APPENDIX I LAURA

Who was Laura? This question has given rise to the liveliest controversies. Some of the commentators say that she was not flesh and blood at all, but a symbol, an abstraction, an allegorical representation of poetry, of virtue, of philosophy, or what you will. Others declare that there were many Lauras, the objects of Petrarch’s love poems. Others can give her age, her birthplace, and her characteristics, but do not assume to know her name or her ancestry. Some say she was unmarried, others that she was a matron, the mother of many children. Some declare she was the daughter of Henry of Chiabaux, Lord of Cabrières, others that she belonged to the family of the Baux Adhemar de Cavaillon, c. Probably the majority of the students of Petrarch accept the results of the arguments and documents of the Abbé de Sade in his Memoirs for the Life of Petrarch, and believe she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves and the wife of Hugues de Sade. Among these divergent views, which is correct?

That Laura was not a mere creation of Petrarch’s fancy is shown by Petrarch himself in a letter, written December 21, 1335, to his friend, Bishop James Colonna, who had jestingly denied her existence.

‘Would to God’, he says, ‘that my Laura were an imaginary person and that my passion for her were only feigned! Alas, it is a madness! How difficult and grievous it would be to feign it for a long time, and what extravagance to act a play like this! One can counterfeit illness in conduct, voice, and gesture, but one cannot give himself the air and colour of a sick person. How many times have you been a witness to my pallor and my torments! I know well that you only speak in irony.’ 1

Laura’s actual existence is also shown in a poetical epistle to this same friend, written in Latin, probably in 1338, shortly after Petrarch’s return from Rome and his emigration to Vaucluse.

‘Exceedingly dear to me is a woman ( mulier ) who is known for her virtue and her noble blood. My songs have glorified and have spread her fame afar. My mind ever returns to her and she ever assails me with new grief of love, and it does not seem as if she will ever renounce her dominion over me.’

He describes his efforts to shake off the yoke, and his wanderings through distant lands and his flight to the sequestered valley he has chosen for his abode. Yet even here his beloved one visits him in sleep and demands him back as her slave. Then his limbs stiffen and the blood runs to his heart from all his veins, and he awakens in consternation bathed in tears, springs from his couch, and before the dawn, flees from the house and wanders over mountains and groves, looking around him in fear lest he should meet her in his wandering. 2

Equally conclusive as to the actual existence of Laura are the three books written by Petrarch in 1343, De Contemptu Mundi, in the form of dialogues between himself and St. Augustine. This work, which he also called his ‘Secret’, was not originally intended for publication, and it was in the nature of an intimate and frank confession of his own shortcomings and weaknesses. St. Augustine, after exhorting him to meditate on death, and after reproaching him for his vanity, ambition, cupidity, and incontinence, as well as a certain pessimism in his nature ( acidia ), expresses his astonishment that a man of Petrarch’s talent could devote a great part of his life to the adoration of a mere mortal woman. Petrarch answers with enthusiastic praise of his beloved, and Augustine replies that if he were once to see her lying dead he would be ashamed of his passion. Petrarch declares he hopes this dreadful sight will be spared him as he is the elder of the two, and Augustine answers that the body of his beloved has been already greatly weakened by her illnesses and her frequent anxieties. 1

Petrarch answers that his own health is also shaken by cares and that he hopes to die before her. He insists that his love is pure and believes that he sins only in its excess. All that he has been he owes to her. Augustine declares that this belief is a dangerous illusion, and that his mortal love had separated him from the love of heavenly things. Petrarch declared that it is not the body but the soul of his beloved with which he is enamoured, that with her increasing age her body became less beautiful but her spirit constantly developed and his love increased. Augustine asks if he would have loved her if she had been ugly. Petrarch answers that he would have done this only if the beauty of her spirit could have been set before his eyes. ‘Therefore’, answers Augustine, ‘you have loved only her visible body although her spiritual graces have helped to maintain your passion.’ Petrarch finally admits that he loves her body as well as her soul. Augustine reminds him that in his youth his fear of God and his love of religion was much greater than at present, and says Petrarch must admit that the change occurred when his love began. Augustine asks how it happened that his beloved did not lift him again to virtue. Petrarch answers that she had done all she could by example, admonition and reproaches, that in spite of his efforts he had never obtained from her the least favour to the disparagement of her honour, and that when she saw that nothing could restrain him and that he was going headlong to destruction, she preferred to abandon rather than to follow him. Augustine now reminds Petrarch that he has admitted his unlawful desires which he had just now denied, and adds that lovers know not what they will nor what they say. Petrarch declared that these desires had ceased, and that for this he is grateful to this lady. Augustine says that his flame is perhaps enfeebled but that it is not extinguished, and he reminds the poet that he has had a portrait of the lady made by a skilful painter and that he carries it everywhere with him, and that he extends his affection to everything that bears her name, and goes about with the laurel tree in his head and on his lips as if he were a priest of Apollo or a dweller on the banks of the Peneus. Why did he seek with such eagerness that laurel crown which was formerly the reward of the poets? It was the connexion of laurel and Laura which made him cross the seas and mountains and submit to an examination at Naples and receive this crown at Rome. How can a man with such a passion be mindful of God? Petrarch now admits all and asks what he shall do not to despair of salvation. Augustine answers that he must seek all other means of cure, and recommends a change of scene. Petrarch says he has already tried this in vain. But Augustine insists he has done this without the necessary resolution not to look back and to break finally with the past. Petrarch asks if there are not other remedies. Augustine answers that Cicero names satiety, shame, and reflection. The first he will not consider, but under the second head he asks Petrarch if he has not seen himself in a mirror and has not perceived any change in his appearance. Petrarch admits his grey hairs, and Augustine seeks to shame him into the belief that he is too old to play the rôle of a lover.

