Matura Veyssière de La Croze

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Matura Veyssière de La Croze

Maturin Veyssière de La Croze (also Mathurin ; * December 4, 1661 in Nantes , † May 21, 1739 in Berlin ) was a French orientalist and librarian. He worked at the Berlin court and belonged to the Huguenot community . He left four dictionaries in Coptic , Armenian , Slavic and Syriac .

life and work

Maturin Veyssière de La Croze was born on December 4, 1661 in Nantes, France. He received his first education and private lessons from his father and from his father's library. In 1677 the family became impoverished and he became a novice in the monastery of Saint-Florent in Saumur . He studied theology at Le Mans . In 1682 he was a Benedictine monk in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. He was working on a major edition of the Church Fathers . In 1696 he got into arguments with the prior and fled to Basel . He found support from Professors Peter Werenfels and Johann Jakob Buxtorf and converted to the Reformed Church .

In 1697 he became electoral librarian in Berlin. Together with the rise of elector Friedrich I to king, he became royal librarian in Berlin in 1701. He taught some members of the ruling family, including Wilhelmine of Prussia . In 1725 he also had a professorship in philosophy at the French college in Berlin. He was considered one of the most educated men of his time and led extensive correspondence with many other important scholars. While Frederick I gave him good conditions at the beginning of his time in Berlin, albeit little budget, for the expansion of the Berlin library, the interests of the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I were hostile to education. The budget for new books was completely cut and at times even the salaries for library employees. Only thanks to a lottery win and other income was he able to continue his job as a librarian. He cataloged the entire manuscript collection and made the library accessible for research. He wrote some works on the history of missions in India (whereby he could essentially fall back on the work of the missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg ), Ethiopia and Armenia . He died in Berlin on May 21, 1739.

He left behind an important private library and a large estate with numerous unpublished works. His manuscripts went to Th. Hirsch and Charles Étienne Jordan . His manuscript for a Coptic Lexicon formed the basis for the Lexicon Ægyptiaco-Latinum , which was published posthumously and which Jean-François Champollion also used for his work. Adolf von Harnack writes about him: “Not only did he master all of the cultural languages, but he also penetrated the Slavic, Basque, Armenian, Semitic, Chinese, but above all Coptic, even though he was autodidact everywhere. "

Works (selection)

Most German titles previously appeared in French.

literature

Web links

Commons : Maturin Veyssière de La Croze  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CERL Thesaurus
  2. ↑ Martin Krause: Short biography on the Claremont Graduate University website , accessed on November 5, 2012
  3. ↑ So far there is only the French article for : Abbaye Saint-Florent de Saumur
  4. ^ Arnold von Salis:  Werenfels, Peter . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 1-4.
  5. ^ Edgar Bonjour : The University of Basel: from the beginnings to the present, 1460–1960 , p. 304. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1971.
  6. ^ Friedhilde Krause, From Mathurin Vessière de La Croze to Adolf von Harnack, p. 57.
  7. ^ The parial legend in Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg . In: Theodor Zachariae (ed.): Small writings on Indian philology, comparative literary history, comparative folklore . Verlag Kurt Schroeder, Bonn and Leipzig 1920, p. 125-134 ( online - first published in: Zeitschrift des Verein für Volkskunde 12, pp. 449-456 (1902)).
  8. ^ Adolf von Harnack: History of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlinhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dgeschichtederk01harn~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D108~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D%27%27Geschichte%20der%20K%C3%B6nlicher% 20Prussian% 20Akademie% 20der% 20Sciences% 20zu% 20Berlin% 27% 27 ~ PUR% 3D , Berlin 1900 vol. 1, part 1, p. 108.
personal data
SURNAME La Croze, Maturin Veyssière de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French orientalist, librarian, polymath
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1661
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantes
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1739
Place of death Berlin