Ange de Saint-Joseph

Ange de Saint-Joseph (also: Joseph Labrosse ) (* 1636 in Toulouse ; † December 29, 1697 in Perpignan ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, bareback Carmelite , missionary, orientalist , lexicographer and translator.

life and work

A Carmelite in Persia

The southern French Joseph Labrosse (also: de La Brosse ) joined the barefoot Carmelites and took the religious name Ange de Saint-Joseph . After learning Arabic in Rome, he went on a mission to Persia from 1664 to 1678 , first to Isfahan , then to Basra . He learned excellent New Persian , interacted with the local elite and made use of his linguistic and cultural experiences in an important dictionary, for which he received permission to print in 1680 and which was published in Amsterdam in 1684 by Jansson-Waesberg under the title Gazophylacium linguae Persarum . In addition, he translated a Persian medicine theory into Latin and published the text in Paris in 1681.

Via Holland and England to Perpignan

After Basra was conquered by the Turks, Ange de Saint-Joseph went to Holland via Rome and Paris in 1679, where he was employed as a visitor to the local order province. After further stays in England and Ireland, he moved to Perpignan Monastery and was appointed Provincial of the Order of Aquitaine in 1697 , but died shortly afterwards at the age of 61.

The dictionary

Ange de Saint-Joseph's dictionary (with a prefixed grammar) is in four languages, Italian-Latin-French-Persian. It is arranged alphabetically according to Italian. Indices are attached for Latin and French. The dictionary contains around 10,000 words for each language. The function is that of a translating dictionary for the (written or oral) production of New Persian for speakers of one of the other languages. The focus is on the oral and the practical. The dictionary is not suitable for deciphering Persian texts. It is the first dictionary of Persian based on a European language. In the opening credits of the dictionary, experts like François Bernier , Jean Chardin , François Pétis de la Croix , Raphaël du Mans , Alexander de Bie (1620–1690) and Carolus Schaaf (1646–1729) congratulate them .

Starting with letter G, the articles are partially enriched with encyclopedic information, whereby the versions in the individual languages ​​do not have to be identical. 302 such factual information was published in 1985 by Michel Bastiaensen in European-Persian (with an introduction).

Attitude in the rite dispute

In the rites controversy of his time, Ange de Saint-Joseph spoke out in favor of accommodation . Education, language skills and accommodation were seen by him as prerequisites for appreciation by the local society. He regarded strict insistence on the rule of the order as counterproductive, an attitude with which he often made enemies with his confreres, visitors and superiors.

Works

• (Translator) Pharmacopoea Persica ex idiomate Persico in Latinum translata. Opus missionariis, mercatoribus, cæterisque regionum orientalium lustratoribus necessarium; nec non europæis nationibus perutile. Paris 1681.
• Gazophylacium linguae Persarum , triplici linguarum clavi italicae, latinae, gallicae nec non specialibus praeceptis ejusdem linguae reseratum. Amsterdam 1684. [1]
  • (Partial edition) Souvenirs de la Perse safavide et autres lieux d'Orient 1664–1678. En version persane et européenne . Edited by Michel Bastiaensen (* 1944). Brussels 1985.

literature

• Christian Windler (* 1960): Missionaries in Persia. Cultural diversity and norm competition in global Catholicism (17th – 18th centuries) . Böhlau, Cologne and Vienna 2018, pp. 574–581.

Web links

• Information on Ange de Saint-Joseph in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Ange de Saint-Joseph in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Page to the dictionary , french