The Lives and Times of the Popes - Including the Complete Gallery of the Portraits of the Pontiffs Reproduced From “Effigies Pontificum Romanorum Dominici Basae” #245058

The future pope was a delicate child, although his earliest years were spent in the open air, and in his young boyhood he became a daring hill-climber. Until he was eight years of age he was educated at the family home, and, being the youngest, was the favorite son of his mother. There are none of the marvellous premonitions of future greatness usually chronicled in the stories of the boyhood of famous men by their biographers to be recorded of Vincenzo Pecci, and his youthful days are, therefore, destitute of gossip of the nursery or the school-room. When he had reached his eighth year he was sent to the Jesuit college at Viterbo, whither his brother Giuseppe had preceded him. His family had always been admirers of the Society of Jesus.