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seigneur de Breves, a learned Frenchman who had the merit of introducing

, seigneur de Breves, a learned Frenchman who had the merit of introducing oriental printing into his country about the beginning of the seventeenth century, was the French ambassador at Constantinople for twenty-two years. On his return, about 1611, Henry IV. sent him to Rome as ambassador in the pontificate of Paul V. where, in 1613, he appears to have established a printing-office; for in the title of a translation of Bellarmin’s conclusion, and a Psalter into Arabic, they are said tp come tx typographia Savariana. Savary is said to have cast the types, and employed on these two works, as correctors, Scialac and Sionita, two Maronites from mount Lebanon. In 1615, Savary returned to Paris, bringing with him Sionita and the printer Paulin, who, in the same year, printed in small quarto, in Turkish and French, the “Treaty of 1604, between Henry the Great, king of France, and the sultan Amurath,” &c. The following year appeared an Arabic Grammar, edited by Sionita and Hesronita. It appears that Savary had the liberality to lend his types to those who were desirous of printing works in the oriental languages. He died in 1627, when, we are told, the English and Dutch made offers for the purchase of his types, and the oriental manuscripts which he had collected in the Levant; but the king of France bought them, and soon after a new establishment appeared at Paris for oriental printing, all the credit of which was given to the cardinal Richelieu, while the name of Savary was not once mentioned. Sic vos non vobis, &c. These types are said to be still extant in the royal printing office. Savary published an account of his travels, from which we learn, that he projected certain conquests in the Levant, for the extension of the commerce of his country, and the propagation of Christianity. The number of oriental Mss. which he brought from the Levant amounted to ninety-seven.