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 independent 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. Jnterpp., 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. Scripturx. 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


recognized centre of theological discussion. One of these discussions was on the doctrine of salvation, with Jacques Couet. It resulted in a bulky treatise, De Jesu Christo Servatore (finished 12th July 1578), the circulation of which in manuscript appears to have commended his powers to the notice of Giorgio Biandrata (1515-1588), court physician in Transylvania, and an unscrupulous ecclesiastical wire-puller.
church affairs ; his policy was the establishment of a kind of broad church, with a confession nakedly Scriptural in its terms, and a resolute suppression of all compromising extremes.
Transylvania had for a short time (1559-71) enjoyed religious liberty under an antitrinitarian prince, John Sigismund. But the existing ruler, Christopher Báthori, favoured the Jesuits, and it was an object with Biandrata to limit the " Judaic" tendencies of the antitrinitarian bishop, Francis David (1510-1579), with whom he had previously acted. By the alleged discovery of a stain upon Biandrata's morals of the gravest sort his influence with David was destroyed. Now Sozzini's scheme of doctrine encouraged the use of seemingly orthodox language in an heretical sense. Christ was to be called God, and invoked with divine honours, though without any inherent title to such homage, but as " un Dio subalterno, al quale in un dato tempo il Dio supremo cedette il governo del mondo " (Cantil). It occurred to Biandrata that, if Sozzini could convert the eloquent David to this view, all would be well. Accordingly in November 1578 Sozzini reached Kolozsvár (Klausenburg), and did his best, during a visit of four months and a half under David's roof, to teach him the doctrine of the invocation of Christ. Though Sozzini did not (as Biandrata desired) urge the absolute necessity of this invocation, the result was a public explosion on David's part against the cultus of Christ in any shape or form. His trial followed, on a charge of innovation. Sozzini hurried off to Poland before it began. He cannot be ac-cused of a guilty complicity with "what he calls the rage of Biandrata, for he was no party to the incarceration of David at Déva, where the old man miserably perished in prison. But he was willing that David should be prohibited from preaching pending the decision of the controversy by a general synod; and his references to the case show that (as in the later instances of Jacobo Paleólogo, Christian Franken, and Martin Seidel) theological aversions, though they never made him uncivil, froze up his kindness and blinded his perceptions of character. Biandrata ultimately conformed to the Catholic Church; yet as late as 1584 Sozzini, always constant to the leanings of friendship, sought his patronage for his treatise Be Jem Christi Natura, in reply to the Calvinist Andrew Wolan. The remainder (1579-1604) of Sozzini's life was spent in Poland. Excluded at first by his views on baptism from the Minor or Anti-trinitarian Church (anabaptist in its constitution), he ac-quired by degrees a predominant influence in its synods. He converted the Arians from their avowal of our Saviour's pre-existence and their refusal to honour Him by invoca-tion ; he repressed the semi-Judaizers whom he could not convince. Through correspondence with his friends in official places he ruled also the policy of the Antitrinitarian Church of Transylvania. Forced to leave Cracow in 1583, he found a home with a Polish noble, Christopher Morsztyn, whose daughter Elizabeth he married (1586). She died in the following year, a few months after giving birth to a daughter, Agnese, afterwards the wife of Stanislau Wisz-owaty. In 1587 the grand-duke Francesco died, and to this event Sozzini's biographers attribute the loss of his Italian property. But he was on good terms with Fran-cesco's successor, and might have continued to receive his rents had not family disputes arisen respecting the inter-pretation of his grandfather's will. The holy office at Siena disinherited him in October 1590; but he was allowed a pension, which does not seem to have been paid. The failure of supplies from Italy dissolved the compact under which his works were to remain anonymous. He began to publish under his own name. The

consequence was that in 1598 a mob expelled him from Cracow, wreck-ing his house and grossly ill-using his person. Friends gave him a ready welcome at Luslawice, 30 miles east from Cracow; and here, having long been troubled with colic and the stone, he died on 4th March 1604. A limestone block, with illegible inscriptions, marks his grave.


