VIT, VINCENZO DE. — Scholar, born on 10 July 1810 at Mestrino (Padua), died on 18 Aug. 1892 at Domodossola.
Ordained a priest in 1836 and a professor at that Seminary until 1844, he subsequently served at Rovigo as librarian of the Accademia dei Concordi and was a canon of the Cathedral. From the well-known Latinist Giuseppe Furlanetto, editor of a new edition of Forcellini’s Lexicon totius latinitatis (v.) he had learned in Padua to love classical philology, and he was entrusted with preparing the Onomasticon, a dictionary on the origin and history of Latin proper names, needed to complete the Lexicon. His first philological essay was a study of the sayings of Varro, largely unpublished and taken from a thirteenth-century codex in the Seminary Library. From the same codex he extracted the Moralis philosophia of Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans and later of Tours, which he published in 1854 in PL 171, 31-32, 1003-56. After reading Rosmini’s works, in 1849 he entered as a novice into the Institute of Charity at Stresa.
Alongside works of an ascetical and historical nature, he did not neglect Roman antiquities (the collection Antiche lapidi romane della Provincia del Polesine dates from 1853), and above all he never ceased gathering material for the Onomasticon and for a new edition of the Lexicon, until he was finally able to publish (1858-60) the first volume. Having moved to Rome in 1862, he published the other five in August 1879, adding more than fifteen thousand words in all to the Forcellinian dictionary. He did not, however, succeed in completing the Onomasticon, which he brought as far as the letter O. The new edition of the Lexicon, revised III by Giuseppe Perin, includes the Onomasticon in volumes V and VI (reprint, Padua 1940). Among his other writings are: Memorie storiche di Borgomanero e del suo mandamento (Milan 1850); Notizie storiche sopra il Lago Maggiore, Stresa e le isole Borromeo (Prato 1875-78); Adria e le sue antiche epigrafi illustrate (Florence 1888); La provincia romana dell'Ossola (ibid. 1892).