MODERN ARIANS. - They are a revival of the ancient followers of Arius (v.). Today, better than "Arians," they are called Unitarians, Anti-Trinitarians (v.), and sometimes Socinians, from the two Sienese Lelio (1525-62) and Fausto (1539-1604) Sozzini (Socini).
Their creed may be said to be contained in these few lines: fatherhood of God, human brotherhood, the guidance of Jesus, salvation through character, and the constant evolutionary progress of humanity.
As an autonomous body distinct from the other Protestant sects, the modern Arians seem to have organized themselves in the year 1568, when the bishop David Ferencs established the first Unitarian nucleus at Cluj-Kolez-svar in Transylvania, where, by the end of the century, 425 Unitarian communities were counted. Other historians, on the other hand, trace the organization of Arianism back to a group of restless Italian heretics who, after their apostasy from Rome, having taken refuge abroad, soon rebelled also against the theocracy established at Geneva by Calvin. Among these three Piedmontese apostates stand out: the physician Giorgio Biandrata of Saluzzo (v.), Giovanni Paolo Alciati of Savigliano (v.), and Matteo Gribaudo (v.). To them must be added the Calabrian Giovanni Valentino Gentile and the three Sienese Lelio and Fausto Socini and Bernardino Ochino (v.).
In 1567 Biandrata published his work De falsa et vera Dei Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti agnitionis, in which he states formally that he links himself back, by his unitarianism, to all the true or supposed Anti-Trinitarian currents that preceded him, from Arius to Joachim of Fiore (v.), from Erasmus to Servetus (v.).
In Poland, the Italian Anti-Trinitarians and their disciples widely propagated their heresy, especially Fausto Socino with his treatise De Jesu Christo Servatore, in which he denies the expiatory sacrifice of the Son of God, while maintaining that his work is exercised directly upon man not by virtue of the cross, but through his example, by imitating which one obtains eternal life. In this way the imitation of Christ takes on a purely humanistic value, and reflects not the saving light of Calvary, but that of the Italian humanistic circles of Basel and the rationalistic currents of Padua.
From Poland unitarianism spread to England, where today 350 Unitarian communities are counted. It also had wide diffusion in North America, where, supported by Jefferson, the heresy established itself through the eloquence of W. E. Channing (1780-1842), of Emerson and of Theodore Parker (1810-60). The 370 Unitarian communities of the United States today count ca. 600,000 members, in constant decline.