ARIAS MONTANO, BENITO. - Spanish Orientalist, exegete, and humanist, born in 1527 at Fregenal de la Sierra, died at Seville on 6 July 1598. Ordained a priest around 1555, he made his religious profession in 1560 among the Knights of Santiago. From May 1562 he was at the Council of Trent as theologian to his confrere Martín Pérez de Ayala, bishop of Segovia; he returned at the beginning of 1564 to his austere hermitage at Peña de Alájar (now Peña de A. M.), near Seville. He combined rare virtue with a truly prodigious capacity for work and learning, so much so that posterity regarded him as a magician. At the king’s wish he founded the library of the Escorial (1566), which he continued to enrich with manuscripts procured from every quarter, finally bequeathing to it his rich collection of Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, and Greek manuscripts.
His most extensive work is the edition of the Bible known as the Polyglotta regia, or Antwerp Bible, which he prepared in Antwerp between 1568 and 1572 at the behest of Philip II and published with the printer Christophe Plantin from 1569 to 1573 in eight volumes: *Biblia sacra, hebraica, chaldaica, graece et latine, Philippi II Regis Catholici pietate et studio ad Sacrosanctae Ecclesiae usum, cura et studio B.A.M.*
The first five volumes contain the sacred text in four languages (in the fifth, with the New Testament, Syriac is added); it is essentially an improved and completed version of the Complutensian Polyglot. The last three volumes are entirely new. Volume VI contains grammars and lexicons of Greek, Syriac (by A. Maes), Chaldean (by Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie), and Hebrew (by S. Pagnini). Volume VII provides the critical apparatus: a version (a reworking of that by S. Pagnini) of the Hebrew Old Testament, a critical edition of the Greek New Testament with the Vulgate, and a new translation by A., all of which were often reprinted separately. Volume VIII includes A.’s treatise on Hebrew idioms in the Old Testament and nine of his historical-archaeological treatises on the Old Testament (published separately: *Antiquitatum iudaicarum* II, IX, Leiden 1593, and among the *Critici sacri*, London 1660), which earned him the title of “Father of Biblical Archaeology.”
This learned work aroused suspicion in Rome because of A.’s excessive reliance on Talmudic and rabbinic influences; moreover, some cardinals feared that the authority of the Vulgate was being threatened. Traveling to Rome, A. obtained from Gregory XIII a papal brief of privilege (23 Aug. 1572). He was urged to remain in Rome, but was ordered by the king to return to Antwerp. He reappeared in Rome in 1575 to defend himself against accusations (Jewish tendencies and heresy) brought by León de Castro before the Spanish Inquisition; A. was acquitted, but the learned Jesuit Mariana, in his censorial verdict (1579), while acknowledging his orthodoxy, denied the scientific value of the Polyglot.
Chaplain and highly trusted advisor to Philip II, to whom he wrote freely from Antwerp (where he lived from 1568 to 1576), he directed the religious policy of the Low Countries. Under A.’s guidance, the severe *Index expurgatorius* was drawn up and promulgated by the Duke of Alba (1571). He oversaw the editions of the Breviary and Missal for Spain (Antwerp, Plantin, 1569–71). In 1576 he was recalled to Spain and settled at the Escorial as librarian. Through a secret mission in 1578, he prepared the annexation of Portugal to Spain (1580). He then returned, refusing the episcopate offered him by the king, to his hermitage at Peña. He took part, with great honor, in the Council of Toledo (1582–83), which promulgated the decrees of Trent. From 1584, renouncing his royal chaplaincy, he lived among his fellow Knights of Santiago.
More a philologist and critic than a theologian, A., master of Semitic (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic), classical, and modern languages, concerned himself solely with the literal sense, intending thereby to produce an apologetic work against the Protestants. Of his projected commentary on the entire Bible, he was able to complete only the New Testament and a few books of the Old Testament (published by Plantin, Antwerp): the Twelve Minor Prophets (1571), the Gospels and Acts (1575), the Epistles of the Apostles and Revelation (1588), Joshua (1583), Judges (1592), Isaiah (1599), and the first thirty-one Psalms of David (1605). Of the longed-for *Opus Magnum* of biblical synthesis, he published only: *Liber generationis et regenerationis Adam* (1593), on biblical theology, and *Naturae historia prima* (1601), on the sciences in the Bible. He was the first to translate into Latin (1575) from Hebrew the itinerary (*Massai’6*) of Benjamin of Tudela from Spain to Baghdad (between 1160 and 1173), passing through Palestine.
A.’s scientific activity should not make us forget his fine ascetical manual inspired by the life of Christ and the apostles (*Dictatum christianum sive communes et aptae discipulorum Christi omnium partes*, Antwerp 1575), nor his numerous Latin poems and hymns (as early as 1552 A. was solemnly crowned poet at Alcalá), almost all of a religious nature, which reveal his humanist aim, including *Humanae salutis monumenta* (Antwerp 1571) and *Hymni et saecula* (1593), his masterpiece. His output in Castilian was limited; yet his *Paráfrasis sobre el Cantar de los Cantares* has been compared to the analogous poem of St. John of the Cross.
In his honor, the Spanish government founded in Madrid in 1940 the *Instituto A. M. de Estudios Hebraicos y Oriente Próximo*.