Giacomo Aconcio

Giacomo Aconcio (Jacobus Acontius) (c.1520–c.1566) was born (possibly into a noble family) about 1520, probably at Trent (Trento) in the prince-bishopric of Trent, though Ossana in the Val di Sole has also been proposed. He was trained as a notary at Ossana and in February 1546 was admitted to the College of Notaries at Trent after obtaining civic status from the episcopal authorities.

Aconcio’s career assumed a wider European dimension following his association, in 1548, with Archduke Maximilian of Austria (later the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II). In 1551 he entered Maximilian’s service at Vienna, where he remained until 1556. During these years he appears to have completed a gradual religious transition towards Protestantism. The comparatively conciliatory climate of Maximilian’s circle, together with the influence of humanist and reforming writers—above all Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, Sebastian Castellio, and Bernardino Ochino—helped shape an irenic and anti-dogmatic religious outlook. The spiritual climate reflected in Il Beneficio di Cristo is likewise often noted in assessing his theological formation.

In 1556 Aconcio returned to Italy and entered the service of Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, then governor of Milan, acting as secretary and overseeing confidential correspondence and ciphered communications. The intensification of inquisitorial proceedings—especially the arrest of Cardinal Giovanni Morone in May 1557—prompted Aconcio, together with his associate Betti, to flee Milan religionis causa in June 1557. He sought refuge in Zürich among the Italian Protestant exiles and lodged with Ochino, the former Capuchin general.

Between 1557 and 1558 Aconcio spent periods in Basel, collaborating with the printer Pietro Perna. There he published his earliest major works (1558): Dialogo di Giacopo Riccamati, Somma brevissima della dottrina cristiana, and the philosophical treatise De methodo. The Dialogo and Somma brevissima, probably composed during his Viennese years, exhibit a Lutheran and in part Waldensian tone, marked by Nicodemite motifs and a pronounced appeal to religious toleration.

De methodo (1558) sets out a programmatic account of the acquisition and communication of knowledge. While grounded in Aristotelian logical categories, it advances—originally for its time—the superiority of analytic over synthetic procedure as a pathway to certainty. An Ars muniendorum oppidorum, composed in Latin and later translated into Italian, is now lost.

Aconcio’s most celebrated work, Stratagemata Satanae, first printed at Basel in 1564 (and reissued in 1565 and later), developed his anti-dogmatic theology in systematic form. The work argues that the multiplication of non-essential doctrinal definitions constitutes one of the devil’s “stratagems,” fomenting discord within Christendom. Against confessional polemic, Aconcio proposed a reduction to a small number of “fundamental articles” derived from the Gospel and sufficient for Christian unity.

In 1559 Aconcio entered English service, recruited by the government of William Cecil for his expertise in military engineering. He settled in London and in 1560 received from Elizabeth I an annual pension of £60; letters of naturalization followed in 1561. A 1564 report on the fortifications of Berwick-upon-Tweed survives as evidence of his professional activity.

Alongside his engineering work, Aconcio remained active in ecclesiastical affairs. He emerged as a leading figure within London’s Spanish (and broader foreign Protestant) congregation and in 1560 defended the Dutch minister Adriaan van Haemstede against charges of heresy. In so doing he criticized the hardening confessional orthodoxy of certain Reformed circles and reaffirmed his conviction that only essential doctrines should define the bounds of Christian fellowship.

Aconcio probably died in England about 1566. In the seventeenth century his Stratagemata Satanae underwent what Giorgio Caravale has termed a “double censorship”: it was placed on the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books and also condemned by the Presbyterian-dominated Westminster Assembly. Notwithstanding such prohibitions, Aconcio’s thought exercised a durable influence in England. His insistence on fundamental articles and doctrinal minimalism contributed to the development of latitudinarian and Arminian currents in the later seventeenth century and may be regarded as an important early articulation of the principle of religious toleration in post-Reformation Europe.

Sources:
Cantimori, D., ‘Aconcio, Iacopo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, I (1960).
Caravale, G., Storia di una doppia censura: Gli Stratagemmi di Satana di Giacomo Aconcio nell’Europa del Seicento (Pisa, 2013).