Petrarch

The First Modern Scholar

and Man of Letters

A Selection from his Correspondence with Boccaccio and other Friends, Designed to Illustrate the Beginnings of the Renaissance. Translated from the Original Latin, together with Historical Introductions and Notes

BY

JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

Professor of History in Columbia University

WITH THE COLLABORATION OF

HENRY WINCHESTER ROLFE

Sometime Professor of Latin in Swarthmore College

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Knickerbocker press

1914

PETRARCH.

TO

G. R. R.

AND

B. C. R.

[Pg v]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

During the fifteen years which have elapsed since the appearance of the first edition of this volume a marked changed of attitude has taken place among scholars in regard to the "Renaissance" and the nature and importance of the revival of classical literature. This change is briefly explained in the opening pages of the introductory chapter (which have been entirely rewritten), and the reasons given for assigning to the "Renaissance" a less distinctive place in the history of culture than it formerly enjoyed. While this does not essentially affect the value of Petrarch's letters and the interest and importance of the personality which they reveal, it enables us to put him and his work in a more correct perspective.

There has, moreover, been added to Chapter VI (pp. 413 sqq.) a careful analysis of Petrarch's Secret. These confessions must be accorded a high place in the literature of self-revelation; they furnish the reader a more complete and vivid impression of Petrarch's intellectual life as well as of his strange and varied emotions than can be formed from reading[Pg vi] the correspondence alone. He not only understood his complicated self but possessed in an unprecedented degree the power of conciliating the interest of others in his own troubles and perplexities. In short, this new edition will serve at once to rectify certain general misapprehensions and at the same time to give a more adequate account of the truly extraordinary person with which it deals.

J. H. R.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

November, 1913.

[Pg vii]

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The purpose of this volume is essentially historical. It is not a piece of literary criticism; it is only incidentally a biography. It has been prepared with the single but lively hope of making a little clearer the development of modern culture. It views Petrarch not as a poet, nor even, primarily, as a many-sided man of genius, but as the mirror of his age—a mirror in which are reflected all the momentous contrasts between waning Mediævalism and the dawning Renaissance.

Petrarch knew almost everyone worth knowing in those days; consequently few historical sources can rival his letters in value and interest; their character and significance are discussed at length in the introduction which follows.

We have ourselves come to love the eager, independent, clear-sighted, sensitive soul through whose eyes we have followed the initial spiritual struggle of modern times; we would that others might learn to love him too.

In the preparation of this volume the editors have naturally availed themselves of the[Pg viii] excellent edition of Petrarch's Epistolæ de Rebus Familiaribus et Variæ, by Giuseppe Fracassetti, 3 vols., 8°, Florence, 1859-63. For the Epistolæ de Rebus Senilibus, and the remaining Latin works, they have necessarily relied upon the lamentably incorrect edition of the Opera printed at Basle in 1581, for in spite of its imperfections it is the most complete collection of Petrarch's writings that we possess. The references in the foot-notes are, therefore, to the pages of Fracassetti's edition or of that of 1581, as the case may be. Much aid has been derived from Körting's standard work, Petrarca's Leben und Werke; from Fracassetti's elaborate notes to his Italian version of the letters; from Voigt's masterly analysis of Petrarch's character and career, at the opening of Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums; and especially from M. Pierre de Nolhac's scholarly and fascinating study, Pétrarque et l'Humanisme.

Part third of the present volume, upon Petrarch's classical studies, is the work of Mr. Rolfe, and the whole book has had the benefit of his acute and painstaking revision.

J. H. R.

BIRCHWOOD, JAFFREY, N. H.,

September, 1898.

[Pg ix]

CONTENTS

[Pg x]

ILLUSTRATIONS

I.—A SKETCH OF VAUCLUSE BY PETRARCH'S HAND Cover

II.—PORTRAIT OF PETRARCH Frontispiece

III.—A PAGE FROM PETRARCH'S COPY OF THE ILIAD

Through the kindness of M. de Nolhac, and with the generous permission of the École des hautes Études at Paris, the editors have been enabled to reproduce three plates of unusual historical interest.

I.—THE SKETCH OF VAUCLUSE with the inscription, Transalpina solitudo mea jocundissima—my delightsome Transalpine retreat—which appears on the front cover of this volume, was discovered by M. de Nolhac in Petrarch's own copy of Pliny's Natural History. A reference in the book to the Fountain of the Sorgue suggested to its owner the idea of recalling by a few strokes of the quill his memories of a spot where he had spent so many years. This sketch, his only essay at pictorial reproduction which has come down to us, is an interesting illustration of the versatility of self-expression which distinguished him from his predecessors and contemporaries.

II.—THE PORTRAIT, which forms the frontispiece, is taken from a manuscript in the National Library at Paris, and its history has been carefully traced by M. de Nolhac (op. cit., pp. 376 sqq.). It adorns the first page of a copy of Petrarch's own work, The Lives of Illustrious Men, which was transcribed with unusual care for his last[Pg xi] princely patron, the ruler of Padua, by one of the poet's most intimate and trusted friends, Lombardo della Seta. A note at the end of the work states that Lombardo completed his task January 25, 1379. We may, therefore, assume that this portrait was executed not later than four and a half years after Petrarch's death, in the city where he spent much of his time during the closing period of his life, and by an artist selected by the poet's devoted friends. It is maintained by some modern historians of art that there was, in those days, no real feeling for portraiture; without, however, venturing into the domain of art criticism, we may, at least, claim for this sketch almost unimpeachable historical authenticity.

