Charles Joseph Sacleux, CSSp (1856–1943) was a French Catholic missionary and linguist.[1] He is known also as a botanist, having collected a herbarium of over 2,000 plants in East Africa and Zanzibar.[2]
Charles Sacleux | |
|---|---|
 Sacleux in 1897 | |
| Personal | |
| Born | 5 July 1856 Enquin, France |
| Died | 16 May 1943 (aged 86) Grasse, France |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Organization | |
| Order | Spiritans |
| Senior posting | |
| Ordination | 1878 |
Life
editSacleux was born on 5 July 1856 in Enquin, Pas-de-Calais in northern France, the second of three sons born to Auguste Sacleux, who died when he was five, and his wife, Marie Firmine Bayart. Charles joined the junior seminary at Arras in 1869 before spending a year at senior seminary beginning in 1874. He joined the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1875 and was ordained a priest in 1878.[1]
Sacleux went to Zanzibar in 1879 and was posted to Bagamoyo and began studying Swahili in depth. He spent almost twenty years on the East African coast. Sacleux's work on Swahili is notable for being one of the few accounts of Swahili prior to its standardization and the influence of English.[1]
In 1898, he returned to France, and took a teaching position in Chevilly. He died in Grasse on 16 May 1943.[1]
In 1890, the botanist Henri Ernest Baillon published Sacleuxia, a genus of flowering plants from Kenya and Tanzania, in the family Apocynaceae and named in Charles Sacleux's honor.[3]
Works
editSacleux wrote:
- Essai de phonétique avec son application à l'étude des idiomes' (1905)[4]
- Grammaire des dialectes swahilis (1909)[1]
- Dictionnaire swahili-français (1939).[1] Online version (open access)
His dictionary of the Comorian language was published in 1979 in two volumes by Mohamed Ahmed Chamanga and Noël Jacques Gueunier.[5]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f Frankl, P. J. L. "Sacleux, Charles Joseph". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50446. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Harries, Patrick; Maxwell, David (20 July 2012). The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 54. ISBN 9781467435857. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
- ^ "Sacleuxia Baill. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ Sacleux, Charles (1905). Essai de phonétique avec son application à l'étude des idiomes Africains. H. Welter. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
- ^ Sacleux, Charles; Chamanga, Mohamed Ahmed; Gueunier, Noël Jacques (1979). Le dictionnaire comorien-français et français-comorien du R.P. Sacleux. Vol. 1. SELAF. ISBN 9782852970489. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Sacleux.