(1st. Enc. Catt.)
Greek inscriptions from the 5th century, including one mentioning a deacon. It is doubtful whether the fragment now in the Museo Indico is Christian (A. Ferrara, *Epigrafia sicula pagana e cristiana*, in *Riv. arch. crist.*, 18 [1941], pp. 205 ff. and fig. 39).
Enrico Josi
PALERIO, AONIO — Heretical humanist (Antonio Paleario or Della Paglia), born at Veroli in 1503 to Matteo and Chiara Jannarilli, died 3 July 1570. After losing his parents early, he moved to Rome about 1521 under Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini, then to Perugia with Cardinal Ennio Filonardi, a fellow townsman, later alternating between Siena and Padua. He married Mairetta Guidotti of Colle Val d’Elsa, where he also stayed, and had five children by her.
He was in touch with Bembo, Sadoleto, Bernardino Maffei, and perhaps Marcello Cervini. In 1540 he was accused by the Dominican Fra Vittorio da Firenze concerning purgatory and excused himself with a lost apology. For his outward conduct he was charged as a heretic in April–May 1542 before the Curia of Siena, where he was then teaching; he excused himself with an oration that, however, was not circulated. Called to teach at Lucca in 1546, he went there and remained until 1555, when the Milanese magistracy invited him to teach and he began lectures in October, forming ties with Basilio Amerbach of Basel, Celio Secondo Curione, Camillo Renato—Italian exiles—and persons suspected of heresy in the city. Accused before the Milan Inquisition by the same Fra Vittorio da Firenze on 13 January 1559, the trial ended in acquittal on 23 February 1560. After the new edition of his works at Basel, which Palerio wished to be anonymous, he was again cited before the Inquisition in April 1567 and arrested on 20 August. The Roman Inquisition demanded him in Rome, and in September he entered the Tor di Nona; the trial lasted until 30 June 1570, when Palerio, as a relapsed heretic, was handed over to the secular arm and hanged, then burned.
He died penitent; the chief counts against him were justification by faith alone, contempt for purgatory and monastic life, denial of the Church and the pope’s power.
His works, published in his lifetime at Lyon in 1552 and at Basel in 1566, include in three books a poem in hexameters, *De immortalitate animorum* (composed 1532–1535 in Lucretius’ manner on a topic then current in literature); fourteen Latin orations in the Cisternonian style, letters, Latin and Italian verse, Italian dialogues on grammatical subjects, and the most compromising piece, the *Actio in pontifices romanos et eorum asseclas*, advocating a renewal of Christianity by a return to the true Gospel through a council, the uprooting of papal and clerical abuses. In it Palerio does no more than repeat, without originality, what was then being said in circles favourable to the Protestant Reformation.