Francesco Petrarca: biography, main dates and events, creativity. Francesco Petrarch Interesting Facts Francesco Petrarch

I am still one of many, although I am trying with all my might to become one of the few.

Francesco Petrarca

The Italian thinker and poet Francesco Petrarca was born on July 20, 1304 in the city of Arezzo, where his father, a notary by profession, once expelled from Florence, lived for some time. In 1312, when Francesco was eight years old, his family moved to Avignon, where the papal court was then located. In Avignon, Petrarch spent his entire childhood.

As a nine-year-old boy, Petrarch became interested in the sayings of Cicero, the music of his word, which he was introduced to by his teacher, Convenevole da Prato. He later said about this: “Such a harmony and sonority of words by itself captured me, so that everything else that I read or heard seemed to me rude and far from being so harmonious.” Undoubtedly, the writings of Cicero were remembered by him for the rest of his life.

In 1326, Petrarch takes the priesthood. His teachers, whose thoughts he relentlessly followed in religious matters, were only the ancient authors and founders of the early church (most of all Jerome and Augustine). Then, in 1326, Petrarch entered the Faculty of Law in Bologna, where he attended classes with his younger brother, Gerardo Petrarch.

Perhaps one day - April 6, 1327 was a turning point in the life of Francesco Petrarch. Then he met the woman he fell in love with for the rest of his life. She went down in history under the name of Laura. Who she was is still not known for certain. Inspired by his feelings, Petrarch wrote his first sonnets, which not only entered the golden fund of the “poetic science of love”, but also became an excellent model for the followers and imitators of Petrarch and remain so to this day. It is known that Francesco Petrarch was not only a brilliant thinker and philosopher, but also a poet; he is considered the founder of Italian national poetry.

In 1330, Petrarch graduated from his studies and entered the service of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, which gave him, the son of an exile, both a certain social position and the opportunity to play a prominent role in the life of his contemporary world.

In early 1337, Petrarch visited Rome for the first time. Later he wrote about it like this: “Rome seemed to me even greater than I expected, especially its ruins seemed to me great.” One might think that the thinker spoke so jokingly, but this is not at all the case. Rather, Petrarch spoke of the great past of the then Roman Empire. Then the philosopher settled in the town of Vaucluse, near Avignon, where he actually began to flourish his work. The poetic creations of Petrarch bore fruit, and already on September 1, 1340, he received two proposals at once to marry the laurels of the first poet: the first came from the University of Paris, the second from Rome. Petrarch, on reflection, gave preference to Rome. In April 1341, Petrarch was crowned with laurels at the Capitol.

Petrarch witnessed a terrible plague that killed more than a third of the population of Europe in the 14th century. Only in the Italian cities of Siena and Pisa, more than half of the inhabitants died. However, the plague bypassed Petrarch himself.

In 1351, the Florentine commune sent Giovanni Boccaccio (a well-known thinker who later became a close friend of Petrarch) to Petrarch with an official message inviting the poet to return to Florence, from where his parents were expelled, and head a university department created especially for him. Petrarch pretended to be flattered and ready to accept this offer, however, leaving Vaucluse in 1353 and returning to Italy, he settled not in Florence, but in Milan.

In the summer of 1356, Petrarch was on an embassy to the Czech king Charles IV from the sovereign of Milan, Galeazzo Visconti.

In the spring of 1362, Francesco Petrarch, “tired of the world, of people, of deeds, tired to the extreme of himself,” set off from Milan to Prague, following the triple invitation of Charles IV, but on the way he was detained by mercenary detachments hosting in Lombardy and turned into Venice, where he settled.

In Venice, Petrarch was the guest of honor. The decision of the Grand Council of Venice on September 4, 1362, when the Republic adopted his plan for the establishment of a public library, stated that "in human memory there was no philosopher or poet in Christendom who could compare with him." In his will, Petrarch donated all his books to the Venetian Republic on the condition that they become the basis of a public library arranged according to his plan.

According to Petrarch himself, his life was not easy. He spoke about his fate as follows: “Almost my whole life was spent in wanderings. I compare my wanderings with those of the Odysseys; if the brilliance of his name and deeds were the same, his wanderings would not have been longer or longer than mine ... it’s easier for me to count the sea sand and heavenly stars than all the obstacles that fortune, envious of my labors, put up.”

Petrarch once said: "I want death to find me either praying or writing." And so it happened. Francesco Petrarca died in Arqua on the night of July 19, 1374, only one day short of his seventieth birthday.

