La religione sociniana. Culto e comunità

The argument of this article is twofold: first, it defines Socinianism as neither a kind of Deism nor a Christian heresy but as a new modern religion of the Renaissance; second, and consequently, treating Socinianism as a religion, this article inquires into the nature of Socinian cult and community. This latter point has been largely neglected by the scholarship. In the century between Faustus Socinus’s “De Christo Servatore” (1584) and Wissowatius’ catechism (1684), the Socinians changed some of the major tenets of their theory of religio, in particular Socinus’s refutation of the idea of religious sacrifice. This article shows that this theoretical shift, caused by the disputes between Grotius and Crell, was reflected in the different editions of the Socinian catechism. The catechism of 1609, still faithful to Socinus’s ideas, in the 1659 and 1684 editions saw radical changes, accepting the Grotian theory of satisfactio. Though Faustus Socinus himself had defended the need for a form of cultus, Socinianism was unable to define it and thus did not become a sect, as the Socinians aimed to do but failed to achieve.