PETRARCH THE MAN 



Scipio's father and the poet Ennius tell of the young 

 Tuscan who in the distant future shall call back the 

 muses and restore the sisters to Helicon. We must 

 remember what importance Petrarch attached to his 

 coronation, and to its taking place in Rome, for there 

 the ceremony would be a more universal recognition of 

 his greatness than if it had occurred in Paris, or in some 

 other city in Italy. 



Of this desire for fame there is an aspect (indeed, a 

 double aspect) which is of considerable importance: 

 with all his excessive vanity, Petrarch, when insisting 

 upon fame, was really a great champion both of the 

 rights of the individual man and of the value of man's 

 activity upon earth. And this in spite of his talking 

 against fame, as did Oderisi of Gubbio, and in spite of 

 his apprehension lest it interfere with his salvation. 

 The rights of the individual, the lawfulness of fame 

 would no doubt have been recognized if Petrarch had 

 never lived; but he, though some may think him only 

 dimly aware of the larger aspect of the real issue, was 

 an eager and a potent leader. It is rather amusing to 

 see him attempting to legitimize glory by making it 

 mean more than posthumous fame on earth. " I 

 beheve," he says in the Secretum, " that the glory for 

 which one is allowed to hope on earth should be sought 

 during this life on earth, to the end that a more splen- 

 did glory may be enjoyed in Heaven, having attained 

 which, one will no longer wish to think of this earth." 

 The shrewd St. Augustine points out the senselessness 



73 



