Today is Wednesday, April 8, 2026.
Ever heard of Giuseppe Tartini? He lived an exciting life. He studied divinity and law at Padua and was apparently a good fencer.
When he was about 20, he married a woman who was a protégé of the archbishop of Padua in secret.
He was arrested — not for marriage — but for abduction, because people with power didn’t approve of his choice of wife. At 20, she was considered too old and was of a different social standing.
Tartini fled and found refuge in a monastery out of town. But his violin-playing eventually influenced the archbishop to allow Tartini to go back to Padua with his wife, Elisabetta.
Giuseppe Tartini, who helped to establish the modern style of violin-bowing, was born on this day, April 8, 1692, in the Republic of Venice.
