Angelo Mai

Angelo Mai was an Italian Cardinal and philologist. He won a European reputation for publishing for the first time a series of previously unknown ancient texts. These he was able to discover and publish, first while in charge of the Ambrosian Library in Milan and then in the same role at the Vatican Library. The texts were often in parchment manuscripts that had been washed off and reused; he was able to read the lower text using chemicals. In particular he was able to locate a substantial portion of the much sought-after De re publica of Cicero and the complete works of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. In 1954, to celebrate the first century after his death, the public library of Bergamo, the city where he was from, was named after him Biblioteca civica Angelo Mai e archivi storici.

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