Italian Nicodemites amidst Radicals and Antitrinitarians

Celio Secondo Curione

The humanist Celio Secondo Curione, born in 1503, belonged to the generation of Reginald Pole, Marcantonio Flaminio and Pietro Martire Vermigli. Educated in the humanist critical spirit, they had reached middle age by the dangerous 1540s when Inquisitions were seizing power. Curione was in trouble with the Inquisition at least twice during the 1530s and suffered a short period of imprisonment. His restless moves suggest that he was trying to shake off questioners: to Milan, Pavia, Sale (not Salo), to Venice, then to Ferrara and, early in 1541, to Duchess Renata’s court there; her little court was seen by many as a nest of nicodemites – correctly.^[12] In 1541, Curione moved to Lucca, where he joined the Augustinian theologian and preacher Pietro Martire Vermigli and the reformers gathered around him. It seems that Curione’s peripatetic life was, of itself, a nicodemite tactic. He was watched, but it was hard to pin him down, partly because he was a humanist teacher, rather than a priest or preacher. Operating on the side-lines of official religion, he was, nonetheless, liable to infect young minds.

In 1542, that year of many exile journeys out of Italy, Curione left for Switzerland; by August he had arrived in Zurich. Yet he was often looking back. He slipped back across the border to Renata’s court and left again in October 1542, to go to Lausanne.^[13] Thereafter, he was based in Swiss cities for over twenty-five years and he was expected to conform. He had to be careful, but Heinrich Bullinger was welcoming to Italians and, during most of Curione’s stay in Lausanne, so was Calvin. In different editions of Curione’s „Pasquin“ published during the first few years of exile, he seemed to sympathise with Calvin’s fiery and fashionable propaganda against all nicodemites. Curione, too, was ‚anti-erasmista‘, ready to mock and condemn Erasmus’s compromises and caution.^[14] This was the time of greatest concord, but it did not last.^[15] In this essay there is not enough space to work through Curione’s many publications.^[16] I shall focus on ‚purple passages‘ where he hinted that nicodemism might be allowable, especially for those living under catholic rule. Almost always, he wrapped up that daring message, veiling and „telling it slant“.^[17] His views were changing and developing and his early harmonious phase in Swiss protestant cites was relatively short.

One early comment, printed in Curione’s „Pro vera et antiqua ecclesiae“ (Basel, 1547) has been described as „an explicit apology for nicodemism“. He wrote that the visible church on earth should not exclude „simulatores“. It is not certain, however, that ‚simulatores‘ should be translated as nicodemites.^[18] He may have meant hypocrites in general – for Curione often stressed that not living according to one’s Christian faith was rank hypocrisy. Significantly, in „Pro vera“, he also claimed that Anabaptists should be punished for their sedition, but not for their religion – a shockingly radical comment on a group widely persecuted at that time.^[19]

By 1550, Curione and Calvin were falling out fast about many matters, including nicodemism. Strangely, some of the evidence lies in two overtly anti-nicodemite publications, on which the two were collaborating.^[20] One was a French translation of „Proscaerus“ by Wolfgang Musculus, a dialogue about nicodemism; of this, more later. The other was a collection of stories about Francesco Spiera, a nicodemite who died in despair in 1547/1548. All the authors of accounts of Spiera’s death claimed that his misery was due to tormented conscience. (It is likely that the unhappy Spiera was being manipulated by those same writers – but that’s another story.)^[21] Curione was editor of the collection and Calvin added a fiery anti-nicodemite preface, strong on damnation and reprobation, and suggesting that Italians were craven dissimulators „playing games with God“.^[22]

Enter Curione, fired by angry patriotism. In a preface written as editor of the collection, he pointed out that the devil was at work everywhere, not just in Italy and, still more menacingly, that the papacy was not only found in Italy.^[23] Where else then? In Basel and Zurich? In Geneva? The phrase foreshadowed Ochino’s later Italian attacks on the ‚new papacies‘ of Calvin and other leading reformers. Curione, leader of Italians in Basel, had come out against Calvin; battle had been joined. Thereafter he needed to be more wary.^[24]