The saint also recommends reflection. Petrarch should consider the loftiness of the spirit, the weakness of the body, and the shortness of life. He should further reflect how inflexible his beloved has shown herself toward him, and he should encourage himself to devote his life to better things.

Augustine next reproaches Petrarch for his excessive desire for fame and immortality and admonishes him not to prefer this to virtue. Finally he urges the poet to let his epic Africa remain unfinished and devote himself to the contemplation of his approaching death and the transitory character of all earthly things. 1

After Petrarch had gone to Italy, ‘Socrates’, the poet’s intimate friend, urgently entreats him to return to Avignon, and Petrarch thus replies in a letter written in 1345. ‘To make me change my purpose, you put before my eyes the errors of my youth, which I ought to forget, a passion whose torments have made me take flight because I had no other resource, the frivolous attractions of a perishable beauty with which I have occupied myself far too much.’ 2

The love poems of Petrarch themselves testify to Laura’s actual existence in a way he could hardly simulate with such effect if she were an imaginary being. A mere ‘symbol’ would hardly be born and die at a particular day of a particular year, nor wear gloves, nor be kissed by a prince at a public festival, nor be kept at home by jealousy, nor tempt its lover to suicide, nor be the subject of a score of incidents in his poems which are applicable to a woman only and not to a spirit nor an imaginary being.

Moreover, after these poems had long since been written and after the woman they celebrated had long been mourned in them as dead, the poet tells us near the close of his own life, in his ‘Letter to Posterity’, that in his youth he had been the prey of a very ardent love, but honourable, and his only one, and that he would have suffered from it still longer if death, cruel but salutary, had not extinguished it.

The foregoing extracts clearly demonstrate that Laura actually existed, and show us quite plainly the character of Petrarch’s passion for her.

Nor was she multifarious, but single. There is no good reason to believe that Petrarch in his poems intended to designate, as several commentators believe, now one person and now another as the object of his passion. The evidence is the other way. His incontinence, indeed, he confesses in his letters, in his dialogue with St. Augustine, in his epistle to posterity, and elsewhere, but he recognizes only a single ideal love worthy to be celebrated in his poems.

Another controversy exists among the commentators of Petrarch as to whether Laura was married or single. Those who insist that she was a young girl when he first saw her and remained unmarried, refer to a sonnet ( cxc ), Una candida cerva: ‘A white doe, with golden horns, appeared to me above the green meadow between two streams int he shade of a laurel at sunrise in the springtime. . . . She had written around her fair collar, “Let no one touch me, my Caesar saw fit to make me free.” ’ The deer was sacred to Diana, and this sonnet doubtless referred to Laura’s chastity and to the resistance which she offered to Petrarch’s passion. The inscription might well mean that her Caesar (God) had freed her from human frailty, and it need not at all follow that she was unmarried. To deduce a biographical fact from an obscure allegory like this may be very misleading.

Another sonnet speaks of the time when Love gave Petrarch his first wound, and the ‘tresses now wound in pearls and gems, but then unbound, which she scattered so sweetly and gathered again in such graceful ways that his mind trembles as he thinks of it. Afterwards’, he adds, ‘time twisted it in stronger knots.’ This might be construed into an inference that she was then unmarried, and that it was only afterwards that she was bedecked with the pearls and gems that matrons might wear. But are there no times when even those who are entitled to bedeck themselves with jewels may still go without them? The unsatisfactory nature of such conclusions is apparent.

Another argument is this: Would her husband have suffered Petrarch during a long period of years thus to testify to his passion in these numerous poems, most of which were well known at the time? Would the Church have permitted it in one who had already taken holy orders? At the present day such an argument would be a strong one, but the fourteenth century in France was quite different from the twentieth century in England and America. In France even to-day a young girl of the higher classes, educated usually in a convent, sees nothing of the world before her marriage. Marriage is usually an affair of convenience managed by the parents, and whatever there be for her of love or romance in life comes afterwards. This was so at that time in Provence. The marriage settlements still preserved show the business character of matrimony as then existing. We find that the adoration and the songs of the troubadours and the minnesingers were directed almost without exception to married women and not to maidens. This was the day of the tourney and the courts of love.

The Abbé de Sade gives an instance. 1 Agnes of Navarre, wife of Phoebus, Count of Foix, is in love with William of Machaut, one of the best French poets of the age of Petrarch. She makes verses for him which breathe her passion. She desires him to publish in his own the circumstances of their love. He is jealous without reason. She sends to him a priest to whom she has confessed, who certifies not only to the truth of her feeling toward him but also her fidelity and the injustice of his suspicions. Yet Agnes of Navarre was a virtuous princess of unblemished reputation. Such was the spirit of the age, and Petrarch has in many instances taken the lays of the troubadours as the models of his love poems.

Those who recall the cicisbeo of later Venetian days and the cavaliere servente who attended upon almost every lady of fashion in Italy in still more recent times, will find little difficulty in understanding that there was nothing extraordinary in Petrarch’s love for a married woman during the corrupt period when the Roman court was at Avignon and when even those in clerical orders took part in the gallantries which were all but universal.

