Angelo Masci ( Arbërisht: Ëngjëll Mashi; 1758–1822) was an Italian Arbëresh jurist and scholar.

Life

Born in Santa Sofia d'Epiro on 7 December 1758 to Noè and Vittoria Bugliari he first studied under Stefano Baffa. At the age of twelve, Masci moved to Naples to continue his studies there under the supervision of his uncle Giuseppe (Zep) Bugliari, chaplain of the Royal Macedonian Battalion of Naples. An alumnus of the faculty of law of the university of Naples, in 1809 he was appointed chief prosecutor of the court of cassation of

Catanzaro Catanzaro (; or ; ), also known as the "City of the two Seas" (), is an Italian city of 86,183 inhabitants (2020), the capital of the Calabria region and of its province and the second most populated comune of the region, behind Reggio Calabr ...

and in 1810 royal commissioner of northern

Calabria Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian S ...

and

Basilicata Basilicata (, ; ), also known by its ancient name Lucania (, , ), is an administrative region in Southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. It has two coastlines: a 30-kilometr ...

Works

Masci's first published work was ''Esame politico-legale de dritti, e delle prerogative de'Baroni del regno di Napoli'' (1792), a treatise on the legal system in regard to the baronial privileges in the Kingdom of Naples. The treatise was used as a polemic against the possible establishment of baronial control over the Italo-Albanian College of San Demetrio Corone. In 1807, his best-known work ''Discorso sull'origine, costumi, e stato attuale della nazione Albanese'' was published in Naples. Using mostly classical works as sources, Masci grouped Illyrian, Macedonian and Epirote into one language family, which he considered the Ursprache of Albanian, but didn't name and identify it. His work influenced

Conrad Malte-Brun Conrad Malte-Brun (; born Malthe Conrad Bruun; 12 August 177514 December 1826), sometimes referred to simply as Malte-Brun, was a Dano- French geographer and journalist. His second son, Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun, was also a geographer. Today he ...

, who republished it with the title ''Essai sur l'origine, les moeurs et l'état actuel de la nation albanaise'' in his ''Annales des voyages, de la géographie et de l'histoire''. In turn, Malte-Brun's essays partially influenced Giuseppe Crispi, who wrote the first monograph on the Albanian language, however, unlike Masci, Malte-Brun and Crispi identified that language family with Pelasgian.

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Masci, Angelo 1758 births 1821 deaths Italian people of Arbëreshë descent 18th-century Neapolitan people 19th-century Neapolitan people Scholars from the Kingdom of Naples