Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio

Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio is thought to have been born in 1510 in Ferrara, then a relatively liberal, growing city for Jews arriving from persecutions and expulsions elsewhere in Europe. Very little is known about his early life, though Austin suggests he might have been educated under Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, the Ferrarese Jewish community's teacher and hazan. Biblical and rabbinic studies were integrated into the study of grammar and language, creating an early facility with Hebrew and broader rabbinic literature which would serve Tremellio his entire life. Farissol's critiques of the Vulgate, further, may have contributed to Tremellio's later focus on producing better-founded versions of the biblical text. (Austin 2007, p. 13) This was reinforced by the humanist emphasis of ad fontes, an emphasis which Luther and others carried into Protestant biblical understandings. Austin also notes that the writings of the Reformers were widely read in Ferrara, several (including Calvin) spent time there under the aegis of Renee of France, and that Savonarola (a Ferrarese by birth) continued to live in popular memory.

Historians are divided as to where Tremellio did his higher education - conventionally, the University of Padua was a logical place which at the time was more open to Jews; but Austin notes that the evidence for this is quite circumstantial, and that both Ferrara and Rome are possible alternatives. Tremellio certainly spent some time in Padua, in which 'The University of Padua, Pole's household, and the Benedictine monasteries of Santa Giustina in Padua and of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, formed a close nexus of reform-minded groups in northern Italy' (Austin 2002, p. 94). He converted to Catholicism, possibly after being introduced to the circle of Reginald Pole by Marcantonio Flaminio (though Carafa himself is noted to have been part of the group which drew him to Catholicism, and then ironically later drove him from Italy), about 1540. Here Tremellius came into close connection 'with the main components of the Beneficio' di Cristo. 'He may not necessarily have known Benedetto da Mantova, but he had undoubtedly encountered the particular brand of Benedictinism associated with the monks of Santa Giustina, through the lectures of the monk Marco, and also through [the fellow Hebraist] van Kampen and Chiari, both of whom had resided with Pole.' [Austin 2002, p. 94]

The following year, possibly at the recommendation of Cardinal Pole, Tremellio was appointed by Vermigli to teach Hebrew at his College based at the Basilica of San Frediano, in Lucca. As with many of the other canons and fellows of this College, who sat under Vermigli's preaching on the letters of St Paul and the Psalms, Tremellio embraced Protestantism in the following year. It does not appear that he was a member of the professed member of the Lateran Congregation while there, teaching rather as a lay humanist rather than as an ordained scholar. Austin (2002) argues that it is thus likely that Tremellio was in Lucca when the Pope and the Emperor met there to discuss (among other things) the challenges of the Reformation to the Church, and that it was 'unthinkable' that two old friends such as Alessandro Farnese (Pope Paul III) and Tremellio did not meet while they were both in the same city. With the reinstitution of the Roman Inquisition under the bull `Licet ab initio' promulgated by his former friend, Farnese, however, Lucca was not safe for long. Some time around the end of 1542, Tremellio followed Vermigli to Strasbourg, again to teach Hebrew, this time in the Academy established by Sturm in 1538.

A gifted linguist, this itinerant lifestyle meant that Tremellio rapidly added modern languages (his birth tongue of Italian, but also French, German, English) to his repertoire of ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldean). He had plenty of opportunity to practice in the multicultural city. At the Academy, he found himself in the midst of an international cohort of well known reformed teachers and intellectuals. Among these were Caspar Hedio, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Paul Fagius, Johann Marbach, the Frenchman Michael Delius, Christopher Kerlin, Paulo Lacizi, Christian Herlin, Ludwig Bebio, Kilian Vogler, Justus Velsius, Sebald Hawenreuter and Johann Sturm himself. As teaching was either unpaid or poorly paid, he was supported by such positions as a prebendary from St. Peter's, the Cathedral of Strasbourg. In October 1544, he was married to a widow of Metz, named Elizabeth. Austin argues for three children, at least one of which was a step child.

When attempts by Charles V to reintegrate the Protestant domains into the Catholic Church sparked the Schmalkaldic War in Germany (1546-1547), and resulted in short term Caroline dominance (until the second War in 1552), Tremellio was compelled (along with other Protestant teachers at Strasbourg) to seek asylum in England. There was a flurry of efforts by Viret, Calvin, Bucer and other leaders to find Tremellio a position. He travelled first to Switzerland, but with no position available there, in 1547 he accepted Thomas Cranmer's invitation to join other exiles (Vermigli and Ochino among them) at Lambeth Palace. Cranmer gathered numbers of continental reformers (including, from 1549, Martin Bucer himself) to assist in the protestantization of the Anglican Church. He arrived in England in 1548, and soon developed a circle of patrons (such as Matthew Parker and William Cecil) who assisted him in his settlement and career. Two years later, Tremellio succeeded another exile, German-born Paul Fagius, who had accompanied Bucer to Lambeth, as the third Regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge (1550–1553). Fagius died in November 1549, having only outlined his intended lectures on Isaiah: as he had in Strasbourg, Tremellio taught for no payment, until support was organized from the Church and the King. It was a position to which Tremellio was suited: as a 'double outsider' (an ethnic Jew who was considered by his own people as an apostate) he could stick with the text, and refuse to be engaged in broader public debate. To this he brought a rare mixture of ability and personal disposition. Austin notes: 'it would appear that Tremellius pursued a wilful policy to give as little away about himself as he could possibly manage' (Austin 2007, p. xv) The death and suffering of many of his contemporaries might be considered sufficient justification. Tremellius became close friends with Matthew Parker, the vice-chancellor of the university, and a new continental scholar, Antoine Chevallier, married his step-daughter from his wife's first marriage.

