Immanuel Tremellius (Italian:Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio; 1510 – 9 October 1580) was an ItalianJewish convert to Christianity. He was known as a leadingHebraist andBibletranslator.
He was born atFerrara and educated at theUniversity of Padua. He was converted about 1540 to the Catholic faith throughCardinal Pole but embracedProtestantism in the following year, before going toStrasbourg to teach Hebrew.
Owing to theSchmalkaldic War in Germany, he was compelled to seek asylum in England, where he resided atLambeth Palace withArchbishop Cranmer in 1547. Two years later, he succeededPaul Fagius asRegius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge.
On the death ofEdward VI of England he returned to Germany in 1553. AtZweibrücken he was imprisoned as aCalvinist.[1] He became professor ofOld Testament at theUniversity of Heidelberg in 1561 and remained there until he was released from his post in 1577. He ultimately found refuge at theCollege of Sedan, where he died. According to Morison, he "when dying reversed his nation's decision, and exclaimed, Not Barabbas, but Jesus! (Vivat Christus, et pereat Barabbas!)."[2]
His chief literary work was a Latin translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Syriac. The New Testament translation, byTheodore Beza, appeared in 1569, atGeneva. The five parts relating to the Old Testament were published atFrankfurt between 1575 and 1579, in London in 1580, and in numerous later editions. The work was joint withFranciscus Junius (the elder), his son-in-law. Harris Fletcher remarks that there were two quite different versions of Tremellius available in the late 1500s:
The Junius-Tremellius Bible first appeared from 1575-79, and subsequently in two different major forms. One of these in 1585 was printed as a tall folio with copious marginal notes, which were for the greater part written by Tremellius. The folio editions contained, in addition to Tremellius' Latin Old Testament with this large amount of marginal notation, a complete Latin translation of the Apochrypha done by Junius, and two Latin translations of the New Testament, one being of the fragmentary Syriac version by Tremellius, and the other from the Greek by Beza. The other form in which this Bible appeared was printed, usually in quarto, without notes, with the Apochrypha, and after 1585 with only Beza's translation of the New Testament.[3]
The Tremellius translation was favored byJohn Milton,[4] "undoubtedly" the folio version, with Tremellius's marginal notes, according to Harris.[3] It was used also byJohn Donne for his version ofLamentations.[5] ArchbishopJames Ussher also used the Junius-Tremellius translation when compiling hisAnnals of the World.[6]
Tremellius also translatedJohn Calvin'sGeneva Catechism into Hebrew (Paris, 1551), and wrote a "Chaldaic" and Syriac grammar (Paris, 1569).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906).The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.{{cite encyclopedia}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)| People |  | ||||||||||||||
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