Abbreviations Used in This Volume
Latin Works of Peter Martyr Vermigli
COR • In Selectissimam D. Pauli Priorem ad Corinth. epistolam Commentarii. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1551.
DEF • Defensio Doctrinae veteris & Apostolicae de ss Euch. … adv. Stephani Gardineri. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1559.
DIA • Dialogus de utraque in Christo Natura. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1561.
ERR • Errata, TRD (q.v.) 1549 preface.
ETH • In primum, secundum, et initium tertii libri Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum … Commentarius doctissimus. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1563.
GEN • In Primum Librum Mosis Qui Vulgo Genesis Dicitur Commentarii. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1569.
IUD • In Librum Iudicum … Commentarij doctissimi. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1561.
LAM • In Lamentationes Sanctissimi Ieremiae Prophetae Commentarium. Zurich: Jacob Bodmer, 1629.
LC • Loci Communes … quatuor classes distributi. London: R. Masson, 1576; Basle: P. Perna, 1580–82 (3 vols.).
PR • Preces Sacrae ex Psalmis Davidis desumptae.… Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1564.
REG • Melachim Id Est, Regum Libri Duo Posteriores cum Commentariis. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1566.
ROM • In Epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos commentarij doctissimi. Basel: P. Perna, 1558.
SAM • In Duos Libros Samuelis Prophetae … Commentarii. Zurich: C. Froschauer, 1564.
TRD • Tractatio de sacramento eucharistiae, habita in universitate Oxoniensi. Ad hec. Disputatio habita MD XLIX. London [R. Wolfe], 1549.
VOT • Defensio … vs Riccardi Smythaei … duos libellos de Coelibatu sacerdotum & Votis monasticis. Basel: P. Perna, 1559.
English Translations
CP • Common Places of Peter Martyr Vermigli. “Translated and partly gathered” by A. Marten. London, 1583.
DIAL • Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ. Trans. and ed. J. P. Donnelly, S.J. PML 2. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers [Truman State University Press], 1995.
DIS • Disputation on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Oxford 1549, in PML 7. Trans. and ed. J. C. McLelland. This volume.
DM • The Life, Early Letters and Eucharistic Writings of Peter Martyr. Trans. G. E. Duffield and J. C. McLelland. Oxford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1989.
EW • Early Writings: Creed, Scripture, Church. Trans. Mario Di Gangi and J. C. McLelland. Ed. J. C. McLelland. PML 1. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers [Truman State University Press], 1994.
LLS • Life, Letters and Sermons. Trans. J.P. Donnelly. PML 5. Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press [Truman State University Press], 1998.
PPS • Prayers from the Psalms, trans. and ed. by J. P. Donnelly, S.J. PML 3. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers [Truman State University Press], 1996.
RDR • The Peter Martyr Reader. Ed. J.P. Donnelly, F. A. James, J. C. McLelland. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 1999.
TR • Treatise on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Oxford 1549, in PML 7. Trans. and ed. J. C. McLelland. This volume.
Secondary Sources
AL • Andreas Löwe, “Peter Martyr Vermigli, Disputatio de Euch. Sacramento.” 2 vols. M. Phil. thesis in Ecclesiastical History. Oxford University, 1997. Unpublished.
BIB • A Bibliography of the Writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli. J. P. Donnelly and Robert M. Kingdon, with M. W. Anderson. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers [Truman State University Press], 1990.
CR • Corpus Reformatorum. Ed. K. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil. Halle, 1834–.
CRA • The Remains of Thomas Cranmer. 4 vols. Ed. H. Jenkyns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833.
CS • Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace. J. P. Donnelly, S.J. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976.
GAN • La Bibliothèque de l’Académie de Calvin. A. Ganoczy. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1969. “La Bibliothèque de Pierre Martyr,” 19–27.
INST • Institutes of the Christian Religion. John Calvin. Ed. J. T. McNeill and F. L. Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.
MAN • Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. 60 vols. J. D. Mansi. Graz, Akademie Druk 1960–61.
OER • The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. 4 vols. Ed. Hans Hillerbrand. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
OL • Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation. 2 vols. Trans. and ed. H. Robinson. Cambridge University Press: Parker Society, 1846–47.
PG • Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca. 161 vols. Ed. J. P. Migne. Paris, 1857–96. Indices 1912.
PL • Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina. 221 vols. Ed. J. P. Migne, Paris, 1844–64. Supplements 1–5. Paris, 1958–74.
PMIR • Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform. Ed. J. C. McLelland. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1980.
PML • The Peter Martyr Library. Ed. J. P. Donnelly, S.J., F. A. James III, and J. C. McLelland. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 1994–.
PMRE • Peter Martyr: A Reformer in Exile (1542–1562): A Chronology of Biblical Writings in England and Europe. M. W. Anderson. Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1975.
RCF • The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West from the Carolingians to the Maurists. 2 vols. Ed. I. Backus. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997.
VS • Veritas Sacramenti: A Study in Vermigli’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. S. Corda. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1975.
VWG • The Visible Words of God: An Exposition of the Sacramental Theology of Peter Martyr Vermigli. J. C. McLelland. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1957; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965
General Editors’ Preface
THIS VOLUME OF THE PETER MARTYR LIBRARY represents Vermigli’s first public theological debate as a Protestant theologian and the first in our series devoted exclusively to his Eucharistic theology—one of the major doctrinal preoccupations of his career. It was during his tenure as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1548–53) that Peter Martyr’s theological reputation was made, and it was a reputation first established at the famous Eucharistic debate of May 1549 when he single-handedly defended the Protestant understanding of the Lord’s Supper against three Catholic opponents. This virtuoso performance was a tour de force and propelled him into the position of a leading apologist for the Reformed understanding of the Eucharist. It is principally for this reason that S. L. Greenslade concluded that of the early holders of the Regius chair in theology, “Peter Martyr was unquestionably the most learned.”
Vermigli came to England at a time which some scholars have described as the “mid-Tudor crisis”—that is, a period of economic inflation, trade deficits, poor harvests, and an expensive war with Scotland, all of which were juxtaposed with intensive religious and political upheaval. With Henry’s death in 1547 the future of England was somewhat uncertain. Archbishop Cranmer seized the opportunity, and with the support of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, set out to reform the Church of England despite devout opposition and economic turmoil. Vermigli, as it turned out, was one of Cranmer’s secret weapons. As Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Vermigli occupied a strategic position not merely in the academic realm, but in the church as well. It would be his responsibility to persuade and train an army of Protestant clergy who would go into the parishes and teach the people in the pews. To that end, Vermigli decided to begin his lectures in March 1548 with a careful study of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. In his dedication to King Edward VI, Vermigli explains why he chose this epistle of Paul: “Nowhere else are such varied and many subjects treated, that relate to the controversies of our times.” The lectures included the Pauline teaching on the Lord’s Supper and so provided a flash point for a controversy that would dominate English religion for decades. In bringing a new translation of Vermigli’s Oxford Disputation and Treatise, we are presenting one of the early benchmarks in the history of the English church.
Not only was the Eucharist a preoccupation of Vermigli, it has become something of a preoccupation for Joseph McLelland. Ever since his years as a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh under the tutelage of T. F. Torrance, McLelland has become the preeminent interpreter of Vermigli’s Eucharistic theology. The Peter Martyr Library is pleased to make available this new translation of one of the early pivotal events of the English reformation.
John Patrick Donnelly, S.J.
Frank A. James III
[xvii] Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, 1549 by Peter Martyr Vermigli
Translator’s Preface
THE TWIN TEXTS presented here are part of the turbulent period in England during the times of Edward VI and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. In 1549 the Book of Common Prayer was published and debate on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was at its height. That same year Peter Martyr was Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford. Martyr’s lectures on 1 Corinthians caused not only resentment but a near riot, precipitating a public debate in May 1549.
Along with the Disputation on the Eucharist, his account of the public debate, Martyr published the Treatise on the Sacrament of the Eucharist that provides systematic treatment of the arguments, biblical and patristic in source, with transubstantiation the target. The work is probably a special lecture series following the exegesis of the Corinthian letter. It is among the most polemical of Martyr’s works, largely negative and often repetitive. Yet taken with the Disputation there is offered a wealth of information about the state of the realm, the choice of patristic authorities, the nature of Martyr’s objections to the traditional doctrine, and his proposed alternative.
This is the third time I have worked with this material. The first was almost fifty years ago while pursuing doctoral research in Edinburgh; it was crucial in understanding Martyr’s sacramental theology. Thirty years later I provided a translation, with introduction, of the Treatise for the Sutton Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics. Now I offer a fresh translation of both texts, along with full annotations.
Along the way I have been helped by many, particularly my editorial partner John Patrick Donnelly, who once again served as reader to make my translation more authentic and readable. Gerald Bray, Frank James, and Diarmaid MacCulloch read the introduction. A special word of acknowledgment is in order for the contribution of the late Marvin Anderson. Since Martyr’s English period was his specialty, Marvin was most helpful on several points; it is therefore appropriate that this volume is dedicated to him. Mr. Löwe kindly supplied copies of his master’s thesis on the Disputation as well as papers on Martyr and Richard Smyth. None of these scholars is responsible for any errors in the book, or opinions that are mine alone.
Joseph C. McLelland
PROGRESS OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION
Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) had attained high rank in the Augustinian Order before leaving his native Italy in 1542 one step ahead of the Inquisition. For the next twenty years he occupied teaching positions in three centers of Reform: Strasbourg on two occasions, Oxford in between, and Zurich at the end. By 1547 Strasbourg was becoming hostile towards his theology and polity, and he gladly accepted the invitation of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, with the consent of the young King Edward VI and Somerset, Lord Protector. Bernardino Ochino, who had escaped Italy with Martyr five years before, again joined Martyr in going to a new land.1 Cranmer invited several “foreign divines” to join in his grand plan for the reform of the Ecclesia Anglicana. They were also to combat the conservative scholarship still flourishing in English universities.2
If it seems surprising that Cranmer should have invited someone only five years within the Reformed camp, we should remember that even by 1547 Martyr had gained the respect of Bucer, Calvin, and Bullinger, while the situation in Strasbourg was becoming difficult through Lutheran party politics: Bucer himself would choose to join Martyr in England the following year.
