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, the results of which he disseminated in the form of numerous publications. Between 1925 and 1942, he published the monumental work Une nouvelle province de l'art byzantin, les églises rupestres de Cappadoce ("A new province of Byzantine art, the rock-cut churches of Cappadocia") in two volumes of text and three of images.

Works

• La Légion d'Orient, Études (1919).
• Une nouvelle province de l'art byzantin, les églises rupestres de Cappadoce (5 volumes, 1925–42).
• La Voix des monuments. Notes et études d'archéologie chrétienne (1930).
• La Voix des monuments. Étude d'archéologie. Nouvelle série (1938).