, a monk of the Ecoles-Pies, and a mathematician and antiquary,
, a monk of the Ecoles-Pies, and a
mathematician and antiquary, was born at Fanano in 1702,
and died in 1765, at Pisa, where the grand duke had given
him a chair in philosophy. This science occupied his first
studies, and his success soon appeared from the “Philosophical and Mathematical Institutions,
” Course of Geometrical
Elements,
” written with precision and perspicuity. On
being appointed professor at Pisa, he revised and retouched
his two performances. The former appeared, with considerable corrections, at Bologna in 1742; and the second,
augmented with f< Elements of Practical Geometry,“was
published at Venice in 1748, 2 vols. 8vo. He was well
versed in hydrostatics and history. After having sedulously
applied for several years to the classical authors, and particularly those of Greece, he proposed to write the
” Fasti
of the Archons of Athens,“the first volume of which appeared in 1734, in 4to, and the fourth and last, ten years
after. Being called in 1746 to the chair of moral philosophy and metaphysics, he composed a
” Course of Metaphysics,“which appeared afterwards at Venice in 1758.
His learned friends Muratori, Gorio, Maffei, Quirini, Passionei, now persuaded him to abandon philosophy; and,
at their solicitations, he returned to criticism and erudition. In 1747 he published four dissertations in 4to, on
the sacred games of Greece, in which he gave an exact list
of the athletic victors. Two years afterwards he brought
out, in folio, an excellent work on the abbreviations used
in Greek inscriptions, under this title,
” De notis Graecorum.“This accurate and sagacious performance was
followed by several dissertations relative to objects of learning. But the high esteem in which he was held by his
acquaintance on account of his virtues and industry, was
an interruption to his labours, he being appointed general
of his order in 1754; yet the leisure left him by the arduous duties of his station he devoted to his former studies,
and when the term of his generalship expired, he hastened
back to Pisa, to resume the functions of professor. He
now published several new dissertations, and especially an
excellent work, one of the best of his performances, entitled
” De praefectis urbis.“At length he confined the
whole of hi:; application on the
” History of the University
of Pisa," of which he had been appointed historiographer,
and was about to produce the first volume when a stroke
of apoplexy carried him off, in spite of all the resources of
the medical art, in December 1765.