Saverio Bettinelli

Who was Saverio Bettinelli?

Saverio Bettinelli was an Italian Jesuit writer.

He was born at Mantua.

Saverio entered the Jesuit order in 1738 and became known as a polymath, dramatist, polemicist, poet, and literary critic. He taught Rhetoric in various Italian cities, until in 1758 he set out to travel through Italy and Germay. In his travels he met Voltaire and Rousseau, In 1773, with the suppression of the Jesuits, he had to abandon his teaching post at Modena, and he retired to Mantua where he died in 1808.

He taught literature from 1739 to 1744 at Brescia, where Cardinal Quirini, Count Mazzuchelli, Count Duranti and other scholars, formed an illustrious academy. He next went to Bologna, to study divinity. At the age of thirty he went to Venice, where he became professor of rhetoric. The superintendence of the college of nobles at Parma was entrusted to him in 1751; and he had principal charge of the studies of poetry and history, and the entertainments of the theatre. He remained there eight years, visiting, at intervals, other cities of Italy, often on the affairs of his order.

In 1755 he travelled in Germany, proceeded as far as Strasbourg and Nancy, and returned by way of Germany into Italy, taking with him two young sons or nephews of the prince of Hohenlohe, who had requested him to take charge of their education. The year following, he journeyed again to France, along with the eldest of his pupils; and during this excursion he wrote his famous Lettere dieci di Virgilio agli Arcadi, which were published at Venice. Bettinelli was also a poet of arcadic verse, collected in his Versi sciolti of 1758 and inspired by Frugoni and Algarotti, and of some tragedies including Gionata, Demetrio Poliorcete, Serse that were put on for the jesuit theater.