II. FAUSTO PAOLO SOZZINI (1539-1604) was born at Siena on Dec. 5, 1539, the only son of Alessandro Sozzini, "princeps sub tilitatum," by Agnese, daughter of Borghese Petrucci, a descend ant of Pandolfo Petrucci, the Cromwell of Siena. Unlike his uncle Lelio, Fausto spells his surname Sozzini, latinizing it Socinus. His father died in 1541. Fausto had no regular education, being brought up at home with his sister Fillide, and spent his youth in desultory reading at Scopeto, the family country-seat. His early intellectual stimulus came from his uncle Celso, a nominal Catho lic, but an esprit fort, founder of the short-lived Accademict dei Sizienti (1554), of which Fausto was a member. In 1561 he went to Lyons, probably engaging in mercantile business; he revisited Italy after his uncle Lelio's death; we find him in 1562 on the roll of the Italian church at Geneva; there is no trace of any rela tions with Calvin ; to Lyons he returned next year. The evangelical position was not radical enough for him. In his Explicatio (1562) of the proem to St. John's Gospel he already attributes to Christ an official, not an essential, deity; a letter of 1563 rejects the natural immortality of man (a position subsequently developed in his disputation with Pucci). Towards the end of 1563 he re turned to Italy, conforming to the Catholic Church, and for 12 years was in the service of Isabella de Medici, daughter of the grand-duke Cosimo of Tuscany. At the instance of "a great personage" he wrote (1570) his treatise De auctoritate s. scrip turae. In 1571 he was in Rome, probably with his patroness. He left Italy at the end of 1575, and after the murder of Isabella he declined the invitation of her brother Francesco, now grand duke, to return. Sozzini now settled at Basle, began translating the Psalms into Italian verse, and became a centre of theological debates. His discussion with Jacques Couet on the doctrine of salvation issued in a treatise De Jesu Christo servatore (finished July 12, 1578), which was read in manuscript by Giorgio Bland rata (q.v.), court physician in Poland and Transylvania.
Transylvania had for a short time (1559-71) enjoyed full religious liberty under an anti-Trinitarian prince, John Sigismund. The existing ruler, Christopher Bathori, favoured the Jesuits; it was now Blandrata's object to limit the "Judaic" tendencies of the eloquent anti-Trinitarian bishop, Francis David (1510 79), and he called in Sozzini to reason with David, who had re nounced the worship of Christ. Sozzini used terms in themselves
orthodox in a heretical sense. Thus Christ was God, though in nature purely human, namely as an Dio subalterno, al quale in un dato tempo it Dio supremo cedette it governo del mondo (Cantu). In matter of worship 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 Sozzini's view, prayer, to whomsoever ad dressed, was received by Christ as mediator, for transmission to the Father.
In Nov. 1578 Sozzini reached Kolozsvar (Klausenburg) from Poland, and, during a visit of four months and a half under David's roof, tried to persuade him to adopt this modified doctrine of invocation. The upshot was that David from the pulpit exerted all his powers in denouncing all cultus of Christ. His civil trial followed, on a charge of innovation. Sozzini hurried back to Poland before it began. He cannot be accused of complicity with what he calls the rage of Blandrata; he was no party to David's incarceration at Deva, where the old man miserably perished in less than three months. But his references to the case show that theological aversions froze up his native kindness and blinded his perceptions of character.
The remainder (1579-1604) of Sozzini's life was spent in Poland. Excluded at first by his views on baptism (which he re garded as applicable only to Gentile converts) from the Minor or anti-Trinitarian Church (largely anabaptist), he acquired by de grees a predominant influence in its synods. He converted the Arians from their avowal of Christ's pre-existence, and from their rejection of the invocatio Christi; he repressed the semi-Judaizers whom he failed to convince. Through correspondence with friends he directed also the policy of the anti-Trinitarian Church of Tran sylvania. Forced to leave Cracow in 1583, he found a home with a Polish noble, Christopher Morsztyn, whose daughter Elizabeth he married (1586). In Oct. 1590 the Holy Office at Siena disin herited him, allowing him a pension, apparently never paid. He now began to publish in his own name, with the result that in 1598 a mob finally expelled him from Cracow. He died at Luslawice on March 4, 1604.