CERIANI, ANTONIO MARIA. — Milanese palaeographer and Orientalist, b. at Uboldo (Milan) 2 May 1828, d. at Milan 2 March 1907. Of humble family, he studied in the Milanese seminaries and was ordained priest on 5 June 1852. A self-taught man of iron memory and tenacious will, by 1855—after a few years of teaching literary subjects—when he was named custodian of the catalogue of the Ambrosian Library, he had already acquired a vast and profound philological culture, which he continued to expand during his service as “doctor” of the same library (from 15 May 1857). On 25 January 1870 he was elected Prefect of the Library, a post he held until his death.
He was a member of several Italian and foreign scientific institutes, perhaps better known abroad than in Italy, within the circle of scholars of Christian and Oriental antiquities. Of austere and studious life, during his fifty years at the Ambrosiana he rarely left his post for any study trip. He excelled in Greek and Latin palaeography and in Syriac literature, especially of a biblical character; he rendered distinguished service to liturgical studies through the critical edition of the Ambrosian Missal (Milan 1902). His major publications are contained in the six-volume collection: *Monumenta sacra et profana, ex codd. praesertim bibliothecae Ambrosianae* (Milan 1861–74), which includes the phototypic edition of the Ambrosian codices of the Syro-Peshitta and Syro-Hexapla (cf. vols. VI and VII). He was the first to identify, as early as 1886, the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint, and to publish the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, the *Ascensio Mosis*, and the *Paralipomena of Jeremiah*. He discovered Book III of the history of the Council of Nicaea by Gelasius of Cyzicus (cf. *Monumenta sacra et profana*, I).