the sacramental hermeneutics in the theology of a mid-sixteenth-century
English divine, namely John Jewel.JOHN JEWEL (1522–71)A leading scholar and Protestant reformer in Oxford in the 1540s and 1550s,
and later bishop of the Church of England under Elizabeth I, John Jewel is
known chiefly for his influentialApologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana (1562),
translated by Ann, Lady Bacon (wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon) and published
in 1564 under the titleApologie or Answere in Defence of the Churche of
Englande.Jewel matriculated from Merton College, Oxford in 1535, graduated
BA in 1540, was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1542, and
proceeded MA in 1545. Among thefirst generation of Oxonians trained in
the methods of Erasmian humanism, Jewel applied himself to the study of
rhetoric and dialectic, and gained a reputation at Oxford as a learned and
assiduous scholar. He was appointed Reader of Humanity and Rhetoric at
Corpus, and it was there that he became an enthusiastic student of the writings
of the early church fathers. Unquestionably the decisive contemporary intel-
lectual influence on Jewel was the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli,
erstwhile luminary of the Augustinian Canons in Spoleto and Lucca whofled
Italy in 1542, served in Strasbourg as professor of Old Testament in the
company of Martin Bucer, and eventually arrived in Oxford in 1547 to take
up the eminent post of Regius Professor of Divinity at the invitation of
Thomas Cranmer. During Vermigli’s time in Oxford, Jewel formed a close
relationship with the scholar whom he described as his‘father and most
esteemed master in Christ’, and served as his amanuensis at the notorious
Oxford Disputation on the Eucharist in 1549.^21 After the accession of Queen
Mary, Jewel played an important role as notary to Thomas Cranmer and
Nicholas Ridley at another public disputation prior to their martyrdom. In the
meantime, Vermigli had departed England for the continent and Jewel, now
forced into exile, followed himfirst to Strasbourg and thence to Zurich where
they continued to promote the cause of religious reform. It is reported that
while in Zurich‘in the afternoons [Jewel] used to read the fathers aloud to
(^21) Peter Vermigli,Tractatio de sacramento Eucharistiae, habita in celeberrima vniuersitate
Oxoniensi in Anglia, per D. Petrum Martyrem Vermilium Florentinum, Regium ibidem Theolo-
giae professorem, cum iam absoluisset interpretationem. II capitis prioris epistolae D. Pauli
Apostoli ad Corinthios. Ad hec. Disputatio de eode[m] Eucharistiae Sacramento, in eadem
Vniuersitate habita per eundem D. P. Mar. Anno Domini M.D.XLIX(London: [R. Wolfe ad
æneum serpentem, 1549]). Peter Martyr Vermigli,The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the
Eucharist, 1549; ed. and trans., with introduction and notes by Joseph C. McLelland (Kirksville,
MO: Truman State University Press, 2000).
Erasmian Humanism and Eucharistic Hermeneutics 101