Nicolaus Serarius — Nicholas Serarius in English catalogs, sometimes spelled Serrarius — was a Lorrainer Jesuit who taught theology and Sacred Scripture at Würzburg and at Mainz, where his great commentaries were printed.
Baronius called him the light of the Church of Germany (lumen Ecclesiae Germaniae). His commentaries on Josue, Judges, Ruth, Tobias, Judith, Esther, and Machabees, and his Prolegomena to the sacred books, made him one of the most consulted Catholic interpreters of his generation.
His Trihaeresium (Mainz, 1604), on the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes — written against Johannes Drusius and continued in the celebrated Minerval controversy that drew in Scaliger and Casaubon — is offered here in English for the first time.