# Petri Martyris Vermilii, Florentini praestantissimi nostra aetate theologi, Loci communes. Ex varijs ipsius Aucthoris & libris in vnum volumen collecti, & quatuor classes distributi. Edited by Robert Masson



**Autore:** Vermigli Pietro Martire, known as Peter Martyr

**Dati editoriali:** Londini [London], ex typographia Ioannis Kyngstoni [John Kingston], 1576

**Codice archivio:** 197

**Prezzo:** 4000.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/peter-martyr-loci-communes-1576

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## Descrizione accademica e analisi

Folio (286x190 mm). [24], 1089 (i.e. 1097), [3] pp. Complete. Errors in paging: no. 248-251, 397-398, 439-440, 487-494 and 650-657 duplicated; no. 393-394, 559-570 and first 652-653 omitted. Collation: *8 â4 A-RR6 SS10 TT-YYyy6. The last leaf is a blank. Roman and italic types, with printed marginal references and ornamental woodcut initials. Title-page with a woodcut of the burning bush bearing the Hebrew tetragrammaton, within a decorative frame dated 1576; verses addressed to the reader and printed errata. 18th-century vellum over boards, spine lettered in gilt within a gilt frame, outer and lower edge gilt. Old shelfmark “II. K.” on the front pastedown. Light soiling to the vellum and minor wear at the head of the spine. Title-page toned and marked, some marginal dampstaining and light browning, but overall, a good, genuine copy. First edition, published fourteen years after Vermigli’s death, of the collection that brought his extensive theological teaching into a single, systematically arranged volume. Prepared by Robert Masson, or Robert le Maçon, minister of the French Protestant congregation in London, the Loci communes gathered doctrinal discussions scattered through Vermigli’s biblical commentaries and other writings. The result gave readers access to a body of arguments whose original arrangement had followed the sequence of particular scriptural books. The title’s promise of material collected in unum volumen and distributed into four classes accurately describes the editorial achievement: the creation of a theological reference work from a lifetime of exposition and controversy. Vermigli’s intellectual formation belonged to the religious and scholarly culture of Renaissance Italy. A Florentine who entered the Lateran Congregation of Augustinian Canons at Fiesole in 1514, he studied at Padua between 1518 and 1526. His education joined Aristotelian philosophy and scholastic theology to the humanist study of languages and texts. At Naples, where he became prior of San Pietro ad Aram in 1537, contact with the circle of Juan de Valdés helped to shape his evangelical convictions. Appointed prior of San Frediano at Lucca in 1541, he developed a programme of theological teaching which made the community a significant centre of religious reform. The threat of inquisitorial proceedings drove him out of Italy in 1542, turning an established Italian churchman into one of the learned exiles through whom the Reformation acquired an international character. At Strasbourg, Martin Bucer secured his services as a teacher of the Old Testament. Thomas Cranmer subsequently invited him to England, where he arrived in 1547 and became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1548. His Oxford teaching, his participation in the Eucharistic disputation of 1549, and his involvement in Edwardian ecclesiastical reform established relationships that outlasted his English residence. Mary Tudor’s accession compelled his departure in 1553. After a further period at Strasbourg, he settled at Zurich in 1556 as successor to Konrad Pellikan, continuing to teach, write and correspond with English reformers until his death on 12 November 1562. The London publication of the Loci thus renewed a substantial connection between Vermigli and the English Reformation. The structure of the collection follows the broad progression familiar from Calvin’s Institutes: knowledge of God as creator; knowledge of God as redeemer; the believer’s participation in Christ and salvation; and the external means through which God sustains the Church and human society. Within this arrangement, doctrinal exposition extends into questions of conduct, worship and public authority. The second class, for example, moves from original sin to free will and the law, bringing the account of fallen humanity into direct relation with the capacity to act and the demands of divine command. The four classes provide a framework within which readers can follow a connected argument while consulting individual subjects. The relationship with Calvin was made unusually concrete in the printing history. Masson’s arrangement brought Vermigli’s discussions into correspondence with the Institutes, while Thomas Vautrollier’s London Latin edition of Calvin, also published in 1576, supplied references to Vermigli’s Loci. The two books could consequently be read together, with the extended exegetical and controversial discussions of the Florentine theologian consulted alongside Calvin’s exposition. This coordination helps explain the place of the Loci in Reformed study: the edition offered a substantial companion to a work already central to theological instruction. The third class opens at p. 487 (l. TT1r) with De praedestinatione, explicitly identified as a discussion drawn from the end of the commentary on Romans 9. Before proceeding, Vermigli divides the subject into questions concerning the nature and causes of predestination, its effects, its relation to necessity and human freedom, and the possibility of change. Scriptural exposition develops into a sustained theological inquiry, with Augustine, Prosper and Hilary brought into the discussion. The printed marginal headings make the stages of argument readily recoverable. The conjunction of biblical argument, patristic testimony and philosophical analysis gives the collection much of its intellectual character. Vermigli continued to employ distinctions acquired through his scholastic education when examining grace, voluntary action and moral responsibility. Recent scholarship has explored the respective importance of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Gregory of Rimini to this inheritance, particularly in the discussion of free choice. His mature theology therefore offers a productive field for studying how medieval intellectual resources were reassessed within a Reformed understanding of salvation. The theological disagreements of the sixteenth century emerge here through close engagement with older authorities and with the conceptual problems those authorities had left unresolved. The scope also reaches well beyond the salvation of the individual. The fourth class connects ecclesiastical institutions and sacramental practice with the preservation of human society, opening onto questions of magistracy, jurisdiction and political obligation. These concerns had particular force for an author repeatedly displaced by changes in religious authority. As Torrance Kirby has emphasized, the prominence of political questions in the collection reflects interests already deeply embedded in Vermigli’s biblical commentaries. The book offered later readers arguments with which to consider the responsibilities of rulers and ministers, and the relationship between the government of the Church and that of the commonwealth. The dedication to Sir Anthony Cooke, beginning on sig. *2r and signed “R. Massonius,” gives the edition a precise place within the personal networks of Protestant scholarship. Cooke had attended Vermigli’s lectures at Strasbourg during his Marian exile. Addressing the collection to him recalled a relationship sustained through teaching and religious displacement. The first edition’s circulation within this milieu is independently illustrated by the copy now at Kingston Lacy, which the National Trust records as having belonged to Anne Bacon, Cooke’s daughter. The title-page woodcut deserves particular attention. The burning bush bears the Hebrew name of God and is accompanied by “Deus in medio eius non commovebitur,” identified as Psalm 46, and “Portae inferorum non superabunt eam,” from Matthew 16. Together, image and scriptural quotations invite a reading of the Church sustained by divine presence despite persecution. McKerrow, who catalogued the block as no. 197, questioned whether it was a printer’s device or an emblem cut specifically for the Loci communes, recording no other use. The collection continued to develop after this first appearance. The Zurich edition of 1580 advertised additional material, and 1583 saw both a further Latin edition, printed in London by Vautrollier, and Anthony Marten’s English translation. The latter brought the work to a wider vernacular readership and included a substantial supplementary collection. These enlarged forms should be distinguished from Kingston’s edition of 1576, which records the initial organization of Vermigli’s theological legacy for readers beyond the immediate circumstances of his teaching. Its bibliographical significance lies in that moment of consolidation: an Italian reformer’s dispersed arguments became an ordered corpus through the work of a French Protestant editor and an English press.

