Petrarch

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Petrarch

(born July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Tuscany — died July 18/19, 1374, Arquà, near Padua, Carrara) Italian scholar, poet, and humanist. After 1326 he abandoned the study of law for his true interests, literature and the religious life. He took minor ecclesiastical orders and moved to Avignon, where in 1327 he first saw Laura, the idealized subject of his chaste love and of his celebrated Italian love lyrics; mainly sonnets and odes written over some 20 years, most were included in his Canzoniere or Rime (1360). The greatest scholar of his age, especially of Classical Latin, he traveled widely, visiting learned men, searching out manuscripts, and undertaking diplomatic missions. He strongly advocated the continuity between Classical culture and the Christian message; in combining the two ideals he is considered the founder and a great representative of humanism. His Latin works, reflecting his religious and philosophical interests, include On Illustrious Men (begun c. 1337), the epic poem Africa (begun c. 1338), the autobiographical treatise Petrarch's Secret (written 1342 – 58), De vita solitaria (1345 – 47; "The Life of Solitude"), and Epistolae metricae (begun c. 1345; "Metrical Letters"). After 1367 he lived in and near Padua. His influence on European literature was enormous and lasting, and his deep consciousness of the Classical past as a source of literary and philosophical meaning for the present was of great importance in paving the way for the Renaissance.

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Music Encyclopedia: Petrarch

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(b Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d Arquà, 18 July 1374). Italian poet. Though he was fond of music, little of his verse belongs to the category of poesia per musica (ballate and madrigals) and only one contemporary polyphonic setting (by Jacopo da Bologna) survives, although others may have been performed in improvised settings. The important 16th-century Petrarch revival begins with the work of Benedetto Gareth and Pietro Bembo's edition of the Canzoniere (1501). His work inspired at least two generations of Italian poets, including Sannazaro and Tasso, all of whom provided texts for madrigalists. Willaert and other composers in Venice set his verse, but settings became less frequent later in the 16th century, though they never disappeared, and the influence of the Petrarchan revival was felt throughout Europe. Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg are among the later composers to draw inspiration from him.

Biography: Petrarch

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The Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374), or Francesco Petrarca, is best known for the Iyric poetry of his "Canzoniere" and is considered one of the greatest love poets of world literature. A scholar of classical antiquity, he was the founder of humanism.

Petrarch has been called the first modern man. He observed the external world and analyzed his own interior life with a new awareness of values. Painfully conscious of human transience, he felt it his mission to bridge the ages and to save the classical authors from the ravages of time for posterity. He also longed for fame and for permanence in the future. Petrarch attained a vast direct knowledge of classical texts, subjecting them to critical evaluation and prizing them as an expression of the living human spirit. His attitude provided the first great stimulus to the cultural movement that culminated in the Renaissance.

Petrarch's life was marked by restlessness, yet one of its constant motives was his devotion to cherished friends. Equally constant was an unresolved interior conflict between the attractions of earthly life, particularly love and glory, and his aspirations toward higher religious goals.

Early Years and Education

Petrarch was born on July 20, 1304, in Arezzo, where his family was living in political exile. His parents were the Florentine notary Ser Petracco and Eletta Canigiani. His childhood was spent at Incisa and Pisa until 1312, when his family moved to Avignon, then the papal residence. A housing shortage there obliged Petrarch, his younger brother Gherardo, and their mother to settle in nearby Carpentras, where he began to study grammar and rhetoric. Beginning in 1316, Petrarch pursued legal studies at the University of Montpellier. But already he preferred classical poets to the study of law. During one surprise visit Petrarch's father discovered some hidden books and began to burn them; however, moved by his son's pleading, he spared Cicero's Rhetoric and a copy of Virgil from the fire. About this time Petrarch's mother died.

In 1320 Petrarch and Gherardo went to Bologna to attend the law schools. They remained in Bologna - with two interruptions caused by student riots - until their father's death in 1326. Free to pursue his own interests, Petrarch then abandoned law and participated in the fashionable social life of Avignon.

