Telesio was born of noble parentage in Cosenza, a city in Calabria, Southern Italy. He was educated in Milan by his uncle, Antonio, himself a scholar and a poet of eminence, and afterwards in Rome and Padua. His studies included all the wide range of subjects, classics, science and philosophy, which constituted the curriculum of the Renaissance savants. Thus equipped, he began his attack upon the medieval Aristotelianism which then flourished in Padua and Bologna. In 1553 he married and settled in Cosenza, becoming the founder of the Cosentian Academy. From 1544 to 1550 and after 1565 he lived in the household of Alfonso III Carafa, Duke of Nocera.