Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter – Wikipédia

Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter (or Widmanstetter , or Widmanstadt ) is a German humanist, also administrator and diplomat, born around 1506 in Nellingen (near Ulm and Tübingen), who died the 28 mars 1557 in Ratisbonne. It is one of the precursors of orientalism, and in particular Syriac studies, in the West.

After studying law, theology and languages ​​at the University of Tübingen, he left for Italy in 1527, and continued his training in Turin, then in Naples and Rome. In 1529, accompanying the emperor Charles V who moved from Genoa to Bologna with his suite to be crowned by the Pope, he met in Reggio d’émilie Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi (Theseus Ambrosius Albonesius, 1469-1540), who was Canon du Latran, Kabbalist, and had learned several oriental languages ​​(cf. Introduction to the Chaldean language, Syrian, and Armenic, and ten other languages. Characters differing alphabet for about forty , etc., Pavia, 1539); He was introduced by him to the Syriac, and was offered a Evangelia In this language with the mission, which he fulfills much later, to have it printed.

In 1533, he became secretary of Pope Clément VII, then in 1535 of Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, archbishop of Capua. As early as 1533, he made a series of conferences in front of the Pope and the Curia where he presented the Héliocentrist theory of Copernicus, raising a great interest ^{[ first ]} (In 1536, Cardinal de Capua wrote to Copernicus to encourage him to publish his work).

Back in Germany in 1539, he entered the service of Duke Louis X in Bavaria, for which he fulfilled numerous diplomatic missions. In January 1542, he married the illegitimate daughter of the Duke, Anna von Leonsberg, of whom he had at least one girl. In 1546, he went to the service of Othon Truchsess in Waldburg, bishop of Augsburg, of which he became the Chancellor and the Archivist. In 1548, the emperor Charles Quint made him knight, then in 1552 Count Palatine Imperial. The same year, he entered the service of Ferdinand i ^is From Habsburg, brother of the emperor, as Chancellor of Austria, then in 1554 as “superintendent” of the University of Vienna: he was responsible for reforming and founding in the city a college of Jesuits. THE February 24, 1557 , his wife having died the previous year, he is ordained a priest. He died a month later.

He left a library of more than 800 pounds, including around 300 manuscripts in Hebrew and Arabic, which was acquired by Duke Albert V of Bavaria: it is the core of the collection of oriental manuscripts of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. In 1553, he brought in Vienna the Syrian priest Jacobite Moïse de Mardin, who stayed in Rome, and produced with him, thanks to a manuscript brought by this priest, and to another supplied by Guillaume Postel, who also came to Vienna, The first printed edition of the New Testament (incomplete) in Syriac (at the printer Michel Zimmermann, 1555). It was also the first edition in an oriental language in Vienna, for which the characters had to be cut. In 1556, he also printed the first Syriac grammar ( Syrian language first elements , also at Zimmermann; taken over by Christophe Plantin, in Antwerp, in 1572). These works served as a basis for Antwerp polyglot bible (1569/72), and constitute, with those of Andreas Masius, the beginnings of Syriac studies in Western Europe. Widmannsteter also achieved an Arab grammar (not printed) and an edition of a summary of the Latin translation of the Koran by Robert de Ketton. ^{[ 2 ]}

• Max Müller, Johann Albrecht von Widmanstetter (1506-1557). His life and work , Bamberg, 1907.
• Hans Striedl, “The library of the orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter”, in Hans Joachim Kissling (Éd.), Serta Monacensia , Leiden, 1952, p. 200-244.
• Id., “Humanist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter as a classic philologist”, in Determination of the Bavarian State Library for Emil Gratzl , Wiesbaden, 1953, p. 96-120.
• Werner Strothmann, The beginnings of Syrian studies in Europe (Göttingen Orient Research I, Series: Syriaca, Volume I), Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1971.
• Robert Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation : the first printing of the Syriac New Testament , E. J. Brill, 2007.