Teseo, Ambrogio

TESEO, AMBROGIO. - Orientalist, b. at Albonese in the Lomellina in 1469, d. at Pavia in 1540. After attending the law school at Pavia, he entered the Congregation of the Canons Regular of the Lateran. He soon showed himself to be a passionate researcher of Oriental texts.

During the Fifth Lateran Council T. was in contact with the envoys of the patriarch Simon of Mount Lebanon. He already knew some Hebrew and Syriac and was entrusted with checking the orthodoxy of their liturgical texts. Among the various scholars with whom he had contacts, it suffices to mention Widmanstetter, whom he met in 1529 at Reggio Emilia. To him T. handed over a Syriac manuscript of the Gospels, widely used by Widmanstetter for the edition of the Novum Testamentum Syriacum (Vienna 1655). In 1539 T. published at Pavia an Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam atque Armenicam et decem alias linguas. Characterum differentia alphabeta circiter quadraginta et eorundem invicem conformatio. Mystica et cabalistica quam plurima scitu digna. Et descriptio ac simulacrum Phagoti Afranii. The long title gives a glimpse of the heterogeneous character of the work, in which autobiographical and historical notices are interwoven with sound linguistic observations or else with cabalistic digressions. It was a pioneer grammatical attempt, at least for Syriac and Armenian.

Angelo Penna