Pietro Bembo, Italian cardinal and scholar (born 1470)

Pietro Bembo, O.S.I.H. was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance, 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.