Before long the youth was involved in a painful struggle. His father,—either because he disapproved of a monastic life, the abuses of which, even at Florence, had been exposed by Dante and afterwards by Savonarola; or because he was ambitious and desired to see his son attain a brilliant position—intended giving him an education calculated to advance him in the service of the State. Peter Martyr, on the contrary, inspired by the pious feelings which he had inherited from his mother, wished to dedicate himself to God. His greatest ambition was to learn; his glory was to know; knowledge, and especially the knowledge of divine things, was in his eyes superior to all the world besides. His father commanded in vain and disinherited him in vain; in 1516 the young man entered the monastery of regular canons of St. Augustine at Fiesole, near Florence. After a certain interval of time Peter Martyr felt that he did not learn much in the cloister. He was penetrated with the thought that man ought to make it his object to propagate around him solid knowledge and true light, especially in all that relates to the immortal soul; but to propagate them, he must first possess them. He obtained permission to visit Padua, the seat of a celebrated university. Quiet, steady, diligent, affectionate, and respectful, he was loved and esteemed by all. He venerated the aged as if they were his fathers, and displayed such modesty, affection, and eagerness to do what was pleasing to his comrades, that he always found them, in times of trial, his surest friends.[[842]] Although he was in the age of passions, and lived in cities where temptations were numerous, he was able to preserve that chastity of thought and that purity of conduct so necessary to the happiness and real success of a young man. He studied philosophy, and in the public disputations acquired a singular dialectic skill, of which he afterwards gave striking proofs. But he was in search of something better, namely, divine truth; and therefore began to attend the lectures of the theological professors. He was soon disgusted with them, for they taught nothing but scholastics, and he resolved to seek the road by himself. He frequently spent the greater part of the night in the library of his monastery; he read the Greek authors, and then took up the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian, Athanasius, and Augustine, and began to have a perception that the theology of primitive catholicism was quite different from that of the papacy.
In 1526, his superiors, struck with his talents, called him to the ministry. Peter Martyr preached at Rome, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, Mantua, Bergamo, and other cities. At the same time he gave public lessons in literature and philosophy, particularly on Homer. But he determined to go farther, and, no longer contenting himself with the poets, philosophers, and Fathers of the Church, he desired to know the Holy Scriptures. He was enraptured with them; as the Latin text was not sufficient for him, he read the New Testament in Greek; he next resolved to read the Old Testament also in the original, and meeting with a Jewish doctor named Isaac, at Bologna, he learnt Hebrew of him. Then it was that a new light illumined his fine genius. While he was studying the letter of the Holy Scriptures, the Spirit of God opened his understanding, and displayed before him the mysteries concealed within them.[[843]] His learning, labors, and administrative ability had already attracted general consideration; and the pious sentiments he now displayed helped to increase it. He was appointed Abbot of Spoleto, and in 1530 was summoned to a larger theatre, to Naples, as Prior of St. Peter’s ad Aram, where we shall meet him erelong.
Aonio Paleario.
In 1534 there lived in Sienna a friend of Greek and Latin literature, an enthusiast for Cicero, whose elegant and harmonious periods he translated better than any other scholar, and who was particularly distinguished among the professors of the university for his elevation of soul, love of truth, boldness of thought, and the courage with which he attacked false doctors and sham ascetics. He made a sensation in the world of schools, and, though he had no official post, the students crowded to his lectures. His name was Antonio della Paglia, which he latinized, according to the fashion of the age, into Aonius Palearius. This, again, was Italianized into Aonio Paleario. Among the hills which bound the Roman Campagna, near the source of the Garigliano, stands the ancient city of Veroli; here he was born in 1503, of an old patrician house according to some, of the family of an artisan according to others. In 1520 he went to Rome, where the love of art and antiquity was then much cultivated, and, from the lessons of illustrious teachers, he learnt to admire Demosthenes, Homer, and Virgil. A rumor of war disturbed his peaceful labors. In 1527 the imperial army descended the Alps, and, like an avalanche which, slipping from the icy mountain-tops, rushes down into the valley, it overthrew and destroyed everything in its course. Milan had been crushed, and, when the news reached Rome at the same time with the furious threats uttered by the imperialists against the city of the pontiffs, the young student exclaimed, ‘If they come near us, we are lost!’ Paleario hastily took refuge in the valley where he was born; but even there the spray of the avalanche reached him. When he returned to the papal city, alas! the houses were in ruins, the men of letters had fled. He turned his eyes towards Tuscany, quitted Rome in the latter part of 1529, and after spending some time at Perugia, went on to Sienna, where he arrived in the autumn of 1530.
That ancient city of the Etruscans, transformed into a city of the Middle Ages, at first delighted the friend of letters. Its position in the midst of smiling hills,[[844]] the fertility of its fields, the abundance of everything, the beauty of the buildings, the cultivated minds of its inhabitants—all enraptured him. But erelong he discovered a wound which wrung his heart: the State was torn by factions; an ignorant, impetuous, turbulent democracy had the upper hand; the strength of a people who might have done great things was wasted in idle and barren disputes. The most eminent men wept over the sorrows of their country, and fled with their wives and children from the desolated land. ‘Alas!’ exclaimed Paleario, ‘the city wants nothing but concord between the citizens.’[[845]] He met, however, with an affectionate welcome in the families of a few nobles; and, after visiting Florence, Ferrara, Padua, and Bologna, he returned in 1532 to Sienna, to which his friends had invited him.
Poem On Immortality.
Paleario was a poet: his fancy was at work wherever he went; and, either during his travels or on his return to the Ghibeline city, he composed a Latin poem on the immortality of the soul.[[846]] We find traces of the Roman doctrine in it, especially of purgatory[[847]] and of the queenship of the Virgin.[[848]] His eyes, however, were already turned towards the Reformation. He desired to have readers like Sadolet, and also the sympathy of Germany.[[849]] The poem evidences a soul which, without having yet found God and the peace he gives, sighs after a new earth, a rejuvenated humanity, and a happiness which consists in contemplating the Almighty, the King of men, as the eternal and absolute goodness and supreme happiness.[[850]]
Ere long Paleario took another step. The religious questions by which Italy was so deeply agitated engrossed that eminent mind. He commenced reading not only Saint Augustine but the Reformers and the Holy Scriptures, and began to speak in his lectures with a liberty that enraptured his hearers, but so exasperated the priests that his friend and patron Sadolet recommended him to be more prudent. Paleario, however, boldly crossed the threshold which separates the literary from the Christian world. He received thoroughly the doctrine of justification by faith, and found in it a peace which was to him a warrant of its truth. ‘Since he in whom the Godhead dwells,’ he said, ‘has so lovingly poured out his blood for our salvation, we must not doubt of the favor of Heaven. All who turn their souls towards Jesus crucified, and bind themselves to him with thorough confidence, are delivered from evil and receive forgiveness of their sins.’
Paleario loved the country. Having noticed a villa which had belonged to Aulus Cecina, the friend of Cicero, situated between Colle and Volterra, at the summit of a plateau, whence flowed a stream, watering the slopes, and where a pure air and the tranquility of the fields could be enjoyed,[[851]] the Christian poet bought it, and there, in his beloved Cecignana, on the terrace before the house or among the forest oaks, he passed many a peaceful day, consecrated to serious meditation. He knew that the world on which he fixed his eyes was the creation of the Supreme, the free will of God; that an inward and uninterrupted bond existed between the Creator and his creatures; and rejoiced that, owing to the redemption of Jesus Christ, there would be formed out of its inhabitants a kingdom of God, from which evil would be forever banished.
Paleario’s Love Of Nature.