Gabrini, Thomas Maria

, of the order of the clerks minor, was born at Rome in 1726, and boasted of being the descendant of Nicolas Gabrini, better known by the name Rienzi. Having been appointed Greek professor at Pesaro, he acquired great reputation for his critical knowledge of that language. He afterwards was invited to be philosophy professor at Rome, and had a cure of souls which he held for twenty-seven years, with the character of an excellent pastor. After other preferments in the ecclesiastical order to which he belonged, he was at last | made general, and while in this station was frequently consulted by congregations, bishops, and popes, who had a very high esteem for his judgment. He died very advanced, on Nov. 16, 1807. Besides some tracts published in. defence of his ancestor Rienzi, he published “A Dissertation on the 20th proposition of the first book of Euclid,” Pesaro, 1752, 8vo, which went through several editions, and many dissertations, memoirs, and letters in the literary journals, on the origin of mountains, petrifactions, and other objects of natural history; medals, obelisks, inscriptions, and classical and ecclesiastical antiquities. He left also some valuable manuscripts on similar subjects. ¹