Bembo, Pietro (pyā`trō bĕm`bō), 1470–1547, Italian humanist, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. A favorite of the Medici, he was secretary to Pope Leo X and was made a cardinal by Paul III. Bembo was for many years the arbiter of Italian letters, insisting that classical traditions be preserved. He was responsible for editions of Petrarch and Dante and helped establish the language of Tuscany as the standard literary Italian. He wrote the History of Venice (1551); a disquisition on platonic love, Gli Asolani (1505, tr. 1954), inspired by Plato's Symposium; a book of lyric verse (Rime, 1530) in Latin and Italian; and Prose della volgar lingua [prose in the vernacular] (1525).

Bembo, Pietro

(born May 20, 1470, Venice—died Jan. 18, 1547, Rome) Italian prelate and linguist. Born into an aristocratic family, he became librarian of St. Mark's Cathedral and was created a cardinal in 1539. After writing lyric poetry in Latin, he turned to the vernacular, producing Italian poems in imitation of Petrarch and an Italian history of Venice. His Discussions of the Vernacular Language (1525) was one of the earliest books to codify Italian spelling and grammar, and it helped establish the Italian literary language. Bembo successfully advocated the adoption of 14th-century Tuscan as a model for literary Italian.