Francesco Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was born at Arezzo in Tuscany on 20 July 1304, the son of a Florentine notary in political exile. He grew up near Avignon, where the popes then lived, and studied law at Montpellier and Bologna before turning to letters. In 1327, he later wrote, he first saw Laura in an Avignon church, and his Italian poems to her, gathered in the Canzoniere, made the sonnet the great love form of Europe. He held clerical offices and church benefices, lived for years in retreat at Vaucluse, climbed Mont Ventoux with Augustine's Confessions in his pocket, and in 1341 was crowned poet laureate on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. A tireless hunter of ancient manuscripts, he rediscovered letters of Cicero and urged a revival of classical learning joined with Christian faith, earning the name father of humanism. He wrote Latin dialogues, letters and the epic Africa, and served as a diplomat. He spent his last years at Arquà near Padua, where he died on 19 July 1374.

Francesco Petrarch is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A devout Catholic and Christian humanist who held clerical offices and benefices, including a canonry, and spent his last years in religious contemplation at Arquà. He revered Augustine, wrote the Secretum as an imagined dialogue with him, and praised the contemplative life in De otio religioso; his brother Gherardo became a Carthusian monk. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Dante Alighieri · Augustine of Hippo · Cicero · Geoffrey Chaucer · Edmund Spenser · William Shakespeare