VERGERIO, PIER PAOLO the Younger. — Apostate bishop, born in 1497–98 at Capodistria to Girolamo, a local nobleman; died at Tübingen on 4 October 1565. He studied in Venice, perhaps at the school of Egnazio, then obtained a doctorate in law at Padua, where he taught notarial art (1522) and law (1523), and practised as a lawyer and magistrate.
He was the brother of Giov. Battista, later bishop of Pola (1532); at first he was a friend of Girolamo Muzio, Antonio Elio, later bishop, and the Aretino. In 1526 he married Diana Contarini, who died the following year; he travelled in Dalmatia and acquired knowledge of the Slovene and Croatian languages. Upon 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; he remained there until after the death of Clement VII, when he was recalled by Paul III. In February 1535 he returned as nuncio to Germany, to the King and the princes, to prepare for the convocation of the Council, and in November he also met Luther (November 1535). At the end of 1535 he left Germany and went to Rome and Naples; but he fell into disfavour, and consequently soon became a fierce hater of Farnese. He was appointed bishop of Modrussa in Croatia on 5 May 1536, and from there, on 6 September of the same year, was transferred to Capodistria, with the burden of a pension in favour of Elio. Once consecrated bishop, he did not concern himself with residing in his diocese; he was present at Vicenza on 12 May 1538 when the question of opening the Council there was discussed; he then stayed at Mantua with Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1539), and afterwards at Ferrara with Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1540), accompanying him to France, where he also met Marguerite of Navarre. Francis I sent him as his trusted representative to the Diet of Worms (November 1540), where he met the best-known heretics; he then went to Speyer (January 1541) and Regensburg, and aroused suspicion of adherence to heresy. After an unsuccessful visit to Rome, he went to Capodistria (July 1541), where he did nothing but foment civil discord, undertake ill-considered reforms, defame the local friars, and provoke a denunciation by them before the Council of Ten in Venice (December 1544); as a result, he had to leave Capodistria and take refuge in Ferrara, Mantua, and Brescia (1546). In the meantime Giovanni Della Casa had arrived in Venice as nuncio (1544), and had to begin proceedings against V. (25 January 1545), who was sent to Rome. V. was therefore summoned before the Inquisition on 15 January 1546. That month he sought to present himself at the Council of Trent, but was not admitted because of his conflict with the Pope over his conduct and his slanders; he therefore alternated his residence between Istria and Venice. Meanwhile, in June 1547, the proceedings against him were closed and he was sent to Rome. In December the order was dispatched from there that he be taken to prison in Rome, where he was to be judicially summoned. V. became agitated, declared himself a fugitive, and stayed in Padua and elsewhere; nevertheless, it was only on 3 July 1549, in consistory, that Paul III declared him deposed from the bishopric. Foreseeing his imminent condemnation, V. had left Italy on 1 May; on 15 May he is found at Chiavenna, then at Chur and Poschiavo, in June at S. Gallen, and in December at Basel. He immediately began disseminating his polemical writings, which he published without a place of printing, in Italian, in order more easily to spread his doctrines. Appointed parish priest at Vicosoprano in January 1550, he held the parish until 1553, hoping to become the leader of the Italians who, like him, had taken refuge for reasons of religion. But he was not a man capable of winning affection: quarrelsome and ambitious, he was quick to denounce anyone who could not tolerate his arrogance or did not share his ideas. These had nothing original or systematic about them: essentially they were Luther’s, with a more marked iconoclastic tendency, diluted in a multitude of polemical pamphlets written with crude and popular-minded superficiality. In them his constant aim was to introduce heresy into Italy by denigrating the papacy, Catholic practices, and the Council. Thus he supported Primo Truber’s attempts to spread Protestantism in Slovenia, promoting for this purpose the distribution of Bibles and pamphlets translated into Slovene and Croatian. He soon fell out with the heretical Swiss pastors and placed himself under the authority of Christopher, duke of Württemberg (1553), maintaining the line of the Confessio Augustana. Subsequently, not a year passed without his undertaking a long journey from Tübingen. In April–May 1555 he was among the Grisons. In October 1556 Sleidanus (v.) in Strasbourg, supplying him with material for his history. He then turned his attention towards Poland and dealt personally with Albert, duke of Prussia, and with Prince Radziwill at Vilna. In the spring of 1558 he dared to reappear in Italy, crossing Friuli from Pontebba to Duino and distributing books; but by the end of April he was again in Tübingen (cf. P. Paschini, Eresia e riforma cattolica etc., Rome 1951, pp. 58 ff.). In the spring of 1559, after polemicizing with Bishop Hosius of Warmia, he was again in Poland, struggling against the other heretical confessions that were seeking to establish themselves in that nation. In 1560 he hoped to be able to attend the Council of Trent, and in the years 1561–64 he returned to the land of the Grisons, until he ended his life at Tübingen. An unruly nature, ready to meddle covertly in everything, so much so that even the Protestants had more than enough reason to complain about him. He corresponded with Celio Curione, Bonifacius Amerbach, and the principal heretics of the various tendencies, and for a time also with Elizabeth of England. Muzio (v.), who tried in vain to enlighten him, exchanged the Vergeriane with him in 1550.
His correspondence as nuncio in: Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland; I. Nuntiaturen des V. (1533–36), Gotha 1899, edited by Friedenburg. His earliest works: De republica veneta, 1526; De pace et unitate Ecclesiae, Venice 1542; Storia di Francesco Spiera, Padua 1548; a tendentious work of propaganda, subsequently published and translated several times. 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 support of Albert of Prussia.