His Eminence

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti
Prefect of the Congregation for Studies
ChurchRoman Catholic Church
Appointed23 May 1845
Term ended15 March 1849
PredecessorLuigi Lambruschini
SuccessorCarlo Vizzardelli
Other post(s)Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Onofrio (1838-49)
Orders
Ordination23 September 1797
Created cardinal12 February 1838
by Pope Gregory XVI
RankCardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born
Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti

19 September 1774
Bologna, Papal States
Died15 March 1849(1849-03-15) (aged 74)
Rome, Papal States
BuriedSant'Onofrio
ParentsFrancesco Mezzofanti
Gesualda Dall'Olmo

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti (17 September 1774 – 15 March 1849) was an Italian cardinal known for being a hyperpolyglot.

Life

Born in Bologna, he showed exceptional mnemonic, musical, and language learning skills from a young age. He studied with the Piarists, where he met several missionaries from various countries. By speaking with them he began learning several new languages including Swedish, German, Spanish, and languages of Indigenous peoples of South America, as well as studying Latin and Ancient Greek in school. He completed his theological studies before he had reached the minimum age for ordination as a priest. In 1797 he was ordained and became professor of Arabic, Hebrew, languages of Asia, and Greek at the University of Bologna. The same year, Mezzofanti tutored the eldest son of Georgiana Hare-Naylor.[1][2]

Mezzofanti lost his university position for refusing to take the oath of allegiance required by the Cisalpine Republic, which governed Bologna at the time. Between 1799 and 1800 he visited many foreign people who had been wounded during the Napoleonic Wars to attend to them and started to learn other European languages.

In 1803, he was appointed assistant librarian of the Institute of Bologna, and soon afterwards was reinstated as professor of Oriental languages and Ancient Greek. The chair of Oriental languages was suppressed by the viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais in 1808, but again rehabilitated on the restoration of Pope Pius VII in 1814. Mezzofanti held this post until he went to Rome in 1831 as a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), the Catholic Church's governing body for missionary activities.

In 1833, he succeeded Angelo Mai as Custodian-in-Chief of the Vatican Library, and in 1838 was made cardinal of Sant'Onofrio and director of studies in the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.[3] His other interests included ethnology, archaeology, numismatics, and astronomy.

List of languages spoken

The precise number of languages known to Mezzofanti is uncertain. Mezzofanti's nephew gives a list of 114 languages.[4] Charles Russell's biography gives a list of thirty languages "frequently tested, and spoken with rare excellence:"[5]

Biblical Hebrew, Mishnaic Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldee, Coptic, Ancient Armenian, Modern Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Albanian, Maltese, Greek, Romaic, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, English, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Chinese.

Another nine were "spoken fluently, but hardly sufficiently tested": Syriac, Ge'ez, Amharic, Hindustani, Gujarati, Basque, Romanian, Californian,[6] and Algonquin.[5]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1890). "Hare-Naylor, Francis" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 24. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ↑ Hare, Augustus J. C. (2011). Story of My Life, Volumes 1-3. Library of Alexandria. ISBN 978-1-4655-8197-6.
  3. ↑ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mezzofanti, Giuseppe Caspar". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 351.
  4. ↑ Russell, Charles William (1858). The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti; with an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern. London: Longman, Brown, and Co. pp. 463–465.
  5. 1 2 Russell, Charles William (1858). The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti; with an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern. London: Longman, Brown, and Co. p. 467.
  6. ↑ Russell, Charles William (1858). The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti; with an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern. London: Longman, Brown, and Co. p. 355.

References

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