All Petrarch's writings were imbued with extraordinary romanticism and humanism, love for the world around him. Among his most famous works: the comedy "Philology", "Canzoniere", that is, a book of poems and songs, the heroic poem "Africa", "Cures for the vicissitudes of fate", collections of sonnets "On the life of Laura" and "On the death of Laura", " The Book of Memorable Things” and the unfinished poem “Triumphs”.

Francesco Petrarca was the first great humanist, poet and citizen who managed to see the wholeness of the pre-Renaissance currents of thought and unite them in a poetic synthesis, which became the program of future European generations. With his work, he managed to instill in these coming multi-tribal generations of Western and Eastern Europe a consciousness - albeit not always clear, but one that became, as it were, supreme in the mind and inspiration for them.

Petrarch is the founder of the new modern poetry. His "Canzoniere" for a long time determined the development of European lyrics, becoming a kind of indisputable model. If at first for his contemporaries and closest followers in his homeland, Petrarch was the great restorer of classical antiquity, the herald of new paths in art and literature, then, starting from 1501, when through the efforts of the typographer Aldo Manuzio, the Vatican Codex Canzoniere was widely publicized, the era of the so-called. Petrarchism, and not only in poetry, but also in the field of aesthetic and critical thought. Petrarchism went beyond Italy. Evidence of this is the work of such famous poets as Gongora (in Spain), Camões in (Portugal), Shakespeare (in England), Kochanowski (in Poland). Without Petrarch, their lyrics would not only be incomprehensible to us, but simply impossible.

Moreover, Petrarch paved the way for his poetic heirs to the knowledge of the tasks and essence of poetry, the knowledge of the moral and civic vocation of the poet.

In the self-portrait that involuntarily arises when reading Petrarch, a trait is striking: the need for love. It is both the desire to love and the need to be loved. This feature found the most clear expression in the poet's love for Laura, the main subject of the sonnets and other poems that make up the Canzoniere. Petrarch's love for Laura is the subject of innumerable scholarly works. Laura is a very real person. Love for her, as is often the case in real poetry, is romantic and impetuous, somewhat calmed down by the end of the poet's life and almost merged with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bheavenly, ideal love.

Another trait that the poet himself revealed in himself, for which he sometimes (especially in his declining years) scourged himself, is the love of fame. Not in the sense, however, of mere vanity. The desire for fame in Petrarch was closely connected with the creative impulse. It was to a greater extent that prompted Petrarch to take up writing. Over the years, this love, the love of fame, began to moderate. Having achieved unparalleled fame, Petrarch realized that she evoked much more envy in those around her than good feelings. In his “Letter to posterity” he sadly writes about his crowning in Rome, and before his death he is even ready to acknowledge the triumph of Time over Glory.

The acquaintance of the Russian public with Petrarch was initiated by the Russian poet Konstantin Batyushkov, perhaps the first adherent of so-called Italianism in Russia, the author of articles about Petrarch. Batyushkov also translated one of his most famous sonnets, the 269th, and wrote an arrangement of his first canzone, which he called "Evening." The great merit in getting acquainted with the work of Petrarch belongs to the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. Perhaps the main merit of Ivanov as a translator of Petrarch is that he, the first of the major Russian writers, approached Petrarch not “suddenly”, but fully armed with the most thorough philological, historical and cultural knowledge, while remaining a fair poet.

Undoubtedly, Francesco Petrarch made a huge contribution to the development of philosophy and literature in general, primarily as the founder of true humanism, which, perhaps, turned out to be what attracted the followers and imitators of Petrarch in his work.

Francesco Petrarch. LXI sonnet (translated by V. Ivanov)

Blessed is that land, and that long is bright,

Where I became a prisoner of beautiful eyes!

Blessed is the pain that's the first time

I felt when I did not notice

How deeply pierced by the arrow that methyl

I have a god in my heart, secretly crushing us!

Blessed are the lamentations and groans,

How did I announce the dream of oak forests,

Waking echoes with the name of Madonna!

Blessed are you that so many glory

Acquired for her, melodious canzones, -

Golden thoughts about her, a single alloy!

Thoughts and Sayings of Francesco Petrarch

Human life on earth is not just a military service, but a battle.

Personal presence harms fame.

Love is great at winning.

