Socinianism - Origins

Origins

The ideas of Socinianism date from the element of the Protestant Reformation known as the Radical Reformation, and have their root in the Italian Anabaptist movement of the 1540s, such as the Antitrinitarian Council of Venice in 1550. Lelio Sozzini was the first of the Italian Antitrinitarians to go beyond Arian beliefs in print and deny the pre-existence of Christ in his Brevis explicatio in primum Johannis caput – a commentary on the meaning of the Logos in John Chapter 1:1–15 (1562). Lelio Sozzini considered that the "Beginning" of John 1:1 was the same as 1 John 1:1 and referred to the new creation not the Genesis creation. His nephew Fausto Sozzini published his own longer Brevis explicatio later, developing his uncle's arguments. Many years after the death of his uncle in Switzerland Fausto Sozzini passed via the Unitarian Church in Transylvania, attempting to mediate in the dispute between Giorgio Biandrata and Ferenc Dávid, then moved to Poland, where he married the daughter of a leading member of the Polish Brethren, the anti-trinitarian minority, or ecclesia minor, which had in 1565 split from the Calvinist Reformed Church in Poland. Sozzini never actually joined the ecclesia minor, but was influential in reconciling several controversies among the Brethren – on conscientious objection, on prayer to Christ, and on the virgin birth. Fausto persuaded many in the Polish Brethren who were formerly Arian, such as Marcin Czechowic to adopt his uncle Lelio's views.

Fausto Sozzini was further influential through the posthumous Racovian Catechism which set out his uncle Lelio's views on Christology and replaced earlier catechisms of the Ecclesia Minor, and also after his death through the writings of his students issued in Polish and Latin from the press of the Racovian Academy at Raków, Kielce County.

The name "Socinian" only started to be used in Holland and England as the Latin publications were circulated among early Arminians, Remonstrants, Dissenters, and early English Unitarians from the 1610s onward. In the 1660s Fausto Sozzini's grandson Andreas Wiszowaty and great-grandson Benedykt Wiszowaty published the nine-volume Biblioteca Fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant 1668 in Amsterdam, with the works of F. Sozzini, the Austrian Johann Ludwig von Wolzogen, the Poles Johannes Crellius, Jonasz Szlichtyng, and Samuel Przypkowski. These books circulated among thinkers like Isaac Newton, John Locke, Voltaire and Pierre Bayle.

In Britain and America "Socinianism" later became a catch-all term for any kind of Dissenting belief. Sources in the 18th and 19th century frequently attributed the term "Socinian" anachronistically, using it to refer to ideas which covered a much wider range from the narrowly defined position of the Racovian catechisms and library.