general rejection of the educational ideals of his times. He was as
little in sympathy with the intellectual predilections of the period as
was Voltaire with the contentions of Jansenist and Jesuit. He disliked
dialectics, the most esteemed branch of study in the mediæval schools;
he utterly disregarded Scotus and Aquinas, and cared not for nominalism
or realism, preferring to derive his religious doctrines from the
Scriptures and the half-forgotten church Fathers, his partiality
for whom, especially for Augustine and Ambrose, is evident from his
numerous references to their works. His neglect of the Schoolmen is
equally patent. Lastly, he dared to assert that Aristotle, although a
distinguished scholar, was not superior to many of the ancients, and
was inferior at least to Plato. He ventured to advance the opinion that
not only was Aristotle's style bad, but his views upon many subjects
were quite worthless.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the powerful fascination which
Aristotle exercised over the mediæval mind. Only the Scriptures and
the stately compilations of the civil and canon law were classed with
his works. His knowledge seemed all-embracing, and his dicta were
accepted as unquestionable. He was "the Philosopher" (_philosophus_),
"the master," as Dante calls him, "of them that know." Nor is his
supremacy hard to understand. When his works reached Western Europe,
at the end of the twelfth and the opening of the thirteenth century,
partly through the Arabs of Spain and partly from Constantinople, men
were filled with an eager, undiscriminating desire for knowledge. His
treatises afforded both an acceptable method and the necessary data for
interminable dialectical activity. His _Metaphysics, Physics, Ethics_,
and the rest, supplied abundant material upon which his principles of
logic might be brought to bear by a disputatious generation. So the
greatest of inductive philosophers became the hero of a recklessly
deductive age, which was both too indolent and too respectful of
authority to add to or correct his observations. It was assumed that
nothing remained to be done except to understand, expound, and comment
upon the writings of a genius to whom all the secrets of nature and of
man had been revealed. Even theology, a characteristic creation of the
Middle Ages, was greatly affected, if not dominated, by Aristotle, so
that Luther's first act of revolt took the form of an attack upon "that
accursed heathen."
Some of his acquaintances in Venice were accustomed, during their
conversations together, to suggest some problem of the Aristotelians or
to talk about animals; Petrarch says:
"I would then either remain silent or jest with them or change the
subject. Sometimes I asked, with a smile, how Aristotle could have
known that, for it was not proven by the light of reason, nor could it
be tested by experiment. At that they would fall silent, in surprise
and anger, as if they regarded me as a blasphemer who asked any proof
beyond the authority of Aristotle. So we bid fair to be no longer
philosophers, lovers of the truth, but Aristotelians, or rather
Pythagoreans, reviving the absurd custom which permits us to ask no
question except whether _he_ said it.... I believe, indeed, that
Aristotle was a great man and that he knew much; yet he was but a man,
and therefore something, nay, many things, may have escaped him. I will
say more.... I am confident, beyond a doubt, that he was in error all
his life, not only as regards small matters, where a mistake counts for
little, but in the most weighty questions, where his supreme interests
were involved. And although he has said much of happiness, both at the
beginning and the end of his _Ethics_, I dare assert, let my critics
exclaim as they may, that he was so completely ignorant of true
happiness that the opinions upon this matter of any pious old woman, or
devout fisherman, shepherd, or farmer, would, if not so fine-spun, be
more to the point than his."[31]
Commonplace as these reflections seem to us, they resound in the
history of culture like a decisive battle in the world's annals.
Nor was it mere pettishness which led Petrarch to speak thus of the
supreme authority of his age: the instincts and training which made
it impossible for him to bow down and worship the Stagirite, implied
a great intellectual revolution. Nowhere is the broadening effect of
his intelligent and constant reading of the classics more apparent
than in his estimate of Aristotle's relative greatness. He was far too
intimately acquainted with the history of literature to feel for any
one man the respect entertained for their master by the Schoolmen.
