I Biographical
Vestro de grege unus fui autem, mortalis homuncio.
Epistola ad Posteros.
Francesco Petrarca to Posterity
Greeting.—It is possible that some word of me may have come to you, though even this is doubtful, since an insignificant and obscure name will scarcely penetrate far in either time or space. If, however, you should have heard of me, you may desire to know what manner of man I was, or what was the outcome of my labours, especially those of which some description or, at any rate, the bare titles may have reached you.
To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds. I was, in truth, a poor mortal like yourself, neither very exalted in my origin, nor, on the other hand, of the most humble birth, but belonging, as Augustus Cæsar says of himself, to an ancient family. As to my disposition, I was not naturally perverse or wanting in modesty, however the contagion of evil associations may have corrupted me. My youth was gone before I realised it; I was carried away by the strength of manhood; but a riper age brought me to my senses and taught me by experience the truth I had long before read in books, that youth and pleasure are vanity—nay, that the Author of all ages and times permits us miserable mortals, puffed up with emptiness, thus to wander about, until finally, coming to a tardy consciousness of our sins, we shall learn to know ourselves. In my prime I was blessed with a quick and active body, although not exceptionally strong; and while I do not lay claim to remarkable personal beauty, I was comely enough in my best days.1 I was possessed of a clear complexion, between light and dark, lively eyes, and for long years a keen vision, which however deserted me, contrary to my hopes, after I reached my sixtieth birthday, and forced me, to my great annoyance, to resort to glasses.2 Although I had previously enjoyed perfect health, old age brought with it the usual array of discomforts.
My parents were honourable folk, Florentine in their origin, of medium fortune, or, I may as well admit it, in a condition verging upon poverty. They had been expelled from their native city,3 and consequently I was born in exile, at Arezzo, in the year 1304 of this latter age which begins with Christ’s birth, July the twentieth, on a Monday, at dawn. I have always possessed an extreme contempt for wealth; not that riches are not desirable in themselves, but because I hate the anxiety and care which are invariably associated with them. I certainly do not long to be able to give gorgeous banquets. I have, on the contrary, led a happier existence with plain living and ordinary fare than all the followers of Apicius, with their elaborate dainties. So-called convivia, which are but vulgar bouts, sinning against sobriety and good manners, have always been repugnant to me. I have ever felt that it was irksome and profitless to invite others to such affairs, and not less so to be bidden to them myself. On the other hand, the pleasure of dining with one’s friends is so great that nothing has ever given me more delight than their unexpected arrival, nor have I ever willingly sat down to table without a companion. Nothing displeases me more than display, for not only is it bad in itself, and opposed to humility, but it is troublesome and distracting.
I struggled in my younger days with a keen but constant and pure attachment, and would have struggled with it longer had not the sinking flame been extinguished by death—premature and bitter, but salutary.4 I should be glad to be able to say that I had always been entirely free from irregular desires, but I should lie if I did so. I can, however, conscientiously claim that, although I may have been carried away by the fire of youth or by my ardent temperament, I have always abhorred such sins from the depths of my soul. As I approached the age of forty, while my powers were unimpaired and my passions were still strong, I not only abruptly threw off my bad habits, but even the very recollection of them, as if I had never looked upon a woman. This I mention as among the greatest of my blessings, and I render thanks to God, who freed me, while still sound and vigorous, from a disgusting slavery which had always been hateful to me.5 But let us turn to other matters.
I have taken pride in others, never in myself, and however insignificant I may have been, I have always been still less important in my own judgment. My anger has very often injured myself, but never others. I have always been most desirous of honourable friendships, and have faithfully cherished them. I make this boast without fear, since I am confident that I speak truly. While I am very prone to take offence, I am equally quick to forget injuries, and have a memory tenacious of benefits. In my familiar associations with kings and princes, and in my friendship with noble personages, my good fortune has been such as to excite envy. But it is the cruel fate of those who are growing old that they can commonly only weep for friends who have passed away. The greatest kings of this age have loved and courted me. They may know why; I certainly do not. With some of them I was on such terms that they seemed in a certain sense my guests rather than I theirs; their lofty position in no way embarrassing me, but, on the contrary, bringing with it many advantages. I fled, however, from many of those to whom I was greatly attached; and such was my innate longing for liberty, that I studiously avoided those whose very name seemed incompatible with the freedom that I loved.
I possessed a well-balanced rather than a keen intellect, one prone to all kinds of good and wholesome study, but especially inclined to moral philosophy and the art of poetry. The latter, indeed, I neglected as time went on, and took delight in sacred literature. Finding in that a hidden sweetness which I had once esteemed but lightly, I came to regard the works of the poets as only amenities. Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to have been born in any other period than our own. In order to forget my own time, I have constantly striven to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I delighted in history; not that the conflicting statements did not offend me, but when in doubt I accepted what appeared to me most probable, or yielded to the authority of the writer.
My style, as many claimed, was clear and forcible; but to me it seemed weak and obscure. In ordinary conversation with friends, or with those about me, I never gave any thought to my language, and I have always wondered that Augustus Cæsar should have taken such pains in this respect. When, however, the subject itself, or the place or listener, seemed to demand it, I gave some attention to style, with what success I cannot pretend to say; let them judge in whose presence I spoke. If only I have lived well, it matters little to me how I talked. Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.
My life up to the present has, either through fate or my own choice, fallen into the following divisions. A part only of my first year was spent at Arezzo, where I first saw the light. The six following years were, owing to the recall of my mother from exile, spent upon my father’s estate at Ancisa, about fourteen miles above Florence. I passed my eighth year at Pisa,6 the ninth and following years in Farther Gaul, at Avignon, on the left bank of the Rhone, where the Roman Pontiff holds and has long held the Church of Christ in shameful exile. It seemed a few years ago as if Urban V. was on the point of restoring the Church to its ancient seat, but it is clear that nothing is coming of this effort, and, what is to me the worst of all, the Pope seems to have repented him of his good work, for failure came while he was still living. Had he lived but a little longer, he would certainly have learned how I regarded his retreat.7 My pen was in my hand when he abruptly surrendered at once his exalted office and his life. Unhappy man, who might have died before the altar of Saint Peter and in his own habitation! Had his successors remained in their capital he would have been looked upon as the cause of this benign change, while, had they left Rome, his virtue would have been all the more conspicuous in contrast with their fault.8
But such laments are somewhat remote from my subject. On the windy banks of the river Rhone I spent my boyhood, guided by my parents, and then, guided by my own fancies, the whole of my youth. Yet there were long intervals spent elsewhere, for I first passed four years at the little town of Carpentras, somewhat to the east of Avignon: in these two places I learned as much of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as my age permitted, or rather, as much as it is customary to teach in school: how little that is, dear reader, thou knowest. I then set out for Montpellier to study law, and spent four years there, then three at Bologna. I heard the whole body of the civil law, and would, as many thought, have distinguished myself later, had I but continued my studies. I gave up the subject altogether, however, so soon as it was no longer necessary to consult the wishes of my parents.9 My reason was that, although the dignity of the law, which is doubtless very great, and especially the numerous references it contains to Roman antiquity, did not fail to delight me, I felt it to be habitually degraded by those who practise it. It went against me painfully to acquire an art which I would not practise dishonestly, and could hardly hope to exercise otherwise. Had I made the latter attempt, my scrupulousness would doubtless have been ascribed to simplicity.
So at the age of two and twenty10 I returned home. I call my place of exile home, Avignon, where I had been since childhood; for habit has almost the potency of nature itself. I had already begun to be known there, and my friendship was sought by prominent men; wherefore I cannot say. I confess this is now a source of surprise to me, although it seemed natural enough at an age when we are used to regard ourselves as worthy of the highest respect. I was courted first and foremost by that very distinguished and noble family, the Colonnesi, who, at that period, adorned the Roman Curia with their presence. However it might be now, I was at that time certainly quite unworthy of the esteem in which I was held by them. I was especially honoured by the incomparable Giacomo Colonna, then Bishop of Lombez,11 whose peer I know not whether I have ever seen or ever shall see, and was taken by him to Gascony; there I spent such a divine summer among the foot-hills of the Pyrenees, in happy intercourse with my master and the members of our company, that I can never recall the experience without a sigh of regret.12
Returning thence, I passed many years in the house of Giacomo’s brother, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, not as if he were my lord and master, but rather my father, or better, a most affectionate brother—nay, it was as if I were in my own home.13 About this time, a youthful desire impelled me to visit France and Germany. While I invented certain reasons to satisfy my elders of the propriety of the journey, the real explanation was a great inclination and longing to see new sights. I first visited Paris, as I was anxious to discover what was true and what fabulous in the accounts I had heard of that city.14 On my return from this journey I went to Rome,15 which I had since my infancy ardently desired to visit. There I soon came to venerate Stephano, the noble head of the family of the Colonnesi, like some ancient hero, and was in turn treated by him in every respect like a son. The love and good-will of this excellent man toward me remained constant to the end of his life, and lives in me still, nor will it cease until I myself pass away.
On my return, since I experienced a deep-seated and innate repugnance to town life, especially in that disgusting city of Avignon which I heartily abhorred, I sought some means of escape. I fortunately discovered, about fifteen miles from Avignon, a delightful valley, narrow and secluded, called Vaucluse, where the Sorgue, the prince of streams, takes its rise. Captivated by the charms of the place, I transferred thither myself and my books. Were I to describe what I did there during many years, it would prove a long story. Indeed, almost every bit of writing which I have put forth was either accomplished or begun, or at least conceived, there, and my undertakings have been so numerous that they still continue to vex and weary me. My mind, like my body, is characterised by a certain versatility and readiness, rather than by strength, so that many tasks that were easy of conception have been given up by reason of the difficulty of their execution. The character of my surroundings suggested the composition of a sylvan or bucolic song. I also dedicated a work in two books upon The Life of Solitude,16 to Philip, now exalted to the Cardinal-bishopric of Sabina. Although always a great man, he was, at the time of which I speak, only the humble Bishop of Cavaillon.17 He is the only one of my old friends who is still left to me, and he has always loved and treated me not as a bishop (as Ambrose did Augustine), but as a brother.
