Solomon Caesar Malan (22 April 1812 – 25 November 1894) D.D., Vicar of Broadwindsor, Prebendary of Sarum, was a Geneva-born Anglican divine, a polyglot and orientalist. He published around 50 works related to biblical studies and translations.
Malan's Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs (1889–1893) is now considered significant for his critical insights. Near the end of his life he gave to notable institutions, including a set of Tibetan sutras to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and most of his personal library to the Indian Institute in Oxford. It became the Malan Library, and after its dispersal in the 1960s, was recognized as foundational for the Oriental Division in the Bodleian Libraries.
By birth a Genevan descended from an exiled French family, Malan was born as César Jean Salomon Malan in Geneva. He was the first of a dozen children born to his gifted father, Dr. Henri Abraham César Malan (1787–1864) and his Swiss wife, Salomé Georgette Jeanne Schönberger (1790-unknown). She is rarely mentioned in any of the published writings related to Solomon Caesar Malan's life.
His father was a counter-cultural theological teacher in the final years of Genevan city-state history and became a controversial Swiss religious leader, whose evangelical version of Protestant faith challenged the rationalized Enlightenment Calvinism that had become dominant in the first years of 19th century Geneva. Ultimately rejected by the Genevan Calvinist hierarchy as a minister in their community in 1818, the father Malan set up his own church community on his own property, offering a vital Christian alternative in worship to what was offered in the state church. Writing hymns in French that became famous for their theological vitality, and publishing numerous short stories and some larger works as a Swiss evangelical intellectual, the father Malan became known as an evangelical international missionary in various European countries, as well as in Great Britain, particularly within Scotland. His honorary doctorate was given by the University of Glasgow, indicating the level of respect he had attained outside of Switzerland.
This situation of social alienation and counter-cultural religious assertiveness profoundly shaped the early years and educational training of the first son, César Jean Salomon. The education his first son received was essentially a home education, in which César Jean Salomon thrived. Under his father's guidance, he initially learned Latin (his "father tongue" and first language), French, German and Italian. According to his son's biography, at the age of 18 César Jean Salomon Malan had already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew.
In addition, however, he also was trained by his father in a wide variety of fine and technical arts. His lessons in sketching and watercolours were taught by a private tutor and bore extensive fruitfulness in much-appreciated sketches and paintings in his later years. During these formative years, César Jean Salomon also was taught botany, and because of his father's gift of a rather sophisticated workshop for his bright son, he learned skills in carpentry, bookbinding, and printing. As revealed later in his life, his bookbinding skills were aesthetically impressive. Also, the mature son Malan knew enough music theory and how to play some musical instruments to employ them in his ministry. Probably during this early period of his life, he had also begun to study calligraphy, an art in which he later excelled in numerous styles and languages.
Because of his father's growing international reputation as an evangelical theologian, there were a number of international guests who visited their Swiss Genevan home, and in that context, the eldest son met the first love of his life, the daughter of an English evangelical Anglican, Mary Marsh Mortlock (1813-1840). Though his father had hoped that the first son would follow him in his distinctive ministry in Geneva as what could be seen as a Free Church or Dissenter Christian community, César Jean Salomon chose another route that led him to leave Switzerland and his father's work.
To Great Britain and formal education in Oxford
From his earliest youth, he manifested a remarkable faculty for the study of languages, but it was the romantic relationship he developed with Mary Mortlock that would reshape his destiny, move him to leave his father's home, and adopt the English name, Solomon Caesar Malan. After some difficult questions emerged regarding the romantic relationship between César Jean Salomon Malan and Mary Morlock, an agreement between the two fathers was reached, that included a way for the son Malan to attain a solid grasp of English, obtain a formal education, and marry. Mary's father agreed to support the young Malan's education if he could successfully matriculate into a college in Oxford. In order to do so, they agreed that he should serve as a family tutor in Great Britain for a period, so that he could become capable in English to sit for the university entrance examinations. If he succeeded in these matters, then it was also agreed that César and Mary could marry. What was an additional religious problem involved in these arrangements is that colleges in Oxford required that a person who graduated would agree with the principles of the Anglican faith, including its support for the English royal family, a principle that was opposed by Malan's father. Nevertheless, once the arrangements were settled, a new set of challenges and opportunities opened up for the life of the son who would subsequently be known as Solomon Caesar Malan.
As a consequence, when the young Malan was twenty years old, an arrangement was made for him in 1832 to travel to Scotland and serve as a tutor in the marquis of Tweeddale's family. The university examinations occurred the following year, but the young Malan was still self-consciously lacking confidence in the quality of his English. Hoping to overcome that difficulty, he petitioned the examiners to allow him to do his paperwork during the examination in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin or Greek, rather than in English. Though his request was not granted, the young Swiss scholar managed to pass. Consequently, in 1833 he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. A year later in 1834, Solomon and Mary were married, and the relatively young Swiss student began to thrive in his studies.
Unquestionably, the young Malan took up his opportunity to study in Oxford with a vigour and intensity driven by both an insatiable desire to learn all that he could and to please those who had agreed to support him and his wife. Unfortunately, this led to his losing sight in his left eye during those years, a threat to his gifted scholarly intentions, but one that did not ultimately obstruct either his personal motivation to learn or his intense self-imposed disciplines. In fact, during his years of study in Oxford, he earned two major scholarships: the Boden scholarship for Sanskrit in 1834, and the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship for Hebrew in 1837. Obviously, this indicates something about his level of scholarly attainment in those two classical languages. When he graduated in 1837, it was not with extraordinary honours, but he did achieve a 2nd class in Literae humaniores.
Unknown to many others at the time, Solomon Caesar Malan took it upon himself as a newcomer to Oxford to become an expert in proverbial literature. Using the Hebrew biblical text of the proverbs, which are mostly attributed to his namesake, King Solomon, as the basis for this personal research project, Malan took this task also as an act of devotion to the biblical text that he, his father, and his wife all considered to be divine revelation. As the inside flyleaf to the manuscript version of his Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs reveals, he began the multilingual recordings of parallel or antagonistic proverbs in 1833, the year he initiated his university studies in Oxford. For just over sixty years he devoted himself to this study, ultimately donating the huge manuscript that he had produced at the end of his life to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1894, just a few months before his death.