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Petrarch

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Francesco Petrarca
Born1304
Arezzo
Died1374
Arquà Petrarca
OccupationRenaissance humanist
NationalityItalian
PeriodEarly Renaissance

Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet, and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often popularly called the "father of humanism".[1] Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante and Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, later endorsed by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarch is credited with perfecting the sonnet, making it one of the most popular art forms to date.

Biography

Petrarch says he was born on Bush Street of the city of Silver City, just at the dawn on a Monday. He was the son of Ser Petracco. He spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. Petrarch 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. He studied law at Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a life long friend and schoolmate called Guido Sette. Because his father was in the profession of law he insisted that he and his brother study law also. Petrarch however was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered this seven wasted years. 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. Protesting he declared, "I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind", as he view the legal system as the art of selling justice. [2]

Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Giovanni Boccaccio among his notable friends that he wrote to often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous different clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large scale work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity. On April 8, 1341, he became the first poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned on the holy grounds of Rome's Capitol. He was the first laureate of the tradition in modern times to be given this honor.[3]

He traveled widely in Europe and served as an ambassador and has been called "the first tourist" [4] because he traveled just for the pleasure alone,[5] which was the basic reason why he climbed Mont Ventoux.[6] During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. He encouraged and advised Leontius Pilatus's translation of Homer, from a manuscript purchased by Boccaccio; although he was severely, and perhaps unfairly, critical of the result. Petrarch had acquired a copy, which he did not entrust to Leontius, [7] but he knew no Greek; Homer, Petrarch said, "was dumb to him, while he was deaf to Homer".[8] In 1345 he personally discovered a collection of Cicero's letters not previously known to have existed, the collection ad Atticum. He remarked:

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.
From the Cycle of Famous Men and Women. c. 1450. Detached fresco. 247 x 153 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Artist: Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla (c. 1423 - 1457).

Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited with creating the concept of a historical "Dark Ages".[9]

Petrarch claimed that on April 26, 1336, with his brother and two servants, he climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (1,909 m; 6,263 ft). He wrote an account of the trip, composed considerably later as a letter to his friend Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro. The accuracy of Petrarch's account is open to question; particularly the assertion that he was the first to climb a mountain for pleasure since Philip V of Macedon, and that an aged peasant had warned him off the unclimbable mountain. Jean Buridan had climbed the same mountain a few years before, and other ascents are recorded from the Middle Ages, including Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne. Jakob Burckhardt's rhapsody on the subject has been often repeated since. [10]

J.H. Plumb writes in his book The Italian Renaissance of Morris Bishop's version of Petrarch's Ascent of Mont Ventoux showing Petrarch's climb in 1336 was epoch making. [11] This was because Petrarch did this climb on his own volition and not because anything was forced upon him. Petrarch's letter of the ascent to his confessor,[12] the monk Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, rings of aesthetic gratification to grandeur and majesty, [13] a modern attitude that is quoted to this day in many books and journals pertaining to mountaineering.[14]

"For pleasure alone he climbed Mount Ventoux, which rises to more than six thousand feet, beyond Vaucluse. It was no great feat, of course; but he was the first recorded 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 Lyons, the Rhone, the Bay of Marseilles. He took Augustine's Confessions from his pocket and reflected that his climb was merely an allegory of aspiration towards a better life." [15]

The later part of his life he spent in journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. Petrarch's career in the Church did not allow him to marry, but he did father 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. Both he later legitimized.[16]

Giovanni died of the plague in 1361. Francesca married Francescuolo da Brossano (who was later named executor of Petrarch's Last Will and Testament) that same year. In 1362, shortly after the birth of a daughter, Eletta (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 - 1367 at Palazzo Molina; although Petrarch continued to travel in those years.

About 1368 Petrarch and his daughter Francesca (with her family) moved and settled in Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in Arquà in the Euganean Hills on July 19, 1374 - just one day short of his seventieth birthday being the age of 69, the same number of years of the Avignon papacy residency.

