Silvio Giuseppe Mercati
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Silvio Giuseppe Mercati (born Giuseppe Mercati; 16 September 1877 – 16 October 1963) was an Italian Byzantinist, recognized as the first Italian classical scholar who specialized in Byzantine studies and the first Professor of Byzantine studies in the Italian university system.
Mercati was born in Reggio Emilia (precisely in the village of Villa Gaida) from a middle-class family. He had two older brothers, Giovanni and Angelo, who both became ecclesiastics, the former working as 'Dottore' of the Ambrosian Library and later as prefect of the Vatican Library, whereas the latter became archivist of the Vatican Secret Archive.[1]
Mercati initially enrolled in the Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria of Milan (precursor of the University of Milan) in 1896, but soon had to move to Naples for health reasons (1897–1898), studying at the local university.[2] After a year-break, in 1899–1900 he studied at the University of Rome and, from 1900–1901 to 1904–1905, at the University of Bologna, where he graduated defending a thesis on the Greek versions of the writings of Ephrem the Syrian (tutored by Vittorio Puntoni).[1] From 1905 to 1907 he taught in high schools;[3] in that year he won a scholarship and spent three years in Germany, where he specialized in Byzantine philology with Wilhelm Meyer (Göttingen) and Karl Krumbacher (Munich).[1]
He was Lecturer in German language at the Sapienza University (1916–1919); at the same time he was habilitated to university teaching and taught Byzantine Philology from 1918 to 1924.[4] In 1924–1925 Mercati was professor of Greek literature at the University of Catania, but moved almost immediately to the Sapienza University of Rome, where he taught Byzantine studies, palaeography and papyrology until his retirement in 1949.[1] In 1957, his friends and colleagues edited a Festschrift in his honor.[5] Among his disciples were Giuseppe Schirò (professor at the University of Padua and then at the Sapienza, after Ciro Giannelli's brief experience),[6] Enrica Follieri (Schirò's successor) and Bruno Gentili, who later specialized in archaic Greek poetry.[1]
From 1931 (vol. III) to his death he edited the Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici series; in the same year he was deputy chair of the Fifth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Rome), and in 1951 he chaired the Eight Congress (Palermo).[7] In 1952 he was elected first president of the Associazione Nazionale di Studi Bizantini.[8] He gifted a large part of his private library to the Sapienza University after his retirement, and the rest was purchased by the University of Palermo after his death.[1]
His older brothers Angelo and Giovanni died in 1955 and 1957 respectively;[9] widowed since 1952, he died in Rome in 1963.[9][1] He was interested in rhabdomancy.[10]
Research
Mercati specialized in Byzantine literature, in particular poetry and literature with religious background. He wrote several short articles and notes, and a monograph – the critical edition of Ephrem's Greek sermons.[11] His disciple Giuseppe Schirò identified three leading lines of research in his activity: 1. – Literary and historical texts; 2. – Epigraphy; 3. – Literary texts transmitted by papyri (and Biblical, liturgical and hagiographical texts in particular).[12] His disciple (and successor) Enrica Follieri cited "l'originalità, l'erudizione, la brevità" [originality, erudition, brevity] as the most evident characteristics of Mercati's production.[13]
Starting from 1908, Mercati signed his publications as "Giuseppe Silvio" to distinguish himself from his older brother Giovanni, who also was a Byzantine scholar – since the two shared the same initial of first name; from his edition of Ephrem's texts in 1915, he inverted the two names, and since then he wrote Silvio Giuseppe Mercati.[1]
A large part of his minor works was reprinted in 1970.[14]
