Italian Protestant exiles and the heresy debate in sixteenth-century Switzerland, 1553 - 1584

This thesis explores the contributions of Italian Protestant exiles to the debate over the legitimacy of coercing or killing heretics which flared up in Switzerland following the burning at the stake of the Antitrinitarian Michael Servetus in Geneva in 1553. On the one hand, it reconstructs the development of two alternative theologico-political languages, or patterns of argument, in response to the question of religious coercion: the orthodox Reformed language, formulated by the leaders of the Swiss Reformed Churches and their supporters, which was designed to justify the legitimacy of inflicting penalties, including capital punishment, on heretics; and the “Castellionean” language, inspired by the fundamental ideas first put forward in the writings of the Basel-based Savoyard scholar Sebastian Castellio, and aimed at the rejection of persecution. It shows how the heresy debate occasioned the articulation of different accounts of magisterial and ecclesiastical coercive authority and of the Scriptural, moral, and historical grounds for choosing either approach. On the other hand, it traces the dissemination of these views across multiple levels of society, from teaching in Reformed academies to informal discussions in tailors’ workshops; to this end, it examines a diverse range of sources, including printed and manuscript treatises, poems, letters, reports of synodal proceedings, and more. In so doing, it responds to the challenges posed by more recent scholarship on early modern religious toleration to a traditional intellectual-historical approach to the subject: it eschews an overemphasis on canonical thinkers, bringing into focus the perspective of lesser-known authors as well as ordinary believers; further, it offers a more balanced and less partisan account by giving due weight to arguments on both sides of the debate. Finally, it brings Anglophone scholarship on religious toleration into dialogue with the rich Italian historiographical tradition on the significance of the Italian Protestant diaspora, while rejecting the conventional recourse to the Italian exiles’ national background as an explanatory category. This study proposes instead that the exiles’ ideas resulted from the productive encounter between Italian anti-Papalism and northern European spiritualism.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Panetta, Odile

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Laven, Mary

• Bernardino Ochino
• Delio Cantimori
• Early modern history
• Early modern Switzerland
• Ecclesiastical discipline
• Girolamo Zanchi
• Heresy
• History of political thought
• History of Protestantism
• Italian Reformation
• Jacopo Aconcio
• John Calvin
• Michael Servetus
• Pietro Martire Vermigli
• Religious toleration
• Sebastian Castellio
• Sixteenth century
• Theodore Beza
• Théodore de Bèze

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ae5b962d-fc3b-4d9b-aa51-94fc9ec4ea6a/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.102082

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/358424