her courtiers re-awakened.  It was her desire that the Spanish nobles should cultivate the arts and literature, after the fashion prevailing in Italy.  Lucio Marineo Siculo, also a disciple of Pomponius Laetus, had preceded Martyr in Spain by nearly two years, and was professor of poetry and grammar at Salamanca.  He was the first of the Italians who came as torch-bearers of the Renaissance into Spain, to be followed by Peter Martyr, Columbus, the Cabots, Gattinara, the Geraldini and Marliano.  Cardinal Mendoza availed himself of the propitious moment, to propose Martyr’s name for the office of preceptor to direct the studies of the young noblemen.  In response to a welcome summons, the impatient canon left Granada and repaired to Valladolid where the Court then resided.[4] The ungrateful character and dubious results of the task before him were obvious, the chief difficulties to be apprehended threatening to come from his noble pupils, whose minds and manners he was expected to form.  Restive under any save military discipline, averse by temperament and custom to studies of any sort, it was hardly to be hoped that they would easily exchange their gay, idle habits for schoolroom tasks under a foreign pedagogue.  Yet this miracle did Peter Martyr work.  The charm of his personality counted for much, the enthusiasm of the Queen and the presence in the school of the Infante Don Juan, whose example the youthful courtiers dared not disdain, for still more, and the house of the Italian preceptor became the fashionable rendezvous of young gallants who, a few months earlier, would have scoffed at the idea of conning lessons in grammar and poetry, and listening to lectures on morals and conduct from a foreigner.  Of his quarters in Saragossa in the first year of his classes he wrote:  Domum habeo tota die ebullientibus Procerum juvenibus repletam.

[Note 4:  In the month of June, 1492.]

During the next nine years of his life, Peter Martyr devoted himself to his task and with results that gratified the Queen and reflected credit upon her choice.  In October of 1492 he had been appointed by the Queen, Contino de su casa,[5] with a revenue of thirty thousand maravedis.  Shortly after, he was given a chaplaincy in the royal household, an appointment which increased both his dignity and his income.  His position was now assured, his popularity and influence daily expanded.

[Note 5:  An office in the Queen’s household, the duties and privileges of which are not quite clear.  Mariejol suggests that the contini corresponded to the gentilshommes de la chambre at the French Court.  Lucio Marineo Siculo mentioned these palatine dignitaries immediately after the two captains and the two hundred gentlemen composing the royal body-guard.  Consult Mariejol, Pierre Martyr d’Anghera, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1887.]