|
Jacob Palaeologus, born Giacomo da Chio (Chios, – Rome, March 23, 1585) was a Dominican friar who renouinced his religious vows and became an antitrinitarian theologian. An indefegatible polemicist against both Calvinism and Papal Power, Palaeologus cultivated a wide range of high-placed contacts and correspondents in the imperial, royal, and aristocratic households in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire; while formulating and propagating a radically heterodox version of Christianity, in which Jesus Christ was not to be invoked in worship, and where purported irreconcilable differences between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were rejected as spurious fabrications. He was continually pursued by his many enemies, repeatedly escaping through his many covert supporters. Palaeologus played an active role in the high politics of European religion and diplomacy over a period of twenty years before he lost imperial favour; and having been extradited to the Papal States, was executed for heresy by the Roman Inquisition. == Life == Palaeologus was born at the Genoese colony on Chios, one of the Aegean Islands near the coast of Anatolia, of a Greek father and an Italian mother. Chios had been, since 1347, ruled by the Republic of Genoa and by the 16th century it was a fief of the Giustiniani family. The young Giacomo attached himself to Vincenzo Giustiniani (later Master General of the Dominican Order) and entered into the Dominican Order. He was educated in Dominican schools at Genoa and Ferrra, and later at the University of Bologna; He adopted the name "Jacob Palaeologus" and claimed kinship with the former Palaiologos emperors of Byzantium. Although in later life he repeatedly defended this claim; no independent sources survive that support it. By 1554, Palaeologus was back east in the Dominican convent of St Peter in Pera, the Latin Christian quarter of Istanbul, and it was here that he developed a lifelong adherence to antitrinitarian teachings of Michael Servetus, and composed a defence of Servetus' doctrines against their denunciation by John Calvin; in consequence of which Servetus had been condemned to death in Geneva in 1553. In 1556 Palaeologus returned to Chios and actively supported the secular Genoese commissioners and the agents of the Holy Roman Emperor against the authority of the bishop of Chios; this led to his being denounced to the Inquisition and arrested in Genoa in 1557. In 1558, he escaped to Istanbul, but was rearrested in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and brought to the prison of the Roman Inquisition under the personal investigation of the Grand Inquisitor, Michele Ghislieri (a fellow Dominican friar, later Pope Pius V). For the rest of his life, Palaeologus maintained a fierce opposition to the Inquisition, and a particular enmity for Ghislieri. At the death of Pope Paul IV in 1559, the Roman mob looted buildings and burned records. Palaeologus escaped from prison when a mob stormed the headquarters of the Roman Inquisition and released inmates. Although evidence against him was destroyed, he was subsequently tried ''in absentia'' by a Roman Inquisition tribunal, convicted, sentenced to death in 1561, and burned in effigy. Palaeologus escaped initially to France, where, in 1562, he unsuccessfully petitioned Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, the papal legate, to have the Inquisition heresy conviction overturned. Then later in 1562, realising that he was also not safe or welcome among Reformed Protestants because of his virulent denunciations of Calvinism, he offered help to Andreas Dudith, Bishop of Knin and the imperial representative at the Council of Trent. Palaeologus advised Dudith in the presentation to the Council of the imperial arguments for permitting Utraquism, the distribution of both bread and wine to the laity at Holy Communion; and in exchange Dudith attempted to have Palaeologus' heresy conviction by the Inquisition overturned by the Ecumenical Council, stirring up in the process a major disruption to the Council's proceedings. Eventually in 1563, Palaeologus was granted imperial asylum in Prague; and when the new Emperor Maximilian II succeeded in 1564, Palaeologus advanced in the imperial favour. Following the example of his patron Dudith, Palaeologus renounced his religious vows, marrying the daughter of a leading Prague reformer. In 1569, Palaeologus was proposed to the emperor as the Utraquist candidate to the office of Archbishop of Prague. This was however blocked by Ghislieri his sworn enemy, wo was now pope ; and who eventually contrived to have Palaeologus expelled from the imperial dominions to Poland in 1571, where he was reunited in Kraków with Dudith, who was now the imperial representative to the Kingdom of Poland. Palaeologus was openly advancing antitrinitarian views but became embroiled in a bitter controversy with Gregory Paul of Brzeziny and the ''Ecclesia Minor'' over the Polish antitrinitarians' condemnation of Christian service in the military. Having acquired enemies in