PETRARCA, FRANCESCO

PETRARCH, FRANCESCO. —

I. HIS LIFE

Together with his younger brother Gherardo, Petrarch studied in Provence, where his father had moved: first at Carpentras, then at Montpellier; however, he went on to perfect his studies at Bologna, continuing his legal studies in deference to his father’s wishes. In 1326, recalled to Avignon by the death of Ser Petrarca, the two brothers were free to dispose of their lives as they wished. Petrarch abandoned legal studies for literary pursuits; he embraced the ecclesiastical state, though only to the extent of receiving minor orders, which, through the enjoyment of some benefice, shielded him from financial hardship. He made himself known at Avignon for his wit, learning, and elegant, refined life. Among the prominent figures who sought him as a familiar, he preferred Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, with whom he remained for a long time—not as a servant, but rather as a son or, better still, an affectionate brother. Meanwhile, he formed numerous friendships that enabled him to become the master of a vast school of minds bound by a commonality of interests.

This period proved decisive for Petrarch’s definitive formation. First, there was his amorous experience: on 6 April 1327, he met Laura in the church of Santa Chiara in Avignon and was seized by that love which was to remain the only one of his life. The woman’s virtue soon tempered his ardor, and little by little that love faded; yet he always retained a vivid memory of it and its loss. Indeed, through long contemplation, he came to reflect the whole of his spiritual life in II. At that time, Petrarch could have cared for other women; he could not, however, love them. No less important were his cultural and artistic experiences: he broadened his learning both through tireless study of the books that the Avignonese milieu abundantly provided and through frequent travels. Among several shorter journeys, two were of particular importance for his education: the first, in 1333, took him to Paris, Flanders, and southern Germany; the second, in 1337, to Italy. Alongside this ever-growing and refined learning, he pursued literary activity in both the vernacular and Latin, through which he gradually achieved that artistic maturity which may be considered attained after his thirtieth year, as evidenced by the writings of the second half of his life—the only ones, with few exceptions, that he allowed to reach us.

The year 1337 was of great significance: his visit to Rome, fundamental for Petrarch the humanist; the birth of his son Giovanni; and his residence in the sweet solitude of Valchiusa. In 1341, a third period in Petrarch’s life began: that of alternating residences in Italy and Provence. The occasion for his first stay in Italy was the journey he undertook to receive, in Rome on the Capitol, the laurel crown, earned by his fame as a poet and most learned man of letters (8 April 1341). For nearly a year, he accepted the hospitality of Azzo da Correggio, lord of Parma, and there he came to love and prize the secluded dwelling of Selvapiana, his Cisalpine Helicon. Then he returned to Provence for a dense and important two-year period: the birth of Francesca, his second natural daughter; his brother Gherardo’s entry into the Carthusian order; and signs of a spiritual crisis that led Petrarch to reflect on the vanity of the passions to which he had long been subject. Yet no decisively new orientation can be discerned in his life.

He crossed the Alps again in September 1343 as a papal ambassador to the court of Naples; and once more he stayed for a long time in Parma. But when the Visconti laid siege to the city, he fled dramatically and perilously in February 1345. By the end of the same year, he returned to his beloved Valchiusa, where he remained quietly and productively for nearly two years. In 1347, he greeted with enthusiasm the news that the Roman people had risen against the nobles and elected Cola di Rienzo as tribune, and soon he seized the opportunity to return to Italy. From Rome, however, he received information that portrayed Cola differently from what he had hoped. He then went to Parma, where he held a benefice, and from 1348 he served as archdeacon; but he often traveled: to Verona, Mantua, Rome, and Padua, where he obtained a canonry.

In 1348, in Parma, the news of Laura’s death on 6 April was a new invitation to meditate on the vanity of worldly things. In 1351, he wished to revisit Valchiusa, to which he was bound by his sweetest memories, but he did not stay long. In 1353, having definitively left Provence, Petrarch accepted the invitation of Cardinal Giovanni Visconti and settled in Milan, first in a small house near Sant’Ambrogio, then in the monastery of San Simpliciano outside the walls. From Giovanni, and later from Bernabò and Galeazzo, Petrarch received numerous solemn assignments as secretary and orator: he negotiated with Genoa, Venice, the Novarese, Emperor Charles IV, the rebel Iacopo Bussolari, and the King of France; yet he never wished to accept a fixed office, so jealous was he of his freedom. Petrarch remained in Milan for a full nine years; he left in 1361 to flee a pestilence, and, at the invitation of Francesco da Carrara, he took refuge in Padua, where he soon received the news of his son Giovanni’s death. The spread of the pestilence soon forced him to move again. He then went to Venice, where he remained for five years, honored by the government of the Republic and comforted by the presence of his daughter Francesca, who had married.

After brief stays in Pavia and Padua, he chose as his home for his final years a small villa at Arquà, in the Euganean Hills. Here, as once at Valchiusa and Selvapiana, he was able to live as he preferred: a man of tranquil spirit, far from tumult, noise, and cares, continually reading and writing. But his health was much shaken: from 1369 he suffered from quartan fevers; in 1370 a severe syncope from which he never fully recovered. On the morning of 19 July 1374, his household found him dead.

