MORONI, GAETANO. - Scholar, b. in Rome on 17 Oct. 1802, d. there on 3 Nov. 1883.
A barber and later a valet to Cardinal Mauro Cappellari, prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, who entrusted him with the task of transcribing the register of the Congregation's archival documents. He had him as a conclavist in the Conclave of Pius VIII and then in that of 1831, from which Cappellari emerged as pope under the name Gregory XVI. M. then became the Pontiff's first aide of the chamber, who assigned him many confidential tasks, whence arose talk of undue interference by M. in Vatican politics, which proved, however, to be entirely unfounded. He retained his post even under Pius IX, though without effectively exercising it.
M.'s fame rests on the 103 volumes of the Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, which appeared in Venice between 1840-61 (text) and 1878-79 (indexes), which he, a self-taught man and polygraph, compiled over a span of more than half a century, gathering in it a most precious harvest of information, much of which still has genuine usefulness today, on the history of the Church, the liturgy, the ceremonies and traditions of the Curia, hagiography, the biography of popes, cardinals and bishops, sacred art, etc. An inexhaustible researcher of published and manuscript sources, M. condensed in his Dizionario thousands of works consulted by him and availed himself of the information of scholars and specialists, so as to make of the work — however teeming with inaccuracies, repetitions and superfluities — an excellent working tool. Having risen to fame, M. was enrolled in numerous Italian and foreign academies and was awarded several decorations, as he himself recalls with naive complacency in the prolix autobiography found on pp. 446-78 of vol. IV of the Indexes.
Bibliography
Renzo U. Montini