PETER MARTYR D'ANGHIERA. - Historian and geographer, born at Arona of a modest family in 1459, he came, not yet twenty years old, to Rome, where he was in the service of Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giovanni Arcimboldo, then of the ambassador of Castile to the Holy See, the Count of Tendilla. Esteemed for his talent and culture, he went with Tendilla to Spain in 1487 and, welcomed in court circles, took part in the last phase of the war against the Arabs of Granada.
After the capture of that city, he took up the clerical habit and was counselor and chaplain to Queen Isabella, remaining for the rest of his life in Spain (except for a journey to Egypt, where in 1501 he successfully carried out a delicate mission); and thus he was able to follow closely the entire heroic age of the great geographical discoveries and the events connected with them, in which he took a particular interest. He knew personally Columbus, Vespucci, Vasco da Gama, Sebastian Cabot, Magellan, Hernán Cortés. With Queen Isabella he cooperated in the noble attempt to raise the Spanish people from ignorance and spiritual misery; from 1518 he was a member of the Council of the Indies. He died in 1526 at Granada and was buried there in the Cathedral.
His work Decades de Orbe Novo embraces, in 8 books, thirty-four years of the history of American discoveries, from the first enterprise of Columbus, which aroused his admiration. The 1st ed., containing only the first Decade, was published without his knowledge in 1511; in 1516 three Decades saw the light; the complete work was put into print in 1530, when the author was already dead. The Decades are a historical source of the very first order, because P. M. was a witness or had direct knowledge of the facts narrated. But of great importance too is the copious correspondence with numerous acquaintances and friends (Opus epistolarum; 1530): although some letters may be literary exercises or addressed to fictitious correspondents, the greater part is certainly authentic and some letters, such as those that spread in Italy the first news of Columbus's voyage, possess an exceptional value. Noteworthy too is the Legatio Babylonica, that is, the account of the mission to Egypt. A distinguished humanist, a conscientious historian, a statesman imbued with the Christian spirit, P. M. is one of the noblest figures of the milieu of the Spanish court in the 16th century.