The so-called natural science of his day was scornfully put aside by
Petrarch as unworthy the attention of a man of culture. Those fond
of the subject, he tells us, "say much of beasts, birds, and fishes,
discuss how many hairs there are on the lion's head and feathers in
the hawk's tail, and how many coils the polypus winds about a wrecked
ship; they expatiate upon the generation of the elephant and its
biennial offspring, as well as upon the docility and intelligence of
the animal and its resemblance to human-kind. They tell how the phœnix
lives two or three centuries, and is then consumed by an aromatic fire,
to be born again from its ashes." This characteristic mediæval lore
he rejects as false, and sensibly declares that the accounts of such
wonders as reach his part of the world relate to matters unfamiliar
to those who describe them. Hence, such stories are readily invented
and received by reason of the distance from the places where the
phenomena are said to occur. "Even if all these things were true," he
characteristically urges, "they help in no way toward a happy life, for
what does it advantage is to be familiar with the nature of animals,
birds, fishes, and reptiles, while we are ignorant of the nature of the
race of man to which we belong, and do not know or care whence we come
or whither we go?"[32]
The astrologers, so highly esteemed in his day, seemed to him mere
charlatans, who were supported by the credulity of those who were madly
curious to know what could not be known, and should not be known if it
could. Cicero and Augustine had demonstrated the futility of the claims
made by the _mathematici_, as they were long called, and Petrarch
ratified their judgment; yet so general was the belief in their powers
that astrology was taught in the universities of Italy.[33] Even the
hard-headed despot of Milan once deferred a military expedition because
an astrological friend of Petrarch's declared the proposed time to
be unpropitious. The army had, however, scarcely started, with the
approval of the astrologer, before such terrible and prolonged rains
set in that only the personal courage and good fortune of the prince
prevented a disaster. When Petrarch inquired of his friend how he
made so grievous, a miscalculation, the astrologer replied that it
was especially difficult to forecast the weather. He received the
triumphant retort: "It is easier, then, to know what is going to happen
to me alone or to some other individual several years hence, than that
which threatens heaven and earth to-day or to-morrow!"[34]
Petrarch's good sense was once or twice tested to the utmost, and
yet he refused to give a supernatural explanation even to startling
personal experiences, such as still occasionally disturb the precarious
adjustment of our generally accepted scheme of the universe. He gives
two curious instances of prophetic visions that came true. On one
occasion, he had left the bedside of a very dear friend, whose case
had been pronounced hopeless by the physicians. Upon his falling into
a troubled sleep the sick man appeared to him and announced that he
would get the better of his malady if only he were not deserted. There
was one already at hand, he said, who might save him. Hereupon Petrarch
awoke to find one of the doctors at his door, who had come to comfort
him for the loss of his friend. He thereupon compelled the reluctant
physician to return to the sick-room: they immediately perceived
hopeful signs in the condition of the patient, who was in due time
completely restored to health.
The second dream that Petrarch narrates concerned his noble friend,
Giacomo of Colonna, who while still a young man had been made Bishop
of Lombez, a town not far from Toulouse. Petrarch was, at the time
of which we are speaking, at Parma, separated from his friend, as he
points out, by no inconsiderable stretch of country.
"Vague rumours of his illness had reached me, so that, swayed
alternately by hope and fear, I was eagerly awaiting more definite
news. I shudder even now as I recall it all; my eye rests upon the
very spot where I saw him in the quiet of the night. He was alone,
and crossed the brook that is running before me through my garden. I
hastened to meet him, and in my surprise and astonishment I overwhelmed
him with questions--whence he came, whither he was going, why he was in
such haste, and entirely alone? He made no reply to my queries, but,
smiling as was his wont when he spoke, he said: 'Do you remember how
you were troubled by the storms of the Pyrenees, when you once spent
some time with me beyond the Garonne?[35] I am worn out by them now,
and have left them never to return. I go to Rome.' While saying this
he had swiftly reached the limits of the enclosure. I pressed him to
permit me to accompany him, but twice he gently repulsed me with a wave
of the hand, and finally, with a strange change in his face and voice,
said: 'Desist, I do not wish your companionship now.' Then I fixed my
eyes upon him and recognised the bloodless pallor of death. Overcome
by fright and sorrow, I cried out, so that, as I awoke at that very
moment, I heard the last echoes of my own scream. I marked the day and
told the whole story to the friends who were within reach and wrote
about it to those absent. Twenty-five days later the announcement of
his death reached me. Upon comparing the dates, I discovered that he
had appeared to me upon the same day upon which he departed this life.
