13 Facts About Vangjel Meksi

Vangjel Meksi was an Albanian physician, writer, and translator.

One-time personal physician to Ali Pasha, the 19th-century Albanian ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina, Meksi produced the first translation of the New Testament into Albanian with the help and sponsorship of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Vangjel Meksi did not live to see his work's publication however, which was supervised by Gregory IV of Athens.

Vangjel Meksi was born in 1770 in Labove, a village near Gjirokaster, and pursued secondary studies in Ioannina, then an important Ottoman provincial center.

Armed with a letter of recommendation from Ali Pasha, Vangjel Meksi was admitted to the University of Naples in Italy, where he studied medicine under Dr Nicola Acuto and practiced in a hospital administered by the parish of San Giovanni a Carbonara.

Vangjel Meksi published two translations into Albanian during 1814, both now lost, one of which was a religious work by Abbe Claude Fleury.

Pinkerton relates in one of his letters to the BFBS that Vangjel Meksi was well regarded by the Albanian community, the Greek Orthodox Church, and by Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople.

On October 19,1819, Pinkerton and Vangjel Meksi concluded a contract to translate the New Testament into Albanian on behalf of the society.

Vangjel Meksi was a member of the Filiki Etaireia, a secret society whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule over the Balkans and to establish an independent Greek state.

Vangjel Meksi is said to have taken part in the negotiations leading to an agreement proposed by Theodoros Kolokotronis that permitted the Albanians who were defending Tripolitsa to leave unharmed, an arrangement that helped the Greeks to capture the town from the Turks.

Vangjel Meksi did not live to see the 1827 publication of his translation of the New Testament; he had died a bachelor six years earlier, at the age of about 51.

Vangjel Meksi's work was important for the development of written Albanian, and his endeavors strengthened the conviction that a stable Albanian alphabet had to be created.

Vangjel Meksi's translation served as the basis for Joseph Ritter von Xylander's studies of the Albanian language, which definitively refuted the thesis that the language had a Tatar origin.