Sebastiano Ayala was born of a noble family, in the city of
Castrogiovanni in
Sicily, in the year 1744.[1] He studied at
Palermo, and was appointed professor of
rhetoric at
Malta. When the Jesuits were driven out of Malta, Ayala went to
Rome, he having been excepted from the order which prohibited any Jesuit, a subject of the
House of Bourbon, being received in that city. He studied
theology in the
Roman College during two years, and made such progress in
mathematics and
astronomy, that
Lorenzo Ricci, the general of the order, determined to associate him with
Leonardo Ximenes as his colleague and future successor in the
observatory at Florence.[2]Count Kaunitz, however, by whom he was held in great esteem, took him to
Vienna, and by his influence, after the
suppression of the Society of Jesus, Ayala was made minister from the
Republic of Ragusa at the imperial court. He occupied that position for almost 30 years. Ayala was the only individual who had regular contact with Kaunitz in the weeks of the Chancellor's final illness.[3] He was the friend and biographer of
Metastasio. He died in Vienna on December 29, 1817.[1]
Works
“Lettera apologetica della persona e del regno di Pietro il Grande contro le grossolane calunnie di
Mirabeau.”
“De la liberté et de l’égalité des hommes et des citoyens, avec des considérations sur quelques nouveaux dogmes politiques,” Vienna, 1792, 8vo., and again at Vienna in 1794, 8vo. It was translated into
Italian under the title “Della libertà e della uguaglianza degli uomini e de’ cittadini, con riflessioni su di alcuni nuovi dommi politici,” 1793, 8vo. Two other translations in Italian also appeared. Also into
German, “Ueber Freyheit und Gleichheit der Menschen und Bürger,” Vienna, 1793, 8vo.[4] This work is directed against the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and discusses at large the questions of civil liberties and equality. It was widely disseminated as
propaganda by opponents of the
French Revolution.[5]
Ayala was among the first who perceived the necessity of a revision of the
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, particularly with a view to render the
Latin explanations more precise and to remove many superfluous quotations. He explained his views in a work entitled “Dei difetti dell’antico Vocabolario della Crusca, che dovrebbero correggersi nella nuova edizione,” Vienna, 8vo.
“Opere postume di Metastasio, date alla luce dall’abate Conte d’Ayala,” 3 vols. Vienna, 1795, 8vo., also in 4to. and in 12mo. in the same year, and at
Paris in 3 vols., in 4to. and 8vo. in 1798. This publication contains Metastasio’s unpublished correspondence, translations of portions of
Sophocles and
Euripides, and his Life, written by Ayala. He is said to have been the author of several anonymous pieces, and to have published a catalogue of the productions of the
Aldine Press, a complete collection of which he possessed. He also exposed the errors in
Davanzati’s translation of
Tacitus, and accompanied his criticism by a version of a copious extract from the Latin.[6]
^Klingenstein, Grete; Szabo, Franz A. J., eds. (1996). Staatskanzler Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg 1711-1794: neue Perpektiven zu Politik und Kultur der europäischen Aufklärung. Graz: Schnider. p. 141.
ISBN3900993432.
Jones, John Winter (1844).
"Ayala, Sebastiano". The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Vol. 4. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. pp. 340–341. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the
public domain.
Sommervogel, Carlos (1890). Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. Vol. I. Bruxelles-Paris. pp. 710 ff.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
De Tipaldo, Emilio Amedeo (1834). "Ayala (Sebastiano)". Biografia degli Italiani illustri del Secolo XVIII. Vol. I. Venice: Dalla tipografia di Alvisopoli. p. 26.