What was hidden behind the intriguing title exalting Satan’s Stratagems? This chapter aims to answer this question in an attempt to understand the extraordinary success of Jacob Acontius’s masterpiece and contextualize its line of thinking. The reader will find a careful reconstruction of the author’s intellectual biography (ca 1520–1566) from his early career as a notary in Trent, Italy to his conversion to Lutheranism in the mid-sixteenth century, his escape from the peninsula and his sojourn in England as an engineer. Acontius soon became involved in religious controversies in England in the early 1560s, which is when he wrote his major work, Satan’s Stratagems, arguing consistently for an extremely broad and tolerant vision of Christianity. The book is analyzed in detail and comparisons are made with his previous publications and other major contemporary books on similar topics.
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