Francesco Negri (reformer)

Francesco Negri (* 1500 in Bassano del Grappa , Republic of Venice , † 1563 ) was an Italian Benedictine monk, Catholic theologian who became a Protestant in Venice around 1525 , went to Strasbourg , Chiavenna and Pińczów and worked there as a weaver, translator, teacher, writer and Reformer was active.

Live and act

Negri came from a noble family, his father was the merchant Cristoforo Negri, his mother's name was Dorotea Buonamente. In Bassano he attended school with Andrea Locatelli from 1511 to 1515 and with Giovanni da Reggio from 1515 to 1517, where he learned the classical languages ​​and philosophy. He entered the Benedictine monastery of San Benedetto in Polirone near Mantua in 1517 and was given the name Simeone. In 1522 he became a monk in the monastery of Santa Giustina in Padua . In 1524 he came with his brother Girolamo to the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, where he got to know the teachings of Martin Luther . After his father died in 1525, he was able to leave the monastery. In 1529 he went first to Augsburg and then to Strasbourg , where he worked as a weaver and married Cunegonda Regina Fessi. There he met some reformers, for example, he took lessons from Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer . He accompanied Huldrych Zwingli to the Marburg Religious Discussion in 1529 , and he was also present at the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1530. In the same year he returned briefly to Italy, presumably to clarify inheritance issues. However, he continued to live in Strasbourg until 1538, where he worked as a translator from Latin into Italian.

From 1538 on, Negri stayed in Chiavenna in southern Graubünden, where he first worked as a private teacher and then founded a school where he taught classical languages ​​himself. An evangelical congregation gathered around him, consisting mainly of Italian religious refugees, such as he was. However, he had sympathy for Anabaptist and anti-Trinitarian teachings, which were represented by Camillo Renato and Francesco Stancaro and which brought him into conflict with the reformer and pastor of Chiavenna Agostino Mainardi , who represented a theology based on the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger . In October 1550 he took part in the Anabaptist Council in Venice.

He wrote and translated school books and wrote a catechism called Brevissima somma della dottrina christiana recitata da un fanciullo, in domanda e resposta , which was modeled on that of Martin Luther. In 1546 he created a personified theological drama entitled La tragedia del Libero arbitrio (German: The tragedy of free will ). It became his best known work as it was translated into French in 1558, Latin in 1559, and English in 1573. A poetic eulogy for religious tolerance and freedom in Graubünden was published in Basel in 1547 under the title Rhetia sive de situ et moribus Rhetorum . At the time of the Counter-Reformation , his works were included on the papal index of forbidden books in 1559 .

In 1561 Negri went with his son Giorgio to Pińczów near Kraków, where Protestant-anti-Trinitarian Italian exiles could live and believe largely undisturbed. He worked there as a Bible teacher and theological writer. In 1563 he planned to return to Chiavenna to meet his wife and two other children, but before he could start the trip he died of the plague.

Works

• Rudimenta grammaticae, Mediolani, apud Antonium Castellonium , 1541
• Ovidiane Metamorphoseos Epitome , Christoph Froschauer , Zurich 1542
• Tragedia di F (rancesco) N (egri) B (assanese) intitolata, Libero arbitrio , Johannes Oporinus & Jacob Parcus, Basel 1546; Brucioli (?), Venice 1547, Oporino, Venice 1551; French translation 1558; Latin 1559; english 1573.
• Rhetia sive de situ et moribus Rhetorum , Basel 1547 (translation and edition by T. Schiess: Rhetia - a poem from the 16th century by Franciscus N. from Bassano , 1897)
• Brevissima somma della dottrina christiana recitata da un fanciullo, in domanda e resposta , Basel 1550 (?)
• De Fanini Faventini, ac Dominici Bassanensis morte, Qui nuper ob Christum in Italia Rome. Pon. Iussu impie occisi sunt, Brevis Historia , Dolfino Landolfi , Poschiavo 1550.
• Canones grammaticales , apud D. Landolphum, Pesclavii, 1555
• Ad evangelicam Ecclesiam in Polonia renascentem in Psalmum CIII brevissima paraphrasis , Marek Szarfenberg, Krakow 1559
• In dominicam precationem meditatiuncula: eiusdem De restituta humano generi per Iesum Christum salute carmen, item Ad Iesum Christum gratiarum actio , per Franciscum Nigrum Bassianatem, Froschauer, Zurich 1560

Translations from Italian into Latin

• Paolo Giovio : Turcicarum rerum commentarius… ex Italico Latinus factus, Argentorati, Commentarii delle imprese dei Turchi di Paolo Giovio , for Wendelinus Rihelius, 1537
• Niccolò Machiavelli : Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio , 1537 (?)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to Biasiori. Bundi and Dingel with missing or different information.

literature

• Lucio Biasiori: Negri, Francesco. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 78 (2013).
• Martin Bundi : Niger, Franciscus. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . April 29, 2010 .
• Irene Dingel (ed.): Antitrinitarian disputes. The tritheistic phase (1560–1568) (= Controversia et Confessio. Vol. 9). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-647-56015-1 , pp. 182-213.
  • Inside: Negri, Francesco (called Bessamonte). Retrieved November 22, 2017.
• Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer: Protestant religious refugees in Switzerland (1540–1580). In: Hartmut Laufhütte , Michael Titzmann (ed.): Heterodoxy in the early modern times (= early modern times. Vol. 117). De Gruyter, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-1109-2869-3 , pp. 119-160.
• Giambattista conte Roberti: Notes storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Francesco Negri apostata Bassanese del secolo 16. Basseggio 1839.
• Manfred E. Welti: Brief history of the Italian Reformation (= writings of the Association for Reformation History . Vol. 193). Mohn, Gütersloh 1985, ISBN 3-579-01663-6 , pp. 61-121 ( digitized in the Google book search).