Johannes Potken

Johannes Potken (Latin Potkenius) (c.1470- c.1525) was a German scholar, papal secretary and printer from Cologne, active at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 1513 he had printed in Rome the Psalterium David et Cantica aliqua, in Ge'ez.^[1][2] It was a collection of psalms and other canticles.

Potken had learned the language from the Ethiopian Abba Thomas Walda Samuel,^[3] a pilgrim to Jerusalem and guest of Pope Leo X. This was the beginning of European publishing of Ethiopian literature (although misidentified by Potken as 'Chaldean'.) The work included a syllabary, Alphabetus, seu potius Syllabarius literarum Chaldaearium. The font was cut by Marcellus Silber, a printer in Regensburg.

He was in Rome as a long term papal protonotary; he became provost of the church of St. Georg, Cologne. Potken edited also the quadrilingual Psalterium in quatuor linguis Hebraea Graeca Chaldaea Latina, which appeared in 1518, with Johann Soter (i.e. Johann Heyl).^[4][5] He was a correspondent of Sebastian Brant and Johannes Reuchlin.^[6]

References

• Anna Dorothea von den Brincken, Johann Potken aus Schwerte, Propst von St. Georg in Köln, der erste Äthiopologe des Abendlandes, in: Aus Köln und rheinischer Geschichte (1969) 51-60
• German Printers and the German Community in Renaissance Rome MAAS Library.1976; s5-XXXI: 118-126

Notes