RAGGIO, GIAMBATTISTA FRANCESCO. – Abbot and scholar, born in Chiavari on 15 July 1795, died in Genoa on 6 February 1860.
Professor of Latin and Greek literature at the Pious Schools of Cárcare (Savona), and subsequently of rhetoric at the Episcopal Seminary of Noli, he was the author of an acclaimed translation of Sallust’s works. In 1830 he was called to teach rhetoric in Genoa, where in 1834 he assumed the direction of the Berio Civic Library, and later became a collegiate doctor and councillor of the class (faculty) of literature at the University. A contributor to numerous literary newspapers and periodicals of Liguria and Piedmont, he published in the Rivista ligure a vigorous critique of G. B. Niccolini’s Arnaldo da Brescia, highlighting its anticlerical bias. The forceful review elicited a broad response and earned R. the hostility of liberal circles, which in 1849 induced the municipal authorities to remove him from the direction of the Library. For the same reason, it proved impossible to implement the resolution of the municipal council of Noli, which in 1890 had decreed that a plaque be dedicated to R., commemorating his activity as an educator and scholar. In addition to the aforementioned Italian translation of Sallust (Genoa 1840 and 1847, two editions), it should be recalled that
he edited the publication of the Laws of the Consulate of Genoa of MCXLIII, in Historiae Patriae monumenta, Leges Municipales, I, Turin 1838, cols. 234–94, and published various poetical works.
A steadfast champion of the rights of the Church and the Roman pontificate, he consistently wore ecclesiastical dress, although he had received only minor orders.