Vit

Vit, VINCENZO DE, distinguished Latinist and editor of the enlarged edition of Forcellini's Lexicon Totius Latinitatis (6 vols. quarto, Prato, 1858-79), a Paduan by birth (1811) and an ecclesiastic by profession, was a canon of Rovigo, and town-librarian, when in 1850 he joined the brotherhood of Rosmini, to whom he dedicated the Lexicon. On his jubilee in 1888 Leo XIII. sent him a gold medal. His minor writings on history, archaeology, and philology have been collected in a uniform edition published at Milan and Florence. The 11th vol. (1892) is entitled Domodossola; or the Roman Province of the Alpes Areticane, the existence of which he maintains against Mommsen. His greatest original work is the Onomasticon, containing all proper names down to the 5th century. Thirty-six years' labour had just brought him to the end of O, closing the fourth volume, when he died 17th August 1892. He also left ready for the press a supplemental seventh volume to Forcellini, giving in 1000 pages in double columns all the words in recently discovered inscriptions or codices.