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Petrarch Biography

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PETRARCH (It. PETRARCA, pā-trär'kå), Francesco (1304–74). An Italian poet and humanist, born at Arezzo, July 20, 1304, of a family then in exile from Florence because of its affiliation with the party of the Bianchi. To the family name Petracco the young Francesco gave the more pleasing form Petrarca. The wanderings of the family took the lad to Piso in 1310 and in 1313 to Avignon in France. After preliminary training he was sent to Montpellier in 1319 to study law. Some four years later he went unwillingly to Bologna to continue his studies in jurisprudence, for he shrank from pettifogging, though he admired the majesty of Roman law. A love of the classics, particularly of Cicero, early took possession of him. To them he devoted himself after the death of his father (1326), who had once flung his son's books of poetry and rhetoric into the flames, allowing the half-burnt manuscripts to be rescued, however, at Francesco's passionate entreaty. His father having left him no means to continue his studies, he returned to Avignon and took minor orders as an ecclesiastic, thus providing for himself a livelihood which insured to him the freedom which he so jealously guarded. He entered into the gay and fashionable life of Avignon, at that time the seat of the papacy and the animated meeting place of Italian and French culture. There in 1327 he met that Laura who was to inspire his imperishable lyrics. We cannot yet be certain of her identity, but it is probable that she was Laura de Noves, wife of Hughes de Sade and mother of 11 children at the time of her death by the plague of 1348. Her relations with Petrarch during these 21 years seem to have been as innocent as they were beautiful.

But his love for Laura was only another cause for restlessness. Animated by that interest in the external world that is characteristic of the Renaissance, he traveled through Belgium, Switzerland, France, Spain, and even Hungary, constantly questioning, seeking for direct information. In this he is as modern as when he looks within himself and describes his impressions and his emotions. In 1337 for the first time he entered Rome. That same year an unknown woman bore Petrarch a son, Giovanni, and probably it was she who gave him a daughter Francesca in 1343. These children were legitimized by papal bulls. At intervals he went back again to Avignon, and thence he withdrew for a while to the solitude of Vaucluse (Valchiusa). It was here that he received in 1340 from the universities of Paris and Rome invitations to visit those places and receive the crown of the poet laureate. He decided in favor of the University of Rome, and on Easter Sunday, 1341, he was publicly crowned on the Capitol. He visited many Italian cities and in 1343 was sent by Pope Clement VI on an embassy from Avignon to Naples. Constantly on the alert for manuscripts, he had the good fortune to discover some of the letters of Cicero, just as he had earlier brought to light two of Cicero's orations. He may also have found a part of the Institutiones of Quintilian. At Parma he received tidings in 1348 of Laura. The news of her death and of that of his friend Cardinal Colonna affected him greatly and was the inspiration of new songs. In 1350 he was in Florence with Boccaccio and in 1351 Boccaccio visited him at Padua. Having refused several offers of apostolic secretaryships from the holy see, he left Avignon for good in 1353. About this time began his connection with the Visconti in Milan, who in 1356 sent him to Prague as Ambassador to Charles IV of Germany, and in 1360 he undertook a similar mission to Paris. The remaining years of his life were mainly spent in scholarly pursuits at Arqua, near Padua, and there, July 18, 1374, he died, after a life which in spite of its inconsistencies, his advocacy of civic independence, and his praise of the tyrant Galeazzo, his desire for office and his unwillingness to accept it for fear of losing his freedom to come and go, his love of quiet and his constant travel, his vows of celibacy and his proclaimed paternity, had had more than the usual measure of success and some moments of glory.

His Latin works, on which he prided himself—the Africa, in hexameters, dealing with the undertakings of Scipio Africanus, moral, historical, and other scientific treatises, letters, the Carmen Bucolicum and the Epistolœ Metricœ, which contain many allusions to events of his time and life, as do also his Letters—have not the elegance of Poliziano or Bembo nor the polished brilliance of Erasmus; yet his zeal for the correction of manuscripts and the accumulation of learning and his passionate love of living antiquity were among the powerful influences in the Renaissance and mark an epoch in the development of modern scholarship. But it was the Canzoniere, most of them sonnets to the golden-haired Laura, living and dead, some of them to his friends, which brought Petrarch even in his lifetime that fame which he believed his writings would win for him. The canzone to Italy breathes a passion of patriotism not heard again in the lyric until Leopardi. The songs to those scenes in which he has lived show not so much keen observation as appreciation of the beauties of nature which are the setting of his emotion—another link with the nineteenth century. The forms of verse he took from the earlier love poets, and occasionally fell into some of their mannerisms. It was these trivialities caught up by later versifiers which were developed into the Petrarchism for a while rampant in France and Spain as well as in Italy. It must be admitted also that Petrarch's instability of mood—his belief one moment that his love for Laura is a good, which will bring him glory and salvation, and that of the next that it is an evil bringing him suffering in this world and damnation in the next—gives the basis for the antitheses carried to such extremes by the Petrarchists. Petrarch is not all modern. Besides the traces of troubadour workmanship in his verse there is mediæval mysticism in his thought. For the most part a sensuous pagan rejoicing in the beauty of his world, he is often the ascetic and fearful Christian. Perhaps his greatest service was the formulating of the æsthetics of his age. With the ideal of style constantly before him he labored at his Latin writings. With the ideal of beauty he gave to some of his sonnets a classic plasticity, and in his constant observation of his inner state, he discovered that each moment brings with it the possibility of a lyric.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol XVIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 433-434.