MARTYR, PETER, a famous reformer, whose family name was Vernigli, was born at Florence in 1500. At the age of sixteen he became an Augustine monk of the monastery of Fiesole, and was afterwards employed in teaching philosophy, theology, and Greek at Padua, and in preaching in the principal cities of Italy. He was led to renounce the Romish creed through a perusal of the writings of Luther and Zwingli, and was accordingly, in 1542, forced to flee before the persecuting zeal of his brother-priests. After sojournings successively at Zurich and Basle he became professor of divinity at Strasburg. Invited to England in 1549 by Archbishop Cranmer, he was appointed in the same year to a theological chair at Oxford. The accession of Mary, however, in 1553, obliged him to resign his appointment, and to return to his former chair at Strasburg. Soon after his departure from England, the remains of his deceased wife were disinterred at Oxford, and buried under a dunghill. In 1556 Martyr was translated from Strasburg to a theological professorship at Zurich. He died there in 1562. Of Peter Martyr's numerous theological treatises, his Locti Communes, published at Geneva in 1624, is best known.