Deaths on March 4

Fausto Sozzini, Italian theologian and educator (b. 1539)

Fausto Paolo Sozzini, also known as Faustus Socinus (Polish: Faust Socyn; 5 December 1539 – 4 March 1604), was an Italian theologian and, alongside his uncle Lelio Sozzini, founder of the Non-trinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church during the 16th and 17th centuries and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.His 1570 treatise De auctoritate scripturae sacrae (published in English in 1732, as A demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion, from the Latin of Socinius) was highly influential on Remonstrant thinkers such as Simon Episcopius, who drew on Sozzini's arguments for viewing the scriptures as historical texts.