VERGERIO, PIER PAOLO il Vecchio. - Scholar and diplomat, born in Capodistria around 1370, died in Budapest on 8 July 1444.
He studied in Padua; in 1386 he went to Florence, where he befriended Coluccio Salutati. In 1388–90 he taught logic in Bologna and composed the comedy *Paulus*. From 1390 to 1396 he was in Padua at the court of the Carrara lords, when Petrarch’s fame was still alive; he published Petrarch’s poem *Africa*, addressed two orations to Francesco Novello, and composed seven *Orationes pro s. Hieronymo*. In 1398–99 he studied Greek in Florence with Chrysoloras. Returning to Padua in 1400, in 1402 he composed the treatise *De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis* on the education of young nobles, which he dedicated to Ubertino di Carrara; for this he is ranked among pedagogists. He compiled a *Vita Petrarchae* (printed by A. Solerti in *Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio*, Milan n.d., pp. 294 ff.) and a *Historia Principum Carrariensium* (in *RIS*, *Scriptores*, XVI, 113–84); moreover, in March 1405 he earned doctorates in arts, medicine, and law. After the fall of the Carrara in that year, he moved to Rome, entered the Curia, and turned to ecclesiastical subjects, composing two discourses on the schism. In 1414 he was at Constance with John XXIII and entered the Chancery of Emperor Sigismund, who created him *poeta laureatus*; he accompanied the emperor to Perpignan in 1415 and then, in July 1420, attended the disputation with the Hussites in Prague. A writing of his, *Pro reintegranda unione Ecclesiae*, is in *Archivio storico per Trieste, Istria, Trentino* (1882, pp. 351–74); he was never a priest. After leaving Constance in 1418, he did not return to Italy.
BML: *Epist. di P. P. V.*, Venice 1887; A. P. Pierantoni, *P. P. V.*, Chieti 1920; L. Smith, *Epistolario di P. P. V.*, Rome 1934 (with biography and various writings); C. Marchente, *Ricerche intorno al «De principibus Carrariensibus et gestis eorum liber» attribuito a P. P. V., Seniore*, Padua 1946. Pio Paschini
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PEDAGOGY. - The *De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis*
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