 He was a major publisher of Protestant historians like Flacius Illyricus and David Chytraeus and promoted the ars historica treatises of the period, notably the 18 "authores de historia" in Artis Historicae Penus (1579).A native of Lucca and a Dominican, he arrived in Basel in 1544 as a disciple of the reformer Pietro Martire Vermigli and with the help of Pietro Carnesecchi.As a printer he started as an assistant to the renowned Johannes Oporinus and set up a press of his own in 1558.