Benedetti, Pietro

BENEDETTI (in Arabic Mubarak, altered by Westerners into Ambarak), Pietro. - Maronite Orientalist, b. in 1663 at Baḥā (Lebanon), not at Ġuṣṭā (al-Mašrīq, 21 [1923], p. 274), d. in Rome in 1742. He pursued his studies at the Maronite college of Rome (1672-85) and returned to Lebanon, where (1685) he was ordained priest by the learned patriarch ad-Duvajhi (in Latin Aldoensis and more often Edenensis), who entrusted him with revising his writings. In 1691 he sent him to Rome on a mission. Two years later, while he was returning to Lebanon, he was detained in Florence by Cosimo III, who charged him with reorganizing the printing house of Lorenzo the Magnificent and with printing the manuscripts of 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, of which the Lebanese Synods IV, VI, 6, VIII make mention. He translated St. Ephrem from Syriac, opening to the West for the first time a mine of sacred knowledge, but he died while translating the second half of vol. III (the last), which was continued and published by S. E. Assemāni (Rome 1743). Appended to vol. II he published Antirheticon seu confutatio Io. Kohlii ad Geminōs S. Ephraemi de S. Coena Sermones (Rome 1740) and Antirheticon de Aug. Eucharistiae Sacramento adversus R. P. Le Brumun et E. Renaudotium (ibid. 1740). He translated from Arabic the Kitāb al-Iḫtiǧāq of the patriarch ad-Duvajhi under the title Vindicis Maronitarum, which remained unpublished in ms. Vat. lat. 7411. His other writings are listed in Sommervogel, I (coll. 1295-98).

Pietro Sfair