BECCARI, CAMILLO. - Jesuit, historian of the missions, b. in Rome on 14 July 1849. Having entered the novitiate in 1863, he taught for twenty years in various colleges; in 1897 he became vice-postulator and from 1902 to 1923 postulator general of the causes of beatification and canonization of the Society of Jesus; d. in Rome on 4 Aug. 1929.
His name is linked to one of the principal modern editions of sources for the history of the missions. In 1903 he published a volume of Notizie e saggi di opere e documenti inediti riguardanti la storia di Etiopia durante i secc. XVI, XVII e XVIII; thanks to the support of the Italian Ministry of the Colonies, the essay became vol. I of a collection: Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saec. XVI ad XIX (15 vols. in 2°, Rome 1903-1917; I, op. cit., 1903; II-III, Petr. Pacz, Historia Aethiopiae, 1905-1906; IV, Emm. Barradas, Tractatus tres historico-geographici, 1906; V-VII, Emm. d'Almeida, Historia Aethiopiae, 1907-1908; VIII-X, Patr. Alph. Mendez, Expeditio Aethiopica, 1908-1910; XI-XIV, Relationes et epistolae variorum, 1911-14; XV, Index analyticus, 1917). He republished separately, in Italian translation, one of the Portuguese treatises of vol. IV: Il Tigrè descritto da un missionario gesuita del sec. XVIII (Rome 1909). Despite certain deficiencies, due to the editor's insufficient technical preparation, B.'s collection is of fundamental importance, not only for the history of the Jesuit mission in Abyssinia, but for the whole civil and ecclesiastical history of Ethiopia in the modern era.
Edmondo Lamalle