Ermenegildo Pistelli (February 18, 1862Inscription on a plaque
visible on Commons
placed at his birthplace in Camaiore. – January 14, 1927) was an Italian

papyrologist Papyrology is the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which is papyrus, the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations ...

palaeographer Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

and

presbyter Presbyter () is an honorific title for Christian clergy. The word derives from the Greek ''presbyteros,'' which means elder or senior, although many in the Christian antiquity would understand ''presbyteros'' to refer to the bishop functioning as ...

Biography

Born in

Camaiore Camaiore is a city and ''comune'' of 32,513 inhabitants within the province of Lucca, Tuscany, central-western Italy. It stretches from the Apuan Alps to the east, to the plains and the coast of Versilia to the west. History Camaiore has Roman ori ...

in 1862, Pistelli was a pupil of Girolamo Vitelli and finished his philological studies in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

. He became a

Piarist The Piarists (), officially named the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools ( la, Ordo Clericorum Regularium pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum), abbreviated SchP, is a religious order of clerics regular of the ...

in 1884. Since 1903 he taught

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

and

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

at the ''Istituto di Studii Superiori Pratici e di Perfezionamento'' (the modern

University of Florence The University of Florence (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'', UniFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The first universi ...

) and in 1921 became corresponding member of the ''

Accademia dei Lincei The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rom ...

''.''Ermenegildo Pistelli'' on the Treccani Encyclopedia
/ref> He oversaw the publication of various works ranging from

Giovanni Pascoli Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli (; 31 December 1855 – 6 April 1912) was an Italian poet, classical scholar and an emblematic figure of Italian literature in the late nineteenth century. Alongside Gabriele D'Annunzio, he was one of the great ...

's poems to works about

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...

to ancient

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

texts; as a papyrologist, he examined numerous manuscripts found at

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus (; grc-gre, Ὀξύρρυγχος, Oxýrrhynchos, sharp-nosed; ancient Egyptian ''Pr-Medjed''; cop, or , ''Pemdje''; ar, البهنسا, ''Al-Bahnasa'') is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo ...

, e.g.

Papyrus 2 Papyrus 2 () is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek and Coptic. It is a papyrus fragment of a copy of the Gospel of John dating to the sixth century. It is currently housed at the Egyptian Museum, Florence (Inv. no. 7134). There is a port ...

, 35, 36,

Uncial 0171 Uncial 0171 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε 07 ( Soden) are two vellum leaves of a late third century (or beginning of the fourth) Greek uncial Bible codex containing fragments of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Luke fragment, ...

, 0173. Pistelli also was a prolific writer of reviews, critical essays and prose works on various subjects, as well as works for young readers. He died in Florence in 1927.

Significant works

*1901
''De recentiorum studiis in Tyrtaeum collatis''
B.Seeber: Firenze. *1917. ''Le pìstole d'Omero''. *1921.
''Profili e caratteri''
*1921
''Per la Firenze di Dante''
*1927. ''Eroi, uomini e ragazzi''. * Editions
Iamblichus, ''Protrepticus''
(

Teubner The Bibliotheca Teubneriana, or ''Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana'', also known as Teubner editions of Greek and Latin texts, comprise one of the most thorough modern collection published of ancient (and some medieval) ...

, 1888)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pistelli, Ermenegildo 1862 births 1927 deaths Italian papyrologists Italian philologists Italian Egyptologists Writers from Florence Academic staff of the University of Florence