Turrettini

TURRETTINI. - A Lucchese family, whose founder, FRANCESCO, left Lucca in 1574 and settled in Geneva in 1593.

Among his descendants the following became famous: BENEDETTO, son of Francesco (1588-1631), minister of the Italian Calvinist church of Geneva, sent to the Synod of Dort (or Dordrecht), of whose doctrine he was an ardent defender and propagator. Against the book of Fr. Cotton, Geneva plagiaria, he wrote Difesa della fedeltà delle traduzioni della S. Bibbia fatte a Ginevra; he also published a Storia della Riforma in Ginevra. FRANCESCO, son of the preceding (1623-87), likewise minister of the Italian Calvinist church, wrote against the Pope De circulo pontificio and, in defense of justification without works, the Concordia Pauli et Jacobi in instificationis articulo; he also published the Instituto theologiae Helveticae, used in various Calvinist academies. GIOVANNI ALFONSO, son of the preceding (1671-1737), is the most celebrated; he was successively professor of ecclesiastical history, rector of the academy and of the Church of Geneva. Throughout his life he worked actively for the union of Protestants; to this end he wrote: De pace protestantium ecclesiastica and in 1707 the Oratio de componendis protestantium dissidiis. He entered into relations with Leibnitz, with certain cardinals (A. M. Quirini and D. Passione) and also with the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury (Wake). From the letter to Wake he took occasion to write in 1719 Nubes testium pro moderato et pacifico de rebus theologicis iudicio et instituenda inter protestantes concordia. He attempted to suppress the absolute formulas of the Protestant confessions and to attenuate the differences between the doctrines of the various sects, and indeed in 1725 he had removed in the Church of Geneva the absolute formula of the Calvinists of Dort "not to teach the contrary (to the canons of Dort) either by word or in writing, neither privately nor publicly," replacing it with that of Calvin. He protested that he held the doctrine of the Prophets and the Apostles as it is contained in the books of the Old and New Testament. At the end of his life, however, he had to confess that union was impossible among those who disagreed on fundamental points of the Gospel, adding that it might nevertheless be effected among those where the disagreement was only accidental. Against the work of Bossuet, Variations des Eglises protestantes, he wrote the Pyrrhonismus pontificius or Tesi storico-teologiche sulle variazioni dei pontificii intorno all'infallibilità della Chiesa. Because of his writings, some clearly heretical, others tending to reconcile the different doctrines with one another, it was said of him that he was the last of the good Protestants and the first of the bad. His works were published in 3 vols. at Geneva, 1774-76.

Camillo Crivelli