III.—THE FACSIMILE of a page from one of Petrarch's own volumes will give some idea, to those unfamiliar with manuscripts, of the appearance of a book in the fourteenth century; it shows us, too, the untiring energy of the first modern scholar in emending and elucidating the scattered and neglected fragments of ancient literature, for which he made such diligent search.

[Pg 1]

INTRODUCTORY

[Pg 2]

"La formule qui définit le mieux Pétrarque est celle qui le désigne comme "le premier homme moderne." Par la direction de sa pensée, il échappe presque entièrement à l'influence de son siècle et de son milieu, ce qui est sans doute la marque la moins contestable du génie."—PIERRE DE NOLHAC.

[Pg 3]

History is the memory of mankind; it far outruns the narrow range of our own personal recollections and enables us to participate consciously in a process of change so impressive in its vast length and complexity as to reduce the experiences of our own generation to a mere incident. It makes it possible for us to see not only how to-day is growing out of yesterday, and this year out of last, but how the nineteenth century prepared the way for the twentieth, the eighteen for the nineteenth, and so on, back and back to the very beginnings of man's lineage. No one of us has precisely the same experiences two days in succession, and yet amid the most considerable vicissitudes of life we always carry over from day to day and year to year a great part of our habits and convictions,—which constitute what others call our character. The life of a people, although much more stable than that of most of its members, is always slowly and irrevocably altering; it is in the main a perpetuation of the[Pg 4] old but always possesses some

element of the new, since the individuals who compose a nation, as well as the conditions under which they live, are always changing.

The historian should reckon with both the old and the new in tracing man's past; he must show not only how things have changed but how they have remained the same. The mass of hoary tradition and ancient custom which enters so generously into every stage of civilisation, no matter how progressive, often, however, escapes his observation. Successful historians are men of letters who have something of the poet, the dramatist or the story-teller in them, and in order to construct a narrative which has any chance of appealing to their readers they are forced, following the example of the playwright, to divide the past into periods, like the scenes in a play, and assign to each a dominant motive. In doing this they are tempted greatly to exaggerate the exceptional and novel. Moreover, since the historian can include in his story but a very small part of the multitudinous experiences of mankind during the period with which he is dealing, he inevitably selects what will fit into a coherent narrative and neglects all the rest; he must

introduce order where there is essential[Pg 5] confusion, lucidity where there is obscurity, and discover simplicity where their is inextricable complexity.

As a result of this highly artificial nature of the historian's work—of which he himself is usually unconscious—historical legends arise, which by reason of their dramatic character and their plausible simplicity are eagerly and widely accepted, and only reluctantly abandoned when some of the vast number of facts which have been neglected in their formation are given an opportunity to assert themselves. The pretty myth of the common origin and gradual dispersion of all those peoples whose language belongs to the Indo-European group has been dissipated by recollecting that a common language does not necessarily imply a common racial origin. The legend that Luther first translated the Bible into German vanishes before a list of the numerous editions of German Bibles printed during the fifty years previous to his undertaking. The publication of Napoleon's letters add too many facts to permit one longer to accept what Thiers and John S. C. Abbott say of him. A similar fate awaits the Renaissance; that, too, has assumed the form of a myth, which is threatened by a consideration of

certain obvious facts which its[Pg 6] authors innocently, but none the less fatally, overlooked.

As this word is used in histories of literature, art, and philosophy, it implies a freeing of man's mind from the shackles of the Middle Ages; he discovers himself and the world in all its beauty and interest; he shakes off religious dependence and becomes self-reliant; he casts aside the cowl and goes forth joyfully into the sunlight. This awakening has been attributed to a revived interest in the neglected works of the classical authors. They were potent, it has been assumed, to bring new life into a paralysed world, so soon as they become the object of passionate study and emulation. It was they, it has been claimed, that dispelled the gloomy superstition of the Dark Ages and aroused a buoyant spirit of Hellenism which enabled men to soar above the fruitless subtleties of Scholastic Theology.

This conception of the Renaissance is much more recent in origin than is usually supposed; it is scarcely more than fifty years old, and finds its first clear presentation in the well-known Civilisation of the Renaissance, which the Basel professor, Jacob Burckhardt, published in 1860. Fifteen years later John Addington Symonds began to issue his stately series of[Pg 7] volumes on The Renaissance in Italy. The charm of his style served to popularise the conception of a distinctive period during which Europe awoke from its winter sleep and developed those traits of character which we deem essentially modern. For a generation or more the Renaissance has been the theme of innumerable popular books and lectures and has constituted a recognised "epoch" in manuals of historical instruction.

