Editorial note — DE ORBE NOVO

[Note 1: Ranke, in his Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber, and Rawdon Brown, in his Calendar of State Papers relating to England, preserved in the Archives of Venice, mention Anghera, or Anghiera, as the name is also written, as his birthplace. Earlier Italian writers such as Piccinelli (Ateneo de' Letterati Milanesi) and Giammatteo Toscano (Peplus Ital) are perhaps responsible for this error, which passages in the Opus Epistolarum, that inexplicably escaped their notice, expose. In a letter addressed to Fajardo occurs the following explicit statement: "... cum me utero mater gestaret sic volente patre, Aronam, ubi plæraque illis erant prædia domusque ... ibi me mater dederat orbi." Letters 388, 630, and 794 contain equally positive assertions.]

[Note 2: Mazzuchelli (Gli Scrittori d'Italia, p. 773) states that Peter Martyr was born in 1455, and he has been followed by the Florentine Tiraboschi (Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. vii.) and later historians, including even Hermann Schumacher in his masterly work, Petrus Martyr der Geschichtsschreiber des Weltmeeres. Nicolai Antonio (Bibliotheca Hispana nova, app. to vol. ii) is alone in giving the date as 1559. Ciampi, amongst modern Italian authorities (Le Fonti Storiche del Rinascimento) and Heidenheimer (Petrus Martyr Anglerius und sein Opus Epistolarum) after carefully investigating the conflicting data, show from Peter Martyr's own writings that he was born on February 2, 1457. Three different passages are in agreement on this point. In Ep. 627 written in 1518 and referring to his embassy to the Sultan of Egypt upon which he set out in the autumn of 1501, occurs the following: ... quatuor et quadraginta tunc annos agebam, octo decem superadditi vires illas hebetarunt. Again in Ep. 1497: Ego extra annum ad habitis tuis litteris quadragesimum; and finally in the dedication of the Eighth Decade to Clement VII.: Septuagesimus quippe annus ætatis, cui nonæ quartæ Februarii anni millesimi quingentesimi vigesimi sexti proxime ruentis dabunt initium, sua mihi spongea memoriam ita confrigando delevit, ut vix e calamo sit lapsa periodus, quando quid egerimsi quis interrogaverit, nescire me profitebor. De Orbe Novo., p. 567. Ed. Paris, 1587. Despite the elucidation of this point, it is noteworthy that Prof. Paul Gaffarel both in his admirable French translation of the Opus Epistolarum (1897) and in his Lettres de Pierre Martyr d'Anghiera (1885) should still cite the chronology of Mazzuchelli and Tiraboschi.]

[Note 3: The Visconti, and after them the Sforza, bore the title of Conte d'Anghera, or Anghiera, as the name is also spelled. Lodovico il Moro restored to the place the rank of city, which it had lost, and of which it was again deprived when Lodovico went into captivity.]