Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo
Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo by Titian, c. 1540
Born	20 May 1470 Venice, Republic of Venice
Died	18 January 1547 (aged 76) Rome, Papal States
Occupations	priest, scholar, poet, and literary theorist
Writing career
Language	Italian, Tuscan dialect
Genres	poetry, non-fiction
Movements	Renaissance literature, Petrarchism

Pietro Bembo, O.S.I.H. (Latin: Petrus Bembus; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance (15th–16th c.), Pietro Bembo greatly influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect as a literary language for poetry and prose, which, by later codification into a standard language, became the modern Italian language. In the 16th century, Bembo's poetry, essays and books proved crucial to reviving interest in the literary works of Petrarch. In the field of music, Bembo's literary writing techniques helped composers develop the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal the most important secular music of 16th-century Italy.

Life

Pietro Bembo was born on 20 May 1470 to an aristocratic Venetian family. His father Bernardo Bembo (1433–1519) was a diplomat and statesman and a cultured man who cared for the literature of Italy, and erected a monument to Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) in Ravenna. Bernardo Bembo was an ambassador for the Republic of Venice (697–1797), and was accompanied by his son, Pietro. During his father's ambassadorships to Florence (1474–1476 and 1478–1480), Pietro acquired a love for the Tuscan dialect, from which the Italian language developed.

Under the tutelage of the neo-Platonist scholar Constantine Lascaris (1434–1501), Pietro Bembo studied Greek language for two years at Messina, and then studied at the University of Padua. His later travels included two years (1497–1499) at the Este court at Ferrara, during the reign of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (r. 1471–1505). For writers and composers, the city of Ferrara was an artistic centre where Bembo met the poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533); later, in the 1497–1504 period, Bembo wrote his first work, Gli Asolani (The People of Asolo, 1505), a poetic dialogue about courtly love, which stylistically resembled the writing styles of the humanists Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) and Petrarch (1304–1374). The poems were later set to music, which Bembo preferred to be sung by a woman to the accompaniment of a lute, an artistic wish granted in 1505 when he met Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) in her response to having received a gift copy of Gli asolani.

In the 1502–1503 period, Bembo again was in Ferrara, where he had a love affair with Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), wife of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (1476–1534), son of the previous duke. In the event, Bembo left the city of Ferrara when Ercole employed Josquin des Prez (1450–1521) as a composer to the chapel; fortuitously, Bembo left town just as the Black Death plague killed most of the population of Ferrara in 1505, including the renowned composer Jacob Obrecht (1457–1505).

In the 1506–1512 period, Bembo resided in Urbino, where he wrote Prose della volgar lingua (Prose of the Vernacular Tongue, 1525), a treatise about composing and writing poetry in the vernacular language of the Tuscan dialect. He accompanied Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici (1478–1534) to Rome, where Bembo was later appointed Latin secretary to Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521), and was also made a member of the Knights Hospitaller, in 1514. At the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, Bembo retired, with impaired health, to Padua and continued to write. In 1530, he accepted the office of official historian of his native Republic of Venice. Shortly afterwards, Bembo was also appointed librarian of the basilica of San Marco di Venezia.

On 20 December 1538, Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) made Bembo a cardinal in pectore (in secret). In 1538, Bembo received Holy Orders as a priest. Afterwards, Bembo's secret nomination as cardinal was published, and he then received the red Galero hat in a papal consistory on 10 March 1539, with the title of Cardinal Deacon of the church of San Ciriaco alle Terme Diocleziane, which occasion Bembo marked by commissioning a portrait from Titian (1488–1576), the most important painter of the Venetian school. In the event, Cardinal Bembo was advanced to the rank of Cardinal Priest in February 1542, with title to the church of San Crisogono, changed two years later to that of the Basilica of San Clemente. At Rome, Cardinal Bembo continued to write, and revised his earlier works, whilst studying theology and the history of Classical antiquity (A.D. 8th–6th c.). Despite having been rewarded for his successful administration of the dioceses of Gubbio and Bergamo, the Church did not promote Bembo to bishop. In 1547, Pietro Bembo died at the age of 77 years, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Works and influence

