Editing Bernardino Ochino

{{Short description|Italian theologian (1487–1564)}}
{{more citations needed|date=May 2014}}
[[File:Bernardo Ochino.png|thumb|Portrait by an unknown author, 1748]]
'''Bernardino Ochino''' (1487–1564) was an Italian, who was raised a [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] and later turned to [[Protestantism]] and became a [[Protestant reformer]].

==Biography==
Bernardino Ochino was born in [[Siena]], the son of the barber Domenico Ochino, and at the age of 7 or 8, in around 1504, was entrusted to the order of [[Franciscan]] Friars. From 1510 he studied medicine at [[Perugia]].

===Transfer to the Capuchins===
[[File:Bernardino Ochino.jpg|thumb|left|Bernardino Ochino in a 16th-century engraving.]]
At the age of 38, Ochino transferred himself in 1534 to the newly founded [[Order of Friars Minor Capuchin]]. By then he was the close friend of [[Juan de Valdés]], [[Pietro Bembo]], [[Vittoria Colonna]], [[Pietro Martire Vermigli|Pietro Martire]], [[Pietro Carnesecchi|Carnesecchi]]. In 1538 he was elected vicar-general of his order. In 1539, urged by Bembo, he visited [[Venice]] and delivered a course of [[sermon]]s showing a sympathy with [[justification by faith]], which appeared more clearly in his ''Dialogues'' published the same year. He was suspected and denounced, but nothing ensued until the establishment of the [[Inquisition]] in [[Rome]] in June 1542, at the instigation of Cardinal [[Pope Paul IV|Giovanni Pietro Carafa]]. Ochino received a citation to [[Rome]], and set out to obey it about the middle of August.  According to his own statement, he was deterred from presenting himself at Rome by the warnings of [[Gasparo Contarini|Cardinal Contarini]], whom he found at [[Bologna]], allegedly dying of [[poison]] administered by the reactionary party.

===Escape to Geneva===
Ochino turned aside to [[Florence, Italy|Florence]], and after some hesitation went across the [[Alps]] to [[Geneva]].  He was cordially received by [[John Calvin]], and published within two years several volumes of ''Prediche'', controversial tracts rationalizing his change of [[religion]].  He also addressed replies to marchioness [[Vittoria Colonna]], [[Claudio Tolomei]], and other Italian sympathizers who were reluctant to go to the same length as himself. His own breach with the Roman [[Catholic Church]] was final.

===Augsburg and England===
In 1545 Ochino became minister of the Italian Protestant congregation at [[Augsburg]]. From this time dates his contact with [[Caspar Schwenckfeld]]. In 1546 he participated in the anti-Trinitarian [[Collegia Vicentina]].<ref name="Mattei">Roberto de Mattei, A Sinistra di Lutero, Solfanelli 2017, pp82-86</ref> He was compelled to flee from Augsburg when, in January 1547, the city was occupied by the imperial forces for the [[Diet of Augsburg]].

Ochino found asylum in England, where he was made a [[prebendary]] of [[Canterbury Cathedral]], received a [[pension]] from [[Edward VI]]'s privy purse, and composed his major work, the ''Tragoedie or Dialoge of the unjuste usurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome''. This text, originally written in [[Latin]], is extant only in the 1549 translation of Bishop [[John Ponet]]. The form is a series of dialogues.  [[Lucifer]], enraged at the spread of [[Jesus]]'s kingdom, convokes the fiends in council, and resolves to set up the [[pope]] as [[antichrist]].  The state, represented by the emperor [[Phocas]], is persuaded to connive at the pope's assumption of spiritual authority; the other churches are intimidated into acquiescence; Lucifer's projects seem fully accomplished, when [[Heaven]] raises up [[Henry VIII]] of England and his son for their overthrow.

