Blandrata (or Biandrata), Giorgio

Blandrata (Or Biandrata), Giorgio, an Italian physician, one of the first of the modern Arians, was born at Saluzzo about 1515. He at first practiced medicine with success. Having exposed himself to the Inquisition by his free criticisms upon Romanism, he fled to Geneva, where, in his conversations with Calvin, he showed that the germs of Socinianism were already in his mind. From there he repaired first to Germany, and subsequently to Poland, where he was elected one of the superintendents of the Helvetian churches of Little Poland, and successfully spread his Antitrinitarian views. He travelled in Poland, Germany, and Transylvania, and becoming physician to the Queen Bona, of Savoy, he communicated his errors to the King of Poland, Sigismund Augustus. He afterward went to the court of John Sigismund, prince of Transylvania, and in 1566 he held at Weissenburg (ABAa Julia) a public conference with the Lutherans, and with such success that he persuaded that prince and many of the nobility of the province to embrace his HERESY. SEE TRANSYLVANIA. After the death of Sigismund he returned once more to Poland, and became physician to the king, Stephen Bathori. Socinus complained that Blandrata, in his later years, favored the Jesuits. He is said to have been at last strangled by his nephew in a quarrel between 1585 and 1592.-Biog. Univ. 4:572; Mosheim, Ch. Hist. cent. 16, sec. 3, pt. ii, ch. 4:§ 13; Henke, G. Blandratse confessio Antitrinitaria, ejusque confutatio, auctore Matthia Flacio ; Landon, Eccl. Diet. s.v.