Giovanni Cantoni (writer)

Giovanni Cantoni (23 September 1938 – 18 January 2020) was an Italian writer, translator and apologist, founder and former national regent of Alleanza Cattolica.

Biography

Giovanni Cantoni was born in Piacenza, the son of a veteran of the Italian Social Republic. From his father he inherited the rejection of the myth of the Resistenza, finding his own cultural models in the idealist philosophy of Giovanni Gentile and in the neo-pagan mysticism of Julius Evola.

For some years he frequented the Florentine house of the writer Attilio Mordini, together with Count Neri Capponi and the historian Franco Cardini. After the religious cenacles of the house in Via della Pergola, in the center of Florence, he was involved with the Center for the Civil Order, founded in the 1960s by Gianni Baget Bozzo to counter the growth of the DC, oriented to the left.

In 1960 he joined the Centre for Traditional Studies of Turin and the Center for the Civil Order of Augusto Del Noce and Baget Bozzo, which intended to contest the formation of centre-left governments, and oversaw the publication of the writings of the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio, strongly critical of the Italian Risorgimento, considered the Italian version of the French Revolution.

In the 1960s he collaborated with the official newspaper of the Holy See L'Osservatore Romano and with that of the Italian Social Movement, Secolo d'Italia.

In the early seventies, together with Mauro Ronco, activist of the Christian political movement "Europa Settanta", Roberto de Mattei, exponent of the Youth Monarchist Front and the charismatic Agostino Sanfratello, he founded the Alleanza Cattolica association, of which he was national regent from 1960 to 2016.

From 1972 to 2016 he directed the magazine Cristianità, the official organ of Alleanza Cattolica. He was also rector of the Institute for Social Doctrine and Information (IDIS) which in 1996 promoted the editorial initiative of the Dictionary of Strong Thought.

In 1994 he resumed his collaboration with Secolo d'Italia, the newspaper of the National Alliance. Since 2000 he also collaborated with Il Timone, a monthly popular apologetic magazine. Some of his works have been translated into Spanish and Slovak.

A noted scholar of the main exponents of Latin American Catholic traditionalism, including Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nicolás Gómez Dávila and José Pedro Galvão de Sousa, he has contributed significantly to their translation and dissemination in Italy.

Works

Major publications

• La lezione italiana: premesse, manovre e riflessi della politica di compromesso storico sulla soglia dell'Italia rossa (1980)
• Libertà religiosa, «sette» e «diritto di persecuzione» (1996; with Massimo Introvigne)
• Aspetti in ombra della legge sociale dell'islam: per una critica della vulgata islamicamente corretta (2000; edited by Samir Khalil Samir)
• Per una civiltà cristiana nel terzo millennio: la coscienza della Magna Europa e il quinto viaggio di Colombo (2008)

As editor

• Luigi Taparelli, La libertà tirannia: saggio del p. L. Taparelli d'Azeglio S. J. sul liberalismo risorgimentale (1960; with Carlo Emanuele Manfredi)
• Aa.Vv., Voci per un dizionario del pensiero forte (1997; introduction by Gennaro Malgieri)
• Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Note sul concetto di cristianità: carattere spirituale e sacrale della società temporale e sua ministerialità (1998)
• Aa.Vv., Magna Europa: L'Europa fuori dall'Europa (2007; with Francesco Pappalardo)
• Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Rivoluzione e contro-rivoluzione: edizione del cinquantenario (1959-2009) (2009)

Translations

• Frithjof Schuon, L'uomo e la certezza (1967)
• Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Trasbordo ideologico inavvertito e dialogo (1970; with Silvio Vitale)
• Jean Servier, L'uomo e l'invisibile (1973; with Agostino Sanfratello)
• Mircea Eliade, Il mito dell'eterno ritorno (1975)
• Mircea Eliade, Miti, sogni e misteri (1976)
• Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Rivoluzione e controrivoluzione (1977)
• Mircea Eliade, Mito e realtà (1993)

Miscellania

• Jean Daujat, Conoscere il comunismo (1979; translated by Marco Invernizzi; with introduction by Giovanni Cantoni)
• Anon., La cerca del Graal, (1985; translated by Anna Cattabiani; with introduction by Giovanni Cantoni)
• Paolo Calliari, Servire la Chiesa. Il venerabile Pio Bruno Lanteri (1759-1830). Pioniere del movimento laici cattolici (1989; preface)
• Jean Dumont, I falsi miti della rivoluzione francese (1990; preface)
• Massimo Introvigne, Il ritorno dello gnosticismo (1993; introduction)
• Raoul Plus, Come pregare sempre principi e pratica dell'unione con Dio (2009; introduction by Aldo Forzoni; with preface by Giovanni Cantoni)

References

• "Contributo per la bibliografia di Giovanni Cantoni." In: PierLuigi Zoccatelli & Ignazio Cantoni, eds., A maggior gloria di Dio, anche sociale. Scritti in onore di Giovanni Cantoni nel suo settantesimo compleanno. Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli (2008), pp. 283–339.