While I was wandering in those mountains upon a Friday in Holy Week, the strong desire seized me to write an epic in an heroic strain, taking as my theme Scipio Africanus the Great, who had, strange to say, been dear to me from my childhood. But although I began the execution of this project with enthusiasm, I straightway abandoned it, owing to a variety of distractions. The poem was, however, christened Africa, from the name of its hero, and, whether from his fortunes or mine, it did not fail to arouse the interest of many before they had seen it.
While leading a leisurely existence in this region, I received, remarkable as it may seem, upon one and the same day,18 letters both from the Senate at Rome and the Chancellor of the University of Paris, pressing me to appear in Rome and Paris, respectively, to receive the poet’s crown of laurel. In my youthful elation I convinced myself that I was quite worthy of this honour; the recognition came from eminent judges, and I accepted their verdict rather than that of my own better judgment. I hesitated for a time which I should give ear to, and sent a letter to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, of whom I have already spoken, asking his opinion. He was so near that, although I wrote late in the day, I received his reply before the third hour on the morrow. I followed his advice, and recognised the claims of Rome as superior to all others. My acceptance of his counsel is shown by my twofold letter to him on that occasion, which I still keep. I set off accordingly; but although, after the fashion of youth, I was a most indulgent judge of my own work, I still blushed to accept in my own case the verdict even of such men as those who summoned me, despite the fact that they would certainly not have honoured me in this way, had they not believed me worthy.19
So I decided, first to visit Naples, and that celebrated king and philosopher, Robert, who was not more distinguished as a ruler than as a man of culture.20 He was, indeed, the only monarch of our age who was the friend at once of learning and of virtue, and I trusted that he might correct such things as he found to criticise in my work. The way in which he received and welcomed me is a source of astonishment to me now, and, I doubt not, to the reader also, if he happens to know anything of the matter. Having learned the reason of my coming, the King seemed mightily pleased. He was gratified, doubtless, by my youthful faith in him, and felt, perhaps, that he shared in a way the glory of my coronation, since I had chosen him from all others as the only suitable critic. After talking over a great many things, I showed him my Africa which so delighted him that he asked that it might be dedicated to him in consideration of a handsome reward.21 This was a request that I could not well refuse, nor, indeed, would I have wished to refuse it, had it been in my power. He then fixed a day upon which we could consider the object of my visit. This occupied us from noon until evening, and the time proving too short, on account of the many matters which arose for discussion, we passed the two following days in the same manner. Having thus tested my poor attainments for three days, the King at last pronounced me worthy of the laurel. He offered to bestow that honour upon me at Naples, and urged me to consent to receive it there, but my veneration for Rome prevailed over the insistence of even so great a monarch as Robert. At length, seeing that I was inflexible in my purpose, he sent me on my way accompanied by royal messengers and letters to the Roman Senate, in which he gave enthusiastic expression to his flattering opinion of me. This royal estimate was, indeed, quite in accord with that of many others, and especially with my own, but to-day I cannot approve either his or my own verdict. In his case, affection and the natural partiality to youth were stronger than his devotion to truth.
On arriving at Rome, I continued, in spite of my unworthiness, to rely upon the judgment of so eminent a critic, and, to the great delight of the Romans who were present, I who had been hitherto a simple student received the laurel crown.22 This occasion is described elsewhere in my letters, both in prose and verse.23 The laurel, however, in no way increased my wisdom, although it did arouse some jealousy—but this is too long a story to be told here.
On leaving Rome, I went to Parma, and spent some time with the members of the house of Correggio, who, while they were most kind and generous towards me, agreed but ill among themselves. They governed Parma, however, in a way unknown to that city within the memory of man, and the like of which it will hardly again enjoy in this present age.
I was conscious of the honour which I had but just received, and fearful lest it might seem to have been granted to one unworthy of the distinction; consequently, as I was walking one day in the mountains, and chanced to cross the river Enza to a place called Selva Piana, in the territory of Reggio, struck by the beauty of the spot, I began to write again upon the Africa, which I had laid aside. In my enthusiasm, which had seemed quite dead, I wrote some lines that very day, and some each day until I returned to Parma. Here I happened upon a quiet and retired house, which I afterwards bought, and which still belongs to me. I continued my task with such ardour, and completed the work in so short a space of time, that I cannot but marvel now at my despatch.24 I had already passed my thirty-fourth year when I returned thence to the Fountain of the Sorgue, and to my Transalpine solitude. I had made a long stay both in Parma and Verona,25 and everywhere I had, I am thankful to say, been treated with much greater esteem than I merited.
Some time after this, my growing reputation procured for me the good-will of a most excellent man, Giacomo the Younger, of Carrara, whose equal I do not know among the rulers of his time. For years he wearied me with messengers and letters when I was beyond the Alps, and with his petitions whenever I happened to be in Italy, urging me to accept his friendship. At last, although I anticipated little satisfaction from the venture, I determined to go to him and see what this insistence on the part of a person so eminent, and at the same time a stranger to me, might really mean. I appeared, though tardily, at Padua,26 where I was received by him of illustrious memory, not as a mortal, but as the blessed are greeted in heaven—with such delight and such unspeakable affection and esteem, that I cannot adequately describe my welcome in words, and must, therefore, be silent. Among other things, learning that I had led a clerical life from boyhood, he had me made a canon of Padua, in order to bind me the closer to himself and his city. In fine, had his life been spared, I should have found there an end to all my wanderings. But alas! nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness. Scarcely two years was he spared to me, to his country, and to the world. God, who had given him to us, took him again.27 Without being blinded by my love for him, I feel that neither I, nor his country, nor the world was worthy of him. Although his son, who succeeded him, was in every way a prudent and distinguished man, who, following his father’s example, always loved and honoured me, I could not remain after the death of him with whom, by reason especially of the similarity of our ages, I had been much more closely united.
I returned to Gaul, not so much from a desire to see again what I had already beheld a thousand times, as from the hope, common to the afflicted, of coming to terms with my misfortunes by a change of scene.28..............
The preceding brief autobiography, written at the close of his life,29 does not extend beyond Petrarch’s forty-seventh year, and in spite of its peculiar interest it is but a very imperfect sketch, which must be supplemented by the abundant data scattered through the correspondence. In order that the reader may approach the letters with a fuller understanding of the circumstances in which they were written, it is therefore desirable to touch upon certain points which Petrarch neglected in his account of himself, and then to trace his life from his return to Vaucluse in 1351, the last event mentioned in the Letter to Posterity to his death, twenty-three years later.
Of his parents he tells us but little. His father had, before his exile, held a responsible position in the Florentine Republic, and his readiness of speech had caused him to be chosen upon more than one occasion to perform important public missions. His name, Petracco, was changed by his son to Petrarca; why, we do not know. It has been suggested that Francesco invented the latter as more rhythmical, or adopted it on account of some hidden symbolic meaning, as four centuries later young Arouet mysteriously chose to call himself Voltaire. It is perhaps safer to look upon the alteration as merely an instance of the Latinisation of proper names, which was quite natural and almost necessary at a time when Latin was so generally employed.
Petracco père was a friend of Dante while they lived in Florence together, and when it pleased the citizens of that most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome to cast them out from her sweet bosom, and they were, as Dante tells us, borne to divers ports “by the dry wind that blows from grievous poverty,”30 the bonds of friendship were knit the closer, for a community of misfortune as well as of tastes and interests served to bring them together. Petrarch’s father was, however, forced by the care of his family to give up his studies. We know nothing of his literary tastes, except that he was an ardent admirer of Cicero; and, although his interest was probably legal rather than literary, his son confidently assumes that, had he been permitted by circumstances to continue his intellectual pursuits, he would have reached a high degree of scholarship.31 Almost the only anecdote recorded of him is a trifling instance of his personal vanity. When somewhat past his fiftieth birthday, he was one day horrified to discover, upon looking into the glass, a single hair verging upon grey. Amazed at this indication of premature decay, he not only filled his own home but roused the whole neighbourhood with his laments. Petrarch adds, with an air of conscious virtue, that his own hair began to grow grey before he reached five and twenty.32
The only other kinsman to whom we need refer is Petrarch’s brother, Gherardo, who was apparently two or three years his junior. A considerable number of the letters are addressed to him. The two spent much of their early life together, but Gherardo, when about thirty-five years old, turned his back upon the world and entered a Carthusian monastery. Some years later the elder brother felicitated him upon his escape from the exacting cares of a life of fashion: he no longer suffered the “piratical tortures” of the curling-iron, and his close-cropped hair left eyes and ears free to perform their functions; the elaborate costume of the fourteenth-century dandy, whose scrupulous folds were liable to be discomposed by every careless movement, had been exchanged for a simple monastic garment, readily donned or laid aside, and affording its wearer no anxiety. Petrarch admits that he is himself still held in bondage, that he still has a partiality for good clothes, though this passion grows hopefully less from day to day. He had, however, worse sins to reflect upon than the elaborate coiffures and tight boots of their frivolous days at Avignon. “What,” he asks, for example, “have trivial verses, tilled with the false and offensive praise of women,33 in common with songs of praise and holy vigils?” We shall refer later to these letters addressed to Gherardo, for they afford a convenient illustration of Petrarch’s views of that most cherished of mediæval ideals, the monastic life.34
Petrarch, like Erasmus and Voltaire, had no place that he could call home, unless it were the hated Avignon, whither he was taken when about nine years old. This migration to Provence, to which Avignon then belonged, important as it was in the life of our poet, did not involve so complete a separation from Italian influences as would at first sight appear. The boy had in his earliest years learned the Tuscan dialect, which, Dante impatiently declares, was unreasonably held by the Florentines to be the highest form of Italian.35 There was on the Rhone a considerable Italian colony, with which Petrarch’s family associated, and at Carpentras, not far from Avignon, whither the family moved on account of the cheaper living, the little Checco, as he was familiarly called, had an Italian schoolmaster from Prato. Moreover, his later friends and patrons of the noble Roman house of Colonna undoubtedly maintained their national traditions, in spite of the growing French influences at the papal court.
