PETRARCH
HIS LIFE AND TIMES
BY
H. C. HOLLWAY-CALTHROP
PREFACE
IN a short Life of
Petrarch, which aims at interesting the reader in fourteenth-century history,
and in one of its most fascinating personalities, there can be no room for the
elaborate discussion of chronological and other “cruces.” Students of the
period know only too well how many, how intricate, and how exasperating these
difficulties are ; happily they are hardly ever of first-rate importance. In
these pages I have done my best to ensure accuracy, and in no case have I put
forward a statement without careful consideration of the evidence; but in no
case, either, has space permitted me to give a full digest of such evidence.
In trivial matters I have simply stated what seems to me the most probable
version of the facts : in questions of more moment I have indicated the
existence of a doubt and of possible alternative solutions. Usually, but not
always, I have followed Fracassetti, to whom all students of Petrarch and his
times owe a debt of deepest gratitude.
It is equally impossible
within the limits of a Preface to give a list of the authorities on which any
life of Petrarch must be based. Anyone who wishes to pursue the subject further
may be referred to the first chapter of Dr. Koerting’s Petrarcas Leben und
Werke (Leipzig, 1878), where he will find an admirable digest of the chief
materials available to that date ; a foreign bookseller will keep him informed
as to later publications. Here I may just mention that de Sade, Baldelli,
Domenico Rossetti, Fracassetti, and Dr. Koerting are the modern writers to
whom my obligations are greatest.
After all, however,
Petrarch himself is far and away the most important authority for his own
biography ; the following narrative is substantially taken from his writings,
and I think there are very few statements in it which do not find valid support
—I dare not say complete proof—there.
My cordial thanks for
helpful correspondence are due to Mr. Lionel Cust, to the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham,
to Dr. Paget Toynbee and, above all, to Professor Ker, who has constantly
encouraged my work on Petrarch, and has given this book the inestimable
benefit of his supervision.
Equally cordial are my
thanks to three younger friends, Mr. D. Home of Christ’s College, Mr. F. W.
Hunt of Oriel, and Mr. Dennis Robertson, k.s., of Eton, for the unstinted help
with which they have supplemented the deficiencies of my eyesight by writing my
MS., verifying my references, and correcting my proofs.
H. C. H.-C.
Eton College
May, igoj
CHAPTER I Early Years, 1304-1326
CHAPTER II Avignon and Laura, 1326-1329
CHAPTER III Travel and Friendship, 1329-1336
CHAPTER IV Rome and Vaucluse, 1336-1340
CHAPTER V The
Crown of Song, 1340-1341
CHAPTER VI Parma, Naples, and Vaucluse, 1341-1347
CHAPTER VII Rome and Rienzi, 1347
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX Florence and
Boccaccio, 1350
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI Milan and
the Visconti, 1353-1354
CHAPTER XII Charles IV
and Prague,1354-1357
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII The Pope in
Rome, 1367-1370 .
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
1304-1326
FRANCESCO PETRARCA,
better known to
ideals, and did more
than a man may well dare to hope towards their realisation ; but he often erred
in his application of them to the problems of practical life. Intellectually
the most gifted man of his age, he rendered incalculable service to the mental
development of mankind; but he occasionally wasted his brilliant talent in
trivial and unworthy controversy. Fervent in piety, enthusiastic in friendship
and in the pursuit of noble aims, he was not exempt from frailty, while the
ardour of his temperament explains, and may be held to excuse, a certain want
of balance in his character. We see in him no mirror of perfection, but a man
of high virtues and splendid gifts, of quick human sympathies and impulses, of
a self-questioning spirit not at unity with itself, of provoking but not
ignoble foibles, a man to admire, to pity, sometimes to quarrel with, to love
always.
Petrarch came of an
ancient and honourable, but not a noble, family. For three generations at least
his ancestors had been Notaries in the city of Florence. His great-grandfather,
Ser Garzo, was a man of saintly life and great repute for wisdom, the
counsellor and referee not only of neighbours and intimate friends, but of
politicians and men of letters. He lived to the age of 104, and died at last on
his birthday in the same room in which he had been born. His son, Ser Parenzo,
seems to have maintained the honourable traditions of the family without adding
to its distinction ; but his son again, Ser Petracco, the father of Petrarch, was
a man of extraordinary talent, combining a refined
taste in literature with
ability of the highest order in the hereditary profession of the law. Bom probably
in 1267, he rose rapidly in the service of the State, and before he was
thirty-five years of age had held many important public positions; for
instance, he was Chancellor of the Commission for Reforms, and in 1301 was a
member of an important embassy to Pisa.
The highest dignities of
the State seemed to lie within the reasonable compass of his ambition, and it
must have been about this time that the happy prospects of his life were
crowned by his marriage with the young and charming Eletta Canigiani. But in
the year 1302 he was arraigned before a criminal court on a trumped-up charge
of having falsified a legal document, convicted in his absence, and sentenced
to a fine of 1000 lire or the loss of his right hand. Banishment and the
confiscation of his property were the result of his refusal to surrender and
take his sentence. Every one knew that the charge was false, a pretext devised
to give some colour of justification to the banishment of a political opponent,
and that his real offence consisted in his adhesion to the party of the “
White Guelfs,” of which the poet Dante was the most illustrious member.
The cross-currents of
mediaeval politics in Italy are numberless, and it is hard to steer an
intelligible course among them; every rule had almost as many exceptions as
examples, and every principle was liable to violation to suit the convenience
of its nominal upholders. But speaking broadly, it may
be said that the Guelf
championed civic independence under the hegemony of the Papacy, the Ghibellin
personal government under the sovereignty of the Emperor. How far either Pope
or Emperor cxercised an effective control within his own party depended mainly
on his personal character and that of those with whom he had to deal; the
Angevin Kings of Naples and the Republic of Florence were often more powerful
than the Pope, while on the Ghibellin side the great Lords of Lombardy
habitually acted as independent princes, and scarcely pretended to give more
than a nominal allegiance to the successors of Frederick II.
In Florence the Guelf
party had ruled supreme for nearly forty years, and the political struggle
centred upon the efforts of the people to limit the authority of the nobles.
Suddenly the Guelf party was rent in twain by a feud which began, much as our
own Wars of the Roses are said to have begun, in a domestic brawl. The feud
spread from Pistoia, the city of its origin, to Florence, where the nobles,
seeing in it a chance of regaining the power and privileges recently taken from
them, espoused the quarrel of the “ Blacks,” or extreme Guelfs, and accused the
“ Whites,” the more moderate faction, of endangering the safety of the State by
encouraging Ghibellinism. With Florence thus divided against herself, the
right arm of the Church was paralysed, a state of things so serious that even
Pope Boniface VIII was for once in his life disposed to moderate counsels, and
nominated Charles
of Valois, brother of
the King of France and cousin of the King* of Naples, to act as mediator
between the factions. There were old ties of friendship and alliance between
the Royal House of France and the Republic of Florence, and the great body of
the people gladly welcomed the Prince, who swore to respect their laws and
liberties, and to deal justly with all parties. By these promises he gained admission
to the city, into which he made his solemn entry on All Souls’ Day, 1301. But
he was no sooner within the walls than he shamelessly violated all his pledges,
set at naught the Constitution of the State, and openly encouraged the “Black”
faction to murder and rob their principal opponents. For the violence of the “
Black ” Guelfs some excuse may be found; Florence was surrounded by bitter
enemies, and the honest men of the party may really have thought that the “
Whites ” had been guilty of disloyalty to the Guelf cause, or of weakness in
serving it, while the nobles had been exasperated by special legislation
directed against their order, and could hardly be expected to forego an
opportunity of revenge. But for Charles no shadow of justification can be
pleaded; he was false to his commission, false to his plighted word, false to
the people who trusted him. His conduct ranks among the meanest betrayals which
history records.
It was probably at this
time that Ser Petracco was forced to leave the city, though formal proceedings
were not taken against him till many months later, and the date of his “ trial
” and con
demnation is October
2nd, 1302. His young wife went with him into banishment, and they found a
refuge, together with many of their friends and fellow-exiles, in the Ghibellin
city of Arezzo, a retreat especially convenient to Petracco, as his hereditary
property at Incisa lay on the direct road to Florence, and only twelve miles
across the State boundary.
In 1303 he returned for
a few weeks to Florence as ambassador for his party. Boniface VIII was dead,
and Benedict XI made another attempt at reconciling the Guelf factions. With
this object he sent as Legate to Tuscany the Cardinal Niccolo da Prato, an
honest man zealous for peace. On May loth, 1303, the Florentines received the
Cardinal with open arms, gave him the temporary government of the city, and
elected Priors devoted to his interests, who issued safe-conducts to the envoys
of the White Guelfs.
All promised well; the
people were earnest for peace, the Cardinal was benevolent and sincere; the “
White ” envoys seem to have been reasonable in their demands. But the “Black”
extremists were resolved to prevent a peace which would ruin their supremacy in
the State, and they shrank from nothing that might serve their object. By a
clever forgery of the Cardinal’s hand and seal, they persuaded the people that
he was summoning a Ghibellin army to Florence; the negotiations were broken
off; the envoys returned to report their failure to their friends, and the
Cardinal, suspected by every one except those who had brought him
into suspicion, retired
to his native Prato, and laid the territory of Florence under an interdict.
Peaceful means having
failed, the “Whites” resolved on an attempt to redress their grievances by
force. The Cardinal, in an evil hour for his reputation as a statesman,
encouraged them in their design, and so played into the hands of the “ Blacks ”
and confirmed the bulk of the people in their suspicions of him. Acting on his
suggestion, the exiles mustered their forces and appeared before the walls of
Florence on the morning of July 20th, 1304. But scattered as they had been
among the cities of Tuscany and the Emilia, concerted action was difficult and
secrecy impossible; some of their contingents arrived too late; they found
their enemies forewarned; and after some fruitless skirmishing they were forced
to retreat and disperse.
We do not know whether
Petracco, who had played so prominent a part in the peace negotiations, shared
the responsibility for this ill-judged and ill-executed appeal to arms ; but he
probably shared its dangers, and if so, he was away from home when his eldest
son was born. “ On Monday, July 20th, 1304,” Petrarch tells us in one of his
letters, “ the very day on which the exiles were beaten back from the walls of
Florence, just as the dawn began to brighten, I was born in the city of Arezzo,
in Garden Street as it is called, with such travail of my mother and at such
peril of her life, that not only the midwives, but even the physicians believed
for some time that she was dead.” The
street still keeps its
old name of Vicolo dell’ Orto; the house which first sheltered the poet of
Laura and founder of Humanism still stands, and now bears on its walls a marble
tablet inscribed with Petrarch’s name, with three passages from his writings in
which he speaks of his birthplace, and with an attestation of the transfer of
the house in 1810 from private to public ownership. The city has always been
proud of her accidental connection with Petrarch, and he for his part was
equally proud of her as his birthplace. “ Arezzo,” he declared to an Aretine
friend, “has been far more generous to an alien in blood than has Florence to
her own son.” And more than four centuries after his death Arezzo reaped a rich
reward for her hospitality to his parents, when Napoleon after Marengo, out of
reverence for the memory of Petrarch, exacted no penalty for the stubborn
resistance of the Aretines.
Intimately as his name
has been associated with that of Arezzo in the imagination of posterity, he
spent there only the first six months of his life. In February, 1305, Eletta
left Arezzo with her little son, and went to live on Petracco’s hereditary
property at Incisa. On the way the future poet had a narrow escape from
drowning: he was carried “on the arm of a strong young fellow, as Metabus
carried Camilla, wrapped in a linen cloth and slung from a knotted staff. While
crossing the Arno, the young man was thrown by a stumble of his horse, and
nearly perished in the rushing stream throuoh his efforts to save the burden
entrusted to
O
him.” No harm came of
the accident, and the
party arrived safely at
Incisa, where Petrarch was to spend the next seven years of his life.
Somehow or other this
little country estate had escaped the decree of confiscation which deprived Ser
Petracco of the rest of his property. The obvious theory that it belonged to
Eletta’s family and not to her husband’s is disproved by documents ; probably,
therefore, Petracco was not its sole owner; he may have held it jointly with
other relatives, or it may have been settled on his wife in return for the
dowry which she brought him. Whatever the explanation, Eletta was able to live
there unmolested, and Petracco, though banished and proscribed, could easily
visit her by stealth. The rulers of a mediaeval State cared chiefly about its
cities and fortified places ; so long as there were no conspiracies hatching,
they would not be over-active in policing a little country village. Moreover,
the great range of the Prato Magno, at the foot of which Incisa lies, offers
many a lonely sheep-track by which an exile might travel unsuspected, and many
a wooded nook where, sheltered by friends, he might find a hiding-place from
any casual search- party. Petracco certainly did contrive to visit his wife,
and in 1307 their second son, Gherardo, was born ; a third boy, who died in
infancy, must have been born much later, though the local inscriptions at
Incisa claim him too as a native of the place, for Petrarch retained a vivid
recollection of his love for this baby-brother and of his poignant sorrow at
the child’s death.
We have 110 details of
the life at Incisa; but any
one who has lived the
year through in Tuscany can imagine them for himself, for the essential
features of Tuscan life are as little changed as the scenery itself. You may
search Europe from end to end and find no more ideal spot than Incisa for a
poet’s upbringing. It is a bright little township on the left bank of the Arno,
deriving its name from the crorge or cutting which the river has here made
<d & i>
for itself through the
rock. To the west are steep round-topped hills rich with vegetation ; to the
east a lovely maze of low ridge and fertile valley lies between the channel of
the Arno and the massive range of the Prato Magno. Then, as now, the corn grew
between rows of pollards, mostly maple, over which twined the stems and
tendrils of the vines ; then, as now, you might see by the summer moonlight,
after the corn was reaped, the white or fawn-coloured oxen moving slowly
between the trees, dragging through the stubble such a plough as that of which
Cincinnatus held the stilts. Mingled with the vineyards are groves of olives;
above them on the slopes of the mountain grow the chestnuts, the meal of which
is a staple food of the country-folk; higher yet is a belt of pines and beeches
; and above all the immense expanse of short, crisp grass, sweet to crop and
elastic to tread, from which the range takes its name of “the Great Meadow.”
The passion for Nature, which distinguishes Petrarch from his predecessors,
was surely first aroused in him by the beauty of his childhood’s home.
Nor was this his only
debt to Incisa. From
every peasant he would
hear those Tuscan songs which are distinguished above all popular poetry by
grace of imagery and refinement of diction ; his quick, impressionable brain
would receive from them its first idea of poetic expression ; here surely was
the origin of that Italian spirit which in later years he breathed into the
courtly forms of the Provengal lyric. A tablet marks the house, still standing
on the steep hillside amid the ruins of an ancient castle, which tradition
assigns as the home of Eletta and her children ; another tablet of very recent
erection on the little town hall commemorates Petrarch’s connection with the
place; it is a sound instinct which has led the composers of both inscriptions
to emphasise the fact that here the future poet’s childish lips first opened to
the sweet accents of his mother-speech.
The current of Italian
politics had borne him as a baby to Incisa; the same stormy current swept him
out of this quiet home seven years later, and carried him to have his first
glimpse of the great world at Pisa. Henry of Luxemburg had been elected Kins:
of the Romans with the full consent of Pope Clement V, if not actually at his
suggestion ; for the first time it seemed as if Emperor and Pope might work
heartily together to reconcile the Italian factions. Never was man so well
fitted as Henry for this honourable task. Men said of him that he was neither puffed
up by victory nor cast down by defeat; among the petty intrigues of German
princes and Italian despots he walked serene, intent upon justice, so that he
did indeed
deserve the magnificent
eulogy of Dante, who assigned a seat in the highest heaven, in the very Rose
of the Blessed, to “the lofty Henry, who should come to guide Italy aright
before she was ready.” He failed, but his failure was more glorious than the
successes of meaner men. In the spring of 1312, however, when he marched
through Lombardy into Tuscany, the hopes of his friends ran high. The Pope,
though notoriously capable of treachery, had not yet declared himself a traitor
to the Emperor of his choice, and if the Caesar’s authority were backed by the
Pope, Guelf and Ghi- bellin alike might be expected to bow before it. The
prospect was still fair when Henry took up his quarters in Pisa, a stronghold
of Ghibellin- ism loyal through all vicissitudes to its noblest champion.
Hither came Ser Petracco, with many of his political friends, to meet the
Emperor, and hither, finding himself at last in a place of safety, he summoned
his wife and children to join him. So it was in Pisa that the little Petrarch
first beheld the glories of a rich and artistic Italian city, at this time the
rival of Florence herself in the beauty of her buildings. The cathedral and the
baptistery stood then as we see them to-day, only the bronze doors and a few
decorative details remaining to be added at a later date; the leaning tower
wanted only the topmost tier of its arches; the cloister of the Campo Santo was
built, and the best artists of Tuscany had begun to cover its walls with
frescoes of the rarest beauty. By the Arno stood the little fishermen’s chapel
of the Spina, a gem in marble,
finished only a year or
two before, and the quays on either side were lined with a stately row of
palaces which Venice herself could not surpass for many a day to come. To a
quick-witted child of precocious aesthetic sense Pisa must have seemed a city
of fairyland.
He stayed about a year
within her walls, till the defeat of Henry VII quenched the last spark of
genuine Imperialist enthusiasm in Italy. Henry had been crowned in Rome, but in
other respects his expedition ended in failure. The Pope played him false;
Naples and Florence met him with open and successful opposition ; and after a
fruitless campaign he died in August, 1313, at Buonconvento, a little
fortified town in the territory of Siena. It was commonly believed that a
priest had poisoned the consecrated elements, but there is no evidence of foul
play, and the fatigues of an arduous campaign may well have brought about
Henry’s death by natural causes. Indeed, it is probable that many suspected
poisonings in the Middle Ages were really cases of “something in—itis,” which the
medical men of the day were incompetent to diagnose.
Henry was laid to rest
in his faithful Pisa, where his tomb, by the master hand of Giovanni Pisano,
may still be seen ; and in his grave were buried the last hopes of the
Florentine exiles, who must now choose between a shameful recantation and perpetual
banishment. Like Dante, Ser Petracco had once already rejected the former
alternative; he now decided to leave Italy altogether, and to settle in
Avignon, whither Clement V had transferred the
Papal See four years
before. So the party left Pisa, apparently in the autumn of 1313, and travelled
to Genoa, where they were to take ship for Marseilles. Never did Petrarch
forget that wonderful journey by the foot of the Carrara Mountains and along
the Eastern Riviera. Forty years later he recalled with rapture the memory “ as
of a lovely dream, liker to a heavenly than an earthly dwelling- place, even
such as the poets celebrate when they sing of the Elysian fields.” The pleasant
hill-paths, the bright ravines, the stately towers and palaces enchanted him ;
the hillsides seemed a vast garden of cedar, vine, and olive ; and when at
length he entered Genoa, it seemed to him “ a city of Kings, the very temple of
prosperity and threshold of gladness.”
Though short, his stay
in Genoa was memorable for the formation of the earliest and one of the most
intimate of his many friendships. He met here Guido Settimo, a boy of his own
age, who was to be his fellow at school and college, his host at Avignon and
guest at Vaucluse, and of whom he could write fifty years later that to see
Guido, then become Archbishop of Genoa, was much the same as to see himself,
since they had lived together from childhood in perfect harmony of disposition
and everything else.
Guido’s father, like Ser
Petracco, was about to settle at Avignon ; so at Genoa the two families took
ship together for Marseilles. A southerly winter gale nearly wrecked them
outside the harbour, but they presently got safely to land, and
journeyed up the valley
of the Rhone to Avignon. Here they found themselves in a fresh difficulty : “
the place could barely accommodate the Roman Pontiff and the Church, which had
lately followed him thither into exile, for it had in those days but a small
number of houses, so that it was overflowed by this deluge of visitors.” The
fathers, accordingly, decided to establish their families in the neighbouring
town of Carpentras, “a little city in truth, but still the chief place of a
little province,” where they found suitable houses for themselves and a grammar
school for the education of their boys. Here Petrarch spent four of the
happiest years of his life. For politicians, especially for those whose
fortunes were bound up with the Roman Curia, the times were troublous. Pope
Clement V died in this very town of Carpentras, and the Conclave assembled
there; but the Cardinals would not come to an agreement, and the See remained
vacant for two years. All this mattered nothing to the two boys. “You remember
those four years,” Petrarch writes to Guido in the letter already freely
quoted; “what a delightful time it was, with perfect freedom from care, with
peace at home and liberty abroad, and with its leisure hours spent amid the
silence of the fields. I am sure you share my feelings, and certainly I am
grateful to that season, or rather to the Author of all seasons, who allowed me
those years of absolute calm, that undisturbed by any storm of trouble I might
drink in, so far as my poor wit allowed, the sweet milk of boyish learning, to
strengthen my mind for digesting more solid nourishment.”
The “sweet milk of
boyish learning” was administered by Convennole of Prato, perhaps the most
celebrated schoolmaster of his day, and as famous for the oddities of his
character as for the excellence of his teaching. He was said to have kept a
school for fully sixty years, and his renown was justified by the number of his
pupils who afterwards attained to distinction in learning and politics and to
positions of eminence in the Church. Among them all Petrarch was his favourite;
this was so notorious that in after-years Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, who
delighted in the old man’s simplicity and scholarship, used to tease him by
asking: “‘Tell me, master, among all your distinguished pupils, whom you love, as
I know, is there any room in your heart for our Francesco?’ And thereupon the
old man’s tears would rise so that he would either be silent, or sometimes go
away, or, if he was able to speak, he would swear by everything sacred that he
loved none of them all so well.” There is good reason to think that he had been
Petrarch’s tutor in Italy, and that he accompanied the family to Avignon and
Carpentras; at all events, he transferred his school thither, and there
Petrarch advanced under his tuition from childish lessons to profounder studies
in Latin grammar and literature, in rhetoric and in dialectic. The last that
we hear of Convennole is a tragi-comic episode which resulted in a serious
literary loss. In his old age he fell into great poverty, and Ser Petracco
helped him liberally with money; after the latter’s death he relied wholly on
Petrarch, who gave him money
when he could, and when
he had none, as was often the case, procured him loans from richer friends, or
lent him something to pawn. One day the old man’s distress got the better of
his honesty. He borrowed two works of Cicero, the unique MS. of the De Gloria
and The Laws, together with some other books, ostensibly for literary work of
his own, “ for not a day passed without his planning out some work with a
high-sounding title, and writing a preface for it, after which his fickle fancy
would straightway fly off to some totally different matter.” Presently his
delay in returning the books led Petrarch to suspect the truth, and he found
that Convennole had pawned them. He would have redeemed them himself, and
begged to be told the pawnbroker’s name; but the old man in an agony of shame
protested that he would do his duty, and begged for time to redeem his honour.
Petrarch would insist no further ; but Convennole’s necessities presently
obliged him to return to Tuscany, where he soon afterwards died, and Petrarch,
who was then at Vaucluse, heard nothing of his departure till the people of
Prato sent to ask him to write his epitaph. In spite of every effort, he could
never find a trace of his missing Cicero ; “ and so,” he says, “ I lost my
books and my tutor at the same time.” Of The Laws, other copies were preserved,
but the De Gloria has been a lost book from that day.
It was while still a
schoolboy at Carpentras, and probably very early in his stay there, that
Petrarch first saw Vaucluse, the place which was afterwards
to be more closely
associated with his name than any of his residences. Ser Petracco one day
brought home Guido Settimo’s uncle as his guest, and he, being a stranger to
the neighbourhood, was anxious to see the celebrated source of the Sorgue. The
two boys begged to be allowed to share the excursion, and as they were too
small to ride on horseback alone, they were mounted each in front of a servant,
and in this fashion Eletta, “the best of all mothers that ever I knew,” as
Petrarch calls her, who loved the little Guido almost as well as her own boys,
was content to let them &o. “And when we arrived at the
o
source of the Sorgue,”
Petrarch continues, “ I remember as though it had happened to-day how I was
moved by the strange beauty of the spot, and how I spoke my boyish thoughts to
myself as well as I could to this effect: Here is the place which best suits
with my temper, and which, if ever I have the chance, I will prefer before
great cities.”
After four happy years
at Carpentras the troubles of Petrarch’s life began, when his father sent him
to study law at the High School of Montpellier. Petrarch, now in his
seventeenth year and a boy of precocious talent, already felt that literature
was his vocation, and hitherto his father, a sound scholar with a finer
literary judgment than most scholars of the day, had encouraged him in his
tastes. “ From my boyhood,” he tells us, “at the age when others are gaping
over Prosper and /Esop, I buckled to the books of Cicero, impelled both by
natural instinct and by the advice of my father, who professed deep veneration
for that author, and who
would easily have gained
distinction as a man of letters if his splendid talent had not been diverted by
the necessity of providing for his family. ... At that time I could not
understand what I read, but the sweetness of the language and majesty of the
cadences enchanted me, so that whatever else I read or heard sounded harsh in
my ears and quite discordant. . . . And this daily increasing ardour of mine
was favoured by my father’s admiration and the sympathy which he showed for
awhile with my boyish study.” Presently, however, Ser Petracco changed his
tone; his means had been seriously impaired by his political misfortunes ; his
son must begin to think of a profession at which money could be earned; what
more natural than that he should destine his brilliant boy for the traditional
calling of the family, in which he himself had won so considerable a
reputation? It was well enough to unbend the mind over the masterpieces of
antiquity, but the study of them must not interfere with the serious business
of life, and he began to bid the lad “forget Cicero and set himself to the
study of the laws of borrowing and lending, of wills and their codicils, of
property in land and property in houses.” One day, finding that the young
scholar could not be persuaded to divorce himself from his classics, Petracco
took sterner measures. “ I had got together,” says Petrarch, “all the works of
Cicero that I could find, and had hidden them carefully away for fear of the
very thing that actually happened, when one day my father fished them out and
threw them into the fire before my very eyes,
to burn like the books
of the heretics. At this I set up as terrible a howling as if I myself had been
thrown upon the logs, whereupon my father, beholding my sorrow, plucked out two
of the books just as the flames were on the point of reaching them, and holding
Virgil in his right hand and Cicero’s Rhetoric in his left, gave them with a
smile, as an offering to my tears, saying, ‘ Keep the one for an occasional
hour of recreation, and the other as a stimulus to your study of civil law.”’
Petrarch was a dutiful
son, and for seven years applied himself diligently to the studies marked out
for him by his father, and gave promise of great proficiency in them ; but all
the time his heart was elsewhere, and to the end of his life he regarded this period
of legal study as “ rather wasted than spent.” Probably he underrated the
benefit of it; an eager, fervent temper such as his needs discipline as well as
instruction, and it may be that the steady grind at an uncongenial subject did
much to develop his indefatigable industry, and to enable him to get the best
results out of his genius when he came to apply it to the things for which he
really cared.
At all events, he was
happy at Montpellier, in spite of distasteful studies. The place was then “a
most flourishing town, the sovereignty of which was vested in the King of
Majorca with the exception of one corner belonging to the King of France, who
. . . soon afterwards managed to get possession of all the rest. And what a
peaceful calm prevailed there at that time, what wealth its merchants enjoyed,
how full of scholars were the streets, and what a number of masters
taught in the school! ” Above all, he still had Guido Settimo for his companion
during the whole four years that he spent there ; for Guido too was ordered to
study the law, and was happier than his friend in finding it congenial to his
tastes and disposition.
Early in 1323 the two
friends went to finish their legal training at Bologna, whither Petrarch’s
younger brother, Gherardo, either accompanied or soon afterwards followed them.
No young man could be better qualified than Petrarch to enjoy the pleasures and
interests of university life ; with an insatiable appetite for literature he
combined a capacity for friendship which assured him of the full benefit of the
social life of the place. In Bologna, the premier University of Italy, he found
charming surroundings and pleasant companions, so that “nowhere was life freer
or more delightful,” and his residence there seemed “not the least of the
benefits which God had given him.” Only the educational methods of the day
seemed to him radically wrong. “ Philosophy,” he protests, “is so prostituted
to the fancies of the vulgar, that it aims only at hair-splitting on subtle
distinctions and quibbles of words. . . . Truth is utterly lost sight of, sound
practice is neglected, and the reality of things is despised. . . . People concentrate
their whole attention on empty words.”
For himself, he
continued “ to bend beneath the weight of legal study” during the whole of his
residence at Bologna, his tutor being the Canonist Giovanni Andrea, the most
celebrated lawyer of the
time, “a chief glory of
the city and University,” where he held the Chair of Canon Law for forty- five
years. Unhappily he was not satisfied with being first in his own profession,
but assumed the airs of a dictator in literature and criticism too, a pose in
which his ignorance and arrogance at once amazed and disgusted his more
cultivated pupils. Yet tutor and pupil must have been on good terms on the
whole, for they made an expedition together to Venice for the mere pleasure of
seeing the place, and may probably have included visits to Pesaro and the
country round Rimini in the same tour.
Petrarch appears to have
had no other tutor while at Bologna, for the old tradition, which made him the
pupil of Cino da Pistoia there, is certainly erroneous. The two poets admired
each other; they exchanged poems during Cino’s lifetime, and Petrarch wrote the
beautiful sonnet Piangete, Donne as a lament for his death. Moreover, the young
poet’s genius was influenced for good by his study of the elder’s art, and in
this sense only he may be called a pupil of Cino. The latter was probably
absent from Bologna during the whole of Petrarch’s residence there.
The study of law and the
companionship of his tutor were far from monopolising Petrarch’s time at the
University. His leisure hours were devoted to literature and to rambles round
the city in company with his friends. One of these was a young poet, Tommaso
Caloria of Messina, with whom Petrarch soon formed one of those close and
ardent
friendships the record
of which is the most delightful feature of his biography. Their tastes were
congenial, their talents similar in kind if not in degree, and Petrarch
thought so highly of Tommaso’s genius as to name him among the poets in the
Triumph of Love. Something of this high estimate may have been due to the
partiality of friendship, but Petrarchs critical instinct was not easily misled
even by the fervour of his affections.
With Tommaso, Guido, and
other friends, Petrarch spent many a holiday in rambles through the delightful
country of the Emilia which lies round Bologna. “ I used to go with those of my
own age,” he says, “ and on festal days we would wander to a great distance, so
that the sun often set while we were still in the country, and we did not get
back till the dead of night. But the city gates stood open, or if by any chance
they had been shut, there was no wall to the town, but only a brittle paling
half rotten by age ... so that you could approach it from numberless points,
and each of us could make entry where it suited his convenience.” We are
accustomed to think of the fourteenth century as a turbulent age, when might
was right, and a city’s safety lay in the strength of her walls and the courage
of her people. It is a little surprising, therefore, to read of this free,
joyous student life, and still more so to hear of a rotten paling as the only
rampart of an Italian town.
Before Petrarch had
quite completed his twenty- second year, he and Gherardo were summoned home by
the news of their father’s death ; they left
Bologna on April 26th,
1326, and travelled with all speed to Avignon. Ser Petracco was not quite sixty
years old, and his death must have come with the shock of a surprise to the
family, for his health had been good, and so little had he felt the weight of
years, that he threw the whole household into commotion in his indignation at
finding the first white hair on his head when more than fifty years of age.
This is the single humorous anecdote of him that has come down to us ; for the
rest he seems to have been an austere man, who failed to win the full
confidence of his children, though he always commanded their deep respect. He
had lived a hard life, which may well have deadened his sensibilities, and,
after all, he was not more despotic than most parents, who claim to mould their
children’s lives without taking due account of peculiarities in their
temperament. Intellectually he had much in common with his greater son, though
he lacked the latter’s delicate fancy and creative genius; morally the father was
probably the stronger man of the two, but in the strength of his character
there was an element of harshness, and the more finely strung nature of the
son, with his keenness of human sympathy and his enthusiasm for noble ideals,
appeals more successfully to the imagination and affection of mankind.
A still keener sorrow
was in store for the brothers. Eletta, according to the received tradition,
which is probably correct, died only a few weeks after her husband. Though
Petrarch mentions her very seldom in his extant writings, there is enough to
show the depth and
enthusiasm of his love for her. His allusion to her as “ the best of all
mothers that ever he knew ” has been already quoted, and the Latin poem in
which he laments her death overflows with tenderness. He calls her
Elect of God no less in
deed than name; speaks of her as possessing
Nobility to wake the
Muses’ choir,
Supreme affection,
majesty of soul;
and declares that
The good will aye revere
thee; I must weep Thy loss for aye ! Not verily that Death Brings aught of
terrible to thee, we grieve ;
But that thou, sweetest
mother, leavest us,
Me and my brother,
wearied, where the ways Of Life divide, midst of a stormy world.
Throughout his life her
memory remained fresh in his heart, and when a little granddaughter was born to
him in his old age, he had the child christened by the cherished name of
Eletta.
CHAPTER II
AVIGNON AND LAURA
1326-1329
SER PETRACCO had done
much to retrieve
because they wished to
save it for me, but because they were busy plundering what they considered the
more valuable portions of my inheritance.” Unhappily this beautiful MS. was
pawned together with the De Gloria by old Convennole, and so Petrarch lost the
last vestige of his father’s property.
Being now his own
master, he determined to be not a lawyer, but a scholar and a poet. He made his
choice deliberately, and he never regretted it ; his instinct told him truly
that the advancement of learning was his vocation, and never was any man’s
choice of work more fully justified by the event. It is hardly possible to
exaggerate the effect of that choice on the revival of learning in Europe.
But a scholar in the
early fourteenth century could not live by his pen. At Florence and Bologna the
men of letters were mostly lawyers ; elsewhere, and especially at the Papal
Court, they were nearly always Churchmen. Petrarch’s course was obvious ; he
immediately took the minor orders, which were sufficient to give him a locus
standi and hopes of preferment in the Church without fettering his liberty of
action, but he delayed till long afterwards his ordination as priest, which was
a far graver matter, and might possibly have hindered rather than helped him in
his early career. It has sometimes been urged as a reproach against him that
he entered the Church without any vocation to the ministry ; and his defenders
have replied that in so doing he only followed the custom of the age, that the
minor orders imply no stringent obligation and require no special vocation, and
that in spite of
occasional human
frailties he was one of the most devout-minded men of his time, with strong religious
tendencies even in the early youth which he spent, to use his own words, “ in
subjection to his vanities.” All these answers are valid, but to say the truth
they are all superfluous. The Church of the Middle Ages took thought for men’s
intellects as well as for their souls ; she was organised for mental culture as
well as for spiritual devotion ; and the scholar found his natural place in her
ranks side by side with the preacher and the theologian.
Circumstances equally
dictated his choice of a residence. He hated Avignon: he declaims with quite
comic vehemence against its very soil and climate, calling it “the melancholy
Avignon, built upon a rugged rock, on the banks of the windiest of rivers.”
Much more violent are his denunciations of its politics and its morals. Avignon,
as the seat of the Papal Court, was treasonably usurping the sovereign rights
of Rome; she was the Babylon of a captivity worse than the Jewish, because
voluntary and base; Babylon is his habitual name for her, and under this
opprobrious nickname he denounces alike the perfidy of her rulers and the
wickedness of her inhabitants. And the society in which the gay licence of
Provence met the darker corruptions of an unscrupulous priesthood furnished
only too much matter for his diatribes. Yet nowhere else could he think of
establishing himself. His father had formed influential connections at the
Papal Court, and he himself was beginning to be known in the city; in no other
place could a brilliant
This society of artists,
scholars, statesmen, and men of the world was an ideal environment for a young
man eager to acquire and diffuse knowledge,
eager also for personal
renown; and the astonishing speed with which Petrarch’s celebrity as a poet
spread through Europe must have been mainly due to the men of all countries who
learned to appreciate him at Avignon. He himself admitted that nowhere else,
as things stood, could he have found such opportunities as were open to him at
Avignon; only he held that things ought to have been otherwise, and these
opportunities should have been open to him not at Avignon, but in Rome.
However great may have
been his disgust at the fouler corruptions of Avignonese society, he took his
full share of its pleasures and gaieties. He was at this time a young man of
engaging appearance, comely if not strikingly handsome, with a high colour and
a complexion rather fair than dark; his eyes were animated in expression and
remarkably keen of sight—in the Laurentian library portrait they are rather
small, but very clear and beautiful— he was of middle height, and his limbs,
though not very strong, were well knit and agile. In early and middle life his
health was robust, and he was extremely temperate in his habits, “drinking nothing
but water throughout his childhood and down to the close of the period of
youth.” From the Laurentian portrait we see further that he had an intellectual
face, with a rather low but very massive forehead, a large, straight nose,
delicately arched eyebrows, high and well-modelled cheekbones, and a beautiful
mouth with lips that shut at once firmly and smilingly. By the time that he sat
for this picture his chin had grown double, but still kept the
appearance of having
been finely cut in younger days. He was well qualified for the part of a dandy,
and played it with his brother’s support to admiration. “You remember,” he
writes twenty years later, “ the quite superfluous gloss of our exquisite
raiment, and our daintiness in putting it on and off, a troublesome business
which we performed morning and evening; you remember too our terror lest a
single hair should get out of place, or a breath of wind ruffle the arrangement
of our curls, and how we swerved from every horse that met or passed us, lest a
speck of dust should mar the shine of our scented cloaks, or a touch should disarrange
the folds in which we had laid them.
. . . And what shall I
say of our shoes ? What a cruel, unremitting warfare they waged with our feet,
which they were supposed to protect! They would soon have made mine quite
useless, if I had not taken warning by the straits to which I was pushed, and
preferred giving a little offence to other folk’s eyes before crushing my own
muscles and joints. And what of our curling-tongs and the dressing of our hair?
How often the toil of it delayed our sleep at night and cut it short in the
morning! Could any pirate have tortured us more cruelly than we tortured
ourselves by twisting cords round our heads? We twisted them so tight indeed at
night, that in the morning our mirror showed us crimson furrows across our foreheads,
and in our anxiety to show off our hair we had to make it hide our faces.”
But though he ruffled it
with the best of the
dandies, so that all
Avignon pointed him out as a model of elegance, he never allowed frivolity to
distract him from scholarship. He was bent on acquiring knowledge, and he found
friends, some of them much older than himself, who were able and willing to
help him. One of them was Giovanni of Florence, one of the Pope’s writers, an
old man well qualified by character, learning, and experience to be an adviser
of youth. To him Petrarch confided his hopes and his difficulties, and in
return the old man spoke to him of the true method and right aim of study,
bidding him not to be cast down by an apparent check in his pursuit of
learning, seeing that the recognition of our ignorance is the first step to
knowledge. In the last year of his life Petrarch was asked to advise a young
man who feared that he had come to a standstill in his work, and answered that
he could do no better than repeat to him the counsel which he had himself
received from Giovanni of Florence.
Another friend by whose
affectionate help and advice he profited much was the lawyer Raimondo Soranzio,
“a venerable and noble old man,” who gloriously sacrificed all hope of
preferment by withstanding the Pope himself in a good cause. He possessed a
fine library of the classics, though he himself cared little about any of them
except Livy, and he generously allowed Petrarch the free use of his books ;
indeed, it was he who lent him the De Gloria, of which the melancholy history
has already been told.
So far Petrarch’s life
had been a happy one ; he had met with
misfortunes, it is true, but they were not of such a kind as could daunt a
high-spirited youth, and many an ambitious young man of letters would gladly
compound for them all on condition of having Petrarch’s advantages. But now, in
the twenty-third year of his age and less than a year after his return to
Avignon, the great crisis of his life came upon him, bringing him twenty-one
years of deep unhappiness, hardly compensated by the enduring renown which was
its fruit. On the 6th April, 1327, at the hour of Prime, he first saw Laura in
the Church of St. Claire, and was overwhelmed at once with the love of which he
tells us: “In my youth I bore the stress of a passion most violent, though
honourable and the single one of my life; and I should have borne it even
longer than I did, had not Death, opportune in spite of its bitterness, quenched
the flame just as it was beginning to grow less intense.” It is to the
vicissitudes of this deep and enduring passion that we owe the poems by which
their author holds his high rank among the masters of song.
Who was Laura? Frankly,
we do not know. In all probability Petrarch purposely destroyed all marks of
identification ; if this was his intention, his success was complete, and the
riddle will probably never be answered with certainty. So careful was the
lover to guard his lady’s secret, that even in his lifetime his friends would
tease him by pretending to believe that he was in love with no woman at all,
but only with the laurel crown of poetry, which he symbolised under the name of
D
Laura; and this
allegorical theory has never been quite without adherents. Happily no
reasonable person, acquainted with all the evidence and with Petrarch’s methods
of thought and expression, can doubt its falsity. That in answer to a friend’s
banter he protested the reality of his passion counts for little; of course he
would have done that whether he were maintaining a fact or a fiction. But the
manner of his protestation, with its revelation of a spirit vexed by
fluctuating emotions and conflicting desires, carries conviction. Much more
conclusive, however, indeed absolutely conclusive, are the references to Laura
in his Dialogues De Contemptu Mundi, and the two pathetic entries on the
fly-leaf of his Virgil. The Dialogues, which he called his Secrctum, were
written for himself alone; under the form of a dialogue with Saint Augustine
they constitute a private record of his inmost thoughts and feelings. He never
published them ; it is doubtful whether even his most intimate friends were
ever allowed to read them ; their very existence was certainly unknown till
after his death to the great body of his admirers. Yet it is precisely in this
private record that we find the most valuable information as to his love for
Laura and its effect on his character and his work. And on the fly-leaf of his
Virgil, the book which he carried everywhere with him, now preserved in the Ambrosian
Library at Milan, he noted down, again for his own eye only, among the most
solemn events of his life, the dates of his first meeting with Laura and of her
death. This is conclusive; for on no
conceivable theory can
Petrarch, writing for himself only, have set down the date of Laura’s death in
1348, if she was but the symbol of his laurel crown, which he gained in 1341,
and which showed no sign of fading during his lifetime. But if the support of circumstantial
evidence is wanted, there is plenty to be had. The Canzoniere, for instance,
describes in minutest detail every feature of the beloved lady’s face except
her nose; it is hard to imagine a poet spending so much pains on the
unsubstantial features of an allegorical picture; it is quite inconceivable
that, describing all the rest, he should forget the most prominent of them all;
had Laura been a mere allegory, we should have had either no portrait or a
complete one. Nor is it conceivable that Petrarch would have spoken of a
fictitious passion in the terms of strong abhorrence which, under occasional
impulses of ascetic fervour, he applied to his earthly love. The strength of a
reaction is a sure gauge of the strength of the action which preceded it, and
the intemperate fervour of Petrarch the ascetic bears witness to the intensity
of the emotions of Petrarch the lover and the poet.
Laura was a real woman,
and Petrarch was desperately her lover; so much may safely be asserted, so
much and no more. We do not even know that her real name was Laura; here may
well be the grain of truth from which the whole allegorical myth sprung;
nothing is more likely than that Petrarch, who constantly gave nicknames of
affection to his friends, should have called the lady whom he loved by a name
that associated her in his
fancy and in the ears of
the world with his life’s ambition. Was she married or single ? Again we do not
know. The received opinion follows the conjecture of the Abb6 de Sade, and
identifies her with his ancestress, Laura de Noves, wife of Count Hugo de Sade,
a nobleman of Avignon. But the evidence for her marriage rests mainly on a
questionable interpretation of a single Latin contraction, while the general
tone of the Canzoniere supports the theory that she was unmarried. If this was
the case, Petrarch may well have called his love for her an “ honourable ”
passion, not merely in the sense in which Prove^al courts of love adjudged
honourable the devotion of a troubadour to his lady, but in the more modern and
domestic sense that he hoped to win her in marriage; for a dispensation from
the minor orders could easily be obtained, though the story of Pope Clement VI
having offered him a dispensation from priest’s orders must be dismissed as an
idle tale.
Another theory, much in
vogue just now, represents her as a simple village maiden, possibly of gentle
birth and able to read the Italian poems of her lover, but innocent of the
turmoil of city society, living and dying at the foot of a hill a few miles out
of Vaucluse, and buried within the precincts of the valley. It is a pretty
theory; unfortunately it raises more difficulties than it solves, and contradicts
more facts than it explains. The riddle is still unread.
Whoever she was, there
is no exaggerating the effects of her influence on her lover. His love for
her was the critical
experience of his life, and under its stimulus his whole nature leaped into
fuller and more vigorous life. Laura gave him little encouragement and no hope
that she would ever return his love; great was his joy when he received so much
as a smile or a kindly glance from her whose perfections he was making
celebrated through the length and breadth of Europe. Once, when he so far
presumed upon her mood of unwonted kindliness as to talk to her openly of love,
she bade him know that she was not such an one as he seemed to think her. Her
coldness purified his passion ; in spite of himself he revered a chastity so
uncommon in the society in which he lived. He suffered, but his moral nature
gained strength and elevation from the suffering. “Through love of her,” he
wrote in his Secretum, “ I attained to love of God ” ; and again, “ It is to
her that I owe what little merit you see in me, and I should never have gained
such name and fame as I have, save for the nobility of feeling with which she
cultivated the sparse seeds of virtue planted by nature in my breast. It was
she who reclaimed my youthful spirit from all baseness.”
No less remarkable was
the quickening of his intellectual powers. He had been “devoted to the study of
poetry long before he saw Laura,” and his earlier verses had won him no little
repute among men of taste and learning. Yet of these J^lvenilia he has allowed
not a line to come down to us. He coveted high renown ; he wished to live by
his best work alone; and when at a later date he came to
arrange his papers for
eventual publication, he carefully destroyed everything which his maturer judgment
pronounced incapable of sustaining his reputation. He then threw into the fire
“ a thousand or more letters and poems,” among which, as de Sade ingeniously
conjectures, were probably included all the letters containing references to
Laura and to the incidents of his intercourse with her; and the earlier Italian
poems doubtless formed part of the same literary holocaust. These must have had
considerable merits, for no mere rubbish could have obtained a vogue in such a
society as that of Avignon ; but we may be sure that Petrarch would not have
destroyed them if they had been on a level with his later work. It is safe to
conclude that, till his meeting with Laura, he had shown little more than the
promise of poetical excellence. Now, however, under the stimulus of love, he
suddenly leaped to eminence as one of the master poets of the world. Two
characteristics especially distinguish the Canzoniere from the work of other
poets : the uniform excellence of its workmanship, and the minuteness with
which it portrays the subtlest phases of emotion. The four parts of which it is
composed differ widely in tone and feeling; individual poems in each part
differ equally widely in the interest of their subject-matter; but in beauty of
form, in delicacy of expression, in perfection of melody, there is no
distinction between its earlier and later poems ; the earliest-written sonnet
of the series—the sonnet numbered XVI in the ordinary editions—is, technically
speaking, a model which no
writer of sonnets has
surpassed. Partly this uniformity of skill must have been due to subsequent
polishing, for Petrarch had the habit of keeping his works by him and
constantly making alterations and improvements in them ; but it is only work of
fine quality which can be brought to perfection by revision, and Petrarch’s
sudden leap to excellence must have been mainly due to the influence of his
love.
