Jacob Palaeologus

Jacob Palaeologus, also called Giacomo da Chio (c. 1520 – March 23, 1585), was a Dominican friar who renounced his religious vows and became an antitrinitarian theologian. A polemicist against both Calvinism and Papal Power, Palaeologus cultivated a wide range of high-placed contacts and correspondents in the imperial, royal, and aristocratic households in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire; while formulating and propagating a radically heterodox version of Christianity, in which Jesus Christ was not to be invoked in worship, and where differences between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were rejected as spurious fabrications. He was continually pursued by his many enemies, repeatedly escaping through his many covert supporters.

Palaeologus played an active role in the high politics of European religion and diplomacy over a period of twenty years before he lost imperial favour; and having been extradited to the Papal States, was executed for heresy by the Roman Inquisition.

Life

Palaeologus was born at the Genoese colony on Chios, one of the Aegean Islands near the coast of Anatolia, of a Greek father and an Italian mother. Chios had been, since 1347, ruled by the Republic of Genoa and by the 16th century it was a fief of the Giustiniani family. The young man attached himself to Vincenzo Giustiniani (later Master General of the Dominican Order) and entered into the Dominican Order. He was educated in Dominican schools at Genoa and Ferrara, and later at the University of Bologna. He adopted the name "Jacob Palaeologus" and claimed kinship with the former Palaiologos emperors of Byzantium. Although in later life he repeatedly defended this claim, no independent sources survive that support it.