Laura and the Canzoniere

On April 6, 1327, in the church of St. Clare, Petrarch saw and fell in love with the young woman whom he called Laura. She did not return his love. The true identity of Laura is not known; there is, however, no doubt regarding her reality or the intensity of the poet's passion, which endured after her death as a melancholy longing. Petrarch composed and revised the love lyrics inspired by Laura until his very last years. The Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarum fragmenta, contains 366 poems (mostly sonnets, with a few canzoni and compositions in other meters) and is divided into two sections: the first is devoted to Laura in life (1-263) and the second to Laura in death (264-366). Petrarch became a model for Italian poets. The influence of his art and introspective sensibility was felt for more than 3 centuries in all European literatures.

When the income of Petrarch's family was depleted, he took the four Minor Orders required for an ecclesiastical career, and in the fall of 1330 he entered the service of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. In 1333, motivated by intellectual curiosity, Petrarch traveled to Paris, Flanders (where he discovered two of Cicero's unknown orations), and Germany. Upon returning to Avignon, he met the Augustinian scholar Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, who directed him toward a greater awareness of the importance of Christian patristic literature. Until the end of his life, Petrarch carried with him a tiny copy of St. Augustine's Confessions, a gift from Dionigi. In 1336 Petrarch climbed Mt. Ventoux in Provence; on the summit, opening the Confessions at random, he read that men admire mountains and rivers and seas and stars, yet neglect themselves. He described this experience in spiritual terms in a letter that he wrote to Dionigi (Familiares IV, 1).

Major Works in Latin

Petrarch's reputation as a man of letters and the canonries to which he was appointed at various times assured him the ease and freedom necessary for his studies and writing. He participated during this period in the polemic concerning the papal residence, expressing in two Epistolae metricae his conviction that the papacy must return to Rome. Early in 1337 Petrarch visited Rome for the first time. The ancient ruins of the city deepened his admiration for the classical age. In the summer he returned to Avignon, where his son, Giovanni, had been born, and then went to live at Vaucluse (Fontaine-de-Vaucluse) near the source of the Sorgue River. There he led a life of solitude and simplicity, and he also conceived his major Latin works. In 1338 Petrarch began his De viris illustribus, and about that time he also started his Latin epic on Scipio Africanus, the Africa. In Vaucluse, Petrarch probably also worked on his Triumphus Cupidinis, a poetic "procession, " written in Italian, in which Cupid leads his captive lovers. In 1340 Petrarch received invitations simultaneously from Paris and Rome to be crowned as poet. He chose Rome. His coronation on April 8, 1341, was a personal victory and a triumph for art and knowledge as well.

Middle Years

On returning from Rome, Petrarch stopped at Parma. There, on the wooded plateau of Selvapiana, he continued his Africa with renewed inspiration. In April 1343, shortly after Petrarch had returned to Avignon, Gherardo became a Carthusian monk. That same year Petrarch's daughter, Francesca, was born. Gherardo's decision to become a monk deeply moved Petrarch, leading him to reexamine his own spiritual state. Though his Christian faith was unquestionably sincere, he felt incapable of his brother's renunciation. His inner conflict inspired the Secretuma dialogue in three books between St. Augustine and Petrarch. In it Petrarch expressed his awareness of his failure to realize his religious ideal and his inability to renounce the temporal values that motivated his life. That year Petrarch also began a treatise on the cardinal virtues, Rerum memorandarum libri.

In the fall of 1343 Petrarch went to Naples on a diplomatic mission for Cardinal Colonna. He recorded his travel impressions in several letters (Familiares V, 3, 6). Upon his return he stopped at Parma, hoping to settle at Selvapiana. But a siege of Parma by Milanese and Mantuan troops forced him to flee to Verona in February 1345. There, in the cathedral library, he discovered the first 16 books of Cicero's letters to Atticus and his letters to Quintus and Brutus. Petrarch personally transcribed them, and these letters of Cicero stimulated Petrarch to plan a formal collection of his own letters.

From 1345 to 1347 Petrarch lived at Vaucluse and undertook his De vita solitaria and the Bucolicum carmen the latter a collection of 12 Latin eclogues. Early in 1347 a visit to Gherardo's monastery inspired Petrarch to write his De otio religioso. In May of that year an event occurred in Rome that aroused his greatest enthusiasm. Cola di Rienzi, who shared Petrarch's fervent desire for the rebirth of Rome, gained control of the Roman government through a successful revolution. Petrarch encouraged Cola with his pen, exhorting him to persevere in his task of restoring Rome to its universal political and cultural missions. Petrarch then started out for Rome. But Cola's dictatorial acts soon brought down upon himself the hostility of the Pope and the antagonism of the Roman nobles. News of Cola's downfall, before the year was over, prompted Petrarch to write his famous letter of reproach (Familiares VII, 7), which tells of his bitter disillusionment.

