saddened by the death of his friends “Laelius” and
Francesco Nelli.
Around 1366, Petrarch employed Giovanni Mal-
paghini as a scribe for the tedious task of copying the
Familiares and the Canzoniere. In 1367, during a jour-
ney to Pavia by canal barge, Petrarch was able to respond
to accusations lodged against him a year previously
by four Aristotelian philosophers (Leonardo Dandolo,
Tommaso Talenti, Zaccaria Contarini, and Guido da
Bagnolo) who claimed that he was “a good man, but
uneducated.” In his response, the invective De sui ipsius
et multorum ignorantia (On His Own Ignorance and
That of Many Others), Petrarch gives clear evidence of
the changeover from the outmoded ideas of scholastic
philosophy to the new humanism; in particular, he argues
that the source of knowledge lies not in pseudoscientifi c
syllogistic arguments but rather in a profound intuitive
awareness of the self.
In 1368, Petrarch, having been given some land near
Arquà (some 10 miles, or about 16 kilometers, southwest
of Padua)—initiated the construction of a house, which
was fi nished in 1370. Among his possessions were a
lute and a painting of the Madonna by Giotto, both of
which have disappeared. Failing health prevented him
from undertaking some highly desired trips to Rome and
Avignon. His last works include a translation into Latin
of Boccaccio’s story of Griselda (Decameron, 10.10)
and the Invective against the Man Who Maligned Italy
(Invectiva contra eum qui maledixit Italie). The motiva-
tion for the Invective was an anonymous letter written by
a Frenchman (Jean de Hesdin) that praised the French
and spoke ill of Italy. As for the tale of patient Griselda,
Petrarch was so taken by its value as a moral example
that he wanted to make it available to readers who did not
know Italian, and his translation was Chaucer’s model
for the Clerk’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales. In his last
years, Petrarch went on several diplomatic missions for
Francesco da Carrara; he wrote letters and continued
to work on the defi nitive versions of the Canzoniere,
Trionfi , and De viris illustribus as well as on the com-
pilations of his letters. During the night between 18 and
19 July 1374, Petrarch died. He was buried on 24 July
in a marble tomb in the parish church at Arquà.
The Vernacular Works
Although the Letter to Posterity says virtually nothing
about his Italian works, Petrarch obviously considered
them of great importance, for he was continuously revis-
ing them up to the very end of his life. If what he says
in the Letter to Posterity is truly indicative of the way
he wanted to be remembered, then it is a great irony,
for his fame today rests primarily on his Italian poetry,
which proved so infl uential during the Renaissance,
particularly in France, Spain, and England. The compo-
sition of the Canzoniere was attended to with great care:
its 366 poems are divided into two major sections—In
vita di madonna Laura and In morte di madonna Lau-
ra—beginning with the secular sonnet Voi ch’ascoltate
in rime sparse il suono (“You who hear the sound in
scattered rhymes”) and ending with the religious ode to
the Virgin Vergina bella, che di sol vestita (“Beautiful
Virgin, clothed with the sun”). A large variety of subjects
and themes—amorous, political, artistic, moral, and
religious—are treated; nevertheless, the truly remark-
able feature of the collection is Petrarch’s obsessive
attention to the presentation of his own poetic persona.
Many poems in the Canzoniere are characterized by
stylized, conventional attitudes toward love and by the
presentation of a pensive, introspective lover, and these
features were imitated widely in the Renaissance. This
combination of psychological and poetic conceits would
come to constitute what we generally refer to today as
Petrarchism. Although Petrarch was not the inventor
of the sonnet, he brought it to such perfection that this
fourteen-line metrical form has become known as the
Petrarchan sonnet. The six allegorical Triumphs (Tri-
onfi ), which relate the progress of the soul in relation to
love, chastity, death, fame, time, and eternity, had a ma-
jor impact on Renaissance literature, art, and pageantry.The Latin Works
Petrarch’s literary production in Latin encompasses a
number of major themes that highlight his crucial place
in the history of western civilization. On the one hand,
his treatises on fortune (De remediis utriusque fortune)
and on the monastic life (De otio religioso) are distinctly
medieval in fl avor and conception. On the other hand,
there is a defi nite, forward-looking “Renaissance” cast
to many of the Latin works. Petrarch consciously at-
tempted to revive classical genres and patterns in the
epic poem Africa and in the series of famous lives (De
viris illustribus) and events (Rerum memorandarum
libri). His treatise on the solitary life, De vita solitaria,
is a well-reasoned defense of the Ciceronian ideal of
studious leisure (otium), which he tried to follow in his
own life. He took the cue from classical examples in his
collections of letters, in his invectives, in his pastoral
poems (Bucolicum carmen), and in his dialogue with
Augustine (Secretum).
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Chaucer, Geoffrey;
Dante Alighieri; Robert of AnjouFurther Reading
Editions and Translations of Petrarch
Il Bucolicum carmen e i suoi commenti inediti, ed. Antonio Av-
ena. Padua: Società Cooperativa Tipografi ca, 1906. (Reprint,
Bologna: Forni, 1969.)PETRARCA, FRANCESCO