I. Lileeva

The greatest poet, he himself valued only the poetry of the ancients. Francesco Petrarch was known to contemporaries as a brilliant connoisseur of antiquity. Then, in the XIV century, the Renaissance began in Italy. The old medieval laws and ideas were broken, people were freed from the oppression of the "spiritual dictatorship" of the Catholic Church. The new worldview was based on the humanism of ancient culture. Francesco Petrarch is rightfully considered one of the first humanists of the Renaissance, who expressed new, progressive ideas, a new attitude to life, to man.
Petrarch devoted all his time to the study of ancient culture, searching for, deciphering, translating, interpreting the manuscripts of the authors of Ancient Rome, and brilliantly writing poems in Latin. Of particular interest is his treatise "On Contempt for the World" - a kind of confession of a restless soul. And for his Latin poem "Africa", describing the feat of the ancient Roman commander Scipio Africanus, Petrarch was crowned with a laurel wreath on the Capitol as the first poet of Italy. But the judgment of posterity very often differs from the judgment of contemporaries. The poem "Africa" ​​has long been forgotten, and Petrarch's immortal fame was brought by his poems in Italian, written "On the Life of the Madonna Laura" and "On the Death of the Madonna Laura", poems that made up the famous collection "Canzonere" (Book of Songs).
On April 6, 1327, in Avignon, in the south of France, in the church of Saint Clare, an Italian young monk, listed in the retinue of the powerful Cardinal Colonne, first saw the young woman Laura. The beauty of Laura made an irresistible impression on Francesco Petrarch, and although he saw her only a few times from a distance, her image sunk deep into the heart of the poet. For twenty-one years, until the death of Laura, Petrarch lived in love for her, dreams of his ideal lover, and then mourned her death for a long time. The image of Laura was always with him: both in his travels in France and Italy, and in his solitude in the mountain town of Vaucluse, where he lived for four years, indulging in philosophical reflections. Petrarch wrote these verses for himself and did not attach much importance to them.
The most interesting thing in the "Canzoniere" is the image of the poet himself, whose feelings, thoughts, spiritual confusion, experiences, "impulses of a mournful heart" make up the content of most of the poems. Petrarch with amazing depth reveals the diverse, complex and contradictory world of human love experiences. This brought him the fame of a classical singer of love.
The main poetic genre of Petrarch's book is the sonnet - a poem of 14 lines with a certain rhyme order. Petrarch made the difficult form of the sonnet flexible, capable of expressing great feelings and thoughts. A. S. Pushkin wrote:

Severe Dante did not despise the sonnet;
In it, the heat of Petrarch's love poured out.

In addition to the sonnets, there are also songs (canzones) in the Canzoniere. In the famous canzone "My Italy" sounds the voice of Petrarch - a citizen, a patriot: he mourns the fragmentation of Italy, is indignant at the ongoing internecine wars. Addressing his canzone, the poet exclaims: “Go and demand: “Peace! peace! peace!"
Petrarch, continuing Dante, did a lot to create the Italian literary language.
A humanist, a thinker who defended the greatness and dignity of the human person, a singer of love, a poet who created poems that are amazing in terms of the depth of penetration into the inner world of a person, Petrarch has long been known and loved by Russian readers.

Biography

Petrarca, Francesco (1304−1374) Italian poet, recognized literary arbiter of his time and forerunner of the European humanist movement.

Born July 20, 1304 in Arezzo, where his father, a Florentine notary, fled in connection with political unrest. Seven months later, Francesco's mother took Francesco to Anchisa, where they remained until 1311. At the beginning of 1312, the whole family moved to Avignon (France). After four years of studying with a private teacher, Francesco was sent to law school in Montpellier. In 1320, together with his brother, he went to Bologna to continue the study of jurisprudence. In April 1326, after the death of their father, both brothers returned to Avignon. By that time, Petrarch had already shown an undoubted inclination towards literary pursuits.

In 1327, on Good Friday, in an Avignon church, he met and fell in love with a girl named Laura - nothing more is known about her. It was she who inspired Petrarch to write his best poems.

To make a living, Petrarch decided to take the priesthood. He was ordained, but hardly ever officiated. In 1330 he became a chaplain to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, and in 1335 he received his first benefice.

In 1337 Petrarch purchased a small estate in Vaucluse, a valley near Avignon. There he began two works in Latin - the epic poem Africa (Africa) about the winner Hannibal Scipio the African and the book On Glorious Men (De viris illustribus) - a collection of biographies of prominent people of antiquity. Then he began to write lyrical poems in Italian, poems and letters in Latin, set about the comedy Philology (Filologia), now lost. By 1340, Petrarch's literary activity, his connections with the papal court, and long-distance travels had earned him European fame. On April 8, 1341, by decision of the Roman Senate, he was crowned with the laurels of the poet laureate.

