Richard Smyth (or Smith) (1499/1500,

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

– 9 July 1563,

Douai Douai (, , ,; pcd, Doï; nl, Dowaai; formerly spelled Douay or Doway in English) is a city in the Nord département in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe some from Lille and from Arras, Dou ...

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) was the first person to hold the office of Regius Professor of Divinity in the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and the first Chancellor of the

University of Douai The University of Douai (french: Université de Douai) ( nl, Universiteit van Dowaai) is a former university in Douai, France. With a medieval heritage of scholarly activities in Douai, the university was established in 1559 and lectures started ...

Life

Educated at Merton College, Oxford, and taking his MA degree in 1530, he became

Registrar of the University of Oxford The Registrar of the University of Oxford is one of the senior officials of the university. According to its statutes, the Registrar acts as the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professio ...

in 1532 then (by royal appointment) its first Regius Professor of

divinity Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...

in 1536. Taking his doctorate in divinity on 10 July 1536, he was subsequently made master of Whittington College, London, rector of St Dunstan-in-the-East and then Cuxham, Oxfordshire, principal of St. Alban's Hall, and divinity reader at

Magdalen College Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

. Some (possibly unreliable) accounts have him renouncing Catholicism and the authority of the Pope at Oxford and (on 15 May 1547) at

St Paul's Cross St Paul's Cross (alternative spellings – "Powles Crosse") was a preaching cross and open-air pulpit in the grounds of Old St Paul's Cathedral, City of London. It was the most important public pulpit in Tudor and early Stuart England, and ma ...

on the accession of the Protestant

Edward VI Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and the first E ...

. However, even if the accounts are reliable, soon afterwards he became a Catholic again and was thus replaced in his professorship with Peter Martyr. He and Martyr were to hold a public disputation in 1549, but fled to Leuven before it could be held. On release he left to become professor of divinity at Louvain, returning on the accession of

Mary Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

to become canon of Christ Church and royal chaplain and take a major part in proceedings against

Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry ...

, Nicholas Ridley, and

Hugh Latimer Hugh Latimer ( – 16 October 1555) was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555 under the Catholic Queen Mary I he was burned at the ...

. Regaining most of his benefices, he lost them all again when

Elizabeth Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to: People * Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name) * Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist Ships * HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships * ''Elisabeth'' (sch ...

succeeded Mary, and was briefly imprisoned in the house of Archbishop

Matthew Parker Matthew Parker (6 August 1504 – 17 May 1575) was an English bishop. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was also an influential theologian and arguably the co-founder (with a p ...

. On release, he again fled to the continent, this time to

, where Mary's widower Philip II of Spain appointed him dean of St. Peter's church and then (on Philip II's inauguration of

on 5 October 1562) the university's chancellor and professor of theology.

Works

*''Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament of the Altar'' (1546) *''Defence of the Sacrifice of the Mass'' (1547) *''Defensio celibatus sacerdotum'' (1550) *''Diatriba de hominis justificatione'' (1550) *''Buckler of the Catholic Faith'' (1555–56) *''De Missa Sacrificio'' (1562) *refutations of John Calvin and Christopher Carlile, of Philipp Melanchthon,

John Jewel John Jewel (''alias'' Jewell) (24 May 1522 – 23 September 1571) of Devon, England was Bishop of Salisbury from 1559 to 1571. Life He was the youngest son of John Jewel of Bowden in the parish of Berry Narbor in Devon, by his wife Alice Bel ...

l,who had accused Smyth of adultery and

Theodore Beza Theodore Beza ( la, Theodorus Beza; french: Théodore de Bèze or ''de Besze''; June 24, 1519 – October 13, 1605) was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation ...

, all published in 1562.

References

Bibliography

*J. Andreas Löwe, ''Richard Smyth and the Language of Orthodoxy: Re-imagining Tudor Catholic Polemicism'' (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions: History, Culture, Religion, Ideas, 96; Leiden: Brill, 2003). {{DEFAULTSORT:Smyth, Richard Clergy from Worcestershire 16th-century English clergy Christian writers English theologians Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford Principals of St Alban Hall, Oxford English Roman Catholics Regius Professors of Divinity (University of Oxford) Vice-Chancellors of the University of Oxford 15th-century births 1563 deaths Registrars of the University of Oxford