Antonio Rosmini, who died a hundred years ago, has a distinguished but rather singular place in Catholic history. Revered by many as a saint in all but name, founder of the Institute of Charity, a priest corde et animo, he was also, in the judgment of the relatively few who have studied his writings, a very great Christian intellect; while for students of Italian history he has an honourable if somewhat isolated place in the complex national revival known as the Risorgimento. Evidently a many-sided person and yet, just because of this, not one to be easily identified with any particular group or trend in Church or State. And this isolation, so to call it, is reflected in the fortunes of those voluminous philosophical writings which Rosmini himself considered his main life-work, along with the founding of the Institute. Among Catholics they are still shadowed, though less than formerly, by a suspicion of unorthodoxy; while anti-clericalism has hindered, until recently, their influence with lay academic circles especially in Italy. Moreover Rosmim’s literary style, though clear and dignified, entirely lacks the ease and grace and sting which so helped Croce, for example, to win the attention of his countrymen and hold it for nearly half a century. However there are now signs of a change; and in post-war Italy Rosmini’s influence is probably stronger, if still less widely diffused, than Croce’s.