Guillaume de Jerphanion [SEP] occupation
Guillaume de Jerphanion
Guillaume de Jerphanion, born at Pontevès in 1877, died in Rome on 22 October 1948, was a French Jesuit, epigrapher, geographer, photographer, linguist, archaeologist and Byzantinist.
He served as an officer-interpreter with the French Légion d'Orient in Cyprus in 1918, and became professor and member of the Pontifical Oriental Institute at Rome. He was elected member of the French Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1947.
He was the first scholar to undertake systematic explorations in Cappadocia,
Xenophon's "Anabasis" of 402 BC. In the 13th century, the Byzantine author Theodore Skoutariotes mentions the convenient temperatures of the tuff caverns, which were relatively warm through the cold Anatolian winters and pleasantly cool in the hot summer months. In 1906, the German scholar visited Cappadocia and wrote about it in his book "Kleinasiatische Denkmäler". In the same period, Guillaume de Jerphanion went to the region and wrote the first academic work on the rock-cut churches and their paintings.
A systematic investigation of the