, a learned Italian orientalist, was born in 1469, a descendant
, a learned
Italian orientalist, was born in 1469, a descendant of the
noble family of the counts of Albanese. At fifteen months
he is said to have spoken his native language with facility,
and at fifteen years, to have spoken and written Greek and
Latin with a promptitude equal to the best scholars of his
time. He entered young into the order of regular canons
of St. John of Lateran, but did not come to Rome until
1512, at the opening of the fifth session of the Lateran
council. The great number of ecclesiastics from Syria,
Ethiopia, and other parts of the East, who attended that
council, afforded him an opportunity of prosecuting his
studies with advantage: and at the request of the cardinal
Santa Croce, he was employed as the person best qualified
to translate from the Chaldean into Latin the liturgy of
the eastern clergy, previously to the use of it being expressly sanctioned by the pope. After having been employed by Leo X. for two years in giving instructions in
Latin to the subdeacon Elias, a legate from Syria to the
council, whom the pope wished to retain in his court, and
from whom Ambrogio received in return instructions in the
Syrian tongue, he was appointed by the pontiff to a professor’s chair in the university of Bologna, where he delivered instructions in the Syriac and Chaldaic languages
for the first time that they had been publicly taught in Italy.
He is said to have understood no less than eighteen languages, many of which he spoke with the ease and fluency
of a native; but from the letter quoted by Mazzuchelli, it
appears more probable that he was master of at least ten
languages, and understood many others partially. In the
commotions which devastated Italy after the death of Leo X.
he was despoiled in 1527 of the numerous and valuable
eastern manuscripts, Chaldean, Hebrew, and Greek, which
he had collected by the industry of many years, and of the
types and apparatus which he had prepared for an edition
of the Psalter in the Chaldean, accompanied with a dissertation on that language. He afterwards, however, came
to Venice, in the prosecution of this object; and, in 15.39,
published at Pavia, his “Introduction to the Chaldean,
Syrian, Armenian, and ten other tongues, with the alphabetical characters of about forty different languages,
” 4to,
which is considered by the Italians themselves as the
earliest attempt made in Italy towards a systematic acquaintance with the literature of the East. He died the
year following.