Giuseppe Crispi

Giuseppe Crispi (Arbërisht: Zef Krispi; 1781–1859) was an Italian philologist and bishop of Arbëresh descent.

One of the major figures of the Arbëresh community of Sicily of that era, he wrote a number of works on the Albanian language.

[1] Born on 30 July 1781 in Palazzo Adriano to the Crispi family, he studied at the seminary of Palermo, under Nicola Chetta.

[7] Crispi considered Albanian closely related to Pelasgian, Phrygian, Macedonian and "proto-Aeolian", thus an "ancestor" of Greek, which according to him had lost its "ancient features" over the millennia.

[4] The monograph influenced other Arbëreshë authors like Giuseppe Schiro, who first possibly used it as a point of reference in his 1834 paper Rapporti tra l'Epiro e il Regno delle due Sicilie.