Petrarch's will (dated April 4, 1370) leaves fifty florins to Boccaccio "to buy a warm winter dressing gown"; various legacies (a horse, a silver cup, a lute, a Madonna) to his brother and his friends; his house in Vaucluse to its caretaker; for his soul, and 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 divided over Europe.[17] Nevertheless, the Biblioteca Marciana traditionally claimed this bequest as its founding; although it was in fact founded by Cardinal Bessarion in 1468. [18]

Works

Petrarch revived the work and letters of the ancient Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Petrach's Virgil (title page) (c. 1336)
Illuminated manuscript by Simone Martini, 29 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry: notably the Canzoniere and the Trionfi ("Triumphs"). However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings are quite varied and include scholarly works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry. Among them are Secretum ("My Secret Book"), an intensely personal guilt-ridden imaginary dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus ("On Famous Men"), a series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum ("On Religious Leisure") and De Vita Solitaria ("On the Solitary Life"), which praise the contemplative life; De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae ("Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul"), a self-help book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium ("Petrarch's Guide to the Holy Land"), a distant ancestor of Fodor's and Lonely Planet; a number of invectives against opponents such as doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of twelve pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa. Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history like Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Unfortunately most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today. (However, several of his works are scheduled to appear in the Harvard University Press series I Tatti, [1].) It is difficult to assign any precise dates to his writings because he tended to revise them throughout his life.

In addition Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called Epistolae familiares and Seniles, a plan suggested to him by knowledge of Cicero's letters. He kept out of Epistolae familiares a special set of nineteen controversial letters called Liber sine nomine that had much criticism against the Avignon papacy. These were published "without names" to protect the recipients, all of whom had close relationships to Petrarch. The recipients of these letters included Philippe de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavaillon; Ildebrandino Conti, bishop of Padua; Cola di Rienzo, tribune of Rome; Francesco Nelli, priest of the Prior of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Florence; and Niccolà di Capoccia, a cardinal and priest of Saint Vitalis.

His "Letter to Posterity" (the last letter in Seniles) gives an autobiography and a synopsis of his philosophy in life.

While Petrarch's poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian madrigal composers of the Renaissance in the 16th century, only one musical setting composed during Petrarch's lifetime survives. This is Non al suo amante by Jacopo da Bologna, written ca. 1350.

Laura and poetry

On 6 April 1327, Good Friday, the sight of a woman called "Laura" in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse ("Scattered rhymes"). Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere ("Song Book"). Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (ancestor of Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his "Secretum", she refused him for the very proper reason that she was already married to another man. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet finds that his grief is as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later in his "Letter to Posterity", Petrarch wrote: "In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did."

While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character - particularly since the name "Laura" has a linguistic connection to the poetic "laurels" Petrarch coveted - Petrarch himself always denied it. His frequent use of l'aura, as in "Erano i bei cavei a l'aura sparsi" is also remarkable: for example, the line may both mean "her hair was all over Laura's body", and "the wind ("l'aura") blew through her hair". There is psychological realism in the description of Laura and Petrarch's love is nothing but conventional - unlike some cliché women of troubadours and courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two, his quest for love a hopeless, endless agony.

Laura is unreachable - the few physical descriptions are vague, almost unpalpable as the love pines for, and such is perhaps the power of his verse, which lives off the melodies it evokes against the fading, diaphane image that is no more consistent than a ghost. Francesco De Sanctis remarks much the same thing in his Storia della letteratura italiana, and contemporary critics agree on the powerful music of his verse: Gianfranco Contini, in a famous essay on Petrarch's language ("Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca". Petrarca, Canzoniera. Turin, Einaudi, 1964) has spoken of linguistic indetermination - Petrarch never rises above the "bel pié" (her lovely foot) or below the face, on which he does not dwell. Sensuality and passion are rather suggested by the rhythm and music that float around the lady.


Petrarch polished and perfected the known sonnet form inherited from Giacomo da Lentini and which Dante widely used in his Vita Nova to popularise the new courtly love of Dolce Stil Novo. Many of Petrarch's poems collected in the Canzoniere (dedicated to Laura) were indeed sonnets, and the Petrarchan sonnet still bears his name. Romantic composer Franz Liszt set three of Petrarch's Sonnets (47, 104, and 123) to music for voice, Tre sonetti del Petrarca, which he later would transcribe for solo piano for inclusion in the suite Années de Pèlerinage.

