Language, Rhetoric and Reformation in Bernardino Ochino’s Prediche ([Geneva, Jean Gérard], 1542)

Bernardino Ochino of Siena, former Vicar-General of the Capuchin Friars, converted to Protestantism and fled Italy in 1542. After reaching Geneva in the same year, he published a book of Prediche (sermons) together with other works. These sermons were addressed to the Italian people (probably with the aim of promoting the breakthrough of Protestantism in Italy) and show some influence from Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis. While never preached, Ochino’s Prediche have all the features typical of the genre to which they are supposed to belong: personal deixis, questions and exhortations, and repetition of words and clauses. Moreover, Ochino’s sermons show a distinctive rhetorical feature, the frequent use of corrections. Rather than being linked to Ochino’s polemical view of the Catholic Church, this feature relates to his way of conceiving arguments, both before and after his conversion to Protestantism.