CHAPTER I.[1774-1798.]

A Memoir of Cardinal Mezzofanti can be little more than a philological essay. Quiet and uneventful as was his career, its history possesses few of the ordinary attractions of Biography. The main interest of such a narrative must consist in the light which it may tend to throw on the curious problem;—what degree of perfection the human mind, concentrating its powers upon one department of knowledge, is capable of attaining therein; and the highest hope of the author is to escape the reproach which Warburton directed against Boileau’s biographer, Desmaiseaux, of having “written a book without a life.”

Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti,[264]was born at Bologna,[265]on the 17th of September, 1774.[266]His father, Francis Mezzofanti, a native of the same city, was of very humble extraction, and by trade a carpenter. Though almost entirely uneducated,[267]Francis Mezzofanti is described by the few who remember him, as a man of much shrewdness and intelligence, a skilful mechanic, and universally respected for his integrity, piety, and honourable principles. For Mezzofanti’s mother, Gesualda Dall’ Olmo, a higher lineage has been claimed;—the name of Dall’ Olmo[268]being extremely ancient and not undistinguished in the annals of Bologna; but the fortunes of the immediate branch of that family from which Gesualda Dall’ Olmo sprung, were no less humble than those of her husband. Her education, however, was somewhat superior; and with much simplicity and sweetness of disposition, she united excellent talents, great prudence and good sense, and a profoundly religious mind.

Of this marriage were born several children; but they all died at an early age, except a daughter named Teresa, and Joseph Caspar, the subject of the present biography. Teresa was the senior by ten years, and, while her brother was yet a boy, married a young man named Joseph Lewis Minarelli,[269]by trade a hair dresser, to whom she bore a very numerous family,[270]several of whom still survive. To the kind courtesy of one of these, the Cavaliere Pietro Minarelli,I am indebted for a few particulars of the family history, and of the early years of his venerated uncle.[271]

It may be supposed that in the case of Mezzofanti, as in those of most men who attain to eminence in life, there are not wanting marvellous tales of his youthful studies, and anecdotes of the first indications of the extraordinary gift by which his later years were distinguished.

According to one of these accounts, his first years were entirely neglected, and he was placed, while yet a mere child, in the workshop of his father, to learn the trade of a carpenter. As is usual in the towns of Italy, the elder Mezzofanti, for the most part, plied his craft not within doors, but in the openstreet: and it chanced that the bench at which the boy was wont to work was situated directly opposite the window of a school kept by an old priest, who instructed a number of pupils in Latin and Greek. Although utterly unacquainted, not only with the Greek alphabet, but even with that of his own language, young Mezzofanti, overhearing the lessons which were taught in the school, caught up every Greek and Latin word that was explained in the several classes, without once having seen a Greek or Latin book! By some lucky accident the fact came to the knowledge of his unwitting instructor: it led of course to the withdrawal of the youth from the mechanical craft to which his father had destined him, and rescued him for the more congenial pursuit of literature.[272]

A still more marvellous tale is told by a popular American writer, Mr. Headley, whom his transatlantic admirers have styled the “Addison of America;” that while Mezzofanti “was still an obscure priest in the north of Italy, he was called one day to confess two foreigners condemned for piracy, who were to be executed next day. On entering their cell, he found them unable to understand a word he uttered. Overwhelmed with the thought that the criminals should leave the world without the benefits of religion, he returned to his room, resolved to acquire the languagebefore morning. He accomplished his task, and next day confessed them in their own tongue! From that time on, he had no trouble in mastering the most difficult language. The purity of his motive in the first instance, he thought, influenced the Deity to assist him miraculously.”[273]This strange tale Mr. Headley relates, on the authority of a priest, a friend of Mezzofanti; and he goes so far as to say, that “Mezzofanti himself attributed his power of acquiring languages to the divine influence.”[274]

The imagination might dwell with pleasure upon these and similar tales of wonder; but, happily for the moral lesson which it is the best privilege of biography to convey, the true history of the early studies of Mezzofanti, (although while falling far short of these marvels, it is too wonderful to be held out as a model even for the most aspiring) is, nevertheless, such as to show that the most gifted themselves can only hope to attain to true eminence by patient and systematic industry.

