MAIANEAS
659
they were still on his hands, he commenced an edition of the well-known Codex Vaticanus of the Old and New Testament, with various readings and prolegomena, which, however, he never entirely completed ; or if he did, as some suj^pose, he destroyed a greater part of his manuscript on the Old Testament, lest it should ever see the light of day in an incomplete and imperfect state. The text of the Xew Testament was published in 185S, and in a thoroughly revised form in 1859, under the ti- tle Nov. Test, ex vetusiissimo codice Vat., secundis curis edituni studio Angeli Maii ; but even in a revised form the work does not deserve the name of Jlai on its title- page. Comp. Kitto, Journ. Sac. Lit. 1859 (Oct.), p. IGG sq.
While engaged in these vast literary enterprises Mai held the laborious and responsible post of secretary of the Propaganda, to which he had been appointed in 1833; and it was observed with wonder that his other engagements were never suffered to interfere with the duties of the secretarj-ship. In 1838 he was rewarded for his great services to the Church with the cardinal's hat, at the same time with his friend and successor in the Vatican Library, Jlezzofanti ; and soon afterwards was appointed to several important and confidential offices in the Koman court, chietly of a literary character. He was named successively prefect of the Congregation for the Supervision of the Oriental Press ; prefect of the Congregation of the Index ; and prefect of the Congre- gation of the Council of Trent. In 1853 he was appoint- ed to the still more congenial post of librarian of the Roman Church. He died September 9, 1854.
"Cardinal Mai's abilities as an editor," says his biog- rapher in the Unr/h'sk Cyclopadia, " were of the very highest order. While his collections comprise an infi- nite variety of authors of every age, of every countrj-, of every variety of style, and in every department of liter- ature, he appears in all equally the master. Whether the subject be theology, or history, or law, or languages, or general literature, bis learning is never at fault, and his critical sagacity never fails. In the many delicate and difficult questions which so often arise — in assign- ing an anonymous manuscript to its true author, in col- lecting fragments of the same work and dovetailing them together into intelligible order, in selecting from a heap of unknown materials all that is unpublished, and de- ciding upon the question of its genuineness or its intrin- sic value— in a word, in all the thousand investigations which fall to the lot of a critical editor treading upon untried ground, he possessed a skill and acuteness which can hardly be described as other than instinctive, and which, taking into account the vast variety of subjects which engaged him, must be regarded as little short of marvellous. The private character of Cardinal Mai has been well described as the very ideal of a Christian scholar. Earnestly devoted to the duties of his sacred calling, he yet loved literature for its own sake also, and he was ever foremost in every project for its advance- ment. He was a member of all the leading literary so- cieties of Italy, anil not unfrequently read papers in those of Rome and Milan. His charities were at all times liberal, and, indeed, munificent; and at his death he l)e- queathed the proceeds of the sale of his noble library to the poor of his native village of Schilpario. A monu- ment has been erected to his memory in the church of St. Anastasia, from which he derived his title as cardi- nal." See Mutti, Elo;iio di Am/elo Mai (1828) ; Rabbe, Jiioff, Univ. des Contemporains ; Hoefer, Nonv. Biog. Gen- erale, xxxii, 857 sq.; Ein/lish Cyclop, s. v.; Wetzer und Welte, Kirchen-Lexikon, vol. xii, s. v.
Maia'neas {Maimn>aQ,\u\g. omits), given (1 Esdr. ix, 48) in place of the Maasias (q. v.) of the Heb. text (Neh. viii, 7).
Maid or Maiden (prop. ^"^"3, -jTaiciaKt], a fiirl as corresponding to "i:'3, Trfuc, a young man ; also nbflra, Koparrinr, a rirfiin ; for which the usual term is ITibr ; but rr^X and HHS'ui, like covXi], are a maidservant). See Handmaid; Vikgin.
Maignan, Emanuel, a Roman Catholic eccksjas^ tic, noted as a philosopher, was born at Toulouse, in France, in 1601 ; was educated at the College of the Jesuits in that place, where he evinced extraordinary ability as a mathematician and philosopher. A strong inclination to a religious life led him to seek the monas- tery for his retreat. In 1636, however, he was called to fill a professor's chair of mathematics in Rome ; returned from Rome to Toulouse in 1650, and was created by his countrymen provincial in the same year. He died in 1676. Maignan published De Perspectiva Horaria (Toulouse, 1648), and a Course of Philosophy (Toulouse, 1652, 4 vols. 8vo ; 2d edit. 1673, folio), enlarged by two Treatises on the same subject in 1673. He opposed Des Cartes in his theory of the Creation, and to refute it the more completely, he invented a machine " which showed by its movements that Des Cartes's supposi- tion concerning the manner in which the universe was formed, or might have been formed, and concerning the centrifugal force, was entirely without foundation." See Gen. Biog. Diet, ix, 1, s. v. ; Thomas, Diet. Bi'og. and My- thol. s. V.