ASSEMANI. - Name of four celebrated Catholic Orientalists, belonging to an illustrious Maronite family of Lebanon. The name in Arabic is as-Sim'ānī, not as-Sam'ānī.
1. GIUSEPPE SIMONE OR SIMONIO
Born in Tripoli (Lebanon), of a family from the village of Ḥaṣrūn, on 27 July 1687; died in Rome on 3 January 1768. He studied at the Maronite College in Rome and was preparing to return to Lebanon when Father Eva (Ḥaṣrūd), co-founder of the Maronite Antonine Order, reported the existence of manuscripts in the Egyptian monasteries and, authorized by the Pope, commissioned Elia Assemani to purchase them; the latter sent 40 of them to Rome. Giuseppe Simone, then twenty years old, was called by Clement XI to catalogue them and indicate their contents, and on 10 March 1710 was appointed a writer of the Vatican Library. In 1715 he was sent to the East to acquire manuscripts and, ably assisted by the Maronite patriarch, purchased a considerable number in Egypt and Syria (A., Bibl. Orient., I, pp. VII and IX).A. was a Vatican canon, vice-prefect and prefect of the Vatican Library, and finally, in 1766, titular archbishop of Tyre. In 1735 Clement XII sent him as legate to convoke the famous Synod of the Maronites of 1736, confirmed by Benedict XIV with the bull Singularis. Its version in Arabic and Latin is due to the pen of A., who subsequently addressed to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda the Relazione sull'ablegazione apostolica alla nazione dei Maroniti..., printed in Rome without a date. The diary (jaumijjah), written on that occasion by A., was published by L. Boleibel (in al-Mašriq, 25 (1927), nos. 6, 7 and 8). In 1739 Charles IV, king of Naples, appointed A. historiographer of the kingdom and granted him honorary citizenship.
In addition to the aforementioned manuscripts, the Vatican Library had been enriched by the codices offered by the Chaldean patriarch Joseph I (Amidenses), by Pietro della Valle, by the library of the Institute of Sciences of Bologna, by that of S. Pietro in Montorio, by that of the Maronite College in Rome, by the Maronites Abraham Ecchellenese (v.) and Fausto Naironio (Ecchellenese), by Gabriele Eva of Aleppo (Boerense), and by Abraham Massad (A., Bibl. Orient., I, praef., pp. VIII, IX, X; A. Mai, Script. Vet. nova collectio, IV, praef., p. VIII). This precious collection gave him the opportunity to undertake the Bibliotheca Orientalis, which was to comprise 12 vols., but of which only 4 were published (Rome 1719-1728): I, De Scriptoribus Syris orthodoxis; II, De Scriptoribus Syris monophysitis; III, I, De Scriptoribus Syris nestorianis, and III, II, De Syris nestorianis. This work was universally recognized as fundamental for Syrian literature and was showered with praise. A fire, which broke out in A.’s private library on 30 August 1768, destroyed, besides many manuscripts and printed works, most of the copies of these volumes and the manuscript of the remaining 8 (Mai, ibid., p. 166).
Other works are: Menologium Graecorum (Urbino 1727), of which the 1st and 2nd parts were translated by Clement XI before his priesthood, while the 3rd, which constitutes half of the work, was translated by A.; Chronicon Orientale by Ibn ar-Rāhib, edited by Abraham Ecchellenese and reprinted by A. with a new Latin translation (1731); S. Ephraem Syri opera omnia, 6 vols. in-fol., of which only the first three were translated into Latin from the Greek by A. (Rome 1732-46); Kalendaria Ecclesiae Universae, 6 vols. in 4ª (there 1750-55), whose subtitle is Kalendaria Ecclesiae Slavicae, sive Graeco-Maschae (this work too is incomplete and was to consist of 12 vols.); and Bibl. Iuris Orient. canon. et civil., in 5 vols. (there 1762-66).
