Dictionary of Heretics, Dissidents, and Inquisitors in the Mediterranean World
Edizioni CLORI | Firenze | ISBN 978-8894241600 | DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1309444
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Fausto Sozzini, or Socini (Siena, 5 December 1539 – Lusławice, 4 March 1604), more commonly referred to in English by his Latinized name Faustus Socinus, was a radical theologian and heretic, an exile religionis causa, who exerted his influence on the antitrinitarian or Unitarian Polish Ecclesia minor, giving rise to a theological current known as Socinianism, which proved particularly fertile despite the dispersion of the Polish Brethren with the full affirmation of the Counter-Reformation in Poland in the 17th century.
Biographical Notes
A member of a family of jurists (his grandfather was the renowned Mariano Sozzini the Younger, his father Alessandro Sozzini), many of whom adhered to the Reformation, he entered the Accademia degli Intronati in 1557 under the name Frastagliato, actively participating in the cultural and worldly life of Siena, as attested by his youthful poetic production. Being himself suspected of heresy, he was forced to take refuge in Lyon in April 1561. After the death of his uncle Lelio Sozzini on 14 May 1562, he went to Zurich to recover his papers, whose reading strongly influenced the composition of his first antitrinitarian work, the Explicatio primae partis primi capitis Evangelistae Johannis, published anonymously in Transylvania in 1568. Meanwhile, from June 1563, he had returned to Italy, where, despite his often deferred plans to depart again, he remained continuously for twelve years, assisting in Rome between 1565 and 1568 the auditor of the Rota Serafino Razzali (during this Roman stay he also befriended Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto), then working mainly in Florence under Isabella de’ Medici and her husband Paolo Giordano Orsini. During these Italian years he wrote the De auctoritate sanctae scripturae (later published in 1590). The powerful protection he enjoyed, including that of Francesco de’ Medici (regent of Tuscany from 1564 and Grand Duke from 1574 to 1587), shielded him from inquisitorial persecution. Only at the end of 1575 did he permanently leave Italy, settling in Basel, where he disputed with Pastor Jacques Covet on the salvific value of Christ’s death on the Cross and where, from 1577, he entered into a long debate with Francesco Pucci on the immortality of Adam.
In 1578 he moved to Transylvania at the invitation of Giorgio Biandrata, but remained only briefly due to immediate theological clashes, especially with Ferencz Dávid, with whom he disputed over the worship of Christ (later published in 1595 under the title De Iesu Christi invocatione). Having already made contact during his journey with the Polish antitrinitarians, he then moved to Kraków, gradually imposing his leadership over the Ecclesia minor (the antitrinitarian or Unitarian church of the Polish Brethren, which distinguished itself from the Calvinist Ecclesia Maior). This leadership, already established with the Synod of Brest in 1588 (the same year Sozzini published under the title De Jesu Christi Filii Dei natura sive essentia two earlier writings affirming the human nature of Christ), was definitively sanctioned by the Synod of Lublin in 1593 (followed in 1594 by the publication of De Jesu Christo servatore, written in 1578 during the dispute with Jacques Covet and completed shortly before leaving Basel, in which Sozzini denied the salvific value of Christ’s death, affirming instead the decisive importance of his preaching and example). He remained in Poland until his death in 1604 in the village of Lusławice, near Kraków, where he had retired fearing persecution by King Sigismund III, who had initiated a firm Counter-Reformation turn in Poland. At his death, his last work, the Christianae religionis brevissima institutio, an antitrinitarian catechism, remained unfinished; it was completed by his disciples and became known as the Raków Catechism.
