John Immanuel Tremellius

1510-1580. Italian Reformer and Semitic scholar. Born in Ferrara of Jewish parentage, he was educated at Padua and won to Christianity through Cardinal Pole in 1540. The following year, while Tremellius was teaching at Lucca, Peter Martyr Vermigli's influence led him to adopt Protestantism. He fled the Inquisition* (1542), journeying to Strasbourg, where he taught Hebrew in Johannes Sturm's school. In 1547, during the Smalcaldic War, he fled to England, and in 1549 became reader in Hebrew at Cambridge. At the accession of Mary Tudor he left England for the Continent, serving as tutor to the children of the duke of Zweibrücken (1555-59), as headmaster of the Hornbach gymnasium (1559-60), and professor of OT studies at Heidelberg (1561-77). He ended his career teaching Hebrew at Sedan, where he died. Tremellius is best known for his Latin translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (5 vols., 1575-79), long used as the most accurate Latin Bible. He also translated Calvin's Catechism into Hebrew and Greek (1551) and published Bucer's Ephesians Commentary from lectures he heard at Cambridge (1562), and an Aramaic and Syriac Grammar (1569).