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Bible Encyclopedias
Giovanni Antonio Bianchi
The Catholic Encyclopedia
It was perhaps at the instance of Clement XII that Bianchi composed his scholarly and exhaustive defence of the rights and privileges of the Roman Pontiff, which had been attacked by the Neapolitan lawyer, Pietro Giannone, in the latter's "Storia civile del regno di Napoli". Bianchi's work which was entitled "Della podesta e della polizia della chiesa, trattati due contro le nuove opinioni di Pietro Giannone" appeared in Rome in six volumes between the years 1745 and 1751. In the first treatise (2 vols.) Bianchi defends the indirect power of the Roman Pontiff over temporal sovereigns; while he lucidly and forcibly defends the rights of the pope as regards the external laws and government of the Church, in the second treatise, which comprises the remaining four volumes. Amid the storm of controversial literature provoked by the treatise of the Dominican theologian, Daniele Concina, "De Spectaculis theatralibus", Bianchi's "Sui vizii e sui difetti del moderno teatro e sul modo di corregerli ed emendarli" appeared at Rome in 1753. In this he contends with Scipio Maffei against Concina for the lawfulness, within certain limits, of modern theatrical displays. Notwithstanding these graver preoccupations, Bianchi found time to indulge his predilection for poetry and tragic writing, and his compositions in this field, though of minor importance, show him to be an accomplished master of his own native Tuscan.
Hurter, Nomenclator, II, 1530-32; D'Alencon in Dict. de theol. cath. (Paris, 1900), II, 812; Schulte, Geschichte der Quellen und Litteratur des Canonischen Rechts, (Stuttgart, 1880), III, 512; Feller, Biographie universelle (Paris, 1848), II, 2.
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Obstat, Nihil. Lafort, Remy, Censor. Entry for 'Giovanni Antonio Bianchi'. The Catholic Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​tce/​g/giovanni-antonio-bianchi.html. Robert Appleton Company. New York. 1914.