As Capella was of the order of the Servites, his scholar was induced,
by his acquaintance with him, to engage in the same profession, though
his uncle and his mother represented to him the hardships and
austerities of that kind of life, and advised him, with great zeal,
against it.
But he was steady in his resolutions, and, in 1566, took the habit of
the order, being then only in his fourteenth year, a time of life, in
most persons, very improper for such engagements; but, in him,
attended with such maturity of thought, and such a settled temper,
that he never seemed to regret the choice he then made, and which he
confirmed by a solemn publick profession, in 1572.
At a general chapter of the Servites, held at Mantua, Paul, for so we
shall now call him, being then only twenty years old, distinguished
himself so much, in a publick disputation, by his genius and learning,
that William, duke of Mantua, a great patron of letters, solicited the
consent of his superiours to retain him at his court; and not only
made him publick professor of divinity in the cathedral, but honoured
him with many proofs of his esteem.
But father Paul, finding a court life not agreeable to his temper,
quitted it two years afterwards, and retired to his beloved privacies,
being then not only acquainted with the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
Chaldee languages, but with philosophy, the mathematicks, canon and
civil law, all parts of natural philosophy, and chymistry itself; for
his application was unremitted, his head clear, his apprehension
quick, and his memory retentive.
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