Wednesday, February 27, 2008

While Dante died before the plague struck Italy, both Petrarch and Boccaccio survived the onslaught of the plague in 1348. Petrarch lived in the vicinity of Avignon, where the papacy had moved at the beginning of the century. He deplored the corruption and wealth of that part of the world; in fact, if any one thing can be said to characterize his profile, it would be a sense of deep unhappiness with the world of his own period. Where he looked to find escape from that unhappiness oscillated between the ancient world, particularly Rome, and the afterlife promised by the Christian faith.

Petrarch was a man of introspection. One of his major works is called the "Secret" (or Secretum), a dialogue between himself and St. Augustine. Augustine, probably the single most influential theologian of late antiquity, was a kind of literary and theological mentor to Petrarch, particularly in his having written the Confessions, a story of his early life and conversion in his thirties to the life of a deeply committed Christian. Augustine was held back prior to that breakthrough by two things: his professional ambition (he was a renowned teacher of rhetoric) and his inability to live without sexual intimacy with a woman. Petrarch, likewise, felt himself to be held back by his own love of worldly praise on the one hand and by his overwhelming love for a young woman named Laura, who died in the plague of 1348. She was his ideal love, but Petrarch also had a very real mistress by whom he fathered several children.

Petrarch became famous as a literary figure in several media. First, he was a composer in the vernacular (Italian) of love poetry. His sonnets, inspired by his love for Laura, would alone have been sufficient to give him an enduring place in literary history. But he also wrote in Latin, and considered his Latin work to be more important by far than his Italian poetry. In writing about Dante, for example, Petrarch claimed that Dante's Italian poetry, his life's work, was in a medium that he, Petrarch, considered to be only the frivolous occupation of his youth. In Latin Petrarch wrote an epic poem, the Africa, and a number of treatises and letters, some of which you'll be reading.

A word or two about letters is in order. Today we think of them as private corresponsdence, something that has to do with our intimate friendships, and in fact with the advent of e-mail, I'm not sure many of us even bother with hand-written letters much any more. In Petrarch's time they were a literary form, intended to be published and read by a wider audience. It may seem a bit crazy to write a letter to someone who has been dead for centuries, as Petrarch wrote to Cicero, but his letters were for the benefit of his own readers, and represented his reflections on the relationship between Cicero's life and his works, as well as the relationship between Petrarch's time and the time of Cicero. That they were cast in the form of a personal communication is crucial to their meaning, however. Cicero was, in the estimation of many, the greatest orator in Latin of all time. He also was a philosopher and man of letters. Petrarch himself saw Cicero as a figure with whom, like Augustine, he identified personally, even though Cicero lived and died in the first century B.C.

Petrarch revolted against scholasticism, the form of learning that was dominant in the universities at that time. At the height of the medieval period, in the 13th century, scholasticism was the most vital force in intellectual life. The term itself is based on the word for school, and scholastics (also called schoolmen) were educated in the newly-developing universities. As I have indicated, a university is an urban phenomenon, a kind of guild of teachers (or sometimes students), that is self-governing and operates according to representative principles, the theories underlying the guild styles of governance that we have seen in Florence. During the 13th century and beyond, university men (and they were exclusively men) were intrigued by the ancient philosopher Aristotle, wishing to incorporate his thought into an understanding of the Christian faith.

This was not necessarily an easy thing to do. Many Christians, including Petrarch, saw Aristotle as not particularly relevant to Christian teaching. Nevertheless the most famous scholastic of them all, Thomas Aquinas, made his life's work a reconciliation of Aristotle's reasoning with revealed Scripture, and he eventually was made a saint. The Franciscan William of Occam, on the other hand, was a couple of generations later than Aquinas, and his thinking strongly undermined the synthesis Aquinas worked so hard to effect.

The real question underlying these matters is the following: is God's way of doing thing intrinsically rational, or is it beyond human reason to discern? If the former, then we can try to know God and do His will by using our minds; if the latter, then a different sort of attitude altogether would be required. According to Petrarch, a good will was more important than intellectual acuity.

I look forward to seeing you in class.

1. Letter to Posterity: What seems to be important to Petrarch in this letter? What is Petrarch's opinion of himself?Ascent of Mount Ventoux: This piece is in fact an extended allegory of Petrarch's aspirations toward the blessed life. His model is St. Augustine, who is not just a spiritual but also a literary mentor, for Petrarch's account of his breakthrough in the Ascent is modeled on that of Augustine in the Confessions. What is Petrarch seeking, and what holds him back? How does he use the Confessions to describe his sudden insight?
2. Letter to the Shade of Cicero: This letter was composed after Petrarch discovered Cicero's Letters to Atticus, a friend to whom Cicero confided his painful reflections on his political career. Up until this discovery, Petrarch had known Cicero as a philosopher who was removed from the world of public affairs. A key theme in Petrarch's work (as well as that of many other Renaissance humanists) is a comparison between the active life and the contemplative life. What does this piece tell us about Petrarch's view of the active life?

Laurel Carrington carringt@stolaf.edu
Most recent update: January 23, 2008

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