### BEMBO, Pietro
#### I. Life
Pietro Bembo was born in Venice on 20 May 1470 to Bernardo, a political figure of the Venetian Republic who valued good scholarship and took his son with him on diplomatic missions to courts and cities in Italy. Pietro developed a passion for the literary life of his time and became an excellent Latin scholar. To learn Greek, he traveled to Sicily to study under Constantine Lascaris. At the court of Ferrara, he met Lucrezia Borgia, and in Urbino in 1507, he demonstrated his skills as both a polished courtier and a talented writer. Later, together with Jacopo Sadoleto, he served as a papal secretary to Leo X; some of the letters he wrote during this period were later published, revised in style, in his collection of *Epistolae*.
In Rome, he lived with a Roman woman whom he referred to as Morosina, keeping her with him and having children with her, including Torquato, who later worked on editing his father’s works. Bembo had obtained benefices within the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, where he was reluctantly required to take religious vows. After leaving Rome in 1521, he retired to live in Padua and at his villa on the Brenta River, which he named Noniano, spending long periods in Venice and hosting a literary circle with his friends. He collected valuable manuscripts, mostly of a literary nature, as well as works of art.
In 1530, his Republic appointed him official historian; indeed, he compiled the *Historia Veneta* in Latin and later translated it into Italian, continuing the work of M. Antonio Sabellico and covering the period from 1487 to 1513. The high esteem in which Bembo was held throughout the learned world of his time led Paul III, despite opposition from the more austere figures in his court, to create him a cardinal in the consistory of 20 December 1538, and to publish the appointment on 19 March of the following year. Bembo, then 68 years old, greatly appreciated this long-awaited honor, traveled to Rome in October, and received holy orders. He was given the diocese of Gubbio on 29 July 1541, and then that of Bergamo on 18 February 1544. He even considered the possibility of becoming pope, but instead died in Rome on 19 January 1547, equally admired for his Latin writings (letters and poems) as for those in the vernacular.
Pio Paschini
#### II. The Literary Man
For Bembo, the question of how one should write represented his lifelong work, just as it would three centuries later for Manzoni; the two spent roughly the same number of years constructing a theory of a lofty style, only for the other to dismantle II. *Prose della volgar lingua* is a treatise in dialogue form (as were most treatises of the time), imagined as taking place in Venice over three consecutive evenings in December 1512. The interlocutors include Carlo B., the author’s brother and his mouthpiece, Giuliano de’ Medici, and Ercole Strozzi. There is an extreme right-wing humanist stance represented by the latter, who outright denies the right and possibility for the vernacular to rise to the level of a literary language, dismissing it as nothing more than linguistic detritus. At the other extreme is a roughly faithful adherence to Dante’s theory of the illustrious vernacular. Between these two extremes, Bembo asserts the rights of Tuscan speech, indeed of Florentine speech.
This thesis holds significance in the history of the Italian language, provided one does not delude oneself about its meaning or its scope. Bembo arrived at this theory—so romantic and Manzonian in spirit—using arguments that were anything but romantic or Manzonian; instead of championing the rights of spoken Florentine or the people, he upheld those of written Florentine and of literary figures. Yet on the matter of style, Bembo’s humanism prevailed both in theory and practice. After conceding so much to the dignity of the vernacular word and the genius of the vernacular word, he conceded nothing to its essence. From the conviction that it too must harmonize within the forms of classical rhetoric—that is, Latin—he derived a kind of Ciceronian vernacular, a Latinizing or aureate style. The only writer who, thanks to Bembo, managed to escape the snares of *bembismo* was Petrarch in his lyric poetry. Petrarch had been scorned by humanists as a Provençalizing and barbaric writer, but now, elevated by Bembo’s authority to the status of a classic of the vernacular, the right—or duty—to imitate him instead of Horace or Catullus established itself naturally.
The book that served as the apotheosis of Petrarch and thus as the full classicization of the great 14th-century vernacular literature, both in spirit and form, was the famous dialogue on love, *Gli Asolani*, written before 1502 and published in 1505. Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, holds court in Asolo for the wedding of one of her ladies-in-waiting, and over three days, three Venetian nobles and three gentlewomen debate love, the source of all suffering for Perottino and of all good for Gismondo. Lavinello, however, recognizes in the first the sensual lover and in the second the Platonic lover, and it is to this latter that the moving hymn of the epilogue is dedicated. This philosophy draws from Petrarch and that spurious Platonism which, since the time of Andreas Capellanus, had persisted in courtly circles. It is no coincidence that *Gli Asolani* is dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. The tone is grave and always announces profound matters, yet the content is light and almost frivolous, creating a contrast that intentionally stops short of irony, though it brushes against II. A true Petrarch in miniature, suspended between leisure and business, between the love of solitude and that of worldly success, between temptation and the need for God, Bembo did not produce masterpieces, but he never neglected the *labor limae* and was a marvelous craftsman. They say that a sense of harmony is a gift of the Italians; but Bembo possessed it in a particularly refined way. He infused it, in a Petrarchan manner, even into his life.
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