BRUCIOLI, ANTONIO. - Man of letters and translator of heretical doctrines into the vernacular, b. in Florence at the end of the 15th century, d. in Venice in 1566. He was a frequenter of the famous "academic gardens of the Rucellai." Involved in the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Clement VII, he fled to Lyon in 1522, where he had his first contacts with the new heretical doctrines. Having returned home in 1527, he wrote against ecclesiastical abuses, real or supposed, and Varchi says of him that "he was so constant in this matter of priests and friars that, however much he was warned and reproved by his closest friends, there was never any order that he was willing to abide by, saying: He who tells the truth does no wrong." Condemned to exile, he took refuge in Venice, where, with some absences, he remained until the end of his life.
There he wrote various works: Dialoghi filosofici; the translation of Pliny's natural history; the political essay Del Governo dello ottimo principe e capitano dello esercito, etc., but his principal work was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular in 1532 and the Commentari on the same Bible in seven volumes between 1542 and 1546. Of this translation the Protestant Di Silvestri Falconieri says: "His style is harsh and unadorned; it is held that he translated the Bible not from the original Hebrew and Greek, but from the ugly Latin translation of Santes Pagnino." This translation was the cause of various trials on the part of the Inquisition. The first (1548) ended with a sentence of a fine and of banishment to Ferrara; the second (1555) ended with condemnation to abjure, to submit to certain penances and to compose "a retractatory work"; the third (1558-59) was brought against him for having neglected to write the retractatory work. The points on which he was subject to heresy we can gather from his abjuration, where he confesses to have held "that by faith alone, excluding the merits of works, man is saved; that the Sacraments are two, namely Baptism and the Eucharist, tacitly excluding the others; that the saints ought not to be invoked, likening them to the various creatures; that those who fall away from Christ were never of Christ; that only the elect can have faith, and the others cannot." The explanations he gave to the tribunal can be understood in an orthodox sense, but not his writings, and for this reason he was condemned to prison. He died shortly after having served his sentence.