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.



T. J.