Petrarch himself in another place reproaches the men of Avignon who quietly let their wives be carried off from them. 2 The husband of Laura, however, as we shall see elsewhere, does not appear to have been quite so indifferent as this.

The reasons for believing that Laura was a married woman are very strong. As Hallam says, there is no passage in Petrarch whether in poetry or prose which speaks of Laura as a maiden or gives her the usual appellations of an unmarried woman, puella in Latin or donzella in Italian, not even in his poem ‘The Triumph of Chastity’, where so obvious an opportunity presented itself of celebrating her virginity. On the contrary she is always called donna or madonna in Italian and mulier in Latin, the generic names for ‘woman’ and ‘lady’. Dante, just before Petrarch’s time, distinguishes clearly between donna and donaella, and Petrarch somewhere would certainly have called Laura donzella had she been unmarried. Moreover, Laura’s resistance to the passion of her lover during more than twenty years of devotion, retaining his affection yet denying her favours, is much more easily explained by the insurmountable obstacle of her marriage than in any other way. As Hallam remarks, ‘From all we know of the age of Petrarch the only astonishment is the persevering virtue of Laura. The troubadours boast of much better success with Provençal ladies.’

But far more conclusive are two sonnets in which Petrarch complains of the jealousy which deprives him of her company. One of these is the following:

Now who could be jealous of her and at the same time have the power to restrain her liberty except her husband?

In the dialogue between Petrarch and St. Augustine, the saint says, ‘Corpus eius crebris ptbus exhaustum.’ The contracted word ptbus has been rendered perturbationibus, ‘anxieties’, and partubus, ‘child-bearings’, and Hallam in his Middle Ages 1 insists that partubus is much the better Latin. If Petrarch’s Laura was indeed Laura de Sade, who had eleven children, this interpretation of the words of St. Augustine would be appropriate.

In several of Petrarch’s sonnets he speaks of the precious stones which she wears, of the pearls which she bound in her hair, and of her rich and costly dresses. At the time when he wrote, the unmarried woman did not usually wear pearls nor precious stones. They were simply clothed and appeared but little in the world. Taken all together, the reasons for believing Laura to be a married woman seem quite conclusive.

But to what family did she belong, where was she born, where did she live, what was her age when she and Petrarch met? There is a curious silence upon these matters in the writings of Petrarch both in prose and verse. He describes certain incidents which must have identified her to her contemporaries, as for instance in the following sonnet, when, upon a festal occasion, a certain prince, in whose honour it was given (perhaps Charles of Luxemburg, afterwards Emperor of Germany), selected her from among the other guests, drew her to him, and kissed her forehead and her eyes as a tribute to her beauty.

But these contemporaries, as well as Petrarch himself, have said so little from which we can at this time determine her identity that they could hardly have concealed it better if there had been a conspiracy of silence. Subsequent investigators have laboured with great diligence to unravel the mystery.

Among the first of these was Velutello of Lucca, who travelled to Avignon near the beginning of the sixteenth century and found that there was a tradition in that city that Laura belonged to the family of De Sade. Velutello had several conferences with Gabriel de Sade, a man very old and very noble, who told him that Laura was the daughter of John de Sade, who had his property at Gravesand, two leagues from Avignon, where he passed the summer; but as his informant said she lived about the year 1360 or 1370, Velutello prematurely gave up his inquiries in that direction, and visiting the little village of Cabrières, he examined the baptismal register there, and among several Lauras, found one, the daughter of Henry of Chiabaux, who was baptized June 14, 1314, and he concluded that this was the Laura in question, and placed her meeting with Petrarch at L’Isle, a town between the two arms of the Sorgue, on Good Friday, 1327, upon her return from a pilgrimage to Vaucluse. But there are several reasons against such a conclusion. If this was Petrarch’s Laura, she was only twelve years and nine months old when Petrarch met her, a very early age for her to inspire such a passion.

In Petrarch’s dialogue with St. Augustine, Petrarch says, ‘She will grow old with me,’ and the saint refers to the small number of years in which he is her senior. But at the time of the meeting in 1327, Petrarch, who was born in 1304, would have been nearly twice her age and the words of St. Augustine would have been inappropriate. Moreover, in the note written by Petrarch, shortly after her death, on the manuscript copy of his Virgil, now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, he says: ‘Laura, distinguished by her own virtues and long celebrated in my songs, first appeared to my eyes in the days of my youth in the year of our Lord 1327, the 6th day of the month of April, in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon in the morning hour; and in the same city, in the same month of April, on the same 6th day and at the same first hour but in the year 1348, that light was withdrawn from the light of day when I by chance was then at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my fate.’ 1

If this note is genuine (as seems now established) Petrarch did not meet her at L’Isle. Moreover, the calendar shows that the 6th of April of that year was not Good Friday and hence there would have been no returning group of pilgrims from Vaucluse on that morning. Moreover, Velutello discovered that Henry of Chiabaux was a man of slender means, while Petrarch all through his poems describes everywhere the rich garb and jewellery worn by his lady. Velutello declared, moreover, that Laura de Chiabaux remained unmarried. We have already seen that this in all probability was not true of Petrarch’s Laura.

The views of the Abbé de Sade appear to be better sustained. They are in brief as follows. Laura was the daughter of a nobleman, Audibert de Noves and his wife Ermessende. She was born at Avignon in 1307, and married January 16, 1325, Hugues de Sade, the son of a prominent man who had been repeatedly mayor of Avignon, and she received as a legacy from her father the sum of 6,000 tournois, about $15,000, then a large amount, as well as two dresses, one green and one scarlet, a silver wreath, c. Laura de Sade had eleven children, and died, a victim to the plague, April 6, 1348, having made her will three days before. She was buried in the Franciscan church in the suburbs of Avignon.

