Poet and scholar, born in Venice, NE Italy. In 1513 he was made secretary to Pope Leo X, and in 1539 a cardinal by Paul III, who appointed him to the dioceses of Gubbio and Bergamo. Bembo was the restorer of good style in both Latin and Italian literature, especially with his treatise on Italian prose (Prose della volgar lingua, 1525), which marked an era in Italian grammar.
Pietro Bembo (May 20, 1470 - 18 January 1547), Italian cardinal and scholar.
He was born in Venice and while still a boy he accompanied his father to Florence, and there acquired a love for that Tuscan form of speech which he afterwards cultivated in preference to the dialect of his native city.
After a considerable time spent in various cities and courts of Italy, where his learning already made him welcome, he accompanied Giulio de' Medici to Rome, where he was soon after appointed secretary to Leo X.
The offer of a cardinal's hat by Pope Paul III took him in 1539 again to Rome, where he renounced the study of classical literature and devoted himself to theology and classical history, receiving before long the reward of his conversion in the shape of the bishoprics of Gubbio and Bergamo.
Bembo, as a writer, is the beau ideal of a purist.
His works (collected edition, Venice, 1729) include a History of Venice (1551) from 1487 to 1513, dialogues, poems, and what we would now call essays. The edition of Petrarch's Italian Poems, published by Aldus in 1501, and the Terzerime, which issued from the same press in 1502, were edited by Bembo, who was on intimate terms with the typographer.
The font "Bembo" is named after him.
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