Peter Martyr Vermigli
(1499-1562) *****
Major
Italian reformer whose flight from Italy in 1542 brought a sophisticated
scholastic, rabbinic, and patristic learning to aid a variety of Protestant
endeavors in northern Europe. A confidant of cardinals and humanists, he
assumed the name of Peter of Verona, he was martyred in 1552.
In
1518 he entered the University of Padua to study Aristotle. He took his
doctorate and was ordained priest in 1525. In 1526 he was promoted to public
preacher, and from 1526 to 1533 he taught philosophy and Scripture in the
houses of the Lateran Congregation. In 1533 he became abbot of Spoleto for
three years. McNair argues plausibly (if only from circumstances) that he next
assisted in the remarkable reform proposals which Gasparo Contarini and others
presented to Pope Paul III in 1537. From 1537 to 1540 Vermigli served as abbot
of S. Pietro ad Aram, Naples. During that time he preached to an audience which
overlapped with the reform salon of Juan de Valdes, the Spanish reformer, who
became a close friend. His 1540 public lectures on I Corinthians reached only
3:9-17 when he was suspended from preaching for his denial of purgatsory.
Powerful friends in Rome quashed the local mandate.
The
summer of 1542 led to a crisis of conscience when the Inquisition was
established in Italy on July 21. Vermigli fled Lucca in August by way of Pisa
to Florence. He paused to copy a manuscript of Chrysostom on the Eucharist, to
entrust his library to a patrician friend, and to pen a letter to his Lucca
canons which concluded with the words, "I am free from hypocrisy through
the grace of Christ." Ochino, valued preacher of the Capuchin Order,
joined Vermigli in flight across the Alps on August 25.
After
some days in Zurich, Vermigli spent a month in Basel. On October 5 he left for
Strasbourg at Bucer's invitation. During his five years there he lectured on
the OT and later on Romans, publishing comments on the Apostle's Creed in 1544
which clearly deny Roman teaching on the papacy and Eucharist.
Thomas
Cranmer invited Vermigli to England in 1547. In spring of 1548 he took up
residence in Christ Church, Oxford, as Regius Professor. In the midst of 1549
lectures on I Corinthians, Vermigli held a major Oxford disputation on the
Eucharist. He delivered lectures on Romans, served on the Reform Commission for
Ecclesiastical Laws, and contributed a prayer to the 1552 Prayer Book.
After
Edward VI died, Vermigli returned to Strasbourg late in 1553. There he lectured
on Judges to the Marian exiles and was pressed by the Lutheran John Marbach to
conform to doctrinal constraints on baptism and Eucharist. He left in 1556 for
Zurich.
While
in Zurich, Vermigli was twice invited by Calvin to pastor the Genevan Italian
congregation and to lecture for him. In 1559 he published the massive Defense
Against Gardiner at Cranmer's personal request. He dedicated his 1558 Romans to
Queen Elizabeth. At Zurich he lectured on Samuel, which Beza and Bullinger used
in manuscript, and on Kings. He published in 1561 a Dialogue on the Two Natures
in Christ to answer the Lutheran Brenz.
Vermigli
corresponded with Elizabethan bishops such as Jewel, Cox, and Sandys. His Latin
writings were excerpted and published in a Latin Loci Communes (1576). This was
to be expanded and translated into the Common Places (1583). Judges and Romans
likewise were translated in 1564 and 1568. Vermigli left a considerable
literary deposit for the Elizabethan Puritans. The Loci went through thirteen
Latin editions by 1656, while the commentaries are extant in thirty-one
editions from the Corinthians (1551) to Lamentations (1629).