1342−1343 Petrarch spent in Vaucluse, where he continued to work on the epic poem and biographies, and also, following the model of the Confession of St. Augustine, wrote the confession book My Secret (Secretum Meum) in the form of three dialogues between St. Augustine and Petrarch before the Court of Truth. At the same time, the Penitential Psalms (Psalmi poenitentialis) were written or begun; On memorable events (Rerum memorandum libri) - a treatise on the basic virtues in the form of a collection of anecdotes and biographies; the didactic poems Triumph of Love (Triumphus Cupidinis) and Triumph of Chastity (Triumphus Pudicitie), written in tercins; and the first edition of the book of lyrical poems in Italian - Kanzoniere (Canzoniere).

By the end of 1343, Petrarch went to Parma, where he stayed until the beginning of 1345. In Parma, he continued to work on Africa and the treatise On Memorable Events. He did not finish both works and, it seems, never returned to them. At the end of 1345 Petrarch again came to Vaucluse. In the summer of 1347, he enthusiastically met the uprising raised in Rome by Cola di Rienzo (later suppressed). During this period, he wrote eight of the twelve allegorical eclogues of Bucolic songs (Bucolicum carmen, 1346−1357), two prose treatises: On solitary life (De vita solitaria, 1346) and On monastic leisure (De otio religioso, 1347) - on the beneficial influence secluded life and idleness on the creative mind, and also set about the second edition of Canzoniere.

Perhaps it was sympathy for the uprising of Cola di Rienzo that prompted Petrarch to make a trip to Italy in 1347. However, his desire to join the rebellion in Rome faded as soon as he learned of Cola's atrocities. He stopped again in Parma. In 1348, a plague claimed the lives of Cardinal Colonna and Laura. In 1350 Petrarch met and became friends with Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Nelli. During his stay in Italy, he wrote four more eclogues and the poem Triumph of Death (Triumphus Mortis), proceeded to the poem Triumph of Glory (Triumphus Fame), and also began Poetic Epistles (Epistolae metricae) and letters in prose.

The years 1351-1353 Petrarch spent mainly in Vaucluse, paying special attention to public life, especially the state of affairs at the papal court. At the same time, he wrote the Invectiva contro medicum (Invectiva contro medicum), criticizing the methods of the pope's physicians. Most of the letters written during this period and criticizing the situation in Avignon were later collected in the book Without an address (Liber sine nomine).