His remains were carried to Rome three years later--I, however, neither
suspected nor anticipated anything of the kind at the time of my dream.
His spirit, as I ardently hope, triumphs in heaven, to which it has
returned.
"But we've dreamed enough, let us awake! I will add but a word. It
was not because, in a period of anxiety, first my friend and then my
master appeared to me in a dream, that the one recovered and the other
died. In both cases I simply seemed to behold what, in the one case, I
dreaded and, in the other, desired, and fate coincided with my vision.
I have, therefore, no more faith in dreams than Cicero, who said that
for a single one which accidentally came true he was perplexed by a
thousand false ones."[36]
Petrarch's enlightenment and scholarship would, however, have
availed the world but little, had he not possessed at the same time
certain quite different qualities which go to make up the successful
reformer. History abundantly proves that one may be far in advance
of one's age and yet leave not a solitary disciple behind. In the
fourteenth century, to cite one or two instances, a certain Pierre
Dubois eloquently advocated the higher education of women and their
instruction in medicine and surgery, the study of the modern languages,
the marriage of the clergy and the secularisation of their misused
property, the simplification of judicial procedure, and a system of
international arbitration.[37] But no one, so far as is known, gave
ear to his suggestions, however salutary: six centuries have elapsed
and the world has still but half carried out his programme. While
Petrarch was studying law at Bologna, Marsiglio of Padua issued one
of the most extraordinary treatises ever produced on government, but,
although the circumstances of its publication were favourable to
publicity, its influence was imperceptible.
We have, therefore, but half explained the secret of Petrarch's
influence if we dwell only upon his profound insight and his moral
and intellectual saneness. He might well have been "the first modern"
and yet have suffered the fate of many another whom we know to have
conceived prophetic ideals. He was in advance of his world, it is true,
but he was of it. There was a fundamental sympathy between him and his
age. He was mediæval as well as modern. He belonged both to the present
and the future. Like Luther and Voltaire, he spoke to a generation
that was eagerly and expectantly awaiting its leader, and ready to
obey his summons when it should come. Luther was a monk before he was
a reformer. Had he been less certain that the devil disported himself
in the box of hazel-nuts that he kept on his desk, he might, in just
so far, have exercised a less potent influence over a superstitious
people. Had Voltaire been less blasphemous and more appreciative of the
true greatness of Hebrew literature, he might never have advanced the
cause of humanity.
Of Petrarch's affinities with the culture of his time the reader may
form his own judgment from the abundant evidence furnished by the
letters. In one important respect he was ever the child of the Middle
Ages; he never freed himself from the monastic theory of salvation,
although he frequently questioned some of its implications.
His success was not, however, due solely to the gospel that he preached
and its fitness for his day and generation. He enjoyed, in addition to
these, the inestimable advantage of personal popularity. He was the
hero of his age. He was courted, as he says with perfect truth, by
the greatest rulers of his time, who omitted no inducement that might
serve to draw him to their capitals. He was the friend of successive
Popes and of the far-away Emperor himself. The King of France claimed
the honour of his presence at the French Court, as Frederick the Great
sought that of Voltaire. Luther and Erasmus were scarcely more widely
known than he.
It was, however, with men of letters that his influence was most
potent. Among his fellows he ruled supreme. His relations with
Boccaccio, the greatest of his Italian contemporaries, were especially
sympathetic and affectionate, but scarcely less cordial was his esteem
for aspiring young Humanists whose names are now forgotten. Of their
feelings for him we can judge from the few letters addressed to him
that have come down to us. A modest Florentine scholar, Francesco
Nelli, who had won the great man's love, tells us of the rejoicing
which the arrival of Petrarch's messages occasioned among his
Florentine friends.
