Pier Paolo Vergerio

Pier ("also:" Pietro) Paolo Vergerio (1498–October 4 1565), was an Italian Reformer.

He was born at Capodistria (Koper), then part of the Venetian Republic and studied jurisprudence in Padua, where he delivered lectures in 1522; he also practiced law in Verona, Padua, and Venice. In 1526 he married Diana Contarini, whose early death was at least a partial cause of his entering upon an ecclesiastical career. Here his advancement was so rapid that as early as 1533 he was papal nuncio to King Ferdinand in Germany; and he was there again in 1535 on business connected with the council. The nuncio's eagerness in the cause of the council brought him into a personal encounter with Martin Luther at Wittenberg.

Although Vergerio achieved little in the way of his appointed task, which was to induce the Protestants to send delegates to the council, Pope Paul III twice dispatched him across the Alps; and meanwhile rewarded him, first with the bishopric of Modrusz in Croatia, next with Capodistria. In the year 1540, Vergerio again entered active diplomatic service; he was at Worms at the religious conference as commissioner for King Francis I of France. It was in memory of the council that he dedicated the tract "De unitate et pace ecclesiae". Like Cardinal Contarini, beside whom he also appeared at the religious conference of Regensburg in 1541, he was charged with having conceded too much to the Protestants. He then resolved to return to Capodistria and pursue thoroughgoing studies.

Vergerio had yet no thought of withdrawing from the Roman Catholic Church, nor did he overstep the line of reformatory attempts within that church, such as were espoused by Contarini and others. But suspicion was awakened; so that December 13, 1544, a denunciation of Vergerio was lodged with the Venetian Inquisition; and although after due examination Vergerio was released, Cardinal Marcello Cervini - then Pope Marcellus II - took advantage of the fact that Vergerio was not yet formally absolved to prevent his participation in the council, for which he had labored so many years.

Vergerio had to return from Riva, and began a publicistic activity which turned more and more against the Roman Catholic Church. In connection with the "Historic" of Francesco Spiera of December 7, 1549, Vergerio directed a sharp reply to the suffragan bishop of Padua; and instead of responding to a second summons, by the Nuncio Della Casa, to appear before the tribunal in Venice, on May 1, 1549, he left Italy forever. The experiences at Spiera's sick-bed had brought Vergerio to inward decision. The twelve treatises which he produced at Basel in 1550 supply information regarding his dogmatic position. Meanwhile the second trial had been conducted in Venice, and was confirmed at Rome, July 3, 1549. Vergerio was convicted of heresy in thirty-four points, deposed from his episcopal dignity, and made subject to arrest. At that time, however, he was in the Swiss Grisons, and became active in a brisk round of polemics.

His themes were the papacy, its origin and policy; the jubilees; saint and relic worship, and the like. Vergerio continued in the Grisons till 1553, when he heeded a call from Duke Christopher of Württemberg to write and travel in behalf of Evangelical doctrine. While he never again set foot in Italy, in 1556 he made his way to Poland, and incidentally conferred with Duke Albrecht of Prussia. He was in Poland in 1559 with the twofold object of meeting the moves of the Nuncio Alois Lipomano, and of working counter to Johannes a Lasco. In vain he sought permission to take part in the religious conference at Poissy in 1560, and he was not allowed to appear at the Council of Trent as the duke's delegate. During all these years he continued his polemical authorship, and worked toward the publication of his "Opera", though but the first volume appeared (1563). He died at Tübingen.

References

*Schaff-Herzog