Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/245

 S C I N U S 229 (to Rudolph Gualther), the sacraments (to Johann Wolff). Not till the fate of Servetus had directed his mind to the question of the Trinity did he throw out any doubts upon this subject. At Geneva, in April 1554, he had uttered incautious remarks on the common doctrine, emphasized in a subsequent letter to Martinengo, the Italian pastor. Bullinger, warned by several correspondents (including Calvin), questioned Sozini as to his faith, and received from him an explicitly orthodox confession, afterwards reduced to writing (15th July 1555), with a frank reserva- tion of the right of further inquiry. A month before this Sozini had been sent with Martino Muralto to Basel to secure Ochino as pastor of the Italian church at Zurich. There can be little doubt that the minds of Sozini and Ochino (a thinker of the same order as Camillo, but with finer dialectic skill) acted powerfully on each other in the radical discussion of theological problems. Sozini lost his father in 1556, an event which involved him in pecuniary anxieties. To what property he was entitled does not appear ; he got nothing under his father's will. Fortified with the most influential introductions (including one from Calvin), he visited in 1558 the courts of Vienna and Cracow to obtain support for his appeal to the reigning duke of Florence. His object was to realize his own estate and secure that of his family. It is a sufficiently curious circumstance that Melanchthon's letter introducing Sozini to Maximilian II. invokes the historic parallel of the emperor Constans rendering a hospitable reception to Athanasius, when he fled from Egypt to Treves. Well received out of Italy, Sozini (who does not appear to have got beyond Venice) found he could do nothing at home. The Inquisition had its eye on his family : his brother Cornelio was imprisoned at Rome ; his brothers Celso and Camillo and his nephew Fausto were " reputati Luterani " at Siena, and Camillo had taken refuge in flight. In August 1559 Sozini returned to Zurich, and we hear little more of him. His brief career ended on 14th May 1562, at his lodging in the house of Hans Wyss, silk-weaver. The news of his death reached his nephew at Lyons through Antonio Maria Besozzo. Fausto repaired to Zurich and got his uncle's papers, comprising very little connected writing, but a good many notes. Fausto has so often been regarded as a plagiarist from Lelio that it may be well here to state that his debt to Lelio, somewhat over-estimated by himself, was twofold. (1) He derived from him in con- versation (1552-53) the germ of his theory of salvation ; (2) Lelio's paraphrase (1561) of apx 7 ? m J nn i- 1 & s "the beginning of the gospel " gave Fausto a hint of Biblical exegesis by help of which he constructed a new Christology. Apart from these suggestions, Fausto owed nothing to Lelio except a curiously far-fetched interpretation of John viii. 58, and the stimulating remembrance of his pure character and brilliant gifts. The two men were of totally different genius. Lelio, impulsive and inquisitive, was in quest of the spiritual ground of religious truth ; the drier mind of Fausto sought in external authority a basis for the ethical teaching of Christianity. Sozini's extant writings are (1) De Sacramentis Dissertatio, four parts, 1560, and (2) De Resurrectione, a fragment. Both were first printed in F. et L. Socini, item E. Soneri Tractatus, Amsterdam, 1654, 16mo. To these may be added his Confession, 1555 (printed in Hottinger, Hist. Ecdes. N. T., vol. ix., sec. 16, part 5, 1667), and about twenty-four letters, some still imprinted ; but the most im- portant will be found in Illgen and Trechsel, and (the earliest) in the edition of Calvin's works by Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss. Sand adds a Rhapsodia in Esaiam Prophetam, of which nothing is known. Beza suspected that Sozini had a hand in the De Hssreticis, an sint persequendi, 1553, and to him has also been assigned the Contra Libellum Calvini, 1554 ; but these ascriptions were not made till his nephew had identified his name with active heresy, and are not supported by internal evidence. To Lelio also Beza assigned (in 1567) an anonymous Explicatio (1562) of the proem of St John's