Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Carlo Giovanni Maria Denina

DENINA, Carlo Giovanni Maria (1731–1813), an Italian author, was born at Revello, Piedmont, in 1731, and was educated at Saluzzo and Turin. In 1753 he was appointed to the chair of humanity at Pignerol, but he was soon compelled by the influence of the Jesuits to retire from it. In 1756 he graduated as doctor in theology, and began authorship with a theological treatise. Promoted to the professorship of humanity and rhetoric in the college of Turin, he showed his literary activity in his great work On the Revolutions of Italy, and in other writings. Collegiate honours accompanied the issue of its successive volumes, which, however, at the same time, multiplied his foes and stimulated their hatred. In 1782 he repaired to Berlin, where he remained for many years, in the course of which he published various works. In 1804 he went to Paris as the imperial librarian, to which office he had been appointed by Napoleon, who was attracted to him at Metz. He died there on 5th December 1813. Denina's reputation is mainly founded on his History of the Revolutions of Italy, in which he combines a philosophic spirit and the habit of accurate narration.