[xviii] It was this plan and invitation that brought Martyr and Ochino to England on 20 December 1547. Ochino was appointed canon of Canterbury, while Martyr stayed at Lambeth until taking up his appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. Martyr’s name appears in the battels book of Christ Church for January 1548, and in February he was incorporated Doctor of Divinity (his first appointment had been Padua 1526).3 He lived in Christ Church and lectured in the Divinity School. He replaced Richard Smith, the first incumbent of the Regius Chair and Martyr’s first English adversary, who precipitated the Oxford Disputation.4 Martyr had with him a letter to Cranmer from Bucer which expounded the Strasbourg teaching on the Eucharist. Bucer acknowledges that the elements do not change in nature but become signs, while Christ does not descend from heaven to be joined with the symbols. Christ “remains in the heavens until he will show himself openly to all as judge”; only the faithful receive Christ. A crucial point concerns whether Christ’s “local” presence in heaven precludes presence elsewhere; Bucer remains cautious here, although Cranmer “was soon to move beyond.”5
During 1548 the eucharistic debate had engaged Parliament. It was most intense in the House of Lords, which rejected Cranmer’s draft Service of Communion. But Somerset and the king’s council assured speedy passage in the Commons, and the Uniformity Bill was passed by both houses in January 1549. Royal assent was granted in March, allowing Cranmer’s Prayer Book to come into general use on [xlx] Whitsunday, 9 June.6 Martyr commented on the situation to Bucer: “Transubstantiation, I think, is now exploded, and difficulty respecting the presence is at this time the most prominent point of dispute.”7
Related to these events are a brief tract by Martyr on “The Sacrament of Thanksgiving” prepared for Lord Somerset’s use in 1548, and the two longer texts from 1549 translated here. The situation in Oxford was complex. That indefatigable student John ab Ulmis reflects the “Swiss party” view promulgated by Bullinger’s disciples. His letters report most diligently the affairs of Oxford and London, and the state of his own efforts to attract patrons.8 We learn that by Ascension Day 1548, Peter Martyr
has also maintained in like manner [i.e. from orthodox Fathers and Scripture] the cause of the Eucharist and holy Supper of the Lord, namely, that it is a remembrance of Christ and a solemn setting forth of his death, and not a sacrifice. Meanwhile, however, he speaks with caution and prudence (if indeed it can be called such) with respect to the real presence, so as not to seem to incline either to your opinion, or to that of Luther.9
The new regius professor chose to begin his tenure with First Corinthians. Philip McNair calls this “a cool and courageous thing to do,” because of the “flash points” of disputed doctrine ignited by Paul’s letter.10 This was in March 1548, presumably on Lady Day as the new term began. We know that he began Romans in March 1550.11 What was he lecturing on in his second year, particularly the spring of 1549, when the eucharistic debate was precipitated? One possibility is that [xx] he took two years to cover the Corinthian letter. Martyr’s own account of the events leading to the Disputation states: “in explaining chapter X of the same letter.”12 This seems to mean his lectures on the book, as Philip McNair thinks, citing Richard Smith’s explicit dating: “nunc, hoc est Anno D 1549 mense Martio Oxoniae in Anglis enarrat epistolam ad Corinthis priorem.”13 On the other hand, it could refer to the Treatise, given as a separate lecture series after completing the Corinthian exposition. Both R. Masson and A. Marten, the editors of Martyr’s commonplaces, identify the Treatise as “given publicly when he had completed the interpretation of the xi. chapter.”14 John Strype accepted this at face value: “These lectures he printed soon after in London.”15 The inclusion of a special set of lectures would explain the apparent undue length of the Corinthians series, although Martyr’s own witness remains ambiguous.
“THAT GREAT RABBIN PETER MARTYR HIM SELFE”
Peter Martyr’s first year apparently repeated the pattern he had established at his academy in Lucca eight years before: he instructed disciples in private, but in public spoke about the real presence “with caution and prudence.”16 This gave the impression that at Oxford he was in the beginning, in Rastell’s words, “a Lutheran only, but perceiving afterwards, the Superiour powers to fansie an other way, he followed also them with all the wit he had, and became an open [xxi] Zwinglian.” As Richard Smith nicely phrased it, he “sange an other songe.” Thomas Harding would later taunt John Jewel with the inconstancy of his heroes, including “that great Rabbin Peter Martyr him selfe.”17 Marvin Anderson adds material from the “recusant rhetoric” of the Jesuit Robert Parsons, in 1604: “At his first coming into England, the good cheere of Oxford, togeather with the company of his women, and other libertyes and dissolutions of that tyme, made him iump of the English states Religion.”18 Such portrait hardly befits the retiring foreigner who was married, spoke no English, and was so studious in nature!
Martyr’s caution was in part a strategy for the times and in part the result of his own diffident nature. But when he expounded 1 Cor. 10:16 he openly declared his eucharistic doctrine. John ab Ulmis pinpoints the exact time, writing on 2 march 1549 to Bullinger:
Peter Martyr has openly declared to us all, on this very day on which I write this letter, what was his opinion upon this subject; and he seemed to all of us not to depart even a nail’s breadth from that entertained by yourself. Nay more, he has defended that most worthy man, Zwingle, by the testimony of your opinion, and taken part with him against his adversaries, who falsely object to him that he makes the sacrament a mere sign.19
A decade later, Martyr himself recalls the day in a letter of August 1559 to Richard Cox: Smith was “present in the Schools, indeed constantly.” He took notes of Martyr’s lectures, taking exception “when in explaining Chapter X of the same Letter I taught concerning the mystery of the Eucharist those things which I believed to be the more true and sincere.” Soon after, Smith staged a confrontation: “On a day when I was not suspecting it, a certain man in the lecture room itself urged with a very great disturbance of his making, that at the hour when I was daily accustomed to engage in my teaching function, I should go down unexpectedly and suddenly with an arranged escort [xxii] to a sacred Disputation.”20
Martyr’s written commentary on 1 Corinthians, published within two years of the Disputation, does not mention the event, even in its preface to Edward VI. The relevant passage, 1 Cor. 10:16, reflecting the eucharistic flashpoint, is quite subdued when compared with the Treatise and Disputation, and lacks the scholium one would have expected for such a crucial issue. Martyr’s commentary on the verse first notes the context, namely Paul’s warning against idolatry, and proceeds to contrast false mysteries such as the Eleusinian with the true sacraments instituted by Christ. In the latter, symbols are transformed by Christ’s word and institution into “signs and mysteries of our salvation.” Martyr compares the ratio of sacrifice, human offerings to God, with that of sacrament, thanksgiving for the divine offering. Citing patristic evidence, he takes the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ as archetypal for the two natures in the sacramental elements. Thus “the visible word” becomes “a potent and efficacious sign.”21
THE RELATION BETWEEN DISPUTATION AND TREATISE
Whatever its original provenance, the Tractatio clearly belongs with the Disputation as its formal explication. Whether or not a separate lecture series, its notes were in hand before the formal debate, so that Martyr prepared his material on the three propositions with these before him. An important source is the brief tract prepared (1 December 1548) for Somerset’s use in the debate on the Act of Uniformity (15–18 December): Of the Sacrament of Thanksgiving: A Short Treatise of Peter Martyr’s Making.22 Its unknown translator provided a summary: [xxiii] (1) “Christ is in the Holy Supper to them that do come to his table, and he doth verily feed the faithful with his body and blood”; (2) there is no transubstantiation; (3) there is no intermixture of the natures or substances of bread and wine with body and blood; but (4) the two are so united that as often as one is faithfully received so is the other; (5) “The presence of Christ … doth belong more nighly and properly to the receivers than to the tokens,” that is, “those receivers that do rightly and faithfully come to the communion”; (6) “The presence of Christ … is not at any time, but in the use of the supper”; (7) only the good receive the body and blood, while the wicked “receive nothing but the tokens of bread and wine”; (8) in receiving the sacraments the faithful should worship “in their mind Christ himself and not the tokens”; (9) “the residue of this sacrament, after the communion is done, ought not to be kept as we see it used now in popish churches.”
Was this tract intended as a scholium for the written commentary?23 If so, it expanded into a full-blown treatise, a solid scholarly companion to his account of the Disputation. Its biblical and patristic citations, even the choice of words, are the same throughout. We have put the Treatise first, as Peter Martyr intended in his dedication, “in the Disputation, and in the Treatise prefixed to it,” and as it is in most editions.
PETER MARTYR’S EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGY
The Oxford Treatise, which Salvatore Corda regards as “the manifesto of Vermigli’s eucharistic doctrine,” represents a theologian caught in high controversy, quite opposed to the concept of transubstantiation, but trying to do justice to two sides of the Reformed position. As explained below, the Disputation debated only the two negative propositions, setting aside the third, which would have expounded Martyr’s emphasis on a “sacramental” relation of signifier and signified: tertium modum constituo, nimirum per sacramentalem significationem24. The Treatise, however, is able to develop this positive pole. [xxiv] Despite its similar concentration on arguments for and against transubstantiation, it manages to develop Martyr’s favorite ideas of the Christological analogy: just as two natures exist in one person, so two “substances” exist in the Eucharist.25 He distinguishes this from “consubstantiation” by resisting analogies from coinherence: not a second hypostatic union, but a derivative and dynamic union through the Holy Spirit.
Martyr draws on scriptural and patristic passages familiar since the famous tenth-century debate between the monks of Corbie.26 There are preferred texts such as John 6 and I Corinthians 10 and 11, as well as Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other fathers, some collected in Gratian’s decree de Consecratio.27 Indeed, this arsenal of patristic texts is wearing; in Martyr’s own “Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ” he is open enough to have his opponent, Pantachus, remark: “I’ve had my fill of patristic quotations.”28 Already in the dedicatory letter to Cranmer the theme of duplex manducatio is explicit, and a “median position” invoked against “the hyperboles of the fathers and the contempt of Anabaptists.” The “head and sum of all contention” consists in thinking that Christ’s body is enclosed in the elements or sub species. Finally, there is no sacrament without use: in using it “we grasp Christ’s body and blood by faith alone.”
