9 October 1580 A.D. John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

9 October 1580 A.D.  John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

Underhile, Andy.  “Obscure Heroes of the Reformation—Tremellius.”  Contra Mundum.  7 Sept 2011.  http://andycontramundum.blogspot.com/2011/09/obscure-heroes-of-reformation.html.  Accessed 17 Jul 2014.

Obscure Heroes of the Reformation - Tremellius

Immanuel Tremellius was born in Ferrara. His father was a Jew and educated him very skillfully in the Hebrew language. He came under the ministry of Peter Martyr and was soon converted. He went with Martyr to Lucca, where he taught Hebrew.

He went with Martyr to Strasberg and then to England during the reign of Edward VI. Upon Edward’s death, he returned to Germany and in the school of Hornbach, he taught Hebrew.

He was later sent to Heidelberg to be the professor of Hebrew. He translated the Syriac New Testament into Latin. He also set about to translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew and was thus associated with the work of Francis Junius.

Late in life, he was called upon by the duke of Bouillon to be the professor of Hebrew at the newly built university in Sedan. Tremellius remained faithful at this post until his death at the age of 70, in the year 1580.

9 October 1580 A.D. John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

9 October 1580 A.D.  John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

Wiki-offering.

Immanuel Tremellius (Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio; 1510 – 9 October 1580) was an Italian Jewish convert to Christianity. He was known as a leading Hebraist and Bible translator.

Contents 

• 1 Life
• 2 Works
• 3 See also
• 4 References
• 4.1 Further reading
• 5 External links

Life

He was born at Ferrara, and educated at the University of Padua. He was converted about 1540 to the Catholic faith through Cardinal Pole, but embraced Protestantism in the following year, and went to Strasbourg to teach Hebrew.

Owing to the Schmalkaldic War in Germany he was compelled to seek asylum in England, where he resided at Lambeth Palace with Archbishop Cranmer in 1547. In 1549 he succeeded Paul Fagius as Regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge.

On the death of Edward VI of England he returned to Germany in 1553. At Zweibrücken he was imprisoned as a Calvinist.^[1] He became professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg in 1561, and remained there until he was released from his post in 1577. He ultimately found refuge at the College of Sedan, where he died. According to Morison, "when dying reversed his nation's decision, and exclaimed, Not Barabbas, but Jesus! (Vivat Christus, et pereat Barabbas!)."^[2]

Works

His chief literary work was a Latin translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Syriac. The New Testament translation, by Theodore Beza, appeared in 1569, at Geneva. The five parts relating to the Old Testament were published at Frankfurt between 1575 and 1579, in London in 1580, and in numerous later editions. The work was joint with Franciscus Junius (the elder), his son-in-law. This translation was favored by John Milton.^[3] It was used also by John Donne for his version of Lamentations.^[4]

Tremellius also translated John Calvin's Geneva Catechism into Hebrew (Paris, 1551), and wrote a "Chaldaic" and Syriac grammar (Paris, 1569).

See also

• Theodore Beza

References

1. Jump up ^ Nicholas Barker, 'The Perils of Publishing in the Sixteenth Century: Pietro Bizari and William Parry, Two Elizabethan Misfits', in Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (editors), England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp (1990), pp. 125-6.
2. Jump up ^ James Morison, A Practical Commentary on the Gospel According St. Matthew, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902), p. 581.
3. Jump up ^ William B. Hunter, John T. Shawcross (editors), Milton Encyclopedia (1981), p. 88.
4. Jump up ^ David L. Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English (1992), p. 433.

Further reading

• Kenneth Austin (2007), From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (c. 1510-1580)
• Dagmar Drüll, Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1386-1651, Berlin: Springer, 2002, pp. 532–533.
• W. Becker: Immanuel Tremellius, ein Proselytenleben im Zeitalter der Reformation, 1890

External links

• Source
• Erich Wenneker (1997). "Tremellius, Immanuel". In Bautz, Traugott. Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German) 12. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 444–448. ISBN 3-88309-068-9. 
• Literaturliste im Online-Katalog der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
• Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 11, pp. 504.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906.

9 October 1580 A.D. John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

9 October 1580 A.D.  John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformed Churchman, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

No author.  “1648 Biblia Sacra by Junius-Tremellius-Beza.” Historical Theoblogy. N.d. http://rester.us/HistoricalTheoBlogy/?p=67.  Accessed 17 Jul 2014.

