Casiodoro de Reina or de Reyna ( 1520 – 15 March 1594) was a Spanish

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

who (perhaps with several others) translated the Bible into Spanish.

Early life

Reina was born about 1520 in Montemolín in the

Province of Badajoz The province of Badajoz () is a province of western Spain located in the autonomous community of Extremadura. It was formed in 1833. It is bordered by the provinces of Cáceres in the north, Toledo, Ciudad Real in the east, Córdoba in the s ...

. Hermann Dechent
''Reina.''
In: ''

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB, german: Universal German Biography) is one of the most important and comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language. It was published by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Ac ...

'' (ADB). Band 27, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, S. 720–723. (in German) From his youth onward, he studied the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

. In 1557, he was a monk of the

Hieronymite The Hieronymites, also formally known as the Order of Saint Jerome ( la, Ordo Sancti Hieronymi; abbreviated OSH), is a Catholic cloistered religious order and a common name for several congregations of hermit monks living according to the Rule o ...

Monastery of St. Isidore of the Fields, outside

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Penins ...

( ''Monasterio Jerónimo de San Isidoro del Campo de Sevilla''). Around then, he had contact with

Lutheranism Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

and he became an adherent of the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

. He fled with about a dozen other monks when they came under suspicion by the

Spanish Inquisition The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...

for Protestant tendencies to Geneva But he was not comfortable with the atmosphere and the doctrinaire rigidity around

John Calvin John Calvin (; frm, Jehan Cauvin; french: link=no, Jean Calvin ; 10 July 150927 May 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system ...

. In 1558, Reina declared that Geneva had become "a new Rome" and left. Reina travelled in 1559 to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, where he served as a

pastor A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...

to Spanish Protestant refugees. However King

Philip II of Spain Philip II) in Spain, while in Portugal and his Italian kingdoms he ruled as Philip I ( pt, Filipe I). (21 May 152713 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent ( es, Felipe el Prudente), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from ...

was exerting pressure for his extradition.

In exile on the Continent

In the late 1550s he was suspected by the Spanish inquisitors in

to have been the one who converted the monks of San Isidro to Lutheranism. in April 1562, the Inquisition made an ''

auto-da-fé An ''auto-da-fé'' ( ; from Portuguese , meaning 'act of faith'; es, auto de fe ) was the ritual of public penance carried out between the 15th and 19th centuries of condemned heretics and apostates imposed by the Spanish, Portuguese, or Mexi ...

'' in which an

effigy An effigy is an often life-size sculptural representation of a specific person, or a prototypical figure. The term is mostly used for the makeshift dummies used for symbolic punishment in political protests and for the figures burned in certai ...

of him was burned. The works of Reina and his colleagues were placed in the Index of prohibited books and he was declared a "heresiarch" (leader of

heretic Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important relig ...

s). About 1563 Reina went on to

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, where he became associated with the authors of the

Polyglot Bible A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translat ...

. In April 1564 he went to

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, where he settled with his family. Reina wrote the first great book against the Inquisition: ''Sanctae Inquisitionis hispanicae artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae'' ("Some arts of Holy Inquisition"). This work was printed in 1567 in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...

under the pseudonym: ''Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus''. He secretly translated the work of the critic of Calvin, Sebastian Castellion, ''De haereticis, an sint persequendi'' ("Concerning heretics, whether they should be Persecuted"), that condemned executions "for reasons of conscience" and documented the original Christian rejection of the practice.

Biblical translation

While in exile, variously in London, Antwerp, Frankfurt,

Orléans Orléans (;"Orleans"
(US) and Bergerac, funded by various sources (such as Juan Pérez de Pineda) Reina began translating the Bible into Spanish by using a number of works as source texts. For the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

, the work appears to have made extensive use of the

Ferrara Bible The Ferrara Bible was a 1553 publication of the Ladino version of the Tanakh used by Sephardi Jews. It was paid for and made by Yom-Tob ben Levi Athias (the Portuguese Marrano known before his return to Judaism as ''Alvaro de Vargas'',In a num ...

in Ladino, with comparisons to the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...

and the

Vetus Latina ''Vetus Latina'' ("Old Latin" in Latin), also known as ''Vetus Itala'' ("Old Italian"), ''Itala'' ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum \mathfrak, is the collective name given to the Latin translations of biblical texts (bot ...

. The

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

derives from the

Textus Receptus ''Textus Receptus'' (Latin: "received text") refers to all printed editions of the Greek New Testament from Erasmus's ''Novum Instrumentum omne'' (1516) to the 1633 Elzevir edition. It was the most commonly used text type for Protestant deno ...

Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...

, with comparisons to the Vetus Latina and

Syriac manuscripts Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

. For the New Testament, he had great aid from the translations of Francisco de Enzinas and Juan Pérez de Pineda. Reina was granted citizenship by Frankfurt on 16 August 1571. He worked as a silk trader to make money for his family. In 1574, he bought the library of

Johannes Oporinus Johannes Oporinus (also Johannes Oporin; Latinised from the original German name: ''Johannes Herbster'' or ''Hans Herbst'') (25 January 1507 – 7 July 1568) was a humanist printer in Basel. Life Johannes Oporinus, the son of the painter Hans ...

at an auction in Basel who had died in July 1568. With Oporinus he unsuccessfully attempted to publish the first Bible in the Spanish language before he died for which he advanced 400

guilders Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' " gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman E ...

. It is speculated that Reina's Bible, published in Switzerland in 1569, which became the basis of the

Reina-Valera The Reina–Valera is a Spanish translation of the Bible originally published in 1602 untilAnon. ''¡Refrescante y más brillante que nunca!'' Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas (1995) p.9 United Bible Societies in 1909 revised the earlier translation pr ...

Bible, was a composite work of the expatriate Isidorean community, done by several different hands, with Reina the first among them. Step by step, he became a true member of the Lutherans. Around 1580, he published a

Catechism A catechism (; from grc, κατηχέω, "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adul ...

, in the sense of Luther's Catechism, in Latin, French and Dutch.

Death

Reina died in 1594 in Frankfurt.

Works

Beside his Spanish Bible translation he published other works:''Inquiries with the: Karlsruher Virtuellen Katalog''
/ref> *''Confessión de Fe cristiana (hecha por ciertos fieles españoles, los cuales, huyendo los abusos de la Iglesia Romana y la crueldad de la Inquisición de España, dexaron su patria, para ser recibidos de la Iglesia de los fieles, por hermanos en Christ)''. London, ca. 1560 - Reprint: ''Confessión de fe Christiana. The Spanish Protestant Confession of Faith''. Exeter, 1988, edited by A. Gordon Kinder *''Sanctae Inquisitionis hispanicae artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae''. Heidelberg, 1567, under the pseudonym: ''Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus''; the Spanish title: ''Algunas artes de la Santa Inquisición española''; (in English: ''Some arts of Holy Inquisition'') *'' La Biblia que es los Sacros libros del Vieio y Nuevo Testamento ... Transladada en Espanol''. Basel, 1569 *''Evangelium Ioannis''. Frankfurt am Main, 1573; published in Latin; in the Spanish title: ''Comentarios a los Evangelios de Juan y Mateo'' *''Expositio primae partis capitis quarti Matthaei''. Frankfurt am Main, 1573; Dutch translation by Florentius de Bruin, Dordrecht, 1690; published in Latin; in the Spanish title: ''Comentarios a los Evangelios de Juan y Mateo'' *Sixtus Senensis, ed.: ''Bibliotheca sancta à F. Sixto Senensi ex praecipuis catholicae ecclesiae authoribus collecta''. Frankfurt am Main, 1575 *''Confessio in articulo de coena''. Antwerpen, 1579 *''Catechismus, Hoc est: Brevis instructio de praecipuis capitibus christianae doctrinae, per quaestiones & responsiones, pro Ecclesia Antwerpiensi quae Confessionem Augustanam profitetur''. Antwerpen, ca. 1580; published in Latin, French and Dutch; the Spanish title: Catecismo *''Estatutos para la sociedad de ayuda a los pobres y perseguidos'', in Frankfurt. *''Exposión de la primera parte del capitulo cuarto de San Mateo sobre las tentaciones de Cristo'', edited by Carlos López Lozano. Madrid, 1988

Notes

References

*Kinder, A. Gordon. 1975: ''Casiodoro de Reina: Spanish Reformer of the Sixteenth Century''. Tamesis, London. * *

External links

Biography of Casiodoro de Reina in the Center for Reformation Studies (Spanish)
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Reina, Casiodoro de 1520s births 1594 deaths People from Tentudía Hieronymites Spanish Lutheran clergy 16th-century Lutheran clergy Converts to Lutheranism from Roman Catholicism People excommunicated by the Catholic Church Spanish Christian theologians Translators of the Bible into Spanish Writers from Extremadura Spanish emigrants to the Kingdom of England Spanish emigrants to Germany People with acquired German citizenship 16th-century Protestant theologians Protestant Reformers Spanish evangelicals