Valdo Vinay

Born on 10 August 1906, Valdo was the son of Pietro Giosuè Vinay, of Villasecca, teacher, and his wife Iside Saccomani (who came from a La Spezia Baptist family). Vinay spent his childhood and early adolescence in Trieste, where his father, an Italian teacher in the Evangelical Schools, had attended the local Episcopal Methodist community before helping co-found the local Waldensian Church. Together with his brothers Valdesina (d. 1981), the important Waldensian ecumenist, social activist and Italian Senator, Tullio Vinay (1909-1996) and the future socialist politician Cornelio (1913-2009) Valdo received an education influenced by Trieste's particular culture, situated as it was on the border between Central European culture and the Eastern world of the Balkans.(Coïsson)

After secondary studies at the Latin School of Pomaretto, at the Petrarca High School of Trieste and at the Waldensian College of Torre Pellice, Vinay enrolled in 1925 at the Polytechnic of Turin, but abandoned his studies in 1927, preferring to study theology instead. He then attended the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome, going to Leipzig in 1930 and, in 1932, to Bonn, where he was a student of the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. There he prepared his thesis on Barth's Christology.

Ordained in 1933, he was the pastor until 1940 of the Waldensian church of Fiume, Abbazia and the Istrian diaspora. This was a very important experience for Vinay, one he 'lived with enthusiasm and passion' (Coïsson), contributing to the formation of strong bonds with the members of the community, especially in the tragic post-war years, when almost all were forced to emigrate as refugees. In the same period he collaborated with others in his radicalized anti-Fascist generation (such as Giorgio Peyronel, Bruno Revel, Ferdinando Geremia, Giorgio Peyrot, Francesco S. Lo Bue among others) on Giovanni Miegge's magazine Gioventù Cristiana, seeking to popularize in Italy dialectical and Barthian theology. Spini describes his own experience meeting Vinay while attending an ACDG National Convention at Villar Pellice from 25 August to 2 September 1933. This was held in Il Castagneto, a villa built by the wealth American Episcopalian, Walter Lowrie, by personal permission of Mussolini himself (who no doubt wanted to avoid American entanglements). It attracted the great and the good among the internal and external friends of Italian evangelicalism, Ernesto Buonaiuti, Lelio Basso, Giuseppe Rensi, Piero Jahier, the anti-fascist Ferdinando Geremia di Cartura di Padova, Vincenzo C. Nitti, Cesare Gay, and many others. 

At Villar it was essentially a clash between the tradition of the Pietist Awakening and Freemason-evangelism with the innovations brought by the theology of crisis and the struggle of the Confessing Church against National Socialism in Germany. Symbols of this were the presence of a squadron of Episcopal Methodists, aligned and compact, under the orders of the president Carlo Maria Ferreri, and that of a restless squadron of young Barthians, including - in addition to their teacher, Giovanni Miegge - names who would gain notoriety with the Resistance, such as Mario A. Rollier (1909-1980) and Giorgio Peyronel, {future} university professors {at the} Faculties of Physical and Natural Sciences {respectively of the State University of Milan {and the University of Modena}, or theologians and pastors, who one day would become in their turn intellectual and spiritual guides, such as Carlo Gay and Valdo Vinay (1906-1980). A not insignificant detail is that Valdo Vinay was missing the index finger of his right hand: he had amputated it to avoid military service. (Spini 2007: 206)

From November 1933 to March 1936, Vinay wrote numerous articles on the Kirchenkampf, concluding (as his teacher, Barth also did) the inevitability of a clash between the church and the totalitarian and pagan Fascist state. During the War, 'he took on the task, not without personal risk, of maintaining contacts with the Confessing Church against Nazism.'  (Spini 1994: 210)  This, as Spini notes, was a key contribution in making Miegge's circle effective, precisely because it could both express the Italian resistance, and also connect its intellectual concerns to a larger European discourse:

what gave a special meaning to the work of Giovanni Miegge and his friends and disciples was the fact that it was not a question of doing intellectual work or of establishing a position outside and against the totalitarian regime, like Benedetto Croce's La Critica or Ernesto Buonaiuti's Religio. It was a question of operating on the living flesh of the evangelical Christian people of Italy... (Spini 1994: 198)

After the War, from January to Autumn 1947, Vinay also directed the Waldensian fortnightly La Luce.