1550 was a prolific year. Curione translated into Italian „Le cento e dieci considerationi“, a work by Juan de Valdés, Spanish sage of Italian ‚spirituali‘, a group well known to Curione in Italy. The translator’s preface is clear evidence of Curione’s reverence for the Spanish mystic who believed in taking „the secret way“ and thought that dissimulation was legitimate.^[25] Of course, Curione could always claim that he was just the translator, and not responsible for the message.^[26] That ruse ‚I am not the author, don’t blame me‘ was a common humanist-nicodemite ploy.

The strongest evidence for Curione’s own nicodemite views is found in a letter of religious counsel, a medium beloved of Italian ‚spirituali‘.^[27] Intended to comfort and guide „his brothers scattered in the land of Babylon“, it was published in Italian in his „Quatro lettere Christiane“, dated as 1552. This publication is extremely rare – no surprise there, it was suppressed in both protestant and catholic areas. The „paradosso“ printed at the very end, gives Bologna as the place of publication but in fact it was printed in liberal Basel.^[28] To modern readers, Curione’s comments may look like pious advice. Yet, in the early 1550s, they were very unusual indeed. The thing that stands out is his politeness to those tempted to dissimulate their beliefs. Set it beside Calvin’s and Vermigli’s severity as they reprimanded nicodemites and we are a different mental world.^[29] In a well-established strategy for those who wanted to hide their views, Curione sets up a mock discussion with „others“ (useful, anonymous others) who praise Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and suggest that we should try to be like Nicodemus: even if we can’t be faithful in daylight, at least we can follow his example and come to Christ by night.^[30] Curione is sensitive; he says he knows that „the mynde is led hyther & thyther, into dyuerse ambigious and doubtful cogitacions“. He even asks „forgiveness yf in geuinge counsayle I shal speake any thing that shal seme over harde unto them, not having accommodated myself sufficientelye to theyr infirmitie“.^[31] It is impossible to imagine Calvin, or even the more measured Vermigli, trying to accommodate to the „infirmitie“ of nicodemites.

Curione, however, recognised that people might be „weake … they dare not publykelye con|temne the superstitious services“. Speaking to these weaker brethren he said: „I would counsayle such not to attempte or enterpryse any thing rashely.“ If people avoid being rash they usually wait: Curione appeared to be suggesting Italians should wait, as nicodemites had always done – for better times, when persecutions might cease. If they could not to be bold witnesses, they should „read the scriptures in their houses“, seek counsel, and „pray to God that he will increase their faith“. This was not permission to be a nicodemite: they should want God to make them braver. Curione understood, however, that Italians might go to papist services „through frailty or feare of men“. They should repent, he said, and „being void of counsel, what to do“ they should „ask pardon of the Lorde and committing themselves to the mercy of God“, who might show them the way to a „peaceable place“ of exile.^[32] Mercy, ‚misericordia‘, was the dominant theme, for Curione as for many Italian reformers of his generation.^[33] Later, in his „De amplitudine beati regni“, Curione amplified that theme. There he would speak of mercy for all without limits.^[34]

His ‚Babylon letter‘ was destined for wide circulation and publication, but first it was made respectable, expurgated, stripped of its most outrageous hint that we might become like Nicodemus. In expurgated form, the Babylon letter first appeared in the translation into French of Wolfgang Musculus’s „Proscaerus“, called „Temporiseur“ and published in London with the date 1550.^[35] Nineteen ‚conseilz‘, letters of counsel from leading reformers, were attached to this weighty production, and Curione’s Babylon letter was one of them. Then, in 1551, the same letter was printed and bound with the English translation of Musculus’s work, called in English „Temporisour“. In this English version Curione’s (expurgated) Babylon letter was given far greater prominence in that it was the only companion text.^[36] Thus his enigmatic letter was doing rather well, printed in Italian and then, in expurgated form, in French and English, giving kindly counsel to Europe’s nicodemites. But despite gaining French and English readers, Curione’s letter of advice was written for nicodemites in Italy. Almost always, they were his first concern.

