Charles Prospero Fagnani

Theologian, teacher, author, Charles Prospero Fagnani was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, and on its faculty for thirty-four years. For almost a quarter of a century he met successive classes of Juniors during the first semester, five times a week, at nine o’clock in the morning, in a class for beginners in Hebrew, drilling them in the elements of that language. Academic teaching was, however, by no means the chief concern of his career. As a minute adopted by the faculty of the Seminary recites:

“His mind and heart were open to every phase of human life. Prayer at the opening of the class hour was not a form but reflected the interests of his active mind, and was often supplemented with pungent comments upon current events. Although he was most careful in his dress and personal appearance, he was neither conventional in his thinking nor commonplace in the expression of his ideas. He was precise and vigorous in his use of words. Students and others were sometimes irritated by his manner of saying things as much as by what he said. But that never troubled Dr. Fagnani, whose purpose was to be provocative and to stimulate thought. This led him to be extreme in his advocacy of progressive ideas, whether in theology, in the support of the newest theories as to health and food, or in questions of social reform.”

There was a twinkle in his eye and lightness of touch in his handling of grave subjects which gave him an extraordinary popularity as a speaker before large and mixed gatherings. He was a devoted supporter of the Salvation Army. His expositions of the weekly International Sunday School lesson on Saturday mornings filled to overflowing for many years the largest classroom available in the Seminary. He also conducted a weekday Bible class attended by upwards of 500 men at the West Side Y.M.C.A. His blithe spirit and unfailing interest in people stirred a warm response wherever he appeared.

Born in New York City, the son of a well-known portrait painter, he attended school in Paris as a child, was graduated from the College of the City of New York and taught in the public schools of the city for six years. Then in the pursuit of more wisdom he studied law at Columbia; but he never practiced law and a few years later he entered the Union Theological Seminary. Ordained by the Presbytery, he engaged in pastoral work for a few years, but illness prevented such labor and after a few years abroad devoted to travel and study, he, in 1899, returned to the Seminary as a member of its faculty. For the last ten years of his service there, from 1916 to 1926, he was Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis. Throughout these years he was a frequent visitor to the Century club-house and one of its much loved members. Since his retirement in 1926, he had lived in Paris, departing only before the approaching invasion in 1939 and settling in the foothills of the western Pyrenees for the last months of his long and vigorous life.

Geoffrey Parsons
1940 Century Memorials