Editing Module:Petrarch (section)

==Biography==

===Youth and early career===
Petrarch was born in the [[Tuscany|Tuscan]] city [[Arezzo]] on 20 July 1304. He was the son of [[Ser Petracco]] (a diminutive nickname for ''Pietro'') and his wife Eletta Canigiani. Petrarch's birth name was ''Francesco di Petracco'' ("Francesco [son] of Petracco"), which he [[Latinized name|Latinized]] to ''Franciscus Petrarcha''. His younger brother Gherardo (Gerard Petrarch) was born in [[Incisa in Val d'Arno]] in 1307. [[Dante Alighieri]] was a friend of his father.<ref name="Bishop">[[J.H. Plumb]], ''The Italian Renaissance'', 1961; Chapter XI by Morris Bishop "Petrarch", pp. 161–175; New York, [[American Heritage Publishing]], {{ISBN|0-618-12738-0}}</ref>

Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of [[Incisa in Val d'Arno|Incisa]], near [[Florence]]. He spent much of his early life at [[Avignon]] and nearby [[Carpentras]], where his family moved to follow [[Pope Clement V]], who moved there in 1309 to begin the [[Avignon Papacy]]. Petrarch studied law at the [[University of Montpellier]] (1316–20) and [[University of Bologna|Bologna]] (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate, [[Guido Sette]], future archbishop of Genoa. Because his father was in the legal profession (a [[Civil law notary|notary]]), he insisted that Petrarch and his brother also study law. Petrarch, however, was primarily interested in writing and studying [[Latin literature]] and considered these seven years wasted. Petrarch became so distracted by his non-legal interests that his father once threw his books into a fire, which he later lamented.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bishop |first1=Morris |title=Petrarch and His World |date=1963 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-34122-8 |pages=27}}</ref> Additionally, he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, "I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind", since he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.<ref name="Bishop" />

Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted [[Boccaccio]] among the notable friends with whom he regularly corresponded. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large-scale work, ''[[Africa (Petrarch)|Africa]]'', an [[Epic poetry|epic poem]] in [[Latin]] about the great [[Roman Republic|Roman]] general [[Scipio Africanus]], Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity. On 8 April 1341, he became the second<ref>after [[Albertino Mussato]] who was the first to be so crowned according to Robert Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1973)</ref> [[poet laureate]] since [[classical antiquity]] and was crowned by Roman ''Senatori'' [[Giordano Orsini (Senatore 1341)|Giordano Orsini]] and Orso dell'Anguillara on the holy grounds of [[Rome's Capitol]].<ref>Plumb, p. 164</ref><ref name=pie32>Pietrangeli (1981), p. 32</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kirkham|first1=Victoria|title=Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works|date=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|page=9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iGDdF667hosC&q=giordano+orsini+1341&pg=PA9|isbn=978-0226437439}}</ref>

