GENTILE, GIOVANNI VALENTINO. - Italian heretic, b. at Cosenza in 1520 and d. at Bern on 10 Sept. 1566. He led an agitated and wandering life; compelled, in fact, to leave Italy for religious reasons, he went in 1556 to take refuge in Geneva, where he met other Italian heretics and exiles, such as Giovanni Paolo Alciati, the physician Giorgio Biandrata and the jurist Matteo Gribaldi Mofa.
Won over to the ideas of the latter, he soon became one of the most stubborn propagators of the anti-Trinitarian doctrines, which led him to deny the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, maintaining that it was impossible to justify the dogma of the Trinity on the basis of Holy Scripture. Having thereby entered, and even more so because of his open opposition to Calvin, into the suspicion of the authorities of Geneva, he was arrested and, after a long series of interrogations, condemned to decapitation by a special commission of jurists. He was nevertheless able to escape the penalty; however, despite his promise to remain in Geneva, he fled, taking refuge with Gribaldi at Farges, where he continued with greater zeal the spread of his ideas. From there he went to Lyon, then to Grenoble, then again to Farges; arrested by the bailiff of Ges, he managed to have himself released and to return to Lyon, where he had his profession of faith printed, which was nevertheless to compromise him further; he had troubles here as well, on account of which he went, in 1562, to Biandrata in Poland, from where he was driven out in 1564. Having stayed for some time first in Moravia, then in Austria, taking advantage of Calvin's death he returned once more to Bern, where he sought to convoke all the French Protestants for a public refutation concerning the Trinity. But, arrested once again, he sought in vain to justify himself, and was therefore condemned and decapitated, without, however, having been willing to abjure.
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Niccolò Del Re