Resting at an inn one day in Basle, in about 1576, the Huguenot minister Jacob Couet found himself dining with men who denied that Christ's death was necessary to satisfy divine justice. Appalled by such heresy, Couet saw his chance to win them for the Reformed religion and brought the conversation round to the atonement. Yet the task he had set himself proved difficult, for he was up against Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), the Italian theologian whose interpretation of Christianity would become notorious across Europe. Couet's stay in Basle lasted just one night; he was to leave early the next morning for Geneva. Unwilling to end the discussion so soon, both he and Socinus agreed to continue their arguments in written form, through correspondence. The papers circulated extensively in manuscript and were finally printed in 1594 as De Jesu Christo Servatore. It became clear that Couet's alarm, his interest, and his keen desire to refute Socinus' heresy were shared by scholars and theologians across the continent. For more than half a century the controversy over Socinianism kept Europe's presses busy. Yet the exact nature of Socinus' ideas has received little recent attention. What follows in this chapter is an attempt to remedy this deficiency and to outline the broad contours of Socinian thought in the early seventeenth century.

Socinus challenged Couet on the question of divine justice and, as we shall see, Socinus' understanding of divine justice was one of the most significant aspects of his thought.