The Black Death and Milanese Period

Rather than proceed to Rome, Petrarch remained in Parma, where in May 1348 news of Laura's death reached him. The Black Death deprived Petrarch of several of his close friends that year, among them Cardinal Colonna. His grief is reflected in the poems he then wrote to Laura and in his letters of this period, one of the most desolate letters being addressed to himself (Ad se ipsum). Three eclogues and the Triumphus mortis (following the Triumph of Love and the Triumph of Chastity) were also inspired by the pestilence.

Because of the losses Petrarch had suffered, a period of his life seemed to have ended. In 1350 he began to make the formal collection of his Latin prose letters called Familiares. Since 1350 was a Year of Jubilee, Petrarch also made a pilgrimage to Rome. On his way he stopped in Florence, where he made new friends, among whom was Giovanni Boccaccio. After a brief stay in Rome, Petrarch returned northward and arrived in Parma in January 1351. In the meantime, Pope Clement VI was soliciting Petrarch's return to Avignon, and Florence sent Boccaccio with a letter of invitation promising Petrarch a professorship at the university and the restitution of his father's property. Petrarch chose Provence, where he hoped to complete some of his major works. He arrived in Vaucluse in June 1351, accompanied by his son. In Avignon that August he refused a papal secretaryship and a bishopric offered to him. Petrarch was impatient to leave the papal "Babylon" and wrote a series of violent letters against the Curia (Epistolae sine nomine).

In the spring of 1352, Petrarch returned to Vaucluse, resolved to leave Provence. The following spring, after visiting Gherardo, he crossed the Alps and greeted Italy (Epistolae metricae III, 24). For 8 years he stayed in Milan under the patronage of Giovanni Visconti and later Galeazzo II Visconti, enjoying seclusion and freedom for study while using his pen to urge peace among Italian cities and states. He worked on the Canzoniere, took up old works (De viris illustribus), and began the treatise De remediis utriusque fortunae. Petrarch was also entrusted with diplomatic missions that brought him into direct relationship with heads of state, including the emperor Charles IV.

Padua, Venice, and Arquà

In June 1361 Petrarch went to Padua because the plague (which took the life of his son and the lives of several friends) had broken out in Milan. In Padua he terminated the Familiares and initiated a new collection, Seniles. In the fall of 1362 Petrarch settled in Venice, where he had been given a house in exchange for the bequest of his library to the city. From Venice he made numerous trips until his definitive return to Padua in 1368. During this period a controversy with several Averroists gave rise to an Invective on his own ignorance.

Petrarch's Paduan patron, Francesco da Carrara, gave him some land at Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua. There Petrarch built a house to which he retired in 1370. He received friends, studied, and wrote, and there his daughter, Francesca, now married, joined him with her family. Despite poor health, Petrarch attempted a trip to Rome in 1370, but he had to turn back at Ferrara. Except for a few brief absences, Petrarch spent his last years at Arquà, working on the Seniles and on the Canzoniere, for the latter of which he wrote a concluding canzone to the Virgin Mary. The Posteritati, a biographical letter intended to terminate the Seniles, remained incomplete at Petrarch's death. He revised his four Triumphs (of Love, Chastity, Death, and Fame), adding two more (of Time and of Eternity). Petrarch died on the night of July 18/19, 1374, and he was ceremonially buried beside the church of Arquà.

Biography

Sometimes the most influential musician of a generation dies long before that generation is even born, and once in a great while, as in the case of the fourteenth-century Italian poet and humanist Francesco Petrarch, that person happens not to be a musician at all. A century and a half after his death, Petrarch's work came to be the driving force behind a stylistic revolution in music whose tendrils could still be heard influencing Baroque and even Classical composers.

