ALBER, JANOS NEPOMUK. - Hungarian Piarist, exegete, and historian, born at Magyaróvar on 7 July 1753, died at Pest on 21 June 1830. He taught biblical sciences and languages and ecclesiastical history, first to his fellow religious and then at the theological academy of Pest.
Well versed in patristic literature and philological criticism, he published the extensive commentary Interpretatio S. Scripturae per omnes Veteris et Novii Testamenti libros (16 vols., Pest 1801-1804), with a calm refutation of rationalist and Protestant theses, which won esteem even in non-Catholic circles. Less successful were his Institutiones hermeneuticae Scripturae S. (3 vols. on the New Testament, Pest 1818; 3 vols. on the Old Testament, Pest 1827), and Institutiones linguae hebraicae (Pest 1826). Pius VII honoured A. with a laudatory brief.
Another fruit of his long teaching career was the Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae (2 vols., Pest 1793; 5 vols., Eger 1825), of which he published an Epitome (Eger 1826), and Dissertationes in selecta capita historiae ecclesiast. (2 vols., Vienna 1820). He defended the rights of the Church against his Josephinist colleague Adamo Breganoczy, professor of canon law at Pest, who claimed to refute him with the Responsum datum Jo. Alber theologiae professori de nonnullis iuris ecclesiastici sententiis (Pest 1824).