Almost nothing is known of Gribaldi's childhood and youth. He was born in Chieri, near Turin. It is likely that he began his legal studies at the university in Turin. Early in his academic career he taught law in France: Toulouse, c.1535-36, Cahors, until 1540; Valence, 1540-43; and Grenoble, 1543-45. Before 1536 he married Georgine Carraxe, heiress of the estate of Farges, 12 miles from Geneva, in the Duchy of Savoy. They had seven children. Wherever he worked during the academic year, throughout his life Gribaldi spent his summers at Farges. Beginning in 1536 Farges was in territory administered by the Protestant Swiss city of Bern. While teaching in France Gribaldi attended mass and was outwardly a Roman Catholic. He left Grenoble when the university there could no longer afford to pay him.

It is unknown how Gribaldi was employed between 1545 and 1548. He spent some of this time in the State of Venice, where made contact with local Protestants, including the antitrinitarian Anabaptist group meeting in Vicenza. At their meetings he became acquainted with Valentine Gentile, Giorgio Biandrata, Bernardino Ochino, and Camillo Renato. He taught at the University of Padua, 1548-55. In Padua the largest group of students were Protestants from Germany and Switzerland. Because of their numbers, and the revenue they brought to the city, Protestants were for a time immune from the inquisition. Gribaldi was a popular lecturer amongst these foreign students.

In 1548 Gribaldi witnessed the death of Francesco Spiera, a Protestant Venetian legal scholar who had been forced by the inquisition to deny his beliefs publicly. In his ensuing last days Spiera suffered greatly from pangs of conscience and was convinced that he was irredeemably damned for having betrayed his faith. This warning event spurred several closet Protestants, including Gribaldi and Bishop Pierpaolo Vergerio, to openly proclaim their new evangelical faith. Gribaldi put together a classic work of Protestant apologetic, The Story of Francesco Spiera, 1549, a book that included testimonies by himself and Vergerio and prefaces by John Calvin and Celio Curione.

Gribaldi was first targeted by the Roman Catholic authorities in 1550 when the newly-installed pope, Julius III, complained to a Venetian ambassador that that new law professor from Piedmont at the University of Padua was spreading heresy. The Venetians, however, managed to delay the full force of the inquisition for several years.

In the summer of 1553 Gribaldi, staying at his Farges estate, visited nearby Geneva. He condemned the ongoing trial of Servetus, saying that no one should be punished for their beliefs, however false. Her asked for an interview with Calvin, but was refused. While visiting the major Swiss cities on his way back to Italy and in his classes in Padua he continued to argue for toleration. That fall he hosted Lelio Sozzini in his home. While Sozzini was there, the publisher Pietro Perna arrived from Basel with news of Servetus's execution and a copy of On the Errors of the Trinity. Having read this, Gribaldi announced that, without Servetus, he might never have known Christ. The praise he accorded Servetus in his lectures helped to convince a number of his Polish students, including Peter Gonesius and Michael Zaleski, to become antitrinitarians. They later followed him when he took a teaching post in Germany.

Gribaldi probably helped Curione to compose the pseudonymous protest pamphlet, Apologia pro Michaele Serveto, 1554. It was most likely Gribaldi, drawing on material from Book 1 of Servetus's Errors, who concocted "Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" ("Declarationis Jesu Christi filii Dei") and "On the True Knowledge of God and His Son" ("De vera Dei et filius eius cognatione"), works attributed to Servetus, but which reflect Gribaldi's style and antitrinitarian thought more than they do the theology of Servetus. Alphonsus Lyncurius Tarraconensis, the fictitious author of Apologia, was revived to provide a preface to "Declarationis." These works were smuggled into Poland in manuscript form by Gribaldi's students.

In "Preliminary Exercises on the Christian Religion" ("Religionis Christianae progymnasmata"), Gribaldi wrote that "it is impious and blasphemous to call the true and highest God, who is completely uncompounded spirit, a trinity God or a triad God." His statement of faith was, "There is one true and highest God, namely, the eternal Father, from whom are all things, and one Jesus Christ, the son of the one God, through whom are all things." Lest he be thought to be proclaiming two Gods, he said that "they are naturally one, by a unity and unanimity of mutual love."

Gribaldi was more orthodox than Servetus, however, in his belief in the doctrine of vicarious atonement. In "Preliminary Exercises" he said that God "reconciled the world to himself through the Son." The pseudo-Servetus work, "Declarationis," reflects the same aspect of Gribaldi's theology: "This redemption and reconciliation was accomplished by means of his only begotten son, who, absolutely obedient to the Father, out of ineffable love, like a spotless lamb, offered himself up as a willing sacrifice for the sins of humanity." Though an avowed disciple of Servetus, Gribaldi went his own way, reinterpreting and developing Servetus's ideas as he spread them amongst those who would later carry them to Poland.