At school (1315-19) Petrarch soon discovered an extraordinary fondness for Latin. While the other boys were still struggling with the simple Æsop, he was poring over Cicero’s works, which fascinated him with their sonorous periods before he could grasp their meaning.36 His old schoolmaster, Convennevole, was very proud of his pupil, and singled him out as the most illustrious of those whom he had instructed during his sixty years as pedagogue.
Petracco was anxious to provide a career for his son, and not unnaturally chose for him his own profession of the law. Like so many other notable literary spirits since his day, Petrarch began his career in a law school, first at the neighbouring University of Montpellier, and later at Bologna. But while Schumann began composing symphonies at Heidelberg, and intercalated a waltz “here and there between Justinian’s Institutes and the Pandects,” Petrarch appears to have made some progress in his uncongenial subject, and to have gained the esteem of one at least of his teachers. Of his four years at Montpellier we know practically nothing. The boy was only about nineteen when he removed to Bologna, the greatest of mediæval law schools. His three years here were pleasantly spent with the congenial friends he made among his fellow-students. They took long excursions into the country, often not returning until late at night, but such was the happy security of the time that, even if the gates were closed, they had no difficulty in getting over the dilapidated fortifications, which presented no very formidable barrier to active young students. It was during this period that he first visited Venice, then at the height of her glory.
The motives that induced Petrarch promptly to give up the law as soon as he heard of his father’s death, are not far to seek. Some of them are noted in his Letter to Posterity, One of his professors, whom in later life he sharply criticised for his ignorance of classical philology, accused him, in turn, of cowardly desertion. He replied that it was never wise to oppose nature, who had made him a devotee of solitude, not of the courts; and while he conceded it to be a happy circumstance that he had spent some time in Bologna, he believed himself to have been equally fortunate in leaving it when he did.37 As an old man, however, he judged these seven years at the universities to have been “not so much spent, as totally wasted.”38
Once at least (in 1335) Petrarch put his legal knowledge to the test, by acting as counsel for the Correggi in a case involving the control of the city of Parma. The merits of the case need not occupy us; Petrarch believed the claims of his client to be just, and he assures us that only the fairest means were employed in his successful defence before the papal consistory.39 He certainly won the friendship of Azzo di Correggio; and his cordial relations with this equivocal person afford the first example of the sympathetic intercourse which he maintained throughout his life with the distinguished despots of the time.
It is probable that Petrarch’s mother soon followed his father to the grave. The modest property which Petracco had accumulated in exile was dishonestly appropriated by the executors, and the brothers were left to shift for themselves. Petrarch almost immediately took orders, but probably did not, as has been generally supposed, ever become a priest.40 He had to face the same problem that in succeeding centuries confronted those who wished to devote themselves to literature. At a time when an author could expect no remuneration for his work, except perhaps for dedications, he might secure a livelihood by putting himself in the way of preferments in the church, or, as was the custom of the Humanists of the fifteenth century, he might rely upon the patronage of some great prince or prelate. Petrarch enjoyed the advantages of both these sources of income. He was, very early in life, so fortunate as to gain the esteem of the Colonnesi, the most influential of the noble Italian families at the papal court. Giacomo, the youngest of the seven sons of old Stephano Colonna, had been struck by Petrarch’s appearance when they were students together at Bologna, and on returning to Avignon and learning of Petrarch’s situation he made advances which led to one of the most enthusiastic friendships which the poet records. With his aid and that of his eldest brother, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, the young writer gained immediate recognition, and did not thereafter want for friends and admirers. It was through the influence of Cardinal Colonna that he received his first benefice, in 1335.
Although Petrarch had, as Dante says of himself, “drunk the waters of the Arno before he had cut his teeth,” fate made him, like Dante, a citizen of the world.41 His life was interrupted by frequently recurring journeys and changes of residence. Scarcely two years had elapsed after his return to Avignon before an invitation from Giacomo Colonna, newly appointed Bishop of Lombez, enabled him to visit Toulouse and spend a “celestial summer” within sight of the Pyrenees.
But before we trace his various pilgrimages, a word must be said of the curious city in which he and several of his most intimate friends spent much of their life. Avignon, although a town of no great importance when Petracco first brought his wife and family thither, was destined to become one of the great European capitals. Clement V., a Gascon, who had been chosen pope in 1305, summoned the cardinals to Lyons to celebrate his coronation, instead of going himself to Rome. During his pontificate he held his court at various French towns, and resided for a time in the Dominican cloister at Avignon. He was succeeded by the energetic old Frenchman, John XXII. (1316-1334), who was followed by six other French popes, all of whom maintained their court at Avignon. Although they appear to have been, upon the whole, good and upright men, they were all Frenchmen, and deliberately chose to reside in a city but just across the Rhone from France; they thus inevitably sacrificed the cosmopolitan character that their predecessors had enjoyed at Rome. Moreover, the college of cardinals became largely French, so that the curia soon came to be regarded as a servile exponent of French interests. The national jealousy in Germany was augmented by the long struggle between the popes and Louis of Bavaria, while the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War produced in England a revolt against the claims not only of “French popes,” but of popes in general. An added explanation of the ill-repute into which the head of the Church fell is to be found in the extortions of the papal treasury; for it became necessary to repair in some way the deficiency caused by the diminution of the Italian revenue, and to meet the ever-increasing expenses of a scandalously luxurious court. The most loudly decried of the financial expedients of the popes owe their origin, or at least their outrageous extension, to this period.
Petrarch’s span of life exactly coincided with the exile of the popes from Rome, and his “fate or his sins” made him a most unwilling citizen of their new home, “the Babylon of the West.” He never tires of execrating the city, but we may safely assume that he paints too lurid a picture of its condition when he declares that it was “filled with every kind of confusion, the horror of darkness overspreading it, and contained everything fearful which had ever existed or been imagined by a disordered mind.” Although the popes were building a magnificent palace, calling a Giotto to aid in their artistic undertakings, and collecting a large library,42 Petrarch describes their capital as “a hell on earth,” and no longer what it was in his earlier days, although even then the most foul and filthy of places.43 But doubtless he owed more to his residence in the “windy city” than he was ready to admit. He was willing to share in the good things at the pope’s disposal, so long as no duties were involved which would interfere with his cherished freedom. To his sojourn in this great centre of international intercourse may be ascribed, in large part, his wide acquaintance with men of all nations, as well as the profound influence which he exercised over his contemporaries.
It was not long after his return from Bologna that Petrarch first saw his Laura. Twenty-one years later he made a note upon a fly-leaf of his favourite copy of Virgil, in which he was accustomed to record his bereavements. Placed apart from the others, in order that it might often catch his eye, it reads as follows: “Laura, who was distinguished by her own virtues, and widely celebrated by my songs, first appeared to my eyes in my early manhood, in the year of our Lord 1327, upon the sixth day of April, at the first hour, in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon; in the same city, in the same month of April, on the same sixth day, at the same first hour, in the year 1348, that light was taken from our day, while I was by chance at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my fate. The unhappy news reached me at Parma, in a letter from my friend Ludovico, on the morning of the nineteenth of May, of the same year. Her chaste and lovely form was laid in the church of the Franciscans, on the evening of the day upon which she died. I am persuaded that her soul returned, as Seneca says of Scipio Africanus, to the heaven whence it came. I have experienced a certain satisfaction in writing this bitter record of a cruel event, especially in this place where it will often come under my eye, for so I may be led to reflect that life can afford me no farther pleasures; and, the most serious of my temptations being removed, I may be admonished by the frequent study of these lines, and by the thought of my vanishing years, that it is high time to flee from Babylon. This, with God’s grace, will be easy, as I frankly and manfully consider the needless anxieties of the past, with its empty hopes and unforeseen issue.”44
This meagre notice contains all that we really know of the woman whose name is associated for all time with that of Francesco Petrarca. While she is, it is hardly necessary to say, the theme of nearly all his Italian lyrics, little or no reference is made to her in the Latin works, with two notable exceptions, to be spoken of later. In the vast collection of prose letters two or three vague allusions to his love for her may be found. Once only is Laura mentioned by name,—in a letter to Giacomo Colonna, who had begun to suspect that the much besung sweetheart was but a play upon words—a personification of the longed-for poet’s laurel (Laurea). “Would that your humorous suggestion were true,” Petrarch replies; “would to God it were all a pretence, and not a madness!”45 From none of these sources do we learn anything of the lady herself. Many ingenious theories have been based upon the descriptions in the Canzoniere, which, though often sufficiently detailed, are however poetic, allegorical, and conflicting. The futility of such deductions can be made clear by a single example. Upon no other topic does the poet dwell with more evident pleasure, or more varied detail, than the eyes of his mistress; yet it cannot be determined whether these were blue or dark.46
While it must, therefore, be acknowledged that attempts to learn more of the object of Petrarch’s devotion have proved unavailing, it is possible, from the material at our disposal, to study satisfactorily and profitably the poet’s attitude toward one great preoccupation of humanity, the love of woman. The genuineness of the passion that fills the sonnets, no one who reads the Latin works can doubt, although it is touched upon in only a very few instances. Its reality is attested by two passages of considerable length, which also serve to explain the conflict of emotions depicted in the Italian lyrics. One of these, a Latin metrical epistle to Giacomo Colonna, we may neglect47; the other bit of self-analysis it behooves us to examine somewhat carefully, since it casts a flood of light, not only upon the extraordinary man with whom we are dealing, but upon a fundamental contrast between mediæval and modern thought.48
Petrarch was, as we have seen, engaged in a lifelong struggle to reconcile the opposing ideals, both moral and intellectual, toward which he felt himself drawn. During his best years the most terrible of his inward conflicts was that between the monk and the self-respecting lover; between the mediæval, ecclesiastical, and the modern, secular, conception of love. By the ecclesiastical, or monkish, conception, we mean the belief in the inherent sinfulness of love, regardless of the relations that may exist between the lover and the object of his affection. This belief was, of course, part of a complex theological system, which owes its formulation, in large measure, to Petrarch’s spiritual guide, St. Augustine.49 A great deal of the unnatural and often indecent twaddle about women which fills the theological works of the Middle Ages may be traced more or less directly to him. It was woman who brought sin into the world in the beginning; it is she who is responsible for its propagation ever since. Man, it is assumed, would be a pure, God-fearing, well-nigh angelic being were it not for the perverse seductions of the other sex. The most scandalous tales were not considered out of place by the preachers of the thirteenth century, to illustrate the diabolical origin of woman’s charms and the disastrous effects of the only kind of love of which a Jacques de Vitry or the retired inquisitor, Stephen of Bourbon, could form a conception.50
In order to discuss the matter in all its bearings, Petrarch chose the form of an imaginary dialogue, his Secret, between himself and his favourite ghostly adviser, St. Augustine; and a most extraordinary bit of modern introspective and psychological acumen it is.