Petrarch went to school in Montpellier and later studied law at the famous University of Bologna. Law, however, was not destined to be Petrarch's foothold on the ladder to success. Rather, the church would be. In 1330, Petrarch was tonsured and took a semi-clerical position attached to a prominent Roman family living in Avignon. Free time was his in abundance, though, and during the 1330s, he began his career as a poet in earnest. By 1342, the first version of his Canzoniere, a series of sonnets and canzoni (many of which pay Platonic tribute to the beautiful lady Laura, whom Petrarch first met in the late 1320s and whose life he followed, from a distance, with considerable interest up until her death in 1348 -- which he dutifully recorded in verse), was ready. Many further versions and revisions of and supplements to these greatly influential poems would appear throughout Petrarch's lifetime.

Petrarch's poetic proficiency and insightful, classically oriented (meaning Greco-Roman-oriented) non-fiction won him great renown throughout Europe. His friends were the cream of the European aristocratic and literary crop -- prominent nobles and even heads of state, authors like Boccaccio. After living in no fewer than eight cities during his lifetime, he built a home in the countryside at Arquà in the final years of his life and died there just two days shy of his 70th birthday.

But Petrarch's death in 1374 is only the beginning of the story so far as musicians are concerned. Petrarch was not a musician, but he loved music, and musical qualities -- very modern-seeming musical qualities, at that -- abound in his poems. Musicians of his own day had little interest in his kind of verse, but when a diplomat and churchman named Pietro Bembo published a new edition of the Canzoniere in 1501, Petrarch's work caught like wildfire amongst composers. Adrian de Willaert and Cipriano de Rore are just two of the madrigal composers who were devoted to the poems of Petrarch, attracted by the poet's interest in rhythm and sonority and his unerring sense of form, and encouraged by the variety of sentiments and moods -- from serious to sweet to arduous to grim to explosive to modest. By setting Petrarch sonnets and Petrarch canzoni, composers found themselves prompted to explore whole new realms of expression, and history shows again and again that composers love being prompted to such exploration. More than 150 individual editions of the Canzoniere were issued during the sixteenth century, influencing poet after poet, who in turn brought Petrarch-like poetry to more and more musicians. It is safe to say that the sixteenth-century madrigal could not have come to be without Francesco Petrarch's work, and few would argue that there was in the sixteenth century a more important musical vessel than the madrigal. ~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

Wikipedia: Petrarch

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Francesco Petrarch

Born	20 July 1304(1304-07-20) Arezzo
Died	19 July 1374 (aged 69) Arquà Petrarca
Occupation	Renaissance humanist
Nationality	Italian
Writing period	Early Renaissance

Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism".^[1] Based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio and above all Dante Alighieri, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, later endorsed by the Accademia della Crusca. His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch was also known for being one of the first people to refer to the Dark Ages.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Mont Ventoux
- 1.2 Later years
2 Works
- 2.1 Laura and poetry
3 Dante
4 Philosophy
5 Legacy
6 Footnotes
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

Biography

Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo

Petrarch says he was born on Garden Street in the city of Arezzo, just at dawn on a Monday. He was the son of Ser Petracco. He spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. Petrarch spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras, where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V who moved there in 1309 to begin the Avignon Papacy. He studied law at Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate called Guido Sette. Because his father was in the profession of law he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also. Petrarch however was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, "I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind", as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.^[2]

Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large scale work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity. On April 8, 1341, he became the first poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned on the holy grounds of Rome's Capitol.^[3]

He traveled widely in Europe and served as an ambassador and has been called "the first tourist"^[4] because he traveled just for pleasure,^[5] which was the basic reason he climbed Mont Ventoux.^[6] During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. He encouraged and advised Leontius Pilatus's translation of Homer from a manuscript purchased by Boccaccio, although he was severely critical of the result. Petrarch had acquired a copy, which he did not entrust to Leontius,^[7] but he knew no Greek; Homer, Petrarch said, "was dumb to him, while he was deaf to Homer".^[8] In 1345 he personally discovered a collection of Cicero's letters not previously known to have existed, the collection ad Atticum.

Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited with creating the concept of a historical "Dark Ages".^[9]

Mont Ventoux

Summit of Mont Ventoux

Main article: Ascent of Mont Ventoux

Petrarch claimed that on April 26, 1336, with his brother and two servants, he climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (1,912 m; 6,263 ft). Petrarch made the climb of his own volition, i.e. for pleasure, rather than any necessary journey.^[10] He wrote an account of the trip, composed considerably later, as a letter to his friend Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro. The accuracy of Petrarch's account is open to question; particularly the assertions that he was the first to climb a mountain for pleasure since Philip V of Macedon, and that an aged peasant had warned him off the unclimbable mountain. Jean Buridan had climbed the same mountain a few years before, and other ascents are recorded from the Middle Ages, including Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne. Jacob Burckhardt's rhapsody on the subject^[11] has been often repeated since.^[12]

J. H. Plumb writes in his book The Italian Renaissance of Morris Bishop's version of Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux showing^{[clarification needed]} Petrarch's letter on the ascent to his confessor,^[13] the monk Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, rings of aesthetic gratification from grandeur and majesty,^[14] a modern attitude that is quoted to this day in many books and journals pertaining to mountaineering.^[15]

"For pleasure alone he climbed Mount Ventoux, which rises to more than six thousand feet, beyond Vaucluse. It was no great feat, of course; but he was the first recorded Alpinist of modern times, the first to climb a mountain merely for the delight of looking from its top. (Or almost the first; for in a high pasture he met an old shepherd, who said that fifty years before he had attained the summit, and had got nothing from it save toil and repentance and torn clothing.) Petrarch was dazed and stirred by the view of the Alps, the mountains around Lyons, the Rhone, the Bay of Marseilles. He took St. Augustine's Confessions from his pocket and reflected that his climb was merely an allegory of aspiration towards a better life".^[6]

In the Confessions, Petrarch's eyes were immediately drawn to the following words:

"And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.",^[13]

Original lyrics by Petrarch, found in 1985 in Erfurt

Petrarch's response was to turn from the outer world of nature to the inner world of 'soul':

I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again. [...] [W]e look about us for what is to be found only within. [...] How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation [...]^[13]

James Hillman argues that this rediscovery of the inner world is the real significance of the Ventoux event.^[16] The Renaissance begins not with the ascent of Mont Ventoux but with the subsequent descent—the "return [...] to the valley of soul", as Hillman puts it. Whether Petrarch's focus on 'soul' is 'modern' depends on what is meant by 'modern', since much of 'modernity' would deny the very existence of subjectivity.

Later years

The Triumph of Death, or The 3 Fates. Flemish tapestry (probably Brussels, ca. 1510–1520). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who spin, draw out and cut the thread of Life, represent Death in this tapestry, as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity. This is the third subject in Petrarch's poem "The Triumphs". First, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity.

The later part of Petrarch's life he spent in journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in the Church did not allow him to marry, but he did father two children by a woman or women unknown to posterity. A son, Giovanni, was born in 1337, and a daughter, Francesca, was born in 1343. Both he later legitimized.^[17]

Giovanni died of the plague in 1361. Francesca married Francescuolo da Brossano (who was later named executor of Petrarch's will) that same year. In 1362, shortly after the birth of a daughter, Eletta (same name as Petrarch's mother), they joined Petrarch in Venice to flee the plague then ravaging parts of Europe. A second grandchild, Francesco, was born in 1366, but died before his second birthday. Francesca and her family lived with Petrarch in Venice for five years from 1362 to 1367 at Palazzo Molina; although Petrarch continued to travel in those years.

About 1368 Petrarch and his daughter Francesca (with her family) moved to the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in his house in Arquà on July 19, 1374 – one day short of his seventieth birthday.

Petrarch's will (dated April 4, 1370) leaves 50 florins to Boccaccio "to buy a warm winter dressing gown"; various legacies (a horse, a silver cup, a lute, a Madonna) to his brother and his friends; his house in Vaucluse to its caretaker; for his soul, and for the poor; and the bulk of his estate to his son-in-law, Francescuolo da Brossano, who is to give half of it to "the person to whom, as he knows, I wish it to go"; presumably his daughter, Francesca, Brossano's wife. The will mentions neither the property in Arquà nor his library; Petrarch's library of notable manuscripts was already promised to Venice, in exchange for the Palazzo Molina. This arrangement was probably cancelled when he moved to Padua, the enemy of Venice, in 1368. The library was seized by the lords of Padua, and his books and manuscripts are now widely scattered over Europe.^[18] Nevertheless, the Biblioteca Marciana traditionally claimed this bequest as its founding, although it was in fact founded by Cardinal Bessarion in 1468.^[19]

