Tommaso Leccisotti

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Tommaso Leccisotti OSB (born October 12, 1895 in Torremaggiore , † January 3, 1982 in Montecassino ) was an Italian Benedictine , archivist of the Montecassino Abbey and historian.

Life

Domenico Leccisotti was the oldest of ten children in a very wealthy landowning family. From 1906 he attended the monastery school in Montecassino, the maturità classica he acquired in 1913 at the Liceo Tulliano of Arpino . In 1912 he had already entered the alunnato of the monastery, in 1914 he began the novitiate together with the future abbot Ildefonso Rea . He chose Tommaso as the religious name . The novitiate and the study at the University of Rome were interrupted in April 1915 by the convocation. Long sick leave enabled the novitiate to be completed in 1916, and solemn profession could take place on June 5, 1917 . After his discharge from military service, which he had completed as a lieutenant in the infantry , he began studying theology at the Roman Benedictine University of Sant'Anselmo in November 1919 . Even before graduating with the laurea in sacra teologia in 1924 , Leccisotti had taken perpetual vows in 1921 and was ordained priest in 1922 by the bishop of Sessa Aurunca . In addition, Dom Tommaso continued to attend the lectures of Pietro Fedele at the Sapienza and obtained the laurea in lettere in 1925 with a study on Erasmus von Montecassino .

Returning to the abbey from Rome, he became a librarian and completed the card catalog destroyed in World War II . Until 1943 he also taught in the monastery schools and from 1926 to 1931 he was jointly responsible for the care of novices. Between January 1933 and September 1934, on behalf of the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, he organized the archives of the Archbishop's Curia and the Arcivescovile cafeteria, as well as the cardinal's personal papers. For the 1400th anniversary of the founding of Montecassino in 1929, he published an article on the history of the monastery and one on the history of the Benedictine Congregation of Montecassino, although he was only able to publish regularly after his return from Milan. In 1935 a biography of the Benedictine cardinal Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet and the Benedictine nun Maria Fortunata Viti appeared , by Paul VI. Was beatified in 1967. He worked extensively on the history of the Cassinese branches in northern Apulia in the Capitanata , including the one in his home town of Torremaggiore. In 1943 he had to leave Montecassino to inform the curial authorities of the impending danger. After the abbey was destroyed, he stayed in Rome in San Paolo fuori le Mura for 13 years. There he was able to found the magazine Benedictina in 1947 , which was supposed to deal scientifically with all aspects of Benedictineism and which he headed until 1979. However, the proportion of historical studies outweighed by far.

In 1956 Abbot Rea Dom Tommaso was appointed archivist, who was responsible for the organization of the archives, which had been damaged by the war. Indispensable for research are the regesta of the document archive of his abbey, which he started and which appeared in a series of the Italian state archive administration from 1964: Abbazia di Montecassino. I Regesti dell'Archivio . All volumes that were later published with the assistance of Faustino Avagliano contain extensive digressions on the history of the archive, the archivists and other topics from the history of the monastery, on which the respective holdings shed light. During his stay in Rome, in collaboration with C. Tabarelli, he devoted himself to indexing the archives of a monastery in Perugia , in 1956 the two volumes of the Le carte di S. Pietro di Perugia were published. His older works also include a family story: Memorie della famiglia Leccisotti , Torremaggiore 1978.

literature

References and comments

  1. ↑ He published his first essay on Erasmus in 1932 in the magazine of the Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo , followed by numerous others.
  2. ↑ In 1969 Leccisotti published a two-volume biography of the cardinal
  3. ^ First in the anthology L'Italia benedettina , then also separately in 1946; the 10th edition reached 350 pages.
  4. ↑ In 1959 he interrupted the publication for seven years because he did not receive enough articles that met his scientific demands
  5. ↑ As early as 1944, Leccisotti had carried out a first revision of the archive holdings that remained in Montecassino. The losses mainly concerned archival documents from the 19th and 20th centuries

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Leccisotti, Tommaso
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leccisotti, Domenico (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Benedictine, archivist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Torremaggiore
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1982
Place of death Montecassino