Casiodoro de Reina

First translator of the Bible into Castellan Spanish.  Born in Montemolin (then actually under reign of Seville) in approximately 1520, and died in Frankfort in 1594.   With others, he abandoned the monastery Jeronimo de San Isidoro del Campo, near Seville, in 1557, to discover a Sevillian Protestant Community, fixing his community in Ginebra.  His desire of putting himself without injury to the Holy Office, differences with his new fellow religionists, the entanglement of Phillip II (that put spies near him and a price on his head) economic needs, the Spanish political in Flandes and the printing of the first complete Bible in the Castellan tongue from the originals.  They constantly obliged him to change his home.  So, we see it in Frankfort, London, Ambres, Bergerac, Castillo de Montargis, Basilea, and Estrasburg.

            As a translator, he is known for the Bible of the Bear (Basilea, 1569),  and the French translation of The Historial Confessions of Augustine (Ambres, 1582).  He was the author of The Declaration or Confession of Faith made for the Spanish Faithful, Fleeing from the Abuses of the Roman Church and the Cruelty of the Inquisition of Spain done to the church of the faithful being received of her (Frankfort, 1577); portions of commentaries of the Gospels of John and Matthew (part of which are in Latin in 1573, Frankfort) and Catechism (1580), published in Latin, French, and Dutch.  Also, writing the Statutes  for a society of help for the poor and persecuted, in Frankfort, that has survived to this day.

            In the Edict of Faith of the Inquisition of Seville, the 26^th of April of 1562, he was burned in effigy and represented in the Catalog of Books Prohibited by the Inquisition as a first class author. 

            When he died, he left his pastorship of the Lutheran Community of French Speakers in Frankfort to one of his sons, Marcos.  There he maintained his own portrait to the thought that announced “Casiodoro de Reina was born in Seville.