HYVERNAT, HENRI

Orientalist and professor; b. Loire, France, June 30, 1858; d. Washington, D.C., May 29, 1941. In 1877 Hyvernat began his studies for the priesthood at Issy and Paris. Fellow students who became his lifelong friends included M. J. lagrange and P. batiffol. Hyvernat, encouraged by the famous Abbé F. G. Vigouroux, made the Semitic languages, including Babylonian and Egyptian, his chosen field of study and began to prepare for a scientific career. After ordination in Lyons, France, on June 3, 1882, he was appointed chaplain at the French church of St. Louis in Rome. In 1885, with his degree of doctor of divinity from the Pontifical University, he was made professor of Assyriology and Egyptology at the Roman Seminary and interpreter of Oriental languages at the Congregation De Propaganda Fide.

In 1883 Le Monde published Hyvernat's study of the Assyrian monuments in the Vatican. In 1886–87 he published his Actes des Martyrs de l'Egypte (Coptic text with French translation), and in 1888 his Album de paléographie Copte.

In 1887 he accepted the offer of a professorship at The Catholic University of America that was to be established in Washington, D.C., in 1889. During the intervening year he undertook a scientific survey for the French government of the cuneiform inscriptions preserved in Armenia and Kurdistan. The account of the results and adventures of this survey appeared in book form in 1892 (Du Caucase au golfe Persique, with P. Müller-Simonis). Hyvernat assumed his duties at Catholic University on the day of its solemn opening in 1889 and he retained his professorship there for 52 years until his death.

Besides teaching, Hyvernat wrote articles on the Coptic versions of the Bible and other subjects related to Egypt for Vigouroux's Dictionnaire de la Bible in 1895, for the Jewish Encyclopedia in 1901, and for the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1903. For the Revue Biblique he wrote his Études sur les versions Coptes de la Bible in 1896 and his Petite introduction a l'étude de la Massore between 1902 and 1904. In 1903 he collaborated with Dr. J. B. chabot in founding the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, and he edited its volumes of the Coptic Acta Martyrum. In 1912 he was instrumental in having the Corpus enterprise tranferred to the joint ownership of the two Catholic Universities of Louvain and America.

While in Europe in 1910, Hyvernat became deeply interested in the unique collection of 50 ancient Coptic manuscripts discovered at Hamuli in Egypt. When this was purchased by J. P. Morgan of New York in 1911, Hyvernat obtained the commission to prepare a catalogue of the manuscripts, to have them taken to the Vatican Library Studios to be repaired, rebound, and photographed, and to have a photographic edition prepared for distribution to a list of great libraries. The work was completed in 1925.

While recovering from serious illness in 1927, Hyvernat began his work on a Catalogue raisonné, which was to fill ten or more volumes and serve as a Summa of all Coptic learning. This he completed in abbreviated form by 1932 and turned over to the Pierpont Morgan Library. To the Institute for Christian Oriental Research at the Catholic University of America, a project he had planned, he deeded his library and all his life's savings. In this way he secured for himself a share in the continuation by others of his long life's unfinished labors.

Bibliography: t. c. petersen, "Professor Henry Hyvernat," Catholic World 153 (Sept. 1941) 653–666.

[t. c. petersen]