Giorgio Enrico Renato Peyrot

Giorgio Peyrot was born in Rome on 26 February 1910, the younger of two sons of Edgardo Henri Albert Peyrot (1881, Torre Pellice –1961) and Beatrice Filippini (1884, La Spezia–1969). (His brother was Arturo Ernesto Carlo Peyrot, 1908–1993). After matriculating, he enrolled in Law, from which he graduated in 1933, and began practising law. After two years he moved into legal consultancy for economic and commercial organisations. During the 1930s he was part of a group of young intellectuals (including Valdo Vinay and Mario A. Rollier) influenced by Giovanni Miegge and Barthian theology, which challenged both the authoritarian management of the Waldensian Church and the failure of Liberal conservatism in the face of agressive Fascism. In 1938, he began editing a fixed column titled 'Storia Valdese' (Waldensian History) in the magazine Gioventù Cristiana, where he published theoretical reflections and historical narratives. On 5 June 1940, in Torre Pellice, he married Elisa Decker, with whom he had three children: Roberta (1941), Gabriella (1944), and Eli (1946).

In September 1943, after the collapse of the Fascist government and Italy's departure from the War, Peyrot participated in theological sessions in Torre Pellice dedicated to the themes of the Concordat and the separation of Church and State. In 1946, he was appointed director of the Legal Office of the Waldensian Board (Tavola Valdese), a role he held until 1981. 'Assisted by a small number of secular lawyers who, in various localities, defended pro bono the small and fearful Protestant communities (especially Pentecostals) of the South, Peyrot managed to assist and protect numerous Italian Protestant communities in their disputes.' (Zanini 2026) In the same year, he established and led the legal office of the Federal Council of Evangelical Churches (FCEI), which became essential in the fight for religious freedom after the establishment of the new Italian Republic. In 1946 Peyrot authored and distributed the volume La libertà di coscienza e di culto di fronte alla Costituente Italiana (Freedom of Conscience and Worship before the Italian Constituent Assembly) to all lawmakers drafting the new Republican Constitution. Over the next few years, he became central to the FCEI's national policy directions, while also collaborating with the Evangelical Culture Centre in Rome on several theological and historical editions. Paolo Naso goes so far as to accord him the title 'the main strategist in the battle for religious rights led by the Italian Protestants'. (Naso 2026)

With socialist politicians such as Luigi Preti, Peyrot's legal work developed into energetic representation of religious minorities. In 1951 he published a notable study in the journal Il Diritto ecclesiastico concerning police obstruction and constitutional guarantees for culti ammessi. In 1952–1954. alongside jurists Arturo Carlo Jemolo and Leopoldo Piccardi, he assisted the Assemblies of God in Italy (ADI) in their legal appeal to the Council of State against the Ministry of the Interior's refusal to grant them legal recognition. In 1953 he drew on this experience to publish L’intolleranza religiosa in Italia nell’ultimo quinquennio (Religious Intolerance in Italy in the Last Five Years), providing documentation of the harassment faced by Pentecostals and other minorities. He also contributed, alongside long-time colleague Giorgio Spini, to the popular press.  On 17 January 1955, he sent a vigorous memorandum to the Ministry of the Interior, which had been slow-walking reform subsequent to findings of the Corte di Cassazione, demanding the formal, written repeal of the 1935 Buffarini-Guidi circular in the same form that it had been issued. His well-founded fear was that local police and security forces would continue to act on old fascist legislation, despite the fact that it had been removed from the books.  Later that year he published the landmark study La circolare Buffarini-Guidi e i pentecostali. His efforts were a primary factor in the circular's final revocation on 16 April 1955.

The next year (1956), he presented a report in Milan regarding the problems of religious minorities, subsequently publishing La condizione dei protestanti in Italia. Subsequent publications appeared in organs such as Quaderni del Movimento Cristiano Studenti, the Ecumenical Review, etc. While serving as a professor of ecclesiastical law at the University of Rome, Peyrot provided statistical data and reports to the World Council of Churches regarding the situation of the Federal Council's member churches. In 1959–1968, Under the pseudonym "Amerigo Luello" (shared with Giorgio Spini), he co-authored several civic education textbooks and history courses for secondary schools. 