In this dialogue, of which some account is given later in this volume, Petrarch defends, with refreshing earnestness, the higher conception of love; but his respect for Augustine, who vigorously asserts the debasing nature of the passion, is too great to permit him ultimately to reject the monkish notions. Much he freely confesses to the Bishop; much is extorted from him by a clever process of cross-questioning. This love for a woman, together with his longing for fame,51 Augustine declares to be the poet’s most conspicuous failings, which serve to bar his way to a higher life. Upon Augustine’s expressing his astonishment that so superior a mind should languish for so many years in the shameful bonds of love, Francesco passionately declares that it is the soul, the innate celestial goodness, that he loves and admires; that he owes all to her, who has preserved him from sin and stimulated him to develop his greatest powers.52 These arguments are, however, easily met. The poet is forced to acknowledge that his life has shown only degeneration since he first saw Laura; it was her virtue, not his, which maintained a purely platonic relation between them. His confessor points out that if he looks in the glass he cannot fail to see how the fire of passion and the loss of sleep have made him old before his time. However, he must not despair; let him travel, that may furnish a remedy. But Petrarch has already vainly fled from temptation. Then let him meditate upon the infirmity of the body, and the shortness of life. “Think shame of yourself,” his mentor exclaims, “that you are pointed at, and have become a subject of gossip with the common herd! Think how ill your morals correspond with your profession; how this passion has injured you in soul, body, and estate; how much you have needlessly suffered on its account; how often you have been deluded, despised, and neglected! Think how proud and distant your mistress has always shown herself toward you, how you have made her famous and yet have sacrificed yourself, solicitous for her good name when she spent no thought upon your welfare! Separated from God by this earthly love, you have subjected yourself to a thousand miseries. Consider the useful and honourable tasks that you have so long neglected, the many incompleted works that lie before you and that demand your whole energy, not merely the odd moments which your passion leaves free.” “Few indeed there be,” Augustine characteristically remarks, “who, having once imbibed the sweet passion of desire, manfully endeavour to grasp the truly foul character of woman’s person.”53 Consequently they easily relapse with every new temptation. If the poor victim would be free, he must banish the past from his thoughts; no day or night must elapse without tearful prayers which may, perchance, at last bring divine relief.
It is only by remembering the general condemnation of the love of woman among the ecclesiastical class, which was, up to Petrarch’s time, nearly synonymous with the literary class, that we can understand the general form which the discussion takes in the dialogue just outlined. It is his pure affection for a pure woman that fills Petrarch with apprehension. He studiously neglects all other considerations, however important. One possible vague reference to his connection with the church occurs54; but there is none at all to the fact that the object of his devotion was, as we may assume, a married woman. If Laura was unmarried, the arguments against the attachment become still more unnatural, as measured by a modern or secular standard. Of that liaison which resulted in two illegitimate children no notice is taken, although it would seem a natural subject for criticism upon the part of a confessor like Augustine. The dialogue is therefore a discussion of love at its best. The arguments which Petrarch puts in the mouth of St. Augustine are mainly conventional and monastic, with some suggestions of the interference with work which a literary bachelor would be likely to apprehend.55 The defence, on the other hand, is purely modern,—modern enough fully to grasp, and even defend against the perversions of monasticism and the current theological speculation, one of the noblest of man’s attributes. But Petrarch was too thoroughly conservative in everything touching religion to reject a view of love so systematically inculcated by the church.
Turning again to the course of Petrarch’s life, we find him undertaking his first long journey in 1333. He visited Paris, the Netherlands, and the Rhine, and described his experiences in two charming letters to his friend, Cardinal Colonna, who probably supplied him with the means necessary for the expedition. The poet exhibited the same love of travel for travel’s sake that was characteristic of his countrymen from Marco Polo to Columbus, but unfortunately the letters describing his impressions of foreign lands are relatively few.56
Three years after the journey to the north Petrarch first visited Rome. Both as a Humanist and as a mediæval Christian he had longed to behold that holy city, “which never had and never would have an equal.” It was there that Scipio Africanus, the hero of his epic, had dwelt, and there, too, was the resting-place of innumerable other men whose names would never die. He might also, he hoped, wander among the tombs of the saints, and gaze upon the spots that had been hallowed by the presence of the Apostles.57 Petrarch was much too ardent and sincere a Catholic to allow Brutus and Cato to crowd out Peter and Paul. Indeed there was no break, in his mind, between the history of pagan and Christian Rome. It was to him, as it had been to Dante, a single divine epic: “When David was born, Rome was born; then it was that Æneas came from Troy to Italy, which was the origin of the most noble Roman city, even as the written word bears witness. Evident enough, therefore, is the divine election of the Roman Empire, by the birth of the holy city, which was contemporaneous with the root of the race from which Mary sprang.”58
Petrarch might have rejected as faulty Dante’s proof from chronology, but they would have agreed that Rome was always peopled not with human, but with heavenly citizens, who were inspired by divine love in loving Rome. “Wherefore,” Dante exclaims, “one should not need to inquire further to see that an especial birth and an especial destiny were decreed, in the mind of God, to that holy city. I am of the firm opinion that the stones that remain in her walls are deserving of reverence, and that she is worthy, beyond all that is praised and glorified by men.”59 A similar conviction in Petrarch’s mind helps to explain his unquestioning devotion to Cicero and Augustine alike, and his mystical trust in the eternal youth of the hopelessly senile Holy Roman Empire.60
He was not disappointed in what he saw, in spite of the apprehension expressed by Cardinal Colonna that the city, in its terrible state of ruin,61 would seem sadly different from the picture the poet had formed of it in his anticipations. On the contrary, his wonder and admiration were but increased by the sight of what remained of the ancient mistress of the earth. That she should have conquered the world no longer affords him surprise, but only that she did not conquer it sooner.62
Upon his return to Avignon, Petrarch found the city more disgusting than ever, and in turning over the question of a more agreeable home he bethought him of a valley not far away, which he had visited in his boyhood, and there he determined to take up his abode. Of the beauties of Vaucluse, where he spent most of the following fifteen years, and of his life and surroundings there, he has given us many a charming picture. This life of literary seclusion in the suburbs of a great city is so essentially modern in character that it serves to bridge the five centuries that separate us from Petrarch and to bring him into sympathy with the scholar and litterateur of to-day.
The form which Petrarch’s desire for glory assumed in his earlier days was the aspiration publicly to receive the laurel crown of the poet. One of his most intimate friends came to the conclusion, as we have seen, that this yearning for the laurel had led the poet, by a skilful personification, to delude the world into the belief that it was a woman’s charms that held him captive. Augustine is made to say in the Confessions that Petrarch’s worldly madness reaches its climax in the worship that he paid, not only to Laura’s person, but even to her name, so that he cherished, “with incredible levity,” everything that resembled it in sound. “Wherefore thou hast so loved the imperial or poetic laurel, which was called by her name [Laurea], that since that time thou hast let scarcely a song escape thee without mentioning it.”
However thoroughly convinced he may have become in later life of the vanity of such a distinction, Petrarch appears to have been willing as a young man to resort even to somewhat undignified, if not actually dishonest, expedients to accomplish his end. When he tells us that upon the same day (September 1, 1340) invitations to receive the laurel chaplet reached him from both Rome and Paris, we may safely look, primarily at least, to the poet’s own contrivances, for an explanation of this double honour. Up to the time of his coronation he was known only by his Italian verses, since his great epic, the Africa, had but just been got under way. He had influential friends, however. At Paris his fellow-citizen Roberto de’ Bardi, chancellor of the renowned university, was ready to do him a good turn; and at Rome his powerful friends the Colonnesi were in a position to help him to realise his cherished ideal. He seems, nevertheless, to have relied chiefly upon the aid of King Robert of Naples.63 He was, it must be remembered, a subject of this monarch, to whom Avignon at that time belonged. It was doubtless his friend Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro who first brought the comparatively unknown poet to the attention of the King, and Robert showed his awakened confidence by despatching to him an epitaph of his own composition for criticism. Petrarch was, not unnaturally, dazzled by the royal verses: “Happy the pen,” he exclaims, “to which such words were committed!” Far from venturing any strictures, he is doubtful what he should most admire, the classic brevity of the diction, the elevation of the thought, or the grace of expression.64 It occurred to him later that he might employ the favour of Robert to gratify his own ambition. The following extract from a letter to Dionisio (January 4, 1339) tells us more, perhaps, than we should wish to know of his plans: “As for me, I intend soon to follow you [to Naples]. You well know how I regard the laurel. I have resolved, all things being considered, to be indebted for it to no one else than the King of whom we have just been speaking. If I shall seem sufficiently worthy in his eyes for him to invite me, all will be well. Otherwise, I may pretend to have heard something which will explain my coming, or I will, as if in doubt, so interpret the letter which he sent me containing such friendly and flattering recognition of an unknown man, that I shall appear to have been summoned.”65 Happily, however, subterfuges were unnecessary, as two invitations to receive the laurel came without applying to Robert.