Even more remarkable is
the other distinguishing characteristic of the Canzoniere. Petrarch has been
well called “the poet of the heart of man”; human sentiment is his theme, and
from the abundance of his own experience he draws the picture of all its
phases. When he writes of the external world, he deals in generalities, for its
aspects are matters of secondary interest to him ; it is on the delineation of
feeling, from the fervour of indomitable passion to the airiest trick of
graceful fancy, that he lavishes his unrivalled powers of analysis and
expression.
It is not possible
within the limits of a short biography to attempt either a detailed criticism
of the Canzoniere, or a minute estimate of the influences which helped to
fashion it, and of its own influence on the development of European literature.
Briefly it may be said that, while in matters of form and phrase Petrarch’s
debt to the Provencals is great, the temper and spirit of the poems are
entirely Italian. The “courtly” forms of Provencal lyric lay ready to his hand
; so did a stock of phrases which for three centuries had been the common
property of poets. Of these he availed
himself so
freely that critics to whom form seems the all-important thing in literature
may with some justification go near to accuse him of plagiarism. But those who
judge poetry by its spirit will rightly maintain that the Canzoniere breathes
of Italy. Cino’s influence counted for more in the making of it than that of all
Provence; yet even Cino and the Tuscans did not contribute very much to its
essential character. It is the mirror of its author’s soul, and that soul was
Italian. .
This intensely personal
character of the Canzoniere explains its failure as a model. Itself perhaps
the most exquisite book of poetry ever published, it gave rise to one of the
feeblest and most tedious schools of verse that have afflicted the world. The
Petrarchists could imitate their master’s tricks of diction and refine
wearisomely upon his “conceits”; but they could not catch his spirit, and the
breath of life was not in them.
A brief description of
the scheme and contents of the Canzoniere may be of service to those who wish
to make closer acquaintance with it. The collection, as set in order by
Petrarch himself, consists of four parts: (i) Sonnets and Songs during the
life of Madonna Laura; (2) Sonnets and Songs after her death; (3) Triumphs “in
vita ed in morte ” ; and (4) Poems on various occasions. The contents of Parts
I and II are sufficiently described by their titles. Part I consists of 207
sonnets, 17 odes, 8 “sestine,” 6 “ballate,” and 4 madrigals, in all 242 poems,
composed between the 6th April, 1327, the day on which Petrarch first saw
Laura,
and the 6th April, 1348,
the day of her death. Part II is much shorter; it contains 90 sonnets, 8 odes,
1 “sestina,” and 1 “ballata,” exactly 100 poems in all, composed after Laura’s
death, and probably before 1361, the third critical date in Petrarch’s life,
after which he seems to have written little, if any, Italian poetry. Part III
contains the Triumphs, of which the scope and object are well set forth by
Marsand as follow: “The poet’s aim in composing these Triumphs is the same
which he proposed to himself in the Canzonierey namely, to
return in thought from time to time now to the beginning, now to the progress,
and now to the end of his passion, taking by the way frequent opportunities ©f
rendering praise and honour to the single and exalted object of his love. To
reach this aim he devised a description of man in his various conditions of
life, wherein he might naturally find occasion to speak of himself and of his
Laura. Man in his first stage of youth is the slave of appetites, which may all
be included under the generic name of Love or Self-Love. But as he gains
understanding, he sees the impropriety of such a condition, so that he strives
advisedly against those appetites and overcomes them by means of Chastity, that
is, by denying himself the opportunity of satisfying them. Amid these struggles
and victories Death overtakes him, and makes victors and vanquished equal by
taking them all out of the world. Nevertheless, it has no power to destroy the
memory of a man, who by illustrious and honourable deeds seeks to survive his
own death.
Such a man truly lives
through a long course of ages by means of his Fame. But Time at length
obliterates all memory of him, and he finds in the last resort that his only
sure hope of living for ever is by joy in God, and by partaking with God in His
blessed Eternity. Thus Love triumphs over Man, Chastity over Love, and Death
over both alike; Fame triumphs over Death, Time over Fame, and Eternity over
Time.”
Part IV consists of
twenty sonnets and four odes written on various occasions, mostly of public interest,
and contains some of the noblest passages ever inspired in the soul of a poet
by the fervour of idealistic patriotism. Many of these will be noticed in
connection with the events to which they refer ; here it is enough to say that
if every other scrap of Petrarch’s work had perished, the odes Spirto Gentil
and Italia Mia would of themselves establish his claim to rank with the
greatest masters of lyric song.
CHAPTER III
TRAVEL AND FRIENDSHIP
1329-1336
WE have no record of the
two years following
the first meeting with
Laura; they were probably spent in Avignon, and we may confidently ascribe to
them, the earliest of the extant poems. But not even love and poetry could
distract Petrarch from scholarship, and in the summer of 1329 he undertook the
first of many journeys in which he combined the delights of travel and
sight-seeing with a diligent hunt for forgotten manuscripts of the classics.
This passion for travel for the love of sight-seeing is one of the many minor
traits in Petrarch’s character which mark him as belonging rather to the modern
than the mediceval age ; throughout the Middle Ages men travelled far and wide
on errands of war, of diplomacy, of commerce, and of religion; but Petrarch may
fairly be called the first of the tourists. Still keener was his passion for
book-hunting, and the two went well together. “Whenever I took a far journey,”
he tells us, “I would turn aside to any old monasteries that I chanced to see
in the distance, saying: ‘Who knows whether some scrap of the writings I covet
may not lie here?’ Thus about the twenty-fifth year of
my age, in the course of
a hurried journey among the Belgians and Swiss, I came to Liege, and hearing
that there was a good quantity of books there, I stayed and detained my
companions while I copied out one of Cicero’s speeches with my own hand and
another by the hand of a friend, which I afterwards published throughout Italy.
And to give you a laugh, I may tell you that in this fine barbaric city it was
a hard matter to find a drop of ink, and what we did get was exactly the colour
of saffron.”
Meanwhile stirring
events had happened in Italy. Lewis of Bavaria, elected King of the Romans, had
invaded the land, and he had been crowned Emperor in Rome, first by the Bishops
of Venice and Ellera, and then again by an Anti-Pope whom he had set up in the
Chair of St. Peter. As the death of Henry VII quenched the last spark of
genuine Ghibellin sentiment in Italy, so the expedition of “the Bavarian/’ as
the old chroniclers call him in scorn and hatred, marks the acknowledged end of
the old divisions. From the day when Ghibellin Pisa and Milan had once acted in
concert if not in alliance with Guelfic Florence and Angevin Naples to oppose
the invader, the old names had become mere badges, still worn perhaps for
custom and tradition’s sake, but seen of all men to be empty of significance.
The old rivalries were still too keen, the old feuds too bitter, to permit of
lasting union ; the ancient enmities broke out afresh as soon as the Bavarian
had recrossed the Alps. But their mere suspension marks a new phase of national
feeling.
When Milan and Florence
had engaged in hostilities against a common enemy, and that enemy a foreigner,
Italian unity had ceased to be a mere dream. Its realisation might be the work
of centuries, but it had at least become a possible aspiration of practical
politicians.
Prominent among the
Ghibellin families who now rallied to the Papacy was the Roman House of
Colonna, and it was a young Churchman of this House who accomplished an act of
daring which placed Pope John XXII deep in his debt. To the pretensions of
Lewis and his Anti-Pope John replied by a Bull of Excommunication against them
both ; this Bull, if it was to produce its full dramatic effect, must be openly
published in Rome itself; yet its publication was no easy matter, for the
Bavarian held the city, and a troublesome Papalist ran no small risk of his
life. The risk was accepted by Giacomo Colonna, youngest son of old Stefano,
the head of the House, who, accompanied by four masked companions, publicly
read the Bull of Excommunication and nailed it to the door of the Church of San
Marcello. This was the signal for a popular outbreak, which presently forced
the Emperor to quit Rome and begin the retreat which ended in his expulsion
from Italy. So conspicuous a service merited a signal reward, and Giacomo,
though under the canonical age, received the bishopric of Lombez, a village
near the source of the Garonne at the foot of the Pyrenees.
Two years later, in the
summer of 1330, the young Bishop went to take possession of his see,
and with him went
Petrarch, whom he had known by sight only as a fellow-student at Bologna. It
was after his Roman adventure that he sought Petrarch out and began an
acquaintance which soon ripened into a devoted friendship.
To the sojourn at Lombez
Petrarch ever afterwards looked back as one of the most delightful episodes in
his life, “a summer of almost heavenly bliss,” of which the mere remembrance
made him happy. His devotion to his patron was deep and sincere ; Giacomo’s
brilliant wit and sound learning were doubly attractive in a man who, though a
priest, had shown the qualities of a soldier and a courtier; the delicacy of
his nature made the name “patron” synonymous with “friend,” and with this charm
of intellect and character he combined an earnest sense of duty which made him
throw himself into the affairs of his petty diocese as energetically as into
the great drama of European politics.
Two other lifelong
friendships were the fruit of this happy visit. Lello Stefani, the “Lselius” of
the letters, was a Roman of noble rank though not ancient descent, a man of
letters, a soldier, and a statesman, attached to the House of Colonna not only
by hereditary ties, but by bonds of affection so strong that not even political
differences in that age of bitter feuds could strain them. Very happily chosen
was the name of “ Lselius,” suggested no doubt by its likeness to “ Lello,” and
approved as reminiscent of the Lselii and the Scipios. “ That name of note
among old-world friends still endures as a name of good omen to friendships,”
wrote
Petrarch ; “and this
third Laelius is my second self, nay, rather one and the same with me.”
Dearer even than
Loelius, dearest indeed of all Petrarch’s friends, was the young Flemish
musician Lewis, known to the poet and his circle as their Socrates. “Thou
alone, my Socrates,” writes Petrarch twenty years later, “wert given to me not,
as the rest of my friends, by the land of Italy, but by Annea Campineae, so
that the poverty of thy fatherland might be exalted in the richness of thy
talent, and Nature assert her prerogative of fashioning great souls from any
soil and under every sky. Therefore to my profit she bore thee, a man of such
parts, and brought thee forth at the very time when I was being born afar off
in another sphere of the world ; and although thy birth made thee a foreigner,
yet art thou become more than half Italian by the courtesy of thy spirit, by
the intimacies of thy life, and especially by thy love for me. Marvellous that
in men born so far apart there should be such neighbourhood of souls, such
unity of wills, as have now in our case been attested by the witness of twenty
years! From the earnestness of thy character and from thy sweet pleasantness
we chose thee thy surname; and while thy supremacy in the art of music might
have persuaded us to call thee Aristoxenus% the better
judgment of thy friends prevailed in naming thee our Socrates.” A volume might
be filled with quotations from Petrarch, illustrating the depth and the ardour
of this flawless friendship: to Socrates he writes every passing thought with
that perfect confidence which
reveals the small things
of life as readily as the great, which is not afraid of giving undue importance
to trifles nor shy of opening the heart on matters of the gravest moment, but
utters whatever is uppermost in the mind without reserve and without disguise,
in the happy certainty that whatever interests or affects the speaker will
equally interest and affect the hearer. Petrarch was a good lover and a good
hater; in all his friendships we are charmed by his loyalty, his ardour, and
his most delightful partiality; but in the friendship with Socrates we find in
addition a tenderness of sentiment, a lover-like self-abandonment, which
distinguishes it in kind and in quality from all the rest.
In mid-autumn the whole
party returned to Avignon, and Petrarch took up his residence in the house of
Giacomo’s elder brother, the Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. He himself would have
preferred to remain with his first patron, but Giacomo judged more wisely of
his friend’s interest: his own career, brilliantly as it had opened, was still
in the making; it would be affected by the accidents of Roman and Papal
politics, and he could not therefore give Petrarch either a settled home or
the certainty of leisure for his work. On the other hand, the Cardinal’s
position was assured : three years earlier, while still a young man under
thirty, he had received the highest dignity of the Church short of the Papacy
itself, and the great influence which any Cardinal of his House would
inevitably possess was heightened in his case by the elevation
THE PALACE OF THE
POPES, AVIGNON
For the next sixteen
years their personal relations were of the pleasantest, and even after
Petrarch’s political adhesion to Rienzi had made it impossible for him to be
the intimate associate of a Colonna, he still wrote to the Cardinal in terms of
unabated respect and gratitude. Probably he never felt for him quite the same
ardour of brotherly love which Giacomo had inspired in him. But he revered him
as “a man of the utmost goodness and innocence of heart, far beyond the wont of
cardinals.” He was attached to him by ties of intellectual sympathy and
community of tastes, and the friendship between them was so close that
Petrarch could declare that in the Cardinal’s household he “lived many years,
not as under a master, but as under a father; nay, rather as with a most loving
brother, or still more truly as with himself, and in his own house.” A little
incident which happened while Petrarch was an inmate of the house throws so
interesting a light, alike on the personal relations between the two men and on
domestic discipline in the fourteenth century, that it is worth quoting at
length
in spite of its
triviality. “You may remember,” Petrarch wrote some years later to the
Cardinal, “ how there was once a serious quarrel among some of your people, and
blows were struck, at which you were so justly incensed that you sat down as it
were on a judgment-seat, and calling your household together, administered an
oath to each one of them, binding them to speak the truth. Even your brother
Agapito, Bishop of Luni, had sworn, and I was just stretching out my hand, when
in the full tide of your anger you drew back the Gospels, and in the hearing of
them all declared that you were satisfied with my simple word. And to make it
clear that you never regretted your action, and that the kindness of it was
not unpremeditated, whenever similar incidents occurred, as they often did, you
never allowed me to be sworn, though all the rest were bound by oath.”
In the Cardinal’s house
Petrarch had the happiness of still living with Socrates, and for a time with
Lselius too; he also found installed there two friends, the soldier Mainardo
Accursio of Florence, and the Churchman Luca Cristiano of Piacenza, with whom
he lived thenceforward on terms of closest intimacy. He had certainly known
Luca and possibly Mainardo also at Bologna, but it was at Avignon that the
acquaintance ripened into so affectionate a friendship that Petrarch could
write of it to Socrates: “ The four of us had but one mind. . . . Where could
you find a kindlier spirit than our Luca or a more genial comrade than Mainardo
? The former, indeed, was so formed in
mind as to be not only
the sweetest and brightest of housemates, but also the sharer and companion of
our studies ; while the latter, though unpractised in matters of this sort, was
abundantly furnished with the qualities which are the object of such studies,
to wit with courtesy, faith, liberality, and constancy of mind. In a word, though
untrained in the liberal arts, he had learned to be a good man and a good
friend, and it was better for us to have one such in our band, than for us all
to be devoted to scholarship and negligent of everything else.” Mainardo has
generally been identified with the Olympius of the letters, but some recent
critics ascribe the name to Luca; the point is a doubtful one, and the safe
course is to speak of both friends by their real names. Both of them, Petrarch
declares, knew every thought of his heart as he knew theirs, and many years
later he gave a practical proof of his affection for Luca by resigning a
canonry at Modena in his favour.
Petrarch was fortunate
too in his relations with the whole Colonna family. Stefano the Elder, at this
time on a visit to his son the Cardinal, treated him from the first like one of
his own sons. There must have been a peculiarly winning charm in the poet’s
character, which throughout his life made him the friend and confidant rather
than the dependent of his patrons. In his presence the sternest character grew
gentle, and the stiffest neck bowed willingly to the yoke of affection, so that
to him Azzo da Correggio was sincere and Bernabo Visconti courteous. And old
Stefano, the man of
antique mould, who
“looked like Julius Csesar or Africanus come back in the flesh, but for his
great age/' who was “the bravest and stoutest man of our time in confronting a
foe, though so loving to his family that he seemed wrapped up in their life,”
Stefano, whose fierce triumphs and bitter sufferings in his struggle with
Boniface VIII seemed to have
hardened body and soul
in him to iron, became all gentleness in his intercourse with Petrarch,
confided to him with tears the forebodings of his heart as to
the fate that awaited
his family, and granted to his intercession what he had refused to many other
friends, the pardon of one of his sons with whom he had had a bitter quarrel.
Such confidence and kindness from one so stern and unbending to most men made a
deep impression on Petrarch, whose sensibility was a prominent element in his
disposition, and he always speaks of Stefano as “ a man of unique character,
to be regarded with mingled awe and admiration.”
Much more familiar was
his intercourse with Stefano’s brother, Giovanni Colonna di San Vito ; he too
had played a brave part in the struggle with Boniface VIII, but he was not cast
in his brother’s iron mould; exile and hardship and the gout had done much to
break his spirit, and he was now an amiable but rather querulous old man, who
conceived an extraordinary affection for Petrarch, and treated him like a
friend of his own age. For his diversion Petrarch wrote a comedy, which he
afterwards burnt, and after Giovanni’s departure from Avignon at the end of
1331 wrote him several
letters, as well as a
humorous fable called The Spider and the Gout.
Cardinal Colonna’s house
was Petrarch’s home for nearly seven years, and here he had opportunities of
meeting the many distinguished men from all parts of Europe, who came on
errands of business or of diplomacy to the Papal Court. Among others he became
acquainted with the celebrated Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham in 1333, and
soon afterwards Chancellor and Lord High Treasurer of England, who was
entrusted by Edward III with no less than three diplomatic missions to the
Pope. On either the first or the second of these Petrarch met him, and had a
discussion with him on the site of the Island of Thule. He describes the author
of Philobiblon as a man of brilliant talents and good knowledge of letters,
from his youth up curious to an incredible degree in abstruse questions, and
already possessed of one of the finest libraries in the world ; a description
which tallies well enough with the received estimate of Richard as a brilliant
dilettante and amateur of literature, rather than a profound and serious
scholar.
To this period
undoubtedly belong a great many of the Italian poems, and from them we may
infer that Laura was resident in Avignon, and that her poet had frequent
opportunities of meeting her. To this period also belongs the Latin poetical
letter to Enea Tolomei of Siena, called forth by King John of Bohemia’s visit
to Avignon and subsequent descent into Italy. John had first invaded Italy in
1330 as the ally of Lewis of Bavaria, but the
latter, suspecting him
of fighting for his own hand, had picked a quarrel with him and instigated a
rising against him in Bohemia. John left his son Charles, a lad of sixteen, in
nominal command of his Italian army, hastened home, and soon restored order in
his own kingdom. Then, being still eager to further his Italian projects, he
turned to Philip of France, and so began the alliance which eventually brought
him to his death at Crdcy. Philip, ever ready to fish in troubled waters and
sure that in the event of success he would get the lion’s share of the plunder,
agreed to help John with a large force ; and to give some colour of
justification to their enterprise, these royal filibusters agreed that John
should go to Avignon and obtain the Pope’s sanction. Once more Italian
patriotism was roused against the foreigner, once more old enemies sank their
differences and formed a temporary league against the Franco-Bohemian invaders;
and Petrarch, burning with indignant zeal, wrote that letter to Tolomei which
is the Latin counterpart of the noble ode Italia Mia, written long afterwards
at a time of even sorer trouble to Italy. In both poems we feel the purity and
strength of his love for Italy and the loftiness of his political idealism,
and, what is perhaps even more remarkable, in the Latin letter we find Petrarch
the enthusiast, the poet, some would say the visionary, going straight to the
heart of the matter and laying his finger unerringly on the real practical
cause of the mischief. Others might be misled by appearances— even so shrewd a
writer as the chronicler Giovanni
Villani speaks of John
as Italy’s chief enemy—but Petrarch, though as yet little versed in practical
politics, detects Philip as the real culprit, and, neglecting the Bohemians,
directs the whole force of his invective against the French.
The Italian league was
soon successful. John lost Pavia to Azzo Visconti, and the French army was soon
afterwards annihilated before Ferrara, so that by the month of October, 1333,
the King was forced to return to Bohemia, and in the words of an old writer, “
the fame of him vanished like smoke from the plains of Lombardy.” Meanwhile
Petrarch had set out on a journey to Paris. Probably the Pope’s action in
secretly encouraging the invasion of Italy, while pretending to discourage it,
had intensified his dislike of the Papal Court, and the unsuccessful course of
his love for Laura may have made him restless and dissatisfied. He was
certainly eager for sight-seeing, and persuaded the Cardinal, though with some
difficulty, to let him go on a foreign tour. In Paris he sought out the Augus-
tinian friar Dionigi of Borgo San Sepolcro, who was lecturing at the University
on Philosophy and Theology. Dionigi was a man of deep piety and unusual
learning, a theologian of scholarly sympathies, and a friend to whom Petrarch
could confide all the troubles of his heart. Probably he took him for his
confessor; certainly he sought his advice about his love for Laura. Dionigi
showed keen insight into the character of his penitent. He judged that
spiritual zeal would be for him the best antidote to an earthly passion, and
showed an even
more remarkable grasp of
his moral and intellectual temperament by directing his attention not to the
more ascetic of the fathers, but to the liberal and cultured Augustine.
Petrarch already knew and possessed the De Civitate Dei; Dionigi now gave him a
copy of the Confessions, which Petrarch ever afterwards carried about with him
in all his journeys. Predisposed as he was to admire St. Augustine, it is
nevertheless from his intimacy with Fra Dionigi that we must date the
passionate enthusiasm of hero- worship which henceforward inspired him with the
same feeling for Augustine as his spiritual guide that he already felt for
Cicero as his master in literature. From this intimacy too dates the development
in Petrarch of a devotional impulse which henceforth shared the empire of his
soul with his zeal for learning. He has now two ideals, those of the scholar
and of the saint, and occasionally, though not very often, the two ideals clash
in violent spiritual conflict. In such moments of agony —for to Petrarch’s
sensitive nature the strife was nothing less than agony—he is possessed with
ascetic fervour, and for a moment condemns all earthly aims as vanity and
vexation of spirit; but this was not his normal temper; it was only at rare and
brief intervals that he lost sight of the nobler conception of the scholar who
is also a saint.
“You tell me,” he writes
in answer to a bantering accusation from Giacomo Colonna, “that I do but
affect a reverence for Augustine and his works, while really I have never torn
myself away from the poets and philosophers. And why, pray, should
I tear myself away from
those to whom you can see that Augustine himself clung close ? ” Again he
asserts that Cicero’s writings, “though diverse from Christianity, are never
adverse to it,” and that the great classical authors are full of sentiments in
harmony with the Christian spirit. And when Boccaccio was momentarily thrown
off his balance by a supposed revelation commanding him to renounce poetry and
scholarship, Petrarch could reassure him by a letter containing some of the
noblest passages ever written on the right relation of literature to religion.
And the point which chiefly attracts him in the De Civitate Dei is that
Augustine “ could base it on a great foundation of philosophers and poets, and
adorn it with all the colours of the orators and historians.”
Far more violent and far
more constant was the struggle between spiritual devotion and earthly love. The
latter was, indeed, too strong a feeling to be overcome by any concurrent
emotion, but henceforth at least “it no longer held sole possession of the
spirit’s chamber, but found there another sentiment fighting and striving against
it.” It is just this strife of conflicting emotions that calls forth our
liveliest sympathy. Doubtless the steadfast man who marches to his end with
never a stumble by the way is a heroic figure, but our tears flow and our
hearts are wrung rather for the sensitive soul responsive to every impression,
and battered by the storm of opposing passions, which nevertheless through
error and through pain achieves its escape as through Vanity Fair and the
Valley of the Shadow of
Death to the Delectable
Mountains and the peace of Beulah.
In Paris he “spent a
long time, exploring it thoroughly from a wish to see everything, and to
discover whether all its reputed glories were real or imaginary, and, when
daylight often failed, making use of the night as well.” Next he visited Ghent,
“which, like Paris, boasts of Julius Caesar as its founder, and all the other
peoples of Flanders and Brabant, whose trade is the preparation of wool and
weaving.” Thence he went to Li&ge, “a place noted for its clergy,” which he
had already visited four years previously, and to Aix-la-Chapelle, where some
priests of the cathedral showed him in MS. a legend of Charlemagne and the
foundation of the
city. From Aix, after
taking the baths, “which are warm like those of Baiae,” he went to Cologne,
“situated on the left bank of the Rhine, a place which may well be proud of its
position, its river, and its people. Marvellous was it in a barbaric land to
find so advanced a civilization, so beautiful a city, such dignity in the men,
and such comeliness in the women.” By good luck he arrived on St. John’s Eve,
and witnessed a picturesque local ceremony performed on that day. And, by a
further stroke of good fortune, which shows how widely his fame as a poet was
already spread, he found friends in the place, with whom he could converse in
Latin, and who could give him an explanation of what he saw. About sunset “the
whole bank of the river was covered with a brilliant and vast concourse of
women. Good heavens! What beauty
of form, feature, and
dress! One whose heart was not already engaged might well have been smitten
with love. I stood on a spot of rising ground, from which I could attend to all
that was going on. There was a wonderful throng without any disturbance ; and
each in her turn the women, some of whom were girdled with sweet-scented herbs,
hastened to turn their sleeves above the elbow and wash their white hands and
arms in the current, murmuring some soft words in their foreign tongue.
. . . Understanding
nothing of the ceremony, I asked one of my friends in a quotation from Virgil—
‘ What means this
concourse at the river’s bank ?
What seek the souls here
gathered ? ’
And he answered that
this was a very old national custom, the women, especially among the common
people, believing that all the impending misfortune of a whole year is washed
away by this day’s ablution, and that henceforth better fortune succeeds. At
which I smiled and said, ‘ O too happy dwellers by the Rhine, if all your
miseries are purged by him! Neither Po nor Tiber has ever availed to wash away
ours. You pass on your evils down the Rhine to the Britons, and willingly would
we send ours to the Africans and Illyrians ; but our streams, it would seem,
are too sluggish.’ At this they all laughed, and at last, late in the evening,
we left the riverside.”
At Cologne he was
greatly interested in “ the illustrious monuments of Roman greatness,” and in
the association of the place with Agrippa and Augustus. He saw “the Capitol,
the image of
ours, except that in
place of the Senate, which there debated questions of peace and war, here a
mixed choir of comely lads and maidens sings nightly praises to God he also saw
“the beautiful, though yet unfinished, church in the midst of the town, which
they rightly call their high church, and in which lie the bodies of the Magi
Kings, brought by three stages from East to West.” On the last day of June he
left Cologne, and gave proof of his courage, not to say rashness, by venturing
to travel alone, unarmed, and in time of war through the forest of the
Ardennes, which he found “a dismal and weird country,” but which inspired him
to write the beautiful sonnet Per mezz’ i boschi. At length, “after compassing
many a large tract of country,” he came on the 8th of August to Lyons, “another
noble colony of the Romans, and a little older than Cologne ” ; and to his
transports at the sight of the Rhone we owe the sonnet Millepiagge. Here he
fell in with one of Cardinal Colonna’s servants, who gave him news which
decided him to rest a few days in Lyons, and then go quietly on to Avignon by
boat.
Giacomo Colonna had for
some time past been planning a visit to Rome, and had promised to take Petrarch
with him. To see Rome, and especially to see it in his friend’s company, was
one of the poet’s dearest wishes, and he was hurrying back to Avignon in the
hope that they might make the journey together in the course of the autumn,
when he heard from the Cardinal’s servant that Giacomo and Lcelius had already
started without waiting, as
had been expressly
agreed, for his return. Bitterly disappointed, he wrote to Giacomo to reproach
him for his breach of faith, the cause of which he could not conjecture. But on
arriving at Avignon, he learnt that family affairs of great importance had
required the Bishop’s immediate presence in Rome. Some years previously the
perpetual quarrels of the Colonna and the Orsini families had been suspended
by a truce, the term of which expired this summer. The Pope, unable to bring
about a lasting reconciliation, issued a Bull on the 3rd of June prolonging
this truce for a year, but it was already too late. In May the Orsini, headed
by Bertoldo, the bravest and most popular of their chiefs, entrapped Stefano
Colonna the Younger into an ambush, where they attacked him with greatly superior
forces. But Stefano and his party, though outnumbered and taken by surprise,
fought so gallantly that they won a complete victory, routing the Orsini and
killing Bertoldo and his cousin Francesco. Such at least was the story as told
and believed in Cardinal Colonna’s household, and the Popes subsequent action
seems to confirm its truth, in spite of Villani’s assertion that Stefano
Colonna was the author of the ambush. Often as the rival houses had engaged in
similar affrays, this was the first occasion on which any of their chiefs had
been killed, and the affair created an immense sensation in Rome and Avignon.
The Orsini, aided by their relative Cardinal Poggetto, the Papal Legate, were
eager to avenge their defeat, and it was to counteract their schemes that
Giacomo
started in such haste
for Rome. Probably through his influence and that of Cardinal Giovanni, the
Pope was persuaded to administer a severe rebuke to his Legate, and the House
of Colonna maintained for the time its superiority over its rivals. Petrarch,
who as yet knew nothing of Roman politics but what he heard from his patrons,
of course shared their gratification, and addressed a stirring sonnet to
Stefano the Younger, exhorting him to avoid the error of Hannibal, who
conquered at Cannae, but failed to follow up his victory. With this sonnet,
which was written in Italian that the Colonna men-at-arms might understand it,
he sent a Latin letter to Stefano to the same effect, and also composed a Latin
poem made up of original lines and quotations placed alternately, which, however,
he destroyed on finding that others had anticipated him in this queer method
of composition.
Much as he rejoiced in
the victory of his patrons, he was still more elated by the news, which he also
heard on reaching Avignon, that King Philip of France had engaged to lead a new
Crusade, and that the Pope had announced his intention of bringing back the
Papacy to Italy. To him, as to all devout men of his age, it seemed a shameful
and horrible thing that the holy places should be in the possession of
unbelievers, and that Christian princes and states should turn their arms one
against another, instead of combining to rescue the cradle of the faith from
Saracen domination. In spite of the failure of all previous Crusades, he seems
to have had no doubt that success was now
possible and even easy,
if only the effort were sincerely made; and the hope inspired him to address to
Giacomo Colonna the ode O aspettata in Ciel’ in which he exhorts the Bishop to
employ his great influence and his unrivalled eloquence in rousing the sons of
Italy to take their part in the glorious enterprise. John XXII’s proposal to
return to Rome, which he regarded as the only rightful seat of the Papacy,
stirred him to yet higher enthusiasm. Thus it seemed to him that Christendom
now bade fair to escape from two of the chief evils that afflicted the age, and
the double hope is finely expressed in the sonnet II sticcessor di Carlo, in
which he urges the Princes of Italy to assist King and Pope in their
endeavours. Philip, who but a few months since seemed to be Italy’s worst
enemy, can now be honoured with the title of “successor to Charlemagne”; and
when “the Vicar of Christ, returning to his nest, sees first Bologna and then
our noble Rome,” Italy, the gentle lamb, will rise and smite the fierce wolves
that have torn her. So perish all who sow dissension betwixt hearts that love
should bind ! Disappointment soon succeeded to hope; King Philip took the cross
indeed, but with it received from the Pope the right to levy a tithe on the
revenues of the Gallican Church, and with the grant in his hands he soon
dropped the pretext of crusading zeal on which he had obtained it. The Pope
kept up appearances a little longer, and the Cardinal Legate was ordered to
build a palace at Bologna for his reception on his way to Rome, Presently,
however, the palace took the
form of a fortress
commanding the city, and the Pope too had got what he wanted by his pretext.
He died in the following
year at the age of ninety-one ; he had been Pope eighteen years, and had
amassed eighteen million lire in specie, as well as plate, gems, and ornaments
to the value of seven millions more. He was not a great or a good Pope, and as
a theologian he nearly split the Church by propounding an unorthodox opinion on
the Beatific Vision. But he must have had some good qualities of head and
heart, for though he remained at Avignon, he was shrewd enough to appreciate
the value of the Roman tradition, and he won the friendship of so upright a man
as Cardinal Colonna, who, as Petrarch tells us, loved the man though not his
errors. The Conclave which followed was a hotbed of intrigue; the French party
was the strongest, but the Italians, though unable to carry a candidate of
their own, could prevent any one whom they disliked from obtaining the
requisite two-thirds majority. To gain time, the Frenchmen put forward Cardinal
Fournier, the least influential member of the College; but when the scrutiny
was taken, it was found that every one had voted for Fournier in the belief
that only a few others would do so, and he was declared unanimously elected.
The new Pope himself was more astonished than any one at the result, and is
said to have exclaimed, “Your choice has fallen on an ass.” He took the name of
Benedict XII. The election of a Frenchman was, of course, distasteful to
Petrarch, but it was not long before Benedict showed him marks of personal
friendship and
esteem : he allowed
Petrarch to address him in a poetical Latin letter urging the return of the
Papacy to Rome, and though he never yielded either to this or to subsequent
appeals of the same kind, he was certainly not displeased at them, for he
presently conferred on their author his first ecclesiastical preferment, a
canonry at Lombez.
| The Monument of Pope John XXII, Avignon |
Soon afterwards began
Petrarch's friendship with Azzo da Correggio, one of those friendships with
Italian despots which have puzzled some of his admirers and scandalised many of
his critics. How, it is asked, could Petrarch, with the praises of virtue and
fidelity always on his lips, seek the society and extol the merits of men
steeped in crime, to whom treachery and assassination were mere moves in a game
of political intrigue, and whose reputation for cruelty and lust is the
blackest spot in the record of the Italian people? With many members of these
ruling families Petrarch lived on terms of intimate acquaintance; to three of
them, namely, to Azzo da Correggio and to Jacopo and Francesco da Carrara, he
was bound by ties of warmest friendship. How was this possible ? The easy
explanation and the false one is that Petrarch was a hypocrite and a sycophant.
The truth is less easily stated, and to men of our age and country will never
be fully comprehensible. In the first place, it must be remembered that until
the researches of comparatively recent historians shed a flood of light on the
period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, history had given a
one-sided account of these Italian despots.
The world was so shocked
at their unspeakable crimes that it forgot their equally extraordinary merits.
Numbers of them were men of the most brilliant intellectual gifts, lovers of
literature, appreciative patrons of art, gallant in war, splendid and usually
generous in peace. They were, to use a modern catchword, strenuous men in every
department of life. Thorough was their motto, efficiency their ideal; if
morality could be banished from the world, they might be taken as types of
complete manhood. The man who saw only their good side might well be carried
away by enthusiasm for their excellencies, and it is unquestionable that something
in Petrarch led them to show him as much as possible of their best and as
little as possible of their worst side. Of their base intrigues and unscrupulous
treacheries he evidently accepted the version which they themselves gave him ;
and if this says little for his faculty of impartial discernment, such
blindness to the faults of a friend is at worst the weakness of an
over-trustful nature. However incomplete the explanation, to those who have
entered into Petrarch’s character the facts are indisputable, that he was not a
hypocrite, and that he was the friend of Azzo.
Their friendship began
at Avignon, but was the consequence of a faction-fight at Parma: the family of
Correggio, acting as henchmen of the Lords of Verona, had driven the Rossi out
of Parma; the latter came to plead their cause before the Pope, and were opposed
by Azzo da Correggio and Gulielmo da Pastrengo, an accomplished scholar
and lawyer of Verona.
Azzo and Gulielmo engaged Petrarch as their advocate in the Papal consistory,
and the poet won his case in this, the only lawsuit in which there is any
record of his having appeared. His success got him the temporary goodwill of
Mastino della Scala, at that time Lord of Verona, and the enmity of Ugolino de’
Rossi, Archbishop of Parma ; it is more important that he was henceforth on
terms of warm friendship with both Azzo and Gulielmo.
To the following year
belongs an incident trivial in itself, but interesting as showing a little
trait in which Petrarch anticipated the modern spirit. Accompanied by his
brother Gherardo and a couple of servants, he made the ascent of Mont Ventoux,
“a steep and almost inaccessible mass of crags,” and one of the highest peaks
in Provence. He was fascinated by the wild beauty and majestic solitude of peak
and ravine, which were foolishness to the classical and a terror to the mediaeval
world; and however small an achievement the ascent of Mont Ventoux may appear
to a member of the Alpine Club, it entitles Petrarch to be called the first of
the climbers. Among the ridges of the hills the brothers found an old shepherd,
who tried hard to dissuade them from the ascent, saying that “fifty years ago
he had been led by the same impetuous eagerness of youth to climb the peak, but
had got nothing by it save toil and regret and the tearing of his flesh and
clothes by the rocks and brambles ; and never either before or since had any
one been known to dare the like.” The brothers, how
ever, persevered, and
the old man, finding remonstrance of no avail, showed them a steep track among
the rocks, still giving them many warnings, which he kept shouting at them
after they had gone forward. “ We left with him,” says Petrarch in a letter to
Fra Dionigi, “so much of our dress and other things as was likely to be in our
way, and so, girded just for the mere ascent, we set ourselves eagerly to our
climb. But, as always happens, the strenuous effort was very soon followed by
fatigue; so after going a little way we rested on one of the rocks.
“ Thence we started
again, but at a slower pace, and I especially began to prosecute mountain climbing
at a more moderate speed. My brother pursued his upward path by the shortest
way over the very ridges of the mountain ; but I was less hardy and inclined to
the lower paths, and when he called after me and pointed to the more direct
way, I answered that I hoped to find the ascent of the other side easier, and
was not afraid of taking a longer route if it offered a gentler slope. This I
put forward as an excuse for my laziness ; and while the others had already
arrived on high ground, I kept wandering along the hollows, though no easier
ascent appeared anywhere, but the way grewT longer and my vain toil
heavier. Presently I grew heartily tired and sick of this aimless wandering,
and determined to go straight up the heights. There, tired and distressed, I
came up with my brother, who was waiting for me and had refreshed himself with
a long rest, and for a little time we went on to
gether. But we had
hardly left that ridge behind, when behold! I forgot my former circuit, and
again fell upon the lower paths ; so I once more wandered along the hollows,
seeking a long and easy way, but finding only long trouble. I tried, forsooth,
to put off the trouble of climbing; but no human device can do away with the
nature of things, and no material body can rise higher by descending. Why make
a long story ? Three or four times in a few hours the same thing occurred to
me, to my own vexation and my brother’s amusement.” So he sat down in a hollow
and moralised on the far- off altitude of the life of blessedness and the
strenuous climbing needed to attain to it; and “ these thoughts wonderfully
strengthened both body and mind in me to undergo the rest of the ascent.
o
Would that I might
accomplish in spirit that other journey, for which I sigh day and night, even
as, overcoming at leAgth all difficulties, I accomplished this of to-day with
my bodily feet! . . . There is one peak higher than the rest, which the rustics
call ‘the little boy,’ for what reason I know not, unless it be from sheer
contradiction, as I suspect is the case with sundry other names ; for it looks
truly like the father of all the neighbouring mountains. On its top is a
little piece of level ground, on which we at length rested our weary limbs. . .
. Here I stood amazed . . . the clouds were under our feet . . . and I looked
in the direction of Italy, to which my heart is most inclined. . . . Then a
fresh train of thought occurred to me, and I remembered that to-day was the
tenth anniversary of
my leaving Bologna. . .
. Oh ! the changes of those years! . . . I no longer love what I used to love ;
nay, that is not true ; I do love still, but with more modesty and a deeper
melancholy. Yes, I still love, but unwillingly, in spite of myself, in sorrow
and tribulation of heart. . . . Then I began to think that in ten years more I
might at least hope to be fit to encounter death with a quiet mind. . . . And
passing at last from thoughts of myself ... I began to admire the view, from
the hills of the province of Lyons on the right to the bay of Marseilles on the
left, with the Rhone flowing close under us. While looking at each object in
the landscape, and now considering the earthly scene and again passing to
matters of a higher nature, it occurred to me to look at the Confessions of
Augustine which you gave me, and which I keep and always carry about with me in
memory alike of the author and the giver. I opened the little volume of tiny
compass but infinite sweetness, intending to read the first passage that might
offer ; for what could I find there but words of piety and devotion ? It
chanced, however, that I hit upon the tenth book of the work. My brother stood
listening, waiting to hear a sentence from Augustine by my mouth ; and God is
my witness, as well as he who was standing by, that my eyes first lit on the
passage where it is written : ‘ And men go about to marvel at the heights of
the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the broad estuaries of the
rivers, at the circuit of the ocean, and at the revolutions of the stars, and
forsake their own souls.’ I stood
amazed, and begging my
brother, who was eager to hear the passage, not to trouble me, I shut the book,
angry with myself for having even now been marvelling at earthly things, when I
ought long since to have learnt even from the philosophers of the Gentiles that
there is nothing marvellous in comparison with the soul, and when it is great
all things are small beside it. . . . Then I felt that I had seen enough of the
mountain, and turned my mind’s eye back upon myself; and from that time no one
heard me speak till we reached the bottom. For that passage had brought me
occupation enough ; nor could I believe that I had lighted on it by mere
chance, but I fancied that what I had read there was a special message to my
own heart.
. . . Amid the
reflections thus engendered ... I returned in the depth of night and by
moonlight to the rustic inn, whence I had started before dawn, and where I am
writing you this hurried letter while the servants are preparing supper. ...
You see then, my loving father, that I would hide nothing from your sight, but
am diligent in making known to you not only the general course of my life, but
the separate thoughts of my heart. Pray, I entreat you, for those thoughts,
that though they have long been wandering and unstable, they may stand firm at
the last, and after fruitless tossing on many a sea, may return to the one good
true and sure foundation of the soul.”
CHAPTER IV
ROME AND VAUCLUSE
1336-1340
TEN full years had passed
since Petrarch, summoned back from Bologna
by the news of his father’s death, had quitted Italy, the land of his devoted
attachment; and it does not appear that he had yet had an opportunity of
revisiting her. Three years earlier, as we have seen, he had hoped to go to
Rome with Giacomo Colonna, but the latter’s hurried return thither after the
affray with the Orsini had baulked him of the expected visit. In December of
this year a bantering invitation from Giacomo gave him another opportunity
which he eagerly seized. “With joy and laughter” he read in this letter that
his friend esteemed him already, in spite of his youth, the cleverest deceiver
in the world. “You try to deceive Heaven itself,” the Bishop seems to have
said, “by feigning devotion to Saint Augustine ; you do deceive the world and
get yourself immense credit by feigning a passion for ‘ Laura,’ when the crown
of ‘ laurel ’ is the real object of your heart’s desire; and you very nearly
succeeded in deceiving me by feigning a burning desire to come and visit me in
Rome.” To this agreeable jesting, which forms the chief support of the
allegorical theory of Petrarch’s love, the poet
replied by protesting
the genuineness of his double devotion. “Would to God,” he cries, “that your
banter were true, and my passion a feint and not a madness! . . . But you know
well that it is so violent as to have affected my bodily health and complexion.
... I can only hope that the sore will come to a head in time, and that I may
find the truth of Cicero’s saying that ‘ one day brings a wound and another day
healing.’ Against this fiction, as you call it, of Laura, perhaps that other
fiction of Augustine may help me, for by much grave reading and meditation I
may grow old before my time. . . . But as to yourself and Rome . . . answer me
seriously; put out of sight the longing to see your face, which I have borne
now for over three years, thinking daily, ‘lo! to-morrow he will come,’ or ‘
lo! in a day or two I shall start ’; take no account of the heavy burden of my
troubles which I can scarce be content to share with any one but you; grant
that I have cooled in my desire to see your most illustrious father, your noble
brothers, and your honourable sisters; still, what do you think I would not
give to see the walls and hills of the city, and, as Virgil says, ‘the Tuscan
Tiber and the palaces of Rome’? No one can imagine how I long to look upon that
city, deserted and the mere image of old Rome though it be, which I have never
yet seen! . . . I remember how Seneca exults in writing to Lucilius from the
very villa of Scipio Africanus, and thinks it no small matter to have seen the
place where that great man spent his exile, and where he laid his bones, which
his father
land could not afterwards
obtain. If such were the feelings of a Spaniard, what, think you, must I feel,
who am Italian born ? For here is no question of the villa of Liternum or the
tomb of Scipio, but of the city of Rome, where Scipio was born and nurtured,
where he won equal glory as victor and as accused, and where not only he, but
numberless other men lived, whose fame shall endure for ever.”
To him a journey to Rome
was indeed a pilgrimage not of religion only, but of politics and culture
also. In the continuity of her history he saw an epitome of human development;
many before him had been moved by the recollection of her ancient glories ; and
the theory of her claim to be the seat alike of Papacy and Empire had been
formulated by Dante in a treatise which may be called the political testament
of the Middle Ages; but Petrarch is the first to read her history as a whole
and to regard its changing periods as mere phases in one deathless career. She
is to him the sacred city not merely of Christendom, but of humanity.
The Cardinal’s
permission for the journey was obtained, and Petrarch immediately started for
Marseilles, where he took ship for Civita Vecchia. Off Elba he encountered a
storm, but arrived safely in port, probably about the middle of January. Here
he found it impossible to go on to Rome without an escort, for the Orsini had
collected a strong force with which they held the approaches to the city. For
the present therefore he remained in Capranica (Mons Caprarum), a hill-fortress
some thirty miles from Rome, where he was welcomed
by Orso, Count of
Anguillara, who had married Agnese Colonna, one of Stefano the Elder’s many
daughters. Thence he sent a courier to inform Giacomo of his arrival, and also
wrote a full account of his surroundings to Cardinal Giovanni. “ I have lighted
on a place in the Roman territory,” he says, “ which would suit my troubled
feelings admirably if my mind were not in haste to be elsewhere. Known
formerly as the Mount of Goats ... it became gradually peopled by men, who
built a citadel on the highest mound, round which have clustered as many houses
as the narrow limits of the hill allowed. Though unknown to fame, it is
surrounded by famous places ; on one side is Mount Soracte, well known as the
dwelling-place of Silvester, but also made illustrious before Silvester’s time
by the songs of the poets; on another side are the lake and hill of Ciminus,
mentioned by Virgil; and there is Sutrium only two miles away, the favoured
haunt of Ceres and, as the legend runs, a colony of Saturn. Not far from the
walls they show a field in which they say the first crop of corn in Italy was
sown by a foreign king and reaped with the sickle; which marvellous benefit so
softened the rude spirit of the people, that this foreigner was by their favour
chosen king during his life and worshipped after his death, for after reigning
to a good old age, he was represented as a god with a sickle in his hand. The
air here seems most healthy, and there are beautiful views from the surrounding
hills. . . . Peace alone is wanting to
complete the prosperity
of the country. . . . For
what do you think ? The
shepherd arms himself for his woodland watch, from fear rather of robbers than
of wolves ; the ploughman dons a breastplate and takes a spear to do the office
of a goad in prodding the flank of a troublesome ox; the fowler throws a
shield over his nets ; the fisherman too hangs his hooks with their beguiling
bait from the tempered blade of a sword; and, ridiculous as you will think it,
when a man goes to draw water from the well, he lowers a rusty helmet at the
end of his dirty rope. In a word, there is nothing done here without arms. All
night long the watchmen howl upon the walls and voices call to arms; what cries
are these to take the place of the sounds I have been wont to draw from the
melodious strings! Among the dwellers in these lands nothing looks secure ;
there is not a word of peace nor a feeling of their common humanity, only war
and hatred and all things after the likeness of the works of devils. In this
place, illustrious father, half willingly and half unwillingly I have now spent
sixteen days; and so powerful is habit, that while all others rush to the
citadel at the clang of arms and braying of trumpets, I may often be seen
wandering over the hills, diligently thinking over something to win me the
favour of posterity. All are astonished to see me at my ease, fearless and
unarmed ; while I am astonished to see them all fearful, anxious, and armed :
such differences are there in the ways of men! If haply I were asked whether I
wish to go hence, I should find it hard to answer ; ’twere well to be gone, and
yet ’tis pleasant to stay."
