Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi (''Theseus Ambrosius'', 1469–1540) was an Italian humanist. During the

Fifth Council of the Lateran The Fifth Council of the Lateran, held between 1512 and 1517, was the eighteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church and was the last council before the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent. This was the first time since 1213 t ...

, Teseo was tasked by Cardinal

Bernardino López de Carvajal Bernardino López de Carvajal (8 September 1456, in Plasencia, Extremadura – 16 December 1523, in Rome) was a Spanish Cardinal. Life He was a nephew of Cardinal Juan Carvajal. He studied in Salamanca from 1466; obtained a bachelor's degree i ...

to give religious instruction to a Syrian priest in Latin and

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...

and became an expert in the Syriac language himself.H. L. Hastings. "A historical introduction to the Peshitto Syriac New Testament". in James Murdock. translator. (1915). ''The Syriac New Testament'' 9th ed. Boston: H.L. Hastings. pp. ix-xi
Internet Archive website
Retrieved 8 June 2023. He was a proponent of

Christian Kabbalah Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance due to Christian scholars' interest in the mysticism of Kabbalah, Jewish Kabbalah, which they interpreted according to Christian theology. Often spelled Cabala to distinguish it from the Jewish for ...

and an early student of

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

. His ''Introductio ad Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atque Armenicam, et decem alias linguas'' (Pavia 1539) was one of the earliest Western studies of Syriac and

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

. The bulk of the work consists of an ''Introduction to Chaldean, Syriac and Armenian'' (foll. 9–192). To this is added an ''Appendix'' which includes the presentation of

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

s (foll. 193–213), including brief references to Coptic (called "Jacobite") and Ethiopic (misleadingly called "Indian") and comments on the ancestry of European languages, especially languages of Italy, with a discussion of

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

Works

* ''Introductio ad Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atque Armenicam, et decem alias linguas'', Pavia (1539)
archive.org Google Books

Notes

Sources

*Fiano, Emanuel A.
"Albonesi, Teseo Ambrogio degli"
in ''Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition''. Edited by Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron M. Butts, George A. Kiraz and Lucas Van Rompay. Digital edition prepared by David Michelson, Ute Possekel, and Daniel L. Schwartz. Gorgias Press, 2011; online ed. Beth Mardutho, 2018. *Hastings, H. L. "A historical introduction to the Peshitto Syriac New Testament". in James Murdock. (Translator). (1915)
''The Syriac New Testament''
pp. ix ff. 9th ed. Boston: H.L. Hastings. * *Strohmeyer, Virgil B. ''The importance of Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi's selected Armenian materials for the development of the renaissance's

perennial philosophy The perennial philosophy (), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a school of thought in philosophy and spirituality that posits that the recurrence of common themes across world religions illuminates universal truths about ...

and an armenological philosophical tradition'' (1998) *Wilkinson, R. J., "Teseo Ambrogio and the Maronite Delegation to the Fifth Lateran Council" in ''Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation'' (2007), 11–28. {{DEFAULTSORT:Albonesi, Teseo Ambrogio degli 1469 births 1540 deaths Italian Renaissance humanists 16th-century linguists Christian Kabbalists