After some feigned hesitation Petrarch chose Rome rather than Paris. There is in reality little doubt that nothing would have induced him to give the preference to any other place than the Capitol, which exercised an unrivalled fascination over his mind. Poets had, during his time, been crowned elsewhere,—Mussato, a poet and historian, at Padua, and his old master, Convennevole, at Prato; but centuries had passed since anyone had been granted cosmopolitan recognition by having the laurel placed upon his head by a Roman senator. In imitation of the Olympian games Domitian had, toward the end of the first century, established similar periodical contests in Rome in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus. The victor’s brow, according to Martial, was encircled by an oak chaplet; but in other contests held at the Emperor’s villa, the laurel crown was given. The later history of the institution is obscure, but the custom doubtless perpetuated itself, and may have lasted until the destruction of the Empire. A vague tradition was current that many poets had received the laurel upon the Capitol. This Petrarch accepted, evidently assuming that the great Augustan writers, whom he so much admired, had enjoyed this distinction; and in his address upon the occasion of his coronation he refers to the numerous distinguished poets who had been crowned before him upon that spot. Statius, who died circa 96 A.D., and who must have been one of the first to gain the honour, he cites as the last person recorded to have received it.66
As he tells us in his Letter to Posterity, Petrarch first betook himself to Naples, where, as a preparation for his coronation, he submitted to an examination by the King. Robert was somewhat of a philistine, as we may infer from the fact that Petrarch found it necessary carefully to explain to him the nature of poetry, the function of the poet, and the significance of the laurel, and to defend his noble art against the aspersions of a theological age. However skilled in other matters, the King was but slightly versed in literature. Yet he expressed the conviction that, could he earlier have heard Petrarch’s defence, he would have devoted no inconsiderable portion of his time to poetry.67 Of the details of the coronation very little is known. Petrarch describes it in very general terms in a metrical epistle,68 and we have besides two or three brief and inaccurate contemporary accounts.69 The address which he made upon the Capitol has, however, recently been discovered and printed,70 but it is, unfortunately, a very disappointing composition quite unworthy of Petrarch’s powers. His text is a line or two from Virgil:
“But I am caught by ravishing desire, above the lone
Parnassian steep,”71
but instead of developing his subject, as does Cicero in his defence of Archias, he adopts the repellent, conventional form of the times, pedantically classifying his ideas by headings and numbers, like a scholastic theologian. He extols the laurel in a truly mediæval fashion for its magic virtues in causing its wearer to dream true dreams, and in protecting him from lightning, etc. The most significant part of the address is his defence of poetry.
“The coronation of Petrarch as poet,” Körting declares, “is an episode standing alone, not only in the annals of the city of Rome, but in the whole history of mankind. It is an epoch-making event in the fullest acceptance of the word.”72 This may very well be somewhat exaggerated, but the coronation was certainly a solemn attestation of a new interest in culture, although as we have seen by no means a spontaneous tribute, unsought by the poet. Later in life he deprecated the whole affair as a piece of youthful arrogance which left him, in Faust’s words, so klug als wie zuvor. At the time, however, he was confident that the revival of the custom of Imperial Rome would be a source of glory, not only to the city, but to Italy as a whole.
From Rome Petrarch—went northward to Parma, where he arrived most opportunely, since his old friend Azzo di Correggio and his three brothers had just obtained possession of the town. The poet’s relations with the professional despot of the time are so cordial and constant as naturally to arouse astonishment in one unfamiliar with the political and social conditions of the period. Yet he but furnishes an illustration of one of the most curious characteristics of the Renaissance, the—comradery between the bloodstained tyrant and the man of letters. The “age of despots” and the palmy days of humanism coincide. Tyranny and the revival of classical learning are historically so closely affiliated as to suggest some causal relation. Certain it is that they flourished together, and early in the sixteenth century disappeared together.
The fate of Parma, where Petrarch resided at intervals, and the future career of his beloved and respected Azzo, are too typical of the period to be completely ignored even in this brief sketch. Azzo had first taken orders, but married later, and entered upon the then recognised métier of tyrant.73 It will be remembered that Petrarch had earlier represented him in a lawsuit involving the possession of a town, and the friendship formed at Avignon remained constant to the end. A lull in the business of the Correggio family led Azzo to make what our less picturesque bosses of the present day would call a “deal.” Parma was, at the moment, under the control of the Scaligeri of Verona. Azzo, anxious for even temporary occupation, promised Luchino Visconti of Milan, another of Petrarch’s friends, to turn over the town to the Visconti after four years, if he would aid him to dispossess the present proprietors. It was under these conditions that, with the incidental approbation and support of the citizens, the Scaligeri were ousted. Petrarch celebrated the occasion in an enthusiastic ode to Liberty!74
The administration of the Scaligeri had been execrable, and there was some reason for looking upon the coup de main as a deliverance. The brothers, says a chronicler, began to reign not as lords but as fathers, without partiality or oppression of any kind. Had they but persevered, they might have continued to hold the town forever, but at the end of a year they changed their policy.75 The most fair-minded of the brothers died, and, regardless of the arrangement for the speedy transfer to Milan, Azzo sold the town, in 1344, to the Marquis of Este, for 60,000 gold florins, hoping to retain the position of governor. This led to a struggle between half a dozen neighbouring despots, and two years later the town was ceded to Milan, on condition that the Marquis of Este should be reimbursed for the sum he had paid to Azzo. Azzo soon made up with his enemies, the Scaligeri, and so far gained their confidence that he was twice appointed governor of Verona. During his master’s absence, however, a revolt broke out, which was naturally attributed to him, and the shifty adventurer found that no excuses or explanations would serve to pacify the offended Can Grande. He was obliged to flee, leaving his wife and children in the hands of his incensed lord. For a time he wandered helplessly about among the towns of northern Italy, until Petrarch, who was at that time residing at the court of the Visconti, procured him a comfortable refuge at Milan. As a salve for his wounds, the poet dedicated to the ill-starred ex-tyrant, his Antidotes for Good and Evil Fortune.76 We have abundant proof, in both his Latin and Italian verses, of Petrarch’s partiality and admiration for this strange character. Upon Azzo’s death, he addressed letters of consolation to the widow and children of the deceased, and asserted that in him he had lost that which gave life its especial charm—Perdidi propter quod præcipue me vivere delectabat!77 We must recollect that the affinities which lead to friendship are often obscure, even where our opportunities for observation are most favourable. Petrarch doubtless saw something more than a mere adventurer in this man, who has left so despicable an historical record.
Petrarch lingered in Parma, or its suburbs, about a year, but the election of a new pope, Clement VI. (May, 1342), made it expedient for him to return to Avignon and present his compliments to the head of the church, with a hope, perhaps, of securing some favour that might increase his precarious income from the prebend at Lombez. As we have seen, benefices were regarded, and with justice, as foundations for the support of indigent scholars. Before returning to Avignon the poet addressed a lengthy metrical epistle78 to Clement, urging his return to Rome. The Pope accepted some, at least, of the suggestions contained in the letter, and furthermore granted its author a priorate near Pisa.
The quiet life at Vaucluse was resumed only to be again interrupted by a journey to Naples, as representative of the Pope. The mission was not particularly successful, but the letters written from Naples, describing the savage state of the inhabitants and the continued celebration of gladiatorial contests, are of great interest.79 It was on his return from Naples, while visiting some of the towns of Lombardy (1345), that he discovered at Verona a codex containing Cicero’s letters to Atticus, Brutus, and Quintus. They came, however, too late to exercise any important influence upon his own epistolary style.80 The following two years (1346-7) were spent at Vaucluse, where he made certain improvements in his villa and began his work in praise of the life of solitude. But soon an extraordinary and absorbing political crisis distracted his attention from the amenities of his country home.
Cola di Rienzo, with whose ideas he had been fascinated upon their first meeting, three years before, had suddenly proclaimed himself, in the name of the people, ruler of Rome (May 20, 1347). An explanation of Petrarch’s interest in this famous coup d’état will be given later in connection with some of the letters which passed between him and the tribune.81 So fully was his sympathy aroused that late in the year 1347, some six months after Rienzo’s accession to power, he resolved to go to Rome and join in the glorious movement of enfranchisement. But, on reaching Genoa, he was arrested by the news of Rienzo’s mad conduct, and abruptly gave up the journey southward. After despatching a letter of expostulation and warning, he turned toward Parma, where another prebend had recently been granted him by the Pope. The town, which had fared hardly during the later years of Azzo’s rule, was now under the undisputed sway of Luchino Visconti, and Petrarch found the conditions there much improved. We may infer that he now enjoyed a tolerable income from his benefices; he was at any rate able to build himself a house, which still stands at the corner of Borgo di San Giovanni and Vicolo di San Stephano. He seems always to have had a genuine fondness for outdoor life as a relief and recreation. In his garden at Parma he raised choice fruits, and he took pride in the specimens of his horticulture that he sent to Luchino, the lord of the city.
