VERGERIO, PIETRO PAOLO

born July 23, 1370, Capodistria, Istria [now Koper, Slovenia] died July 8, 1444/45, Budapest byname Vergerio The Elder, Italian Vergerio Il Vecchio Italian educator whose treatises on Humanistic education greatly influenced educational methods and curriculum in Renaissance Italy. Vergerio studied at Padua, Florence, and Bologna and obtained degrees in the arts and medicine. From 1390 to 1406 he was professor of logic at Padua. It was during this period (1392?) that he composed De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis (On the Manners of a Gentleman and Liberal Studies), the most influential of Italian Renaissance educational treatises, which passed through 40 editions before 1600; in it he advocated Latin as the core of liberal education and the revival of the study of Greek, as well as the pursuit of a broad range of academic subjects and physical education. From 1406 to 1417 Vergerio was papal secretary to popes Innocent VII and Gregory XII and then entered the service of the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund, for whom he translated the Anabasis of Arrian into Latin. Among his several other works are On Restoring Unity in the Church and a Life of Petrarch.