DOMENICO, GERMANO, di SLÉSIA. — Franciscan Arabist, born in 1588 at Schurgast (Slesia), died on 28 September 1670 at the Escorial.
He entered the Order of Friars Minor in 1624. He studied Arabic at the college of S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome, under Fr. Tommaso Obicini da Novara; he then further perfected his knowledge during a stay 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 of Propaganda. In 1640 he returned to Palestine, and in 1645 was appointed prefect of the mission at Samarkand in Tartary. In 1652 he was again in Rome, from where he went to Spain and resided in the convent of S. Lorenzo dell’Escorial, with the Hieronymites; there, by order of King Filippo IV, he translated and refuted the Qur’an and taught Arabic to some monks. He wrote an Arabic grammar entitled Fabrico ovvero Dizionario della lingua volgare arabica et italiana (Rome 1636); Antitheses fidei (there 1638); Fabrico linguae Arabicae (there 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 Other unpublished works of his are preserved in manuscript in the library of the Escorial; the most important are: Annotationes de Deo uno et reino; Veni mecum ad Christianes orientales; Logica Solana et lingua Arabica in Latinam translata; Interpretatio Alcorani.
This last work is D.’s most important, and is the best and most successful translation and refutation of the Qur’an completed up to that time. The grammar and dictionary are of lesser merit; the latter, however, remained in use, in the absence of anything else, in Italy and especially in the Holy Land until the middle of the nineteenth century.