As a theoretician of literature, Pietro Bembo instilled to the Tuscan dialect the emotional effect that the Ancient Greek language (A.D. 9th–6th c.) had upon the Greek listener, by using examples from the classically composed poetry of Petrarch and the prose of Giovanni Boccaccio, whilst foregoing the difficulties of translation and composition inherent to the pluri-lingualism of Dante Alighieri's writing in The Divine Comedy (1321). His works may be considered as an early instance of the Petrarchism movement within the Renaissance literature. In the book Prose della volgar lingua (The Prose of the Vernacular Tongue, 1525) Petrarch is the model of verse composition, and Bembo gives detailed explanations of the communicational functions of rhyme and stress in the sounding of a word and the cadence of a line to achieve a balanced composition. That the specific placement of words within a line in a poem — based upon the writer's strict attention to the sonic rhythm of vowels and consonant letters — would elicit from the Italian reader and listener the range of human emotions, from grace and sweetness to gravity and grief. Bembo's rules of poetical composition in Prose of the Vernacular Tongue were crucial to the development of the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal Italy's pre-eminent secular music in the 16th century. His theories of musical composition were disseminated by the Venetian School, by composers such as Adrian Willaert, whose book Musica nova (New Music, 1568) contains madrigal compositions derived from the linguistic theories of Bembo.

As a writer, in the book De Ætna ad Angelum Chabrielem Liber (1496), Bembo tells how he and his father, Bernardo, climbed Mount Ætna and there found snow in summertime, a reality that contradicted the Greek geographer, Strabo, who said that snow was present only in winter; nonetheless, Bembo perceptively notes: "But first-hand inquiry tells you that it lasts, as does practical experience, which is no less an authority." The typeface for De Aetna was the basis for the Monotype Corporation's "old-style serif" font called "Bembo". Bembo's edition of Tuscan Poems (1501), by Petrarch, and the work of lyric verse Terze Rime (1530), much influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect into the literary language of Italy. In Gli Asolani (The People of Asolo, 1505) Bembo explained and recommended Platonic love as superior to carnal love, despite his love affair with the married Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519); besides dialogues, poems, and essays, Bembo published a History of Venice (1551).

As a priest, Bembo reaffirmed and promoted the Christian perfection of Renaissance humanism. Deriving all from love, or the lack thereof, Bembo's schemas were appended as supplements to the newly invented technology of printing by Aldus Manutius in his editions of The Divine Comedy in the 16th century. Bembo's refutation of the pervasive puritanical tendency to a profane dualistic gnosticism is elaborated in The People of Asolo, his third prose book, which reconciled fallen human nature by way of Platonic transcendence that is mediated by Trinitarian love; Bembo dedicated that book to his lover Lucrezia Borgia.

Reception

• The character Pietro Cardinal Bembo also features prominently in Baldassare Castiglione's work The Book of the Courtier where he speaks about the nature of "Platonic" love.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pietro Bembo — A famous Italian scholar and Cardinal, b. of a noble family at Venice, 20 May, 1470; d. at Rome, 18 January, 1547. He was the son of Bernardo Bembo, whose enthusiasm for Italian literature led him to raise a monument to Dante at Ravenna. His early education was received at Florence. He afterwards studied Greek under Lascaris at Messina and philosophy under Pomponazzo at Padua. After spending some time at the court of Ferrara, where he met Lucrezia Borgia, with whom he maintained a Platonic friendship for many years, he went in 1506 to Urbino, where he became the leading figure among the brilliant group of men of wit and culture gathered about the court. In 1512 he accompanied his intimate friend, Giuliano de' Medici, to Rome, where a short time afterwards he was appointed secretary to Pope Leo X. He remained at Rome for eight years, enjoying the society of many distinguished men and loved and admired by all who knew him. There he became enamoured of the beautiful Morosina. It was at her urgent solicitation that Bembo, in 1520, on the death of Leo X, withdrew from public affairs and retired with his health impaired by severe sickness to Padua, where he lived in ease and elegance, devoting himself to literary pursuits and the society of his learned friends. Here he collected an extensive library and formed a rich museum of medals and antiquities. His Paduan retreat became the gathering-place of all the most cultured and most scholarly men in Italy. In 1529 he accepted the office of historiographer of the republic of Venice, and shortly afterwards was appointed librarian of St. Mark's. In 1539 Pope Paul III recalled him to Rome and conferred on him the cardinal's hat. From the time of Bembo's ecclesiastical preferment there was a marked change in his conduct. Heretofore his life had been anything but edifying - in fact it had been more pagan than Christian. But now he renounced the study of the classics and applied himself chiefly to the study of the Fathers and the Holy Scriptures. Two years after he was raised to the cardinalate, he was made Bishop of Gubbio, and still later he received the Bishopric of Bergamo. He died more admired and lamented than any man of letters of his time and was buried not far from Pope Leo in the Church of the Minerva.

