Cassiodoro de Reina

Casiodoro de Reina (Montemolín, Badajoz, c. 1520-Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, March 15, 1594) was a Spanish Hieronymite religious convert to Protestantism, famous for performing the well-known Spanish translation of the Bible called the Bible of the Bear.

Biography

Casiodoro de Reina entered the Hieronymite Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo de Santiponce (Seville) as a monk. He soon had contacts with Lutheranism and became a supporter of the Reformation, being persecuted by the Inquisition, in part for the clandestine distribution of Juan Pérez de Pineda's translation of the New Testament. When the repression was unleashed, he preferred to leave the monastery and flee with his trusted friends to Geneva in 1557, among whom Cipriano de Valera accompanied him.

However, what he saw in Geneva was not to his liking: Michael Servetus had been executed in 1553, and the treatment of dissidents was highly controversial. Reina was opposed to the execution of real or alleged heretics, considering it an affront to the testimony of Jesus. He secretly translated Sebastian Castellion's book 'On Heretics', De haereticis, an sint persequendi, which condemns executions for reasons of conscience and documents Christianity's original rejection of such practice.

Although Cassiodoro de Reina was firmly a Trinitarian and, therefore, did not share the Unitarian beliefs, for which Servetus was burned, he could not accept that someone be executed for their beliefs. He came into contradiction with John Calvin and his prevailing rigidity made him say that "Geneva has become a new Rome", so he decided to go to Frankfurt, the city of birth of the wife of Queen. He argued, contrary to mainstream opinion, that pacifist Anabaptists should be considered "as brothers."

Meanwhile, the Catholic Inquisition carried out in Seville in April 1562 an "Auto de fe" in which an effigy of Cassiodoro de Reina was burned. His works were included in the so-called & # 34; Index of Forbidden Books & # 34; (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) and was declared heresiarch; that is, chief of heretics.

In England, where Queen Elizabeth I granted him permission to preach to persecuted Spaniards, he was ordained in 1562 as Church of England pastor at St. Mary's in Hargs. There he served as Pastor of a Calvinist congregation and simultaneously began to translate the Bible into Spanish, the first to be done in that language. It should be noted that the Polyglot Bible, printed between 1514 and 1517 in Alcalá de Henares, only contained the Latin texts together with their original languages: Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. His closest associate, Gaspar Zapata, Reina's assistant for Bible translation, led the French-speaking Calvinist community to harshly criticize Reina's translation of the Bible, even going so far as to accuse him of sodomy in the extreme. For this reason he had to flee to Antwerp in January 1564, experiencing enormous financial difficulties in order to finish his translation of the Bible.

He also wrote the first major book against the Inquisition, entitled Some Arts of the Spanish Holy Inquisition, published in Heidelberg in 1567 under the pseudonym Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus. The work was published in Latin, but was immediately translated into English, Dutch, French and German.

Bear Bible, Basel, 1569.

Finally, in 1567 he went to Basel to continue the Bible project, having already translated the Old Testament. The first contract for an edition of 1,100 copies was signed in the summer of 1567 with the famous publisher Oporino. Unfortunately for Reina, in June 1568 Oporino died and the Bible project was ruined. The 400 Florins for the production of the Bible collected in Frankfurt could not be recovered.

To add insult to injury, Reina's Spanish enemies sought to reprint Juan Pérez de Pineda's New Testament in France with all the notes from the French Geneva Bible and for this they demanded the money donated for Reina's Bible. This conflict was put to an end by the French ambassador from Ávila, who, being aware of the project, had the printer and all the booklets already printed stopped, as well as the copy of the New Testament of 1556, with the annotations written for the new edition; which was requisitioned and sent to Felipe II.

After the above, Reina entrusted the publication of his translation of the Bible, to Thomas Guarin. The logo of this editorial captivated Reina, for which she decided to put it on the cover of the edition. For this reason, this Spanish version was known as The Bear Bible, and it was finally published in Basel, in 1569. The cost of the edition was 300 guilders.

Christian leaders and the municipal council of that city supported the work with all their might and, as a token of gratitude, Casiodoro de Reina dedicated a copy to the library of the University of Basel, which is still preserved.

2600 copies of this first edition were printed, which is the figure given by Cipriano de Valera in his introduction to the Biblia del Cántaro; final revision of the Queen's Bible. Despite the obstacles to its sale, in 1596 it had already been completely sold out.

This work was the first Christian Bible printed entirely in Spanish. Today it is recognized as a valuable contribution to Spanish literature. The Cipriano de Valera Bible, published in 1602, is actually a corrected edition of Reina's translation, as recognized in the current versions, called Reina-Valera. However, these modern versions suppress the deuterocanonical books (by action of the London Bible Societies), translated by Reina and placed as appendices in the Valera edition, in the manner of Luther's Bible. It had the III book of Esdras, IV of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. Such actions were to try to comply with the rules of the Council of Trent, in relation to the sacred scriptures, but they failed.

Casiodoro de Reina lived in Antwerp until 1585, the year in which the troops of the Spanish King Philip II seized the city. He then returned to Frankfurt, where he had been granted citizenship in 1573. He supported himself eight years with a silk trade he established. Already being over 70 years old, he was elected assistant pastor in 1593. He was able to exercise his ministry for eight months, since he died in said city on March 15, 1594.

When he died, he was succeeded as pastor of the French-speaking Lutheran community in Frankfurt by one of his sons, Marcos. There an oil portrait of him is preserved in the Dutch orphanage and an engraving in the meeting room of the evangelical ministers of that city, where he was highly respected, which reads as follows: "Casiodoro de Reina, born in Seville.... 4;

In honor of his legacy, a monument was inaugurated in the town of Santiponce on October 29, 2020, the year of the five hundredth anniversary of his birth: “To Cassiodoro de Reina and translators of the Bible into Spanish. For tolerance and freedom. Santiponce, October 2020.”

Works

In addition to the translation of the Bible and other translations, the following works are Reina's originals:

• Confession of Christian Faith, made by certain Spanish faithful, who, fleeing the abuses of the Roman Church and the cruelty of the Inquisition of Spain, dexed their homeland, to be received from the Church of the faithful, by brothers in Christ 1559
• Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae artes aliquot detectae (Some arts of the Holy Spanish Inquisition) 1567
• Comments to the Gospels of John and Matthew, published in Latin in Frankfurt 1573
• Catechism 1580, published in Latin, French and Dutch.
• Statutes for the society of help to the poor and persecuted, in Frankfurt.