Alciati della Motta, Gian Paolo

ALCIATI della MOTTA, GIAN PAOLO. - A Socinian from Milan according to some, from Savigliano in Piedmont according to others, born around 1510, died at Danzig in 1580. At first he devoted himself to the military life, but afterward he joined the anti-Trinitarian conventicle of Vicenza, taking refuge later in Geneva when it was dissolved by the government of Venice in 1546. Having gone to the Grisons, he took part in the struggles that arose there between the anti-Trinitarians and the Zwinglians. Returning to Geneva around 1554, he refused to subscribe to the confession of faith presented to him by Calvin, and had to flee.

Calvin, who did not spare epithets for his adversaries, called him "a mind not only stupid, but frenzied to the point of rage." Beza accused him of having turned Muslim, but this was an arbitrary inference drawn from a letter that A. had written to Gregorio Paulo and in which he had affirmed that, in his opinion, the doctrine of the Muslims was more consonant with reason than that of the Christians, who acknowledged three Persons in a single nature. From 1562 until 1574, the year in which he had to withdraw to Danzig, he propagated his anti-Trinitarian doctrines in Poland, with excursions into Moravia and Transylvania, teaching especially by word and in writing that Jesus Christ was inferior to the Father, that he was a simple man and that he did not exist before his birth. He was a friend and companion of Biandrata (v.) and of the other anti-Trinitarian followers of Sozzini.