Far from being entirely neglected, as these tales would imply, Mezzofanti’s education commenced at an unusually early period. His parents—

A virtuous household, but exceeding poor,

conscious of their own want of learning, appear, from the very first, to have bestowed upon the education of their son all the care which their narrow circumstances permitted. According to an accountobtained from the Cavaliere Minarelli, he was sent, while a mere child, not yet three years old, to a dame’s school, more, it would seem, for security, than for actual instruction. Being deemed too young to be regularly taught, he was here left for a time to sit in quiet and amuse himself as best he could, while the other children were receiving instruction; but the mistress soon discovered that the child, although excluded from the lessons of his elders, had learned without any effort, all that had been communicated to them, and was able to repeat promptly and accurately the tasks which she had dictated. He was accordingly admitted to the regular classes; and, child as he was, passed rapidly through the various elementary branches of instruction, to which alone her humble school extended.

From this dame’s school he was removed to the more advanced, but still elementary, school of the Abate Filippo Cicotti, in which he learned grammar, geography, writing, arithmetic, algebra, and the elements of Latin. But, after some time, the excellent priest who conducted this school, honestly advised the parents, young as was their boy, to remove him to another institution, and to permit him to apply himself unrestrainedly to the higher studies for which he was already fully qualified.

His father appears to have demurred for a while to this suggestion. Limiting his views in reference to the boy to the lowly sphere in which he himself had been born, he had only contemplated bestowing upon him a solid elementary education in the branchesof knowledge suited to its humble requirements; and, with the old-fashioned prejudices not uncommon in his rank, he was unwilling to sanction his son’s entering upon what appeared to him an unnatural and unprofitable career, for one who was destined to earn his bread by a mechanical art. Fortunately, however, his wife entertained higher and more enlightened views for their child, and understood better his character and capabilities.

It was mainly, however, through the counsel and influence of a benevolent priest of the Oratory, Father John Baptist Respighi, that the career of the young Mezzofanti was decided. This excellent clergyman, to whom many deserving youths of his native city were indebted for assistance and patronage in their entrance into life, observed the rare talents of Mezzofanti, and, by his earnest advice, promptly overruled the hesitation of his father. At his recommendation, the boy was transferred from the school of the Abate Cicotti, to one of the so-called “Scuole Pie,” of Bologna;—schools conducted by a religious congregation, which had been founded in the beginning of the seventeenth century, by Joseph Cazalana; and which, though originally intended chiefly for the more elementary branches of education, had also been directed with great success, (especially in the larger cities,) to the cultivation of the higher studies.

Among the clergymen who at this period devoted themselves to the service of the Scuole Pie, at Bologna, were several members of the recently suppressedsociety of the Jesuits, not only of the Roman, but also of the Spanish and Spanish American provinces. The expulsion of the society from Spain had preceded by more than three years the general suppression of the order; and the Spanish members of the brotherhood, when exiled from their native country, had found a cordial welcome in the Papal states. Among these were several who were either foreigners by birth, or had long resided in the foreign missions of the society. To them all the Scuole Pie seemed to open a field of labour almost identical with that of their own institute. Many of them gladly embraced the opportunity; and it can hardly be doubted that the facility of learning a variety of languages, which this accidental union of instructors from so many different countries afforded, was, after his own natural bias, among the chief circumstances which determined the direction of the youthful studies of Mezzofanti.

One of these ex-Jesuits, Father Emanuel Aponte, a native of Spain, had been for many years a member of the mission of the Philippine Islands. Another, Father Mark Escobar, was a native of Guatemala, and had been employed in several of the Mexican and South American missions of the society. A third, Father Laurence Ignatius Thiulen, had passed through a still more remarkable career. He was a native of Gottenburg, in Sweden, where his father held the office of superintendent of the Swedish East India Company, and had been born (1746,) a Lutheran. Leaving home in early youth with the design ofimproving himself by foreign travel, he spent some time in Lisbon, and afterwards in Cadiz, in 1768; whence, with the intention of proceeding to Italy, he embarked for the island of Corsica, in the same ship in which he had reached Lisbon from his native country. In the meantime, however, this ship had been chartered by the government as one of the fleet in which the Jesuit Fathers, on their sudden and mysterious suppression in Spain, were to be transported to Italy. By this unexpected accident, Thiulen became the fellow passenger of several of the exiled fathers. Trained from early youth to regard with suspicion and fear every member of that dreaded order, he at first avoided all intercourse with his Jesuit fellow passengers. By degrees, however, their unobtrusive, but ready courtesy, disarmed his suspicions. He became interested in their conversation, even when it occasionally turned upon religious topics. Serious inquiry succeeded; and in the end, before the voyage was concluded, his prejudices had been so far overcome, that he began to entertain the design of becoming a Catholic. After his landing in the Island of Corsica, many obstacles were thrown in his way by the Swedish consul at Bastia, himself a Lutheran; but Thiulen persevered, and was enabled eventually to carry his design into execution at Ferrara, in 1769. In the following year, 1770, he entered the Jesuit society at Bologna. He was here admitted to the simple vow in 1772. But he had hardly completed this important step, when the final suppression of the Order was proclaimed; and, althoughboth as a foreigner, and as being unprofessed, he had no claim to the slender pittance which was assigned for the support of the members, the peculiar circumstances of his case created an interest in his behalf. He was placed upon the same footing with the professed Fathers; and two years later, in 1776, he was promoted to the holy order of priesthood, and continued to reside in Bologna, engaged in teaching and in the duties of the ministry.[275]

