PALEARIO, AONIO. - Humanist and heretic (Antonio Paleari or Della Paglia), born at Veroli in 1503 to Matteo and Chiara Jannarilli, died on 3 July 1570. Having lost his parents early, he went to Rome around 1521 to stay with Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini, was at Perugia with Cardinal Ennio Filonardi, his fellow townsman, then alternately at Siena and Padua. He married Marietta Guidotti of Colle Val d'Elsa, where he also resided, and had 5 children by her.
He was in contact with Bembo, with Sadoleto, with Bernardino Maffei and perhaps with Marcello Cervini. In 1540 he was accused by the Dominican friar Vittorio da Firenze concerning purgatory and excused himself with a lost apology. Because of his outward conduct he was accused as a heretic in April-May 1542 before the Curia of Siena, where he was then teaching; he excused himself with an oration which, however, was not circulated. Called to teach at Lucca in 1546, he moved there and remained until 1555, when he was invited by the magistracy of Milan to teach and began his lectures in October, and he had dealings with Basilius Amerbach of Basel, with Celio Secondo Curione, Camillo
Renato, exiles from Italy, and with persons suspected of heresy in the city. Accused before the Milanese Inquisition by the same friar Vittorio da Firenze on 13 January 1559, the trial ended with his acquittal on 23 February 1560. Following the new edition of his works at Basel, which P. would have wished to be anonymous, he was again summoned before the Inquisition in April 1567 and arrested on 20 August. The Roman Inquisition required him to come to Rome and in September he entered Tordinona; the trial lasted until 30 June 1570, when P., as a relapsed heretic, was handed over to the secular arm and hanged and then burned. He died repentant; the charges against him had been justification by faith alone, contempt for purgatory and the monastic life, denial of the Church and of the power of the pontiff.
His works, published during his lifetime at Lyon in 1552 and at Basel in 1566, comprise in three books a poem in hexameters De immortalitate animorum composed in 1532-1535 on the model of Lucretius and on a theme current in the literature of the time; 14 Latin orations on the Ciceronian model, letters, Latin and Italian verses, Italian dialogues on grammatical subjects and the most compromising of all: the Actio in pontifices romanos et eorum asseclas, advocating a renewal of Christianity through a return to the true Gospel, by means of a council, and the extirpation of the abuses of the papacy and the clergy. In it P. does nothing but repeat without originality what was then being repeated in circles favourable to the Protestant Reformation.
Bibliography4 works
Pio Paschini