CARINI, ISIDORO. – Priest, palaeographer, and historian, b. in Palermo on 7 Jan. 1845, d. in Rome on 25 May 1895. Ordained in 1868, he devoted himself passionately to the palaeographical and historical studies of Christianity, the papacy, and Italy that were to characterize his work as an investigator and scholar. He took part in the founding of the Archivio storico siciliano and the Società siciliana di storia patria (1872), taught palaeography and diplomatics at the State Archives of Palermo, gathered a rich collection of documents in Barcelona for the sixth centenary of the Sicilian Vespers, and in 1885 was summoned to Rome by Leo XIII, who held him in great affection. He subsequently became a canon of St Peter’s, under-archivist of the Holy See, consultant to the Cardinal Commission for Historical Studies, professor of palaeography and diplomatics at the Vatican School, and finally prefect of the Library, distinguishing himself through important discoveries made and disseminated from those inexhaustible collections.
The friendship that the Pontiff had already cultivated with C.’s father, General Giacinto Carini, and the good fortune of having been held at the baptismal font by Francesco Crispi made him a spontaneous and natural intermediary in the contacts that Leo XIII maintained with the latter when, beginning on 15 Dec. 1893, he once again became president of the Council. Thus, through C., the bitter dispute over the granting of the exequatur to no fewer than seventeen bishops was settled, among them the bishop of Mantua, appointed patriarch of Venice, who was later to become Pius X; an apostolic prefecture was established at Keren; and during the very frequent visits Crispi made to Via Gregoriana, where C. lived, lengthy negotiations began in 1894 for the famous attempt to resolve the Roman question. C.’s sudden and premature death seems to have been contributed to in no small measure by the fierce attacks directed against him by those who, opposed to the work he was carrying out, sought to strike at him on the occasion of the theft of precious codices that had just taken place in the Vatican Library. A member of numerous academies and contributor to several newspapers and journals, C. was also responsible for De rebus Regni Siciliae (Palermo 1882) and Gli architti e le biblioteche di Spagna in rapporto alla storia d'Italia in generale e della Sicilia in particolare (2 vols., ibid. 1884), as well as a volume on the Arcadian Academy.