BANDURI, ANSELMO. - Benedictine and learned Byzantinist, born at Ragusa in Dalmatia in 1671, died at Paris in 1743. He pursued his studies in Italy, where at Florence he met Montfaucon; through the latter’s good offices he was sent by Grand Duke Cosimo III to Paris to study historical methodology at the school of the Maurists. Arriving there in 1702, he was a guest at St-Germain des Prés and devoted himself eagerly to the exploration of the Byzantine period, especially among the rich manuscript collections of the Parisian libraries.
In 1711 he published at Paris the 2 vols. of the Imperium orientale sive Antiquitates Constantinopolitanae, an important account of Byzantine antiquities which won him the post of librarian to the Regent, the duke d’Orléans, and admission to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres (1715). In 1718 he also published at Paris the two volumes Numismata imperatorum romanorum a Traiano Decio uque ad Palaeologos Augustos, a work little esteemed by Eckhel, who, however, greatly praised the Bibliotheca nummaria, sive auctorum qui de re nummaria scriperunt.
Noemi Crostarosa Scipioni