Nicholas Tacitus Zegers


Nicholas Tacitus Zegers was a Flemish Franciscan biblical exegete.

Life

He was born either at Diest or Brussels during the latter half of the fifteenth century; After receiving an education at Leuven, he entered the Franciscan Order, joining the Province of Cologne; at the division for that province; he was assigned to the Low German Province.
Coming under the influence of Francis Titelmans, professor of exegesis in the convent of Leuven, he devoted himself to the study of Scriptures. He succeeded Titelmann in the chair of exegesis in 1536, which he held to 1548. After a period elsewhere, he returned to Leuven in 1558.
He died at Leuven, 25 August 1559.

Works

In 1548 he gave up his chair to devote himself to writing. His foundation in Greek and Hebrew enabled him to exercise critical judgment on the explanation of passages of Holy Writ, a quality at that time quite rare. He opposed the reading of Erasmus on the Law of Christ from the Greek Testament. His commentary is mostly antiquarian. Memeranus writes of him:
Vir pietatis amans, semper studiosus honesti,
Et bona qui semper publica ubique juvat.
Besides many translations of ascetical works from Flemish and French into Latin, he also wrote: