Giuseppe Vito Castronovo

Giuseppe Vito Castronovo (29 June 1814 – 26 March 1893) was a Dominican priest, historian and librarian from Erice, Sicily. He is best known for a multi-volume local history of Erice published in the 1870s, a cornerstone of the town’s historiography, and for serving as the first director of the Vito Carvini Municipal Library (1868–1893), where he organised, expanded and safeguarded its collections.

Castronovo was born in Erice on 29 June 1814. After studies at the Mazara seminary he entered the Dominican Order in Palermo, pursued theological studies, and became a noted preacher and scholar.^[1]

In 1868 the municipal council of Monte San Giuliano (now Erice) appointed him the first director of the newly constituted civic library. During a tenure that lasted until 1893, he carried out the first systematic cataloguing and reordering of the holdings, secured municipal funds for new acquisitions, and successfully petitioned for the return of manuscripts that had been sent to Trapani’s Biblioteca Fardelliana. In 1872 the library was housed in improved premises on the ground floor of the Palazzo Municipale on Piazza della Loggia.^[2]

Active in the civic and ecclesiastical life of Erice, Castronovo documented the parish churches and the Chiesa Matrice (Real Duomo); his manuscript Erice sacra was published from the autograph in 2015.^[3][4] Later scholarship on the nineteenth-century rebuilding of the mother church and on Castronovo’s writings has revisited these themes.^[5][6]

Castronovo died in Erice on 26 March 1893.^[1]

Castronovo wrote extensively on the history, religious life and antiquities of Erice (historically known as Monte San Giuliano). Among his principal works are:

• Erice, oggi Monte San Giuliano in Sicilia: memorie storiche (Palermo, 1872–1875; parts issued into the late 1870s). A multi-part history that remains a key reference; reprinted in anastatic editions in 1988 and later.^[7][8][9]
• Erice sacra (ms., 19th century; ed. Salvatore Denaro, 2015). A comprehensive manuscript survey of churches, confraternities and sacred art in Erice, preserved in the Biblioteca comunale “Vito Carvini” and published from the autograph.^[4][3][10]
• Le glorie di Maria Santissima Immacolata sotto il titolo di Custonaci… (Palermo: F. Lao, 1861; anastatic reprint 2011). A devotional-historical monograph on the cult of Our Lady of Custonaci.^[11][12]
• Le Chiese di Erice (ms., c. 1870), cited by later studies on the church history of Trapani and Erice.^[13]

Other manuscripts attributed to him include notes on antiquities and local "museums" (Musei–Anticaglie della montagna e dell’agro ericino, ms. 18, Biblioteca "V. Carvini").^[14]

Castronovo is commemorated by a marble bust in the Balio Gardens at Erice. Contemporary description identifies it as the portrait of “Padre Maestro Giuseppe Castronovo”, placed a little apart from the bust of the scholar Ugo Antonio Amico.^[15]

Castronovo’s historical compilations and ecclesiastical surveys are frequently cited in studies of Erice and the Trapani area, and his stewardship laid the foundations for the holdings and organisation of today’s Biblioteca comunale “Vito Carvini”.^[2] Recent scholarship has revisited his historical method, literary production, and his role in the nineteenth-century rebuilding of the mother church.^[16][14][6]