Simoni, Simone

SIMONI, SIMONE. - Protestant theologian and physician, b. perhaps in Lucca in 1532, d. in Kraków ca. 1602.

He shared in all the theological restlessness, the radical leanings, and the wanderings in foreign lands that distinguished the most authoritative Italian "reformers" of the 16th century, and he had a particular inclination toward pantheism, derived from his formation in Alexandrian Aristotelianism. He studied in Lucca, then medicine and philosophy in Bologna, Pavia, and Padua, where for some time he held a chair. In Geneva in 1565, he openly adhered to Calvinism, obtaining citizenship there and a chair of philosophy, and, shortly afterward, also of medicine. Because of his doctrines he came into conflict with Beza and with the Italian Reformed community. Exiled, he took refuge in France, where, as a physician, he received a teaching appointment at the Collège Royal in Paris; expelled from there as well because he was a Protestant, he went to Heidelberg (Palatinate), where he clashed with Lutheran orthodoxy because of his symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist. In 1579 he is found in Leipzig as physician to the Elector and professor of philosophy; then from 1581 in Prague, Wrocław, and Kraków, as court physician to Rudolf II of Hungary and Bohemia and to Stephen Báthory.

Mario Bendiscioli