Girolamo Lagomarsini (16981773) was an Italian humanist and

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 ...

. Born into a wealthy Genoese family in

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

, he studied

classical literature Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

Arezzo Arezzo ( , , ) , also ; ett, 𐌀𐌓𐌉𐌕𐌉𐌌, Aritim. is a city and ''comune'' in Italy and the capital of the province of the same name located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about southeast of Florence at an elevation of above sea level. ...

and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. Later holding a chair at the Collegium Gregorianum he published a collection of

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 ...

orations and conducted influential research on the

text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including: **Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred **Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...

of the Roman author

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

Biography

Girolamo Lagomarsini was born on 30 September 1698 at

El Puerto de Santa María EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...

(

), of a wealthy Genoese family. In 1708 he went to

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, and commenced his studies in the College of the Jesuits at

Prato Prato ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Italy, the capital of the Province of Prato. The city lies in the north east of Tuscany, at the foot of Monte Retaia, elevation , the last peak in the Calvana chain. With more than 200,000 i ...

, in Tuscany. In 1721, he began to teach

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

at the college of

. Four years afterwards he went to

to complete his

theological Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

studies, after which he returned to his duties at Arezzo. In 1732 he was appointed to the chair of rhetoric at

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 ...

, and in 1751 to that of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

in the Collegium Gregorianum at Rome, which position he occupied until his death on 18 May 1773.

Works

Lagomarsini left several works on

; he published Latin orations (1746) and epistles, a poem ''On the Origin of Springs'', (''De Origine Fontium'', 1749), and other works. From 1735 to 1744 he collected material for a new edition of

, which, however, was never published.

Barthold Georg Niebuhr Barthold Georg Niebuhr (27 August 1776 – 2 January 1831) was a Danish–German statesman, banker, and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. By 1810 Niebuhr wa ...

was the first to make use of Lagomarsini's vast collection of various readings preserved in the

Roman College The Roman College ( la, Collegium Romanum, it, Collegio Romano) was a school established by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1551, just 11 years after he founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). It quickly grew to include classes from elementary school t ...

. An industrious scholar, Lagomarsini collated all the

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

s of Cicero accessible to him in

and elsewhere. In such a vast bulk of material there is much that is valuable, and yet a great deal is of little use to the modern scholar because of the indiscriminate way in which the material was gathered. Reading follows upon variant reading without any critical analysis of the text or any attempt at a new interpretation. To be sure, this is not so much a personal fault of Lagomarsini as a characteristic of the era in which he lived and worked. At that time the mere gathering of erudite material was considered to be valuable and a sense of discrimination had not yet been attained. Nonetheless, the variants collected by Lagomarsini stimulated questions concerning textual history, thus making a valuable contribution to the development of modern

textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in ...

Notes

Bibliography

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lagomarsini, Girolamo 1698 births 1773 deaths Italian humanists Italian classical scholars Italian Jesuits