Pancirolus, Guy

, the son of Albert Pancirolus, a famous lawyer in his time, and descended from an illustrious family at Reggio, was born there April 17, 1523. He learned Latin and Greek under Sebastian Corrado and Bassiano Lando, and made so speedy a proficiency in them, that his father, thinking him fit for the study of the law at fourteen, taught him the first elements of that faculty himself; and Guy studied them incessantly under his father for three years, but without neglecting the belles lettres. He was afterwards sent into Italy, in order to complete his law-studies under the professors of that country. He went first to Ferrara; and, having there heard the lectures of Pasceto and Hyppolitus Riminaldi, passed thence to Pavia, where he had for his master the famous Alciat, and to Bologna and Padua, where he completed a course of seven years study, during which he had distinguished himself in public disputations on several occasions: and the fame of his abilities having drawn the attention of the republic of Venice, he was nominated by them in 1547, while only a student, second professor of the Institutes in the university of Padua. This nomination obliged him to take a doctor’s degree, which he received from the hands of Marcus Mantua. After he had filled this chair for seven years, he was advanced to the first of the Institutes in 1554; and two years after, on the retirement of Matthew Gribaldi, who was second professor of the Roman law, Pancirolus succeeded him, and held this post for fifteen years. At length, having some reason to be dissatisfied with his situation, he resigned it in 1571, when Emanuel Philibert duke of Savoy offered him the professorship of civil law, with a salary of a thousand pieces of gold. Here his patron the prince shewed him all imaginable respect, as did also his son Charles Emanuel, who augmented his appointments with a hundred pieces. The republic of Venice soon became sensible of the loss sustained by his departure, and were desirous of recalling him to a vacant professorship in 1580. This Pancirolus at first refused, and would indeed have been content to remain at Turin, but the air of the place proved so noxious to him, that he lost one eye almost entirely, and was in danger of losing the other; the dread of which induced him to hearken to proposals that were made afresh to him in 1582; and having a salary of a thousand ducats offered to him, with the chair he had so much wished for, he returned to Padua. The city of | Turin, willing to give him some marks of their esteem, at his departure, presented him with his freedom, accompanied with some pieces of silver plate. He then remained at Padua, where his stipend was raised to the sum of twelve hundred ducats. Here he died in June 1599, and was interred in the church of St. Justin, after funeral service had been performed for him in the church of St. Anthony; where Francis Vidua of that university pronounced his funeral oration. He was author of a number of learned works, of which the principal are: 1. “Commentarii in Notitiam utriusque Imperii et de Magistratibus,” Venice, 1593, fol. often reprinted, and inserted in the Roman Antiquities of Gracvius; 2. “De Numismatibus antiquis;” 3. “De quatuordecim Regionibus Urbis Romae,” printed in the Leyden edition of the Notitia, 1608; 4. “Rerum Memorabiliuui jam olim deperditarum, et contra recens atque ingeniose inventarum,” 1599, 2 vols. 8vo, often reprinted and translated. He wrote also a valuable treatise, which was not published till 1637, entitled “De Claris Legum Interpretibus.”!¹