Matteo Gribaldi

Matteo Gribaldi (* around 1500 in Chieri , Piedmont ; † September 1564 in Farges near Geneva ) was an Italian lawyer and representative of the anti-Trinitarianism of the Reformation .

Life

Gribaldi worked between 1535 and 1545 as a lawyer at the French universities of Toulouse , Cahors , Valence and Grenoble . While still in France, he married Georgine Carraxe, with whom he had seven children. Probably around 1542 he converted to Protestantism , but lived on as a Catholic outwardly . From 1548 he worked at the University of Padua , where many Protestant students from Germany and Switzerland had enrolled. In the same year he witnessed the death of the Protestant Venetian lawyer, Francesco Spiera , who was affected by the Inquisition , as evidenced by the work Historia de quodam, quem hostes Evangelii in Italia coegerunt abiicere agnitam veritatem ( The story of one whom the enemies of the Gospel in Italy forced to deny the known truth ) caused. Around 1550 Gribaldi came into contact with the writings of Michel Servet and turned to anti-Trinitarian standpoints. In the autumn of 1553 Lelio Sozzini also lived with Gribaldi in Padua for two months. After Michel Servet's execution, Gribaldi published the work Apologia pro Michaele Serveto ( Defense for Michel Servet ) under the pseudonym Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis in 1554 .

Since Gribaldi had a country estate in Farges in the Pays de Gex , he was often to be found in nearby Geneva , which was influenced by Calvinism . Here he wrote a pamphlet for the Italian community of Geneva in September 1554, in which he for the first time advocated the notion that father and son must be two substantial entities. A short time later, he published the confessional De Deo et Dei Filio , which in the following years was mainly used in Poland and Lithuania and led to the transfer of anti-Trinitarian positions to the Reformed communities in Poland-Lithuania . Petrus Gonesius , a student from the Polish-Lithuanian town of Gonionds , played a not insignificant role here . In the spring of 1555, Gribaldi took over the call, supported by Pietro Paolo Vergerio , of the Protestant-oriented Duke Christoph von Württemberg at the University of Tübingen . On the way to Württemberg he met Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich and Johannes Calvin in Geneva , with whom he fell out. Calvin was not ready to shake hands until they had agreed on essential points. Calvin and his colleague Théodore de Bèze subsequently drew Christoph von Württemberg's attention to Gribaldi's anti-Trinitarian positions. Gribaldi finally had to justify himself before the academic senate of the University of Tübingen in July 1557. In order to avoid the danger of an execution as an alleged heretic , Gribaldi fled shortly afterwards to his country estate in Farges, where he was arrested and detained by the Bernese authorities in September 1557. In order to avoid the threatened extradition to Tübingen, Gribaldi was finally ready to sign the Confessions of the Old Church and thus to break away from his anti-Trinitarian views. Nevertheless, he had to leave the Bern region. Only after the death of his wife in 1558 was he allowed to return to Farges. However, his return was tied to the condition that he remained silent about his religious views. A year later, Gribaldi was able to work again at the University of Grenoble, but was released again later. Matteo Gribaldi died of the plague in Farges in September 1564 .

Historically, Gribaldi can be seen as a link between the work of Michel Servet and the later socians in Poland and Lithuania. Gribaldi took over the anti-trinitarianism represented by Michel Servet, but spoke differently than this for a subordinatian tritheism .

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Gribaldi, Matteo. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 350.
• Carlos Gilly : Alphonsus Lyncurius and Pseudo-Servet , in Idem, Spain and the Basler Buchdruck up to 1600: A cross section through the Spanish intellectual history from the perspective of a European printing city. Helbing and Liechtenhahn, Basel 1985, ISBN 3-7190-0909-2 , pp. 298-318 ( PDF; 64.1 MiB ; on the writings written by Gribaldi under the name “Servet”).
• Peter Hughes, Peter Zerner: Declaratio Michael Servetus's Revelation of Jesus Christ the Son of God and other Antitrinitarian Works by Matteo Gribaldi. Providence, Blackstone 2010.
• 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.
• Uwe Plath: “Lyncurius” again. Some thoughts on Gribaldi, Curione, Calvin and Servet. In: Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance. 31: 583-610 (1969).
• Uwe Plath: Calvin and Basel in the years 1552–1556, Basel / Zurich 1974, pp. 154–159
• Diego Quaglioni:  Gribaldi Moffa, Matteo. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 59:  Graziano – Grossi Gondi. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2002.
• Christoph Schmidt : Pilgrims, Popes and Prophets: A History of Religions from Eastern Europe , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-657-77265-0 , pp. 127-160: From West to East: The Anabaptists

Web links

• Alphonsus Lyncurius and Pseudo-Servet , pp. 298-318 ( PDF; 64.1 MiB ).
• Gribaldi y Servet (2004), pp. 227, 312–317 ( [1] ; PDF; 65.5 MB)
• Peter Hughes: Matteo Gribaldi. In: Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. October 19, 2008.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhold Rau: Matteo Gribaldi in Tübingen , in: Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1968/69, ed. v. Alemannic Institute , pp. 38-87.
2. ↑ Antitrinitarians. European History Online (EGO), accessed September 29, 2011 .