– February 1, 1620 in Ara Coeli) was an Italian Minorite friar

Friar

A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...

.

Biography

Joining the Franciscans at an early age, he devoted himself to Oriental languages and became an authority on Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

. Once entering Rome he was appointed by Paul V, whose confessor he was to the chair of Scripture at Ara Coeli. Calasio is known by his Concordantiae sacrorum Bibliorum hebraicorum, published in 4 vols. (Rome, 1622), two years after his death, a work which is based on Nathan's Hebrew Concordance (Venice, 1523).

Works

For forty years Calasio labored on this work, and he secured the assistance of the greatest scholars of his age. The Concordance

Concordance

Concordance can mean:* Concordance , a list of words used in a body of work, with their immediate contexts* Concordance , the presence of the same trait in both members of a pair of twins...

 evinces great care and accuracy. All root-words are treated in alphabetical order and the whole Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 has been collated for every passage containing the word, so as to explain the original idea, which is illustrated from the cognate

Cognate

In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...

 usages of the Chaldee, Syrian, Rabbinical Hebrew and Arabic. Calasio gives under each Hebrew word the literal Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 translation, and notes any existing differences from the Vulgate

Vulgate

The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...

 and Septuagint readings. An incomplete English translation of the work was published in London by Romaine in 1747. Calasio also wrote a Hebrew grammar, Canones generales linguae sanctatae (Rome, 1616), and the Dictionarium hebraicum (Rome, 1617).

External links