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.