Camillo Renato


Paolo Ricci was a Franciscan, then a Lutheran, possibly an Anabaptist, and only allegedly an Antitrinitarian. He also adopted an academic pseudeonym Lisia Fileno, Fileno Lunardi, and finally the name Camillo Renato.

Paolo ''Lysias Philaenus'' Ricci

He was born Paolo Ricci and became a Franciscan. In the 1530s he frequented circles sympathetic to the Reformation in Naples, then moved to Padua and Venice where, among other things, he challenged the existence of purgatory. Ricci writes: "some slanderers accused me of heresy, I was detained, prosecuted, not convicted, not condemned, did not abjure on any matter and was discharged." Emerging free from this trial, towards the end of 1538 went from Venice to Bologna, with the intention to go later in Rome for "consult with some very learned and reverend cardinals to the glory of Christ and for harmony and common interest of all the Church."
In Bologna Ricci was tutor to the three sons of Giulio Danesi - to whom he dedicated three Latin carmina. And in Bologna Ricci first effected a Latin pseudonym, Lysias Philaenus, as was common among those attended and intellectual circles, where art, religion and moral philosophy were discussed. He himself gives the names of the participants in Bologna: humanists Leandro Alberti, Romulus Amasea and Achille Bocchi, and the noblemen Francesco Bolognetti, Giulio Danesi, Cornelio Lambertini, and Alessandro Manzoli.
In 1540 he was forced to recant some ideas in Modena, but Ricci became progressively more radical, developing ideas beyond what was published in his 1540 Apologia in his born name.

The baptism of 'Camillo the Reborn'

In 1540, he was arrested for heresy in Ferrara, but escaped, possibly at the intervention of Duchess Renée de France, and moved into exile in Valtellina, which at the time was under the protectorate of the Grisons. Sometime before 1545, he adopted the name Camillo Renato possibly as an expression of his break with his previous infant Christening.
He died c.1575.

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