Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (born c. 1455, Étaples, Picardy [France]—died March 1536, Nérac, Fr.) was an outstanding French humanist, theologian, and translator whose scholarship stimulated scriptural studies during the Protestant Reformation.

Ordained a priest, Lefèvre taught philosophy in Paris from about 1490 to 1507. During visits to Italy in 1492 and 1500, he studied Greek classics and Neoplatonist mysticism. In Paris he influenced the church reformers Guillaume Farel and François Vatable. From 1507 he worked for the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey, Paris, where his former pupil Guillaume Briçonnet was abbot. Appointed bishop of Meaux in 1516, Briçonnet began reforms in his diocese and made Lefèvre his vicar general in 1523. When the clergy of the diocese were suspected of Protestantism in 1525, Lefèvre moved to Strasbourg, later returning to Blois, under the protection of King Francis I. In 1531 he fled to Nérac, where he was supported by Margaret of Angoulême, queen of Navarre.

Lefèvre’s work shows an effort to divorce religious studies from the older Scholasticism. Between 1492 and 1506 he wrote student manuals on physics and mathematics and published new, annotated translations or paraphrases of Aristotle’s works on ethics, metaphysics, and politics. He seems to have undergone a religious crisis in 1505, and, influenced by the ideals of the Brethren of the Common Life (communal Dutch clergymen who sponsored scholarship), he turned to mysticism. That year he published a volume of contemplations by the Catalan author and philosopher Ramon Llull and later published works by the celebrated mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck and by Nicholas of Cusa. In 1509 he issued his Psalterium quintuplex (five Latin versions of the Psalms). That work—along with his commentary on the letters of St. Paul (1512), which has sometimes been interpreted as embodying the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation—had some influence on Martin Luther.

In 1521 his book rejecting the view of the three Marys of the Gospels as being one person was condemned by the Sorbonne. He wrote Latin commentaries on the Gospels (1522) and on the Catholic Letters (1527). Understanding the importance of using the vernacular for religious and other prose works, he translated the whole Bible into French from the Vulgate (1530). Lefèvre had considerable influence on younger scholars, who improved on his methods. By reason of his biblical studies, his edition of the Psalms, and his commentaries on St. Paul, he is often hailed as a reformer on the eve of the Reformation.