GRIBALDI, MATTEO. — Italian jurist and reformer, born at Chieri, in Piedmont, into the Gribaldi Mofa family, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and died at Farges (Switzerland) in September 1564. He taught law at the Universities of Perugia, Toulouse, Valenza, and Grenoble. It is not possible to establish with certainty precisely when his complete adherence to the Reformation took place; it is certain, however, that his convictions must soon have begun to waver, considering that Protestantism was very widespread in Piedmont at that time. But it was perhaps during the period of his teaching at Padua (1548–55), where he met Pier P. Vergerio, with whom he subsequently maintained a close friendship, that he decided without reserve in favor of the Reformation.
He maintained epistolary and personal relations with Calvin, of whom he later became a determined adversary in doctrinal matters and by whom he was repaid with continual insults, denigration, and accusations of heresy, especially because he had publicly condemned the trial and SEGRETO (v.).
Having definitively left Padua on 22 April 1555 at the behest of the Venetian authorities, G. withdrew to Switzerland, from where he then proceeded to Tübingen, having been invited by Duke Christoph of Württemberg to teach at that University. Before reaching Tübingen, however, he went to Geneva, where Calvin unsuccessfully summoned him to a discussion on 29 June. But soon his residence in Tübingen was no longer secure either, since Calvin and his faithful Beza had used every means to discredit him in the eyes of the Duke. Invited therefore to defend himself against the accusations that had rained down upon him so abundantly, and to make his views explicit, G. requested three weeks’ time to reply; in the meantime, however, he thought it more prudent to take refuge in Farges, from where he nevertheless justified himself in writing in a letter sent to the academic senate of the University. Nonetheless accused by the Duke, he was prosecuted by the authorities of Bern and had to appear before the Bernese preachers, who compelled him to sign a confession of faith on 20 September 1557. Banished from Bern, after a period of exile in Fribourg, he returned to teaching at Grenoble, where he was recalled in 1559; but the following year he had to leave the city again, because the University could no longer provide the funds necessary for his salary. From this date G.’s traces are lost, and all that is known of him is that four years later he fell victim to the plague at Farges.
G. is regarded as the leading figure of Italian anti-Trinitarianism, whose theories he first expounded (1554) in the Italian church of Geneva and subsequently in a letter addressed to its leaders.
Of his entire juridical production, the notable work is De methodo ac ratione studendi in iure civili (Lyons 1541), in which the analytical method of teaching law according to the practice of the Italian schools is outlined, and which is known as nos italicus ius docendi.