Though a discredited scandal might best be forgotten, its reverberations may still have meaning. In 1537 England was cut off by the break with the Roman church from its Italian contacts outside of Venice; yet a scandal which was the talk of Rome and Florence in hat and following years not only made its speedy way to England but was soon recorded in print there.
Cosimo Gheri, Bishop of Fano, died in Fano of an apparent long standing malaria or other fever in September 1537. A young man of twenty-four, he owed his bishopric to his late uncle, his predecessor as bishop. He was praised for both learning and devotion and was well known from his recent student days at Padua to many of new eminence in the church—Contarini, Cortese, Sadoleto, Pole, Cervini. A laudatory account of him was written on January 1, 1538, for Venetian friends by his fellow-student Ludovico Bcccadelli, then in the famiglia of Cardinal Contarini in Rome, and his good works in the short year of his incumbency at Fano have been recorded by the local historian.