MAINARDI, AGOSTINO. — An Augustinian who went over to the «Reformation» and subsequently became pastor at Chiavenna, in the Grisons, born in 1482 at Caraglio (Cuneo) and died at Chiavenna on 31 July 1563. It is not known precisely when he began to incline toward Protestantism. His Lenten sermons of 1532 at Asti and, above all, those of 1538 at Rome, in S. Agostino — where he aroused the protests of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits — made him suspect. Finally, at Milan, in 1541, during the Lenten sermons in the church of S. Marco, M. upheld ideas so openly heretical that the governor, the marquis del Vasto, reported him to the captain of justice and to the podestàs of the duchy so that they might arrest him.
Shortly thereafter (probably in the summer of 1541), his position having become untenable, M. fled. He preached at Tirano and then continued on to the Grisons, where he became pastor of the Reformed community of Chiavenna. BULLINGER, HEINRICH (v.), whose ideas he upheld, he soon came into conflict with groups of Anabaptists, especially Italian exiles, who were numerous in the area. Among these «skeptical academics» and «greedy» seekers after strangeness and novelty, as the Protestants defined them, Camillo Renato (v.) showed himself particularly vehement against M. The controversy with Renato concerned the question of the Lord’s Supper, understood by M. in a Calvinist sense, while Renato and his followers considered it devoid of value. The controversy, which began around 1545, continued until 1551, since Renato had been excommunicated in 1550 and consequently expelled from the Rhaetian Churches; but it continued in latent form and was taken up again later, when Renato’s ideas were disseminated and developed against M. by Pietro Leoni and Ludovico Fieri. This time too, after the Anabaptists had been tried, M. emerged victorious. Among M.’s works are remembered the Treatise on the Eucharist (1552), the Treatise on the One and Perfect Satisfaction of Christ (1561), and A Pious and Useful Sermon on the Grace of God (1562). It seems that the pamphlet Anatomy of the Mass, published under the pseudonym Antonio di Adamo, was his: an obscene parody of the divine Sacrifice, translated into French by Calvin’s secretary, Villars, and into Latin by P. P. Vergerio.