A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and its Antecedents, Volume I

870 Pages·1945·3.878 MB·English

by  Earl Morse Wilbur

A HISTORY OF UNITARIANISM

Volume I (1945)

A History of Unitarianism
Socinianism and its Antecedents

by

EARL MORSE WILBUR, D.D.
In Memory of

A dearly beloved Son

THOMAS LAMB ELIOT WILBUR

1912—1932

in whose life, too soon cut short were finely exemplified
the principles of

Freedom in thought

Reason in conduct and

Tolerance in judgment

crowned by uprightness of character
This volume is dedicated to Jay Garfield Puterbaugh (1876-
1965)—a business leader of national stature; an outstanding and
devoted Unitarian layman; one who had an abiding interest in all
people, all people; a wise and good man who changed the lives of
all he touched. Here is the advice he gave to students:
Nothing in life gives us more pleasure and real satisfaction
than worthy achievement. The signpost on the road to Happiness
is “Achievement,” and Achievement is the result of honest work
well done, responsibilities met, duties performed. This road at
times seems long and a little steeper and more difficult than we
like, but it is the only road that leads to Happiness. Some people
(not wishing to pay the price or to earn the happiness we all
desire) try to find a short cut, and, in the beginning, many such
roads look promising and attractive; but they grow rough and
difficult and the door at the end of such roads is labeled
“Disappointment.”
Copyright © 1945, 1972 by Beacon Press
This edition published jointly by Beacon Press and
Meadville Theological School of Lombard College, 1977
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the
Unitarian Universalist Association
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Card # 65—29746
ISBN 0—8070—1384—6
PREFACE

