FAITHFUL, PIETRO. - Historian and politician, b. at Minturno on 15 April 1873, d. at Rome on 9 Jan. 1943. First a professor in secondary schools, he then spent long years in university teaching at Turin (1905-15) and at Rome (1915-42).
F. was one of the major representatives of the historical-philological school. A reliable editor of the most important Roman church cartularies (of SS. Cosma e Damiano, of S. Maria Nova, of S. Prassede), with his contributions he shed vivid light on medieval Rome: fundamental are his researches on the papacy and the civic institutions of the 10th and 12th centuries, just as famous are his courses on the constitution of the patrimonia, on Arnold of Brescia, on Boniface VIII, on Cola di Rienzo. He also reassessed historical studies on the medieval Mezzogiorno, whose deep unity with Campania, with Latium, with Rome he perceived. A deputy on the national list, he was minister of Public Education from 1925 to 1928 (and as such actively worked, in harmony with his sentiments as a Catholic, for the Conciliation, among whose immediate antecedents is to be placed F.'s meeting, at Assisi, with Card. Merry del Val), linking his name to institutions and measures such as the resumption of the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the recovery of the ships of Nemi, the national edition of the Latin and Greek classics, the founding of the Accademia d'Italia. President of the Istituto storico italiano (from '55 for the Middle Ages) and of the Deputazione romana di storia patria, as well as of the Poligrafico dello Stato, he gave impetus to the monumental collections of the Fonti della storia d'Italia, of the Regesta chartarum Italiae, and of the reprint of Muratori's Rerum Italicarum scriptores.
A good worker of charity, he founded in Minturno and in the Pontine area institutions of welfare, which commend his memory to posterity, together with his work as a historian.
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