Bosio, Ferdinando

Bosio, Ferdinando an Italian minister, was born in 1823. He was educated for the priesthood, and at twenty years of age took the highest scholarship and entered the seminary at Milan, under the charge of the bishop. At this time he was ordered to give up the reading of certain anti-Romanist publications, but refused. He subsequently received ordination as a priest, and in 1850 was appointed professor of rhetoric in the seminary at Mantua. He now manifested so strong an antipathy to the Austrian occupation, and gave such vent to his patriotic sentiments, that he was tried and condemned to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for twelve years, and Ferdinando Bosio found himself in the Castle of Josephstadt, on the Bohemian confines. During this imprisonment his system received a shock which ultimately ended his life. The emperor Francis Joseph, on his public entry into Milan in 1856, granted an amnesty to a large number of Italian. prisoners, and Bosio was among the number; the latter accordingly returned to Italy, after his five-years of suffering. He was now sent as a parish priest to Casalromano, where he remained until 1861. The reading of a copy of the Scriptures sold him by a Wesleyan colporteur led to his conversion to Protestantism. He became a student, an evangelist, and finally, in 1866, a Wesleyan Methodist minister. The last eight years of his life were spent in Milan, where he died, July, 1879. Bosio, though modest and retiring, was a man of independent thought and strong moral courage. His preaching was that of a studious, thoughtful man, and was fill of nervous force and earnest appeal. He was esteemed and beloved by his brethren. See Minutes of the British Conference, 1879, p. 56.