Celio Secondo Curione: Epistola ad Henricum Bullingerum

Celio Secondo Curione, the Italian humanist and religious exile who taught at Basel, answers Bullinger’s worry that a recent letter of admonition might have offended him. Far from it, he writes: the letter showed him Bullinger’s love more clearly than ever, since it belongs to true friendship to admonish freely but not harshly and to accept admonition patiently. He would rather be warned, even rebuked and corrected, by a friend than by an enemy. He did not reply sooner only because he thought it unnecessary. Later he describes the cares and the poverty that force him to toil at paid work day and night at the cost of his health, and says he is writing from his bed, ill with a painful catarrh.

The letter is an attractive example of humanist friendship between the Italian exile and Bullinger, expressed in polished Latin with classical commonplaces such as carrying owls to Athens. It also gives a glimpse of the hard material circumstances of the Italian refugees, even one as learned as Curione, who supported his family by teaching and literary work. Curione later became known as an advocate of religious toleration.