Works

Petrarch revived the work and letters of the ancient Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero

Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the Canzoniere and the Trionfi ("Triumphs"). However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings include scholarly works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry. Among them are Secretum ("My Secret Book"), an intensely personal, guilt-ridden imaginary dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus ("On Famous Men"), a series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum ("On Religious Leisure") and De Vita Solitaria ("On the Solitary Life"), which praise the contemplative life; De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae ("Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul"), a self-help book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium ("Petrarch's Guide to the Holy Land"), a distant ancestor of Fodor's and Lonely Planet; a number of invectives against opponents such as doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of 12 pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa. Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history such as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today. However, several of his works are scheduled to appear in the Harvard University Press series I Tatti ^[20]. It is difficult to assign any precise dates to his writings because he tended to revise them throughout his life.

Petrarch's Virgil (title page) (c. 1336)
Illuminated manuscript by Simone Martini, 29 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

In addition Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called Epistolae familiares and Seniles, a plan suggested to him by knowledge of Cicero's letters. He kept out of Epistolae familiares a special set of 19 controversial letters called Liber sine nomine that contained much criticism of the Avignon papacy. These were published "without names" to protect the recipients, all of whom had close relationships to Petrarch. The recipients of these letters included Philippe de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavaillon; Ildebrandino Conti, bishop of Padua; Cola di Rienzo, tribune of Rome; Francesco Nelli, priest of the Prior of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Florence; and Niccolà di Capoccia, a cardinal and priest of Saint Vitalis.

His "Letter to Posterity" (the last letter in Seniles)^[21] gives an autobiography and a synopsis of his philosophy in life. It was originally written in Latin and was completed in 1371 or 1372.^[22]

While Petrarch's poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian madrigal composers of the Renaissance in the 16th century, only one musical setting composed during Petrarch's lifetime survives. This is Non al suo amante by Jacopo da Bologna, written around 1350.

Laura and poetry

On April 6, 1327, Good Friday, after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called "Laura" in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse ("Scattered rhymes"). Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere ("Song Book"). Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his "Secretum", she refused him for the very proper reason that she was already married to another man. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later in his "Letter to Posterity", Petrarch wrote: "In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair – my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did".

Laura de Noves

While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character – particularly since the name "Laura" has a linguistic connection to the poetic "laurels" Petrarch coveted – Petrarch himself always denied it. His frequent use of l'aura is also remarkable: for example, the line "Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi" may both mean "her hair was all over Laura's body", and "the wind ("l'aura") blew through her hair". There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, and Petrarch's love is by no means conventional – unlike some cliché women of troubadours and courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two, his quest for love a hopeless, endless agony.

Laura is unreachable – the few physical descriptions are vague, almost impalpable as the love he pines for, and such is perhaps the power of his verse, which lives off the melodies it evokes against the fading, diaphanous image that is no more consistent than a ghost. Francesco De Sanctis remarks much the same thing in his Storia della lera italiana, and contemporary critics agree on the powerful music of his verse. Perhaps the poet was inspired by a famous singer he met in Veneto around 1350's^[23]. Gianfranco Contini, in a famous essay on Petrarch's language ("Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca". Petrarca, Canzoniere. Turin, Einaudi, 1964) has spoken of linguistic indeterminacy – Petrarch never rises above the "bel pié" (her lovely foot): Laura is too holy to be painted; she is an awe-inspiring goddess. Sensuality and passion are suggested rather by the rhythm and music that shape the vague contours of the lady.

Dante

Dante Alighieri, detail from a Luca Signorelli fresco in the chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto.

