Crivellucci, Amedeo

CRIVELLUCCI, AMEDEO. - Historian, b. at Acquaviva Picena on 20 Apr. 1850, d. in Rome on 11 Nov. 1914. He was professor of Modern History at the University of Pisa and remained there from 1885 to 1907, when he was called to that of Rome.

He made his debut with the study Del governo popolare in Firenze e del suo ordinamento secondo il Guicciardini (Pisa 1877), and with I primi saggi della storiografia fiorentina (Rome 1882); but he soon turned his investigation to the relations between State and Church from their origins and in particular in the age of the Lombards. The Storia delle relazioni tra lo Stato e la Chiesa (vols. I and II, Bologna 1885-86), runs from the earliest times of Christianity to the fall of the Western Empire and from there to the end of the pontificate of Gregory the Great. But where the eighteenth-century rationalism, which brought him close to Giannone, and his impetuous passionateness are best tempered, is in vol. III, on the origins of the Papal State (Pisa 1909), which was nevertheless surpassed by the studies and conclusions of Duchesne. The work, as a whole, suffers from a certain monotony and from excessive work on the texts, forced beyond their meaning. He proved himself, moreover, a better scholar in his particular contributions (such as those on Chiesa e Impero al tempo di Pelagio II e di Gregorio II [1892] or on Le Chiese cattoliche ed i Longobardi ariani in Italia [1895-96]), than in works of synthesis, owing to a lack of general ideas and a skepticism toward the supreme values of history, due to the philological method that he had learned, perfecting it in Berlin, and which he had then introduced into Italy. To this was due his disaffection for general questions and his greater attention to methodology and heuristics, which led him to translate from Bernheim's Manuale only the parts relating to them (Pisa 1897) and to undertake vast bibliographical enterprises, such as from 1902 the Annuario bibliografico della storia d'Italia, compiled with Monticolo and then alone from 1904 to 1913, and which is moreover a perfect working tool. The same may be said of the editions of the Historia Romana of Paul the Deacon and of the Historia romana of Landolf Sagax (Rome 1912-13), and of the journal Studi storici, which, from 1892 until his death, he strove to publish with every effort and sacrifice, even personal.

Pier Fausto Palumbo