De Soto (in Latin Petrus a Soto) was confessor to
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Later, for six years, he served as senior chair of theology at the
University of Dillingen, where he
disputed with
Protestants and worked with the
Bishop of Augsburg to establish a Catholic academic stronghold. In May 1555 he was sent to
London to take part in the late stages of the persecutions that led to the executions of the
Oxford Martyrs, and was more generally involved in
Reginald Pole's efforts to solidify England's return to Catholicism under
Mary I. He served as theology professor at the
University of Oxford from October 1555 to August 1556, teaching a course on the
Sentences of
Peter Lombard, with the
Regius Professorship of Hebrew being temporarily appropriated to give him a position. He was first theologian of
Pope Pius IV at the third convocation of the
Council of Trent (1559), but was accused in 1560 by the
Inquisition in
Valladolid of being influenced by
Lutheranism, largely on the basis of having urged
approval of
Bartolomé Carranza's
Catechism, and comments he made at the Council. During the Council he wrote scripture-based poems that were set to music by the Flemish composer
Jacobus de Kerle which reportedly influenced the deliberations of the Council Fathers on sacred music. He died in
Trent in 1563 while the trial was still in its early stages. ==References==