Assemani

Assemani is the Italian form of the name of a learned Maronite family; namely, GIUSEPPE SIMONE, the head of it, STEFANO EVODIO, and GIUSEPPE LUIGI (in Lat. Aloysius, born about 1710), two of his nephews, and his grandnephew SIMIONE, who was born March 14, 1749, at Tripoli. He was educated in the Maronite College at Rome, and after completing his studies spent twelve years as a missionary in his native country, and then went to Padua as a teacher of Oriental laiguages, where he died, April 7, 1821. He wrote a famous work On the Civilization, Literature, and Manners of the Arabs (Padua, 1787). See Wetzer u. Welte's Kisrchenlexikon, s.v. (B.P.).