VITO MARIA AMICO. - Benedictine, Sicilian scholar, b. in Catania on 15 Feb 1697, d. there on 5 Dec 1762. In 1713 he entered the monastery of S. Niccolò l'Arena (Catania), which belonged to the Cassinese Congregation. Master of novices, professor of philosophy and theology, he became especially well known for his works in history and archaeology, to which he felt most inclined.
He began his activity as a historian with a study of the Benedictine abbeys of Sicily, published as an appendix to Pirri’s Sicilia Sacra in 1733 in collaboration with A. Mongitore, and later reprinted separately: Sicilia Sacrae libri quarti integra pars... (Catania 1733-34). Drawn, however, to the history of his native city, after extracting many documents from the sources, he published the four volumes of the Catana illustrata (ibid. 1740-46), which, despite its defects, made a notable contribution to the city’s history. Especially noteworthy is vol. III, where he collected inscriptions, medals, and notable monuments of Catania. At the instigation of Giovio he prepared a new updated edition of Fazello’s De rebus siculis, published in Catania from 1749 to 1753. Meanwhile, he was granted the title of Royal Historiographer (1751). The last of his major works, though the most laborious, was the Lexicon topographicum siculum (4 vols., Catania 1757-60), an interesting and accurate work, divided according to the three administrative valleys of the time, later translated by G. Di Marzo (Palermo 1855-56), who enriched it with further additions. The author published other works of a historical-literary nature and left several unpublished manuscripts. The method he followed in writing history is that of his time, which he himself expounded in detail in De recta civilis historiae comparandae ratione (Catania 1744), the inaugural lecture with which he opened the chair of history at the University of Catania, whose necessity he had advocated. He is credited with founding the museum attached to the library of S. Niccolò l'Arena.