DE ROSSI, GIAN BERNARDO. — The greatest Hebraist of Christian Italy, born on 25 October 1742 at Villa Castelnuovo (diocese of Ivrea), died at Parma on 24 March 1831. A versatile and precocious intellect, in his youth he cultivated literature and languages, philosophy and history, music and mathematics, drawing and sculpture. But having subsequently entered the sacred Orders, and becoming a priest in 1766, he devoted himself entirely to the Bible, especially to the Old Testament, and to the Hebrew language and its cognates. Having soon acquired great renown, in 1769 he was appointed to the chair of Oriental languages at the University of Parma, where he settled and spent the remainder of his long life, wholly devoted to his studies and little disturbed by the succession of governments and political upheavals during those troubled times. He corresponded with scholars throughout Europe and, through assiduous care and expense, assembled a very rich library of Hebrew manuscripts and incunabula, which is still preserved under his name in the Government Library of Parma.
He published, in works both large and small, more than 50 vols.; he left even more unpublished or merely sketched out. Among the printed works, the principal ones are: De praecipuis consis et momentis neglectae a nonnullis hebraicarum litterarum disciplinae (Turin 1769); Della vana aspettazione degli Ebrei del loro re Messia (Parma 1773); Variae lectiones Veteris Testamenti ex immensa manu scriptorum editorumque codicum congerie haustae (ibid. 1784–88); Annales hebraeotypographici saec. XV (ibid. 1795); 4 vols., with a fifth, Scholia critica in V. T. libros seu Supplementa in variae lectiones (ibid. 1798), a fundamental work, a mine still exploited by scholars today; Dizionario storico degli autori ebrei e delle loro opere (2 vols., ibid. 1802); Mas. codice hebraici bibliothecae I. B. D.-R. (3 vols., ibid. 1803–1808); Memorie storiche sugli studi e sulle produzioni del dott. G. B. D.-R. (ibid. 1809). Translations from the Hebrew text: Salmi (ibid. 1808), Ecclesiast (ibid. 1809), Giobbe (ibid. 1812), Treni di Geremia (ibid. 1813), Proverbi (ibid. 1815).