Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/740

 708 PETRARCH small benefices were conferred upon him ; and repeated offers of a papal secretaryship, which would have raised him to the highest dignities, were made and rejected. Petrarch remained true to the instinct of his own vocation, and had no intention of sacrificing his studies and his glory to ecclesiastical ambition. In January 1343 his old friend and patron Robert, king of Naples, died, and Petrarch was sent on an embassy from the papal court to his suc cessor Joan. The notices which he has left us of Neapolitan society at this epoch are interesting, and it was now, perhaps, that he met Boccaccio for the first time. The beginning of the year 1345 was marked by an event more interesting in the scholar s eyes than any change in dynasties. This was no less than a discovery at Verona of Cicero s Familiar Letters. It is much to be regretted that Petrarch found the precious MS. so late in life, when the style of his own epistles had been already modelled upon that of Seneca and St Augustine. No one, not even Erasmus, would have profited more by the study of those epistolary masterpieces, or would have been better able to imitate their point and ease of diction, had he become acquainted with them at an earlier period. In the month of May 1347 Cola di Rienzi accomplished that extraordinary revolution which for a short space revived the republic in Rome, and raised this enthusiast to titular equality with kings. Petrarch, who in politics was no less visionary than Rienzi, hailed the advent of a founder and deliverer in the self-styled tribune. Without considering the impossibility of restoring the majesty of ancient Rome, or the absurdity of dignifying the mediaeval Roman rabble by the name of Populus Romanus, he threw himself with passion into the republican movement, and sacrificed his old friends of the Colonna family to what he judged a patriotic duty. To follow the meteoric course of Rienzi through those months of mock supremacy, exile, and imprisonment at Avignon does not concern Petrarch s biographer. It will be enough to say that the poet con tented himself with writing a rhetorical exhortation to the Roman people on the occasion of the tribune s downfall, giving vent, as usual, through eloquence to emotions which men of more practical character strove to express in act. Petrarch built himself a house at Parma in the autumn of 1347. Here he hoped to pursue the tranquil avocations of a poet honoured by men of the world and men of letters throughout Europe, and of an idealistic politician, whose effusions on the questions of the day were read with plea sure for their style. But in the course of the next two years this agreeable prospect was overclouded by a series of calamities. Laura died of the plague on the 6th April 1348. Francesco degli Albizzi, Mainardo Accursio, Roberto de Bardi, Sennuccio del Bene, Luchino Visconti, the car dinal Giovanni Colonna, and several other friends followed to the grave in rapid succession. All of these had been intimate acquaintances and correspondents of the poet. Friendship with him was a passion ; or, what is more true perhaps, he needed friends for the maintenance of his intellectual activity at the highest point of its effectiveness. Therefore he felt the loss of these men acutely. We may say with certainty that Laura s death, accompanied by that of so many distinguished associates, was the turning-point in Petrarch s inner life. He began to think of quitting the world, and pondered a plan for establishing a kind of humanistic convent, where he might dedicate himself, in the company of kindred spirits, to still severer studies and a closer communion with God. Though nothing came of this scheme, a marked change was henceforth perceptible in Petrarch s literary compositions. The poems written In Morte di Madonna Laura are graver and of more religious tone. The prose works touch on retrospective topics or deal with subjects of deep meditation. At the same time his renown, continually spreading, opened to him ever fresh relations with Italian despots. The noble houses of Gonzaga at Mantua, of Carrara at Padua, of Este at Ferrara, of Malatesta at Rimini, of Visconti at Milan, vied with Azzo di Correggio in entertaining the illustrious man of letters. It was in vain that his correspondents pointed out the discrepancy between his professed zeal for Italian liberties, his recent enthusiasm for the Roman republic, and this alliance with tyrants who were destroying the freedom of the Lombard cities. Petrarch remained an incurable rhetorician ; and, while he stigmatized the despots in his ode to Italy and in his epistles to the emperor, he accepted their hospitality. They, on their part, seem to have understood his temperament, and to have agreed to recognize his political theories as of no practical import ance. The tendency to honour men of letters and to patronize the arts which distinguished Italian princes throughout the Renaissance period first manifested itself in j the attitude assumed by Visconti and Carraresi to Petrarch. When the jubilee of 1350 was proclaimed, Petrarch made a pilgrimage to Rome, passing and returning through Florence, where he established a firm friendship with Boccaccio. It has been well remarked that, while all his other friendships are shadowy and dim, this one alone stands out with clearness. Each of the two friends had a distinguished personality. Each played a foremost part in the revival of learning. Boccaccio carried his admira tion for Petrarch to the point of worship. Petrarch repaid him with sympathy, counsel in literary studies, and moral support which helped to elevate and purify the younger poet s over-sensuous nature. It was Boccaccio who in the spring of 1351 brought to Petrarch, then resident with the Carrara family at Padua, an invitation from the seigniory of Florence to accept the rectorship of their recently-founded university. This was accompanied by a diploma of re storation to his rights as citizen and restitution of his patrimony. But, flattering as Avas the offer, Petrarch declined it. He preferred his literary leisure at Vaucluse, at Parma, in the courts of princes, to a post which would have brought him into contact with jealous priors and have reduced him to the position of the servant of a com monwealth. Accordingly, we find him journeying again in 1351 to Vaucluse, again refusing the office of papal secretary, again planning visionary reforms for the Roman people, and beginning that curious fragment of an auto biography which is known as the Epistle to Posterity. Early in 1353 he left Avignon for the last time, and entered Lombardy by the pass of Mont Genevre, making his way immediately to Milan. The archbishop Giovanni Visconti was at this period virtually despot of Milan. He induced Petrarch, who had long been, a friend of the Visconti family, to establish himself at his court, where he found employment for him as ambassador and orator. The most memorable of his diplomatic missions was to Venice in the autumn of 1353. Towards the close of the long struggle between Genoa and the republic of St Mark the Genoese entreated Giovanni Visconti to mediate on their behalf with the Venetians. Petrarch was entrusted with the office ; and on 8th November he delivered a studied oration before the doge Andrea Dandolo and the great council. His eloquence had no effect ; but the orator entered into relations with the Venetian aristocracy which were afterwards extended and confirmed. Meanwhile, Milan continued to be his place of residence. After Giovanni s death he remained in the court of Bernabo and Galeazzo Visconti, closing his eyes to their cruelties and exactions, serving them as a diplomatist, making speeches for them on ceremonial occasions, and partaking of the splendid hospitality they offered to emperors and princes. It was in this capacity of an independent man of letters.