Deus Est Caritas: The Voice of Gabriele Biondo on Personal Justification and Church Reform

The book examines the life and the writings of Gabriele Biondo, a secular priest who lived in the little town of Modigliana between the second half of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century. Through a careful examination of his writings and the sources he used, this book allows the reader to obtain a more precise understanding of Biondo, his background, his life, his movements, the difficulties that he encountered (mainly with the ecclesiastical authorities and the other members of the clergy, but also with civic leaders), and the main events of his life. Additionally, Biondo was the leader of a minor following formed by nuns, secular women, and laymen. Therefore, this book illustrates Biondo's pastoral activity, the ideas and principles that supported his actions, and the objectives he was pursuing. Given these various objectives, this book is of interest to those scholars and academics interested in the religious tensions that swept through Europe in the years immediately preceding the Protestant Reformation and who, consequently, seek to investigate Biondo's personal and complex answer to these tensions.


Vito Guida obtained his master's degree in Cultural and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute with a dissertation on the Sacri Monti, in which he explored how their notion gradually shifted from a geographical structure, which attempted to reconstruct the loca sancta, to an interior event that concentrated on personal suffering. In the following years, he continued his doctoral research on religious piety in Early Modern Italy while focusing on the writings of the secular priest Gabriele Biondo. His focus has been on the relationship between philosophy and theology of the medieval and early modern periods, and on the interaction of cultural phenomena and intellectual ideas. Particularly, he has studied the development of theology within the Franciscan and Dominican areas and investigated the conflictual relationship between ecclesiastical institutions and laity. He has directed two seminars: the first was dedicated to the diatribe between Erasmus and Luther about free-will; the second examined various traditional works on predestination and grace by Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas. He is currently interested in the writings and pastoral activities of Giovanni Dominici, focusing on his Venetian period as a teacher of theology and leader of the Observance within the Dominican Order.