THIS HISTORY is the fruit of attention that I have given the subject more
and more intensively during forty years. The first incentive to it was received
when, to fill a gap in a student’s required schedule, I offered an elementary
one-hour course, the study for which at once discovered a lamentable want of
works dealing with the subject save in the most superficial way. The only work
in English attempting to cover the entire field (J. H. Allen, Historical Sketch of
the Unitarian Movement, 1894) was in fact only a ‘sketch,’ hastily done and
with little use of primary sources. For the Continental section only two works
were at all satisfactory, and they were dated far back in the previous century (F.
Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier, 1839—44; and Otto Fock, Der
Socinianismus, 1847). For England there was nothing at all, and for America
only one work (G. W. Cooke, American Unitarianism, 1902) besides a series of
popular lectures by different persons, wholly done at second hand
(Unitarianism: Its Origin and History, 1895).
The reasons for this surprising neglect were two: first, the failure clearly to
recognize that here were not four separate though similar movements, arising in
Poland, Transylvania, England, and America, but rather four connected phases
of one single movement nearly as old as Protestantism, whose significance can
not be clearly grasped until they are considered together; and secondly, the
widely scattered location of the primary authorities and the forbidding barriers
of the languages in which many of them are written. For, in addition to
extensive sources in Latin and in the more familiar languages of western
Europe, a rich store of quite indispensable material is buried in Polish and
Hungarian, two difficult languages practically unknown to English-speaking
scholars; and these works, moreover, are for the most part to be found only in
remote libraries which have seldom been explored by western scholars. The
whole subject, in fact, cannot be adequately investigated without a working
knowledge of some thirteen different languages (witness the footnotes). Nor,
strangely enough, had any library in either Europe or America ever attempted
to collect more than a casual fraction of the works necessary for a proper study
of the subject.
With a distant goal thus glimpsed I long ago began compiling a
comprehensive bibliography of the subject and, on the basis of this
bibliography, collecting as opportunity offered all obtainable items bearing on
any phase of it, including photostats of a considerable number of the rarest and
most important items. The result, now in the library of the Starr King School
for the Ministry at Berkeley, may confidently be regarded as by far the most
comprehensive collection of Unitariana in the world, comprising practically all
works on the subject now obtainable in any language.
As my studies progressed year by year, I sharpened the language tools
required in them, while sabbatical leaves enabled me to explore half a hundred
libraries in Europe and America in order to discover where to find important
authorities, widely scattered and in many cases exceedingly rare, and
incidentally also to gain a vivid sense of the background of the history by
visiting in person nearly every spot having any intimate connection with it.
Finally, generous grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hibbert
Trust made it possible for me to spend three years in working over this material
in the quiet interval between the World Wars, with full access to libraries which
have since been either destroyed or hopelessly scattered. The copious notes
thus taken (together with the bibliography) are now deposited in the library of
the Starr King School for the Ministry, where they constitute what may perhaps
be the only surviving remnant of many works now irrevocably lost to
scholarship.
Since the beginning of the present century many researches in various
details of this subject have been made, especially by Polish scholars, which are
practically unknown to the English-speaking world. Of these I have taken full
advantage. To the present work my Our Unitarian Heritage (1925) was in a
sense a preliminary study, though designed for young people and greatly
restricted in scope. Any discrepancies from it discovered here should of course
be taken as corrections called for by more recent studies. The composition of
this history from such a mass of materials has proved unexpectedly difficult
and time-consuming, and has more than once been interrupted by illness; but I
have steadfastly refused to be hurried into doing slipshod work.
The gathering of materials for such a book as this makes one indebted to
countless persons who have shown him courtesy, done him kindness, or given
him active help. To most of these I can make only this general
acknowledgment; but I would especially mention my debt to Professor George
R. Noyes of the University of California, who in teaching me Polish gave me
the key to rich sources on Socinianism hitherto unexplored and has for a
generation been unfailingly helpful; to Professors Waclaw Sobieski (now
deceased), Stanislaw Kot, and Roman Dyboski of the University at Kráków for
their unstinted helpfulness and their valued friendship; to Dr. W. H. Drummond
of Oxford, Dr. Henry Wilder Foote of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
Professor Roland H. Bainton of Yale University for repeated acts of kindness;
to the administration of the Jagellonian and Czartoryski libraries at Krakow, the
Unitarian College at Kolozsvár, the Preussische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the
University libraries at Leiden and Jena, the British Museum and the Dr.
Williams’s Library in London; to the Principals of Manchester College,
Oxford, and the Unitarian College at Manchester, and the librarians of Harvard
University and the University of California, all of whom have been unfailingly
helpful. The Trustees of the Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and of the
Hibbert Trust, London, by their opportune grant of fellowships enabled me to
complete my researches at a time when the whole work must otherwise have
fallen to the ground, and have left me forever grateful to them. The Trustees of
the Starr King School for the Ministry (succeeding the institution in whose
service most of this work was done) have made this history to a special degree
their own by a most generous subvention toward the expense of publication, in
which numerous others have also assisted. But besides and above all others my
wife deserves acknowledgment for the unwavering and solicitous interest and
the constant encouragement and helpfulness with which she has through long
years followed every phase and step of my work, though it has, alas, robbed us
both of many hours of happy companionship.
Particular pains have been taken with the bibliographical references, which
have been designed not only to cite authorities used but also to indicate
literature in which the subject can be pursued in further detail. An index to the
full titles of works cited in abbreviated form, and a table giving the
pronunciation of names likely to be otherwise trouble some, may be found at
the end of the text.
E. M. W.
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
APRIL, 1945
CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION... 11

