Carlo Passaglia — Carolus or Karolus Passaglia on his Latin title pages, Charles Passaglia in some English works — was born at Lucca in 1812, entered the care of the Society of Jesus as a youth, and from 1844 taught theology at the Roman College, where he became one of the most learned dogmatic theologians of his generation, steeped in the Greek and Latin Fathers.
He labored with great zeal for the definition of the Immaculate Conception proclaimed by Pius IX in 1854, and wrote a vast commentary on that doctrine; in the same fruitful years he published his Theological Commentaries (1850–51), his work on the Church of Christ, and his commentaries on the eternity of punishments and the fire of hell.
His later years were troubled. Having taken the side of Italian unification against the temporal power of the popes, he was expelled from the Society in 1859, his writings on the question were placed on the Index, and he spent his last decades at Turin, where he taught moral philosophy. Shortly before his death there in 1887 he sought reconciliation with the Pope and made a full retraction.
Two of his works are offered here in English for the first time: the third part of his Theological Commentaries (Rome, 1851), which follows the division of the divine will into first and second, and the universal extent of the order restored in Christ, through Chrysostom and the witness of the whole Church to the Apostle’s words that God wills all men to be saved; and his Commentaries on the Eternity of Punishments and on the Fire of Hell (Rome, 1855).