Bembo's bad boarder
Adam's Notes for Januay 9, 2024
Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) is an interesting guy I keep running into.
He was a friend of my favourite Renaissance poet, Ludovico Ariosto, in their student days and then part of the same circle of poets. Supposedly he stole a girlfriend from Ariosto (“With you I would share my servants, my table, my house, my clothes,” Ariosto wrote in a poem to Bembo, “but, my friend, my bed is not common property”). Later, Bembo risked his life to romance Lucrezia Borgia, then married to Duke Alfonso d’Este. After the 95 theses were nailed to a cathedral door, Bembo, then holding the office of apostolic secretary to the Pope, wrote to the bishop of Wittenberg telling him to get this Martin Luther character back in line.1 In later years, his book Prose della volgar lingua (writing on the vulgar tongue) convinced Ariosto to rewrite his Orlando Furioso, focusing on refining the language.
And yet at the same time, Bembo always comes off a bit tangential every time I encounter him, I guess because I’m reading English language stuff, and his most important work was about unifying the Italian language. So recently I decided to read about Bembo directly, picking up Carol Kidwell’s biography.
Before becoming a cardinal, Bembo spent many years in semi-retirement at his villa in Padua. His friends would often send their sons to live with him, because he had a reputation for erudite scholarship and because he was close to the University of Padua. This was a fairly common practice, sending your sons to board with someone who can teach them a trade or profession. Often it worked out, but not always. Benvenuto Cellini, for example, was apprenticed as a goldsmith and went to live with goldsmiths until he realized he was more talented than his master, and ran off.
Cornelio, the nephew of Pietro Bembo’s good friend Angelo Gabriele was one such example of an impossible youth. Just look at what Bembo wrote to Gabriele on April 10, 1528 (emphasis mine):
I received your Cornelio, not voluntarily, as far as I was concerned, for the reasons I gave you before by word of mouth, but in good part, because of you, to whom I owe everything, and with the intention of holding him dear for love of you. And first I began to teach him grammar and I bought him the books he asked me for and I would have bought all that he needed if I did not see very early that a letter could not enter that head and he did not care that it should. And all the same, urging him and reminding him of his own good many times, in the end I became absolutely convinced that every effort expended on that was completely superfluous and vain. And because he did bad things very often, in fact, every day, I would criticise him affectionately, and correct him, so that he would change, and adopt good behaviour and abandon wickedness, and sometimes I threatened him, to the end that, at least through fear, he might mend his ways. All of which was always in vain. On the contrary, the more he was instructed or threatened, by me or by the others, the worse he always appeared to try to be. He did not tell the truth, nor do what he was told to do, except reluctantly, nor did he obey me more than the others, nor was there ever a neglect of everything like his, nor could one see a kitchen boy more filthy or gluttonous or more greedy than he because, not only at home, but also throughout the whole challenging people to competitions in eating and drinking ... And already he has been seen to gulp down so much milk ... that I am amazed that he did not explode. He never spoke other than stupidly, and with a rough and loutish voice so that I, having lost all hope of correcting him, no longer wore myself out picking him up and I let him be, imagining that I had a madman in the house, as lords have at times ... and I fed and dressed him willingly, for love of you who gave him to me. And I wondered in my heart how it was possible that your brother and that lady, who I heard from everyone was so civilised and so nice, could have given birth to this monster. But then, as he grew more in all these vices ... from day to day and now brought shame upon me 1000 times, not just at home, but also everywhere I went, and brought me grief and vexation each day, he became so insolent and bestial that he began to want to beat my servants and to threaten to stab them in the chest and to set about them and a little while ago he almost broke one of my steward’s legs ... I took up my pen to inform you of this and to beg you that now that he wants to go to Venice because he says one of his uncles has died and left him 200 florins ... not to send him back to my house, because I cannot any longer endure such an irrational and dissolute ... animal who lacks no vice and has no virtue ... he gambles both his hose and his caps and his coat and his shirts so that no guardian can keep him clothed ... as I certainly wanted to do ... and I bought his coat back a little while ago ... and I recently bought him four shirts because he had gambled those that he received from his mother and from you. And if ... he wins anything gambling, do not imagine that he spends it on clothes, because everything goes down his gullet, as if he did not have anything to eat in my house. This one ... is not a man to stay in any gentleman’s house ... but to be kept at sea continually on some ship ... Do not send him back to me on any account ... Your priest knows, who brought him to me ... I cannot stand him any longer in my house ... (T II, 866)
From Pietro Bembo: Lover, Linguist, Cardinal by Carol Kidwell
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I’ve read elsewhere that Ariosto was the first person to mention Martin Luther in Italian. As I recall, he says something like, you have to be forgiving of men who deal with God and high theology, for they’re bound to come back down to earth with their minds all befuddled.
Cornelio is officially my new hero :-)
I love those witty exchanges! :) Thank you. You made me smile....