On the death of Edward VI of England, and the enthronement of Mary, Tremellio returned to Germany in 1553, making a living by tutoring. In 1560, he was instrumental in winning religious refugees liberties for the Protestants of Metz, as leader of a delegation to Catherine de Medici. At Zweibrücken, where he was tutor to the ducal family, he was imprisoned as a Calvinist. When Frederick III became Elector Palatine, and converted to the reformed faith, he replaced the teaching staff at Heidelberg with Calvinists. Among these were Zanchi and Tremellio, the latter of whom was made professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg in 1561. His work was not merely scholarly - he represented Frederick III in a number of political trips, and acted (with his colleagues at the Academy) as an advisor. The gathering of this group of high level, transnational Calvinist scholars was in one sense Frederick III's contribution to the cause of international Calvinism against Habsburg Catholic “tyranny.”

He remained there until he was released from his post in 1577, the year after Frederick died, by the new Lutheran ruler, Ludwig VI. These fifteen years were among the most productive and uninterrupted of Tremellio's scholarly life, seeing a flow of translations and publications (including of Bucer's Lectures on Ephesians, and various Syriac and Chaldean works), and Tremellio's involvement in such key ecclesial moments as the crafting of the Heidelberg Confession. His translation of Calvin's Geneva Catechism into Hebrew would be used by various Bible and missionary societies into the nineteenth century. When the University was closed for some time due to the plague in the 1560s, Tremellio returned to England as an envoy of the Elector Palatine, where he stayed with his friend from Cambridge days, Matthew Parker, then Archbishop of Canterbury, for about six months. In 1569, when Tremellio published his Chaldaean and Syriac Grammar, he dedicated it to his former host. After leaving Heidelberg, he spent some time in Neustadt (Thomas 2007) under Johann Casimir, then in Metz (Austin 2002), and then finally found refuge at the College of Sedan, which had been opened under the patronage of Henri La Tour d'Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne, and duke of Bouillon, for the training of the Huguenot nobility and ministers in France.

Amidst all of these travels, Tremellio's chief and most lasting literary work was a Latin translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Syriac-- produced with his colleague at Heidelberg, Franciscus Junius (the elder) -- often (mistakenly, Austin argues) described as Tremellio's son in law. As Austin notes, it was unusual for so much of an ouevre to continue to be produced in Latin, in a period when many scholars were turning to the vernacular. The project obviously has links to Fagius and Bucer's stay at Lambeth, where Cranmer employed them in the correction and improvement of the Biblical text. Tremellio was the logical person to take on the Old Testament on Fagius' death in 1549. This was, as Bruce Gordon has pointed out, a 'living book', intended by its editors and translators to continue to grow as scholarship and the sources improved with research. 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. These would go on to have a lasting impact on bible translation through the next several centuries, including upon the King James' version, and was the preferred bible used by authors such as John Milton and John Donne.

Tremellio died on 9 October 1580. According to Johann Grynaeus, he cried out 'Vivat Christus, et pereat Barabbas!,' an indicator of his love for Jesus and his consciousness of having chosen the difficult path of conversion. Tremellius has not been a widely-studied figure in European historiography, despite his scholarly contributions and standing. As Austin notes, many Italian protestant diasporic scholars were buffeted from country to country during the swings and roundabouts of the consolidation of Reform, counter-reform and reaction, rendering them not quite in the centre of any national historiography. An increasing scholarly appreciation of his work is part of a larger appreciation of the particular gifts which so many Italian writers, churchmen and thinkers gave to the Protestant world right at its roots in the first and second generations of the Reformation. Tremellio's moderate, thoughtful Calvinism, and great scholarly acumen, had a much greater impact than many have previously allowed. In Austin's words, 'not only does Tremellius serve as a helpful corrective for our understanding of religious writings of the period, but he also obliges us to re-evaluate Calvinism as a whole.' (Austin 2002, p. 310)

References

• Austin, Kenneth. (2007). From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (c. 1510-1580), Burlington & Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Austin, Kenneth. (2018). 'Immanuel Tremellius: from Italian Hebraist to International Migrant.' in Cornel Zwierlein and Vincenzo Lavenia (eds.), Fruits of Migration: Heterodox Italian Migrants and Central European Culture, 1550-1620. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.
• Austin, Kenneth. (2002), From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (1510-1580), PhD thesis, University of St Andrew's.
• Fletcher, Harris. (1927). "Milton's Use of Biblical Quotations". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 26.2, pp. 145–165.
• Gordon, F. Bruce. (2015). 'Creating a Reformed book of Knowledge: Immanuel Tremellius, Franciscus Junius and their Latin Bible 1580-1590', Chapter 5, in K. E. Spierling (ed.), Calvin and the Book: The Evolution of the Printed Word in Reformed Protestantism, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Thomas, Andrew. L. (2007). A House Divided: Wittelsbach Confessional Court Cultures in Bavaria, the Palatinate, and Bohemia, c.1550-1650, PhD Thesis, Purdue University.