SIMONI, SIMONE. - Protestant theologian and physician, born perhaps at Lucca in 1532, died at Cracovia c. 1602.
A participant in all the theological unrest, radical tendencies, and wanderings in foreign lands that distinguished the most eminent Italian “reformers” of the sixteenth century, and with a particular inclination toward pantheism, derived from his formation in Alexandrian Aristotelianism. He studied at Lucca, then medicine and philosophy at Bologna, Pavia, and Padova, where for some time he held a chair. At Ginevra in 1565, he openly embraced Calvinism, obtaining citizenship there and a chair of philosophy, and shortly afterward also one of medicine. Because of his doctrines he came into conflict with Beza and with the reformed Italian 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 because he was 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 at Lipsia as physician to the Elector and professor of philosophy; then, from 1581, at Praga, Breslavia, and Cracovia, court physician to Rodolfo II of Ungheria and Boemia and to Stefano Bathori.