 

1648 Biblia Sacra by Junius-Tremellius-Beza – Online for Free

Available now online via Google Books is this treasure of the Protestant church that was typically the standard Latin biblical text of the scholarly Reformed world from 1579 through 1764. An edition of the New Testament was published on its own as early as 1569. Thus this bible stands as a textual bookend for the period of Reformed orthodoxy and was quite influential in its own right. I do not have space to enumerate the multi-national usage of and esteem for this work. But perhaps I can give you a sense of its importance via its publishing history. The first edition by Tremellius and Junius was published in Frankfurt am Main in 1579. It was published in 6 different academic centers of Protestant Europe – London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Frankfurt, Hanover, and Zurich. Combined there were at least 30 different editions of this Bible. It underwent four recensions under Junius’ editorial eye before his death in 1602. After 1581, a shrewd London printer bundled the Tremellius-Junius Old and New Testament with Beza’s New Testament. In the early London editions the New Testament contains, in parallel columns, Tremellius translation of the New Testament from Syriac into Latin next to Beza’s translation from the Greek into Latin. This particular Amsterdam edition only contains the Beza New Testament with the Tremellius-Junius Old Testament.

Immanuel Tremellius 

Immanuel Tremellius (1510-1580) was the professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Strasbourg as well as the Regius professor of Old Testament at Cambridge (after Fagius, appointed under King Henry VI), and finally served in that capacity during the apex of Heidelberg University’s Reformed heyday from 1561 through 1568. Tremellius was an Italian Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism and then to the Reformation in short succession in 1540 and 1541. His expertise was in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin. He wrote grammars for Chaldee and Syriac. By the way he also translated Calvin’s Catechism into Hebrew (Paris: 1551).

Franciscus Junius 

Franciscus Junius was born in Bourges, and after a distinguished academic career at a young age turned down a staff position with the French Ambassador to Byzantium (by missing the departure of the Ambassador’s entourage!). At 16 entered the Geneva Academy in the early 1560s as one of Calvin’s students.  Upon Calvin’s death he made his way to Heidelberg. (Bypassing about 8 years of his life …) In 1571 Junius began work with Tremellius on the translation and by 1578, Junius had not only completed the translation work but also married Tremellius’ daughter. Junius also was a phenomenal linguist in his own right – rendering a translation of 1 John from Arabic into Latin at the old age of 28. He also was responsible for a 1580 Hebrew Grammar that was the fruit of his 8 year tenure translating the Old and New Testaments (I have honestly been searching quite adamantly for this grammar, as it is quite rare, and found a digital copy recently here - I almost fell out of my chair … no really). Junius was close friends with Ursinus (preached his funeral oration) and taught at Neustadt, Heidelberg, and Leiden. His correspondence is wide and broad in the spectrum of learned discourse and ranges the gamut of humanistic and philological scholars regardless of their stance towards the Reformation.

Further reading: 

• Tremellius entry in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchlexicon
• Tremellius entry at Wikipedia reproduces this from the Jewish Encyclopedia 
• Franciscus Junius entry from 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica
• see Haag La France Protestante entry for Francois Du Jon 
• Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique 

9 October 1580 A.D. John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformer, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

9 October 1580 A.D.  John Immanuel Tremellius Dies—Italian Reformer, Hebraist, Resident at Lambeth Palace, & Professor at Cambridge and Heidelberg Universities

No author. “Tremellius, John Immanuel.”  Jewish Encyclopedia.  N.d. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14495-tremellius-john-immanuel.  Accessed 17 Jul 2014.

TREMELLIUS, JOHN IMMANUEL:

Italian Hebraist; born at Ferrara 1510; died at Sedan Oct. 9, 1580. He was educated at the University of Padua. He was converted about 1540 to the Catholic faith through Cardinal Pole, but embraced Protestantism in the following year, and went to Strasburg to teach Hebrew. Owing to the wars of the Reformation in Germany he was compelled to seek asylum in England, where he resided at Lambeth Palace with Archbishop Cranmer in 1547. In 1549 he succeeded Paul Fagius as regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge. On the death of Edward VI. he revisited Germany, and, after some vicissitudes, became professor of Old Testament at Heidelberg (1561). He ultimately found refuge at the College of Sedan, where he died. His chief literary work was a Latin translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Syriac. The five parts relating to the Old Testament were published at Frankfort-on-the-Main between 1575 and 1579, in London in 1580, and in numerous later editions. Tremellius also translated into Hebrew Calvin's "Catechism" (Paris, 1551), and wrote a "Chaldaic" and Syriac grammar (Paris, 1569).

Bibliography:

• Dictionary of National Biography.