Gospel, which was the work of Fausto. This error, adopted by Zanchi, has been the chief source of the misconception which repre- sents Lelio as a heresiarch. In Franc. Guinio's Defensio Cafh. Duct, de S. Trin., 1590-91, is an anonymous enumcratio of motives for adhering to the doctrine of the Trinity, by some ascribed to Lelio, by others, with somewhat more probability, to Fausto. For the life of L. Sozini the best guide is Trechsel, Die Prof. Antitrin. vor F. Socin, vol. ii., 1844 ; but there are valuable materials in Illgen, Vita L. Socini, 1814, and especially Symbols? ad Vitam et Doctrinam L. Soc., &c., 1820. Wallace (Antitrin. Bion., 1850, ii. 63) gives the ordinary Unitarian viow, relying on Bock, Da Porta, and Lubienecki ; see also Bonet-Maury's Early Sources of English Unit. Christ., 1884, chap. 9. Use has been made above of unprinted sources. II. FAUSTO PAOLO SOZZINI (1539-1604), theological writer, was born at Siena on 5th December 1539, the only son of Alessandro Sozzini, " princeps subtilitatum," by Agnese, daughter of Borghese Petrucci. He was thus descended on the one side from the long line of great lawyers, of whom Mariano the elder is traditionally said to have been the first heretic of the family, on the other from Pandolfo Petrucci, the Cromwell of Siena. His father died in 1541 at the early age of thirty-one. Fausto re- ceived no regular education ; he was brought up at home with his sister Fillide. The influence of the able women of his family communicated a strong moral impress to his thought. His youth was spent in desultory reading at Scopeto, the country seat of his family. His early intel- lectual stimulus came from his uncle Celso, an esprit fort, though always nominally a Catholic, and the founder of the Accademia dei Sizienti (1554), of which Fausto was a member. In 1556 his grandfather's will made him inde- pendent by leaving him one-fourth of the family estates. Next year he was enrolled in the famous Accademia degli Intronati, the centre of the intellectual life of Siena. His academic name was "II Frastagliato " ; he took as his badge "un mare turbato da venti," with the motto "turbant sed extollunt." About this time Panzirolo (De Claris Legg. Interp])., not published till 1637) describes him as a young man of fine talent, and bespeaks for him a legal career. But Fausto despised the law, and preferred the writing of sonnets. He was suspected of Lutheranism in 1558-59', soon after he came of age (1561) he went to Lyons, being probably employed there in mercantile business ; he re- visited Italy after his uncle Lelio's death ; we next find him enrolled for a short time in 1562 as a member of the Italian church at Geneva ; he returned to Lyons next year. The evangelical position was not radical enough for him. His Explicatio (1562) of the proem to St John's Gospel shows that already he attributed to our Lord an official instead of an essential deity; a letter of 1563 rejects the natural immortality of man (a position developed long after in his disputation with Pucci). Towards the end of 1563 he conformed again to the Catholic Church, and spent the next twelve years in Italy, partly at court. Przypkowski, regardless of chronology, places him in the service of Francesco, grand-duke of Tuscany. His unpub- lished letters show that he was in the service only of Isabella de' Medici, Francesco's sister. This portion of his life is obscure, and he afterwards regarded it as wasted. Till 1567 he continued to give some attention to legal studies. He found time to write (1570) his treatise De Auctoritate S. Scripturse. In 1571 he was in Rome, per- haps with his patroness. At the end of 1575 he left Italy, and after Isabella's death (strangled by her husband in 1576) declined the overtures of Francesco, who pressed him to return. Francesco was probably aware of the motives which led Sozzini to quit Italy ; for there is every reason to believe the statement of Przypkowski that the grand- duke agreed to protect him in the enjoyment of the in- come of his property so long as he published nothing in his own name. Sozzini now fixed himself at Basel, where he gave himself to close study of the Bible, began a poetic version of the Psalms, edited posthumous dialogues of Castellio, and, in spite of his increasing deafness, became a