This hypothesis is supported by the following facts. Firstly, the age of Laura de Noves appears to correspond with the observation made in the dialogue with St. Augustine that she was but few years his junior. The contract of marriage, which the Abbé de Sade claims to have copied from the family records, is dated January 16, 1325, and she would probably have been about 18 years of age at that time, being born not far from 1307.

Secondly, Petrarch speaks of her green dress with violets when he first saw her, and there are many allusions to this green dress in his sonnets. In the marriage contract two dresses were given her, one green, the other scarlet, and Paul de Sade, her father-in-law, in his will acknowledges that he received these dresses.

Thirdly, Petrarch tells us that his Laura was of noble blood. Now the father of Laura de Noves was the descendant of an earlier Audibert de Noves, who was, up to the year 1222, chancellor of Raymond, sixth Count of Toulouse. He held the first rank at Noves, a town two leagues from Avignon, and also had a house in that city.

Fourthly, in Petrarch’s note on the Virgil manuscript, he says she died at Avignon, April 6, 1348, and was buried the same day at evening in the Franciscan church. In one of his sonnets he also gives the same date for her death, and in his eleventh eclogue, as well as in one of his letters and in one of his odes, he gives us to understand that she died of the plague, which seems confirmed by the fact that in his manuscript note he says she was buried on the day of her death, which would only occur if there were some special reason, such as an epidemic.

On April 3, Laura de Sade made her will, stating that she was sound in mind though ill in body. The family records also show that she could not have lived very long after this, because on November 19, 1348, her husband married Verdaine de Trentelivres.

In her will she chooses as her burial-place the Church of the Lesser Brothers (the Franciscans) in the city of Avignon, in which church the family of De Sade had built a chapel dedicated to St. Anne, and under this Hugues de Sade had built another, the Chapel of the Cross, where the family arms were sculptured, a star with eight rays. Here he was buried, and here also was buried Verdaine, his second wife. 1

In 1533 a body was exhumed in this chapel and a leaden box found in the grave, containing a medal bearing the figure of a woman with the letters M. L. M. J., 2 and also a sonnet of which the following is a close but unrhymed translation:

This sonnet sounds like an impudent forgery. Cardinal Bembo, to whom it was submitted in 1533, declared that these verses were not only below the marvellous and almost divine genius of Petrarch, but that even the most mediocre poet would disavow them, and that the most common laws of Italian poetry were violated. Moreover, Petrarch was far away in Italy at the time Laura was buried.

The interpretation given to the four letters on the medal, M. L. M. J., Madonna Laura morta jace, ‘Madonna Laura lies dead’, 2 also seems absurd.

Moreover, the originals of the family records and other documents by which the Abbé de Sade supports all his contentions, and verbatim copies of which he inserts in his memoirs, no longer exist. He had the copies certified by lawyers and citizens of Avignon as genuine, but this fact, as well as their great detail and their remarkable concurrence with what is known of Laura’s personality and life, has awakened mistrust rather than confidence. Laura de Sade was the ancestor of the family to which the Abbé belonged, and there has been a strong suspicion that these documents are not all genuine, although their manufacture may not have been due to the Abbé himself but to those from whom he may have innocently received them.

The fact of the De Sade chapel, however, in the Franciscan church seems established, and that Petrarch’s Laura was buried in that church appears from the memorandum on the Virgil manuscript.

Velutello, as we have seen, says that some two hundred years after her death he found that the opinion was current in Avignon that Petrarch’s Laura was Laura de Sade, which of itself is a pretty strong circumstance, and even if the documents are fictitious it may well be that they were manufactured in order to give conclusive proof of that which was only a probability without them. On the whole, the De Sade hypothesis seems more likely to be true than any other.

Where was Laura born? This question, too, is contested. In one of his earlier sonnets ( iv, Quel ch’ infinita providenzia et arte ) Petrarch compares the birth of Laura to that of the Messiah. Bethlehem, he says, was preferred to Rome as the birthplace of the Saviour, so now from a little town, piccolo borgo, God gives this new light to the world.

• He showed no grace to Rome when He was born,
• But to Judea. Thus it ever pleased Him
• To lift humility to the highest station.
• Now from a little town a sun He gave us
• Such that both nature and the place give thanks
• So fair a woman to the world was born.

What was the ‘little town’ to which Petrarch refers in these lines? His biographer, Dr. Gustav Koerting, believes that it was Avignon, for which the poet had so great a contempt in comparison with his beloved Rome, with which it is here contrasted, and this may have been the case, though at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Laura was born, it was still a considerable city and it was greatly extended and largely rebuilt after it became the seat of the papal Court. La Crusca defines a borgo as a street or collection of houses not surrounded by city walls, and more properly the suburbs or faubourg of a walled city. Villani gives the name of borgi to the faubourgs of Florence, therefore the Abbé de Sade claims that Laura was born in that faubourg of Avignon where the Franciscan convent was located, and he says that near the city gate leading to this faubourg, and close to an inn called the ‘White Horse’, there was still existing in the sixteenth century a house built of yellow stone, before which the Sorgue passed, which was called the house of Madame Laura, and where tradition said she was born.

