NEGRI, FRANCESCO. — A Benedictine monk who became a Protestant, born in Bassano in 1500 into the noble family of the Buonamonti (a surname he abandoned in favor of Negri), died in Cracow 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 the *Commentaries on the Affairs of the Turks* by Paolo Giovio, and the preface to this work was written by Filippo Melanchthon. In 1538 he moved to Chiavenna as a teacher of classical languages, 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 and then into Latin by N. himself, and in 1589 into English. In the controversy between Agostino Mainardi (v.) and Camillo Renato (v.), although N. held less extreme views than Renato, he openly sided with him. In 1546, N. went to Zurich to visit Bullinger, and in the same year he also participated in certain secret meetings of Anabaptists in Vicenza; while continuing his opposition to Mainardi, he finally broke with Renato. In 1550, N. seems to have gone secretly to Venice to attend a secret meeting of sixty Anabaptists. In that same year N. composed the work *De Fanini Faventini ac Dominici Bassanensis morte*, in which, taking as his starting point the execution of 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 to support the cause of the “Reformation.” From 1555 to 1559 he was in Tirano; perhaps like many Italians he was already inclined toward anti-Trinitarianism, and in 1562, with his son Giorgio, he set out for Poland; however, he maintained good relations with Swiss leaders. He died the following year in Cracow, while preparing to return to Switzerland, where he left his wife and children in the greatest poverty.