These good Fathers, with that traditionary instinct which in their order has been the secret of their long admitted success in the education of youth, were not slow to discover the rare talents of their young scholar in the Scuole Pie. In a short time he appears to have become to them more a friend than a pupil. Two, at least, of the members, Fathers Aponte, and Thiulen, lived to witness the distinction of his later life, and with them, as well as with his first and kindest patron, Father Respighi, he ever continued to maintain the most friendly and affectionate relations.[276]

It would be interesting to be able to trace the exact history of this period of the studies of Mezzofanti, and to fix the dates and the order of his successive acquisitions in what afterwards became the engrossingpursuit of his life. But, unfortunately, so few details can now be ascertained that it is difficult to distinguish his school life from that of an ordinary student. His chief teachers in the Scuole Pie appear to have been the ex-Jesuit Fathers already named; of whom Father Thiulen was his instructor in history, geography, arithmetic, and mathematics;[277]Father Aponte in Greek; and probably Father Escobar in Latin. As he certainly learned Spanish at an early period, it is not unlikely that he was indebted for it, too, to the instructions of one of these ecclesiastics, as also perhaps for some knowledge of the Mexican or Central American languages.

But although barren in details, all the accounts of his school-days concur in describing his uniform success in all his classes, and the extraordinary quickness of his memory. One of his feats of memory is recorded by M. Manavit.[278]A folio volume of the works of St. John Chrysostom being put into his hand, he was desired to read a page of the treatise “De Sacerdotio” in the original Greek. After a single reading, the volume was closed, and he repeated the entire page, without mistaking or displacing a single word! His manners and dispositions as a boy were exceedingly engaging; and the friendships which he formed at school continued uninterrupted during life. Among his school companions there is one whodeserves to be especially recorded—the well-known naturalist, Abate Camillo Ranzani, for many years afterwards Mezzofanti’s fellow-professor in the university. Ranzani, like his friend, was of very humble origin, and like him owed his withdrawal from obscurity to the enlightened benevolence of the good Oratorian, F. Respighi.[279]Young Ranzani was about the same age with Mezzofanti; and as their homes immediately adjoined each other,[280]they had been daily companions almost from infancy, and particularly from the time when they began to frequent the Scuole Pie in company. The constant allusions to Ranzani which occur in Mezzofanti’s letters, will show how close and affectionate their intimacy continued to be.

Joseph Mezzofanti early manifested a desire to embrace the ecclesiastical profession; and although this wish seems to have caused some dissatisfaction to his father, who had intended him for some secular pursuit,[281]yet the deeply religious disposition of the child and his singular innocence of life, in the end overcame his father’s reluctance. Having completed his elementary studies unusually early, he was enabled to become a scholar of the archiepiscopal seminary of Bologna, while still a mere boy, probably in the year 1786.[282]He continued, however, to residein his father’s house, while he attended the schools of the seminary.

Of his collegiate career little is recorded, except an incident which occurred at the taking of his degree in philosophy. His master in this study was Joseph Voglio, a professor of considerable reputation, and author of several works on the philosophical controversies of the period.[283]It is usual in the Italian universities for the candidate for a philosophical degree, to defend publicly a series of propositions selected from the whole body of philosophy. Mezzofanti, at the time that he maintained his theses, was still little more than a child; and it would seem that, his self-possession having given way under the public ordeal, he had a narrow escape from the mortification of a complete failure. One of the witnessesof his “Disputation,” Dr. Santagata, in the Discourse already referred to, delivered at the Institute of Bologna, gives an interesting account of the occurrence. “For a time,” says Dr. Santagata, “the boy’s success was most marked. Each new objection, among the many subtle ones that were proposed, only afforded him a fresh opportunity of exhibiting the acuteness of his intellect, and the ease, fluency, and elegance of his Latinity; and the admiring murmurs of assent, and other unequivocal tokens of applause which it elicited from the audience, of which I myself was one, seemed to promise a triumphant conclusion of the exercise. But all at once the young candidate was observed to grow pale, to become suddenly silent, and at length to fall back upon his seat and almost faint away. The auditors were deeply grieved at this untoward interruption of a performance hitherto so successful; but they were soon relieved to see him, as if by one powerful effort, shake off his emotion, recover his self-possession, and resume his answering with even greater acuteness and solidity than before. He was greeted with the loud and repeated plaudits of the crowded assembly.”[284]