Lorenzo Mascetta, in his work The Canzoniere of Petrarch arranged chronologically, has an elaborate and laboured introductory article on Laura, in which he seeks to deduce the principal events of her life from the poems of Petrarch, taking certain lines from one poem and putting them side by side with lines from another in a very ingenious manner. His arguments are far from convincing, however, since they imply too great precision on the part of Petrarch in poems where the poet’s fancy as well as the demands of verse and rhyme require much latitude. He believes that it was impossible that Avignon was the small town referred to, although in a letter in Latin verse to Bishop Colonna Petrarch speaks of her birthplace as a ‘beloved city’. Neither of these terms Mascetta considers applicable to Avignon, and after considering many other extracts he concludes that she was born in the spring of 1314, in the town of L’Isle, not far from Avignon, where the two branches of the Sorgue separate and form an island, and that she was buried also in the Franciscan convent there. The difficulty with this hypothesis is that the latter part of it contradicts entirely the memorandum of Petrarch in his Virgil manuscript.

In some of the old texts and editions certain verses are found beginning thus:

• Where Sorgue and Durance into a greater vessel
• Together join their waters, clear and turbid,
• There once was my academy and Parnassus
• And there unto my eyes that light was born, c.

Since the Sorgue and Durance both flow into the Rhône close to Avignon, De Sade believes that Avignon is intended. Mascetta insists that the verses are an imposture, and that the family of De Sade was very generous in securing literary support to its claims of descent from Petrarch’s Laura. While it cannot be said, even if she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, that the place of her birth has been satisfactorily established, yet here too the probabilities would seem to favour the contention of De Sade, that Avignon, the city where she lived and died, was also the place where she was born.

APPENDIX II ‘EPISTLE TO POSTERITY’ 1

‘ Francis Petrarch to Posterity—Greeting ’

‘ Perhaps, future reader, you may have heard somewhat about me, doubtful though it may be whether a name so humble and obscure as mine is likely to travel far in point either of time or space. Perhaps, even, you may wish to know what sort of man I was, or what was the fate of my works, and of those in particular whose reputation may have reached you, or whose name, however faintly, you may have heard.

‘As to the first point, indeed, men’s opinions will differ; for nearly every one speaks pretty much, not as truth but as inclination urges: there are no bounds either to eulogy or to blame. One of the human family like yourself, I was but a child of earth and mortal; of an origin neither particularly illustrious nor humble, my family, as Augustus Caesar says of himself, was ancient. Nature gave me neither a bad nor an immodest disposition, had not the contagion of social intercourse injured it. Youth deceived me; manhood carried me away; but old age corrected me, and by experience taught me thoroughly that truth which I had long before studied, namely, that youth and pleasure are vanities. Of a truth the Fashioner of every age and time suffers poor mortals, who are puffed up about nothing, at times to go astray, that they may realize, though late, the remembrance of their sins.

‘My body, when I was a young man, was not remarkable for strength, but had acquired considerable dexterity. I do not pride myself on any excellence of form, beyond such as might be pleasing to a man of greener years. My complexion was lively, half-way between fair and dusk. My eyes were sparkling, and for a long time my sight was extremely keen, until it failed me unexpectedly when past my sixtieth year; so that I was forced, much against the grain, to have recourse to spectacles. Old age came at last upon a body which had never known what illness was, and besieged it with the accustomed array of diseases.

‘I was born of honourable parents of the city of Florence. Their fortune was scanty, and, to tell the truth, verging towards poverty; but they were exiles from their country. I was born in exile at Arezzo, on Monday, July 20, 1304. Riches I held in sovereign contempt, not because I did not wish to have them, but because I hated the labour and anxiety which are the inseparable companions of wealth. I cared not for abundance of sumptuous repasts; on the contrary, with humble fare and common food I led a more enjoyable life than all the successors of Apicius, with their most exquisite dishes. Banquets, as they are called—or rather eating entertainments, inimical alike to modesty and good manners—have always been displeasing to me. I have counted it an irksome and a useless thing to invite others to such gatherings, and no less so to be invited by others. But to associate with my friends has been so agreeable to me, that I have held nothing more grateful than their arrival, nor have ever willingly broken bread without a companion. Nothing displeased me more than show, not only because it is bad and contrary to humility, but because it is irksome and an enemy of repose. In youth I felt the pains of love, vehement in the extreme, but constant to one object and honourable; and I should have felt them longer had not death—bitter, indeed, but useful—extinguished the flame as it was beginning to subside. As for the looser indulgences of appetite, would indeed that I could say I was a stranger to them altogether; but if I should so say, I should lie. This I can safely affirm, that although I was hurried away to them by the fervour of my age and temperament, their vileness I have always inwardly execrated. Soon, indeed, as I approached my fortieth year, while I still retained sufficient ardour and vigour, I repelled these weaknesses entirely from my thoughts and my remembrance, as if I had never known them. And this I count among my earliest happy recollections, thanking God, who has freed me, while yet my powers were unimpaired and strong, from this so vile and always hateful servitude.

