Salerno Medical School Foundation and the study center of the literary, arts and rational thought cenacle "Ferrante Sanseverino", present: reform and reforms, the Waldensian reform and Ferrante Sanseverino. Salerno, 5 April 2025. Report by Pasquale Giustiniani
..Reform/reforms. The "myth of Geneva", the new capital of Christianity antithetical to Rome and a laboratory of political, economic and social innovations, shone from the 1940s onwards, experiencing cracks, but not crises. Calvin's works spread throughout the peninsula, in the original or in translation, thanks to the propaganda action of clandestine believers and exiles. The pro-Protestant groups, especially with the intensification of heretical repression in the mid-sixteenth century, found in Geneva a destination for their diaspora and a doctrinal and ecclesiological system to draw inspiration from in their homeland: a solid system capable of providing strong normative authority, doctrinal and material support for community life, a Eucharistic conception that was completely alternative to the Catholic one, a sign of the group's identity and spiritual communion. ((⏱️=1000))The Waldensian Reform. Bernardino Ochino, in his widely propagated Sermons, took up the main themes of Calvin's Institutions, albeit mixed with so-called Waldensian elements. Calvin's masterpiece was also spread by a central figure in Waldensianism, Marcantonio Flaminio, who took passages and ideas from it for the elaboration of that original synthesis of ideas, both Waldensian and Reformed, that is The Benefit of Christ, of which he was co-author together with Benedetto da Mantova. That "sweet little book", as Vergerio defined it, printed without constraints in Venice in 1543, was perhaps the heterodox text that became the most read and most famous in Italy: according to Vergerio, in Venice alone 40,000 copies had been sold in six years, and this was due to the message of profound spirituality and religious renewal that it appeared to be the bearer of. An example is the confession of an illustrious Waldensian prelate, the apostolic protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi (executed in 1567), who declared to the judges: «When Flaminio [Marcantonio] was staying with me in Florence, he had shown me a little of Calvin's Institutio, which had filled my mind with similar opinions, in which I continued and grew until the year 1545, often reading those books, and conversing with those people who were able to confirm them in my soul». In the early 1540s, crucial events marked the history of the Italian peninsula: the failure of the Ratisbon talks, the institution of the Holy Office, the convocation of the Council of Trent, the disappearance of charismatic figures such as Juan de Valdés, Gasparo Contarini and Gian Matteo Giberti. The Protestant reform movement then decided to undertake an energetic propaganda campaign for the new theology, through the diffusion of religious literature in the vernacular. Faith in Christ became the fulcrum of the Christian's life and the only instrument of justification: Ochino openly affirmed this in his sermons, urging people to believe that "we will have paradise through the merits of Christ". He did not address the issue of works, he only made them understand their inessentiality for the purposes of salvation, "gently" leading his listeners to share what would become a fundamental principle of the Protestant Reformation. Ochino had learned this doctrine and these methods of propaganda, precisely. in the Neapolitan Circle of Juan de Valdés: a Spanish reformer who, with his syncretistic conception of Alumbradism, Erasmism and Protestantism, shaped the consciences of many Italians in the decade between 1530 and 1541, with the aim of carrying out a renewal of Christians and the church, albeit without traumatic ruptures with Rome. The Reformation in Southern Italy. Even in Southern Italy, the anxiety of Reformation was distinguished by the high degree of social promiscuity - bringing together nobles, ecclesiastics, commoners, bourgeois, who were already among the ranks of the Catholics -, by the important role of the religious and by the different doctrinal outcomes, with figures of great importance in the Italian and European religious and cultural world, such as Juan de Valdés, Camillo Renato, Giorgio Siculo, Agostino Doni. As regards the Kingdom of Naples in the modern era, and not only, the results of the conclave of 1549, with the failure to elect Pole, due to the trials opened against him by Carafa, and the definition of the first decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Trent, which will be called and will never officially conclude (the conclusion will be made official by Vatican I at the end of the nineteenth century) certainly marked the beginning of the decline of the experience of the "spirituals", or of the Waldensians stricto sensu. On the one hand, that experience took on the forms that we can define as typically Calvinist (as they developed above all in Geneva and Switzerland). 