Orso, “the Bear who is
gentler than any lamb,” and Agnes, “one of those women who are best praised by
silent admiration,” entertained Petrarch till Giacomo could join him, which he
did on January 26th, riding unmolested from Rome with his eldest brother
Stefano the Younger and only a hundred horsemen, although five hundred of the
Orsini beset the road. The party probably stayed in Capranica for some days.
Sonnet XXXIV, Percli to t' abbia guardato, was certainly written there, and
others of the extant poems probably owe their origin to those “wanderings among
the hills” of which Petrarch speaks to the Cardinal. Presently they moved on to
Rome, where he was received as one of themselves by the whole family,
especially by old Giovanni di San Vito, who made himself his constant
companion and guide through the city. Even in this day of her humiliation the
glories of Rome paralysed for awhile his powers of composition. “What must you
expect me to write from the city,” he says, “ after the long letters I sent you
from the hills! You may well be looking for an outpouring of eloquence now that
I have arrived in Rome. Well, I have found a vast theme, which may serve
perhaps for future writing; but just now I dare not attempt anything, for I am
overwhelmed by the miracle of the mighty things around me, and sink under the
weight of astonishment. But one thing I must tell you, that my experience is
contrary to what you expected. For I remember that you used to dissuade me from
coming hither, chiefly on the ground that my enthusiasm would
cool at the sight of the
city laid in ruins, and ill- answering to its fame and to the idea which I had
formed of it from books. And I too, though burning with eagerness, was not
unwilling to wait, fearing lest the image which I had formed in my mind should
suffer loss by actual sight and by the presence which is ever the foe of great
reputations. This time, however, wonderful to say, nothing has been lowered and
everything has been heightened by it. In truth, Rome is greater and her remains
are greater than I thought, and my wonder is now not that she conquered the
world, but that she did not conquer it sooner.” Some years later he reminds
Giovanni di San Vito of their delightful excursions together. “ We used to
stroll side by side in the mighty city,” he writes, “ and not only in it, but
around it as well, and every step brought some suo^Q-estion to stir the mind
and loose the
tongue.” The two were
often accompanied by Paolo Annibaldi, this year joint Senator of Rome with
Stefano the Younger, the head of a House allied to that of Colonna by ties of
marriage and friendship. Paolo’s “extraordinary worth and humanity ” had made
Petrarch his dear friend: unlike most of the Roman nobles, he cared for the
artistic and historical monuments of the city and sorrowed over her ruin. His
death in the year l355, while still in the flower of his age, was a
veritable tragedy; one of his sons was killed in a faction-fight, and he fell
dead in an access of grief across the mutilated body of his boy.
Strongly as Petrarch had
always felt the claims of
Rome to be the seat of
Empire and Papacy, he was now more than ever disposed to assert her rights.
Accordingly he wrote once more to Benedict XII, resuming the subject of his
former poem, but speaking now in his own person, and asserting the superiority
of Rome over all other countries. Benedict had now settled the theological
question of the Beatific Vision, and so, Petrarch suggested, had time to take
measures for resuming his proper position as husband of Rome and father of all
Italy. But probably the Pope had never really intended to return ; certainly,
even if he had been sincere in expressing his wish to do so, the intrigues of
the French party among the Cardinals were successful in detaining him at
Avignon, and so thoroughly had he become convinced of the necessity of
remaining there, that he was now laying the foundations of the papal palace
designed to form a permanent residence for himself and his successors.
We do not know how long
Petrarch stayed in Rome, but he must have left soon after Easter if he found
time during this summer for the extended travels which seem clearly indicated
in a poetical letter addressed to Giacomo Colonna. These travels can hardly be
assigned to any other date. He returned to Avignon on August 16th ; at some
time in the interval he paid a visit to Lombez to take up his canonry there,
and in the course of these four or five months he appears also to have made a
sea trip to Morocco and to have visited the English Channel. He speaks
expressly of having
seen “the mountain
hardened by Medusa’s eye” in the country of the Moors, by which he must mean
some part of the chain of Mount Atlas; and thence, he says, he went northward,
and came “ where the swollen wave of the British sea wears away with flow and
ebb of tide the shores that stand doubtful which shall receive its stroke.” The
chronology is extremely difficult, and some critics take the short way of
treating the whole letter as mere rhetoric. But the travels indicated were not
quite impossible of accomplishment in the four and a half months available for
them, and to regard inconvenient allusions as worthless evidence on the ground
that they occur in a poem is to ignore difficulties, not to solve them.
Avignon on his return
appeared to him more detestable than ever ; during his absence, if we may trust
another of his Latin poetical letters, he had enjoyed intervals of respite from
the violence of his passion for Laura, but the sight of her rekindled that
passion in all its fury. We may suppose too that his hatred of Avignon as the
usurper of the rights of Rome was intensified by his visit to the Eternal City.
For “on my return thence,’5 he tells us, “ I could not endure the
disgust and hatred of things in general, but above all of that most wearisome
city, naturally implanted in my mind, and so I looked about for some better
retreat, as it were a harbour of refuge, and found the valley, a very small
one, but solitary and pleasant, which is called The Closed Valley, fifteen
miles distant from Avignon, where rises the king of all river sources, the
Sorgue. Captivated by
the charm of the place, I transferred thither my books and myself.” He bought a
small house at Vaucluse with a strip of riverside meadow adjoining it, and so
installed himself in the one of his many residences which is best entitled to
be called his home, and has been most closely associated by posterity with his
name and fame.
Many reasons make the
date of his settling at Vaucluse one of the most important in his life.
Hitherto he had been entirely dependent upon his patrons; now, though still
looking to them for preferment, he had a home of his own in which he could
order his life after his own fashion. Here he was free from the agitation which
the sight of Laura never failed to renew in his spirit—he intimates repeatedly
that to avoid her was his main object in going to Vaucluse—and here he could
indulge that love of scenery, that passion for nature and solitude, which was
so rare among the men of his day, and contrasts so strongly with his own
interest in man as “the proper study of mankind.” Here too he had abundant
leisure for literary work; he was free from the bustle and distractions of town
life, and he made such good use of his time that “ nearly everything which he
ever wrote was either finished, begun, or planned here.” But though enjoying
the leisure and quiet of almost complete solitude, he was not cut off from his
friends or from society. Socrates and Leelius came often to see him ; the
Cardinal’s house at Avignon was open to him whenever he chose to go there; and
visitors
from every part of
Europe, attracted by his fame, sought him out in his retreat. “While I was
living
in France in the period
of my youth,” he says, “ I was surprised to see sundry noble and talented men
come from the further provinces of France, as well as from Italy, with no other
design than that of seeing me and holding conversation with me; among whom was
Peter of Poitiers, of honourable memory, a man illustrious alike for piety and
for learning. And you will wonder the more when I tell you that some of these
visitors sent me magnificent presents in advance, and then came in the wake of
their gifts, as though they would smooth the way and open the gates by their
liberality. ... By word and deed they proclaimed that they came to Avignon
solely to see me, so that if I was not in the city, they would take no heed of
anything there, but hastened on to the source of the Sorgue, where I generally
spent the summer.” Such homage was very gratifying to Petrarch ; the love of
fame was strong in him ; he shared and fostered that eager pursuit of personal
glory which marked the Italians of the Renaissance. He made some parade of
despising the opinions of “the vulgar,” but in his heart he liked even popular
applause, and he could not fail to be elated by the unstinted homage paid to
his genius by men qualified to appreciate it. It is pleasant to add that when
embarrassed by the difficulty of disposing of these admirers’ gifts without
offence to the givers, he solved the problem with characteristic generosity by
sharing them with his friends.
At Vaucluse he had the happiness
of finding a neighbour who soon became one of his most intimate friends. Philip
de Cabassoles was a member of a noble Provencal family connected by
long-standing ties of marriage and friendship with the House of Anjou, and
especially with the Neapolitan branch of it. King Robert of Naples indeed, who
as Count of Provence was his sovereign, held him in such esteem that by his
will he appointed him a member of the Neapolitan Council of Regency during the
minority of his granddaughter Joanna. Philip’s personal qualities justified
the unanimous good opinion of his contemporaries. He had already won a
reputation for brilliant intellectual attainments ; he was an eager student
and an enthusiastic patron of letters ; in private life he was the most loyal
of friends ; and when the time came in 1343 for him to take up the ungrateful
task of statesmanship at Naples, he struggled gallantly though ineffectually to
uphold public order and political probity amid the welter of factious intrigue
which followed the Wise King’s death. Long before the canonical age he had been
appointed by John XXII to the bishopric of Cavaillon, “a little town,” as
Petrarch describes it, “about two leagues from Vaucluse, which as being the
seat of a bishopric is dignified with the name of city, but which has no
quality of a city except the title and its antiquity.” Vaucluse lay within the
diocese of Cavaillon, and one of the Bishop’s official residences was a castle
perched on the crags which overhang the valley. Here Petrarch paid his respects
to Philip, who was
a year his junior in
age, and the two men, mutually attracted by each other’s great qualities,
contracted an intimacy, which soon ripened into one of the closest and most
valuable of Petrarch’s friendships. Philip “loved him not only with a Bishop’s
love, as Ambrose loved Augustine, but with that of a brother,” and his
affection was repaid in full. The friends spent hours in each other’s society,
entering each other’s houses unannounced, and using each other’s books as a common
possession. To Philip Petrarch dedicated the De Vita Solitaria, and he was one
of the very few friends ever permitted to see the poet’s compositions in the
rough.
Another motive, of which
Petrarch preserved no record, may have contributed to his wish for partial
retirement from Avignon. In this year (1337), an illegitimate son was born to
him. Of his fault much has been said: in some it has aroused genuine
indignation, in others a base satisfaction at the lapses of a devout and
passionate soul; of his punishment and repentance those know best who have
studied his writings most closely and read his character most accurately. To a
man of his physical habit temptation came with its fullest force; is it not
punishment enough that to a man of his spiritual temperament penitence was an
agony of the soul ? We do not know who was Giovanni’s mother; there is reason
to suppose that she was a person of humble origin, and that she was also the
mother of his daughter Francesca, born to him six years later; we do know that
after the birth of the latter child, while Petrarch was still under forty, he
regained control of his
passions, and that his subsequent life was free from stain. He was punished
also, as we shall see later, by the conduct of the boy, conduct which was
probably aggravated by the father’s injudicious handling of a stubborn and
perverse disposition, and by mutual misunderstanding due to the inherent
difficulty of their relations. Petrarch’s very conscientiousness made the mischief
worse; he felt himself deeply responsible for Giovanni’s character and
education ; though he did not call the boy by the name of son, he procured him
letters of legitimacy, and never hesitated to acknowledge his own fault, if
the acknowledgment was necessary for Giovanni’s preferment. He spent infinite
pains, too, on training the boy in liberal learning; in return he unhappily
demanded a pliancy foreign to Giovanni’s nature, and any father who would learn
how to deter a son from the path in which he wishes him to walk has only to
study the history of Petrarch and Giovanni. It is the melancholy story of two
persons connected by no tie except that of natural kinship, which, if it does
not inspire community of tastes and mutual affection, will surely aggravate and
embitter the disagreement of their tempers. Doubtless the boy was most to blame
; he was constitutionally idle, perverse, and sullen. But it is evident enough
that his faults were enhanced by the mismanagement of his father. To those
whose character commanded his sympathy Petrarch was the best of friends and the
most genial of instructors, but he had neither patience nor tact enough to
overcome the difficulties of a
natural antipathy. Above
all things, idleness and sullenness were hateful to him ; so when Giovanni was
idle, he lectured him and teased him with instances of exemplary diligence, or
tried to rouse him out of the sulks by sermonising, or, worst of all, by
sarcasm and ridicule. Conscientiously he tried to do his duty; but the more he
tried the worse he blundered, and it is hardly surprising that the boy showed
his worst side to his father, while some of Petrarch’s friends discerned in him
through all his faults a promise of better things.
On April 17th, 1338,
during a visit to Avignon, he had the inestimable joy of recovering the beautiful
MS. of Virgil which had been one of the treasures of his father’s library, and
had been stolen from him in 1326. We do not know the circumstances in which he
regained possession of it, further than that his own note on the fly-leaf
speaks of its “ restitution,” which seems to point to a voluntary act on the
part of its unlawful possessor. Precious as is the codex itself, this fly-leaf
is more precious still, for on it in Petrarch’s beautiful handwriting (a kind
of delicate black-letter, which cannot have been taken by Aldus, as tradition
asserts, for the model of his cursive type) are recorded the dates of his first
meeting with Laura and of her death, together with the deaths of his son
Giovanni, of Socrates, and of many other friends. Surely a more pathetic
document was never penned in the whole course of literary history. From the
date of its recovery this cherished volume accompanied its owner everywhere;
and on its fly-leaf, the page
which his eye would see
oftener than any other, he “se£ down a record of the cruel events, not without
a bitter sweetness in the remembrance of them.,, Some time after
Petrarch’s death the book became the property of Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, and
was kept at Pavia till the submission of that city to the French King’s troops
in 1499, when Antonio Pirro saved it from the plunderers ; from him it passed
through several hands till it was bought by Cardinal Borromeo, who presented it
to the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Napoleon stole it, but in 1815 it was
restored to Milan, and is still one of the chief treasures of the library.
About this time Petrarch
came in contact with Humbert II, the last Dauphin of Vienne. The impending
outbreak of war between France and England placed this Prince in a position of
embarrassment, for he owed homage both to the Emperor and to the King of
France. The former summoned him to help his ally, King Edward III, the latter
to join the French force against the English. The Dauphin’s chief anxiety
seems to have been to keep out of the fighting; an old chronicler describes him
as having the air and manners of a woman; and his double allegiance furnished a
not unwelcome pretext. Instead of joining either party, he established himself
at Avignon, where the Pope had assigned him a house, and employed himself in
prosecuting a lawsuit with the Archbishop of Vienne. Cardinal Colonna got
Petrarch to write him a letter exhorting him to take up arms for Philip, but
the peaceful disposition of the Dauphin
was proof against the
poet’s eloquence. He stayed at Pont du Sorgue and prosecuted his lawsuit. It
was probably with him that Petrarch and his brother Gherardo made an expedition
to the Ste. Beaume, or cave of St. Mary Magdalene, near Marseilles. A man “
whose high position far transcended his prudence," Petrarch tells us, a
great personage whose society was not at all pleasing to him, frequently
pressed him to accompany him on this expedition. Petrarch as constantly refused
till Cardinal Colonna backed the great man’s request; the poet then yielded,
and some devotional Latin verses of mediocre quality were the fruit of his
visit to this sacred but fearsome cavern. For his brother Gherardo the journey
proved more notable: he took advantage of it to visit for the first time the
O
Carthusian monastery of
Montrieu, in which some years later he was to take the vows.
About this time also
Petrarch had the happiness of renewing his friendship with Azzo da Correggio
and Gulielmo da Pastrengo. Their mission to Avignon was the result of one of
those family feuds ending in murder so frequent in the history of the Italian
despots. Mastino della Scala had taken possession of Lucca in defiance of the
treaty rights of the Florentines; his cousin Bartolommeo, Bishop of Verona, was
accused, truly or falsely, of a conspiracy to murder him and hand over Lucca
to the allied troops of Florence and Venice. Azzo da Correggio was the accuser,
and on August 6th, 1338, Mastino, probably accompanied by Azzo, met the Bishop
on the steps of the cathedral and stabbed him to death.
Then he sent off Azzo in hot haste as his ambassador to the Pope to obtain
absolution, and associated Gulielmo and another lawyer with him as his
advocates.
| TOMBS OF THE SCALIGERI, VERONA |
They reached Avignon in
September, and Petrarch, hearing of their arrival, came over from Vaucluse to
see them. But hardly had he reached Avignon when a frenzy of emotion
overmastered him; the sight of the city brought back the wild tumult of his
passions; he could not stay, but fled back to Vaucluse, and a day or two
afterwards wrote to tell Gulielmo the cause of his absence. The violent mood
soon passed, no doubt, and he renewed the habit of which he speaks in this
letter, of “revisiting this ill-omened city and returning voluntarily into the
snare to which no hook of necessity drew him.” The ambassadors stayed a whole
year at Avignon, and the friends met frequently both there and at Vaucluse. In
September, J339> Pope formally absolved Mastino, and the envoys
returned to Italy.
The year 1339 is notable
too for Petrarch’s first meeting with the Abbot Barlaam, under whom three years
later he made an ineffectual attempt at learning Greek. Barlaam was a native of
Calabria, but had lived most of his life in Salonika and Constantinople, where
he was Abbot of the monastery of St. Gregory. He is described by Boccaccio as a
man of diminutive stature but huge learning ; as a theological disputant he
had made bitter enemies at Constantinople, but just now he was in high favour
with the Court, and the Emperor Andronicus had sent him
to Avignon on one of
those futile missions which had for pretext the reunion of the Churches, and
for real object an inquiry whether the West could be cajoled into helping the
East with men or money.
Petrarch has left some
delightful accounts of his life at Vaucluse, but most of these refer to the
second and third periods of his sojourn there, and will be noticed later. There
is evidence enough, however, to show that this first period too was one of
intense literary activity, pursued in a life of rustic frugality. “ Long would
be the story,” he writes, “ if I went on to tell what I did there through many
and many a year. This is the sum of it, that almost every one of the poor works
which have come from my pen was either completed, begun, or planned there. . .
. The very aspect of the place suggested to me that I should attempt my bucolic
poetry, a woodland work, and the two books upon the life of solitude . . . and
as I wandered among those hills on a certain Friday in Holy Week I hit upon the
thought, which proved a fruitful one, of writing a poem in heroic verse about
the great Scipio Afri- canus the Elder, whose name, I know not why, had been
dear to me from my boyhood.” In addition to all these compositions, there is
good reason to think that his earlier years at Vaucluse saw at least the
beginning of his greatest prose work, the Lives of Illtistrious Men; and if he
wanted a change from original composition, there were always his classical
manuscripts lying ready to his hand for the careful annotation which reveals to
us the wide range and the thoroughness of his reading.
As evidence of his
manner of life, take the following delightful note in which he invites
Cardinal Colonna to sup with him : “You will come a long- hoped-for guest to
supper, and will remember that we have no market of dainties here. A poet’s
banquet awaits you, and that not of Juvenal’s or Flaccus’ kind, but the pastoral
sort that Virgil describes : ‘ mellow apples, soft chestnuts, and rich store of
milky curd.’ The rest is harder fare: a coarse, stiff loaf, a chance hare, or a
migratory crane—and that very seldom ; or perhaps you will find the chine of a
strong-flavoured boar. Why make a long story? You know the roughness of both
place and fare, and so I bid you come with shoes not only on your feet, but, as
the parasite in Plautus wittily says, on your teeth too.”
CHAPTER
V
THE CROWN OF SONG
1340-1341
PETRARCH had not yet
reached his thirty- seventh birthday when he won the object of his highest
ambition—the Crown of Songr The
bestowal of this laurel
wreath was an ancient custom last observed in Rome in the case of the poet
Statius, who received the bays from Domitian as the prize of a contest of
“music and gymnastic.” Though twelve centuries had elapsed since that event,
the memory of the custom still survived : Dante had coveted the crown in vain,
and Petrarch from his earliest manhood made no secret of his eager desire to
win it. He was attracted by its historical connection with old Rome, by the
picturesque nature of the ceremony, above all by the public recognition of the
recipient’s mastery in the art of poetry. He was no dilettante scribbler, no
amateur of letters desirous of the palm without the dust; he was willing, nay
eager, to live laborious days, and to spend himself and his substance in the
pursuit of learning. But he cared dearly too for the reward so hardly earned;
he longed for the applause of men qualified to appreciate him ; he was athirst
for fame. Even his thirst must have been assuaged when on
one and the same day,
September 1st, 1340, he received letters from Rome and from Paris offering him
the object of his desire. He wrote that very evening to Cardinal Colonna asking
his advice as
to which invitation he
should accept. “ I am at the parting of two roads,” he said to the Cardinal,
“and I stand hesitating and knowing not which I had better take ; it is a short
story, but wonderful enough. To-day about nine o’clock I received a letter from
the Senate summoning me in pressing terms and with much persuasion to Rome to
receive the crown of song. To-day also, about four o’clock, a message reached
me with a letter on the same subject from the illustrious Robert, Chancellor of
the University of Paris, my fellow-citizen, and a firm friend to me and my
fortunes. He urges me with carefully chosen reasons to go to Paris. Who could
ever have suspected, I ask you, that such a thing would happen among these
rocks and hills? In fact, the thing is so incredible that I send you both the
letters with the seals uninjured. The one summons came in the morning, the
other in the evening; and you will see how weighty are the arguments which
appeal to me on either side. Now since joy suits ill with deliberation, I own
that I am as much perplexed in mind as joyful at my good fortune. On one side
is the attraction of novelty, on the other veneration for antiquity ; on the
one my friend, on the other my country. One thing indeed weighs heavily in the
latter scale, that the King of Sicily is in Italy, whom of all men I can most
readily accept as judge of my ability. You
see now all the waves
that toss my thoughts ; you, who have not scorned to put your hand to their helm,
will direct by your counsel the stormy passage of my mind.”
Petrarch would hardly
have asked the Cardinal’s advice if he had not been sure of the answer. To
balance the claims of Rome and Paris was a pretty literary exercise ; but in
his judgment Paris kicked the beam. Rome was for him the world’s capital, whose
offer of the crown proclaimed him the world’s poet; in Rome he meant to be
crowned, and to Rome Cardinal Colonna advised him to go.
On the way he would
visit Naples. Robert the Wise, titular King of Jerusalem and the Two Sicilies,
had long been one of his heroes. He wrote of him as “that consummate king and
philosopher, equally illustrious in letters and in dominion, unique among the
kings of our day as a friend of knowledge and of virtue.” And Robert deserved
high praise. He had his faults, though Petrarch did not see them. He reminds us
a little of our British Solomon, who stands at the close of the Renaissance as
Robert stands at its opening, a king eager to be reputed wise, whose statesmanship
was too often mere statecraft, and whose learning bore the taint of pedantry.
But the comparison with James is grievously unjust to Robert; his faults, if
like in kind, were less in degree, and he had what the Stuart lacked—the saving
grace of magnanimity. There was nothing petty about him. His title “King of
Jerusalem” was a mere reminiscence of an episode in history; of the Two
Sicilies the island kingdom had passed under
the sway of the Aragonese; but the realm of Naples throve under his rule, and
carried weight in European politics out of all proportion to its natural
resources. As a skilful diplomatist and a prudent ruler Robert earned his
surname of “the Wise.”
He earned it still
better as a friend of learning; the greatest of his services to his age and
country lay in his treatment of artists and men of letters. The brilliant and
versatile Emperor Frederick II had lived with poets as comrades, not as dependents
; Robert followed this forgotten example, and made it the fashion. He received
Petrarch not as a client, but as a friend ; under colour of “examining” him,
he organised a public display of the poet’s prowess, and lavished on him every
possible token of friendship and esteem. By this reception of Petrarch, Robert
enthroned intellect in the face of Europe.
| MONUMENT OF KING ROBERT OF NAPLES |
Petrarch’s journey from
Provence, his stay in Naples, and his coronation in Rome occupied nearly two months;
there is some conflict of evidence as to the exact dates of his movements, and
even as to the day of the coronation, but the following narrative gives what
seems to be the most probable account. Accompanied by Azzo da Correggio, he
left Avignon on February 16th, 1341, and took ship at Marseilles. The friends
reached Naples early in March, and remained there as the guests of King Robert
till the beginning of April. Day after day Petrarch and the King had long
conferences, at which they discussed poetry, history, and philo
sophy; personal
intercourse heightened their mutual admiration, and the poet’s enthusiasm knew
110 bounds when Robert declared to him that he valued learning and letters
above the crown of Naples itself. Then came the examination alluded to above,
surely the longest viva voce on record, when Robert assembled his whole Court,
and for two days and a half propounded question after question in every known
branch of learning. All these the poet seems to have answered to the
satisfaction of his audience, and on the third day Robert solemnly pronounced
him worthy of the laurel crown, and offered to confer it on him with his own
hand in Naples. But Petrarch was loyal to Rome; only in the Capitol would he
receive the supreme distinction ; and Robert respected a preference of which
he fully understood the motive. It was only his age, he declared, and not his
royal rank, that prevented him from going himself to Rome for the occasion.
Feeling himself unequal to the journey, he appointed the accomplished knight
Giovanni Barili, a favourite officer of his household, to act as his deputy,
wrote letters testifying to Petrarch’s worthiness to receive the laurel, and
gave him his own purple robe to wear at the ceremony.
With Barili Petrarch
formed a lasting friendship, and to this Neapolitan visit he owed also a still
closer intimacy with Marco Barbato, the Chancellor of the kingdom, a native of
Ovid’s birthplace Sulmo, himself a man of letters and a poet, “excellent in
talent, and still more excellent in life.” The warmth of Petrarch’s friendship
for Barbato
is testified by a number
of letters couched in terms of confidence and affection, and by the dedication
to him of the Latin poetical letters. Yet they met only twice in twenty-two
years; and from 1343 to Barbato’s death in 1363 their intercourse was carried
on entirely by correspondence. Their friendship furnishes an interesting
example of a sympathy which twenty years of absence could not weaken.
On April 2nd Barili and
his attendants left Naples, and either then or two days later Petrarch and Azzo
set out in turn by a different route for Rome. They arrived safely on Good
Friday, the 6th, and were received by Orso and the members of the Colonna
family present in the city; but when they inquired for Barili, no news of him
could be heard. Hastily they sent out a courier to scour the country ; but
Easter Eve passed without tidings of the King’s envoy, wrho had in
fact fallen into the hands of banditti near Anagni, and was detained their
prisoner for several days. The coronation could not be deferred beyond Easter
Sunday, for on the close of that day Orso’s senatorship came to an end, and it
was essential that Petrarch should be crowned while the Chief Magistracy was
still held by one of his friends. Early on Easter morning, therefore, April
8th, trumpeters summoned the populace to the Capitol. The novelty of the
spectacle, resumed after an interval of centuries, the splendour and pomp of
the pageant, probably also the newly awakened zeal for art and letters, drew a
vast crowd of onlookers, whose enthusiastic
H
applause drowned, at
least for the moment, the voices of envy and detraction. Here, in Rome, they
were met to do honour to the poet and scholar whose enthusiasm for their city
was to be the keynote of the new learning, who was to revive and popularise
the memories of her glorious past, and to claim anew for her, in these days of
her desertion by Pope and Emperor, the indefeasible right to rule the world.
Of the ceremony itself
we have few details; but from what we know we can infer that it was worthy of
the occasion. Twelve boys, richly dressed in scarlet, led the way ; they were
all fifteen years of age, and wTere chosen from twelve of the
noblest Roman families. After them, clad in green and crowned with flowers,
came six of the principal nobles of the city, Petrarch’s old friend Paolo Anni-
baldi being one of them ; and in the midst of this distinguished escort walked
Petrarch himself, wearing the purple robe of the King of Naples. After him
came the Senator escorted by the chief functionaries of the city, and we may
be sure that a procession in which the leading men of Rome and their sons took
part was not lacking in either the number of its attendants or the brilliance
of its pageantry. When they reached the top of the Capitoline Hill a herald
summoned Petrarch to speak. He saluted the people, and, taking a verse of
Virgil for his text, gave an elaborate discourse on the difficulties, delights,
and rewards of poetry, concluding with a prayer that the Senator, as representative
of the Roman people, would be pleased to
bestow on him the crown
of which the King of “Sicily” had judged him worthy. Then he knelt down before
Orso, who placed the laurel crown on his head and declared aloud that he gave
it him as the reward of distinguished merit. After this Petrarch recited a
sonnet, which has not been preserved, in remembrance of the heroes of old
Rome, and the veteran Stefano Colonna spoke a glowing eulogy of the newly
crowned poet.
This ended the ceremony
on the Capitol. It seems to have been purely civic in its character, for no
hint is given of any ecclesiastical rite or function in connection with it. But
Petrarch was of all men least likely to forget the claims of religion ; very
great as might be his elation at the recognition of his genius and his work, he
remembered in the hour of his triumph to give God the glory. The procession
reformed and escorted him to St. Peter’s, where he publicly gave thanks for the
honour conferred on him, and left his laurel crown to hang among the votive
offerings of the cathedral. The day ended with a banquet in his honour, and the
presentation to him by Orso of a diploma testifying to his excellence in the
arts of poetry and history, authorising him to teach and dispute in public and
to publish books at his pleasure, and conferring upon him the citizenship of
Rome in recognition of his loyal devotion to her interests.
Thus ended a day notable
not only in the life of its hero, but in the history of letters. It is probably
true that Petrarch owed this conspicuous honour as much to the partiality of
his friends as to
the general recognition
of his services. The best of his work was still to be done; he himself in old
age, looking back on this most brilliant day of his life, admitted with evident
sincerity that the leaves of his laurel crown were immature, and that a not
unnatural result of its reception was to bring upon him much envy and ill-will.
It was by his Italian poetry that he was chiefly known as yet, and we have seen
that his Italian poetry, exquisite and in some respects unique as are its
qualities, had little effect in the really important work of his life, the
revival of learning. In connection with that work, it is true that he had
already gained a European reputation as an earnest and indefatigable student,
bent on accumulating knowledge, and eager to diffuse it; but he had as yet
published little or nothing to justify in the face of the world the high esteem
of his admirers. Still, when every allowance has been made for personal
influence, and every possible point conceded to those who were already carping
at the honour conferred on him, the fact remains that his coronation marks the
awakening of general interest in learning, the end of an age in which letters
were the exclusive possession of a few, and the advent of a time when even
those who did not themselves possess scholarship would owe the tone of their
thought and the tenor of their daily life to the spirit born of the New
Learning. This is Petrarch’s pre-eminent claim to the gratitude of humanity.
He was hardly a better Latinist than John of Salisbury; he knew less Greek than
Robert Grosseteste; but to his efforts, and not to
those of any
predecessor, we owe it that the culture of the Renaissance became a living
force in the development of Europe. In this sense, our modern life may be said
to date from the ceremony on the Capitol.
CHAPTER VI
1341-1347
PETRARCH had
contemplated a stay of some few days in Rome; in the event his visit was
prolonged a day beyond his intention. Soon after leaving the gates he
encountered one of those hordes of banditti which infested the Romagna, and was
forced to return to the city. He started again the next day with a stronger
escort, and reached Pisa by the end of April. Three weeks later he rejoined
Azzo and took part in his triumphal entry into Parma. For the past two years
the Correggi had been busy with another move in that game of intrigue of which
the Lordship of Parma was the stake. When in need of an ally against the Rossi,
they played the jackal, as we have seen, to Mastino della Scala; but the Lord
of Verona took something more than the lion’s share of the prey, and the
Correcrofi were not the men to be content with bare
OO
bones. Azzo’s journeys
to Avignon and Naples, which coincided so happily with Petrarch’s movements,
were undertaken to obtain Pope Benedict’s and King Robert’s consent to a plan
for getting Luchino Visconti of Milan to help in expelling Mastino’s troops
from Parma and transferring the
102
sovereignty of the city
to Azzo and his brothers. The Visconti were ever ready to fish in troubled
waters, and Luchino willingly promised assistance, in return for which the
Correggi secretly undertook to hand over the sovereignty to him after four
years’ enjoyment of it. It is not quite clear, nor does it much matter, how far
Benedict and Robert were aware of this secret stipulation : it seems unlikely
that they would have sanctioned a plan for the aggrandisement of their worst
enemy; on the other hand, they must have known the Visconti character too well
to suspect Luchino of giving anything for nothing. Probably they knew of the
agreement, and trusted Azzo, the arch-intriguer, to break his promise when the
time should come for performing it. Be this as it may, the bargain was struck;
Luchino sent troops from Milan; on May 21st the Veronese garrison was expelled,
and on the 23rd the brothers da Correggio, accompanied by Petrarch, made their
state entry into Parma amid a great popular demonstration of joy and welcome.
Probably the Veronese domination had really been oppressive, and the bulk of
the people may have hailed the Correggi as genuine liberators; while those who
had been too often deluded by promises of freedom to put any further trust in
princes may have thought that, tyrant for tyrant, their own nobles were at any
rate less objectionable than a stranger. And for a year or two things went well
in Parma; while Azzo and his brothers remained of one mind, they employed their
brilliant talents in the work of government, and really did much to
lighten the burdens and
improve the administration of the State.
Everything therefore
promised well for the happiness of Petrarch’s first sojourn in Parma, which was
to last about a year. But not even Azzo’s companionship could keep him
permanently in the town ; mountain and woodland called him with an irresistible
charm ; and on the great spurs of the Apennines above Reggio, where the River
Enza flows down from Canossa to the plain, he found a pleasant summer refuge
from the heat and dust of the city. Either in the little village of Ciano or in
a neighbouring castle owned by the Correggi, he spent a great part of the
summer ; and here one day, as he wandered in the wood which then bore the name
of Silva Plana, he suddenly bethought him of the poem begun some years ago in
the solitude of Vaucluse. Eagerly he resumed the interrupted work, composing a
few lines on the spot, and going on with it every day till his return to Parma.
Arrived there, he hired a quiet and secluded little house and garden, situated
on the outskirts of the city, which pleased him so well that he bought it a few
years later. Here he applied himself to his Africa with such vigour that in an
incredibly short time the nine books of the poem were complete.
Doubtless his coronation
acted as a sharp stimulus to his powers; the excitement of so unique an honour,
and the desire to justify to himself and to the world the renown which he
enjoyed, might well have stirred a less sensitive and less impetuous
nature to extraordinary
efforts. Certain it is that the years immediately following the coronation were
years of incessant literary work; and it is to the period between 1341 and 1361
that we owe the great bulk of the compositions which may be called the
first-fruits of Humanism. Some estimate of the literary value and effect of
these compositions will be attempted in a later chapter; here it is sufficient
to note that the crowning honour of Petrarchs life produced in him not a sense
of satiety or contentment with repose, but, on the contrary, a livelier and
keener ambition, a noble eagerness to deserve the fame which the world had
already awarded him. Those who cannot see beneath the superficial flaws of a
character may speak contemptuously of his vanity, his affectations, and his
greed of fame ; far other is the estimate of those who have read his heart and
know the high idealism, the insatiable appetite for toil, and the profound
sense of devotion to his calling, which lay beneath these insignificant and not
unlovable foibles.
A remarkable and
touching illustration of his celebrity is furnished by the visit of an old
blind grammarian, a native of Perugia, who kept a school at Pontremoli, and who
made his way at this time to Parma solely for the pleasure of spending a few
hours in the company of the poet, of whose coronation he had heard, and from
whose scholarship he anticipated, what indeed it was chiefly instrumental in
producing, a great awakening of the mind of Europe.
Over this bright life of
honoured work, pursued
alternately in happy
solitude and in the still happier companionship of friends, there soon came a
cloud of heavy sorrow ; during this summer Petrarch heard of the death of the
friend of his undergraduate days, the poet Tommaso Caloria of Messina; and in
the month of September he had to bear a still more lamentable loss. News had
reached him that Giacomo Colonna was ill at Lombez; and one night he dreamed
that he saw him walking alone and hurriedly on the bank of a little stream in
his garden at Parma; he hastened to meet him, and poured out question after
question as to how he came there, and whence and whither he was going; Giacomo,
he thought, smiled brightly as of old, and said, “ Do you remember how you
hated the storms in the Pyrenees when you lived with me on the Garonne ? I am
now worn out by them, and am going away from them to Rome, never to return.”
Petrarch in his dream would have joined himself to his friend, but Giacomo
waved him affectionately away, and then in a more decided tone said, “ Stop, I
will not have you this time for a companion.” Then Petrarch noticed the
bloodless pallor of his face and knew that he was dead, and woke with his own
cry of grief and horror still ringing in his ears. Nearly a month later came
messengers from Provence with the tidings that Giacomo had died at the very
time when Petrarch had thus seen him in a dream.
The new year (1342)
brought him yet a third bereavement by the death at Naples of Fra Dionigi da
Borgo San Sepolcro, for whom King Robert
had three years
previously obtained the bishopric of Monopoli. Fra Dionigi’s influence was the
stronq-est ever brought to bear on Petrarch’s mind
and character; as we
have seen, he knew how to foster his penitents religious enthusiasm without
impairing his zeal for secular learning, and to his wise advice it must be
largely due that Petrarch neither sacrified his intellect on the altar of
fanaticism, nor forgot the Christian faith in reviving Augustan culture.
| CLEMENT VI(FROM A PORTRAIT IN THE
BRITISH MUSEUM)
|
In the spring of this
year, “sorely against the grain,” he bade farewell to Italy and returned to
Avignon. We know neither the precise date nor the compelling cause of his
return, but it has been plausibly conjectured that Cardinal Colonna summoned
him back, and that the summons may have had some connection with the Pope’s
last illness. Benedict XII died on April 25th, and on May 7th Pierre Roger was
elected to succeed him and took the name of Clement VI. The election was a
victory for the French party, but the new Pope was no bitter partisan ; his
official name was not ill- chosen as an index to his character; he was a
“douce” man, self-indulgent to the point of laxity, incapable of saying No to
friend or nephew, but incapable also of rancour, amiable in disposition,
cultivated in mind, and if not quite a scholar, at least an intelligent amateur
of scholarship. Petrarch speaks of him as “an accomplished man of letters, but
overwhelmed with business, and therefore a devourer of digests.” Their first
meeting may have occurred in connection with an embassy from Rome,
which will be more fully
noticed in the next chapter; however this may be, the new Pope soon proved
himself a good friend to Petrarch. “Clement added to my fortunes,” the latter
tells us; and we shall see that the addition consisted of no less than four
benefices conferred on himself and one on his son, besides an informal offer of
the papal secretaryship, which was declined. To the first of these benefices,
the priory of St. Nicolas of Miliarino, in the diocese of Pisa, Petrarch was
appointed on October 6th, 1342.
But it is characteristic
of him that the first use he made of Clement’s favour was to obtain preferment
for a friend. Barlaam, the “little man of huge learning,” had come back as a
theological refugee to Avignon. He was a poor Latinist, being a native of
Calabria, where to this day the peasants speak a patois as much Greek as Latin
in its origin. Petrarch knew no Greek at all, and was acutely conscious of this
defect in his training. The two friends started a course of mutual instruction
; but before Petrarch had time to make any appreciable progress, the bishopric
of Geraci, in Calabria, fell vacant, and he persuaded the Pope to bestow it on
Barlaam ; and so, in his own words,deprived himself of the leader under whom
he had begun campaigning with no small hope of success.”
It is too much to say
with one of his biographers that this lost opportunity prevented him from founding
the Renaissance on a Greek instead of a Latin basis : his predilection for all
things Roman would, we may be sure, have prevented him from giving
the preference to Greek
literature, however deeply he might have felt its charm; but it is permissible
to suppose that, if he and Boccaccio had been as proficient in Greek
scholarship as they were enthusiastic for it, the full glory of the Renaissance
might have been antedated by a generation.
Greek, then, had to be
given up; but with Petrarch the surrender of one study meant closer application
to others; he was incapable of idleness, and the winter months, spent mostly at
Vaucluse, but with frequent visits to Avignon, were a time of incessant mental
activity. Many of the Italian poems are referable to this period, and he was
probably working also on the Lives of Illustrious Men. But above all this
sojourn at Vaucluse is notable for the writing of the three dialogues On
Despising the World\ which to those who feel the charm of Petrarch s nature and
the intense humanity of his character are the most fascinating of all his
writings. He called them his Secretum; in the form of dialogues between Saint
Augustine and himself he took the Saint, as it were, for his confessor, and
laid bare to him his inmost heart. The dialogues £ive as faithful a portrait
as a man may hope to paint of his own personality ; the light of them
penetrates the veil and makes visible to us the mechanism of the soul. We see
the Humanist, self-conscious, selfquestioning, taking himself, as it were, for
audience, and expressing even his solitary musings through ordered forms of
rhetoric; but beneath this surface aspect we see even more clearly the
passionate soul, earnest in thought, sincere in faith, nobly tenacious
of its ideals; and
through all the rhetoric of balanced question and answer rings the note of
genuine emotion. Very likely Petrarch may have foreseen the probability that
these dialogues would be published after his death ; very likely he may even
have found pleasure in the idea that posterity would one day look deep into his
heart. None the less in writing them he meant to be his own sole and sincere
confidant during his lifetime; they were truly his Secretum; and the
elaboration of their style is due less to their author’s habitual craving to
deserve and win renown, than to his instinctive feeling that the deep matters
of the soul demand the utmost pains that the artist can bestow on their
interpretation.
The interest of the
Secrettim quickens to pathos when we find that its composition synchronises
with Petrarch’s last battle and final victory over his natural frailty. In the
spring of 1343 his daughter Francesca was born ; thenceforward, as he tells us,
while still in the full vigour of manhood, be became master of his passions,
and lived free from the sin which he had always loathed. He bestowed the same
conscientious care on Francesca’s nurture as on Giovanni’s, and with far
happier results; gifted with an amiable disposition, and trained apparently by
judicious guardians, the girl grew up to be the chief solace and delight of her
father’s latter years.
From his quiet scholar’s
life at Vaucluse Petrarch was presently recalled to the world of politics and
intrigue by the lamentable course of events at Naples. King Robert died full of
years and of
honour in January, 1343,
and immediately his kingdom sank into indescribable anarchy and corruption. It
was as if the Wise King, like the physician in Poe’s horrible story of arrested
decomposition, had been able to galvanise the dead body-politic, but only with
the result that, as soon as his controlling power was withdrawn, the
accumulated foulness of years became manifest in an instant. Robert’s heir was
his granddaughter Joanna, a girl of sixteen, married in her childhood to her
cousin Prince Andrew of Hungary, who was only a year her senior. Once again a
parallel suggests itself between the House of Stuart and the Angevin House of
the Two Sicilies. In Naples, as in Scotland, we have a young queen of wilful
temper and ungoverned passions ; a consort of mean abilities and dissolute
inclinations ; presently a murder, of which the husband is the victim, and the
wife is commonly believed to be an accomplice, if not the instigator. Certain
it is that she made indecent haste to marry her paramour, whose brother was the
actual murderer. The tragedy, in the earlier as in the later case, took time
to work out, and Petrarch could have no more than a vague suspicion of doom impending
over his old patron’s family when he paid his second visit to the city ; but
already there was more than enough to disgust him as a man and distress him as
an Italian patriot.
The voyage began with an
omen of misfortune. Starting by sea, he was shipwrecked off Nice, and seems to
have continued his journey by land. On October 4th he reached Rome ; on the 6th
he went
with Stefano Colonna the
Elder to Praeneste, as the guest of Stefano’s grandson Giovanni; on the 12th he
arrived at Naples. The primary object of his mission was to treat for the
release from prison of some turbulent friends of the Colonna family, who had
got the worst of a conspiracy; but as the Pope’s envoy he would naturally be
expected to report on the situation, and two letters to Cardinal Colonna paint
a gloomy picture. Power was in the hands of an unscrupulous Hungarian friar, a
man of abandoned life and filthy habits, who by the irony of chance bore the
name of Robert, as if to point the contrast with the Wise King whose heritage
he misruled. Supported by a cabal of intriguers male and female, “this fierce
inhuman beast oppresses the lowly, spurns justice, and pollutes all authority
human and divine.” Foreseeing something of what might happen after his death,
King Robert had appointed Philip de Cabassoles head of a Council of Regency,
which should hold office till Queen Joanna completed her twenty-fifth year; he
now “ alone embraces the side of forlorn justice; but what can one lamb do amid
such a pack of wolves?” Property and life were alike insecure; the very Council
“ must end its sittings at the approach of evening, for the turbulent young
nobles make the streets quite unsafe after dark. And what wonder if they are
unruly and society corrupt, when the public authorities actually countenance
all the horrors of gladiatorial games ? This disgusting exhibition takes place
in open day before the Court and populace, in this city of Italy, with more
than barbaric
ferocity.” Knowing
nothing of what he was to see, Petrarch was taken to a spectacle attended by
the sovereigns in state; suddenly to his horror he saw a beautiful youth,
killed for pastime, expiring at his feet, and putting spurs to his horse fled
at full gallop from the place.
His mission was a
failure; he argued the prisoners’ case before the Council, and on one occasion
came very near succeeding; but the Council broke up without cominor to a
decision. Indirect influence
O
seemed equally
unsuccessful: “the elder Queen pities, but declares herself powerless;
Cleopatra and her Ptolemy might take compassion if their Photinus and Achillas
gave them leave.” Eventually the men were set at liberty, but not till after
Petrarch had left the city, and then only through the young Queen’s personal
intercession.
“Cleopatra” honoured her
grandfather’s friend personally, and appointed him her chaplain ; but this was
poor compensation for the misery of witnessing the ruin of Naples. A far
greater consolation was the companionship of his friends Barbato and Barili,
whose society he enjoyed throughout his two months’ stay, and with whom he made
long and delightful excursions in the surrounding country.
From the horrors of
Naples, of which an appalling storm in the bay was perhaps the least, Petrarch
fled away in December to Parma. Here too he was in a focus of intrigue; but the
city was now his Italian home, where he could live his own life and pursue his
studies at his pleasure. Moreover, the intrigues here, however much fighting
they might
1
entail, were conducted
according to the usages of
1 O o
polite society, and the
arch-intriguer was his friend.
The chronology of the
next two years is so difficult, that even Fracassetti, the indefatigable
editor and annotator of the Letters, has made mutually inconsistent statements
with regard to it; the following version is given with some diffidence as best
fitting in with the known facts and dates.
Petrarch reached Parma
about Christmas, 1343, and stayed there till February, 1345 ; of his doings
there we have no record. The times were troublous; the brothers da Correggio
were quarrelling; and Azzo, rather than surrender the sovereignty as promised
to Luchino Visconti, sold it to the Marquis of Ferrara. Thereupon Milan and
Mantua formed a league, and in November, 1344, their allied forces laid siege
to Parma. For three months Petrarch endured the disquiet and discomfort of life
in a beleagured town; then “a great longing for his transalpine Helicon came
upon him, since his Italian Helicon was ablaze with war,” and he determined to
break out at all hazards. About sunset on February 24th he and a few companions
sallied forth unarmed from the city ; about midnight they were near Reggio, a
stronghold of the enemy. Here they fell in with armed banditti, who threatened
their lives; unable to resist, they fled at top speed in different directions
through the darkness. Petrarch was just congratulating himself on his escape,
when his horse fell at some obstacle, and he was thrown heavily to the ground,
half stunned, and so badly bruised on one arm that it was some days
before he could put his
hand to his mouth. As soon as possible he recovered his horse, and presently
found a few of his companions ; the rest had ridden back to Parma. The night
was pitch dark, and rain and hail fell in torrents, so that the little party
were forced to take shelter under their horses’ bellies. When the dawn came,
they travelled by by-ways to Scandiano, a friendly town, where they learned
that a body of the enemy had been lying in wait to intercept them, and had only
just gone back to quarters. Here Petrarch’s arm was bandaged, and they went on
to Modena, and thence, on the following day, to Bologna.
