§ III. SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LINGUISTS.
The catalogue of Spanish linguists opens with a name hardly less marvellous than that which I have placed at the head of the linguists of modern Italy—that of Fernando di Cordova;—one of those universal geniuses, whom Nature, in the prodigal exercise of her creative powers, occasionally produces, as if to display their extent and versatility. He was born early in the fifteenth century, and was hardly less precocious than his Italian rival, Pico della Mirandola. At ten years of age he had completed his courses of grammar and rhetoric. He could recite three or four pages of the Orations of Cicero after a single reading. Before he attained his twenty-fifth year, he was installed Doctor in all the faculties; and he is said by Feyjoo to have been thorough master (supo con toda la perfeccion) of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. Feyjoo adds, that he knew, besides, all the principal European languages.[72] He could repeat the entire Bible from memory. He was profoundly versed in theology, in civil and canon law, in mathematics, and in medicine. He had at his perfect command all the works of St. Thomas, of Scotus, of Alexander of Hales, of Galen, Avicenna, and the other lights of the age in every department of science.[73] Like the Admirable Crichton, too, he was one of the most accomplished gentlemen and most distinguished cavaliers of his time. He could play on every known variety of instrument; he sang exquisitely; he was a most graceful dancer; an expert swordsman; and a bold and skilful rider; and he was master of one particular art of fence by which he was able to defeat all his adversaries, by springing upon them at a single bound of twenty-three or twenty-four feet! In a word, to adopt the enthusiastic panegyric of the old chronicler on whose simple narrative these statements rest, “if you could live a hundred years without eating or drinking, and were to give the whole time to study, you could not learn all that this young man knew.”[74] The occasion to which this writer, quoting Monstrelet’s Chronicle,[75] refers was the Royal Fête at Paris in 1445; so that Fernando must have been born about 1425. Of his later history but little is known. He was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1469, and died in 1480.
A Portuguese of the same period, Pedro de Covilham, is mentioned by Damian a Goes in his curious book, De Ethiopum Moribus in terms which, if we could take them literally, should entitle him to a place among the linguists. During the reign of John II. of Portugal (1481-95) Covilham, who had already distinguished himself as an explorer under Alfonzo V., was sent, in company with Alfonzo de Payva, in search of the kingdom of Prester John, which the traditional notions of the time placed in Abyssinia. Payva died upon the expedition. Covilham, after visiting India, the Persian Gulf, and exploring both the coasts of the Red Sea, at length reached Abyssinia, where he was received with much distinction by the King. He married in the country, and obtained large possessions; but, in accordance with a law of Abyssinia[76] similar to that which still exists in Japan, prohibiting any one who may have once settled in the country ever again to leave it, he was compelled to adopt Abyssinia as a second home. When, therefore, he was recalled by John II., the King of Abyssinia refused to relinquish him, pleading “that he was skilled in almost all the languages of men,”[77] and that he had made to him, as his own adopted subject, large grants of land and other possessions. Covilham, after a residence of thirty-three years, was still alive in 1525, when the embassy under Alvarez de Lima reached Abyssinia.
Very early in the sixteenth century, I find a notice of a Spanish convert from Judaism, called in Latin “Libertas Cominetus” (Libertas being, in all probability, but the translation of his Hebrew patronymic,) whose acquirements are more precisely defined. He was born at Cominedo, towards the close of the fifteenth century, and renounced his creed about 1525. His fellow-convert Galatinus, an Italian Jew, and himself no mean linguist, describes Libertas in his work “De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis,” as not only deeply versed in Holy Writ, but master of fourteen languages.[78] The Biographical Dictionaries and other books of reference are quite silent regarding him.
