Arminiani e sociniani nel Seicento: rifiuto o reinterpretazione del cristianesimo sacrificale?

Abstract

Abstract The terms „Socinian“ and „Arminian“ (despite their often equivocal and polyvalent use) refer primarily to the members of two small Christian communities viewed with great suspicion by the established churches: the Ecclesia minor of the Polish Brethren, on the one hand, and the Dutch Remonstrant Brotherhood, on the other. These were two numerically small and marginalized groups, but capable of influencing substantial numbers of theologians and intellectuals of different denominational backgrounds in many European countries. The Dutch Remonstrants faced frequent allegations of Socinianism: far from diminishing over time, these charges became harsher and more insistent after the destruction of the Ecclesia minor and the resulting Socinian diaspora. However, this study shows that the relationship was not one-way: Arminius’ heirs in turn influenced those of Sozzini, as evidenced by the development of the two theological traditions on the crucial issue of Christ’s redemption and atonement. At the end of the seventeenth century, on this as on other subjects, the theories of the Remonstrants established some hegemony over the doctrinal elaborations of the successors to the Socinian tradition.