Christian Hebraists - in The Renaissance

In The Renaissance

What was known of Jewish literature came to the scholastics entirely through translations, as can be seen in the works of Albertus Magnus.

That the Venerable Bede (673-735) knew anything of Hebrew may be doubted, despite the testimony of Hody in his De Bibliorum Textibus (1705). The same may be said of Alcuin (b. 735); but the "Magister Andreas, natione Anglus" mentioned by Roger Bacon, and identified by S. R. Hirsch with an Augustinian monk who lived about 1150, must at least have been able to read the Bible in the Hebrew original. Bacon himself (b. c. 1210) was "a tolerable Hebrew scholar."

It was not, however, until the end of the 15th century that the Renaissance and the Reformation, while awakening a new interest in the classics, brought about a return to the original text of Scripture and an attempt to understand the later literature of the Jews. Hieronymus Buclidius, the friend of Erasmus, gave more than 20,000 francs to establish a Hebrew chair at Louvain; as the chair of Hebrew at the University of Paris, Francis offered the chair to Elijah Levita, the friend of Cardinal Ægidius of Viterbo, who declined to accept it. Cardinal Grimani and other dignitaries, both of the state and of the Church, studied Hebrew and the Cabala with Jewish teachers; even the warrior Guido Rangoni attempted the Hebrew language with the aid of Jacob Mantino (1526). Pico de la Mirandola (d. 1494) was the first to collect Hebrew manuscripts, and Reuchlin was the first to write a modern grammar of the Hebrew language. But interest still centered wholly around the Bible and the expository literature immediately connected therewith.

During the whole of the 16th century it was Hebrew grammar and Jewish exegesis that claimed attention. Christian scholars were not ashamed to be the students of Jewish teachers. In fact, one of the most noted Hebraists of this period was Immanuel Tremellius (1510-1580), born Jewish and converted first to Catholicism and soon thereafter became a Calvinist, producing the main Reformed translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin (he also translated the New Testament from the Syriac into Latin). Sebastian Münster (d. 1552) was known as a grammarian; Pellicanus (d. 1556) and Pagninius (d. 1541), as lexicographers; Daniel Bomberg (d. 1549), as a printer of Hebrew books. Arius Montanus (d. 1598) edited the Masorah and the Travels of Benjamin of Tudela. Widmanstadt (1523), living in a colony of Spanish Jewish refugees in Naples, studied Hebrew with David ibn Ya'ya and Baruch of Benevento, and collected the Hebrew manuscripts which formed the basis of the Hebrew division of the Royal Library at Munich. Vatablé (d. 1547) made use of Rashi's commentary. Conrad Gesner (d. 1565) was the first Christian to compile a catalogue of Hebrew books; Jacob Christmann (d. 1613) busied himself with the Jewish calendar, and Drusius (d. 1616) with the ethical writings of the Jews.