GONESIUS (GONIADZKI, CONYZA), PETRUS:
Polish antitrinitarian; b. at Goniadz (32 m. n.w. of
Bielostok) c. 1525; place and date of death unknown. By his opposition to the anti-Catholic
teachings of Francesco Stancaro at Cracow he
attracted
the attention of the bishop and clergy of
Samogitia, who sent him abroad to complete his
education. During the following years he resided
in Germany (especially at Wittenberg), Switzerland (including Geneva), and probably Italy. His
association with Italian antitrinitarians in Switzerland and his study of the writings of Servetus seem
to have inspired him with heretical doctrines concerning the Trinity, while from the Moravian Anabaptists he received the teaching that the Christian
can neither accept office nor engage in war, and
took a hostile attitude toward infant baptism. At
a synod held at Secymin Jan. 22-23, 1556, Gonesius
boldly polendzed against the doctrine of the Trinity,
accepting the Apostles' Creed, but rejecting the
Nicene and Athanasian Symbols. The Father alone
is God; the Logos is not the Son, but the seed of the
Son; and the doctrine of consubstantiality is
rejected. The man Christ was transformed into
God, and God or the Word into man, so that the
Son is
at once subject to the Father, and at the
same time the two are identical. Refusing to retract, Gonesius was sent to Wittenberg in the hope
that Melanchthon might convince him of error.
The treatise which he there prepared, De
communications idiomatum nee dialediea nee physics
ideoque
prorsus nulls, was so filled with the heresy of Servetus that Melanchthon declined to have any further
dealings with him, and dismissed him. Gonesius's
reception in Poland, however, was most unfavorable, and at a synod held in the same year at Pinczow his doctrines were condemned as Arian. Two
years later at the Synod of Brzesk in Lithuania, he
repeated his assertions, and found a strong defender
in the atarost of Samogitia, Jan Kiszka, who appointed him preacher at Wengrow and placed a
press at his disposal for the promulgation of his
views. He now won to his side many of the clergy
and nobility of Podlachia and Lithuania, and in
1565 the Reformed openly divided into trinitarian
and unitarian factions. The latter party soon far
outstripped Gonesius, and he was forced to struggle
in vain against the " Ebionite " and " Artemonite " heresies which denied the preexistence of
Christ. Of the latter part of his life nothing is
known.
A. Hegler†. (K. HOLL.)
Bibliography:
F. S. Rock, Hist.
andidrinitariorum, i. 108,
ii. 1079, Leipsic, 1774-84;
0.
Fock,
Der Socinianismus,
pp. 143 sqq.,
Kiel,
1847.
