Amelli, Ambrogio Maria - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 633

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

AMELLI, AMBROGIO MARIA. - Historian, palaeographer and musicologist, born in Milan on March 19, 1848, died at Montecassino on Aug. 25, 1933.

He studied in the Milanese seminaries and was ordained a priest

Article illustration — AMELLI, AMBROGIO - Portrait. (by E. Joni)

priest on September 20, 1870. From July 1870 he had been hired as a writer at the Ambrosian Library by Msgr. Ceriani (v.), under whose guidance he studied Hebrew and Syriac and perfected himself in paleography and diplomatics.

As a youth he was proficient in music and singing, and studied harmony and counterpoint with maestro Paolo Bonanomi. He was the first in Italy to advocate with apostolic fervor, though not always with success, the ideas of sacred music reform that were imposing themselves especially in Germany. To this end, he founded in Milano and directed from 1877 to 1885 the periodical Musica Sacra.

In 1885, having changed his baptismal name, Guerrino, to that of Ambrogio Maria, he entered the Benedictine Order at Montecassino, where he dedicated himself entirely to historical research; there he served as prior and archivist. In 1908 he was appointed titular abbot of the Badia of Firenze, and in 1916 vice-president of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of the Vulgate. His activity was very prolific in articles and pamphlets on biblical, patristic, liturgical, and musical subjects. To him we owe, among other things, the discovery (1882) of the appeal libellus of Flavian to Pope Leo the Great.

BIBL.: Miscellanea A. (per il 50° del suo sacerdozio), Badia di Montecassino 1920 (dom. Gaetano Fornari gives the list of A.'s publications therein); M. Inguranez, L'abate dom. A. A. e la sua opera, in Scuola Cattolica, 62 (1934), pp. 385-400; M. Busti, L'abate A. M. A. benedettino cassinese (I Nostri, n. 46), Milano 1934. Enrico Galbiati