Mai

Mai, ANGELO, CARDINAL, a distinguished Italian scholar, was born in the village of Schilpario, in Lombardy, March 7, 1782. He was educated and lived till 1808 in Jesuit establishments, next was a secular priest at Milan, and became custodian of the Ambrosian Library there. Here he devoted himself to palæography, and during the next six years discovered a series of long-lost works, many from palimpsests. Among these were fragments of some of Cicero's Orationes; of Plautus, especially of the Vidularia, a lost play; of Letters of Fronto, the preceptor of Marcus Aurelius; of Isæus, Themistius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Philo, Porphyrios, and the Chronicon of Eusebius. All these, however, were eclipsed by his well-known edition and restoration of the De Republica of Cicero (1822). Meanwhile Mai had been invited to Rome by Pius VII., and named to the charge of the Vatican Library. He at once turned his attention to the unedited MSS. of the Vatican, and undertook the task of publishing those among them which had been neglected by earlier editors; and although appointed in 1833 to the onerous office of secretary of the Propaganda, and in 1838 to the cardinalate itself, he found time to superintend a series of publications almost unexampled in extent and importance in modern times. His first series was in ten quarto vols., entitled Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio, e Vaticanis Codicibus edita (1825-38). It consists, like the great collections of Mabillon, Montfaucon, D'Achéry, and others, of miscellaneous unpublished Greek and Latin works, partly sacred, partly profane, comprising an entire volume of palimpsest fragments of the Greek historians, Polybius, Diodorus, Dion, Dionysius, and others. The succeeding collections, Classicorum Auctorum Collectio, e Vaticanis Codicibus edita (10 vols. 1828-38), Spicilegium Romanum (10 vols. 1839-44), and Patrum Nova Bibliotheca (6 vols. 1845-53), are all on the same plan, and all equally replete with new and interesting materials. For many years Cardinal Mai was engaged in preparing an edition of the celebrated Codex Vaticanus, but long postponed its publication with the intention of preparing preliminary dissertations. But death overtook him unexpectedly near Albano, September 9, 1854; and the edition was ultimately published without these (5 vols. 1858). This work was far from being entirely satisfactory, and has since been superseded by the edition of Vercellone and Cozza (1868). Cardinal Mai's library was bequeathed, at half its estimated value, to the Vatican, for the good of the poor of his native village.