In 1940 Vinay was called by the Facoltà valdese di Teologia (Waldensian Faculty of Theology) in Rome to take the place of Giovanni Miegge (then on sick leave) teaching Church History and Practical Theology. His engagement with some of the leading figures of his time--such as Barth, Cullmann, Miegge, Ernesto Bonaiuti, and others--made Vinay not only a protagonist, but also an important chronicler of the influence of Barth in Italy and the related changes in the Protestant community. (see for instance his 1962 article on Miegge's development in Protestantesimo, which retraces their intellectual path) (Saccomani: 793). In 1941 he married Teresa Marullo Reedtz: together, they would have three children. Despite the closure of the Faculty during World War II, Vinay remained in the capital where he organized conferences and contributed to the opening of the Centro Evangelico di Cultura (Evangelical Cultural Centre), of which the Methodist pastor Emanuele Sbaffi was elected president and Vinay secretary. His location enabled him to uncover and draw attention to numbers of key historical texts. For twenty-six years, he also energetically directed the Library of the  Facoltà, tripling its holdings.

In 1948, he and the historian Giovanni Gonnet (1909-1997)--whose scholarly interests connected directly to Vinay's own--worked together to evangelize the lower Lazio region, involving the students of the Facoltà. Many villages in the Ciociaria countryside were regularly visited and congregations established in Colleferro and Ferrentino.

Between 1950 and 1959, and again from 1965 to 1967, Vinay was elected Dean of the Facoltà, working to connect the school to other Protestant institutions around the world. He built a dense network of international friendships, not only through participation in working commissions of the World Council of Churches in Geneva (from 1963 to 1975 he was a member of the Faith and Order Commission), but also through invitational teaching exchanges throughout Europe (Basel and Marburg in 1950, Utrecht, Leiden and Gröningen in 1956, Oslo in 1959, Bern and Zurich in 1960, Kiel and Marburg in 1962, Basel in 1974). He received honorary degrees by the universities of Basel in 1948, Jena in 1961 and Prague in 1969.

Vinay's historical writing had a significant influence in encouraging understanding of the Waldensian heritage, and the more general importance of what he called the ecclesia peregrinorum to designate the dispersal throughout Europe of Italians who fled their homeland. His journal articles and conference speaking quickly developed for him a reputation as a scholar of the Reformation and a theologian in the Barthian mode. Numerous essays by Vinay, especially in German, are significant in the debate on the religious roots and spiritual tasks of the present that fascinated the European Protestant world throughout the twentieth century. His work was shaped by his experiences of Depression, War and Cold War and of the ecumenical movement. With the appearance of his magisterial third volume of the History of the Waldensians (1980) he argues that particular contribution of 19th Century Waldensianism was "establish a theological and cultural collaboration with the men most open to the needs of internal reform of the church" mediating the Reformation into Italian culture and Catholic theology. Apart from the direct and disproportionate influence of Protestants in the Risorgimento, it was this influence which he thought had had the greatest impact on the emergence of modern Italy and a modernized Catholicism. (Chiarini 1990: 13)  Methodists such as Sbaffi also gave point and force to his sense of immanence of God in history. Annese quotes him as saying: 

It is well known how close Emanuele Sbaffi was also to Ernesto Buonaiuti, for whom the waiting for the Holy Spirit had an eschatological Joachimite character, in the hope of the epoch of the Spirit and of a universal palingenesis. Who could not feel deeply this double instance of the Holy Spirit in life, in the present history, and in the waiting for the Kingdom of God? [233]

His work critiqued both the tendency to tradition on one side, and the tendency to either radicalism (from Anabaptists to Vietnam protestors) or overconfidence in progress amidst liberals on the other. The Bible was a living word delivered through preaching, and preaching a key element in forming and motivating Christian action in the world. Alongside his ecumenical commitment in the Protestant sphere, Vinay promoted dialogue with the Catholic world--both inside the Waldensian community and more broadly in Protestant circles--during and after the Second Vatican Council, arguing that evangelization of the Catholic world was best done 'ab intra'. He taught at the Pontifical Institute of St. Anselm of the Benedictines, and at the Seraphicum of the Franciscans, establishing deep personal ties with members of the Community of St. Egidio, in whose church in Trastevere he preached once a week in 1973, holding annual courses in biblical exegesis.

