He was the son of a wagonmaker and received his early education at Bamberg and probably at Nuremberg under John Cochlæus; with Paul of Schwartzenberg, canon of Bamberg, he pursued humanistic, juristic, and theological studies at Pavia, Padua, and later at Siena, there obtaining degrees in Law and Divinity.
Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, Archbishop of Bologna and papal legate in Germany, employed him as secretary and as such Nausea was at the Diet of Nuremberg (1524), at the convention of Ratisbon, at the Diet of Ofen, and for a time at Rome.