Abstract
Crypto-protestants in Tuscany received encouragement from Plymouth Brethren like the Walker brothers and Eliza Browne, a friend of SPT. With the persecution that followed the failure of the revolution in 1849, Guicciardini’s connections with the Brethren became apparent and were criticized. In an anonymous reply, SPT defended Guicciardini’s anticlericalism even though he [SPT] had left the Brethren. SPT’s Prisoners of Hope publicized the plight of the Tuscan Protestants persecuted during the 1850s prior to Italian Unification. Further support from another ‘Plymouth Sister’ Charlotte Johnson put SPT in a still more anomalous position and confirmed his final withdrawal from the movement.
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- 1.
The starting point for any consideration of nineteenth-century Italian Protestantism is Giorgio Spini’s pioneer work Risorgimento e Protestanti (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche Italiane, 1956), the theme of which has recently been revisited in an essay with the same title by Eugenio F. Biagini, in S. Maghenzani, G. Platone [eds.], Riforma, Risorgimento e Risveglio: Il Protestantesimo italiano tra radici storiche e questioni contemporanee (Turin: Claudiana, 2011), 77–96. For the part played in Italian Protestantism by the Brethren (or Fratelli), Spini’s account must be supplemented with Domenico Maselli’s Tra Risveglio e Millennio: Storia delle Chiese Cristiane dei Fratelli, 1836–1886 (Turin: Claudiana, 1974). The linguistic insularity of the British and their ignorance of this subject are well demonstrated by the fact that in English, we are effectively confined to a single, slender and verging on the simplistic volume by Daisy D. Ronco, Risorgimento and the Free Italian Churches, Now Churches of the Brethren (Bangor: University of Wales, 1996).
- 2.
For the part played in this movement by Swiss visitors, see my ‘L’influenza del réveil svizzero prima dell’Unita d’Italia,’ in Maghenzani, Riforma, 105–13.
- 3.
For Guicciardini’s unusual Christian pilgrimage, the best account is still Stefano Jacini, Un Riformatore Toscano dell’Epoca del Risorgimento: Il Conte Piero Guicciardini (1808–1886) (Florence: Sansoni, 1940), but reference should also be made to D.D. Ronco, “Per me, vivere e Cristo”: La vita e l’opera del Conte Piero Guicciardini nel centenario della sua morte 1808–1886 (Fondi, Italy: Unione Cristiana Edizioni Bibliche, 1986) and to Lorenza Giorgi, Massimo Rubboli [eds.], Piero Guicciardini, 1808–86: Un Riformatore religioso nell’Europa dell’Ottocento (Florence: Olschki, 1988), in which several of the essays are in English.
- 4.
For the Walker family in Florence, see Alessandra Pecchioli, ‘Giulia Baldelli: Una prima breve panoramica delle famiglie Walker, Baldelli e Tommasi,’ in A. Pecchioli [ed.], La Chiesa ‘degli italiani’: All’origine del Evangelismo risvegliato in Italia (Rome: GBU, 2010), 207–22. For George Walker, see also Stunt, Elusive Quest, 226–28.
- 5.
Anna Shipton, The Upper Springs and the Nether Springs; or, Life Hid with Christ in God (London: James Nisbet, 1882), 165–66. Cf. M. Newlin, Memoir of Mary Anne Longstreth by an Old Pupil (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1886), 108.
- 6.
In 1814, Sophia Elizabeth Robertson of Plymstock married Captain Henry Reddish Browne who died in Calcutta (June 1825). In 1829, she married James L. Harris, who was, for some years, the editor of the Brethren magazine the Christian Witness. This explains Eliza Browne’s ability to identify the names of the anonymous authors in her copies of their works, which are preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence and in the library of the Brethren assembly of Via Vigna Vecchia, also in Florence; see Timothy Stunt, ‘Understanding the Past in the City of Florence,’ Harvester (September 1983): 70.
- 7.
S.P. Tregelles, The Jansenists: Their Rise, Persecutions by the Jesuits and Existing Remnant—A Chapter in Church History (London: Bagster, 1851). Copy in the writer’s possession.
- 8.
W. Soltau, ‘The Story of the Madiai,’ Sunday at Home (1904): 446–53. This source appears to be unknown to any of the authors who have discussed the origins of the Italian fratelli evangelici. For Henry Soltau’s involvement with the Brethren in Plymouth, see Stunt, Elusive Quest, 170–73.
- 9.
S.P. Tregelles (Plymouth, 29 November 1848) to the BFBS (Cambridge /CUL BSA/D1/2 Tregelles 29/11/1848).
- 10.
Stunt, Elusive Quest, 228.
- 11.
Religious Liberty in Tuscany in 1851 : or Documents relative to the Trial and Incarceration of Count Pietro Guicciardini and others, exiled from Tuscany by decree of 17 May 1851. Tr. from the Italian (London: Nisbet [1851]), 17, 18. This early persecution suffered by Guicciardini and his companions is given a fuller context in Maselli, Tra Risveglio, 52–68.
- 12.
Religious Liberty, 4.
- 13.
[S.P.T.] L.M., ‘Review of Books: Religious Liberty in Tuscany in 1851,’ JSL NS 1 (January 1852), 464–68. That it was written by Tregelles is apparent from the occurrence of several sentences concerning Florence and Savonarola (464, 468) which he later used in his introduction to S.P. Tregelles [ed.], Prisoners of Hope: Being Letters from Florence Relative to the Persecution of Francesco and Rosa Madiai… 2nd ed. (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1852), 1–2, 16–17; vide infra Chapter 8, p. 106, Footnote 28.
- 14.
