History of the Catholic Church in Arabic, copied in Aleppo

(Orsi, Giuseppe Agostino). Al-Tawarikh al-Kanisiyya [Histories of the Church].

€ 6,500.00

This manuscript, copied in Aleppo in 1841 by a Malachite priest, comprises the Arabic translation of two books of the “Storia ecclesiastica” by the Dominican cardinal Giuseppe Agostino Orsi (1692-1761), a major 18th-century work of Catholic historiography. Originally composed in Italian, this vast history of the Church was published in Rome between 1747 and 1761, covering the first six centuries of Christianity in twenty volumes.

The present manuscript, in four parts, covers the 14th through 17th books, in the 6th and 7th volumes of the "Storia ecclasiastica". The work was copied by a priest who signs his name ‘Abd Allah and notes that he completed this lengthy manuscript in Aleppo. This Arabic translation, undertaken in Ottoman Syria, underlines the central role played by the Malachite communities in the transmission and diffusion of European theological knowledge and history within the late Ottoman Empire.