The Inquisitorial Trial in absentia
Already cited as a heretic in the trial against his uncle Cornelio Sozzini (1578–1581), Fausto became the target of an inquisitorial offensive against him from 1583. The news reached Poland, and the nuncio Alberto Bolognetti, instructed by the Cardinal of the Holy Office Giacomo Savelli, together with the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, tried to induce Sozzini to repent and reconcile with the Church. Bolognetti also pressured Chancellor Jan Zamoyski, stressing the subversive character of Sozzini’s doctrines towards political authority (on religion and politics Sozzini had just debated with Iacopo Paleologo, to whom he had addressed a reply in 1581), which forced Sozzini to temporarily flee Kraków in February 1583. Nevertheless, he could still rely on the protection of Grand Duke Francesco I of Tuscany and his wife Bianca Cappello (to whom he wrote letters of justification), which initially spared him serious consequences. Francesco I also lifted the ban imposed by Ascanio Piccolomini, coadjutor of the Archbishop of Siena, on Cornelio Marsili, Sozzini’s brother-in-law, forbidding financial dealings with him, thus allowing Sozzini to continue receiving income from Tuscany in Poland. The situation changed after Francesco I’s death on 19 October 1587. The new Grand Duke, Ferdinando I, firmly aligned with Counter-Reformation positions, allowed Ascanio Piccolomini (by then Archbishop of Siena, since 1588) and the Siena Inquisition to proceed against Sozzini. The trial in absentia lasted from 1 June 1589 to 3 February 1591. He was sentenced to death and burned in effigy. His assets were confiscated, giving rise to a long dispute between his relatives and the Siena Inquisition.
Theological Thought of Fausto Sozzini and His Influence
Through a rationalist approach and the use of philological criticism, Sozzini dismantled fundamental dogmas established by Tradition, also aiming to purge Christianity of crystallisations drawn from Platonism and, above all, Aristotelian metaphysics.
He affirmed the human nature of Christ and, through his critique of the traditional interpretation of the Prologue of the Gospel of John, denied the dogma of the Trinity and Christ’s pre-existence.
The phrase “In the beginning was the Word,” which constitutes the incipit of John’s Gospel, was, according to Sozzini, a reference to the beginning of the Gospel preaching (to which the verbum or sermo referred) and not to the eternity of Jesus Christ, who, in his view, saved humanity not through his sacrifice on the Cross (which Sozzini deemed unacceptable, since God could not be cruel and bloodthirsty), but through his preaching and example. Jesus was thus considered a mere man who showed others the way to eternal life and was made divine through his resurrection.
Just as he denied the metaphysical value of Christ’s death on the Cross, he also denied the metaphysical value of Adam’s sin, which was simply to be interpreted as the first instance of human transgression against divine law. Original Sin therefore did not exist, and Adam’s guilt was not transmitted to his descendants. His interpretation diverged radically from that of Francesco Pucci, who believed Adam to be originally immortal; the two held a long dispute, beginning in 1577 when Pucci moved to Basel from England to meet the Sienese theologian, lasting until 1583 (their text was posthumously printed in 1610 under the title De statu primi hominis ante lapsum disputatio). For Sozzini, this implied that those who had not known the Christian religion could not be saved, unlike Pucci, who, influenced by Platonism, affirmed the existence of a natural religion and the possibility for all men, regardless of professed faith, to be saved through divine reason, that is, the logos of Christ. This position was later softened by his followers, particularly Johann Crell (1590–1633) and Samuel Crell (1660–1747), who admitted the existence of a natural religion.
By denying Original Sin, Sozzini also rejected the regenerative value attributed to Baptism by the Catholic Church, Protestant churches, and even by the pure Anabaptists: for him Baptism was a mere adiaphoron and not essential for salvation, unlike faith and Christ’s example.
Socinian theology implied an obvious rejection of ecclesiastical hierarchies and papal authority, refuting the Tradition on which they relied.
As to relations between Christianity, the State, and laws, Sozzini attempted a compromise between the antitrinitarian tradition, which held that Christians belonged to another kingdom than earthly ones and therefore fostered disinterest in politics and non-observance of secular laws, and the Anabaptist tradition, which sought to establish the Kingdom of God on earth by reforming institutions and laws. On this issue, he confronted Iacopo Paleologo, to whom he addressed the Ad Jacobi Paleologi librum pro racoviensis responsio (1581). According to Sozzini, Christians could participate in political life, even holding public office, provided this did not imply renouncing fundamental values (such as rejecting violence and war). His followers, forced to confront the advance of Catholic Counter-Reformation in Poland, which endangered religious coexistence, came to affirm that the State should act as guarantor of religious coexistence and tolerance. This principle, already sketched in Samuel Przypkowski (1592–1670), was fully articulated by Johann Crell in the short treatise Vindiciae pro religionis libertatis, written in 1632 and published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1637. The evolution of Socinian thought thus anticipated the reflections of John Locke (1632–1704) and the Enlightenment.
