Jakob Joseph Matthys (the family name is also spelled Mathis and Mathys; December 12, 1802 in Oberrickenbach, municipality of Wolfenschiessen; † March 9, 1866 in Stans) was a Catholic priest who served as chaplain in Niederrickenbach for about 15 years and as chaplain in Dallenwil for about 20 years.
Primarily in his first position, which by far did not fill him, he dealt with at least 37 foreign languages as well as a now forgotten planned language. He wrote his own biography in 1844 in 35 languages, including the native dialect and the native written language.
When Matthys learned in 1862 of the project for the Schweizerisches Idiotikon that had just begun, he worked out a monumental Nidwalden dictionary - a folio of 611 closely written pages - as well as an 89-page dialect grammar despite illness and sent both to Zurich. The dictionary is still one of the most important Nidwalden sources of the Idiotikon editorial staff, and the grammar is of importance in the history of science.
Life
Childhood and study
Matthys was a son of Niklaus Josef Mathis, a small farmer and - after he had sold his small estate out of necessity - a day labor, and Anna Josefa, née Käslin. He grew up in great poverty, from six to sixteen in Beckenried, his mother's home village. As a boy, he tended goats on the Buochserhorn, combed silk and spun cotton; later, he gathered resin with his father, searched for roots for doctors and distillers, and wood for coopers and other craftsmen. As he grew older, he worked as a farmhand.
Matthys did not attend school until he was 21 years old. He taught himself reading, writing and arithmetic. It was said of the fifteen-year-old lad that anyone in the area who had to calculate a haystack, a livestock lease or a "Käslosung" had this done by young Matthys. From 1821 to January 1823 he served in Bavaria with one of the princes of Oettingen as a "Swiss servant". In 1822 he bought the Latin grammar and the Latin-German dictionary of Christian Gottlieb Broeder at the market of the "nearby city" and began to learn Latin. He continued this self-study in the summer of 1823, when he was a shepherd high above Engelberg. In order not to have to constantly look up words in the dictionary, he learned it by heart without further ado.
The chaplain at home became aware of the young man and found him a patron in the painter Martin Obersteg the Younger, so that Matthys was able to attend the Capuchin-run Latin school in Stans from December 1823. Learning was easy for him - instead of four years he completed the school in two and a half. In the school year 1826/1827 he was at the Jesuit College of Solothurn, where he immediately took the second to last year's course before transferring to the university. In 1828 he studied at the Jesuit College St. Michael in Fribourg, from 1829 to 1831 at the Seminary in Lucerne and in 1831/1832 at the Seminary in Chur - there he always graduated with top grades. Since his patron had died in the meantime, he had to earn his living as a tutor. On March 6, 1831 he received the minor orders, already on March 13 he became subdeacon, on March 19 deacon and on March 25 he received the ordination to the priesthood.
As pilgrimage chaplain in Maria-Rickenbach (1831-1845)
As a child from a poor family, Matthys had to look for a position as soon as possible. On November 6, 1831, he was elected chaplain in Niederrickenbach (Municipality of Oberdorf), where he was responsible as pilgrimage chaplain. The small mountain village, lonely and situated at an altitude of about 1200 meters, was at that time only a moderately visited place of pilgrimage and there was also no monastery. Matthys had little to do during the winter months, and there were few children to teach. In his autobiography Matthys enumerated in seven points all the things that had been concealed from him in order to distract from the lack of attractiveness of the chaplaincy, which therefore nobody but he had wanted. During this time he took refuge in a restless study of languages. The benefice, however, only came with about 500 guilders - clearly too little for Matthys, who was dependent on many expensive books for his language learning, had to support his penniless relatives, and increasingly suffered from health problems.