The name of Benedict Arias Montanus, editor of the so-called “King of Spain’s Polyglot Bible,” is better known to Biblical students. He was born at Frexenal[79] in Estremadura in 1527 and studied in the university of Alcala, then in the first freshness of the reputation which it owed to the magnificence of the great Cardinal Ximenes. Montanus entered the order of St. James, and after accompanying the Bishop of Segovia to the Council of Trent, where he appeared with great distinction, returned to the Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de los Angelos near Aracena, with the intention of devoting himself entirely to study and prayer. From this retreat, however, he was drawn by Philip II., who employed him to edit a new Polyglot Bible on a more comprehensive plan than the Complutensian Polyglot. On the completion of this task, Philip sought to reward the learned editor by naming him to a bishopric; but Montanus had humility and self-denial enough to decline the honour, and died an humble chaplain, in 1598. The estimate formed by his contemporaries of Montanus’s attainments in languages falls little short of the marvellous. Le Mire describes him as omnium fere gentium linguis et literis raro exemplo excultus; but we may more safely take his own modest statement in the preface of his Polyglot, that he knew ten languages.[80]
The celebrated Father Martin Del Rio, best known perhaps to English readers, since Sir Walter Scott’s pleasant sketch, by his vast work on Demonology, was also a very distinguished linguist. Del Rio, although of Spanish parentage, was born at Antwerp in May 1551. His first university studies were made at Paris; but he received the Doctor’s degree at Salamanca, and has merited a place in Baillet’s Enfans Celebres, by publishing an edition of Solinus, with a learned commentary, before he was twenty years old.[81] Del Rio’s talents and reputation opened for him a splendid career; but he abandoned all his offices and all his prospects of preferment, in order to enter the Society of the Jesuits at Valladolid in 1580. According to Feyjoo,[82] Del Rio knew ten languages; and Baillet would appear to imply even more, when he says that he was master of at least that number. Del Rio died at Louvain in 1608.
One of Del Rio’s most distinguished contemporaries, the celebrated dramatic poet, Lope de Vega, although his celebrity rests upon a very different foundation, was also a very respectable linguist, so far, at least, as regards the modern languages. The extraordinary fecundity of this author, especially when we consider his extremely chequered and busy career as a secretary, a soldier, and eventually a priest, would seem to preclude the possibility of his having applied himself to any other pursuit than that of dramatic literature. The mere physical labour of committing to paper (putting composition out of view altogether) his fifteen hundred versified plays,[83] three hundred interludes and sacred dramas[84], ten epic poems, and eight prose novels, besides an infinity of essays, prefaces, dedications, and other miscellaneous pieces, would appear more than enough to occupy the very busiest human life. Yet notwithstanding all this prodigious labour, Lope de Vega contrived to find time for the acquisition of Greek, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, French, and probably English! Well might Cervantes call him “a Prodigy of Nature!”
Although the missionaries of Spain and Portugal are, as a body, less distinguished in the department of languages than those of Italy, yet there are some among them not inferior to the most eminent of their Italian brethren. The great Coptic and Abyssinian scholar, Antonio Fernandez, was a Portuguese Jesuit. He was born at Lisbon in 1566, and entered the Jesuit society as a member of the Portuguese province of the order. After a long preparatory training, he was sent, in 1602, to Goa, the great centre of the missionary activity of Portugal. His ultimate destination, however, was Abyssinia, which country he reached in 1604, in the disguise of an Armenian. He resided in Abyssinia for nearly thirty years, and was charged with a mission to the Pope Paul III. and Philip IV. of Spain, from the king, who, under the influence of the missionaries, had embraced the Catholic religion. Fernandez set out with some native companions in 1615; but they were all made prisoners at Alaba, and narrowly escaped being put to death; nor was he released in the end, except on condition of relinquishing this intended mission, and returning to Abyssinia. On the death of the king, who had so long protected them, the whole body of Catholic missionaries were expelled from Abyssinia by the new monarch in 1632; and Fernandez returned, after a most chequered and eventful career, to Goa, where he died, ten years later, in 1642. Of his acquirements in the Western languages, I am unable to discover any particulars, but he was thoroughly versed in Armenian, Coptic, and Amharic or Abyssinian, in both of which last named languages he has left several ritual and ascetic works for the use of the missionaries and native children.
The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in America, too, (especially those of the Jesuit order) rendered good service to the study of the numerous native languages of both continents.[85] Most of the modern learning on the subject is derived from their treatises, chiefly manuscript, preserved by the Society.
