Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples: Pioneer of French Reform
This journal article examines Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455-1536), a French humanist scholar who played a pioneering role in preparing the theological groundwork for the Reformation through his study of Paul's epistles and emphasis on justification by faith, though he himself remained within the Roman Catholic Church. The article addresses the historiographical challenge of evaluating Lefèvre's legacy, noting the scarcity of English translations of primary sources and the varying Protestant assessments of his influence on sixteenth-century French reform movements.
As his name would indicate, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455-1536) was a Frenchman from Étaples, a coastal town south of Calais, in Picardy. His surname is sometimes given as Fabry or Fabri, and he is also known by the Latin form of his name: Jacobus Faber Stapulensis. Although this sounds complicated, it is worth bearing in mind if you look him up online or in books and articles dealing with the Reformation, along with the men and ideas that prepared the way for it. Unlike the other...
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