Editing Module:Petrarch (section)

===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>