Editing Module:Petrarch (section)

===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.