In 1353 Petrarch, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Visconti, settled in Milan, where he acted as secretary, orator and emissary. At the same time he completed Bucolic Songs and the collection Without an Address; began a lengthy essay On the means against any fortune (De remediis ultriusque fortunae), which eventually included more than 250 dialogues on how to cope with luck and failure; wrote the Way to Syria (Itinerarium syriacum) - a guide for pilgrims to the Holy Land. In 1361, Petrarch left Milan to escape the plague that was raging there. He spent a year in Padua, at the invitation of the Carrara family, where he finished work on the collection Poetic Epistles, as well as the collection Letters on Private Matters (Familiarum rerum libri XXIV), which included 350 letters in Latin. At the same time, Petrarch began another collection - Elderly Letters (Seniles), which eventually included 125 letters written between 1361 and 1374 and divided into 17 books. In 1362 Petrarch, still fleeing the plague, fled to Venice. In 1366 a group of young followers of Aristotle attacked Petrarch. He responded with a caustic invective On the ignorance of one's own and of others (De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia). In 1370 Petrarch bought a modest villa in Arqua, on the Euganean Hills. In 1372 hostilities between Padua and Venice forced him to take refuge for a time in Padua. After the defeat of Padua, he, together with its ruler, went to Venice to conduct peace negotiations. In the last seven years of his life, Petraraka continued to improve the Canzoniere (in the last edition of 1373, the collection was entitled in Latin Rerum vulgarium fragmenta - Fragments in the vernacular) and worked on the Triumphs, which in the final edition included six successive "triumphs": Love, Chastity, Death, Glory, Time and Eternity. Petrarch died in Arqua on July 19, 1374. Petrarch revised the cultural heritage of antiquity, carefully analyzing the texts of ancient writers and restoring their original appearance. He himself felt himself standing at the junction of two eras. He considered his age decadent and vicious, but he could not but learn some of his addictions. Such, for example, is the preference for the teachings of Plato and St. Augustine to Aristotle and Thomism, Petrarch's refusal to recognize secular poetry and active life as an obstacle to Christian salvation, a view of poetry as the highest form of art and knowledge, an understanding of the virtues as a common denominator of ancient and Christian culture, and, finally, a passionate desire to return Rome to the position of the center civilized world. Petrarch was tormented by a deep inner conflict caused by the clash of his beliefs and aspirations with the requirements for a Christian. It is to him that Petrarch's poetry owes its highest rises. The immediate sources of inspiration were the unrequited love for Laura and admiration for the valor and virtues of the ancients, embodied mainly in the figure of Scipio the African Senior. Petrarch considered Africa his main achievement, but Canzoniere - 366 various Italian poems, mainly dedicated to Laura, became his "miraculous monument". The sublime lyricism of these poems cannot be explained solely by the influence on Petrarch of the poetry of the Provencal troubadours, the "sweet new style", Ovid and Virgil. Drawing a parallel between his love for Laura and the myth of Daphne, which Petrarch understands symbolically - as a story not only about fleeting love, but also about the eternal beauty of poetry - he brings to his "book of songs" a new, deeply personal and lyrical experience of love, wrapping it in a new art form. Bowing before the achievements of ancient heroes and thinkers, Petrarch at the same time considers their achievements as a sign of a deep need for moral rebirth and redemption, longing for eternal bliss. The life of a Christian is fuller and richer, because he is given to understand that Divine light can turn the knowledge of the past into true wisdom. The same refraction of pagan mythology in the prism of the Christian worldview is also present in the love lyrics of Petrarch, where the theme of redemption sounds as a result. Laura as Beauty, Poetry and Earthly Love is worthy of admiration, but not at the cost of saving the soul. The way out of this seemingly insoluble conflict, redemption, consists rather in Petrarch's effort to achieve the perfect expression of his passion than in the renunciation with which the collection begins and ends. Even sinful love can be justified before the Lord as pure poetry. Petrarch's first meeting with Laura took place, according to him, on Good Friday. Petrarch further identifies his beloved with religious, moral and philosophical ideals, while at the same time emphasizing her incomparable physical beauty. So his love is on the same level with Plato's eternal ideas that lead a person to the highest good. But, although Petrarch is within the framework of a poetic tradition that originates with Andrei Chaplain and ended with a “sweet new style”, nevertheless, neither love nor the beloved is something unearthly, transcendent for him. Admiring ancient authors, Petrarch developed a Latin style that was much more perfect than the Latin of that time. He did not attach importance to writings in Italian. Perhaps that is why some of the poems in Canzoniere have purely formal merits: in them he is fond of wordplay, striking contrasts and strained metaphors. Unfortunately, it was precisely these features that the imitators of Petrarch (the so-called Petrarchism) most readily adopted. Petrarch's sonnet, one of the two typical forms of a sonnet (along with Shakespeare's), is distinguished by a two-part division into an initial eight-line (octave) with the rhyme abba abba and a final six-line (sextet) with the rhyme cde cde. In one form or another, Petrarchism manifested itself in most European countries. Having reached its peak in the 16th century, it periodically revived until recently. At an early stage, they imitated mainly the works of Petrarch in Latin, later - the Triumphs and, finally, the Canzoniere, whose influence turned out to be the most persistent. Among the well-known poets and writers of the Renaissance who, to one degree or another, were influenced by Petrarch, are G. Boccaccio, M. M. Boiardo, L. Medici and T. Tasso in Italy; Marquis de Santillana, A. Marc, G. de la Vega, J. Boscan and F. de Herrera in Spain; C. Maro, J. Du Bellay, M. Seve, P. Ronsard and F. Deportes in France; J. Chaucer, T. Wyeth, G. H. Surry, E. Spencer, F. Sidney, T. Lodge and G. Constable in England; P. Fleming, M. Opitz, G. Weckerlin and T. Höck in Germany. During the Romantic period, Petrarch also found admirers and imitators, the most notable of which are U. Foscolo and G. Leopardi in Italy; A. Lamartine, A. Musset and V. Hugo in France; H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell and W. Irving in America.

Born Petrarch Francesco on July 20, 1304 in Arezzo, his father worked as a notary in Florence, but was forced to flee with his family due to political unrest. Francesco was not yet 1 year old, as his mother moved him to Anchisa, where they lived until 1311. The following year, the Petrarch family moved to French Avignon. At first, Francesco was educated at home with a private teacher, and then went to law school in Montpellier. In 1320 he moved with his brother to Bologna to continue his studies in law. In the middle of the spring of 1326, the father died and the brothers returned to Avignon.