But, in spite of the seemingly favourable conditions, his residence at Parma marks a crisis of affliction and bereavement in Petrarch’s life, from which he never entirely recovered. “This year, 1348,” he declared long after, “I now perceive to have been the beginning of sorrow.” Rienzo, in whose fate he was so deeply concerned, soon weakly abdicated, but not before Petrarch’s former friends the Colonnesi had been slaughtered at the gates of Rome. Then came the fearful plague which swept over Italy and far beyond, and which Boccaccio has pictured in his introduction to the Decameron.” Life is but one long agony”—Magnus dolor est vivere—our poet cried in desperation, as bereavement after bereavement was announced to him. The death of Laura and of Cardinal Colonna severed the two dominant attachments of his earlier life. Many other friends fell victims to the same fearful disease, among them Roberto de’ Bardi, who had procured him the invitation to receive the laurel at Paris, and Luchino Visconti himself.
We may infer that the once attractive Parma now aroused only sombre associations. Petrarch wandered for a time hither and thither, but at the end of 1348 he appears to have taken up a transitory residence at Padua, at the urgent invitation of its ruler, Giacomo II. of Carrara. Here, as he tells us, he was received as the blessed are welcomed in heaven. His new friend was a typical despot, who had murdered his cousin, the legitimate successor, and was himself murdered a few years later (December, 1350), by his nephew. He proved himself, nevertheless, a wise ruler and an enthusiastic friend of literature; he, too, gave Petrarch a prebend, in order to keep him at his court. In the poet’s admiration for this man we perceive the same instinctive deference to political sagacity that led Machiavelli to declare Cæsar Borgia to be the model of princes.
The year 1350 had been designated as a year of jubilee, a timely occasion for the exhibition of the devotion stimulated by the terrible calamities of the preceding years. With mediæval fervour Petrarch joined the pilgrims bound for Rome. On his way southward he visited Florence for the first time, and for the first time saw face to face his greatest literary contemporary and most sympathetic friend, Giovanni Boccaccio. At Rome he did not neglect to visit the various churches and perform the usual devotions. Writing to a friend a little later, he declares that it was providentially arranged that they did not meet in Rome, else, instead of visiting the churches devotione catholica, they would, careless of their souls, have wandered about the city curiositate poetica, for, however delightful intellectual pursuits may be, they are as nothing unless they tend to the one great end.82 But the stay in Rome was short, and we have no picture of the impressions which this international mediæval “revival” produced upon the enlightened traveller.
This visit to his father’s native city of Florence had suggested to its people the idea of re-establishing the distinguished son of their exiled fellow-citizen in his rights; they even extended to him an invitation to occupy a position in their newly founded university. For these attentions the poet thanked the Florentines warmly, but discreetly put aside the suggestion of the university position. He had estimated fairly the quality of Florentine admiration, and preferred the patronage of the despots. He felt, instinctively, the danger to his reputation from continued contact with his carping, novelty-loving, outspoken compatriots. Some years later (1363), in a moment of irritation at the comments made by the Florentines upon a portion of his great epic which had, by accident, fallen into their hands, he writes to Boccaccio that the wise prince, Frederick II., who knew the nation well, concluded that “all familiarity with the Italians should be avoided, since they are extremely curious and perceive all too quickly the defects of others. They pass judgment upon everything, not only upon the truth, but upon what they have entirely misconceived, so that everything is turned to ridicule that is not just what they would have it. Such is their presumption that they esteem themselves capable of criticising anything and everything.” “I will not,” Petrarch continues, “discuss the truth of this opinion, but I believe myself to be right in saying that if these words were applied not to the Italians at large but to our fellow-citizens, nothing could be truer or more to the point. With them there is no such thing as intimacy and friendship, but only censure, and that by no means mild and benevolent, but harsh and inexorable. There is no one among them who, although he may be more lax than Sardanapalus in his conduct, does not outdo Fabricius or Cato in the severity of his judgments. But I will not discuss their views of things which have nothing to do with my case. In dealing with literature they seem to assume that nothing is properly expressed which does not tickle their own great spreading ears.... Elsewhere, even beyond the Alps and the Danube, my poor verses have encountered no fault-finders; but nothing fills the Florentines with such horror as the mention of a fellow-citizen. It is not I alone who suffer; anyone who would rise above the common level becomes thereby a public enemy. Believe me, my friend, you who sympathise so fully in my indignation at the wrong I suffer, believe me, we were born in a city83 where to praise one, is to reproach many.”84 Petrarch had doubtless long harboured such feelings, and wisely chose not to risk the danger, upon which both he and Dante dwell, of the contempt which comes from close intercourse.
In June, 1351, after four years filled with bereavement and anxiety, we find Petrarch back in his old surroundings at Vaucluse. During his brief stay here he was called upon to co-operate in no less a task than the drafting of a constitution for Rome. The Pope, convinced by the disorders of the past years that some change was necessary, deputed a commission of cardinals to prepare a new form of government, and they, aware of Petrarch’s familiarity with the conditions in Rome, asked his co-operation. Those curious to study the poet as constitution-monger will find his plan among his letters.85 The power, he urged, should be given back to the people, and the barons should be excluded, for the time being, from the government. It was about this time that he avoided accepting an onerous papal secretaryship which his friends were anxious to force upon him, by ingeniously submitting so elegant a sample of his style that he was rejected on the ground that he could not write in the barbarous but official forms of the curia.86
Pope Innocent VI., who followed Clement VI. at the close of the year 1352, was an exceptionally unenlightened person, who, from Petrarch’s well-known fondness for Virgil, inferred that he must be addicted to magic. After the confidence and respect that he had enjoyed under the preceding popes, Innocent’s suspicions appeared to him intolerable, and doubtless supplied one of the motives which led him definitely to abandon his old haunts. The death, or departure from Avignon, of many of his friends, and the loss of his trusted and faithful housekeeper at Vaucluse, had helped to render the city and its surroundings more distasteful than ever, and in May, 1353, he left the region forever and joyfully saluted his own dear Italy:
Salve cara Deo tellus sanctissima salve,
... agnosco patriam gaudensque saluto,
Salve pulchra parens, terrarum gloria salve.87
Luchino Visconti had, at his death in 1349, been succeeded in Milan by his brother, the famous Bishop Giovanni, from all accounts one of the greatest rulers of his century. Like his brother, he was an admirer of literature, or at least he realised that the presence of distinguished scholars at his court might enhance his influence; and by the mild but potent aid of science and letters he sought, as Rousseau declares the tyrant is wont to do, “to overspread his iron chains with garlands of flowers.” His rule could not but receive a certain sanction, which would serve to give it an air of legitimacy in the eyes of the Italians, if Petrarch, the exponent of Italian patriotism, could be induced to come and reside in his capital. The now homeless poet, while doubtless flattered by the august attentions of the Bishop, evidently felt some hesitation in accepting his hospitality. He objected on the ground that the noise of a city disturbed him; he feared, too, that his duties towards his new lord might restrict his now inveterate and somewhat vagrant fondness for liberty and change. But upon his inquiring what was expected of him, the Bishop replied that he asked only his presence, “which, he believed, would grace both himself and his reign.”88 To his scandalised friends in republican Florence the poet confesses that he was induced to stay, partly because he was quite at a loss where else to go, and partly out of respect for the ill-disguised commands of “the greatest of the Italians.” He defends himself against the reproaches of Boccaccio and other friends on the ground that he has in no way sacrificed his freedom; but he admits that it will be no such easy matter to convince the public of the purity of his motives.89
A commodious house was selected for the new-comer in the retired western portion of the city, where he could look out upon the church of St. Ambrose, and, far beyond the walls, could see the snowy circle of the Alps. Eight years were spent in Milan, which, under the Visconti, was rapidly becoming the busy capital of a small but important European state. There is no reason to think that Petrarch did not sincerely love the solitude and quiet delights of the country, but, like many a modern man of letters, he recognised that urban life, if an evil, was after all a necessary one. It is probable, too, that, like the later Humanists, he was dependent upon princely patronage for the funds required to support himself and to hire the necessary copyists, since his benefices appear to have afforded him an insufficient income. Whatever his motives, the precedent was established, and later Humanists were not only subservient to princes, but even resorted to a species of blackmail, by threatening, if money was not forthcoming for dedications, to blast the reputation of the offender to all coming generations.90
That Petrarch was a member of the Bishop’s council of state is not probable, but he certainly delivered more than one address upon solemn occasions, and undertook several embassies for the Visconti. Bishop Giovanni lived but a year and a half after his arrival, and was succeeded by his three notorious nephews, Matteo, Bernabò, and Galeazzo, the first of whom soon died, leaving the possessions of the Visconti to be divided between the two other brothers.
