SOCINI (Sozzini), Lelio and Fausto. - Heretics of Siena, who gave their name to the Protestant-radical current of the "anti-Trinitarians" or "Unitarians," which indeed takes from them the name of "Socinianism."
I. LAELIUS
Born in Siena in 1525, died in Zurich in 1562. He studied law in Padua and was soon won over by the ideas of renewal of the Church in the form of evangelism (v.); he nevertheless held firm to the philological and philosophical motives of a Stoicizing humanism, for which reason he was an energetic champion of man's ethical capacities against Calvinism, as well as a renewer of the Arian position with regard to the divinity of Jesus Christ. He left Italy for reasons of study and also religious reasons, and traveled through central Europe several times but found no stable residence in the centers of Protestantism in Switzerland (Basel, Geneva, Zurich) and Germany (Wittenberg) because of his contestation of the new Calvinist, Lutheran, and Zwinglian dogmas, as well as of the Catholic one. His relations with the leading figures of the Reformation (Calvin, Bullinger, Butze, Melanchthon and others) ended up being polemical and bitterly so, especially with Calvin. He thus took part in all the theological controversies of the second generation of the "Reformation." He was also in Kraków, in Poland, under the protection of noblemen who were dissidents both in politics and in religion. Laelius's theological position is substantially analogous to that of many other Italian heretics of the period (Ochino, Biandrata, Gribaldi, Aconcio, Stancaro, Pucci, Gentili), strongly seized by the critical demands of Erasmian humanism: it is a position centered on the criticism of every form of ecclesiastical discipline, above all of dogmas as not pertinent to the substance of faith-trust, on the practice therefore of a more or less explicit dogmatic undifferentiation, on the theory of tolerance of heretics (hence the lively protest against the condemnation of Michael Servetus [v.], an antitrinitarian), on the simplification of Christian doctrine and on the criticism of the Trinitarian dogma.
II. FAUSTO
Born in Siena in 1539, died on 3 March 1604 at Luclavice (Kraków). Initially a man of letters, he gave European resonance to his uncle's ideas (whose manuscripts he inherited) and firmly organized the anti-Trinitarians of Poland and Transylvania. As early as 1562 he had written a pamphlet against the Trinitarian doctrine, printed anonymously; after having been in Lyon, he lived for some time in Florence, at the Medicean court, studying the Bible and translating the Psalms, but also composing love sonnets and songs as a disguise. Only in 1574 did he leave Italy definitively for Switzerland and then for Poland, which was destined to become the center of his intense activity as a propagandist and organizer. His writings were circulated, for the most part, under various pseudonyms. In Poland anti-Trinitarian currents already existed, but divided and in conflict: Fausto was able to delineate a middle theory, in which all could agree and at the same time give a solid structure to the Churches, assailed both by the new Protestant orthodoxy and by a resurgent Catholicism. The center of Fausto's activity was the city of Raków (near Sandomierz), where a symnasium bonarum artium already existed, which soon became the center of propaganda for the sect, as Calvin's Academy was in Geneva.
Fausto's theological conception is found substantially in the profession of faith known as the "catechism of Raków," drawn up (1605-1609) on the basis of his opinions and his writings after his death. In it the authority of the Bible as the norm of faith is recognized, but above it is placed the "sound human intellect," which has no need of any special divine assistance to recognize religious truths. In the interpretation of the Bible one must adhere to the literal sense, bearing in mind that the biblical idea of God is anthropomorphic. Only the Father of Jesus is held to be God; the unity of the person, for the Socinians, is inseparable from the unity of nature; therefore they seek to prove that the divinity of Christ is contrary to Holy Scripture and to reason; nevertheless Jesus, for them, is superior to other men by the three prerogatives of the virgin birth, of perfect holiness, and of the power to govern the world transmitted by God. For these prerogatives, adoration is also due to Christ, though of a lower order than that reserved for God. Furthermore, the infallibility of divine foreknowledge is contested, as is the doctrine of the original holiness and justice of man; it is called into doubt that man was at first immortal, and that original sin is hereditary. Man's likeness to God consists exclusively in his dominion over the creatures subordinate to him. The necessity of Grace for eternal life is also denied (the ethical powers of man being sufficient for the observance of the commandments) and, with this, predestination, the necessity of Christ's Redemption and of the application of his merits.
The Sacraments are regarded as mere ceremonies. Baptism itself is not necessary for those born in Christianity, and Christ's command "baptize all nations" was valid only for the initial era of the Church. The Supper, on the other hand, was instituted permanently, but with the simple meaning of a commemorative ceremony of Jesus' death. The resurrection of the flesh and the eternity of the pains of hell are denied: the evil angels and the damned on the last day will be annihilated.
The anti-Trinitarianism of the S. acted as a rationalistic ferment even after their followers, expelled from Poland (1638), found refuge in Transylvania, Holland, England, America; Socinianism, freeing itself ever more decisively from the theological presuppositions initially retained, became an ideological current of a pacifist, rationalist, republican character, indifferent regarding dogmas, markedly ethico-religious, which had great importance in the formation of English liberalism.
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Mario Bendiscioli