PASCOLI
PATER
Acquaintance, 1901, p. 143). He adds that
" no man ever came near him without in
some measure loving him." D. Oct. 17,
1891.
PASCOLI, Professor Giovanni, Italian poet. B. Dec. 31, 1855. Ed. Bologna University. Pascoli made brilliant studies in Italian, Latin, and Greek, and was appointed professor of Greek and Latin at Messina University. From there he passed to Pisa, and he succeeded Carducci in the chair of Italian literature at Bologna. He translated Homer s Iliad and Odyssey, and his own verse (Versi per Nozzi, 1887; Epos, 1897, etc.) put him in " the first rank of living Italian poets " (Athenceum, Apr. 13, 1912). There were Italian authorities who regarded him as " the greatest Latin poet since the Augustan Age " (Annual Register, 1912, p. 100). Pascoli was anti-Papal, and he in much of his verse rejoices at the triumph of Garibaldi and the liberators of Italy ; but he was a Theist, with a certain moral tenderness for Christianity. He called upon the clergy to " get rid of the ashes and scum [of dogma and ritual] upon their souls and present Christianity as a torrent of love " (Patria e umanitd, 1914, p. 81). His views were based on humanitarian sentiment rather than on a clear philosophy. D. Apr. 6, 1912.
PASSERANI, Alberto Radicati, Count de, Italian philosopher. B. end of the seventeenth century. Passerani, who was attached to the court of Victor Amadeo II, took an active part in that monarch s struggle with the Papacy. The pamphlets he wrote were so violent against the priests that he was summoned before the Inquisi tion. He fled to England, and his property was confiscated. He afterwards lived in France, and then Holland. He " was a great enemy of the clergy, having adopted the ideas of the philosophers which were then current " (Larousse). His Ration alistic and humanitarian sentiments are expressed in his pamphlet, Une dissertation
587
sur la mort (1733), for which he was im*
prisoned ; La religion tnahometane com-
paree a la paienne (1737), and a number
of posthumous writings, in which he
scathingly criticizes Christianity. The
Count was a practical and fervent humani
tarian, and left all his property to the poor
of Amsterdam, where he died, in exile, in
1737.
PASTORET, Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre, Marquis de, French jurist and statesman. B. Oct. 25, 1756. Ed. Oratorian College, Lyons. At the out break of the Revolution he was Maitre des Requetes at the Paris Cour des Aides. He had accepted the ideas of the philosophers, and published an Eloge de Voltaire (1779) and other small Deistic works. Adopting the moderate ideas of the Revolution, he was appointed Procureur General Syndic for the Seine. It was Pastoret who led a deputation to ask the Convention to convert the church of Ste. Genevieve into the Pantheon. He was the first President of the Legislative Assembly in 1795, and he was later President of the Council of Five Hundred. In 1804 he was appointed professor of international law at the College de France, and in 1809 professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Letters. He was promoted to the Senate in 1809. Accepting the restoration, he became a Peer in 1814, Minister of State in 1826, and Chancellor of France in 1829. In 1830 he lost his position by refusing to take the oath to the reactionary monarchy. A member of the Academy and the author of important works on law, Pastoret held a very high position in the France of his day, and never abandoned his early Deism. D. Sep. 28, 1840.
PATER, Walter Horatio, M.A., writer. B. Aug. 4, 1839. Ed. private school Enfield, King s School Canterbury, and Oxford (Queen s College). Pater s family was of Dutch-Catholic origin, though his parents had embraced Protestantism at London. He at first intended to study for 588
