Giovanni Battista Eliano

Giovanni Battista Eliano (; 15303 March 1589) was a Jesuit priest and scholar of Oriental languages.

Life

Giovanni Battista Eliano, sometimes called Giovanni Battista Romano, was a convert to Roman Catholicism from Judaism, and flourished in the second half of the 16th century. Sources variously say that he was a native of Alexandria, was born in Rome in 1530, or was born in Naples in about 1536.

His maternal grandfather was the noted scholar Elias Levita, whence he adopted the surname Eliano. He was formerly known as Solomon Romano. He received instruction from his learned grandfather while in Germany. He then travelled in Italy, and in Venice he tried to bring his brother back into the fold of the synagogue, in which he did not succeed; on the contrary, he became himself a convert to Christianity, and was baptised in 1551. For a long time he was professor of Hebrew and Arabic in Rome. Maronite Patriarch Estephan El Douaihy noted that Eliano was not a scholar in Arabic and could not understand many of the works he was condemning. Douaihy also noted that Eliano could not differentiate between Maronite and non-Maronite books.

He died at Rome on 3 March 1589.