Giovanni Maria Percoto

Giovanni Maria Percoto (Udine, 25 June 1729–Ava, 12 December 1776) was a Barnabite missionary, linguist, translator, titular bishop of Maxula Prates, and apostolic vicar of Ava and Pegu. Born into the noble Percoto family, he was the seventh of the seventeen children of Variente Percoto and Elisabetta Caimo. Baptized Pietro Paolo on 26 June 1729 in the parish of San Valentino at Udine, he later assumed the religious name by which he is known. His early religious formation was influenced by the Oratorian Andrea Masotti and by his education in the Barnabite college for nobles at Udine, where the rector Francesco Curioni encouraged his vocation. Percoto entered the Barnabite novitiate of Santa Maria al Carrobiolo in Monza in September 1746, received the habit on 8 November, and made his profession on 9 November 1747.

His higher formation proceeded within the intellectual institutions of the order, principally at Sant’Alessandro in Milan and subsequently at Bologna, where he studied theology. His early correspondence reveals a marked attachment to the devotion of the Sacred Heart, cultivated among the Barnabite scholastics. While still in formation he participated in the preparation of the devotional compendium Divozione al S. Cuore di Gesù, printed at Bologna by Lelio dalla Volpe in 1752; the precise extent of his individual authorship is difficult to determine, since the work originated as a collective undertaking. After ordination to the priesthood, Percoto was assigned to the Barnabite college at Macerata, where he served as a lecturer in philosophy and master of the young professed religious. Returning to Bologna in 1757, he taught within the order and offered himself for the Barnabite mission in the kingdoms of Ava and Pegu.

Selected for the mission in 1759, Percoto travelled with Benigno Avenati. After examination by the Congregation de Propaganda Fide and an audience with Clement XIII, they departed from Livorno in May 1760. Their long overland and maritime journey led through Smyrna, Aleppo, Damascus, Mesopotamia, Basra, the western coast of India, Bengal, Chandernagore, and Calcutta. Percoto began studying Burmese before reaching his destination. He entered the port of Rangoon early in October 1761 and thereafter worked chiefly in the kingdom of Ava. The Christian communities entrusted to the Barnabites were geographically dispersed, materially poor, and frequently deprived of clergy; the missionaries also operated amid warfare, precarious communications, recurrent illness, and jurisdictional disputes involving Portuguese ecclesiastical interests and Franciscan clergy associated with Goa and the diocese of São Tomé of Mylapore.

The deaths of several confrères left Percoto for extended periods virtually alone in the interior. His surviving correspondence with his family, Barnabite superiors, and Propaganda Fide documents his pastoral journeys, the administration of scattered Christian settlements, the instruction of children, the redemption and education of dependants, and his repeated requests for missionaries, financial support, medical assistance, and adequate canonical faculties. He sought to establish a seminary and schools capable of ensuring a more stable indigenous Christian ministry. His episcopal appointment as apostolic vicar of Ava and Pegu and titular bishop of Maxula Prates was made on 8 November 1765, although the decree reached the mission only later. He travelled to Rangoon, where Pierre Brigot, apostolic vicar of Siam, consecrated him on 31 January 1768. On returning to Ava he undertook pastoral visitations, administered confirmation to communities in which the sacrament had long been unavailable, and continued the organization of the seminary.

Percoto’s most enduring historical importance lies in his study of Burmese and Pali and in his attempt to place Burmese Christian instruction upon a durable textual and typographical foundation. He acquired a command of Burmese sufficient for preaching, catechesis, translation, and the critical revision of texts with learned native speakers. Contemporary and later Barnabite inventories associate him with catechetical works, scriptural and liturgical translations, studies of Burmese religion, translations or summaries of Pali monastic texts, a Burmese grammar, and a substantial Latin-Portuguese-Burmese vocabulary. Much of this material remained manuscript, was subsequently dispersed, or survives only through documentary references. In the final year of his life he was still occupied with the compilation of his dictionary.

Of particular consequence was the material conveyed to Rome by the Barnabite Melchiorre Carpani, whom Percoto sent to represent the mission before Propaganda Fide. Percoto supplied carefully drawn and classified Burmese characters, explanatory material, and Burmese manuscripts intended to make printing in the language practicable. At the Polyglot Press of Propaganda Fide, Giovanni Cristoforo Amaduzzi directed the project, Giuseppe Expilly prepared the punches and type, and Carpani supervised the linguistic and technical revision. The resulting Alphabetum Barmanum seu Bomanum regni Avae finitimarumque regionum appeared at Rome in 1776, accompanied by Carpani’s prologue and followed by Percoto’s Compendium doctrinae christianae idiomate barmano sive bomano. This production occupies a fundamental place in the history of Burmese typography: Percoto’s drawings and explanations furnished the basis upon which Burmese movable types were prepared for the Propaganda press. His Compendium is also the earliest extant substantial Christian text printed in Burmese and preserves an early form of Catholic Burmese theological vocabulary.

The authorship and responsibility for the Alphabetum were subsequently obscured. Because Carpani conveyed the manuscripts to Rome and supervised publication, and because Amaduzzi supplied the learned editorial apparatus, bibliographers variously assigned the work to Carpani, Amaduzzi, or later Barnabite linguists. The documentary investigations of Renzo Carmignani, based principally upon Percoto’s correspondence and instructions preserved in Barnabite archives, established the decisive distinction: Percoto prepared the Burmese alphabetic material and made it suitable for typographical reproduction, while Carpani oversaw its manufacture and publication in Rome. Later research by Filippo M. Lovison has further reconstructed the institutional, archival, and typographical circumstances of the edition.

Percoto’s linguistic legacy extended beyond Catholic missionary literature. Modern comparative study of his Burmese version of the Lord’s Prayer has shown that the terminology and syntactical patterns preserved in the 1776 Compendium formed part of the Burmese Christian tradition inherited by nineteenth-century translators. John de Jong’s analysis has identified significant correspondences between Percoto’s text and Adoniram Judson’s early translation of Matthew, while properly distinguishing Percoto’s individual work from the accumulated vocabulary of the older Burmese Catholic communities upon which he himself depended. Percoto must therefore be situated not merely within Barnabite missionary history, but within the longer transmission of Christian discourse and biblical translation in Burmese.

Prolonged labour, recurrent fever, and the physical conditions of the mission progressively undermined his health. In 1776 swelling of the legs compelled him to return to Ava, where he continued his linguistic and pastoral work. He fell acutely ill on 11 December and died during the night of 12 December 1776, aged forty-seven. His death occurred in the same year as the Roman publication that embodied his most consequential contribution to the history of Burmese printing, apparently before news of its completion could reach him.