Lodovico Antonio Muratori

Lodovico Antonio Muratori (born Oct. 21, 1672, Vignola, Modena—died Jan. 23, 1750, Modena) was a scholar and pioneer of modern Italian historiography.

After studying at Modena under the Benedictine Benedetto Bacchini, who introduced him to the historical-critical methods of the French Maurists, in 1694 he was ordained priest and employed in the Ambrosian library at Milan. There he published the Anecdota (2 vol., 1697–98; two further volumes added, 1713), a selection of texts that he had discovered among the manuscripts belonging to the library. In 1700 he went to Modena as librarian for Duke Rinaldo I. Legal disputes between the Este family and the Holy See over the ownership of the territory of Comacchio led Muratori to study, in the original documents, some of the juridical and ideological problems of the Italian middle ages, and he came to see in that period the origin of the modern states, although as a man of the 18th century he still considered it a “barbarous” epoch. As a result he undertook a documentary study, and, with the active collaboration of local correspondents, he collected in his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 28 vol. (1723–51; “Writers on Italian Affairs”) chronicles, diaries, and legal documents illustrating the history of medieval Italian society.

At the same time Muratori was working on his 75 dissertations, published in the Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi, 6 vol. (1738–42; “Antiquities of the Italian Middle Ages”), which includes the Muratorian Canon, a 2nd-century list of the books of the New Testament. These constitute his most lively and acute historical work, and are made up of detailed and penetrating studies on such subjects as the history of institutions, of economics, of religion, and of social customs. Particularly acute is the analysis of relationships between social events and religious traditions, relationships that he establishes with independent critical judgment. In 1744 he began the publication of the Annali d’Italia, 12 vol. (1744–49), a work of some significance because in it Muratori attempted to narrate the history of the Italian peninsula as a unified whole. As works of historiography, however, the Annali, except for brief passages, are a failure. His analytical approach seems to be used to hide the absence of a central theme, and the biographical sketches lack penetration and psychological insight. It would seem that Muratori had more understanding of the people and their needs than of individuals.

Muratori was not only a historian. As a man of letters he was sensitive to the connections between culture and morals, and he believed that it was the duty of the critic to point them out, as can be seen from Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto (1708; “Reflections on Good Taste”). As a priest he fought against superstition and against medieval scholasticism, as revived by the Jesuits, for cultural as well as moral reasons. He was even accused of Jansenism, a Roman Catholic religious movement of non-orthodox tendencies—the accusation, although unjust in itself, was based on the apparent affinity between his own advocacy of a moral rebirth and that of the Jansenists. He was further linked to them by his definite acceptance of jurisdictional theories, because of his own preferences and the influences of the Maurists.