Bendinello Sauli was born in Genoa in about 1481 into a wealthy family of merchants. His ecclesiastical and curial career began in 1503 and he attained the cardinalate in 1511. By early 1518 he was dead, stripped of all but the appearance of rank.

The call by Gian Giacomo Musso in 1958 for a monograph dedicated to this ‘remarkable figure’ went unanswered and this is, to date, the first indepth study of Sauli's life and career. Monographs on cardinals were, and remain, unfashionable but this is not the only probable cause for his neglect: the view of Genoa as a backwater of the Renaissance may well have led those qualified to investigate Sauli's life to disagree with Musso's assessment.

In fact Sauli has suffered from mixed reviews to the present day. He is either an angel or a demon depending on the commentator, whose stance generally reflects his opinion of the event which caused Sauli's downfall, disgrace and death: his implication in 1517 in the plot to murder Leo x. Assessments vary, from remarking on ‘his many outstanding qualities of mind and body which he had acquired by his own personal virtue … a lively and intelligent disposition’ and his ‘possessing every type of virtue’ to noting that ‘he was an ambitious and envious man’, ‘he had the soul of a factious baron rather than that of a priest’, or even ‘a totally insignificant personality’.