Angelis, Pedro de (1784–1859)

views updated

Angelis, Pedro de (1784–1859)

Pedro de Angelis (b. 29 June 1784; d. 10 February 1859), essayist and scholar. Bernardino Rivadavia, former president of Argentina (1826–1827), persuaded Angelis, an Italian intellectual living in Paris, to take up residence in Buenos Aires and help develop the cultural life of the new nation. Angelis arrived in 1827 and became co-editor of Rivadavia's official paper, La crónica política y literaria de Buenos Aires. He also founded the Ateneo (an intellectual society) and edited the Gaceta mercantil. In 1828 Angelis edited the Latin text Cornelli Nepotis … vitae excellentium imperatorum for the university.

He attained prestige in the Argentine literary world and served Rivadavia's cause as well as that of Juan Manuel Ortiz de Rosas. During the second Rosas dictatorship (1835–1852), Angelis became fascinated with history and began collecting original historical documents, many of which he included in his six-volume work Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de la Plata. Ilustrada con notas y discertaciones (1836–1837). He served as head of the government printing office and was head archivist. In 1852 Angelis sold his collection of over twenty-seven hundred books and twelve hundred manuscripts to the government of Brazil, where today they can be consulted in the National Library (in Rio de Janeiro) under Colección de Angelis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ricardo Caillet-Bois, Rafael Alberto Arrieta, and Domingo Buoncore, eds., Historia de la literatura argentina, vol. 6 (1960), pp. 27-32. Elías Díaz Milano, Vida y obra de Pedro de Angelis (1968).