ANTONIO LANZA. — Moral theologian and archbishop of Reggio Calabria, born at Castiglione Cosentino on 18 March 1905, died at Reggio Calabria on 23 June 1950. Ordained priest on 16 April 1927, he first taught moral theology in the Calabrian regional seminary, from which in 1935 he moved to the same chair at the Lateran Athenaeum. In Rome he held positions in the Roman tribunals and was vice-assistant of the Catholic Graduates’ Movement. He was elected to the metropolitan see of Reggio Calabria on 12 May 1943.
ANTONIO LANZA — FRANCESCO LANZONI
Everything is discussed and expounded with a criterion and measure that remain constant, and with that lucidus ordo which is the chief gift of every scientific treatise. The Storia pittorica dell’Italia (Bassano 1795–96), the first critical history of the most glorious of the Italian arts, stands apart from other distinguished erudite works of the eighteenth century by its concise clarity and elegance of exposition. The “learned and judicious” L., as Carducci calls him, also distinguished himself with epigraphs and Latin poems, collected and published in 1807, and with translations of Greek and Latin poets, of which the most prized is the terza rima version of Hesiod’s Works and Days (Florence 1808), surpassing all previous renderings in fidelity and restrained elegance. Yet it is not so much for these literary works as for his archaeological and historical writings—works in which he studied with equal love and learning the ancient figurative arts and ancient poetry, the Etruscan language and art, and Italian painting—that L. must be regarded as one of the leading representatives of Neoclassicism in Italy, a worthy contemporary of his friend Canova. In 1824 there were collected at Naples the Opuscoli spirituali, to which the pious abbot devoted himself in the last years of his life.
Lanza’s manuscripts are preserved partly in the archive of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (10 volumes under the title Repertori di antichità e di pittura and a folder entitled Pitturae historiae documenta) and partly at Macerata (notably a collection of no fewer than 1,171 letters addressed to L. by leading Italian and foreign philologists and archaeologists).