Marini, Marco

MARINI, MARCO. - Regular canon of the Congregation of the Most Holy Savior, a noted Hebraist, b. at Brescia around 1542-43, d. there in 1594. He was abbot of St. Agnes on the Via Nomentana (Rome). He refused various bishoprics. He was secretary for Arabic and Persian letters at the court of Venice (1568); at Rome, by order of Gregory XIII, he was inquisitor of the Jews and charged with purging the Talmud, printed at Basel by Froben in 1588 (without the treatise 'Abhidhah Zārāh).

Extremely versed in Greek, Arabic, Aramaic, Slavic and above all in 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 edition of the Targūmim of Jonathan (which he rediscovered), Onkelos and the Jerusalem Targum, and left three powerful works that are still highly relevant today: Hortus Eden, seu Grammatica linguae sanctae (quarto, Basel 1580, reprinted in Venice 1855 and 1593); Arca Noë seu thesaurus linguae sanctae novus (2 folio vols., Venice 1593), a most copious and learned handbook-dictionary-concordance that illustrates passages and words of the Hebrew text, especially against the Jews; Annotationes literales in Psalmos, completed at Rome and revised at Brescia by the author up to 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 utmost competence.

Bonaventura Mariani