The Ecclesia minor, which Sozzini had consolidated and strengthened after his theological positions prevailed at the Synod of Brest in 1588 and that of Lublin in 1593, already weakened by King Sigismund III’s Counter-Reformation turn (1587–1632), breaking with the policy of tolerance pursued by his predecessors since Sigismund II (1548–1572), was swept away by the persecution under Ladislaus IV (1632–1648) and John II Casimir (1648–1668): in 1635 the Socinians’ places of worship were closed in Lublin; in 1638 their center in Raków, with its school and press, was destroyed; and in 1658 the Socinians were finally expelled from Poland.
The exiles dispersed to Transylvania, Germany, and the Netherlands (where Socinian thought showed strong affinities with Arminianism). The refugees in the Netherlands published the fundamental texts of the Socinian tradition in the multi-volume series Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, printed in Amsterdam between 1665 and 1668, under the symbolic date of 1656.
Bibliography
- Mario Biagioni, Filosofia)/ Fausto Socini e i Sociniani, in Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero – Filosofia, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2012.
- Mario Biagioni, Sozzini, Fausto, in DBI, vol. 93 (2018).
- Domenico Caccamo, Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (1558–1611). Studi e documenti, Sansoni–The Newberry Library, Florence–Chicago 1970.
- Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, edited by Adriano Prosperi, Einaudi, Turin 1992.
- Massimo Firpo, Antitrinitari nell’Europa orientale del ’500. Nuovi testi di Szymon Budny, Niccolò Paruta e Iacopo Paleologo, La Nuova Italia, Florence 1977.
- Massimo Firpo, Pierre Bayle, gli eretici italiani del Cinquecento e la tradizione sociniana, in «Rivista storica italiana», 85, 1973, pp. 612–666.
- Fiorella Pintacuda De Michelis, Socinianesimo e tolleranza nell’età del razionalismo, Franco Angeli, Milan 1975.
- Giovanni Pioli, Fausto Socino: vita, opera, fortuna. Contributo alla storia del liberalismo religioso moderno, Guanda, Modena 1952.
- Antonio Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale del Cinquecento, Olschki, Florence 2008, 2 vols.
- Fausto Sozzini, Rime, edited by Emanuela Scribano, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome 2004.
- Aldo Stella, Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI secolo, Liviana, Padua 1969.
- Aldo Stella, Dall’anabattismo veneto al ‘Sozialevangelismus’ dei Fratelli Hutteriti e all’illuminismo religioso sociniano, Herder, Rome 1996.
- Lech Szczucki (ed.), Faustus Socinus and his Heritage, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków 2005.
- Lech Szczucki, Sozzini, Fausto, in DSI, vol. III, pp. 1466–1467.
- Earl Morse Wilbur, Our Unitarian Heritage: An Introduction To The History Of The Unitarian Movement, The Beacon Press, Boston 1925.
Online Texts
- Fausti Socini Senensis Opera omnia in duos tomos distincta. Quorum prior continet ejus Opera exegetica & didactica, posterior Opera ejusdem polemica comprehendit, accesserunt quaedam hactenus inedita. Quorum catalogum versa pagina exhibet, Irenopolis, post annum Domini 1656.
Links
- Entry on Fausto Sozzini on Scholasticon
- Entry on Fausto Sozzini on Symogih.org
Article written by Daniele Santarelli | Ereticopedia.org © 2014–2020 | English version 2025
et tamen e summo, quasi fulmen, deicit ictos
invidia inter dum contemptim in Tartara taetra
invidia quoniam ceu fulmine summa vaporant
plerumque et quae sunt aliis magis edita cumque
[Lucretius, "De rerum natura", lib. V]