"Your circle," Nelli writes, "assembled to partake of an elegant
repast.... Those who live and rejoice in the renown of your name and
profess your revered friendship (you will understand me, although I
express myself but ill) each brought forth his treasure and refreshed
us with its sweetness.... Your poem was eagerly read with delight and
fraternal good-will. Then we joyously discussed your letters, by means
of which you were joined to each of us by a lasting bond of friendship,
so that we each silently proved your affection for us by thus producing
incontestable evidence. There was no envy, such as is usually aroused
by commendation, no detraction or aspersions; each was bent upon adding
his part to the applause aroused by your eloquence."[38]
As the reader turns to the letters themselves, he will soon discover
that, in spite of their author's assertions to the contrary, each is a
well-rounded and carefully elaborated Latin essay, hardly destined to
perform the ordinary functions of a letter. While he believed Cicero to
be his model, he allowed himself, whether by some natural inclination
or from the fact that he knew them earlier, to follow Seneca's epistles
more closely. All trivial domestic matters or questions of business,
which he regarded as beneath his own dignity and that of the Latin
language, were relegated to a separate sheet, written presumably in
Italian, which was much better adapted to every-day affairs than the
intractable classical forms which he strove to imitate.[39] But none
of these contemned post-scripts, interesting as they would probably be
to us, have been preserved, and we have not a single line of Italian
prose from Petrarch's pen.[40]
Although he was fond of saying that he took no pains with his style
in his intercourse with his friends, the constant traces of care and
revision will scarcely escape the reader. Moreover, these finished
communications were not to be treated lightly. "I desire," he says,
"that my reader, whoever he may be, should think of me alone, not of
his daughter's wedding, his mistress's embraces, the wiles of his
enemy, his engagements, house, lands, or money. I want him to pay
attention to me. If his affairs are pressing, let him postpone reading
the letter, but when he does read, let him throw aside the burden of
business and family cares, and fix his mind upon the matter before him.
I do not wish him to carry on his business and attend to my letter at
the same time. I will not have him gain without any exertion what has
not been produced without labour on my part."[41]
The conditions were, indeed, very untoward in those days for regular
correspondence between friends, and it is natural that the modern
note, lightly dashed off and despatched for the most trifling sum,
with almost unfailing security, to any part of the globe, should have
had no analogy in the fourteenth century. There was in Petrarch's
time no regular postal system. Letters were intrusted to a special
messenger, or to someone going in the proper direction, pilgrim or
merchant. Sometimes a long period might elapse without any opportunity
of forwarding a letter, for the scarcity of messengers was as familiar
an evil to those living in a great city like Milan as to the solitary
sojourner in the wilderness.[42] Once Petrarch resorted to his cook
as a messenger. When once under way, there was no assurance that the
letter would reach its destination. Many are Petrarch's laments,
over the loss of his own and his friends' messages. They were often
intercepted and opened, sometimes apparently by autograph-mongers; they
might then be returned or not as it pleased those who violated them.
Once, as he was returning to Padua, Petrarch came upon two letters
from his friend Nelli, in the hands of certain fellows--"not bad men
indeed," but those whom he was as much surprised to find interested
in such things as if he had discovered "a mole amusing itself with a
mirror."
At last Petrarch's patience was quite exhausted and he resolved to
give up writing letters altogether. About a year before his death he
imparted his purpose to Boccaccio, as follows:
"I know now that neither of two long letters that I wrote to you have
reached you. But what can we do?--nothing but submit. We may wax
indignant, but we cannot avenge ourselves. A most insupportable set of
fellows has appeared in northern Italy, who nominally guard the passes,
but are really the bane of messengers. They not only glance over the
letters that they open, but they read them with the utmost curiosity.
They may, perhaps, have for an excuse the orders of their masters, who,
conscious of being subject to every reproach in their restless careers
of insolence, imagine that everyone must be writing about and against
them; hence their anxiety to know everything. But it is certainly
inexcusable, when they find something in the letters that tickles their
asinine ears, that instead of detaining the messengers while they take
time to copy the contents, as they used to do, they should now, with
ever increasing audacity, spare their fingers the fatigue, and order
the messengers off without their letters. And, to make this procedure
the more disgusting, those who carry on this trade are complete
ignoramuses, suggesting those unfortunates who possess a capacious and
imperious appetite together with a weak digestion, which keeps them
always on the verge of illness. I find nothing more irritating and
vexatious than the interference of these scoundrels. It has often kept
me from writing, and often caused me to repent after I had written.