II. LATENT ANTITRINITARIANISM AMONG THE EARLY REFORMERS... 22

III. ANTITRINITARIAN TENDENCIES AMONG THE EARLY ANABAPTISTS IN

GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND... 29
IV. ANTITRINITARIAN ANABAPTISTS IN HOLLAND... 52

V. THE EARLY LIFE OF SERVETUS, 1511—1532... 62

VI. THE UNITARIAN ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT IN ITALY... 89

VII. PIONEERS OF LIBERAL PROTESTAN IN ITALY... 102

VIII. ANTITRINITARIAN PIONEERS IN THE GRISONS… 112

IX. THE LATER LIFE OF SERVETUS, 1532—1546... 129

X. SERVETUS: THE “CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO”... 147

XI. THE DENUNCIATION AND TRIAL OF SERVETUS AT VIENNE... 164

XII. THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SERVETUS... 175

XIII. AFTER DEATH THE JUDGMENT: CALVIN ON THE DEFENSIVE... 201

XIV. CASTELLIO AND THE STRUGGLE FOR TOLERATION: SERVETUS IN

RETROSPECT… 211
XV. FOLLOWERS OF SERVETUS IN SWITZERLAND: GRIBALDI, BIANDRATA…

228
XVI. FOLLOWERS OF SERVETUS (continued): ALCIATI AND GENTILE... 228

XVII. FOLLOWERS OF SERVETUS AT ZURICH: LAELIUS SOCINUS AND OCHINO…

242
XVIII. A SPORADIC OUTBREAK OF ANTITRINITARIANISM AT
HEIDELBERG… 273
XIX. POLAND: THE EARLY REFORMATION… 281

XX. BEGINNINGS OF ANTITRINITARIANISM IN POLAND... 300

XXI. GROWTH OF LIBERAL THOUGHT IN THE REFORMED CHURCH IN

POLAND... 313
XXII. THE CALVINISTIC REACTION IN THE REFORMED CHURCH IN POLAND...

326
XXIII. THE MINOR REFORMED CHURCH: ITS EARLY HISTORY; THE QUESTION OF

BAPTISM... 345
XXIV. EFFORTS AT CIVIL PERSECUTION OF THE ANTITRINITARIANS.

DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OP CHRIST... 359
XXV. THE MINOR CHURCH EXCLUDED FROM THE UNION OF PROTESTANTS.

EFFORTS AT UNION WITH THE MORAVIAN BRETHREN... 371
XXVI. RAKOW AS CENTER OF THE MINOR CHURCH. THE WARSAW

CONFEDERATION… 378
XXVII. THE MINOR CHURCH: THE STRUGGLE WITH RADICALISM, DOCTRINAL

AND SOCIAL... 389
XXVIII. THE MINOR CHURCH AND THE STATE: NON-RESISTANCE, PACIFISM.

EFFORTS AT UNION WITH THE CALVINISTS. A DEMOCRATIC CHURCH... 396
XXIX. THE MINOR CHURCH REACHES MATURITY. FAUSTUS SOCINUS UP TO HIS

ARRIVAL IN POLAND... 406
XXX. THE MINOR CHURCH UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF SOCINUS,1579— 1604...

418
XXXI. THE RACOVIAN CATECHISM: THE SOCINIAN DOCTRINAL SYSTEM… 431

XXXII. SOCINIANISM FULL-BLOWN: PROPAGANDA, ORGANIZATION AND

USAGES… 444
XXXIII. GROWING OPPOSITION TO THE SOCINIANS PROMOTED BY THE JESUITS…

459
XXXIV. GROWING PERSECUTION AND OPPRESSION: THE DESTRUCTION OF

RAKOW… 468
XXXV. CONTINUED PERSECUTION IN THE UKRAINE AND ELSEWHERE... 483

XXXVI. SOCINIANISM OVERWHELMED AND BANISHED FROM POLAND… 494

XXXVII. SOCINIAN EXILES SEEK TRANSYLVANIA. HEROIC LEADERSHIP OF

ANDREW WISZOWATY... 510
XXXVIII. SOCINIAN EXILES AT KREUZBURG, MANNHEIM AND FRIEDRICH STADT

AND IN BRANDENBURG. DEVELOPMENT OF SOCINIANISM IN EAST PRUSSIA
AND DANZIG... 522
XXXIX. THE SOCINIAN EXILES IN EAST PRUSSIA... 536

XL. SOCINIAN LEAVEN AT WORK IN GERMANY AND FRANCE… 547

XLI. PRECURSORS OF SOCINIANISM IN HOLLAND. A KINDRED MOVEMENT IN

THE REMONSTRANTS’ STRUGGLE FOR TOLERATION... 560
XLII. GROWING INFLUENCE OF SOCINIANISM AMONG THE REMONSTRANTS.

INCREASED REPRESSION BY THE ORTHODOX... 573
XLIII. SOCINIANISM AMONG THE MENNONITES AND COLLEGIANTS… 588

XLIV. THE LAST SOCINIANS IN HOLLAND. CHANGES IN DOCTRINAL AND

SOCIAL VIEWS… 601
PRONOUNCING TABLE... 619
INDEX OF ABBREVIATIONS… 641
GENERAL INDEX.