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## Bibliografia di riferimento

A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, 2nd ed., no. 24667; English Short Title Catalogue, S117860; R. B. McKerrow, Printers’ & Publishers’ Devices in England & Scotland, 1485-1640, London, 1913, p. 74, no. 197; F.A. James III, “The Legacy of Peter Martyr and the Martyr Translation Project,” Calvin Studies X, 2000, pp. 206-222; T. Kirby, “Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Political Theology and the Elizabethan Church,” in Polly Ha and Patrick Collinson, eds., The Reception of Continental Reformation in Britain, Oxford, 2010, pp. 83-106; S.J. G. Burton, “Peter Martyr Vermigli on Grace and Free Choice: Thomist and Augustinian Perspectives,” Reformation & Renaissance Review, 15/1, 2013, pp. 37-52; M. Camaioni, “Vermigli, Piero Mariano,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 98, 2020; E. Campi, “Vermigli, Pietro Martire,” Dizionario storico della Svizzera; M.W. Anderson, Peter Martyr A Reformer in Exile, Niewkoop, 1975, p. 549; J.P. Donnelly, “Translation of Robert Maçon: Preface and Outline (1576),” in E. Campi, F.A. James III and P. Opitz, eds., Peter Martyr Vermigli: Humanism, Republicanism, Reformation, Geneva, 2002, pp. 14-21; J.C. McLelland, “A Literary History of the Loci Communes,” in W. J. Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi and Frank A. James III, eds., A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli, Leiden-Boston, 2009, pp. 479-494.

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