, was born at Mantua in 1490, and at the age of sixteen he entered
, was
born at Mantua in 1490, and at the age of sixteen he
entered into a Benedictine monastery in his native city,
where his talents and industry obtained for him a high reputation for proficiency in literature and sacred criticism,
while the excellence of his disposition rendered him an
object of general esteem. He was selected to fill the most
important and distinguished stations in his order, and he
was afterwards chosen by pope Paul IV. as visitor of the
Benedictine foundations in Spain. When he had performed this task, he had returned to his native country,
and devoted himself almost wholly to theological studies,
in the course of which he conceived the hopeless project
of uniting Catholics and Protestants in one communion.
After a life spent in the service of his fellow creatures, he
died in 1559, in his seventieth year. He left behind him
many theological works, of which the principal were “Commentaries upon the Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, and
the first Epistle of St. John,
” published in Commentary upon the Psalms.
” These works
must have had more than common merit in respect to liberality of sentiment, as they were prohibited by his church.
His “Commentary on the Psalms
” indeed was reprinted
in writes purely and nobly
” and Thuanus had reason to say,
“that no man will ever repent the reading of his Commentaries.
”