Petrarch's is a world apart from Dante, and the Divina Commedia. In spite of the metaphysical subject, the Commedia is deeply rooted in the cultural and social milieu of turn-of-the-century Florence: Dante's rise to power (1300) and exile (1302), his political passions call for a "violent" use of language, where he uses all the registers, from low and trivial to sublime and philosophical. Petrarch confessed to Boccaccio that he had never read the Commedia, remarks Contini, wondering whether this was true or Petrarch wanted to distance himself from Dante. Dante 's language evolves as he grows old, from the courtly love of Dolce Stil Novo (Vita Nuova) to the Convivio and Divina Commedia, where Beatrice is sanctified as the goddess of philosophy – the philosophy announced by the Donna Gentile at the death of Beatrice.

In contrast, Petrarch's thought and style are relatively uniform throughout his life – he spent much of it revising the songs and sonnets of the Canzoniere rather than moving to new subjects or poetry. Here, poetry alone provides a consolation for personal grief, much less philosophy or politics (as in Dante), for Petrarch fights within himself (sensuality versus mysticism, profane verse versus Christian literature), not against anything outside him. The strong moral and political convictions which had inspired Dante belong to the Middle Ages and the libertarian spirit of the commune; Petrarch's moral dilemmas, his refusal to take a stand in politics, his reclusive life point to a different direction, or time, one in which moral values and faith are giving way and are constantly questioned. The free commune, the place that had made Dante an eminent politician and scholar, was being dismantled: the signoria was taking its place. Humanism and its spirit of empirical enquiry, however, were making progress – but the papacy (especially after Avignon) and the empire (Henry VII, the last hope of the white Guelphs, died near Siena in 1313) had lost much of their original prestige.

Petrarch polished and perfected the sonnet form inherited from Giacomo da Lentini and which Dante widely used in his Vita Nova to popularise the new courtly love of the Dolce Stil Novo. The tercet benefits from Dante's terza rima (compare the Divine Comedy), the quatrains prefer the ABBA-ABBA to the ABAB-ABAB scheme of the Sicilians. The imperfect rhymes of u with closed o and i with closed e (inherited from Guittone's mistaken rendering of Sicilian verse) are excluded, but the rhyme of open and closed o is kept. Finally, Petrarch's enjambment creates longer semantic units by connecting one line to the following. Many of Petrarch's poems collected in the Canzoniere (dedicated to Laura) were sonnets, and the Petrarchan sonnet still bears his name.

Philosophy

Portrait of Petrarch

Petrarch is traditionally called the father of Humanism and considered by many to be the "father of the Renaissance." He was the first to offer a combination of abstract entities of classical culture and Christian philosophy. In his work Secretum meum he points out that secular achievements didn't necessarily preclude an authentic relationship with God. Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest.^[24] He inspired humanist philosophy which led to the intellectual flowering of the Renaissance. He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature – that is, the study of human thought and action. Petrarch was a devout Catholic and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith. A highly introspective man, he shaped the nascent humanist movement a great deal because many of the internal conflicts and musings expressed in his writings were seized upon by Renaissance humanist philosophers and argued continually for the next 200 years. For example, Petrarch struggled with the proper relation between the active and contemplative life, and tended to emphasize the importance of solitude and study. Later the politician and thinker Leonardo Bruni argued for the active life, or "civic humanism." As a result, a number of political, military, and religious leaders during the Renaissance were inculcated with the notion that their pursuit of personal glory should be grounded in classical example and philosophical contemplation.

Legacy

The Romantic composer Franz Liszt set three of Petrarch's Sonnets (47, 104, and 123) to music for voice, Tre sonetti del Petrarca, which he later would transcribe for solo piano for inclusion in the suite Années de Pèlerinage.

Petrarch's Tomb Arquà Petrarca.

In November, 2003, it was announced that pathological anatomists would be exhuming Petrarch's body from his casket in Arquà Petrarca, in order to verify 19th-century reports that he had stood 1.83 meters (about six feet), which would have been very tall for his period. The team from the University of Padua also hoped to reconstruct his cranium in order to generate a computerized image of his features to coincide with his 700th birthday. The tomb had been opened previously in 1873 by Professor Giovanni Canestrini, also of Padua University. When the tomb was opened, the skull was discovered in fragments and a DNA test revealed that the skull was not Petrarch's,^[25] prompting calls for the return of Petrarch's skull.

