Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. We are continuing our confessing like its 1559 series. We've been in Paris and

we've been in Poland and on this episode we will be in Calvin's Geneva but the

particular confession we are talking about is in Italian.

It is the Formulario by Latanzio Ragnoni.

Ragnoni was born in Siena in 1509.

When he was 21, going on 22,

he had his law degree in hand,

and he began with a prominent position in Siena's town government and was on quite an upward trajectory.

But then he met up with Bernardino Ochino, and by 1542, both Ochino and Ragnoni were convinced of the

reformation position against the Roman Catholic position on the doctrine of justification and on the Lord's Supper.

Chino went to Geneva in 1542 and for the next four years he pastored a congregation of Italian refugees there in the city of Geneva.

1545, 1546, he went on to Augsburg and pastored an Italian refugee congregation there at Augsburg.

In 1551, Ragnoni arrived in Geneva. By 1557 he was appointed to be pastor of this

Italian church in the congregation there. He was preaching and he was organizing the congregation. He had

very significant skills as a jurist and brought all of those skills to his work as a pastor.

It was during his brief time as pastor that many missionaries were sent from

Geneva to the Waldensian communities that were scattered throughout Italy.

There was also some challenges for the Italian congregation.

A number of the refugees who came in from Italy were Unitarians. They were denying the doctrine of the Trinity. And so as the end of the year 1558 rolled around,

Ragnoni and Calvin had a conference together and decided it was time to write a doctrinal

confession for the Italian congregation there in the city of Geneva.

It was released in January of 1559. It was entitled

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