Peter Martyr Vermigli, the quiet outsider (1499 - 1562)
MANY YEARS ago an Italian friend handed me a book as I left Milan, Italy, to return to the U.K. It happened to be the PhD thesis of an Italian academic, Dr Philip McNair, who had taught me at university. The subject was: Peter Martyr Vermigli, monk and priest of the early 1500s.1 He was the son of one Stefano Vermigli, of a family well- respected in Florence, who named him after Peter Martyr of Milan who had died at the hand of the Arians in the 13th century. The book describes the course of his life as a young man, entering a monastery aged 15, being priested in 1526, and then teaching the Bible as a member of the Congregatio Lateranense, a reforming movement under Pope Paul III. It ends with Vermigli’s flight from Italy, as his teaching matured into that of a reformer whose conscience would not sit easily with his loyalty to the Roman establishment. I left the book on the shelf for years, assuming it would be of little interest. I picked it up during my sabbatical in the autumn of 2016, and wished I had pursued an interest in Vermigli many years ago when I lived and worshipped in an Italian Reformed church. This article is the fruit of a first reading of Vermigli’s story, and focuses more on the man than on his teaching. I found his story heart-warming as I reflected on the path of my own life. To my surprise Vermigli was well known to all the leading lights of the Reformation and respected as a teacher, as an authority on the Early Church Fathers, and as a skilful debater on crucial matters of doctrine. Through his own discovery of salvation by grace through faith he upset the Italian Church of his day no less than Luther did in Germany. He was not alone in finding joy and peace through the Epistle to the Romans, but he encountered the pressure of the establishment of his day. He reached a point where he was forced, in his own view, to leave Italy while he still could, and accept that he had become an outlaw from the Church of Rome.
* Full article available in printed copies.
John Rutter
is rector of Glenavy, diocese of Connor.