His „De amplitudine beati regni dei“, however, was much more universal in its reach.^[37] Curione’s most startling proposition was that the number of the saved was greater than that of the damned and that everyone, including Jews and the population of the American Indies, might be saved. „De amplitudine“ overturned the orthodox theology of both catholics and protestants, in that both groups believed that salvation could come through Christ alone. It was, as Lucio Biasiori points out, the decisive move in Curione’s journey towards radicalism.^[38] Yet behind this work lay a complex network of publications of ‚misericordia‘ theology – from Erasmus, to Marsiglio Andreasi, to a work by Curione’s son Orazio but probably written by Curione senior.^[39] Such meditations on mercy for all were contrary to Calvin’s dogma of predestination and reprobation. At first glance, Curione’s „De amplitudine“ is not directly about nicodemites, but they were part of the story: if American Indians, who had never even heard of Christ, might be saved through God’s mercy, then Christian nicodemite sinners had reason to hope.

In his „De amplitudine“, Curione was addressing the whole ignorant and sinful world for which Christ had died ‒ Jews, American Indians, conforming Italians.^[40] Some religious truths had not yet been fully explained, he said.^[41] Because of that lack of certainty, all might be saved; his underlying theme was: ‚we don’t yet know‘. Curione was challenging people who thought that they did know – and that included his Swiss hosts.^[42] Effectively, he undermined all those who were sure of their own salvation. Curione was examined twice in 1558 by the Basel city council because of what he had written. He avoided serious punishment as a heretic but publication of his „De amplitudine“ was forbidden by the Basel authorities, and Bullinger agreed. Worse trouble followed: Curione was shocked by the revelation that his friend, Jan van Brugge, was in fact the anabaptist David Joris, who had been living secretly in Basel for many years.^[43] After this scandal, Curione still avoided imprisonment, but from 1558 until his death in 1569, he produced no more directly religious texts.^[44] His sudden, decade-long, silence on such topical subjects was an eloquent form of nicodemism.

Bernardino Ochino

Fra Bernardino Ochino’s ‚nicodemite‘ years in Italy are key to understanding his later dramas in exile, as Michele Camaioni has shown. In 1534, Ochino, already nearing 50, left the Franciscan Observants in order to join the Capuchins, hoping that their stricter way of life would help him to save his own soul.^[45] Then he met the mystic Juan de Valdés and was much influenced by his defence of gradualism and keeping secrets, especially when preaching the Gospel.^[46] Meanwhile, Ochino had gained influential patrons: Vittoria Colonna and Caterina Cibo, he knew Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga well and also many of the ‚spirituali‘, including the English cardinal, Reginald Pole. All of them have been viewed as nicodemites.^[47]

By 1542 Ochino was Italy’s star preacher, passionate, charismatic, deeply involved in Capuchin works of charity and used to addressing adoring crowds – even tipped to become a cardinal. In July of that year, however, he was summoned to Rome to answer questions about his beliefs. He began to obey, but then took fright and fled north to cross the Alps, dressed as a soldier. In a letter written to Vittoria Colonna in August 1542 he said that he had never preached with greater reservation than in the year before he left Italy. If he had stayed, he said, he would have preached „Cristo mascherato in gergo“: Christ masked in jargon.^[48] Shortly afterwards, when safely in exile, Ochino reflected still more frankly on his ministry in Italy: he said that he had „introduced the Lutheran doctrine with „oblique artifice“ but he „certainly did not lie at all“; he had, proceeded „little by little, almost stealthily“. But this „required great caution and moderation“. With comments like these, Ochino came closer to admitting dissimulation than any other Italian reformer.^[49] But it is important to note that he was referring to his stance in Italy – not to dissimulation in lands that had adopted reformation teaching, like Switzerland. That would come later.

