Giulio Battelli

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Giulio Battelli (born April 11, 1904 in Rome ; † March 10, 2005 ibid) was an Italian archivist , palaeographer , diplomat and university professor . He made a significant contribution to the identification and decryption of hundreds of medieval documents kept in Italian and Vatican archives and libraries.

Life

Giulio Battelli came from a long-established Roman family. During the First World War , he attended high school in Rome and then studied Lettere at the University of La Sapienza . There he was a student of the historian Pietro Fedele (1873-1943), who aroused his interest in historical sources and palaeography. For this reason, Battelli also completed two years of additional training at the Vatican School of Paleography (Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia) during his studies . His former teacher Angelo Mercati , at that time Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives , initially hired him as Scrittore in 1927 ; from 1932 he worked there as an archivist .

Battelli taught palaeography and diplomatics at the Vatican Archives School from 1932 to 1974 and was its director from 1953 to 1974. In the same disciplines he was also professor at the Pontifical Lateran University (from 1933 to 1967), at the La Sapienza University (1965 to 1968) in Rome and at the Macerata University (1970 to 1975).

A specialist in ancient scripts, Battelli identified, researched and deciphered hundreds of medieval documents that were kept in the Vatican archives. He has published numerous articles in paleographic journals and books. He was involved as a collaborator in the 12-volume Enciclopedia Cattolica (Catholic encyclopedia), which was written between 1948 and 1954. Since his participation in the 10th International Historians' Day in Rome in 1955, Battelli attended other international conferences and worked with foreign historians and institutes. For example, he was a corresponding member of the British School at Rome Institute and, as a corresponding member, was a member of the Central Management of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich. Battelli was a member of numerous national and international academies and institutes.

Battelli's most important publications include the Lezioni di paleografia (lectures on paleography), which have been reprinted repeatedly since 1936, as well as the four volumes of the so-called Schedario Baumgarten, which appeared between 1965 and 1986 . This was a collection of handwritten notes by the German historian Paul Maria Baumgarten , who in 1923 wrote his decades of preparatory work for an intended study of the papal authorities and documents of the late Middle Ages on 8643 loose pieces of paper from the Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia e Diplomatica had left. Battelli prepared this extensive collection of material with notes on around 10,000 documents from the Popes of Innocent III. until Pius IX. systematically and published it in the form of a four-volume facsimile edition. In a review of the first volume of Schedario Baumgarten, the Austrian historian Heinrich Appelt , member of the Central Directorate of Monumenta Germaniae Historica , praised Battelli's work as a "research tool that is unique of its kind."

Even after his retirement , Battelli continued to work intensively on his research topics for many years. The last time he visited the Vatican Secret Archives just a few months before his death in December 2004.

Giulio Battelli was 100 years old. He died in March 2005 in Rome, the city of his birth.

family

Battelli was married to Anna Maria Cajani since 1936. The couple had two children, the son Francesco and the daughter Maria.

Honors

In 1996 Battelli received the “Cultori di Roma” prize from the mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli , which has been awarded annually since 1955 by the Istituto Nazionale Di Studi Romani . After retiring from active professional life, he was honorary president and honorary member of several institutions.

Memberships and honors (selection)

Publications (selection)

  • Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli XIII e XIV. Latium . Vatican Apostolic Library, 1946.
  • Lezioni di paleografia . Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1949, ISBN 978-8-82092-689-2 . ( limited preview in Google Book search). First published in 1936, last reprinted in 1999
    • as editor:
    • Umbrae codicum occidentalium sub auspiciis societatis codicum Mediaevalium studiis promovendis . 10 volumes, North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1960 to 1966. [1]
    • Schedario Baumgarten . Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 4 volumes, 1965 to 1986. [2] Volumes 3 and 4 have been edited by Sergio Pagano .
  • Scritti scelti: codici, documenti, archivi . Multigrafica Ed., Rome 1975, [3] Festschrift for the 70th birthday. (Selected writings: codices, documents, archives.)

Web links

literature

  • Palaeographica diplomatica et archivistica. Studi in onore di Giulio Battelli. Festschrift in honor of Giulio Battelli. Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari dell'Università di Roma. La Sapienza University, Rome 1979. [4]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti (AIPD): Obituary Giulio Battelli (with a detailed list of publications). In: paleografi-diplomatisti.org. April 11, 1904, archived from the original on October 20, 2017 ; Retrieved October 1, 2017 (Italian).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Rita Cosma: Obituary and Biography Giulio Battelli , Deputazione Di Storia Patria Per L'Umbria , dspu.it, accessed on October 14, 2017. (.pdf, Italian)
  3. ↑ Battelli, Giulio nell'Enciclopedia Treccani. In: treccani.it. Retrieved October 15, 2017 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Heinrich Appelt: Schedario Baumgarten. Descrizione diplomatica di bolle e brevi originali da Innocenzo III a Pio IX. Riproduzione di Giulio Battelli. Vol. I (1198 to 1254) . Review. In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 74, 1966. S. 198.
  5. ^ Istituto Nazionale Di Studi Romani: Winner of the Cultori di Roma Prize since 1955. In: studiromani.it. Retrieved October 1, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Battelli, Giulio, 1904-2005 - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies - Library of Congress. In: id.loc.gov. Accessed October 1, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Battelli, Giulio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Battelli, G.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian archivist, palaeographer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 2005
Place of death Rome