Jacob Palaeologus

Jacob Palaeologus or Giacomo da Chio (* 1520 in Chios , † March 23, 1585 in Rome ) was an important Greek - Italian theologian and diplomat of the 16th century. Initially a Dominican, he later turned to the Reformation and especially to Unitarianism .

life and work

Palaeologus was born around 1520 on the Greek island of Chios, which at that time still belonged to the Republic of Genoa . His Greek father was a craftsman, his Italian mother a housekeeper. As a young man, Palaeologus joined the Dominican Order and studied at the Dominican schools in Genoa and Ferrara and later at the University of Bologna . During this time he took the name Jacob Palaeologus, which refers to the former Byzantine imperial family Palaiologos . In 1554 he moved to Pera , the Christian quarter of Istanbul , where he worked at the St. Peter monastery. Here he also wrote a defense for Michael Servet , who was burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553 as an anti-Trinitarian . In 1556 Palaeologus returned to Chios and took part in an attempted coup against the Bishop of Chios . A year later, Palaeologus was arrested by the Inquisition in Genoa . In 1558 he was able to flee to Istanbul, but was arrested again in Dubrovnik (Italian: Ragusa ) and taken to the prison of the Grand Inquisitor Michele Ghislieri (later Pope Pius V) in Rome. In August 1559 his trial began in the Dominican Church in Rome. After the death of Pope Paul IV in 1559, a mob plundered Rome. Palaeologus escaped from prison and the documents incriminating him were burned. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death in absentia in 1561. Palaiologos initially escaped to France , where he made contact with the reform-friendly Bishop Andreas Dudith and advised him at the Council of Trent . In 1563 Palaiologos finally received asylum in Prague , which was held by the Hussites , where he also married. Due to his knowledge of the Greek and Turkish languages, he eventually became an imperial diplomat . At the same time he made contacts with the Bohemian and Polish brothers during his time in Prague . After Michele Ghislieri was elected Pope, the Inquisition wanted Palaeologus to be extradited to Rome, whereupon he was arrested on March 30, 1571. After four months, however, he was able to escape, sold his property and now turned to Poland , where he met his former friend Andreas Dudith in Cracow in Lesser Poland , who had since converted from Catholicism to Calvinism .

Palaeologus now confessed to Unitarianism, but in Poland he was in an open dispute with representatives of the pacifist direction critical of the state such as Gregor Pauli , Marcin Czechowic and Johann Ludwig von Wolzüge about the legitimacy of violence. In a publication De bello sententia published in 1572 , he distinguished between war of aggression and war of defense, whereby he allowed Christians to participate in the latter. Later moved Palaeologus to Transylvania , became a member of the local Unitarian Church and eventually became rector of the Unitarian College in Cluj (romänisch: Cluj , Hungarian: Kolozsvár ). In Transylvania, Palaeologus supported the Nonadorantists around Franz David . In the election of a new prince in the Duchy of Transylvania after the death of Johann Sigismund , he supported the anti-Trinitarian and pro-imperial candidate Gaspar Bekes against the Catholic Stephan Báthory .

After Beke's failure, he returned to Krakow. But after Stephan Báthory finally became the new Polish king in 1576, Palaeologus moved to Moravia , where he was arrested by the Bishop of Olomouc in December 1581 in the village of Loučka near Zlin . From there he was transported to Rome via Vienna. In February 1582 he was to be burned at the stake. Shortly before, however, he swore from his radical reformist views, so that he was initially spared. However, since he also every collaboration with Pope Gregory XIII. refused, he was finally beheaded on May 25, 1585 in the courtyard of the Torre di Nona prison in Rome. His body was then burned at the stake on Campo de 'Fiori and his ashes thrown into the Tiber .

Theologically, Palaeologus argued against the dogma of the Trinity, predestination and the pre-existence of Christ . In his work De baptismo liberorum he also spoke out against infant baptism .

literature

• Christopher J. Burchill: The Heidelberg Antitrinitarians: Johann Sylvan, Adam Neuser, Matthias Vehe, Jacob Suter, Johann Hasler , Bibliotheca dissidentium 11, Baden-Baden 1989 ISBN 978-3-87320-120-0 .
• Euan Cameron: The European Reformation , Oxford 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-873093-4 .
• Diarmaid MacCulloch : Reformation: Europe's house divided 1490–1700 , London 2003, ISBN 978-0-7139-9370-7 .
• George Huntston Williams : The Radical Reformation , 2002 ISBN 0-943549-83-3 .
• Lech Szczucki: Disputatio scholastica , Utrecht 1994, ISBN 90-6004-431-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stefan Fleischman: Szymon Budny. A theological portrait of the Polish-Belarusian humanist and Unitarian (approx. 1530–1593) (= building blocks for Slavic philology and cultural history. Series A: Slavic research. NF vol. 53). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-04306-0 , p. 45, (also: Würzburg, Universität, dissertation, 2004).
2. ↑ Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online