JOHN, a celebrated canonist in the 14th century, was born at Mugello, near Florence; and was professor of canon law at Padua, Pisa, and afterwards at Bologna. It is said that he macerated his body with fasting; and lay upon the bare ground every night for 20 years together, covered only with the skin of a bear. This is attested by very good authors; but if the story which Poggius tells of him in his jests be true, he must afterwards have relaxed much of this continency: "Joannem Andreae (says he), doctorum Bononiensem, cujus fama admodum vulgata est, subagitatem ancillam domesticae uxoris deprefedit: in infuenta rupeasta mulier in virum verba, ubi nunc, sit Joannes, eft sapientia vestra? Ille nil amplius locutus, in vulva illius, respondit, loco admodum sapientiae accommodato." The French translation of this perhaps will not be displeasing.

Jean, dit André, fameux Docteur des Loix, Fut pris un jour au péché d'amourette: Il accolloit une jeune faubrette. Sa femme vint, fit un signe de croix. Ho ho, dit elle, eft ce vous? non je pense: Vous, dont par-tout en vante la prudence. Qu'eft devenu cet esprit fi jubilé? Le bon André, pour suivant son névoce, Honteux pourtant, ma foi, répondit-il, Prudence, esprit, tout gît dans cette faffe.

Since it is agreed that John Andreas had a bastard, this story is at the bottom very probable; and it was perhaps with the mother of Banicontius that his wife found him. Andreas had a beautiful daughter, named Novella, whom he loved extremely: and he is said to Andreas have instructed her so well in all parts of learning, that when he was engaged in any affair which hindered him from reading lectures to his scholars, he sent his daughter in his room; and left her beauty should prevent the attention of the hearers, she had a little curtain drawn before her. To perpetuate the memory of this daughter, he entitled his commentary upon the Decretals of Gregory IX. the Novellae. He married her to John Calderinus, a learned canonist. The first work of Andreas was his Glofs upon the Sixth Book of the Decretals, which he wrote when he was very young. He wrote also Glofses upon the Clementines; and a Commentary in regula Sexti, which he entitled Mercuriales, because he either engaged in it on Wednesdays (diebus Mercurii), or because he inferred his Wednesdays disputes in it. He enlarged the Speculum of Durant, in the year 1347. This is all which Mr Bayle mentions of his writings, though he wrote many more. Andreas died of the plague at Bologna in 1348, after he had been a professor 45 years; and was buried in the church of the Dominicans. Many eulogiums have been bestowed upon him. He has been called Archidoc tor decretorum: In his epitaph, Rabbi doctorum; lux, censor, normaque morum; "Rabbi of the doctors, the light, censor, and rule of manners;" And it is said, that Pope Boniface called him lumen mundi, "the light of the world."

JOHN, was born a Mahometan, at Xativa in the kingdom of Valencia, and succeeded his father in the dignity of alfaqui of that city. He was enlightened with the knowledge of the Christian religion by being present at a sermon in the great church of Valencia on the day of Assumption of the Blest Virgin, in the year 1487. Upon this he desired to be baptized; and, in memory of the calling of St John and St Andrew, he received the name John Andreas. "Having received holy orders (says he), and from an alfaqui and a slave of Lucifer, become a priest and minister of Christ; I began, like St Paul, to preach and publish the contrary of what I had erroneously believed and asserted; and, with the assistance of Almighty God, I converted at first a great many souls of the Moors, who were in danger of hell, and under the dominion of Lucifer, and conducted them into the way of salvation. After this, I was sent for by the most catholic princes King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, in order to preach in Granada to the Moors of that kingdom, which their majesties had conquered: by God's blessing on my preaching, an infinite number of Moors were brought to abjure Mahomet, and to turn to Christ. A little after this, I was made a canon by their grace; and sent for again by the most Christian Queen Isabella to Arragon, that I might be employed in the conversion of the Moors of those kingdoms, who still persisted in their errors, to the great contempt and dishonour of our crucified Saviour, and the prodigious loss and danger of all Christian princes. But this excellent and pious design of her majesty was rendered ineffectual by her death." At the desire of Martin Garcia, bishop of Barcelona, he undertook to translate from the Arabic, into the language of Arragon, the whole law of the Moors; and after having finished this undertaking, he composed his famous work of The Confusion of the Sect of Mahumed; it contains twelve chapters. chapters, wherein he has collected the fabulous stories, impostures, forgeries, brutalities, follies, obscenities, absurdities, impossibilities, lies, and contradictions, which Mahomet, in order to deceive the simple people, has dispersed in the writings of that sect, and especially in the Alcoran, which, as he says, was revealed to him in one night by an angel, in the city of Meke; though in another place he contradicts himself, and affirms that he was 20 years in composing it. Andreas tells us, he wrote this work, that not only the learned amongst Christians, but even the common people, might know the different belief and doctrine of the Moors; and on the one hand might laugh and ridicule such insolent and brutal notions, and on the other might lament their blindness and dangerous condition. This book, which was published at first in Spanish, has been translated into several languages; all those who write against the Mahometans quote it very much.