Saravia, Adrian
SARAVIA, ADRIAN (1531-1613), theologian, was born at Hesdin, Pas-de-Calais, of a Spanish father and Flemish mother, both Protestants. He entered the ministry at Antwerp, had a hand in the Walloon Confession and gathered a Walloon congregation in Brussels. He migrated to the Channel Islands early in the reign of Elizabeth; and, after a period as schoolmaster, officiated (1564-1566) at St Peter's, Guernsey, then under Presbyterian discipline. Subsequently he held the mastership of the grammar school at Southampton, and in 1582 was professor of divinity and minister of the reformed church at Leiden. From Leiden he wrote (9 June 1 585) to Lord Burghley advising the assumption of the protectorate of the Low Countries by Elizabeth. He became domiciled in England in 1587-1588, leaving Holland on the discovery of his complicity in a political plot, and was appointed (i 588) rector of Tattenhall, Staffordshire. His first work, De diversis gradibus ministrorum Evangdii (1590; in English, 1592, and reprinted), was an argument for episcopacy, which led to a controversy with Theodore Beza, and gained him incorporation (9 June 1590) as D.D. at Oxford, and a prebend at Gloucester (22 Oct. 1591). On 6th December 1595 he was admitted to a canonry at Canterbury (which he resigned in 1602), and in the same year to the vicarage of Lewisham, Kent, where he became an intimate friend of Richard Hooker, his near neighbour, whom he absolved on his deathbed. He was made prebendary of Worcester (1601) and of Westminster (5 July 1601). In 1604, or early in 1605, he presented to James I. his Latin treatise on the Eucharist, which remained in the Royal Library unprinted, till in 1885 it was published (with translation and introduction) by Archdeacon G. A. Denison. In 1607 he was nominated one of the translators of the Authorised Version of 1611, his part being Genesis to end of Kings ii. On the 23rd of March 1610 he exchanged Lewisham for the rectory of Great Chart, Kent. He died at Canterbury on the 15th of January 1612, and was buried in the cathedral on the 19th of January. See the particulars collected in Denison's " Notice of the Author " prefixed to De sacra eucharistia. (A. Go. *)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