Through this work, Peyrot developed a jurisprudential argument designed to unpick the complications which the Fascist period Concordat, legislation and administrative regulations created for religious minorities in the post-War Republican order. Peyrot unveiled for many internationals the decade-long legal and political struggle to reconcile the lived reality of religious minorities with the democratic principles of the new Republic, highlighting that the 1948 Constitution created a "complete and favourable change" in theory by recognizing individual rights to worship and propagate faith (Article 19) and asserting that all confessions are "equally free before the law" (Article 8). This contrasted to the persistent institutional inequality: the Roman Catholic Church maintained a privileged condition under the Lateran Treaty (Article 7), while other confessions must regulate their relations with the State through specific agreements (that the government long refused to negotiate) or, where too weak to negotiate an intesa, through Legge 1159 of 24 June 1929 (the 'Legge sui culti ammessi'). The between 1948 and 1958 the dominant democristiano Italian Government refused to abandon Fascist legal provisions, arguing that until new special laws were passed, the old Fascist-era restrictive laws remained valid. Peyrot argued that this was a voluntary confusion between the rights of individuals (which are final) and the administrative relations between Church and State. For particular traditions, the state's military service requirements were also problematic. He was one of the first Italian academics to (in 1962) argue that refusal of military service could be ‘dictated to the conscience of the individual by a philosophical principle, or by a humanitarian point, or even by political reasons’ and that ‘the reason that induces the conscience of the individual to object to military service—whether of a religious, humanitarian, philosophical, political, or moral nature—should have no decisive or discriminating bearing on the purposes of recognition.’ Conscientious objection, in other words, was a right regardless of the motivations of those who claimed it. (Naso 2026)

Peyrot argued that the Supreme Constitutional Court, which began its activity in June 1956, was the decisive factor in resolving the crisis. The Court established that constitutional guarantees are independent of State-Church agreements. Consequently, it invalidated several Fascist provisions, including requirements for governmental permission for printed propaganda, restrictions on the travel and residence of evangelical ministers, the necessity of police notification for religious meetings and previous permission to open temples. Finally, Peyrot contended that the legal struggle must be accompanied by a change in the "general climate" of Italian society. Because Protestants represent a tiny fraction of the population, their liberty is often viewed as a marginal problem. He argued that, instead, the treatment of minorities was precisely the measure of the emergence of Italy as a modern, constitutional democracy. He would spend much of his legal life in the following decades working with Italian liberals (including many modernizing Catholics, such as Arturo Carlo Jemolo) to usher protestant denominational intese through the parliamentary process. This began to bear fruit from 1971, though the first of the agreements (with the Waldensian Church) was not signed until 1984, nearly thirty years after the judicial arms of the state had rendered the applications necessary. 

At the same time, he maintained an active academic life, publishing and teaching in history and law. In 1965, for instance, he co-authored a study on the origin and development of Waldensian educational institutes in the Pinerolese valleys. In 1975, during the internal debate over the integration of Waldensian and Methodist churches, he published an article in Eco-Luce emphasizing that church consensus is more important than a simple majority, and in 1983, he authored a book on the Waldensian painter Paolo Paschetto. 

Giorgio Peyrot died on 4 November in Luserna San Giovanni. He is buried in the Cimitero Comunale, Torre Pellice.

Some works:

• 1953 - ‘L’intolleranza religiosa in Italia nell’ultimo quinquennio,’ Protestantesimo 8.1 (1953): 2–39.

• 1955 - La circolare Buffarini Guidi ed i pentecostali (Roma: Associazione italiana per la libertà della cultura, 1955).

• 1956 - La condizione dei protestanti in Italia (Roma: Tip. U. Quintily, 1956).

• 1960 - 'Considerazioni sulle conseguenze di una politica concordataria,’ Protestantesimo 15 (1960): 77–80.

• 1967 - ‘La legislazione sulle confessioni religiose diverse dalla cattolica,’ in Pietro Agostino d’Avack (ed.), La legislazione ecclesiastica. Atti del congresso celebrativo del centenario delle leggi amministrative di unificazione (Milano: Neri Pozza Editore, 1967), pp. 519–548

• 1975 - ‘Libertà e religione nelle chiese evangeliche,’ in Teoria e prassi delle libertà di religione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975), pp. 553–669.

• 1982 - with Gabriele Mercol, Matrimoni interconfessionali. Agape 14–15 marzo 1982 (Prali: Agape, 1982)

• (posthumously) Peyrot, Giorgio, La libertà di coscienza e di culto di fronte alla Costituzione Italiana, Stefano Gagliano (ed.) (Chieti Scalo: Edizione GBU, 1st ed. 1946; this ed. 2013).

Sources:

• Gagliano, Stefano (ed.), Giorgio Peyrot. La libertà di coscienza e di culto di fronte alla Costituente italiana (Chieti: GBU, 2013).

• Pons, Italo and Giovanni Battista Varnier (eds.), Giorgio Peyrot. Il giurista delle minoranze religiose (Genova: De Ferrari–Genova University Press, 2013).

• Naso, Paolo, 'Italian Protestants and Civil Rights: Coherence and Differentiation', in M. Hutchinson, D. Saresella and P. Zanini (eds.), Brill Global History of Italian Protestantism (Leiden: Brill, 2026)

• Zanini, Paolo, 'Anti-Protestant Campaigns in Italy 1945–1955', in M. Hutchinson, D. Saresella and P. Zanini (eds.), Brill Global History of Italian Protestantism (Leiden: Brill, 2026)