MANSI, GIOVANNI DOMENICO. - Cleric Regular of the Mother of God, b. at Lucca on 16 February 1692; d. there on 27 September 1769. A religious at the age of 16, he taught moral theology at Naples; he then became theologian to Archbishop Fabio Colloredo of Lucca, founded there an Academy of ecclesiastical history and liturgy, and was himself archbishop there from 1765.
An indefatigable worker, but hardly original, he began by translating and publishing the works of others, furnishing them with dissertations, notes and variant readings; he translated into Latin Calmet's work on the Bible (3 vols., Lucca 1725-38); he republished L. Thomassin's Vetus et nova disciplina (3 vols., ibid. 1728); the Annales of C. Baronio and O. Raynald (28 vols., ibid. 1738-56), inserting into them new Councils and the notes of D. Giorgi; the Historia ecclesiastica of A. Noël (9 vols., ibid. 1749-92) with the observations of C. Roncaglia; the Bibliotheca latina of J. A. Fabricius (6 vols., Padua 1754); the Miscellanea of E. Baluze, arranged in a new order (4 vols., Lucca 1761), etc. But his name is linked to the conciliar publications; at first he published a Supplementum to the conciliar collection of N. Coleti (6 vols., ibid. 1748-52); from this he passed to the fusion of that work with the collections of Ph. Labbe, G. Cossart, N. Coleti, under the title: SS. Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (31 vols., I, Florence 1757; II-XXXI, Venice 1757-98; reprinted with additions by L. Petit and G. B. Martin in 60 vols., Paris 1899-1927).
M., who had completed the work in 1764, saw only the first 14 vols. of it. The collection, which stops at the middle of the Council of Florence, although it still renders many useful services, betrays only too much haste, a lack of critical judgment in the choice of texts and variant readings, and a lack of accuracy, so that one encounters repetitions and contradictions that mislead; and sometimes a negligence that is a source of grave confusions.
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