Francisco de Enzinas

Francisco de Enzinas (1 November 1518? – 30 December 1552), also known by the humanist name Francis Dryander (from the Greek drus, which can be translated encina in Spanish), was a classical scholar, translator, author, and Protestant apologist of Spanish origin.

Francisco de Enzinas was born in Burgos, Spain, probably on 1 November 1517. (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 Low Countries around 1536 for commercial training, but on 4 June 1539 he enrolled at the Collegium Trilingue of Louvain. There he fell under the spell of humanist scholarship as popularized by Desiderius Erasmus. Around that time he developed an acquaintance with the Polish Reformer Jan Łaski. (Epistolario, letter 1.) He also made a connection with the University of Oxford, as shown by a letter he wrote to a certain Edmund Crispin of Oriel College, later published by the martyrologist John Foxe in the first edition of his Acts and Monuments. (Pratt ed. (1870), v6, p139, n1.) The same work, more popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, also contains eyewitness accounts originally penned by Enzinas.

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 at the stake by the Roman Inquisition in 1547.

...
Wikipedia