MARTIN DE, commonly called the Doctor of Navarre, or Doctor Navarrus, was descended of a noble family, and born the 15th of December 1491, at Varasayn, a small city of Navarre, not far from Pamplona. He entered very young into the monastery of regular canons at Roncevaux, where he took the habit, which he continued to wear after he left the convent. He studied classical learning, natural and moral philosophy, and divinity, at Alcala, in New Castile, adopting chiefly the system of Petrus Lombardus, commonly called the Majore of the Sentences. He applied to the study of the law at Ferrara, and taught it with applause at Toulouse and Cahors. After being first professor of canon law at Salamanca for 14 years, he quitted that place to be professor of law at Coimbra, with a larger salary. The duties of this office he discharged for the space of 20 years, and then resigned it to retire into his own country, where he took care of his nieces, the daughters of his deceased brothers. Having made a journey to Rome to plead the cause of Bartholomeo de Caranza archbishop of Toledo, who had been accused of heresy before the tribunal of the inquisition in Spain, and whose cause was, by the Pope's order, to be tried in that city, Aspicueta's writings, Aspicueta which were well known, procured him a most honourable reception. Pope Pius V. made him assistant to Cardinal Francis Aciat, his vice penitentiary; and Gregory XIII. never passed by his door without calling for him, and stopped sometimes a whole hour to talk with him in the street. His name became so famous, that even in his lifetime the highest encomium on a learned man was to call him a Navarrus. He was consulted as an oracle. By temperance he prolonged his life to a great length. His economy enabled him to give substantial proofs of his charity. Being very old, he used to ride on a mule through the city, and relieved all the poor he met; to which his mule was so well accustomed, that it stopped of its own accord at the sight of every poor man, till his master had relieved him. He refused several honourable posts in church and state, that he might have leisure to correct and improve the works he had already written, and compose others. He died at the age of 94, on the 21st of June 1586. He wrote a vast number of treatises, all which are either on morality or common law.