594 margaret l. king
dispersed, of another humanist and cardinal, domenico Grimani, con-
tained 392 precious Greek manuscripts.71
The most important library was that acquired by the state of Venice
itself, now the Biblioteca nazionale Marciana. in the Trecento, Venice had
tried but failed to acquire Petrarch’s library. That loss still rankled when,
in 1468, the Greek-born scholar Bessarion, now a catholic and cardinal of
the church, bequeathed to the republic his invaluable library laden with
rare Greek manuscripts snatched from constantinople before its collapse.
Stored away in trunks in the ducal Palace, these were made available to
the public from 1560, when the Marciana library was completed, designed
by Jacopo Sansovino, of which Bessarion’s collection of 1000 or so pre-
cious books is the core. another 2000 arrived as gifts before 1600, and by
1623 the collection had expanded to nearly 6000 manuscripts and printed
books.
The libraries, public and private, were concentrated in the hands of
elites and tended to classical, theological, and academic texts—mostly in
latin, some in Greek. But at the same time, the production of books in
the vernacular, more likely to gain a popular audience, had exploded. The
patrician humanist and author Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) had advocated
the use of the vernacular in his Prose della vulgar lingua (1525) and mod-
eled it in his dialogues, Gli asolani.72
Meanwhile, the translation of classical texts into italian accelerated,
while the presses turned out volumes of sonnets and letters—featuring
quite a few by female authors; conduct and how-to books; books of magic
and necromancy, pornography, heretical works, and other forbidden
71 aubrey diller, henry dominique Saffrey, and leendert Gerrit Westerink, Bibliotheca
graeca manuscripta Cardinalis Dominici Grimani (1461–1523) (Mariano del Friuli [Gorizia],
2003).
72 For Bembo, see Pietro Bembo, Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani, trans. rudolf Brand
Gottfried (Bloomington, 1954); carol Kidwell, Pietro Bembo: Lover, Linguist, Cardinal
(Montreal/ithaca, 2004); and christine raffini, Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare
Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism
(new York, 1998). a convenient edition of Bembo’s major works in Pietro Bembo, Prose
della volgar lingua; Gli Asolani; Rime, ed. carlo dionisotti (Milan, 1989); but see also Bembo,
Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani, trans. Gottfried; Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua: l’editio
princeps del 1525 riscontrata con l’autografo Vaticano Latino 3210, ed. claudio Vela (Bologna,
2001); and related conference papers in Silvia Scotti Morgana, Maro Piotti, and Massimo
Prada, eds., Prose della volgar lingua di Pietro Bembo: Gargnano Del Garda (4–7 ottobre
2000) (Milan, 2000).