HEPBURN, JAMES. — Minim friar, theologian, philologist, and Scottish polyglot, born at Odhanstocks, in the county of Haddington, on 14 July 1573, died at Venice in 1621. The son of a Protestant minister, he converted to Catholicism at the University of S. Andrea, where he was perfecting his cultural education, with particular attention to the Oriental languages. He visited Italy, France, Turkey, Persia, Syria, and other countries of the East. On returning to Europe, he professed the Rule of the Minims at Avignon, taking the name Bonaventura; he then went to Rome, to the convent of the Trinità al Pincio. Since he knew more than seventy languages, Paul V appointed him librarian of the Vatican Library for the Oriental manuscripts, where he remained in that office for six years. In 1620 he went to Venice to translate Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldean writings.
He wrote thirty works, of which the following were published: Alphabetum arabicum et exercitatio lectionis au arabic grammar (Rome 1591); Dizionario ebraico-caldaico (there 1591); Virgo aurea septuaginta duobus encomius coelata (there 1616, dedicated to Paul V); the same work under the title Encomum B. M. V. ecc. (there 1617), with the addition of alphabets of many little-known languages; Lexicon S. Linguae succinctum, a Hebrew dictionary (without place, printer, or date, perhaps Rome 1600 [?]), a copy of which is held in the Vatican Library. Among the manuscripts are Commentarius in Cantica Canticorum, and other Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic translations. Many volumes from his rich library passed into that of the Trinità del Monte Pincio in Rome.