PETER SABINUS. - Humanist, disciple and colleague of Pomponio Leto (1429-98), he was a professor of Greek and Latin literature at the Roman Archigymnasium, as is evident from the faculty roster of 1514.
He is chiefly known as the author of an important epigraphic collection, compiled toward the end of the 15th century. He may be said to have been the first to gather and save from oblivion many Christian inscriptions preserved in churches, public buildings, and private dwellings. In a letter to Coccio Sabellico, he notes that he had largely recorded inscriptions he himself had seen and transcribed, as well as others taken from the collections of Ciriaco of Ancona (1319-1455) and Fra Giocondo of Verona (1435-1515). The collection was dedicated in 1495 to Charles VIII, King of France, shortly after the invasion of Italy. An exemplar of the original collection is preserved in a codex of the Marciana Library (Lat. X, 195, ff. 94-324), which contains: inscriptions by Fra Giocondo (ff. 1-93), the Sabinian collection divided into two parts: the first (ff. 94-274) comprising some twenty Christian inscriptions, along with many pagan ones from Italy and Rome, and the second (ff. 235-324) containing 245 inscriptions, all Christian. The collection was published by G. B. de Rossi from a Marciana codex (X, 195), in *Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores*, II, 1, Rome 1888, pp. 407-55.