Giovanni Luzzi

Giovanni Luzzi was born on 8 March 1856 in Tschlin, a village of the Lower Engadine in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, to Jon Lüzi and Uorschla née Scharplaz, members of an Italian-speaking Reformed family. His birth coincided with a catastrophic fire that, two days earlier, had destroyed the entire village. In 1857 his parents emigrated to Italy, settling in Lucca, a favoured destination for families from the Grisons, where his father established a modest livelihood, first opening a café and later a grocery shop.

Luzzi was educated in Lucca between 1857 and 1877, attending the ginnasio from 1869 and the liceo from 1874. His youth was marked by severe personal loss: his mother died during a smallpox epidemic in 1873, and his father followed in 1876, leaving the twenty-year-old Luzzi responsible for poorly remunerative family businesses and the care of three younger sisters. Despite these burdens, he completed his secondary education with distinction. In the autumn of 1877, having obtained his liceo diploma, he moved to Florence to study at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology, intending to prepare for the evangelical ministry with the specific aim of serving an Italian-speaking Swiss parish.

At the Waldensian faculty Luzzi devoted himself particularly to Greek and Hebrew exegesis of the New Testament. Concurrently, he attended courses in Hebrew and Latin literature at the Istituto di Studi Superiori, and began the private study of German. Disappointed by what he perceived as the limited intellectual horizon of the faculty, he sought broader cultural and scholarly formation. In 1878 he met Giuseppe Comandi, founder of an evangelical orphanage, and in 1880 accepted an offer to undertake educational and charitable work at the Asilo Comandi in exchange for accommodation and a small stipend. This arrangement enabled him to remain in Florence, continue his theological studies independently, and deepen his engagement with social Christianity.

In June 1886 Luzzi defended a thesis in Greek exegesis on the First Epistle of Peter, and on 6 September was ordained as a Waldensian pastor. Shortly thereafter he travelled to Edinburgh on a scholarship awarded by the Waldensian Church in recognition of his voluntary work, undertaken with Paolo Geymonat, in the Florentine Oratorio church. During his year at the University of Edinburgh (1886–87) he further pursued Hebrew studies and encountered British liberal evangelicalism, notably the thought of Henry Drummond, whose reconciliation of evolutionary science and Christian faith influenced him profoundly. In Scotland he met Evangeline (“Eva”) Henderson, whom he later married. Eva was the daughter of George Henderson (1834–1877), a Scottish merchant active in Edinburgh and Livorno, and Sarah Hossell (1836–1913). The couple had four children: Iride (b. 1889), Nella (1891–1977), Alma (1892–1983), and Giovanni Henderson Luzzi (1894–1925).

In November 1887 Luzzi returned to Italy to assume the pastorate of the Waldensian church in via de’ Serragli, Florence, a position he held until 1902. During fifteen years of Florentine ministry he conceived his role within the Missione evangelica italiana not primarily in terms of proselytism, but as dialogue and cooperation with all—lay or clerical—who sought the renewal of Christian unity on evangelical foundations. His ministry combined intense pastoral activity with an energetic programme of social initiatives. In 1891 he founded the Cucine economiche in the working-class district of San Frediano, followed in 1894 by the Dispensario medico, both of which remained active until the outbreak of the First World War.

In 1902 the Waldensian Synod appointed Luzzi to the chair of Systematic Theology at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Florence. He taught a range of disciplines until 1923, orienting the faculty toward a more explicit engagement with liberal Protestant theology and facilitating its integration into Italian cultural life. In April 1905 he received an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Edinburgh.

In January 1904, in Rome, Luzzi co-founded—together with the Methodist Salvatore Mastrogiovanni—the Federazione italiana degli studenti per la cultura religiosa, the Italian branch of the World Student Christian Federation, intended to promote social commitment and cultural exchange among students. The Federation was conceived as an explicitly ecumenical organisation. In November 1908 Luzzi provided it with a journal, Fede e vita, which he edited and which became a major forum for Protestant–Catholic dialogue.