Several of Ochino's ''Prediche'' were translated into English by [[Anne Bacon|Anna Cooke]]; and he published numerous controversial treatises on the Continent. Ochino's ''Che Cosa è Christo'' was translated into Latin and English by the future Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1547.<ref>Mueller, Janel & Scodel, Joshua, eds, ''Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544-1589'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)</ref>

===Zürich===
In 1553 the accession of [[Mary I of England|Mary I]] drove Ochino from England. He went to Basel, where [[Lelio Sozzini]] and the lawyer [[Martino Muralto]] were sent to secure Ochino as pastor of the Italian church at [[Zurich]], which Ochino accepted. The Italian congregation there was composed mainly of refugees from [[Locarno]]. There for 10 years Ochino wrote books which gave increasing evidence of his alienation from the [[orthodoxy]] around him.  The most important of these was the ''Labyrinth'', a discussion of the [[free will|freedom of the will]], covertly undermining the [[Calvinism|Calvinistic]] doctrine of [[predestination]].

In 1563 a long simmering storm burst on Ochino with the publication of his ''Thirty Dialogues'', in one of which his adversaries maintained that he had justified [[polygamy]] under the disguise of a pretended refutation.  His dialogues on [[divorce]] and against the [[Trinity]] were also considered heretical.

===Poland, and death===
Ochino was not given opportunity to defend himself, and was banished from Zürich. After being refused admission by other Protestant cities, he directed his steps towards Poland, at that time the most tolerant state in Europe.  He had not resided there long when an edict appeared (August 8, 1564) banishing all foreign [[dissident]]s.  Fleeing the country, he encountered the [[Black Death|plague]] at [[Pińczów]]; three of his four children were carried off; and he himself, worn out by misfortune, died in solitude and obscurity at [[Slavkov u Brna|Slavkov]] in [[Moravia]], about the end of 1564.

==Legacy==
Ochino's reputation among Protestants was low. He was charged by [[Thomas Browne]] in 1643<ref>"Ce monstre d'homme, ce secrétaire de l'enfer, en un mot, l'auteur de l'abominable livre des trois imposteurs" (Thomas Browne, Religio medici, 1643, 1e partie, section 19. Cité par Georges Minois, Le Traité des trois imposteurs, Albin Michel, 2009, p. 85 et p. 310, n. 35.)</ref> with the authorship of the legendary-apocryphal heretical treatise ''[[The Treatise of the Three Impostors|De tribus Impostoribus]]'', as well as with having carried his alleged approval of polygamy into practice.

His biographer [[Karl Benrath]] justified him, representing him as a fervent [[Evangelism|evangelist]] and at the same time as a speculative thinker with a passion for free inquiry. The picture is of Ochino always learning and unlearning and arguing out difficult questions with himself in his dialogues, frequently without attaining to any absolute conviction.

==Works==
*''Prediche'' (1542)
*''Epistola alli Signori di Balia della città di Siena'' (1543)
*''Responsio ad Marcum Brixiensem Abbatem Ordinis S. Benedicti'' (Geneva, 1543)
*''Responsio ad Mutium Justinopolitanum'' to [[Girolamo Muzio]] (1496–1576)
*''Tragoedie or Dialoge of the unjuste usurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome''. 1549 translation of Bishop [[John Ponet]].
*''Disputa intorno alla presenza del corpo di Cristo nel Sacramento della Cena''
*''Labyrinth'' – ''Laberinti del libero arbitrio'' (1563) dedicated to Elisabeth I
*''Dialogi XXX'' (1563)
*''Prediche''

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*Karl Benrath's German biography, translated into English by [[Helen Zimmern]], with a preface by the Rev. W. Arthur, London, 1876.

==External links==
* {{Librivox author |id=16330}}

;Attribution
{{1902 Britannica}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ochino, Bernardino}}
[[Category:1487 births]]
[[Category:1564 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Siena]]
[[Category:Capuchins]]
[[Category:Italian Calvinist and Reformed theologians]]
[[Category:General Vicars and Ministers General of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin]]
[[Category:Converts to Calvinism from Roman Catholicism]]