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Pietro Bembo

March 02, 2023

This article is about an Italian scholar. For other pages with the name Bembo, see Bembo (disambiguation).

Pietro Bembo, O.S.I.H. (Latin: Petrus Bembus; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was an Italian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.[1] 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 basic 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.[2]

Pietro Bembo
Born20 May 1470 (1470-05-20)
Venice, Republic of Venice
Died18 January 1547(1547-01-18) (aged 76)
Rome, Papal States
Occupationpriest, scholar, poet, and literary theorist
Bembo's Coat of Arms

Life

 
Bembo in the habit of a Knight of Malta. (Lucas Cranach the Younger)
 
The obverse face of a bronze coin features the left profile of Bembo. (Valerio Belli, ca. 1532)

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.[3] 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 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.[4]

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 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 vernacular language of the Tuscan dialect. He accompanied Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici (1478–1534) to Rome, where Bembo later was appointed Latin secretary to Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521), and also was made a member of the Knights Hospitaller, in 1514.[5] 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 also was appointed librarian of the basilica of San Marco di Venezia.[6]

On 20 December 1538, Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) made Bembo a cardinal in pectore (in secret), who then returned to Rome[who?]. 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.[7] 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.[7] In 1547, Pietro Bembo died at the age of 77 years, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.[8]

Works and influence

 
Bembo's portrait, Historia veneta (1729)

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). 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.[9] Bembo’s rules of poetical composition in Prose of the Vernacular Tongue were basic to the development of the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal Italy’s pre-eminent secular music in the 16th century.[10] 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.[10]

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.”[11] 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);[12] 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 [13][14] 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.

Bibliography

  • Raffini, Christine, "Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism", 1998. ISBN 0-8204-3023-4
  • Pietro Bembo, "Oratio pro litteris graecis", 2003. Edited with English translation by Nigel G. Wilson.
  • Nalezyty, Susan. Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Art Collector, 2017. ISBN 9780300219197

References

  • 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 December 30, 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 December 30, 2007), (subscription access)
  • This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
  • 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.

Notes

  1. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bembo, Pietro" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ Grove online
  3. ^ Burke, Edmund (1907). "Pietro Bembo" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  4. ^ Haas, Grove online
  5. ^ Bonazzi, Francesco (1897). Elenco dei Cavalieri del S.M. Ordine di S. Giovanni di Gerusalemme, 1136-1713 (in Italian). Naples: Libreria Detken & Rocholl. p. 37.
  6. ^ University of Mannheim "Italian Authors"
  7. ^ a b Cheney, David M. "Pietro Cardinal Bembo, O.S.Io.Hieros". Catholic-Hierarchy.org. Retrieved February 14, 2019. [self-published]
  8. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, p.0000.
  9. ^ Atlas, p. 433.
  10. ^ a b Haar, Grove online
  11. ^ Grafton, Anthony (13 September 2018). "Locum, Lacum, Lucum". London Review of Books. 40 (17): 10.
  12. ^ “Pietro Bembo” Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) p. 0000.
  13. ^ Flow diagram leading to the deeper-seated vices in purgatory . Archived from the original on 2012-05-05. Retrieved 2012-02-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ^ Aldus' second edition printing of Dante's Divine Comedy, Venice 1502. . Archived from the original on 2012-02-05. Retrieved 2012-02-26.

External links

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

March 02, 2023
pietro, bembo, this, article, about, italian, scholar, other, pages, with, name, bembo, bembo, disambiguation, latin, petrus, bembus, 1470, january, 1547, italian, scholar, poet, literary, theorist, also, member, knights, hospitaller, cardinal, roman, catholic. This article is about an Italian scholar For other pages with the name Bembo see Bembo disambiguation Pietro Bembo O S I H Latin Petrus Bembus 20 May 1470 18 January 1547 was an Italian scholar poet and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church 1 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 basic 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 2 Pietro BemboPortrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo c 1540Born20 May 1470 1470 05 20 Venice Republic of VeniceDied18 January 1547 1547 01 18 aged 76 Rome Papal StatesOccupationpriest scholar poet and literary theoristBembo s Coat of Arms Contents 1 Life 2 Works and influence 3 Bibliography 4 References 5 Notes 6 External linksLife Edit Bembo in the habit of a Knight of Malta Lucas Cranach the Younger The obverse face of a bronze coin features the left profile of Bembo Valerio Belli ca 1532 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 3 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 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 4 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 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 vernacular language of the Tuscan dialect He accompanied Giulio di Giuliano de Medici 1478 1534 to Rome where Bembo later was appointed Latin secretary to Pope Leo X r 1513 1521 and also was made a member of the Knights Hospitaller in 1514 5 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 also was appointed librarian of the basilica of San Marco di Venezia 6 On 20 December 1538 Pope Paul III r 1534 1549 made Bembo a cardinal in pectore in secret who then returned to Rome who 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 7 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 7 In 1547 Pietro Bembo died at the age of 77 years and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva 8 Works and influence Edit Bembo s portrait Historia veneta 1729 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 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 9 Bembo s rules of poetical composition in Prose of the Vernacular Tongue were basic to the development of the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal Italy s pre eminent secular music in the 16th century 10 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 10 As a writer in the book De AEtna ad Angelum Chabrielem Liber 1496 Bembo tells how he and his father Bernardo climbed Mount AEtna 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 11 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 12 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 13 14 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 Bibliography EditRaffini Christine Marsilio Ficino Pietro Bembo Baldassare Castiglione Philosophical Aesthetic and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism 1998 ISBN 0 8204 3023 4 Pietro Bembo Oratio pro litteris graecis 2003 Edited with English translation by Nigel G Wilson Nalezyty Susan Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Art Collector 2017 ISBN 9780300219197References EditAtlas 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 December 30 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 December 30 2007 subscription access This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica 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 Notes Edit Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Bembo Pietro Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 3 11th ed Cambridge University Press Grove online Burke Edmund 1907 Pietro Bembo In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 2 New York Robert Appleton Company Haas Grove online Bonazzi Francesco 1897 Elenco dei Cavalieri del S M Ordine di S Giovanni di Gerusalemme 1136 1713 in Italian Naples Libreria Detken amp Rocholl p 37 University of Mannheim Italian Authors a b Cheney David M Pietro Cardinal Bembo O S Io Hieros Catholic Hierarchy org Retrieved February 14 2019 self published Catholic Encyclopedia p 0000 Atlas p 433 a b Haar Grove online Grafton Anthony 13 September 2018 Locum Lacum Lucum London Review of Books 40 17 10 Pietro Bembo Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 p 0000 Flow diagram leading to the deeper seated vices in purgatory Archived copy Archived from the original on 2012 05 05 Retrieved 2012 02 26 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Aldus second edition printing of Dante s Divine Comedy Venice 1502 1515 Venice ALDUS MANUTIUS AND ANDREA TORRESANI DI ASOLO Archived from the original on 2012 02 05 Retrieved 2012 02 26 External links EditBembo Pietro Carmina in Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Bergamo 1753 facsimile CAMENA Project Works by or about Pietro Bembo at Internet Archive Borgia Lucretia Pietro Bembo Lettere di Lucrezia Borgia a messer Pietro Bembo 1859 Biblioteca ambrosiana digitised by Oxford University Apr 13 2007 contains 9 letters to Bembo authored between 1503 and 1517 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Pietro Bembo amp oldid 1128029003, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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