No very satisfactory history of the Visconti has been written; the opinions of their contemporary judges, as well as of later writers, are exceedingly contradictory. In reaching a conclusion as to the character of the more prominent members of the family, the reader may always choose between the seemingly irreconcilable epithets of vir diabolicus and pater patriæ. There is nothing extraordinary in this, however, and when the earnest investigator has examined all the testimony he will doubtless accept both titles, for they are not really incompatible. All periods offer instances of the most conflicting qualities in the leaders of men, and the Renaissance was especially rich in examples, from the conduct of Boniface VI., that upright and conscientious savage, who read the hours in a loud voice as he walked up and down near the place of torture, listening to the cries of his aged victims,91 to the licentious pranks which Cellini narrates of himself and his fellow-artists. Especially common are the examples of bad men who were unquestionably great statesmen. It may be true that Galeazzo Visconti introduced the most hideous system of producing death, by a carefully graduated process of mutilation, but it may be equally true that he himself suffered tortures of gout little inferior to those of the unfortunate criminal with a fortitude and equanimity which brought tears to the eyes of his attendants. For years he not only endured these torments with patience, but, according to Petrarch, carried on his government with magnanimity and foresight, and when fortune went against him,92 exhibited a high degree of philosophical resignation. The same man who induced his courtiers to play at dice to their undoing, might conciliate the learned by supporting scholars or establishing a university. The magnificent palace at Pavia, although one of the most beautiful in the whole world, as Corio declares,93 may well have sadly afflicted the tax-payer. The public man, whatever his character and aims, is pretty sure, if he rises above mediocrity, to be accused of unscrupulousness. The expedients of a fifteenth-century tyrant were doubtless of a fiercer stamp than the shifts of to-day, but that need not prevent our understanding the admiration expressed by Petrarch or Machiavelli for the better qualities of a Giacomo di Carrara, a Galeazzo Visconti, or a Cæsar Borgia.
The sojourn at Milan was interrupted, as we have said, by several diplomatic missions. In November, 1353, Petrarch was sent to Venice to try to arrange a peace between that city and Genoa. But his eloquence was vain, and the war was continued, in spite of a personal letter of expostulation to the Doge.94 Of Petrarch’s relations with the Emperor Charles IV. something will be said later.95 In 1356, the year after he first met Charles in Italy, Petrarch was sent to Prague as the representative of the ruler of Milan. He tells us little or nothing of his experiences, but he evidently made several friends in this northern centre of culture, with whom he continued to correspond after his return, thereby greatly widening the scope of his influence.96 Still a third mission remained, which was to carry him beyond the Alps. King John of France had, in 1356, been defeated by the Black Prince and carried a prisoner to England, where, four years later, he gained his freedom only by the payment of an enormous ransom. At this juncture Galeazzo Visconti offered him timely pecuniary aid, upon condition that his son, Gian Galeazzo, should marry King John’s daughter. The match was promptly arranged, and the nuptials took place in October, 1360. It then seemed only proper that Galeazzo should give some formal proof of the satisfaction he felt at King John’s release, and Petrarch was chosen as a fitting person to carry his congratulations. The King and his court were so delighted with the poet that they would gladly have induced him to remain at Paris. This was, as Petrarch complacently points out in a letter to the Emperor Charles, but another proof of the skill of the astrologer who had long before predicted that he would be upon terms of intimacy with almost all the great princes of his age.97
A new outbreak of the plague, the invasion of the mercenary troops (compagnies) which had been left without resources by the temporary cessation of the Hundred Years’ War, and personal bereavement in the death of his son and of his friend “Socrates,” all served to cast a shadow over the opening years of the period covered by the Letters of Old Age (1363-1374). The plague, which had spared Milan in 1348, raged there with especial fury in 1361, and compelled Petrarch to leave the city. After a time of hesitation, during which he resolved first to return to Vaucluse, and then to accept Charles’s invitation to Prague, he was forced, by the uncertainty of the roads, to give up both plans. He decided in the fall of 1362 to establish himself in Venice. Here he was furnished with a mansion, on the Riva degli Schiavoni, upon the condition that he should leave his library to the city. But, while Venice fulfilled her part of the bargain, the books, as we have seen, were never delivered.98 The quiet of the city and its freedom from the martial turmoil of Lombardy, as well as the circumstance that it was the home of his daughter, who was happily married to a young nobleman,—all served to make Venice an attractive refuge. The city was naturally much visited by travellers, and Petrarch often had the pleasure of entertaining distinguished guests in his charming home, from the windows of which he could look off upon the busy harbour. Boccaccio came to see him more than once, but would not consent, in spite of Petrarch’s entreaties, to make his permanent home with him.
The rest of the story is soon told. After five years at Venice the restless old man moved to Padua, where Francesco di Carrara, the son of his former friend, was in power. It was for this younger prince, with whom he lived upon the happiest terms, that he composed his little work upon The Best Form of Government.99 This affords, as may readily be inferred, a marked contrast to the practical suggestions of Machiavelli’s famous hand-book. The latter, however, only formulated principles of conduct already discovered by the very house of Carrara for which Petrarch prepared his manual.
Distracted by the noise of the city, which his failing health rendered the more distressing, the poet found a charming home at Arquà, pleasantly situated in the Euganean Hills, some twelve miles south of Padua. In this new Vaucluse he passed, with few interruptions, the last four years of his life. He was found by his attendants upon the 18th of July, 1374, his face bowed upon the book before him, dead.
During the long life that we have just reviewed Petrarch allowed scarcely a day to pass without writing one or more letters. The historical importance and multiform interest of his correspondence have already been dwelt upon. Letter-writing was, as he was aware, a veritable passion with him, which was destined to retain its hold until the very end. He frequently reasoned about it with characteristic self-consciousness, and the reader will note many allusions to the subject throughout the present collection. There is, however, one particularly full discussion of his feelings towards his favourite literary occupation, which is to be found in the following dedicatory preface, written, probably in 1359, as an introduction to his first collection of letters. In many ways it is one of the most suggestive of the epistles and merits careful study.
Notes
1 None of the portraits of Petrarch, not even the well-known one in a codex of the Laurentian library, are authentic, unless it be the one reproduced at the beginning of this volume. See page vii.
2 Eye-glasses were a somewhat new invention when Petrarch resorted to them. Poggendorf (Geschichte der Physik, pp. 93 sqq.) cites the first reference to them (1299), which reads as follows: “I found myself so oppressed by age that without the so-called eye-glasses, which have recently been discovered as a godsend to poor old persons, I could neither read nor write.” We know little of the construction of these first spectacles. An early German painting (15th century), in the National Gallery at London, shows a saint with a completely developed pince-nez.
3 Petrarch’s father and Dante were banished forever from Florence upon the same day, January 27, 1302.
4 This is doubtless one of the two or three obscure references to Laura, in Petrarch’s correspondence. His frigid statement of the case is characteristic of Petrarch the Humanist as contrasted with Petrarch the singer. Compare the fervour of the sonnets with the original of this passage:—Amore acerrimo, sed unico et honesto, in adolescentia laboravi, et diutius laborassem, nisi iam tepescentem ignem mors acerba, sed utilis, extinxisset.
5 Petrarch, although a churchman, was the father of two illegitimate children, a son, Giovanni, born in 1337, and a daughter, Francesca, born, probably of the same mother, some six years later. The unfortunate mother was, according to Petrarch’s own story, very harshly treated by him. This obscure liaison seems not to have afflicted him with the remorse which his purer attachment for Laura caused him. Only the latter is spoken of, and that at great length, in his imaginary confession to St. Augustine (see below, p. 93 sqq.). The son proved an idle fellow who caused his father a world of trouble, even entering into collusion with a band of thievish servants to rob him. The plague cut short his unpromising career in his twenty-fourth year. Petrarch noted in his copy of Virgil, which he used as a family record: “Our Giovanni was born to be a trial and burden to me. While alive he tormented me with perpetual anxiety, and his death has wounded me deeply.” The daughter was of a happier disposition. She married, and Petrarch rejoiced in two grandchildren. One of these, the little Francesco, was, when but a year old, a “perfect picture” of his illustrious grandfather, but the great hopes for the child’s future were cut short by its early death. Petrarch comforts himself with the thought that the child “has gained eternal happiness without effort, and by his departure has freed me from a continual source of solicitude.” Sen., x., 4. See Fracassetti’s Italian translation of Petrarch’s letters, Lettere delle Cose Familiari, ii., 256; Körting, Petrarca’s Leben und Werke, Leipzig, 1878, pp. 143 sqq.
6 Petrarch’s father, being still an exile, could not return with the family to Ancisa, in Florentine territory, but joined them when they moved to Pisa, which did not in those days belong to Florence.
7 Urban V. (1362-1370) had transferred the papal court back to Rome after it had remained for sixty years in France and Avignon, but after a year or two the disorder in Italy, as well as his own longing and that of his cardinals for their native land, overcame his good intentions and he returned to Avignon, where he died almost immediately, in December, 1370.
8 Petrarch had not only exhorted Urban V. to return to Rome, but had previously sent metrical epistles to his predecessors, Benedict XII. and Clement VI., urging them to restore the papacy to its ancient seat. The letters which Petrarch wrote to his friends in regard to the abominations of the “Babylonish Captivity” form a separate collection of his correspondence, Epistolæ sine Titulo, in which the names of those to whom they were addressed are suppressed for fear of compromising them.
9 The news of the death of Petrarch’s father recalled him and his brother from Bologna in April, 1326. Cf. Fam., iv., 1.
10 It seems strange that at twenty-two Petrarch should already have spent some seven years at the universities. It was not, however, unusual then. There were no entrance requirements, and the students were often mere boys. Rashdall places the age of freshmen at thirteen to sixteen years, but they might enter still younger. See Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. ii., p. 604.
11 Some thirty miles southwest of Toulouse.
12 It was on this occasion that Petrarch formed his life-long friendship with “Socrates,” who lived at Avignon, and with “Lælius,” a Roman, who also resided at Avignon until the death of Cardinal Colonna, in 1348. To these two a great many of his letters are addressed.
13 Petrarch was a commensal chaplain in the house of the Cardinal, as we learn from the Papal document granting him his first benefice, apud De Sade, Mémoires sur la Vie de Pétrarque, “Pièces justificatives,” vol. iii., No. 15.
14 Petrarch’s letters relating to Paris and Cologne are given below, Part iv.
15 Probably some three years after the journey to the north.
16 See below, p. 373 sq.
17 The castle of Cavaillon is close by the valley of the Sorgue.
18 September 1, 1340, when Petrarch was thirty-six years old.
19 The invitations to Rome and Paris to receive the laurel crown have a history, as the reader will easily infer. See below, p. 100 sqq.