The three Propositions of the Disputation form the agenda of the Treatise (§1). After defining transubstantiation, Martyr states arguments for (§§3–5) and against (§§6–22), turning to patristic evidence (§§23–31) and so to refutation (§§32–42). An excursus on “Rules for Patristics” (§§43–44) introduces an analysis of the patristic evidence (§§45–64); this lengthy section illustrates the question of authority at [xxv] the heart of the Disputation also. He now turns to the final section, “Alternatives to Transubstantiation” (§§66–82). Here he examines Lutheran and Zwinglian teaching, warning that he understands “that Luther regards this matter not so crassly, while Zwingli thought not so lightly of the sacraments” (§65). Seeking a golden mean between the two, in his Conclusion (§§78–82) he rejects the Lutheran manducatio impiorum as well as the Zwinglian failure to stress the sacramental mutation. He thinks the Zwinglians underestimate the power ascribed to sacraments; he spends much more time on this error than that of Lutherans. Thus he answers the critique of Bucer, showing his difference from the “Swiss party” on his left. The positive finale to the Treatise offers a balanced view over that of the polemical stance of the Disputation, serving as exegetical key to a proper reading of the debate.
Interpretations of Martyr’s eucharistic teaching have varied from regarding him as Lutheran, Bucerian, or Zwinglian, and positing a dramatic shift while in England, chiefly for political reasons.29 We hope to show that he was closest to both Cranmer and Bullinger, the Zurich antistes who made common ground with Calvin in the 1549 Consensus Tigurinus. When Martyr finally returned to Zurich in 1556, renewing friendships begun with his initial brief stopover in 1542 on leaving Italy, his inaugural address referred to the “labors and dangers” encountered in England “in defending the orthodox teaching on the Eucharist which you men of Zurich too have steadfastly defended as its first and somehow its unique patrons.”30 His final years spent in Zurich witness to this unity of heart and doctrine.
THE ACADEMIC DEBATE
The debate must have presented quite a scene.31 After the fateful lecture, Richard Smith led the clamor for public debate; notices advertising a debate were posted in the Oxford churches; Smith’s servant [xxvi] handed Martyr a note on his way to lecture the following day. Martyr informed his class that he was there “not to debate but to lecture.”32 As soon as he finished the lecture a cry for debate was raised, and a mob scene threatened. Vice Chancellor Wright escorted Martyr and Smith through the crowd to his own house to discuss the matter.33 Martyr insisted on royal permission to debate such a sensitive topic,34 for proper judges, moderators, and recorders,35 and for questions to be prepared beforehand and acceptable to both parties. Such agenda reflect his experience with formal debates at Padua, where “our Florentine” was already famous for his debating skill, and at Strasbourg, where he prepared formal theses for his students.36 Oxford had used the debating method as early as 1340. Students took the role of opponens or respondens, with a praelector presiding and summing up. An initial proposition (aporia) was described through conflicting opinions (doxae), resolved and redefined in the conclusiones.37 John ab Ulmis described the custom to Rodolph Gualter:
On Mondays and Wednesdays the masters [of arts] hold disputations; and on Thursdays the students in divinity, physic, and law dispute among themselves in regular and alternate turns.… Every disputation has a fixed moderator of its own to preside over it. In theology Peter Martyr presides.38
[xxvii] Three propositions were agreed upon, after discussion of terminology. Martyr refused the scholastic materia and substantia, preferring the adverbs carnaliter and corporaliter derived from biblical nouns.39 The theses reflect his own position, with two negations clearing the way for the final statement.
(1) In the sacrament of the Eucharist there is no transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
(2) The body and blood of Christ are not carnally and corporeally in the bread and wine, nor, as others say, under the species of bread and wine.
(3) The body and blood of Christ are joined with the bread and wine sacramentally.
In fact only the first two propositions were debated. The third was set aside when the commissioners accepted William Tresham’s request that it be considered superflua et inutilis.40 Thus we lack explicit exegesis of the third proposition, what Martyr means by “sacramentally united with the bread and wine,” and how he solves “the difficulty respecting the presence” as noted above. This lack seems curious in light of Martyr’s own statement in the Disputation: “I open with my three questions.… I prove a third mode, namely a sacramental signification” (preface, 1B). Presumably he thought he had indeed included the substance of the third proposition along the way. But in his concluding speech Chancellor Cox referred to the “two questions” that were examined (94 v).
The date was set for 4 May, by which time the royal visitors [xxviii] had arrived41 and Smith had departed for Louvain.42 On 17 May Martyr posted a notice on the door of St. Mary’s Church:
Doctor Smith had challenged me to a disputation, as the whole university knows; I had agreed to that; we had come to an agreement about the points that should be discussed; but he is said to have absented himself from the appointed day and from this place, telling his friends at the same time that many would be pleased if I kept my appointment with him; so I offer publicly, for the edification of pious minds, to debate the same points which we planned to treat, with him or any other who will appear in his place. I take it upon me with God’s help to defend and prove my propositions. The royal commissioners and visitors have appointed the 28th day of May as the day of disputation, and given their full permission to proceed.43
The debate took place on 28, 29, and 31 May (30 May was Pentecost) and 1 June. Three scholars took up the challenge. William Tresham, D.D., a fellow canon of Christ Church,44 debated with Martyr on the first and third days, William Chedsey, D.D., fellow of Corpus Christi College,45 on the second and fourth days, with two interventions [xxix] by Philip Morgan of St. Mary’s Hall on the third day.46 Tresham and Chedsey proved worthy opponents; Morgan less so. When Tresham’s books failed to arrive for the day’s debate, Morgan stepped in; Schmidt remarks: “It was a good thing for Morgan that Tresham had meanwhile received his books and could enter the discussion.”47 Dr. Nicholas Cartwright relieved Martyr briefly on the second day.48 Referees were drawn from the royal visitors: Henry Holbeach, Simon Haynes, Sir Richard Morison, and Christopher Nevison.49 They would sign Martyr’s subsequent written account of the debate to declare that he had made no alteration.50 Since one of the disputants was a university praelector, the moderator was Richard Cox, dean of Christ Church and chancellor of the university.51
[xxx] As the text shows, the central point of controversy was transubstantiation. While this is explicitly the burden of the first thesis, the entire debate moves slowly around the point, first with Tresham and then with Chedsey. At one point, despite agreeing to turn to the second question, Chedsey leads off with a “confirmation of the first question” (70r), then requests a fifth day of debate (78v). The visitors deny it, and Chedsey proceeds: “That the bread and wine may be transubstantiated.…” Soon they interrupt again to state that Martyr’s solution to the argument is sufficiently understood, so that Chedsey “should proceed further” (82r). At last the visitors break in, ordering them “to proceed to the second question” (88v). Even here the remaining exchanges do not much advance things: the manner of bodily presence in the sacrament remains unresolved. The fourth day is tedious, and the visitors call a halt to debate at 11 a.m.
Chancellor Cox summed up the debate, making it clear whom he considered the winner: “Peter, who is worthily called Peter for the firmness of his stance, Martyr, and worthily called Martyr for the countless witnesses to the truth that he regularly produces, deserves great thanks at this time.” [95r] Cox acknowledges his own reforming position in exhorting the students to study the Word of God, and commends those who “increase in good learning and piety.” He would “pronounce no decision,” however, since the dispute was postponed rather than ended, according to the royal will.52
RESPONSE AND CRITIQUE
Reactions to the Disputation soon came in; we will examine those of Cranmer, Bucer, and Gardiner. Theodore Beza was also a positive reader, while John Calvin’s assessment may be conjectured through later remarks.53
[xxxi] THOMAS CRANMER has sparked much debate about his own eucharistic theology. Basil Hall argues that even after Martyr’s stay at Lambeth, Cranmer “showed no marked change in his beliefs on the subject after 1548,” while because of his polemical style Martyr uses “terms inevitably more negative than sufficiently positive,” so that his position is “difficult to define in its positive aspect.” Hall takes some sentences from Martyr’s prefatory letter to Cranmer as evidence for division between the two, questioning my own reading of their “near identity.” But at that point in his dedication Martyr is not addressing Cranmer (or even Bucer), rather the supporters of transubstantiation of the preceding paragraph.54
As for Cranmer, C. H. Smyth reviews the evidence for his “conversion” from the Roman theory of transubstantiation, concluding that he moved directly to Bucer’s “Suvermerian” position, through Ridley’s influence. Cranmer’s 1548 translation of Justus Jonas’s catechism even led F. A. Gasquet and E. Bishop to conclude that he held a “Real Absence” view.55 Philip Hughes remarks that “the only one of these Reformers who, in the crucial year 1548, had anything like the entrée [xxxii] to Cranmer was Peter Martyr—and from him we have no direct information.”56
In 1551 Cranmer stated in opposition to Gardiner: “Of M. Peter Martyr’s opinion and judgment in this matter, no man can better testify than I; forasmuch as he lodged within my house long before he came to Oxford, and I had with him many conferences in that matter, and know that he was then of the same mind that he is now, and as he defended openly in Oxford, and hath written in his book.”57 The two friends had shared their research during this period; Cranmer’s collection De re sacramentaria resembles Martyr’s biblical and patristic sources in the Treatise. While Diarmaid MacCulloch considers it “dateable to autumn 1547 at the earliest,” K. J. Walsh argues that this florilegium was composed by Cranmer after Martyr’s visit.58 Martyr had brought with him from the Continent two new texts, which proved most significant in defining the eucharistic theology of both men in the fateful years from 1548 on. One was his own manuscript copy of Chrysostom’s Ad Caesarium monachum, which he presented to the archbishop—Gardiner called this Cranmer’s “secret copye.”59 The other consisted of excerpts from Theodoret’s first two Dialogues, which [xxxiii] reinforced the same Christological analogy for the sacramental relation as did Chrysostom. Cranmer makes use of both texts in his 1550 Defence.60
A footnote to this reaction concerns Nicholas Udall’s English translation of the Treatise, published 1550. Micronius wrote to Bullinger in May of that year that “the English translation of Peter Martyr’s book was not to be allowed to be printed owing to the bishops, and those too gospellers.” Basil Hall adds: “When the English version was published there were omissions of parts of the Latin translated by Udall—perhaps this compromise allowed publication.”61 But my own scrutiny of Udall shows that he expands on Martyr’s text but nowhere seems to omit anything of substance. His preface states: “In som places I haue either altered or leaft ye scoole termnes whych otherwise would have made the thing more darke … or els haue added suche circumstaunce of other woordes, as might declare it & make it plaine.”62
Yet the question remains: just how “negative” is Peter Martyr’s eucharistic teaching? His obsession with refuting transubstantiation complicates a clear answer. He never tires of the familiar arguments from biblical, patristic, and medieval sources, which one can find in his works from the 1549 Treatise to the 1561 Epitome.63 Moreover, his scholastic method in refuting mass and transubstantiation (“sophistically with their own weapons” in Scaliger’s phrase) features negative argumentation at the cost of positive statement. He considers himself one with Bullinger, whose response to the Disputatio was most positive, confirming Martyr’s reformed position.64 But his unity with Cranmer [xxxiv] is equally clear, as MacCulloch argues convincingly.65
The relation between Martyr’s 1549 Oxford texts and Cranmer’s 1550 Defence may serve as a reliable source to compare the two. Because of their closeness in time and location, we have footnoted parallels to Cranmer throughout the Treatise; parallels to Calvin and others similarly could have been noted. A chief point of difference is that Cranmer begins with “the true and catholic doctrine and use of the sacrament,” locating his critique of transubstantiation within this positive theology.66 Just over a quarter of the book concerns the kind of rebuttal which Martyr had made the centerpiece of both Treatise and Disputation. To be fair to Martyr, the public debate was largely controlled by his three opponents, who kept returning to their arguments for transubstantiation and were reluctant to let Martyr proceed to the matter of real presence. Nevertheless, he indicates his positive doctrine in such things as use of the crucial term exhibere, accompanied by stress on the mutation of the elements and the feeding of believers. Salvatore Corda’s thorough study reinforces this judgment, based on Martyr’s emphasis on the unio Christi as the definition of faith, the efficacy of the signs, and the actual reception of Christ by believers in the sacramental action.67
STEPHEN GARDINER presents a significant case study in the affairs of England.68 He had been Cranmer’s ally in the 1531–32 discussion of grounds for Henry’s divorce. At that period, in MacCulloch’s description, they were “apparently both conservative-minded Cambridge humanists,” but soon “definitely parted ideological company.”69 The [xxxv] bishop of Winchester was quick to criticize Martyr, complaining of his cunning in a letter of 1549/50, later attached to his tract against Martyr’s account of the Disputation. “You discuss the Eucharist in a wicked and shameful way; with subtlety and shrewdness you cunningly twist certain considerations to your purpose, and openly and forcibly distort certain others; you treat nothing with honesty and integrity.70 His treatise rehearses Martyr’s arguments and subjoins his own, “that everything may be perfectly clear to the reader.” This response presented Martyr with a powerful adversary in subsequent writings, and at greater length in his 1559 reply, the Defensio … adversus Stephani Gardineri.