There is nothing more to be done against these letter-thieves, for
everything is upside down, and the liberty of the state is entirely
destroyed.
"To this obstacle to correspondence I may add my age, my flagging
interest in almost everything, and not merely satiety of writing but an
actual repugnance to it. These reasons taken together have induced me
to give up writing to you, my friend, and to those others with whom I
have been wont to correspond. I utter this farewell, not so much that
these frivolous letters shall, at last, cease to interfere, as they
so long have done, with more serious work, but rather to prevent my
writings from falling into the hands of these paltry wretches. I shall,
in this way, at least escape their insolence, and when I am forced to
write to you or to others I shall write to be understood and not to
please.[43] I remember already to have promised, in a letter of this
kind, that I would thereafter be more concise in my correspondence, in
order to economise the brief time which remained to me. But I have not
been able to keep this engagement. It seems to me much easier to remain
silent altogether with one's friends than to be brief, for when one has
once begun, the desire to continue the conversation is so great that it
were easier not to begin than to check the flow."[44]
If the letters of Erasmus can, as Mr. Froude suggested, be properly
regarded as the most important single source for the history of the
Reformation, those of Petrarch must, by reason of the scantiness of
other material, be looked upon as indispensable to an understanding of
the intellectual life of Italy at the opening of the Renaissance. Still
his entire correspondence is by no means available as yet in even a
tolerable Latin edition, and, except for an Italian translation, his
letters are quite out of the reach of those who cannot read them in
the original.[45] The editors of the present volume therefore feel no
hesitation in offering to the English-reading public a version of some
of the more characteristic examples of a correspondence possessing
such exceptional interest. They were unfortunately forced to select,
since the letters that have been preserved would, if reproduced _in
extenso_, fill no less than eight volumes of the size of this. The
choice has been determined by a desire to shed all possible light
upon the historical rôle of Petrarch and upon the times in which he
lived. Some explanations have necessarily been added to the text, but
a constant effort has been made to exclude all that was mere erudition
or interesting only to the special student. The letters selected have
nearly always been given in their entirety and with all possible
literalness, for condensation would inevitably have interfered with the
true impression which the original produces, even if it served at times
to render the book more readable. We can but hope that the choice that
we have made will, so far as is possible in so brief a compass, give a
correct notion, at first hand, of the extraordinary character with whom
we have to do.
[1] The writer has ventured to suggest that the thought of the
Renaissance is much more akin to that of the Middle Ages than with that
of to-day. See _The New History_ pp. 101 _sqq_.
[2] _Ep. de Rebus Sen_., xvi., 2.
[3] _Sen_., xiii., 10; _Opera_ (1581), p. 923.
[4] For Petrarch's attitude toward the Italian language the reader is
referred to Part II., below.
[5] From the first sonnet, beginning, Voi ch'ascoltate.
[6] Gaspary, _Geschichte der italienischen Literatur_, 1885, i., 480.
[7] _Cf_. Preface to _Dialogus de Contemptu Mundi_, as the work
is called in the Basle editions. Many MSS. entitle the work more
appropriately _De Secreto Conflictu Curarum Suarum. Cf_. Voigt, _op.
cit_., p. 132.
[8] See below, pp. 93 _sqq_. [In order to discuss...] and 404 _sqq_ [In
spite, however, of the conventional ...].
[9] For example the familiar,
Dies iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favilla.
or Abelard's lines:
In hac urbe lux solemnis,
Ver æternum, pax perennis.
In hac odor implens cœlos,
In hac semper festum melos.
10: See below, p. 233 _sqq._ [Such remarks, which are not infrequent.]
11: _Letter to Posterity._
12: The wretchedly printed, editions published at Basle in 1554 and
1581 are the most complete, but they omit the work on _Famous Men_ and
nearly half of the letters.
13: As first (and last) Englished by Thomas Twyne, London, 1579.
14: This is a part of the _Lives of Famous Men_, but is nearly as long
as all the others together.