Ochino

Ochino, BERNARDINO, Italian reformer, was born at Siena in 1487, and joined the Franciscan Observants, but in 1534 changed to the Capuchin order, as being more strict. In four years' time he was vicar-general of the order, having already before joining it gained the reputation of a man of great piety and eloquence. In 1542 he was summoned to Rome to answer to the Inquisition for certain evangelical tendencies which had been manifested in sermons delivered by him at Venice three years before, and had been much talked about. Warned by Cardinal Contarini, Ochino turned back at Bologna and fled to Geneva, where Calvin gave him a welcoming hand. In December 1545 he was appointed preacher to the Italian congregation in Augsburg, but fourteen months later was driven from the city by the advent of the imperial troops. From this time Ochino was dogged by misfortune, and was never able to stay long in any one place. He first found refuge in England, invited there by Cranmer; he was made pastor to the Italian exiles and given a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral. In England he wrote the Tragedy, a series of dramatic dialogues translated from the original Latin into English by Bishop Ponet, which is believed to have had some influence upon Milton's Paradise Lost. At Mary's accession (1553) Ochino fled to Switzerland, and ministered to the Italian exiles in Zurich for ten years. Then the publication of Thirty Dialogues, one of which the Calvinists stated to contain a defence of polygamy, occasioned his being banished precipitately from the canton. In the dialogue in question Ochino states expressly and repeatedly that 'polygamy is immoral;' but, being a man of inquiring, questioning intellect, he at the same time threw out the suggestion that there might be individual cases in which it might perhaps be permissible, provided the individual were quite certain he had God's approval. Ochino fled to Poland, but was soon driven thence by an edict directed against all foreigners, and died in flight at Schlackau in Moravia in the end of 1564. See Life by Benrath (Eng. trans. by Helen Zimmer, 1876).