PAGNINI, SANTI (SANTE). - A distinguished Orientalist and exegete, who was the first translator of the Bible from the original texts after St. Jerome, b. at Lucca on 18 Oct. 1470, d. at Lyon on 24 Aug. 1536. In 1487 he took the Dominican habit in the convent of St. Dominic at Fiesole, devoting himself early and with ardour to the study of Oriental languages, promoted by Savonarola.
Having mastered Hebrew, he worked tenaciously on a new translation of the Bible, which was published, but without the commentaries, at Lyon in 1528. Although too literal, it was well received and was repeatedly printed, even in the most famous polyglot Bibles, alongside the Hebrew text. In 1520, under the protection of Leo X, P. began in Rome, where he was teaching, the edition of a Psalterium tetraglottum, with commentaries of the Fathers and the rabbis, which was interrupted for lack of means at psalm 28 (29): only 2 copies of it survive. There followed the Enchiridion Chaldacum (Rome 1523), an exposition of Talmudic terms. Having gone to Lyon, P. continued his scholarly activity by publishing in that city, in 1525, a Greek grammar (Isagogae ad linguam Graecam capessendum); in 1526 a Hebrew grammar (Hebraicae institutiones), which met with greater success; in 1529 the weighty Hebrew dictionary (Thesaurus linguae sanctae), universally esteemed (the admiration of W. Gesenius is well known: Journal des savants, 1844, p. 609); and in 1536, on the eve of his death, a kind of biblical hermeneutics (Isagogae ad S. Literas et ad mysticos S. Script. sensus). Other works, among them a commentary on the whole Bible, remained unpublished. P.'s reserved attitude toward the Vulgate was often exploited by the Protestants, who, reprinting P.'s works, inserted their own errors into them, bringing about their condemnation by the Church.
Bibliography3 works
Timoteo M. Centi