In 1551 Gardiner produced an Explication and Assertion of the True Catholic Faith attacking Cranmer’s A Defence of the true and catholike Doctrine, which he charged “doth but as it were translate Peter Martyr.”71 This occasioned Cranmer’s immediate rebuttal, An Answer … Unto a craftie and Sophisticall cavillation. In the latter, Cranmer’s quotations from Gardiner show the antipathy to Martyr (matching Cranmer’s to Gardiner), whom he accuses of employing “as many shifts and lies as he may impugn” in the Treatise; again, “Peter Martyr wrote in Latin, and rejoiceth not, I think, to have his lies in English.”72 In turn, Gardiner replies with the Confutatio Cavillationum (1552 and 1554). During the Marian exile, Martyr accepted the urging (and financing) of friends and students to fulfil Cranmer’s last wish to issue a rebuttal of Gardiner’s work on transubstantiation.73 The result was the longest monograph on the sacrament of the entire Reformation, the 1559 [xxxvi] Defensio.74 The latter draws explicitly on the Treatise: Part 2 is headed: “Certain examples noted which the author formerly set forth in his Treatise on the Eucharist.”75
MARTIN BUCER had arrived from Strasbourg in April to serve as regius professor at Cambridge, and was still at Lambeth when Martyr sent his famulus Julius Santerenziano to deliver a copy of the Disputation, with covering letter dated 15 June.76 Martyr expresses worry that his doctrine might seem not to square with his friend’s; he expands certain points to show that he “does not differ at all” from Bucer.
I acknowledge that we truly receive the res sacramenti, that is the body and blood of Christ; but I say that it is accomplished by soul and faith, meanwhile granting that the Holy Spirit is effective in the sacraments, by the power of the Spirit and the institution of the Lord. I try to hold this particularly against superstitions, lest the body and blood of Christ be mixed with bread and wine themselves, carnally and through a corporeal presence. But that we ourselves are truly joined to him I do not question, nor would I have the sacramental symbols to be without honor and dignity.… Only one thing remains by which you might be offended—I claim that it does not agree with Christ’s body, so greatly glorified, to be in many places.77
Bucer replied to Martyr’s covering letter just five days later, stating his agreement in substance with Martyr’s report, but giving suggestions for change in the last two of the three propositions—apparently he was not informed that the last had been dropped. The second (Corpus et sanguis Christi non est carnaliter aut corporaliter in pane et vino, nec ut alij dicunt, sub speciebus panis et vini) should be replaced [xxxvii] by these or similar words: “Corpus Christi non continetur localiter in pane et vino: nec iis rebus affixum aut adiunctum est ulla huius mundi ratione.” The third (Corpus et sanguis Christi uniuntur pani et vino sacramentaliter) should continue: “Ita ut credentibus Christus hic vere exhibetur: fide tamen, nullo vel sensu vel ratione huius seculi intuendus, recipiendus, fruendus.” The changes involve two terms on which Bucer was always sensitive, the denial of “local” presence, and the explicit use of exhibere and cognates.78
Bucer also expresses concern that Martyr’s tenor in “the whole Disputation” will convince readers “that you maintain that Christ is absent altogether from the Supper, and that whatsoever is done in it has no further results than that faith, excited concerning Christ truly absent, is increased through the Spirit of Christ, by his benefits brought to mind and by meditation,” even though “I know that you acknowledge that Christ exhibits himself present to faith.” Bucer’s concern and suggested changes reflect his conviction that while he and Martyr agree on essentials, the latter places a dangerous emphasis on Christ’s presence in heaven localiter, combined with the movement sursum corda of faith in sacramental participation. Bucer wrote to John Brenz: “I am as sorry for master Martyr’s book as anyone can be; but that Disputation took place, and the propositions were agreed upon, before I arrived in England. At my advice he has inserted many things in the preface whereby to express more fully his belief in the presence of Christ.” He adds that Martyr was surely influenced by “powerful” men who “confine [Christ] to a certain limited place in heaven, and talk so vapidly about His exhibition and presence in the supper (indeed some of them cannot even endure these words), that they appear to believe that nothing else but the bread and wine is there distributed.”79 Bucer writes in similar fashion to Niger:
[Martyr] acknowledges the presence and exhibition of Christ; but, since the Zurich people have here many and great followers, this excellent man was drawn, I hardly know how, to consent to use the word “signification,” although he added “efficacious,” by which he understands the exhibition [xxxviii] of Christ, as he himself explains in the Preface to his Disputations, in which by my advice he added many observations to his own, and withdrew some; for he is most desirous of a pious concord.80
Is Bucer misreading his friend’s meaning on this point?81 Near the end of the Treatise Martyr discusses the Zwinglian position as an alternative to both transubstantiation and the Lutheran view. He writes that Christ’s words “‘do this in memory of me’ seem to them to imply the absence of the body of Christ. But I have warned elsewhere that this argument is not very firm, unless they mean it concerning the body of Christ really and corporeally and naturally present.… For he is eaten spiritually, and is truly joined to us.”82 Of course, Bucer’s position in the fragile compromise reached in Strasbourg with the Lutherans is different from Martyr’s adversarial position in England. Bucer shares Calvin’s concern for signa exhibitiva83 and a presence not fictional but real. To these he adds negations, notably the denial of presence localiter or huius mundi, eirenic tools that serve him better than Martyr’s polemics.84 But is he not taking too much credit for influencing Martyr’s preface? Surely the latter reflects the content of both Disputation and Treatise, which remained substantially unchanged? Bucer’s feeling for language is welcome, but his constant search for the mediating term at times prove harmful: Bossuet called him “the great master of subtleties.”85 As for Martyr, his first published work had [xxxix] already described the sacraments as verba visibilia and “effective.”86
Of relevance to this moot point is Bucer’s own shifting theory of the Lord’s Supper. C. H. Smyth sees a distinct change from the doctrine he held on arrival in England in May 1549, expressed in the above critique of Martyr’s role in the Disputation. In July 1550 Bucer visited Martyr in Oxford, and in September received John Laski (John à Lasco), with whom he began correspondence. Smyth sees these contacts as confirming Bucer’s position from “Suvermerian” to “Sacramentarian,” imitating Cranmer’s shift from Roman to Suvermerian.87 It seems to me that there is little difference between the two views, since both stress the presence of two realities through sacramental relation. Both attempt a via media between Lutheran and Zwinglian extremes; this was ever Bucer’s “Sisyphean” burden as he termed it in the critical letter to Martyr. Martyr answered with clear testimony on the crucial points, the “double eating” of the faithful, duplex os fidelium and their union with Christ. The complexity of views concerning the Supper are not easily solved by labels, and perhaps Bucer himself best reflects the wisdom of avoiding positives where negation will make do: “not of this world” rather than make “a new article of faith concerning the certain place of heaven in which the body of Christ is contained.”88
AN “ALTERNATIVE VIEW”?
M. A. Overell has proffered “an alternative view” of Peter Martyr in England.89 She notes that most recent writers agree with an earlier judgment: “As Strype put it, ‘he was very rudely treated there by a popish party’; in short, that he was a good man in a bad situation.” And further: “This sympathetic interpretation is commonly extended not just to Martyr’s miseries in Oxford but to the whole of his English exile.”90 Among modern scholars who “have tended to buttress the traditional [xl] highly sympathetic view” are the authors associated with the Peter Martyr Library. Overell is concerned with “the Italian’s social and personal impact” rather than areas of theology and liturgy. She concludes that “the colorful story of Martyr’s controversy with the Oxford Catholic group needs careful examination.”
