Ambarach was born in
Batha, Lebanon in 1663. From 1672 to 1685, he was educated at the
Marionite College in Rome. He returned to Syria in 1685, where he was
ordained as a
priest. He returned to Rome in 1691 to represent the
Maronite Church in a legal dispute. After completing this assignment, he was commissioned by
Cosimo III de' Medici to organize a Semitic-language printing establishment in Florence. His goal there was to prepare and print Semitic-language editions of theological manuscripts for the
Palatina Library at
Parma and the
Laurentian Library at Florence. Soon after, he was designated the chair of
Hebrew at the
University of Pisa. In 1708, he became a member of the
Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. Shortly after he joined the Jesuit order,
Pope Clement XI appointed him to a commission intended to organize the printing of a corrected edition of the
Septuagint. His most notable work is a collected edition of the works of
St. Ephrem the Syrian, a prolific writer in the
Syriac language, with accompanying
Latin translation. He had only published two volumes of this collection when he died in 1742. The third volume was completed by
Stephen Assemani. ==References==