He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has been called "the first [[Tourist#History|tourist]]"<ref>NSA Family Encyclopedia, ''Petrarch, Francesco'', Vol. 11, p. 240, Standard Education Corp. 1992</ref> because he traveled for pleasure<ref>[[Morris Bishop|Bishop, Morris]] ''Petrarch and his World'', p. 92, Indiana University Press 1963, {{ISBN|0-8046-1730-9}}</ref> such as his [[ascent of Mont Ventoux]]. During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin [[manuscripts]] and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of [[Ancient Rome|Rome]] and [[Ancient Greece|Greece]]. He encouraged and advised [[Leontius Pilatus]]'s translation of [[Homer]] from a manuscript purchased by Boccaccio, although he was severely critical of the result. Petrarch had acquired a copy, which he did not entrust to Leontius,<ref>Vittore Branca, ''Boccaccio; The Man and His Works'', tr. Richard Monges, pp. 113–118</ref> but he knew no [[Greek language|Greek]]; Petrarch said of himself, "Homer was dumb to him, while he was deaf to Homer".<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.tuttotempolibero.altervista.org//poesia/trecento/francescopetrarca/epistolefamiliares.html| title = ''Ep. Fam.'' 18.2 §9| access-date = 2018-11-12| archive-date = 2016-02-20| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160220021531/http://tuttotempolibero.altervista.org//poesia/trecento/francescopetrarca/epistolefamiliares.html| url-status = dead}}</ref> In 1345 he personally discovered a collection of [[Cicero]]'s letters not previously known to have existed, the collection ''[[Epistulae ad Atticum]]'', in the [[Chapter Library of Verona|Chapter Library]] (''Biblioteca Capitolare'') of [[Verona Cathedral]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bibliotecacapitolare.it/en/history/|title=History – Biblioteca Capitolare Verona|website=Bibliotecacapitolare.it|access-date=23 February 2022|archive-date=20 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180420090857/http://www.bibliotecacapitolare.it/en/history/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of [[Middle Ages|the era]] in which he lived, Petrarch is credited with creating the concept of a historical "[[Dark Ages (historiography)|Dark Ages]]",<ref name="DarkAges"/> which most modern scholars now find inaccurate and misleading.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Snyder|first=Christopher A.|author-link=Christopher Snyder (historian)|year=1998|title=An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons A.D. 400&ndash;600|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|publication-date=1998|location=University Park|pages=xiii&ndash;xiv|isbn=0-271-01780-5}}. In explaining his approach to writing the work, Snyder refers to the "so-called Dark Ages", noting that "Historians and archaeologists have never liked the label Dark Ages ... there are numerous indicators that these centuries were neither 'dark' nor 'barbarous' in comparison with other eras."</ref><ref name=dmas>{{cite book |title=[[Dictionary of the Middle Ages]] |volume=Supplement 1 |publisher=Charles Scribner |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofmidd0000unse_y1k9_supp1/page/388 |chapter=Medievalism |pages=389–397 |year=2004 |first=Kathleen |last=Verdun |isbn=9780684806426 |editor-first=Chester William |editor-last=Jordan |editor-link=William Chester Jordan}}; Same volume, [[Paul Freedman|Freedman, Paul]], [https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofmidd0000unse_y1k9_supp1/page/383/mode/2up "Medieval Studies"], pp. 383–389.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Raico|first=Ralph|author-link=Ralph Raico|title=The European Miracle|date=30 November 2006 |url=https://mises.org/daily/2404|access-date=14 August 2011}} "The stereotype of the Middle Ages as 'the Dark Ages' fostered by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment ''philosophes'' has, of course, long since been abandoned by scholars."</ref>

===Mount Ventoux===
{{Main|Ascent of Mont Ventoux}}
[[File:140608 Mont-Ventoux-04.jpg|thumb|left|Summit of [[Mont Ventoux]]]]
Petrarch recounts that on 26 April 1336, with his brother and two servants, he climbed to the top of [[Mont Ventoux]] ({{convert|1912|m|ft|sp=us}}, a feat which he undertook for recreation rather than necessity.<ref>[[Marjorie Hope Nicolson|Nicolson, Marjorie Hope]]; ''Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite'' (1997), p. 49; {{ISBN|0-295-97577-6}}</ref> The exploit is described in a famous letter addressed to his friend and confessor, the monk [[Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro]], composed some time after the fact. In it, Petrarch claimed to have been inspired by [[Philip V of Macedon]]'s ascent of [[Beklemeto Pass|Mount Haemo]] and that an aged peasant had told him that nobody had ascended Ventoux before or after himself, 50 years earlier, and warned him against attempting to do so. The nineteenth-century Swiss historian [[Jacob Burckhardt]] noted that [[Jean Buridan]] had climbed the same mountain a few years before, and ascents accomplished during the [[Middle Ages]] have been recorded, including that of [[Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne]].<ref>Burckhardt, Jacob. ''[https://archive.org/details/civilisationren02middgoog The Civilisation of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy]'' (1860).  Translated by S.G.C. Middlemore.  [[Swan Sonnenschein]] (1904), pp. 301–302.</ref><ref>[[Lynn Thorndike]], [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707236 Renaissance or Prenaissance], ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan. 1943), pp. 69–74. [[JSTOR]] link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.</ref>

