MAI, A.NGELO, CARDINAL, a distinguished editor and scholar, was born in the village of Sehilpario, in Lombardy, Mar. 7, 1782. He was educated and lived till 1808 in. establishments belonging to the Jesuits; but obtained an appointment, first as associate, and ultimately as doctor, in the celebrated Ambrosian library at Milan. His career as an author dates from this appointment. In 1813 he published a translation and com mentary of Isocrates, De Permutatione ; but his reputation is due much more to his pub lications of the palimpsests or re-written manuscripts, the first specimens of which he issued at Milan (see PALDEPSEST). His earliest publications in that line were fragments. of Cicero's Orations; of the Viclularia, a lost play of Plautus; of Letters of Front°, Mar cus Aurelius's preceptor; the Chronicon of Eusebius, and other less hnportant works, which, however, were entirely eclipsed by his well-known edition and restoration of the De 1?epublica of Cicero, published in 1820. Meanwhile, Mai had been invited to Rome by Pius VII. and named to the charge of the Vatican library. together with other- • honorable and emoluraentary appointments. He at once turned his attention to the unedited MSS. of the Vatican, and after a short examination of this noble collection. undertook, as the mission of his life, the task of publishing those amonn- them which had been overlooked by earlier editors, or had escaped their notice. This task he steadily pursued; and although he was appointed, in 1833, to the onerous office of secretary of the propaganda, and. in 1838, to the cardinalate itself, his Roman publica
tions form a collection of an extent and importance almost unexampled in modern thnes. His first series was in 10 4to vols., entitled Seriptorum Veterum Nova Calectio, e Vaticanis Codieibus edita (Rome, 1825). It consists, like the great collections of Montfancon, D'Aeliery, and others, of miscellaneous unpublished works, partly sacred. partly profane, and indifferently in the Greek aiai the Latin languages, comprising, are entire volume of paliinpsest fragments of the Greek historians, Polybius, Diodorns, Dion, Dionysius, and others. The succeeding collections, viz., Cassia: Auctores ex Codieilms Vatieanis (10 vols. 8vo, 1838), Spiellegium Romanura (10 vols. 8vo, 1839-44), and Nova Patrum Bibliotheca (6 vols. 4to, 1853), are all on the same plan, and all equally replete with new and interesting materials. For many years, too, he was engaged in preparing an edition of the celebrated Codex Vaticanus, which he had printed, but the publication of which wa-s postponed, awaiting the preparation of his intended preliminary disserta tions. He died, however, rather unexpectedly, at Albano, Sept. 8, 1854; and as no trace of the expected preliminary matter was found ainong his papers, the edition was published (185'7) entirely without critical matter. It has, in consequence, disappointed expectation. His library, which he directed to be sold for the use of the poor of his native village, was purchased by the pope for the Vatican library.