MARINI, MARCO. - Regular canon of the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, renowned Hebraist, b. at Brescia about 1542–43, d. there in 1594. He was abbot of S. Agnese on the Via Nomentana (Rome). He refused various bishoprics. He was secretary for Arabic and Persian letters at the court of Venice (1568); in Rome, by order of Gregory XIII, inquisitor of the Jews and charged with expurgating the Talmud, printed at Basle by Frobenius in 1588 (without the treatise 'Abhidhah Zārāh).
Extremely proficient in Greek, Arabic, Aramaic, Slavonic, and especially Hebrew (he was called the “Priscian” of the Hebrew language), in which he wrote the preface to Steuco’s Enarrationes in Jobum; he edited the Targūmim of Ionathan (rediscovered by him), Onkelos, and the Jerusalem Targum, and left three substantial works still of great relevance today: Hortus Eden, seu Grammatica linguae sanctae (4to, Basle 1580, reprinted at Venice in 1855 and 1593); Arca Noë seu thesaurus linguae sanctae novus (2 vols. folio, Venice 1593), a most copious and learned handbook-dictionary-concordance illustrating passages and terms of the Hebrew text, especially in opposition to the Jews; Annotationes literales in Psalmos, completed in Rome and revised at Brescia by the author as far as Psalm 28, and published and revised by G. L. Mingarelli (2 vols., Bologna 1748–50). The work is based on the Hebrew text with the highest competence.