773 



PETRABCA, FRANCESCO. 



PETRARCA, FRANCESCO. 



774 



greatest care of him, and he was restored to life ; but the physicians 

 declared that he was unable to proceed to Rome, and he was taken 

 back to Padua in a boat. Petrarea had been long subject to palpita- 

 tions and epileptic fits, the consequence of his too great application 

 to Rtudy. From Padua he removed, in the summer of 1370, to Arqua, 

 a pleasant village in the Euganean Hills, where he enjoyed a pure air 

 aud retirement. He built a house there, and planted a garden and 

 orchard : this is the only residence of the numerous houses which he 

 had at Panna, Padua, Venice, Milan, Vaucluse, and other places, 

 which still remains, and is shown to travellers. In this retirement 

 he resumed his studies with fresh zeal. Among other things, he 

 wrote his book 'De sui ipsius tt multorum aliorum Ignorantia,' 

 intended as a rebuke to certain Venetian freethinkers who, inflated 

 with the learning which they had gathered from Averroes' ' Commen- 

 taries on Aristotle,' of which a Latin translation had spread into 

 Italy, sneered at the Mosaic account of the creation, and at the 

 Scriptures in general. Four of these young men had sought the 

 society of Petrarea while he resided at Venice, and he was at first 

 highly pleased with them ; they were accomplished and witty, and 

 fond of study. But this sympathy did not last long. Petrarea had 

 no blind veneration for Aristotle, and still less for Averroes ; he was 

 a believer in the Scriptures, and moreover he had no great bias for 

 natural history, in which his visitors were skilled, aud he used to 

 observe to them that it was of greater importance to " investigate the 

 nature of man than that of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes." The four 

 admirers of Aristotle were scandalised at his own freethinking concern- 

 ing their oracle, and they held a kind of jury among them to decide 

 upon the true merits of Petrarea. The verdict was, that Petrarea 

 was a good kind of a man, but destitute of real learning, " Bonus vir, 

 sine literi-." This judgment spread about Venice, and made a great 

 noise. Petrarea at first laughed at it, but his friends took up the 

 businen seriously, and urg-d him to defend himself, which he did in 

 his retirement at Arqua, by the book already noticed. In this work 

 he acknowledges his own ignorance, but at the same time he exposes 

 the ignorance of his antagonists. With regard to Aristotle he says 

 what others have said after him, that "he was a great and powerful 

 lijinci, who knew many things, but was ignorant of many more." 



The air of the Euganean hills did not prove sufficient to restore 

 Petrarea to health. His physician Dondi told him that his diet was 

 too cold ; that he ought not to drink water, nor eat fruit and raw 

 vegetable*, nor fast, as he often did. But Petrarea had no faith in 

 medicine. He absolutely wrote four books of invectives against 

 physicians. He valued Dondi. not as a physician but as a philosopher, 

 and he used to tell him so, but Dondi still remained attached to him. 

 The news of Urban V.'s return to Avignon, and of his subsequent 

 death, caused much [grief to Petrarea, who had a great esteem for 

 that pontiff. His successor Gregory XI., to whom he was also per- 

 sonally known, wrote to Petrarca, in 1371, a moat kind letter inviting 

 him to his court. But Petrarca was unable to move. He was often 

 seized with fits, and sometimes given up for dead. He wrote to 

 Francisco Bruni, the Apostolic secretary, that " he should not ask the 

 pope for anything, but that if hi* Holiness chose to bestow on him a 

 living without cure of souls, for he had enough to take care of his 

 own soul, to make his old age more comfortable, he should feel 

 grateful, though he felt that he was not long for this world, for he 

 was waning away to a shadow. He was not in want ; he kept two 

 horses, and generally five or six amanuenses, though only three at the 

 present moment, because he could find no more. He could have 

 more easily obtained painters than transcribers. Although he would 

 prefer tu take his meals alone, or with the village priest, he was gene- 

 rally besieged by a host of visitors or self-invited guests, and he must 

 not behave to them as a miser. He wanted to build a small oratory 

 to the Virgin Mary, but he must sell or pledge his books for the pur- 

 pose." (' Variarum Epistolarum,' the 43rd.) Some months after 

 (January 1372), writing from Padua to his old college friend Matthew, 

 archdeacon of Liege, he says, " I have been infirm these two years, 

 being givm up several times, but still live. I have been for some 

 time at Venice, and now I am at Padua, performing my functions of 

 canon. I am happy in having left Venice, on account of this war 

 between the republic and the lord of Padua, At Venice I should have 

 been an object of suspicion, whilst here I am cherished. I spend the 

 greater part of the year in the country ; I rend, I think, I write; this 

 is my existence, a< it was in the time of my youth." 



In September 1373 peace was made between Venice and Francis of 

 Carrara, lord of Padua. One of the conditions was that the latter 

 hhoultl send his sou to Venice to aik pardou and swear fidelity to the 

 republic. The Lord of Padua begged Petrarca to accompany his son. 

 Petrarca appeared before the senate, and pronounced a discourse on 

 the occasion, which was much applauded, After his return to Padua 

 he wrote his book ' De Republics uptime admiuistranda,' which he 

 dedicated to his patron and friend Francis of Carrara. 



The following year his health grew worse : a slow fever consumed 

 his frame. He went as usual to Arqua for the summer. On the 

 morning of the 18th of July one of the servants entered his library 

 and found him sitting motionless, with hid head leaning on a book. 

 As he was often for whole hours in that attitude the people of the 

 house at first took no notice of it, but they soon perceived that their 

 muter was quite dead. The news of his death soon reached Padua. 



