Petrarch

Francis Petrarch (Francesco di Petracco, born in Arezzo, 1304 – died in Arquà, 1374) was an Italian poet and scholar who is regarded as one of the founders of humanism. He lived at the turning point between the medieval world and the Renaissance, and his importance lies both in his love lyrics and in his effort to recover Latin texts and reconcile them with Christian faith.

He was the son of a notary, Pietro di Petracco, and spent his early childhood in Incisa, near Florence, after his family had been exiled from the city. The household then moved to Avignon and nearby Carpentras. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, so he studied law at Montpellier and Bologna, but he remained far more drawn to Latin literature, above all to Cicero. According to a well-known story, his father once threw his books into the fire. After his parents died he returned to Avignon and worked in several church offices, which left him time to write.

In 1327 he first saw Laura in Avignon, a woman who became the inspiration for much of his poetry. Little is known about her, though she may have been Laure de Noves, who later married and became known as Laure de Sade. Petrarch never made her his partner in public life, and his love remained an idealised passion. He had two children, Giovanni and Francesca, by a woman whose identity is unknown, since his church career prevented him from marrying.

In 1336 he climbed Mont Ventoux with his brother and two servants. He later wrote a letter to his friend Dionigi describing the pleasure of looking out over the landscape and, once at the summit, opening Augustine's Confessions, which led him to see the climb as an image of a better life. His enjoyment of nature for its own sake has made him a forerunner of mountaineering.

He was a tireless book collector. He travelled through France, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain and England in search of classical manuscripts. In 1341 he was crowned poet laureate in Rome on the strength of Africa, a Latin epic about Scipio Africanus. In 1345 he located letters of Cicero in Verona that were little known at the time, a discovery that brought him fame among scholars. His friendship with Boccaccio, with whom he corresponded for years, strengthened his project of recovering classical culture.

His thought sought to bring the Greco-Roman inheritance into dialogue with Christianity. In the Secretum, an imaginary dialogue with Saint Augustine, he explores the tension between earthly desire and the search for salvation. He also argued that Italy had to be united if it was to regain the greatness of imperial Rome. In the vernacular he wrote the Canzoniere, more than three hundred poems in which Laura's death during the plague of 1348 marks a turn from youthful love toward spiritual reflection.

Petrarch died at Arquà, traditionally found over a book he had been reading. His influence was vast. Petrarchism spread across Europe through poets such as Garcilaso de la Vega, Shakespeare and Spenser, and his poetic language helped Pietro Bembo fix the standard of literary Italian. He is also credited with the idea of a Dark Age, a notion that modern historians now consider misleading.