Nicolaus Serarius — Nicholas Serarius in English catalogs, sometimes spelled Serrarius — was a Lorrainer Jesuit who taught theology and Sacred Scripture for some twenty years at Würzburg and then at Mainz, where he flourished in teaching and writing until his death in 1609.
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; against Drusius, Scaliger, and Casaubon he carried on some of the most learned controversies of the age.
Two of his works are offered here in English for the first time: the Trihaeresium (Mainz, 1604), on the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes — written against Johannes Drusius and continued in the celebrated Minerval controversy — and the former volume of his last great labor, the Commentary on Joshua, left finished at his death and published by his Mainz college (Paris, 1610), which follows Joshua question by question from his genealogy and the name of JESUS to the camp at Gilgal.