PETRUS, an eminent Italian philosopher, was born at Mantua in 1462. He was of so small a stature, that he was little better than a dwarf; yet he possessed an exalted genius, and was considered as one of the greatest philosophers of the age in which he lived. He taught philosophy, first at Padua and afterwards at Bologna, with the highest reputation. He had frequent disputations with the celebrated Achillini, whose puzzling objections would have confounded him, had it not been for his skill in parrying them by some joke. His book De Immortalitate Animae, published in 1516, made a great noise. He maintained, that the immortality of the soul could not be proved by philosophical reasons; but solemnly declared his belief of it as an article of faith. This precaution did not, however, save him; many adversaries rose up against him, who did not scruple to treat him as an atheist; and the monks procured his book, although he wrote several apologies for it, to be burnt at Venice. His book upon Incantations was also thought very dangerous. He shows in it, that he believed nothing of magic and sorcery; and he lays a prodigious stress on occult virtues in certain men, by which they produced miraculous effects. He gives a great many examples of this; but his adversaries do not admit them to be true, or free from magic.—Paul Jovius says, that he died in 1525, in his grand climacteric. He was three times married; and had but one daughter, to whom he left a large sum of money. He used to apply himself to the solution of difficulties so very intensely, that he frequently forgot to eat, drink, sleep, and perform the ordinary functions of nature: nay, it made him almost distracted, and a laughing-stock to every one, as he himself tells us.