BERTONIO, LUIGI. - Jesuit missionary and distinguished linguist. Born at Rocca Contrada in the March of Ancona around 1555, he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1574 and was transferred in 1581 to the province of Peru. A missionary among the Indians for forty years, mainly at the residence of Juli, on Lake Titicaca, he spent his last years in the colleges of Arequipa and then of Lima, where he died on 3 August 1625. While one of the great languages of Peru, Quechua, was being studied by Fr. Diego González Holguín, the other, Aymara, was studied by B., who resided precisely at Juli among tribes renowned for the purity of their idiom.
He wrote: Arte breve de la lengua aymara (Rome 1603); Arte y grammatica muy copiosa de la lengua aymara (ibid. 1603, but perhaps in reality 1608; reprinted at Juli in Peru, 1612); Vocabulario de la lengua aymara (2 vols., Juli 1612); these two fundamental works, Arte and Vocabulario, were reproduced in facsimile by J. Platzmann (Leipzig 1879). B. also wrote a Confessionario muy copioso en dos lenguas, aymara y española (Juli 1612) and adapted to the needs of the natives, with the help of an Indian of Juli, the Libro de la vida y milagros de N. S. Iesa Christo of Alonso de Villegas (Juli 1613).
Bibliography7 worksSommervogel, I, coll. 1392-94; VIII, coll. 402-404; Streit, Bibl., II, pp. 402-404; E. Torres Saldamando, Las antiguas Jesuitas del Perú, Li
BIBL.: Sommervogel, I, coll. 1392-94; VIII, coll. 402-404; Streit, Bibl., II, pp. 402-404; E. Torres Saldamando, Las antiguas Jesuitas del Perú, Lima 1882, pp. 71-78; T. Medina, Bibliotheca hispano-americana, II, Santiago del Cile 1900, pp. 30-31; J. E. Uriarte and M. Lecina, Bibl. de escritores de la Comp. de Jesús... de España, I, Madrid 1925, pp. 477-78; M. Mendiburu, Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú, 2nd ed. by E. San Cristóbal, III, Lima 1932, pp. 50-56.
Lamalle, Edmondo. “Bertonio, luigi.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II, col. 1479. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949. https://azioneromana.com/article/bertonio-luigi.
MLA
Lamalle, Edmondo. “Bertonio, luigi.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949, col. 1479. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/bertonio-luigi.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec2_bertonio_luigi,
author = {Lamalle, Edmondo},
title = {Bertonio, luigi},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {II},
pages = {1479},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1949},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/bertonio-luigi}
}
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