AMICO, VITO MARIA. — Benedictine, Sicilian scholar, born in Catania on 15 February 1697, died there on 5 December 1762. In 1713 he entered the monastery of S. Niccolò di Arena (Catania), which belonged to the Cassinese Congregation. Master of novices and professor of philosophy and theology, he became especially known for his works on history and archaeology, toward which he felt particularly 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 subsequently reprinted separately: Siciliae Sacrae libri quarti integra pars... (Catania 1733–34). Having, however, become absorbed in the history of his native city, after drawing many documents from the sources he published the four volumes of the Catana illustrata (there, 1740–46), which, despite all its defects, made a notable contribution to the history of the city. Particularly noteworthy is vol. III, in which he collected inscriptions, medals, and valuable monuments of Catania. At Giovio’s urging he prepared a new, updated edition of Fazzello, De rebus sculis, published in Catania from 1749 to 1753. Meanwhile, he was granted the title of Royal historiographer (1751). The last of his major works, but 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 that time, later translated by G. Di Marzo (Palermo 1855–56), who enriched it with further additions. The A. published other works of a historical-literary character, while also leaving several unpublished manuscripts. The method he followed in writing history was that of his age, which he himself expounded in considerable 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 responsible for founding the museum attached to the library of S. Niccolò d’Arena.