ABSTRACT
The promise that Pietro Bembo saw in Giovan Matteo quickly changed into profound admiration. Each letter exchanged between Pietro and Giovan Matteo contains the same language and sentiments that sustained their bond over the decades, and over great distances. From very early on in their correspondence, Giovan Matteo became Pietro’s Figliuolo Carissimo, his “Dearest Son,” a name that he would continue to use for his nephew throughout their entire correspondence. Like Giovan Matteo Bembo, the pirate Barbarossa had sought and made his fortunes largely in the Eastern Mediterranean. His origins are hazy, but it seems that he was born and given the name of Hizir on the island of Lesbos shortly after its 1462 Ottoman conquest. At each stage of Giovan Matteo’s career, letters to and from Pietro Bembo continued to flow, but Pietro was not the only person with whom Giovan Matteo participated in a surviving published correspondence.
