Their classes overlapped a little bit so they knew each other by sight, but they mostly hang around in different circles. Machete’s former mentor had just became a bishop and no longer had time for keeping an apprentice, so he funded his further studies as a rare display of goodwill. Vasco had been sent there by his parents, who had recently found out he’s gay and hoped that proper strict education would straighten him up. In the original canon, they were both studing theology in Venice at the same time. Sure he was sort of guided and trained towards that goal all along, but he also genuinely thought it was something that would give his existence meaning and significance, after being discarded by his birth family and feeling vague worthlessness and lack of belonging ever since. He wasn’t interested in preaching, but if there was a chance he could be safe and respected, even regarded as holy, he felt he had to do everything in his power to attain that. He was inquisitive and very fascinated by books so the monks taught him to read, and when they commented he’d make a good priest he was instantly entranced with the idea. He was a quiet, meek, punctual and polite kid, and because he didn’t like to play outside and was so well behaved, he was allowed inside the scriptorium and the library. He grew up in a strongly religious environment so a certain sense of spirituality and fear of God was ingrained in him from early age. Before orphanages monasteries sometimes housed orphans and foundlings until they were old enough to be apprenticed). Machete spent his early childhood in a monastery, after his parents left him there (he was sickly and his family was stretched thin and couldn’t care for him anymore. Committing crimes against men of God was a severe offence, more so than regular laypeople, and (at leasts in some eras and places) priests themselves couldn’t be tried in regular courts and had their own ecclesiastical courts instead, all of this made clergy kind of a protected class. I’ve read that some village priests could only write their name and memorized everything else, but for the most part you had to be able to write, read and speak at least passable Latin). But if you managed to join the clergy, had luck on your side and didn’t do abysmal job, you might be able to ascend to a higher status, accumulate more wealth and live reasonably comfortably regardless of your origins (to my understanding the main reason people didn’t choose this path to escape poverty and hardship was because of the literacy requirement. Social classes were extremely rigid, if you were born a peasant you died a peasant and so on. Apart from nobility who had the benefit of proper education, they were usually the only people who were literate, and being able to read was a massive advantage. Well, priests were held in extremely high regard at the time.
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