MAI, ANGELO. - Cardinal, paleographer, b. at Schilpario (Bergamo) on 7 March 1782, d. at Albano on 9 Sept. 1854. He entered the Jesuits at Colorno (Parma) in 1799; ordained a priest, he was, at the College of Orvieto, set on the path of the study of paleography and of palimpsests by Frs. Montero and Menchaca, early Spanish Jesuits; in 1815 he obtained a position as writer at the Ambrosian Library. Recalled to Rome by Pius VII, in 1814, when he had already acquired worldwide fame through his discoveries, Cardinals E. Consalvi and L. Litta, judging that M., placed at the head of the Vatican Library, would serve the glory of God better than in the Society of Jesus, proposed to the Pope that he be made to leave the Order, which came about in 1819 by mutual agreement between Pius VII and the superior general A.
Fortis. M. was therefore, from 1819 until his death, prefect of the Vatican Library. He was then created cardinal on 2 Febr. 1838.
M. owes his celebrity to the discovery and publication of 359 unpublished writings of ancient pagan and Christian authors from palimpsests of the Ambrosian and Vatican Libraries: omissions of Cicero and especially part of the De Republica, the works of Fronto, letters of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius, fragments of Homer, Plautus, Terence, Aurelius Symmachus, of the Chronicle of Eusebius of Pamphilus, of the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a work of Porphyry, the Itinerarium Alexandri. Of the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers he discovered works of Augustine, Hilary, Cyprian, Jerome, Ambrose, Athanasius, Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa and Nazianzen, Marius Victorinus, Ferrandus the deacon, Martin, and of many Byzantine writers.
He gathered the principal works discovered into 4 great collections, furnishing them with introductions and notes: Scriptorum veterum nova collectio e Vaticanis codicibus edita (10 vols., Rome 1925-38); Nova Patrum Bibliotheca (7 vols., ibid. 1852-54); Spicilegium Romanum (10 vols., ibid. 1939-44); Classici auctores ex codicibus Vaticanis (10 vols., ibid. 1828-1838). He also occupied himself for many years with the Vatican codex of the Bible, published later by order of Pius IX by the Barnabite C. Vercellone (Rome 1857 and better ibid. 1859). It must be added that the imperfection of the technical means employed for the reading of the palimpsests destroyed several writings of the parchments treated; and that many of the texts published bear considerably the mark of the impatient haste of the collector.
For M., Leopardi, on the occasion of the discovery of Cicero's books on the Republic, wrote the canzone: « Italo ardito, a che giammai non posi... ».