In his places of exile Ochino was not the prize-convert of some historical myth but an elderly and puzzled traveller, who was frequently ‚off-message‘. He arrived in Geneva late in 1542. When he left there in 1545, tensions about doctrine had developed: Calvin whispered to a friend that Ochino’s sermons were best left in Italian, not translated.^[50] The troublesome Italian moved to Basel, then Augsburg, then to join Vermigli in Strassburg. They both left there for exile in England in 1547 and stayed until 1553. Here, as in my comments about Curione, I focus specifically on the nicodemite moments. In London, Ochino was lauded at first, in fact rather more so than Vermigli. There was a royal welcome when the humanist Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth I, translated one of his writings.^[51] Some of his sermons were translated into English and published.^[52] Like a true Capuchin, Ochino wrote in sympathy for the poor in his „Dialogus regis et populi“ – a sympathy too outspoken for the dialogue to be translated into English. His „Tragedie of the unjust primacie of the bishop of Rome“ also addressed some political issues and became entangled with the dangerous crises of the protectorate during the reign of the Boy King, Edward VI.^[53] Italy’s star preacher knew no English: it was apparent that he did not fully understand the internecine conflicts of these tortuous years and there were false rumours that he had been imprisoned. In November 1550 another exile was given his job as minister at the Italian Strangers’ church in London. Ochino’s own insecurity at this stage is the context for an enigmatic but important comment about conformity and nicodemism.

It happened in 1550, a year when European debates about nicodemism were rife, aided by the publication of Calvin’s „De vitandis superstitionibus“, which made his tirades against „Messieurs les nicodemites“ available in Latin.^[54] We have already seen that a French translation of „Proscaerus“, Musculus’s dialogue about the Temporiser, was published in London in the same year. Nineteen ‚conseilz‘ were attached; Curione’s ‚Babylon letter‘ was among them and so was Ochino’s advice.^[55] Ochino’s ‚conseil‘ stood out from the rest, however, because it was by far the shortest and highly ambiguous: „Christians should not be where they cannot be without dishonouring God.“^[56] And that was it … Ochino’s pithy sentence looks very strange amidst all the other long, often ponderous ‚conseilz‘. Probably the Christians Ochino had in mind were the anguished „fratelli“ left behind in Italy, required to „dishonour God“ by their presence at catholic masses. Ochino’s exceptional brevity amounted to a refusal to join the strident anti-nicodemite chorus published in the French „Temporiseur“.^[57] Carlo Ginzburg captured the Italian’s tone perfectly when he called this contribution „insolent“.^[58] Even before he left London at the accession of the catholic Queen Mary Tudor in 1553, Ochino was becoming a cuckoo in anti-nicodemite nests.

On his return to Switzerland, he travelled through Geneva in October 1553, close to the time when the Spanish radical and anti-trinitarian, Miguel Servetus, was burned alive as a heretic. The protest against that fateful act, so shocking in a reformed city, started in Basel, but it was to resound throughout Europe. Led by the Savoyard biblical scholar Sebastian Castellio, aided by his friend Curione, the protesters cast Calvin as responsible for the Spaniard’s execution. Castellio’s bitter attack on Calvin, entitled „Contra libellum calvini“, listed Ochino among those who had been in Geneva and had joined in the criticism of Servetus’s execution.^[59]

