GIOVANNI BATTISTA SPOTORNO. — Barnabite, born in Albisola Superiore on 27 Oct. 1788, died in Genoa in 1844.
A Barnabite since 1806, he taught mathematics, jurisprudence, and theology at Macerata and Rome. He refused to take the oath of loyalty to the French government that had occupied Rome, for which he lost his professorship and was confined to Chiavari, where he set about reorganizing the library of that Società economica. With the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, he resumed teaching at Livorno and Bologna. Returning to Genoa in 1819, he directed the Barnabite College of S. Bartolomeo there, then assumed oversight of the city’s public schools, the prefecture of the Civic Library, and the teaching of Latin eloquence at the University. Spotorno was at once a noted publicist and edited Il Ligustico, an organ of the classical school against the Romantic movement, engaging in lengthy and bitter polemics. He also contributed to the Archivio storico italiano, and, turning to the celebration of civic glories, annotated the Annali genovesi of Giustiniano, published a substantial series of Elogi di liguri illustri, wrote four volumes of Storia letteraria della Liguria, a Storia dell’antica pittura genovese, and a well-received Storia dei Longobardi. But his favorite subject was always Christopher Columbus, whose Genoese birth he documented in a widely noticed book. He translated, commented on, and refuted in several points the life of the great navigator written by Washington Irving, and finally published a weighty Codice diplomatico colombo-americano.