SPEZI, PIO

SPEZI, PIO. — A Romanist and, in particular, a scholar of the history and study of the churches of Rome, born in Rome on 1 October 1861, died there on 2 January 1940.

A teacher of history successively at the secondary schools of Ceccano, Teramo, Potenza, and Rome, for more than 40 years he devoted all his energy to collecting, by rigorous scientific methods, material to be used in compiling a complete bibliography concerning the churches of Rome, useful not only for the history of the individual churches, extant and vanished, but also for resolving problems of topography and toponymy. An essential feature of his work was the comparative study of the various surviving catalogues of the Roman churches from the 5th to the 22nd century, taking as its basis the four fundamental catalogues: that of Cencio Camerario, the French Anonymous, the Anonymous of Turin, and the catalogue of Signorili. S. was thus able, by means of synoptic tables, to establish the onomastics and topography of each church and to compile alphabetical indexes corresponding to the records he had prepared, making use of all writings that, for whatever reason, had dealt with the churches of Rome; the result of this investigation constitutes the first part of S.’s bibliography. The second part consists of the special bibliography; for each church it lists the various sources and the related studies and information. The method of S.’s work could already be discerned in his first publication: Bibliografia metodico-analitica delle chiese di Roma, Saggio della lettera A (Rome 1928; reprinted from the Bollettino di bibliografia romana directed by C. Galassi-Paluzzi). After S.’s death, the first volume of Le Chiese di Roma nei XX secoli del cristianesimo. Bibliografia, topografia toponomastica (ibid. 1940) was published; it contains the introduction, the sources, and the general bibliography of printed works (pp. 43–233) and manuscripts (pp. 235–43). Recently, the sig.ra n. Giovannelli-Recchi deposited with the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology the 34,000 records assembled by S.

He was also an outstanding scholar of the work of G. G. Belli, of whom he discovered 121 unpublished sonnets among the papers of mons. Tizzani (v.) preserved in the Library of the Lateran Canons Regular at S. Pietro in Vincoli. Among his historical studies may also be mentioned Gli agnelli di S. Agnese, in La vita italiana, 2 (1894), and Pio V e i suoi tempi (Rome 1904).

(from U. Spilantzen, storia del Risorgimento I giugno, II, Rome 1921, p. 25)
SPIELBERG - View of the fortress, drawing by a prisoner.