MAINARDI, AGOSTINO. - An Augustinian who went over to the "Reformation" and then became pastor at Chiavenna, in the Grisons, b. in 1482 at Caraglio (Cuneo) and d. at Chiavenna on 31 July 1563. It is not known precisely when he began to lean toward Protestantism. His Lenten sermons of 1532 at Asti and above all those of 1538 at Rome, in S. Agostino - where they provoked the protests of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits - made him suspect. At Milan, finally, 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 afterward (probably in the summer of 1541), his position having become untenable, M. took flight. He preached at Tirano and then continued into the Grisons, where he became pastor of the Reformed community of Chiavenna. Closely attached to Bullinger (v.), whose ideas he supported, he soon came into conflict with the groups of Anabaptists, especially Italian exiles, numerous in the area. Among these "sceptical academics" and "coveters" of strange novelties, as the Protestants called them, Camillo Renato (v.) showed himself particularly bitter against M. The controversy with Renato concerned the question of the Supper, understood by M. in a Calvinist sense and held by Renato and his followers to be without value. The controversy, which began around 1545, continued until 1551, Renato having been excommunicated in 1550 and then banished from the Rhaetian Churches; but it continued in latent form and was taken up again later, when Renato's ideas were spread and developed against M. by Pietro Leoni and Ludovico Fieri. Once again, after the Anabaptists were tried, M. obtained the victory. Among M.'s works are remembered the Trattato dell'Eucaristia (1552), the Trattato dell'unica et perfetta satisfactione di Cristo (1561), Un pio et utile sermone della Gratia di Dio (1562). The libel Anatomia della Messa appears to be his, published under the pseudonym of Antonio di Adamo, an obscene parody of the divine Sacrifice, translated into French by Calvin's secretary, Villars, and into Latin by P. P. Vergerio.
Bibliography7 works
Franco Bolgiani