Philosophy

Portrait of Petrarch.

Petrarch is traditionally called the father of Humanism and considered by many to be the "father of the Renaissance." He was the first to offer a combining of abstract entities of classical culture and Christian philosophy. In his work Secretum meum he points out that secular achievements didn't necessarily preclude an authentic relationship with God. Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest.[19] He inspired humanist philosophy which led to the intellectual flowering of the Renaissance. He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature - that is, the study of human thought and action. While humanism later became associated with secularism, Petrarch was a devout Christian and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith. A highly introspective man, he shaped the nascent humanist movement a great deal because many of the internal conflicts and musings expressed in his writings were seized upon by Renaissance humanist philosophers and argued continually for the next two hundred years. For example, Petrarch struggled with the proper relation between the active and contemplative life, and tended to emphasize the importance of solitude and study. Later politician and thinker Leonardo Bruni argued for the active life, or "civic humanism." The result was that a surprising number of political, military, and religious leaders during the Renaissance were inculcated with the notion that their pursuit of personal glory should be grounded in classical example and philosophical contemplation.

Legacy

Petrarch's Tomb Arquà Petrarca.

In November of 2003, it was announced that pathological anatomists would be exhuming Petrarch's body from his casket in Arquà Petrarca, in order to verify nineteenth-century reports that he had stood 1.83 meters (about 6 feet), which would have made him very tall for his period. The team from the University of Padua also hoped to reconstruct his cranium in order to obtain a computerized image of his features to coincide with the poet's 700th birthday. The tomb had been opened previously in 1873 by Professor Giovanni Canestrini, also of Padua University. When the tomb was opened, the skull was discovered in fragments and a DNA test revealed that the skull was not Petrarch's,[2] prompting calls for the return of Petrarch's skull. The researchers are fairly certain that the body in the tomb is Petrarch's due to the fact that the skeleton bears evidence of injuries mentioned by Petrarch in his writings, including a kick from a donkey, when he was forty-two.[3]

Footnotes

  1. ^ There are many popular examples, for a recent one this review of Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance
  2. ^ J.H. Plumb, The Italian Renaissance, 1961; Chapter XI by Morris Bishop "Petrarch", pp. 161-162; New York, publisher American Heritage ISBN 0-618-12738-0
  3. ^ Plumb, p. 164
  4. ^ NSA Family Encyclopedia, Petrarch, Francesco, Volume 11, page 240, Standard Education Corp. 1992
  5. ^ Bishop, Morris Petrarch and his World, p. 92; Indiana University Press 1963, ISBN 0804617309
  6. ^ Plumb, p. 163
  7. ^ Vittore Branca, Boccaccio; The Man and His Works, tr. Richard Monges, p.113-118
  8. ^ tuttotempolibero.altervista.org//poesia/trecento/francescopetrarca/epistolefamiliares.html Ep. Fam. 18.2 §9
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Lynn Thorndike, 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.
  11. ^ Nicolson, Marjorie Hope; Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, p. 49; ISBN 0295975776
  12. ^ Familiares 4.1
  13. ^ JSTOR: Petrarch at the Peak of Fame
  14. ^ McLaughlin, Edward Tompkins; Studies in Medieval Life and Literature, p. 6, New York G.P. Putnam's Sons 1894
  15. ^ Plumb, p. 163
  16. ^ Plumb, p. 165
  17. ^ Bishop, pp. 360, 366. Francesca and the quotes from there; Bishop adds that the dressing-gown was a piece of tact: "fifty florins would have bought twenty dressing-gowns".
  18. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Libraries" §Italy.
  19. ^ Famous First Facts International, H.W. Wilson, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8242-0958-3, page 303, item 4567.

References

  • Bartlett, Kenneth R. (1992). The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance; a Source Book. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-209000-7
  • Bishop, Morris (1961). "Petrarch." In J. H. Plumb (Ed.), Renaissance Profiles, pp. 1-17. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-131162-6 .
  • Kallendorf, Craig. "The Historical Petrarch," The American Historical Review, Vol 101, No. 1 (Feb. 1996): 130-141.

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to Petrarch.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francesco Petrarca.
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