The researchers are fairly certain that the body in the tomb is Petrarch's due to the fact that the skeleton bears evidence of injuries mentioned by Petrarch in his writings, including a kick from a donkey when he was 42.^[26]

Footnotes

^ There are many popular examples, for a recent one this review of Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance
^ J.H. Plumb, The Italian Renaissance, 1961; Chapter XI by Morris Bishop "Petrarch", pp. 161-162; New York, publisher American Heritage ISBN 0-618-12738-0
^ Plumb, p. 164
^ NSA Family Encyclopedia, Petrarch, Francesco, Volume 11, page 240, Standard Education Corp. 1992
^ Bishop, Morris Petrarch and his World, p. 92; Indiana University Press 1963, ISBN 0804617309
^ ^a ^b Plumb, p. 163
^ Vittore Branca, Boccaccio; The Man and His Works, tr. Richard Monges, p.113-118
^ tuttotempolibero.altervista.org//poesia/trecento/francescopetrarca/epistolefamiliares.html Ep. Fam. 18.2 §9
^ Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan., 1943), pp. 69-74; Theodore E. Mommsen, "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages" Speculum 17.2 (April 1942:226-242); JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
^ Nicolson, Marjorie Hope; 1997 Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, p. 49; ISBN 0295975776
^ Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilisation of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore. Swan Sonnenschein (1904), pp. 301–302.
^ Lynn Thorndike, Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan., 1943), pp. 69–74. JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
^ ^a ^b ^c Familiares 4.1
^ JSTOR: Petrarch at the Peak of Fame
^ McLaughlin, Edward Tompkins; Studies in Medieval Life and Literature, p. 6, New York G.P. Putnam's Sons 1894
^ Hillman, James (1977). Revisioning Psychology. Harper & Row. pp. 197. ISBN 0060905638.
^ Plumb, p. 165
^ Bishop, pp. 360, 366. Francesca and the quotes from there;^{[clarification needed]} Bishop adds that the dressing-gown was a piece of tact: "fifty florins would have bought twenty dressing-gowns".
^ Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Libraries" §Italy.
^ "I Tatti Renaissance Library/Forthcoming and Published Volumes". Hup.harvard.edu. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/itatti/forthcoming.html. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
^ Petrarch's Letter to Posterity (1909 English translation, with notes, by James Harvey Robinson)
^ Ernest H. Wilkins, "On the Evolution of Petrarch's Letter to Posterity," Speculum 39, pp. 304–308.
^ Anna Chiappinelli, "La Dolce Musica Nova di Francesco Landini" Sidereus Nuncius, 2007, pp. 55-91> [1]
^ Famous First Facts International, H. W. Wilson Company, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8242-0958-3, page 303, item 4567.
^ "Genetic analysis of the skeletal remains attribute...[Forensic Sci Int. 2007] - PubMed Result". Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2009-07-01. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?tmpl=NoSidebarfile&db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=17320326&dopt=Abstract. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
^ http://www.upf.edu/bioevo/2007BioEvo/BE2007-Caramelli-FSI.pdf

References

Bartlett, Kenneth R. (1992). The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance; a Source Book. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0669209007
Bishop, Morris (1961). "Petrarch." In J. H. Plumb (Ed.), Renaissance Profiles, pp. 1–17. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-131162-6 .
Hanawalt, A. Barbara. "The Middle Ages:An Illustrated History" pp. 131–132 Oxford University Press New York 1998
Kallendorf, Craig. "The Historical Petrarch," The American Historical Review, Vol 101, No. 1 (Feb. 1996): <130-141.>

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Petrarch

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Francesco Petrarca

Canzoniere (different edition) and other works
Petrarch from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Excerpts from his works and letters
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374)
Works by Petrarch at Project Gutenberg
Timeline of life of Petrarch
Poems From The Canzoniere, translated by Tony Kline.
Francesco Petrarca at The Online Library of Liberty
De remediis utriusque fortunae, Cremonae, B. de Misintis ac Caesaris Parmensis, 1492. (Vicifons)
Free scores of works by Petrarch in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Petrarch and Laura Multi-lingual site including translated works in the public domain and biography, pictures, music.
Petrarch - the poet who lost his head April 2004 article in The Guardian regarding the exhumation of Petrarch's remains

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Petrarch

Biography

Contents

Biography

Mont Ventoux

Later years

Works

Laura and poetry

Dante

Philosophy

Legacy

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links