Ochino left Geneva rapidly, but his satires called „Apologi“ were published there in 1554; they harked back to the anti-catholic pasquinade tradition and may have been written in earlier years.^[60] Ochino was recalled to present Swiss controversies when, in 1555, a delegation from Zurich, led by Lelio Sozzini, offered him work as pastor for the growing Italian refugee congregation.^[61] A close friendship developed between the elderly Ochino, the young Sozzini, and Giacomo Aconcio, an early advocate of tolerance, who spent nearly a year in Zurich with Ochino.^[62] Ochino was becoming identified with these younger radicals, despite his anxiety to retain his new job as pastor. He became more critical of German and Swiss theology of salvation and of leading reformers for their personal pride, their desire for worldly fame, „d’esser additati, nominati et famosi“. In sermons published in 1562 he claimed they were persecuting „senza fine“ those whose talents put their own in the shade.^[63] His younger friend, Aconcio, wrote on similar lines „there’s not anyone alive who does not carry a papacy deep within his heart“.^[64] Ochino, Aconcio, Curione … they were as one in their horror of the ‚new papacies‘ emerging within the cities of Swiss reform. They had suffered under one pope and now they challenged several. At this time, nicodemite solutions to the problems of forcing people’s consciences appeared in Ochino’s sermons. In the collection published in Basel in 1555, he claimed that, in the dilemma between martyrdom and persecution, there was a third way, still pleasing to God – presumably the nicodemite option. Yet, with typical ambivalence, some anti-nicodemite comments still appeared in sermons. He was playing ‚pro‘ and ‚con‘ as he often did.^[65]

Ochino’s last two major works „Laberinti del libero o servo arbitrio“ (1560) and „Dialogi XXX“ (1563) revealed his radicalism more clearly than his earlier writings. The „Laberinti“ focused on the definitions of the doctrine of predestination, which he thought had led to labyrinths and dead-ends, from which believers should extricate themselves. As in his earlier brief sentence in „Le Temporiseur“, his tone was teasing and insolent: „If we are obliged to think we are free, Augustine will be damned, and Chrysostom would be a great heretic if we were to believe that we are not free, and with him all the Greek doctors.“ Take your pick, he implied; in the light of such ancient conflicts, all doctrine was relative and persecution was pointless.^[66] The only way out was to adopt a position of „dotta ignoranza“– learned ignorance. That had been a resort of many nicodemites: it echoed the mature Curione’s point that the complexities of salvation theology had not yet been fully explained and explored.^[67] Recognition of uncertainty was a recurring theme in radicals’ discussions of nicodemism and tolerance: if we do not know, we should keep quiet and not persecute others. Such statements also implied criticism of the minutiae of reformed dogma.^[68]

Ochino had undertaken to seek prior permission before he published again, but his „Dialogi XXX“ appeared in 1563 without the necessary imprimatur.^[69] „Dialogue XXI“ about polygamy became notorious.^[70] It is, however, Ochino’s suggestion of nicodemism that must claim our attention here. Erich Hassinger wrote of all these dialogues: „One is inclined to believe that something is being deliberately concealed.“^[71] First there is the form: dialogues again, with their in-built uncertainty about who thinks what. The speaker called Ochinus takes the orthodox side, but often feebly and without conviction. Meanwhile the more radical opposition seems to get the upper hand in the debate. Ochino put controversial statements into mouths of named interlocutors, who were sometimes real people, still alive.^[72] This was similar to Curione’s strategy in his „De amplitudine beati regni“, some nine years earlier: in that text the speaker called Mainardus, in real-life an upright Calvinist, was made to say unorthodox things. In „Dialogue XXVIII“ (concerning „how heretics are to be treated“), Ochino follows a similar but even more dangerous line, choosing a catholic interlocutor, Cardinal Giovanni Morone, one of the Italian spirituali.^[73] Ochino’s Morone condemns persecution as pointless, because it makes hypocrites (nicodemites?) rather than martyrs.^[74] That result had been manifest in the lives of many Italian exiles and in Morone’s own extraordinary transitions from so-called orthodoxy to so-called heresy and back again. Thus, Ochino co-opts a nicodemite cardinal, recently freed from prison in the Vatican, to lecture protestants on the futility of making hypocrites through persecution. Swiss reformers were made to appear no better than catholic cardinals.^[75] The ideas of toleration articulated by the character called Morone were similar to those found in the works of Ochino’s friends Sebastian Castellio and Aconcio.^[76] Bullinger came to believe that these radicals were acting together and that Lelio Sozzini and Sebastian Castellio had helped Ochino to write these dangerous dialogues.^[77]