Soon afterwards he made
his way to Verona, and here he was compensated for all recent perils and discomforts
by one of the biggest literary “finds” ever vouchsafed to a book-hunter’s
diligence. In a church library he came across a manuscript of Cicero’s letters.
It has generally been supposed that the treasure - trove comprised both the
Familiar Letters and those to Atticus, but there is some reason to think that
only the latter were found on this occasion. However that may be, here was a
discovery for which, even had it stood alone, the world must have hailed Petrarch
its benefactor, and seldom has Fortune played so happy a stroke as that by
which she gave to Cicero’s most ardent and most distinguished pupil the supreme
delight of being the first to see his master in the intimacy of private
converse. The fact that Cicero had published letters was well known, and
scholars had made eager but hitherto fruitless search for the precious
manuscripts. Now
at last the author to
whom they all looked as “ father and chief of oratory and style ” stood revealed
also as the brightest of correspondents, the wittiest of gossips, the most
human of friends ; and Petrarch noted with special delight that Cicero, like
himself, could communicate every passing thought and share every momentary
doubt with the friend who had won his heart. He lost not a moment in making a
copy of the treasure with his own hands ; and the discovery also inspired him
with the idea of writing the first of his two letters to Cicero, by which he
set the fashion of embodying historical criticism in the form of letters to
dead authors.
Petrarch seems to have
spent the whole summer in Verona, in happy companionship with Gulielmo da
Pastrengo, and with Azzo da Correggio, who had fled thither on the failure of
his plot in Parma. During his stay here he probably sent for his son Giovanni,
now a boy of eight years old, and placed him under the charge of Rinaldo da
Villafranca, a well-known professor of grammar in Verona. In the autumn he left
Verona for Avignon, and Gulielmo accompanied him on his journey as far as
Peschiera, on the Brescian border. A letter from Gulielmo, interesting because
so few of the letters written to Petrarch by his friends have been preserved,
tells of their journey to the little frontier town ; the night spent almost
wholly in talk, the start before sunrise, and the affectionate parting, on a
knoll overlooking the Lago di Garda.
Nothing further is known
of Petrarch’s journey back to Avignon or of the date of his arrival, except
that he was certainly
there by the middle of December ; he may quite possibly have arrived a month
or two earlier.
The next two years were
spent principally at Vaucluse. As on former occasions, his life there was
diversified by frequent visits to Avignon, and there are many signs that he was
fully in touch with the life of the Papal Court, and with the course of events
in Provence and in Italy. With Clement VI he stood higher in favour than ever;
in either 1346 or 1347 the Pope offered him the post of Papal Secretary and
Protonotary, and though Petrarch wisely declined an honour which would have
taken him from his proper business of scholarship to overwhelm him with the
uncongenial burdens of official correspondence and court intrigues, the refusal
in no way diminished Clement’s anxiety to promote his interests; in October, 1346,
he conferred on him a canonry at Parma, and in 1348 gave him the higher dignity
of Archdeacon there. Once again it is pleasant to find that Petrarch’s first
thought on receiving an accession of wealth was to offer help to a friend. It
must have been about the time of his nomination to the canonry that he wrote to
an unknown correspondent: “ I heard something the other day from one who knew
about the state of your money chest, and I have determined to be so bold as to
come to its assistance. Here then is an offering—I will not say from the
surplusage of my fortune, for that would sound unpleasantly like bragging, nor
does the mere phrase ‘ Fortune’s bounty ’ quite express my meaning, so I will
say
that I have sent you a
trifle from the bounties which Fortune has deigned to heap on me, who busy not
myself with such things, beyond all expectation or wish of mine; and however
small the gift, I doubt not but that you will deign to accept it, and in this
little thing, as in a tiny mirror, you will see the sender’s great affection,
and will weigh the magnitude of his goodwill against the littleness of his
& &
gift.”
Petrarch, then,
maintained his place in the Pope’s favour and his connection with friends at
Avignon ; but residence in the city was as distasteful to him as ever, and
Vaucluse was his home for the next two years. There is an undated letter to
Guido Settimo, almost certainly written at this time, in which he speaks of
himself as still suffering from the smart of his old wound, and praying, as yet
unsuccessfully, for deliverance. The allusion is unmistakable ; time had done
something to mitigate the violence of his passion, but his love for Laura was
still the dominant sentiment of his heart. Vaucluse gave him peace; here he
found full opportunity for quiet study of books and of nature, with just so
much companionship of intimate friends as might serve to keep his faculties
alert and his affections keen. Never surely has a storm-tossed soul taken
refuge in a more perfect haven. Visit the spot to-day, and you find a busy
little township clustered round a few mills whose wheels are driven by the
Sorgue. But it is easy to ignore the modern buildings, to dot the lower slopes
in fancy with patches of woodland, and to picture the place
as Petrarch knew it.
There has been no appreciable change in the apparently perfect circle of steep
hills crested with limestone crags, in the great silent pool where the river
rises under the shadow of a cliff 350 feet high ; or in the long rock-strewn
falls through which it rushes noisily to the valley-level. The very fig tree
growing between the rocks at the head of the cataract may be the descendant of
one from which Petrarch could offer Cardinal Colonna a dish of figs drawn, like
his jug of drinking water, from mid-stream. The little church may have stood on
its present site; the Bishop of Cavaillon’s castle, now a picturesque ruin, was
then an almost impregnable fortress crowning a steep hill 600 feet high ; only
there was no thriving French village, but at most a few peasants’ cottages
dotted about the valley, with Petrarch’s own house standing probably on the
site now occupied by one of the mills, with his meadow bordering the stream,
and his two gardens, the upper one on the slope by the cataract, the lower one
originally perhaps a peninsula jutting into the river-bed, and by him converted
into an island by the cutting of a little channel now utilised as a mill-race.
| View of Vaucluse and the Castle of the
Bishop of
|
Here in the years 1346
and 1347 Petrarch “waged war with the nymphs of the Sorgue, seeking to annex
enough of their domain to build a habitation for the Muses.” Gardening gave him
recreation; for work we know with certainty that this is the date of his
treatise in two books On the Solitary Life, which he dedicated to the Bishop of
Cavaillon. Philip watched over the composition of the treatise,
though it was not till
many years later that Petrarch sent him a copy of the finished work. And in
1347 a visit to his brother Gherardo at his monastery furnished him with the
subject of his essay On the Repose of Men vowed to Religion.
It was to the troubles
of Naples that Petrarch owed the pleasure of the Bishop’s society. Andrew of
Hungary had been murdered in September, 1345; Queen Joanna speedily married
the murderer’s brother, her cousin, Prince Lewis of Tarentum; King Lewis of
Hungary led an expedition into Italy to avenge his brother’s death; and Philip,
sick of his position as nominal head of an ineffective Regency, left Naples in
disgust, and came back to his diocese and to his castle above Vaucluse.
Petrarch’s grief at the ruin of Naples, poured out in a letter of lamentation
to Barbato, was deep and sincere ; but in intercourse with Philip he found
perhaps an adequate compensation for his distress.
In January, 1347, he had
the exquisite pleasure of taking Socrates to pay a visit to the Bishop at
Cavaillon ; the charming little letter in which he accepted the latter’s
invitation deserves to be translated in full. It runs thus :—
“ I will come to you at
the time when I know you will be glad to see me, and I will bring with me our
Socrates, who is your most devoted admirer. We will come the day after
to-morrow; and we will not shrink from the sight of a city, though we shall be
dressed in rough country clothes. For we fled hither two days since, hurriedly
and as at a bound, from the restless tumult of the town, like ship
wrecked sailors making
for shore, planning for ourselves a time of unharried quiet, and in the dress
which seemed most appropriate for the country in winter. You bid us betake
ourselves just as we are to your city; we will obey all the more willingly as
we are drawn by eager longing for your company. Nor will we care greatly how
our outer man looks in your eyes, to whom we both wish and believe that our
souls stand visible and undraped. One thing, most loving father, you will not
deny to the wishes of your friends: if you wish to have us often as your
guests, you will let us share no special banquet of dainties, but your usual
meal. Farewell.”
CHAPTER VII
ROME AND RIENZI 1347
| RIENZI ; FROM AN ITALIAN PRINT |
PETRARCITS life was full
of startling contrasts
and sharp surprises; but
in all his career’s vicissitudes no external event ever stirred his emotions
quite so violently as the Roman crisis of 1347. The gardener of Vaucluse, the
philosophical essayist on saints and hermits, the poet of a tran- quillised but
constant devotion, became in an instant the fervid politician, the people’s
champion, the prophet of a revolution. The society in which he lived was
hostile to his ideals ; he cared not whom he offended by his advocacy of them ;
his patron and lifelong friend was of the opposite faction; even gratitude and
friendship must give place to the patriot’s zeal; blows were being struck for
Rome, and with all his soul Petrarch believed that the cause of Rome was the
cause of God.
Fully to comprehend the
high hopes excited in him by Rienzi, the hot enthusiasm with which he
championed the Tribune in the face of a sceptical and unfriendly world, and the
bitterness of his disappointment when the cynics were justified of their
unbelief, and the gallant enterprise failed like any base intrigue of faction,
we must realise
how all his ideals of
Qrovernment and all his hopes of progress were based and centred in the eagerly
desired restoration of Roman supremacy. From his father he inherited the
political creed of the White Guelfs expounded by Dante in the De Monarchia.
Pope and Emperor were alike the consecrated vice-gerents of God 011 earth ;
each in his allotted sphere must rule the spiritual and temporal world in conformity
with the Divine Will ; both were “ Holy Roman,” and both, as Petrarch insisted
more fervently than any of his predecessors, must regard Rome as their capital
city, and must have a special care of Italy, “the Garden of the Empire.” Their
authority over distant provinces might be delegated to vicars and vassals ; but
Italy was their home, the motherland of the imperial race, in whose chief city
resided, dormant perhaps but indefeasible, the right to rule the world ; and
both Pope and Emperor were bound to make the government of Italy their chief
and personal care. In all this there was nothing peculiar to Petrarch ; the
Emperors claimed to be the legitimate successors of the Csesars ; the Popes
appealed to the Donation of Constantine as their title to exclusive sovereignty
in Rome ; the claims of both were theoretically reconciled by the White Guelf
creed. Nor was Petrarch’s personal enthusiasm for Rome a new sentiment in the
world ; the tradition of her greatness and the aspiration for its revival had never
quite died away, and a generation before Petrarch wrote his first letter to
Benedict XII, Giovanni Villani had been inspired by the sight of the
Eternal City and the
memory of her past glories to set to work on his incomparable Florentine
Chronicle. What differentiates Petrarch’s enthusiasm for Rome from the
sentiments of any predecessor is his conception of the continuity of her
history. He regards its periods not as separate episodes connected only by an
accidental tie of locality, but as successive stages in an ordered development,
phases bright or dark in one deathless career, destined to lead, through
whatever difficulties and trials, to the glorious consummation of invincible
empire. Looking thus upon her history as a whole, political forms and
ordinances became to him mere secondary matters; the Pope and the Emperor
themselves were but instruments designed to secure the supremacy of the Roman
people, the people for whom Romulus built his sacred wall, whose supremacy
Scipio assured by his victory over Carthage, for whose safety Cicero unmasked
the conspiracy of Catiline. If only either Pope or Emperor would devote himself
to the service of the Roman people, Petrarch would be a good Papalist, a loyal
Imperialist. Alas! both were sadly neglectful of their high mission ; both
were thinking only of their own petty interests ; neither of them would live in
Rome or work for her. Suddenly, like thunder from a clear sky, came the
astounding news that Rome had found her champion ; that a man of obscure origin
but of lofty aims had made his appeal to the noblest of her traditions; that he
had set himself to revive the great age of her history, the age when the people
was really sovereign, andhad taken for himself
the title of Tribune as an earnest that he would be as the Gracchi, that he
would stand for the people and break the yoke of their oppressors from off their
necks. Petrarch’s course lay before him clear and unmistakable: Rienzi was
trying to realise his own ideals ; at any sacrifice of private interests, even
of private friendships, he must go with the champion of the Roman people.
Niccola di Lorenzo Gabrini,
known to his own generation as Cola di Rienzo, and to ours by the further
modification “ Rienzi,” was the son of a Roman innkeeper, who, finding the boy
possessed of unusual talent, sent him to a school of grammar and rhetoric.
Fired with enthusiasm for the classics, Rienzi completed his own education by
diligent study of the ancient monuments and inscriptions, which lay neglected
in the modern city. For a livelihood he adopted the profession of notary, but
his leisure was spent in studying the history of old Rome, and in dreaming how
her glories might be revived. He was by temperament a dreamer; a domestic
tragedy made him a man of action. His brother was killed in a tumult; the
political idealist was thenceforth the avenger of blood. He would exalt Rome by
breaking the power of the barons who misgoverned her. He had self-restraint
enough to await his opportunity. Meanwhile his talents, and especially his
splendid gift of oratory, made him a conspicuous figure in Rome. Soon after
Clement Vi’s accession—there is some doubt as to the exact date, but it was
either in the summer
of 1342 or early in
1343—he went to Avignon as chief spokesman of an embassy sent by the magistracy
and people of Rome to the Pope. Here he must have met Petrarch, here in all
probability their friendship began. There is even a tradition, unsupported by
evidence, that the poet was associated with Rienzi as spokesman of the
embassy; however this may be, it is safe to assume that Rome’s youngest
burgess, fresh from his coronation on the Capitol, must have used his influence
at court in favour of his fellow-citizens. There is indeed a passage at the end
of Petrarch’s magnificent ode Spirto Gentil’ from which some biographers have
inferred either that the two men had never met previously to the composition of
the ode, or that it must have been addressed not to Rienzi, but to some other
eminent citizen of Rome. But the passage in question easily admits of an
interpretation consistent with the narrative here given ; the rest of the ode tallies
perfectly with Rienzi and the events of 1347, and with no other person or
events of the period ; and the tone of Petrarch’s earlier letters to the
Tribune implies a friendship founded on personal acquaintance, as well as on
community of ideas. It is equally safe to assume that intercourse with
Petrarch acted as a keen stimulus to Rienzi. He came to Avignon as a man
honoured in his own city, but unknown beyond it, nursing in his mind great
hopes, which so far he had found no opportunity of communicating to others.
Here he discovered that those hopes were shared by one who could make Europe
ring with the praise of
them, a man not only
famous as the first poet and scholar of his age, but sought out by princes to
be their friend and counsellor, and standing high in the favour of Pope Clement
himself.
The embassy had little
if any tangible result; but Rienzi’s eloquent exposition of the troubles and
needs of Rome is said to have made a favourable impression on the Pope, and
this may help to explain the benevolent attitude of his Vicar four years
later. Of the urgent need for reform there could be no doubt. Since the Pope’s
departure Rome had had no settled government; a series of faction-fights had
constituted her history, the will of the temporary victors her law. Municipal
affairs were supposed to be administered by the popularly elected heads of the
thirteen city wards ; but these Capo- rioni, as they were called, had no force
at their back, and their office was an empty survival from a former Constitution.
The machinery of government was in the hands of the Senator, a chief
magistrate nominated annually by the Pope from the ranks of the nobles. If the
Senator was a strong man in alliance with the barons of the predominant
faction, he was feared and obeyed ; but officially he was hardly more powerful
than the Caporioni. He could never be impartial, for he was never independent.
The House of Colonna, the House of the Orsini, these were by turns the
effective rulers of Rome, and their government was sheer brigandage.
Rienzi, on his return
home, set himself to evolve civil order out of this anarchy. He presently began
a series of harangues to
the people, which involved him in frequent quarrels with the nobles. Gradually
he advanced in popular favour; many of the lesser barons, jealous of the great
Houses which overshadowed them, witnessed without displeasure, or were even
inclined to further the rise of a new power in the State; and it was long
before the pride of the Colonna allowed them to see in their unexpected
antagonist anything but an object of ridicule and insult. But Rienzi’s leaven
worked, and choosing his opportunities with rare skill, he first promulgated a
set of laws for the reform of the Government, and then persuaded the people to
assign to him the task of enforcing them. Alarmed at last, but even now unable
to measure the strength of his despised opponent, Stefano Colonna hurried back
to Rome. The new ruler ordered him to quit the city, and he had not provided
himself with force enough even to contest the mandate; he had to obey, and the
more prominent of the nobles either accompanied, or soon afterwards followed
him into banishment. An abortive conspiracy only served to increase Rienzi’s
power; his enemies were forced to swear allegiance to the new institutions. The
reformer had conquered; for the first time since the battle of Philippi,
liberty was a word of meaning in Rome. In the ecstasy of material triumph,
Rienzi was still mindful of the greatness of his ideal; invested with absolute
power, he took for himself the title identified in the history of old Rome with
the championship of popular freedom, and with consummate tact associated the
Vicar
Apostolic with himself
in the revived dignity. The two were acclaimed joint Tribunes and Liberators of
the Roman people.
The astonishing tidings
reached Avignon in the early summer of 1347 ; they were soon confirmed by a
formal letter from Rienzi himself. Clement and some few members of the Sacred
College may possibly have been statesmen enough to realise that the Papacy must
ultimately succeed to any power wrested from the barons. The attitude assumed
by the Vicar Apostolic in Rome, and the fact that Petrarch seems never for an
instant to have lost favour with the Pope, are indications that the Tribunes
success may have been not altogether unwelcome in the highest quarters. But
among the Roman prelates, and especially in Cardinal Colonna’s household, the
news was received with consternation. Rienzi and all his works were denounced
with unmeasured violence; and only one solitary voice was raised in defence of
the reformer. That voice was Petrarchs. Immediately on hearing of Rienzis
accession to power, he wrote to him and to the Roman people a letter of praise,
encouragement, and exhortation, which he knew would be circulated through the
length and breadth of Italy ; and he followed this up with other similar
letters, with a Latin eclogue, and with the stately Italian ode already
mentioned. To his fervid imagination, it seemed that “ the ancient strife was
being fought again,” that the nobles were playing the part of the worst of the
old patricians, and that the destruction of a power, the more intolerable
because its possessors
were aliens in blood, was the necessary preliminary to a reign of justice.
Estrangement from
Cardinal Colonna was the inevitable result of Petrarch’s championship of
Rienzi; it was not in human nature that a patron should tolerate a client who
openly advocated the ruin of his family, and it must be confessed that Petrarch
was not happy in his manner of dealing with the breach. The eclogue
Divortmm> written on the subject of his parting with the Cardinal, though
not ungraceful, strikes the reader as artificial even beyond the wont of this
kind of allegory. Moreover, it tells less than half the truth. Dislike of
Avignon, longing for Italy, a desire for a life of independence, are all
indicated, and these were genuine motives as far as they went. But no hint is
given of Petrarch’s adhesion to Rienzi, which was the really determining cause
of the separation. Worse still is the letter of condolence written from Parma
some months after the battle of November 20th, in which the Colonna family was
almost annihilated. It opens, indeed, with a sincere and touching
acknowledgment of the writer’s debt to the Cardinal, but all the rest is sorry
reading. The laboured excuses for the delay in writing it, and the cold,
stilted terms of its yet more laboured consolations, contrasting so strikingly
with the passionate outburst of Petrarch’s emotion when his heart was really
wounded, suggest an inevitable task, undertaken with reluctance and somewhat
ungraciously performed. Undoubtedly the very ardour of Petrarch’s patriotism
made him appear more callous
than he really was; a
man of less impassioned sincerity would have found it easier to veil his
governing sentiment. And two things are very noticeable in the history of
Petrarch’s treatment of the Colonna disaster : first, that to the end of his
life he never for an instant doubted the political necessity of breaking their
power ; and secondly, that in spite of this conviction, he never ceased to
speak of them, as distinguished from the other Roman nobles, in terms of deep
personal regard. His relations with his old friend and patron had become hopeless,
and for this very reason he did himself less than justice in the attempt to
continue them.
Avignon was now more
than ever a place of torment to him, and even Vaucluse lay too near the hateful
city to be tolerable as a residence. He resolved that he would go to Italy and
take his stand by the Tribune’s side. Rienzi seemed more firmly seated in power
than ever; the fame of his great enterprise had spread far and wide; he had
formally announced his assumption of power to the sovereign princes of Europe,
and they in return had sent ambassadors of the highest rank to greet and
congratulate him. On the very day when Petrarch set out from Avignon the great
slaughter of the Colonna, which left old Stefano the survivor of all his sons
except the Cardinal, and of nearly all his grandsons, might have seemed to have
rid the Tribune of his most dangerous antagonists. But to those who could see
beneath the surface, the canker of decay was already visible. On
November 22nd Petrarch,
travelling southward, met a courier with letters from Lselius, which must of
course have been sent from Rome before the 20th; these gave news of Rienzi’s
doings which caused him the utmost alarm. He decided to suspend his journey and
await events at Genoa. Letters written on the journey to Laelius and to
Socrates expressed his dismay and apprehension, and on the 29th he wrote in the
strongest terms of anxiety, warning, and entreaty to Rienzi himself. “ I hear,”
he said, “ that you no longer cherish the whole people, as you used to do, but
only the basest faction of them.” He implored Rienzi not to be the destroyer of
his own work, but to stand firm on the lofty ground which he had taken, and to
remember that great efforts are needed to sustain a great reputation. Let him
be mindful of his duty to be the servant of the State, not her tyrant.
Petrarch’s grief at the
impending ruin of his country was made, if possible, more poignant by his sense
of the falseness of his own position. He had trumpeted Rienzi as the saviour of
his country, the hero who had done at a stroke the duty which a long line of
emperors had consistently neglected. For his sake he had broken old
friendships, and exposed himself to the charge of callous ingratitude, the most
odious accusation that could be brought against a man of his temperament. “ A
most frightful storm of obloquy,” he foresaw, must break upon him, if Rienzi
faltered in the great work, and with denunciation of the turncoat would be
mingled bitter ridicule of the dupe. Petrarch was a self
conscious man, whose
vanity would embitter such a trouble, though it would not turn him from his
duty. The agony of his anxiety for his country and the alarm with which he
viewed his own prospects are voiced in the despairing cry of his letter to
Laelius: “I recognise my country’s doom; wherever I turn, I find cause and
matter for grief. With Rome torn and wounded, what must be the condition of
Italy? With Italy maimed, what must my life be ? ”
One ray of hope crossed
his mind: Lselius was an old and intimate friend of the Colonna ; might not
partisanship have led him into exaggeration of the Tribune’s failings? Alas!
his tidings were only too true. Rienzi’s head was turned by the suddenness and
completeness of his success. His cool judgment gave place to capricious
obstinacy; he intrigued with the various parties among his opponents so
clumsily that he united them all against him. He quarrelled with the Pope’s
Vicar, and cited Pope and Emperor to his tribunal; at the same time his
pretensions disgusted the mob as much as his high position excited their envy.
Centuries of misrule had left the Roman people ill-fitted for self-government;
patience could hardly be expected of them. After all, was not Rienzi their
creature ? By what title, then, could he claim to be their despot? It is easy
to tax the Roman people with fickleness; in fairness it should be remembered
that they did not desert Rienzi till he himself had given unmistakable signs
that his lofty patriotism had degenerated into a personal and rather tawdry
ambition. He rose to
power as a great idealist, he fell like any faction-mongering Italian despot,
and his fall was even more sudden than his rise. Hardly had he celebrated an
insolent triumph over the slaughtered Colonna, when Nemesis came upon him. The
mob rose against him in tumult, and to save his life he had to lurk for some
days in a hiding-place in the city, and then flee in disguise to Naples. The
pitiful meanness of the catastrophe embittered his friends’ grief at the
failure of their hopes. “At least,” said Petrarch, “he could have died
gloriously in the Capitol which he had freed.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT PLAGUE AND THE
DEATH OF LAURA
1348-1349
THE condition of Italy in
1348 seemed desper
ate indeed. For five
years the Great Company, a body of soldier-adventurers disbanded by the Pisans
at the close of a war with Florence, had subjected her to a war of brigandage;
Naples lay at the mercy of the Hungarian invader; Lombardy and the Emilia
groaned under the misrule of unscrupulous tyrants ; and the only hopeful attempt
ever made to restore the liberties and reassert the supremacy of Rome had just
ended in ignominious failure. Finally, as if man had not done enough to
devastate the “ Garden of the Empire,” she was now to suffer first a
destructive earthquake, and then the ravages of that appalling scourge of God,
the Great Pestilence. Boccaccio in his introduction to the Decameron has left a
description of this awful visitation, which ranks among the masterpieces of
literature. Perhaps the most striking impression derived from reading it is the
feeling that communities and individuals alike lost their sense of
responsibility; that the ordinary rules of life were abrogated, and the moral
code superseded by the
law that each man made
for himself. Petrarch, too, speaks in a letter to Socrates of the unprecedented
havoc wrought by the plague: “of empty houses, deserted cities, the fields
untilled, their space seeming narrowed by the strewn corpses, everywhere the
vastness of a terrible silence.” He suffered his full share of the general
misery : blow after blow fell upon him, crushing his spirit and crippling his
power of work ; for a year and a half, he declared, in the letter just quoted,
he could neither do nor say anything of worth. That is not literally exact:
even at this season of abject sorrow he produced a few pieces of interesting
work, including the poetical letter to Virgil written at Mantua; but as
compared with any other epoch of his life, the years 1348 and 1349 may be
accounted a barren period. He was miserable and restless. Parma was his home,
but he could not stay long at a time even in his “ Cisalpine Helicon.” We find
him often at Verona, then wandering from one Lombard city to another, and
beo-inning the connection with Padua, which was
OO 1
destined to become so
intimate in the near future. At the end of January, 1348, he was at Verona; on
March 13th he returned to Parma, and brought with him the boy Giovanni, whose
education he now entrusted to the grammarian Ghilberto Baiani. Giovanni
probably lived at home, attending Ghil- berto’s school as a day-boy, and father
and son were both the unhappier for an association which should have brought
solace to the one and a new interest in life to both.
The first bereavement of
which Petrarch received
LAURA
KhiO.M A I'KINT IN THE
PADUAN 1S19 EDITION' Ol- THE CANZONIKKK
certain tidings in this
year of mourning was the death of his cousin and friend, Francesco degli
Albizzi, a sorrow which he felt the more acutely as Francesco was struck down
while on his way to pay him an eagerly expected visit. But already, if we may treat
the uncorroborated evidence of passages in his Italian poems as sufficient
authority for a fact, he had felt the presage of a far heavier loss, which must
change the face of the world for him henceforward. On April 6th, the
twenty-first anniversary of his first meeting with Laura, while resident at
Verona, he felt a sudden presentiment of her death, and on May 19th a letter
from Socrates reached him at Parma telling him that she had indeed died at the
very moment of the mysterious warning. The fly-leaf of his Virgil contains
this entry :—
| Laura;
from a print in the Paduan 1819 edition of the
|
“Laura, a shining
example of virtue in herself, and for many years made known to fame by my
poems, first came visibly before my eyes in the season of my early youth, in
the year of our Lord 1327, on the 6th day of the month of April, in the Church
of St. Clara of Avignon, in the morning. And in the same city, on the same 6th
day of the same month of April, at the same hour of Prime, but in the year
1348, the bright light of her life was taken away from the light of this earth,
when I chanced to be dwelling at Verona in unhappy ignorance of my doom. The
sorrowful report came to me, however, in a letter from my Lewis, which reached
me at Parma on the morning of the 19th day of May in the same year. Her most
chaste and most beautiful
body was laid to rest in
the habitation of the Minor Friars at evening on the very day of her death. Her
soul, I am persuaded, has returned, in the words that Seneca uses of Africanus,
to the heaven which was its home. I have thought good to write this note, with
a kind of bitter sweetness, as a painful reminder of my sorrow, and have chosen
this place for it, as one which comes constantly under my eyes, reckoning as I
do that there ought to be nothing to give me further pleasure in this life, and
that by frequent looking on these words and by computing the swiftness of
life’s flight I may be admonished that now, with the breaking of my strongest
chain, it is time to flee out of Babylon. And this by the prevention of God’s
grace will be easy for me, when I consider with insight and resolution my past
life’s idle cares, the emptiness of its hopes, and its extraordinary issues.”
The death of Laura
removed an element of storm and stress from Petrarch’s life ; at the cost of a
great sorrow it gave him final deliverance from passion. Years afterwards, when
he sat down to write in all candour the autobiographical fragment which he
called his Letter to Posterity, he could even speak of his bereavement as
“timely for him, in spite of its bitterness.” That was the calm judgment of
retrospect; it is the note in the Virgil which expresses his feeling at the
time, and helps us to realise the deep sincerity underlying the elaborate art
of his poems On the Death of Madonna Laura. In poetical quality the second part
of the Canzoniere does not differ from the first; there is
the same faultless
workmanship, the same delicate play of fancy, the same felicitous rendering of
the subtlest shades of emotion. To take only a single illustration, the sonnet
to the bird that sang in winter may rank with the sonnet to the waters of the
Sorgue as a lyric born of the poet’s sympathy with nature. But in sentiment the
poems of the second part differ widely from their predecessors ; their
prevailing tone is exactly that “ bitter sweetness ” of which the note in the
Virgil speaks, and they are permeated by a spirit of piety, which reminds us of
Petrarch’s saying in the Secretum that “ through love of Laura he attained to
love of God.”
The composition of these
poems extended over more than a decade, and we cannot assign dates to them with
even an approach to exactitude. Criticism which relies entirely on
appreciation of spirit and tone is always risky, for it gives undue scope to
the temperament of the critic ; and it is doubly dangerous in dealing with
Petrarch, who was for ever correcting and polishing his works, and whose
faculty of reminiscence was so acute that it could carry him back almost at
will into the temper of a period that had long passed away. Neither can we
trust the position of any given poem in the collection as a proof of its place
in the order of composition ; there can be little doubt that in the final
arrangement of the Canzoniere Petrarch was guided chiefly by his sense of
artistic fitness. Still it is reasonable to suppose that many of the lyrics
were the immediate fruit of his sorrow, and that, speak
ing generally, the
earlier in place were also the earlier in time ; it is difficult, for instance,
to believe that at least the inspiration of the ode Che debb' io far was not
due to the poignancy of recent grief.
All through the summer
the plague infested Avignon, and on July 3rd Cardinal Colonna fell a victim to
it. Stefano the Elder had now outlived all his seven sons. However great was
the strain put upon their relations by recent events, Petrarch had till a year
ago been like a son of the House, and even in the pain of parting he had not
for a moment forgotten or concealed his debt of affectionate gratitude to his
patron. He could not avoid writing to old Stefano, and he accomplished the task
of condolence much better now than in the previous autumn. It was not an easy
letter to write ; he could not pour out his soul, and he would not be guilty of
an insincerity. He solved the difficulty in a way characteristic of him and of
his age, by composing with extreme care an elaborate epistle graced with rich
ornaments of classical learning. Nothing could be more foreign to the
sentiments of our own day ; but it was what a past generation would have called
“a beautiful letter,” and there can be no doubt that its recipient would take
as a compliment the pains bestowed on its composition. Throughout its length
Petrarch keeps his emotion under restraint; but its formality is rather grave
than cold, and in one passage, which speaks of Giovanni as having attained to
the cardinalate and of Giacomo as having been surely destined to rise even
higher had life been granted
to him, the sincerity of
the emotion is almost intensified by the restraint put upon its expression.
If grief could have been
assuaged by public honours, Petrarch would have found no lack of consolation.
The “storm of obloquy” which he anticipated from his association with Rienzi
never burst. On the contrary, hardly a month passed without his receiving some
signal mark of esteem from persons high in place and power. Whatever the rulers
of Italy might think of Rienzi’s abortive political Renaissance, they vied with
each other in doing honour to Petrarch as the leader of its intellectual
counterpart. Humanism was now in the air, and the sure instinct which guides
men swayed by a general impulse pointed to Petrarch as its prophet. Heedless of
political differences, the rulers of Ferrara, of Carpi, of Mantua, and of Padua
were at one in welcoming him to their cities, and that the Pope regarded him
with undiminished favour was testified by his presentation in 1348 or 1349 to
the archdeaconry of Parma, of which he took formal possession in 1350.
Of these new connections
by far the most important was his friendship with Jacopo II da Carrara, the
ruler of Padua. History affords no more typical example of an Italian despot
than this remarkable man, who obtained his lordship by murder and forgery, and
used it to promote the welfare of his city and the interests of art and learning.
Better, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries he appreciated the value of
Petrarch’s work, and this just estimate made him, if possible, more eager
than the others to do
honour to the poet and to enjoy the luxury of his companionship. It was in 1345
that he seized the government of Padua ; over and over again in the next few
years he sent letters and messages entreating Petrarch to come and live with
him there; at last, in March, 1349, Petrarch paid him a visit and was received,
“not like a man, but with such a welcome as awaits the souls who enter
Paradise.” To ensure his new friend’s future residence in Padua, Jacopo
procured him a canonry there, to which he was formally inducted on the Saturday
after Easter. Loaded thus with honours and benefits, Petrarch may be forgiven
if he ignored Jacopo’s crimes, which he had not personally witnessed, and
celebrated in terms of unstinted eulogy his friend’s virtues and charm, of
which he had daily experience in the intimacy of private life. Jacopo was evidently
a man as fascinating to his friends as he was dangerous to his enemies. When
he set himself to win Petrarch’s love and gratitude, he succeeded so completely
that the latter could write to Luca Cristiano, to whom he would certainly not
be guilty of an insincerity, “ I have another residence equally tranquil,
equally fit to be our joint home, at Padua, in the valley of the Po, where no
small portion of our happiness would consist in the privilege of living with my
benefactor whose qualities I have so extolled to you.”
This letter was written
to Luca on May 18th, very soon after Petrarch’s return to Parma, where he found
that, as he prettily says, “the one draw
back to his stay in
Padua had been that he had thereby missed a visit from Luca and Mainardo.”
Bitterly indeed did he regret his absence when some weeks later he learnt that
it had lost him his last opportunity of seeing that loyal soldier and true
friend alive. Finding him away from home, the two had supped in his house and
slept together in his bed. The next morning they left a letter telling him that
they had just come from Avignon after saying good-bye to Socrates, and were on
their way, Mainardo to Florence and Luca to Rome, but that a little later on
they hoped to come back and stay with him in Parma. Finding this letter on his
return more than a month afterwards, Petrarch began to wonder why he heard no
further tidings of them, and presently dispatched a confidential servant to
Florence with a letter to Mainardo, and a request that he would send the
servant on to Luca. Eight days later the messenger reappeared with the
lamentable news that, as the friends were crossing the Apennines, they had been
ambushed by armed banditti; that Mainardo, who was riding ahead, had been
instantly slain, and Luca, who dashed to his assistance, had at length escaped,
no one knew whither, so severely wounded that it was feared he must have died.
Perils of this kind were common enough in the Italy of the fourteenth century;
Petrarch himself, as we have seen, had had more than one narrow escape from a
similar fate. But his wrathful indignation knew no bounds when he heard that
these banditti were under the protection of certain great men of the neighbour
hood “unworthy of the
name of nobles,” who prevented the peasants from coming to Luca’s help and
avenging Mainardo’s death, and orave the
o o 1 o
robbers shelter in their
fortresses. Petrarch was for some time in doubt about Luca’s fate. He made
fruitless inquiries at Florence, at Piacenza, and in Rome ; at length a member
of his household happened to meet a Florentine of position passing through
Parma, and, knowing his master’s anxiety, made bold to entreat the stranger to
see Petrarch and tell him all he knew. From this stranger Petrarch heard to his
great comfort that Luca was still alive, but the melancholy story of Mainardo’s
death was confirmed in every particular.
Many other friends died
in these terrible years of plague, among them one whose loss caused Petrarch
the keenest grief, though their friendship was of recent origin. Paganino
Bizozero was a native of the Milanese territory whom Luchino Visconti had
appointed Governor of Parma. Here Petrarch found him at the end of 1347, and
here apparently he died on May 23rd, 1349, though his governorship had come to
an end four months before. Their intimacy, therefore, lasted less than a year
and a half, but Petrarch’s account of him, given in the same letter to Socrates
which tells of Mainardo’s death, shows how close a bond of affection united
them during that short period. “ There was left to me,” he says, “a friend of
illustrious dignity, a high-minded and very prudent man, Paganino of Milan, who
by many instances of his worth had become most congenial to me, and
seemed altogether worthy
not of my love only, but of yours too. So he had begun to be as a second
Socrates to me ; there was almost the same confidence, almost the same
intimacy, as well as that sweetest property of friendship, the sharing of
either kind of fortune and the opening of the soul’s hiding- places for the
loyal communication of its secret things. Oh, how he loved you; how eagerly he
desired to see you whom indeed he did see with his spiritual eyes; how anxious
he was for your life in this general shipwreck! so that even I marvelled that a
man not personally known could be so well beloved. If ever he saw me sadder
than my wont, he would ask in friendly trepidation, What is the matter ? What
news of our friend ? And when he had been told that you were well, he would put
away his fear and overflow with exceeding joyfulness. Now he, as I must tell
you with many tears . . . was suddenly seized one evening with this sickness of
the plague which is now destroying the world. He had taken supper with his
friends, and had spent the rest of that evening entirely in talking about us
and discoursing of our friendship and our affairs. That night he spent in
enduring extreme agony with perfect fearlessness; in the morning death quickly
carried him off; and, the plague abating no jot of its usual cruelty, before
three days were past his sons and every member of his household had followed
him to the grave,”
CHAPTER IX
FLORENCE AND BOCCACCIO
1350
PETRARCH’S life may be
divided into three clearly defined periods, of which the boundary marks are
dates in the history of his friendships. The first period ends with the great
plague, and the deaths of Laura and Mainardo; the second opens with his visit
to Boccaccio, and closes with the second plague and the deaths of Socrates,
Lselius, Nelli, and Barbato; the third is the last period of the poet’s life,
when of his earlier friends only Guido Settimo and Philip de Cabassoles remained
alive, but his old age was saved from desolation by the ever-strengthening tie
of affection which bound him to Boccaccio, by the veneration of his pupils, and
by the devoted love of his daughter.
The last years of the
first period, while afflicting him with heavy sorrows, had brought him a great
accession of material wealth : he now held a priory, three canonries, and an
archdeaconry, to the latter of which was attached a large official house, of
which he made occasional use, while retaining for ordinary purposes the more
modest residence, which he had bought and beautified. His personal expenses,
apart from the cost of travel, cannot have
146
been large, for wherever
he went he found welcome and entertainment. His income, then, was more than
sufficient to supply his personal needs, and to allow him to make provision for
his son and daughter. Characteristically, he spent the surplus in furthering
his life’s work. From this time forward, he was hardly ever without a copyist
or two in the house—sometimes he had as many as four at once—engaged in making
transcripts from the precious manuscripts, which he had either hunted out
himself, or borrowed from friends, with a view to their reproduction. He still
did much of this work himself, and more than once we find him complaining, not
that good copyists were dear, but that they were scarce. We shall never know
with certainty how much we owe to this employment of his money, but we may
safely assume that if he had remained poor, many a library would be without
some of its richest treasures. Even as things were, his industry and
Boccaccio’s were taxed to the utmost limit of human capacity.
He divided the earlier
months of 1350 between Padua, Parma, and Verona; on Valentine’s Day he was
present at the solemn translation of the body of St. Anthony of Padua from its
first place of burial to the church newly erected in the saint’s honour. A
document discovered by Fracassetti fixes June 20th as the day on which he took
formal possession of his archdeaconry; immediately afterwards he must have
left Parma for a flying visit to Mantua, for it was on his way back from that
city that some members of the Gonzaga family enter
tained him on June 28th
to a sumptuous supper in their castle of Luzzera, which Petrarch describes in a
humorous letter to Lselius as “a home of flies and fleas enlivened by the
croaking of an army of frogs.”
Meanwhile the year of
Jubilee was being celebrated in Rome, with the more solemnity as the terrors
of the plague had inclined the minds of many to religion, and disposed them to
obtain the indulgences promised to those who went on pilgrimage to Rome.
Petrarch tried unsuccessfully to persuade Gulielmo da Pastrengo to accompany
him thither. Failing in this, he set out alone, about the beginning of October.
He travelled by way of Florence, a journey ever memorable as the occasion of
his first meeting with Boccaccio.
History contains no more
satisfactory episode than the friendship of these two men of letters. From
their society their companions must have derived the same kind of pleasure that
the eye finds in looking at a harmonious arrangement of complementary colours.
Their natures were made to supplement each other; the life of neither could be
reckoned complete till he had found his fellow. Petrarch had an anxious spirit;
under every rose he looked for the thorn, and if he failed to find it, he vexed
his soul with questioning whether it ought not to have pricked him. Boccaccio
plucked the flower and wore it with a gay assurance that took no count of
thorn-pricks. Petrarch’s worst troubles were the offspring of his own soul;
Boccaccio’s were imposed on him by the rub of circumstance.
Petrarch was
introspective, self-conscious, jealous to a fault of his reputation, but
laudably anxious to deserve it. Boccaccio was too well amused by the follies of
others to be deeply concerned about his own, and too instinctively an artist to
care overmuch what other people thought of his art. Petrarch had the deeper
nature, the higher ideals, the more sensitive conscience; in Boccaccio we are
captivated by a rich generosity of sympathetic humour. In intellect no less
than in character each of them was his friend’s complement. They were alike in
their enthusiasm for learning and in their indefatigable industry, but they
were alike in hardly anything else. Petrarch was incomparably the riper
scholar, the sounder critic ; he had a more reasoned judgment, a more
cultivated taste; Boccaccio had the more fertile imagination, the brighter wit.
Petrarch was lucid in argument, but apt to be prolix in narrative; Boccaccio
showed little talent for disquisition, but his was the story-teller’s
inimitable gift.
| BOCCACCIO
|
There is therefore a
quality in Petrarch’s intercourse with Boccaccio which distinguishes it from
all his other friendships. Close and intimate as it was, there were others
which for some years to come surpassed it in intensity of feeling; Boccaccio
was very dear, but Socrates, Lselius, and Francesco Nelli, of whom we shall
have to speak immediately, were dearer still. All these, however, were Petrarch’s
followers in the battle for culture; Boccaccio stood by his side, a
comrade-in-arms. True, that with unfailing reverence he styled himself his
pupil, and that the
title was accurate as well as modest. Petrarch possessed, in a degree rare even
among great leaders, the divine gift of kindling enthusiasm, and Boccaccio’s
glowing tributes may express without exaggeration the magnitude of his debt;
none the less, he stands out above the rest, his master’s sole intellectual peer.
In Boccaccio’s house
Petrarch found another Florentine, with whom he fell at once into a friendship
that reminds us of Lombez and the earlier days at Avignon. Francesco di Nello
Rinucci, commonly called Francesco Nelli, came of an influential family; his
father had held the office of Gonfalonier of Justice, the highest executive
dignity in the republic. He was himself in Orders, and Prior of the Church of
the Holy Apostles, but had some talent for affairs, for which he found scope
later in the post of Secretary to the Grand Seneschal of Naples; at home
Petrarch seems to have thought that his abilities were insufficiently
appreciated, in spite of the fact that he was a most loyal patriot. He was an
intimate friend of Boccaccio, and an enthusiast for learning. He took his place
at once in the inmost circle of Petrarch’s friends, and the latter, with his
familiar habit of bestowing gracious nicknames, called him his Simonides.
Here, too, Petrarch met
the eminent scholar and lawyer Jacopo or Lapo da Castiglionchio, of whose
accomplishments Coluccio Salutati, himself a distinguished follower of
Petrarch in humanistic studies, could write after his death : “ Whom has our
State ever produced more diligent in pursuit of our
studies and of those
which pertain to eloquence ? Which of the poets was unknown to him, nay,
rather, which of them was not a hackneyed writer to him ? Who was better versed
in the works of Cicero ? Who more abundant in gleanings from history? Who more
deeply imbued with the precepts of moral philosophy? Good heavens! How he
abounded in sweetness, and in weightiness of discourse; how ready he was in
dictation, or in setting himself to the task of writing I ”
o o
With all these three men
Petrarch had already been in communication by letter. Lapo had sent him
Cicero’s Pro Milone the year before, and thenceforward the two kept up a
constant commerce of books. In addition to the Pro Milone, Lapo sent him at
different times the Pro Plancio and the Philippics, of which Petrarch had
copies made by trustworthy scribes before sending them back ; and in return he
communicated to Lapo his own precious discovery, the Pro Archid. Lapo was a
fervent admirer of Petrarch’s genius, and possessed a manuscript of the last
thirteen books of his Familiar Letters, which is now preserved in the
Laurentian Library at Florence. It contains some interesting marginal notes in
Lapo’s own handwriting.
How long Petrarch had
been in communication with Boccaccio and Nelli is not quite certain. If one of
his letters to Socrates is rightly ascribed to the year 1350, he was already on
terms of affectionate intimacy with them both ; and this is confirmed by
Boccaccio’s statement that he was devoted to Petrarch for forty years or more.
This passage
has led to a conjecture
that the two may have met in Paris, while others have dated their intimacy from
Petrarch’s first visit to Naples; but Boccaccio’s words do not necessarily
imply more than devoted admiration, and Petrarch’s own statement that Boccaccio
had not previously known him by sight is a conclusive reason for assigning the
year 1350 as the date of their first meeting face to face. We must suppose,
then, either that the sentence in the letter to Socrates is a later
interpolation, or that the earlier intimacy had been one of letters which have
not come down to us. The first extant communication is a copy of verses sent
by Petrarch to Boccaccio in 1349.
This first visit was a
very short one; Petrarch hastened on to Rome, but on October 15th he was
delayed at Bolsena by an injury to the thigh caused by a kick from his horse.
In spite of this mishap, he was in Rome by November 1st, but his wound still
gave him much pain. In December he left Rome for his birthplace, Arezzo, whose
citizens received him with extraordinary honour. Thence he went on to Florence
for a second and probably longer visit to Boccaccio; and it was here, not at
Arezzo as Fracassetti states, that Lapo gave him a copy of the newly discovered
Institutions of Quintilian. As was his wont, Petrarch eagerly devoured the new
treasure, and then sat down to an appreciation of it in the form of a letter to
its dead author.
He left Florence about
the new year, and three months later he received a return visit from Boc
caccio, of which the
occasion must have been singularly gratifying to both. Technically Petrarch
was still a banished man; the decree which exiled Petracco two years before his
son’s birth applied to his descendants, and Petrarch was theoretically in peril
of his life when in his forty-seventh year he visited the city of his
ancestors. Practically there was no fear of any attack on him. Florence was
ea^er to claim her share in the distinction achieved
o
by her illustrious son.
