Pietro Martire Vermigli

Pietro Martire Vermigli , 1500-1562, Italian Protestant reformer, also known as Peter Martyr. He joined the Augustinian canons and in that order received high honors as a scholar and preacher. At Naples he was influenced by Juan de Valdés and, accused of heresy, was forbidden to preach for some time. In 1541 he was appointed prior at Lucca, where he became the center of a group known as the Lucchese Reformers. Vermigli began to publicize Protestant views in such doctrinal matters as the interpretation of the Eucharist solely as a spiritual remembrance. Threatened with arrest, he fled to Pisa, to Switzerland, and then to Strasbourg. At the invitation of Archbishop Cranmer, he went to England, where he was professor at Oxford from 1547 until the restoration of Roman Catholicism by Mary I in 1553. While there he had some influence on episcopal changes and was consulted about the revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Vermigli returned to Strasbourg as professor; he then went to Zürich, where he was professor of theology from 1556 until his death. He was a Protestant representative at the unsuccessful attempt at Catholic-Protestant reconciliation at the Colloquy of Poissy (1561). Vermigli's works were widely read and were influential in developing a Protestant theology.

Peter Martyr (1499–1562), an Anglicized form of ‘Pietro Martire Vermigli’, Reformer. Named after St Peter Martyr, he joined the Augustinians and in 1533 became prior of a house in Naples. He was impressed by reading works of M. Bucer and U. Zwingli; his sympathy with the Reformers led to accusations of error, and in 1542 he fled from Italy. In 1547 he came to England at T. Cranmer's invitation and became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1548). He took part in a disputation on the Eucharist in 1549, was consulted over the BCP of 1552, and was one of the commissioners for the reform of canon law. On Mary's accession, he was put under house arrest but soon allowed to go to Strasbourg; in 1556 he moved to Zurich.

Martyr, Peter (Pietro Martire Anghiera) (1455–1526),Italian chaplain, whose residence in Spain brought him acquaintance with Columbus, da Gama, Cortés, Magellan, and other discoverers. They furnished him with information, supplemented by official documents, for his letters on contemporary history and discovery. His De Orbe Novo (1516), known as the Decades, and his Opus Epistolarium (1530) give him claim to the title “the first historian of America.”