CARACCIOLO, GALEAZZO. — An Italian Protestant, born in Naples in 1517, died in Geneva on 7 May 1586. Among the Italian heretics of the 16th century, he was, by birth, the most prominent of all. Calvin and Beza called him the “marquis” of Vico, but in reality he never possessed this title, which, upon the death of his father, Colantonio I, passed to his son, Colantonio II. He did, however, hold the titles of chamberlain and knight of the Golden Key of the Empire. In Naples, he attended the gatherings held in his own palace on Via Chiaia by Juan Valdés and was drawn to his doctrines, which led him to embrace Protestantism. He seems to have attended (1542) the Diet of Regensburg, where issues such as the primacy of St. Peter and clerical celibacy were discussed.
On 21 March 1551, when the tribunal of the Inquisition was established in Naples, Caracciolo emigrated to Augsburg. In Geneva, he met Calvin, who always held him in high regard, especially after Caracciolo’s former protector, Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, ascended to the papacy as Paul IV (23 May 1555). In Geneva, with other exiles, he founded the first dissident Italian church. The Brescian Massimiliano Martinenghi served as its first minister, and Galeazzo as deacon. Later, Caracciolo became a member of both the Small and the Great Council and of the consistory. His request to remarry, after his wife Donna Vittoria—heiress to the duchy of Nocera—refused to embrace her husband’s heresy and follow him out of Italy, caused grave embarrassment to Calvin. It was the first case of its kind, and Calvin was uncertain whether to risk scandalizing Christendom or to lose the nobleman from Naples. The controversy was publicly debated in the churches with the Bible in hand and brought before the ecclesiastical consistory and the civil magistracy. The marquis ultimately obtained a declaration of nullity for his first marriage and freedom to remarry, which he did on 10 January 1560, taking as his second wife a very wealthy Frenchwoman from Rouen, Anna Franny. Beza called Caracciolo emphatically a “second Moses,” and Calvin dedicated the second edition of his commentary on the Epistle to the Corinthians to him.