OCHINO, BERNARDINO Italian Reformer, was born at Siena. He entered the order of Observantine Friars, the strictest sect of the Franciscans, and rose to be its general, but, craving a yet stricter rule, transferred himself in 1534 to the newly founded order of Capuchins, of which in 1538 he was elected vicar-general. In 1539 he delivered at Venice a remark able course of sermons, showing a tendency to the doctrine of justification by faith, which is more marked in his Dialogi VII. published soon after. He was suspected and denounced, and when the Inquisition was established at Rome, Ochino was at once cited, but was deterred from presenting himself at Rome by the warn ings of Peter Martyr and of Cardinal Contarini. After some hesitation he escaped across the Alps to Geneva. He was cordially received by Calvin, and within two years published six volumes of Prediche (Eng. trans., Ipswich, 1548), tracts rather than sermons, explaining and vindicating his change of religion. He was minister of the Italian Protestant congregation at Augsburg from 1545 until when the city was occupied by the imperial forces in the Schmalkaldic War. Escaping by way of Strasbourg he found an asylum in England, where he was made a prebendary of Canterbury, received a pension from Edward VI.'s privy purse,
and composed his chief work, A Trajedy or Dialogue of the unjust usurped Primacy of the Bishop of Rome (1549), originally writ ten in Latin, but extant only in the translation of John Ponet, bishop of Winchester. The conception of the Trajedy bears a re markable resemblance to that of Paradise Lost; and it is almost certain that Milton, whose sympathies with the Italian Ref orma tion were so strong, must have been acquainted with it, and with some of Ochino's later works. In the Labyrinth (dedicated to Queen Elizabeth), he assailed the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination.
The accession of Mary in 1553 drove him from England, and he became pastor of the Italian congregation at Zurich. In 1563 the publication of his Thirty Dialogues, in one of which his adversaries maintained that he had justified polygamy under colour of a pretended refutation, led to his banishment. He found refuge in Poland until the edict of the 6th of August, 1564, ban ished all foreign dissidents. He died at Schlakau in Moravia, about the end of See Life by B. 0. Benrath (2nd ed., Brunswick, 1892 ; Eng. trans. by Helen Zimmern, 1876).