§ 63. DANTE, PETRARCA, BOCCACCIO. 573
Dante__b£gan his poem iii_Latij^. and_was blamed by Gipvanni del Virgilio,ji teacher of Latin literature in Bologna, because he abandonedLtheJanguage of old Kome for the vulgar dialect of Tuscany. Poggio also lamented this course. But the poet defended himself in his unfinished book. Eloquence in the Vernacular, Be vulgari eloquio,^ and, by writing tlie Cotnmedia, the Vita 7iuova, the Convivio and his sonnets in his native Florentine tongue, he became the father of Italian literatiiije and opened the paths of culture to the laity. Within three years of the poet's death, commentaries began tq^ be writtei^ on the Divina Comm§dia, as by Graziuolo de' Bambagliolo, 1324,jind within 100 years chairs were founded for its exposition at Florence, Venice, Bologna and Pisa.
A second service which Dante rendered in his poem to the coming culture was in bringing antiquity once more into the foreground and treating pagan and Christian elements side by side, though not as of the same value, and interweaving mythological fables with biblical history, classical with Christian reminiscences. By this tolerance he showed himself a man of the new age, while he still held firmly to the mediaeval theology.2
Dante's abiding merit, however^ was his inspiring portrayal of the holiness and love of God. Sin, the perversion of the will, is punished with sin continuing in the future world and pain. Salvation is through the " Lamb of God who takes away our sins and suffered and died that we might li ve. " This poem, like a mighty sermon, now depresses, now enraptures the soul, or, to use the lines of the most poetic of his translators, Longfellow, —
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom ;
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
What soft compassion glows.
Fraiicescoxetrarcaj 1304-1374, was the most cultured- maa ofEistiaje. His Italian sonnets and soiigg are masterpieces of Italian poetic diction, but he thought lightly of them and hoped to be remembered by his Latin writings.^ He was an enthusi-
1 Engl, translation by A. G. F. Howell, London, 1890.
2 See Burckhardt-Geiger, I. 219.
3 Of his 317 sonnets and 29 camoni all are erotic but 31. For the sake of
674 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
ast for the literature of antiquity and gave a great impulse to its study. His parents^ exiled frorn Florence, removed^ to Avignon, then the seat of the papacy, which remained Francesco's residence till 1333. He was ordained to the priesthood but without an inward call. He enjoyed several ecclesiastical benefices as prior, canon and archdeacon, wliich provided for his support without burdening him with duties. He courted and enjoyed the favor of princes, popes and prelates. He abused the papal residence on the Rhone as the Babylon of the West, urged the popes to return to Rome and hailed Cola da Rienzo as an apostle of national liberty. His writings contain outbursts of patriotism but, on the other hand, the author seems to contradict himself in being quick to accept the hospitalit}^ of the Italian despots of Mantua, Padua, Rimini and Ferrara, and the viconti of Milan. In 1350, he formed a friendship with Boccaccio which remained warm until his death.
In_S£ite of his priestly vows, Petrarca lived with concubines and had at least two illegitimate children, Giovanni and Francesca, the stain of whose birth was removed by papal bulls. In riper years, and more especially after his pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year, 1350, he broke away from the slavery of sin. "I now hate that pestilence," he wrote to Boccaccio, "infinitely more than I loved it once, so that in turning over the thought of it in my mind, I feel shame and horror. Jesus Christ, my liberator, knows that I say the truth, he to whom I often prayed with tears, who has given to me his hand in pity and helped me up to himself." He took great delight in the Confessions of St. Augustine, a copy of which he carried about with him.
In his Be contemptu mundi, — the Contempt of the World, — written in 1343, Petrarca confesses as his greatest fault the love of glory and the desire for the immortality of his name. This, the besetting sin of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Humanists inherited. It became with them a ruling passion. They found it in Cicero, the most read of all the Latin classics. Dante strove after the poet's laurel and often returned to the theme of
euphony, the author changed his patronymic Petrarco into Petrarca. In the Enghsh form, Petrarch, the accent is changed from the second to the first syllable.