Jean-Philippe Baratier

Jean-Philippe Baratier , born with Schwabach (Bavaria) the January 19th 1721 and died in Market (Saxony-Anhalt) the October 5th 1740, is a Child prodigy of French origin. Compared by Voltaire with Peak of Mirandole, he died before to have been able to give all the measurement of his many talents.

Biography

At the three years age, it could write. At four years, he spoke the Latin with his father, the French with his mother and the German with the servants. At seven years, it controlled the Greek and the Hebrew . At nine years, it wrote a Hebrew dictionary and a Greek dictionary of the most difficult words of the Ancien and New Testament , from 300 to 400 each one pages, with critical reflections which announced already a remarkable maturity of mind. It completed at the same time to transcribe in Hebrew the Biblia parva of Heinrich Opitz, which it then translated into Latin, and contributed to the Germanic Bibliothèque several essays which drew to him the attention of the German scholars.

In 1732, at the 11 years age, it composed the translation in French of a Hebrew text of the 12th century, the Voyages of Rabbi Benjamin , with notes and essays which astonished the commentators by abundance by readings and the force of logic that they supposed in such a young author. This work caused also the admiration of Voltaire:

This last translation is of an eleven year old child, named Baratier, French of origin, born in the margraviat from Brandebourg-Anspach. It was a wonder of science, and even of reason; such as one had not seen any since the prince Pic of Mirandole. It knew perfectly the Greek and Hebrew as of the nine years age; and what there is of more astonishing, it is that at its age it had already enough judgment not to be not the blind admiror of the author whom he translated: he made a judicious criticism of it; that is more beautiful than to know Hebrew.

He then wrote in Latin a theological work and engaged on a point of criticism a controversy with the authors of the Dictionnaire of Trévoux . Then, being discovered a passion for mathematics, it built out of paperboard the instruments which were necessary and discovered by itself the methods of calculating for him that, for lack of books, it could not learn from the scientists who had preceded it. It sent memories on astronomy to the academies of Prussia and England and was allowed with that of Berlin. He wrote, in 1735, several essays on ecclesiastical antiquities, of which one, relating to the old chronology of the popes, appeared in 1740. In 1738, it addressed to the Academy of Science of Paris a draft study on the Longitude S and to this end proposed a Boussole of its invention. It started to deal with the explanation of the Hiéroglyphe S when it died, of an unknown disease, at the 19 years age.

Education of a child prodigy

The father of Jean-Philippe Baratier, François Baratier, was the Pasteur huguenot of the French church of Schwabach. In the foreword which it wrote for the Voyages of Rabbi Benjamin , it states to have been the single person in charge of the education of his son. Pasteur almost excuses himself there to present “only the early fruit of a studious child” while evoking “a scholarship and a reading which will appear if not very common to the children of this age, that several will be tempted to believe that one lends some much to this one. ” It makes remainder little case of this scholarship “of which so many scientists are applauded until in their old age” but which should according to him be used only “to pose a good base for more important studies. ” Because “if it wants so much to learn various kinds of languages, it is not to restrict themselves to know them, but to be able to benefit from their books, and to draw his scholarship in the sources. ”

It is, writes Pasteur, “by the use” that his/her son learned Latin, French and German, while it is “by art and with method” that he learned “the languages Greek, Hebraic, chaldaïque, rabbinical Syriaque and . ” Once Latin had become “as much and more familiar to him than his native tongue,” at the age of four years and half, he was exerted with the Greek by the reading of the historical books of the Ancien and the New Testament , then, on the end of his sixth year, with Hebrew by the reading of the Genèse . He then attacked the more difficult books of the Bible, passing each word in review several times, “so that he could not only translate these French or Latin books, but as of Latin to return them in Hebrew of sharp voice” and “as in his ninth year, he could already not only usually read without points, but to also write and compose in this language in prose and worms. ”

All its other readings, known as still Pasteur, “are only furtive readings which it made without my knowledge and in my absence, or of the private readings, that I allowed him at certain hours after it had made his ordinary readings on the Bible. ” Thus it acquires by itself the syriaque one and is plunged in the study of the rabbinical literature. “I made him study any grammar, adds Pasteur, neither to read any classic author nor made him do in no language any of these exercises scholastic which one calls of the topics. ” At most he from time to time consults a dictionary, which it hastens to annotate, and if it resorts to the grammar books, it is “only after these languages were enough familiar to him to feel the analogy it, and to be able to form itself of it all the time, without needing rules, or by being formed itself principal rules. ” Lastly, whereas it enters its twelfth year, “as regards Arabic, only little time ago still that it began it and he read only some chapters of the Alcoran, that he hears passably. ”

Notes, sources and references

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