Bembo was a thorough master of elegant diction. He possessed beyond any contemporary the formal perfection of style, both in Latin and Italian, demanded by the age in which he lived. In his Latin writings it was his aim to imitate as closely as possible the style of Cicero. His letters were masterpieces of Latin style and of the art of letter-writing. He is said to have passed his compositions through numerous portfolios, revising them in each one of them. Bembo's works include a history of Venice, poems, dialogues, criticisms and letters. The most important are: "Rerum Veneticarum Libri XII" (1551), a history of Venice covering the period from 1487 to 1513, originally published in Latin, but afterwards translated by the author into Italian; "Gli Asolani" (Venice, 1505), a dialogue in Italian on Platonic love, composed in imitation of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, and dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia; "Le Prose", a short treatise on the Italian language; "Le Rime" (Venice, 1530); "Carmina" (Venice, 1533), a collection of Latin poems; and several volumes of letters, written in Latin. Besides these original works he edited the Italian poems of Petrarch, printed by Aldus (1501), and the "Terze rime" of Dante (1502). His collected works were published at Venice in four volumes in 1729.

SYMONDS, Renaissance in Italy (New York, 1900), II; The Revival of Learning; GARNETT, A History of Italian Literature (New York, 1898); VON REUMONT, Gesch. Der Stadt Rom.; TIRABOSCHI, Stor. Lett. Ital. (1809), VII, 1, 110-111, 235-251; III, 926-931, 1120; IV, 1560; BATTAGLIA, Elogio del Cardinale P. Bembo (Venice, 1827); BECCATELLI, Vita di Pietro Bembo, cardinale, in Istor. case Venez. (1718), II, xxxii-li.

Bibliography

• Atlas, Allan W., ed. Renaissance music: music in western Europe, 1400–1600. NY: Norton, 1998. ISBN 0-393-97169-4
• James Haar, "Pietro Bembo." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 30 December 2007), (subscription access)
• James Haar, Anthony Newcomb, Massimo Ossi, Glenn Watkins, Nigel Fortune, Joseph Kerman, Jerome Roche: "Madrigal", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 30 December 2007), (subscription access)

• Pietro Bembo, "Oratio pro litteris graecis", 2003. Edited with English translation by Nigel G. Wilson.

Further reading

• Danzi, Massimo (2005). La biblioteca del cardinal Pietro Bembo [The Library of Cardinal Pietro Bembo]. Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance (in Italian). Vol. 399. Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A. ISBN 2-600-00924-8. ISSN 0082-6081.
• Nalezyty, Susan. Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Art Collector, 2017. ISBN 9780300219197
• Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco; Bembo, Pietro. De imitatione. Briefe über die Nachahmung. Lateinisch/Deutsch. Edited, translated and commented by Rafael Arnold and Christiane Reitz. Bibliotheca neolatina, vol. 14. Heidelberg: Manutius, ISBN 978-3-944512-30-3.
• Raffini, Christine, "Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism", 1998. ISBN 0-8204-3023-4

External links

• Bembo, Pietro: Carmina, in: Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Bergamo 1753; facsimile, CAMENA Project
• Works by or about Pietro Bembo at the Internet Archive
• Borgia, Lucretia; Pietro Bembo, Lettere di Lucrezia Borgia a messer Pietro Bembo, 1859 Biblioteca ambrosiana, digitised by Oxford University 13 Apr 2007 contains 9 letters to Bembo authored between 1503 and 1517