TIRABOSCHI, GIROLAMO. — Historian, born in Bergamo on 18 December 1731, died in Modena on 3 June 1794. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1746, taught eloquence in Milan at the Collegio di Brera, and from 1770 was prefect of the Biblioteca Estense of Modena.
There he published, from 1772 to 1782, the Storia della letteratura italiana, whose second, definitive edition, in sixteen volumes with additions and corrections, appeared once again in Modena from 1787 to 1793; it is a vast collection of information, sifted by a highly vigilant critical mind according to the method and example of Muratori, and arranged in a solid structure intended to encompass the entire development of Italian culture, from the Etruscan age through the whole of the seventeenth century. T.’s erudition, despised by many during the age of Romanticism, was later celebrated by strict philologists for its seriousness, and is still useful to scholars.
The same value was evident in the Biblioteca modenese (6 vols., Modena 1781–86), with information on writers, artists, and music teachers originating from the Este provinces; in the Storia dell’angusta badia di S. Silvestro di Nonantola, supplied with a diplomatic code (2 vols., there 1784–85); in the Memorie storiche modenesi (5 vols., there 1793–95), where the history of the Este provinces from the Roman age through the fifteenth century is presented, the successions of the bishops of Modena and Reggio are reconstructed, information is provided on the monasteries and principal families of the region, and numerous documents, largely unpublished, from 767 to 1469 are printed; in the Dizionario topografico-storico degli Stati Estensi (posthumous, 2 vols., Modena 1824–25); and in other minor works.