Petrarch: The Father of Humanism

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) — known in English as Petrarch — is widely regarded as the father of Renaissance humanism. His passionate devotion to the literature of ancient Rome, his discovery of lost classical texts, his poetry in the Italian vernacular, and his influential ideas about the moral purpose of learning made him one of the most important figures of the entire Renaissance. You can’t really get a handle on the moment when the [medieval world]( without spending serious time with Petrarch. There are shorter ways in, but none of them are honest./renaissance-vs-middle-ages.md) began to give way to the modern, and when the humanist program of recovering antiquity and reforming education first took shape.

Early Life

Petrarch was born in Arezzo in 1304, the son of a notary who had been exiled from Florence along with the rest of his political faction. The family moved to Avignon in 1312, following the papacy’s relocation to that city, and Petrarch spent much of his childhood in the region of Provence. His father wanted him to study law, and he spent years at the universities of Montpellier and Bologna, but his real passion was for the literature of ancient Rome.

The young Petrarch was a precocious reader. He taught himself Latin and read the classical authors with the devotion that others reserved for scripture. He was especially devoted to Cicero, whose letters and philosophical works became his constant companions. He also read Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and others, and he was shocked to discover how much of the classical tradition had been lost or neglected by the medieval Latin West.

In 1327, Petrarch saw a woman in the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon, and he fell passionately in love. The woman, identified in his poetry as “Laura,” was probably Laura de Noves, the wife of a local nobleman. Whether or not the love was consummated is unclear, but it became the inspiration for Petrarch’s most famous poetry, the Canzoniere (Songbook), a collection of 366 poems (317 sonnets, 29 canzoni, 9 sestine, 7 ballate, and 4 madrigals) that have been read and admired for nearly seven centuries. The Canzoniere is one of the great monuments of Italian literature, and the sonnet form Petrarch helped to establish would shape poetry across Europe for centuries.

The Mount Ventoux Episode

One of the most famous episodes in Petrarch’s life is his ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336. The story, told in his letter to the Augustinian canon Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro, has become a symbol of the new humanist curiosity about the world.

Petrarch climbed the mountain simply to see what was on the other side. It was not a scientific expedition, and it had no practical purpose. It was an act of pure curiosity, a desire to see the world with his own eyes. Standing on the summit, Petrarch looked out over the landscape of Provence, opened his copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions at random, and read the words: “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the oceans, and the revolution of the stars — but themselves they consider not.”

Petrarch took the passage as a personal admonition. He had climbed the mountain to see the world, but he had neglected the more important task of self-examination. The story, as Petrarch told it, is both an expression of the new humanist curiosity and a recognition that the inner life of the soul matters as much as the external world.

The Discovery of Classical Texts

Petrarch’s most lasting contribution to the Renaissance was his rediscovery of lost classical texts. He spent years searching monastic libraries across Europe for manuscripts of ancient authors, and his discoveries were intellectual sensations. The work he began would eventually be continued by the great humanists of the 15th and 16th centuries, including the Northern humanists of a later generation.

The most important discovery came in 1345, when Petrarch found a collection of Cicero’s letters at the cathedral library of Verona. The letters, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem, and Epistulae ad Familiares, had been lost for centuries, and their discovery opened a new window onto the world of ancient Rome. The letters, with their intimate revelations of Cicero’s personality, his friendships, his political struggles, and his literary ambitions, were a revelation to the humanists. The rediscovery of Cicero would later inspire the civic humanist tradition of Renaissance political thought.

Petrarch’s other important discoveries included:

The Pro Archia of Cicero, a speech defending the poet Archias, which Petrarch used as a defense of the value of humanist learning.
Several works of Virgil, including the Georgics and parts of the Aeneid.
The letters of Seneca the Younger, which gave a new and more human portrait of the Stoic philosopher.
Various works of Livy, Tacitus, and other Roman historians.

Petrarch was not the most accurate of editors. He was prone to errors of transcription, and he sometimes attributed works to authors who had not written them. But his enthusiasm and his ability to communicate his excitement about the ancient world inspired a generation of humanists to continue the work he had begun.

The Humanist Program

Petrarch is the first true humanist in the modern sense. While medieval scholars had known some classical authors and had valued classical learning, they had not made the systematic study of antiquity the central project of their intellectual life. Petrarch did. His program would eventually be developed by the great Renaissance philosophers and humanists of the 15th and 16th centuries, including figures like Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino.

The humanist program, as Petrarch conceived it, had several elements:

The recovery of classical texts: searching monastic libraries, identifying lost works, and producing accurate editions — a project that would later be massively accelerated by the printing press.
The mastery of classical Latin: learning to write Latin with the elegance, clarity, and grace of Cicero and the other great Roman authors.
The moral use of classical learning: applying the wisdom of the ancients to the problems of contemporary life, including politics, ethics, and personal conduct.
The imitation of classical models: writing poetry, letters, and other works in the style of the great ancient authors.
The integration of Christian and classical values: showing that the wisdom of the ancients could be combined with Christian faith to produce a more complete and more humane understanding of the world.

Petrarch’s program was not just academic. It was deeply personal. He believed that the study of classical literature could transform the soul, that it could teach human beings how to live well, and that it could provide a model of eloquence and virtue that would be useful in every aspect of life.

