Pier Paolo Vergerio

Pier Paolo Vergerio ( 1498 – 4 October 1565), the Younger, was an Italian papal nuncio and later Protestant reformer.

Life He was born at Capodistria (Koper), Istria, 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 an ecclesiastical career.

Papal nuncio 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. In 1554 and 1555 he talked Trubar to start the translation of the Bible into Slovene. This resulted in Trubar's translation of the Gospel of Matthew in 1555, which was the first integral translation of a part of the Bible to this language, and later led to Trubar translating the entire New Testament into Slovene. A bust by Oreste Dequel was put on display in 1954 at Vergerio Square in Koper, the main coastal port town of Slovenia.

While Vergerio never again set foot in Italy, in 1556 he made his way to Poland, and conferred with Duke Albrecht of Prussia. He was in Poland in 1559 with the two-fold object of meeting the moves of the Nuncio Alois Lipomano, and of working counter to Johannes a Lasco. He sought permission to take part in the religious conference at Poissy in 1560, but 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 only the first volume appeared (1563). He died in Tübingen.