DOMENICO, GERMANO, of SILESIA. – Franciscan Arabist, born in 1588 at Schurgast (Silesia), died on 28 September 1670 in the Escorial.
He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1624. He studied Arabic at the College of St Peter in Montorio in Rome under Fr. Tommaso Obicini of Novara; he then perfected his knowledge by residing in Palestine. From 1636 he was lecturer in Arabic at the aforementioned college and collaborated on the edition of the Arabic Bible, published in 1671 by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. In 1640 he returned to Palestine and in 1645 was appointed prefect of the mission to Samarkand in Tartary. In 1652 he was again in Rome, whence he went to Spain and resided in the convent of St Lawrence in the Escorial, among the Jeronymites; there, by order of King Philip IV, he translated and refuted the Qur’an and taught Arabic to some monks. He wrote an Arabic grammar entitled Fabrica ovvero Dittionario della lingua volgare araba et italiana (Rome 1636); Antitheses fidei (ibid. 1638); Fabrica linguae Arabicae (ibid. 1639), a large Arabic-Latin-Italian dictionary. Other unpublished works of his are preserved in manuscript in the library of the Escorial; the most important are: Annotationes de Deo uno et trino; Veni mecum ad Christianos orientales; Logica Solana ex lingua Arabica in Latinam translata; Interpretatio Alcorani.
This last work is the most important of D.’s writings and is the best achieved version and refutation of the Qur’an produced up to that time. The grammar and the dictionary are of lesser value; the latter, however, was used, in the absence of others, in Italy and especially in the Holy Land until the mid-19th century.