recounts his fi rst impressions of Rome: “No doubt I
have accumulated a lot of matter to write about later,
but at present I am so overwhelmed and stunned by the
abundant marvels that I shouldn’t dare to begin.... Rome
was greater than I thought, and so are its remains. Now I
wonder not that the world was ruled by this city but that
the rule came so late.” Petrarch’s enthusiasm for Rome
is complemented by his patriotism for Italy in general;
for example, in canzone 128 of the Canzoniere, Italia
mia, benché ‘l parlar sia indarno, he laments Italy’s
abject, strife-torn condition; issues a call to arms (verses
93–96); and concludes with an urgent plea for peace, i’
vo gridando: Pace, pace, pace (verse 122).
Shortly after his return to Avignon in 1337, Petrarch
purchased property and a house in Vaucluse along the
Sorgue River, and this became his resort of peace and
solitude: transalpina solitudo mea jocundissima (“My
most delightful transalpine solitary refuge”). In this
locus amoenus he found the time to read, meditate,
write, and entertain close friends. Vaucluse represented
for Petrarch the Ciceronian ideal of ottum, the leisure
to pursue one’s interests without having to attend to the
concerns of everyday life. A new acquaintance of his in
Vaucluse was Philippe de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavil-
lon, to whom Petrarch would later dedicate his Latin
treatise De vita solitaria (On the Solitary Life).
During this period of meditative leisure, Petrarch
began several of his works, some of classical inspiration:
the treatise on the lives of famous men, De viris illus-
tribus; his epic poem on the deeds of Scipio Africanus,
Africa; his collection of Italian poems, the Canzoniere or
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta; and the Triumph of Love,
the fi rst of the Trionfi —six allegorical poems in terza
rima, based on the descriptions of ancient triumphal
pageants. Petrarch would continue to revise most of
these works for the rest of his life. The evolution of the
Canzoniere can be traced through extant manuscripts,
some in Petrarch’s own hand, that disclose the succes-
sive forms of the collection; this would culminate in
the version in the Vatican Library, Codex Lat. 3195.
Although he divided his time at Vaucluse between Latin
and Italian works, Petrarch clearly indicated his prefer-
ence for the former. On 1 September 1340 he received
two invitations to be crowned poet laureate: one letter
came from the chancellor of the University of Paris and
the other from the Roman senate. Because we know that
Petrarch carefully planned the sequence of events lead-
ing to these invitations, we can appreciate the coyness
with which he reports his careful weighing of these of-
fers, his asking advice from Cardinal Colonna, and his
eventual (but foregone) decision to accept the invitation
from Rome. Petrarch was familiar with the coronation
of poets in antiquity and with a recent revival of that
tradition (the coronation of Albertino Mussato in Padua
in 1315). This signal honor would, he thought, ensure
his fame for posterity and, just as important, reestablish
Rome as the locus for culture in the world. To ascertain
his worthiness for this honor, he voluntarily underwent
a rigorous examination by his sponsor, King Robert of
Anjou of Naples. On 8 April 1341, in the palace of the
senate on the Capitoline, Petrarch was crowned poet
laureate and delivered an oration, in which he spoke
of the poet’s responsibility and rewards as well as the
nature of the poet’s profession. The Coronation Oration
is a wonderful combination of medieval homily and clas-
sical rhetoric; in it Petrarch begins with a citation from
Virgil’s Georgics (3.291–292), interrupts it with a reci-
tation of the Ave Maria, and then immediately returns
to the Virgilian passage. The remainder of the oration
contains numerous citations from Virgil, Ovid, Cicero,
Horace, and other classical authors. The fame that Pe-
trarch achieved in this single event was immeasurable;
indeed, he was now a celebrity, one who was in demand
as an honored guest in cities throughout Europe and was
cheered wherever he went. This was, in many ways, the
beginning of what we might call the cult of personality
that Petrarch cultivated and shaped for himself. After
leaving Rome, Petrarch spent time in Parma as a guest
of the Correggio family and fi nished a draft of his Africa.
When he returned to Provence, he began to study Greek
with the Calabrian monk Barlaam, but without mastering
much beyond a very elementary level.
The year 1343 was important for Petrarch. At the pa-
pal court in Avignon, he met Cola di Rienzo, who would
later become the Roman “tribune of the people.” In Feb-
ruary, Robert of Anjou died. In April, Petrarch’s brother
Gherardo became a Carthusian monk, and this led Pe-
trarch to reexamine his own life and goals. In 1343, his
illegitimate daughter, Francesca, was born. From these
troubling events emerged his soul-searching imaginary
dialogue with (Saint) Augustine—the Secretum—as
well as his Seven Penitential Psalms and his treatise on
the cardinal virtues, the Rerum memorandarum libri.
In form and content, the Secretum is based on classi-
cal and early Christian models, especially Augustine’s
Confessions. Whereas in his work the saint achieves a
relative peace, Petrarch is constantly tormented by the
unresolved confl ict between spiritual aspirations and
worldly concerns. Despite the sound Christian advice
imparted by the character Augustinus to Franciscus and
the insistent call to meditate on death in order to prepare
one’s soul for the afterlife, Franciscus cannot easily
abandon his earthly pursuits, nor does he really wish
to. The lack of resolution at the end of the three-day
dialogue suggests not so much Petrarch’s lack of faith
as his very human reluctance to abandon immediate
worldly pursuits in favor of distant eternal rewards.
During the next few years, Petrarch traveled fre-
quently: to Naples (in 1343), Parma (1344–1345), and
Verona (1345). In the Capitular Library in Verona, hePETRARCA, FRANCESCO