In his 'final text', entitled Autocritica protestante ossia Discorso di congedo (Protestant Autocriticism or Farewell Speech), Vinay summarized what he considered the organizing theme of his long career under the banner of 'Christian militancy': by 'giving back biblical substance to the faith and preaching of the Church'--as he himself had done at Sant'Egidio--one could 'live an authentic life and its testimony is true and fruitful". Organizational ecumenism had, he thought, only limited value: rather than trying to reconcile different traditions, Christians needed to focus on knowing Jesus better through the New Testament, and preaching that faithfully from their pulpits. By doing so, they would converge on the practice of life which resulted, formed in communities under the Lordship of Christ himself. Vinay died in Rome on 25 November 1990, to a considerable outpouring of commemorative articles and notes. The Community of Sant'Egidio posthumously edited and published his notes on biblical preaching in Commenti ai Vangeli (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1992).  In January 2021 the Facoltà commemorated his work in a seminar entitled 'Il “secolo breve” di un protestante italiano Valdo Vinay (1906-1990)'.

Mark Hutchinson

Principal Works:

1942 - La dottrina di Dio nella teologia di C. Barth (Torre Pellice: Claudiana).

1949 - L' uomo nel pensiero di Lutero e la crisi della società odierna (Rome: Claudiana).

1950 - I due regni nella teologia di Lutero (Rome: Claudiana).

1955 - Facoltà Valdese di Teologia 1855-1955 – Relazione di Valdo Vinay (Torre Pellice: Claudiana).

1956 - Ernesto Buonaiuti e l’Italia religiosa del suo tempo (Torre Pellice: Claudiana). 

1958 - (edited) Scritti religiosi di Martin Lutero (Bari: Laterza).

1961 - Evangelici italiani esuli a Londra durante il Risorgimento (Torino: Claudiana).

1964 - Il Concilio Vaticano II in una visuale protestante italiana (Torino: Claudiana).

1965 - Luigi Desanctis e il movimento evangelico fra gli italiani durante il Risorgimento (Torino: Claudiana).

1970 - La Riforma protestante (Brescia: Paideia, and 2d ed. 1982)

1973 - Ecclesiologia ed etica politica in Giovanni Calvino (Brescia: Paideia).

1975 - Le Confessioni di fede dei Valdesi riformati con i documenti del dialogo fra la “prima” e la “seconda” riforma (Torino: Claudiana).

1980 - Storia dei valdesi. Volume III: Dal movimento evangelico italiano al movimento ecumenico (1848-1975) (Torino: Claudiana).

1992 - Commento ai Vangeli (Brescia: Morcelliana). (posthumous)

Sources: 

• Annese, Andrea, 'Buonaiuti e gli evangelici italiani: metodisti, valdesi, associazioni giovanili', in Paolo Carile and Marc Cheymol (eds), Ernesto Bonaiuti nella cultura europea del Novecento. A special edition of Modernism (2016): 193-235.

• Chiarini, F., 'Gli Studi sulle singole denominazioni evangeliche', in F. Chiarini and L. Giorgi (eds.), Movimenti Evangelici in Italia: Dall'Unita ad oggi studi, studi e ricerche (Torino: Claudiana, 1990)

• Coïsson, Renato, 'Valdo Vinay', Dizionario dei Protestanti in Italia, online at https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XX&evan_id=569, accessed 15 Jan 2025.

• Gonnet, Giovanni, 'In ricordo di Valdo Vinay, ' BSSV 169 (December 1991): 145-52.

• Saccomani, Sara, 'Gli studi su Giovanni Miegge dal 1961 al 2002', Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 60.4 (2005): 791-795.

• Spini, Giorgio, Studi sull'evangelismo italiano tra Otto e Novecento (Torino: Claudiana, 1994).

• Spini, Giorgio, Italia di Mussolini e Protestanti, Stefano Gagliano (ed.), (Torino: Claudiana, 2007)

• Toscano, Mario, 'World War I, Fascism and the Religious context for Italian Protestantism', in M. Hutchinson, D. Saresella and P. Zanini, Brill Global History of Italian Protestantism, vol. II (Leiden: De Gruyter Brill, 2025, forthcoming).

• Vinay, Paola (ed.), Testimone d'amore. La vita e le opere di Tullio Vinay. Testimonianze, scritti, ricordi personali (Torino: Claudiana, 2009).

• Vinay, Valdo, ‘Il Nuovo Testamento della Repubblica Romana,’ Protestantesimo 11 (1956): 5–24