After a brief look at the Oxford Disputation, Overell contends that Martyr’s apparent “courage and triumph on this occasion” require qualification. She reminds us that Martyr was a government employee, disputing before royal visitors and “propounding the official line,” and yet the outcome was far from certain. She states: “In his public summary Dr. Cox praised both parties and decided for neither,” an important point “often overlooked by Protestant historians.” Now in this judgment she is quite mistaken, for both the prefatory letter introducing the Disputation and the chancellor’s speech at its conclusion praise Martyr in high terms. The royal commissioners, while asking readers to judge for themselves, make it clear that in their opinion Martyr is the clear winner. Chancellor Cox declares: “Peter alone against all,” who accepted heavy labors, curbed the vain sayings of vain men, refuted “papistical trivia,” and “delivered to the university the doctrine of Christ, out of those living fountains of God.”91
Overell is correct, however, in observing that “Martyr himself seems to have been disappointed and somewhat chastened by the episode, and he never repeated the experiment.”92 This reflects Martyr’s realistic sense of the divided mood of the English church, that the official line was not necessarily the favorite one. There is truth also in Overell’s contention that “the evidence suggests that he was not immune from the uncertainty and wavering which marked the intellectual history of so many others.… As a relatively inexperienced Protestant he was still struggling to find his own balance in the whirlpool of contemporary theology.” Like Erasmus with Archbishop Warham not long before, Martyr found himself a “lonely exile” dependent on patronage. He entertained mostly like-minded foreigners in his home; if Harding’s memory is to be trusted, “the Italian became progressively [xli] more isolated as his exile wore on.”93
This alternative view draws heavily on Martin Bucer, relating to the familiar controversy as to whether Martyr’s mind had changed during his English sojourn.94 “Bucer clearly thought Martyr had changed, and changed moreover to suit the prevalent English mood.” Now on this point we argued above that the Bucer–Martyr disagreement concerned terms rather than substance. Martyr found himself in a time and place whose mood was different from either Italy or Strasbourg. Not only were king and archbishop responsible for his being there; he also had received the warmest welcome from Cranmer, and in their discussions had discovered strong mutual interests, notably in the patristic support for their common struggle against transubstantiation.
Overell concludes that despite Martyr’s “profound influence on the official documents of the Edwardian Reformation,” his impact at “more social and personal levels” reveals one who “had neither the settled opinions nor the straightforwardness in delivering them required in a theological adviser to a contentious Reformation.” Therefore “the English exile of the most famous of all the Italian Evangelicals was more of a failure, or at least less of a success, than has generally been believed.”95
This dissident voice urges restraint in taking our pair of texts as examples of a clear–cut victory in the eucharistic struggle in Cranmer’s England. Her argument, however, remains ambiguous on the crucial question of how these “social and personal levels” relate to the academic, theological, and ecclesiastical milieux in which Martyr moved. Nor does it explain Martyr’s subsequent influence over the Marian refugees, who persuaded him to complete Cranmer’s task of a final reply to Gardiner, and invitations to return to England under a new monarch and archbishop. The Overell thesis relies on recusant literature, but it does sound a warning not to relapse into an older “heroic” view of the Reformation.96 Perhaps she has in mind R. W. Dixon’s comment [xlii] about Foxe: “A still more partial historian, to whom, chiefly, several generations have looked for the knowledge of the Reformation, so far improved upon Peter himself as to omit all the arguments of Peter’s adversaries, preserving Peter only.”97
CONSEQUENCES
The effect of Martyr’s efforts in behalf of the reformation of sacramental theology may be judged by the 1552 revision of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer sought the opinion of the foreign divines then in England about the proposed revision. Bucer added his own Censura of the book to Martyr’s.98 Martyr reports to Bullinger: “everything that could have fostered superstition has been removed from it. The main reason why the other things that were being proposed did not prevail was because the sacramentarian question blocked the way—not indeed as regards transubstantiation or the real presence (if I may speak that way) either in the bread or in the wine since, thanks be to God, there seems to be no controversy about them among those who profess the Gospel, but many people wavered over whether the sacraments confer grace.” Martyr also mentions the opposite party, who held that “nothing more should be attributed to the sacraments than to the external Word of God.”99
The question of whether the sacraments confer grace continued to bother the Church of England. The nineteenth-century debates saw William Goode and G. C. Gorham in particular appeal to Martyr.100 The memory of Peter Martyr remains ambivalent in England. Like Bucer, and Cranmer himself, he fell victim to the continuing debate about the relation between continental and English reformations, and the roots of Puritanism. In particular there are scholars who insist that [xliii] Martyr was clearly a “Zwinglian” on arriving in England, influencing Cranmer in this direction.101
Despite this ambiguity, during Martyr’s stay in England his place seemed clear. On Mary’s accession, Martyr joined Thomas Cranmer at Lambeth; the archbishop issued a bold challenge on 5 September 1553:
I with Peter Martyr and four or five others of my choosing [will] prove to all that not only the common prayers Ecclesiastical, the Holy Administration, with the rest of the rites and ceremonies, but also the whole doctrine and religious order established by our supreme King and Lord, Edward the Sixth, are more pure and more agreeable to the Word of God than what has been in England for the past thousand years.102
At the Elizabethan settlement Martyr’s friends and pupils hurried home to assist in the work of renewing the Reformed face of the church.103 John Jewel wrote to his mentor Martyr on 28 April 1559, “The queen both speaks and thinks most honorably of you; she lately told lord Russell that she was desirous of inviting you to England, a measure which is urged both by himself and others, as far as they are able”; in November, “nothing is at this time more talked about, than that Peter Martyr is invited, and daily expected to arrive in England.”104 While Martyr did not return, his influence did, through his writings and his students, many now in high places, in particular through Bishop Jewel’s Apology for the Church of England.105
Some would place Martyr’s works among the “normative documents [xliv] for the doctrine and government of the Church of England.” One such was John Pym, majority leader in Parliament in 1629. Warning against current developments under Archbishop Laud, he argued that heading the list of those documents giving evidence of “what is the established religion of the realm” are the 1552 Articles, King Edward VI’s catechism, and the writings of Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, along with the professions of Cranmer and Ridley.106
TEXT AND TRANSLATION
It will be obvious that Martyr states his case twice, repeating his arguments and their patristic sources in roughly the same order in the Treatise and the Disputation. Since the Treatise comes first, its annotations will serve for both texts, as indicated where relevant in the Disputation’s notes. It will also be obvious that Martyr’s catena of passages from the church fathers relies partly on his own solid research, but also on collections of material. Frequent reference to the De Consecratio is a case in point: the material gathered by Gratian (PL 187.1731 ff.) provides Martyr with such relevant texts as the Berengarius affair and passages from Ambrose and Jerome. Gratian also employs the older designation “Eusebius Emmissenus” for Emisenus, as well as “Lib. II, epist. 2, Caecilio fratri salutem” for Cyprian’s Ad Caecilium de Sacramento Domini calcidi, now known as epistle 63.107 As we will see, Martyr’s references to such texts sometimes mention Gratian explicitly and sometimes identify the original source, mostly quite familiar to him, as the extent of his personal library shows.108 Moreover, his introduction of Theodoret’s Dialogues and Chrysostom’s Ad Caesarium Monachum, one of which was controversial and the other novel, illustrates his stature as patristic scholar.109
The text used for this translation of both works is the first edition: [xlv] Tractatio de sacramento eucharistiae, habita in celeberrima Universitate Oxoniensi. Ad hec Disputatio de eadem Universitate habita M.D. XLIX. London: [R. Wolfe], 1549, 4•, ca. 13.5:19 cm, fols. 1–67, for the Treatise, and fols. 2 r–94 v for Disputation.110 This edition contains Martyr’s prefatory letter to Cranmer and Cox’s concluding oration. We reproduce the title page and sample pages in the present volume. The copy of the Disputation in the British Library has notes in the handwriting of King Edward VI at fols. 8 and 10 through 13.111 Nicholas Udall translated the Treatise the following year: A Discourse or traictise of Petur Martyr Vermill a Florentine … wherin he openly declares his … iudgemente concernynge the sacrament of the Lordes supper (London: Robert Stoughton, 1550). It has a prefatory letter to Sir William Parr, earl of Essex.112 In 1552 a Zurich edition appeared: De Sacramento eucharistiae in celeberrima Angliae schola Oxoniensi habita tractatio, edited by A. Gesner and R. Wyssenbach, with prefatory letter from John Wolf to John Butler as well as a summary of the eucharistic views of the pope, Luther, and Zwingli, Martyr’s letter to Cranmer, and significantly, Augustine’s letter to Dardanus. Bound with the Treatise is Disputatio de eucharistiae sacramento habita in celeberr. Universitate Oxonien. in Anglia. This edition includes the letter of the presiding ten legates (A3 v–A6 v). A second Gesner edition appeared in 1557. There were also French translations of 1557 (Geneva) and 1562 (Lyon), and an Italian (Geneva) in 1557.113 The Treatise is in Masson’s Loci Communes of 1576 and Marten’s Common Places as IV.10, with the Disputation in the latter’s appendices. I have corrected the text according to the list of errata (ERR), noting changes either in braces { } in the text, or in footnotes.
Special mention should be made of help received from Andreas Löwe’s master’s thesis on the Disputation.114 Besides his introductory material using relatively neglected sources for the history of the debate, he presents Jewel’s manuscript on which Martyr’s original edition was [xlvi] based, collated with that of William Chedsey’s secretary.115 The latter is preferred over Tresham’s more antagonistic tone. Löwe’s careful analysis of the “two conflicting manuscript sources” (AL, 1:lxxvii) shows little substantive alteration by either, although Chedsey at times presents the opponents’ arguments in greater detail than does Martyr, and also records moderatorial interjections at greater length. I have taken note of the more important glosses, although the vast majority are either juxtapositions, synonyms, or more expanded ways of expressing the same idea.
ENDNOTES
1 The first biography was Josiah Simler’s funeral oration of 12 November 1562, expanded and published three months later. J. P. Donnelly has a modern translation in LLS 9–62. See also P. McNair’s biographical introduction to PML, vol. 1 (EW, 3–14). Bernardino Ochino (1534–64) became a pilgrim and refugee after Mary’s accession, was persecuted for his antitrinitarianism, and died in Moravia, in exile and poverty. See VWG, 15 ff.
