Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) was born in Arezzo,
Italy on July 20, 1304. We know him today as “The Father of Humanism.” He was
an Italian poet and scholar who based most of his poems on a woman named Laura
who was his idealized beloved and these poems contributed to the Renaissance
flowering of lyric poetry. He loved classical artists and this love inspired
him to travel because of it. He visited men of learning and searching monastic
libraries for classical manuscripts. Petrarch’s father was a lawyer who was
forced to leave Florence in order to find a job and ended up in Avignon in
1312. Several years after Petrarch was born. Once Petrarch was old enough, his
father had him study law and he moved back to Italy with his brother in 1320,
where started to develop ‘an unquenchable thirst for literature.” His earliest
poems were about his mother’s death and he started to become acquainted with vernacular
poetry, where he moved back to Avignon and became associated with Cardinal
Giovanni Colonna. Later he met his beloved Laura who he kept secret about her
status because he felt that was unimportant. From this love, his most
celebrated Italian poems sprang forth, which despised as mere trifles, he
revised them throughout his life. He then was invited by Paris and Rome to be
crowned poet and chose Rome in order to celebrate the rebirth of the cult of
poetry. He wrote Secretum Meum in
1342-43 which was an autobiographical treatise consisting of three dialogues
between Petrarch and St. Augustine talking about even if you are absorbed in
yourself and others around you, a man might still find his way to God. Petrarch
love for Laura made him realize that he had love for the creature rather than
the creator which was proof to his attachment of the world. Because of this, he
broke through his too-exclusive admiration for antiquity to admit to other
authoritative voices. He wrote De Vita
Solitaria as an example of this where developed the theoretical basis and
description of the “solitary life” where a man can enjoy nature and study
together with those of prayer. He died July 18/19, 1374 in Padua, Italy.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Petrarch#ref5637
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