Amico, Vito Maria

AMICO, VITO MARIA. - Benedictine, Sicilian scholar, b. at Catania on 15 February 1697, d. there on 5 December 1762. In 1713 he entered the monastery of S. Niccolò di Arena (Catania), which was part of the Cassinese Congregation. Master of novices, professor of philosophy and theology, he became known above all for his works of history and archaeology, to which he felt himself most inclined.

He began his activity as a historian with a study on the Benedictine abbeys of Sicily, published as an appendix to Pirri's Sicilia Sacra in 1733 in collaboration with A. Mongitore, and then reprinted separately: Siciliae Sacrae libri quarti integra pars... (Catania 1733-34). Drawn, however, by the history of his native city, after having extracted many documents from the sources, he published the four volumes of the Catana illustrata (ibid. 1740-46), which, despite all its defects, made a notable contribution to the city's history. Volume III is especially notable, where he collected inscriptions, medals and valuable monuments of Catania. At the urging of Giovio he prepared a new, updated edition of Fazello's De rebus siculis, published at Catania from 1749 to 1753. In the meantime 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 the time, later translated by G. Di Marzo (Palermo 1855-56), who enriched it with further additions. The A. published other works of a historico-literary character, also leaving several unpublished manuscripts. The method he followed in writing history is that of his time, which he himself set out with a wealth of detail in the De recta civilis historiae comparandae ratione (Catania 1744), which is the inaugural lecture with which he opened the chair of history at the University of Catania, whose necessity he had advocated. To him is due the founding of the museum attached to the library of S. Niccolò d'Arena.

Mario Scaduto