Hepburn, James

HEPBURN, JAMES. - Scottish Minim, theologian, philologist and polyglot, b. at Odhanstocks, in the county of Haddington, on 14 July 1573, d. at Venice in 1621. The son of a Protestant minister, he converted to Catholicism at the University of St. Andrews, where he was perfecting his cultural formation, with particular attention to the Oriental languages. He visited Italy, France, Turkey, Persia, Syria and other Eastern countries. Having returned to Europe, he professed the Rule of the Minims at Avignon, taking the name Bonaventura; he then moved to Rome, to the convent of the Trinità al Pincio. As he knew more than seventy languages, Paul V appointed him librarian of the Vaticana for the Oriental manuscripts, in which office he remained for six years. In 1620 he went to Venice for the translation of 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 (ibid. 1591); Virgo aurea septuaginta duobus encomius coelata (ibid. 1616, dedicated to Paul V); the same with the title Encomum B. M. V. etc. (ibid. 1617) with the addition of alphabets of many little-known languages; Lexicon S. Linguae succinctum, a Hebrew vocabulary (s. n. t., perhaps Rome 1600 [?]), a copy of which is found in the Vatican Library. Among the manuscript works, Commentarius in Cantica Canticorum, and other Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic translations. From his rich library many volumes passed to that of the Trinità del Monte Pincio in Rome.

Gennaro Moretti