Petrarch

Petrarch 1304-1374

By: Katie

Petrarch was born at the end of the middle ages in 1304, in the northern Italian city of Florence. Petrarch's father was a minor government official however that ended soon after he was born, because of quarrel he and his family were exiled out of Florence, and moved to another part of Northern Italy. There his father found a job in the service of the Pope as a secretary and notary.

One of his father’s best friends was Dante; Dante was also exiled at the same time and for the same thing as his father. Dante had written a book while in exile called the divine comedy. As Petrarch grew older he came to admire Dante, and including many of his works. When Petrarch was 10 he was forced to move with his family to Southern France, because his father had to go with the, due to political unrest.

At the age of 12 he was sent to the University of Montpellier to study law. He loved the University at first but soon grew to dislike the law; he called it “the art of selling justice”, Petrarch would much rather read books by Roman authors like Virgil, Seneca, Julius Caesar and above all, Cicero. Word finally got to his father that he was neglecting his studies. When his father came he threatened to burn all of his son’s books by the Roman authors, but decided not to when Petrarch burst into tears.

In 1326 both of his parents died he and his brother Gherardo returned to their home-in-exile in Avignon, France. During this time he and his brother began to live the life of elegant young men.

In April of 1327 while attending an Early morning Church service he was said to of had a vision about a young lady named Laura whose beauty was none like he had ever seen before. For 21 years she was his inspiration for poetry and prose. The theme of this writings became his eternal, unrequited devoting to Laura.

In the year 1348 brought new tragedies for Petrarch his beloved Laura died in plague, leaving Petrarch crushed.

Petrarch spent the rest of his life collecting manuscripts which had been preserved at monasteries in Italy and France, writing and traveling. Towards the very end of his death he even became interested in some Greek writers who his Roman authors had quoted. In particular a man who Cicero and quoted so often, Plato. After he acquired a manuscript, in Greek, by Plato, he searched, unsuccessfully, for some young scholar who could help him master classical Greek the way he had mastered classical Latin.

Petrarch died peacefully on a warm summer morning in July of 1374, the day of his seventieth birthday; his servants found his body slumped over at his desk. He had been working on his copy of the Life of Julius Caesar, written in classical Latin, when he died.

Here is one of the Poems Petrarch wrote,

Sonnet 231

Life hurries on, a frantic refugee,

And death, with great forced marches, follows fast,

And all the present leagues with all the past

And all the future to make war one me.

Anticipation joins to memory

To search my soul with daggers; and at last,

Did not damnation set me so aghast,

I’d put an end to thinking and be free.

The few glad moments that my heart has know

Return to me; then I foresee in dread

The winds upgathering against my ways,

Storm in the harbor; and th pilot prone,

The mast and rigging down; and dark and dead

The lovely lights whereon I used to gaze.

- (translated my Morris Bishop)

I hope you enjoyed reading that, please tell me how you like it and if you want me to write another one about someone else :)

Katie