Caraccioli, Galeazzo

CARACCIOLI, cɑ̄-rɑ̄´chî-ō´´lî, GALEAZZO (Marchese di Vico): Italian Protestant; b. at Naples 1517; d. at Geneva July 5, 1586. He was the most distinguished of the Italians who sought a refuge at Geneva when the reaction came over Italy; his mother was a sister of Pope Paul IV., he was in the royal service, and his wife was a Cáraffa. At Naples he became acquainted with Juan de Valdès and Peter Vermigli, who at that time preached there, and was deeply impressed by these reformatory men. The evangelical ideas which he imbibed at Naples and which caused him many struggles in his family and in society, were deepened by a journey to Germany in 1544. He found it impossible to make open profession at Naples; the efforts to introduce the Inquisition after the Spanish pattern were frustrated by the resistance of the people in 1547 bordering on a revolution; but, nevertheless, the vice-regent urged the suppression of every anti-Roman opinion. Caraccioli 412decided to forsake fatherland, position, and possessions rather than to continue as a hypocrite. Pretending to go to the imperial court at Augsburg, he left Italy, his wife refusing to follow him. He reached Geneva June 8, 1551, and joined the Italian community which was founded there in 1542. All efforts of his people to bring him back, renewed by Paul IV., after his accession in 1555, were in vain. Toward the end of 1555 he became a citizen of Geneva. He kept up correspondence with his wife and his son and in 1558 met them once more in a little isle of the Adriatic Sea and in the paternal castle at Vico; as they refused to follow him, in spite of his entreaties, he left them forever. The consistories of Geneva and other places declared his marriage dissolved, and in 1560 he married again.

K. Benrath.

Bibliography: His life was written by N. Balbani, Historia della Vita di G. Caraccioli, Geneva, 1587, republished, Florence, 1875.