The Characteristics of Humanism Discussion

None of the potraits of Petrarch, not even the well-known one in a codex of the laurentian library, are authentic
Eye-glasses were a somewhat new invention when petrarch resorted to them. Poggendorf cites the first reference to them (1299), which reads as follows: ” I found myself so oppressed by age that without the so-called eye-glasses, which have recently been discovered as a godsend to poor old persons, I could neither read nor write.” We know little of the construction of these first spectacles. An early German painting (15th century), in the National Gallery at London, shows a saint with a completely developed pince-nez.
Petrarch’s father and Dante were banished forever from Florence upon the same day, January 27, 1302.
This is doubtless one of the two or three obscure references to Laura, in Petrarch’s correspondences. His frigid statement of the case is characterstic of Petrarch the Humanist as contrasted with Petrarch the singer. Compare the fervour of the sonnets with the original of this passage:—Amore acerrimo, sed unico et honesto, in adolescentia laboravi, et diutius laborassem, nisi iam tepescentem ignem mors acerba, sed utilis, extinxisset.
Petrarch, although a churchman, was the father of two illegitimate children, a son, Giovanni, born in 1337, and a daughter, Francesca, born, probably of the same mother, some six years later. The unfortunate mother was, according to Petrarch’s own story, very harshly treated by him. The obscure liaison seems not to have afflicted him with the remorse which his purer attachment for Laura caused him. Only the latter is spoken of, and that at great length, in his imaginary confession to St. Augustine. The son proved an idle fellow who caused his father a world of trouble, even entering into collusion with a band of thievish servants to rob him. The plague cut short his unpromising career in his twentyfourth year. Petrarch noted in his copy of Virgil, which he used as a family record: ” Our Giovanni was born to be a trial and burden to me. While alive he tormented me with perpetual anxiety, and his death has wounded me deeply.” The daughter was of a happier disposition. She married, and Petrarch rejoiced in two grandchildren. One of these, the little Francesco, was, when but a year old, a “perfect picture” of his illustrious grandfather, but the great hopes for the child’s future were cut short by its early death. Petrarch comforts himself with the thought that the child “has gained eternal happiness with effort, and his departure has freed me from a continual source of solitude.
Petrarch’s father, being still an exile, could not return with the family to Ancisa, in Florentine territory, but joined them when they moved to Pisa, which did not in those days belong to Florence.
Urban V. (1362-1370) had transferred the papal court back to Rome after it remained for sixty years in France and Avignon, but after a year or two the dis in Italy, as well as his own longing and that of his cardinals for their native land, overcame his good intentions and he returned to Avignon, where he died almost immediately, in December, 1370.
It seems strange that at twenty-two Petrarch should already have spent some seven years at the universities. It was not, however, unusual then. There were no entrance requirements, and the students were often mere boys. Rashdall places the age of freshmen at thirteen to sixteen years, but they might enter still younger. See Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. ii.,p. 604.
Some thirty miles southwest of Toulouse.
It was on this occasion that Petrarch formed his life-long friendship with “Socrates,” who lived at Avignon, and with “laelius,” a Roman, who also resided at Avignon until the death of Cardinal Colonna, in 1348. To these two a great many of his letters are addressed.
Petrarch was a commensal chaplain in the house of the Cardinal, as we learn from the Papal document granting him his first benefice, apud De Sade, Memoires sur la Vie de petarque, ” Pieces justificatives, “vol. iii., No. 15.
Petrarch’s letters relating to Paris and Cologne are given below, Part IV.
Probably some three years after the journey to the north.
The castle of Cavaillon is close by the valley of the Sorgue.