The toponym found associated both with P’s Latin and vernacular names and the testimony of G. M. Mazzuchelli (Gli Scrittori d’Italia [Brescia 1753] 1.1.332) suggest that he came from Trezzo sull’Adda (now in città metropolitana di Milano). Of his education and degrees nothing is yet known. Rosa first mentions P. as editor of an edition Gratian (Venezia 1479) and of Guido de Baysio’s Rosarium (Venezia 1480). P. contributed, along with one N. Soranzo, notes to the latter, which also appear in later editions of the work (Lyon 1513; Venezia 1559, 1580, 1601).

In the early decades of the 16th century P. was in Trino di Monferrato (prov. Vercelli), where Guglielmo IX Paleologo put him in charge of the publication of legal works by the printer Giovanni Giolito de’Ferrari. We find P. in 1520s in Venice engaged in anti-Lutheran polemic. A letter of Clement VII to Tommaso Campeggi, nuncio in Venice, commends P’s efforts and those of his son Giambattista in this regard.

Three anti-Lutheran treatises of P’s, Tractatus aureus de pontifica potestate, De thesauro ecclesie (on indulgences), and De confessione, all contra Lutheranos errores and dedicated to Clement VII, were published posthumously by his son with another dedication to Paul III (Venezia 1545; TUI 1584 t. 13.1). P. refers to his treatise De concilio, written for Julius II, and probably dealing with the events that lead to the Fifth Lateran Council in the early years of the 16th century, but this treatise seems to have been lost. A Consultatio de concilio generali against appeals to a general council and dated in 1526 survives in BAV, Vat. lat. 3664. 1526 is the last known date in which in which P. is recorded as alive.

Literature on P. is sparse. That cited by Rosa is now all more than a century old. Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text,1470-1600 (Cambridge studies in publishing and printing history; Cambridge 1994) 10, mentions P’s editorial work, dating it back to as early as 1472 and putting him fairly far down in the editorial chain, but Richardson may not have realized how young P. must have been at the time.

Source: M. Rosa, in DBI (2 [1960])

Entry by: CD 22.v.2019

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