MANSI, GIOVANNI DOMENICO. — Cleric regular of the Mother of God, born at Lucca on 16 February 1692; died there on 27 September 1769. He entered religious life at the age of 16 and taught moral theology at Naples; subsequently he was theologian to the archbishop Fabio Colloredo of Lucca, where he founded an Academy of ecclesiastical history and liturgy and where he himself became archbishop in 1765.
An indefatigable worker, though by no means original, he began by translating and publishing the works of others, supplying them with dissertations, notes, and variants; he translated Calmet’s work on the Bible into Latin (3 vols., Lucca 1725–38); republished L. Thomassin’s Vetus et nova disciplina (3 vols., there 1728); the Annales of C. Baronio and O. Raynald (28 vols., there 1738–56), inserting new Councils and the notes of D. Giorgi; the Historia ecclesiastica of A. Noël (9 vols., there 1749–92), with the observations of C. Roncaglia; the Bibliotheca latina of J. A. Fabricius (6 vols., Padua 1754); E. Baluze’s Miscellanea, arranged in a new order (4 vols., Lucca 1761), etc. But his name is associated with the conciliar publications; he first published a Supplementum to the conciliar collection of N. Coleti (6 vols., there 1748–52); from this he proceeded to merge that work with the collections of Ph. Labbe, G. Cossart, and 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 its first 14 volumes. The collection, which comes to a halt halfway through the Council of Florence, while still rendering many useful services, reveals too clearly the haste, the lack of critical judgment in the selection of texts and variants, and the lack of accuracy that led to repetitions and contradictions, thereby causing confusion; at times it also displays negligence, the source of serious errors.