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| Francesco Petrarca |
Today, Jordi Santanyí and his friends are still in Arezzo. They want to
visit the Francesco Petrarca's house, where this genius, father of Renaissance,
was born and where the artistic and literary heritage of the Petrarchan Academy
is kept in. Nowadays, this building is owned by the Accademia Petrarca di
Lettere Arti e Scienze di Arezzo, established in 1623. It dates back to the XVI
century and was built on top of a previous building of the XIII-XIV centuries.
The library has got about 20.000 books and incunabula, some of which
date back to the XVI, XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries. Among them there are
valuable editions of some Petrarchan works and some antique books, including
some works by F. Redi, a doctor, literary man and naturalist from Arezzo, who
lived in the XVII century (1626-1697).
All the books dating back to the XV-XVIII centuries were collected by
F.Redi himself and his successors until 1820 when they were inherited by the
Petrachan Academy.
As well as the Redi Library, the Academy owns important collections of
books including G. L. Passerini’s Dante’s Library and valuable collection of letters, about 8000, belonging to the most well-known literary representatives of the
Italian culture of the first three decades of the XX century.
Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and visiting Petrarca's home is an
unforgettable experience for them. Jordi wants to know more things about
Petrarca's life and The Grandma is interested in the mysterious figure of Laura,
the secret love of the Tuscan writer.
Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304-July 18/19, 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch was a scholar and poet of Renaissance who was one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with inventing the 14th-century Renaissance.
Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri.
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| Jordi visits La Casa di Petrarca, Arezzo |
Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.
Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the Dark Ages.
Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani. His given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca. Petrarch's younger brother was born in Incisa in Val d'Arno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father.
Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras, where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V who moved there in 1309 to begin the Avignon Papacy. He studied law at the University of Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate called Guido Sette. Because his father was in the legal profession, a notary, he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also.
More information: Ibelcasentino
Petrarch however, was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally, he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind, as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.
Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large-scale work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity.
On April 8, 1341, he became the second poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned by Roman Senatori Giordano Orsini and Orso dell'Anguillara on the holy grounds of Rome's Capitol.
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| The Grandma & Claire inside La Casa di Petrarca |
He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has been called the first tourist
because he traveled just for pleasure, and the reason he climbed Mont
Ventoux. During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts
and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome
and Greece.
Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited or charged with creating the concept of a historical Dark Ages.
Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in the Church did not allow him to marry, but he is believed to have fathered two children by a woman or women unknown to posterity.
About 1368 Petrarch moved to the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in his house in Arquà early on July 20, 1374 -his seventieth birthday. The house hosts now a permanent exhibition of Petrarchian works and curiosities; among others you find the famous tomb of Petrarch's beloved cat who was embalmed.
More information: The New York Times
Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the Canzoniere and the Trionfi. However, Petrarch
was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this
language. His Latin writings include scholarly works, introspective
essays, letters, and more poetry.
Among them are Secretum Meum, an intensely personal, guilt-ridden imaginary dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus, a series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum and De Vita Solitaria, which praise the contemplative life; De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae, a self-help book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium; invectives against opponents such as doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of 12 pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa. He translated seven psalms, a collection known as the Penitential Psalms.
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| Joseph visits La Casa di Petrarca, Arezzo |
Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history such as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today, but several of his works are available in English translations.
Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called Epistolae familiares and Seniles, both of which are available in English translation. The plan for his letters was suggested to him by knowledge of Cicero's letters. These were published without names to protect the recipients, all of whom had close relationships to Petrarch.
His Letter to Posterity gives an autobiography and a synopsis of his philosophy in life. It was originally written in Latin and was completed in 1371 or 1372 -the first such autobiography in a thousand years, since Saint Augustine.
While Petrarch's poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian madrigal composers of the Renaissance in the 16th century, only one musical setting composed during Petrarch's lifetime survives. This is Non al suo amante by Jacopo da Bologna, written around 1350.
More information: BBC
On April 6, 1327, after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse. Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere.
Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade. There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing.
Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his Secretum, she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair.
In his Letter to Posterity, Petrarch wrote: In
my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure
love affair -my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had
not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the
cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been
entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.
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| Francesco & Laura |
His frequent use of l'aura is also remarkable: for example, the line Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi may both mean her hair was all over Laura's body, and the wind l'aura blew through her hair.
There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, although Petrarch draws heavily on conventionalised descriptions of love and lovers from troubadour songs and other literature of courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two.
Petrarch's quest for love leads to hopelessness and irreconcilable anguish, as he expresses in the series of paradoxes in Rima 134 Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;/e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio: I find no peace, and yet I make no war:/and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice.
More information: Poetry in Transation-The Canzoniere
Laura is unreachable -the few physical descriptions of her are vague, almost impalpable as the love he pines for, and such is perhaps the power of his verse, which lives off the melodies it evokes against the fading, diaphanous image that is no more consistent than a ghost.
In addition, some today consider Laura to be a representation of an ideal Renaissance woman, based on her nature and definitive characteristics.
Petrarch is traditionally called the father of Humanism and considered by many to be the father of the Renaissance. In his work Secretum meum he points out that secular achievements did not necessarily preclude an authentic relationship with God.
Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest. He inspired humanist philosophy which led to the intellectual flowering of the Renaissance.
He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature -that is, the study of human thought and action. Petrarch was a devout Catholic and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith.
More information: The Guardian
How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation
from the rocks of ignorance.
Petrarch
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