VERGERIO, Pier Paolo the Younger. - Apostate bishop, b. in 1497-98 at Capodistria to Girolamo, a nobleman of that place, d. at Tübingen on 4 Oct. 1565. He studied at Venice, perhaps at the school of Egnazio, then at Padua he took his doctorate in law, taught the notarial art there (1522) and law (1523), and practiced as a lawyer and magistrate.
He was the brother of Giovanni Battista, later bishop of Pola (1532); at first a friend of Girolamo Muzio, of Antonio Elio, later bishop, and of Aretino. In 1526 he married Diana Contarini, who died the following year; he traveled in Dalmatia and acquired a knowledge of the Slovene and Croatian languages. On the death of his brother Aurelio, papal secretary (1532), he entered the Curia as a notary and was sent as papal nuncio to Austria and Bohemia to Ferdinand of Habsburg in 1533, and remained there until after the death of Clement VII, when he was recalled by Paul III. In Feb. 1535 he returned as nuncio to Germany to the King and the princes to prepare for the assembly of the Council, and in Nov. he also met with Luther (Nov. 1535). Toward the end of 1535 he left Germany and was in Rome and Naples; but he fell into disfavor, for which reason he soon became a fierce hater of Farnese. He was appointed bishop of Modrussa in Croatia on 5 May 1536, whence on the following 6 Sept. he was transferred to Capodistria with the burden of a pension in favor of Elio. Consecrated bishop, he did not concern himself with residing there; he was present at Vicenza on 12 May 1538 when the opening of the Council there was being discussed, then he stayed at Mantua with Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1539), then at Ferrara with Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (1540), and went with him to France, where he also met Margaret of Navarre. Francis I sent him as his confidential agent to the Diet of Worms (Nov. 1540), where he met with the best-known heretics; then he went on to Speyer (Jan. 1541) and to Regensburg, and gave rise to suspicion of adherence to heresy. After a futile visit to Rome he went on to Capodistria (July 1541), where he succeeded only in stirring up civil discord, undertaking ill-considered reforms, even defaming the friars of the place and provoking a denunciation of them before the Council of Ten at Venice (Dec. 1544), for which he had to leave Capodistria and take refuge at Ferrara, Mantua, and Brescia (1546). Meanwhile Giovanni Della Casa had arrived as nuncio at Venice (1544) and had to begin the trial against V. (25 Jan. 1545), who was sent to Rome. Therefore on 15 Jan. 1546 V. was cited before the Inquisition. In that month he presented himself at the Council of Trent, but was not admitted because of his conflict with the Pope over his conduct and his slanders, for which reason he alternated his residence between Istria and Venice. Meanwhile in June 1547 the trial against him was concluded and he was sent to Rome. In Dec. the order was dispatched from there to bring him to prison in Rome, where he was judicially cited. V. grew agitated, declared himself a fugitive, and stayed at Padua and elsewhere; however, only on 3 July 1549 did Paul III in consistory declare him deposed from the bishopric. Anticipating the imminent condemnation, on 1 May V. had left Italy, and on 15 May he is found at Chiavenna, then at Chur, at Poschiavo, in June at St. Gallen, and in Dec. at Basel. He immediately began to spread his polemical writings, which he published without place of printing in Italian in order to spread his doctrines more easily. Appointed parish priest at Vicosoprano in Jan. 1550, he held the parish until 1553, thinking of becoming the head of the Italians who were refugees for reasons of religion, like himself. But he was not a man who knew how to win goodwill, quarrelsome and ambitious as he was, a ready denouncer of anyone who would not tolerate his arrogance or did not share his ideas. These had nothing original or systematic about them: at bottom they were those of Luther with a more pronounced iconoclastic tendency, diluted in a multitude of polemical libels written with a crude and popular carelessness, with which he had the constant aim of introducing heresy into Italy, denigrating the papacy, Catholic practices, and the council. Thus he favored the attempts of Primo Truber to spread Protestantism in Slovenia, promoting for that purpose the dissemination of Bibles and pamphlets translated into the Slovene and Croatian languages. He soon fell out with the Swiss heretical pastors and placed himself in the service of Christopher
Duke of Württemberg (1553), keeping to the line of the Confessio Augustana. Thereafter not a year passed in which he did not make a long journey from Tübingen. In Apr.-May 1555 he was among the Grisons. In Oct. 1556 he met at Strasbourg with Sleidanus (v.), to whom he supplied material for his history. Afterward he turned his gaze toward Poland and treated personally with Albert Duke of Prussia and with Prince Radziwill at Vilnius. In the spring of 1558 he dared to reappear in Italy, crossing the Friuli from Pontebba to Duino, spreading books; but at the end of Apr. he was again at Tübingen (cf. P. Paschini, Eresia e riforma cattolica etc., Rome 1951, p. 58 ff.). In the spring of 1559, after having polemicized with Bishop Hosius of Warmia, he was again in Poland, in struggle with the other heretical confessions, which were tending to take root in that nation. In 1560 he hoped to be able to be present at the Council of Trent, and in the years 1561-64 he passed again into the country of the Grisons, until he ended his life at Tübingen. A restless nature, ready to meddle in everything impulsively, so much so that even the Protestants had only too much to complain about him. He was in correspondence with Celio Curione, Bonifacio Amerbach, and with the leading heretics of the various tendencies and for a time also with Elizabeth of England. Muzio (v.), who tried in vain to enlighten him, exchanged with him the Vergeriane in 1550.
His correspondence as nuncio in: Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland; I. Nuntiaturen des V. (1533-36), Gotha 1899, ed. Friedenburg. The first works: De republica veneta, 1526; De pace et unitate Ecclesiae, Venice 1542; Storia di Francesco Spiera, Padua 1548; a tendentious work of propaganda, several times afterward published and translated. Dodici trattatelli di M. Pietro Paolo V., 1550, "to the brothers of Italy." Of a collection of his writings only one volume of Opera appeared in 1563 with the contribution of Albert of Prussia.
Bibliography7 works
Pio Paschini