Giacinto Achilli 

Giacinto Achilli was born in the village of Celleno, 18 miles from Viterbo (then part of the Papal States) c. 1803. Accuracy in dating his career is difficult, due to the conflict which followed him, and Achille's own contentious and shifting self-narrative. In 1819 it seems he joined the Dominican order, studying at the convent of the Minerva in Rome. In 1825 he was ordained a priest at Lucca, the next year being appointed to teach at the Dominican convent of Gradi in Viterbo and a professor in the local seminary. Almost immediately, he was deprived of the faculty to teach for an unnamed fault and spent a year at the convent of La Quercia, also in Viterbo. In 1827 he was teaching at the seminary in Viterbo, later being awarded the degree of Master of Sacred Theology at the Roman College of St. Thomas. His career was soon marked by accusations of dissolute lifestyle - starting in 1831. he was accused of the seduction of eighteen-year-old Elena Valente, followed by multiple others, including at Montefiascone (involving Vincenza Guerra) and at Capua, where he had been asked by Cardinal Serra to preach the Lenten sermons. These cases would follow him later and ruin his career. In 1839 he claimed that he 'made effective' papal permission for secularization out of the order.  In 1838, after having served as prior of the convent of San Pietro Martyro in Naples, Achilli was expelled from Naples, again surrounded by accusations of improper lifestyle.  In 1841 on 16 June, the Roman Inquisition permanently suspended him a divinis from his priestly faculties and sentenced him to a penance of three years in a remote Dominican house at Nazzaro. In 1842 he travelled as the servant of Signor Pietro Boccaciampi to Corfu, then a British protectorate, where he assumed the title of cavaliere (knight), declaring himself a political refugee and escapee from the fortress of Ancona. The papal consul asked for his extradition from Corfu, which was refused when it was discovered Achilli had become a Protestant. 

Achilli rapidly turned to controversy and anti-Catholic diatribe, a genre which was on the rise in the British world due to divisions in the Anglican church over Tractarianism and outrage at John Henry Newman's Tract 90. The first of Achilli's two public letters to Pope Gregory XVI attacking Catholicism was printed by the government press in Corfu. In 1844 he founded an ‘Italian church’ in Corfu, which was presumably modelled on the Church of England, with the support of the Bible Society. The church remained active until he left the island. At the time the Church of England saw itself as a proper replacement for 'papalism', when Roman Catholicism would 'inevitably' collapse due to its inherent superstition, backwardness and failure to engage enlightened modernity. In 1845 the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, translated into Italian by a chaplain, Rev. Blackburn, was noted as “exciting both surprise and admiration for the constitution of our Church”. For his part, Achilli was involved in the publication of L'Indicatore, the first Protestant journal in the Italian language, which was published in Malta (from 1 May).  He would later move to Malta and open an Italian church at the centre of British naval power in the Mediterranean. At Achilli's request, the Rev. Lowndes, minister of the Church of Scotland in Malta, visited Luigi Desanctis. 

In 1847 Achilli travelled to London, and after returning to Malta was appointed a professor at the Malta Protestant College, which from 1846 to 1865 acted as an Anglican missionary training hub at Villa St. Ignatius in St. Julian's. The Institute of Missions, established to welcome former priests and friars, opened in April of 1846: Achilli would travel to Great Britain to collect funds for the institute. Lacking sources, he translated the Beneficio di Cristo back into Italian from an English translation he claimed to have discovered. In December 1847 he participated in the inauguration of an Italian church in Valletta, Malta.

His past, however, continued to dog his career - the next year (1848) he was dismissed from the Malta Protestant College due to charges of immoral behavior, returning to London. Later that year, it appeared that 'the Protestant dream' might receive a very significant fillip -- on 15 November 1848, as the 'bourgeois revolutions' spread throughout Europe, the Minister of Justice of the Papal government (Pellegrino Rossi) was assassinated. Public order broke down, Roman liberals took to the streets, and the Pope (Pius IX) fled to the Bourbon fortress of Gaeta. The Constitutional Assembly convened on 8 February and proclaimed the Roman Republic after midnight on 9 February. Liberals from the Italian diaspora, among them Garibaldi and Mazzini, flooded into Rome to protect what they saw as a democratic Republic which at the same time permitted the Pope to continue as a spiritual leader of Catholics. Supported by a group of evangelicals organized in 'The London Society for the Religious Improvement of Italy and the Italians', (The Times 27 Aug 1849: 3) Achilli left London in January, and was received into the new Roman Republic’s revolutionary club, the Circolo Popolare. There he circulated his writings La chiave di San Pietro and La sedia di San Pietro, and Giovanni Diodati's translation of the Bible. On 24 June, he married Josephine Hely, the youngest daughter of Captain James Hely. Unfortunately for him, Pius IX called on French and other forces, and the Republic was crushed in July. Achilli was arrested and imprisoned. 

