Heavenly Ascent: The relation of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Preface to the Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist to the introduction of the Edwardian Prayer Books
On June 9, (Whitsunday) 1549, the first English Prayer Book came into official use throughout the kingdom of Edward VI. Less than two weeks prior (May 29, 30, and June 1), the Florentine reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli, who had come to England at the invitation to Archbishop Cranmer to serve as the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, participated inDisputation on the Holy Eucharist at that same university. Beginning on June 10, the day following the formal introduction of the new English liturgy, uprisings began to take place in the realm in Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall.They were quickly put down, and in a matter of weeks (July 21), Archbishop Cranmer, climbed into pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral to preach a sermon against rebellion (A Sermon concerning the tyme of rebellion), which Torrance Kirby has convincingly argued came from the hand of Peter Martyr Vermigli. Later that year, Vermigli's text of both his Treatise on the Eucharist and his text of the Oxford Disputation were published. The published version of the text includes a short preface dedicated to Archbishop Cranmer. It is this short preface and its relationship to the Communion Rites of the First and Second English Prayer Books that is the subject of this paper.
Published in Anglican and Episcopal History 91.4 (Dec. 2022)
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