But for very shame she could not speak of Petrarch as a Florentine while her
own records proclaimed him an exile. Petrarch’s visits to Florence gave an
appropriate opportunity of redressing the wrong done to him through his father,
and his friendship with Boccaccio enabled the reparation to be made in a
singularly agreeable manner. At the beginning of April Boccaccio went to Padua
as the bearer of a letter from the Priors of the Guilds and the Gonfalonier of
Justice of the People and State of Florence, revoking the sentence of
banishment, restoring the property confiscated nearly fifty years before, and
inviting Petrarch in terms of honorific compliment to fix his abode in the
city of his forefathers. Petrarch replied in cordial and dignified terms. It is
noticeable that even as an exile he had always spoken of Florence as his “
Patria,” and he must now have felt a new pleasure in acknowledging his Tuscan
descent. For a time he may even have thought seriously of accepting the
invitation to go and live among those who now addressed him as “
fellow-citizen.”
However this may be,
Padua had for the moment lost its charm, and had become a place of mourning for
him. He had returned there on January 7th, to find that a fortnight earlier
Jacopo da Carrara had been assassinated by a bastard nephew. Petrarch’s grief
was profound. His lamentations, loud and bitter as they are, have no note of
exaggeration ; his praises of his dead friend, though pitched in the highest
key, are absolutely sincere. Jacopo’s death must have made him not unwilling to
leave Italy for a time, when in the summer of 1351 it became convenient for him
to return to Vaucluse.
|
THE TOMB OF JACOPO II
DA CARRARA, WITH INSCRIPTION BY PETRARCH
|
CHAPTER X
VAUCLUSE
1351-1353
ON May 3rd he left Padua,
accompanied by the
boy Giovanni, after
dictating an impromptu epitaph for Jacopo’s tomb, on which he might profitably
have spent a little more time. The genuineness of its sentiment makes
inadequate amends for the extreme flatness of its composition. Petrarch had the
pen of a ready writer, but the fluency of his poetic style always needed the
correction of his maturer judgment.
That night he stayed at
Vicenza, and found there, to his amusement and delight, an old man more
enthusiastic about Cicero than himself, or at least more intemperate in praise
of him. The talk of the company after supper fell upon the great Latin author,
the old man abounding in unqualified admiration of him. Here was Petrarch’s
pet subject brought ready to his hand; he put forward his favourite view that
Cicero was flawless as a writer and an orator, but somewhat unstable as a
politician, and he gave the audience the rare privilege of hearing him read his
own two letters to Cicero, which are written upon this theme. But the old man
was unconvinced; he threw out his hands
piteously, crying, “
Spare, oh spare my Cicero ! ” And when pressed by arguments that he could not answer,
shut his eyes and turned away his head as if in pain, moaning, “ Ah me ! Ah me!
So they are finding fault with my Cicero ! ”
Petrarch stayed some
days at Verona, and then went on to Piacenza, whence, on June nth, he
dispatched a letter to Socrates, written some weeks earlier, but held back for
want of a trusty messenger. To this he added a few sentences announcing that
he was on his way to Vaucluse, and hoped that Socrates would soon meet him
there. He actually arrived there by way of Mont Genevre on June 21st.
For nearly two years
Vaucluse was once more his home, and he seems to have lived there for weeks and
even months together without interruption. Of course he went sometimes to
Avignon; during the whole period, indeed, business of various kinds took him
there much oftener and kept him there much longer than he liked. Not a few such
visits were paid in connection with a little incident of monastic intrigue,
which gave him a good deal of occupation and must surely have afforded him some
amusement. To the great Benedictine abbey of Vallombrosa were attached several
dependent religious houses, among which was the abbey of Corvara, near Bologna.
In 1351 the post of Abbot of Corvara fell vacant; the right of nomination was
vested in the Abbot of Vallombrosa. Petrarch and his Florentine friends desired
that the dignity should be conferred on a certain Don Ubertino; Nelli was
especially eager to back
Petrarch in procuring this appointment, and the Bishop of Florence also used
his influence in Ubertino’s favour. The Abbot was a saintly person, unused to
the ways of a place- hunting world. He yielded to all this pressure and
nominated Don Ubertino ; then almost immediately he repented of his decision,
revoked the appointment, and made a second nomination in favour of Don Guido,
another brother of the Order. Ubertino refused to give way ; he had got his
presentation, and he meant to have the place. Guido was equally firm in his
determination to be Abbot of Corvara. The dispute went for judgment to Avignon
; and the Abbot of Vallombrosa found himself in a pitiable position. He was of
course disposed to maintain his second nomination, and had forwarded papers in
support of it to Avignon. But again the Bishop and Nelli intervened, and
induced him to promise neutrality. He wrote a letter to his lawyer at Avignon
full of praises of Ubertino, and ending with the cryptic statement that he
could not speak more explicitly because he had once already been accused of
inconstancy, and he would not incur the reproach a second time. To the ordinary
man’s intelligence it seems rather as if he had now incurred it from both
sides. The affair dragged on for months; the law was not more expeditious at
Avignon than elsewhere, and the decision was further delayed by the Pope’s
illness. Petrarch threw himself heart and soul into Ubertino’s cause ;
Fracassetti even represents him as arguing it in court; his own letters give no
warrant for this, but
show that he left
nothing undone that influence and solicitation could achieve. “ I have become
in another’s behalf what I never have been in my own,” he writes, “a busy
importunate canvasser.” The case was heard at last in full Consistory;
Petrarch’s opinion was quoted, and his wishes carried weight with Pope and
Cardinals, and much to his delight Ubertino was declared lawful Abbot of
Corvara.
After settling this
little matter of ecclesiastical patronage, Petrarch still had occasion for
frequent visits to “Babylon.” But he stayed there no longer than he could help,
and the period from Midsummer, 1351, to the middle of April, 1353, may be
regarded as practically spent in his “Transalpine Helicon.” It was a period of
profuse letter-writing; the Familiares are not arranged in quite trustworthy
chronological order, but, speaking roughly, more than five books of them, from
the middle of the eleventh to nearly the end of the sixteenth, were written at
this time. From frequent allusions in these letters, we know also that it was a
time of much reading and hard literary work, though we cannot name with
certainty the books on which Petrarch was engaged. There is a passage in the
lamentable letter to Socrates of June, 1349, in which Petrarch says that his
friends are looking for great men’s histories from his pen, but that he has now
no heart for anything but mourning. The allusion must surely be to his great
and long- forgotten work, the Lives of Illustriotis Men, and we may infer that
this history of the Roman
Republic, written in the
form of a series of biographies, from Romulus to Julius Csesar, had been well
advanced in the earlier periods of his residence at Vaucluse ; it is reasonable
to conjecture further that on getting back to his books, and resuming his usual
habits of work, Petrarch would devote himself anew to its composition, but he did
not quite complete it, for at the end of 1354 he told the Emperor that “he
still wanted time and leisure to give it the final touches.” Italian politics,
too, as we shall have occasion to note later, occupied much of his time and
thought during these years. But above all, this is a period of happy country
life in the beautiful valley of the Sorgue, and there are no more delightful
passages in the whole range of Petrarch’s writings than those in which he
describes its charms. A complete collection of these passages would fill a
fair-sized volume. Here we must be content with the description of his life
given in a letter to Nelli in the summer of 1352. He writes as follows:—
“ I am spending the
summer at the source of the Sorgue. You know what comes next without my saying
it, but as you bid me speak, I will tell you in a few words.
“ I have declared war on
my body. May He without whose aid I must fail so help me, as gullet belly,
tongue, ears, and eyes often seem to me to be not my own members, but my undutiful
foes. Many are the evils which I remember having suffered from them, especially
from the eyes, which have led me into all my falls. Now I have shut them up
here so that they can
see hardly anything but sky, hills, and streams; neither gold, nor jewels, nor
ivory, nor purple cloth, nor horses, except two mere ponies, which carry me
round the valleys in company with a single lad. Lastly, I never see the face
of a woman, except that of my bailiffs wife, and if you saw her, you might
suppose yourself to be looking on a patch of the Libyan or Ethiopian desert.
’Tis a scorched, sunburnt countenance, with not a trace of freshness or juice
remaining; had Helen worn such a face, Troy would still be standing; had
Lucretia and Virginia been thus dowered, Tar- quinius had not lost his kingdom,
nor Appius died in his prison. But let me not, after this description of her
aspect, rob the goodwife of the eulogy due to her virtues; her soul is as white
as her skin is swarthy. She is a bright example of female ugliness boding no
harm to man. And I might say more on this head, if Seneca had not dealt with
the theme at length in his letters which allude to his Claranum. My bailiffs
wife has this singular property, that while beauty is in general an attribute
proper rather to woman than to man, she is so little affected by the want of it
that you may reckon her ugliness becoming to her. There never was a trustier,
humbler, more laborious creature. In the sun’s full blaze, where the very
grasshopper can scarce bear the heat, she spends her whole days in the fields,
and her tanned hide laughs at Leo and Cancer. At evening the old dame returns
home, and busies her unwearied, invincible little body about household work,
with such vigour that you
might suppose her a lass
fresh from the bedchamber. Not a murmur all this time, not a grumble, no hint
of trouble in her mind, only incredible care lavished on her husband and
children, on me, on my household, and on the guests who come to see me, and at
the same time an incredible scorn for her own comfort. This woman of stone has
a heap of sacking on the bare ground for her bed. Her food is bread well-nigh
as hard as iron, her drink wine which might more justly be styled vinegar
drowned in water; if you offer her anything of mellower flavour, long custom
has taught her to think the softer victual hard. But enough about my bailiffs
wife, who would not have engaged my pen except in a country letter. Well, this
is my eyes’ discipline. What shall I say of my ears ? Here I have no solace of
song or flute or viol, which, elsewhere, are wont to carry me out of myself;
all such sweetness the breeze has wafted away from me. Here the only sounds are
the occasional lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, the songs of the birds,
and the ceaseless murmur of the stream. What of my tongue, by which I have
often raised my own spirits, and sometimes perhaps thos“e of others? Now it
lies low, and is often silent from dawn to dusk, for it has no one except me
to talk to. As to my gullet and belly, I have so disciplined them, that my
herdsmans bread is often enough for me, and I even enjoy it, and I leave the
white bread, brought me from a distance, to be eaten by the servants who
fetched it. To such an extent does custom stand
me in the stead of luxury.
And so my bailiff and good friend, who humours all my whims, and has himself a
constitution of stone, has no quarrel with me on any subject, except that my
fare is harder than he says a man can put up with for any time. I, on the other
hand, am persuaded that such fare can be tolerated longer than luxurious
living, which the satirist declares to be most wearisome, and not to be endured
five days together. Grapes, figs, nuts, and almonds are my delicacies. And I
thoroughly enjoy the little fish which abound in this river, especially the
catching of them, a pursuit in which I am most diligent, and very fond of
handling both hook and net. What shall I tell you of my clothes and shoes ?
They are changed from top to toe. Not such was my old fashion. ‘ Mine,’ I say,
because of the surpassing vanity with which, while observing the proprieties, I
trust, and holding fast by seemliness, it was my pleasure of old to shine among
my equals. Now you would take me for a ploughman or a shepherd, though all the
while I have finer clothes here with me, but there is no reason for changing my
dress except that the clothes which I choose to wear first get dirty first. My
old bonds are loosed, and the eyes which I once sought to please are closed for
ever; and I think that, even if they were still open, they would not now have
their wonted mastery over me. But in my own eyes I never look so well as when
loose- girt and free. And what can I tell you of my dwelling- ? You might take
it for the house of Cato
or Fabricius. There I
live with a single dog and
only two servants. I
gave the slip to all the rest in Italy, and would that I had given them the
slip on the journey so that they could never get back to me, for they are the
one hurricane that wrecks my peace. My bailiff, however, lives in the adjoining
house, always at hand whenever he can be of service, but with a door that can shut
off his quarters at any moment, if I feel the least symptom of boredom at his
being always in waiting.
| Vaucluse; the Sorgue and Petrarch’s Garden |
“ Here I have fashioned
me two little gardens, the most apt in the world to my fancy and desire ;
should I try to picture them to you, this letter would be long drawn out. In a
word, I think the world scarce holds their like, and if I must confess my
womanish frivolity, I am in a huff that such beauty should exist anywhere out
of Italy. The one I always call my Transalpine Helicon, for it is bowered in
shade, made for study as for nothing else, and consecrated to my Apollo. It
lies close to the pool in which the Sorgue rises, beyond which is only a
trackless crag, quite inaccessible except to wild animals and birds. My other
garden lies close to my house; it has a better-tilled appearance, and Bromes
nursling (Bacchus) has his favourite plant there. This, strange to say, lies in
the middle of the beautiful swift river, and close by, separated only by a
little bridge at the end of the house, hangs the arch of a grotto of natural
rock, which under this blazing sky makes the summer heat imperceptible. It is
a place to fire the soul to study, and I think not unlike the little court
where Cicero used to declaim his speeches, except that his place
had no Sorgue flowing by
it. Under this grotto, then, I sit at noon ; my morning is spent on the hills,
my evening in the meadows, or in that wilder little garden, close to the
source, where design has embellished nature, where there is a spot in midstream
overshadowed by the lofty crag, a tiny spot indeed, but full of lively
promptings by which even a sluggard soul may be goaded to high imaginings. What
would you have ? I might well spend my life here, if it were not at once so far
from Italy and so near to Avignon. For why should I try to hide from you my
twin weakness ? Love of the one soothes my sorrow and plucks at my heart;
hatred of the other goads and exasperates me, and seeing that the loathsome
stench of her breeds plague throughout the world, is it any wonder if her too
near neighbourhood pollutes the sweet air of this little country-side? It will
drive me away from here ; I know it will. Meanwhile you know my mood. The one
thing I long for is the sight of you and my few surviving friends ; the one
thing I dread is a return to city life. Farewell.”
Only a few months after
this letter was written, the faithful farm-bailiff, Raymond Monet, who had been
truly a friend as well as a servant to his master for many years, died, and
Petrarch, then at Avignon, wrote to the Cardinals Talleyrand and Gui de
Boulogne, asking them to sanction his immediate return to Vaucluse. Regulus, he
says, asked leave to return from Africa at a critical moment to look after his
farm at home on account of his bailiffs death, and Gnseus Scipio similarly
asked leave of
absence from Spain to
portion his daughter. “Now I,” says Petrarch, writing on January 5th, “may
support my appeal for leave of absence by the precedent of both these great
generals ; for by my bailiffs death yesterday not only does my farm run the
risk of neglect, but my library, which is my adopted daughter, has lost her
guardian. For my bailiff,” he goes on, “though a countryman, was gifted with
more than a townsman’s forethought and refinement of manners. I think earth never
bore a more loyal creature. In a word, this one man by his surpassing fidelity
compensated and made amends for the sins and treacheries of the whole race of
servants, as to which I have not only to make daily complaint by word of mouth,
but have sometimes put my complaints into writing. And so I had given into his
charge myself, my property, and all the books which I have in Gaul ; and
whereas my shelves contain every sort and size of volume, mixed big and little
together, and I myself have often been absent for long periods, never once on
my return have I found a single volume missing, or even moved from its proper
place. Though unlettered himself, he had a devotion to letters, and he took
special pains with the books which he knew I valued most. Much handling of
them had by this time taught him to know the works of the ancients by name, and
to distinguish my own small treatises from them. He would beam with delight
whenever I gave him a book to hold, and would clasp it to his bosom with a
sigh. Sometimes under his breath he
would call upon its
author by name, and, strange as it may sound, the mere touch of the books gave
him an enjoyable feeling of advancement in learning. And now I have lost this
excellent guardian of my property, with whom for fifteen years I have been wont
to share all my troubles, who was to me, so to speak, as a priest of Ceres, and
whose house served me for a temple of fidelity. Two days since, in obedience to
your Eminences’ summons, I came away, and left him as I thought slightly
indisposed. He was an old man, it is true, but, as Maro says, of a hale and
green old age. Yesterday at evening he left me, called hence to attendance on a
better Master. May He grant uninterrupted repose to his soul after the many
labours of his body here. His one prayer to God was for repose. This he seeks
at Thy hands; deny him not this, O Christ. Grant him to dwell no longer in my
house, but in the house of the Lord, to regard the Lord’s pleasure, not mine,
and to have his conversation in His temple, instead of in my fields, where he
laboured many years with limbs hardened to cold and heat alike. In my service
he found toil; in Thine let him find rest. At Thy command the bonds of his old
prison-house have been loosed and he has come to Thee.
“One of my servants, who
happened to be present at his death, brought me the sad news as quickly as
possible, and arriving here late last night, told me that he had breathed his
last, after making frequent mention of my name, and calling with tears on the
name of Christ. I grieved sincerely, and my grief
would have been still
more bitter, had not the good man’s age long since warned me that I must look
for this bereavement.
“ So I must go. Give me
leave, I pray you, most eminent Fathers, and let me go from the city where I am
of no service, to the country where I am wanted, and where I am more anxious
about my library than about my farm.”
Great as were the joys
and sorrows of life at Vaucluse, they were far from monopolising Petrarch’s
attention. His spirit had regained its buoyancy, and once more he threw
himself heart and soul into the great drama of Italian politics. The years
1351-3 were fruitful in episodes of that drama. The war between Venice and
Genoa, the pacification of Naples, the appointment of a Commission to regulate
the government of Rome, and the imprisonment and release of Rienzi at Avignon,
the death of Clement VI, and the election of Innocent VI to succeed him, all
belong to these eventful years.
With the struggle for
the supremacy of the sea Petrarch had no very direct concern, but no one who
valued the safety of Europe, least of all an Italian patriot, could see without
alarm the two great maritime republics wasting their strength on internecine
war, while the weakness of Constantinople and the constant growth of the
Moslem power might at any moment create a situation of urgent peril to the
West. Clement was probably a shrewder politician than those who saw only the
pleasure- loving side of his nature suspected; he did his best
to bring about peace,
and it may have been at his instigation that Petrarch, whose letters received
a consideration that would not now be accorded to the appeals of even the most
distinguished amateur diplomatist, wrote in terms of eloquent entreaty and
fervid exhortation to the rulers of both states. But neither formal nor informal
diplomacy availed to stay the war. In February, 1352, the fleets had a drawn
battle. Eighteen months later, the Venetians under Pisani gained their
overwhelming victory off Sardinia. A shameful flight saved the Genoese Admiral
Grimaldi and a third of his force; the rest of the Genoese fleet was either
sunk or captured. For the moment Venice remained mistress of the Mediterranean.
In the affairs of Naples
Petrarch took a closer personal interest, though apparently no active share.
Here again the Pope was chief mediator. After months of negotiation, in the
course of which he did a stroke of business for the Papacy in buying the
Countship of Provence from Queen Joanna, Clement succeeded in brinorino- the
hostile factions
o o
to terms. The King of
Hungary recognised Lewis of Tarentum, Joanna’s cousin, paramour, and second
husband, as King of the Two Sicilies, and for a while the land had peace. Lewis
was now first in rank at Naples ; but first in influence and power stood the
King’s tutor in the art of statesmanship, the great Florentine, Niccolo
Acciaiuoli, who became Grand Seneschal of the realm. Though not yet personally
acquainted with Petrarch, Acciaiuoli
was excellently disposed
in his favour, for he knew intimately the whole circle of his Florentine
friends : his own brother Angelo, in fact, the Bishop of Florence, was included
in that circle, and enjoyed Petrarch’s hospitality at Vaucluse in the spring of
1352. In the Grand Seneschal, Petrarch saw a not unworthy successor to King
Robert, alike as a ruler and a patron of letters.
Interesting as were the
politics of the maritime republics and of Naples, the magic word Rome evoked a
far deeper sentiment. Since the fall of Rienzi, confusion had reigned in the
city. The Jubilee had brought a kind of truce, for the Romans thoroughly
understood the value of their city as a place of pilgrimage. But Clement was
too sensible to take the temporary toleration of his Legate as a sign of
settled order, and appointed a Commission of four Cardinals to advise him on
the necessary reforms. In the autumn of 1351 this Commission asked Petrarch to
lay his views before them, and he did so in two letters, which illustrate and
emphasise in a remarkable manner the sincerity and consistency of his views.
Writing under a full sense of responsibility, and writing to Princes of the
Church, whose sympathies would naturally be with the ruling class, he repeats
the conviction expressed five years earlier to Rienzi, that the Baronial Houses
were the eternal enemies of Rome’s peace, and that if good government was to be
made possible in the city, the magistracy must be recruited, not from them, but
from the ranks of the people.
Only a few months after
this correspondence with
the Cardinals, Rienzi
himself appeared in Avignon, a prisoner in peril of his life. He had taken
refuge with the Emperor: the latter cannot be severely blamed if he showed
scant sympathy with the upstart who had summoned to his bar the heir of the
Caesars. The Pope wanted to have Rienzi ; the Emperor had no pleasure in
keeping him : to the Pope he went. The chamber which was his prison is shown to
all who visit the Papal palace, and they are told that he was released from it
at the intercession of his friend Petrarch. There is no written authority for
this gracious legend, but two things are certain : Petrarch was in a fury of
indignation at Rienzi’s imprisonment, and the reason which he assigns for his
release could have no validity outside Crotchet Castle. He was in a fury
because, as he thundered, Rienzi was arraigned not for his bad deeds, but for
his good ; not for betraying the cause of Rome, but for having dared to assert
her sovereignty. Rienzi was in the grip of wicked men; how could he ever expect
deliverance ? Hear the astonishing story. Through the modern Babylon ran a
rumour that Rienzi was a poet. What! A sacred bard lies chained in this city of
culture. Off with his gyves! And Rienzi comes out a free man. As history this
is a little thin, and it is pleasant to think that he who circulated it may,
after all, have had a hand in the happy deliverance.
In August, 1352,
occurred a curious little episode, of which the details are somewhat obscure,
though the main fact is clear. The papal secretaryship was
again vacant, and two of
Petrarch’s friends among the Cardinals used secret influence to get it offered
to him. Again he wisely shrank from the uncongenial burden, and in his turn
took secret measures to defeat his friends’ well-meant but unwelcome scheme.
What reason can there have been for all this mystery ? Once before the office
had been openly offered and declined; the same kind of thing was to happen,
formally or informally, three times more in the course of the next twelve
years. Why this manoeuvre of sap and countersap now ? Possibly the Cardinals
may have wanted to confront him with a fait accompli; possibly he may have
feared to wound their susceptibilities by open opposition. The reasons are all
conjectural, but there is ample warrant for the fact.
This was not the only
preferment resigned by Petrarch in this year. In the autumn he was appointed to
a canonry at Modena, but being already provided with a sufficient income, he
sent the presentation to Luca Cristiano on October 19th, and the terms of the
accompanying letter in which he explained his action are a model of that
delicate tact which makes it possible for one friend to accept a service of
this kind from another.
Rienzi had been set free
in August, 1352. At the end of the year the Pope, who had admired his
eloquence, tolerated his power, and profited by his fall, was no more. For some
time Clement had been in failing health. In the spring of the year Petrarch,
who held all physicians for quacks, as indeed at that time of the world’s
history most of
them were, wrote the
Pope a letter warning him to beware of their practices. This brought on the
poet the hatred of the medical profession, and a controvery ensued of which we
can read only one side. Our estate would be the more gracious if we could read
neither: to those who love Petrarch best as a man, he must appear most
detestable as a controversialist. Whether in spite of his physicians’ exertions
or because of them, Clement died on December 6th, 1352, and twelve days later
the Sacred College, spurred to haste by information that King John of France
meditated a visit to their neighbourhood, chose Stefano Alberti, Cardinal of
Ostia, to succeed him.
Clement’s successor took
the name of Innocent VI ; to those who regard innocence as synonymous with
ignorance, the choice must have seemed admirable. It is only fair to add that
the new Pope had a better title to it in the exemplary austerity of his life.
He checked the licence of the Papal Court, reformed abuses, and insisted on
bishops living in their dioceses; but his ignorance was appalling. Here in the
middle of the fourteenth century, at the head of the Church, which numbered in
her ranks five-sixths of the educated men of Europe, was a Pope who, at the
suggestion of a malevolent Cardinal, seriously proposed to excommunicate
Petrarch as a necromancer, on the sole ground that he was a student of Virgil.
The absurd sentence was never passed ; many of the influential Cardinals were
well affected to Petrarch, and it so happened that his especial friend
Cardinal Talleyrand had
been instrumental in procuring Innocent’s election. But for a moment the
ridiculous accusation was a serious danger, and however abominable Petrarch may
have found Avignon in the past, its neighbourhood must have seemed yet more
destestable when the rude bigotry of Innocent had taken the place of Clement’s
refined taste and kindly tolerance.
CHAPTER XI
MILAN AND THE VISCONTI
1353-1354
PETRARCH had meant to
spend the winter in Italy. On November 16th, 1352, he started from Vaucluse in
fine weather, which had been unbroken for many weeks, but he had hardly left
the valley when a gentle drizzle set in, which presently turned to a heavy
rain, and as the day wore on to a veritable deluge. He took shelter at
Cavaillon, where he found the Bishop indisposed, but declaring himself cured by
the sight of him. Philip besought him to give up the idea of his journey, and
in the course of the night came news that the roads round Nice were closed to
travellers by armed bands of the mountaineers. All through the night the rain
fell in torrents, and in the morning Petrarch found his friend’s entreaties,
which in themselves had been nearly enough to turn him, supported by the fact
that “one route was made impassable by war, and all by flood.” It seemed, he
thought, as if God would not have him go forward, and he returned presently to
Vaucluse. In the spring of 1353 he resumed the project. In April he paid a
visit to his brother Gherardo, whom he had not seen for more than five years,
but of whose courageous
conduct, when Montrieu
was devastated by the plague, he had heard an account some two years before,
which had filled him with joy and admiration. Not only had Gherardo refused to
desert the post in which he believed Christ had set him, but when the plague
came, and brother after brother fell a victim to it, he spent his whole time
nursing the sick, giving absolution to the dying, and burying the dead. Then
he found himself, with one faithful dog, the sole survivor of a house which had
numbered over thirty brethren. Marauders came to pillage the defenceless shrine
; Gherardo opposed their entrance, and they slunk away abashed. Then, having
saved the sacred edifice and its contents, he set himself to have it
repeopled, and applied to the principal monastery of his Order, not for any
reward or recognition of his services, but to have new brethren given him and a
new prior set over him. To this brother, whom Dr. Koerting has aptly called “
Francesco without the modern elements,” the latter had a whole-hearted attachment.
From an unsteady, headstrong youth, Gherardo had grown to be a man of
singularly resolute character, and the elder brother, whom his conduct had
formerly inspired with grave anxiety, now looked with unqualified admiration on
his piety and self-devotion. His visits to Montrieu were rare, but they
evidently gave him unqualified pleasure, and he warmly recommended the
monastery, through his brother-poet Zanobi da Strada, another of his Florentine
friends, to the favour of Acciaiuoli and the Court of Naples. From Montrieu he
went
back to Vaucluse, and on
April 26th paid what proved to be his last visit to the city which had so
deeply influenced his fortunes, where so much of his life had been spent, and
which, in spite of its associations with Laura and with Socrates, he so
cordially detested. He went back to make preparations for what he intended, as
in fact it proved, to be his final departure from Provence.
Early in May he set out,
travelling as he had come two years before, by the direct route over Mont
Genevre. As on his descent from the top of the pass he left the clouds behind
him, and “the soft, warm air, rising from the Italian valley, caressed his
cheek,” the sight of Piedmont spread out to the eastward smote him with gladness,
and in a poem of eighteen hexameters he poured out a salutation to “ the land
beloved of God, the land of unmatched beauty, the land rich in wealth and in
men, the mistress of the world, on whom art and nature had lavished their
choicest favours, and to whom he was now eagerly returning, never again to
depart from her.” It is not pretended that in workmanship these lines can equal
the hexameters of Virgil, or even of Politian, but they are veritably a great
lyric, for almost alone among Petrarch’s Latin verses they utter the note of
rapturous inspiration.
This salutation to Italy
was written on the spot. It is very probable that the sight of those glorious
valleys stretching away from Mont Genevre inspired Petrarch also with the idea
of his greatest Italian poem, the Ode to the Lords of Italy. Various dates have
been assigned to this supreme lyric, but
the best choice seems to
lie between 1345, the time approximately assigned by De Sade and Fracas- setti,
when the earlier depredations of the Great Company inflicted new sufferings on
Italy, and 1353 or 1354, the time suggested by Gesualdo and
preferred here, when Petrarch, returning to the valley of the Po, found the
princes and republics of his country bidding against each other for the service
of similar bands of foreign mercenaries. Every line of this glorious ode burns
with the fire of purest patriotism ; it is a cry of lamentation over his
Italy’s wounds, of passionate entreaty to her princes for union and for peace,
and of prayer to God, wrung from the suppliant’s very soul, that He, who for
pity of man came down from heaven, will turn and look upon the beloved sweet
country, and soften the hard hearts of those who afflict her with war. Here is
the real national hymn of Italy; for five hundred years it haunted the
imagination of those who dreamed of her unity, gave inspiration to the counsels
of her statesmen, and nerved the arm of her soldiers. The unsurpassed beauty of
the poem as a lyric is almost equalled by its fruitfulness in political result.
If this was, indeed, the
time at which the ode Italia Mia was composed, there is a pathos which can
without exasperation be called tragic, in the && & * fact that it
coincides with the least excusable error of Petrarch’s life, the one action in
which he seemed to fall below his high standard of patriotism. He had hardly
touched Italian soil, when he accepted the shameful patronage of the Archbishop
of Milan.
N
Of all the ruling
families who afflicted Italy in the fourteenth century, the Visconti were the
most odious. It is true that their fellow-tyrants could not be excelled in the
magnitude of their vices, but few were so ill-provided with compensating
virtues. The viper was the appropriate cognisance of the House, and its present
head, the Archbishop Giovanni, habitually goes by the name of the Great Viper
in the pages of Villani’s chronicle. In truth he had just the qualities with
which the serpent is credited—its cunning, its callousness, and its poison. If
he had not the wanton ferocity of his great- nephew Bernabo, his cold,
deliberate ruthlessness seemed almost more hateful. That he was a consummately
able and successful statesman is indisputable, but we find no hint in his
career that his lust of power was ever checked by a scruple, or lit by a ray of
magnanimity.
Luchino had died in his
bed in January, 1349: an event not quite so rare in the Visconti family as in
some others. Giovanni succeeded him, and the power of Milan stood higher than
ever. With Luchino Petrarch had had some amicable correspondence, initiated by
the ruler of Milan, who asked for a copy of verses and some plants from the
poet’s garden. Both verses and plants were sent, accompanied by a letter
couched in the courtly terms of compliment required by good manners in that
age, but giving Luchino not ambiguously to understand that the encouragement of
men of letters is the chief glory of princes. Now as Petrarch passed through
Milan in uncertainty where
to go next, Giovanni,
“the greatest of Italian princes,” laid on him hands of friendly compulsion,
and persuaded him to fix his abode there. From Petrarch’s first narrative,
written before he realised any need for apology, we gather that the interview
went somewhat as follows: The Archbishop couched his request in the most
flattering terms ; he whose lightest word was usually treated as a command
condescended to ask for Petrarch’s presence in Milan as a favour. Petrarch was
on the point of objecting that he was pledged to work, that he hated a crowd
and longed for quiet, but the Archbishop anticipated all his objections and
answered them before they were made. He would place at his disposal a healthy
house in a delightful part of the city, with the church of St. Ambrose on one
side, and a view over the plain to the Alps on the other ; could the country
offer a more peaceful retreat? His time should be his own, he should be
absolutely his own master; no service should be expected of him, no obligation
imposed. Petrarch yielded, and yielding incurred a reproach from which his
warmest partisans cannot wholly clear him.
| The Equestrian Statue of Bernabo Visconti |
The news brought utter
dismay to some of his best friends. There is indeed no hint of disapproval from
Socrates; to that loyal and affectionate heart, we may suppose, whatever
Petrarch did seemed right. But the Florentines could not possess their souls in
even a show of patience, and no one who realises the situation can refuse them
his sympathy. A good Florentine could not help hating Milan, and no better
Florentines than
Boccaccio and Nelli ever breathed the Tuscan air. It was not merely that
Florence and Milan happened to be inveterate enemies; their antagonism was
derived not from a mere accident of history, but from a conflict of principles.
Whatever the faults of her government, the great Guelf Republic stood for
civic liberty; whatever the merits of Milanese order, the name of Milan’s
rulers symbolised tyranny. In going to live with the “Great Viper,” the master
whom they revered seemed to them, not without reason, to have fallen below the
most elementary standard of patriotism. From Nelli came a letter of
remonstrance, the tenor of which can be pretty accurately inferred from Petrarch’s
reply. Boccaccio took a rod from the master’s own cupboard; he employed
Petrarch’s favourite device of allegory and in a pastoral dialogue upbraided “
Silvanus ” (as Petrarch often called himself in compositions of this kind) for
deserting and betraying the nymph Amaryllis (Italy) and giving himself into the
hands of her oppressor, Egon (the Archbishop), the false priest of Pan, a
monster of treachery and crime. Petrarch replied to his friends in letters
which give the genuine explanation of his conduct, but do not touch the main
issue. The real gist of the remonstrance is that he, the Italian patriot, has
gone over to the enemy’s camp. He replies that the Archbishop is a very
powerful and very courteous prince, that great men’s commands have to be
obeyed, especially when they take the form of entreaties, and that he feared
to incur the reproach of arrogance by
refusing. All this is
quite sincere: he had a delicate sensitiveness which made it very difficult for
him to say “ No” to those who went out of their way to be kind to him, and the
Archbishop was a man to whom few people would dare to refuse anything for which
he condescended to ask. He meant to have the World’s Laureate as an ornament to
his Court, and he got him. By sheer strength of will and suppleness of method
he dominated Petrarch ; but he did not win him, as Azzo and Jacopo had won him,
by the heart, even though, like every one else, he showed him only the best
side of his nature. The last thing a man could do with Giovanni Visconti was to
love him.
One consideration, at
which Petrarch just hints, may have had legitimate weight with him. The
Archbishop offered him a “healthy” house; with the Great Plague fresh in
remembrance that was an inducement worth thinking about, and strangely enough
Milan had hitherto entirely escaped the pestilence. Petrarch was a very brave
man ; many a time we have seen him hazard his life for a whim, and go unarmed
through a country swarming with brigands. But the bravest man may prefer Goshen
to a charnel-house, and having no special duty to combat the plague, he might
avoid it if he could.
So in Milan he stayed
and believed himself his own master. The Visconti kept their promise, and put
no constraint upon him. They knew their man; he would have wriggled free from
chains, but the silken bonds of courtesy and kindness held him fast. If he
attended a public ceremony, it was as an
honoured guest; if he
represented his patrons abroad, it was as chief spokesman of a distinguished
embassy. The close scrutiny of his friends’ eyes discerned that his residence
in Milan was derogatory to his highest ideals, but it must be acknowledged that
in the view of society at large those very ideals were exalted by the exceeding
honour done to his person.
H is first attendance at
a state ceremonial nearly cost him his life; he rode out in the train of the
Visconti brothers to meet the new papal legate, Cardinal Albornoz. Night was
falling when the Cardinal arrived, and the darkness was increased by clouds of
dust from the two cavalcades. Petrarch rode forward in his turn to make
obeisance, and was resuming his place when something frightened his horse; the
animal jibbed and backed, and dropped his hind-legs over the precipitous and
unguarded edge of the road. Petrarch was saved
o o
from a fall that would
probably have been fatal by the promptitude and dexterity of young Galeazzo
Visconti. The horse hung on by his fore-feet only, and Petrarch fell off into
some brambles, which arrested his fall for a moment, and just gave Galeazzo
time to grasp him by the hand and pull him up in safety. The horse too,
lightened of its burden, managed to scramble up. Petrarch might well consider
that he owed his life to Galeazzo.
A few weeks later he
attended a far more imposing if somewhat melancholy ceremonial. As already
mentioned, the crushing defeat of the Genoese off the mouth of the Loiera took
place in August.
Wounded in her honour by
the flight of her admiral, and crippled in power by the loss of more than half
her best ships, the city turned upon her rulers, and after driving them from
power, took the desperate course of seeking help from Milan. The Archbishop’s
aid was to be had only on his own terms ; the price of it was the lordship of
the city. Men scarcely believed their ears when it was known that the Genoese
were ready to pay the price. Even Petrarch, the Archbishop’s honoured guest and
counsellor, was shocked for a moment at the proud city’s humiliation. But the
shameful bargain was struck, and on October 10th the Archbishop received from
the ambassadors of the city the submission of Genoa. He made them a dignified
and encouraging reply; he had got what he wanted, and was not the man to grudge
stately phrases. It must be allowed that he had the graces of external
deportment. It must be allowed also that he did not neglect his share of the
bargain. He made serious efforts to negotiate an honourable peace with Venice,
and Petrarch was among the envoys entrusted with the delicate task. The
victorious republic rejected his overtures with contempt, and a year later
suffered in her turn the retribution that waits on arrogance. In November,
1354, the Genoese admiral, Paganino Doria, with a new fleet, sailed up the
Adriatic, and surprised and utterly destroyed the naval force of the Venetians
at Porto Lungo. The war was over, and it was Venice who in the following year
had to sue for peace. The strategy and tactics of this great achievement were
Doria’s, but men noted
that the turning point in the struggle had been the intervention of Milan.
oo
It seemed as though
Giovanni Visconti had only to put his hand to an enterprise, and its success
was assured. But by a strange coincidence, neither he nor the great Venetian
Doge, Andrea Dandolo, lived to see the issue of the struggle ; Dandolo died in
September, and Giovanni Visconti on October 3rd.
He was succeeded in his
sovereignties by his great-nephews Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo, who kept the
territories of Milan and Genoa as a common possession, and divided the rest of
the inheritance. Their accession was made the occasion of a magnificent
ceremony, at which Petrarch delivered the inevitable harangue, and was much
disgusted at having it interrupted in the middle by an astrologer, who declared
that this was the one propitious moment for executing the deed of partition.
The brothers continued to him the full measure of their great-uncle’s favour,
and Bernabo shortly afterwards asked him to stand godfather to his infant son
Marco. The enduring result is a birthday poem in Latin hexameters, of which the
first few lines are not without elegance, but which presently degenerates into
a catalogue of the incredible number of persons who, unfortunately for the
conscientious student of Petrarch, have borne the name of Marcus.
A rather painful incident
of a private character has to be noticed as belonging to this period. In 1352
the boy Giovanni, though only fifteen years old, had been appointed to a
canonry at Verona,
and his father had sent
him from Vaucluse to take possession of it, commending him to the care of his
old schoolmaster Rinaldo and of Gulielmo da Past- rengo. Now, probably owing to
his connection with the Visconti, Petrarch lost the favour of Can della Scala,
Mastino’s heir; and Giovanni, who may have given a handle to his enemies by
some youthful irregularity of conduct, was deprived of his benefice, and
returned to live with his father.
| THE TOMB OF ANDREA
DANDOLO, WITH INSCRIPTION BY PETRARCH
|
The year which brought
this domestic anxiety brought also a notable addition to Petrarch’s library. In
January, 1354, he received from the Greek general, Nicholas Sygerus, who was
equally distinguished as a soldier and a scholar, a manuscript of the Homeric
Poems in Greek, probably the first copy of Homer sent from East to West since
the severance of the Churches. His delight in the possession of this treasure
furnishes a touching illustration of his enthusiasm for the classics. “From the
extremity of Europe,” he writes, “you have sent me a present, the worthiest of
yourself, the most acceptable to me, the noblest in intrinsic value that it was
possible
for you to
send What gift could come
more appropriately from
a man of your talent and eloquence than the very fountain-head of all talent
and eloquence ? So you have given me Homer, whom Ambrose and Macrobius have
well named the fount and origin of all divine imagination. . . . Your gift
would be complete indeed, if only you could give me your own presence together
with Homer’s, so that under your guidance I might enter on the strait path of a
foreign language, and enjoy your
gift in the happy
fulfilment of my own wish. . . . Your voice, if only I could hear it, would
both excite and assuage the thirst of learning that possesses me ; but it
reaches not my ears, and without it your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I am
deaf to him. Nevertheless, I rejoice in the mere sight of him; often I clasp
him to my bosom and exclaim with a sigh, ‘ Oh, great man! How do I long to
understand thy speech!’ . . . Take then my thanks for your exceeding bounty.
Strange to say, Plato, the prince of the philosophers, was already in my house,
sent to me from the West. ... Now through your generosity the Greek prince of
poets joins the prince of philosophers. ... If there is any book that you wish
to have from me, I beg you to let me make a return for your great kindness ;
use your right to command me. For I, as you see, use my right over you ; and
since success in begging breeds boldness in the beggar, send me Hesiod, if your
leisure allows, send me, I pray you, Euripides.”
CHAPTER XII
CHARLES IV AND PRAGUE
1354-1357
CHARLES of Luxemburg,
Prince of Bohemia,
son of the blind King
John, was elected King of the Romans in 1346, a few weeks before his father’s
death at Crecy. Strictly speaking, he should have borne no higher title
previous to his coronation, but the stringency of the old rule had become
relaxed by courtesy, and we find him constantly addressed as Emperor from the
first. His election was the result of a papal intrigue, carried out during the
lifetime of his predecessor Lewis “the Bavarian,” who had been deposed and
excommunicated by three successive Popes. Naturally it was displeasing to
those who considered that an Emperor’s main function should be to annoy the
Pope. Lewis had lived up to this simple view of his duties; he had even, as we
have seen, revived the good old imperial practice of setting up an Anti-Pope.
Charles IV was the Papacy’s effective rejoinder, nearly twenty years delayed,
but the Papacy could afford to wait. Militant German imperialists nicknamed him
“the Priests’ Kaiser,” but after the death of Lewis in 1347 his title was
generally accepted.
Now, if ever, the White
Guelf ideal of Pope and Emperor ruling the world jointly seemed to have its
chance. Yet it was not even seriously tried. It is easy for us, who have been
enlightened by the genius of Macchiavelli, to comprehend the failure; for since
the days of the great Florentine it has been an accepted axiom that human
nature is the most important factor in politics. The White Guelf theory never
had a chance precisely because of its logical perfection. Admirable as an
embodiment of ordered thought and philosophic synthesis, it lacked just the one
thing needful, in that it made no allowance for the friction of human passions.
There was just a chance that Petrarch might see this. He had broken loose from
the methods of the schoolmen, and had taken the classical writers for his
models. If you had said to him that systems were useless unless you could get
suitable men to work them, he would have accepted the statement without demur,
and would have quoted you a dozen instances of the fact from Livy, and as many
illustrations of the principle from Cicero; in the last year of his life he
might even have cited his own admirable treatise Concerning the Best Methods of
Administering a State. But he did not realise this truth in practical politics,
or see how fatal it must be to his hopes, precisely because he stood too near
to the Middle Ages, and his own life too closely resembled the lives of the men
who had evolved the theory.
Not that he was its
bigoted adherent. As we have seen in considering his relations with Rienzi,
the sovereignty of Rome
was to him the supreme end of politics, and he would have welcomed any means by
which that end could be attained. Personally his warmest sympathies were with
a revival of the Roman Republic; but this had been tried and had failed ; and
with mingled feelings of disillusionment and hope he took up again the White
Guelf idea, and wrote letter after letter to Charles IV, urging him by every
incentive which could stimulate his ambition or rouse his conscience to come
to Italy and cherish his rightful bride. The first of these letters is assigned
by Fracassetti to February, 1350, but contains a passage which makes 1351 seem
the more probable date. At the latest, it was written only about three years
after Rienzi’s fall. Frequently during the intervening years there were rumours
that the Emperor was coming to Italy, but as frequently the Emperor put off the
visit with what seemed to Petrarch frivolous excuses. The poet spared neither
rebuke nor reproach, but the Emperor bore him no grudge for his plain speaking.
When at last he arrived in Italy, he invited him to spend a week at his Court,
and even sent Sagramor de Pommieres, an officer of his bodyguard, to escort
him thither.
Charles had come to
Italy with the full assent of the Pope, to whom he had promised not to spend
more than the actual day of his coronation in Rome, and to respect the papal
sovereignty over the States of the Church. Early in November, 1354, he arrived
in Padua, where Jacopo’s sons and successors received him with every honour,
and were
rewarded with the title
of Vicars Imperial. Then came his first disillusionment: Can della Scala shut
the gates of Verona against him. The Visconti were of course hostile, for,
being but a novice in diplomacy, he had made no secret of his wish to form a
league against them. He went to Mantua, where the Gonzaga received him well,
and where he expected to find ambassadors from the cities of Tuscany. Here was
his second disappointment; as the Pope’s ally, he had found himself unwelcome
to many of the old Ghibellin families ; now he was to learn that his imperial
title deprived him of all countenance from the Guelf republics ; of the Tuscan
states only Pisa, pathetically faithful to her traditions, sent envoys to
welcome once more an Emperor to Italy. The “ Priests’ Kaiser” had fallen
between two stools. But Charles was no fool; he could listen to unpalatable
advice and profit by experience ; and in Italy the lessons of statecraft, if
learnt at all, were learnt quickly. Charles agreed with his adversaries while
he was in the way with them. He no longer talked of taming the Visconti’s
insolence ; on the contrary, he proposed to receive the Iron Crown of Lombardy
at their hands.
Petrarch’s visit must
have been useful to Charles in this change of front. If he wanted an occasion
for opening communications with Milan, here was one which could be either kept
free from the taint of politics, or made to serve as an introduction to them. The
visit was also a great success from the point of view of the visitor. He
travelled through
the coldest weather in
living memory, but the warmth of his welcome made ample amends. Charles
received him with frank courtesy, and to his vast delight kept him talking
night after night into the small hours. Charles asked him about the Lives of
Illtistrious Men. Petrarch seized his opportunity, and while telling him that
it was not yet ready for publication, promised to dedicate it to him if his
actions were such as to deserve it, and if he himself were spared to finish it.
And to keep him in mind of the great men whom he was to imitate, Petrarch made
him a present of some very beautiful gold and silver medals of the Caesars,
among which the portrait of Augustus especially almost seemed to have the
breath of life. We must credit Charles with rare magnanimity, or perhaps it
were juster to say we must credit Petrarch with rare charm, when we find that
at the end of the discourse which accompanied the gift the Emperor urged his
lecturer to go with him to Rome. Petrarch’s account of the visit, written in a
letter to Lselius, leaves us with the impression that both he and Charles must
have had an insatiable appetite for talk.
Presently the Emperor
moved on to Milan and became the Visconti’s guest. This was not a happy visit;
Galeazzo excelled in the art of polite discourtesy, and while nothing was done
that must necessarily provoke a rupture, nothing was omitted that could bring
home to the Emperor the sense of his own weakness and the power of his hosts.
