Cardinal Giovanni Battista Mezzofanti

“ So far from shutting out from my judgment the drawbacks on the undiscriminating praise heaped upon the Cardinal by some of his biographers, which these criticisms imply, I regard them as (by recalling it from the realm of legend,) [472] forming the best and most secure foundation of a reputation which, allowing for every drawback, far transcends all that the world has ever hitherto known. I do not say that in all these languages, or perhaps in any of them, Cardinal Mezzofanti was the perfect paragon which some have described him ”

“ It was not to be expected that a man so eminent in one absorbing pursuit should have made a very distinguished figure in general literature or science. Among the many laudatory reports of him which are contained in this volume, a few will be found which hardly concede to him even a second-rate place as a scholar, still less as a philologer. In some of the literary circles of Rome, Mezzofanti was not popular. ”

“ Every year, from the time of his coming to Rome, even after he had been made Cardinal, he used to assist the students in composing their several national odes for the Polyglot Academy of the Propaganda, which is held during the octave of the Epiphany, and in which the astonished foreigners who witness it behold a living emblem of the unity of the Catholic Church, which alone is able, through the Holy Spirit that vivifieth her, to show forth in one fraternity the union of all tongues, in praising and blessing the Lord who created us and redeemed us by the blood of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition, simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors ”

“ When over-matched, entangled, and outnumbered.” “One day,” says M. Manavit, “Gregory XVI. provided an agreeable surprise for the polyglot prelate, and a rare treat for himself, in an improvised conversation in various tongues—a regular linguistic tournament. Among the mazy alleys of the Vatican gardens, behind one of the massive walls of verdure which form its peculiar glory, the Pope placed a certain number of the Propaganda students in ambuscade. When the time came for his ordinary walk, he invited Mezzofanti to accompany him ”

“ The title of Cardinal Mezzofanti was derived from the ancient church of Saint Onuphrius, (Sant’ Onofrio,) on the Janiculum, which is probably best known to visitors of Rome as the last resting-place of the poet Tasso.
To many persons, no doubt, the office of Cardinal has but little significance, except as a part of the stately ceremonial of the Roman court—a brilliant and enviable sinecure, sometimes the reward of distinguished merit, sometimes the prize of political influence or hereditary family claims. ”

“ Even his regular priestly duties as a confessor now contributed, as his extraordinary duties in the hospitals had done before, to enlarge his stock of languages. He was soon marked out as the “foreigners’ confessor” (confessario dei forestieri) of Bologna, an office which, in Rome and other Catholic cities, is generally entrusted to a staff consisting of many individuals. Almost every foreigner was sure to find a ready resource in Mezzofanti ”

“ Afterwards Professor in the Catholic Seminary of Warmond, in Holland, and at present Curé at Soest, in the province of Utrecht.
[460] “Let him who dares to doubt the gift of Pentecost, stand ashamed and confounded before the mind of Mezzofanti. In him, let him honour that man who is fit to be the earth’s interpreter—whose intellect penetrates the language-secret of all nations. ”

“ Mr. George Bidder, one of the latest, and in many respects most creditable, examples of this faculty, confesses his entire deficiency in talent for literature or language; and Zachariah Dase, whose performances as a calculator almost exceeded all belief, could never master a word of any foreign language except a little German.
But in Cardinal Mezzofanti we meet not only each of these qualities, but a most perfect and perfectly balanced union of them all. His memory in itself would have made him an object of wonder. ”

“ Such were at this period the tempting rewards of scientific or literary eminence in France. Moreover, Count Marescalchi, in whose family Mezzofanti had acted as tutor and librarian during the years of his deprivation, was now Resident Minister of the Kingdom of Italy at Paris. The Count’s intercourse with Mezzofanti was but little interrupted by their separation; and, even during his residence in Paris, the latter continued to correspond with him; chiefly on matters connected with the education of his children, or with the completion or extension of his noble library. ”

“ Immediately upon his nomination by the Pope as member of the chapter, Mezzofanti was appointed by his brother canons to the office of Rector of this college, which he continued to hold till his elevation to the Cardinalate. The office is in great part honorary; and Mezzofanti, in addition to his gratuitous services, devoted a considerable part of his income from other sources to the improvement of the establishment, and especially to the support of many meritorious students, whose limited means would have excluded them from its advantages but for his disinterested generosity. ”

“ Most of the branches of knowledge in which he is here represented as deficient, are in themselves the study of an ordinary life. To have added them all to what he really did possess, [485] would have been a marvel far exceeding the greatest wonder that has ever been ascribed to him; nor was any one more ready than the modest Cardinal himself, not merely to admit many particulars in which his learning was defective, but even to disparage the learning which he actually possessed. He confessed over and over again, that he was no philologer—that he was nothing but “an ill bound dictionary.” ”

“ In a short time he appears to have become to them more a friend than a pupil. Two, at least, of the members, Fathers Aponte, and Thiulen, lived to witness the distinction of his later life, and with them, as well as with his first and kindest patron, Father Respighi, he ever continued to maintain the most friendly and affectionate relations. [276]
It would be interesting to be able to trace the exact history of this period of the studies of Mezzofanti, and to fix the dates and the order of his successive acquisitions in what afterwards became the engrossing [136] pursuit of his life. ”

“ We have now before us, in the narrative of Cardinal Mezzofanti’s life, such materials for an estimate of his attainments as a linguist and a scholar, as a most diligent and impartial inquiry has enabled me to bring together. I can truly say that in no single instance have I suffered my own personal admiration of his extraordinary gifts to shape or to influence that inquiry. I have not looked to secure a verdict by culling the evidence. A great name is but tarnished by unmerited praise—non eget mendacio nostro. ”