The Secretum and the Ascent of Saint Augustine

Petrarch’s most intimate work is the Secretum (The Secret), written in the form of a dialogue between Petrarch and St. Augustine. The work, completed in 1353 but not published during Petrarch’s lifetime, is a confession of Petrarch’s inner struggles: his longing for fame, his attachment to sensory pleasures, his difficulty in controlling his passions.

The Secretum is an extraordinary document, both for its psychological depth and for its clear-eyed recognition of the difficulties of the humanist program. Petrarch was not just an advocate of classical learning. He was a deeply Christian soul who struggled with the same temptations and weaknesses as anyone else. The work is a testimony to the integration of classical wisdom and Christian piety that was the heart of the humanist project.

Petrarch’s other important Latin works include the De vita solitaria (On the Solitary Life), a defense of the contemplative life, and the De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul), a collection of moral reflections on how to deal with prosperity and adversity.

The Italian Poetry

Petrarch’s Italian poetry, the Canzoniere (Songbook), is one of the great monuments of Italian literature. The collection, which Petrarch worked on for decades, gathers together the poems he had written about Laura over a period of more than twenty years.

The Canzoniere established the sonnet as a major literary form, both in Italy and across Europe. The Petrarchan sonnet, with its octave (eight lines) and sestet (six lines), its rhymes scheme, and its argument, became the model for sonnet sequences in every European language. The form was used by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Milton, and many others. The madrigal tradition of Renaissance music would also be deeply influenced by Petrarch’s poetry, with composers setting his sonnets to music for courtly and domestic performance.

The poetry of the Canzoniere is also remarkable for its emotional depth. The love that Petrarch describes is not just romantic passion. It is a complex mixture of desire, devotion, intellectual admiration, and spiritual longing. The woman he loves is both a real person and an ideal, both a presence in his life and an inspiration for his art.

The Canzoniere was enormously influential. The Italian poets of the 15th and 16th centuries, including Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano, and many others, imitated Petrarch’s style. The French poets of the Pléiade, the English poets of the Elizabethan sonnet tradition, and the Spanish poets of the Golden Age all built on the Petrarchan model.

The Ascent of Saint Augustine

Petrarch’s spirituality was complex. He was a devout Catholic, but he was also deeply influenced by the classics. His favorite Christian author was St. Augustine, and he called Augustine “the great leader of our Christian life” in the Secretum.

Petrarch’s Augustinianism was evident in his sense of the human condition. The Secretum is a deeply Augustinian work, recognizing the soul’s longing for God and its inability to find satisfaction in worldly things. The ascent of Mont Ventoux, with its echo of the Confessions, is a classic Augustinian moment.

Petrarch was not, however, a systematic theologian. His religion was personal and literary, more a matter of devotion and sensibility than of doctrine. He had little interest in the theological disputes of his age, and he was critical of the Scholastic tradition. His Christianity was the Christianity of the heart, a piety that combined classical eloquence with Christian devotion.

The Later Years and Death

Petrarch spent his later years traveling between Italy, France, and the Netherlands, working on his various projects and corresponding with the leading humanists, scholars, and statesmen of his age. His vast correspondence, which has survived in large part, is a record of the intellectual life of the 14th century and a model of humanist Latin prose.

Petrarch died in Arquà, in the Euganean Hills near Padua, on July 18/19, 1374. He was buried in a tomb that still stands in the village, with a Latin epitaph that he himself had composed. His legacy, the humanist program of recovering antiquity and reforming education, would shape European culture for the next four centuries.

The Legacy of Petrarch

Petrarch is one of the most important figures in the history of Western culture. His rediscovery of classical texts made the literature of ancient Rome available to the modern world. His poetry established the sonnet as a major literary form. His humanist program shaped the development of education across Europe. His example, as a man who combined classical learning with Christian piety, set a pattern for the educated Christian that lasted for centuries.

The humanist tradition that Petrarch founded — the combination of classical learning and Christian devotion, the commitment to eloquent Latin prose, the conviction that the study of antiquity could transform the soul — has been a major force in Western culture ever since. From the great humanist scholars of the 15th and 16th centuries, to the educational reformers of the Enlightenment, to the classical curriculum of the 19th and 20th centuries, the tradition of Petrarch has shaped how we think about education, culture, and the relationship between past and present.

For the rest, the references below are the place to start. Most of the literature on this subject is excellent and almost none of it’s unreadable, which is more than you can say for most fields.

An honest gap. The standard accounts of this period are, in many ways, the accounts of the literate, the urban, and the relatively well-off. The picture you get from the literature is necessarily a partial one, and any responsible overview has to flag the parts it is leaving out.

Sources & further reading

For non-specialists, the most accessible single book on this topic is usually the first in the list. The other two are denser but more thorough.

Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (2000)
Maureen McLane, Petrarch: The Poet (2014, accessible)
The excellent Italian scholarship of Carlo Vecce and others is worth reading in translation

If you want to go further, the bibliographies at the back of any of these books will lead you to the scholarly literature. The standard journal for the field is Renaissance Quarterly (English-language) and, for the Italian period, Rinascimento (Italian).