Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (M / France, 1580-1637), scholar
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was a French intellectual and collector. Inspired by the work of Purchas, in the first half of the 17th cent. he made strong efforts to recover the Ethiopic text of the "lost" Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), after Capuchin Gilles de Loches (Aegidius Lochiensis) told him in 1633 that the manuscript was available in Egypt.
The story is told in the biography of Peiresc published by Pierre Gassendi:
"But [Peiresc] conceived great hopes of obtaining out of the East, both Coptic, and other rare Books … ; when about the very same time [1633], that very good man Ægidius Lochiensis a Capucine, returned out of Ægypt, where he studied the Oriental Languages, seven whole years together. For he being received with great exultation by Peireskius, from whom he had no small assistance in that Countrey; he told him of rare Books, which were extant in divers Covents and Monasteries. And memorable it is, how he saw a Library of eight thousand Volumes, many of which bore the marks of the Antonian Age. And because among other things, he said he saw Mazhapha Einock, or the Prophecie of Enoch, foretelling such things as should happen at the end of he World, a Book never seen in Europe, but was there written in the Character and Language of the Æthiopians or Abyssines, who had preserved the same: therefore Peireskius was so inflamed with a desire to purchase the same at any rate, that sparing no cost, he at length obtained it." The Mirrour of True Nobility & Gentility = Viri illustris Nicolai Claudij Fabricij de Peiresc (1657 @1641 Gassendi / Rand), book (English ed.), pp. 89-90.
In 1634 the Capuchin Agathange de Vendôme wrote to Peiresc that he had found in Egypt the book, and two years later, in 1636, the manuscripts was finally in Peiresc's hands at Aix-en-Provence, France. Peiresc could not read the Ethiopic text and unsuccessfully tried to have it translated by Gilles de Loches. Peiresc died in 1637, thinking of having reached his goal. In 1647, the manuscript was purchased for Cardinal Jules Mazarin, universally believed to be a copy of the so-called Mazhapha Einock. However, in 1681 the Ethiopist Hiob Ludolf asked a friend to transcribe portions of the document and immediately realized that the Ethiopic manuscript Peiresc purchased from Egypt merely contained a number of citations of and allusions to the Enoch tradition. Ludolf was so frustrated that he concluded that a book of Enoch never existed.
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