Francesco Petrarca

64 FRANCESCO PETRARCA (1304-1374)

The poet of romance and “The Father of Humanism”

Francesco Petrarca, commonly referred to as Petrarch, was one of the greatest Italian poets and one of the first “humanists” in history. Born in Arezzo in 1304, Petrarch spent most of his 70 years assiduously studying the classics, writing in Latin and traveling. His extensive travel through Europe earned him the title of “the first tourist” by some scholars.

Petrarch’s father, Ser Pietro, known as Petracco, was a Florentine jurist and a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri. Similar to Dante, Petracco belonged to the White Guelphs’ who advocated for moderate papal power and upon the White Ghelphs’ defeat at the hands of the Black Guelph faction, was sentenced to exile as was his friend Dante. Petracco left Florence for Arezzo in 1302, while his son Petrarch was very young. The family followed the French Pope Clement V’s displacement to Avignon, where the seat of the papacy remained throughout Petrarch’s life. At his father’s urging, Petrarch studied law in Montpellier and then in Bologna, where he would remain for six years. While he was passionate about civil law, Petrarch was not interested in legal practice. Instead he spent his time writing and studying Latin literature, and befriended young poets.

Passion for the classics

After his father’s death, Petrarch abandoned his studies and returned to Avignon, where he took up clerical jobs to be able to spend his free time writing. On Good Friday in 1327 while in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon, he met the love of

PORTRAIT OF FRANCESCO PETRARCA

16th century, oil on panel, from Florentine School

66 his life, Laura, who would become his muse and the focus of his literature. Though it was love at first sight for the young Petrach, Laura, being married, would constantly turn down his advances.

Petrarch’s feelings for Laura would keep him

“burning for 21 years” and his adulations would not cease even after her death. Petrarch wrote

Il Canzoniere, a series of love poems addressed to

Laura, including 317 sonnets. The lyrical, fixed verse form came to be known as the Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet, and remains to this day one of the two principal sonnet forms along with those composed by Shakespeare.

When his financial situation became difficult, Petrarch chose an ecclesiastical career, although he never became a fully ordained priest. He took a job as a house chaplain for an important church official, for whom he made his first trip to Rome, a destination he had long dreamed of. Visiting Rome’s ruins inspired him to begin writing in Latin and draw more references from the classics and humanism. Back in his country house in Avignon, far from the worldliness of the papal court and in solitude, Petrarch would go on to compose a prolific and diverse collection of works in Latin, including De Viris Illustribus (“On Famous Men”), Africa, and letters such as Epystole.

The traveling poet laureate

1341 marked a significant turning point in Petrarch’s life, earning him a rare and distinguished recognition. On 8 April, in the Roman Senate building on the Campidoglio, Petrarch was crowned poet laureate, only the second since classical antiquity. Now established as an exceptionally cultured scholar, Petrarch then began a whirlwind tour of Italian cities, including Parma, Naples, Verona (where he discovered Cicero’s letters), Mantua, Padua and again returning to

Rome. Between trips, he would retreat to his house in Valchiusa to devote himself to writing in Latin. These were the years in which he wrote the Secretum (“My Secret Book”) and the treatise De Vita Solitaria (“Of Solitary Life”). During this time he also wrote some of the I Trionfi (“The Triumphs”), poems inspired by Dante, that were written in the Tuscan vernacular. There were, however, several fundamental differences between the two poets. For one, Dante’s work was rooted in the cultural and social backdrop of his day and sometimes were reflections of his own predicaments. His language also evolved as he aged. In contrast, Petrarch’s thought and style remained consistent throughout his life. He spent much time revising the songs and sonnets of Il Canzoniere rather than taking on new subjects. Poetry alone provided consolation for his personal grief, absent of the philosophy or politics that were to be found in Dante’s works.

Petrarch continued to travel throughout northern Italy as a poet-diplomat, and eventually settled with his daughter’s family in Arquà, a tranquil town on the Euganean Hills near Padua. This is where he would spend his remaining years in philosophical and religious contemplation and revisioning of his works.

Because of Petrach’s lifetime study of the classics, his belief that they would enhance a person not only intellectually but morally as well to help develop one’s own awareness as a human, Petrarch has been called “the Father of Humanism.” Humanism became the cultural movement that would pave the way for the Renaissance.