Girolamo Zanchi

Girolamo Zanchi [later known as Hieronymus Zanchius] was born on 2 February 2, 1516, in Alazano Lombardo in the Valle Seriana, provincia Bergamo, the son of Francesco Zanchi, and his wife Barbara nee Morlotti. Literature was in his family: his father was a jurist and historian, and his cousins Basilio (1501-1558) and Gian Crisostomo (1500-1566) respectively gained notoriety as a poet and a historian. Other members of his family also joined the Lateran Congregation at the monastery of Santo Spirito in Bergamo, which Zanchi joined at the age of 15 after his parents died.

Zanchi proved to be a good scholar, a facility which In 1541 saw him placed at the priory of San Frediano in Lucca under Peter Martyr Vermigli. In Vermigli's college, Zanchi sat under Vermigli's preaching of the letters of Paul, and studied leading Protestants, in particular Melanchthon, Bucer, Musculus, and Calvin, and became a teacher himself. While still in Italy, he wrote a Compendium based on Calvin's Institutes, which acted for him as a summary of Christian orthodoxy. With the rise of the Roman Inquisition, many of his colleagues (Tremelli, Celio Secondo Curione, and Lacizi among them) in Lucca fled Italy in the early 1540s. Zanchi, however, stayed almost another decade - possibly because he didn't yet have the profile of his colleagues. He wrote some of his work in the style of Thomas Aquinas as quaestiones disputatae (a scholastic method of rational question and arguments) in order to disguise his work from the Inquisition. As an Augustinian, it was a style not unfamiliar to him from Augustine's own works. In 1551, Martinengo was accused, and fled to Graubünden (the Grisons). Zanchi followed him shortly thereafter.

Zanchi fled to Chiavenna, where he stayed for eight months. He then went to Geneva, where he met Musculus, and Lausanne, where he met Viret. Baschera and Moser (2007) propose that he sat under Calvin's lectures and preaching in Geneva. While in Basle, he was supported for Vermigli's recently vacated position at the Strasbourg Academy by Curione, and appointed to teach Old Testament. Typical of scholastic argumentation, in his ten years teaching at Strasbourg 'he managed to cover only the first twelve chapters of Isaiah, a few psalsm, Hosea and 1 John' while also lecturing 'on Aristotle's Physics' (Baschera and Moser 2007, 'Introduction'). In 1554, he published a Greek edition of the Physics, and later a small treatise on the Lord's Supper.

In 1553, Zanchi married Violante (d. 1556), the daughter of Celio Secondo Curione. He married a second time in 1561, to Livia nee Lumaga, from Piuro, the Valtellina. From 1561-1563, he engaged in a furious debate with the strong Luthern bloc in Strasbourg, in the person of Johann Marbach, which had consequences for the confessional status of the city. Required to sign the Augsburg Confession, he did so with the caveat that he did so only if it was understood in the orthodox fashion. His continued teaching of Calvinist high predestinarianism (including the perseverance of the saints), and his refusal to teach the Lutheran concept of ubiquity (the presence of Christ in the Eucharist) created conflict with his students, which soon flowed over into public debate. At the request of the chapter, Zanchi submitted his lectures, and summarized his stance in 14 theses, promoting his cause by touring Switzerland and parts of Germany, obtaining statements of support for his orthodoxy. The conflict in Strasbourg proved to be unresolvable, with Zanchi refusing to have his conscience bound by a formula of Concord run up by a municipal committee. A number of congregations and colleges reached out to him with offers of relocation (Geneva, Berne, Lausanne, Lyon, Heidelberg, Marburg). He chose instead to accept the position of town minister in Chiavenna, in succession to Agostino Mainardi (d. 1563)

Chiavenna, in Graubunden, was not the best place for a scholastic Calvinist to find peace. It was 'a hotbed of heterodox opinion', which could not but lead Zanchi into debate. He was drawn into repeated cases of conflict with Simone Fiorillo and others among the exile population in his church, who objected to his high Calvinist orthodoxy. Numbers of those close to him continued to suffer at the hands of Lutheran authorities, and Zanchi was criticized for publishing in his own defence before the Synod in Chur could decide on the matter. In September 1567, Zanchi was offered and took a position as professor of theology at the University of Heidelberg, a position defined as teaching theology 'from holy scripture and the church fathers by means of common places'. For his inaugural lecture, he took the theme of 'the necessity of retaining the pure word of God in the Church' (Baschera and Moser 2007). To recognize his new position, he was granted a doctorate in divinity.

