De Orbe Novo, The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d'Anghera Vol. 1 (of 2)

Introduction 9
virtues of civic probity, self-restraint,
and frugality, that
characterised the best society of Greek and Rome in their
florescence. These same men lived on terms of close
intimacy with princes of the Church, on whose bounty
they throve, and by degrees niimbers of them even entered
the ranks of the clergy, some with minor and others with
holy orders. To their labours, the world owes the recovery
of the classic literature of Greece and Rome from
oblivion, while the invention and rapid adoption of the
printing-press rendered these precious texts forever
indestructible and accessible.
Into this brilliant, dissolute world of
intellectual activity,
Peter Martyr entered, and through it he passed
unscathed, emerging with his Christian faith intact and
his orthodoxy untainted. He gathered the gold of classical
learning, rejecting its dross; his morals were above
reproach and calumny never touched his reputation.
Respected, appreciated, and, most of all, beloved by his
contemporaries, his writings enriched the intellectual
heritage of posterity with inexhaustible treasures of
original information concerning the great events of the
memorable epoch it was his privilege to illustrate.
General culture being widely diffused, the pedantic imitations
of
antiquity applauded by the preceding generation
ceased to confer distinction. Latin still held its
supremacy but the Italian language, no longer reputed
vulgar, was coming more and more into favour as a vehicle
for the expression of original thought. Had he remained
in Italy Martyr might well have used it, but his remioval
to Spain imposed Latin as the language of his voluminous
compositions.
Four years after his arrival in Rome, a Milanese noble,
Bartolomeo Scandiano, who later went as nimcio to Spain,
invited Peter Martyr to pass the summer months in his
villa at Rieti, in company with the Bishop of Viterbo.
In the fifteenth letter of the Opus Epistolarum he recalls