In scholarship on Peter Martyr Vermigli, a quotation about him from Joseph Justus Scaliger seems to have made the rounds. However, I have only seen it quoted at second hand from an essay by B.B. Warfield called “Calvin as a Theologian.” That essay starts like this:

The subject of this address is “John Calvin the Theologian,” and I take it that what will be expected of me is to convey some idea of what manner of theologian John Calvin was, and of his quality as a theological thinker.

I am afraid I shall have to ask you at the outset to disabuse your minds of a very common impression, namely, that Calvin’s chief characteristics as a theologian were on the one hand, audacity—perhaps I might even say effrontery—of speculation; and on the other hand, pitilessness of logical development, cold and heartless scholasticism. We have been told, for example, that he reasons on the attributes of God precisely as he would reason on the properties of a triangle. No misconception could be more gross. The speculative theologian of the Reformation was Zwingli, not Calvin. The scholastic theologian among the early Reformers was Peter Martyr, not Calvin. This was thoroughly understood by their contemporaries. “The two most excellent theologians of our times,” remarks Joseph Scaliger, “are John Calvin and Peter Martyr, the former of whom has dealt with the Holy Scriptures as they ought to be dealt with—with sincerity, I mean, and purity and simplicity, without any scholastic subtleties. . . Peter Martyr, because it seemed to fall to him to engage the Sophists, has overcome them sophistically, and struck them down with their own weapons.”

Warfield’s purpose here is to exonerate Calvin from the charge of “scholasticism,” or, as he puts the charge in the mouth of Calvin’s hypothetical accusers, “cold and heartless scholasticism.”

I’m not sure where Warfield got the quotation from; he may have gotten it directly from the source in Scaliger. If so, he presumably would have translated the Latin himself.

That source is volume 2 of the Scaligerana, or Scaliger’s table talk, a collection in which the compilers share various observations of Scaliger as an alphabetical list of topics. When we look at the source, things get a bit more interesting than in the excised version found in Warfield.

Calvinus solidus theologus et doctus, styli sat purgati et elegantioris quam theologum deceat. Excellentissimi theologi duo nostris temporibus, Joannes Calvinus et Petrus Martyr: quorum ille litteras sacras tractavit ut tractandae sunt, vere inquam, et pure ac simipliciter sine ullis argutationibus scholasticis: et divino vir praeditus ingenio multa divinavit quae non nisi a linguae Hebraicae peritissimis (cujusmodi tamen ipse non erat) divinari possunt. Petrus Martyr, quia sibi rem esse videbat cum sophistis, sophistica illos devicit, propriisque confodit armis: non tamen id est sacras litteras interpretari.

Calvin was a sound and learned theologian, with a style sufficiently pure and too elegant for a theologian. Our times have seen two very excellent theologians: John Calvin and Peter Martyr. Of these, the former handled Sacred Scripture as it ought to be handled–by which I mean truly, as well as purely and simply, without any scholastic prattling; and, as a man endowed with divine talent, he divined many things that cannot be divined except by those who are very skilled in the Hebrew language (although him himself was not such a person). Peter Martyr, because he saw that he had to deal with sophists, overcame them with sophistry, and stabbed them with their own weapons. Still, that is not what it means to interpret Sacred Scripture.^[1]

First, Scaliger’s comments on Calvin:

Is the remark on his style, viz. that it was “too elegant for a theologian,” meant in earnest as a criticism? I’m not sure. He is certainly not saying simply that Calvin’s style was more elegant than one might expect from a theologian. The verb deceat means that his style was more elegant than was fitting for a theologian. Still, we should not discount the possibility of subtle humor here, in the sense of, “How would one know that Calvin was a theologian by reading him? He’s far too polished!”

Indeed, Scaliger clearly likes Calvin’s mode, and writes unambiguously from the side of Team Humanist: Exegesis must be “simple” and lack “scholastic prattling” (argutationibus scholasticis), a remark that ought to be seen, I think, as a statement about style, though not without reference to substance as well. The scholastic style is prolix and lends itself to the quibbling treatment of minutiae as auctae,^[2] so to speak, a feature which is not merely formal, but material, too.

The next remark moves to substance directly: Calvin, according to Scaliger, had a kind of mantic understanding of Scripture. He observed many things that can only come through great skill at Hebrew–which, Scaliger says, Calvin did not have! He therefore “divined” Scripture’s meaning. Again, a barb? Or gentle humor? Or a dig that is also a compliment? One is perhaps put in mind of Ben Jonson, who, in one breath, zings Shakespeare for having had “small Latin and less Greek,” and in the next compares him to “thund’ring Aeschylus,/Euripides and Sophocles.” Such arch wit on the part of Scaliger may serve as a good index of his own humanist bona fides.

The section on Peter Martyr Vermigli is more brief, and is also not without ambiguity. Martyr seems, according to Scaliger, to be closer to the scholastics.^[3] But note how he glosses that: It is sophistry. Vermigli, then, “overcame [sophists] with sophistry.” Victory is good, but the means seem questionable. Strategically useful, yes–and yet that is not way to interpret the Bible. What makes this comment most surprising is that that is primarily what Vermigli did. As Joseph C. McLelland writes in “A Literary History of the Loci Communes,”

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) did not compose the work for which he is best known, the Loci Communes. He was a biblical scholar and Professor of Hebrew whose lectures on both Old and New Testament books provided the basis for his published works.^[4]

Vermigli’s work on the Bible was the basis for just about everything he did, which arguably puts a little sting in Scaliger’s remark, even if he thinks quite highly of Vermigli.

To conclude: Yes, Scaliger refers to Calvin and Vermigli as two “very” or “most excellent theologians” of his era. But his comments are somewhat more complex than is evident from the partial quotation in Warfield with which we began. Scaliger remains an admirer, but for understanding his point of view on his own terms, I hope that having the whole remark will be useful.