It would be interesting to know something of his system of teaching in what proved to be a peripatetic academy, since he and his aristocratic pupils always followed the Court in its progress from city to city; but nowhere in his correspondence, teeming with facts and commentaries on the most varied subjects, is anything definite to be gleaned.  Latin poetry and prose, the discourses of Cicero, rhetoric, and church history were important subjects in his curriculum.  Though he frequently mentions Aristotle in terms of high admiration, it may be doubted whether he ever taught Greek.  There is no evidence that he even knew that tongue.  Besides the Infante Don Juan, the Duke of Braganza, Don Juan of Portugal, Villahermosa, cousin to the King, Don Inigo de Mendoza, and the Marquis of Priego were numbered among his pupils.  Nor did his personal influence cease when they left his classes.  The renascence of learning did not move with the spontaneous, almost revolutionary, vigour that characterised the revival in Italy, nor was Peter Martyr of the paganised scholars in whom the cult for antiquity had undermined Christian faith—­else had he not been acceptable to Queen Isabella.

Some authors, including Ranke, have described him as occupying the post of Secretary of Latin Letters.  Officially he never did.  His knowledge of Latin, in a land where few were masters of the language of diplomatic and literary intercourse, was brought into frequent service, and it was no uncommon thing for him to turn the Spanish draft of a state paper or despatch into Latin.[6] He refused a chair in the University of Salamanca, but consented on one occasion to deliver a lecture before its galaxy of distinguished professors and four thousand students.  He chose for his subject the second satire of Juvenal, and for more than an hour held his listeners spellbound under the charm of his eloquence.  He thus described his triumph:  Domum tanquam ex Olympo victorem primarii me comitantur.[7]

[Note 6:  Talvolta era incaricato di voltare in latino le correspondenze diplomatiche pin importanti.  I ministri o i lor segretari ne faceano la minuta in ispagnuolo, ed egli le recava nella lingua che era allora adoperata come lingua internazionale.  Ciampi, Nuova Antologia, tom, iii., p. 69.]

[Note 7:  Opus Epistolarum.  Ep. lvii.]

During these prosperous years in Spain, the promise made to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was faithfully kept, though the latter’s early fall from his high estate in Rome diverted Martyr’s letters to other personages.  With fervent and unflagging interest he followed the swift march of disastrous events in his native Italy.  The cowardly murder of Gian Galeazzo by his perfidious and ambitious nephew, Lodovico il Moro; the death of the magnificent Lorenzo in Florence; the accession to power of the unscrupulous Borgia family, with Alexander VI. upon the papal throne; the French invasion of Naples—­all these and other similar calamities bringing in their train the destruction of Italy, occupied his attention and filled his correspondence with lamentations and sombre presages for the future.