Preliminary considerations

Measured against the Reformation in Central and Northern Europe, the

Reformation Italian-style falls short on all counts.

1. The plan for a Reformation in Italy, designed by a tiny minority, never got off the drawing board. (Only the Waldensian communities, whose origin and development form part of the history of medieval heresies and therefore constitute a separate chapter in the history of the Reformation, managed to achieve a durable confessional organisation.)

2. This failure was not a defeat bringing to an end the drama of an open struggle.2

3. Italian Protestantism, which took over not a single city or state, never entered the chronicle of European events, except for a few short-term sensations, such as the defection of a few prominent ‘heretics’ (Bernardino Ochino, General of the Capuchins, who fled in 1542, and Pier Paolo Vergerio, Bishop of Capodistria, who departed in 1549, for example) and the execution of some others who lacked the good sense to get out in time (such as Pietro Carnesecchi, put to death in 1567, and Aonio Paleario, burned in 1570).

4. The most famous of the ‘Italian Reformers’, Juan de Valdes, was a Spaniard, whose concept of reform was so subtle that it failed to have institutional consequences and therefore did not make a clear impression, either on most of his contemporaries or on historians of the present day, who continue to have difficulty interpreting it.