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

by Francis Augustus MacNutt

by Francis Augustus MacNutt

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Introduction 21<br />

eigner. Of his quarters in Saragossa in the first year <strong>of</strong><br />

his classes he wrote: Domuni habeo tola die ebullientibus<br />

Procerum juvenibus repletam.<br />

During the next nine years <strong>of</strong> his Hfe, <strong>Peter</strong> <strong>Martyr</strong><br />

devoted himself to his task and with results that gratified<br />

the Queen and reflected credit upon her choice.<br />

In October<br />

<strong>of</strong> 1492 he had been appointed by the Queen, Contino<br />

de su casa,^ with a revenue <strong>of</strong> thirty thousand maravedis.<br />

Shortly after, he was given a chaplaincy in the royal<br />

household, an appointment which increased both his<br />

dignity and his income. His position was now assured,<br />

his popularity and influence daily expanded.<br />

It would be interesting to know something <strong>of</strong> his system<br />

<strong>of</strong> teaching in what proved to be a peripatetic academy,<br />

since he and his aristocratic pupils always followed the<br />

Court in its progress from city to city; but nowhere in his<br />

correspondence, teeming with facts and commentaries on<br />

the most varied subjects, is anything definite to be gleaned.<br />

Latin poetry and prose, the discourses <strong>of</strong> Cicero, rhetoric,<br />

and church history were important subjects in his curriculiim.<br />

Though he frequently mentions Aristotle in<br />

terms <strong>of</strong> high admiration, it may be doubted whether he<br />

ever taught Greek. <strong>The</strong>re is no evidence that he even<br />

knew that tongue. Besides the Infante Don Juan, the<br />

Duke <strong>of</strong> Braganza, Don Juan <strong>of</strong> Portugal, Villahermosa,<br />

cousin to the King, Don Ifiigo de Mendoza, and the Marquis<br />

<strong>of</strong> Priego were numbered among his pupils.<br />

Nor did<br />

his personal influence cease when they left his classes.<br />

<strong>The</strong> renascence <strong>of</strong> learning did not move with the spontaneous,<br />

almost revolutionary, vigour that characterised<br />

the revival in Italy, nor was <strong>Peter</strong> <strong>Martyr</strong> <strong>of</strong> the pagan-<br />

'<br />

An <strong>of</strong>fice in the Queen's household, the duties and privileges <strong>of</strong> which<br />

are not quite clear. Mari^jol suggests that the contini corresponded to<br />

the gentilshommes de la chambre at the French Court. Lucio Marineo<br />

Siculo mentioned these palatine dignitaries immediately after the two<br />

captains and the two hundred gentlemen composing the royal body-guard.<br />

Consult Mari^jol, Pierre <strong>Martyr</strong> <strong>d'Anghera</strong>, sa vie et ses ceuvres, Paris, 1887.

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