Vincenzo de Vit

Who was Vincenzo de Vit?

Vincenzo de Vit was an Italian Latin scholar and historian of Ancient Rome.

He made his studies at Padua, was ordained priest in 1836, in 1844 became librarian of the Academia dei Concordi at Rovigo and canon of the cathedral. He was thus advancing in the path of ecclesiastical honours, but under the influence of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati he entered the latter's religious order, known as the Institute of Charity, in Stresa. He began his revision of Egidio Forcellini's lexicon in Stresa. Compelled to have recourse to libraries, he went first to Florence in 1861, and in 1862 to Rome, where he took up his residence, returning to Northern Italy in the summer.

De Vit's idea differed from that of Forcellini and Furlanetto, it being his intention to include in his book all the periods and all the varieties of Latin down to A.D. 568. He likewise gave an exact digest of the authors of the Church Fathers, and accorded considerable space to inscriptions, which he also treated in special works. His work was a third larger than Furlanetto's edition, which extension compelled him to leave out proper names. The Lexicon totius latinitatis was completed in 1879.