On his next visit to Geneva, in 1554, Gribaldi preached about the unity of God at a service of the Italian congregation, and, upon request, left his hearers with a written statement of his beliefs on the subject, "Gribaldi to the Italian Brethren" ("Gribaldus fratribus italis"). In consequence some of the Swiss reformers began to question his orthodoxy. Meanwhile, in Venice, the Jesuits campaigned to have him dismissed from his post at the University of Padua. Fearing that the state would no longer be able to protect him from the inquisition, in 1555 he accepted a professorship at the university in Tübingen, Germany. Passing through Geneva on his way from Farges to Zürich and Tübingen, he was pressured by Calvin to explain his doctrines at a meeting of the Geneva ministers. When Calvin refused to shake hands until they agreed on doctrine, Gribaldi immediately departed. Calvin then had him summoned and examined by the City Council. Under interrogation Gribaldi inadvertently revealed some of his heretical ideas. The Council nevertheless ruled that, as a foreigner, he should be allowed to depart the city unmolested.

In Zürich his friend, the relatively tolerant Reformer Heinrich Bullinger, convinced Gribaldi to deflect suspicion by composing a confession of orthodoxy. This reassured another friend of his, Vergerio, who then conducted him to Tübingen. There, in addition to teaching, Gribaldi helped his new employer, the Lutheran political leader Duke Christoph of Württemberg, in a lawsuit filed against the Hapsburgs. Meanwhile Vergerio visited Poland. What he learned about Gribaldi's influence there led him to tell the Duke, "he nourishes new and most pernicious opinions." By 1557 the Duke had also been provided with Calvin's version of Gribaldi's activities in Geneva.

Shortly after he barely escaped assassination in Bern—he was stabbed at the behest of the disgruntled losers of the lawsuit over the Farges estate—Gribaldi was investigated by the Tübingen university senate. Because they were unsatisfied with the evasive answers he gave when asked about his theology, the senate required him to subscribe to the Athanasian creed. He was allowed three weeks to meet this demand in a way that would satisfy his conscience. Just before the deadline, he fled to Switzerland. When the Duke had Gribaldi's library searched, investigators discovered a heretical manuscript work, "On the true Knowledge of God" ("De vera cognitione Dei"), with annotations by Curione. The Duke sent this document to Bern, along with a record of the senate hearing.

Accordingly the Bernese government decided to closely monitor Gribaldi's activities. As soon as it was clear to them that he was continuing to disseminate antitrinitarian theological writings, they had him arrested and imprisoned. He was sentenced to banishment and his estate was confiscated. In an attempt to have this decision reversed, he met with Bern's ministers and signed a confession affirming the Athanasian Creed and denying his own radical doctrines. But, as the government doubted his sincerity, they exiled him anyway. After the death his wife during the following year, he petitioned to be allowed to return to Farges. This was granted, on condition that he keep his religious opinions to himself. Discredited, he fell out of communication with his former Protestant friends.

Gribaldi accepted a new offer to teach at the University of Grenoble in 1559. Partisans of a rival professor, however, soon complained about Gribaldi's unorthodoxy. Early in the following year, under pressure from the French government, the university reluctantly dismissed him. In that year sovereignty over the territory containing Farges reverted back to the Catholic Duchy of Savoy. Nevertheless the Protestant reformers continued to keep a wary eye on Gribaldi. In 1563 Calvin was advised that he was preparing a commentary on the Institutes. Before he could cause any further trouble to either Catholic or Protestant authorities, he died of plague at Farges.

Gribaldi wrote many works in the field of jurisprudence. He wrote The Way and the Approach to Study (De methodo et ratione studendi, 1541) for his students. His few extant credited religious writings are collected in Delio Cantimori and Elisabeth Feist, Per la storia degli eretici Italiani del Secolo XVI in Europa (1937). A rather unreliable transcription of Declarationis Jesu Christi filii Dei is printed in volume 2 of Miguel Servet, Obras Completas (2004). There is an English translation of the discourse, De vera Dei et filius eius cognatione, by George Huntston Williams in Stanislas Lubienicki, History of the Polish Reformation and Nine Related Documents (1995). Apologia pro Michaeli Serveto is in Calvini Opera, vol. 15 (1876), and is translated by David Pingree as "The Apologia of Alphonsus Lyncurius," in John Tedeschi, ed., Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus (1965). Gribaldi's letter to the Italian brethren is in Calvini Opera, vol. 15. Information about Gribaldi can be gathered from Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. 2 (1850); Frederic C. Church, The Italian Reformers, 1534-1564 (1932); Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and Its Antecedents (1945); George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (1962); and Uwe Plath, Calvin und Basel in den Jahren 1552-1556 (1974).

Article by Peter Hughes