That it is a convenient term no one will deny! The civilisation of the Italian city states in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, from Dante to Machiavelli, from Giotto to Raphael, presents so much of rich delight that we ought to have a suitable name for it all. In this sense the expression, Renaissance, will probably continue to be used; but it is safe to predict that as we gain fuller insight into the conditions which preceded and followed this period it will be ranked much lower than hitherto as a time of decisive progress in human knowledge and ideals. Neither Burckhardt nor Symonds were cognisant of the extraordinary achievements of what they called vaguely the Middle Ages. And both of them were so classical-minded as to have but an inadequate appreciation of how slight[Pg 8] were the intellectual changes of the Renaissance compared with those that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the results of which make the world in which we live what it is.

It is clear enough to historical students of to-day that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries offer the spectacle of a far more unmistakable awakening than does the so-called Renaissance. These centuries witnessed the development of the towns, the revival of the Roman Law, the founding of the universities, in which the encyclopædic works of the most learned, penetrating, and exacting of all ancient thinkers—Aristotle—were made the basis of a liberal education; and they beheld the literary birth of those vernacular languages which were one day to displace the speech of the Romans. These centuries devised, moreover, a new, varied, and lovely style of architecture, sculpture, and ornament, which still fills us with wonder and delight; they carried the knowledge of natural things and the practical arts beyond the point reached by Greeks or Romans; they sketched out the great career of experimental and applied science, which was hidden from the ancients and which is one of the main revolutionising forces of our day.

[Pg 9]

When we consider these and other achievements which preceded the Renaissance we are forced to ask what did it contribute that was equally important and distinctive? This question is a difficult one. Neither Burckhardt nor Symonds were in a position even to ask it, and only recently are students in this field setting themselves to re-examine more carefully and fully the facts, and place the achievements of the period in proper relation to what went before and what came after.[1]

One thing at least is clear. The knowledge of the Greek language had died out in western Europe with the disruption of the Roman Empire, and except in so far as Greek thought and taste had become embodied in Latin, it was lost for several hundreds of years. In the thirteenth century Aristotle's works were put into Latin, and so deeply did they impress their readers that they were assigned a supreme place, alongside the Bible and the Church and Roman Law. Two centuries later a great part of the Greek classics, Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and above all Plato, were brought from Constantinople,[Pg 10] translated into Latin and made available for such scholars as cared to read them. This was the great literary work of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile every vestige of Latin literature was being hunted out, copied, and edited. There was not a great deal to be found that had not been known and read more or less all along, but the sense of its preciousness increased and a conviction developed that it was far better than anything that had been produced since the

German Barbarians broke up the Roman Empire. The scholars who carried on this work had much to say of humanitas, by which they meant the culture to which man alone, of all creatures, is able to aspire. Cicero uses the word in this sense, and they found it defined for them by Aulus Gellius, a compiler who lived under Marcus Aurelius. Culture to them was in the main what it has been to the classical-minded ever since—namely, familiar intercourse with the best authors of Greece and Rome.

The Humanists did not, however, at once cast off the mediæval modes of thought. They ranged on their library shelves side by side with the pagan classics, the works of the Greek and Latin Christian fathers; they fell under the spell of Neoplatonism and deemed Plotinus and Porphyry legitimate interpreters of Plato. They[Pg 11] were not even proof against the crude superstitions and futilities of the Jewish Cabbala.

The rôle of classical literature in the development of thought and taste is momentous, but it has served to hamper as well as to forward the progress of knowledge and the increase of insight. The classics have to-day worn out their welcome in many quarters. The more bigoted among the classicists of our own time have little of the truly Hellenic about them. Greece in its finest period owed its greatness partly to its frank use of its own vernacular language, partly to its exceptional freedom from tradition and routine. The classicist, on the contrary, would have us base our education upon dead languages and adhere piously to tradition, and routine. The Greek writers of the fifth century before Christ were free and progressive; their modern retainers are too often ultra-conservative and indifferent to the glowing opportunities of their own time.

But their position in any case is very different from that of the Humanists of the fifteenth century. To-day we can acquaint ourselves with the best that has been said and thought without going back to the masterpieces of antiquity. Each European people has developed its own national literature and given birth to[Pg 12] geniuses able to assimilate, elaborate, and augment the older heritage in modern speech and modern literary forms. So the importance of the revival of classical scholarship five hundred years ago is not to be judged by the position that Greek and Roman books occupy in our intellectual life to-day. However conscious one may be of the limitations of classical thought and the obstacles which its unconditional admirers have opposed to natural and salutary intellectual readjustments, no one will have any inclination to underrate its vast significance in the development of modern culture.

Francesco Petrarch is generally accorded the distinction of being the first great leader in the revival of classical literature. He did not live to see the incoming of the Greek books, but he made a vain effort to learn the language and fully realised its importance. He was, moreover, untiring in promoting the study of Roman literature and writes to his dearest friend Boccaccio: "I certainly will not reject the praise which you bestow upon me for having stimulated in many instances, not only in Italy but perchance beyond its confines, the pursuit of studies such as ours, which have suffered neglect for so many centuries. I am indeed one of the[Pg 13] oldest among us who are engaged in the cultivation of these subjects."[2]