Francis of Carrara, accompanied by all the nobility of Padua, the 

 bishop and chapter, and most of the clergy repaired to Arqua to 

 attend the funeral. Sixteen doctors of the university bore his remains 

 to the parish church of Arqua, where his body was interred in a 

 chapel which Petrarca had built in honour of the Virgin Mary. 

 Francesco da Brossano, his son-in-law, raised him a marble monument 

 supported by four columns; and in 1667 his bust in bronze was 

 placed above it. On one of the columns the following distich was 

 engraved : 



" Inveni requiem ; spes et fortuna valete ; 

 Nil mihi vobiseum est, ludite nunc alios." 



Petrarea had had two natural children, a sou and a daughter. The 

 son died before his father. The daughter, Tullia, married in her 

 father's lifetime Francesco da Brossano, a Milanese gentleman, whom 

 Petrarca made his heir. He left legacies to various friends, and among 

 others to Boccaccio, who did not survive him long. The portraits of 

 Petrarca are numerous, but they differ from one another ; that which 

 is considered the most authentic is at Padua, in the Episcopal palace, 

 above the door of the library. It is a fresco painting, which was cut out 

 of the wall of the house of Petrarca at Padua, when it was pulled down 

 in 1581. (Vale'ry, ' Voyages Litt<5raires.') An engraving of it is given 

 at the head of the handsome edition of Petrarca's verses by Marsaud. 



The works of Petrarca are of three kinds : 1 , his Italian poetry, 

 chiefly concerning Laura ; 2, his Latin poetry ; 3, liis Latin prose. 

 His Italian poetry, called ' II Canzoniere,' or ' Rime di Petrarca,' con- 

 sists of above 300 sonnets, about SO canzoui, and three short poems, 

 in terza rima, styled ' Trionfo d'Amore,' ' Trionfo della Morte," and 

 ' Trionfo della Fama.' Petrarca'a ' Canzoniere ' has gone through 

 more than 300 editions, with and without notes and commentaries. 

 The best is that edited by Professor Marsand, 2 vols. 4to, Padua, 

 1819-20, with a biography of Petrarca, extracted from his own works. 

 The character of his poetry is well known ; its greatest charm consists 

 in the sweetness of numbers, " enlivened by a variety, a rapidity, and 

 a glow which no Italian lyric has ever possessed in an equal degree." 

 (Foscolo.) That in Petrarea's sonnets there is too much ornament, 

 that he indulges too much in metaphors, that his antitheses are often 

 forced, and his hyperboles almost puerile all this is true ; and yet 

 there is so much delicacy and truth in his descriptions of the passion, 

 of love aud of its thousand affecting accessories which he brings 

 before the rniud of the reader, that he awakens many associations and 

 recollections in every heart ; and this in perhaps the great secret of 

 the charm of hia poetry, notwithstanding its perpetual egotism. 

 There is much to choose among his sonnets, many of which, especially 

 those which he wrote after Laura's death, are far superior to the rest 

 in loftiness of thought and expression. He borrowed little from the 

 Latin poets, and much from the Troubadours; but his finest imi- 

 tations are drawn from the sacred writings. He improved the 

 materials in which the Italian language already abounded, and he 

 gave to that language new grace aud freshness. No term which he 

 has employed has become obsolete, and all his phrases may be and 

 still are used in the written language. Far inferior to Dante in inven- 

 tion, depth of thought, and in boldness of imagery, Petrarca is superior 

 to him in softness and melody. Dante was a universal poet ; ho 

 describes all passions, all actions : Petrarca paints only one passion, 

 but he paints it exquisitely. There are some of his canzoui which 

 soar higher than the rest in their lyric flight, especially the one which, 

 begins " Italia mia," and which has been often quoted ; and another 

 which he wrote in 1333, when a new crusade was in contemplation. His 

 beautiful canzone, or ' Ode to the Virgin,' with which he closes his 

 poetry about Laura, is also greatly admired for its sublimity an 1 pathos. 



Petrarca's Latin poetry consists, 1, of the 'Africa,' an epic on the 

 exploits of Scipio in the second Punic war, a dull sort of poem, with 

 some fine passages : it was however much admired at the time ; 

 2, Epistles, in verse, addressed to several popes, for the purpose of 

 urging their return to Rome, and also to several friends ; 3, Eclogues 

 or Bucolics, which are acknowledged by himself to be allegorical,- and 

 were in fact, like Boccaccio's eclogues, satires against the powerful of 

 his time, and especially against the papal court of Avignon. 



Ginguend, in his ' Histoire Litte'raire,' and others, have endeavoured 

 to find the key to these allegories. The sixth and seventh eclogues 

 are evidently directed against Clement VI. ; and the twelfth, entitled 

 ' Couflictatio,' has also some violent invectives against the Papal court. 

 This circumstance has given rise to strange surmises, as if Petrarca 

 were a secret heretic, an enemy of the church of Rome, belonging to 

 some supposed secret society. We know from Petrarca's own letters, 

 especially those styled ' sine titulo,' that he spoke very plainly to his 

 friends concerning the disorders and vices of the Papal court, which 

 he called tlie modern Babylon, the Babylon of the west. He says that 

 Jesus Christ was sold every day for gold, and that his temple was 

 made a den of thieves ; but we also evidently see that in all these 

 invectives he spoke of the discipline of the Church, or rather of the 

 abuses of that discipline, and not of the dogmas things which have 

 often been confounded, both by the advocates and the enemies of 

 Rome. Pctrarca, like many other observing men of that and the 

 succeeding century, could not be blind to the enormous abuses existing 

 iu the Church ; but their indignation was poured out against the indi- 

 viduals who fostered those abuses, aud they never thought of attacking 

 the fabric itself. This was especially the case in Italy. There might 



