Celio Secondo Curione (1 May 1503, in Cirié – 24 November 1569, in Basel) (usual Latin form Caelius Secundus Curio) was an Italian humanist, grammarian, editor and historian, who exercised a considerable influence upon the Italian Reformation.M. Kutter, Celio Secondo Curione. Leben und Werk (1503–1569) (Helbing and Lichtenhahn, Basel and Stuttgart 1955). A teacher in Humanities, university professor and preceptor to the nobility, he had a lively and colourful career, moving frequently between states to avoid denunciation and imprisonment: he was successively at Turin, Milan, Pavia, Venice and Lucca, before becoming a religious exile in Switzerland, first at Lausanne and finally at Basel, where he settled. He was famous and admired as a publisher and editor of works of theology and history, also for his own writings and teachings, and for the wide sphere of his friendships and correspondence with many of the most interesting reformists, Protestants and heretics of his time, though his energetic influence was at times disruptive.His first biography is by Giovanni Nicolò Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione, given at Basel in 1570 and published in J.G. Schelhorn, Amoenitates Literariae (Daniel Bartholomæi et Filium, Francofurti et Lipsiæ 1730–1731), XIV, pp. 325-402. For an English abstract of this, see R.S., 'Italian Reformation. Select Memoirs of Italian Reformation Confessors, No. 4: Coelius Secundus Curio', The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, No. CCVII, Vol. XVIII (March 1823), pp. 129-33. The imputation of antitrinitarianism is very doubtful.Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione, pp. 386 ff. Curio published under the Latin form of his name, but scholarship has adopted the Italian form.
Rebellious youth
Celio Secondo was born on 1 May 1503 at Cirié, in Piedmont, not far from Turin, to Jacomino Troterio Curione and Charlotte de Montrotier (a lady in the court of Bianca of Savoy) who died giving birth to him.Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione, pp. 325-402, at p. 329. The twenty-third of the sons of Jacomino, who married into the feudal family of the Counts di Provana, his surname may derive from the Castello di Cuori, near Ciriè. He was brought up by his maternal aunt Maddalena at Moncalieri (in the Po valley under the Western Alps), a little town under the authority of Turin, where his father received public appointments and where his mother's family dwelt. His father died when he was nine, leaving him among other things a precious illuminated Bible.
Around 1520 he began his studies at the University of Turin, where his masters were Giorgio Corona, Domenico Machaneo (commentator upon Suetonius) and Giovanni Bremio for Humanistic studies, and Francesco Sfondrati, future Cardinal, for Law. Some of the Turin Augustinians introduced him to some of the writings of Luther, the De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae and Resolutiones Disputationum de Indulgentiarum Virtute, and other works of the reformers north of the Alps, the De Falsa et Vera Religione of Zwingli and the Loci Communes of Melancthon. Curio and his friends Jacopo Cornello and Francesco Guarino (who became pastors at Geneva) were much enthused.Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione (1570), p. 331. The narrative of Stupano is extensively employed in English by T. McCrie, History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy in the Sixteenth Century (William Blackwood, Edinburgh/ T. Cadell, London 1827), p. 101 ff, and passim.
Curio planned a journey into Germany, but instead found himself imprisoned for two months in the fortress of Caprano by order of the Bishop of Ivrea, Cardinal Bonifacio Ferrero. He was then sent to the Benedictine abbey of Fruttuaria at San Benigno Canavese, to be "purged" of heretical ideas through penitence and the study of orthodox texts. This was unsuccessful: Curio violated the reliquary of SS Agapeto and Tiburtius, substituting a Bible for the bones, with a message in Latin: "This is the Ark of the Covenant, from which true Gospels can be brought forth and in which are found the true relics of the Saints."Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione (1570), pp. 331-34.
The early chronology is unclear: his biographer states that, having fled to Milan, he distinguished himself by helping the citizens during an epidemic of the plague. There was one such at Milan in 1524, and another in 1528 in the province of Bergamo. To this period belong a journey to Padua and his enrolment in study,N. C. Papadopoli, Historia Gymnasii Patavini (Sebastian Colet, Venice 1726), II, p. 222-23. another journey to Rome and a later return to Milan, with (around 1530) his marriage to Margherita Bianca Isacchi (1509–1587) at Barzago (Brianza).Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione (1570), p. 335.
A teacher in Italy
At Milan he lived by teaching humanities, while continuing to study law with Sfondrati. To avoid the constant warfare in the Duchy he accepted an invitation from Gian Giorgio, Marchese of Montferrat. He remained at the court of Casale Monferrato for a while after the Marchese's death on 3 April 1533: his first daughter, future wife of Girolamo Zanchi, was born at Ceva on 8 November, and his second son Orazio at Casale in 1534. Here he became acquainted with Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, professor at Vicenza, who was visiting Piedmont: they agreed in religious matters so much that Morato later said that Curio had been for him what Ananias had been for St Paul.Opera Olimpia Moratae (1558), p. 315.
