SIMONI, Simone. - Protestant theologian and physician, born perhaps in Lucca in 1532, died in Cracow c. 1602.
Participating in all the theological unrest, radical tendencies, and wanderings in foreign lands that characterized the most authoritative Italian “reformers” of the 16th century, with a particular inclination toward syncretism derived from his training in Alexandrian Aristotelianism. He studied in Lucca, then medicine and philosophy in Bologna, Pavia, and Padua, where for a time he held a chair. In Geneva in 1565, he openly adhered to Calvinism, obtaining citizenship and a chair in philosophy there, and shortly afterward also one in 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 was entrusted with teaching at the Collège Royal in Paris; expelled from there as well for being 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, Breslau, and Cracow, court physician to Rudolph II of Hungary and Bohemia and to Stephen Báthory.