GRIBALDI, MATTEO. — Italian jurist and reformer, born in Chieri, in Piedmont, into the Gribaldi Mofa family, at the beginning of the 16th century, and died at Farges (Switzerland) in September 1564. He taught law at the Universities of Perugia, Toulouse, Valencia, and Grenoble. The exact date of his full adherence to the Reformation is uncertain; however, it is certain that his sentiments must have wavered early on, given the widespread Protestantism in Piedmont at the time. It was perhaps during his teaching period in Padua (1548–55), where he met Pier P. Vergerio, with whom he later formed an intimate friendship, that he decisively embraced the Reformation.
He maintained epistolary and personal relations with Calvin, later becoming a tenacious doctrinal opponent of Calvin, who repaid him with continuous insults, denigrations, and accusations of heresy, particularly for Gribaldi’s public condemnation of the trial and execution of the Spaniard Michael Servetus (see).
Grenoble, diocese of — Interior of the Cathedral (11th century) with many later restorations.
Having definitively left Padua on April 22, 1555, due to the orders of the Venetian regents, Gribaldi retired to Switzerland, from where he then proceeded to Tübingen, having been called by Duke Christoph of Württemberg to teach at that university. Before reaching Tübingen, however, he went to Geneva, where Calvin summoned him in vain for a meeting on June 29. Soon, Tübingen also became unsafe for him, as Calvin and his loyal Beza had done everything to discredit him in the Duke’s eyes. Invited to defend himself against the accusations that had been heaped upon him and to clarify his thought explicitly, Gribaldi requested three weeks to respond; in the meantime, however, he deemed it more prudent to take refuge in Farges, from where he justified himself in writing in a letter sent to the academic senate of the university. Nonetheless, accused by the Duke, the Bernese authorities brought a case against him, forcing him to appear before the Bernese preachers, who compelled him to sign a confession of faith on September 20, 1557. Banished from Bern, after a period of exile in Fribourg, he returned to teach in Grenoble, where he was recalled in 1559; but the following year, he had to leave the city again because the Studium could no longer provide the funds for his salary. From this point onward, Gribaldi’s traces are lost, and it is only known that he died of the plague four years later in Farges.
Gribaldi is considered the leading figure of Italian anti-Trinitarianism, whose theories he first expounded in 1554 in the Italian church in Geneva and later in a letter addressed to its leaders.
Of his juridical works, noteworthy is the treatise *De methodo ac ratione studendi in iure civili* (Lyons, 1541), in which he outlines the analytical method of teaching civil law according to the practice of Italian schools, known as the *mos italicus iuris docendi*.