Cardinal Mezzofanti in the Book’s Account

In the book’s telling, Cardinal Mezzofanti was the son of a carpenter and was first expected to follow the same trade, but a priest intervened and arranged for his education for the priesthood. The passage says that before finishing university he had already learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, and Swedish, and that at twenty-two he was appointed first professor of Arabic and later professor of Oriental languages at the university.

The book then presents the larger marvel: by the time of his death on March 15, 1849, he was said to be thoroughly acquainted with roughly seventy to eighty languages. It also reports an almost uncanny ear for speech, saying he could identify the English county a speaker came from and that he knew the full range of dialects, patois, and provincialisms.