Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/49

 PETRARCH 27 To explain the position in which they stood to each other, we must turn to the manners and customs of their age and country. Partly, perhaps, through the great reverence paid in the Roman Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary and other female saints, a sort of woman worship had, in the thirteenth century, spread through the south of Christendom. It was no unusual thing for a knight or a troubadour to select a certain lady, celebrate her in his songs, call on her name in the hour of danger, and wear her color in battle. The adored or the adorer might be either of them married that made no difference ; and the tender litany would sometimes run on for years, long after the idol's hair was silvered and her form more remarkable for plumpness than grace. Homage of this sort did not at all hurt the reputation of her to whom it was paid ; not even her husband and children respected her the less for it. Some distinguished ladies had many devotees of this kind. On her side, the woman professed herself to have for her worshipper an equable, cordial feeling, which never went beyond sisterly friendship. Whether these platonic attachments ever slid into something warmer we cannot say. The history of the time gives us no examples of such being the case. As for Petrarch, Laura's beauty and the graces of her mind first awoke with- in him a romantic sentiment, which, according to the fashion of his brethren the troubadours, he at once began publicly to proclaim in his verse. By degrees, through his thoughts constantly dwelling on her, his glorious genius created out of Laura Noves an ideal being who was woven into his deepest feelings, and his most aerial fancies, and his highest aspirations. What mattered it to him that the real Laura as years went on grew middle-aged and changed ? His own Laura was gifted with immortal youth. Even after her death his imagination was still filled with her ; and the sweet cadences in which he mourns her, and the more exalted strains in which' he follows her to her home above, will always be regarded by his readers as some of the most precious gems he has left them. But Laura was not the poet's only theme. Love of his country was prob- ably Petrarch's strongest passion. Italy was then a complete patchwork of small states, and it was the dream of Petrarch's whole life to see the Peninsula united from the Alps to Spartivento. In words burning as the summer suns which shine upon his native land, and powerful as the sudden storms which some- times sweep over her shores, he spoke out this great longing of his life. He was also the author of many Latin poems, which were held in even higher honor than his writings in Italian. One of these Latin poems that on Scipio Africanus was a great favorite among his contemporaries, but to us it is the coldest and stiff est of his works. Petrarch's fame went on steadily increasing, until at thirty-seven he was uni- versally acknowledged as the first poet of the period. When he had reached that age, there came to his quiet little home at Val Chiusa two messengers from two great European cities namely, Rome and Paris each of which begged him to accept the laureate's crown within its walls. The true Italian could not long