VIT, VINCENZO DE. - Scholar, b. 10 July 1810 at Mestrino (Padua), d. 18 Aug. 1892 at Domodossola.

A priest in 1836 and a professor in that Seminary until 1844, he then held at Rovigo the office of 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 at Padua to love classical philology, and he was given the task of preparing the Onomasticon, a dictionary on the origin and history of Latin proper names, an entirely necessary complement to the Lexicon. His first philological essay was a piece on the largely unpublished sentences of Varro, drawn from a 13th-century codex in the Library of the Seminary. From the same codex he took the Moralis philosophia of Hildbert, bishop of Le Mans, later of Tours, which he published in 1854 in PL 171, 31-32, 1003-56. Having read the works of Rosmini, he entered in 1849 as a novice the Istituto della Carità of Stresa.

Alongside works of an ascetic and historical character, he did not neglect Roman antiquities (the collection of the Antiche lapidi romane della Provincia del Polesine dates from 1853) and above all he did not fail to gather the material for the Onomasticon and for a new edition of the Lexicon, until he was finally able to bring out (1858-60) vol. I. Having moved in 1862 to Rome, he published the other 5 in Aug. 1879, adding altogether more than fifteen thousand words to the Forcellinian dictionary. He was unable, however, to finish the Onomasticon, which was carried as far as the letter O. The new edition of the Lexicon, 3rd ed. by Giuseppe Perin, includes the Onomasticon in vols. V and VI (reprint, Padua 1940). Among his other writings are remembered: 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).

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: P. Prada, V. de V., in Rassegna nazionale, 68 (1892), pp. 471-92; E. Ferrero, V. de V., in Atti d. Accol. delle Sc. di Torino, 28 (1892-93), pp. 308-21; C. Cipolla, V. de V., in Il Nuovo Rivorgimento, 3 (1892-93), pp. 145-50.

Silvio Furlani

@incollection{ec12_vit_vincenzo_de, author = {Furlani, Silvio}, title = {Vit, vincenzo de}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1503--1504}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/vit-vincenzo-de} }

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Vit, Vincenzo de

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