2 See C. Schmidt, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1858), 75: “noch das Unwesen mittelalterlicher Scholastik und Barbarei.”
3 Andreas Löwe discovered this entry, correcting Philip McNair’s estimate of “late February”; see AL, 1:xxx. (See also n. 15 below.) The definitive treatment of this period is Philip M. J. McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” PMIR, 85–105. McNair’s research for a volume of that title, to complement his Peter Martyr in Italy, has now been turned over to Frank A. James for completion. For Martyr’s Paduan D.D., see Philip M. J. McNair, Peter Martyr in Italy, Anatomy of Apostasy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 116 ff.
4 Richard Smith (Smyth) was the subject of strong negative opinion, summed up by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 489: “Smith was a curious combination of great talent, time-serving, deep conservative convictions and large sexual appetites.” Cf. John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (London, 1816), 2:62–71. Andreas Löwe, “Richard Smyth: Stations in a Life of Opposition” (unpublished paper), observes, however, that “Smyth was a popular target” for such allegations, which appear to reflect evangelical polemics rather than historical fact. Smith took up a professorship at the University of Louvain, and in 1551 was incorporated at St. Andrews where he lectured in theology at St. Mary’s College. (Löwe uses Smyth’s own spelling of his name).
5 Dated 28 November 1547; see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 381–82.
6 G. J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (London: Macmillan, 1969), 66. Archbishop Cranmer’s committee had been established on 9 September 1548. See MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer 395 ff. for the progress of Cranmer’s liturgical reform.
7 26 December 1548: OL, 2:225, 470.
8 OL, 2:84–219, 377–460. See also C. H. Smyth, Cranmer and the Reformation Under Edward VI (London: SPCK, 1973), 133–38, “Swiss Students at Oxford.”
9 OL, 2:184, 378.
10 McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 99. See COR, dedicatory preface to Edward VI, fol. a4r: “The main reason for my purpose was that nowhere else are such various and numerous subjects treated, that bear on the controversies of our time. In truth, if the teaching of this letter were used with skill and prudence, we could easily heal completely all the faults by which the soundness of the church is corrupted.” Martyr had expounded the same letter while in Naples, 1537–40.
11 John ab Ulmis to Henry Bullinger, 25 March 1550; OL, 2:192, 401.
12 Prefatory letter to his Defensio against Smith (VOT); see n. 20 below. The commentary was published in the first quarter of 1551, within two years of the Disputation. Its exegesis of 1 Cor. 10:16 is more than ten pages (fols. 255 v–261 r), covering ground similar to both, arguing against transubstantiation on grounds grammatical and historical, with the familiar quotations from Tertullian, Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, etc.
13 McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 103. Smith’s words are a marginal note in his Defensio against Martyr, 82A.
14 Tractatio … cum jam absolvit interpretationem xi capitis prioris Epistolae ad Corinthios (LC/CP, 4:10).
15 J. Strype, Cranmer (London, 1649), 279; Löwe, AL, 1:lxxvii, agrees: “About the time of the formal authorization of the Uniformity Bill, Vermigli began another series of lectures on the Eucharist, which also stemmed from his first Oxford exposition of the letter to the Corinthians. In this lecture series, later published as Tractatio de Sacramento Eucharistiae, the reformer set out his sacramental theology in greater detail.” See also MacCulloch, address at the Peter Martyr Vermigli Symposium (Zurich, 1999): “A version of his Oxford lectures on the Eucharist was warmly dedicated to the archbishop.”
16 See McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 101: “Ever since his time in Naples, he seems to have been operating on two fronts, one public and the other private”; cf. John Strype’s similar judgment in Ecc. Mem., 2:336.
17 McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 103, quoting Rastell, Smith, and Harding. For modern estimates of Martyr see S. Corda, VS, 179 ff.
18 Marvin W. Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality: Peter Martyr and the English Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988): 451–69; here 451.
19 OL, 2:388.
20 Letter to Cox prefacing VOT; see McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 104. M. Young, The Life and Times of Aonio Paleario (London, 1860), 1:428; R. W. Dixon, History of the Church of England (London, 1902), 3:113, thought that the Disputation followed the interpretation of 1 Cor. 11.
21 COR, fols. 255 v ff.
22 Copies in the British Library (B. Mus. Royal. MS 17 C.V., fols. 2–69), and Cambridge University Library (MS Ff V 14, fols. 13–39 v); Latin original unknown. See F. A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1891), 158 ff., and DM, 142–43. A copy of this manuscript was loaned to me by David G. Selwyn some years ago. See David G. Selwyn, “A New Version of a Mid-Sixteenth Century Vernacular Tract on the Eucharist: A Document of the Early Edwardian Reformation?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988): 217–29. “It would appear more than probable that this manuscript was actually designed for Somerset’s help and guidance in the management of the [eucharistic] business” (Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI, 315). MacCulloch, 1999 symposium address, notes: “Strikingly, in the debate which followed Cranmer did not differ from the line taken in this tract.” Cf. AL 1.xxviii–iv; also VS, 65–66, and PMRE, 95–96.
23 23A lengthy exposition of 1 Cor. 10:17 (COR, fols. 263 r–271 v), included without a break in the text, was extracted by Masson for his LC and given the title An in Communione liceat Una Tantum Species Uti (LC/CP, 4:11), but it is not a condensed treatise.
24 Martyr’s preface to the Disputation, fol. 4 v.
25 In fact Martyr had introduced the idea early in the Disputation: “I insist on the comparison [collationem] between Christ himself and the Eucharist, for the sacrament must correspond with him … the substance of bread does not go away because of the correlation [convenientiam] the sacrament has with Christ, in whom both humanity and divinity remain whole” (DIS 9 r–10 r). Löwe, AL, 1:lvi ff., holds that Martyr’s conclusiones presented on the fourth day constitute a summary of his constructive theology.
26 See xxxii, n. 58 below.
27 See “Text and Translation” p. xl below, and Jenkyn’s “Authorities,” CRA, 4:436 ff. Irena Backus, RCF, xiii, observes: “Throughout the Middle Ages the Fathers were auctoritates on which the Church founded its doctrine or its law regardless of the time in which they wrote. This ahistorical method partly explains the other title of Decree of Gratian, Concordia discordantium canonum (harmony of conflicting canons or norms)”; see D. Rutherford’s chapter on the Decretum, 513 ff.
28 DIAL, 125.
29 See n. 17 above. E.g. C. W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers (London: Macmillan, 1958), 144 (following Smyth, Cranmer and the Reformation, 125): “Peter Martyr, who was a Bucerian when he arrived in England”; Cf. AL, 1:xvii ff.
30 Oration, LLS, 324.
31 McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 105, observes: “The basic facts of the Disputation which [Smith] provoked but did not attend, held in the Divinity School at Oxford from May 28 to June 1, 1549, have been established for centuries, and are recounted by Simler, Foxe, Schlosser, Schmidt, Young, Smyth, McLelland, and Anderson, to say nothing of Wood, Strype, Burnet, and many of the historians who have described the Reformation in England.”
32 Simler (LLS 34); Strype, Ecc. Mem., 2:336 ff., PMRE 101.
33 Simler (LLS 35); Schmidt, Leben, 89–106, provides a detailed account and assessment. See also DM, 113 ff. Strype treats the Disputation in Ecc. Mem., 2:325 ff., including Bucer’s response. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1563), 2:920 ff., provides a summary of Martyr’s arguments.
34 An Act of Parliament of December 1548 forbade public debate about the sacrament until the king, on the advice of his council and clergy, “should set forth an open doctrine thereof, and what terms and words may justly be spoken thereby”; Strype, Ecc. Mem., 2:130–31. An earlier decree forbade public criticism of the sacrament after 1 May 1548 (Burnet, History, 1:47).
35 John Jewel was appointed Martyr’s notary; see Humphrey, Vita Iuelli, 44; Tresham’s and Chedsey’s remain anonymous. John Ab Ulmis states: “I constantly took notes of that Disputation, and presented a copy to the marquis of Dorset”; see OL, 2: 391.
36 See McNair, Peter Martyr in Italy, 109; Dixon, History, 3:113–18. For the “Theses for Debate” see EW, 85 ff.
37 Statuta antiqua universitatis Oxoniensis, ed. Gibson (Oxford, 1931), 32–33, 346, quoted in AL, 1:xxxiv. Cf. Frank A. James III, Peter Martyr and Predestination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 110–11.
38 OL, 2:419–20. Ab Ulmis was admitted B.A. to Christ Church in 1549, M.A. 1552. Robert Parsons, S.J., extols the benefits of disputation as “a good meanes and profitable instrument, to examine and try out truth … laying forth the difficultyes on both sides”; see idem, Re-view of Ten publike Disputations (1604) 3, 20, quoted by AL, 1:xxxiii. Later (1 June 1550) Martyr would complain to Bullinger that new rules increased his burden, since he had to preside at the “public disputations upon theological subjects” held on alternate weeks, as well as at the weekly debate in Christ Church. Because of the public nature of these debates, the result is “a continual struggle with my adversaries, who are indeed most obstinate”; OL, 2:481.
39 See letter of dedication (5), and DIS 1(B) (135) below.
40 According to the gloss that Löwe discovered—Chedsey MS 2b, d. (see AL, 2:iii). Parsons, Re-view, 37, sees a “manifest fraud” in the order of the Propositions, since the first (on transubstantiation) depends on the second (real presence); quoted in AL, 1:xiv.
41 Two royal visitations were established to visit Oxford and Cambridge; see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer 425–26). Their investigations were much resented by traditionalists; see Anthony à Wood, Historia et Antiquitates, 1:94.
42 Dixon, History, 3:116, reports a prison sentence for creating a disturbance; see McNair, “Peter Martyr in England,” 104–5, and n. 4 above. See VWG, 20 n. 44, regarding Smith’s continuing literary debate with Martyr on justification, celibacy, and vows. Martyr answered with the Defensio … ad Ricc. Smythaei … duos libellos de Coelibatu sacerdotum & Votis monasticis (Basel: P. Perna, 1559).
