Mezzofanti

Mezzofanti, GIUSEPPE, Cardinal, a remarkable linguist, was born at Bologna, 17th September 1774. He was ordained priest in 1797, and appointed to the chair of Arabic at Bologna; soon after he was deprived because of his inability to take the oath to the Cisalpine Republic, but was reinstated later. In 1831 he settled in Rome with the rank of Monsignore, and two years after succeeded Cardinal Mai as Keeper of the Vatican Library. In 1838 he was raised to the dignity of cardinal. He died 15th March 1849, at Rome. Mezzofanti's European reputation was founded, not on his writings, but on the almost miraculous extent of his linguistic acquirements. Towards the end of his life he understood and spoke fifty-eight different tongues. As early, indeed, as 1820 Lord Byron called him 'a walking polyglot, a monster of languages, and a Briareus of parts of speech.' Yet he was not in the strict sense a critical or scientific scholar, or even otherwise a man of great intellectual power. See his Life by Russell (1857).