BENEDETTI (in Arabic Mubārak, altered by Westerners into Ambarak), Pietro. Maronite Orientalist, b. in 1663 at Baṭḥā (Lebanon), not at Gūsṭā (al-Mašriq, 21 [1923], p. 274), d. in Rome in 1742. He studied at the Maronite College in Rome (1672–85) and returned to Lebanon, where (1685) the learned patriarch ad-Duwayhī (in Latin Aldoensis and more often Edenensis) ordained him priest and entrusted him with revising his writings. In 1691, the patriarch sent him on a mission to Rome. Two years later, while returning to Lebanon, he was detained in Florence by Cosimo III, who commissioned him to reorganize the printing press of Lorenzo the Magnificent and to print manuscripts from the Palatine and Laurentian libraries. Around 1700, he was appointed professor of biblical sciences at the University of Pisa. In 1707, he entered the Society of Jesus; in 1709, Clement XI appointed him a member of the commission charged with the edition of the Septuagint.
He founded in Lebanon the college of 'Ajnūrā, mentioned in the Lebanese Synods IV, VI, 6, VIII. He translated St. Ephrem from Syriac, opening for the first time to the West a mine of sacred knowledge, but died while translating the second half of the third volume (the last), which was completed and published by S. E. Assemāni (Rome 1743). Attached to the second volume, he published Antirrheticon seu confutatio Io. Koklīi ad Geminos S. Ephraemi de S. Coena Sermones (Rome 1740) and Antirheticon de Aug. Encharistiae Sacramento adversus R. P. Le Brumun et E. Renaudotium (ibid. 1740). He translated from Arabic the Kitāb al-Ilūṭīgā of Patriarch ad-Duwayhī under the title Vindicia Maronitarum, which remained unpublished in ms. Vat. lat. 7411. Other writings are listed in Sommervogel, I (cols. 1295–98).