Nicolò Rusca

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Nicolò Rusca on a painting by Antonio Caimi (1852)

Nicolò Rusca (born April 20, 1563 in Bedano , † September 4, 1618 in Thusis ) was Roman Catholic archpriest in Sondrio . He lost his life in the course of the religious turmoil in Valtellina in the 17th century.

Life

He was of aristocratic origin and studied at the Helvetic College in Milan from 1580 to 1587 . In 1588 he was pastor in Sessa and from 1590 archpriest in Sondrio . Rusca played an active role in the Counter-Reformation - he called himself Ketzerhammer - and, on behalf of the Como bishop, fought the planned reformed state school. He zealously preached the biblical principles of faith in Plurs and Tirano, supported the poor, taught the catechism and, through his ascetic-religious life, aroused great resentment among his evangelical fellow Christians. In Bünden and especially in the Valtellina, unrest broke out from 1614 because of the alliance with Venice, which wanted to put the Reformed faith on an equal footing in Valtellina. The Catholic-oriented French-Spanish alliance and its supporters in Graubünden got into a dispute over this. In 1617 Rusca was arrested by the Bündner authorities with the help of Jörg Jenatsch by Captain Buol von Maladers. As evangelicals, both were turned towards the alliance with Venice and wanted to break the balance of power and the Catholic majority in the Valtellina by force. Archpriest Rusca was brought before the Thusner criminal court as an alleged heretic and traitor and tortured to death the following year. This crime was one of the causes of the Veltliner murder and Grison turmoil of 1620. A few weeks after the death of Rusca occurred the landslide of Plurs 1618, which was regarded by the people as a sign of divine displeasure about the events in frets.

From 1619 to 1845 Rusca's bones were kept in Pfäfers monastery ; today they are in the collegiate church of Sondrio.

On April 21, 2013, Rusca was beatified in Sondrio , which is seen as a provocation in Protestant Graubünden circles. The beatification of Nicolo Rusca is the first such award for a Swiss since the canonization of Bernarda Bütler in 2008.

literature

  • Giovanni Battista Bajacca: Nicolai Ruscae STD Sundrii in Valle Tellina Archipresbyteri anno MDCXVIII Tuscianae in Rhetia from Hereticis necati Vita & Mors . 1621.
  • Cesare Cantù: Il Sacro Macello di Valtellina. Le guerre Religose del 1620 tra cattolici e protestanti tra Lombardia e Grigioni . Milano 1832.
  • I conflitti confessionali all'epoca di Nicolò Rusca . Bollettino della Società Storica Valtellinese 55 (2002).
  • Adolf Collenberg: Nicolò Rusca. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 5, 2012 , accessed December 6, 2019 .
  • Giovanni Da Prada: L'arciprete Nicolò Rusca ei Cattolici del suo tempo . 1994.
  • Abramo Levi: L'arciprete di Sondrio Nicolò Rusca . Credito valtellinese, Sondrio 1993.
  • Antonio Maffei: Elogio di Nicolò Rusca . 1852 (Speech on the occasion of the transfer of Nicolò Rusca's coffin from the Santuario della Sassella to the Collegiate Church of Sondrio on August 8, 1852).
  • Santo Monti (ed.): Atti della visita pastorale diocesana di F. Feliciano Ninguarda vescovo di Como (1589-1593) . Società Storica Comense, 1892–1898.
  • Ekkart Sauser :  RUSCA, Nikolaus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 15, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-077-8 , Sp. 1216-1217.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Philip Schaff: The History Of The Reformation: History Of The Christian Church . Volume VIII, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1-4191-2412-9 .

Web links

In German language

In Italian

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ srf.ch Beatification of Rusca
  2. ↑ Kath.ch
personal data
SURNAME Rusca, Nicolò
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman Catholic archpriest in Sondrio
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1563
PLACE OF BIRTH Bedano
DATE OF DEATH September 4, 1618
Place of death Thusis