WEITENAUER, IGNAZ. – Jesuit, polyglot, and exegete, born at Ingolstadt on 1 November 1709, died at Salem on 4 February 1783. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1724 and taught Oriental languages at Innsbruck for 20 years. After the suppression of the Order (1773), he retired to the Cistercian abbey of Salem, where he continued his work as a writer.
W. composed many philological works, some of them grammatical in character and dealing with modern languages. An indication of his piety and zeal is provided by the Subsidia eloquentiae sacrae (19 vols., Augusta 1764–69). He wrote a Hierolexikon linguarum Orientalium (there 1759), which, also in its popularizing character, reflects the state of Oriental studies at the time. He edited an edition of the Vulgate (Biblia sacra utriusque Testamenti, 7 vols., there 1773) and a German translation, of which the New Testament appeared in 2 volumes (there 1777–78) and the entire Bible in 14 volumes (there 1781–83). Much greater success was achieved by the brief biblical dictionary Lexikon biblicum in quo explicantur Vulgatae vocabula et phrases (Innsbruck 1758), which was reprinted several times (the last edition appeared more than a century later in Turin, published by Marietti, in 1866).