Scholars<ref>Such as [[J.H. Plumb]], in his book ''The Italian Renaissance''</ref> note that Petrarch's letter<ref name=AMV>[http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_letters.html?s=pet17.html Familiares 4.1] translated by Morris Bishop, quoted in Plumb.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 462985|title = Petrarch at the Peak of Fame|journal = PMLA|volume = 108|issue = 5|pages = 1050–1063|last1 = Asher|first1 = Lyell|year = 1993|doi = 10.2307/462985| s2cid=163476193 }}</ref> to Dionigi displays a strikingly "modern" attitude of aesthetic gratification in the grandeur of the scenery and is still often cited in books and journals devoted to the sport of [[mountaineering]]. In Petrarch, this attitude is coupled with an aspiration for a virtuous Christian life, and on reaching the summit, he took from his pocket a volume by his beloved mentor, Saint Augustine, that he always carried with him.<ref>McLaughlin, Edward Tompkins; ''Studies in Medieval Life and Literature'', p. 6, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894</ref>

<blockquote>For pleasure alone he climbed Mont Ventoux, which rises to more than six thousand feet, beyond Vaucluse. It was no great feat, of course; but he was the first recorded [[Mountaineering|Alpinist]] of modern times, the first to climb a mountain merely for the delight of looking from its top. (Or almost the first; for in a high pasture he met an old shepherd, who said that fifty years before he had attained the summit, and had got nothing from it save toil and repentance and torn clothing.) Petrarch was dazed and stirred by the view of the Alps, the mountains around [[Lyon]]s, the [[Rhone]], the Bay of [[Marseilles]]. He took [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]]'s ''[[Confessions (Augustine)|Confessions]]'' from his pocket and reflected that his climb was merely an [[allegory]] of aspiration toward a better life.<ref>{{cite book |last=Plumb |first=J.H. |date=1961 |title=The Horizon Book of the Renaissance |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7FKVBjaLtJsC&q=%22climb+was+merely+an+allegory%22 |location=New York |publisher=American Heritage |page=26 }}</ref>
</blockquote>

As [[Bibliomancy|the book fell open]], Petrarch's eyes were immediately drawn to the following words:

{{quote|And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.<ref name=AMV/>}}
Petrarch's response was to turn from the outer world of nature to the inner world of "soul":

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

[[James Hillman]] argues that this rediscovery of the inner world is the real significance of the Ventoux event.<ref name=RP>{{cite book|first=James|last=Hillman|author-link=James Hillman|year=1977|title=Revisioning Psychology|isbn=978-0-06-090563-7|publisher=Harper & Row|pages=[https://archive.org/details/revisioningpsych00hill/page/197 197]}}</ref> The Renaissance begins not with the ascent of Mont Ventoux but with the subsequent descent—the "return [...] to the valley of soul", as Hillman puts it.

===Later years===
Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy and southern France as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in [[Catholicism|the Church]] did not allow him to marry, but he is believed to have fathered two children by a woman (or women) unknown to posterity. A son, Giovanni, was born in 1337, and a daughter, Francesca, was born in 1343. He later legitimized both.<ref>Plumb, p. 165</ref>

For a number of years in the 1340s and 1350s he lived in a small house at [[Fontaine-de-Vaucluse]] east of [[Avignon]] in France.

[[File:Arquà Petrarca Punto di vista di un'aquila.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Petrarch's [[Arquà Petrarca|Arquà]] house near [[Padua]] where he retired to spend his last years]]
Giovanni died of the [[bubonic plague|plague]] in 1361. In the same year Petrarch was named [[canon (priest)|canon]] in [[Monselice]] near [[Padua]]. Francesca married [[Francescuolo da Brossano]] (who was later named executor of Petrarch's [[Will and testament|will]]) that same year. In 1362, shortly after the birth of a daughter, Eletta (the same name as Petrarch's mother), they joined Petrarch in [[Venice]] to flee the plague then ravaging parts of Europe. A second grandchild, Francesco, was born in 1366, but died before his second birthday. Francesca and her family lived with Petrarch in Venice for five years from 1362 to 1367 at [[Palazzo Molina]]; although Petrarch continued to travel in those years. Between 1361 and 1369 the younger Boccaccio paid the older Petrarch two visits. The first was in Venice, the second was in Padua.