About this period, soon after Mezzofanti had completed his fifteenth year, his health gave way under this long and intense application; and his constitution for a time was so debilitated, that, at the termination of his course of philosophy, he was compelled to interrupt his studies;[285]nor was it until about1793, that he entered upon the theological course, under the direction of the Canon Joachim Ambrosi. One of his class-fellows, the Abate Monti, the venerable arch-priest of Bagni di Poreta, in the archdiocese of Bologna, still survives and speaks in high terms of the ability which he exhibited. He describes him as a youth of most engaging manners and amiable dispositions—one who, from his habitually serious and recollected air, might perhaps be noted by strangers

For his grave looks, too thoughtful for his years,

but who, to his friends, was all gaiety and innocent mirthfulness. Mgr. Monti adds that he was at this time a most laborious student, frequently remaining up whole nights in the library for the purpose of study. His master in moral theology was the Canonico Baccialli, author of aCorpus Theologiæ Moralis, of some local reputation.

Having completed the course of theology, and also that of canon law, he attended the lectures of the celebrated Jurist, Bonini, on Roman Law. The great body of the students of the school of Roman Law being laymen, the young ecclesiastic remained a considerable time unobserved and undistinguished in the class; until, having accidentally attracted the notice of the professor on one occasion, he replied with such promptness and learning to a question which he addressed to him, as at once to establish a reputation; and Dr. Santagata, who records the circumstance,[286]observes that his proficiency in each of his many different studies was almost as great asthough he had devoted his undivided attention to that particular pursuit.

Meanwhile, however, he continued without interruption, what, even thus early in his career, was his chosen study of languages. Under the direction of Father Aponte, now rather his friend and associate than instructor in the study, he pursued his Greek reading; and as this had been from the first one of his favourite languages, there were few Greek authors within his reach that he did not eagerly read. Fortunately, too, Aponte was himself an enthusiast in the study of Greek, and possessed a solid and critical knowledge of the language, of which he had written an excellent and practical grammar for the schools of the university, frequently republished since his time;[287]and it was probably to the habit of close and critical examination which he acquired under Aponte’s instruction, that Mezzofanti owed the exact knowledge of the niceties of the language, and the power of discriminating between all the varieties of Greek style, for which, as we shall see later, he was eminently distinguished.

One of his fellow pupils in Greek under Aponte was the celebrated Clotilda Tambroni, whom I have already mentioned in the list of lady-linguists, and whose name is the last in the catalogue of lady-professors at Bologna. A community of tastes as well as of studies formed a close bond of intimacy between her and Mezzofanti, and led to an affectionate andlasting friendship in after life. To Aponte she was as a daughter.[288]

His master in Hebrew was the Dominican Father Ceruti, a learned Orientalist and professor of that language in the university. About the same time also, he must have become acquainted with Arabic, a language for the study of which Bologna had early acquired a reputation. And, what is a still more unequivocal exhibition of his early enthusiasm, although Coptic formed no part of the circle of university studies, Görres states that he learned this language also under the Canon John Lewis Mingarelli.[289]If this account be true, as Mingarelli died in March 1793, Mezzofanti must have acquired Coptic before he had completed his nineteenth year.

Nor did he meanwhile neglect the modern languages. About the year 1792, a French ecclesiastic a native of Blois, one of those whom the successive decrees of the Constituent Assembly had driven into exile, came to reside in Bologna. From him Mezzofanti speedily acquired French.[290]He received his first lessons in German from F. Thiulen,[291]whohad been one of his masters in the Scuole Pie; and who, although a Swede by birth, was acquainted with the cognate language of Germany. From him, too, most probably, Mezzofanti would also have learned his native Swedish, but, on the occupation of northern Italy by the French, F. Thiulen, who had made himself obnoxious to the revolutionary party in Bologna, by his writings in favour of the Papal authority, had been arrested and sent into exile.[292]Perhaps Thiulen’s absence from Bologna was the occasion of calling into exercise that marvellous quickness in mastering the structure of a new language, which often, during Mezzofanti’s later career, excited the amazement even of his most familiar friends. At all events, the first occasion of his exhibiting this singular faculty of which I have been able to discover any authentic record, is the following:—

