ZANCHI, Girolamo. - Italian Protestant, born in Alzano di Bergamo in 1516, died in Heidelberg on 19 Nov. 1590.
He entered the Canons Regular in Bergamo in 1531; after completing his studies alongside Celso Martinengo of Brescia, he moved to Lucca in 1541, VERMIGLI, PIETRO MARTIRE (v.) and was able to read the writings of Bucer, Melanchthon’s *Loci*, Bucer’s *De origine erroris*, and later Calvin’s *Institutes*. He remained in Lucca even after Vermigli’s flight. He left Italy in October 1555, when Martino, after having to leave Milan where he was preaching, found refuge with the Grisons and then in Strasbourg as a teacher of Old Testament exegesis. There he married the daughter of Celio Secondo Curione, and after her death in 1556, he remarried. He declared himself to be neither Lutheran, nor Zwinglian, nor Calvinist, and *christianus igitur sum non sectarius*; in reality, he followed the Zwinglian-Calvinist tendency, and unlike many other Italians, he, like Vermigli, remained consistently intolerant within the limits of Protestant church organizations, not without lamenting their factionalism and discordant perspectives. In Strasbourg in 1561, he met the papal nuncio Delfino, with whom he negotiated, without result, regarding Protestant participation in the Council of Trent. After Agostino Mainardi died in Chiavenna in July 1563, Z. succeeded him in leading the community. At the beginning of 1568, he moved to Heidelberg, where he taught for ten years. His works were printed in Geneva in 1617 and 1619 and include letters, treatises, and theological opinions he wrote at the request of private communities in the name of the Faculty of Theology at Heidelberg. The subject of this article should be distinguished from the humanist Basilio Z., also from Bergamo and a canon regular, who died in Rome in 1558.