MAI, ANGELO Italian cardinal and philolo gist, was born of humble parents at Schilpario in the province of Bergamo, Lombardy, on March 7, 1782, was made a cardinal in 1838, and died at Castelgandolfo on Sept. 8, 1854. He was edu cated at the Collegium Romanum, and after teaching at Orvieto and elsewhere was mane custodian of the Ambrosian library at Alilan in 1813. He went to Rome in 1819 as chief keeper of the Vatican library.
It is on his skill as a reader of palimpsests that Mai's fame chiefly rests. To the period of his residence at Milan belong: Fragments of Cicero's Pro Scauro, Pro Tullio, Pro Flacco, In Clodiurn et Curionern, De sere alieno Milonis, De rege Alexandrino (1814) ; M. Corn. Frontonis opera inedita, cum epistolis item ineditis, Antonini Pii, Marci Lucii Veri et Appiani (1815; new ed., 1823, with more than ioo additional letters found in the Vatican library) ; portions of eight speeches of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus; fragments of Plautus; the oration of Isaeus De hereditate Cleonymi; the last nine books of the Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and a number of other works. M.
Tullii Ciceronis de republica quae supersunt appeared at Rome in 1822; Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, e vaticanis codicibus edita in 1825-38; Classici scriptores e vaticanis codicibrs editi in 1828-38; Spicilegium romanum in ; and Patrum nova bibliotheca in See B. Prina, Biografia del cardinale Angelo Mai (Bergamo, 1882), a scientific work, which gives a full and, at the same time, a just appreciation of his work ; Cozza-Luzi, Epistolario del card. Angelo Mai (Bergamo, 1883) ; life by G. Poletto (Siena, 1887).