5] with a revenue of thirty thousand
maravedis. Shortly after, he was given a chaplaincy in the royal
household, an appointment which increased both his dignity and his
income. His position was now assured, his popularity and influence
daily expanded.

[Note 5: An office in the Queen's household, the duties and
privileges of which are not quite clear. Mariejol suggests that the
_contini_ corresponded to the _gentilshommes de la chambre_ at
the French Court. Lucio Marineo Siculo mentioned these palatine
dignitaries immediately after the two captains and the two hundred
gentlemen composing the royal body-guard. Consult Mariejol, _Pierre
Martyr d'Anghera, sa vie et ses oeuvres_, Paris, 1887.]

It would be interesting to know something of his system of teaching in
what proved to be a peripatetic academy, since he and his aristocratic
pupils always followed the Court in its progress from city to city;
but nowhere in his correspondence, teeming with facts and commentaries
on the most varied subjects, is anything definite to be gleaned. Latin
poetry and prose, the discourses of Cicero, rhetoric, and church
history were important subjects in his curriculum. Though he
frequently mentions Aristotle in terms of high admiration, it may be
doubted whether he ever taught Greek. There is no evidence that he
even knew that tongue. Besides the Infante Don Juan, the Duke of
Braganza, Don Juan of Portugal, Villahermosa, cousin to the King, Don
Inigo de Mendoza, and the Marquis of Priego were numbered among his
pupils. Nor did his personal influence cease when they left his
classes. The renascence of learning did not move with the spontaneous,
almost revolutionary, vigour that characterised the revival in Italy,
nor was Peter Martyr of the paganised scholars in whom the cult
for antiquity had undermined Christian faith--else had he not been
acceptable to Queen Isabella.

Some authors, including Ranke, have described him as occupying the
post of Secretary of Latin Letters. Officially he never did. His
knowledge of Latin, in a land where few were masters of the language
of diplomatic and literary intercourse, was brought into frequent
service, and it was no uncommon thing for him to turn the Spanish
draft of a state paper or despatch into Latin.[6] He refused a chair
in the University of Salamanca, but consented on one occasion to
deliver a lecture before its galaxy of distinguished professors and
four thousand students. He chose for his