Athanasius Safar

Athanasius Safar of Mardin (Syriac: ܐܬܢܣܝܘܣ ܣܦܪ ܕܡܪܕܝܢ;[1] also known by his original Arabic name, Safar al-‘Attar al-Mardīnī; 1638 – 4 April 1728 or 1730)[2][3] was the Syriac Catholic bishop of Mardin (then Ottoman Empire, now Turkey).[4] He completed the first edition of the Syriac Breviary in 1696.[5]

Safar was born into a Syriac Orthodox family in Mardin in 1638. He converted to Catholicism in 1679 and was ordained bishop of Mardin on 11 March 1685 in Aleppo.[2][6] He carried out missions in Persia and later in Paris, for François Piquet, the French consul in Aleppo.[7] In 1684, he left Isfahan, traveling via Diyarbekir and Aleppo to Alexandretta, arriving in Marseille in August 1685.[6] He claimed the same see as another bishop, Timothée Karnûsh, who had also arrived in Rome fleeing persecution of Christians. In 1687, Safar unsuccessfully demanded that money deposited with Karnûsh be given to him.[7][8]

Safar obtained permission from Pope Innocent XI to travel to the Americas.[2] In 1689, Safar boarded a ship from Spain to Mexico with a servant.[9] He collected a large sum, 46,000 pezzi di otto, by 1694, when he was denounced by local Franciscans and arrested. Safar had to hand over the money to papal authorities, who spent it on maintaining the Syrian chapel in Rome. Nevertheless, Safar collected a pension and lived comfortably in Rome for the rest of his life. He invited his nephew, Giovanni Domenico Safar, to join him; the younger Safar collected a pension from 1736. After his death in 1753, his wife and unmarried daughter collected money until as late as 1770.[4][8]

References
  1. "Athanasius Safar of Mardin". www.syriaca.org. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  2. Aydin, Polycarpus Augin (2017). The Syriac Order of Monastic Profession and the Order of Baptism: Common Structure, Imagery and Theological Themes. Gorgias Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-4632-0619-2.
  3. Takahashi, Hidemi (2013). Barhebraeus: A Bio-Bibliography. Gorgias Press. p. 513. doi:10.31826/9781463235710. ISBN 978-1-4632-3571-0.
  4. Heyberger, Bernard (2018). "Migration of the Middle Eastern Christians and European Protection: A Long History". Middle Eastern Christians and Europe: Historical Legacies and Present Challenges. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 26. ISBN 978-3-643-91023-3.
  5. Fathi, Jean. "Fatḥallāh, Elias". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  6. Ruffi, Louis Antoine de (1954). Le culte de S. Louis d'Anjou à Marseille au XIVe siècle (in French). Ed. di Storia e Letteratura. pp. 114–115.
  7. La carrière manquée d'un écclésiastique oriental en Italie: Timothée Karnush, archevêque syrien catholique de Mardin, dans Bernard Heyberger (ed.) L'Italie vue par les étrangers, Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Mulhouse, T. XIX, 1995.
  8. Wainwright, Matthew Coneys; Michelson, Emily (2020). A Companion to Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome. BRILL. p. 256. ISBN 978-90-04-44349-5.
  9. Ghobrial, John-Paul A. (December 2017). "Migration from within and Without: In the Footsteps of Eastern Christians in the Early Modern World". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 27: 154–155. doi:10.1017/S008044011700007X. ISSN 0080-4401. S2CID 165197839.

Further reading
  • Sebastian P. Brock et al. (eds.), The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (Piscataway,NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011), pp: 165.
  • Rudolf Macuch, Geschichte der spät- und neusyrischen Literatur, 1. Aufl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965), pp: 29-30.
  • Albīr Abūnā, Adab al-Lugha al-Ārāmiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq Dar el Machreq, 1970), pp: 588-590.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.