on the other hand a certain closure in themselves, a no longer productive retreat, of the Waldensians, as in the case of Colonna, Brancaccio or Galeota, who nevertheless had to suffer inquisitorial trials until late in life, testify without any doubt to the fragmentation of the group and its diversified outcomes. Nevertheless, throughout the 1550s, the alternating events of the "war of Pope Paul", the spasmodic attention towards a papal election, which would rebalance the situation, the expectation of providential events and a certain bond that still united some characters: all this suggests that the meaning of the dispute, political and theological of the Waldensian type, was not perceived as completely extinct. Waldensianism was the distinctive element, although not the only one, of the southern heterodox movement and represented one of the main breeding grounds of the Reformation, in its various directions. The circle that gathered around Juan de Valdés in Naples in the 1630s played a fundamental role in the history of the Reformation in the Kingdom for three reasons: a heretical message was spread from it, aimed at introducing the reformed doctrines, which spread widely and, above all, conquered the feudal aristocracy and key figures in the city institutions. Spiritualism, gradualism and Nicodemism were the cornerstones of the Waldensian teaching, and the reason for its great appeal. It envisaged a gradual process of profound spiritual renewal through the inspiration of Christ and the direct experience of justifying faith, which led to a completely interior religion, indifferent to religious practices and doctrinal differences. It was a religion that did not imply open breaks with the Catholic Church and justified the so-called Nicodemism. Its essentially spiritualistic content, despite the acceptance of the cardinal doctrine of Lutheranism, sola fide, its insistence on experience rather than religious knowledge and on the differentiated path in faith by individuals, made Waldensianism a movement susceptible to various interpretations, adaptable to different needs, and of great success. From Naples the movement thus spread throughout the peninsula, in Sicily and in Europe, also arriving at different positions, from Calvinism to Anabaptism to anti-Trinitarianism. Even in the South the transition from Valdés to Geneva was not rare. Due to its orientations, the Waldensian message was destined to make inroads into the elite (and in particular among noblewomen). The Neapolitan circle of the Spanish exile saw the presence of great aristocrats such as the Prince of Salerno, Ferrante di Sanseverino, the Marquis of Oria Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, the Marquis of Vico Galeazzo Caracciolo, the Roman noblemen Ascanio Colonna and Camillo Orsini, refined noblewomen such as Giulia Gonzaga, Isabella Bresegna, Caterina Cibo, Vittoria Colonna, prelates of the calibre of Cardinal Reginald Pole, the Apostolic Protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi, the Archbishop of Toledo Bartolomé Carranza, the Archbishop of Otranto Pierantonio di Capua, renowned ecclesiastics such as Bernardino Ochino, Pier Martire Vermigli, Benedetto Fontanini da Mantova, and even intellectuals such as Marcantonio Flaminio. Alongside these personalities, there were descendants of the most prestigious southern feudal families, mostly belonging to the imperial aristocracy, such as the Colonna, the Gonzaga, the d'Avalos, the Aragona and the di Capua, who were in turn linked to the powerful southern prince-bishops and important religious orders, such as the Benedictines and the Capuchins. Waldensians such as Mario Galeotta, Ferrante Brancaccio, the archbishop Pierantonio of Capua, Giovan Tommaso Minadois, count of Monitoro and royal councilor, Giovan Francesco Alois infiltrated Neapolitan political-social associations such as the powerful Compagnia dei Bianchi della Giustizia of Naples or the Ospedale degli Incurabili, within which they tried to implement a hegemonic plan. From printed sources, long known to scholars, and from the documentation that emerged from the Decreta and Correspondence funds of the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Diocesan Historical Archives of Naples, it is clear that the first, rather timid, anti-heretical interventions in southern Italy must be traced back to the end of the 1540s, when, most likely following the denunciations of the schoolmaster Giusto Seriato, investigations against Galeota and the so-called Neapolitan Waldensian group began. A first trial against the archbishop of Otranto, Pietrantonio di Capua, must have dated back to 1548.,,