43 Text in Chedsey’s MS (see AL, 2:iii), and F. C. Schlosser, Leben des Peter Martyr Vermili (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1809), 427.
44 Dr. William Tresham (d. 1569), was commissary (vice chancellor) of the university 1534–46, and member of the 1540 royal commission on worship. Later he engaged in debates with Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. After reading Martyr’s, he published his own account of the Disputation: Disputatio de Eucharistiae Sacramento contra Petrum Martyrem (BL Harley MS 422). Its prefatory letter calls Martyr “a doting old man, subverted, impudent, and famous master of errors,” who fled from Germany because of lust and adultery, a pseudomartyr (Senex quidam delirus est, subversus, impudens, errorum magister insignis.… Pseudomartyr); text in J. Strype, Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1694), vol. 2, appendix XLV; cf. Schmidt, Leben, 105. See Gervase Duffield’s notes on the various figures in DM, 65–67.
45 William Chedsey (or Cheadsey), fellow of Corpus Christi College 1533–51, later archdeacon of Middlesex and chaplain to Edmund Bonner, bishop of London. In 1554 he participated in the Oxford Disputation against Cranmer and Ridley, and in 1559 was chosen one of nine debaters, against Cox, Jewel and seven others, in the public debates sponsored by Elizabeth I. He was finally sent to the Tower for recusancy (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 2:1024 ff.). His “Relation of the Disputation” was never published: Library of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and a copy in the British Library, Harley MSS. It is the source of one set of glosses (MSa) in AL, vol. 2.
46 Appointed principal of St. Mary’s Hall 1545–46, he resigned in 1550 to take up various livings in his native Pembrokeshire. He “became so quick and understanding a disputant that he was called ‘Morgan the sophister’”; A. Wood, Athenae, 1:432; cf. C. Schmidt: “Morgan Philipps, Vorsteher der Aula B. Mariae, wegen seiner scholastischen Gewandheit unter dem Namen Morgan der Sophist bekannt,” Leben, 92. Strype, Mem. Cran. 2:286–87, calls him Henry.
47 Schmidt, Leben, 97.
48 Nicholas Cartwright, then an admirer of Martyr, was “Master of the Hospital of St. John near Banbury, and had preferment also in the Diocese of Lichfield”; see Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1845), 250n. In 1554 he joined Richard Smith in debating with Cranmer.
49 Henry Holbeach, bishop of Lincoln 1547–52, member of the royal commission for the 1548 Book of Common Prayer, and a royal legate. In 1550 he was appointed a commissioner for the trial of Stephen Gardiner. Dr. Simon Haynes was prebendary of Christ Church, Master of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and compiler of the English liturgy. Sir Richard Morison (d. 1556), ambassador to Italy and the Hanse towns and a patron of Martyr in Oxford, withdrew to Strasbourg during the Marian reign where he studied with Martyr. Christopher Nevinson (or Newinson; d. 1551), doctor of civil law, was a royal visitor to the churches of Westminster, London, Norwich, and Ely, and one of the “honorable umpires” at the Oxford Disputation (Strype, Ecc. Mem., 2:286).
50 Text in De Sacramento eucharistiae … Disputatio … in Anglia, ed. Gesner and Wyttenbach (Zurich, 1552), fols. A3 v–A6 v, which we translate as a preface to the Disputation below.
51 Richard Cox (c. 1500–81), chancellor 1547–52 and first dean of Christ Church, 1547–53. He was a royal chaplain, a member of the two prayer book commissions, and later bishop of Ely (1559); see OER. For Martyr’s own appreciation see COR, Praef. a3 v: ob suas agregias virtutes et piam doctrinam. Anderson, PMRE, 106, calls him “Somerset’s agent for change in Oxford.” His zeal in altering statutes and destroying books won him the ambiguous title “cancellor” of the university; Wood, Hist. et Ant., 270.
52 52Cf John ab Ulmis’s letter to Bullinger (7 August 1549; OL, 2:391): “[T]here has been a sharp disputation at Oxford respecting the Eucharist, where the subject was made so clear and easy of comprehension, in the very presence of the king’s commissioners, that any person of ordinary capacity might easily understand on which side the truth lay, and detect the absurdity of our opponents.”
53 For Beza, see Anderson, PMRE, 321. As for Calvin, a direct response to the Disputation seems lacking. Later correspondence indicates his endorsement of Martyr. In particular, after reading Martyr’s Defensio adv. Gardinerum, Calvin stated: “The whole was crowned by Peter Martyr, who has left nothing to be desired”; see “True Partaking,” Tracts, 2:535. Examining the internal evidence, Jean Cadier’s masterful study of Calvinist doctrine examines Martyr’s Tractatio, comparing its teaching with essential elements in Calvin. Cadier concludes: “Sa pensée est essentiellement calviniste,” adding that Martyr “insiste peut être plus que Calvin sur un bienfait de la Cène, qui est d’établir un lien entre les croyants, membres du même corps, grains formant un même pain.” He considers Martyr’s Poissy statement (DM, 329 ff.) to agree completely with Calvin, hence “On peut considérer Pierre Martyr comme pleinement d’accord avec Calvin dans sa doctrine sur la Sainte Cène”; see Jean Cadier, La doctrine calviniste de la Sainte-Cène (Paris, 1951), 112, 115.
54 Basil Hall, “Cranmer, the Eucharist and the Foreign Divines in the Reign of Edward VI” in Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar, ed. P. Ayris and D. Selwyn (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), 228 ff. The sentences are: “But concerning Christ’s body, which I deny to be present, as you complain so much, I wish to say something openly to explain myself. If I should ask you why one should assert any such presence as you imagine for yourself…” (see below, p. 15, fol. aiiiv). The context shows that Martyr is using a rhetorical device to continue his debate with the supporters of transubstantiation mentioned in the preceding paragraph; there are no paragraph breaks in the original.
55 Smyth, Cranmer, 49 ff., explains: “What men desired was a via media between Luther’s doctrine, which retained too much, and Zwingli’s, which retained too little.… Suvermerianism was the name given by the Lutherans in derision to the doctrine of Martin Bucer and the Strassburg school” (23); cf. p. 51, on the charge of Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI, 130–31, that Cranmer held to a “Real Absence.” Cf. E. Carpenter: “There was ambiguity in Cranmer, and something of this has remained in the Church of England ever since”; quoted in P. N. Brooks, Cranmer in Conflict (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 127.
56 P. Hughes, The Reformation in England (London: Hollis and Carter, 1953), 145. Hughes also notes the apparent change that Cranmer showed by the time of the November 1548 debate in the House of Lords. Cf. Brooks, Cranmer in Conflict, “Defence and Controversy,” 69 ff., and B. Gerrish in OER, 2:78–79. Marvin Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 468–69, argues cogently for Martyr’s influence on Cranmer.
57 Thomas Cranmer, An Answer unto a crafty and sophistical cavillation devised by Stephen Gardiner … against the true and godly doctrine of the most holy sacrament (London: John Day, 1551), Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer … Lord’s Supper, ed. J. E. Cox (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1894), 374. See CRA, 4:xxx–xxxi, for a list of Cranmer’s writings.
58 MacCulloch, Cranmer, 468; K. J. Walsh, “Cranmer and the Fathers, Especially in the Defence,” Journal of Religious History 2 (1980): 240–41, cited by Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 457. The document itself is in the Corpus Christi library, Cambridge (CCCC 102), and was summarized by Strype, Mem. Cran., 269. See CRA, 2:291. The patristic quotations and related propositions coincide with Martyr’s closely, as our footnotes to Martyr’s Treatise show. They include theses concerning the figurative interpretaion of the scriptural passages involved, that the wicked do not eat Christ’s body and blood, that the Old Testament fathers ate and drank Christ, and standard arguments against transubstantiation, particularly the Capernaite interpretation (accidents remaining without a subject), that hoc does not refer to the bread, etc.
59 Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 458.
60 See PMRE, 90–91, VWG, 268 ff., and MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 382–83, 462 ff. MacCulloch, 467, 490–91, notes that Cranmer “drew on Peter Martyr’s previous use of the Dialogues of Theodoret” and also calls attention to “the partisan unreliability of the fifth-century Nestorian sympathizer Theodoret of Cyrrhus.” See also Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 457–63.
61 Micronius, OL, 2:561 (20 May 1550); Hall, “Cranmer,” 238.
62 Nicholas Udall, Discourse, Praef. sig. *3 v. I note Udall’s interjections below at §§29, 60, and 61. G. A. Starr, “Antedatings from Nichols Udall’s Translation of Peter Martyr’s ‘Discourse,’” Notes and Queries, n.s. 12 (1966): 9–12, analyzes Udall’s translation to identify terms first used therein, or their antedatings. He lists many: bluntish for instance, i.e. dull (sig. G3), “gloser of the decrees” (X2), and offre: “signifie offre and represente the bodye and bloud” sig. Y1. Löwe, AL, vol. 2, presents Udall’s text.
63 “Epitome of the Book against Gardiner,” in RDR, 153–60.
64 See the material in Corda, VS, 76 ff., esp. 78: “He should be placed, if this terminology is permissible, between Bucer and Bullinger, perhaps closer to the former in his positive, and to the latter in his negative, formulations.”
65 MacCulloch, 1999 Zurich symposium: “[I]n the nuances of his stance, he showed himself closer to Martyr than he was to Bucer.”
66 Cranmer, A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Saviour Christ (CRA, 2:275–463). Its five books concern: (1) the true and catholic doctrine and use of the sacrament; (2) against the error of transubstantiation; (3) how Christ is present in his holy supper; (4) the eating and drinking of the body and blood; (5) the oblation and sacrifice of our Savior Christ.
67 VS, pt. 2: “Systematic Exposition of Vermigli’s Eucharistic Doctrine,” esp. 116 ff. on the sacramental mutation, 138 ff. on “The manducatio sacramenti,” and 165 ff. “Effectus.”
68 See Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 2:820–96, for Gardiner’s career during the reign of Edward VI.
69 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 67 ff. Stephen Gardiner (1497–1555) clashed with other Reformers too: his A Detection of the Devil’s Sophistry (1546) was rebutted by Anthony Gilby in 1547, and by John Hooper, An Answer unto my lord of winchesters booke. … (Zurich, 1547). See also C. W. Dugmore, “Cranmer and Gardiner” in The Mass and the English Reformers (London: Macmillan, 1958), 176–201.
