FRANCIS HORACE OF PENNABILLI. - The most illustrious Capuchin missionary of Tibet, b. at Pennabilli (Pesaro) in 1680, from the Olivieri family, he entered the Capuchins of the Picene province on 8 Nov. 1700, d. at Patna (Nepal) on 20 July 1745.

With five other confreres he formed the third missionary expedition to Tibet, which set out on 25 Aug. 1712; it reached Chandernagor (Bengal) on 1 Sept. 1713 and continued on to Patna (Behar); in Dec. 1714 he was sent to found a station in Nepal; on 4 Aug. 1716 he set out for Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where he arrived on 1 Oct. of the same year. Appointed prefect of the mission in 1720, he received the decree on 15 Sept. 1725. Exhausted by the hardships and by enormous difficulties, he withdrew to Nepal in Aug. 1732.

In 1737 he came to Rome in search of aid and published the interesting Breve ragguaglio dell'operato da Cappuccini nella missione del Thibet (Rome 1738; cf. Analecta Ordinis Min. Cappuccinorum, 37 [1921], pp. 285-94; 38 [1922], pp. 57-61), several times published and translated. In 1738 he led as prefect the ninth expedition of Capuchins, among whom were Fr. Beligatti Cassinino da Macerata and Fr. Bernini Giuseppe da Gargano, into the difficult mission of Tibet, arriving at Lhasa on 6 Jan. 1741. Reduced to the utmost endurance and driven out by persecution on 20 Apr. 1745, he departed for Patna, marking the end of the Tibetan mission properly so called. He wrote another Relazione sul principio e stato presente della missione del gran Thibet (Rome 1742, cf. Analecta cit., 4 [1888], pp. 279-283, 315-19, 340-43).

He also distinguished himself in literary works; skilled in the local languages, he left in manuscript the first Vocabolario italotibetano, of about 35,000 entries, and an Vocabolario italiano-hindi. To facilitate the knowledge and confutation of the Buddhist religion he translated into Italian various sacred books of the Lama. He translated into the Tibetan language the Doctrina Christiana of St. Robert Bellarmine and the Thesaurus religionis Christianae of Tourlot, as well as the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; he also composed in Tibetan an Apologia del cristianesimo contro il buddhismo, which he delivered to the king in 1713, and a Vita di Maria S.ma. His linguistic and ethnographic manuscripts were used by other authors.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Mattei Gentili, Memorie sulla vita del ven. servo di Dio F. O. dalla Penna, Urbino 1843; Clemente da Terzorio, Le missioni dei Min. Cappuccini, VIII, Rome 1932, passim: Ioannes a Reinfenberg, De vocabolario thibetano a p. F. H. a P. complilato, in Analecta Ordinis Min. Cappuccinorum, 47 (1931), pp. 303-12; Arsenio da S. Agata Feltria, Interno al 'Vocabolario' del p. F. O. d. P., in Bollett. franciscano storico-bibliogr., 5 (1933), pp. 31-33; Adelhelm Jann, Die missionarische und literarische Tätigkeit des apostolischen Präfesten von Tibet, p. F. H. d. P. (1712-43), in Studien aus dem Gebiete von Kirche und Kultur (Festschrift Gustav Schnur), Paderborn 1930, pp. 128-207; Streit, Bibl., VI, pp. 85-86, 93-94, 96-101, 112-14; Friditzand d'Anvers, Missionnaires capuchin et civilisation thibétienne, in Etudes franciscanes, 46 (1934), pp. 129-30.

Ilarino da Milano

@incollection{ec5_francesco_orazio_de_pennabilli, author = {Ilarino da Milano}, title = {Francesco Orazio de Pennabilli}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {V}, pages = {1615--1616}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/francesco-orazio-de-pennabilli} }

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Francis Horace of Pennabilli

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