Everything about Bernardino Ochino totally explained
Bernardino Ochino (
1487-
1564) was an
Italian Reformer.
Biography
Bernardino Ochino was born at
Siena.
At an early age he entered the
order of
Observantine Friars, and rose to be its general, but, craving a stricter
rule, transferred himself in
1534 to the newly-founded
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.
He had already become famous for zeal and
eloquence, and was the intimate friend of the
Spaniard Juan de Valdes, of
Bembo,
Vittoria Colonna,
Pietro Martire,
Carnesecchi, and others destined to incur the suspicion of
heresy, either from the moderation of their characters or from the evangelical tincture of their
theology.
In
1538 he was elected vicar-general of his order; in
1539, urged by
Pietro Bembo, he visited
Venice and delivered a remarkable course of
sermons, showing a decided tendency to the
doctrine of
justification by faith, which appears still more evidently 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 the austere zealot Carafa.
Ochino almost immediately 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
Cardinal Contarini, whom he found at
Bologna, dying of
poison administered by the reactionary party. He turned aside to
Florence, and after some hesitation escaped across the
Alps to
Geneva. He was cordially received by
Calvin, and published within two years several volumes of
Prediche, controversial tracts rather than sermons, explaining and vindicating his change of
religion. He also addressed replies to Vittoria Colonna, 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 decisive and irreparable, and illustrated the justice of
Luther's description of justification by
faith alone as the
articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae, the vital point whose acceptance or rejection drew everything else along with it. In
1545 he became minister of the Italian Protestant congregation at
Augsburg, which he was compelled to forsake when, in January
1547, the city was occupied by the imperial forces. He found an asylum in
England, where he was made a
prebendary of
Canterbury, received a
pension from
King Edward VI's privy purse, and composed his capital work, the
Tragoedie or Dialoge of the unjuste usurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome, etc. This remarkable performance, originally written in
Latin, is extant only in the 1549 translation of Bishop
John Ponet, a splendid specimen of nervous English.
The conception is highly dramatic; the form is that of a series of dialogues.
Lucifer, enraged at the spread of
Jesus' 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. The conception bears a remarkable resemblance to that of
Paradise Lost; and it's nearly certain that
Milton, whose sympathies with the Italian Reformation were so strong, must have been acquainted with it. Several of Ochino's
Prediche were also translated into English by a lady,
Anna Cooke, afterwards wife of Sir
Nicholas Bacon; and he published numerous controversial treatises on the Continent.
In
1553 the accession of
Mary I drove Ochino from England. He became pastor of the Italian congregation at
Zürich, composed principally of refugees from
Locarno, and continued to write books which, repeating the history of his early works, gave increasing evidence of his alienation from the strict
orthodoxy around him. The most important of these was the
Labyrinth, a discussion of the
freedom of the will, covertly assailing the
Calvinistic doctrine of
predestination.
In
1563 the long-gathering storm of
obloquy burst upon the occasion of the publication of his
Thirty Dialogues, in one of which his adversaries maintained that he'd justified
polygamy under colour of a pretended refutation. His dialogues on
divorce and the
Trinity were also
obnoxious. No explanation was allowed. Ochino was banished from Zürich, and, after being refused a shelter by other Protestant cities, directed his steps towards
Poland, at that time the most tolerant state in
Europe. He hadn't resided there long when an edict appeared (
August 8,
1564) banishing all foreign
dissidents. Fleeing the country, he encountered the
plague at
Pińczów; three of his four children were carried off; and he himself, worn out by misfortune, expired in solitude and obscurity at
Slavkov in
Moravia, about the end of
1564.
His reputation among Protestants was at the time so bad that he was charged with the authorship of the treatise
De tribus Impostoribus, as well as with having carried his alleged approval of polygamy into practice.
It was reserved for his biographer
Karl Benrath to justify him, and to represent him as a fervent
evangelist and at the same time as a speculative thinker with a passion for free inquiry, always learning and unlearning and arguing out difficult questions with himself in his dialogues, frequently without attaining to any absolute conviction. The general tendency of his mind, nevertheless, was counter to tradition, and he's remarkable as resuming in his individual history all the phases of Protestant theology from Luther to
Socinus. He is especially interesting to Englishmen for his residence in England, and the probable influence of more than one of his writings upon
Milton.
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