houses and thy gates ;" from the Jerusalem Targum. Jon- athan ben-Uziel, Jerusalem Talmud (I'esuch, i, 1), IJaby- lonian Talmud {Erubin, 9G b; Aboda Sara, 11 a), etc. These authorities, moreover, show that the Hebrews, at least after the Babylonian captivity, and at the time of Christ, wrote the passages containing this injunction on a piece of parchment, ami affixed it to the door-jwsts; and that this Mezuzah, as it is called, is substantially the same as the Jews now have it, which is made in the following manner : On the inside of a piece of square parchment, prepared by a Jew especially for this purpose, are written Deut. vi, 4-9, and xi, 13-21, while on the outside are written the divine name "^TJ^ the Almighty, on the place where the first passage ends, and the words TOII'Sa IT'lD ITir, Kuzu Bemuksaz Kiizu, to the left at the bottom. Thus written, the schedule is then rolled up in such a manner that tlie divine name ^^'3 is out- side, and is put into a reed, or •'>y hollow cylinder made of lead, I y^ brass, or silver, varying in cost- \ liness according to the circum- I stances of the people. In this / ^ tube there is a little hole, just \^ ?
large enough to sliow the di- v ^
vine name, which is protected Modern Jewish Me- by a piece of glass, forming, as zuzah.
it were, a little window, through which "^TiT is seen. Such a Mezuzah must be affixed to the right-hand door- post of every door in the house by a nail at each end. The fixing of it is accompanied by the following prayer: " Behold I prepare my hands to perform the command- ment whidi my Creator has given me about the Mezu- zah. In the name of the one, holy, most blessed God and his Shechinah, who is concealed, mysterious, and incorporated in the name of all Israel. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the luiiverse, who hast sancti- fied us by thy commandments, and hast enjoined us to affix the Mezuzah." Like the Greeks and Ilomans, who attached amulets to the jambs of the doors, and ascribed to them magic power, the Jews from a very early period believed that the Mezuzah guarded the house against the entrance of diseases and evil spirits, as may be seen from the remarks in the Talmud {Jerusalem Pesach, i, 1 ; and B(d>;//<mi<iH A boda Sara, 11a; Minachoth, 33 b), and the Chaldee paraphrase of the Song of Solomon (viii, 3), which is, "I have affixed the Mezuzah to the right side of my door, in the third part thereof, towards the inside, so that the evil spirits may have no power to hurt me." Hence the divine name "^HC is made to de- note the Guardian of the dwellings of Israel, the "C stand- ing for 1-:rr, the n for rn-in, and the 1 for bs'-H"^, according to the exegetical rulecaUed "("P''~ii;l2 (=no- taricum, from notarius, a sliort-hand writer, one who writes with abbreviations), which regards every letter of a word <as an initial or abbreviation of a word; while the words IT'^r "c:'"23 ITIS, supposed to be the name of the guardian angel, or of God himself, are made to stand for irniiX mni i-!^'^■', Jehovah our God is Je- hovah, by another exegetical rule, which exchanges each letter of a word with its immediate predecessor in the alphabet ; e. g. the Z in 1712 is exchanged for "i, the 1 for n, the ^ for 1, and the 1 for n, thus yielding mrT\ Ev- ery pious Jew, as often as he jiasscs the Mezuzah, in leaving the house or in entering it. touches the divine name with the linger of his right hand, puts it to his mouth, and kisses it, s.nyiug in Hebrew, "The I^inl shall preserve tiiy going out and thy coming in, from this
MEZZOFANTI
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time forth, and for evermore" (Psa. cxxi, 8) ; and when lea\-ing on a business expedition, he says, after touching it, n^blSXI -bx "1T13 tODl^n ITID "[^^'2, "in thj' name, Kuzii Bemuksaz Kuzu (=God), I go out and shall prosper."
III. /Jfenifiire. — Maimonides, Ja(i /T^a-CAeza^'cs ITil- choth TiphlUin U-Mezuzah Ve-Sepher Torah,\-,Yi; Jork Ilea, § 285-'295 ; the Jewish ritual entitled Derek Ha- Chiijiiii, containing a summary of all the laws con- nected with the Jewish observances (Vienna, 1859), p. 31 sq.; Buxtorf, Syimg. Jud. p. 482-487; Leo Modena, Rites and Customs, pt. i, ch. ii, § 3 ; AUen's Modern Ju- daism, p. 327-329. See Door-post.
Mezzofanti, Joseph Caspar, a Eoman Catholic prelate, celebrated as the greatest linguist the world has ever seen, was born at Bologna Sept. 17, 1774. His fa- ther, Francis Mezzofanti, was a carpenter ; and he him- self, being destined for the same humble career, was placed at one of the free schools of the Oratory in his native city. Father Kespighi, a priest of that congre- gation, observed the remarkable talents of the boy, and saved him for literature. He was removed to a high- er school — one of the so-called '• iScuole Pie" of Bologna —and eventually to the archiepiscopal seminary, where, after completing the usual course of letters, philosophy, divinity, and canon law in the university, he was ad- mitted to priest's orders in September, 1797. Of the de- tails of his progress in the study of languages during these early years no accurate record is preserved ; but it is known that, like most eminent linguists, he was gift- ed, even in childhood, with a very wonderful memory, and that, partly under the various professors in the uni- versity, partly by the aid of foreign residents in the city, partly by his own unassisted studies, he had ac- qiured, before the completion of his university career, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, French, Ger- man, and Swedish languages. In 1797, at the early age of twenty-t\vo, he was appointed professor of Arabic in the university ; but on the annexation of Bologna, as one of the papal legations, to the newly-established Cisal- pine republic, he, refusing to talce the oaths of the new constitution, was set aside from the professorship. After the conclusion of the concordat between Pius Yll and the first consul, the ancient constitution of the univer- sity was restored. In 1803 jVIezzofanti was named to the higher professorship of Oriental languages, and in the same year became assistant librarian of the public library of the city. In 1808 the professorship was dis- continued, and Mezzofanti was reduced to great distress. He made a scanty living bj^ private tuition : but, nothing daunted, steadily followed in private what had become his engrossing pursuit — the study of languages. A letter of his, dated in 1804, to the celebrated Orientalist, John Bernard de Rossi, whose personal acquaintance he sub- sequently formed during a short visit to IModena in 1805, enclosed a composition in twelve languages, which he submitted to the judgment of his correspondent; and by 1812 Mezzofanti's reputation as a linguist was thoroughly established. The well-known Pietro Gior- dani, in several of his letters to his friends, calls him " the divine Mezzofanti," and declares that his skill in living and dead languages entitles him to be regarded as " a man of all ages and all nations." The war of which Northern Italy was so long the theatre afford- ed Mezzofanti many opportunities of extending his stock of languages. In the hospital of Bologna, to which he was attached as volunteer chaplain, were to be met — among the invalids of the Austrian, Russian, and French armies — Germans, Hungarians, Bohemians, Wal- lachians, Servians, Russians, Poles, and Croats. Partly in the desire to offer these sufferers the consolations of religion, partly from his love of the study itself, jMezzo- fanti labored assiduously to turn these and all similar opportunities to account; and several instances are re- corded in which, without the assistance of a grammar or Uictionarv, he contrived to establish a mode of commu- YI.-O