On the Feast of the Epiphany, 1355, Charles received
the Iron Crown of
Lombardy, not at Monza, but in the church of St. Ambrose at Milan. When he left
the city, Petrarch, though unable to accept his invitation to go to Rome,
accompanied him as far as the fifth milestone beyond Piacenza. He went on to
Pisa, where Lselius waited on him with a letter of introduction from Petrarch,
and so to Rome, where he received the imperial crown on April 4th. He returned
by way of Pisa, where he was pleased, on May 14th, to bestow the Laurel Crown
of Poetry on Zanobi da Strada, Niccolo Acciaiuoli’s secretary, who has been
already mentioned as a friend and frequent correspondent of Petrarch. The
meaning of this strange freak has never been quite clear. The obvious
suggestion is that it must have been meant as a snub to Petrarch, perhaps a
hint that there were other poets, who might be less exigent in the matter of an
Emperor’s deeds before they praised him; but the history of the three men’s
personal relations makes against this easy explanation. There is no hint of
anything but extreme cordiality between Charles and Petrarch, and only the
merest conjecture that the latter’s amicable relations with Zanobi were ever
interrupted. Besides, Charles was not a fool in literature any more than in
politics; he had taste and judgment; and he would have been fully alive to the
absurdity of setting up this painstaking grammarian, capable private secretary,
and respectable writer of verse as a rival to Petrarch. Such folly could only
have emphasised the latter’s superiority to all living poets. Perhaps the
explanation may be simply that
the Emperor wanted a
laureate of his own making, and took what he could get. From Pisa Charles made
his way northwards, and, to Petrarch’s indignation, returned to Germany in
June. His Italian tour had given him two crowns, and rid him of a few
illusions.
During the whole month
of September Petrarch suffered from an unusually violent and prolonged attack
of the tertian fever, to which he was always liable at that season. He rose
from his bed at the beginning of October so weak in body that he could hardly
hold a pen, but with his temper exasperated afresh against the physicians. He
took up the old feud with renewed acrimony, and the violent Invective against
a Physician is the unhappy result. It is not to be doubted that much of the
medicine of that day was mere quackery, and a calmly reasoned exposure of the
knavery of many practitioners and the folly of their dupes, put forth by a man
of Petrarch’s influence, might have served as a useful aid in the promotion of
serious research ; but the intemperate vehemence of Petrarch’s invective,
though it seems to have commanded Boccaccio’s admiration, could only defeat
its own object. Not only the quacks whom he was justified in attacking, but the
earnest students who were labouring to better the rudimentary science of their
time, must have been set against the man who thus vilified the whole
profession. Yet in spite of this furious diatribe Petrarch had pleasant
relations with more than one physician to whom he was personally known ; and in
later years the eminent Dondi dell’
Orologio enjoyed his
intimate friendship, and possessed the precious Virgil after his death.
Meanwhile a tragedy had
happened in the Visconti family. On September 26th Matteo, the eldest brother,
was found dead in his bed. That his brothers should be accused of poisoning him
was only natural; but even in that age men heard with horror that the bereaved mother
was the loudest accuser of her surviving sons. The brothers denied the charge,
and their partisans plausibly attributed Matteo’s death to debauchery. Their
guilt is doubtful, but they certainly divided the inheritance.
About this time the
whirligig of Italian politics brought Petrarch a new friend. For two years the
warrior-priest, Cardinal Albornoz, had been fighting and negotiating as the
Pope’s Legate in Italy, and so successful had he been alike in arms and in
diplomacy, that he had brought the greater part of Romagna and the March, as
well as the ancient States of the Church, either into direct obedience to the
Holy See, or to an admission of its overlordship. Among the great houses
reduced to obedience were the Malatesta of Rimini, whom the Legate deprived of
the great bulk of their usurped possessions, while allowing them to retain
Rimini itself and three other cities, as vassals of the Church. Their
diminished possessions hardly gave scope enough to the more ambitious younger
members of the House, and Pandolfo Malatesta, who was at once the best soldier
and the best scholar of the family, took service with Galeazzo Visconti as
general of his cavalry.
Before knowing Petrarch personally, he had conceived so great an admiration for
him, that he commissioned an artist, whose name is unknown to us, to paint him
a portrait of the poet. The picture is declared by Petrarch to have been at
once expensive and bad, but he was undoubtedly flattered by the compliment and
predisposed to like Pandolfo. They met in Milan, and a warm and lasting
friendship resulted.
But clients of the
Visconti could not hope for the continuous enjoyment of each others society.
The general of cavalry in particular was not left long in idleness. To narrate
the intrigues of these years in detail would require a good-sized volume;
briefly, it may be said that leagues against the Visconti were perpetually
being formed, dissolved, and formed again. In the winter of 1355-6, Giovanni
Paleologo, Marquis of Montferrat, and Milano Beccaria, tyrant of Pavia, both of
them once the allies and now the opponents of the Milanese Princes, joined in
organising such a league. The Marquis’s share in its operations was to excite a
rebellion against Galeazzo in Piedmont, and Pandolfo Malatesta found plenty of
occupation for his sword in fighting the revolted cities. A still more serious
incident connected with the same affair soon afterwards took Petrarch on a
distant errand of diplomacy. It was more than suspected that the Emperor, who
had not forgotten the humiliation inflicted on him the year before, was
secretly supporting the Visconti's enemies, and still more alarming rumours
were current of a proposed invasion of
Italy by the allied
forces of Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria. The Visconti had no mind to apologise
for the past, but their hands were full enough for the moment, and partly to
put the Emperor in good humour, partly to spy out his intentions, they dispatched
an embassy to him, with Petrarch as its orator. It is not to be supposed that the
practical business of the embassy was entrusted to him ; he was to be its
ornamental figure-head, and we can see from the letter in which he tells Nelli
of his appointment that he quite grasped the situation. He had showered
reproaches on Charles at the time of his departure from Italy; now he would
catch him in his own kingdom, and have at him again for his ignoble and most
unimperial flight. “ So,” says he, “ whether my journey be for any profit or
no, at any rate I shall be my own ambassador.” To tell the king to whom you
are accredited that he is but a poor creature would not strike a conventional
diplomatist as the best way of propitiating him; but once again we may take it
that the Visconti knew their men.
Petrarch set out on May
20th, and again enjoyed the pleasure of having Sagramor de Pommieres for a
travelling companion. They went first to Bale, where they expected to find the
Emperor, but Charles was not there, and, after waiting some weeks, they started
for Prague. They had left just in time. Only a few days later the whole basin
of the Rhine was shaken by a tremendous earthquake. Over eighty castles are
said to have been destroyed by the successive shocks, which continued at in
tervals for many months;
and in every town from Bale to Treves houses fell and the citizens had to camp
in the fields. The first shock, which Petrarch and his companions just escaped,
was especially severe at Bale, and laid almost the entire city in ruins.
The ambassadors found
the Emperor in Prague, and Petrarch’s colleagues must have noted with
satisfaction that his hands were much too full of German business to permit of
his present intervention in Italy. He, whose own election had been secured by
every device of trickery, was busy with his famous Golden Bull—the Reform Bill
of Imperial Elections. Also, however unworthy a successor he may have been to
Augustus in politics, he was diligently following his example in the embellishment
of his capital.
We have no details of
this visit to Prague. We know only that Petrarch was received with undiminished
cordiality by the Emperor, and that he spent much time in the congenial society
of two great ecclesiastics of the Court, Johann Oczko, Bishop of Olmutz, and
Ernest von Pardowitz, Archbishop of Prague. Petrarch’s acquaintance with these
two distinguished men, begun in Italy, now ripened to friendship, and many of
his later letters are addressed to them. But perhaps the best fruit of his
embassy was the intimacy with Sagramor de Pommieres, which resulted from their
companionship in travel, and grew so close that a year or two afterwards he
could speak of Sagramor as “privy to his every thought and act.” The visit
brought
him also the dignity of
Count Palatine, conferred on him by the Emperor some months after his departure,
and later still the honour of an autograph letter from the Empress Anna,
informing him that she had been safely delivered of a son.
He returned to Milan at
the beginning of September, and declared to Laelius that the more he travelled
abroad the more he loved Italy.
In the following year
(1357) occurred an incident, the memory of which Petrarch’s admirers would
willingly let die. During the winter events had happened at Pavia which
curiously anticipated by a century and a half Savonarola’s celebrated revolution
in Florence. An eloquent and earnest monk, named Jacopo Bussolari, set himself
to combat from the pulpit the vices and bad government of the Visconti. So far,
his sermons were heard without distaste by the Beccaria, but their attitude
changed when, from denunciation of the Milanese tyrants, Bussolari proceeded to
crusade against tyranny and vice in general, with pointed allusions to the
occupants of the adjoining palace. The Beccaria tried the usual tyrant’s answer
to criticism ; but all their plots to assassinate Bussolari were discovered,
and the successive discoveries raised him from the position of a popular
preacher to that of a national prophet, saint, and hero. At last he ended a
sermon of surpassing eloquence by bidding the people organise a free government
under leaders whom he designated by name. The people rose as one man at his
call, and a republican government was installed under the eyes of the
Beccaria, who were
expelled one by one from
the liberated city. In desperation they turned to their old allies and recent
foes, the Visconti, surrendered to them their fortified country houses, and
organised a plot to put them in possession of the city. This plot also failed,
and for a time Pavia enjoyed the blessings of freedom. Surely this was a
movement with which he who applauded Rienzi should have sympathised. Alas!
Pavia was not Rome, and the iron-willed Visconti held Petrarch in a grip far
stronger than that of the House of Colonna. At Galeazzo’s instigation, he
managed to persuade himself that Bussolari was a mere adventurer, a charlatan,
who had deluded the people with empty phrases, that he might use them as his
instruments to work out the selfish aims of unbridled ambition. He wrote
Bussolari a letter of insolent reproof and impertinent exhortation, which we
can hardly read for shame and would gladly delete from the manuscripts which
it deforms. Affection for Galeazzo, to whom he considered himself indebted for
his life, is the one admissible palliation, and it is pitiably inadequate.
True, that liberty in the fourteenth century did not imply democracy, and that
Petrarch would conscientiously have pronounced mob-rule the worst of tyrannies.
Still Bussolari’s cause was that of civil liberty, self-government, and moral
purity; Galeazzo stood prominent, the champion of a tyranny which encouraged
every vice. Surely the man who could bid Charles live up to the standard of
Augustus might have used his influence with Galeazzo to soften, if he could not
turn aside,
his wrath against Bussolari.
But communication with the Visconti had corrupted Petrarch’s manners; Nelli and
Boccaccio were justified of all their fears. Let it be added, however, that
this is the single instance of Petrarch’s degradation ; in no other case did he
accept a commission from the Visconti which he could not honourably fulfil.
CHAPTER XIII
DOMESTICA
1357-1360
SO far as regards
Petrarch’s connection with public affairs, the years to be dealt with in this
chapter are the least eventful of his life. But they are notable for some
interesting personal experiences, and, above all, as the period at which the
poet himself took a review of his past life and work. They offer, therefore, an
admirable occasion for a similar review by his biographer, and an attempt will
be made in the following chapter to take advantage of the opportunity.
First, however, we must
notice the few domestic events which belong to the period.
One of these shows
Petrarch at his very best. A most distressing thing had happened in the circle
of his friends. After all these years of unbroken affection, Socrates and
Laelius had quarrelled; worst of all, they had quarrelled about Petrarch. Some
slanderous liar had told Laelius that Socrates had represented him as opposing
Petrarch’s interests at Avignon. Lselius was furious, Socrates heartbroken,
Petrarch in a state of mind which without hyperbole he describes as agony. The
moment he heard of the miserable business, he sat down and
wrote Leelius a long,
impetuous letter of loving remonstrance with him for having believed the lie,
and of most loving entreaty that he would believe the truth now and make it up
with Socrates. He was your friend, says Petrarch, even before he was mine. We
have lived eight-and-twenty years together, the three of us, in the closest union
of souls. You know him incapable of such baseness; how could you believe it of
him for a moment? You should have thrust the calumny from you, as Alexander did
when his friend and physician was accused of being bribed to poison him, and he
drank off the draught before showing- the accusation to his friend. & &
“ Friendship is a great,
a divine thing,” he goes on, “and quite simple. It requires much deliberation,
but once only and once for all. You must choose your friend before you begin to
love him ; once you have chosen him, to love him is your only course. When once
you have had pleasure in your friend, the time to measure him is past. ’Tis an
old proverb that bids us not to be doing what is done already. Thenceforward
there is no room for suspicion or quarrel; there remains to us but this one
thing—to love.” Compare with this admirable passage the equally beautiful
sentence in a letter to Nelli, written a few years earlier: “In my friendships
I practise no art, except to love utterly, to trust utterly, to feign nothing,
to hide nothing, and, in a word, to pour out everything into my friends’ ears,
just as it comes from my heart.” Petrarch’s pleading was irresistible, and to
his delight he heard before long that Lselius had no sooner read his letter, than
he
had gone straight with
it to Socrates, and with tears and embraces they had knit afresh the ancient
bonds of affection. The friend who had brought them together was as happy in
their reconciliation as he had been miserable at their estrangement. “All your
life you have done me pleasure on pleasure,” he wrote to Laelius, “but never a
keener pleasure than this.”
This was by no means the
only time in his life that Petrarch played the part of peacemaker among his
friends. We find him, for instance, doing the same office for Nicol5 Acciaiuoli
and Barili, and with equal success; but the matter never went so near his heart
as in this quarrel between Laelius and Socrates. “Till this day,” he wrote in
this letter to Laelius, “ we had lived together not merely in harmony, but, as
one might say, with only one mind in the three of us.” And nothing can be more
charming or more touching than the grace with which in the letter of
congratulation he gives Laelius all the credit for his prompt act of reconciliation,
and is satisfied for his own part with the pure delight of his friends’
reunion. Whatever may have been his qualities or his defects as an Ambassador
of State, the world has not seen his superior in the delicate diplomacies of
friendship.
In the congratulatory
letter to Laelius, there is a passage which makes it clear that once again
Petrarch’s friends at the Papal Court had proposed to get him the offer of the
papal secretaryship, and once more he had been able to defeat their well- meant
intentions, this time without mystery or
secret machination. He
was less than ever inclined for the office. He had fewer friends among the
Cardinals than of old, and Pope Innocent, as we have seen, had been violently
prepossessed against him at the beginning of his reign. That temper, indeed,
must have changed already, or Lselius and the rest could not have dreamt of
getting the appointment for Petrarch. Still, Innocent was not his friend as
Clement had been, and he says himself that his position at the Curia was very
different now from what it had been a dozen years before. The post was given to
Zanobi da Strada, at whose promotion Petrarch sincerely rejoiced, reckoning
that he had now a new friend in Avignon, and regretting only that Zanobi would
have no more time for poetry. The language of this passage sufficiently refutes
the absurd calumny, for which there is not a scrap of first-hand evidence, that
Petrarch was jealous of Zanobi.
To avoid the tediousness
of perpetually recurring to the subject of the papal secretaryship, it may be
mentioned here that Pope Innocents old hostility to Petrarch presently changed
into so cordial a feeling towards him, that in the last year of his pontificate
he made him a direct and formal offer of the post, and that a year later his
successor, Urban V, repeated the offer. Petrarch was still resolute in
declining, but none the less the incident of 1361 shows both men in an
agreeable light. The Pope who could thus revise his own judgments must have
possessed a sense of justice rare among bigots, and there must have been
something singularly
| INNOCENT VI
|
In the early autumn of
1358 he suffered an accident which may be narrated in his own words. “You
shall hear,” he writes to a friend, “what a trick Cicero, the man whom I have
loved and worshipped from my boyhood, has just played me. I possess a huge
volume of his Letters, which I wrote out some time ago with my own hand because
there was no original manuscript accessible to the copyists. Ill-health
hindered me, but my great love of Cicero, and delight in the Letters, and eagerness
to possess them, prevailed against my bodily weakness and the laboriousness of
the work. This is the book which you have seen leaning against the door-post at
the entry to my library. One day, while going into the room thinking about something
else, as I often do, I happened inadvertently to catch the book in the fringe
of my gown. In its fall it struck me lightly on the left leg a little above the
heel. ‘What! my Cicero,’ quoth I, bantering him, ‘ pray what are you hitting me
for ? ’ He said nothing. But next day, as I came again the same way, he hit me
again, and again I laughed at him and set him up in his place. Why make a long
story ? Over and over again I went on suffering the same hurt; and thinking he
might be
o 7 00
cross at having to stand
on the ground, I put him up a shelf higher, but not till after the repeated
blows on the same spot had broken the skin, and a far from despicable sore had
resulted. I despised it though, reckoning the cause of my accident of
much more weight than
the accident itself. So I neither gave up my bath, nor put any restraint on
myself in the matter of riding and walking, but just waited for the thing to
heal. Little by little, as if hurt at my neglect of it, the wound swelled up,
and presently a patch of flesh came up, discoloured and angry. At last, when
the pain was too much not only for my wit, but for sleep and rest, so that to
neglect the thing any longer seemed not courage but madness, I was forced to
call in the doctors, who have now for some days been fussing over this really
ridiculous wound, not without great pain and some danger to the wounded limb,
as they insist, though I think you know just what reliance I place on their
prognostications either of good or evil. At the same time I am bothered with
constant fomentations, and am cut off my usual food, and obliged to keep still,
to which I am quite unaccustomed. I hate the whole business, and especially I
hate being obliged to eat sumptuous fare. But health is now in sight, and you
may hear of me, as I have of you, that I am well again, before knowing anything
of my having been ill. ... So this is how my beloved Cicero has treated me; he
long ago struck my heart, and now he has struck my leg.”
Before the wound was
fully healed, two days in fact before the above letter was written, he paid a
visit which is notable as showing how enthusiasm for the revival of learning
was spreading through different classes of Italian society; it also illustrates
the lines of social cleavage in fourteenth-century Italy.
There lived at Bergamo a
goldsmith named Enrico Capra, an old man who had grown rich byskill in his
handicraft, for he was a working smith, and not to be confounded with the
banker orold-
o
smiths of Florence or
Genoa. As a young man he was little versed in letters, but had always a natural
inclination to them. Late in life he heard of Petrarch’s reputation as a
scholar ; his imagination was kindled, and he resolved to give up everything
for study. Petrarch was his hero. His highest ambition was now to be a humble
scholar in the studies of which Petrarch was the master. He consulted his idol,
and Petrarch, with that practical good sense which is so disconcerting to
people who would like to put poets and sensible men into separate pigeon-holes,
advised him strongly to stick to his trade. “ For,” said he, “ it is late for
you to strike out an entirely new line, and your private affairs may suffer.”
In this one thing, Capra was deaf to his hero’s advice. He gave up his business
and set himself to school. One supreme desire now possessed him, to have the
honour of entertaining Petrarch as his guest, if it were but for a single
night. Petrarch’s fashionable friends would have dissuaded him from the visit,
representing that it was beneath his dignity to be a tradesman’s guest. He knew
better, and was too much a gentleman to be ruled by them. He has often been
accused of courting great men, and it is perfectly true that he did like to sit
on the right hand of princes. But what he liked in it was the feeling that he
had power to influence the powerful. He
was no vulgar devotee of
mere riches or mere rank. He would have been worse than a barbarian, worse than
a wild beast, he declares, if he had refused Capra’s request. The man carried
the fervency of his desire writ plain in eyes and brow. So to Bergamo he went,
and with him rode some of his fine friends, curious to see how the goldsmith
would deport himself. The goldsmith was above everything anxious that Petrarch
should not be bored ; he abounded in conversation, and the fine gentlemen had
to acknowledge that the excellence of their entertainment made the way seem
short. When they reached Bergamo it seemed as if the whole town had turned out
to receive Petrarch. There were the governor, the captain of the militia, and
all the city dignitaries, pressing on him a public reception at the palace and
entertainment at the house of one of the chief men. Again Capra trembled with
apprehension, but Petrarch knew what good manners and good feeling required of
him. He was the goldsmith’s guest, and with civil excuses to the great folks he
went to the goldsmith’s house. There he found such entertainment as Prague
itself had not provided for him. He dined off gold plate, and slept in a bed
hung with imperial purple, in which, vowed his host, no other man had ever
slept, or ever should. There were plenty of books too, “not a mechanician’s
books, but those of a student and a most zealous lover of letters.” Petrarch
might have stayed more than one night if he could have been left alone with his
delighted host, but he ran away from the otherwise
inevitable civic
festivities. The governor and the town councillors, unable to keep him as a
guest, accompanied him a great part of the way home, but it is pleasant to
know that they were outridden by Enrico Capra, who saw his hero safe to the
very threshold of his home.
Petrarch spent a good
part of the winter at Padua, where he had business to transact, and at Venice,
where he stayed for pleasure ; and in the spring of 1359 he enjoyed the
exquisite pleasure of a visit from Boccaccio. We feel a kind of pride in human
nature when we see how completely their difference of opinion about Petrarch’s
residence in Milan had failed to impair their friendship. Sil- vanus cannot
have enjoyed being told that his new friend Egon was a blood-thirsty renegade ;
but Nelli and Boccaccio might say to him what they liked. To them he had given
his heart, and he lived up to his own fine sentiment, that when once you have
given your heart, there is nothing left for you but to love. Moreover, he held
that there should be no concealments between friends; it was Boccaccio’s duty,
then, to show him all that was in his heart. Boccaccio’s attitude seems to have
been equally pleasing. He did not retract his opinion, but he had had his say,
and the decision did not lie with him. His relations with Petrarch illustrate
the modesty of which genius may be capable : he constantly insisted 011 taking
the place of a disciple; and he would not be fatuous enough to suppose that the
master must always see eye to eye with him. So this loyal Florentine made his
pilgrimage to the city
which he hated and the friend whom he loved. There had been a constant interchange
of letters and poems between them since their last meeting. Boccaccio had sent
on one occasion St. Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms, on another some works
of Cicero and Varro copied with his own hand for his friend’s library. Then we
find Petrarch acknowledging the receipt of several letters, and alluding to one
of his own which had been lost in transmission. And Boccaccio having protested
against being called a poet, Petrarch rallies him on his petulance. “ A
strange thing,” he says, “that you should have aimed at being a poet only to
shrink from the name.” And from what follows, we may gather that Boccaccio felt
legitimately aggrieved that his poetical work had not won him the recognition
of the laurel. We gather too that the Milanese visit was a project of long
standing. At last in the early spring of 1359 it was realised, and Petrarch
writes to Nelli: “ I should send you a longer letter, but that I am prevented
by a want of time which is of my own making, to wit, through the most
delightful companionship of our common friend, to whose visit there are only
two drawbacks—the shortness of it and your absence. The pleasant days have
slipped away silently and unperceived. But our friend’s own voice will tell you
what my pen has no time for; you can trust implicitly in his report, for he
knows perfectly my every thought, my every action, my manner of life, in a word
my whole self, and all my little haps and hopes.”
Boccaccio left about the
end of March in wild weather, but reached Florence without accident. Soon
afterwards he sent Petrarch a copy of the Divina Commedia, together with a
poetical Latin letter, in which he begged “ Italy’s glory and his own dear
friend and single hope ” to accept, read, and admire the great work of the
poet-exile, who first showed the world of what achievements in verse his
mother-tongue was capable; his brow deserved the laurel which it failed to
obtain ; Florence, the great mother of poets, bore him and takes her place of
pride among cities under the championship of his glorious name; in honouring
him, his brother-poets do honour to themselves and their craft. In this last
sentiment, or in the exhortation to read Dante, Petrarch may have seen ever so
delicate a hint of the common belief that he was jealous of the latter’s fame,
though Boccaccio had spared no possible words of compliment to himself. His
answer is quite candid, and gives a faithful picture of his sentiments. The
supposition that he was jealous of the elder poet’s fame rests on a far
different basis from the silly gossip that he envied Zanobi. “Jealousy” of
Dante is not, indeed, the right word, but want of appreciation must be
admitted. He is quite sincere in saying to Boccaccio that “Dante easily
carries off the palm among writers in Italian,” and this is not the language of
jealousy; nor is his protestation that he “admires and venerates” Dante less
sincere. But the pith of the whole matter lies in that passage of unconscious
self-revelation, where he protests that his
admiration of the great
Florentine, as of every one else, is critical, and really implies a much higher
compliment to its object than the indiscriminate gush with which his ignorant
worshippers bedaub their idol. Exactly; Petrarch admired Dante “critically,”
but he read him very little, and radical difference of temperament made it
impossible that he should be in sympathy with him.
The autumn of 1359
brought a very sad incident in Petrarch’s domestic life. For years Giovanni’s
character and conduct had been a source of painful anxiety to his father. At
last the young man’s faults of temper, aggravated by the elder’s faults of
management, resulted in an open breach. We have only Petrarch’s side of the
story, and not very much of that, but it is enough to show us quite clearly the
cause and the nature of his unhappy relations with his son. He was a man
predisposed to affection, predisposed also to count his geese swans. He was the
last man in the world to belittle the virtues or exaggerate the sins of those
who belonged to him. There can be no doubt that the lad was slothful, sullen,
and prone to a disorderly life. Only by very judicious handling could his
better qualities, of which Petrarch’s friends discerned the rudiments, have a
chance to win the day. Judicious handling was exactly what Petrarch could not
give him. Sarcasm and sermonising are the very worst tools for fashioning the character
of such a boy, and Petrarch, honestly anxious to shame Giovanni into industry
and instil into him a virtuous ambition, was at once sarcastic and didactic.
The
circumstances of their
relationship probably aggravated the evil. Petrarch, as we have seen, had
procured letters of legitimacy for Giovanni, which of course involved an
admission of paternity, and his friends knew the whole story. But the word
“son” was seldom if ever used in the intercourse of daily life, and though
Nelli, to whom the lad paid an apparently happy visit at Avignon in 1358, spoke
of him as Giovanni Petrarca, his position was one which only devoted love and
tactful sympathy could have rendered tolerable. Now, in these years, Petrarch,
sick of town life, had found himself a retreat entirely to his mind, which he
called Liternum after Scipio’s famous Campanian villa, a few miles outside the
city walls. While he was living there a robbery occurred in his house at Milan,
which was traced to members of his own household. Coincidently, Giovanni was
guilty of misconduct so grave that Petrarch expelled him from his house. This
is all that can be said with certainty, but we may surely infer that Giovanni
was found to be a participator in the robbery, if not its instigator.
It may have been this
unhappy occurrence which finally determined Petrarch to give up his house in
Milan, and transfer himself and his possessions to the Benedictine monastery of
San Simpliciano, where, though only just outside the city, he could enjoy all
the pleasures of life in the country, and where his precious books would, in
his absence, be under the guardianship of the brothers. He chose his rooms with
judgment. They contained a con
venience which had been
wanting in his town house —a little secret door which he could use as a bolt-
hole to escape from unwelcome visitors. Here he settled on November 3rd, and
here in the following August he received a visit from Niccol5 Acciaiuoli, with
whom, as we have seen, he had long been in friendly communication, but whom he
appears never to have met till now. The Grand Seneschal was an expert in
ceremonial; Matteo Villani even hints that he carried ostentation to a fault;
and nothing was omitted that stately pomp and gracious dignity could contribute
to mark the homage which he paid to Petrarch’s genius. But the pleasantest
touch in the visit was the eagerness with which he pounced on the poet’s books,
and his unwillingness to tear himself away from them.
| The Tomb of Niccolo Acciaiuoli |
CHAPTER XIV
THE FOUNDER OF HUMANISM—
PETRARCH’S WORK AND ITS RESULT
IT was in 1359 that
Petrarch faced that worst ordeal of a writer’s life, the revision of his
papers. The letter to Socrates, which serves as preface to the collection of
Familiar Letters, shows him in a retrospective mood of rather melancholy
sentiment. “We have tried wellnigh all things, my brother, and nowhere is rest.
When are we to look for it? Where to seek it? Time, as the saying goes, has
slipped through our fingers. Our old hopes lie buried in the graves of our
friends. It was the year 1348 that made us lonely men and poor; for it took
away from us treasures which not the Indian or the Caspian or the Carparthian
Sea can restore. . . . Now what thought you are taking for yourself, my
brother, I know not; for my part, I am just making up my bundles, and, as men
do on the eve of a journey, am looking out what to take with me, what to share
among my friends, and what to throw into the fire; for I have nothing to sell.”
So he dived into the rusty chests, and presently found himself “ ringed round
with heaped piles of letters, blockaded by a shapeless mass of paper.” His
first impulse was to save bother by
throwing the lot into
the fire; and after a little indulgence in the pathos of retrospect, he began
the work of destruction. “ A thousand or more compositions, some of them stray
poems of every kind, the rest familiar letters, were thus given over to
Vulcan’s revision, not without a sigh indeed, for why should I be ashamed to
own my weakness ? ” While these were burning, he bethought him of another
bundle lying in a corner, and containing letters many of which had already been
transcribed by friends. These he thought would give little or no trouble, so he
spared them, and in fulfilment of an old promise resolved to dedicate the prose
to Socrates, the verse to Barbato. Here one might well suppose the story of the
Epistolce de Rebus Familiaribus and of the Epistolce Poeticce to be complete ;
but he who expects finality little knows his Petrarch, What follows may serve
as a characteristic instance of his method of work; he was for ever polishing,
correcting, interpolating. Two years after writing the preface he nominally
closed the Familiar series with a second dedicatory letter to Socrates. “With
you I began,” he writes, “with you I finish ; here, my Socrates, you have what
you asked for. ... I began this work in youth, I finish it in old age, or
rather I am still continuing what I then began. For this is the one pursuit of
mine to which death alone will put the finishing touch. How can I expect to
cease from chatting with my friends till my life ceases ? . . . Whatever I may
write in this kind henceforward will be classed in another volume under a title
derived from my time
of life, since my
friends are so fond as to forbid my withholding any of my writings from them.”
Even this was not the final arrangement. Socrates died, probably before
receiving the letter just quoted, and the collection, made as a token of
devoted friendship, became its pathetic record. As such Petrarch once more
revised it, and while doing so actually inserted a few letters belonging to the
four intervening years. At last, in 1365, with the help of one of his pupils,
he arranged the series practically as we have it to-day. He meant it to
contain 350 letters; in Fracassetti’s edition, which is the most complete, it
contains 347 ; but possibly some of those which Fracassetti published as an
appendix were intended by Petrarch to have a place in the body of the volume.
The collection is divided into twenty-four books, of which the last contains
the Letters to Illustrious Men of Antiquity; the rest, Petrarch tells us, are “
for the most part ” in chronological order, but the qualifying words require a
pretty liberal interpretation. Besides these, he preserved some other letters
which, to avoid repetition and tediousness, he kept by themselves; these formed
the nucleus of the single book of Various Letters, intended to contain seventy
and actually containing sixty-five epistles. The earliest letter of all was
written in 1326, the latest in 1365 ; but substantially the series extends
from 1331 to 1361, with which year the series of Letters written in Old Age
begins. Of the authorised prose letters, we have thus three classes—the
Farniliar, the Various, and the Senile. In addition to these, a
book is extant of
Letters without Title (Sine Titulo), diatribes against the corruptions of
Church and clergy, which Petrarch kept carefully secret during his life. But as
he preserved the manuscript of them, we may suppose that he intended them to be
published after his death.
Of all Petrarch’s
writings the prose letters are the most important; of all his Latin writings
they are, by a happy coincidence, the most delightful reading. As evidence of
the events of their author’s life, they outweigh all the other biographical
materials put together, and this is perhaps the least of their many merits. The
extracts given in these pages must have been ill-chosen and ill-translated if
the reader has not realised from them that the letters reveal a personality of
singularly human interest and poignant charm. So far as regards mere facts,
Petrarch’s habit of revision and interpolation occasionally—though very seldom
and only in matters of secondary importance—tends to weaken or confuse the
testimony. But there is not a page, not a line, not a word, which does not bear
the true stamp of its author’s individuality. “ If we must needs keep ourselves
before the eye of the public,” he once wrote, “ by all means let us show
ourselves off in books and chat in letters.” Exactly; the man stands revealed
in the “chat” of the letters written to his intimate friends.
Not that he was ever
indifferent to style. He might say with truth that he wrote to his friends
whatever came uppermost in his own mind ; and he might believe himself to be
equally truthful in
saying that he was not
careful about the adornment of these familiar talks. But he simply could not
be careless about workmanship; nature had given him the instinct for style, and
whatever he wrote must be written with the inborn grace of the artist.
He knew too that a
letter from him was regarded as a literary star of the first magnitude; eager
friends copied the precious manuscript and circulated it through Europe.
Boccaccio speaks of these letters with a kind of rapture as equal to Cicero’s ;
and though the pronouncement shows that criticism, which Petrarch had brought
anew to the birth, was still in its infancy, it shows also the extreme importance
of the letters in furthering the main work of their author’s life—the revival
of learning.
In attributing to
Petrarch the initiation of this mighty movement, a word of caution may be found
in season. People sometimes talk as if history could be likened to a row of
pigeon-holes, and as if events once classified and docketed as belonging to
pigeon-hole B could thenceforward be regarded as quite dissociated from the
contents of pigeon-hole A. Of course nobody maintains such an absurdity in
theory, but classification is so useful an aid to memory, that in practice we
are continually tempted to draw hard-and-fast lines of division. No error is
more fatal to the right understanding of history ; it robs even definite events
of half their meaning; much more does it distort and obscure the significance
of intellectual developments. The life of the world’s mind is like the life of
a forest; birth,
growth, death, go on
side by side; while the forest is older than its oldest tree, its youngest
sapling may claim an immemorial lineage. When therefore we say that Petrarch
founded Humanism and inaugurated the New Learning, we do not mean that he
created something out of nothing ; we mean that he inspired ideas and modes of
thought, which preceding scholars had possessed in their own brains, but could
not communicate to society at large. It is true that few successive periods are
as sharply contrasted as the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ; but even so it
is false history to represent the Middle Ages as a night of pitchy blackness,
the Renaissance as a blaze of unheralded light. Scholarship had never died;
our own England furnishes proof of that. John of Salisbury in the twelfth
century was as good a Latinist as Petrarch, and Robert Grosseteste in the
thirteenth had a competent knowledge of Greek. None the less it is to
Petrarch, not to his predecessors, that we rightly attribute the inauguration
of the Renaissance; they were its forerunners, not its founders ; they handed
down the torch of learning unextinguished ; some quality in him enabled him to
fire the world with it.
His method was not
merely to study the classics as ancient literature, but to bring the world back
to the mental standpoint of the classical writers. To do this it was essential
to spread the knowledge of those writers as widely as possible, and we have
seen how diligent he and his friends were in the discovery and reproduction of
texts. Then men had to be convinced that the affairs of old Rome
were of vital interest
to fourteenth-century Italy, and so Petrarch gave to the world the stimulating
conception of the continuity of history. Lastly, it was necessary to set up
again the fallen standard of criticism. Criticism does not mean fault-finding;
the correction of error is only one of its functions. Its main business is to
look below the surface of things, to apprehend their true significance, to
appraise their just value. This intellectual faculty was conspicuously lacking
in the men of the Middle Ages, but the classical men possess it in rich abundance.
Now of all the classical writers known to Petrarch he esteemed Cicero “ far and
away the chief captain,” the wisest thinker, the most discerning critic, the
supreme master of style. Saturated himself with the Ciceronian spirit, he set
himself to diffuse it through Europe. He was no slavish worshipper even of
Cicero; he paid his great master the higher compliment of discriminating
enthusiasm. Like all true apostles, he was less concerned to imitate the manner
of his models than to preach their gospel. This was probably the secret of his
success; the revival of classical learning became in his hands a resurrection
of the classical spirit.
Judged as mere
compositions, his own Latin writings fell far short of the masterpieces which
inspired them, and he himself was fully conscious of their inferiority. Once,
he tells Boccaccio, he had thought of writing solely in Italian, moved thereto
by the consideration that the ancients had written so perfectly in Latin as to
be inimitable.
This must have been a
mere passing thought; from earliest youth onward he felt instinctively that to
write the best Latin he could was the way to propagate the Roman culture.
This sound instinct
explains the depreciatory tone in which he sometimes spoke of his Italian
poems. It is not to be supposed that the man who could write the Canzoniere was
blind to its beauty ; and the pains which he undoubtedly took to polish and
perfect it show that he appreciated the exquisite art of its workmanship. He
knew, too, how greatly it was instrumental in winning him the fame that he
loved. But, almost as if he had foreseen the degradation of the Petrarchist
school, he seems to have felt that not here would lie his real claim to the
world’s gratitude. It is easy to go too far, as Petrarch himself went, in
minimising the importance of the Canzoniere. The poems are quick with the
genius of Humanism, and their revelation of the subtlest workings of a human
soul must have done much to imbue mankind with a thirst for the study of man.
Still it remains a curious fact that Petrarch’s most beautiful poetry was
precisely the least influential of his writings in furthering his life’s work.
It has already been said
that the most influential were the prose letters, which contain samples of
everything that can possibly be put into epistolary form. Far inferior to them
in charm, but almost equally important in the history of literature, are the
three books of poetical letters. These too contain an infinite variety of
subjects, from impassioned appeals to successive Popes for the re
storation of the Papacy
to a graceful description of his “battle with the Nymphs of the Sorgue” for the
reclamation of a garden for the Muses. It is hardly possible for us to
appreciate these poems at their full value. Petrarch indeed handles Latin as a
living language, his idiom is seldom seriously at fault, his diction is choice
and his versification fluent; his hexameters might quite well be mistaken, as
actually happened in the case of a passage from the Africa, for those of some
poet of the Silver Age. But our ears have been attuned to finer harmonies, and
Petrarch’s verses cannot stand comparison with those of Virgil and Horace, or
even with the graceful compositions of Politian, the most accomplished Humanist
of the following century. Moreover, defects of form are much more noticeable,
not to say more irritating, in verse than in prose; and rich as are these
poetical letters in biographical and literary interest, we cannot read them
with quite the enjoyment that the prose collection affords.
Yet more tedious to our
modern taste, but of superlative historical value, is the Book of Eclogues,
containing twelve so-called “pastoral” poems. Here we have the completest
fusion ever achieved between the mediaeval and the classical methods. The
mediaeval doctrine that poetry is allegory is taken up by Petrarch, approved,
and acted on. But the allegory takes a classical shape. Arcady, that migratory
realm of poetic fancy, is transported to Provence; in the guise of the
shepherds and nymphs who inhabit it we are introduced to Petrarch
himself—usually
designated Silvius or Silvanus, the lover of forest and hill — to his brother,
to Socrates and Laura, to Popes and Cardinals, to personifications of the city
of Avignon and of the Spirit of Religious Consolation, and to no less a
personage than St. Peter himself. These all take part in “pastoral” dialogues,
which thinly veil the expression of the poet’s feelings or the discussion of
contemporary events. It is all tiresomely artificial and unreal; but Petrarch
was persuaded that Virgil had done just the same in the eclogues on which his
own were modelled. Whatever we may think of them now, these “ pastoral ” poems
hit the taste of the day and enjoyed an extraordinary vogue.
Petrarch’s most
considerable work in Latin verse, the Africa, remains to be noticed. The story
of its composition has been told already, how it was conceived and partly
written during the first residence at Vaucluse; then put aside for a year or
two ; then, under the stimulus of the recent coronation, resumed during the
walks in the Selva Piana, and finished with a rush at Parma. So far as any work
of Petrarch’s could be called complete during his lifetime, we have it on his
own authority that the Africa was completed in 1341. But he did not hurry its
publication ; he kept it by him for the usual revision, and some years passed
before even his closest friends were allowed a glimpse of it. Presently he so
far yielded to Barbato’s importunity as to send him the passage which narrates
the death of Sophonisba. This is the passage which a French critic in the
eighteenth century declared
had been stolen from the
Punic a of Silius Italicus ; and it is noticeable, as evidence of the quality of
Petrarch’s Latin, that the refutation of the calumny, complete as it is, rests
on external evidence and on the obvious appropriateness of the lines to their
position in the Africa, not on any marked inferiority of Petrarch’s hexameters
to those of Silius. With the exception of this detached extract, the poem was
still kept for many years secluded in its author’s library; and as time went on
he came to regard it with mingled feelings of hope and disappointment. It was
to have been the supreme effort of his imagination, the choice fruit of poetic
genius which should justify in the sight of all posterity his reception of the
laurel crown, the proof that an Italian of the fourteenth century could write a
Roman epic, not perhaps quite a rival to the Aineid, but not altogether
unworthy of a place beside it. He never quite resigned the hope that in the
Africa this high ambition was achieved ; but he suffered grievous pangs of
doubt, and more than once declared his intention of throwing the poem into the
fire, “ being far too severe a critic of his own performances," says
Boccaccio.
How far the Africa can
be called a success must depend on our estimate of the effect produced by it.
Judged by a purely literary standard, it must be pronounced a meritorious
failure, though in justice to its author stress should be laid on the merit.
The conception is a fine one, and the whole poem is inspired by enthusiasm for
Rome. In Scipio Petrarch was celebrating his ideal hero, and Q
it would be hard to find
an historical subject more congenial to epic treatment than the end of the
Second Punic War. Petrarch was fully alive to these advantages and spared no
pains to give effect to them. Unfortunately the art is a little too obvious;
the epic stage-properties are unmistakably second-hand, the machinery creaks,
the magic spell of illusion is wanting. The whole poem is reminiscent of the
ALneid and of what Petrarch knew about the Iliad; we have a palace decorated
with numberless pictures from the mythology, a banquet followed by a sketch of
Roman history, the death of an unhappy queen, a prophetic apparition of Homer.
Only a journey to Hades and a conclave of the gods are wanting; instead of
them we have an astonishing scene in heaven, in which the Almighty expounds
Christian dogma to allegorical impersonations of Rome and Carthage. Here we
touch the root of the whole failure. Petrarch is too earnest in his plea for
Rome to lose himself in his subject; for once he is too much a missionary to be
quite successfully a poet.
Artistically, then, the
Africa is a failure, but historically it holds a notable place in the revival
of learning. Though it was never definitely “published,” we must infer from
Boccaccio’s allusions that some scholars at least had access to it; and the
mere fact of its existence inclined men’s minds to consider the possibilities
of poetry. They heard with admiration that a contemporary of their own had
dared to follow in Virgil’s footsteps, and to compose a great epic in the
tongue which made it
the common property of
scholars in all lands. Boccaccio, in the passage already quoted, mentions the
Africa among Petrarch’s most important works, “which,” he says, “we will read,
and on which we will comment even during the lifetime of their author.” In the
same category Boccaccio places several of those treatises and disquisitions
which also played an important part in fostering the humanistic spirit. The
books On the Solitary Life and On the Remedies of Good and Bad Fortune in
particular had in their day an extraordinary reputation and a potent influence.
Nobody reads them now; and that is a pity, for they are much better reading
than a good deal of the literature that has superseded them. Petrarch would
have based on them his claim to be ranked as a “philosopher,” and the men of
his day would have allowed the claim. Nothing could more clearly mark the
difference between the new learning and the old. Mediaeval philosophy was the
science of exact thought, and had as little as possible to do with literature;
its burning question, the Nominalist and Realist controversy, was concerned
with metaphysical definitions in just that region of metaphysics that lies
nearest to theology. Similarly we find that even Dante, incomparably the
greatest man of letters of his day, in composing his treatise De Monarckia,
handled theoretical politics by the deductive method. Petrarch breaks loose
from the austere discipline of logical process and formula. In his treatises,
as in his letters, he takes his readers back to the Ciceronian standpoint and
invites them to investigate
truth by literary
methods. Not for a moment does he exalt style above matter; what we call “style
for style’s sake ” is an abomination to him. But he requires that a man of
letters shall employ a good style for the adornment of good matter ; and if a
man will only take example by Cicero, he shall know how to achieve the
combination.
Exactly the same is true
of his work as an historian ; he discards the methods of the chroniclers and
reverts to those of Plutarch. His greatest work, the Lives of Illustrious Men,
is a history of classical Rome set forth in thirty-one biographies of great men
from Romulus to Caesar. Considering the materials at Petrarch’s disposal, this
is a stupendous achievement; and the scale on which it is planned no less than
the method of its execution marks it as the first of modern histories. In the
1874 edition it occupies over 750 octavo pages, of which over 350 are given to
the life of Caesar. The knowledge that Petrarch was engaged on it created no small
stir in the world ; we have seen that Charles IV eagerly questioned him about
its progress. Its very excellence, indeed, probably hastened the day of its
supersession ; it must have kindled an interest in historical research fatal to
its continued use as a textbook. Before the invention of printing it had been
forgotten, and only the jejune Epitome, on which Petrarch was engaged at the
time of his death, appears in the earlier editions of his works. Domenico
Rossetti, the editor of Petrarch’s lesser Latin poems, unearthed the original
and corrected the erroneous attribution of part of it
to Giulio Celso; Luigi
Razzolini published the complete text with an Italian translation in 1874;
thanks to these two scholars, we now have easy access to the work which most
completely illustrates Petrarch’s sense of the continuity of history, his zeal
for Rome, and the methods by which he enabled the world to possess once again
the splendid heritage of her literature.
Yet when all is said and
done, it is not by the letter but by the spirit of his Latin writings that
Petrarch holds his rank among the great masters whose work endures through the
ages. He was not the only man of his day who had the right instinct for culture
or the power to discern the beauties of classical literature. But he was the
one whom nature had gifted with the magnetic power to kindle men’s zeal and
make their enthusiasm fruitful. His personality impressed itself on the whole
movement; his very foibles are the characteristic foibles of his successors.
Like him, they were self-conscious men whose eagerness about their personal
reputation was not free from the taint of vanity. Many of them carried to
excess the faults which in their master had been the trivial blemishes of a
most lovable character. But if the world inherited from Petrarch a little
restlessness, a little vanity, a little self-consciousness, he bequeathed to it
also a faculty of right judgment, a tradition of unwearied diligence, a noble
ardour of research. Therefore, and not because he wrote the Africa, the Lives
of Illustrious Men, or even the Letters, we hail him in Boccaccio’s phrase as
“our illustrious teacher, father, and lord.”
THE SORROWFUL YEARS OF
THE SECOND PLAGUE—DEATHS OF FRIENDS
1360-1363
IN 1360 the French had
at last succeeded in raising their King’s ransom, and the Peace of Bretigny was
signed on May 8th. A considerable contribution to the ransom had come out of
the coffers of Galeazzo Visconti, who furnished six hundred thousand florins on
condition that his son Gian-Galeazzo should marry the Princess Isabelle of
France. The bargain was duly carried out, and in October the two children,
whose united ages amounted to twenty-three years, the bride being a year the
elder, were solemnly joined together in holy matrimony at Milan.
The connection with the
House of Valois was a good stroke of business for Galeazzo, but his first
embassy to Paris was sent on an errand of courtesy rather than of negotiation.
