22 Facts About Fausto Sozzini

Fausto Sozzini's doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.

Fausto Sozzini recollected most of his uncle Lelio's religious writings by traveling over again his routes throughout early modern Europe, and systematized his Antitrinitarian beliefs into a coherent theological doctrine.

Fausto Sozzini was born in Siena, capital city of the Republic of Siena, at the time under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire.

Fausto Sozzini's father Alessandro Sozzini, the oldest of eleven brothers, was born in 1509 but died in 1541, in his thirty-second year.

Fausto Sozzini had no regular education, being brought up at home with his sister Fillide, and spent his youth in desultory reading at Borgo Scopeto, the family's country-seat.

Fausto Sozzini joined with the name Frastagliato, while Celso had the name Sonnacchioso.

Fausto Sozzini left Italy at the end of 1575, and after Isabella's death and declined the overtures of her brother Francesco, now grand-duke, who pressed him to return.

Francesco was doubtless aware of the motive which led Fausto Sozzini to quit Italy; there is every reason to believe Samuel Przypkowski's statement that the grand-duke agreed to secure to him the income of his property so long as he published nothing in his own name.

Fausto Sozzini now fixed himself at Basel, gave himself to close study of the Bible, began translating the Psalms into Italian verse, and, in spite of increasing deafness, became a centre of theological debates.

In matter of worship Fausto Sozzini distinguished between adoratio Christi, the homage of the heart, imperative on all Christians, and invocatio Christi, the direct address of prayer, which was simply permissive ; though in Fausto Sozzini's view, prayer, to whomsoever addressed, was received by Christ as mediator, for transmission to the father.

Fausto Sozzini cannot be accused of complicity with the actions of Biandrata; he was no party to David's incarceration at the Fortress of Deva, where the old man miserably perished in less than three months.

Fausto Sozzini was willing that David should be prohibited from preaching pending the decision of a general synod; and his references to the case show that theological aversions, though they never made him uncivil, froze up his native kindness and blinded his perceptions of character.

The remainder of Fausto Sozzini's life was spent in Poland.

Fausto Sozzini was asked by the Polish Brethren to take up the position of a champion of conscientious objection against the Belarusian Symon Budny and the Greek Unitarian Jacobus Palaeologus after Gregory Pauli of Brzeziny had become indisposed, and thereby gained some respect among the Poles.

Fausto Sozzini converted the Arian section of the Ecclesia Minor from belief in the pre-existence of Christ to the early Unitarian position, and from their rejection of the invocatio Christi.

Fausto Sozzini repressed the semi-Judaizers whom he failed to convince.

In 1587 the grand-duke Francesco died; to this event Fausto Sozzini's biographers attribute the loss of his Italian property, but his unpublished letters show that he was on good terms with the new grand-duke, Ferdinando.

The end of financial remittances from his property in Italy dissolved the agreement under which his writings were to remain anonymous, and Fausto Sozzini began to publish in his own name.

Fausto Sozzini's engraved portrait is prefixed to his works ; an oil painting, formerly at Siena, cannot be considered authentic.

Fausto Sozzini's works, edited by his grandson Andrzej Wiszowaty and the learned printer Frans Kuyper, are contained in two closely printed folios.

Fausto Sozzini considered that his ablest work was his Contra atheos, which perished in the riot at Krakow.

In small compass it anticipates the historical argument of the credibility writers; in trying it by modern tests, it should be remembered that Fausto Sozzini, regarding it as not adequately meeting the cardinal difficulties attending the proof of the Christian religion, began to reconstruct its positions in his Lectiones sacrae.