Samuel Petit ( la, Petitus) (1594 – 1653) was a French Huguenot pastor, known as a classical scholar and orientalist.
Life
From
Nîmes
Nîmes ( , ; oc, Nimes ; Latin: ''Nemausus'') is the prefecture of the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Located between the Mediterranean Sea and Cévennes, the commune of Nîmes has an estimated population of 148,5 ...
, the son of the pastor François Petit of
Saint-Ambroix, and Noémi Ollivier, he studied oriental languages at
Geneva from 1610 to 1612. He became professor of Greek at the Collège des Arts at Nîmes in 1615, and pastor there in the same year, a position he held for the rest of his life. He was principal at the Collège from 1627 to 1633.
Works
*''Miscellaneorum libri novem'' (1630). This work includes Petit's speculation on organising the
dialogues of Plato into sets of four. It also included his attempted reconstruction of the
Phoenician language
Phoenician ( ) is an extinct language, extinct Canaanite languages, Canaanite Semitic languages, Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commerci ...
.
*''Eclogae chronologicae'' (1632)
*''Variarum lectionum libri IV'' (1633); reprinted in ''
Critici Sacri'' (1698 edition).
*''Leges atticae'' (1635)
*''Observationum libri III'' (1642)
*''Diatribi de jure'' (1649)
*''Traité concernant la réunion de Chrétiens'' (1670).
Family
In 1620, Petit married Catherine Cheiron. Their surviving daughter Antoinette married the physician
Pierre Formi.
Petit brought up his orphaned nephew
Samuel de Sorbière
Samuel (de) Sorbière (; 1615–1670) was a French physician and man of letters, a philosopher and translator, who is best known for his promotion of the works of Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi, in whose view of physics he placed his support, t ...
, whose mother Louisa was his sister.
Notes
External links
WorldCat pageCERL page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petit, Samuel
1594 births
1653 deaths
French Protestants
French classical scholars
People from Nîmes