PERREAU, PIETRO°

PERREAU, PIETRO° (1827–1911), Italian philosemitic priest and Orientalist. Perreau was born in Piacenza. In 1860 he was appointed deputy librarian of the Palatina library of parma (in charge of the de rossi collection) and in 1876 he became its director. In his Guida Storica Antica e Monumentale della Città di Parma (1887), Perreau describes the acquisition of Hebrew manuscripts by the Palatina library, and in his Catalogo dei codici ebraici… (1880) he covers the manuscripts which were not described by de Rossi. steinschneider published Perreau's descriptions of Hebrew manuscripts (Parma in: HB, 7–8 (1864–65); 10 (1870); 12 (1872); and in Jeshurun, 6 (1868). Perreau published an edition of immanuel of Rome's commentary to the Psalms (1879–82), Esther (1880), and Lamentations (1881). He also published various studies on biblical books such as Song of Songs (La cantica di Solomone… 1882); on Jewish communities in Italy (in: Vessillo israelitico, 27 (1879); Corriere Israelitico, 25, 26 (1886–8); and Educazione e Cultura degl'Israeliti in Italia nel Medio Evo, (1885); and on Jews in England in the 11th and 12th centuries (in: Corriere Israelitico, 25, 1887). Perreau wrote a lexicon of Hebrew abbreviations, Oceano dello Abbreviature… (1883). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Steinschneider, in: HB, 21 (1881/82), 103; idem, in: Aresheth, 4 (1966), 123–4 (Heb. tr. by Y. Eldad); Milano, Bibliotheca, index. (Alfredo Mordechai Rabello)