The Elector Palatine, Frederick III, had converted to the reformed faith and replaced the teaching staff at Heidelberg (Germany's oldest university) with Calvinists. Zanchi thus taught amidst a stellar faculty of reformed colleagues, including Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio, the professor of Old Testament. He had found a place where he could flourish, and became a respected voice in key debates (e.g. the controversy over the introduction of a Genevan-style discipline to Heidelberg, and in the drafting of the Heidelberg Confession). In 1571, he served as university rector. His work was not merely scholarly - he represented Frederick III in a number of political trips, and acted (with his colleagues at the Academy) as an advisor. The gathering of this group of high level, transnational Calvinist scholars was in one sense Frederick III's contribution to the cause of international Calvinism against Habsburg Catholic “tyranny.” While there, he worked on major works which became collectively known as his Theological Writings, one of the foundational works of Calvinist scholastic theology. De tribus Elohim (1572) was (as might be expected after his experience in Chiavenna) an extended defence of the Trinity against the antitrinitarians who were having an influence in Heidelberg. De natura Dei, seu de divinis attributis (1577) and De operibus Dei brought philosophy (particularly that of Thomas Aquinas) into Calvinist theology. The influence of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae on Theological Writings is apparent. Zanchi adopted a structure similar to the Summa, and carried Aquinas’ teaching on natural law into a broader discussion over points from Roman law, canon law, common law (i.e., the natural law), the proper laws (i.e., customary laws) of nations and churches, and the polity of ancient Israel. Other works, such as that on the Fall and the Law, based on his lectures on the decalogue, remained unfinished.

In his work on the natural law, Zanchi criticised political oppressors and unjust laws. A law, he noted, can be unjust in one of two ways. Either it primarily promotes only the well-being and pleasure of the one promulgating the law or it prescribes conduct that opposes God or God’s law. As he noted in his previous work on divorce, unjust laws of either type do not bind our conscience, and people have a moral obligation to resist unjust laws that oppose God or God’s law: “[i]f, therefore, some authority gives a command contrary to God, then not only are we commanded not to obey this governing authority, but we are also required to fight against it.” In his work on De natura Dei, Zanchi 's usus convention 'had a striking impact on the practical divinity tradition in early modern England where it was adopted by pastors and popular theologians to aid them in, not distract them from, the care of souls and the reformation of the English people.' If William Perkins was the father of pietism, O'Banion concludes, then Zanchi '39 years his senior, and a major influence on his thinking, must be regarded as its grandfather.' (O'Banion 2005)

Zanchi's refuge in Heidelberg was disrupted by the succession of the Frederick III's Lutheran son, Ludwig VI, to the Palatinate, leading to the dispersion of the Calvinist faculty at the university. Zanchi found refuge at the short-lived academy set up to receive these academic refugees by Johann Casimir (named after him the 'Casimirianum'). Here Zanchi's teaching was focused on the New Testament, especially Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians. He participated in the formation of De religione christiana fides, a common Reformed confession of the Faith commissioned by Johann Casimir as a response to the Lutheran Formula of Concord. Despite offers to teach and lead elsewhere, he remained at the Casimirianum until his death on 19 November 1590 during a visit to Heidelberg. Suitably, he was buried in the university church there, his epitaph reading: 'Here lie the bones of the Italian Zanchi, who was exiled from his homeland for the love of Christ.' (Baschera and Moser 2007)

Source:

Baschera, Luca and Christian Moser (eds.). (2007). Girolamo Zanchi: De Religione christian fides - The Confession of Christian Religion. Leiden&Boston: Brill, 2007.

Bernhard, Jan-Andrea, 'The Reformation in the Three Leagues (Grisons)', in Amy Nelson Burnett and Emidio Campi (eds.), A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2016.

Grabill, Stephen J. (2003). “Introduction [to On the Law in General ]” ; and D. Hieronymus Zanchi, On the Law in General [from Volume 4 of the Theological Writings , 1617], trans. Jeffrey J. Veenstra, Journal of Markets & Morality 6 (Spring), pp. 305–398.

Merkle, Benjamin, Triune Elohim: The Heidelberg Antitrinitarians and Reformed Readings of Hebrew in the Confessional Age, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/df5d/b7735a9ae8caf035c6aab7216647b02b1b5d.pdf, accessed 18 November 2019.

O'Banion, Patrick. (2005). 'Jerome Zanchi, the Application of Theology, and the Rise of the English Practical Divinity Tradition', Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 29.2/3 (Spring/ Summer), pp. 97-120.