LAGOMARSINI, GIROLAMO. – Jesuit, humanist, and philologist, born in Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) but of Genoese descent, on 30 September 1698, died in Rome on 18 May 1773. He spent his entire life in teaching: humanities and later rhetoric in Arezzo; rhetoric in Prato, then for 20 years at the S. Giovannino in Florence; Greek at the Collegio Romano.
The work to which he devoted many years with great commitment, assiduous reading, and manuscript research was intended to be a critical edition of the Opera omnia of Cicero (in about 30 volumes), complete with notes, commentary, elucidations, and all the variants found in manuscripts and earlier editions. Lagomarsini prefaced this project with a manifesto or prospectus explaining the principles and aims of the vast undertaking: M. Tulli Ciceronis oratio in L. Pisonem (Florence 1741); however, the volumes never actually appeared, both for lack of printers and booksellers and, more significantly, because of the author’s temperament, which prevented him from finally imposing order on the mass of variants and notes accumulated in his manuscripts. These manuscripts, now preserved in the Vatican Library, comprise 80 volumes of various formats (Vat. lat. 11616–11696), plus 11 volumes of correspondence. The most important volume, containing the description and history of the manuscripts and printed works used by the author, along with the key to understanding the numerical codes he assigned to them, is held in the Biblioteca Marcelliana in Florence (B. III, 44).
Also noteworthy are his copious annotations to the work of Antonio M. Graziani, De scriptis invita Minerva libri XX (2 vols., Florence 1745–46), and those to the writings of Giulio Pogiani, Epistolae et Orationes (4 vols., Rome 1762–68); various Orationes and Inscriptiones, and a few carmina. In all these, one admires a keen critical sense and a polished, flowing Latin style, steeped in the purest Ciceronian manner.