Petrarch , Italian Francesco Petrarca, (born July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Tuscany—died July 18/19, 1374, Arquà, near Padua, Carrara), Italian scholar, poet, and humanist. After 1326 he abandoned the study of law for his true interests, literature and the religious life. He took minor ecclesiastical orders and moved to Avignon, where in 1327 he first saw Laura, the idealized subject of his chaste love and of his celebrated Italian love lyrics; mainly sonnets and odes written over some 20 years, most were included in his Canzoniere or Rime (1360). The greatest scholar of his age, especially of Classical Latin, he traveled widely, visiting learned men, searching out manuscripts, and undertaking diplomatic missions. He strongly advocated the continuity between Classical culture and the Christian message; in combining the two ideals he is considered the founder and a great representative of humanism. His Latin works, reflecting his religious and philosophical interests, include On Illustrious Men (begun c. 1337), the epic poem Africa (begun c. 1338), the autobiographical treatise Petrarch’s Secret (written 1342–58), De vita solitaria (1345–47; “The Life of Solitude”), and Epistolae metricae (begun c. 1345; “Metrical Letters”). After 1367 he lived in and near Padua. His influence on European literature was enormous and lasting, and his deep consciousness of the Classical past as a source of literary and philosophical meaning for the present was of great importance in paving the way for the Renaissance.
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