Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder


Pier Paolo Vergerio was an Italian humanist, statesman, pedagogist and canon lawyer.

Life

Vergerio was born at Capodistria, Istria, then in the Republic of Venice. He studied rhetoric at Padua, canon law at Florence and at Bologna. He is noted for writing to Pope Innocent VII and Pope Gregory XII. Hans Baron writes in The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 1966 edition, p.134. The catastrophe of 1405 ruined Vergerio's career as a humanist.
Later he became canon of Ravenna and took part in the Council of Constance in 1414. The next year he was one of the fifteen delegates who accompanied the Emperor Sigismund to Perpignan, where an endeavour was made to induce Pope Benedict XIII to renounce his claims. From 1417 to his death he was secretary to the Emperor Sigismund.
In July 1420, he was the chief orator of the Catholic party at the Hussite disputation at Prague. Though never married and probably in minor orders, he was not a priest. He died at Buda, Kingdom of Hungary, aged 73 or 74.
Pier Paolo Vergerio was the first to publish Petrarch's Africa for the public in 1396–1397.

Works

The following of his works have been printed:
His letters, 146 in number, were edited by Luciani. There are still in manuscript: a Latin version of Arrian's "Gesta Alexandri Magni"; a Life of Seneca; a panegyric on St. Jerome; a few comedies, satires, and other poems.
His On Good Manners is characterised by Quentin Skinner as the first treatise about the proper education of princes.