70 Gardiner, In Petrum Martyrem florentinum malae tractacionis querela Sanctissimae Eucharistiae … (264 folio pages—British Library’s MS Arundel 100). See Anderson, PMRE, 106–7: “Vermigli never rejects Gardiner’s repeated appeal to the Thomist principle according to which ‘gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.’ On the contrary, specifically because of this principle he is bound to reject transubstantiation as a doctrine according to which grace would destroy nature” (184). Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 461, notes that “Gardiner saw the central issue in Martyr’s use of Theodoret.”
71 Cranmer, Answer; Writings, 195; see also Brooks, Cranmer in Conflict, 70, extr. 1.
72 Cranmer, Answer; Writings, 20, 222.
73 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 573, notes Cranmer’s last letter (from the Tower: OL, 1:29–30) to Martyr, who was once again at Strasbourg: “he finally regretted that his lack of books and freedom prevented him from writing the definitive version of the Answer, promised long before in his 1553 preface to the Defence, so that the ‘subtleties and juggling tricks and ravings’ of Stephen Gardiner (under his pen name of Marcus Antonius) could finally be routed.” So the drama that entangled the three men played its final scene. Cf. Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 464.
74 Defensio Doctrinae veteris et Apostolicae de ss. Eucharistiae Sacramento … adv. Stephani Gardineri librum (Zurich: C. Froschauer), 821 folio pages; prefatory letters from Martyr to Queen Elizabeth and to the reader, dated 1 March 1559. See BIB, 32–35. Martyr also published an Epitome of the work (see n. 63 above). See Strype, Ecc. Mem., 2:2, 37.
75 Defensio Doctrinae, 189. The 1562 edition (Zurich: C. Froschauer) includes the Tractatio (620–61) and Disputatio (662–775).
76 Strype, Cranmer, 287; see also Anderson, PMRE, 106, and Corda, VS, 75. Martyr had urged Bucer to leave Strasbourg for England in letters of 26 December 1548 and 22 January 1549 (OL, 2:225–26, 468–77).
77 Mart. Buc. Scripta Anglicana (Basel, 1577), 545 ff. See VWG, appendix C, “Bucer, Calvin and Martyr,” and DM, “Bucer’s Reaction to the Treatise,” 129 ff.
78 Script. Ang., 546–50. See D. F. Wright, “Use of ‘exhibere,’” pp. 99–100 in “Infant Baptism and the Christian Community,” Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community, ed. D. F. Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
79 15 May 1550, OL, 2:252, 544.
80 Quoted in C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1946), 79.
81 Their correspondence about the Disputation is found in Martin Bucer: Scripta Anglicana (Basel, 1577), 545 ff. C. Hopf, Martin Bucer, makes much of Bucer’s critique of Martyr’s position in the Disputation; see also Anderson’s analysis, PMRE, 101 ff.
82 See §77, (p. 119) below; the “elsewhere” refers to Martyr’s lectures on 1 Cor. 11:24.
83 Bucer and Melanchthon had used the phrase in the Wittenberg Concord of 1534: “The bread and wine are signs, signa exhibitiva, which being proferred and taken, the body of Christ is proferred and taken at the same time.” Bullinger’s First Helvetic Confession (1536) has: “symbols by which the true communication of his body and blood is present (exhibeatur) by the Lord himself” (German gereicht und angeboten werde, Art. 23). In 1540 Melanchthon’s revision of the Augsburg Confession inserted exhibeantur in Art. 10. See B. Gerrish and D. Wright, OER, 2:75 ff., 99–100.
84 See Bucer’s fifty-four sentences on the Lord’s Supper in Strype, Mem. Cran, vol. 2, no. XLVI, pp. 855–69.
85 Quoted in C. H. Smyth, Cranmer, 175. One example is his use of the term substantia, to which Stephen Gardiner appealed on behalf of transubstantiation; see Martyr’s reply in DEF, 634.
86 Catechism of 1544, §42 (EW, 66).
87 Smyth, Cranmer, 166 ff. The entire chapter, “Cambridge and Bucer,” 139–77, is relevant to the issue. As to Martyr and Bucer, Smyth identifies John à Lasco as “the chief agent of their conversion” (180).
88 Bucer to Calvin regarding the 1549 Consensus Tigurinus (Ioan. Cal. Op. 13, CR, 41:350 ff.).
89 M. A. Overell, “Peter Martyr in England 1547–1553: An Alternative View” in Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984): 87–104. Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” provides a critique of her view.
90 Overell, “Peter Martyr in England,” 87; the reference is to John Strype, Ecc. Mem. (London, 1816), 2:336.
91 See DIS below, concluding speech, fols. 94 v–96 v in the original. Cf. Martyr’s dedicatory letter to Cox, nominating him as “the patron of my labors,” and commending “your many public accomplishments while you were teaching at Oxford”; Def. ad Ricc. Smythaei … de Caelibatu sac. & Votis Mon. (Basel: P. Perna, 1559).
92 Overell, “Peter Martyr in England,”91.
93 Overell, “Peter Martyr in England,” 99–100, quoting Thomas Harding, A Rejoindre to M. Jewel’s Reply (Antwerp, 1566).
94 See J. C. McLelland, “The Second Book of Common Prayer,” VWG, 28–40.
95 Overell, “Peter Martyr in England,”103.
96 See Parsons, Re-view, on the relative success of the Oxbridge disputations, and N. Sander, The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism (London, 1877), 2:196. Marvin Anderson, “Rhetoric and Reality,” 469, counters Overell’s thesis with the judgment of Patrick Collinson, International Calvinism 1541–1715, ed. M. Prestwick (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 214: “But if we were to identify one author and one book which represented the centre of theological gravity of the Elizabethan Church it would not be Calvin’s Institutes but the Common Places of Peter Martyr.”
97 97R. W. Dixon, History of the Church of England, 118, referring to Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 2:1024 ff.
98 The text of Martyr’s annotations or censura is given in VWG, 29–30.
99 Peter Martyr to Henry Bullinger, 14 June 1552 (LLS, 123–24).
100 “An Unpublished Letter of Peter Martyr, Reg. Div. Prof. Oxford, to Henry Bullinger; written from Oxford just after the completion of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI; edited, with remarks, by Wm Goode” (London, 1850), and The Nature of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist (London, 1856); G. C. Gorham, Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears during the Reformation in England (London, 1857). See VWG, 33–34, DM, 148 ff., BIB, 150–51.
101 See n. 29 above
102 Purgatio Reverendissimi … D. Thomae Arch. Cant.; text in G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England (London, 1681), vol. 2, app. 2:8; Smyth, Cranmer and the Reformation, 122, calls the statement “magnificent.” Hall, “Cranmer,” 231, on the other hand, thinks that I take this to mean too much, since it reflects less an identity of views, particularly eucharistic, and more a tribute to Martyr’s debating skills; besides, Bucer (whom Hall places close to Cranmer) was no longer available.
103 For this paragraph, see VWG, 55 ff., “The Affairs of England.”
104 See Jewel’s six letters of 1559 to Martyr, Zurich Letters 1558–1579 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882), 6–25.
105 “When clergy in Elizabeth I’s Church looked for a reliable and authoritative theological guide, they were likely to turn to Martyr’s Common Places …”; D. MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England 1547–1603 (London: Macmillan, 1990), 71. Anthony Marten, The Common Places of … Peter Martyr (London, 1583), has a prefatory letter to Queen Elizabeth. It is an expanded edition of Masson’s Loci Communes and includes the “Disputation” in its appended material.
106 Quoted by James C. Spalding, ed., The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws of England, 1552, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 19 (Kirksville, Mo., 1992), 56.
107 Martyr’s own text of Cyprian is edited by Erasmus, Divi Cypriani … (Basel: Froben, 1543), in which it appears as Lib. II, ep. 3, fols. 51–58. Peter Lombard, Sent. IV, dist. 8–13 (PL, 192.856–68), also supplies a collection of texts and arguments on which Martyr draws.
108 See CSV, “Peter Martyr’s Library,” 208–17, and PMRE, chap. 8, “Peter Martyr’s Library and Lectures”; both draw on the research of Gardy (1919) and Ganozcy (1969).
109 See “Peter Martyr’s Patristic Sources,” VWG, App. B, 267–71. Martyr showed Cranmer these two texts while staying at Lambeth on his arrival in England. See §31 (61) below for Cyprian, and §28 (54) below, for Theodoret.
110 Donnelly has “fols. 2–90” for Disputatio because the last page is misnumbered 90 instead of 94.
111 See BIB, 1–10, for details and printings.
112 See BIB, 3.
113 See BIB, 4–10, for details and facsimiles of title pages. Schmidt, Leben 105n., identifies the 1562 French translation (BIB, no. 7, p. 10) as published by Claude Ravot, Lyon.
114 Andreas Löwe, “Peter Martyr Vermigli, Disputatio De Eucharistiae Sacramento … 1549”; AL, vol. 1, contains an introduction of eighty-five pages and the 1550 English translation of the Disputation by Nicolas Udall, some five hundred pages. Vol. 2 consists of two glosses, MSa, which is Chedsey’s secretary’s notes (Corpus Christi College, Oxford MSCCC 255, 161–203), and MSb (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 495 [SP53]), which is John Jewel’s account that “clearly forms the basis for the printed edition of 1549" (see AL, 1:lxxvii ff., “Bibliographical and Editorial Notes”).
115 Löwe, AL 1:lxxvii, notes that the Disputation is “among the few writings of Peter Martyr’s which survives in its original manuscript form” while “a wealth of manuscripts of the Oxford Disputatio is still extant.” John Jewel’s transcript survives as MS 495 (SP53) in the Parker Collection of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and forms the basis for the printed edition of 1549. Tresham’s account, by an anonymous notary, is in the British Library (Harleian MS 422, fols. 4–31b). It was published in 1549, with an English translation in 1568, but no copies of either are extant. Two versions by Chedsey’s nameless secretary exist, and do not correspond exactly; Brian Twyne collection, Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS cclv.155, fols. 161–203. A. Löwe, “Bibliographical and Editorial Notes,” AL, 1:lxxvii ff.