A Bolognese musician, named Uttini, had settled at Stockholm, where he married a Swedish lady. Uttini, it would seem, died early; but his brother, Caspar Uttini, a physician of Bologna, undertook the education of his son, who was sent to Bologna for the purpose. The boy, at his arrival, was not only entirely ignorant of Italian, but could not speak a word of any language except his native Swedish. In this emergency Mezzofanti, who, although still a student, had already acquired the reputation of a linguist, was sent for, to act as interpreter between the boy and his newly found relatives: but it turned out that the language of the boy was, as yet, noless a mystery to Mezzofanti than it had already proved to themselves. This discovery, so embarrassing to the family, served but to stimulate the zeal of Mezzofanti. Having made a few ineffectual attempts to establish an understanding, he asked to see the books which the boy had brought with him from his native country. A short examination of these books was sufficient for his rapid mind; he speedily discovered the German affinities of the Swedish language, and mastered almost at a glance the leading peculiarities of form, structure, and inflexion, by which it is distinguished from the other members of the Teutonic family; a few short trials with the boy enabled him to acquire the more prominent principles of pronunciation; and in the space of a few days, he was able, not only to act as the boy’s interpreter with his family, but to converse with the most perfect freedom and fluency in the language![293]

Mezzofanti received the clerical tonsure in the year 1795. In 1796 he was admitted to the minor orders; and, on the 24th of September in the same year, to the order of sub-deacon. On the first of April, 1797, he was promoted to deaconship; and a few months later he was advanced, on September 24th, 1797, to the holy order of priesthood.[294]At thistime he had only just completed his twenty-third year.

This anticipation of the age at which priesthood is usually conferred, was probably owing to an appointment which he had just received (on the 15th of September,)[295]in the university—that of professor of Arabic. Such an appointment at this unprecedented age, is the highest testimony which could be rendered to his capacity as a general scholar, as well as to his eminence as a linguist.

He commenced his lectures on the 15th of the following December. Dr. Santagata, who was a student of the university at the time, speaks very favourably of his opening lecture, not only for its learning and solidity, but also for the beauty of its style, and its lucid and pleasing arrangement.[296]

Unhappily his tenure of the Arabic professorship was a very brief duration. The political relations of Bologna had just undergone a complete revolution. Early in 1796, very soon after the advance of the French army into Italy, Bonaparte hadbeen invited by a discontented party in Bologna to take possession of their city, and, in conjunction with Saliceti, had occupied the fortresses on the 19th of January. At first after the French occupation, the Bolognese were flattered by a revival of their old municipal institutions; but before the close of 1796, the name of Bologna was merged in the common designation of the Cisalpine Republic, by which all the French conquests in Northern Italy were described. By the treaty of Tolentino, concluded in February, 1797, the Pope was compelled formally to cede to this new Cisalpine Republic, the three Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna; and, in the subsequent organization of the new territory, Bologna became the capital of the Dipartimento del Reno.

One of the first steps of the new rulers was to require of all employés an oath of fidelity to the Republic. The demand was enforced with great strictness; and especially in the case of ecclesiastics, who in Italy, as in France, were naturally regarded with still greater suspicion by the Republican authorities, than even those civil servants of the old government who had been most distinguished for their loyalty. Nevertheless the republican authorities themselves consented that an exception should be made in favour of a scholar of such promise as the Abate Mezzofanti. The oath was proposed to him, as to the rest of the professors. He firmly refused to take it. In other cases deprivation had been the immediate consequence of such refusal; but an effort was made to shake the firmness of Mezzofanti, and even to induce him without formally accepting the oath, to signify hiscompliance by some seeming act of adhesion to the established order of things. An intimation accordingly was conveyed to him, that in his case the oath would be dispensed with, and that he would be allowed to retain his chair, if he would only consent to make known by any overt act whatsoever, (even by a mere interchange of courtesies with some of the officials of the Republic,) his acceptance of its authority as now established.[297]But Mezzofanti was at once too conscientious to compromise what he conceived to be his duty towards his natural sovereign, and too honourable to affect, by such unworthy temporizing, a disposition which he did not, and could not, honestly entertain. He declined even to appear as a visitor in the salons of the new governor. He was accordingly deprived of his professorship in the year 1798.

He was not alone in this generous fidelity. His friend Signora Tambroni displayed equal firmness. It is less generally known that the distinguished experimentalist, Ludovico Galvani,[298]was a martyr in the same cause. Like Mezzofanti, on refusing the oath, he was stripped of all his offices and emoluments. Less fortunate than Mezzofanti, he sunk under the stroke. He was plunged into the deepest distress and debility; and, although his Republican rulers were at length driven by shame to decree his restoration to his chair, the reparation came too late. He died in 1798.

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