During these years Luzzi conceived the project that would define his life’s work: an Italian translation of the Bible from the original texts, grounded in modern historical-critical exegesis and deliberately detached from confessional polemics. He initially undertook a revision of Giovanni Diodati’s seventeenth-century translation, but from 1906 committed himself to a complete new translation, a task that would occupy the next twenty-five years. To support this endeavour, on 27 April 1909 he founded the publishing society Fides et Amor, whose shareholders included a majority of Roman Catholics, representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church, and a minority of evangelicals. Early publications included I Vangeli e gli Atti degli apostoli (1909) and the Nuovo Testamento annotato (1911), reissued in 1914 in a special edition dedicated to soldiers at the front.

Luzzi’s exegetical work brought him into close contact with leading figures of Catholic Modernism, making him a pioneer of ecumenical openness in Italy. In October 1912 he travelled to the United States at the invitation of the Princeton Theological Seminary, delivering lectures and sermons over a three-month tour and meeting prominent figures, including Woodrow Wilson and Emma Baker Kennedy, who later became a crucial financial supporter of his biblical project. In 1914 Luzzi founded the Lega di preghiera per la riunione delle Chiese, an interconfessional initiative involving Waldensian, Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Anglican, and Methodist-Lutheran representatives. On 2 October 1917 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology by the Presbyterian College of Montreal.

When the Waldensian Faculty of Theology was transferred to Rome in 1920, Luzzi followed, but soon found the environment unconducive to the concentration required for his translation work. In June 1923 he resigned his professorship and moved to Poschiavo, in the Grisons, to serve as pastor of a Protestant parish, remaining there for seven years. After the death of his son Giovanni in 1925, he subjected himself to an intense rhythm of work, completing large portions of his biblical translation. While in Poschiavo he also collaborated on a translation of the Bible into Romansh, published in 1932 by Engadin Press, working with J. U. Gaudenz (New Testament) and R. Filli (Psalms).

Determined to complete his Italian Bible, Luzzi left the Poschiavo pastorate on 14 September 1930 and returned to Florence. Although retired from formal ministry, he assisted the Dutch-German church of Livorno for three years, travelling there twice monthly. The publication of the twelve-volume La Bibbia tradotta dai testi originali was completed in 1931. In subsequent years he published further theological works, including All’ombra delle sue ali (1933), his autobiography Dall’alba al tramonto (1934), and La religione cristiana secondo la sua fonte originale (1939).

In June 1940, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Luzzi was in Poschiavo for the summer and decided to remain there permanently with his family. In his final years he reconsidered earlier conciliatory attitudes toward both the Roman Catholic Church and the Fascist regime, to which he had once looked with guarded hope for moral renewal. He died in Poschiavo on 25 January 1948.

Giovanni Luzzi is widely regarded as one of the most significant Italian-language Reformed theologians of the twentieth century. His translation of the Bible—philologically rigorous, historically critical, and ecumenically conceived—marked a decisive departure from traditional Italian Protestant versions and reshaped the scriptural culture of Italian evangelicalism. His life stands at the intersection of liberal Protestant theology, Catholic Modernism, and the early ecumenical movement in modern Italy.

Selected Works

• Fatti degli apostoli (1899)

• Le epistole di S. Paolo (1908, with Bosio)

• La Bibbia tradotta dai testi originali (12 vols., 1921–1931)

• Versione riveduta della Bibbia di Giovanni Diodati (1924–25)

• All’ombra delle sue ali (1933)

• Dall’alba al tramonto (1934)

• La religione cristiana secondo la sua fonte originale (1939)
  
  

Sources

Demofonti, Laura, ‘Luzzi, Giovanni’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 66 (2006).

Dür-Gademann, Hans Peter, Giovanni Luzzi traduttore della Bibbia e teologo ecumenico (1996).

Garrone, Daniele, ‘La versione di Luzzi’, in Cristiani d’Italia (2011).

Spini, Giorgio, Italia di Mussolini e i protestanti (2007).