‘But I pass on to other matters. I was conscious of pride in others, but not in myself; and insignificant as I might be in reality, I was always more insignificant in my own estimation. My irritable temper often injured myself, but it never injured others. Honourable and trusty friendships I keenly sought and cultivated—I fearlessly boast that, so far as I know, I speak the truth. Although easily provoked, I was ready to forget offences, and mindful of kind actions. I was favoured with the familiar intercourse of princes and kings, and with the friendships of the great to an extent that excited the envy of others. But it is the penalty of men who grow old that they have to deplore the death of their friends. The most illustrious sovereigns of my own times loved and honoured me—why, I can hardly say; it is for them, not me, to explain; but as I lived with some of them on the same terms on which they lived with me I suffered not at all from the eminence of their rank, but rather derived from it great benefits. Yet many of those whom I dearly loved, I avoided; so great was my innate love of liberty that I studiously shunned any one whose very name might seem to restrict my freedom.

‘My mind was rather well balanced than acute; adapted to every good and wholesome study, but especially prone to philosophy and poetry. And yet even this I neglected, as time went on, through the pleasure I took in sacred literature. I felt a hidden sweetness in that subject, which at times I had despised; and I reserved poetry as a mere accomplishment. I devoted myself singly, amid a multitude of subjects, to the knowledge of antiquity; since the age in which I lived was almost distasteful to me—so much so that, had it not been for the love of those who were very dear to me, I should always have wished to have been born at any other time, and to forget the present, ever struggling to engraft myself upon the past. Accordingly, I delighted in historians—not, however, being in any way the less offended at their contradictions, but following, when in doubt, that path which verisimilitude or the authority due to the writer pointed out.

‘As a speaker, some have said I was clear and powerful; but, as it seemed to myself, weak and obscure. Nor indeed in ordinary conversation with my friends or acquaintances did I ever aspire to eloquence; and I wonder that Augustus Caesar took pains to excel in conversation. But when the subject itself, or the place, or the hearer seemed otherwise to demand it, I made somewhat of an effort—though with what success I know not; let those judge of that in whose presence I spoke. So that I have lived well, I care but little how I talked: it is a windy sort of glory to seek fame from the mere glitter of words.

‘My time, whether by fortune or inclination, was thus divided. The first year of my life, and that not wholly, I spent at Arezzo, where nature first made me see the light, the six following years at Incisa, a small estate of my father’s fourteen miles from Florence. My eighth year, after my mother had been recalled from exile, I spent at Pisa; my ninth and subsequent years in transalpine Gaul, on the left bank of the Rhône. Avignon was the city’s name, where the Roman Pontiff maintains, and has long maintained, the Church of Christ, although a few years ago Urban V seemed to have returned to his true home. But his intention miscarried even in his lifetime, for (what affects me most) he gave it up, as if repenting of his good work. Had only he lived a little longer, he would doubtless have known what I thought of his departure. The pen was already in my hands, when suddenly he found his glorious resolution cut short with his life. Alas! how happily might he have died before the altar of Peter, and in his own home! For whether his successors had remained in the august see, and completed the work he would have begun, or whether they had departed from it, his merit would have been the more illustrious, and their fault the more conspicuous to the world. But this is a tedious and irrelevant complaint.

‘There, then, by the banks of that windy river, I spent my boyhood under my parents’ care, and afterwards the whole period of my early youth, abandoned to my own caprices; not, however, without long intervals of absence. For during this time I stayed for four whole years at Carpentras, a small town lying near Avignon on the east; and in these two places I learned a smattering of grammar, and as much of dialectics and rhetoric as the age could afford—as much, that is to say, as is wont to be taught in the schools; though how little that is, you know, dear reader, well enough. Thence I went to Montpellier to study law, where I spent another four years; thence to Bologna; and there I remained three years, and attended lectures on the whole corpus of civil law; being then a young man of great promise, as many thought, if I persevered in my work. But I abandoned that study altogether; and shortly afterwards I lost my parents. I abandoned it, not because the authority of the laws was irksome to me, which doubtless is great, and redolent of that Roman antiquity in which I delight, but because the practice of those laws is depraved by the wickedness of men. I was disgusted at the thought of having to study thoroughly that which I was resolved not to turn to dishonourable, and could scarcely turn to honourable, uses, for such prudery would have been attributed to ignorance. Accordingly, in my twenty-second year I returned home. By home I mean that exile at Avignon where I had been since the close of my childhood; for custom is second nature. There I had already begun to be known, and my acquaintance to be sought by men of eminence, though why I confess now I know not, and wonder. At that time, indeed, I was not surprised at seeming to myself, after the fashion common to men of my age, well worthy of all honour. I was sought after, above all, by the illustrious and noble family of the Colonnas, who then frequented—I should rather say adorned—the Court of Rome. Especially, I was invited, and I was held in honour—undeserved, certainly, at that time, if not also now—by that illustrious and incomparable man, Giacomo Colonna, then Bishop of Lombes, whose equal I know not if I have seen, or am likely to see. In Gascony, at the foot of the Pyrenees, I spent an almost heavenly summer, in the delightful society of my lord and our companions—so delightful that I always sigh when thinking of that time. Returning thence, I remained for many years with his brother John, the Cardinal Colonna, not, as it were, under a patron, but under a father—nay, not even that, say rather a most affectionate brother, with whom I lived as at home and in my own house.

‘At that time a youthful longing drove me to travel through France and Germany; and although other reasons were invented, in order to recommend my going in the eyes of my elders, yet the real reason was my ardour and eagerness for new scenes. In that journey I first saw Paris, and took delight in finding out for myself what reports were true and what were false about that city. Returning thence, I went to Rome, a city I had longed to see from my infancy. Stephen Colonna, the noble-minded father of that family, and a man equal to the ancients, I loved so dearly, and was so kindly welcomed by him in return, that there was scarcely any difference between myself and any one of his sons. The love and affection of this excellent man continued towards me in unbroken tenor to the last hour of his life, and survive in me still, nor shall ever desert me till I die.

