Eugenio Cecconi was born in Florence in 1834 and studied with the Piarists of Florence before graduating in mathematics at Pisa. While working as a teacher with various charities (especially the San Vincenzo de’ Paoli) he developed a vocation and took his vows in 1859. After finishing his theological studies in Rome, he became vice-director of the seminary in Florence and deputy vicar general in the archdiocese of Florence.

He abandoned mathematics in favour of historical studies and founded a monthly journal called “Archivio dell’ecclesiastico”, which provided a wealth of historical information aimed at widening the knowledge of the clergy; among its contributors the journal counted Geremia Bonomelli and the Jesuit Giovanni Perrone, but ceased publication after only four years.

Some of the learned historical studies, in particular on the fifteenth-century Council of Florence, attracted the attention of Pope Pius IX, who commissioned him to write a history of the First Vatican Council, with the opportunity to attend the sessions. The volumes of the Storia del Concilio ecumenico Vaticano appeared between 1873 and 1879.

He became Archbishop of Florence in 1874 and, as such, followed an intransigent orthodoxy in his relations both with the State and with lay thinking. Eugenio Cecconi was leading the church in Florence at the time when Raffaello Caverni’s De’ nuovi studi della filosofia was being examined and condemned, and accepted in person his submission to the decree. He died in Florence in 1888.