Renano, Blessed

RENANO, Blessed. - German scholar and editor, from a family originally from Rheinau (Lower Alsace) whose surname was Bild, b. at Schlettstadt on 22 Aug. 1485, d. at Strasbourg on 20 July 1547.

He studied in Paris in 1503-1507, where he had as his teacher of Aristotelian philosophy J. Le Fèvre d'Étaples; 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 work in philology and history. He was in contact with the most illustrious scholars and printers of his age, particularly with Erasmus, and like him at first greeted Luther's reform with sympathy, especially as regards indulgences and auricular confession; but he turned away from it when he perceived its revolutionary character. He edited the editions of Erasmus (Basel ed. 1540) and of other humanists, as well as of Church Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Prudentius, Origen) and of Latin classics (Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Seneca, Tacitus); notable are the editio princeps of Velleius Paterculus (Basel 1520) and of Tertullian (ibid. 1521). He published the first commentary on Tacitus's Germania, then recently discovered, and in the Rerum Germanorum libri tres (ibid. 1531) he produced the best 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.

Pio Paschini