[S.P.T.], ‘Review of Religious Liberty,’ 466 . In a footnote, Tregelles explained that he was using ‘a MS translation previously in circulation’ where instead of the word furniture the translator used apparatus. Tregelles evidently preferred this as it was a literal translation of the Italian word apparato in Guicciardini’s original letter, the text of which can be found in full in Jacini, Riformatore, 301–308; for apparato, see p. 307.
- 15.
[S.P.T.], ‘Review of Religious Liberty,’ 467. Tregelles is referring here to the occasion in April 1533 when the followers of Guillaume Farel first celebrated the Lord’s Supper in the garden of Étienne Dada, just outside Geneva. Guérin Muète, who distributed the bread and wine, is variously described as un bonnetier, a hat-maker, a hosier, a stocking weaver or a ‘dealer of knitwear’. Tregelles’s reference to him as a carpenter is strange. He could not have consulted the contemporary account by François Bonivard and Anthoine Froment in Les Actes et gestes de Genève which was not published until 1854. It is possible that he had access to the second volume of Merle d’Aubigné’s Histoire de la Réformation published in the 1840s, but more probably, he used the English translation of Jacob Spon’s Histoire de … Genève where Guérin Muète is referred to as a ‘capmaker’ (Isaac [sc. Jacob] Spon, History of the City and State of Geneva, from Its First Foundation to This Present Time [London: White, 1687], 96). SPT’s handwriting was often appalling, and it is possible that the Editor misread ‘capmaker’ in the contributor’s MS as ‘carpenter’. For a recent discussion of the episode in 1533, see Christian Grosse, Les rituels de la cène: le culte eucharistique réformé à Genève (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 106–108.
- 16.
The list of exiles who settled for the next few years in Piedmont or Malta included the following future leaders of the Fratelli (Brethren): Angiolo Guarducci, a banking accountant, Cesare Magrini, a calligrapher, Carlo Solaini and Sebastiano Borsieri, cigar makers and Fedele Betti, a waiter; see [Jean-Pierre] Meille, ‘Prospects of the Gospel in Italy,’ in E. Steane [ed.], The Religious Condition of Christendom … read at the Conference held in Paris, 1855 (London: Ev. Alliance, 1857), 2: 369; cf. Evangelical Christendom: Its State and Prospects 9 (1 September 1856): 296–98.
- 17.
J. Wood Brown, An Italian Campaign; or the Evangelical Movement in Italy 1845–1887. From the Letters of the Late R.W. Stewart, D.D., of Leghorn (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890), 68–78. Cf. Norman L. Walker, Chapters from the History of the Free Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, [1895]), 191.
- 18.
Tregelles, Prisoners. For Arthur Walker, vide supra Footnotes 4, 10.
- 19.
For further discussion of the Madiai case, vide infra Chapter 8, Footnotes 24–27.
- 20.
Anonymous, ‘The Italian Reform Movement,’ in The American Quarterly Church Review and Ecclesiastical Register 15 (July 1863): 240.
- 21.
Brown, Letters of Stewart, 81.
- 22.
F.J. P[akenham], Life Lines; or God’s Work in a Human Being (London: Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1862), 145.
- 23.
Tregelles later gave a full presentation of his position on such issues in his Pastoral relations, Part iii. ‘Original Establishment’ (Plymouth, December 1862) and Part iv. ‘The Present Formation’ (North Malvern, August 1863) (London, 1862–1863). For ‘modified Presbyterianism’, vide supra Chapter 4, Footnote 17.
- 24.
Pakenham, Life Lines, 147.
- 25.
See G. Spini, ‘Nuovi documenti sugli Evangelici toscani del Risorgimento,’ Bolletino della Società di Studi Valdesi 78 (December 1960), 89–90. Her full name and age are given on her gravestone in the Protestant cemetery of Florence. Wood Brown gives her name as Johnstone, and this led to Dr. Luigi Santini confusing her with Maria Johnstone (1770–1857) who is also buried in the same cemetery. L. Santini, The Protestant Cemetery of Florence called ‘The English Cemetery,’ (Florence: K.S. Printing House, 1961) 11, 22.
- 26.
Pakenham, Life Lines, 148. According to Stewart’s biographer, on one occasion Johnson ‘assembled some of the converts at her villa and actually dispensed the bread and wine of Communion to them with her own hands’. Brown, Letters of Stewart, 82.
- 27.
[R.M. Hanna], ‘Protestantism in Italy,’ The North British Review 20 (November 1853): 79. Bloomers were the newly fashionable (1851) female clothing of supposedly ‘emancipated’ women.
- 28.
Letter from Magrini sent to Tregelles (Florence) published in News of the Churches 8 (18 February 1861): 88–89.
- 29.
Ibid., 174, Letter from Tregelles (Plymouth, 18 June 1861).
- 30.
Ibid., 198, 113.
- 31.
Gualtieri had converted to Protestantism in 1858. ‘Chronique religieuse’ in L’observateur catholique, 7 (October–March 1859): 273.
- 32.
W.C. Langdon, ‘The Possibilities of Italian Reform,’ Andover Review 5:26 (February 1886): 167. For a Methodist’s account of the Brethren in Italy, see T.C. Piggott, T. Durley, Life and Letters of Henry James Piggott of Rome (London: Epworth, 1921), 88–90.
- 33.
S.P. Tregelles, Letter (Plymouth, 18 June 1861) in News of the Churches 8 (1861): 174.
- 34.
Tregelles, Five Letters; vide infra Chapter 12.
- 35.
S.P. Tregelles (Plymouth, 15 April 1864) to B.W. Newton; Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 (66).
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Stunt, T.C.F. (2020). An Embarrassed Advocate of Brethren in Italy. In: The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32266-3_7
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