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A poet and humanist born in Arezzo in 1304, author of a letter describing an ascent of Mont Ventoux dated 26 April 1336.
Personal details
name: Francesco Petrarca
born: 20 July 1304 (traditional date) – Arezzo
Death: the night between 18 and 19 July 1374 – Arquà, now Arquà Petrarca
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: poet, humanist, scholar of the classics
Biography
Francesco Petrarca was born in Arezzo, traditionally on 20 July 1304, to Pietro di ser Parenzo, known as Petracco, a Florentine notary of the White Guelphs who had been banished from Florence in 1302, and to Eletta Canigiani. The date of his birth, derived largely from Petrarch’s own autobiographical accounts, remains subject to some uncertainty. After a period in Incisa and a stay in Pisa, between 1311 and 1312 the family moved to the Avignon area and settled in Carpentras, where Francesco studied grammar and literature with Convenevole da Prato. This was followed by studies in law at Montpellier, from 1316, and at Bologna, from 1320 to 1326: he abandoned these upon his father’s death, having no particular interest in a legal career.
Having received minor orders and a number of ecclesiastical benefices, which enabled him to support himself without embarking on a full-time priestly career, in 1330 he entered thecircle of the Colonna family, first with Giacomo Colonna in Lombez and then as chaplain to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna; in 1335 he was appointed canon in the diocese of Lombez. In 1333, he undertook a long journey through northern France, Flanders, Brabant and Germany: in Liège, he discovered and copied Cicero’s Pro Archia, and during the same period he met Dionigi da Borgo Sansepolcro, who gave him a small manuscript of St Augustine’s Confessions. In 1337, he retired to Valchiusa, near the headwaters of the Sorga, and on 8 April 1341 he was crowned poet at the Capitoline Hill in Rome. In 1345, he rediscovered Cicero’s letters Ad Atticum in Verona; in 1350, he met Giovanni Boccaccio in Florence; and in 1353, he left Provence for good, settling in Milan with the Visconti family.
Petrarch is linked to the cultural history of the mountain through Letter IV, 1 of the Familiares, addressed to Dionigi da Borgo Sansepolcro, which recounts the ascent of Mont Ventoux – referred to in the text as Mons Ventosus – and is dated at Malaucène, 26 April 1336. In the account, Petrarch climbs with his brother Gherardo and two servants, setting off from Malaucène, on the northern slope of the mountain, where they had arrived the previous evening. He states that he was driven by a desire to see what such a height might offer, spurred on by having read, the day before, Titus Livius’s account of Philip V of Macedon’s ascent of Mount Aemus. Along the way, an old shepherd tries to dissuade them, saying that he had climbed to the summit some fifty years earlier and had gained nothing but fatigue, scratches and torn clothes. Gherardo takes the most direct route, whilst Francesco seeks out paths that appear less steep; with every detour, he loses altitude or lengthens the journey: the narrator turns this into an allegory of the spiritual life. At the summit, after taking in the view, he opens the volume of Confessions given to him by Dionysius, which opens at Book X, 8, 15, where Augustine observes that men admire mountains, seas, rivers and the stars whilst neglecting themselves. Petrarch then interrupts his contemplation of the landscape and turns his gaze inwards. He recounts having returned to the inn at night and having written to Dionysius immediately.
However, the surviving text cannot be read as an account written on the evening of the excursion. Dionigi died in Naples on 31 March 1342, and Petrarch compiled and rewrote the Familiares only after the discovery of Cicero’s letters in Verona, rearranging and backdating the texts. Giuseppe Billanovich, in a 1966 study, dated the composition of the letter to the 1350s, linking it to the work on the Secretum, toGherardo’s entry into the Carthusian monastery of Montrieux in 1343, and to the organisation of the collection. The actual journey in 1336 remains a possibility, but cannot be proven on the basis of the letter alone. Scholars are divided on the weight to be given to real-life experience versus literary construction: Robert Durling (1977) discussed theallegorical framework and its connections with Augustine, whilst Lyell Asher (1993) has interpreted the text as a literary construction and a self-representation by Petrarch. The date of 26 April 1336 therefore refers to the event described, not to the writing of the letter.
Nor does the text allow us to attribute the first ascent of Mont Ventoux to Petrarch: in his own account, the shepherd states that he had already climbed it some fifty years earlier. The characterisation of Petrarch as a mountaineer was already circulating in the19th century, when Giosue Carducci titled one of his essays Petrarch the Mountaineer (1882), whilst the designation ‘first mountaineer’ stems from later interpretations, not from verifiable evidence. The interpretation of this episode as a turning point in the perception of the landscape was developed, amongst others, by Jacob Burckhardt and by Joachim Ritter in his 1962 inaugural lecture.
Petrarch died in Arquà on the night between 18 and 19 July 1374, on the eve of his seventieth birthday according to the traditional chronology; ancient sources vary between 18 and 23 July. The funeral took place on 24 July. The body remained initially in the parish church and in 1380 the remains were transferred to the funerary sarcophagus still visible in the church.
Works
Africa, a Latin epic poem on the Second Punic War
*De viris illustribus*, a collection of biographies of illustrious men
*Secretum*, a Latin dialogue between Francis and St'Augustine
*De vita solitaria* and *De otio religioso*, works on solitude and study
*Rerum familiarium libri* (Familiares), 24 books of Latin letters, including Book IV, Letter 1 on Mont Ventoux
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Canzoniere), 366 poems in the vernacular
Triumphi, an allegorical poem in tercets
*Seniles*, a collection of letters from his later years
Bibliography
As a writer
Francesco Petrarca, *Le familiari*, vol. I, introduction and books I–IV, critical edition edited by Vittorio Rossi, Sansoni, 1933
Giuseppe Billanovich, “Petrarca e il Ventoso”, Italia medioevale e umanistica, IX, 1966
Bortolo Martinelli, Petrarch and the Ventoso, Minerva Italica, 1977
Robert M. Durling, “‘Petrarch, the Ventoso and the Possibility of Allegory’”, Revue des Études Augustiniennes, 23, 1977
Lyell Asher, “Petrarch at the Peak of Fame", PMLA, 108/5, 1993
Pétrarque, Lettres familières, vol. II, books IV–VII, edited by Pierre Laurens, Les Belles Lettres, 2002
Francesco Petrarca, Le familiari, books I–V, translated and edited by Ugo Dotti and Nino Aragno, 2004
Rodney Lokaj, Petrarch’s Ascent of Mount Ventoux: The Familiaris IV, I, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2006
As a key reference
Francisco Rico, Luca Marcozzi, “Petrarca, Francesco”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 82, 2015
Francisco Rico, Petrarch’s Fridays. Followed by ‘A Biographical Profile of Petrarch’ in collaboration with Luca Marcozzi, Adelphi, 2016