Continuité et ruptures dans l'itinéraire français de Philippe Sarchi (alias Samuel Morpurgo, 1764-1830)

Résumé 0

From Gradisca to Paris : Philippe Sarchi’s French itinerary (alias Samuel Morpurgo, 1764-1829), by Angela GuidiThis contribution aims to examine the French dimension of the career of Italian philologist and jurist Philippe Sarchi (alias Samuel Morpurgo, 1764-1830). Sarchi, an astonishing savant-passeur figure, was from Ferrara. In his youth he left for Vienna, where he became the first chair of at the University of Vienna. He then led a truly transnational life, between Italy, Austria, France and Great Britain. He converted to Catholicism in 1790, yet returned to Judaism under Napoleon I and remained, from then on, an ardent Bonapartist. Settled in Paris after 1813, he came into contact with several members of the Société asiatique, to which he in turn was admitted in 1824. In 1828, in a context of renewed Orientalist studies, he wrote Grammaire de la langue hébraïque, preceded by an interesting preface. This text, which marks the culmination of his career as a Hebraist, shows the multiplicity of influences in his work as well as the modalities that governed its transmission to the French readership of that time. The study of the conditions of production and circulation of his work also allows us to identify the intellectual and political environments and networks penetrated by Philippe Sarchi in France.