For some unknown reason, the older man, Lelio Francesco, spelled his name
with one “z” and the younger, Fausto Paolo, spelled his with two “zs.”
But as they are both of them much better known by the Latinized form of
their name, Socinius, than by the Italian Sozzini, we can leave that
detail to the grammarians and etymologists.
As far as their influence was concerned, the uncle was much less
important than the nephew. We shall, therefore, deal with him first and
speak of the nephew afterwards.
Lelio Sozini was a Siennese, the descendant of a race of bankers and
judges and himself destined for a career at the bar, via the University
of Bologna. But like so many of his contemporaries, he allowed himself
to slip into theology, stopped reading law, played with Greek and Hebrew
and Arabic and ended (as so often happens with people of his type) as a
rationalistic mystic—a man who was at once very much of this world and
yet never quite of it. This sounds complicated. But those who understand
what I mean will understand without any further explanation, and the
others would not understand, no matter what I said.
His father, however, seems to have had a suspicion that the son might
amount to something in the world of letters. He gave his boy a check and
bade him go forth and see whatever there was to be seen. And so Lelio
left Sienna and during the next ten years, he traveled from Venice to
Geneva and from Geneva to Zürich and from Zürich to Wittenberg and then
to London and then to Prague and then to Vienna and then to Cracow,
spending a few months or years in every town and hamlet where he hoped
to find interesting company and might be able to learn something new
and interesting. It was an age when people talked religion just as
incessantly as today they talk business. Lelio must have collected a
strange assortment of ideas and by keeping his ears open he was soon
familiar with every heresy between the Mediterranean and the Baltic.
When, however, he carried himself and his intellectual luggage to
Geneva, he was received politely but none too cordially. The pale eyes
of Calvin looked upon this Italian visitor with grave suspicion. He was
a distinguished young man of excellent family and not a poor, friendless
wanderer like Servetus. It was said, however, that he had Servetian
inclinations. And that was most disturbing. The case for or against the
Trinity, so Calvin thought, had been definitely settled when the Spanish
heretic was burned. On the contrary! The fate of Servetus had become a
subject of conversation from Madrid to Stockholm, and serious-minded
people all over the world were beginning to take the side of the
anti-trinitarian. But that was not all. They were using Gutenberg’s
devilish invention to spread their views broadcast and being at a safe
distance from Geneva they were often far from complimentary in their
remarks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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