graduating M.A. in 1792. In that year he was ordained and became curate of Horsley, Gloucestershire, where he remained till 1810. He then removed to Walford in Herefordshire, and remained there the rest of his life, as curate till 1830, and afterwards as vicar. His first important work, British Monachism (2 vols., 1802), was a compilation, from manuscripts in the British Museum and Bodleian libraries, of facts relating to English monastic life. In 1799 Fosbroke had been elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. The work for which he is best remembered, the Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, appeared in 1824. A sequel to this, Foreign Topography, was published in 1828. Fosbroke published many other volumes. He died at Walford on the 1st of January 1842.
FOSCARI, FRANCESCO (1373–1457), doge of Venice, belonged to a noble Venetian family, and held many of the highest offices of the republic—ambassador, president of the Forty, member of the Council of Ten, inquisitor, procurator of St Mark, avvogadore di comun, &c. His first wife was Maria Priuli and his second Maria Nani; of his many children all save one son (Jacopo) died young. But although a capable administrator he was ambitious and adventurous, and the reigning doge Tommaso Mocenigo, when speaking on his deathbed of the various candidates for the succession, warned the council against electing Foscari, who, he said, would perpetually plunge the republic into disastrous and costly wars. Nevertheless Foscari was elected (1423) and reigned for thirty-four years. In proclaiming the new doge the customary formula which recognized the people’s share in the appointment and asked for their approval—the last vestige of popular government—was finally dropped.
Foscari’s reign bore out Mocenigo’s warning and was full of wars on the terra ferma, and through the doge’s influence Venice joined the Florentines in their campaign against Milan, which was carried on with varying success for eight years. In 1430 an attempt was made on Foscari’s life by a noble to whom he had refused an appointment; and three years later a conspiracy of young bloods to secure the various offices for themselves by illicit intrigues was discovered. These events, as well as the long and expensive wars and the unsatisfactory state of Venetian finances, induced Foscari to ask permission to abdicate, which was, however, refused. In 1444 began that long domestic tragedy by which the name of Foscari has become famous. The doge’s son Jacopo, a cultivated and intelligent but frivolous and irresponsible youth, was in that year accused of the serious crime of having accepted presents from various citizens and foreign princes who either desired government appointments or wished to influence the policy of the republic. Jacopo escaped, but was tried in contumacy before the Council of Ten and condemned to be exiled to Napoli di Romania (Nauplia) and to have his property confiscated. But the execution of the sentence was delayed, as he was lying ill at Trieste, and eventually the penalty was commuted to banishment at Treviso (1446). Four years later Ermolao Donato, a distinguished official who had been a member of the Ten at the time of the trial, was assassinated and Jacopo Foscari was suspected of complicity in the deed. After a long inquiry he was brought to trial for the second time, and although all the evidence clearly pointed to his guilt the judges could not obtain a confession from the accused, and so merely banished him to Candia for the rest of his life, with a pension of two hundred ducats a year. In 1456 the council received information from the rector (governor) of Candia to the effect that Jacopo Foscari had been in treasonable correspondence with the duke of Milan and the sultan of Turkey. He was summoned to Venice, tried and condemned to a year’s imprisonment, to be followed by a return to his place of exile. His aged father was allowed to see him while in prison, and to Jacopo’s entreaties that he should obtain a full pardon for him, he replied advising him to bear his punishment without protest. When the year was up Jacopo returned to Candia, where he died in January 1457. The doge was overwhelmed with grief at this bereavement and became quite incapable of attending to business. Consequently the council decided to ask him to abdicate; at first he refused, but was finally obliged to conform to their wishes and retired on a yearly pension of 1500 ducats. Within a week Pasquale Malipiero was elected in his place and two days later (1st of November 1457) Francesco Foscari was dead.
The story is a very sad and pathetic one, but legend has added many picturesque though quite apocryphal details, most of them tending to show the iniquity and harshness of Jacopo’s judges and accusers, whereas, as we have shown, he was treated with exceptional leniency. The most accurate account is contained in S. Romanin’s Storia documentata di Venezia, lib. x. cap. iv. vii. and x. (Venice, 1855); where the original authorities are quoted; see also Berlan, I due Foscari (Turin, 1852). Among the poetical works on the subject Byron’s tragedy is the most famous (1821), and Roger’s poem Italy (1821); Giuseppe Verdi composed an opera on the subject entitled I due Foscari. (L. V.*)
FOSCOLO, UGO (1778–1827), Italian writer, was born at
Zante in the Ionian Isles on the 26th of January 1778. On the
death of his father, a physician at Spalatro, in Dalmatia, the
family removed to Venice, and in the University of Padua
Foscolo prosecuted the studies begun in the Dalmatian grammar
school. The fact that amongst his Paduan masters was the abbé
Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made that work highly
popular in Italy, was not without influence on Foscolo’s literary
tastes, and his early knowledge of modern facilitated his studies
in ancient Greek. His literary ambition revealed itself by the
appearance in 1797 of his tragedy Tieste—a production which
obtained a certain degree of success. Foscolo, who, from
causes not clearly explained, had changed his Christian name
Niccolo to that of Ugo, now began to take an active part in the
stormy political discussions which the fall of the republic of
Venice had provoked. He was a prominent member of the
national committees, and addressed an ode to Napoleon the
liberator, expecting from the military successes of the French
general, not merely the overthrow of the effete Venetian oligarchy,
but the establishment of a free republican government.
The treaty of Campo Formio (17th Oct. 1797), by which Napoleon handed Venice over to the Austrians, gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in the Letters of Jacopo Ortis (1798), a species of political Werther,—for the hero of Foscolo embodies the mental sufferings and suicide of an undeceived Italian patriot just as the hero of Goethe places before us the too delicate sensitiveness embittering and at last cutting short the life of a private German scholar. The story of Foscolo, like that of Goethe, had a groundwork of melancholy fact. Jacopo Ortis had been a real personage; he was a young student of Padua, and committed suicide there under circumstances akin to those described by Foscolo. At this period Foscolo’s mind appears to have been only too familiar with the thought of suicide. Cato and the many classical examples of self-destruction scattered through the pages of Plutarch appealed to the imaginations of young Italian patriots as they had done in France to those of the heroes and heroines of the Gironde. In the case of Foscolo, as in that of Goethe, the effect produced on the writer’s mind by the composition of the work seems to have been beneficial. He had seen the ideal of a great national future rudely shattered; but he did not despair of his country, and sought relief in now turning to gaze on the ideal of a great national poet. At Milan, whither he repaired after the fall of Venice, he was engaged in other literary pursuits besides the composition of Ortis. The friendship formed there with the great poet Parini was ever afterwards remembered with pride and gratitude. The friendship formed with another celebrated Milanese poet soon gave place to a feeling of bitter enmity. Still hoping that his country would be freed by Napoleon, he served as a volunteer in the French army, took part in the battle of the Trebbia and the siege of Genoa, was wounded and made prisoner. When released he returned to Milan, and there gave the last touches to his Ortis, published a translation of and commentary upon Callimachus, commenced a version of the Iliad, and began his translation of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. The result of a memorandum prepared for Lyons, where, along with other Italian delegates, he was to have laid before Napoleon the state of Italy, only proved that the views cherished by him for his