Catholic Rome, Calvinist Geneva, and Arian Raków in Lesser Poland; Palaeologus sought in 1573 a more congenial home in the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, whose Unitarian status had been established under the rule of Prince John II Sigismund Zápolya. Bishop Ferenc Dávid had corresponded with him since 1570 and sought his advice. By 1573 this was a well-worn path for Italian reformers and radicals; already taken, amongst many others by Giorgio Biandrata and Francesco Stancaro, and Paleologus found a receptive audience for his teachings. The aristocratic households of Hungary, Principality of Transylvania and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth prized Italian culture and language, and most had sent their sons to Italian universities. Within their own extensive feudal estates they exercised substantial religious freedom – beyond the reach of Catholic bishops, Reformed city councils or the Inquisition – and many were sympathetic to radical Protestant ideas. Numbers of Italian religious exiles found ready employment in these places as physicians, chaplains, tutors, secretaries, and political agents. After an extended trip to Istanbul and Chios (which had been captured by the Ottoman Empire from the Genoese Republic in 1566) – intended in part to impress Maximilian with his value and contacts – Palaeologus became Rector of the Unitarian college at Kolozsvár (Cluj) and the leading theoretician of nonadorantism, the strain of radical Protestantism that denied the validity of addressing Jesus in prayer. Following Zápolya's death in 1571, the succession to the Principality of Transylvania had been disputed. Palaeologus supported Gaspar Bekes, the pro-imperial and antitrinitarian candidate, against Stephen Báthory, the Catholic candidate. Following two failed uprisings, Bekes conceded defeat in 1575 and Palaeologus moved to Kraków where he promoted Maximilian, the Habsburg faction candidate, against Báthory, the Piast faction candidate, in the 1576 Royal election in Poland, and then settling in Moravia. Meanwhile, Dávid was accused of religious innovation and deposed as leader of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church for his nonadorant practises. He died in prison in 1579. Palaeologus wrote polemical works supporting Dávid and attacking Fausto Sozzini for siding against Dávid. Maximilan II died in 1576, and the new emperor Rudolph II was much less sympathetic and was convinced that Palaeologus was spying for the Ottoman Empire and possibly Poland too. Palaeologus was arrested by the Bishop of Olomouc in December 1581. Although the spying accusations could not be substantiated, a large body of heretical writings was found with him and he was extradited to Rome in May 1582. On February 19, 1583, Palaeologus was taken to be burned at the stake but abjured at the sight of a Portuguese Marani being burnt alive and was permitted to return to his cell. The College of Cardinals argued for his death, but Pope Gregory XIII insisted that if Palaeologus would denounce his former antitrinitarian opinions then would be more useful alive. Although Palaeologus was now reconciled with the Catholic Church, he still refused to cooperate with Gregory's plan and was beheaded on March 23, 1585. A wide variety of radical groups emerged from the 16th century Reformation, commonly characterised by *a rejection of clerical authority *a rejection of the sacraments as essential instruments of God's Grace *a rejection of the orthodox formulations of the Trinity These groups were commonly dismissed by their opponents as Anabaptists (although by no means all practiced believer's baptism), a term that carried an implication of low social standing, limited education, excessive religious behaviour and the rejection of social and gender norms. Palaeologus conformed to none of these stereotypes. His command of biblical texts was at least the equal of that of the best of his antagonists, his knowledge of patristics probably better than any. He was formidably skilled in academic debate and wrote eloquently in high Latin style. Moreover, he was a strong critic of all forms of social subversion; and with his education from the University of Bologna, he was readily at ease in the Italian-speaking and Italian-educated aristocratic houses of central and eastern Europe. Even amongst those who did not share his vision of radical Christianity there were many, like Giustiniani and Dudith, who sympathised with his pleas for toleration; and his eloquent defence of free religious expression and debate in a Europe increasingly policed into tight bounds of conformity on one side or another. With the aid of his many contacts and correspondents, he appeared able to travel at will across the boundaries dividing Catholic from Reformed, and Christian from Turk. All of which made him a dangerous man, and explains the extensive, determined and persistent efforts of his opponents to have him silenced. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jacob Palaeologus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|