D'OVIDIO, FRANCESCO. - Man of letters, b. at Campobasso on 5 Dec. 1849, d. at Napoli on 24 Nov. 1925. President of the Lincei, senator, and for half a century (from 1876) professor of Romance philology at the University of Napoli. In his studies of linguistics and literary criticism he brought scrupulous methodical research and subtlety of intuition.
In collaboration with Meyer-Lübke he published a Grammatica storica della lingua e dei dialetti italiani (1910). Noteworthy are his essays on Dante: Sul De volgari eloquentia, in Arch. Glott. Ital., 2 (1876), pp. 59-100; Studi sulla Divina Commedia (1901); Nuovi studi danteschi (1926); Nuovo volume di studi danteschi (1926); L'ultimo volume dantesco (1931-32). But the preferred object of his investigations was Manzoni, to whom he felt spiritually close: Le correzioni ai Promessi Spasi (1895); Studi manzoniani (1928); Nuovi studi manzoniani (1928). He possessed uprightness of life and reverence for religion and truth: “I speak solely in order to inculcate what seems to me the truth and the good.”
DOUMÉ, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE of. - Indigenous newly ordained priests of Camerun.
F. D'O., Napoli 1931; E. Ciafardini, Commemorazione di F. D'O., there 1931; F. Quintavalle, Opera omnia di F. D'O.*, there 1933. Enzo Navarra