GRAFFIN, RENÉ. - Orientalist, b. at Pontvallain (Sarthe, France) on 22 March 1858, d. at Ste-Radegonde-en-Touraine on 3 Jan. 1941, after having given decisive impetus in France to the study of the languages and literatures of the Christian Orient.
In Rome he completed his theological studies at the Pontifical French Seminary, up to ordination to the priesthood; there, as early as 1880, he discovered his vocation, both missionary and scholarly: to make known to Western Christians and to the Eastern Churches themselves the patristic, hagiographical, and liturgical treasures of Oriental literatures. After a year of advanced study at Innsbruck, he returned to the Catholic Institute of Paris, where he founded (Oct. 1886) the course in Eastern Christian languages and literatures: Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and finally, in 1927, Georgian; in 1894 he began publication of the Patrologia Syriaca, supplemented (from 1907) by the Patrologia Orientalis, for which he had no fewer than 9 special Oriental typefaces designed, engraved, and cast; in 1896 the Revue de l'Orient chrétien appeared as a quarterly supplement to the Oeuvre d'Orient. At the death of Mgr G., the Patrologies comprised 28 vols. and the Revue 30 vols. In this immense undertaking his principal and tireless collaborator was a former pupil of his, the priest F. Nau.