Ochino’s „Dialogi XXX“ was an exceptionally long work; his ideas came in torrents, forceful in their very inconsistency. We should take count, however, of heart as well as head. In a searching diagnosis, Alec Ryrie shows how anger – with God and man ‒ stoked the fires of atheism in early modern Europe. Similarly, exasperation, repressed and seething under the surface, nurtured nicodemism; „a plague on both your houses“.^[78] By the early 1560s, Ochino was in that state: almost as hostile to ‚new papacies‘ in Swiss cities as he had once been to the papacy in Italy. Even that choice of phrase was the ultimate insult, coming from a man who had already decided that the pope was anti-Christ.^[79] And yet, when he wrote „Dialogi XXX“, Ochino was still in post as a minister; he was torn in two: „official defender and private critic of the Reformed orthodoxy“, no longer just a grateful immigrant but an exile ready to fight with the only weapons available – deceit, secrecy and contempt.^[80] His colleagues, Zurich’s ministers, who had examined the text of the „Dialogi“ were as angry as he was. Even when Ochino defended orthodoxy, they said, he did so „in a cold or lukewarm manner“ that suggested that he was not serious.^[81] Banished from Zurich in 1563, Ochino died in Austerlitz (Moravia) at the end of 1564, or early in 1565. Four years later, Heinrich Bullinger wrote that the Italian preacher had turned from friend to enemy, becoming „a secret and academic proponent and teacher“ of error.^[82] Perhaps the most insightful comment came from Josias Simler, Vermigli’s biographer, who described Ochino’s way of arguing as „slipppery, obscure“.^[83] „Lukewarm“; „secret“; „not serious“; „slippery“: these adjectives, chosen by contemporaries, all suggest a complex form of nicodemism.

His disgrace damaged all those who had collaborated with him: Castellio the translator into Latin of „Dialogi XXX“, Pietro Perna printer of the book, Curione and Aconcio, friends and inspirers who had contributed to the bank of radical ideas on which Ochino relied.^[84] Also, it reflected on the reputation of Ochino’s much younger friend, Lelio Sozzini, who had died in 1562, the year before „Dialogi XXX“ appeared. But who influenced whom? Evidence from late in Ochino’s life and after his death suggests that Sozzini’s writings had drawn him further into the whirlpool of anti-trinitarian radicalism.^[85]

Lelio Sozzini

The elder Sozzini, the third of my chosen examples, was also a nicodemite but, in his case, the symptoms were different. He did not write in fictional dialogue form as Curione and Ochino had, with interlocutors co-opted to defend radical views: instead, he used his letters, enthusiastic, often cheeky, asking questions, hinting, but hardly ever saying outright what he thought. This was nicodemism by implication and insinuation. Like Curione, he remained deeply concerned about the fate of the many believers in Italy, still in fear and forced to „come to Christ by night“.^[86] Nonetheless, Sozzini evaded a direct clash with Swiss reformers for over a decade. In 1555, he was required by the Zurich authorities to say what he believed. His ambiguous responses shocked many reformers.

Lelio Sozzini was born in Sienna in 1525, and he died in Zurich on 14 May 1562, just before the scandal about Ochino’s „Dialogi XXX“ broke. In his twenties, whilst he was still in Italy, he was in and out of trouble and always on the move, like Curione and Ochino; all three of them were playing ‚catch me if you can‘. Lelio was present at Anabaptist meetings and, in a ‚processo‘ before the Venetian inquisition, Giulio Basalù put Lelio on a list of people who had denied the divinity of Christ.^[87] Evidence from Bologna sets him among radicals, reading and discussing the work of Camillo Renato.^[88] Thus, by the time he fled to Swiss protestant cities in 1548, Sozzini already had radical associations in Italy, but he had concealed them well enough to stay alive. His opinions remained veiled during his early travels in exile, through Augsburg, Strassburg, Basel, and England.^[89] It is likely that he was trying to join Ochino, his fellow Sienese.^[90] At this stage, Sozzini could claim to be „a young gentleman on an educational journey“. Like many refugee Italians, he was somewhat starry-eyed about the wonderful Swiss cities where the Gospel was preached and he was keen to follow Ochino’s example.^[91]

