Domenico Silvio Passionei

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Domenico Silvio Passionei (1682–1761) was an Italian churchman whose career combined diplomacy, administration, and scholarship, and whose legacy is closely tied to the world of libraries and learned collecting in eighteenth-century Rome. Born at Fossombrone in the Marche in 1682, he entered papal service early and was active on the international stage: he was delegated to the Congress of Utrecht in 1712 and later served as apostolic nuncio in Switzerland (from 1721) and in Vienna (from 1730). In Rome he rose to senior curial offices and became cardinal; he is also remembered as a major bibliophile and collector, assembling a private library of such scale and value that it was purchased after his death and became a significant component of the Biblioteca Angelica’s holdings. Passionei’s musical footprint is comparatively modest but unusually specific: he is associated with a set of twelve sonatas for cello and basso continuo transmitted under his name in an early eighteenth-century print and now widely circulated in modern editions and recordings. In parallel with his collecting activity, he also played an institutional role in the Vatican Library’s scholarly life: Vatican Library documentation credits his period of guidance with developing a more systematic editorial policy for the Library’s own publications. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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