Un interlocutore dimenticato nel dibattito religioso di metà Cinquecento: Basilio Millanio (alias Ercole Cattaneo?)

Basilio Milanio was a Benedictine monk who led an obscure life among the main north-Italian convents of his order. The only trace he left consists of two elusive writings that he published in Basel during the 1540’s, under a pen name shared by other Italian religious dissenters: Philalethes (lover of the truth). The first work, Ad eos qui iniuria de natura queruntur (Against Those Who Blame Nature, 1545), is a denunciation of Calvinist predestination doctrine, which he compares to astrological determinism. However, instead of offering a traditional Catholic alternative, the text emphasizes the role of God’s grace for the salvation of man. The other one, De passione Christi (On the Passion of Christ, 1549), conveys a simple piety based on the imitation of Christ, but conceals a radical, symbolical view of Eucharist and the affirmation of the possibility for the believer of simulating his own religious beliefs. What is the place of these two apparently so harmless works in the religious dispute of the time? How could a Catholic monk, in the most important typographical centre of Protestant Europe, publish two works whose aim was sometimes even more radical than Protestants themselves could have expected? A careful reading of these texts reveals many similarities with two of the most significant books of Italian Reformation: Il Beneficio di Cristo (The Benefit of Christ, 1542) and, most of all, the Epistola alli cittadini di Riva (Letter to Riva Citizens, 1550). Both these works were written by brethren of Basilio Millanio: respectively Benedetto Fontanini (with the collaboration of Marcantonio Flaminio, who was also related to Millanio) and the visionary prophet Giorgio Siculo. While the Beneficio di Cristo was a best seller and Siculo’s radical predication attracted a lot of enthusiastic followers, Millanio’s works remained unheard and their author spent the last years of his life translating hagiographical works in behalf of the Counter-Reformation bishop Alvise Lippomano and dedicating an Apocalypse commentary to the ‘‘internal Inquisitor’’ of his order Girolamo Scroguerro. This is, at least, what we draw from a superficial analysis of his life. This article suggests, however, the probable identification between Basilio Millanio and the ex Benedictine don Basilio da Brescia, alias Ercole Cattaneo, tried by the Venetian Inquisition for being one of the most active among Giorgio Siculo’s followers. This identification could help to loose the knot between a life lived in such a hidden way and the composition of works presenting many similarities with a mystical adventure, who challenged religion itself.