Ubaldi, Paolo

UBALDI, PAOLO. - Born in Parma on 30 August 1872, died in Milan on 22 July 1934. Orphaned and taken in at the age of ten by Don Bosco (v. GIOVANNI BOSCO), he became a priest in 1895, and from 1909 was a lecturer in Greek literature, first at Turin and then at Catania, in Greek-Latin Christian literature at Milan from 1924 (Catholic University), and from 1932 in patrology at the great diocesan Seminary of Venegono.

He had in fact applied himself to two quite different fields of work: the classical and the Christian. In the first, he was drawn to the great authors: Homer, Pindar and above all Aeschylus, of whom he produced a reliable text and a penetrating exegesis. In the second he was a true pioneer in Italy. He began with Chrysostom and with Palladius, leaving two finished works, the one as historical reconstruction, the other as literary and linguistic assessment. Subsequently he studied the Greek character of St. Mark; later the Acts of the martyrs and the apologists of the 2nd century, where his best work is that on Athenagoras. He founded and directed Didaskaleion (v.), with the aim of reassessing ancient Christian literature as an autonomous discipline and bringing Italy, in that regard, up to the level of the other nations; and it is thanks to him that the reading of the ancient Christian writers has been added to the curricula of secondary schools, and that today the three Universities of Turin, Catania, and Milan (Catholic) have a chair of ancient Christian literature. At Catania, in 1947, on the initiative of devoted pupils, the Nuovo Didaskaleion arose, with a broader plan of work, together with the Centro di studi sul cristianesimo antico.

Paolo Barale