LYRA, NICHOLAS DE, or, when Latinized, LYRANUS. This celebrated commentator and fore runner of the Reformation, was born about 127o, of Jewish parents, at Lyre, a small town in Nor mandy, in the diocese of Eurecca, from which lie took his surname. Having embraced Christianity when young, lie entered the order of the Francis cans at Verneuil in 1291, whence he was sent to the Franciscan convent at Paris to complete his studies. Here he applied himself with great dili gence and success to his studies, was admitted to the degree of Doctor, and became a most dis• tinguished lecturer on the Bible. His great learning, refined taste, and eminent worth, raised him to the principal offices of his order, and secured him the friendship of the most illustrious persons of his age. So highly was he esteemed by Queen Jane, Countess of Burgundy, and the wife of Philip V., called the Long, that she appointed him one of her executors in 1325. He died at Paris October 23, 134o. He wrote (i) a treatise in de fence of Christianity, and against Judaism, entitled Tractatus fratris Nicolai de Lyra a'e Messia efusque adventu, una cunt responsione ace yudaorunz arsu menta quatuordecim contra veritatem Evans;eliorunt, which he finished in 13o9, and is directed against some Rabbis who made use of the N. 1'. to assail Christianity. It is generally appended to his commentary, and is also given in the polemical work entitled the Hebrawmastix of Hieronymus de Sancta-fide, Frankfort 16o2, p. 148, ff. (2.) Pos. tillce perpetme in universa Biblia, printed at first at Rome 1471-72, 5 vols. folio. It is this work which has immortalised De Lyra, and conferred upon its author the title of Doctor planus et utilis. The great merit of this commentary consists in its em bodying the sober-spirited and ingenious explana tions of Rashi, whose mode of interpretation he regarded as his model, as he frankly states, Simili ter intena'o non solum dictadoctorum Catholicorum,sed et lam Hebra'orunt maxime Rabbi Salomonls, qui inter doctores ilebrecos locutits est rationalibus, aa' declara tionent senszts literalis inchicere.' De Lyra even adopts the well-known Jewish four modes of inter pretation denominated OT1D mystical ; V11-1, allegorical ; 1*1, spiritual ; LVt, literal, which he thus expresses in verses in the same pro logue (i. e., the first), from which the former
quotation is made.
Litera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Months quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.
He gives, however, the preference to the literal sense. All of them,' says he in the second pro logue, 'presuppose the literal sense as the founda tion. As a building declining from the foundation is likely to fall, so the mystic exposition which deviates from the literal sense must be reckoned unbecoming and unsuitable.' Even in the interpre tation of the N. T., where Rashi failed him, acquaintance with the Rabbinical writings and Jewish antiquities enabled him to illustrate largely allusion to the manners and customs of the Hebrews. How much Luther and the Reformation were in debted to De Lyra, may be seen from a compari son of the respective commentaries, and from the couplet of the Reformer's enemies.
Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutlierus non saltasset.
That De Lyra was of Jewish extraction, is, among others, most emphatically declared by Clajim Ibn Musa, who composed, in 1456, a refutation of his polemical treatise, entitled rin)n) pn--en The Book of the Shield and the Spears, in which he says, ct61p,]) m+r; nnnsn commn nnvn nnn, /r6 +limn n+-nri,n vntn virt +-rs.n anTrl ann),...v. De Lyra's statement that he had little intercourse with the Jews, at the end of his polemical treatise, and his modest plea in the prologue to his commentary for indulgence, because,' he says, I am not so well skilled in the Hebrew or Latin lang,uage as to prevent me from failing in many particulars,' which are urged by Graetz and others against his Jewish origin, must be rejected in the face of the ancient testimonies to the contrary. For the different editions of De Lyra's works, and translation into French and German, comp. Grmsse, Tresor de Livres rares et precieux, s.v. See also Davidson, Sacrea' Hermeneutics, Edin 1843, p. 175, etc. ; Graetz, Geschichte der .71tden, vol. vii., Leipzig 1863, pp. 35o, 513.--C. D. G.