Dinner with Raphael. The prolegomena of Peter Martyr Vermigli's Eucharistic Intellections

When it is said that Raphael did not eat, it must not be understood as though he did not eat at all, but that he did not eat in a human manner [.. .]when the angel answered that he uses spiritual meat and drink, that spiritual food was nothing else than an open and manifest knowledge of the true God [.. .]The same also is our meat, though not exactly the same.For angels see God manifestly, we through a mirror, and in a riddle [. ..] those who believe in Christ [. ..]I say that they both eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood, to which use the symbols or signs, since they stir up the senses, are very profitable.Not that the flesh and blood of Christ are poured into the bread and wine, or are by any means included in those elements, but because those things are by the believers received with a true faith.For these are invisible nourishment, and received only in the mind. 1 This essay began as a footnote to a larger study, one looking at Peter Martyr Vermigli's epistemology as it relates to both his Eucharistic theology and his belief that faith is an act of the intellect, and how both are understood within the constraints of his Aristotelianism. 2 In treating this other matters invari-1 Peter Martyr Vermigli, In librum Iudicum commentarii, Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1561, 152v: Quare cum in altero textu dicitur, Raphaelem non comedisse, non ita est intelligendum, quasi prorsus non comederit, sed quod human more non comederit.Illud aut imprimis animadvertendum ibi est, cum angelus respondet, se invisibili cibo ac potu vesci, eam alimoniam spiritualem nihil aliud fuisse, quam apertam et perspicuam notitiam veri dei [.. .]Idem etiam noster cibus est, quamvis non eiusdem modi; illi enim aperte deum vident; nos autem per speculum, et in aenigmate.Quibus addas etiam eos qui credunt Christo, et certo sibi persuadent, eum sua causa esse mortuum, et comedere carnem Christi, et eius bibere sanguinem, ad quem usum symbola dum sensum excitant, plurimum conferunt; non quod caro Christi et sanguis in panem et vinum infundantur, aut elementis illis aliquo modo concludantur, sed quod res illae vera fide a credentibus percipiantur.Sunt enim invisibilis alimonia, quae mente solum capitur.-Martyr then adds, ut Augustinus fideliter monuit: Quid, inquiens, paras dentem et ventrem?Crede et manducasti.Emphasis in the translated text added, and these two terms shall be touched on again in the conclusion.2 Beyond an examination of how faith is an intellectual act, the intended essay examines how Martyr's epistemology could circumvent the problems comprehended in Aristotle's agent intellect, and what these problems might entail for Martyr's Eucharistic doctrine: namely that what the soul intellects is formally the same as the pragmata of intellection.If Martyr extricates himself from the formal link, how can he then avoid not merely a Nestorian sacramentology, but more especially a Docetic Eucharistic faith, the tacit and otherwise contention of his protagonists.The most pressing matters, however, entail Martyr's use of causality and its link to epistemology (and how these are affected by the scholastic reconfiguration of the intellect), how he employs Aristotle's teaching that forms exist in concrete realities, and how

Art · Martyr · Theology · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity