SPERONI, UGO. - A Piacenza-born heretic of the 12th century. He studied Roman law at Bologna before 1145; he became a teacher and jurist there and served as a judge.
There is no difficulty in identifying him with the homonymous consul of Piacenza in the years 1164, 1165, 1171, described in 1161 as a judge in the imperial court, who in the long legal dispute over the rights to the flat bridge over the Po against the Brescian monastery of S. Giulia supported the Commune with the Emperor’s backing, in contrast to both local ecclesiastical authorities and the Roman Curia. It is likely that these anti-ecclesiastical animosities and his Ghibelline spirit influenced his heretical evolution. Before 1177 he wrote a very violent book, *Adversus Antichristum*, against the priestly order and prevailing religion. Its contents are known only through the refutation by the celebrated master Vacarius (v.), his former university companion, whom S. invited to examine II.
S. attacks the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy, declaring them divested of authority because of the misconduct he gratuitously claims to be the universal stain of all their representatives; they are therefore unable to sanctify others through the sacraments and liturgical rites. He then proceeds to dismantle, with various arguments, baptism (he also denies original sin), the Eucharist both as communion and as sacrifice and worship, deeming it an idolatrous materialization; oral confession; the sacrament of Order as priesthood and hierarchy, with the consequent division of the Church into clergy and laity; he rejects the doctrine of justification, declaring all external works and observances of any kind useless, reducing religion to an entirely interior spiritualism grounded in the so-called intrinsic justice. He holds that holiness is necessary to be true Christians and just before God and to be saved, yet faith consists in an interior and abiding justification in which those predestined according to an immutable divine decree are fixed in a stable and passive manner; God, in the timelessness of His knowledge, regards them as just, pure, and holy even when they outwardly commit sins and persist in guilt. In the predestined sinner, even now a sinner, the desire for purity, the inward sorrow for sins, faith in Jesus Christ, and loving communion with Him, etc., suffice; yet even these acts are regarded by God as always present and operative in His elect. It is unclear what place S. assigns to Christ’s redemption in his scheme of salvation; the Speronists believed that the righteous ascended to heavenly glory even before the coming of Jesus.
THE SPERONISTS. - From about 1185 they formed a heretical sect that remained distinct during the first half of the 13th century. S.’s entirely interior and unverifiable spiritualism might not have been expected to foster an association with external features as seen in other ascetic-based groups; indeed, a controversialist notes that the S. possessed property and lived in the married state. Yet their founder admitted the commemorative meal of Jesus’ Last Supper, the necessity—albeit only formal—of water-baptism, and some other outward acts such as preaching, chanting, and collective prayer, though he regarded them as devoid of merit and sanctifying efficacy.
SPOLETO, SPERONI. - Bishop of Spoleto at the close of the 4th century. He governed the Church of Spoleto for about 32 years, from c. 420 to c. 452.
Of his life and activity only a metrical inscription survives, composed in honor of the martyr Vitalis, whom he recovered and for whom he dedicated an altar in the church of Terzo della Pieve. S. styles himself *Dei servus*. He was buried in the cemetery church of SS. Apostoli, where his epitaph was found. His body, it seems, was translated to Aachen in the 8th century. In the new Proprium of the diocese of Spoleto his feast is kept on December 4.