‘Returning again from Rome, and being ill able to endure the hatred and weariness implanted in my mind in that most wearisome abode of Avignon, seeking some by-way of retirement as a port of refuge, I found a valley, tiny in size but solitary and agreeable, called Vaucluse, fifteen miles from Avignon, where the Sorga, the king of streams, takes its source. Charmed with the sweetness of the spot, I betook myself thither with my books. It would be a long story were I to proceed to trace at length my life there for many, many years. The sum of it all is this, that nearly every work that I have published was either finished, or begun, or conceived there. Those works have been so numerous as to exercise and fatigue me even to this day. For my mind, like my body, was remarkable rather for dexterity than strength; and thus I found many things easy to meditate which I neglected afterwards as difficult to carry out. Here the very aspect of the neighbourhood suggested to me to attempt a bucolic poem, a pastoral, as well as the two books on “Solitary Life” dedicated to Philip, a man great at all times, but then a humble Bishop of Cavaillon, now the bishop of a much greater diocese, and a cardinal, who is now the sole survivor of all my old friends, and who loved, and still loves me, not episcopally, so to speak, as Ambrosius loved Augustine, but as a brother.

‘As I roamed about those hills, on the sixth day of the great week, it occurred to me, and I determined, to write a poem in heroic verse on Scipio Africanus the Elder, him, I mean, whose marvellous name was always dear to me from my first boyhood. What I then began, ardent with the impulse of the moment, I soon discontinued under the distraction of other cares; but from the name of the subject I gave the title of Africa to the book—a work which, I know not by what fortune, its own or mine, was a favourite with many before it was generally known.

‘While I was thus spinning out my leisure in that retreat, on one and the same day I received letters both from the Senate at Rome and from the Chancellor of the University of Paris, sending rival invitations to me—the former from Rome, the latter from Paris—to accept the laurel crown of poetry. Elated with pride, as was natural with a young man at these proposals, and judging myself worthy of the honour, inasmuch as men of such eminence had thought so, yet weighing not my own merit, but the testimonies of others, I hesitated, nevertheless, for awhile as to which invitation I should prefer to accept. On this matter I wrote to Cardinal Colonna, whom I have mentioned, asking his advice; for he was so near a neighbour that although I had written to him late, I received his answer before nine o’clock the next day. I followed the advice he gave me, and my answers to him are still extant. Accordingly, I set out; and although, as is the way young men, I was a very partial judge of my own productions, still I scrupled to follow the testimony given by myself, or of those by whom I was invited—though doubtless they would not have invited me, had they not judged me worthy of the honour thus offered. I determined, therefore, to land first at Naples, where I sought out that distinguished king and philosopher, Robert—not more illustrious as a sovereign than as a man of letters, and unique in his age as a king and a friend of science and virtue—for the purpose of enabling him to express his personal opinion about me. His flattering estimate of me, and the kindly welcome he gave me, are matters now of wonder to me; and you, reader, if you had seen it, would wonder too. When he heard the cause of my arrival, he was marvellously delighted, reflecting as he did on my youthful confidence, and thinking perhaps that the honour which I was seeking was not without some advantage to his own reputation, inasmuch as I had chosen him of all men as the sole competent judge of my abilities. Why should I say more? After innumerable colloquies on various subjects, and after having shown to him the “Africa”, with which he was so delighted as to ask me, as a great kindness, to dedicate it to himself—a request which I could not and certainly did not wish to refuse—he appointed a certain day for the matter on which I had come, and detained me from noon till evening. And as the time fell short from the abundance of matter, he did the same thing on the two following days, and thus for three whole days I shook off my ignorance, and on the third day he adjudged me worthy of the laurel crown. He offered it to me at Naples, and even urged me with entreaties to accept it. My affection for Rome prevailed over the gracious solicitation of so illustrious a king; and thus, seeing my purpose was inflexible, he gave me letters and dispatches to the Senate of Rome, in which he expressed his judgement of me in highly flattering terms. And, indeed, what was then the judgement of the king agreed with that of many others, and especially with my own, though at this day I differ from the estimate then formed of me by him, as well as by myself and others. Affection for me and the partiality of the age swayed him more than respect for the truth. So I came (to Rome), and however unworthy, yet trusting and relying upon so high a sanction, I received the laurel crown while I was still but an unfledged scholar, amid the utmost rejoicings of the Romans who were able to take part in the ceremony. I have written letters on this subject both in verse and in prose. This laurel crown gained for me no knowledge, but a great deal of envy. But this story also has strayed beyond its limits.

‘Departing from Rome, I went to Parma, and stayed some time with the Lords of Correggio, who were the best of men and most liberally disposed towards myself, but sadly at enmity among each other; and who at that time were ruling in such a fashion as the city had never experienced before within the memory of man, nor I believe will ever in this age experience again. Mindful of the honour I had accepted, and anxious lest it might seem to have been conferred upon an unworthy recipient, having one day, after climbing by chance a mountain in the neighbourhood, been suddenly struck with the appearance of the place, I turned my pen once more to the interrupted poem of “Africa” and finding that fervour rekindled which had appeared quite laid to sleep, I wrote a little that very day. I added afterwards a little day by day, until, after returning to Parma and obtaining a retired and quiet house, which I subsequently bought and still retain, my intense ardour, which even now I am amazed at, enabled me before long to bring the work to a conclusion. Returning thence, I sought once more the Sorga and my transalpine solitude, just as I was turning my back on my four-and-thirtieth year 1 ; having spent a long while at Parma and Verona, being welcomed with affection everywhere, thank God—far more so, indeed, than I deserved.

