Diodati, Jean

Diodati, Jean (Ital. GIOVANNI), an eminent divine of the Reformed Church, was born in Geneva in 1576, of a noble Italian family from Lucca. His progress in learning was so rapid that Beza procured him the professorship of Hebrew in the University of.Geneva when he was but twenty-one. In 1608 he became pastor, or parish minister, and in the following year professor of theology. While travelling in Italy, he became acquainted with father Sarpi and his friend father Fulgenzio, and there appears to have been some talk and correspondence between them about attempting a religious reform in Italy, but Sarpi's caution and maturer judgment checked the fervor of the other two. Diodati afterwards translated into French and published at Geneva Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent. He was sent by the clergy of Geneva on several missions, first to the Reformed churches in France, and afterwards to those of Holland, where he attended the Synod of Dort (1618-19), and he was one of the divines appointed to draw up the acts of that assembly. He published an Italian translation of the Bible in 1607, which, though paraphrastic, is still considered one of the best in that language; and afterwards a French translation, with brief notes, which was not completed till 1644, and is not very well done. He wrote also Annotationes in Biblia (Geneva, 1607, fol.), which were translated into English and published in London in 1648 (3d ed. 1651), and various theological and controversial works, among them De Fictitio Pontificiorum Purgatorio (1619); De justa Secessione Refornmatorum ab Ecclesia Romana (1628); De Ecclesia (1620); De Antichristo (1624). Senebier, Histoire Litteraire de Geneve, gives a catalogue of Diodati's works. He died at Geneva in 1649. See Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 14:235, and references there.