Sozzini's works, as edited by his grandson Andrew Wiszowaty and the learned printer F. Kuyper, are contained in two closely printed folios, Amsterdam, 1668. They arc usually reckoned the first two volumes of the Bibliotheca Fratrurn Polonorum, but in fact the works of Crell and Schlichting preceded them in the series. They include all Sozzini's extant theological writings, except his essay On Predestination (in which ho denies that God foresees the actions of free agents), prefixed to Castellio's Dialogi IV., 1578 (reprinted 1613), and his revision of a school manual, Iiistrumentum Doctrinarum Aristotelicum, 1586. His pseudonyms, easily interpreted, were Felix Turpio Urbevetanus, Prosper Dysidams, Gratianus Prosper, and Gratianus Turpio Gorapolensis ( = Senensis). Some of his early poetry will be found in Ferentilli's Scielta di Stanze di Diversi Auiori Toscani, 1579 (reprinted 1594); other specimens are given in Cantu, and in the Athenscum, 11th August 1877. Sozzini himself considered that his Contra Atheos, which perished in the riot at Cracow, was his ablest work. In later life he began, but left incomplete, more than one work intended to exhibit his system as a whole. His reputation as a thinker must rest on (1) his De Auctorilate S. Scriptural, and (2) his De Jesu Christo Servatore. The former was first published at Seville (1588) by Lopez, a Jesuit, who claimed it as his own, but prefixed a preface in which, contrary to a fundamental position of Sozzini, he maintains that man by nature has a knowledge of God. A French version (1592) was approved by the ministers of Basel; and the English translation (1731) by Edward Coombe was under-taken in consequence of the commendation of the work in a charge (1728) by Bishop Srnalbroke, who observes that Grotius had laid it under contribution in his De Veritate Christ. Ret. In a small compass it anticipates the whole argument of the "credibility" writers; but in trying it by modern tests it should be remembered that Sozzini regarded it (in 1581) as not adequately meeting the cardinal difficulties attending the proof of the Christian religion, and subsequently began to reconstruct its argument in his un-finished Lectiones Sacrte. His treatise on salvation constitutes his main service to theology, placing orthodoxy and heresy in new relations of fundamental antagonism, and narrowing the conflict to the central interest of religion. Of the person of Christ in this treatise he says nothing; he deals exclusively with the work of Christ, which in his view operates upon man alone ; and it is by the persistency with which this idea tends to recur that we must estimate the theological sagacity of Sozzini. Though his name has been attached to a school of opinion (Socinianism), he disclaimed the role of a heresiarch, and declined to give his unreserved adhesion to any one sect. The confidence with wdiich he relied upon the conclusions of his own mind has gained him the repute of a dogma-tist ; but it was his constant aim to reduce and simplify the funda-mentals of Christianity, and it is not without ground that the memorial tablet at Siena (inscription by Brigidi, 1879) characterizes him as a vindicator of human reason against the supernatural. Of his non-theological doctrines the most important is his assertion of the unlawfulness, not only of war, but of the taking of human life in any circumstances. Hence the comparative mildness of his pro-posals for dealing with religious offenders ; but it cannot be said that he had grasped the full idea of toleration. Hence too his contention that magisterial office is unlawful for a Christian.
For the biography of Sozzini the best materials are his letters. There is a collection in his works ; others are given by Cantu ; some are unpublished. In his correspondence he delineates himself freely, not sparing his weak points of character or of attainment. The earliest life, prefixed (with engraved por-trait) to the works, is by Przypkowski (1636), translated into English by Bidle (1653). This is the foundation of the article by Bayle, the Memoirs by Toulmin


Biandrata was Sozzini's evil genius. Born of an old family in Piedmont and educated in France, Biandrata had attached himself to the left wing of Protestantism, and had moved here and there among the upper circles of the Reformed, depending for professional advancement on a special knowledge of the diseases of women. Driven eastwards a second time in 1558 (after fomenting antitrinitarian heresy in the Italian church of Geneva), he had for twenty years been the confi-dential adviser of ladies of the reigning house, first in Poland and then in Transylvania. In both countries he was a dexterous meddler in


church affairs ; his policy was the establishment of a kind of broad church, with a confession nakedly Scriptural in its terms, and a resolute suppression of all compromising extremes.

No trace is discoverable on the stone of the alleged epitaph— " Tota ruit Babylon: destruxit tecta Lutherus, Calvinus lnuros, sed fundamenta Socinus."