Hadrian à Saravia

Hadrian à Saravia, sometimes called Hadrian Saravia, Adrien Saravia, or Adrianus Saravia (153215 January 1612) was a Protestant theologian and pastor from the Low Countries who became an Anglican prebend and a member of the First Westminster Company charged by James I of England to produce the King James Version of the Bible.

Early years Saravia was born in Hesdin (Artois), then part of Flanders, to Protestant Spanish and Flemish parents, Christopher de Saravia and Elisabeth Boulengier. He entered the ministry at Antwerp, reviewed a draft of the Belgic Confession and gathered a Walloon congregation in Brussels. Saravia continued to move between London and Europe.

Channel Islands He went from there to England and was sent as an evangelist to Jersey and Guernsey. When Elizabeth I of England founded Elizabeth College in 1563 he was appointed as its first schoolmaster.

In 1568 he became rector of the parish of St Pierre du Bois, Guernsey, which was then under Presbyterian discipline.

Southampton From 1571 to 1578, he held the position of headmaster at the Grammar School in Southampton. His students included Robert Ashley, Nicholas Fuller, Francis Markham, Edward Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lake, and Josuah Sylvester.

On 23 March 1610 he exchanged Lewisham for the rectory of Great Chart, Kent. He died at Canterbury on 15 January 1612, and was buried in the cathedral.

Theology Saravia is one of the first Protestant mission theologians. In his ecclesiological writing De diversis ministrorum Evangelii gradibus sicut a domino fuerunt instituti of 1590, he referred to the Church’s missionary command, which he believes is valid for all times. In the episcopate, which goes back to the apostles (apostolic succession), the Church has the authority to send out missionaries. This view was criticized by Protestant theologians, among them Theodor Beza and Johann Gerhard, who, like many of the Reformation and Old Protestant theologians, believed that the missionary command had already been fully fulfilled in the time of the Apostles.