CIAMPINI, GIOVANNI GIUSTINO. - Born in Rome on 13 April 1633, died there on 12 July 1698.
A skilled jurist, he later held very important offices in the Roman Curia. In 1671 he established at the Urban College of Propaganda Fide the Ecclesiastical Academy, afterwards called the Academy of the Councils, for the study of councils and canons and for questions of scholastic and moral theology. In 1673, in his own residence, he established a second academy that dealt with philosophy and the sciences, and he transformed the house into a museum of antiquities, with a collection of machines and scientific instruments. A third series of meetings was held at his home to discuss literary subjects. C.'s preferred field was that of sacred and profane monuments, with the direct study of the same; he often accompanied Mabillon on visits to them, as the latter recalls in his Iter Italicum.
Not everything that C. wrote has been published; his fundamental works are: Examen Libri Pontificalis sive vitarum Romanorum Pontificum (Rome 1688), presented to Pope Innocent XI; it consists of original observations on the very well-known collection of biographies of the popes. There follow the Veterum monumenta, in quibus praecipue musiva opera sacrarum, profanarumque aedium structura, ac nonnullis antiqui ritus dissertationibus iconibusque illustrantur. Pars I a primo Christi saeculo ad quintum (Rome 1690); the second part was published posthumously in 1699; a new edition, in three volumes, edited by C. Giannini, appeared in 1747; it deals extensively with the most distinguished churches of Rome, Italy and abroad, with special reference to the mosaics of those churches. Another work, De sacris aedificiis a Constantino Magno constructis historia (Rome 1693), concerns the churches of Rome and of other countries, built by Constantine or attributed to him.
Bibliography2 works
Carlo Carletti