Giuseppe Mezzofanti

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Giuseppe Cardinal Mezzofanti (oil painting 1838)

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti (born September 17, 1774 in Bologna , † March 17, 1849 in Naples ) was an Italian cardinal . He is considered one of the greatest linguistic geniuses and is said to have understood 57 languages, of which 38 were spoken. Mezzofanti has since been the name for a polyglot person.

Life

Early years

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti was as a child of the carpenter Francesco Mezzofanti and his wife Gesualda Dall'Olmo Mezzofanti in Via Malcontenti al Vecchio N o born in 1988 in Bologna and on 20 September 1774 baptized . With the exception of his sister Teresa, all of the siblings died in infancy.

He received his education at the Piarist School in Bologna, where in addition to the classical languages, Spanish, German and some South American languages ​​were taught. His memory was considered astonishing, at the age of twelve he began the three-year study of philosophy , which he concluded with a public disputation. He finished his theological studies with the same distinction before reaching canonical age . Therefore, he first turned to the study of "Oriental languages" .

Spiritual career

Giuseppe Mezzofanti was ordained a priest on September 23, 1797, and that same year became professor of Hebrew at the University of Bologna . He lost this position when he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Cisalpine Republic . As a pastor he looked after soldiers from all possible countries in the hospital in Bologna from 1799 to 1800, which also gave him the opportunity to expand his language skills. In 1803 he became an assistant at the university library in Bologna and from 1804 to 1808 he taught again as a professor at the same university in Hebrew and now also in Greek. In 1806 he turned down an invitation from Napoleon Bonaparte to move to Paris. As a librarian and professor at the University of Bologna, he studied ethnology , archeology , numismatics and astronomy from 1815 . At the same time he worked in Bologna as a pastor for foreigners and strangers.

Pope Gregory XVI was finally able to persuade Mezzofanti to move to Rome after long hesitation in 1831 to work for the Holy See. On June 14, 1831, he was appointed House Prelate of His Holiness and thus admitted to the papal court. He became canon of the papal basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Peter in the Vatican and advised the Congregation for the Oriental Rite , among other things . On April 16, 1833 he became curator of the Vatican library .

In the consistory of February 12, 1838, Gregory XVI. him cardinal priest and on February 15 of the same year bestowed on him the title of Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo . As a cardinal, he was prefect of several congregations dealing with the rite of the Oriental Churches. He took part in the conclave of 1846 , from which Pius IX. emerged as Pope.

Mezzofanti died on March 15, 1849 in Rome at a pneumonia and was buried in his titular Sant'Onofrio. A memorial was erected over his grave in 1885 .

linguistic proficiency

According to his biographer Charles William Russell, Mezzofanti is said to have mastered 38 languages ​​and is considered the record holder of multilingualism . There is evidence that he spoke the following 29 languages ​​in addition to his Italian mother tongue: Latin , ancient Greek , modern Greek , Hebrew , Arabic , Aramaic , Amharic , Coptic , Armenian , Persian , Turkish , Maltese , Illyrian , Spanish , Portuguese , French , English , Welsh , Scottish Gaelic , German , Dutch , Swedish , Danish , Russian , Polish , Czech , Hungarian , Albanian and Chinese .

Lord Byron said of him:

“Monster of languages ​​[...] who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter”

"A monster of languages ​​[...] which should have existed as a translator at the time of the Tower of Babylon."

- Lord Byron

The German sinologist Emil Krebs , the British researcher Sir Richard Francis Burton , the Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro , Cardinal Secretary of State Rafael Merry del Val and the Belgian orientalist Johan Vandewalle had (or have) similar skills .

Honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti, cardinal. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 6, 2015 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Mezzofanti, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mezzofanti, Giuseppe Gasparo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian cardinal; is considered one of the greatest language geniuses in history
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1849
Place of death Naples