It went in December, to offer Galeazzo’s congratulations to King John on his return
to his capital, and who so fit as Petrarch to be its spokesman ? At the state
reception Petrarch delivered a harangue, in which the leading theme was the
vicissitudes of fortune. To our modern sensitive ears the subject seems rather
a
ticklish one under the
circumstances, but people in the fourteenth century underwent too many of these
vicissitudes to be squeamish in talking about them. And the orator had
evidently gauged the taste of his principal auditors, for the King and his heir
apparent not only pricked up their ears at the mention of fortune, but
proposed to recur to the subject on a less formal occasion, when they even
promised themselves the sport of confuting their learned guest. So after dinner
up came the Prince with Peter of Poitiers, the translator of Livy, and a bevy
of other scholars at his heels, and demanded a discourse upon the nature and
attributes of Fortune. A friendly colleague, zealous for the honour of his
fellow-Italian, had given Petrarch a hint of what was coming, so that he was
not quite unprepared, though he would dearly have liked time for a peep at some
books of reference. Still he came off with credit, and the company was not
inclined to contest his dictum that Fortune was a mere name, a popular
superstition, but of service now and then to the learned in the embellishment
of their phrases. The credit of Italy was saved, and her champion went
victorious to bed. The Prince, who must have been a very glutton of talk, was
for renewing the discussion in the morning, when the ambassadors had audience
of the King. But the talk went off on other matters, and in spite of prompting
nods and becks from the disappointed Prince, the topic had not been reached
when the time came to terminate the audience.
Petrarch spent
altogether about three months
over this embassy. After
making full allowance for the probable delays of Alpine travel in midwinter,
we may suppose that two-thirds of the time would be spent in Paris, for we do
not hear of the ambassador’s staying at intermediate places, but only of his
passing through a country which thirty years ago had seemed to him a picture of
wealth and prosperity, but which he now found desolate and barren, with farms
deserted and houses tumbling to decay. A feature of his visit which gave him
especial pleasure was the renewal of his acquaintance with Peter of Poitiers,
who had testified his admiration for him years before by going to seek him out
at Vaucluse.
In March he was back at
Milan, and a few months later received there a fresh token of the Emperor’s
esteem and regard. Charles sent him his own golden drinking-cup, and
accompanied the gift with a letter of profuse compliment in which he invited
him to return to Prague. Petrarch thanked him for both bowl and letter in the
warmest terms, and very gracefully accepted the invitation of which he hoped he
might avail himself when the unhealthy season of late summer and early autumn
was past. But he did not forget to say roundly, though with perfect courtesy,
that the better course would have been for the Emperor to accept his invitation
to come to Italy. “Yours is the upper hand in virtue of your position, Caesar,”
he writes, “but mine by the goodness of my cause. You summon me to honourable—I
grant you that—and delightful enjoyment ; I call you to high emprise, to your
enforced and bounden
duty, which is indeed so plainly your duty that you may be thought to have been
brought to birth for no other purpose.” And this is only one of many similar
appeals addressed to Charles in the years now under review.
From the middle of 1361
to the end of 1363, the story is little else than a record of deaths. The
plague, never entirely subdued, broke out again with a virulence that in some
places even exceeded that of the first terrible visitation. One after another
Petrarch’s dearest friends died, till of those who had made the season of his
manhood so fruitful in affection only three or four remained to share with him
the joys and sorrows of age. Younger men, indeed, were gathering round him, who
would cherish his later years with filial piety, but only Guido Settimo, Philip
de Cabassoles, and Boccaccio were left of those who had cheered him in youth’s
struggles, or rejoiced, with a joy that no achievement of their own could have
inspired, in the triumphs of his maturer manhood.
The first bereavement of
which he had knowledge, though not the first in order of occurrence, was the
death of his son. All Giovanni’s misdeeds had not quenched the flame of natural
affection in Petrarch’s heart. “ I talked of hating him while he lived,” he
wrote to Nelli; “ now that he is dead, I love him with my mind, hold him in my
heart, and embrace him in memory. My eyes look for him, alas! in vain.” The
Virgil fly-leaf has this entry : “ Our Giovanni, a man born to bring toil and grief
to me, afflicted me with heavy and con
stant anxieties during
his life, and wounded me with pangs of sorrow by his death. For having known
but few happy days in his life, he died in the year of our Lord 1361, the
twenty-fourth of his age, at midnight between Friday the ninth and Saturday the
tenth day of July. The news reached me on the fourteenth of the month, at
evening. And he died at Milan, in that unexampled general slaughter by the
plague from which that city had previously been exempt, but which then found
its way thither and invaded it.”
Three weeks later he
heard first a vague report and then only too certain news of a still greater
sorrow, the greatest, indeed, that could possibly befall him : Socrates had
died exactly three months ago in Avignon, and all this time Petrarch had
been ignorant of his
loss. It sounds incredible, but the note in the Virgil is positive and precise
; Petrarch, often so careless of chronology, noted these days of bereavement
with the closest exactitude. “ In the same year,” the note proceeds, “on the
8th of August, first a doubtful report from one of my servants on his return
from Milan, and presently on Wednesday the 18th of the same month sure
intelligence brought by a retainer of the Cardinal Theatine coming from Rome,
reached me of the death of Socrates, my friend and best brother, who is said to
have been dead since last May in Babylon, otherwise called Avignon. I have lost
my life’s companion and comfort; Christ Jesus, receive these two and the other
five into Thine everlasting habitations, that as they cannot be
longer with me here
below, they may enjoy the blessed exchange of life with Thee.” And to Nelli he
writes : “ Socrates was born in a different part of the world from ours, but
from the very moment of our meeting, his look, his disposition, and his worth
made us of one mind, so that never from that day have I known his zeal for my
interests falter or his devotion slacken for a single instant.”
The latter part of the
year was brightened by an event of happy omen destined to be happily fulfilled:
Petrarch’s daughter Francesca, now eighteen years old, was married to Francesco
da Brossano, a Milanese of good family, whom Boccaccio describes as a very tall
young man of placid countenance, sober speech, and refined manners. Francesca
and her husband made their home with Petrarch ; she was a devoted daughter,
Francesco a model son-in- law ; with them, and by and bye with his little
grandchildren, Petrarch found the chief happiness of his later years. The eldest
of these was the little Eletta, born in the following year; a boy whom they
named Francesco was born in 1366, but died only two years later, in the summer
of 1368.
Azzo da Correggio died
in 1362. For him Petrarch had written his Remedies of Good and Bad Fortujie;
the subject was singularly appropriate to the vicissitudes of that stormy
career, but only a friend’s partiality could lay the blame on Fortune. Azzo had
been his own architect, and had himself to thank when his house lay in ruins.
Fortune, indeed, had done all that she could for him ; he had brilliant
talents, aptitude for statesmanship, extra
ordinary charm of
manner, and early opportunities of employing his gifts with advantage. He threw
everything away from sheer over-indulgence in treacheries. It was not
fickleness, but a kind of natural obliquity which set him scheming, as soon as
he had concluded a bargain, how to get more gain by breaking than by keeping
it. Mere lack of scruple would not have hindered him; on the contrary, morality
was nothing accounted of among the princes of Italy, and a man might very
easily be too nice in his sense of honour to serve them; but there comes a
point at which a reputation for treachery makes the traitor still more
unserviceable as a tool than the honest man. Azzo reached that point, and
passed it; and so he, who might have ruled Parma and founded a great library,
died, a discredited exile, after losing most of his property by confiscation,
and having to spend nearly all that remained in ransoming his wife and two
children from the prison in which the third child had miserably perished.
In the early spring of
1362 Petrarch thought of returning to Vaucluse, and actually started on his
journey, but the disturbed state of Lombardy made travel impossible, and he was
forced to return. Then came a pressing invitation from the Emperor to fulfil
his promise of visiting Prague ; again he started, and again the presence of
hostile armies forced him to go back first to Padua, and thence, to escape a
virulent outbreak of the plague, to Venice. It was just at this time, when he
might well have been excused if the miseries of the past year had
broken his nerve, that
he gave a signal instance of his self-possession and freedom from those superstitions
to which his contemporaries were so prone. A fanatical Carthusian monk, to whom
all secular learning seemed a snare of the devil, visited Boccaccio and told
him that a certain holy man, named Peter of Siena, a worker of miracles, had
had on his death-bed a vision telling him that Boccaccio, Petrarch, and some
others would very soon die, and that if they would escape damnation, they must
amend their lives and give up profane literature. For once, Boccaccio was
thrown off his mental balance; in times of pestilence very sane men may lose
their heads, and in Boccaccio’s versatile nature there was a strain of
melancholy, which in a man of narrower sympathies might have degenerated into
moroseness. For the moment he was thoroughly frightened, and wrote to Petrarch
that he must obey the divinely sent command, get rid of his books, and devote
himself to an ascetic life. Petrarch replied in a letter which ranks among the
noblest of his prose writings.
You tell me, he writes
in effect, that this holy man had a vision of the Saviour, and so discerned all
truth: a great sight for mortal eyes to see. Great indeed, I agree with you, if
genuine; but how often have we not known this tale of a vision made a cloak for
imposture ? And having visited you, his messenger proposed, I understand, to go
to Naples, thence to Gaul and Britain, and then lastly to me. Well, when he
comes, I will examine him closely; his looks, his demeanour, his behaviour
under questioning, and
so forth, shall help me to judge of his truthfulness. And the holy man on his
death-bed saw us two and a few others to whom he had a secret message, which he
charged this
visitor of yours to give
us ; so, if I understand you rightly, runs the story. Well, the message to you
is twofold : you have not long to live, and you must give up poetry. Hence your
trouble, which I made my own while reading your letter, but which I put away
from me on thinking it over, as you will do also; for if you will only give
heed to me, or rather to your own natural good sense, you will see that you have
been distressing yourself about a thing that should have pleased you. Now, if
this message is really from the Lord, it must be pure truth. But is it from
the Lord ? Or has its real author used the Lord’s name to give weight to his
own
saying ? I grant you the
frequency of death-bed prophecies; the histories of Greece and Rome are full of
instances; but even if we allow that these old stories and your monitor’s
present tale are all true, still what is there to distress you so terribly ?
What is there new in all this? You knew without his telling you that you could
not have a very long span of life before you. And is not our life here labour
and sorrow, and is it not its chief merit that it is the road to a better? Do
not philosophers, writers of Holy Scripture, and fathers of the Church all
agree in telling us that death is more to be desired than life ? All this you
know, and I am teaching you nothing new, but only bringing back to your mind
the knowledge which it held
before this shock
paralysed your memory. This at least all must grant, that we ought not greatly
to love life, but that we are bound to endure it to the end, and seek to make
its hard way the path to our desired home. Yes, it is not death that is to be
feared, but life that is to be lived by the Christian rule. Ah! but you have
come to old age, says your monitor. Death cannot be far off. Look to your soul.
Well, I grant you that scholarship may be an unreasonable and even bitter
pursuit for the old, if they take it up for the first time, but if you and your
scholarship have grown old together, ’tis the pleasantest of comforts. Forsake
the Muses, says he; many things that may grace a lad are a disgrace to an old
man : wit and the senses fail you. Nay, I answer, when he bids you pluck sin from
your heart, he speaks well and prudently ; but why forsake learning, in which
you are no novice, but an expert able to discern what to choose and what to
refuse; which has become not a toil, but a delight to you, and which you have
skill to use for the furtherance of knowledge, eloquence, and religion ? What!
Shall we Christians who know exactly what to think of the gods of the mythology
renounce the classics and yet read the really dangerous books of the heretics
? ’Tis the sure mark of ignorance to despise what it cannot understand and to
try to bar against others the way in which it has no skill to walk. Learning
rightly used does not hinder, but helps the conduct of life. It is like a meat
which may disagree with the sick, but gives strength to the healthy. All
history is full of ex
amples of good men who
have loved learning, and though many unlettered men have attained to holiness,
no man was ever debarred from holiness by letters. Good men all have one and
the same goal, but the roads to it are many. Each man travels his own way, but
the lofty ways are better than the low; piety with learning is better than
piety without it, and for every unlettered saint you can name me, I will name
you a greater saint proficient in letters.
But if, in spite of all
this, you persist in your intention, and if you must needs throw away not only
your learning, but the poor instruments of it, then I thank you for giving me
the refusal of your books. I will buy your library, if it must be sold, for I
would not that the books of so great a man should be dispersed abroad and
hawked about by unworthy hands. I will buy it and unite it with my own; then
some day this mood of yours will pass, some day you will come back to your old
devotion. Then you will make your home with me : you will find your own books
side by side with mine, which are equally yours. Thenceforth we shall share a
common life and a common library, and when the survivor of us is dead, the
books shall go to some place where they will be kept together and dutifully
tended, in perpetual memory of us who owned them.
There is no need to
enlarge upon the excellence of this remarkable letter. It tells its own comforting
tale of sane piety, loyalty to a high calling, and considerate devotion to a
friend. Only a true lover
| PETRARCH'S HOUSE IN
VENICE
|
The libraries, however,
were never united; Boccaccio was soon healed of his mental sickness, and went
back to his books with a convalescent’s appetite. But Petrarch made the
intended provision for his own books. He reserved the whole property in them
to himself for his lifetime, but assigned them not by a mere will, but by a
memorandum intended to be embodied in an irrevocable deed, to the Republic of
Venice after his death. There is no evidence that this deed was ever duly
signed, sealed, and delivered; but the validity of the bargain is indisputable,
for Petrarch accepted and enjoyed the consideration. The Palazzo Molina, or
Palace of the Two Towers, was assigned to him, and became his chief residence
till war between Venice and Padua made sojourn in the former city unpleasant
to him. His books therefore should have gone to Venice, and to this day
visitors are told that they formed the nucleus of the Marcian Library ; it has
also been constantly asserted that the State which accepted the precious legacy
left it to rot in the packing-cases that contained it. There is no truth in
either of these statements, though there is some justification for the second
in the condition of some books discovered two hundred and fifty years later,
and erroneously believed to be Petrarchs. After his death, the Republic was either
unable to claim her inheritance or indifferent to it, and the real nucleus of
the Marcian Library is the collection bequeathed by Cardinal Bessarion
in the following
century. Petrarch’s books were probably dispersed soon after his death ;
somehow or other a good many of them found their way to Gian-Galeazzo’s library
at Pavia, and most of these are probably now in Paris ; others are to be found
in various Continental libraries.
In September, Innocent
VI died. For his successor, the Cardinals went outside their own body, and
chose the Abbot Guillaume Grimoard, of Marseilles. Frenchmen now formed the
majority of the Sacred College. The new Pope was a Frenchman, supposed to have
a special attachment to his country. Everything seemed to point to the definite
establishment of the Papal See at Avignon, but a story related by Villani
credits Grimoard before his election with the wish to return to Rome and to
deliver Italy from her tyrants. Whether there is any foundation for this story
or not, the new Pope certainly took the earliest opportunity to give a hint of
possible change; he was proclaimed by the name of Urban V. Joyfully Petrarch
hailed the omen ; that the immediate offer of the secretaryship proved the new
Pope personally favourable to him was least among the causes of his
gratification. With enthusiasm he spoke of “this most holy, liberal, and truly
tirbane Father, raised to the highest place of human dignity by the express
will of God, for the comfort of all good men, and the rescue of the world.”
The story of 1363 is
again an almost unbroken record of deaths. Its one happy episode is Boccaccio’s
three months’ visit to Venice in the summer.
He brought Leonzio
Pilato with him, and we can imagine the zest with which the friends must have
discussed the teaching of Greek. Hardly had Boccaccio left when the hand of
death fell again heavily on the diminished circle of Petrarch’s friends. In
this sad year the plague took from him Laelius, the last survivor of the
Lombez- Avignon group, Barbato, whose friendship with him dated from the
triumphant year of his coronation, and—last-known, but perhaps best-beloved of
all, save only Socrates—Francesco Nelli, his dear Simonides, for twelve years
the sympathetic recipient of all his confidences. “ You alone are left to me
of all my friends,” he cries, in his agony, to Boccaccio, and the words were
almost literally true. Guido Settimo and Philip de Cabassoles were the only
exceptions, and it does not appear that either of them was personally known as
yet to Boccaccio.
THE MASTER AND HIS
PUPILS— VENICE, PADUA, AND PAVIA
1364-1367
PETRARCH had not yet
completed his sixtieth
year, but already he
must be counted an old man. In some respects the second plague made an even
greater change in his life than the first: after 1363 he made no new
friendships of the old intimate kind with men of his own age. The nearest
approach to such a new tie was the ripening of his acquaintance with Francesco
Bruno, the new Papal Secretary, into a feeling of warm attachment and regard.
It is evident that the longer Petrarch knew Bruno, the better he liked and
trusted him. But the word friendship covers many degrees in the scale of human
sentiment, and though Petrarch and Bruno were friends in no mere conventional
sense, they never met in the flesh ; however intimate might be their knowledge
of each other’s minds—and Petrarch testifies that it was very intimate indeed—
they could never be on those terms of more than brotherly affection which we
have learnt to associate with the names of Socrates, Lselius, and Simonides.
For the rest, the names which crop up for the first time in the Letters written
in Old Age are chiefly
those of scholars with
whom Petrarch exchanged the courtesies of their common calling, or men of a
younger generation, some of them his pupils in literature, others the sons of
old friends.
The later letters
accurately reflect the changed condition of their writer’s life. They contain a
much larger proportion of treatises and disquisitions than the earlier
collection; of really “familiar” letters there are comparatively few. One long
and delightful letter of reminiscences addressed to Guido Settimo is our
principal authority for the events of Petrarch’s early years. There are half a
dozen addressed to Philip de Cabassoles, which show that neither long absence,
nor Philip’s promotion, first to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and then to the
Cardinalate, could weaken the ties contracted in the intimacy of Vaucluse. Best
of all, there is a w’hole series of letters to Boccaccio, which prove that
Petrarch had at least one friend left with whom there need be no shadow of
concealment.
If he did not contract
new friendships, still less was he likely to take up new themes or attack the
solution of new problems. The interests of his earlier years were enough to
fill the lives of half a dozen ordinary men ; they could still satisfy even his
appetite for work, and there is not a sign of slackening in the ardour with
which he pursued them. Still we may note that the last decade of his life is a
time of strenuous diligence on the old lines, not of any effort to strike out
new ones.
One change observable in
his habits was entirely for the better: Venice now counted for much more,
and Milan for much less
in his life. His attachment to the republic was of recent growth. Only ten
years before he had been a strong partisan of Genoa, and had written to Guido
Settimo, then Archdeacon and on the point of being made Archbishop of that
city, a letter in which he identified himself with the Genoese, and spoke of
the Venetians as a “haughty and implacable foe.” Next he did his best both by
letter and as the Visconti’s ambassador to bring about peace between the two
great maritime states. From the first Venice treated him with such
distinguished honour as must have inclined him favourably towards her.
Presently came the revolution, by which, after three years’ subjection, Genoa
shook off the yoke of Milan : Petrarch’s personal friendship with Guido was now
the only tie that connected him with Genoa, and there could be no shadow of
reason why he should not cultivate closer relations with Venice. These were
facilitated by his friendship with Benintendi de’ Ravegnani, Chancellor of the
Republic. He accepted her invitation to write Andrea Dan- dolo’s epitaph, paid
her frequent visits, and at last, as we have seen, gave her the reversion of
his library, and accepted the usufruct of a house as a mark of her gratitude.
It was not surprising that Venice in these days of her early greatness should
cast over him the spell which for six hundred years has charmed the imagination
of men. There was a good old Roman ring about the word Republic which always
appealed to him ; and here was a republic which embodied
his ideas in the
stability of her institutions, and gratified his taste by the dignified
splendour of her civic life. He speaks of her as “ that most august city of
Venice, the one remaining home of liberty, peace, and justice, the one refuge
left to good men, the one harbour where the ships of those who desire to live
worthily may still find shelter when battered by the storms of tyranny and war.
’Tis a city rich in gold, but richer in repute; powerful in her resources, more
powerful in her worth; built on a solid foundation of marble, and established
on the yet more solid base of civic concord; girt with the salt of the waves,
and safeguarded by the still better salt of good counsel.” To modern ears,
indeed, it may sound a little strange to speak of the Venetian oligarchy as the
one defender of liberty ; and when we read of the “civic concord” that
prevailed in Venice, we cannot help remembering that she had very recently
beheaded a doge. But once again it must be remembered that by liberty Petrarch
means the people’s assent to the form of their government, not their
participation in its working; and the suppression of Marino Faliero’s puerile
conspiracy might well be regarded as a testimony to the strength of the
Venetian Constitution, not as evidence of any weakness inherent in it.
Not that he broke with
the Visconti; far from it. Only from this time he appears in the character of
Galeazzo’s personal friend, rather than as a client of the family. He was as
deeply interested as ever in the politics of Milan as part of the general
politics of Italy; and when a new papal envoy,
Cardinal Androuin de la
Roche, came to treat for peace between Bernabo Visconti and the Church,
Petrarch waited on him at Bologna. His visit was probably paid just before the
conclusion of the Peace of Lombardy, by which Bernabo Visconti waived his claim
to the possession of Bologna on condition that Androuin, not Albornoz, should
be deputed by the Holy See to govern it.
The sight of Bologna
distressed Petrarch sadly; he had known it as a peaceful and opulent university
town ; now it had been for some years the bone of contention between rival
armies, and the result to both university and city was deplorable; “ it looked
just like a hungry desert.”
He seems to have spent
Lent and Easter, as was now his habit, at Padua ; in May we find him once more
in Venice. The Venetians were now busy with their expedition to Crete, which
was in full rebellion against their authority. The Peace of Lombardy enabled
them to offer the command of their forces to Luchino del Verme, one of the most
celebrated condottieri of the day. For some years Luchino had been Galeazzo’s
Captain-General, and the Milanese successes against the Marquis of Mont- ferrat
must be credited to his skill in leadership. The peace threw him out of work,
and Petrarch, apparently at the instance of the Doge Lorenzo Celso, wrote him a
letter congratulating him on the offer of the Cretan command, and urging him to
accept it; to this practical exhortation he added some five folio pages of
disquisition on the qualities of a great general, as illustrated by instances
from
history. Luchino
accepted the command, was solemnly sworn in, and sailed from Venice on April
joth; less than two months afterwards arrived the news of a decisive victory.
On June 4th Petrarch was standing with his friend and guest, the Archbishop of
Patras, at the window of his house on the Riva degli Schiavoni, when he saw a
galley making at full speed for the harbour; her oars were wreathed with
garlands, and on the prow stood a band of youths crowned with laurel and waving
flags; evidently she brought news of victory. The sentinel in the watch-tower
gave the signal that a ship from abroad was entering the port. The people
flocked down to the quays, and soon all Venice had heard the joyful news that,
almost without loss to her own army, the enemy had been routed, the Venetian
captives liberated, the rebel fortresses surrendered, and the whole island
reduced to submission. Then Venice showed the world how a great nation rejoices
in a great triumph. A huge procession followed the Doge and chief officers of
state to a solemn thanksgiving jn St. Mark’s,
and then paraded the
Great Square. Games and sports followed ; the square was packed so close that
it seemed as if the whole people must be met together, but in all this throng “
there was not a sign of tumult or disorder or quarrelling; the city was full of
joy and thankfulness, of harmony and love; and while magnificence ruled
supreme, modesty and sobriety were not banished from her kingdom.” Two months
later, when the victorious general had returned with his troops, the
celebrations were
renewed on a still more
elaborate scale ; four whole days were devoted to a magnificent spectacle, of
which the chief features were an equestrian display by twenty-four young
Venetian nobles, and a tournament in which Venetians and foreign guests of the
republic took part together. Among the jousters were included some Englishmen
of high rank, members of King Edward’s Court and family, who had come by sea to
Venice a few days before. The Doge witnessed the spectacle from the marble
platform behind the bronze horses of St. Mark, and for two days out of the four
Petrarch sat in a place of honour at his right hand. He was invited, indeed, to
attend the whole performance, but excused himself for the other two days on the
ground of his well-known occupations.
In the following year,
as we learn from the Florentine historian, Scipione Ammirato, the Republic of
Florence asked the Pope to confer on Petrarch a canonry either in her own
Church, or in that of Fiesole. The object of the request was, of course, to
induce Petrarch to take up his residence in Florence, but nothing came of the
proposal. The Pope, however, had his own plan for attracting Petrarch back to
Provence, and nominated him to a canonry at Carpentras. But before the
presentation was actually made, a false report of the poet’s death was
circulated in Avignon, and universally believed. Petrarch hints that this
report, and many others of the same kind, were set about by the malice of a
personal enemy. If this was the case, the lie for once succeeded in doing its
victim a mischief, for
before the error could be rectified, Urban had conferred all Petrarch’s benefices
on others. Those which he had actually held were of course restored to him as
soon as he was found to be alive; but as he had never been formally presented
to the canonry of Carpentras, it remained with its new possessor. It is
doubtful whether Petrarch very much regretted the loss of it. He had been
gratified by the spontaneous mark of Urban’s goodwill, and especially by the
considerate thoughtfulness of a gift which would have brought him back to the
neighbourhood of Vaucluse and Philip de Cabassoles ; all this he warmly acknowledged
in a subsequent letter to Bruno. But as years went on he became steadily less
inclined to leave Italy; and when at last, to his exceeding joy, Urban brought
the papacy back to Rome, he could declare with evident sincerity that the good
Pope’s blessing was the only favour that he desired of him.
The chronology of these
years is not quite clear; the letters belonging to them are certainly not
placed in exact order of composition, and Fracas- setti assigns to 1364-5 some
events which in this narrative are placed a year later. But the matter is one of
curiosity rather than of importance. The general tenor of Petrarch’s life
throughout the period is clear enough.
It was probably in the
summer of this year that he first took up his residence in Pavia. That town had
now been for six years in the power of Galeazzo Visconti. For a short time,
indeed, it had seemed
as though Bussolari
might succeed in his heroic attempt to found a state on the principles of
morality and freedom, but the powers of evil were too strong. The Beccaria,
acting as Galeazzo’s jackals, made themselves masters of the surrounding
country. Pavia was closely besieged, and though Montferrat made many attempts
to relieve it, only a single convoy got through. In October, 1359, hunger
produced the usual pestilence, and Bussolari saw that he must yield. With his
own hand he drew up the terms of capitulation, by which Galeazzo agreed to
respect the new Constitution, and maintain the people in full enjoyment of
their liberties. For himself, Bussolari asked not so much as a safe-conduct; his
concern was for the people, and he had absolutely no thought for his own
safety. Galeazzo signed the treaty, and it is superfluous to add that he broke
it. By inducing Bussolari’s superiors to keep the friar in strict monastic confinement,
which soon ended in his death, Galeazzo did not indeed commit any breach of
faith ; he only gave the expected measure of Visconti generosity. To the
citizens of Pavia he was both mean and treacherous. The liberties which he had
sworn to maintain were at once destroyed, and his breach of faith was made
worse by his subornation of servile lawyers to furnish him with a pretext for
its justification. One thing he did for Pavia : he brought money into the
place. The Milanese historian Corio says that his wife and family persuaded him
to leave Milan, lest Bernabo, in one of his frenzies, should offer him violence
; whether this were his
motive or not—and
Bcrnabo in a frenzy was certainly a person to be avoided—Galeazzo left Milan
in 1360, and built himself a magnificent palace- castle in Pavia. Petrarch was
always welcome at his Court, and from 1365 onwards we find him making a
practice of spending the late summer and autumn there, and sometimes prolonging
his visit to the end of the year.
| CASTLE OF PAVIA |
This period is rich in
letters to Boccaccio. One of these gives us a glimpse of the Italian minstrels
who went about singing and reciting the compositions of well-known poets.
These, if Petrarch’s description is to be trusted, ranked far below the
jongleurs of Provence. The latter, though not to be confounded with the courtly
poets known as troubadours, were as often as not the authors of the
compositions which they sang or recited. But the Italian minstrels are
characterised by Petrarch as “ men of no great parts, but with great powers of
memory, great industry, and still greater impudence, who frequent the halls of
kings and great men, with not a rag of their own to cover their nakedness, but
tricked out in the trappings of other men’s songs, and who earn noblemen’s
favour by their declamatory recitations of this or that man’s best
compositions, especially of such as are written in the vulgar tongue.”
Naturally these reciters were for ever pestering Petrarch for a copy of his
latest poem. In his early days he was in the habit of gratifying them, but
presently took a disgust at their importunity, and not only refused all their
applications, but would not so much as see the applicants.
Occasionally, however,
he received visits of thanks from men whom he had formerly sent away starving
and in rags with a poem to recite, and who now came back well fed and clad in
silk to assure him that his kindness had saved them from utter poverty. This
made him consider the granting of their
o o
requests to be a kind of
alms-giving, and he would often relax his rule of refusal, especially in favour
of those whom he knew to be poor and honest. When he had speech of these men,
he would ask them why they plagued him with all their importunities, and
especially why they did not go and give Boccaccio a turn. One day he got an
answer which throws a charming light on the foibles which almost equally with
his great qualities make Boccaccio dear to us, and on the complete frankness
with which he and Petrarch spoke and wrote to each other. It was no use going
to Boccaccio, it seems, for Boccaccio was in a huff; he was no poet, he said ;
Dante and Petrarch were your only poets, and no one else need apply for the
title. It is not to be supposed that for a single moment Boccaccio allowed
himself to be jealous of the reputation of those whom he thus exalted above
himself. He did not claim to be put on a level with his two great masters; it
was Petrarch who rightly told him that his place was by their side. But
Boccaccio, like all impulsive men, had his fits of depression. Poverty pressed
hard on him, and he was amply justified in feeling now and then that the fruits
of his genius and industry deserved more than they received in the way of
material reward, and perhaps of reputation too. In such a
mood, which we may be
sure was only transitory, he was for throwing his Italian poems into the fire.
What was the use of keeping this stuff, when Italy had the Divina Commedia and
the Canzoniere ? Petrarch’s reproof is at once sensible and affectionate. He
tells Boccaccio about an old man of Ravenna, who was no mean judge of poetry,
and who always put Dante first, Petrarch himself second, and Boccaccio third
among the poets of Italy. For his own part Petrarch accepts the verdict; but if
Boccaccio thinks he ought to have second place, it is entirely at his service ;
there can be no quarrels for precedence between them. If such a thing were
possible, it would mean that their friendship was incomplete ; for his own part
Petrarch would rather rank Boccaccio above himself than below, and he remembers
old sayings by his friend which show a reciprocal affection. The thing that
really matters is not relative position, but excellence of work, and if any one
still remains ahead of him in the race, let Boccaccio take it as an incentive
to go on working his hardest and producing his best. That is the kind of goad
which stimulates a noble mind to win astonishing success. Boccaccio indeed has
a legitimate grievance against this ignorant and conceited
O £3 o
generation, which is
incapable of appreciating such work as his. He may well have a mind to withdraw
it from so incompetent a tribunal; but let him hold his hand, and remember that
in the realm of high learning he may always take refuge from the vulgarities
and ineptitudes of the day.
In the autumn of 1365
Boccaccio went to Avig-
non as the spokesman of
an important Florentine embassy to the Pope. He returned early in December by
sea to Genoa, and Petrarch hoped that he might come thence to pay him a visit
at Pavia, but Boccaccio was obliged to go straight home to Florence. He wrote
Petrarch an account of his stay at Avignon and an expression of his regret at
not being able to visit him ; in reply Petrarch sent a long letter dated from
Pavia on December 14th, in which he alludes with special pleasure to Boccaccio’s
account of his first meeting with Philip, de Cabassoles. “Greatly do I
rejoice,” he writes, “ that in Babylon itself you saw those few friends whom
death has spared me, and above all that veritable father of mine, Philip,
Patriarch of Jerusalem, a man, to describe him in a brief phrase, altogether
worthy of the dignity to which he has attained, and not unworthy to attain to
that of Rome, if ever the turn of events should bring him the office for which
his merits fit him. Though he had never seen you before, he welcomed you as my
second self, you tell me, embracing you long and tenderly with sincere
affection in the presence of the Pope himself, and under the eyes of the
Cardinals, and after loving kisses and pleasant conversation, with anxious
inquiries about my welfare, he begged that I would send him presently my book
On the Solitary Life, which I wrote years ago in his own country district, when
he was Bishop of the diocese of Cavaillon, and dedicated to him. In truth he
asks what is only fair, since I have really finished that little treatise; but
I call God, who knows
everything, to witness
that ten times at least I have tried and tried again to send him the writing in
such a state that, however much its composition might fail to satisfy the
reader’s ears and intelligence, at least its penmanship should be pleasing to
his eye. But every attempt to carry out my wish has been frustrated by the
obstacle of which I am always complaining. You know just what value to set on a
copyist’s trustworthiness and diligence ; they are not the least of the plagues
which afflict your talented writer. And so, incredible as it sounds, this book
which was written in a few months has never got copied in all these years.” The
treatise was actually copied soon after, and sent to Philip in 1366.
The same letter, like
many others which precede and follow it, contains a reference to the Greek
Leonzio Pilato and the Latin translation of Homer which Petrarch had
commissioned him to make. The story of Leonzio is a veritable tragi-comedy. He
was born in Calabria, but when in Italy passed himself off as a native of
Thessalonica; in Greece it pleased him to boast of his Italian origin. Boccaccio
had picked him up on the journey from Venice to Avignon, and persuaded him to
come back with him and teach Greek in Florence. Leonzio claimed to be a
disciple of Barlaam, but not much reliance could be placed on any account that
he gave of himself. Doubt has even been thrown on his qualifications as a
teacher of Greek, but Boccaccio certainly regarded him as thoroughly proficient
in the language and conversant with its
literature. By his
influence in Florence, he managed to get a chair of Greek founded specially
that Leonzio might fill it, and, poor as he was, took private lessons from him,
and so supplemented his professional income. Petrarch too took a share in
contributing to Leonzio’s maintenance; he had heard with enthusiasm of
Boccaccio’s scheme for establishing a chair of Greek, and eagerly seized the
opportunity of commissioning the new professor to make a Latin translation of
Homer. Hitherto there had been nothing of the kind; to persons ignorant of Greek,
Homer could be known only through a sort of compendium, so badly compiled that
its faultiness was apparent on the face of it, even to students wholly ignorant
of the original. Now, thought Petrarch and Boccaccio, was the opportunity for
getting a really good translation, and Petrarch gladly undertook to bear the
whole expense, if he might have the pleasure of putting the book on the
shelves of his library. After many delays and repeated anxious inquiries, the
precious volumes at length arrived, and were installed in their place of honour
in February, 1366; but before the translation reached its purchaser, the
translator had come by a strange end; it seemed as if the fates had ordained
him a death to match the extravagant oddities of his life. Whatever his merits
as a professor, Leonzio could not be pronounced a social success. In
appearance he was a grotesque little man with preternaturally hideous features,
coarse rusty-black hair, and a beard of enormous length. His habits were not
nice; and
Petrarch says that he
wrote letters longer and dirtier than his beard. In character he could only be
compared to the troll in the fairy story, whose caprice showed itself in
perpetual discontent with the conditions of his existence, and grumblings at
the people who were kind to him. While he was in Italy, Greece was the only
land for decent folk to live in. No sooner had he disregarded Petrarch’s and
Boccaccio’s advice, and betaken himself to Greece, than he was begging them to
have him back in Italy. Petrarch at least had had enough of him, and left the
letters unanswered; but Leonzio, who must have been a pretty shrewd judge of
character, felt sure that he would not be turned away if he presented himself
as a suppliant in the house which for three months had endured him as a guest.
He set sail from Constantinople with a manuscript of Sophocles, or so he said,
as a peace- offering, and got safely as far as the Adriatic, when a terrific
storm arose, and Leonzio was killed by a flash of lightning, which struck the mast
to which he was clinging for safety. So died the first professor of Greek in a
Western University.
From the same series of
letters we find that Boccaccio was once more anxious about his friend’s
independence. He did not quite like Petrarch’s long rhapsody on the beauties
and amenities of Pavia; Galeazzo’s new palace might be as fine as Petrarch
painted it, but Boccaccio could not be persuaded that a Visconti castle was the
home of liberty. Petrarch wrote at some length to reassure him, and this time with
better reason than thirteen
years earlier. In 1353
he had been nominally the free guest of the Visconti, but it cannot be denied
that effectively he was their client; now, in 1366, though the court
phraseology might still designate them his patrons, he was really the
independent friend of Galeazzo.
In these years we find
him increasingly intimate with men of a younger generation, who were at once
his pupils in literature and the friends of his old age. Nearest of them all in
affection, and most devoted in service to the master, was Lombardo della Sete,
or da Serico, a native of Padua, and a frequent inmate of the household. He was
a bachelor, and lived a very simple, frugal life in the country. Petrarch
mentions in his will that Lombardo had often neglected his own affairs to
attend to those of his friend ; he named him among his principal legatees, and
even made him his general heir, in the event of Francesco da Brossano dying
before him. The tie between the two was all the closer as Lombardo was himself
a man of letters and a diligent student; he continued and finished the Epitome
of the Lives of Illustrious Men, on which Petrarch was engaged at the time of
his death, and there are extant two or three treatises of his own, one of them
evidently suggested by his studies with Petrarch, On the Praises of certain
Ladies who have won renown in Letters or in Arms. Another friend and disciple,
nearer perhaps to Petrarch in age, but still a good many years his junior, was
the grammarian Donato degli Albanzani, a native of Pratovecchio, in the
Casentino or upper
valley of the Arno, and
therefore called by Petrarch Apenninigena. Boccaccio speaks of Donato as a poor
man, but highly respected, and a great friend of his own. For many years he
taught grammar at Venice, where he probably made Petrarch’s acquaintance in or
about the year 1361. A firm friendship resulted ; Donato was an enthusiastic
admirer of Petrarch’s works, and after the latter’s death published a
commentary on his Eclogues and a translation of his Lives of Illustrious Men.
He also translated Boccaccio’s Lives of Illustrious Women.
A very eminent pupil and
follower of Petrarch in literature, though perhaps not personally known to him,
was Coluccio Salutati, a Florentine by birth, who while still a boy accompanied
his father into exile at Bologna, and was educated there. A lawyer by
profession, he was in 1368 associated with Bruno as joint papal secretary, and
some years later he was recalled to Florence and appointed Chancellor of the
Republic. Distinguished as was his official career, he won far higher fame as a
scholar and a Humanist. Diligently following the lines laid down by Petrarch
and Boccaccio, he did his utmost for the emendation of corrupt classical texts,
and made the fruitful suggestion that public libraries should be instituted and
trustworthy copyists placed on their staff. He was himself the best Latinist of
his day, and his voluminous original works in prose and verse were accounted
masterpieces. He was also well versed in Greek, and successful in promoting
the study of it.
Of almost equal
celebrity with Coluccio was the grammarian Giovanni da Ravenna, whom the former
recommended to the lord of that city, Carlo Malatesta, in 1404, as “having been
at one time the housemate and pupil of Francesco Petrarca, of famous memory,
with whom he lived for the space of nearly fifteen years.” There is an
intricate controversy as to Giovanni’s family and the exact details of his
life, but it seems reasonable to conclude with Baldelli that he was the staunch
friend of the Carrara family, who was successively a teacher of grammar at
Belluno, at Udine, and perhaps in Venice, Chancellor of the city of Padua, and
lecturer on Dante as well as on classical literature at Florence. On the other
hand, Fracassetti is probably correct in discrediting the usual identification
of him with the unnamed “young man of Ravenna ” who was Petrarch’s pupil and
private secretary at this time. There is no sufficient reason for supposing
that this young man’s name wras Giovanni, and even if it were, the
possession of so common a Christian name would not establish his identity with
the famous grammarian. On the other hand, it is practically certain that,
whereas the grammarian spent nearly fifteen years of his youth in Petrarch’s
house, the private secretary was not its inmate for more than three or four.
He came to him on
Donato’s recommendation in 1364, a mere lad, but so apt for his work, that some
two years later Petrarch wrote to Boccaccio that he had found a treasure. The boy
had a prodigious memory. In eleven days he had all Petrarch’s
twelve eclogues
perfectly by heart, and he never forgot what he had learnt. He was temperate in
his habits, not greedy of money, and as keen to work as his master himself; in
a word, though not above eighteen or nineteen years old, he was already the
ideal pupil and private secretary. He was treated as a son of the house, and
for some three years he repaid Petrarch’s affectionate kindness with faultless
diligence. His seems to have been the hand which made the final arrangement of
the Familiar Letters, and to him was entrusted such work as required scrupulous
care and nice judgment in scholarship.
Petrarch had found what
he had been looking for all these years, a careful and trustworthy copyist. But
the pleasant relation was too good to last. One fine day in 1367 the lad took
it into his head that he would like to see the world. Petrarch was much more
hurt in his affection than solicitous about the loss to his convenience. He
loved the boy, delighted in his companionship, anticipated a distinguished
career for him in literature, and had believed him to be singularly stable in
character ; now he thought him a little wanting in gratitude and sadly
deficient in steadfastness. Doubtless he did not make enough allowance for a
young man’s natural wish to try his fortune in the great world ; on the other
hand, the lad evidently urged his point somewhat unkindly and without regard
for the susceptibilities of the employer who had also been his friend and
benefactor. He had his way, of course. He was for going to Naples to see
Virgil’s
tomb, to Calabria, or
perhaps to Constantinople, to learn Greek. At another time he proposed to visit
Avignon. Whatever his ultimate intention, he actually crossed the Apennines and
got to Pisa. Finding no ship there, and having nearly exhausted his money, he
recrossed the Apennines and made for Parma, where he was nearly drowned in
trying to ford the river. A passer-by caught him by the heel and fished him
out, and somehow or other he made his way, penniless, ragged, and half starved,
to Petrarch’s house in Pavia. Here he found Francesco da Brossano at home, who
persuaded him, in spite of shame and fear, to wait and see the master. To him
he confessed his fault, and, of course, Petrarch took him back. “ I am sure he
will not stay with me,” he wrote to Donato; “he will be off again when the
impression of his suffering has worn off, but meanwhile I am putting by a
little journey-money for him.” His prognostication came true. A year later the
young man left him again, this time with Petrarch’s full consent. He carried
with him a letter of introduction to Bruno, who seems to have employed him as a
scribe in the secretary’s office.
Happy as Petrarch was in
seeing his work taken up by capable and eager pupils, and in the general
recognition of its value throughout Europe, it is not to be supposed that the
New Learning was accepted at once and without question by all the minds trained
in other schools of thought. We have seen that Petrarch had involved himself in
a rather undignified quarrel with the physicians; he was now
to have thrust on him a
similar conflict with that sect of philosophers who claimed to base their
system on the works of Aristotle, but who knew their supposed master only
through the commentaries of the Arab Averroes, which Michael Scott had
translated into Latin. Nothing could be more repugnant to Petrarch’s mind and
conscience than the method of this school, which was at once narrow in its
formalism and materialistic in its tendency. Certainly Petrarch professed
himself a devotee of philosophy, but the word philosopher has many shades of
meaning. Petrarch took it in its literal and general sense of a man who loves
wisdom ; he did not conceive that in order to claim the title you must have
thought out a coherent scheme of the universe. He was content to take such
philosophical doctrines as pleased him from any writer in whose pages he found
them, and never dreamed of co-ordinating them into a dogmatic
o o
system. In a word, his
philosophy was that of a man of letters, not of a metaphysician ; and as a man
of letters, anxious that fine thought should be expressed in fine style, he
hated the uncouth formalism of the Averroists, while as a devout Christian he
held the tendency of the school towards materialism to be a still viler
abomination. It was of the Averroists that he was probably thinking when he so
frequently deplored the ignorance, and worse than ignorance, prevalent at the
universities. On the other hand, the Averroists were not the people to take
their correction mildly. They were the dominant school, and who was this writer
of
verses that he should
set himself up as a judge of thinkers ? Of literature and of history they were
perfectly ignorant and scornfully contemptuous. The jargon of their scheme was
the only language they regarded, and what could not be expressed in its
formulae, simply was not knowledge. Matters came to a head in 1366, when four
graceless young men published in Venice a mock-solemn judgment to the effect
that Franciscus Petrarca was a good man, but uneducated. It is a sad pity that
Petrarch took up so silly a challenge. Surely he, whom every scholar in Europe
acknowledged for his chief and master, might have ignored the offensiveness of
the
7 O o
young men’s action and
laughed at its folly; but he was wounded to the quick both in his self-esteem
and in his zeal for the honour of his calling. He answered the attack in the
treatise, the writing of which occupied him for the next two years, On his own
and many other people s ignorance : a work which contains some fine passages,
and some thoughts entirely worthy of its title, but is deformed by that
intemperate vehemence and that note of personal rancour which disfigure all
Petrarch’s controversial writings.
To help him in the
controversy, he tried, apparently without result, to enlist the pen of a distinguished
young friend. The Augustinian friar Luigi Marsili was a native of Florence, and
either there or at Padua, where he received part of his education, he was
presented while still a mere boy to Petrarch. The poet, struck by the lad’s
manner and address, conceived great hopes of his future ;
he welcomed his visits,
and became more and more firmly convinced that a distinguished career was in
store for him. Keen must have been the stimulus afforded by such encouragement
to a boy of brilliant talents and eager desire for knowledge. Marsili’s
o o
subsequent career
justified the high hopes which Petrarch entertained of him ; alike in Paris and
in Italy he was reputed one of the foremost scholars of his day, and Coluccio
Salutati more than once paid him the compliment of consulting his judgment.
Some years passed between Petrarch’s first intimacy with him and its renewal
about this period ; Marsili was now a young man of whom Petrarch could say that
he had come back to him, in Ovid’s words, “a youth to manhood grown, more
comely than himself.” He conceived so strong an affection for him that in 1373
he gave him the copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions which he himself had received
from Fra Dionigi forty years earlier, and accompanied it with a short letter,
which, though written in the last year of his life, may be quoted here :—
“ By your leave, my
friend, I should say that my services to you, which you cite as many, are
nothing at all; it is merely that I have loved you from your boyhood, for even
then I had some presage of what was coming, and that now I love you better and
better every day, now that I have a present hope of finding in you such a man
as I wish. Gladly do I give you the book for which you ask; and I would give it
yet more gladly if it were still in the condition in which I had it as a gift
in my youth
from the celebrated
Dionysius, an eminent brother of your Order, a man distinguished in learning
and every kind of merit, who was a most kind father to me. But I was in those
days, by disposition perhaps as well as by my age, inclined to travel; and
because this book was very pleasant to me both for its matter and its author’s
sake, and was also little enough to be easily handled and lightly carried
about, I took it with me continually wellnigh all through Italy and Germany, so
that the book and my hand seemed to be almost of a piece, so inseparable had
they become by constant companionship. And, to say nothing of other falls by
river and land, I will tell you of a wonderful adventure when it went down to
the bottom of the sea with me off the coast of Nice, and undoubtedly it had
been all over with us both had not Christ plucked us out of this imminent
danger. So in going hither
o o o
and thither with me it
has grown old, till its old pages have become hard reading for old eyes; and
now at last it takes its way back to the house of Augustine, whence it came
forth, and will soon be starting afresh on its travels with you, I suppose. Be
it your good pleasure then to take it such as it is, and henceforth treat
anything that I have as at your disposal; save yourself the trouble of unnecessary
explanations, and take without asking whatever pleases you. Farewell, and may
good fortune be with you ; and pray to Christ for me whenever you approach His
table.”