20 Robert (who died in 1343) was the grandson of that Charles of Anjou (the brother of St. Louis) who had been called in by the popes to succeed the house of Hohenstaufen in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. He was Petrarch’s sovereign (Fam., iv., 3), for Avignon belonged to him as Count of Provence, until sold to the popes by Robert’s successor in 1348. Robert had resided at Avignon, 1318-1324. A letter from Petrarch to Robert, dated December 26, 1338, is preserved, as well as a second one (Pisa, April 21, 1341), describing his coronation at Rome: Fam., iv., 3, 7.
21 The Latin—ut eam (scil. Africam) sibi inscribi magno pro munere posceret—may perhaps mean that the king asked that the book be dedicated to him as a great favour. If, however, Petrarch was rewarded for the attention, he was only one of the first to enjoy a source of revenue which was well known to later Humanists.
22 Upon Easter Sunday, April 8, 1341.
23 See below, p. 105 sq.
24 The great epic was never really finished (cf. Fam., xiii., 11), and Petrarch came in his old age to dislike even the mention of it. Corradini’s edition is the best we have of the poem. An analysis of the Africa may be found in Körting, op. cit., 654 sqq.
25 Petrarch returned to Vaucluse in 1342, when he was toward thirty-eight years old. There is an air of Wahrheit und Dichtung noticeable elsewhere in the letter. It was, for example, probably later, in 1344, on a second visit to Parma, that he bought his house, and then went to Verona, where he found the letters of Cicero.
26 1349.
27 Giacomo was killed by his nephew, December, 1350.
28 The autobiography breaks off abruptly here; we know not why.
29 The fact that Petrarch mentions the death of Urban V., which occurred in December, 1370, indicates that the autobiography was written during the last three years of its author’s life.
30 See the pathetic passage in the Convito, i., ch. 3.
31 Fam., xxi., 15 (vol. iii., p. 110).
32 Fam., vi., 3 (vol. i., p. 324).
33 Cantiunculæ inanes, falsis et obscœnis muliercularum laudibus refertæ.—Fam., x., 3 (vol. ii., p. 73).
35 De Vulgari Eloquio, lib. i., cap. 13
36 See Sen., xv., 1 (Opera, 946).
37 Fam., iv., 16 (vol. i., p. 246).
38 Sen., xv., I (Opera, 947).
39 Fam., ix., 5 (toward the end). Cf. Körting, op. cit., 99 sqq.
40 See Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, vol. i., p. 3, n. 1, who asserts that “officium quotidianum celebrare,” in De Otio Religiosorum, does not refer to the celebration of the mass, as previous writers inferred.
41 Nos autem cui mundus est patria, velut piscibus æquor.—De Vulgari Eloquio, lib. i., cap. 6.
42 Described by M. Faucon, in the Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, Fas. 43, 50.
43 Ep. sine Titulo, No. 7; also Sen., x., 2.
44 See the facsimile of this famous entry in Geiger’s Humanismus, p. 44, and the corrected transcription furnished by M. de Nolhac, op. cit., pp. 407, 408.
45 Fam., ii., 9 (vol. i., p. 124).
46 Many attempts have been made to establish some theory of Laura’s life; the most plausible, by reason of the documentary evidence which he adduces, is that given in the eighteenth century by De Sade, in his well-known Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque (vol. i., pp. 111 sqq., and appendix; also Pièces Justificatives, at the end of vol. iii., containing Laura di Noves’s marriage contract, etc.). Even if the documents were not forged or modified by the lawyers of Avignon, in view of De Sade’s asserted descent from Laura, and even if, as is not certain, they refer at all to Petrarch’s Laura, we learn little or nothing from them. It may be inferred from the Canzoniere that Laura belonged to a good family, and almost everyone (except Geiger) agrees, nowadays, that there is every reason to suppose that she was married, since the freedom she appears to have enjoyed and the ornaments she wore, as well as Petrarch’s use of the word Mulier, all seem to render the assumption a natural one. Any other view would indeed be out of harmony with the habits of an Italian lover of the fourteenth century. The reader who wishes to pursue a somewhat fruitless line of research may compare the views of De Sade with those of Geiger, Petrarka, pp. 211 sqq., and Körting, op. cit., pp. 687 sqq., and may proceed from the references there given to the sources themselves, such as they are.
47 Ep. Poet. Lat., i., 7, lines 38 sqq. A German version of these will be found in Körting, op. cit., pp. 689 sqq.
48 The passage here referred to is in the third book of the Confessions (Suum Secretum), Opera, pp. 352 sqq. Those portions which relate to his love for Laura have been translated into German by Geiger, Petrarka, 231 sqq., and summarised by Körting, op. cit., pp. 639 sqq. The whole work is translated by Develay into French.
49 Peter Lombard reproduces, in the middle of the twelfth century, much of Augustine’s reasoning, in his Sentences, a work destined to be the standard theological manual for generations to follow.
50 Cf. Anecdotes historiques tirés du recueil inédit d’Etienne de Bourbon, publiés pour la Société de l’Histoire de France par Leroy de la Marche, 1867. Professor Crane, of Cornell, has edited the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry for the Folk-Lore Society, London, 1890.
51 This subject will be considered later. See below, Part VI.
52 Cf. the lines:—
Onde s’ alcun bel frutto
Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.
Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto,
Colto da voi; e’ l pregio è vostro in tutto—
in the canzone beginning, Perchè la vita.
53 For Petrarch’s views of marriage see Fam., xxii., 1, as well as several unworthy dialogues in De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ, e. g., i., 45-47; ii., 18, 20, 22.
54 Cogita quantum professio tua discordet a moribus.—Opera, p. 363.
55 Magnæ corporis magnæ animi vires sunt, quæ simul et litteris sufficiant et uxori.—Fam., xx., 4 (vol. iii., p. 21).
56 Two or three examples of such descriptions will be found below, Part. IV.
57 See his enthusiastic letter to Giacomo Colonna, who had invited him to undertake the journey.—Fam., ii., 9.
58 Convito, iv., 5.
59 Convito, iv., 5.
61 All authorities agree as to the fearful degradation of Rome during the absence of the popes.
62 Fam., ii., 14.
63 Petrarch confesses that he owed the crown to Robert. Ecl., x., 370 sqq.
64 Fam., iv., 3 (the opening lines).
65 Fam., iv., 2 (vol. i., p. 206).
66 Recolo... in hoc ipso capitolio romano ubi nunc insistimus tot tantosque vates ad culmen preclari magisterii provectos emeritam lauream reportasse... post statium pampineum illustrem poetam qui domitiani temporibus floruit nullum legimus tali honore decoratum.—Hortis, Scritti Inediti, p. 316.
67 Rerum Mem., end of book i.; an interesting estimate of Robert.
68 Ep. Poet. Lat., ii., 1.
69 Cf. Hortis, op. cit., chap, i., “La Laurea del Petrarca.”
70 Ibid., 311 sqq.
71 Georgics, iii., 291, 292, as translated by Rhoades.
72 Op. cit., p. 174. Cf. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom., vi., pp. 207 sqq.
73 Cf. Fracassetti, Let. delle Cos. Fam., i., 525 sqq.
74 The canzone beginning, Quel c’ ha nostra natura in se più degno.
75 See Fracassetti, op. cit., i., 527.
76 In the dedicatory preface to that work the reader will find an interesting review of Azzo’s career.
77 Var., 16 (vol. iii., p. 337), also Var., 4. For the whole matter see Fracassetti, Let. delle Cos. Fam., i., pp. 525 sqq.
78 Ep. Poet. Lat., ii., 5.
79 Fam., v., 3, 4, and 5. In the last of these there is a fine description of a terrible storm.
80 Fam., xxiv., 3; also Voigt, op. cit., p. 42. It has been satisfactorily proved that Petrarch was unaware of the existence of the important collection Ad Familiares. Cf. de Nolhac, op. cit., 94 and 211 sqq.
82 Fam., xii., 7 (vol. ii., p. 186).
83 Ex ea urbe nati sumus, an inexact expression, since neither was born in Florence, but a confession that they both felt themselves to be Florentine citizens.
84 Sen., ii., 1 (Opera, p. 751). Note Dante’s bitterly sarcastic characterisation of the Florentine readiness to express an opinion, in the Purgatorio, vi., especially lines 127 sqq.:
Molti han giustizia in cuor; ma tardi scocca,
Per non venir senza consiglio all’ arco:
Ma ‘l popol tuo l’ ha in sommo della bocca.
85 Fam., xi., 16 and 17.
86 Fam., xiii., 5.
87 Ep. Poet. Lat., iii., 24.
88 Fam., xvi., 12 (vol. ii., p. 403). Cf. also Fam., xvii., 10.
89 Cf. close of Fam., xvi., 12. For Boccaccio’s words of protest, see Corazzini’s edition of his letters, p. 47 sqq. Nelli did not join in the criticisms of the other friends, but advised him to do as he pleased. See his letter (x.), in the edition of Cochin.
90 See the amusing instances cited by Voigt, op. cit., i., 446 sqq.
91 Cf. Dietrich von Niehm, De Scismate, ed. Erler, p. 94.
92 Sen., viii., 3 (Opera, p. 836).
93 Historia di Milano (ed. of 1565), p. 567.
94 Fam., xviii., 16.
96 For the humanistic tendencies at Prague, see Voigt, op. cit., ii., 261 sqq., and Friedjung, Kaiser Karl IV. und sein Antheil am geistigen Leben seiner Zeit, Vienna, 1876.
97 Fam., xxiii., 2 (vol. iii., p. 184).
98 See above, p. 31 sqq.
99 Opera, pp. 372 sqq.
⁂