Oxford Eucharistic Disputation (1549)
The new English prayer book appeared that same year, and argument over the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist made the university a public arena for doctrinal conflict. In May 1549, Peter Martyr Vermigli defended his teaching on the Lord’s Supper in a public disputation at Oxford. The Italian reformer had been appointed professor of divinity during Edward VI’s reign. His opponents challenged his rejection of transubstantiation and pressed him on the relation of Christ’s body to the bread and wine. Vermigli’s Oxford appointment brought a continental Reformed argument into an English university during rapid changes to public worship. The question was whether Christ’s presence required the substance of bread and wine to disappear.1
And if it so be, that the accidents may remain still, why than may not also the substance of bread remain as well?Peter Martyr VermigliDiscourse concerning the Lord’s Supper3
The Debate and Its Outcome
The dispute took place while England’s worship was being remade. Vermigli argued from Scripture and the church fathers for a true reception of Christ without a bodily presence enclosed in the elements. The published disputation and accompanying treatise carried his position beyond the university. His teaching helped shape the developing Eucharistic language of the English Reformation.2
Why It Matters
Oxford was therefore more than an academic contest. It exposed a contested doctrine at the heart of public worship and helped clarify the direction taken in the 1552 prayer book. Its opponents did not disappear; the same questions returned with force under Mary I.
