''Ildebrandino Conti'' was an Italian churchman and a member of the noble Roman family

Conti Conti is an Italian surname. Geographical distribution As of 2014, 63.5% of all known bearers of the surname ''Conti'' were residents of Italy (frequency 1:756), 11.8% of the United States (1:24,071), 9.2% of Brazil (1:17,439), 6.3% of Argentina ...

. Ildebrandino Conti was made bishop of Padua in 1319, by Pope John XXII, but he left the administration of the

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, pro ...

to a

vicar A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pref ...

, staying in

Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...

until 1332. While he remained in Avignon he probably was employed by a Roman political group in the

Curia Curia (Latin plural curiae) in ancient Rome referred to one of the original groupings of the citizenry, eventually numbering 30, and later every Roman citizen was presumed to belong to one. While they originally likely had wider powers, they came ...

. Again in 1342 he is in the service of the Avignonese court returning to his

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in 1347.

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...

received a

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in the church of Padua in 1349. In 1351 Ildebrandino urged

not to go to Avignon. He asked Petrarch to ignore the message received by two

cardinals Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

(as Petrarch says in another letter ''two powerful bulls lording it over Christ's wide pastures'') to abandon

worldly In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

ambition and avoid the rat race of curial responsibility of which the bishop himself already had ample experience. It turned out to be all in vain. Petrarch, while he went to Avignon to help his friends, did take Ildebrandino's advice on this. Ildebrandino himself died in Padua, November 2, 1352.

Sources

Akadémiai Journals CollectionBiblioteca Italiana Epystole sine nomine VIII
*

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

br>studies of Ildebrandino Conti by Paolo Sambin
* Ildebrandino Guides of Romena in the Italian Wikipedia
New Advant Catholic Encyclopedia on Padua references IldebrandinoIndex theologicus (IxTheo) Zeitschrifteninhaltsdienst Theologie der Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen

Sources

See also