FAGNANI, PROSPER: Roman canonist; b. 1598; d. in Rome 1678. At twenty he was graduated as a doctor of law at Perugia, and two years later he was given the important position of secretary to the Congregatio concilii, which held he for fifteen years. He was afterward successively secretary to other congregations and probably professor of canon law at Rome. The commentary which, at the instance of Alexander VII., he wrote on the decretals (3 vols., Rome, 1661) is still appealed to by canonists. He was blind from his forty-fourth year.