Rare books 18: Cardinal Mezzofanti

Documents for the canonisation of Romeo of Lucca (d. 1380) and beatification of Aloysius Rabatà (1443-1490), presented by the Carmelite postulator Joseph Maria Palma to the relator, Cardinal Mezzofanti (Rome, 1841-42). Notes: Interest is rivetted here not on the respective prospectives so much as on the Relator. The Relator is defined as “a person appointed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to assemble the historic documentation of the candidate for canonization.” This is not the main feather in the cap of Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774-1849), who is one of the most awesome figures of early 19^th century Rome. Awesome because he was a hyperpolyglot, one of the most famous, able to speak about thirty languages “with rare excellence” and several more fluently. Trying to explain Mezzofanti is like trying to explain Mozart. Ni hao is my response to reading statements of fact like “he mastered Chinese in four months and … found Chinese to be one of the most difficult languages he ever tried to learn.” Such is his fame in linguistic circles that James Joyce puns on his name in Finnegans Wake, that novel composed of every language under the sun, plus some other invented ones. It is not surprising to learn that, as a priest, one of his jobs was confessor to foreigners. The Library holds the biography by Charles William Russell (1858), five hundred pages of stunning claims that still do not explain the mystery of memory. With Cardinal Mezzofanti in the room, who needs Google Translate? His job as Relator seems to be one of those extra-things-to-do in his twilight years.