ADRIANO SARAVIA. - Calvinist theologian, b. in 1538 at Hesdin in Artois, d. at Oxford in 1613. In 1559, on account of religious persecution, he took refuge in England where he performed various duties, interspersed however with other assignments at Antwerp, Ghent, etc.
In 1582 he was appointed minister of the Walloon Church at Leiden and soon after professor of theology at that university. Expelled in 1587, he returned to England and served the Anglican Church.
On account of his episcopal conception of the Church he occupies a special place among Calvinist theologians. On this subject he polemicized with Theodore Beza (1594), pronounced against the theory of regicide (1593), defended the Heidelberg Catechism (1583), and seems to have collaborated on the Dutch version of the Confession of Faith of Guy de Brès.