Moses of Mardin was a Syriac Orthodox priest and bishop who played a significant role in printing the first Syriac bible and served as perhaps the first Syriac teacher/scholar in Europe.
Biography
Moses was born in the village of Qaluq near Mardin in the Tur Abdin region. Moses is first mentioned in 1549 as an envoy of the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius Abdullah I Stephan, to Rome to seek the means to print Syriac copies of the New Testament. His mission also included negotiations of unity with the Catholic Church in anticipation of the Patriarch's arrival. Whilst in Rome, Moses stayed in the monastery of St Stephen of the Abyssinians where Johannes Potken had printed the first Ge'ez book, Psalterium David et Cantica aliqu. Here he printed a Syriac manuscript with the assistance of the Cardinals Marcello Cervini, Reginald Pole and Jean du Bellay. However the manuscript produced was defective as the printers did not understand the language. In 1550, Moses travelled to Venice to meet Guillaume Postel to promote the idea of printing a Syriac copy of the New Testament which Postel had been working on since 1537. Despite this Postel could not help print it as he did not have the characters to print in Syriac. In 1552, Moses then returned to Rome where he taught Syriac to Andreas Masius and Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter among others. Upon the advice of Masius, he left Rome in the company of Cardinal Pole as he was returning to England, to meet Johann Jacob Fugger in Augsburg. However, whilst staying in Dillingen he met Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter, then chancellor of the Austrian lands. Both sharing the same goals of printing a Syriac copy of the New Testament, Widmanstetter travelled with Moses to Vienna where they convinced Ferdinand I to fund their project. Thus one thousand copies of the Syriac version of the New Testament was printed in 1555 and Moses himself received half of which to distribute in the East. Moses remained in Europe until 1562 before returning to the East; however before departing he sold 250 copies on the European market. In 1578, he is mentioned returning to Rome as a bishop accompanied by the deposed patriarch Ignatius Nemet Allah I. In 1581, Moses was appointed Professor of Syriac at the College of the Neophytes. Mushe of Mardin Priest, scribe, and bp. A native of the village of Qāluq, in the region of Ṣawro, near Mardin, Mushe was sent by Patr. ʿAbdullāh I bar Sṭephanos to Rome, where he arrived with a few mss. in or shortly before 1549. The aim of the mission was to search for Syriac printed books or for opportunities to produce them. Whether Mushe was additionally entrusted with the delicate task of improving relations between the Syr. Orth and the Roman Catholic Church remains disputed. Mushe lived in Rome and traveled through Europe until some time after 1556. In Rome, he established contacts with some of the earliest Western scholars interested in Syriac. Among them were Guillaume Postel, Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter, and Andreas Masius. He collaborated with Widmanstetter in the publication of the first edition of the Syriac NT, which appeared in Vienna in 1555 and whose Syriac typeface derived from Mushe's handwriting. Mushe served as Masius's Syriac teacher in Rome, and the latter frequently consulted him, in particular while he was preparing his Syrorum Peculium, a Syriac glossary that was included in vol. 6 of the Antwerp Polyglot. Mushe and Masius corresponded in Syriac; a number of letters, belonging to the period 1553–55, are preserved. Masius also translated into Latin aprofession of faith that Mushe is said to have made in 1552 and which Masius included in one of his later publications; its exact status remains unclear. During his time in Europe, Mushe copied many Syriac mss. Several of these are extant, including the remarkable ms. London, Brit. Libr. Harley 5512, which contains parts of the Roman Missal in Latin, written in Serṭo script, along with three Syriac Anaphoras. Mushe wrote it for the bp. of the Abyssinian Convent in Rome, where he often resided, and it shows his interest in, and familiarity with, the Catholic liturgy. After 1556 Mushe returned to the Middle East, where he copied some further mss. and where the title of metropolitan bp. was conferred on him. He returned to Rome, probably in the company of Patr. Niʿmatullāh, following the latter's abdication, in 1578. In Rome he copied and annotated several more Syriac and Arabic mss. He died in or shortly after 1592, possibly in Rome. https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Mushe-of-Mardin References
