Nicholas of Lyra

Nicholas of Lyra (French: Nicolas de Lyre; c. 1270 – October 1349), or Nicolaus Lyranus, a Franciscan teacher, was among the most influential practitioners of biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages.

For example, Deanna Copeland Klepper cites that "as his fifteenth-century critic, Bishop Paul of Burgos (a converted Jew himself) noted, Nicolas’s knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinic interpretation was too limited to reflect a Jewish upbringing.

Nicolas of Lyra's approach to explicating Scripture was firmly based on the literal sense, which for him is the foundation of all mystical or allegorical or anagogical expositions.

The textual basis was so important that he urged that errors be corrected with reference to Hebrew texts, an early glimmer of techniques of textual criticism, though Nicholas recognized the authoritative value of the Church's Tradition: I protest that I do not intend to assert or determine anything that has not been manifestly determined by Sacred Scripture or by the authority of the Church... Wherefore I submit all I have said or shall say to the correction of Holy Mother Church and of all learned men... (Second Prologue to Postillae).Nicholas utilized all sources available to him, fully mastered Hebrew and drew copiously from Rashi and other rabbinic commentaries, the Pugio Fidei of Raymond Martini and of course the commentaries of Thomas Aquinas.

[3] When E. A. Gosselin compiled a listing of the printed editions of works by Nicolaus de Lyra, it ran to 27 pages (in Traditio 26 (1970), pp 399–426).