BINDI, ENRICO. – Bishop, writer, born at Capapale (Pistoia) on 29 Sept. 1812, died at Pistoia on 3 June 1876. For 24 years, until 1856, he was an expert professor of literature at the Forteguerri lyceum in Pistoia, remaining there until 1859, when he had to retire because he was judged to hold anti-liberal ideas. But already in 1861 he moved to the chair of theology in the seminary, of which he was at the same time rector, until in 1867 he was appointed bishop of Pistoia and Prato, and in 1871 archbishop of Siena.
He demonstrated his literary skill first with commentaries on the Latin classics in the Prato collection: Caesar (1844–45), Horace (1850), Plautus and Terence (1853), adding notable introductory studies on the authors and on Latin comic theatre, which, collected together, later formed the volume: Scritti sulla letteratura latina (Florence 1865); then with the classic translation of the Confessions of St Augustine, published in the Collezione Diamante of Barba (ibid. 1864) and later in a separate edition with the addition of the translation of the Life of the Saint, written by Possidius (ibid. 1869). Also worthy of note are the prefaces to the Letters of Davanzati (2 vols., ibid. 1852–53) and to the Poems and Prose of Arcangeli (ibid. 1857). Equal dignity and urbanity are found in the Panegyrics and Sacred and Moral Discourses (2 vols., ibid. 1861–62), in the Pastoral Letters and Homilies (Pistoia 1884), and in the little treatises on philosophy, art, aesthetics and morals, collected in Studi varii (2 vols., ibid. 1861–62), and republished posthumously under the title Religione e Morale (ibid. 1904).