Cardinal Mai (op. cit., vols. IV and V) published various unpublished writings by A., especially the notable dissertation on the validity of the sacrament of Orders among the Copts (V, II, pp. 171-237). His Series chronologica Patriarcharum Antiochiae was published by Giovanni Notain in 1881. Finally, the unpublished opinions written by him for the Holy Office and Propaganda would constitute 100 valuable volumes (cf. Mai, op. cit., IV, p. 168). The precious Glagolitic Gospel Book of the 10th-11th century, acquired in Jerusalem in 1736, was reproduced photographically by J. Vajs and J. Kurz (Prague 1920).
A summary of his life, with a list of his works, was written and is preserved in the archive of the basilica of S. Pietro (277, 22), now transferred to the Vatican Library.
2. STEFANO EVODIO
Great-grandson of Giacomo and grandson of Simone 'Awwād, both Maronite patriarchs, he Italianized his surname as Evodio and added to it that of his maternal uncle Giuseppe Simone A., under which he is better known. Born in Ḥaṣrūn (Lebanon), or in nearby Tripoli, to a family from Ḥaṣrūn, in 1709 or, according to others, in 1707, while E. Tisserant, basing himself on the Ristretto della vita di mons. S. E. A. (Archivio bibl. Vat., 12, l. 100), confirmed by the parish register of the Vatican basilica for the deceased, holds that he was born in 1711 (in Oriens Chr., 1932, pp. 267-269). He studied at the Maronite College in Rome and, having completed his studies under the auspices of the aforementioned maternal uncle, was appointed a writer of the Vatican Library in 1730. The patriarch Giuseppe Khazen consecrated him titular archbishop on 6 October 1736, appointing him his procurator in Rome. In 1768 he succeeded his uncle Giuseppe Simone as first custodian of the Vatican Library and died on 24 November 1782.He compiled the catalogue of the oriental manuscripts of the Medicean Library in 1742; in 1746 he published his Catalogo della Bibl. Chigiana and, in 1748, published the Syriac text with the Latin version of the Acta SS. Martyrum Orient., in 2 vols., with a wealth of notes and detailed indexes. He completed the translation of the 3rd Syriac volume of St. Ephrem, interrupted by the death of Father Benedetti. Moreover, in collaboration with his uncle Giuseppe Simone, he wrote: Bibliotheca Apost. Vaticanae codicum mss. catalogus, which was to appear in 20 volumes, divided into 3 parts, but of which only the first 3 volumes of the first part appeared, respectively in 1756, 1758 and 1759. One copy is in the Vatican Library, while the others perished in the fire which on 30 August 1768 destroyed the private library of S. E. and G. Simone Assemani. The manuscript of S. E., however, was later printed by Mai (Script. vet., IV, p. 64, note). Father Efrem Dirani, in al-Muhānāt, published in 1809, includes (pp. 103-185) the Arabic translation of an Italian dissertation written in defense of St. John Maron by A., and printed in Rome in 1769 by the publisher Giunchi, without the author’s name. Pietro Sfair
3. GIUSEPPE LUIGI
Son of a brother of Giuseppe Simone, born in Tripoli (Lebanon) in 1710, died in Rome on 9 February 1782. He studied at the Maronite College in Rome; he was professor of Syriac and liturgy at the Sapienza and of Syriac at the College of Propaganda Fide, as well as a member of the Pontifical Academy for historical research and a Lateran prebendary.His principal work is the Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiae universae in XV libros distributus in quo continentur libri Rituales, Missales, Pontificales, Officia, Dyptica, ecc. Ecclesiae Occidentis et Orientis... latina versione, praefationibus commentariis et variationibus illustratus. Of the 15 books, however, only the first four and the eighth were published, between 1749 and 1766. The work enjoyed such success and was so much sought after that it had to be reprinted in facsimile in 1902. A. also published other works and translated into Latin the collection of canons compiled by Ebediesu ('Abdiis) and the Nomocanon of Ber Ebro; both were published by Angelo Mai in Script. veterum, X, Rome 1838, part 1, pp. 1–360 (Syriac and Latin), and part 2, pp. 1–268. Pietro Sfair