Pietro Bembo: The Cardinal Who Shaped Italian Literature—and Latin Style
On this day in 1470, one of the most influential literary figures of the Italian Renaissance was born: Cardinal Pietro Bembo. A noble Venetian by birth and a humanist by vocation, Bembo left an indelible mark on both Italian vernacular literature and the Latin prose of the Church.
A Florentine by Choice, Not Birth
Though born in Venice, Bembo’s literary heart belonged to Florence. As a boy, he accompanied his father—an ambassador and man of letters—to the Florentine court, where he fell in love with the Tuscan dialect. His later efforts would help elevate it as the literary standard of the Italian language, making him a central figure in shaping what we now know as modern Italian.
After a two-year study of Greek in Sicily and a degree from the University of Padua, Bembo went on to the court of Ferrara, where he studied Latin and befriended the poet Ludovico Ariosto. His literary journey continued at the court of Urbino, where he composed a major treatise on vernacular literature, published in 1525, that helped canonize Petrarch and Boccaccio as the gold standards of Italian poetry and prose.
Humanism and the Holy See
When Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X in 1513, he invited Bembo to serve in the papal chancery. There, Bembo championed a return to classical Latin, insisting that modern Latinists treat Cicero and Virgil as literary models. His purism led him to eschew common ecclesiastical Latin in favor of classicisms—“senatores” instead of “cardinales,” “virgines vestales” instead of “moniales.”
Though this drew criticism, it also set a standard for refined Latin composition that echoed well into the 17th century.
A Complicated Cleric
Bembo’s life reflected both the brilliance and contradictions of the Renaissance. Despite having taken religious vows as a Knight of Malta, he maintained a long relationship with a mistress, who bore him three children. When the austere Adrian VI succeeded Leo X, Bembo returned to Padua, where he wrote prolifically and was later appointed head of the Library of St Mark in Venice.
In 1539, Pope Paul III made him a cardinal, and he went on to serve as apostolic administrator in various cities. He died in 1547 and was buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
A Poem for Raphael
Just a few minutes’ walk from Bembo’s grave lies one of his most enduring Latin compositions. When Raphael, the great Renaissance painter, died in 1520, he was buried in the Pantheon, the seat of Rome’s artists’ confraternity. His tomb bears a two-line Latin epitaph written by Bembo:
Ille hic est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci,
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.
“Here lies the great Raphael, by whom the great mother of all things (i.e. nature itself) feared to be outdone, and as he was dying, she feared she was dying.”
Our own teacher, Fr. Reginald Foster, who served as the Vatican’s chief Latinist for over four decades, once quipped about this difficult line: “If you can read that, my friends, well—then I’ll know that you’ve learned something.”
