John S. Ott (c2012, 2014, 2017)
Portland State University
HST 356U: Renaissance and Reformation Europe
STUDY QUESTIONS AND READING GUIDE
for PETRARCH and THE STRANDS OF HUMANIST THOUGHT


Primary source readings

Background notes

The humanist Francis Petrarch, or Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), was the son of a notary and lawyer from Arezzo, in Italy.  After a childhood spent in Italy outside Florence, he moved with his family to France near the papal court at Avignon, and was educated at Carpentras. As an adult, Petrarch went on to study law at the universities of Montpellier (southern France) and Bologna (Italy).  Abandoning that profession, Petrarch entered the service of the pope at Avignon.  Petrarch's literary influences were many, his love of humanistic disciplines immense.  He was passionate about recovering and absorbing the learned writing of both the Roman classical and Christian past: he discovered and translated some lost letters of the Roman orator Cicero (d. 43 BCE), he embraced the writings of Seneca, Lactantius, and the Christian thinker/philosopher Augustine of Hippo.  His consummate skill was as a poet, orator, and writer, but he also served as a diplomat for the popes and traveled widely.

His letters reflect Petrarch’s preoccupations with the literary and rhetorical works of Greco-Roman antiquity, chiefly that of the Greek poet Homer (fl. eighth century BCE) and his Roman imitator, Virgil (d. 27 BCE).  For example, Petrarch's letter addressed to Homer, like others he wrote, is written as a direct correspondence to the long-dead poet, whose imagined complaint is that Virgil did not mention him in his work the Aeneid, which was modelled on Homer’s Odyssey.  Of course, Petrarch also wrote frequently to his contemporaries, notably Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375, author of the Decameron).

Petrarch's fame was sealed with the publication of an epic poem, titled Africa, which told the story of the Carthaginian Hannibal and the Roman general Cornelius Scipio Africanus during the Second Punic War. Written in the late 1330s following a visit to Rome, the poem attracted the attention of a learned audience in Paris and Rome, and he was in 1341 crowned "poet laureate" of Rome by two senators. Petrarch traveled widely and for pleasure, visiting, besides Rome, Paris, Naples, and Germany.

Questions

(1)  What can we discern about Petrarch's views on education and learning from his letters?  Why does he write to long dead authors, such as Cicero? What is his view of the times he lived in?
(2)  What sorts of lessons does Petrarch's climb up "Windy Mountain" (Mount Ventoux) hold for him?  What metaphors does he use to describe the mountain and his climb up it?  How should we understand the meaning behind those metaphors?
(3)  What, for Petrarch, is man's highest calling?  Why?
(4)  What kind of portrait of himself does he supply in his memoirs ("To Posterity")? Is he comfortable with this fame? Do you feel this autobiography is a reliable historical source? Why or why not?