For the material support of life, Petrarch takes the dignity. Although he was dedicated, the facts of his worship or rituals are unknown. In 1330 he became chaplain to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. After 5 years, he received the first beneficiation for services to the church.

In 1337, Petrarch bought a small house in the Vaucluse valley near Avignon and began to write the epic poem Africa and the comedy Philology, now considered lost. He also collected biographies of famous people of the ancient period in the book "On Glorious Men". At this time, he creates lyrical poems in Italian, and in Latin - poems and letters. Since the service at the papal court required long-distance travel, Petrarch became famous throughout Europe by 1340. The Senate of Rome awarded him the laurels of poet laureate on April 8, 1341.

In the period 1342−1343. Petrarch lived in Vaucluse and continued to write an epic poem and biographies, created a book-confession "My Secret" and other works.

In 1343-1345. moved to Parma, where he continued his work, but never completed Africa. In 1348 Cardinal Colonna and Laura died of the plague.

In 1351, Petrarch returned to Vaucluse again, engaged in the social life of the papal court and wrote critical letters that would be included in the book Without an Address.

Bishop of Milan Giovanni Visconti invites the poet in 1353 to work as an orator, secretary and emissary. But in 1361 a plague broke out in Milan and Petrarch went to Padua, and a year later to Venice. In 1370 he purchased a small estate in Arqua, located on the Euganean Hills. Francesco Petrarca died at Arqua on July 19, 1374.

Italian lawyer (by education), poet, one of the founders of the humanistic culture of the Renaissance.

The future poet was born in the family of a notary - friend Dante.

Francesco Petrarca knew ancient authors well, especially Cicero , Virgil and Seneca searched for their unknown manuscripts, studied texts, often quoted them and even wrote letters to them as to his friends... Admiring ancient authors, he developed his own literary style.

“Brought up in the Christian religion, Petrarch sought a compromise between it and pagan philosophy, between faith and knowledge.

All his work bears the stamp of this duality. He saw the ultimate goal of his own efforts in overcoming the traditional opposition between the Christian faith and ancient culture. […]

Petrarch became one of first collectors of ancient manuscripts (he looked for them in his travels around Europe, often made this kind of request to friends and acquaintances). His library, unique for those times, included works by Plato ("Timaeus" and several dialogues unknown in Latin translations), Homer ("Iliad" and "Odyssey"), Aristotle, Horace, Virgil, Cicero (most of his speeches and dialogues were discovered by Petrarch) , Quintilian, Titus Livius, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Apuleius, Palladius, Chalcidia, Cassiodorus, as well as Augustine, Martial Capella, Eustachius, Abelard, Dante and other authors. The circle of reading Petrarch is even wider - in addition to those listed, these are works Ovid, Catullus, Propercia, Tibulla, Persia, Juvenal, Lucan, Station, Claudian, Plautus, Terence, Sallust, Flora, Eutropia, Justina, Orosia, Valery Maxim, Macrobius, Vitruvius, Pomponius Mela, Boethius. The most revered and loved were Virgil, Cicero, Seneca.

Being engaged in a thorough study of ancient manuscripts, Petrarch compared and verified various lists, discovered errors and distortions, thus laying the foundations of humanistic philology.
The work he began to restore the complete corpus of ancient literature in original texts was largely carried out by the humanists of the 15th century.

Bragina L.M., Italian humanism. Ethical teachings of the XIV-XV centuries, M., "Higher School", 1977, p. 80.

“Through the efforts of Petrarch, the process of restoring incomparably wider than in the Middle Ages, successive ties with antiquity, characteristic of the Renaissance, was begun. A passionate collector of ancient manuscripts, their first interpreter and textologist, Petrarch laid the foundations of Renaissance classical philology. His library included writings from over 30 ancient authors, including those forgotten or little known in the Middle Ages, and was the largest in Europe at that time.

The attitude of the first humanist to the Middle Ages was different: he saw in the previous centuries the era of the "domination of the barbarians", the decline of education, the corruption of the Latin language, and the undeserved neglect of the pagan culture of antiquity. Petrarch criticized scholasticism for its inability to provide satisfactory answers to the age-old questions about the nature of man and his destiny. He negatively assessed the very structure of scholastic knowledge, in which the quadrivium (mathematical sciences) pushed into the background the humanitarian disciplines so important for understanding human nature.