“ Personally, I have always been disposed to respect and admire every man who possesses an incontestible superiority in any branch of human knowledge; and in this point of view, M. Mezzofanti, whom every body acknowledges to be the man who knew and could speak more languages than any other living man, had certainly a right to boundless admiration on my part. It was popularly reported at Bologna, that M. Mezzofanti, then fifty years old, knew as many languages as he counted years ”

“ In this way he learned Flemish from some Belgian students of the university. On the other hand, select pupils from various parts came to attend his Greek or Oriental lectures, or to pursue their linguistic studies privately under his direction. One of these, the Abate Celestino Cavedoni, now librarian of the Este Library at Modena, and one of the most eminent antiquarians of Italy, was his pupil from 1816 till 1821. With this excellent youth Mezzofanti formed a cordial friendship ”

“ They were administered by Padre Ligi, parish priest of the Church of SS. Apostoli, assisted by the Cardinal’s chaplain, and by his confessor, Padre Proja, now Sacristan of St. Peter’s. The chaplain and the members of his family frequently assembled at his bed-side, to accompany and assist him in his dying devotions; and the intervals between these common prayers, in which all alike took part, were filled up with pious readings by Anna Minarelli, and with short prayers of the holy Cardinal himself. “Dio mio! abbiate pietà di me!” ”

“ Vitruvius, in speaking of the Latin writers upon his art, as contradistinguished from the Greek, calls them “antiqui nostri.” [354]
To the same friend, Count Cicognara, Giordani in a previous letter, dated January 30th, 1812, had written of Mezzofanti’s own peculiar faculty of languages, in terms of almost rapturous admiration. “You know Mezzofanti,” he says;—“Mezzofanti—the rarest, most unheard of, most inconceivable of living men. I call him, and he is, the man of all nations and all ages. By Jove! he appears as though he had been born in the beginning of the world, and, like [200] St. ”

“ In like manner he still, as Cardinal, maintains with the Propaganda precisely the same relations which he held as a simple prelate. Although he is not bound thereto by any possible obligation, he devotes every day to the students of that institution, in summer an hour, in winter an hour and a half. He practises them and also himself in their several languages, and zealously avails himself of the opportunity thus afforded him, to exhort them to piety and to strengthen them in the spirit of their calling. ”

“ A Memoir of Cardinal Mezzofanti can be little more than a philological essay. Quiet and uneventful as was his career, its history possesses few of the ordinary attractions of Biography. The main interest of such a narrative must consist in the light which it may tend to throw on the curious problem;—what degree of perfection the human mind, concentrating its powers upon one department of knowledge, is capable of attaining therein ”

“ Amidst so many grave employments, Mezzofanti goes twice each week to the house of the orphans, to teach them the catechism, and to the barracks of the Swiss soldiers to instruct them in the principles of religion. The library requires his care twice in the week, for several hours in the morning; in the afternoon he gives lessons to the pupils of the Propaganda, whose studies he superintends; to his care are confided the public discourses delivered on the Epiphany: almost all foreigners come to visit him ”

“ A few days after my arrival in college, I was introduced to his Eminence in his polyglot library and study room in the college itself. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew nothing of the Cingalese [364] before I went to the Propaganda, yet in a few days he was able to assist me to put together a short plain discourse for our academical exhibition of the Epiphany. ”

“ Mezzofanti has been called the modern Mithridates, and thought very highly of altogether. In an intellectual point of view, many learned men, even Italians, are certainly above him: his reading appears at times shallow, owing to its having been so scattered, and it has occurred that he has often repeated the same thing to strangers; but his great and peculiar linguistic talent, which seems as it were to spring from some innate sense, cannot be denied; his good nature and politeness to [347] the students who frequent the Vatican are very great ”

“ Eminence in any pursuit, however, is necessarily relative. We are easily deceived about a man’s stature until we have seen him by the side of other men; nor shall we be able to form a just notion of the linguistic accomplishments of Cardinal Mezzofanti, or at least to bring them before our minds as a practical reality, until we shall have first considered what had been effected before him by other men who attained to distinction in the same department. ”

“ His friend, the abate Cavedoni, published these simple but touching letters of Mezzofanti in the Memorie [430] of Modena, as the best testimony which could be offered to the rare merit of the deceased; but, although already known in Italy, they are well worthy of being preserved, not merely as a tribute to the memory of the youth whose death they record, but as representing most truthfully the piety, the sensibility, the fervour, and above all, the amiable and affectionate disposition, of the writer himself. ”

“ For the details, however, I am indebted to an interesting communication from the abate Mazza, Vice-Rector of the Pontifical Seminary at Bologna.
[416] The author of this version, Ercole Faello, is not mentioned by Tiraboschi, nor can I find any other notice of him. His version has no value, except perhaps as a bibliographical curiosity; and Mezzofanti’s criticism of it in his letter to Cavedoni, is the most judicious that could be offered—the simple recital of a few sentences as a specimen of its obscure and involved style. The Tetrasticha, especially, deserves a better rendering. ”

“ By degrees, too, he was beginning, in the natural advance of years, to enjoy the best fruit of the labour of instruction, in the success, and even distinction, attained by his quondam pupils. One of these to whom he was especially attached, the young Marchese Angelelli, had passed through the University with much honour; and, in the beginning of 1815, published anonymously a metrical translation of the Electra of Sophocles, which met with very marked favour. Mezzofanti who was much gratified by the success of this first essay, communicated to his friend Pezzana the secret of the authorship. ”