His supporters appealed to British public feeling, In August, the Times of London carried a letter to the Editor, representing Achille as 'an eminent Italian theologian' and 'an avowed Protestant' known to 'thousands of British Christians of all parties'. Arrested 'by three men in plain clothes', he was 'now in one of the secret cells of the re-established Holy Office' on questionable legal grounds. 'Dr. Achilli has never meddled in politics', (The Times 17 Aug 1849: 3) reflecting their appeal to British rights of conscience and to the popular anti-Papalism which saw the secular Papal states as the very apogee of repression and backwardness.  Achilli saw his mission as religious, but his case interacted with faultlines in domestic British politics, and sparked representations (particularly by Lewis Tonna, the evangelical secretary to the secretary of the Royal United Services Institution) to 'the proper department of the French government' (The Standard 17 Aug 1849: 3). Petitions were raised by The London Committee, and (at its Glasgow conference in November) by the British Evangelical Alliance. (The Times 1 Dec 1849: 5)  The representations made by this more influential body (led by Sir Culling Eardley Eardley, also treasurer of the London Missionary Society) suggest that the Roman Holy Office also made a defence of their position, on the basis of 'criminal acts... apart from his religious faith.'(The Times 1 Dec 1849: 5) Fortunately for Achilli, the liberal statesman, Alexis de Toqueville, was then Foreign Minister during the Second Republic, and French opinion was divided over support for the Catholic regime. (The Times, 27 Aug 1849: 3; one of the Republic's officers, indeed, was Louis Napoleon's cousin, Carlo.)  His imprisonment became a cause celebre, covered in the press, and in publications such as Eardley's own Rome and the Papacy (1849).  It was later recorded that he escaped from prison through the complicity of the French authorities ('with a French uniform and plenty of money') (Daily News 8 Feb 1850: 5), returning to London via Paris in February, where he was welcomed as a hero by the liberal Protestant elite, including no less a personage than the Foreign Secretary, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.

1850

• He opened a chapel in Dufour's Place, Soho, in London in May.

• He was active in lecturing against the Catholic Church under the auspices of the Evangelical Alliance.

• Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman reviewed the pamphlet The imprisonment and deliverance of Dr. Giacinto Achilli (1850) in the Dublin Review in July, accusing him of numerous sexual offences and lying about his own history.

• He was accused of rape or molestation by four of his domestic servants in London.

• His triumphant return from imprisonment.

• He was acclaimed at Exeter Hall and financially supported by Sir Culling Eardley Eardley and the Committee for the Religious Improvement of Italy and the Italians to open a chapel in Dufour's Street to preach to Italians.

1851

• He responded to Wiseman's attack with his autobiography, Dealings with the Inquisition, or, Papal Rome, her priests, and her Jesuits, with important disclosures, which provided an extensive account of his life but did not address the accusations of immorality.

• The text of his autobiography was republished later that same year with a documentary appendix.

• On 28 July, John Henry Newman repeated Wiseman’s charges against Achilli in the fifth of his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England.

• He initiated a libel action against Newman in November, likely at the encouragement of his English supporters.

1852

• His libel trial against Newman began on 21 June and lasted four days.

• He won the case against Newman (who was fined £100), despite multiple testimonies against him.

• He was discredited by the trial and decided to relocate to the United States.

1853

• He went to the United States with a party of Swedenborgians.

• The American Bible Union published his translation of the Greek New Testament into Italian.

• His wife was sent back to Italy.

• He was reported to have published a New Testament in New York, falsely claiming to be the translator, before disappearing into obscurity.

1859

• He appeared before a JP in Jersey City in December, accused of adultery with a Miss Bogue.

1860

• He left Miss Bogue and his eldest son to the care of the Oneida community, with a note implying he would commit suicide and that spirits would carry him off to see the Lord.

1849

• Giacinto Achilli returned to Italy during the Roman Republic of 1849.
  
  

• After the flight of Pope Pius IX, Achilli believed an opportunity had come to liberate Italy from “Popish error”.
  
  

• French forces restored the Pope, after which the Inquisition arrested Achilli again.
  
  

• Achilli subsequently escaped and came to Britain to preach against Catholicism.
  
  

1850

• 28 July 1850 – John Henry Newman delivered his lecture in Birmingham (Lecture on the Present Position of Catholics) accusing Achilli of being a “profligate under a cowl”.
  
  

• 1850 – Nicholas Wiseman earlier made allegations about Achilli in the Dublin Review (No. 56).
  
  

• 1850 – Sir C.E. Eardley published The Imprisonment and Deliverance of Dr. Giacinto Achilli…, narrating Achilli’s version of events.
  
  

1851

• 1851 – Wiseman published Dr. Achilli: Authentic “Brief Sketch of the Life of Dr. Giacinto Achilli”…, expanding allegations.
  
  

• 1851 – Achilli published Dealings With the Inquisition, or Papal Rome… giving his own account of persecution.
  
  

1852

• Newman’s investigators (including Maria Giberne) travelled to Italy to locate witnesses (described within the context of the trial preparations of 1852).
  
  

• Achilli attempted to delay the trial to increase the financial burden of maintaining the witnesses.
  
  

• 24 June 1852 – Newman found guilty of libel at the Court of Queen’s Bench.
  
  

• 1852 – W.F. Finlason published Report of the Trial and Preliminary Proceedings in the Case of G. Achilli v. Dr. Newman.
  
  

After June 1852 (undated but sequential)

• Newman, expecting imprisonment, was instead given a fine, which was paid by supporters worldwide.
  
  

• Achilli left for America in disgrace.
  
  

1850s (mid-to-late, relative chronology)

• Achilli became involved briefly with the Oneida Community (no precise year given).
  
  

• Achilli later disappeared, leaving behind a suicide note (no precise year given, but after his time with Oneida and after the American court case noted below).
  
  

1859

• 22 December 1859 – The New York Times reported that Achilli had appeared in court again and served time in prison for fornication.
  
  

Sources

Eardly, Culling, Rome and the Papacy. A letter. Translated from the French, with introductory remarks, by Sir C. E. Eardley, Bart. [Reprinted from the “Christian Times.”] London 1849