Nor were the other orders less efficient. Padre Josef Carabantes, a Capuchin of the province of Aragon, (born in 1648) wrote a most valuable practical treatise for the use of missionaries, which was long a text book in their hands.
One of the Portuguese missionaries in Abyssinia, Father Pedro Paez, who succeeded Fernandez, and whose memory still lingers among the native traditions of the people,[86] not only became thorough master of the popular dialects of the various races of the Valley of the Nile, but attained a proficiency in Gheez, the learned language of Abyssinia, not equalled even by the natives themselves.[87] A Franciscan missionary at Constantinople about the same time, mentioned by Cyril Lucaris, is described by him as “acquainted with many languages;”[88] but I have not been able to discover his name.
By far the most eminent linguist of the Peninsula, however, is the learned Jesuit, Father Lorenzo Hervas-y-Pandura. He was born in 1735, of a noble family, at Horcajo, in la Mancha. Having entered the Jesuit society, he taught philosophy for some years in Madrid, and afterwards in a convent in Murcia; but at length, happily for the interests of science as well as of religion, he embraced a missionary career, and remained attached to the Jesuit mission of America, until 1767. On the suppression of the order, Father Hervas settled at Cesena, and devoted himself to his early philosophical studies, which, however, he ultimately, in a great measure, relinquished in order to apply himself to literature and especially to philology. When the members of the society were permitted to re-establish themselves in Spain, Hervas went to Catalonia; but he was obliged to return to Italy, and settled at Rome, where he was named by Pius VII. keeper of the Vatican Library. In this honourable charge he remained till his death in 1809.
Father Hervas may with truth be pronounced one of the most meritorious scholars of modern times. His works are exceedingly numerous; and, beside his favourite pursuit, philology, embrace almost every other conceivable subject, theology, mathematics, history, general and local, palæography; not to speak of an extensive collection of works connected with the order, which he edited, and a translation of Bercastel’s History of the Church, (with a continuation), executed, if not by himself, at least under his superintendence. Besides all the stupendous labour implied in these diversified undertakings, Father Hervas has the still further merit of having devoted himself to the subject of the instruction of the deaf-mute, for whose use he devised a little series of publications, and published a very valuable essay on the principles to be followed in their instruction.[89]
Our only present concern, however, is with his philological and linguistic publications, especially in so far as they evince a knowledge of languages. They form part of a great work in twenty-one 4to. volumes, entitled Idea dell’ Universo; and were printed at intervals, at Cesena, in Italian, from which language they were translated into Spanish by his friends and associates, and republished in Spain. It will only be necessary to particularize one or two of them—the Saggio Prattico delle Lingue, which consists of a collection of the Lord’s Prayer in three hundred and seven languages, together with other specimens of twenty-two additional languages, in which the author was unable to obtain a version of the Lord’s Prayer, all illustrated by grammatical analyses and annotations; and the Catalogo delle Lingue conosciute, e Notizia delle loro Affinità e Diversità.[90] In the compilation of these, and his other collections, it is true, Hervas had the advantage, not alone of his own extensive travel, and of his own laborious research, but also of the aid of his brethren; and this in an Order which numbered among its members, men to whose adventurous spirit every corner of the world had been familiar:—
“In Greenland’s icy mountains,
On India’s coral strand,
Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.”
But he, himself, compiled grammars of no less than eighteen of the languages of America; which, with the liberality of true science, he freely communicated to William von Humboldt for publication in the Mithridates of Adelung. He was a most refined classical scholar and a profound Orientalist. He was perfectly familiar, besides, with almost all the European languages; and, wide as is the range of tongues which his published works embrace, his critical and grammatical notes and observations, even upon the most obscure and least known of the languages which they contain, although in many cases they have of course all the imperfections of a first essay, exhibit, even in their occasional errors, a vigorous and original mind.
The name of Father Hervas-y-Pandura is a fitting close to the distinguished line of linguistic “Glorias de España.”