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Oct 13 - Oct 20,2002 |
The mind of a revolutionary thinker
Giacomo Forneri was the first to teach Italian and Modern Languages at Toronto university
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-09-29
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Giacomo Forneri who taught at UofT from 1853 to 1866
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He was born in 1789, the same year when in Paris the Constituent Assembly abolished feudal rights and promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; the year of the French Revolution began. It would sweep the Western world. He, Giacomo Forneri, too young to join, chased the revolution across Europe before becoming the teacher who introduced Modern Languages at the University of Toronto. For 13 years he taught French, Spanish, German and, of course, Italian.
He did more than lecture on grammar and literature, though; he was an exemplary man, and the admiration of his students who long survived him.
He was born in Racconigi, in the province of Turin, in 1789. His ancestors had distinguished themselves in the Crusades, his family was well off, his father a lawyer; he studied with the Jesuits, then graduated in Law.
He was to become a lawyer himself, but he passionately absorbed the ideals of the French Revolution, and its last great leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, captured his fancy. The Emperor's deeds were raising the enthusiasms of the liberals of the period, who saw those deeds - and young Forneri shared this opinion - as helping the people shed the yoke of tyrannical regimes. Therefore, in 1812 Forneri enlisted with a group of friends in the Napoleonic army that was leaving for its Russian campaign. This was a rather unfortunate turn of events: he found himself fighting for the incompetent Gerolamo Bonaparte trying to restore the Kingdom of Westphalia, which then fell into the hands of the Cossacks. They offered him freedom and the rank of captain in exchange for his enlisting in the Russian army; he preferred to remain a prisoner.
Humiliated in his revolutionary aspirations, Forneri returned to Turin determined to go back to practising law, but the codes did not elicit any emotion in him. The meaning of life for him was in the torching of the Bastille. He joined the Carbonari and took active part in the riots following King of Piedmont Carlo Alberto's refusal to accept constitutional reforms. The riots were a failure and Forneri, pursued by the police, was forced to flee to Spain where he enlisted with the rank of captain in the Italian Cacciatori (Light Infantry), a unit of fusiliers siding with Spanish reformers.
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