Petrarch saw the overdue task in turning the entire system of knowledge towards the study of the "human" and therefore assigned the main role to philology, rhetoric, and moral philosophy.

He considered it especially important to restore the ancient basis in these areas of knowledge, to build them on the study of a wide range of classical texts - the works of Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Sallust and many other ancient authors. He read Petrarch and the works of the Church Fathers in a new way, first of all Augustine, highly valued their classical education.

Bragina L.M., Italian humanism of the Renaissance: ideological searches, in Sat.: Humanistic thought of the Italian Renaissance / Comp. L.M. Bragina, M., "Nauka", 2004, p. 8-9.

The most famous are his numerous sonnets dedicated to Donna Laura, a woman whom he, according to him, met in the church of Avignon in 1327. He made no attempt to personally meet Laura. Laura's death caused a new batch of sonnets... The poet's friend, Giovanni Boccaccio claimed that the real Laura never existed. At Petrarch had two illegitimate children.

Naples, Rome and Paris wanted to present Petrarch a wreath of the best poet (strictly speaking, at his own request). The poet chose Rome.

Literary critics believe that the most detailed description in verse of the internal and contradictory experiences of a person was a new word in the literature of that time ...

Francesco Petrarca was an Italian poet of the 14th century who became the founder of early humanism. Considering the mentor of the writer-monk Barlaam of Calabria, he played a large role in the Italian Proto-Renaissance and became a cult poet of the Middle Ages.

Francesco Petrarca was born in Arezzo on July 20, 1304. His father was Pietro di Ser Parenzo, a Florentine lawyer who was expelled from Florence at the same time as Dante for supporting the "white" party. Parenzo had the nickname "Petracco" - probably because of this, the poet's pseudonym subsequently formed. The Parenzo family moved from one city of Tuscany to another, and when Francesco was nine years old, he settled in French Avignon. Subsequently, Petrarch's mother moved to the nearby city of Carpentras.

In Avignon, the boy began to attend school, studied Latin and became interested in the works of Roman literature. In 1319, Francesco graduated from school, after which his father advised him to study law. Although jurisprudence was not close to Francesco, the guy fulfilled the will of his father by enrolling in Montpellier, and soon at the University of Bologna. In 1326, Petrarch's father died, and the young man himself finally realized that classical writers were much more interesting to him than legislative acts.

The only inheritance Francesco received after his father's death was a manuscript of Virgil's writings. Partly because of the difficult financial situation, partly because of the desire for spiritual enlightenment, after graduating from the university, Petrarch decided to accept the priesthood. The Italian settled at the papal court in Avignon and became close to representatives of the authoritative Colonna family (Giacomo Colonna had been a friend since his studies at the university).

In 1327, Francesco first saw Laura de Noves, whose unrequited love prompted him to write poetry, considered the pinnacle of skill in the field of Italian sonnets.

Creation

The greatest popularity of Petrarch was brought by poetic works written in Italian. The vast majority is dedicated to Laura de Noves (although her full name is still a mystery, and Laura de Noves is only the most suitable candidate for the role of Petrarch's muse). The poet himself tells about his beloved only that her name is Laura, whom he first saw on April 6, 1327 in the church of Santa Chiara, and that on April 6, 1348 this woman died. After the death of Laura, Francesco sang about this love for ten years.

The collection of canzones and sonnets dedicated to Laura is called "II Canzoniere" or "Rime Sparse". The collection consists of two parts. Although most of the works included in it describe Petrarch's love for Laura, in the "Canzoniere" there was a place for several poems of a different content: religious and political. Even before the beginning of the seventeenth century, this collection was reprinted two hundred times. Reviews of the sonnets contained in the Canzoniere were written by poets and scholars from different countries, recognizing the undeniable importance of Francesco's works for the development of Italian and world literature.

It is noteworthy that Petrarch himself did not take his Italian poetic works seriously. Although it was poetry that ensured success with the public, and initially Petrarch wrote exclusively for himself and perceived it as trifles and trifles that helped him ease his soul. But their sincerity and spontaneity came to the taste of the world community, and as a result, these works influenced both Petrarch's contemporaries and writers of subsequent generations.

The Italian-language poem of Petrarch called "Triumphs" is also widely known, in which his philosophy of life found its expression. In it, the author, using allegories, talks about a chain of victories: love conquers a person, chastity conquers love, death conquers chastity, glory conquers death, time conquers glory, and, finally, eternity conquers time.

