Francisco de Enzinas

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Francisco de Enzinas (1 November 1518? – 30 December 1552), also known by the

Family and education

Francisco de Enzinas was born in Burgos, Spain, probably on 1 November 1518. (Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs, v9 (1897), p462, n3.) He was one of ten children of the successful wool merchant Juan de Enzinas. The mater of his correspondence was his stepmother, Beatriz de Santa Cruz, whose family included the wealthy Low Countries merchant Jerónimo de Salamanca Santa Cruz and the churchman Alonso de Santa Cruz, treasurer of Burgos Cathedral.

Enzinas was sent to the

A brother, Diego de Enzinas, studied with him at the Collegium Trilingue and collaborated on a Spanish edition of the 1538 Catechism of John Calvin and the Freedom of the Christian Man by Martin Luther, printed at Antwerp in 1542. Diego was burned during the Roman Inquisition in 1547.^[1]

New Testament translation

In the summer of 1541, Enzinas went to Paris where he was present at the deathbed of his relative,

In Melanchthon's house, Enzinas finished a translation of the New Testament into Spanish.^[2] He took it to Antwerp to be printed by Steven Mierdman in 1543. The Spanish New Testament was dedicated to Emperor Charles V who also received the first printed volume during a personal interview with Enzinas in Brussels.^[2] Emperor Charles V passed the book on to his confessor Pedro de Soto, who then ordered Enzinas arrest.^[2] An attempt to confiscate the printed copies of the New Testament was only partly successful.

Enzinas escaped from the Vrunte prison in Brussels in February 1545. He made his way back to Wittenberg and wrote an account of his adventures, titled De statu Belgico et religione Hispanica. It is better known as his Mémoires. The same year in Basel, he edited and published an account of the murder of his friend and fellow Protestant Juan Díaz, the Historia vera, which became a best seller in the overheated religious atmosphere of the day.

Enzinas's New Testament had a marked influence on subsequent translations, of which the most important was the

Marriage, England

In March 1548, Enzinas married fellow religious exile

Enzinas left his wife and newborn daughter in England at the end of 1549 to print Spanish translations of Lucian, Livy, and Plutarch. The reasons are not difficult to understand: his primary interest was publishing Spanish literature, and he knew and trusted the Continental printers more than any in England. In June 1550 his family joined him in Strasbourg. There he built what was effectively a small Spanish publishing house, which for the next two and a half years produced editions of classical works and Old Testament books in Spanish. A second daughter was born in 1551.

Enzinas came close to publishing his major life project, a complete Bible translation, but died before seeing it through the press. Carlos Gilly has demonstrated, from the Old Testament portions issued at Strasbourg, that Enzinas translated from the Latin version of

Enzinas died on 30 December 1552, a victim of plague at Strasbourg; Margaret Elter died about 1 February 1553. Their two daughters, Margarita and Beatriz, became wards of the city and were the objects of an extended custody battle with Beatriz de Santa Cruz. As late as 1566 she was still claiming guardianship over the girls, though they were by then living in Flanders.

Posthumous editions

Enzinas's Mémoires were published posthumously in French translation (Ste. Marie aux Mines, 1558), probably through the efforts of Margaret Elter's relatives in Strasbourg. They were translated into German only a hundred years ago, and have been rendered, in the past half century, into modern French, Spanish, and Dutch.

Enzinas's collected letters appeared in 1995, and include correspondence with Philip Melanchthon, Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, and other religious figures, students, rulers, and printers of the period.

References