“Non c’è altra vera religione che quella di Christo”. Bernardino Ochino e il francescanesimo radicale di fronte alla Riforma

The scope of this essay is to reflect on the attitudes of radical Franciscan circles in the face of the Reformation, examining the representative experience of the preacher and Vicar-General of the Capuchin Order Bernardino Ochino, renowned for his flight into Protestant territory in August 1542. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of Ochinian thought in relation to the theme of Orders and of religious vows, contrasting the works of the Italian period with a series of propagandistic writings dating to the early years of his exile. In opposition to the many «religions» of the «church of Antichrist», Ochino lays claim in these texts to an ideal of Christian perfection independent of the observance of a specific rule and centred, instead, on adherence to the divine will through the «living faith» in the «great goodness of Christ». Conflating motifs deriving from Erasmian and Lutheran criticism of religious vows with the antidogmatic inclinations of Franciscan and Waldensian spirituality, he furthermore declares there to be no «other true religion in the world than that of Christ», expressing such a radical and subjective understanding of Christian liberty and of the sequela Christi, that it soon proves to be incompatible even with the new orthodoxies established by the churches of the Reformation.