Much of his early education was outside of Venice, accompanying his father who was an active politician and diplomat.[3] He received further education in Verona with an uncle, also named Ermolao.[3] In 1462 he was sent to Rome, where he studied under Pomponius Laetus[2][5] and Theodorus Gaza.[3] By 1468 he had returned to Verona, where Frederick III awarded him a laurel crown for his poetry.[3]
He completed his education at the University of Padua, where he was appointed professor of philosophy there in 1477.[2][3][5] Two years later he revisited Venice, but returned to Padua when the plague broke out in his native city.[2][5]
Career
Barbaro had an active political career, though he resented these duties as a distraction from his studies.[2] In 1483 he was elected to the Senate of the Republic of Venice.[3] He was twenty when he gave the funeral oration for Doge Nicholas Marcello in 1474.[4]
Vittore Carpaccio. Life of S.Ursula: The Pilgrims Meet the Pope. Barbaro - in red in centre
It was illegal under Venetian law for ambassadors to accept gifts or positions of foreign heads of state. There was also a dispute between Venice and the Papacy as to who should nominate Patriarchs of Aquileia.[6] Barbaro was accused of treason and the Venetian Senate ordered him to refuse the position.[2][3][4][5] Pope Innocent and his successor Alexander VI threatened to excommunicate Barbaro if he resigned as Patriarch of Aquileia.[2][3]
The Venetian Senate revoked Barbaro's appointment as ambassador and exiled him from Venice.[2][3] They threatened the same for his father, Zaccaria, as well as confiscation of both men's property, but Zaccaria died shortly afterwards.[4][5]
Barbaro edited and translated a number of classical works: Aristotle's Ethics and Politics (1474);[3] Aristotle's Rhetorica (1479);[2][3]Themistius's Paraphrases of certain works of Aristotle (1481);[2][3]Castigationes in Pomponium Melam (1493).[2]
His own work, De Coelibatu was less influential, but Barbaro's Castigationes Plinianae, published in Rome in 1492 by Eucharius Silber, was perhaps his most influential work.[3] In this discussion of Pliny's Natural History Barbaro made 5000 corrections to the text.[2] The work was written in only twenty months and dedicated to the newly elected Pope Alexander VI.[4]Castigationes Plinianae was considered by Barbaro's contemporaries to be the most authoritative work on Pliny. Even before his death, he was considered a leading authority on the Greek and Latin works of antiquity. Erasmus frequently cited Barbaro's works, often with respect.[3]
His letters to Giovanni Pico were also widely circulated.[3] Much of his work was published after his death: In Dioscuridem Corollarii libri quinque, a work on Dioscorides, in 1516, his translations of Aristotle in 1544, and Compendium Scientiae Naturalis in 1545.[3]
Barbaro's work De Officio Legati was representative of a revolution in the conduct of diplomacy which took place during the Renaissance.[7]
Publications
In Caii Plinii Naturalis historiae libros castigationes, 1534