About 1368 Petrarch and Francesca (with her family) moved to the small town of [[Arquà Petrarca|Arquà]] in the [[Euganean Hills]] near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in his house in Arquà on 18/19 July 1374. The house now hosts a permanent exhibition of Petrarch's works and curiosities, including the famous tomb of an embalmed cat long believed to be Petrarch's (although there is no evidence Petrarch actually had a cat).<ref>{{Cite web |title=(Not?) Petrarch's Cat |url=https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/12/not-petrarchs-cat.html |access-date=2022-04-02 |website=blogs.bl.uk |language=en}}</ref> On the marble slab, there is a Latin inscription written by [[Antonio Quarenghi]]:
{|
! Original Latin
! English translation
|-
|valign="top"|
<poem>Etruscus gemino vates ardebat amore:
Maximus ignis ego; Laura secundus erat.
Quid rides? divinæ illam si gratia formæ,
Me dignam eximio fecit amante fides.
Si numeros geniumque sacris dedit illa libellis
Causa ego ne sævis muribus esca forent.
Arcebam sacro vivens a limine mures,
Ne domini exitio scripta diserta forent;
Incutio trepidis eadem defuncta pavorem,
Et viget exanimi in corpore prisca fides.</poem>

|style="padding-left: 3em;" valign="top"|
<poem>::The Tuscan bard of deathless fame
      Nursed in his breast a double flame,
        Unequally divided;
      And when I say I had his heart,
      While Laura play'd the second part,
        I must not be derided.

      For my fidelity was such,
      It merited regard as much
        As Laura's grace and beauty;
      She first inspired the poet's lay,
      But since I drove the mice away,
        His love repaid my duty.

      Through all my exemplary life,
      So well did I in constant strife
        Employ my claws and curses,
      That even now, though I am dead,
      Those nibbling wretches dare not tread
        On one of Petrarch's verses.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40773/40773-0.txt|title=The Last Lay of Petrarch's Cat|translator=J. O. B.|journal=Notes and Queries|volume=5|issue=121|page=174|date=21 February 1852|access-date=5 June 2022}} Latin text included.</ref></poem>
|}

Petrarch's will (dated 4 April 1370) leaves fifty [[Italian coin florin|florins]] to Boccaccio "to buy a warm winter dressing gown"; various legacies (a horse, a silver cup, a lute, a [[Madonna (art)|Madonna]]) to his brother and his friends; his house in Vaucluse to its caretaker; money for Masses offered for his [[Soul (spirit)|soul]], and money for the poor; and the bulk of his estate to his son-in-law, Francescuolo da Brossano, who is to give half of it to "the person to whom, as he knows, I wish it to go"; presumably his daughter, Francesca, Brossano's wife.  The will mentions neither the property in Arquà nor his library; Petrarch's library of notable manuscripts was already promised to Venice, in exchange for the Palazzo Molina.  This arrangement was probably cancelled when he moved to Padua, the enemy of Venice, in 1368.  The library was seized by the lords of Padua, and his books and manuscripts are now widely scattered over Europe.<ref>Bishop, pp. 360, 366. Francesca and the quotes from there;{{Clarify|date=May 2009}} Bishop adds that the dressing-gown was a piece of tact: "fifty florins would have bought twenty dressing-gowns".</ref> Nevertheless, the [[Biblioteca Marciana]] traditionally claimed this bequest as its founding, although it was in fact founded by [[Cardinal Bessarion]] in 1468.<ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Libraries |display=Libraries § Italy |volume=16 |page=573 |first1=Henry Richard |last1=Tedder |first2=James Duff |last2=Brown}}</ref>