Guicciardini, Piero

GUICCIARDINI, PIERO. - Reformer, descendant of Francesco Guicciardini, b. in Florence on 21 July 1808, d. there on 23 March 1886. In his youth he was close to the group of Tuscan liberal Catholics, acquired considerable technical-agrarian knowledge, and furthermore concerned himself with the organization in Tuscany of infant asylums, with vigilant attention to the theories and practical achievements of his time (Aporti, Naville, etc.). He broke away from the Catholic Church (1836) because of an inner crisis, also directed by the friendship of a group of Evangelicals (especially by the Genevan Matilde Calandrini); without officially adhering to any Protestant sect, he began to attend the worship of the Evangelical Reformed church of Florence. By 1846 he was already an ardent organizer.

For his activity contrary to the "state religion" he was imprisoned in 1851. When his confinement was then commuted to exile, he stayed in England, as a guest of the best local aristocracy. It was during this stay that G. joined the recently arisen sect of the Plymouth Brethren or Darbyites; to it he later attracted Teodoro Pietricola Rossetti (cousin of the better-known Gabriele Rossetti), who afterwards had so large a part in the Darbyite mission in Italy. In 1854 G. was rebaptized in the Darbyite sect. The same year he returned to Italy and chose as his residence Nice, in the Sardinian States, rather than Florence. He then began systematically, with some fellow believers, the work of the "evangelization" of Italy, alternating his stays in Italy with sojourns in England and Switzerland. Having returned to Florence in 1859 after the crisis of the grand-ducal government, he later left it again, disappointed by the lack of that unlimited religious freedom which he had hoped Ricasoli would bring about. He continued to supervise his evangelization attempt intensely, without however adhering to parallel Protestant initiatives and to the formulation of a common creed. In the controversy aroused by Pietricola Rossetti's pamphlet, Principi della Chiesa romana, della Chiesa protestante e della Chiesa cristiana, published in 1865, G. declared himself in solidarity with Pietricola, which drew upon him the wrath of the other sects. He spent the last years of his life on his farms in Tuscany. In 1885, that is, the year before his death, because of disagreements of a doctrinal and disciplinary nature, G. broke away from the Plymouth Brethren community of Florence. Of scant theological culture, G. based his theories on a mixture of Protestant reform and Catholicism, namely: Trinity, Church as Mystical Body of Christ, free salvation, justification by faith, anti-papism, revival, pietism.

Massimo Petrocchi