§ 63. DANTE, PETRARCA, BOCCACCIO. 575
fame as a motive of action — lo grand disio della eccelenzaA Petrarca, after^much seeking on his own part, was offered the poet's crown by the University of Paris and the Roman senate. He took it from the latter, and was crowned on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, April 8, 1341, Robert, king of Sicily, being present on the occasion. This he regarded as the proudest moment of his life, the excelling glory of his career. In ostentatious piety the poet carried his crown to St. Peter's, where he laid it on the altar of the Apostle.
Petrarca has been called the first modern scholar and man of letters, the inaugurator of the Italian Renaissance. Unlike Dante, he despised scholastic and mystic learning and went further back to the well of pagan antiquity. He studied antiquity, not as a philologist or antiquarian, but as a man of taste. 2 He admired the Greek and Roman authors for their eloquence, grace and finish of style. Cicero and Virgil were his idols, the fathers of eloquence, the eyes of the Latin language. He turned to Plato. He made a distinction between the religion of the New Testament as interpreted by Augustine and as interpreted by the Schoolmen. Petrarca also opened the period of search and discovery of ancient books and works of art. He spared no pains to secure old manuscripts. In 1345, he found several of Cicero's letters at Verona, and also a portion of Quintilian which had been unknown since the 10th century, A copy of Homer he kept with care, though he could not read its contents. All the Greek he knew was a few rudiments learned from a faithless Calabrian, Barlaam. He was the first to collect a private library and had 200 volumes. His first thought in passing old convents was to hunt up books. He accumulated old coins and medals and advocated the preservation of ancient monuments. He seems also to have outlined the first mediaeval map of Italy .^
1 "The noble desire of fame," Par. xi. 85-117. See, on the subject, Burckhardt-Geiger, I. 164 sq. Pastor, I. 4 sq., calls special attention to this pursuit of the phantom, fame, by the Humanists at courts and from the people.
2 Robinson, Life, p. 336, says, " Petrarch's love for Cicero and Virgil springs from what one may call the fundamental Humanistic impulse, delight in the free play of mind among ideas that are stimulating and beautiful."
8 See Burckhardt-Geiger, II., Excursus LXI.
576 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Few authors have more fully enjoyed the benefit of their labors than Petrarca. He received daily letters of praise from all parts of Italy, from France, Germany and P^ngland. He expressed his satisfaction that the emperor of Byzantium knew him through his writings. Charles IV. invited him three times to Germany that he might listen to his eloquence and learn from him lessons of wisdom ; and Pope Gregory XI. on hearing of his death, ordered good cojjies of all his books. The next generation honored him, not as the singer of Laura, the wife of another, whose beauty and loveliness he praised in passionate verse,^ but as the scholar and sage.
The name of Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375, the third of the triumvirate of the Italian luminaries of the 14th century, has also a distinct place in the transition from the Middle Ages to the age of the Renaissance. With his two great predecessors he was closely linked, with Dante as his biogra- ]3her, with Petrarca as his warm frieuil. It was given to him to be the founder of easy and elegant Italian prose^. The world has had few writers who can equal him in realistic narration. 2 There is ground for the saying that Dante is admired, Petrarca praised, Boccaccio read. He also wrote poetry, but it does not constitute his claim to distinction.
Certaldo, twenty miles from Florence, was probably Boccaccio's birthplace. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine )^ father and a Parisian mother. After spending six years in •^ business and giving six to the law, — the whole period being \ looked upon by him later as lost time, — he devoted himself
',^ to literature. Seygj'al years he spent at the court of Naples, "^ where he fell in love with Maria, the married daughter of J*f King Robert, who yielded her honor to his advances. Later, flQ he represented her passion for him in L' Ajnorosa Fiammetta. ' Thus the three great Italian literati commemorate the love of women who were bound in matrimony to others, but
1 For Petrarca's attachment to Laura, see Koerting, p. 08(j sq., and Symonds, Ital. Lit., I. 92, and Tlie Danlesque aiul Platonic Ideals of Love, in Contemp. Rev., Sept., 1890.
2 Symonds, Ital. Lit., I. 99, says, "Boccaccio was the first to substitute a literature of the people for the literature of the learned classes and the aristocracy," etc.