Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735-1809) (ms 2620)

Gerda Hassler

Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro was born at Horcajo de Santiago, a small village near Cuenca (Spain) 10 May, 1735, and he died at Rome, Italy, 24 August, 1809. He joined the Jesuit Order at the age of 11 and pursued a typical career, passing his novitiate in the Colegio de la Corte, studying theology and philosophy at the University of Alcalá de Henares, and being ordained a priest in 1760. After teaching in Cáceres, Madrid and Murcia, this period of his life was concluded by the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain in 1767. Hervás went to Italy (Cesena, Rome) and started working on a large encyclopedia of mankind which was published in Italian and included an early catalogue of the known languages of the world. Later Hervás published a much more extensive catalogue of the languages of the world in Spanish. The material classified by Hervás had been collected by his fellow monks who had been working as missionaries in foreign countries. Language descriptions, as well as translations of religious and catechist texts provided by this exceptional situation, were much more comprehensive than any personal linguistic experience could have been. Hervás became a member of the Royal Academy of Dublin and of the Etruscan Academy of Cortona, theologian to the Cardinal Albani, librarian of Pope Pius VII, and finally member of the Basque Economics Society.

Hervás' studies on the theory of language are subordinated to the attempt to create a synthesis between religious dogma and the new culture and philosophy which had appeared in the age of Enlightenment. In this context, Hervás accepts empiricist methods of cognition and discusses common «ideological» topics, such as the observation of communication amongst deaf people, and the functional description of the relations between language and thought. Discussing subjects like the origin of language, the relations between languages, thinking and history of the people, Hervás did not hide that there were contradictions between his fundamental position and the arguments borrowed from current linguistic theories. What helped him reconcile Enlightenment theories of language with the biblical story of its origins, was stressing the arbitrary nature of language signs. It is especially the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, along with diversity in language, which proves divine intervention. If men had developed language on their own, there would be no different languages because the same sense organs would have led to the same results everywhere. On this basis, a collection of the different languages of the world would become, a collection of empirical evidence on behalf of the divine creation of language and the duality of language and thought. Following this anthropological objective of the Catalogue, Hervás declared languages to be the best criterion for the classification of people. According to Hervás, there are three areas in which languages can differ: words, grammatical structure (el artificio gramatical) and pronunciation. Each of them can be useful in the comparison of languages and the classification of peoples, but the most reliable criterion is grammatical structure. The stabilty of grammar makes it suitable as a criterion in the classification of peoples.

Major Linguistic Works

(1784), Catalogo delle lingue conosciute e notizia della loro affinità, e diversità, Cesena, Gregorio Biasini.
(1785), Origine, formazione, meccanismo, ed armonia degl'idiomi, Cesena, Biasini.
(1787), Vocabulario poligloto, con prolegomeni sopra più di CL lingue, Cesena, Biasini.
(1787), Saggio prattico delle lingue, con prolegomeni e una racolta di orazioni dominicali in più di CCC lingue e dialetti, Cesena, Biasini.
(1795), Escuela española de sordomudos, o arte para enseñarles a escribir y hablar el idioma español, Madrid, Imprenta Real.
(1800-1805), Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas, y numeración, división, y clases de estas, según la diversidad de sus idiomas y dialectos, 6 vols., Madrid, Imprenta de la Administración del Real Arbitrio de Beneficencia. (Reprint: Madrid, Atlas, 1978).
(1789-1799), Historia de la vida del hombre o Idea del universo, 7 vols., Madrid, Imprenta Aznar.