GOLUBOVICH, GIROLAMO. - Franciscan friar, born in Constantinople on 7 February 1865 to a family originally from Ragusa, died in Florence on 9 January 1941. G. is the historian of the Franciscan East and particularly of the Custody of the Holy Land. At the age of 12, in 1879, he was taken by his mother on a pilgrimage to the Holy Places and remained there, entering the Seraphic College of Ain-Karim.
On 24 September 1881, he donned the Franciscan habit at the Convent of Nazareth, changing his name from Antonio to Girolamo. Ordained priest on 18 June 1888, he was tasked with reorganizing the new library of the Convent of St. Saviour in Jerusalem, one of the richest in Palestine. It was precisely in this first work that he revealed his vocation as a historian of the Custody of the Holy Land, though for several years he seemed destined for the apostolate in the various missions of the Custody. Thus, in 1889 he was sent to Cyprus, in 1893 to Aleppo in Syria, in 1894 to Alexandria in Egypt and to Port Said, and then returned to Cyprus as parish priest of Limassol. In 1898 he was sent to Turin to preside over the section on the Holy Land at the Exposition of Sacred Art. He concluded his life as a missionary with the superior of the mission in Constantinople (1902-1904).
His almost perfect knowledge of Greek, Arabic, and Turkish, and of many other modern languages, allowed him to move swiftly through the vast ancient and modern Eastern world. His first scholarly work was the Series of the Reverend Fathers Custodians of the Holy Land (Jerusalem 1898); from that point onward, he conceived the vast plan for the history of the Custody of the Holy Land, which was approved and encouraged by his superior in Jerusalem. Thus began his major work: the Bio-bibliographical Library of the Holy Land and the Franciscan East, which now comprises 22 volumes in octavo. With this work, G. intended to seek out, catalogue, copy, and publish year by year, century by century, and person by person, all the material, sifted, illustrated, awaiting the ordered, complete history of the Franciscan East. In 1899, he published in Milan Il trattato di Terra Santa by Brother Francesco Suriano, Custodian of the Holy Land from 1493 to 1495 and from 1512 to 1514; in 1902 in Rome, Inghoraphiae locorum et monumentorum Terrae Sanctae accurate delineata a p. Elzeario Horn O. M., Provincia Turiniae, 1725-44, from the codex Vat. lat. 9233. In 1904 he was assigned to the College of St. Bonaventure in Quaracchi (Florence), and despite the work he had to undertake with the other Fathers for the editions then in progress, in 1906 he was able to publish the first volume of his Library. G. was also the first Archivum Franciscanum historicum (v.), a position he declined shortly afterward in order to dedicate himself to his research.
In 1930 he undertook the reprint of the Annales Minorum by Wadding, which had become extremely rare. He made corrections and additions, particularly regarding the missions, such that it truly became a new edition, completed in Florence in 1935 (25 volumes in-folio).
In the final years of his life, G. left two polemical writings to vindicate the authenticity of the Holy Cenacle in Jerusalem and the paternal home of St. Francis in Assisi: Il S. Cenacolo, sua autenticità e sue divine pregonative (Florence 1938); La storicità delle casa paterna di S. Francesco d'Assisi, oggi «Chiesa Nuova» e la popolare leggenda della «Stalletta» (ibid. 1941).