RENANO, BEATO. — German scholar and editor, from a family originally from Rheinau (Lower Alsace), whose surname was Bild; born at Schlettstadt on 22 August 1485, died at Strasbourg on 20 July 1547.
He studied in Paris in 1503–1507, where J. Le Fèvre d’Étaples was his teacher of Aristotelian philosophy; he was in Strasbourg in 1509–10, in Basel after 1511, and in his native city after 1526, where he held no offices or dignities but devoted himself to works of philology and history. He was in contact with the most distinguished scholars and printers of his age, particularly with Erasmus, and, like him, initially greeted Luther’s reform with sympathy, especially regarding indulgences and auricular confession; but he distanced himself from it when he became aware of its revolutionary character. He edited the works of Erasmus (Basel edition, 1540) and of other humanists, as well as those of the Fathers of the Church (Gregory of Nyssa, Prudentius, Origen) and Latin classics (Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Seneca, Tacitus); noteworthy are the first editions of Velleius Paterculus (Basel 1520) and Tertullian (there, 1521). He published the first commentary on Tacitus’s Germania, then newly discovered, and in the Rerum Germantorum libri tres (there, 1531) produced the finest work of German humanism in the field of historical-critical research. His introduction to the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was discovered in England in 1932.