Giuseppe Maria Tomasi

Tomasi was born at Licata, in the Kingdom of Sicily, part of the Crown of Aragon, to Giulio Tomasi, the first Prince of Lampedusa and his wife, Rosalia Traina. His life was oriented toward God from his first years. Formed and educated in the family home, where they did not lack riches or moral training, he gave proof of a spirit very open to study and to piety. His parents cared greatly for this and for his own Christian formation and his instruction in the classical and modern languages, above all in the Spanish language, because he was destined by the family for the royal court of Madrid, as he was bound to inherit from his own father, as his title of nobility, that of Grandee of Spain.

But Tomasi's own spirit aspired, even from youth, to be small in the Kingdom of God, and to serve not the kings of the earth but the King of heaven. He cultivated his pious desire in his heart until he obtained the consent of his father to follow his vocation to religious life.

After having renounced, by means of a notarized document, the principality which belonged to him by birth, in favour of his younger brother, as well as his very large inheritance, Tomasi was admitted into the Theatines, a religious Order founded by St. Cajetan of Tiene in 1524, as a reform movement in the Catholic Church, and noted for the simplicity of life followed by its members. He joined the Order on 24 March 1665, and finally made his religious profession in the Theatine house of St. Joseph, at Palermo, on 25 March 1666.

Tomasi then studied philosophy, first at Messina, and later, owing to poor health, at Ferrara and Modena; and theology in Rome and Palermo. He was ordained a priest on Christmas Day 1673. To a wide knowledge of Greek, he united the study of Ethiopic, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic and Hebrew—converting his teacher, a Jewish rabbi, to Christianity. From the Psalters in these different languages, he collected the titles of the Psalms. He devoted himself to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. Searching the chief libraries, archives, and monuments, he retraced the ancient ecclesiastical discipline and liturgy.

Urged on by his particular love for the ancient documents of the Church and for sound ecclesiastical traditions, Tomasi considered that a good part of his own religious growth lay in dedicating himself, with the spirit of faith, to the publication of rare liturgical books and of the ancient liturgical texts, thereby bringing to light many ancient texts which until then had been hidden in the libraries.[1]

Tomasi's efforts at reform were directed not to the introduction of the new, but to the restoration and maintenance of the old. He was not always upheld and was sometimes rebuked for his zeal. Pope Innocent XII made him examiner of the bishops, or of the clergy. Pope Clement XI, for whom he served as confessor, appointed him consultor of the Theatine Order, theologian of the Sacred Congregation for Consultations about Regulars and other offices of the Holy See, consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and qualificator of the Holy Office. The same pope created him Cardinal Priest, with the title of the Church of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti, commanding him to accept the honour.

Tomasi taught catechism to the children of the poor in his titular church, also introducing its congregants to the use of Gregorian chant. He died in 1713, mourned by all, especially by Pope Clement, who so admired his sanctity that he had consulted him before accepting the papacy. He was buried in his titular church. The relics of his body, transferred in 1971 from the Basilica of his title of Ss. Silvestro e Martini ai Monti, are presently exposed for the veneration of the faithful in the Basilica of San Andrea della Valle of the Theatine Fathers, in Rome.