‘After a long while, having gained the favour of a most worthy man and one whose equal, I think, did not exist among the nobles of that age—I mean Giacomo di Carrara—I was urged by him with such pressing entreaties, addressed to me for several years both through messengers and letters even across the Alps, when I was in those parts, and wherever I chanced to be in Italy, to embrace his friendship, that I resolved at length to pay him a visit, and to discover the reason of this urgent solicitation from a man so eminent and a stranger to myself. I came, therefore, tardily indeed, to Padua, where I was received by that man of illustrious memory not only with courtesy, but as happy spirits are welcomed in heaven; with such abundant joy and such inestimable kindness and affection, that I must fain suppress it in silence, being hopeless of doing justice to it in words. Knowing, among many other things, that I had embraced from boyhood the clerical life, and with a view to attach me the more closely not only to himself but also to his country, he caused me to be appointed a Canon of Padua; and, in short, if his life had only been longer there would then have been an end of my wandering and my travels. But, alas! there is nothing lasting among mortals, and if aught of sweetness chanced to present itself in life soon comes the bitter end, and it is gone. When, ere two years had been completed, God took him from me, his country, and the world, He took away one of whom neither I, nor his country, nor the world (my love to him does not deceive me) were worthy. And although he was succeeded by a son, conspicuous alike for his sagacity and renown, and who, following in his father’s footsteps, always held me in affection and honour, nevertheless, when I had lost one whose age was more congenial to my own, I returned again to France, not caring to remain where I was, my object being not so much the longing to revisit places I had seen a thousand times before, as a desire, common to all men in trouble, of ministering to the ennui of life by a change of scene.’

APPENDIX III CATALOGUE OF PETRARCH’S WORKS

The number of his Latin works is very large. Those that are written in prose include ( a ) seven treatises of a philosophical and religious character; ( b ) four that are historical and geographical; ( c ) three polemical writings; ( d ) four orations; ( e ) two works of an autobiographical character; ( f ) four collections of letters; ( g ) some psalms and prayers; and ( h ) the translation of Boccaccio’s story of Griselda.

( a ) His so-called philosophical works comprise his treatises concerning:

(1) ‘The Antidotes for Good and Evil Fortune’ ( De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae ).

(2) ‘The Solitary Life’ ( De Vita Solitaria ).

(3) ‘The Repose of the Cloister’ ( De Otio Religiosorum ).

(4) ‘The Best Methods of Administering a State’ ( De Republica optime administranda ).

(5) ‘The Duty and Virtues of a General’ ( De Officio et Virtutibus Imperatoris ).

(6) ‘The Means of Avoiding Avarice’ ( De Avaritia Vitanda ).

(7) ‘True Wisdom’ ( De Vera Sapientia ).

( b ) His historical and geographical works comprise:

(1) ‘Remarkable Occurrences’ ( De Rebus Memorandis ).

(2) ‘Lives of Celebrated Men’ ( De Viris Illustribus Vitae ).

(3) Epitome of the ‘Lives of Celebrated Men’ ( Vita rum Virorum Illustrium Epitome ).

(4) ‘Handbook of a Syrian Journey’ ( Itinerarium Syriacum ).

( c ) His polemical writings comprise:

(1) ‘Invectives against a Certain Physician’ ( Contra Medicum quendam Invectivae ).

(2) ‘Defence against the Calumnies of an Anonymous Frenchman’ ( Contra cuiusdam Anonymi Galli Calumnias Apologia ).

(3) ‘Dissertation concerning his own Ignorance and that of many’ ( De sui ipsius et multorum Ignorantia ).

( d ) His orations embrace his

(1) Speech on receiving the laurel crown.

(2) Speech to the Council of Venice.

(3) Speech at Novara.

(4) Speech at Paris to King John and his Court.

( e ) His works of an autobiographical character comprise:

(1) ‘Letter to Posterity’ ( Epistola ad Posteros ). See Appendix II.

(2) ‘Dialogues with St. Augustine concerning Contempt of the World’ ( De Contemptu Mundi ). See Appendix I.

( f ) His collections of letters embrace:

(1) ‘Concerning Familiar Things’ ( De Rebus Familiaribus ).

(2) ‘Miscellaneous Letters’ ( Variae ).

(3) ‘Letters without a Title’ ( Sine Titulo ).

(4) ‘Letters of Old Age’ ( De Rebus Senilibus ).

( g ) His Latin poems comprise:

(1) His epic ‘Africa’.

(2) Twelve Eclogues, containing in allegorical form bitter criticisms of the Court of Avignon.

(3) His poetical Epistles.

In the Italian language only one specimen of his prose writings exists, his speech at Milan, considered by many a translation of an address originally delivered in Latin.

His Italian poems included in his Canzoniere comprise:

( a ) Lyrics.

(1) ‘In the Life of Madonna Laura.’

(2) ‘On the Death of Madonna Laura.’

(3) ‘On Miscellaneous Subjects.’

These are all found together in a single Vatican manuscript.

( b ) His epic poem, the ‘Triumphs’ of

(1) Love.

(2) Chastity.

(3) Death.

(4) Fame.

(5) Eternity. 1