He arrived in Zurich in the spring of 1549. It was a time of heated debate about nicodemism: early accounts of Francesco Spiera’s despair and death were circulating and Calvin’s hotly anti-nicodemite „De vitandis superstitionibus“ had just been published.^[92] Within weeks of his arrival, Lelio asked Calvin and Bullinger about both these books.^[93] This suggests that problems about concealing faith were on his mind. Yet he was deferential towards Swiss leaders, never weighing-in directly, but pirouetting around the subject: could one marry a woman convinced of the Gospel in her heart but currently practising the old superstitions? Such questions came close to the heart of the matter – can I compromise and dissimulate, at least in private matters and at home? Calvin’s initial responses were uncharacteristically mild and patient.^[94] After less than a year, however, he had stopped humouring Lelio. When they were discussing the crucial matter of baptism he wrote „aliunde petenda sunt“.^[95] By the beginning of 1552, when Lelio was questioning him about predestination and the views of Jerome Bolsec, Calvin warned him to back off.^[96]

The antistes of Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, was a more patient man, especially with Italian refugees. He hoped that, if he nourished the faith of these exiles in Swiss cities, they might one day return to convert their homeland.^[97] That was reason enough for putting up with young Sozzini, who was „curiosissimus“, even by his own account.^[98] Sozzini found a roundabout way of helping his fellow Italians, using Curione’s longer experience of Swiss religious politics. In a letter dated August 1550 and published later as the fourth of the „Quatro lettere“, Curione said Lelio had asked his advice on behalf of their brethren trapped in Italy. Lelio’s original letter does not survive; it may have been destroyed by Curione himself, who later became cautious about his own legacy, and saw Sozzini as a risky correspondent.^[99] We know that Curione did as Lelio had asked, however. He wrote to the „fratelli“, who already shared the reformed faith but had remained in Italy: „M L [messer Lelio] mi ha scritto di certa controversia fra voi fratelli“. Their controversy was about the legitimacy of going to mass and even making your communion in order to fend off suspicion.^[100] Curione advised that Italians must pray at home for solutions to their dilemma and he included biblical quotations urging courage. He attached to the letter his own advice which appeared, as we have seen, in the French translation of Musculus’s „Proscaerus“, called „Temporiseur“. His letter was measured and relatively sympathetic; there were none of the typically anti-nicodemite tirades about the sin of „denying Christ“. Curione – at Sozzini’s behest – was offering gentle advice to his brethren „in Padua, in Bologna and in Venice“. Yet he did not comment about the practice of nicodemism in Geneva or Zurich or Basel.^[101]

In the second half of 1552, Sozzini went back to Italy: the reasons given were money and family inheritance, but he certainly kept some radical company during that time. In 1553 he was in Padua with Matteo Gribaldi, a marked man, distrusted by both protestants and catholics. Probably it was in Padua that Lelio learned of the burning of Servetus. He returned to Switzerland, going first to Chiavenna to meet Camillo Renato, leader of radical exiles there. Only then did he move into the eye of the storm of protests against the execution: towards the end of January 1554, he was in Basel, and by April he had arrived in Geneva. Most regarded him as sharing radicals’ fury about Servetus death and about all persecution for religion. Yet Sozzini did not, probably could not, break off his contacts with Swiss leaders. The Italian’s earnest theological questioning continued, but personal greetings from Calvin had cooled somewhat.^[102]

By the summer of 1555, Bullinger asked Sozzini to provide a clarification of his beliefs. Finally the Italian sent a written statement which was profoundly ambiguous.^[103] For instance, he accepted the dogmas of the Council of Nicaea because of the historical context in which the Fathers of the Church had taught them ‒ not because he, Lelio Sozzini, thought they were true.^[104] Surprisingly, Bullinger said he was satisfied; his patient understanding was tested at this point but it continued until Lelio’s death.^[105] By mid-July 1555, however, it was accepted by those ‚in the know‘ in Zurich that Lelio had doubts about the Trinity, a central doctrine of Christianity.^[106] He became closer to known radicals, especially to Ochino and Castellio.^[107] His insistent questioning led to his gradual distancing from mainstream Swiss reformers, a return to Italy, then exile in Poland.