A pleasant incident
occurred near the end of the year 1366. In November Stefano Colonna, a great-
grandson of old Stefano,
visited Petrarch at Venice and spent an afternoon with him. The old wound was
healed then, the old dissensions forgotten, and Petrarch could now write to
Bruno of young Stefano and young Agapito in terms that recall the warmth of his
old affection for their fathers and uncles.
THE POPE IN ROME
1367-1370
RE AT news came in the
spring of 1367, news
that filled Petrarch
with joyful hope of yet seeing the dawn of that better era for which he had all
his life been looking in vain—the Pope was really leaving Avignon and going
back to Rome. It was not the full realisation of Petrarch’s ideal, but at least
it put an end to what he regarded as the very worst political evil of the day,
the exile of the Papacy. Rienzi had failed and Charles IV had never tried to
restore the sovereignty of Rome ; but at least her “ second husband ” was now
awake to the solemn duties and glorious privileges of his office ; at least the
Eternal City was once more to be the centre of the world’s spiritual life. If
so much could be achieved at a blow, might not all the rest follow in due
course ? Might not the recognition of Rome’s right to be the seat of Papacy
lead men to acknowledge her equally valid right to be the seat of Empire ? It
was even rumoured that the spiritual and temporal sovereigns of the world had
arranged to meet within her walls; might not this meeting be the prelude to
their permanent joint residence there ?
The virulence of
Petrarch’s attacks on the vices of the Church and her clergy, and on her
establishment at Avignon, which he regarded as the root of
O' O
the whole mischief, has
led some historians to regard him as a foe to the Papacy itself. Exultant
Protestants have even claimed him as a forerunner of the Reformation. This is
to turn history upside down, and to interpret the fourteenth century by the
experience of the sixteenth. The idea of spiritual freedom to be attained and
spiritual truth to be upheld outside the Roman organisation never occurred to
him ; if by an intellectual miracle he could have conceived Luther’s great
deliverance, he would have shrunk from it with abhorrence; it would have seemed
to him to be vitiated at its very origin by the double taint of ecclesiastical
schism and disloyalty to Rome. But if he was a loyal son of the Roman Church,
how, it may be asked, could he possibly attack her clergy and her organisation
as he did ? There is no minimising the force and bitterness of these attacks ;
he himself regarded the letters containing some of them as so dangerous that he
never acknowledged their authorship, inscribed them with no recipient’s name,
and kept them strictly secret from all but a few carefully chosen friends. Nor
is this all; outside the pages of the letters Sine Titulo, in his acknowledged
works and even in his Italian poems, there are denunciations of “ Babylon ” so
fierce that they were struck out from all editions printed under the jurisdiction
of the Curia. Yet the writer of them was really a papal idealist, intent on
serving the Church
by purifying her, and
quite incapable of the idea of quitting her. In penning these furious diatribes,
he undoubtedly regarded himself as a surgeon using the sharpest possible
instrument to cut out a cancerous growth which threatened the patient’s very
life. Nor did he stand alone ; Catholics of unimpeachable loyalty shared his
views; very eminent Churchmen protected and encouraged him ; bishops and even
cardinals were among the chosen few to whom the letters Sine Titulo were shown.
At last, it seemed, the
Pope himself was convinced, and Petrarch might not unreasonably claim to have
had a share in the work of convincing him. Urban was the third Pope to whom he
had addressed his impassioned appeal for justice to Rome. To Benedict XII he
had written a couple of poetical Latin letters ; to Clement VI he had addressed
a rhetorical poem which Rossetti believes to have been spoken as a harangue on
the occasion of Rienzi’s embassy : now in 1366, while Urban still seemed
established at Avignon, he sent him a long prose letter—rather, perhaps, we may
call it a treatise and an exhortation—which is one of the most interesting of
his political writings. The form of these appeals to successive Popes varies,
but their tenor is always the same : the sorrowful “ widowhood ” of Rome, the
pity of it, the shame of it, and the glory awaiting the servant of God who
shall right her wrong—such is the theme of them all; and not of them only, for
the letters to Rienzi and to Charles IV bewail the same misery,
| URBAN V FROM A POKTRAIT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
|
To the Pope, as to the
Emperor, Petrarch writes with an uncompromising freedom of speech which shows
that his high-flown compliments are the language of conventional courtesy, not
of adulation. A long preface explains why the writer had allowed more than
three years to elapse since Urban’s election before addressing him ; he had
delayed not from distrust of his powers, for the zeal of his heart might well
compensate for their deficiency, nor yet from fear of the Pope’s displeasure,
against which his own age and Urban’s goodness gave him double protection ; but
partly from unwillingness to incur suspicion of flattery by praising one so
highly placed, and partly from fear that if he praised the good work that Urban
had already done, he might repeat with the Pope his lamentable experience with
the Emperor; the later event might belie the early promise, and he might have
vehemently to blame one whom he had prematurely praised. For often those who
show brilliant promise in lesser things fail in the supreme business of their
life ; and of all life’s businesses those of Pope and Emperor are the supreme
ones.
Now he breaks silence,
for three years and more have passed without sign of the accomplishment of the
great work. All this while he had never lost hope, knowing and saying to others
more impatient than himself that great enterprises cannot be done in a hurry.
But now time enough for reasonable preparation has gone by ; he must ask
a patient hearing for
exhortation, perhaps even for blame.
Let Urban consider,
while he does lesser things consummately well at Avignon, in what state lies
his natural home, his spiritual bride. True, the whole Church is his, and the
city in which he chooses to dwell may be called his bride ; none the less Rome
has a peculiar claim on him ; all other cities have their special bridegrooms ;
she alone has no bishop but the Pope. He bids all other bishops reside in their
sees ; how then can he leave the queen of cities in ruins, spoiled by robbers,
and desolate of her bridegroom ? Surely his very name, voluntarily assumed and
hailed as an omen of hope, is a call that Urban cannot ignore. His noble mind
may despise world-given glory ; but let him think what merit Christ will impute
to him who brings His Church back to the place where He established her. Of all
six Popes who have sat at Avignon, Urban has received the clearest call to the
great work ; for in his election the finger of God was almost miraculously made
manifest. If the return to Rome is God’s will, He will perform it through some
one ; why should Urban leave to a successor the glory of being His instrument?
Four qualities are
requisite in the man who shall do the great work ; Urban possesses them all. He
has intellectual ability, for lack of which some have been unable to discern
the good cause from the bad. He has goodness of heart and will; many have let
their passions overpower the conviction of their minds, He has experience; for
lack of it
many have maintained the
superiority of Provence over Italy. Lastly, he is disinterested; many oppose
the return to Rome out of regard for their worldly interests in Avignon. In a
word, Pope Urban is marked out as the man to return to the Urbs.
Lately he had a
magnificent reception at Marseilles ; that was but a feeble earnest of what
would await him in Rome. And who can say that Avignon is a safe residence and
Rome a dangerous one ? Safe! Why the Great Company lately held city and Pope to
ransom; Urban suffered worse indignities than Boniface; and if Rome is
turbulent, the Pope’s absence is the main cause of her turbulence. Never can he
be as happy at Avignon as in Rome, for only in Rome can he feel that he is
taking his proper place and doing his duty to God and man.
Lastly, nowhere west of
Rome can Pope and Emperor honourably and fittingly meet the peril from the
Turks. How, if he stays at Avignon, will he answer Christ and Peter in the
fast-approaching day of death and judgment ?
A summary can give at
best but a poor reflection of Petrarch’s argument; the actual letter occupies
eighteen folio pages, and from every page breathes the persuasiveness of
earnest conviction. But could its author hope to succeed at this third attempt
? The obstacles might well seem as formidable as ever. Once again the Pope was
a Frenchman, and the French party had a stronger hold than ever on the Sacred
College. Only the Pope’s personality was changed, but this was a change indeed.
Benedict, it is true, was not exactly the “ass” that he
styled himself in the
first surprise of his election, but his intellect was of the narrowest
theological type, he was dull of imagination, impermeable by ideas. Clement had
the wit to understand and the taste to value a fine conception, but lacked the
driving power of moral purpose. Of Urban, on the contrary, Petrarch could say
without flattery that he seemed to combine in himself all the requisite
qualities : a great policy was congenial to his mind, unselfish devotion to
duty was perhaps the keynote of his character, and he had already given proof
of no little sagacity in carrying out reforms. At last, then, Petrarch might
hope for success, and the course of events soon justified his hopefulness. How
far his appeal actually influenced the Pope cannot be determined, but
considering his great reputation and the high esteem in which his letters were
held, it is reasonable to suppose that his advocacy had weight with Urban, if
not in forming his decision, at least in confirming it and in hastening its
execution. His letter is dated June 29th; the year is demonstrably 1366; and
before the end of that year the Papal Legate was busy getting ready a summer
residence for the Pope at Viterbo, restoring the ruined palaces of Rome, and
even arranging with Venice, Genoa, and Naples for a supply of galleys to bring
the Papal Court by sea from the Rhone to the Tiber.
On April 30th, 1367, the
Pope left Avignon, on June 9th he reached Viterbo, and about the end of the
month went on to Rome. The Babylonish captivity was apparently at an end, and
Petrarch
poured out his soul in a
long congratulatory letter to the Pope. But even in this peean of praise and
thanksgiving there is a characteristic note of warning and of exhortation to
persevere. Petrarch was an enthusiast with a keen eye for actualities; he knew
that the French party would spare no effort to bring about a return to Avignon,
and almost in the same breath with his exultant cry that Israel was come out of
Egypt and the House of Jacob from among a strange people, he exhorts the Pope
to endurance in well-doing, to patience in overcoming difficulties, and to
vigilance against the arts of the malcontents. Two dangers cause him special
uneasiness. One is the self-indulgent epicurism of the Court. This base motive
he combats in a vein of scornful persiflage, which overlies but does not
conceal his deep anxiety. These people judge a country by the quality not of
its sons but of its tuns; they prefer the wine they get in Provence to the
vintages of Italy. But was ever a man so desperate a drunkard as to want to
sleep in his vineyard ? Wine is grown in the vineyard, kept in the cellar,
drunk in the hall; the two first are the steward’s business, only the third is
the master’s. Wherever you live, your wine must be brought to the house, and if
these people must needs drink French wine in Italy, well, a little extra toil
of sailors who will enjoy the job will bring it them, and it will have improved
on the voyage. And so forth. The other chief danger is the argument from
Italian
o o
turbulence. Already a
street riot at Viterbo had served the French party only too well as an instance
of mob-violence, and
Petrarch foresaw that they would magnify such petty incidents, and possibly
even provoke them, in the hope of frightening Urban back to their own country.
It is curious that,
except for a brief acknowledgment of the importance of the Gallican Church, he
hardly notices the one serious argument by which a statesman might have
defended a preference for Avignon. The centre of European gravity had shifted
northwards. France, Germany, and, above all, England were daily growing more
important; and it was at least arguable that Southern France could now provide
a more convenient ecclesiastical capital than central Italy. Petrarchs silence
on this point was certainly not due to lack of counterarguments ; it is fairly
safe to infer from it that motives of self-interest, not those of public
policy, were the really formidable influences at work.
Urban took all this
exhortation in the spirit in which it was given, and sent his monitor more than
one cordial invitation to pay him a visit. Nothing could have been more
gratifying to Petrarch, but for the moment he seems to have been unable to
accept; probably the state of his health made it difficult for him to undertake
so long a journey.
During the years 1367-8
he divided his time as usual between Venice, Padua, and Pavia. In the latter
year his visit to Galeazzo was paid earlier in the season than usual; the
interminable quarrel between the Visconti and the Church had entered a new
phase, and Galeazzo, for the moment anxious for peace, sent for Petrarch to
help him in treating
for it. Petrarch
accordingly left Padua on May 25th, and arrived at Pavia on the 29th. The Pope
was represented by his brother, Cardinal Grimoard, whom he had lately placed as
Legate in Bologna, and Petrarch was evidently welcomed as the friend of both
parties to the dispute. But the negotiations came to nothing, and the war went
on. From Pavia, according to the received story, of which however there is no
confirmation in Petrarch’s own writings, he went on to Milan to be present at a
ceremony of no little interest to Englishmen. Galeazzo, eager for royal
alliances, was not content with having married his son to a princess of
France; he was now about to marry his daughter to a prince of England. Lionel “
of Antwerp,” Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III, had been four years a
widower; and for half that time negotiations had been going on for his marriage
with Galeazzo’s daughter Violante. At last the treaty had been signed at
Windsor. The bridegroom contributed royal blood, a handsome person, and the
theoretical ownership, derived from his first wife, of large estates in
Ireland. The bride brought two hundred thousand golden florins and the effective
lordship of several townships in Piedmont. After brilliant festivities in
France and Savoy, the Duke of Clarence reached Milan, and one day early in
June—there is the usual conflict of evidence as to the exact date—the marriage
was solemnised with the utmost splendour in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
The received tradition says that at the banquet which followed, Petrarch sat at
the
high table among the
most illustrious guests. The Duke lived but a short time to enjoy his bride and
her wealth ; less than five months after his marriage he died of fever in
Piedmont. There was the usual talk of poison, but Galeazzo had much to lose and
nothing to gain by his son-in-law’s death, and an Englishman’s imprudence in a
strange climate furnishes a sufficient and probable explanation.
In July Petrarch
resolved to return to Padua. But Lombardy had once again become a vast camp,
divided between the rival armies of the Visconti and the league organised
against them by the Pope. Travel might well seem impossible, but Petrarch would
not be deterred from the attempt. He chartered a boat, coaxed a half-frightened
company of boatmen to work her, took not a weapon to defend himself with, and
sailed quietly down the Po. The adventure had an astonishing success. Through
the river-fleets and between the massed squadrons of both armies sailed this
invalid old man of a perfect courage, and the officers of both hosts vied with
each other in doing him honour. His voyage was a triumphal progress, delayed
not by the hostility but by the assiduous kindness of all whom he met. Hardly ever
in the world’s history has the soldier rendered such homage to the poet.
Even this peaceful
triumph scarcely gave adequate compensation for the loss of a visit from
Boccaccio. The latter had left Florence towards the end of March, meaning to go
straight through
to Venice and enjoy with
Petrarch the mutual delight of a surprise visit. Bad weather and perils by the
wayside delayed his journey, and he was still detained at Bologna when he heard
that Petrarch had left Venice on his unseasonable journey to Pavia. How keen
was the disappointment may be read in Boccaccio’s charming letter of regret. “
I
o o
almost gave up the
project,” he writes; “indeed there was excellent reason for stopping short. For
however many things worth seeing there may be in Venice, none of all these
would have induced me to start; and it was only the wish to keep faith with
certain friends, and to see those two whom you love best, your Tullia and her
Francesco (whom till then I had not known, though I think I know all your other
intimates), that persuaded me to resume the journey and accomplish it at the
cost of immense fatigue.” And, after warmest praises of Francesca and her
husband, he delightfully adds : “ But what that belongs to you, or is of your
making, can I refrain from praising ? ”
Sorrow once more dealt
heavily with Petrarch in this year, which took from him both the youngest and
the oldest of those whom he loved, his baby grandson and Guido Settimo,
Archbishop of Genoa. Guido had been his playmate in childhood, his constant
companion in youth, his welcome guest at Vaucluse, where he found occasional
relaxation from the strain of a busy life, his friend always.
The end of the year was
marked by a happier event. Philip de Cabassoles, who for the last seven years
had borne the honorific but empty title of
Patriarch of Jerusalem,
was raised to the Cardinal - ate, and to this dignity was added in the
following year the Bishopric of Sabina. The immediate cause of Philip’s
elevation was his conduct of a special mission to administer the ecclesiastical
affairs of Marseilles ; but apart from his success in this particular work, his
appointment was an instance of Urban’s determination to regard character and
ability as the qualifications for high office in the Church.
The year 1369 is notable
in Petrarch’s life, chiefly as the date of his first stay at Arqu&, a
village in the Euganean hills, which thereafter became his regular summer
residence, and will be more fully described in the next chapter. In the same
year he availed himself of his favour with the Pope to espouse the cause of
Thomas of Frignano, General of the Franciscans. The Chapter of the Order had
elected Thomas against the wish of their patron, the Cardinal of Limoges ;
other members of the Order shared the Cardinal’s dislike of the new General,
and accused him of heresy. The scandal was so grave that Urban suspended Thomas
from his functions, and summoned him to defend himself in Rome. Petrarch, who
was convinced of the General’s innocence and held his character in high esteem,
wrote an eloquent defence of him to the Pope, which may well have influenced
Urban in forming his decision. This was, at all events, in Thomas’s favour; he
was completely acquitted and reinstated in his office, and his subsequent
career amply justified Petrarch’s opinion of him. He was
made Patriarch of Grado
by Gregory XI, and Cardinal by Urban VI.
Towards the end of the
year came another pressing invitation from Urban to visit Rome. In reply
Petrarch wrote, on Christmas Eve, deploring his inability to travel at that
season, but promising to obey the Pope’s summons without fail in the following
spring. In April, accordingly, he made his will and set out from Padua; but on
reaching Ferrara, barely fifty miles away, he was seized with a fainting fit
which was reported to be fatal, and very nearly proved so. After all, it was
perhaps as well that he was stopped on the journey : his disappointment, had
he arrived in Rome, might have been even keener than his disappointment at
being baulked of his visit. He would have found the Pope distraught with
manifold anxieties, hampered by the incessant intrigues of his courtiers,
doubting if he had done right in coming to Rome, and more than half inclined to
go back to Avignon. Highly as he esteemed Petrarch’s zeal for great principles,
and much as he admired his eloquence in defending them, it is not to be
supposed that the poet’s exhortations could have outweighed the pressure of untoward
circumstances. Since Urban had been in Rome, troubles had multiplied round him.
True, he had escaped the humiliating state of dependence which had threatened
to make the Papacy a department of the Government of France. The verdict of
history holds, with Petrarch and with Saint Catherine, that this great
deliverance was worth all the sacrifices necessary to achieve it. But Urban
might be pardoned if he
thought that it been bought too dear. Vexation and disappointment had been his
portion in Rome. The Emperor had visited him in 1368; but the courtesies in
which Charles abounded were poor compensation for the deadly mischief that he
caused to the peace of Tuscany. Lombardy was ablaze with war. The Pope’s
enemies defied him, his friends fought more for their own hands than for Holy
Church. All the time the pressure of the French party never slackened. Five of
the Cardinals had flatly refused to leave Avignon ; their compatriots, wiser
in their generation, accompanied Urban to Italy and gave him no peace while he
stayed there. The Pope was a disillusioned man, and in the bitterness of disillusionment
he yielded. He took the Curia back to Avignon in September, and died there in
December.
Petrarch’s last
political hope was shattered: Tribunate, Empire, Papacy, each had failed; Rome
was once more a “widow.” But his disappointment, bitter as it was, did not
poison his mind against Urban ; he heard of his death with sincere sorrow, and
in spite of ill-health, which might well have been accounted a valid excuse, he
testified his veneration for the Pope’s saintly character by attending his funeral
at Bologna.
THE LAST YEARS
1370-1374
HE record of an
invalid’s last years must have
JL a certain sadness,
but it would be a great mistake to represent the end of Petrarch’s life as a
period of gloom. On the contrary, we have to chronicle a triumph of character
over circumstance. Events were untoward ; but events, after all, are only the
raw material of life; it is a man’s way of dealing with them that makes or mars
the finished article. Petrarch comes out of this test with a new hold on our
sympathies, a new claim to our admiration. Continual ill-health, the pain of a
patriot’s disappointment, disturbance of his chosen home by turmoil of war, the
defeat and humiliation of a dear friend, here surely were troubles enough to
breed despondency, almost to excuse moroseness. Petrarch met them all with a
serenity that illumines the dark places and sheds a halo over the whole
retrospect of his life. He had a scholar’s tenacity, a scholar’s courage, a
scholar’s inexhaustible consolations.
Once, indeed, in the
midst of all this calm confronting of adversity, the old Adam flashed out into
vehemence of invective. But this time it was no
mere private quarrel
that stirred his wrath; Rome was attacked in the person of her champion, and it
was in defence of Rome, far more than of himself, that he once more steeped his
pen in gall. A French Cistercian, angered by his letters of exhortation and
congratulation to Pope Urban, had published a clumsy and silly pamphlet by way
of counterblast. The quality of its wit may be judged from the opening
sentences, which compare Pope Urban’s journey from Avignon to Rome with that of
the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. A
little later Rome is elegantly likened to the waning moon. There is much
ill-natured vilification of Petrarch and of Italy, and much laudation of the
superior excellences of France and Frenchmen. Petrarch could not leave this
poor stuff alone. We have already had occasion to note that he did not shine in
controversy ; the Apology in Anszuer to a Frenchman s Calumnies bears a
depressing likeness to the rubbish which it undertakes to confute. It is not
such sheer nonsense ; it is written in decent Latin, and it has the merit of
patriotic motive ; but it is marred by a note of rancour, and those who love
its author do not willingly read it twice.
Urban’s successor was
Pierre Roger de Beaufort, nephew and namesake of Clement VI, who is famous in
history under his papal name of Gregory XI, as the friend of St. Catherine of
Siena, and the Pope who finally brought back the Curia to Rome. He was a man of
great ability and high character, sincere in his efforts to reform
the monastic orders, and
equally sincere in combating the doctrines of Wickliffe. Towards Petrarch he
showed the kindliest goodwill, and soon after his accession instructed Bruno to
write him a letter expressing friendship, and hinting an intention of doing
something for him. Petrarch’s reply is interesting, as showing that his
considerable income was barely sufficient to meet the many claims upon it. He
cannot say with truth, he tells Bruno, that his means are insufficient for the
maintenance of a simple canon, but he can say quite truly that he has a wider
circle of acquaintance than all the rest of the Chapter put together, and these
friends put him to charges. Besides an old priest who lives with him, a whole
troop will often turn up at mealtimes ; they swarm like Penelope’s suitors,
only they are friends, not enemies, and he has not the heart to turn them away
or grudge them the victuals. Then, alas! he cannot do without servants; and he
keeps a couple of horses, and usually five or six scribes. Just now he has only
three, because scribes worthy of the name are not to be found : one only gets
mere mechanical copyists—and bad ones at that. Then he is undertaking to build
a little oratory to the Virgin. This work he will accomplish if he has to pawn
or sell his books to pay for it. So if Gregory is minded to do for him what
Urban had promised, and he himself hints, the gift will be welcome. Petrarch
can, indeed, manage at a pinch as he has managed hitherto, but age makes the
pinch harder. Only do not let the Pope expect him to ask for
anything. Let him do
anything or nothing, just as he sees fit; in any case, though, let him not
confer a cure of souls or any office entailing fresh labour. Petrarch had
refused secretaryships and bishoprics from Clement. He cannot, as an old man,
take from the nephew burdens which, as a young man, he had refused to receive
from the uncle. Finally, he commends the whole matter to the goodness of the
Pope and the kind offices of Bruno and Philip de Cabassoles. It does not appear
that any additional benefice was conferred, or that Petrarch was very seriously
straitened for want of one; in his personal habits he was the most frugal of
men, and any accession of income would probably have been spent on the further
multiplication of manuscripts.
The letter, of which the
above is a brief summary, was written at Whitsuntide, 1371, from Arqua, where
Petrarch had now established his summer residence. His first recorded stay in
the place was, as we have already seen, in the summer of 1369, when he took
refuge from the turmoil of the city in the hospitable house of the Augustinian
Friars there. He was so charmed with the beauty of the place, that he got
Lombardo da Serico to negotiate for the purchase of a plot of ground,
comprising a vineyard and an orchard of olives and other fruit trees. Here he
built a house, which still stands structurally unaltered, and bears witness to
the simplicity of his domestic habits and his appreciation of beautiful
scenery. Englishmen need no assurance of the loveliness of the hills which inspired
the Muse of Shelley. Arqua lies in a long narrow valley
hemmed in by conical
peaks and their connecting ridges ; in the whole neighbourhood there is not a
spot which looks out on a more enchanting landscape than the site chosen by
Petrarch for his house. He built it on a little spur jutting out from a
hill-side, which shelters it from the north-east; to the west and south are
glorious views up and across the valley; to the south-east the village
scrambles, Italian fashion, up the lower slopes : in Petrarch’s day it was
crowned by a castle, of which only some ruined arches and a fine
thirteenth-century tower now remain. Beyond the village is the only apparent
outlet from the valley, a narrow gap in the hills leading to the flat
water-meadows and isolated crag of Monselice.
| Petrarch’s House at Arqua |
All through this period,
Petrarch’s life hung by a thread. Four times in one year, he tells Pandolfo
Malatesta, he was threatened with imminent death ; the first of these occasions
must have been the fainting-fit of Ferrara already mentioned, the last, as we
learn from his own letter, occurred in the spring of 1371. He had lately come
back from Arqua to spend a few days in Padua, and was just going to answer
Pandolfo’s anxious inquiries about his health by telling him that he was
getting the better of a long sickness. “But all of a sudden,” he writes, “on
May 8th, a most violent fit of my familiar fever seized me. The physicians
flocked in, some sent by order of the lord of the city, others drawn to the
house by friendly concern for me. Up and down they wrangled and disputed, till
at last they settled that I was to die at midnight: already it was u
the first watch of the
night; see what a tiny span of life remained to me, if these humbugging
fellows’ tales had been true. But every day confirms me more and more in my old
opinion of them. They said there was one possible expedient for prolonging my
life a little, by tying me up in some arrangement of strings and so preventing
me from going to sleep: in this way there was just a chance that I might last
till morning—a mighty tiresome price to pay for this little extra time! As a
matter of fact, to rob me of my sleep was just the way to kill me. Well, we
disobeyed them, for I have always begged my friends and ordered my servants
never to let any of these doctors’ tricks be tried on my body, but always to do
the exact contrary of what they advise. So I passed that night in a sweet, deep
sleep, such as Virgil calls the very image of calm death. Why make a long story
? I was to die at midnight. In the morning, flocking, I suppose, to my funeral,
they found me writing, and, utterly astounded, they could say nothing but that
I was a wonderful man. Over and over again they have been baffled and tricked
about me, and yet they never stop impudently asserting what they know nothing
about, nor can they find any other shield than this to cover their ignorance. Yet
if I am a wonderful man, how much more wonderful are they! And as for those who
believe in them, they are not merely wonderful, but astounding.”
It must be owned that
Petrarch’s experience lent some colour to his quarrel with the doctors. But in
truth his condition was beyond hope of relief from
the science of that day.
A year later he had another painful reminder of his physical weakness. Philip
de Cabassoles had come as Legate into Umbria, and with affectionate urgency
insisted that Petrarch must come to visit him in Perugia. No possible summons
could have been more agreeable to the latter, and in May, 1372, he tried to
obey it, but found himself unable to sit on horseback. The friends never saw
each other again, for Philip died in the following August.
o o
Meanwhile, war had
broken out between Padua and Venice, and Petrarch could no longer enjoy the use
of his house in the latter city. “ I should be suspected there,”he writes, in
January, 1372 ; “here (at Padua) I am beloved.” During the spring and summer he
seems to have been much at Arqua, but in the autumn the progress of the war
drove him thence. Things had gone badly for the Paduans, and the Venetian
general camped his army within a short distance of Arqua. Residence in the
country was no longer safe, and, sorely against the grain, Petrarch transferred
himself and his family about the middle of November within the walls of Padua.
The Venetians pursued
their success in the following year, and Francesco da Carrara, after vainly
soliciting help from the King of Hungary, found himself obliged to sue for
peace and accept what terms the republic would grant him. Venice was never slow
to set her foot on the neck of an enemy. She stipulated that the Lord of Padua
should acknowledge himself to be entirely in the wrong, and that either in his
own person, or in that of his
son, he should go to
Venice to entreat pardon for the past, and swear allegiance for the future.
Francesco despatched his son on this painful errand, and begged Petrarch to
accompany him as chief spokesman. The Venetian Senate gave them audience on
September 28th, but Petrarch, seized probably with illness, found himself
unable to deliver the speech which he had prepared ; the audience was postponed
till the following day, when the speech was duly delivered, and the humiliating
ceremony accomplished.
There were probably not
many men still living for whom Petrarch would have undertaken such a task, but
he was bound to Francesco by ties of close and peculiar affection. That prince
had inherited the leading characteristics of his father Jacopo, his
unscrupulousness in politics, his cultured intellect, and his personal charm ;
he inherited also his warm and sincere regard for Petrarch. Francesco could not
have treated his own father with more solicitous respect than he paid to his
father’s friend. Nothing that could make Petrarch’s stay in Padua agreeable was
omitted, and when he fled from the bustle of the city to the quietude of Arqua,
Francesco delighted to visit him there and engage him in discussions on the
subjects that interested them both. It was to him that, just about this time,
Petrarch wrote the long letter on the principles of government, which, in the
Bale edition of his works, is printed as a separate treatise under the title On
the best methods of administering a State. The pamphlet is especially notable
for the stress that it lays on the ethical
basis of government, and
on the moral qualities requisite to make a good ruler. Here we have a marked
contrast between Petrarch and the great political thinker of the following
century. Macchia- velli takes it for granted that adminstration is a prince’s
business, and proceeds to show how he can get through it most efficiently.
Petrarch “is content to fill a single letter with a subject which might well
form the matter of many books, the question what sort of man he ought to be to
whom the charge of the State has been committed.” The ruler, in a word, must
justify his existence by ruling well.
It is to this period,
too, that we must refer the writing of his autobiography, which took the form
of a Letter to Posterity. The desire to live in the thoughts of mankind is not
peculiar to any age, but it was felt perhaps with unwonted intensity by the men
of the Renaissance. The world was in reaction against what is commonly called
the mediaeval spirit. The monastic system embodied, as it were, the principle
of self-effacement; and theology, which was the chief intellectual business of
the Middle Ages, contemplates themes in face of which a mere man shrinks to
nothingness. Against this withering of the individual, the new learning raised
its protest, and it is characteristic of Petrarch that he could be at once the
fervent devotee and the scholar athirst for fame. It was not enough for him
that his influence should work as a silent leaven in the minds of men ; he
wanted to be remembered as a man, as a personality. “You may perhaps have
heard some report of
me,” he writes to the imaginary recipient of the Letter to Posterity, “and you
may like to know what sort of a man I was, and what was the outcome of my
works.” The letter is only a fragment, and carries us no further down than
Jacopo da Carrara’s death, when Petrarch was still under fifty. Nor does it
help us as much as we might have expected in solving the chronological
difficulties which beset the student of its author’s career. But the really
significant thing about it is that the idea of writing it should have entered
his head.
The letters of this
period are rich in instances of the serene calm with which Petrarch awaited
death. “ I read, I write, I think,” he says of himself at the beginning of 1372
; “this is my life, this is my delight, just as it has been ever since the days
of my youth. I envy no man, I hate no man, and whereas I wrote long ago that I
looked down on
o o
no man, now I must say
that I look down on many, but most of all on myself.” A little more or a little
less of life does not seem to him a thing to make a fuss about; he waits God’s
will, and in the meantime keeps flying the flag of his allegiance to Learning.
In a letter to Benvenuto da Imola, he lauds poetry as the most glorious of the
arts, and in a most noble letter to Boccaccio, written in 1373, a letter which
they who value learning should cherish as a priceless heritage, he declares
that nothing but death shall tear him from his beloved studies.
Boccaccio had written in
serious anxiety about his beloved master’s health, and had advised that,
having done more than
enough for reputation, he should now allow himself a rest from hard work. “No
counsel could be more repugnant to my mood,” says Petrarch with the frank
expression of contrary opinion possible between such friends. . . . “You write
that my ill-health makes you ill at ease; I know that, and am not surprised at
it. Neither of us can be really well while the other is ailing. You add that
you suppose the Comic poet’s saying is becoming applicable to me, that old age
is a disease in itself. Here again is no-
o o
thing to wonder at, nor
do I reject this utterance ; only I should modify it by saying that old age is
not a state of bodily disease but of mental health. Well, would you have me
prefer that these conditions should be reversed, so that I should carry a sick
mind in a sound body ? Far be such a wish from my mind! My desire and my
delight is that, as in the body, so in the whole man, that part which is the
nobler should be healthy above the rest. You instance me my years, and this you
could not have done if I myself had not told you the tale of them . . . but
believe me, I remember them, and every day I say to myself, ‘ Here is one more
step towards the end.’ ... I remember them, and do not blush to acknowledge my
age ; why should I be more ashamed of having grown old than of having lived,
when the one process cannot go on long without the other ? What I should really
like is not to be younger than I am, but to feel that I had reached old age by
a course of more honourable deeds and pursuits ; and nothing distresses me
more than that in all
this long while I have not reached the goal that I ought to have reached.
Therefore I am still striving, if haply now at eventide it may be granted me
to retrieve the daytime’s sloth, and often do I call to mind the maxim of that
most wise Prince, Augustus Caesar, that ‘ whatever is done well enough is done
soon enough ; ’ as also the saying of Plato, the most learned of the
philosophers, that ‘ Happy is he to whom it is granted even in old age to
attain to wisdom and right opinion ; ’ or again, that Catholic doctrine of the
most holy Father Ambrose, that ‘ Blessed is the man who even in old age has
risen from error; yea, blessed is he who even under the very stroke of death
turns away his mind from unrighteousness.’ With these and similar thoughts I
am brought to the resolution of amending by God’s favour not only the defects
of my life, but those of my writings too; for neglect of these faults might in
old days have been attributed to set purpose, but can now be ascribed only to
an old man’s torpor and slothfulness.
“ And here comes in that
advice of yours which, as I have said and say again, causes me utter
astonishment ; for who can fail to be astonished at hearing counsels of sleep
and laziness from the mouth of the wakefullest of men ? Read again, I pray you,
and examine what you wrote; sit in judgment on your own advice, and acquit it
if you dare ; the passage, I mean, where by way of a medicine for old age you
exhort me to sloth, a far worse evil than ever age can be; and the more
readily to persuade me,
you try to make me out a great man in one respect or another, as though I might
now come to a stand on the plea that I have gone far enough in life and
achievement and learning. But I am of quite another mind, as the saying is,
and have come to a very different resolution, namely, to double my pace, and
now at this season of sunset, as having lost part of the daylight, to make more
haste than ever towards the goal.
“Now why do you give
your friend advice which you do not take yourself? Such is not the wont of
trusty counsellors. But herein you have recourse to a wonderful piece of wit
and craft; you say that by my writings I have won reputation far and wide . . .
that I am known to the uttermost ends of the earth. ... In this your love for
me deceives you ; it is a really absurd exaggeration. . . . But granted that it
were true; imagine my reputation spread as widely as you please ... do you
think this would be a rein to my diligence? Nay, it would be a spur to it; the
more flourishing appeared the results of my labours, the keener would be my
exertions in them; such is my mood, that success would make me not slothful but
eager and ardent. Further, as though the bounds of earth were too narrow, you
say that I am known also above the firmament, a form of praise bestowed on
Aeneas and Julius ; and there, without any doubt, I really am known ; and I
pray that I may be beloved there too. Next you say in praise of me that,
throughout Italy, and very likely beyond Italy; too, I have stirred up the wits
of many to
engage in these studies of
ours, which were neglected for so many centuries ; and this credit I do not
disclaim, for I am older than nearly all those who are now working at these
subjects in our country. But your inference I do not admit, that I should make
way for the talents of younger men, break the swing of the effort in which I
have engaged, allow others to have something to write about if they wish, and
not seem to want to do all the writing myself. Oh, what a difference of view
between us, who have but one will! To you my writings seem exhaustive, or at
any rate immense; to me they seem a mere nothing. But granted I have written a
great deal, and shall write a great deal more ; what better means can I
possibly find of inciting the minds of those who come after us to perseverance
? Example is always more stimulating than precept; Camillus, a much applauded
general in his old age, did much more to kindle the young men’s valour by
marching to battle like one of themselves, than if he had left them in the
fighting line, issued his orders, and gone to bed. As for your fear of my
exhausting all the subjects, so that nothing will be left for any one else, it
is like Alexander of Macedon’s absurd apprehension that his father Philip would
conquer the world and leave him no chance of winning a soldier’s reputation. .
. . But Seneca has rid us of that fear in a letter to Lucilius. . . .
“ Our ancestors worked
hard in old age ; . . . they had no longer span of life than ours, but they had
greater industry ; and life without industry is
not really life, but a
sluggish and unprofitable loitering. . . . Now your crowning resource in
persuasion is an entreaty that I will try to live as long as I can for the joy
of my friends, and above all for the comfort of your own old age ; for, as you
say, you hope that I shall outlive you. Ah me! this was what our dear Simonides
always hoped ; and again ah me! his prayer was only too fatally efficacious,
whereas if there were any regularity in human affairs, he ought to have
outlived me. And now you, my brother, utter this affectionate wish more
fervently than any one, and some others among my friends utter it too; but it
is the exact opposite of my wish, for I desire to die while you are still
alive, and so to leave behind me some in whose memory and speech I may live on,
and by whose prayers I may be profited, by whom I may still be loved and
missed. . . .
“ Lastly, you ask me to
pardon you for proffering advice, and venturing to prescribe a mode of life to
me under which I should give up mental strain and vigils and my usual tasks,
and should nurse my age, worn out with years and study, in the lap of ease and
sleep. Nay, it is not pardon but thanks that I give you, recognising your love
for me, which makes you in my behalf what you never are in your own, a
physician. But bear with me, I entreat you, in that I obey not your orders, and
believe that even if I were most greedy of life, which I am not, still if I
were to rule me by your advice, I should but die the sooner. Constant toil and
strain are food to my spirit ; when once I begin
to rest and slacken, I
shall soon cease to live. I know my own strength ; I am not fit for other
labours ; but this of reading and writing, in which you bid me slacken, is
light toil, nay rather ’tis a pleasant rest, and breeds forgetfulness of heavy
labours. There is no nimbler or more delightful burden than the pen; other
pleasures flee away, and do you a mischief even while they soothe you ; your
pen soothes you in the taking up, and delights you in the laying down of it; and
it works profit not only to its master but to many besides, often even to the
absent, and sometimes to posterity after thousands of years. I think I speak
absolute truth when I say that of all earthly delights, as there is none more
honourable than literature, so there is none more lasting or sweeter or more
constant; none which plays the comrade to its possessor with so easily gotten
an equipment or with so total a lack of irksomeness. . . . This do I desire for
myself, that when death overtakes me, he may find me either reading or writing
or, if Christ so will it, praying and in tears.”
Just before this letter
was written—so strangely ignorant could he be of the vernacular works of his
friends—he had read the Decameron for the first time, and had pleased himself
by composing in Latin a free rendering of the tale of Griselda. An Englishman
may note with keen pleasure that the story selected by Petrarch for this
tribute of admiration was one of those which kindled the imagination of our
own great master in the art of narrative poetry. This association of the names
of Petrarch,
Boccaccio, and Chaucer
is no mere accidental stroke of good luck; the connection between them illustrates,
better perhaps than any other single event, the literary history of the early
Renaissance. Petrarch’s work, as we have seen, was to spread the knowledge of
the classical authors, and revive their spirit as the dominant intellectual
force of the world ; he accomplished this almost entirely through the medium of
Latin. The choice was a wise one, because it gave him all the scholars of
Europe for audience; but the unlettered could feel his influence only at second
hand. Boccaccio carried the diffusion of the humanistic spirit a long step
further by breathing it into the vernacular literature of Italy. Chaucer in his
turn did for England what Boccaccio had done for Italy; with him the spirit of
the new learning speaks in our national song and begins to mould our national
life. Chaucer himself was well aware of the source from which his inspiration
flowed. It is very possible that the Clerk of Oxen- forde’s Prologue alludes to
an actual meeting with
Petrarch at Padua in the
summer or early autumn of 1373. However this may be, the words of that prologue
make it clear that Chaucer knew Petrarch’s Latin version of the story, and
recognised in its author a master and chief among poets. The clerk tells a
tale—
Lerned at Padowe of a
worthy clerk,
As provyd by his wordes
and his werk.
He is now deed, and
nayled in his chest,
Now God yive his soule
wel good rest!
Fraunces Petrark, the
laureat poete,
Highte this clerk, whos
rethorique swete Enlumynd al Ytail of poetrie.
These letters to
Boccaccio are not quite the last product of Petrarch’s unwearied pen, for de
Sade is undoubtedly mistaken in ascribing his version of the Griselda to the
last month of his life ; but, by a happy neglect of exact chronological
sequence, they have been made to form the last book of the Letters written in
Old Age. There is a beautiful fitness in the arrangement which makes his
correspondence close with these admirable letters to the friend who was his
peer.
He kept the promise
which he had so lately made in them. Death found him at work. The contradictions
of evidence which beset so many incidents of his life throw some uncertainty
over the exact details of his death. One account states that he died in
Lombardo’s arms on July 18th ; another, at least as well supported by evidence
and preferable in sentiment, represents that he was found dead in his library,
with the unfinished epitome of the Lives of Illustrious Men on the desk before
him, on the morning of July 20th, his seventieth birthday.
CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY
PETRARCH’S funeral was
celebrated at Arqua with great pomp ; Francesco da Carrara might be trusted to
see to that. He himself attended with a train of courtiers; four bishops took
part in the ceremony, and the bier was carried by sixteen doctors of law.
Petrarch’s body was dressed in a red gown, according to some the royal robe
which Robert of Naples had given him for his crowning; according to others the
dress of a Canon of Padua. The little chapel which he had hoped to dedicate to
the Virgin had never been built. He was therefore buried temporarily in the
parish church, and six years later in the sarcophagus of the rather clumsy
Paduan type constructed for the purpose by his son-
in-law. It is disgusting
to have to add that his
fc>
bones were not allowed
to rest undisturbed. At a time when the tomb stood in need of repair, an arm
was stolen which is said to be now preserved at Madrid; and among the relics
kept in Petrarch’s house the caretaker shows, with misplaced satisfaction, a
box which contains one of the poet’s fingers.
His epitaph may best be
read, not in the jingling Latin triolet composed by himself, and still legible
on his tomb, but in the testimony borne to his
genius by the man who
could most adequately appreciate it. “Your lamentable letter, my dearest
brother,” wrote Boccaccio to Francesco da Brossano, “ reached me on October
20th ; I did not recognise the writing, but, after undoing the knot and looking
at the signature, I knew at once what I was to read in the letter, namely, the
happy passing of our illustrious father and teacher, Francesco Petrarca, from
this earthly Babylon to Jerusalem above. In truth, although none of our friends
save you had written me the news, I had long since, to my exceeding sorrow,
heard it bruited about by universal report, and for some days together I had
wept almost without intermission, not for his ascent, but because I found
myself left in bereavement and misery. And no wonder : for no mortal man ever
stood closer to me than he. . . . And when I saw and read your letter, I fell
to weeping again for almost a whole night.” Then, after much praise of
Petrarch’s piety and some tender, thoughtful messages to “my sister Tullia,”
Boccaccio goes on to say that, as a Florentine, he must grudge to Arqua the
guardianship of the illustrious dead “ whose noble breast was the choicest
dwelling-place of the Muses and all the company of Helicon, a shrine devoted to
Philosophy and most rich in store of liberal arts; yea, a mirror and glory of
such arts, and especially of that one which concerns itself with Ciceronian
eloquence, as his writings clearly testify.” The sailor, who brings his cargo
from far lands to the head of the Adriatic and sees the tops of the Euganean
hills against the sky, will say to himself and his companions that
“ in the bosom of those
hills lies he who was the world’s glory, the temple of all learning, Petrarch,
the poet of sweet speech, whom kindly Rome decked with the triumphal laurel,
whose many noble books live to herald forth his most sacred fame.” Similarly,
in his book on the Genealogies of the Gods, written some years earlier,
Boccaccio had spoken of “ Francesco Petrarca, the Florentine, my most revered
teacher, father, and lord, ... a man who should be counted among the company of
the illustrious ancients rather than among modern men : who is acknowledged for
a chief poet, I will not say merely by the Italians, whose singular and
everlasting glory he is, but also in France, in Germany, and in that most
distant corner of the earth, England, and by many of the Greeks. ... Now there
lie open to us many works of his, both in verse and prose, most worthy to be
commemorated, which bear to and fro the sure testimony of his heavenly talent.”
Similar testimonies
might be multiplied from the writings of Benvenuto da Imola, from Coluccio
Salutati, and others. But enough has been said to show that those
contemporaries of Petrarch who were best qualified to judge, unanimously
esteemed him their master and leader in learning. From this leadership he
derives his claim to rank among those who have inaugurated new eras and changed
the current of the world’s intellectual history. It is not pretended that he
was the sole scholar of his day. He had predecessors in the so-called Dark
Ages, whose enthusiasm for the classical authors known to them was as great as
his own ; in every country that he
visited he found
contemporaries zealous for learning ; he had devoted pupils and fellow-workers
who shared his high aims and rivalled even his indefatig-
able industry. What
distinguishes him from all the rest is the wonderful power of his influence.
Preceding scholars had been quite unable to make scholarship a power in the
world; men did not change their modes of thought in the twelfth
century because John of
Salisbury wrote good Latin, or in the early fourteenth because Richard de Bury composed
Philobiblon. But with Petrarch, and because of him, the classical spirit
resumed its sway; people without the least pretensions to scholarship began to
think and talk in the ways approved by scholars; the leaven of “the humanities”
leavened the whole lump of society.
It is not possible
precisely to define the quality of temperament which enabled Petrarch to
communicate the spirit which others had only been able to possess ; “ charm ”
affords the only explanation, and charm defies analysis. It is evident from his
whole career that he possessed both intellectual and personal charm to a rare
degree; he fascinated men’s imagination and fired their hearts. Entire
strangers came as pilgrims aglow with enthusiasm to Vaucluse, and having seen
the poet, they went back to spread the fame of him through all lands. So his
reputation grew, and his influence became more potent every day; and the
studies that he loved, from being the monopoly of a handful of scholars, became
the inspiration of the world’s culture.
The triumph was far more
than a mere intellectual success ; it was a triumph of personality and character,
and like all great spiritual triumphs, it was hardly won. Petrarch enjoyed
moments of intense happiness, but he was not a happy man; his life was one of
storm and stress, of anxious self-questioning, and of severe emotional
conflict. The very humanity, by virtue of which he quickened the souls of
others, gave his own soul for a prey to warring passions; only by such
spiritual pangs could the new birth be accomplished.
Surely it is precisely
this human sensitiveness, this intensity of nature, which most endears him to
us. He had his faults; who cares to remember them ? or rather who would do this
glorious man the disservice of caring to conceal them ? and who shall stand in
the judgment if this man falls ? As a consummate artist he wins our admiration;
as father of the new learning he claims our filial piety ; but most of all we
love and cherish in him the eager student, the passionate devotee of high
ideals, the incomparable friend.
| PETRARCH'S TOMB |