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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The Venetian Anabaptist movement was highly heterogeneous. On the one hand, it absorbed the experience of Tyrolean and Trentine Anabaptism, originally linked to the peasant “revolution”; on the other, it was shaped by the experience of certain Neapolitan anti-Trinitarians who were students at Padua (where the rationalistic tradition of the Studio exerted no small influence on the doctrinal development of Anabaptist ideas). This movement was led by Girolamo Busale and was marked by an original convergence of a popular element with a learned and humanistic one.
The “legendary” Collegia Vicentina
According to Socinian tradition, beginning in 1546 the movement organised the so-called Collegia Vicentina, legendary Anabaptist meetings held in the palaces of Vicentine nobles, intended for debate on doctrinal and organisational questions. Supposedly these meetings were attended by intellectuals of some weight such as Giovanni Paolo Alciati della Motta, Giorgio Biandrata, Francesco Negri, Matteo Gribaldi Mofa, Nicolò Paruta, Valentino Gentile, Girolamo Busale, Bernardino Ochino, Lelio Sozzini, as well as Francesco Della Sega and Giulio Gherlandi. The actual occurrence of these Collegia Vicentina, however, finds no convincing confirmation in documentary sources.
Internal disputes and the Anabaptist “council” of Venice
The different strands of the movement confronted one another in heated discussions held in Padua from February to May 1550. During the summer two assemblies were then held in Vicenza (probably in June) and a colloquy in Ferrara (known as the “Synod of Ferrara”). According to Luca Addante, the “true” Collegia Vicentina, which should more properly be called colloquia, are to be identified with the two Vicentine assemblies of 1550.
To resolve internal theological disputes, the movement secretly organised in Venice, between September and October 1550, a general assembly attended by more than sixty bishops and priests (the Anabaptist movement had given itself a hierarchical structure parallel to that of the Roman Church), which lasted for forty consecutive days. During this Anabaptist “council” the more “moderate” position of the movement’s leader, the mysterious Tiziano, had to confront the more radical stance of Busale and others, who, among other things, denied the divinity of Christ and affirmed the mortality of the soul. Busale’s line essentially prevailed in that confrontation, and he became bishop of the Anabaptist community of Padua, though he was soon forced to flee the city in February 1551 as the Inquisition was already on his trail.
The dispersal of the movement
At the end of 1551 the Anabaptist movement suffered a mortal blow due to the denunciation of Don Pietro Manelfi, a Catholic priest and Anabaptist bishop, after which the Roman Inquisition sent to Venice the Dominican Girolamo Muzzarelli, who on 18 December 1551 succeeded in persuading the Council of Ten to take harsh measures against the movement. This led to the dispersal of the Venetian Anabaptists, many of whom found refuge among the Hutterite Brethren communities established in Bohemia.
Bibliography
- Luca Addante, Eretici e libertini nel Cinquecento italiano, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2010.
- Domenico Caccamo, Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (1558-1611). Studi e documenti, Sansoni-The Newberry Library, Firenze-Chicago 1970, pp. 39-46.
- Carlo Ginzburg, I costituti di don Pietro Manelfi, Sansoni-The Newberry Library, Firenze-Chicago 1970.
- Giorgio Politi, Gli statuti impossibili. La rivoluzione tirolese del 1525 e il “programma” di Michael Gaismar, Einaudi, Torino 1995.
- Aldo Stella, Dall’anabattismo al socinianesimo nel Cinquecento veneto, Liviana, Padova 1967.
- Aldo Stella, Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI secolo, Liviana, Padova 1969.
- Aldo Stella, Dall’anabattismo veneto al “Sozialevangelismus” dei fratelli hutteriti e all’illuminismo religioso sociniano, Herder, Roma 1996.
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Article written by Daniele Santarelli | Ereticopedia.org © 2013-2015 | 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]