divinity school was the immediate cause of the 1549 disputations.
Among those listening to Martyr’s lectures (which McNair, citing John
ab Ulmis dates to 2 March 1549, new style^98 ) was Richard Smith who
immediately called for a disputation on the subject. The arrangements,
however, were only made the next day when Richard Cox, the vice-
chancellor of the university,^99 had to take Martyr by the arm, rescuing
him from the uproar of the crowd agitating for the debate, leading the
assailed Professor to his home where the arrangements were made.
Smith, after being imprisoned for contempt but soon released, never
took part in the debate, but fled the country for Louvain by way of
Scotland.^100 When the disputation was finally held, Smith’s place was
taken by William Tresham, whom we already have met as a former
fellow of Merton, but by then was a canon of Christ Church. Jewel,
along with ab Ulmis, was one of the recorders of the debate. Martyr’s
public breach with the more conservative Lutheran position apparently
received its impetus from Cranmer. The archbishop had garnered his
new notions from several sources: most notably Ridley, who had
provided the archbishop with the writings of Ratramnus of Corbie, a
ninth-century monk whose De Corpore et Sanguineconfessed that the
sacrament was but a figure of Christ’s body and blood.^101 Cranmer as
well had sought out Bucer for advice, receiving the Strasbourg
Reformer’s views in a letter delivered to him by Martyr and Ochino
when they arrived in England in late 1547.^102 Yet that is not all that
Martyr brought with him, for he as well had brought a manuscript of
John Chrysostom’s Ad Caesarium Monachumthat he had stopped and
copied when he fled from Italy in 1542, in which the Constantinopolitan
patriarch seemingly embraced a non-corporeal interpretation of the
presence of Christ in the Eucharist.^103 In 1550 Cranmer published his
30 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^98) McNair, ‘Martyr in England’, p. 104.
(^99) Cox was an evangelical, educated at Cambridge and ironically, had been plucked by
Cardinal Wolsey from Cambridge to be an instructor at his new Cardinal College. He
remained when Henry VIII reorganized the institution, and under Mary had to flee
England. Under Elizabeth he would be the bishop of Ely.
(^100) Smith would return following Mary’s accession. He wrote at least two tracts on the
question of clerical marriage, particularly in relation to those who had taken monastic
vows (by whom he meant Luther and Martyr) and then broken them Cf. Defensio
coelibatus sacerdotum(London, 1550).
(^101) Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England: From Cranmer to Baxter and
Fox, 1534–1690(first published in two volumes by Princeton University Press, Vol I. From
Cranmer to Hooker, 1534–1603, 1970; Vol II, From Andrews to Baxter and Fox,
1603–1690, 1975. Combined volume, Grand Rapids, 1996), pp. 103–4.
(^102) MacCulloch,Cranmer, pp. 382–83.
(^103) Ibid., p. 382. Stephen Gardiner, certainly to his great glee, pointed out that this
manuscript was the only one which contained the words which Cranmer would eventually
employ.
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