Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation by Massimo Firpo (review)

The late Gordon Kinder once called the alumbrados of Castile “the goose that laid the golden eggs.” Massimo Firpo’s recent work shows just how far those eggs circulated throughout Reformation Europe. The book is a combination of two earlier articles in Italian that have been translated, updated, and expanded. Its major contribution is distinguishing Valdés’s own religious doctrines from the dual and contradictory “Valdesian” heresies after his death in 1541. In so doing, Firpo provides a detailed account of how the leaders for religious compromise within the hierarchy of the Church, and some of the most radical reformation sects, all drew upon Valdés’s alumbrado heritage.

Given the significance placed on the alumbrados, the analysis of them is rather thin. Their spiritual individualism, their intense rivalry, and their warped representation via Inquisition trial documentation, makes deconstruction of any systematic theology extremely difficult. Nonetheless, recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized their influence on Valdés’s religious thought.

The second chapter somewhat abruptly switches from Valdés to the penetration of Protestant doctrines into Italy from the north setting up the heart of the study: Valdés’s spirituali circle in Naples and its connections to other spirituali, including powerful cardinals influential in the ecclesiastical hierarchy before and during the Council of Trent. Insightfully, Firpo traces a complex and interwoven grid of communication that he believes peaked in power in the late 1540s after Valdés’s death. The most thought-provoking part of the work is his closely reasoned argument that the demise of the Valdesian movement for internal reform resulted in part from radical Valdesian successors. In 1542, just a few months after Valdés’s death, the Papal Inquistion targeted Valdesians, fearing their influence at the top of the church hierarchy. Firpo notes that the Papal Inquisition, in effect, shaped orthodox theology before the Council of Trent leading more Valdesians into radical doctrines including anti-Trinitarianism and Anabaptism. The Radical Reformation, influenced by Valdés albeit postmortem, was as anathema to mainline Protestants as to inquisitors.

Throughout the book Firpo uses the term Reformation to identify both the work of internal and external Valdesian reformers, and classifies both as heresies. Although acknowledging that Valdés’s religious thought was incompatible with Protestant theology, Firpo claims Valdés had absorbed some Protestant doctrines such as “justification by faith alone” (p. 40). Justification by faith was Valdés’s key doctrine, but he never added Martin Luther’s insertion of “alone” to the scripture. Stefane Pastore has highlighted the significance of the alumbrado doctrine of charity, and Valdés’s doctrine of justification by faith was inextricably tied to his doctrine of charity. Valdés, his father, his older brother, and his heir and nephew all served as stewards of all the houses and hospitals of San Lázaro in the Diocese of Cuenca that cared for the poor sick. Further, as Firpo indicates, many of Valdés’s followers joined the Confraternity of the White Servants of Justice, who supported the Neapolitan Hospital for the Incurables, to which Valdés generously donated in his testament. Throughout Europe, the concept of charity changed in the sixteenth century to martial resources for dealing with a rampant crisis in public health. The alumbrados, the Valdés family, Bernardino Ochino and the Capuchins, as well as the Neapolitan confraternity all seem to have been on the cutting edge of this change.

In conclusion, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation is a major contribution to Reformation studies that should appeal to all scholars and graduate students in the field.