NEGRI, FRANCESCO. — A monk who became a Protestant, born at Bassano in 1500 into the noble Buonamonti family (a surname he abandoned in favor of Negri), died at Kraków in 1563. He professed as a Benedictine at S. Giustina (Padua); he openly embraced heresy in 1525 and was in Strasbourg from 1529 to 1531.
He translated into Latin Paolo Giovio’s Commentari delle cose de' Turchi, for which Filippo Melantone wrote the preface. In 1538 he went as a teacher of classical languages to Chiavenna, where he composed the short poem Rhaetia, sive de situ et moribus Rhaetorum (1549); he had already written the satirical tragedy entitled Libero arbitrio (1546 or 1547), expanded in 1550, translated twice into French, then into Latin by N. himself, and in 1589 into English. In the controversy between Agostino Mainardi (v.) and Camillo Renato, (v.) N., although holding less extreme views than Renato, openly took his side. In 1546, N. went to Zurich to visit Bullinger, and in the same year also took part in certain secret meetings of Anabaptists at Vicenza; while continuing his dispute with Mainardi, he finally broke with Renato. In 1550, N. apparently went secretly to Venice to participate in a secret gathering of sixty Anabaptists. In that same year N. composed the writing De Fanini Faventini ac Dominici Bassanensis morte, in which, taking as his starting point the death sentence imposed on Fanino Fanini and Domenico Cabianca (cf. A. Casadei, F. Fanini da Faenza, in Nuova rivista storica, 18 [1934], pp. 168–99), he violently attacked the Inquisition. In 1552 he celebrated the exploits of Maurice of Saxony, hoping to see him advance into Italy in support of the cause of «reform». From 1555 to 1559 he was in Tirano; perhaps, like not a few Italians, he was already inclined toward antitrinitarianism, and in 1562 he departed for Poland with his son Giorgio; he nevertheless maintained good relations with the Swiss leaders. He died the following year at Kraków, while preparing to return to Switzerland, where he left his wife and children in the greatest misery.