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Ermolao Barbaro (Hermolaus Barbarus; sometimes “the Younger” to distinguish from his uncle, the prelate Ermolao Barabaro the Elder (1410-71)), was a humanist who reluctantly spent the bulk of his short career in the family trade as a diplomat and “churchman” when he longed to devote himself to scholarship. He grew up in the majestic Palazzo Barbaro in Venice and received his early education from his uncle. At Padua he studied with the Neoplatonist Matteo Bosso (1428-1502) and in Rome with Giulio Pomponio Leto (1428-98), and Theodore Gaza (1400-75). In his youth he became accustomed to the responsibilities of diplomacy by accompanying his father on diplomatic missions to Rome in 1480-1 and Milan in 1485).  In 1468 his poetry won him a laurel wreath from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (1415-83). After a series of diplomatic posts Pope Innocent VIII (1432-92) made him Patriarch of Aquilea without Venice’s support. He was threatened by the Pope with excommunication if he resigned, but Venice in return exiled him. He lived in Rome and died of the plague in 1493. 

       His edition and translation of Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics (1474) and Rhetorica as well as Themistius’s Paraphrases of Aristotle, contributed to the efforts of Gaza and others to bring the works of Greek authors to Italy. His most influential work on a classical author was Castigationes Plinianae, some 5000 corrections to the text of Pliny’s Natural History, written in under two years. It was the most In the next year he performed similar surgery on the text of Pomponius Mela. Of his non-classical works, De Officio Legati was written while he was ambassador to Rome and codified the post-medieval practices of diplomacy. For Barbaro it was essential that diplomats be scrupulously truthful, faithful to the wishes of their superiors, and of high moral character. His essay De Coelibatu, composed at the age of eighteen,  joined the Renaissance debate about the values of a contemplative life against a life of political engagement. A debate with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in 1485 concerned humanism versus scholasticismFa A number of works were published posthumously, including his numerous letters to other scholars and political leaders.