In the late summer of 1559, however, Sozzini returned to Zurich, where he lived apart, in the house of an anabaptist. He died on 14 May 1562. Shortly afterwards, in 1563, Ochino’s scandalous „Dialogi XXX“ appeared: in this long, rambling text, few noticed that Ochino’s dialogues contained sections of Lelio’s unpublished commentary on St John’s Gospel, „Brevis explicatio in primum Iohannis caput“. Influenced by Erasmus, Valla, and Servetus, it was also original, very much his own work, and destined to become the foundation of anti-trinitarian theology in much of modern Europe. Ochino had put into print important extracts from Sozzini’s text, just after his much younger colleague had died prematurely.^[108]

Lelio Sozzini’s attitudes to nicodemism were different from those of Curione and Ochino. They had wrapped up their doubts in ambivalent humanist forms favoured by nicodemites all over Europe, especially dialogue and debates ‚pro‘ and ‚con‘. Lelio, however, chose intense questioning, usually in letters. He used „il modo accademico“, an approach identified by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Antonio Rotondò.^[109] While still young and relatively unknown, Sozzini harassed the great men of Swiss reform, seeming to want to know, and refusing to keep quiet, even when Calvin warned him off. Finally, in the mid-1550s, he was required to make a clear statement of his beliefs but, even then, his words were ambiguous. He threw sand in reformers’ eyes, yet they indulged him for a surprisingly long time. Bullinger, wise after the event, remembered Sozzini’s „amazing and intensely curious daily questioning“.^[110] His differences with the leaders of Swiss reform had been covered up by nicodemite tactics of ambiguity and exhaustive questioning. He danced around the point not saying exactly what was on his mind but revealing his strong interest in books about nicodemism.^[111] He lived quietly enough in Zurich, but he was in correspondence with friends in Italy whose dilemmas he had passed on to Curione, seeking to comfort those driven to consider nicodemite tactics „in Babylon“.^[112]

Concluding Remarks

All these three Italian radicals were nicodemites. Often, they worked together and, finally, Bullinger and others came to see them as conspirators, jointly responsible for each other’s heretical writings.^[113] And those critics were closer to the truth than they knew. Curione wrote letters at Sozzini’s suggestion.^[114] Parts of Lelio Sozzini’s antitrinitarian treatise were in Ochino’s „Dialogi XXX“ well before Lelio’s work was published.^[115] The extent of their secret collaboration become clear only after they had died. They saw Italy and their beloved „fratelli“ as a special case, Italian dilemmas as more harrowing and Italian compromises as more pardonable. Curione advertised the possibility of „becoming like Nicodemus“, Ochino admitted his own „oblique artifice“, whilst Sozzini acted as intermediary for the distressed and dissimulating brethren he had left behind.^[116]

They were not alone. Deceit was to be found everywhere and many thought nicodemism was allowable – at least sometimes. Compromise appeared in some surprising settings. Jon Balserak has argued persuasively that, under pressure, Calvin’s own loyalties turned him, the great anti-nicodemite, into a deceiver. In the 1560s, facing the terrible realities preceding the French wars of religion, he, too, kept secrets and dissimulated to save reformed religion in his native France.^[117] Similarly, Italian radicals defended dissimulation for their desperate „fratelli“ facing persecution in Italy. Yet they hardly ever advised deceit in Switzerland, despite their fears of ,new papacies‘ emerging in Geneva and Zurich, and even in more liberal Basel. That would be courting trouble and these radical nicodemites had subtler ways. They were long-time experts in the arts of evasion: gossamer veils of dialogue and ambivalence; ‚dotta ignoranza‘; labyrinths of questioning; baffling ambiguity and impenetrable silence.