Felix Pratensis
Encyclopedia
Felix Pratensis (died at Rome in 1539) was a Sephardic
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...

 (specifically Italian) Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 scholar who embraced Roman Catholicism. He is known for his collaboration with the Flemish printer Daniel Bomberg
Daniel Bomberg
Daniel Bomberg was an early printer of Hebrew language books. A Christian, born in Antwerp, he was primarily active in Venice between 1516 and 1549....

 on the first printed Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 Biblia Rabbinica (Veneta) of 1517/8.

He received a good education and acquired three languages. In 1518, he embraced Christianity and affiliated himself with the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

. Having become an Augustinian friar, he devoted himself to proselytizing especially fellow Jews who had not embraced Christianity as he had. He displayed in his sermons great intolerance against his non-Messianic counterparts, earning for himself the sobriquet "the Jews' scourge."

Before his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Felix published a Latin translation of the Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

, entitled Psalterium ex Hebræo ad Verbum Translatum, Venice, 1515.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK