BINDI, ENRICO. - Bishop, writer, b. at Canapale (Pistoia) on 29 Sept. 1812, d. at Pistoia on 3 June 1876. For 24 years, until 1856, he was an expert professor of letters at the Forteguerri lyceum in Pistoia, then rector until 1859, when he had to withdraw 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 1857 he was named bishop of Pistoia and Prato, and in 1871 archbishop of Siena.
He demonstrated his worth as a man of letters first with the commentaries on the Latin classics of the Prato collection: Caesar (1844-45), Horace (1850), Plautus and Terence (1853), adding to them notable introductory studies on the authors and on the Latin comic theater, which, gathered together, later formed the volume: Scritti sulla letteratura latina (Florence 1865), and then with the classic translation of the Confessions of St. Augustine, published in the Barbera Collezione Diamante (ibid. 1864) and afterward, 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 Storie of Davanzati (2 vols., ibid. 1852-57) and to the Poesie e prose of Arcangeli (ibid. 1857). Equal dignity and urbanity are encountered in the Panagirici e discorsi sacri e morali (2 vols., ibid. 1861-62), in the Lettere pastorali e ometie (Pistoia 1884) and in the short treatises on philosophy, art, aesthetics and morals, collected in the Studi varii (2 vols., ibid. 1861-62), and republished posthumously under the title Religione e Morale (ibid. 1904).
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