His brethren having died of the plague Curio should have returned to Moncalieri to settle his inheritance with his only surviving sister, but, faced with being denounced for heresy, he renounced his rights. Having failed to respond to a summons to Casale from Federico Gonzaga, successor to the Marquessate, he took work as a teacher at Castiglione Torinese, where in a disputation with a Dominican preacher in 1535 he argued in defence of Luther. Denounced to the Suffragan of Turin he was imprisoned, but managed to escape by tricking the gaoler into shackling a false leg to the cell wall and escaping through the unbarred window.Stupano, Oratio Panegyrica de Coelio Secundo Curione (1570), pp. 340-42. As the mystery of his escape gave rise to superstitious rumours, he later explained how it was managed in a Dialogue, Probus.Printed with Pasquillus ecstaticus (Geneva 1544 edition), pp. 244-257. (BSB/MDZ digitized) He took refuge at Salò, where he was reunited with his family: two of his sons were born there, Leo in 1536 and Agostino in 1538.
Pavia, Venezia and Ferrara
In 1536 he obtained a chair in humanistic letters for three years at the University of Pavia: Andrea Alciati was his colleague there, and he wrote his first Orations and the first draft of the three books of Schola, sive De Perfecto Grammatico (not published until 1555). He described the perfect Grammaticus as an orator who takes the classical foundations of Cicero and Quintilian to inform a contemporary embodiment of the humanist professor, one who dignifies his profession through full responsibility towards his role as educator and cultural guide. His renown as professor was tied to his anti-Catholic stances: as a result Pope Paul III demanded his removal from the university. His admiring students accompanied him to his alternative lodgings in the city to defend him from possible attack. The Senate of Pavia, fearing a threat of excommunication from the Church, succumbed and in 1539 licensed Curio to leave the Duchy.
He next went to Venice, where he attended the French Ambassador to the republic, the Bishop of Montpellier. To him he dedicated the Aranei Encomion, a short tract treating the fable of Arachne as an allegory of the Church and Holy Wisdom, published in Venice in 1540. In Lent he is likely to have heard the preaching of Bernardino Ochino. He became the companion of the Augustinian mendicant Giulio da Milano, a secret Protestant convert. Giulio, who had preached justification by faith alone, was arrested in 1541, and Curio, identified as his close associate, departed abruptly for Ferrara. There his friend Pellegrino Morato, preceptor in the court of Este, recommended him to Duchess Renata, wife of Ercole II d'Este. He remained briefly, forming a friendship with Morato's young daughter Olympia Fulvia Morata, with whom he maintained a lifelong correspondence.See Olympiae Fulviae Moratae, Foeminae Doctissimae, et Plane Divinae, Opera Omnia cum Eruditorum Testimonijs (Petrus Perna, Basel 1570?/80), Letter of dedication to Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Lucca
By October he was already in Lucca, employed as preceptor by the nobleman Niccolò di Silvestro Arnolfini. The Republic of Lucca was stirred up with religious and political reform movements. The Gonfaloniere, , hoped to end the dominion of Cosimo I de' Medici and the temporal power of the Church in that region, and to create a federation of free Tuscan cities. To this end he advocated to the Comune the formation of a special militia which he should lead. Burlamacchi himself was not Lutheran, but the various Protestant groups in the city (reflecting its mercantile and intellectual exchange with Germany) might approve his project.
When Curio arrived, there was already a large active colony of Italian internal religious exiles, including Paolo Lazise, Celso Martinengo, the Jewish convert Emanuele Tremellio, Peter Martyr and Girolamo Zanchi. From June 1541 Peter Martyr was Prior of the Basilica of San Frediano, a position of considerable authority: he held a school for reading in the Gospels, the letters of St Paul, and Saint Augustine, and encouraged direct reading and understanding of the Bible. His lessons were attended by young students and learned elders such as Curio himself and the humanist Francesco Robortello alike.
Cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni, non-resident Bishop of Lucca newly appointed to the Roman Inquisition, in a letter to the Senate of Lucca dated 22 July 1542 denounced that Evangelic groupG. Tommasi (ed. C. Minutoli), Sommario della Storia di Lucca (G.P. Viuesseux, Firenze 1847), Prefazione, pp. xxxii-xxxiii, & Lib. III Cap. VII, pp. 424-25. and that "Cellio who dwells in the house of Master Niccolò Arnolfini".A. Biondi, Curione, Celio Secondo, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani XXXI (1985), pp. 443-49. Burlamacchi's plan to subject the citizen power to his political and religious reforms was exposed. At the end of July Peter Martyr, the young disciple Giulio Terenziano, Lazise and Tremellius fled, while Curio took refuge at first in Pisa, where the Inquisition tried to catch up with him. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, on 26 August 1542, sent to Duke Cosimo from Rome the warrant for the arrest for that "wretched spirit called Celio of Turin", who however had already taken the road to Switzerland and was received, at the recommendation of the theologian Heinrich Bullinger, in the Academy of Lausanne.F.C. Church (trans D. Cantimori), I Riformatori Italiani (Gabbiani, Milan 1967), pp. 140–141.
In Switzerland