MORONI, Gaetano. – Scholar, born in Rome on 17 Oct. 1802, died there on 3 Nov. 1883.
Barber and later valet to Cardinal Mauro Cappellari, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, who entrusted him with the task of transcribing the regesta of the Congregation’s archival documents. Moroni served as conclavist in the conclave of Pius VIII and then in that of 1831, from which Cappellari emerged as Pope Gregory XVI. Moroni then became first chamberlain to the Pope, who entrusted him with many confidential tasks, whence the rumor of Moroni’s undue interference in Vatican politics, though these proved entirely unfounded. He retained his position even under Pius IX, though without actually exercising II.
Moroni’s fame rests on the 103 volumes of the Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, published in Venice between 1840–61 (text) and 1878–79 (indices), which he, a self-taught polygraph, compiled over more than half a century, gathering a most precious harvest of information, many items of which remain of practical use today, on Church history, liturgy, ceremonies and Curial traditions, hagiography, the biographies of popes, cardinals and bishops, sacred art, etc. An indefatigable researcher of printed and manuscript sources, Moroni distilled into his Dizionario thousands of works he consulted and drew on the information of scholars and specialists, so that despite its abundance of inaccuracies, repetitions and superfluities, the work remains an excellent tool. As his reputation grew, Moroni was admitted to numerous Italian and foreign academies and received several decorations, as he himself recalls with naive satisfaction in the prolix autobiography found at pp. 446–78 of vol. IV of the Indices.