ZANCHI, GIROLAMO. - Italian Protestant, b. at Alzano di Bergamo in 1516, d. at Heidelberg on 19 Nov. 1590.
He entered the Canons Regular at Bergamo in 1531; after completing his studies together with Celso Martinengo of Brescia, he moved to Lucca in 1541, where he found Vermigli (v.) and was able to read the writings of Bucer, the Loci of Melanchthon, the De origine erroris of Bucer, and then the Institutio of Calvin. He remained at Lucca even after Vermigli's flight. He left Italy in Oct. 1555, when Martinengo too had to leave Milan, where he was preaching; he found refuge among the Grisons and then at Strasbourg as a teacher of Old Testament exegesis. Here he married the daughter of Celio Secondo Curione, and after her death in 1556 he married again. He protested that he was 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 moved, like Vermigli, always intolerant within the limits of the Protestant ecclesiastical organizations, not without lamenting their factionalism and their perpetual discord. At Strasbourg he met in 1561 with the papal nuncio Delfino, with whom he negotiated, without result, concerning the participation of Protestants in the Council of Trent. When Agostino Mainardi died at Chiavenna in July 1563, Z. succeeded him in the government of the community, but at the beginning of 1568 he betook himself to Heidelberg, where he taught for ten years. His works were printed at Geneva in 1617 and 1619 and comprise letters, treatises, and theological opinions which he wrote on behalf of communities and of private individuals in the name of the Faculty of Theology of Heidelberg. Z. must be distinguished from the humanist Basilio Z., also from Bergamo and a canon regular, who died at Rome in 1558.