Giovanni Baptista Ferrari was born to an affluent Sienese family and entered the
Jesuit Order in Rome at the age of 19 in April 1602. After studying
metaphysics,
logic and
natural philosophy with Giuseppe Agostini (and after the usual four years of
theology), he was sent to the
Pontifical Maronite College in Rome in 1615/16 – where he learnt
Syriac. The early progress reports at the Collegio Romano are complimentary about his literary and Hebraic talents, but rather critical of what appears to have been his somewhat frail state of health and melancholy character. By the schoolyear of 1619-20 he was teaching
Arabic and
Hebrew at the
Roman College. His first published work was a Syriac Dictionary, or
Nomenclator, which he published in 1622 (but with an approval from
Mutio Vitelleschi and Francesco Donati of 1619). The chief object of the author is to explain the Syriac words in the Bible, in which he was assisted by some learned
Maronites. Although pretty innovative for its time, Ferrari's
Nomenclator was not a very successful effort, and has not enjoyed much esteem in the subsequent literature (
Bochart was especially cutting in his judgment). It is, however, interesting for its introduction, with its long list of profuse acknowledgements to various members of the Maronite college, especially Petrus Metoscita, and for its brief insight into the working procedures and resources of a Syriac scholar of those days. His
Orationes, first printed in Lyons in 1625, and several times reprinted, including two London editions in the 1650s and 1660s, are especially remarkable for four very noteworthy orations on the subject of Hebrew language and Hebrew literary style. In the oration on
Hebraicae linguae suavitas Ferrari asserts the stylistic capabilities of
Hebrew, and defends it against charges that it was limited and coarse; in the chapters
Hebraicae Musae sive de Disciplinarum omnium Hebraica origine and
Hebraicae litteraturae securitas, sive De arguto dicendi genere usurpando he justifies the difficulties of learning the language, and puts forward the case for studying it. His knowledge of the ancient authors, Greek and Latin, was extensive as was his command of the
Semitic languages. Indeed, Ferrari was a member of the Papal Commission charged with translating the Bible into
Arabic. He was honoured in 1759, when botanist
Philip Miller published
Ferraria, which is a
genus of
monocotyledonous
flowering plants in the
family Iridaceae and native to tropical and southern
Africa. ==
De Florum Cultura==