CALVINUS, JUSTUS. - Controversialist, b. at Wetter (Hesse) in May 1572, d. at Mainz between 1616 and 1621. While attending the theology course at Heidelberg, it happened that he read the Annals of Cesare Baronio, which were just then being published. That reading and the study of the Fathers, around 1600, the holy year, enlightened him and brought him into the orbit of Catholicism, through the correspondence then deliberately opened between him, a seeker of the truth, and Baronio, who was his amiable, patient and solicitous teacher and spiritual guide. This correspondence constitutes today a precious relic of the Vallicelliana library in Rome (cf. cod. Vallicelliano Q. 47, fol. 117 ff.).
Having gone to Rome to visit the holy city and his spiritual benefactor (1601), C. was confirmed in the Lateran basilica by Clement VIII himself, his sponsor being card. Baronio, whose surname (Baronio) Justus C., out of deferential gratitude, then wished to assume as well. The cardinal showered him with attentions, admitted him among his household and kept him with him four months. On his returning home, he provided him with a letter of recommendation for the archbishop elector of Mainz. It begins thus: «He who, from Mainz, came to Rome as Justus C., now returns, from Rome to Mainz, as Justus Baronio».
The new convert took his degree at the Italian Universities of Perugia and Siena and then, in his homeland, recounted his own conversion in a volume Apologia (Mainz 1601). He also wrote Prascriptionum adversus hareticos... Tractatus (ibid. 1602 and 1756) and De falso Jubilaeo Wittenbergensi adversus Aegidium Junium Lutheri discipulum and, on the death of card. Baronio, a funeral eulogy of him which he sent to Nicola Serrario, the Lorraine Jesuit friend of Baronio himself.
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Piero Chiminelli