ALCIATI della MOTTA, Gian Paolo. - A Socinian from Milan, according to some; from Savignano in Piedmont, according to others; born c. 1510, died in Danzig in 1580. At first he devoted himself to a military life, later associating with the anti-militarist conventicle of Venanzio, fleeing to Geneva when it was dissolved by the Venetian government in 1546. Having gone to the Grisons, he took part in the struggles that arose there between anti-militarists and Zwinglians. Returning to Geneva around 1554, he managed to subscribe to the confession of faith presented to him by Calvin, but was forced to flee.
Calvin, who spared no epithets for his adversaries, called him “a mind not only stupid, but frenzied to the point of madness.” Beza accused him of having become a Muslim, but this was an arbitrary assumption drawn from a letter that A. had written to Gregorio Paulo, in which he had stated that, in his opinion, the doctrine of the Muslims was more consonant with reason than that of the Christians, who recognized three Persons in one nature. From 1562 until 1574, the year in which he was forced to retire to Danzig, he propagated his anti-militarist doctrines in Poland, with excursions into Moravia and Transylvania, teaching above all, both orally and in writing, that Jesus Christ was inferior to the Father, that He was merely a man, and that He did not exist before His birth. He was a friend and companion of Banda (q.v.) and of the other anti-militarists who followed Socinus.