Italian sonnets, canzones, madrigals by Francesco influenced not only poetry, but also music. Composers of the 14th (while the Renaissance lasted), and then of the 19th centuries, made these verses the basis of their musical works. For example, he wrote "Petrarch's Sonnets" for piano, deeply impressed by the poet's poems dedicated to Laura.

Books in Latin

Francesco's significant works written in Latin include the following books:

• Autobiography "Epistola ad posteros" in the format of a letter to future generations. In this creation, Petrarch tells the story of his life from the outside (he talks about the key events that occurred on his life path).

• Autobiography "De contempu mundi", which translates as "On contempt for the world." The author wrote this work in the format of a dialogue with Blessed Augustine. The second autobiography of the poet tells not so much about the external manifestations of his life story, but about his internal development, the struggle between personal desires and ascetic morality, and so on. The dialogue with Augustine turns into a kind of duel between the humanistic and religious-ascetic worldview, in which humanism wins after all.

• Invectives (angry diatribes) in relation to representatives of the cultural, political, religious spheres. Petrarch was one of the first creative figures who was able to look at the statements, teachings and beliefs of modernity from a critical point of view. Thus, his invective against the doctor, who considered science more important than eloquence and poetry, is widely known. Francesco also spoke out against a number of French prelates (representatives of the highest Catholic clergy), against Averroists (followers of the popular philosophical doctrine of the 13th century), Roman scientists of past years, and so on.

• “Letters without an address” are works in which the author boldly criticizes the depraved customs of Rome in the 14th century. Petrarch throughout his life was a deeply believing Catholic, but he did not feel reverence for the highest spiritual orders, whose behavior he considered unacceptable, and did not hesitate to openly criticize them. "Letters without an address" are addressed either to fictional characters or to real people. Francesco borrowed ideas for writing works in this format from Cicero and Seneca.
• "Africa" ​​is an epic poem dedicated to the exploits of Scipio. It also contains prayers and penitential psalms.

Personal life

The love of Petrarch's life was Laura, whose identity has not yet been established for certain. After meeting this girl, the poet, during the three years he spent in Avignon, hoped to catch her chance glance in the church. In 1330, the poet moved to Lombe, and seven years later he bought an estate in Vaucluse to live near Laura. Having taken the priesthood, Petrarch did not have the right to marry, but he did not shy away from carnal ties with other women. The story goes that Petrarch had two illegitimate children.

Laura herself, apparently, was a married woman, a faithful wife and mother of eleven children. The last time the poet saw his beloved was on September 27, 1347, and in 1348 the woman died.

The exact cause of death is unknown, but historians believe that it could have been the plague, which killed a significant part of the population of Avignon in 1348. In addition, Laura could have died due to exhaustion due to frequent childbirth and tuberculosis. It is not known whether Petrarch spoke about feelings, and whether Laura knew about his existence.

Poets note that in the event that Laura became the legal wife of Francesco, he would hardly have written so many heartfelt sonnets in her honor. For example, Byron spoke about this, as well as the Soviet poet Igor Guberman. In their opinion, it was the remoteness of his beloved, the impossibility of being with her that allowed Petrarch to write works that had a huge impact on all world literature.

Death

Even during the life of Petrarch, his literary works were appreciated by the public, and as a result, he received invitations to the coronation with a laurel wreath from Naples, Paris and Rome (almost simultaneously). The poet chose Rome, where he was crowned with a laurel wreath on the Capitol on Easter 1341. Until 1353, he lived on his estate in Vaucluse, occasionally leaving it for travel or preaching missions.

Leaving this place for good in the early 1350s, Francesco decided to settle in Milan, although he was offered a job in the department in Florence. Having settled at the court of the Visconti, he took up the execution of diplomatic missions.

Subsequently, the poet wanted to return to his native Avignon, but tense relations with authoritative Italian families prevented him from doing so. As a result, he moved to Venice and settled near the family of his illegitimate daughter.

But even here Petrarch did not stay long: he regularly traveled to various Italian cities, and in the last months of his life he ended up in the small village of Arqua. There, the poet died on the night of July 18-19, 1374, when he had only one day left to live until his 70th birthday. The story goes that Francesco passed away at his desk, writing his life story, pen in hand. He was buried in the local cemetery.

Bibliography

• song book
• Triumphs
• About contempt for the world
• Book of famous men
• Letter to posterity
• Letters without an address
• bucolic songs
• Penitential psalms