AYROLI, GIACOMO MARIA. - Jesuit exegete, b. at Genova in 1660, professor of Hebrew at the Roman College, successor to Card. Tolomei in the chair of controversies, d. at Roma on 27 March 1721.
He displayed extensive learning in the classical and Oriental languages in a Dissertatio biblica (Roma 1704), containing a philological exegesis of the most important passages of Sacred Scripture. He published several other dissertations on controversial biblical subjects, especially chronology. In the Liber LXX hebdomadarum resignatus (Roma 1713; reprints 1714 and 1748) he discusses the Messianic prophecy of Dan. 9. Against Fr. de Tournennine, who contested his opinion, he defended himself by publishing (1720) the Theses contra Indaeos de LXX hebd. In 1718 the Dissertatio chronologica de anno, mense et die mortis D.N.I.C. appeared; in 1722, the Dissertatio de annis ab exitu Israel de Aegypto ad IV Salomonis.
The Acta eruditorum of Lipsia (1717, pp. 422-28; 1748, pp. 551-57), reviewing the dissertation on Daniel’s prophecy, praise the «pracelara atque singularis auctoris doctrina» both in the philological field and in that of chronology and history, expressing the hope of soon seeing completed the «opus ipsius quadripartitum» in which the author intended to develop fully his favourite subject; but he was unable to carry out the project he had envisaged.