II. HIS WORKS

### 1. In verse
#### a) *Rerum Vulgarum Fragmenta*
This is the title chosen by the poet; yet the collection is commonly designated by the title *Canzoniere* or *Rime Sparse*, derived from its opening line (*"Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono"*). As early as 1336, the poet began working on a collection of his selected poems and continued to do so intermittently throughout his life, always increasing the number of compositions and modifying the general arrangement of the collection. In all, it is possible to recognize nine different stages, the last of which is preserved in the codex Vat. lat. 3195, transcribed partly by Giovanni Malpaghini and partly by the poet himself. In this final stage, which is reproduced in all modern editions, the collection is divided into two parts and comprises 366 compositions (317 sonnets, 29 canzoni, 9 sestinas, 7 ballads, 4 madrigals), the oldest dating from about 1330, the most recent from the poet’s final years. In pre-Petrarchan collections, it was customary to arrange poems by separating sonnets from canzoni; the poet, however, wished to adopt a basic chronological criterion, though deviating from it when he deemed necessary to preserve that organic character which he intended to impress upon every work of his.

#### b) *Triumphi*
This is a short poem, also in the vernacular, in six parts (*Triumphus Cupidinis, Pudicitiae, Mortis, Famae, Temporis, Eternitatis*), which the poet was unable to bring to a definitive form. The manuscripts preserve traces of the complex elaboration of the work, bearing witness to multiple versions, among which it is difficult to determine one that reflects the poet’s final intention. The poem is in terza rima, in the form of a vision, following a scheme that links it to Dante’s *Divine Comedy*. It is not yet certain when the poet began its composition; but it is known that he worked on it for twenty, perhaps even thirty years, repeatedly modifying it, and that he was still engaged with it a few months before his death.

#### c)
Not all the poems written by the poet found a place, as is well known, in the *Canzoniere*. Admirers of his work, to whom it was dedicated, requested a compendium from him, but they also preserved the so-called *extravagantes*.

#### d) *Africa*
Like the *Triumphi*, this poem also remained unfinished and was published posthumously by Pier Paolo Vergerio. It consists of nine books, some of them quite fragmentary, in hexameters, and deals with the exploits of Scipio in Africa. The poem, in Latin, begun in 1338 or 1339, was carried far forward before the death of Robert of Anjou (1343), to whom it was intended to be dedicated. Subsequently, the poet worked on it repeatedly, with additions and modifications, but did not complete it, despite the urgings of friends and the great anticipation.

#### e) *Epystole metrici*
As early as 1550, the poet thought of a collection of poems to dedicate to Marco Barbato da Sulmona, and he worked on it for many years with numerous revisions. Yet the collection did not receive its definitive form from the poet. It comprises 66 Latin epistles in hexameters, in three books, arranged in a basic chronological order. However, with *Epistle* III, 12, every rule ceases for the remaining 22 epistles, which are evidently appended in a haphazard manner. Excluding the verses on the death of his mother, all the epistles belong to the two decades 1333–1354.

#### f) *Bucolicum Carmen*
These are twelve Latin eclogues, collected in their definitive transcription by the poet himself (cod. Vat. lat. 3358). As was customary in this genre, these eclogues also concealed an allegorical meaning; yet today the pastoral fiction often obscures the underlying significance.

#### g)
A few Latin poems that did not find a place in the collections begun or completed by the poet have been preserved by his admirers.

### 2. In prose
#### a) *Secretum meum*
The subtitle *De secreto conflictu curarum mearum libri tres* clarifies the content of the work, which has an autobiographical character. It is an introspective inquiry concerning moral and religious problems, which the poet intended solely for himself and did not publish. The work was composed between the autumn of 1342 and the winter of 1343.

#### b) *De vita solitaria*
This is a treatise in two books dedicated to Filippo di Cabassole, bishop of Cavaillon. It was written in 1340, but underwent revisions and expansions much later, and its publication was delayed by two decades. The first book illustrates the advantages of a life removed from the anxieties and troubles of those who engage in worldly ambitions and disputes, while the second provides examples of illustrious figures who experienced the solitary life.

#### c) *De otio religiosorum*
This is a treatise in two books, composed in 1347 and dedicated to the Carthusians of Montrieux. It reprises the theme of the previous work but with particular reference to the contemplative life of religious.

#### d) *Psalmii poenitentiales*
Seven prayers consisting of prose verses. Their composition certainly predates 1347.

#### e) *Itinerarium breve de Ianua usque ad Ierusalem et Terram Sanctam*
A brief guide to the lands that Giovanni di Mandello was to traverse on his journey to the Holy Land. It dates from 1358.

#### f) *De viris illustribus*
A major historical work left unfinished. From the research of G. Martellotti (v. *Linee di sviluppo dell’umanesimo petrarchesco*, in *Studi Petrarcheschi*, 2 [1949], pp. 51–80), it appears that the poet conceived the work as a series of biographies from Romulus to Titus, and that at a later stage he greatly expanded the design, beginning instead with Adam. Of the first design, 23 biographies remain; of the second, 12.

PETRARCA, FRANCESCO – The poet’s autograph note on Laura in the Virgil said to be his – Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

The work was dedicated; he asked the Father for a compendium, but even this only gathered the first fourteen biographies. Also incomplete and late is the very extensive biography of Caesar (De gestis Cesariis), probably not intended to be included in the De viris.

g) Rerum memorandarum libri: another historical work of vast design; this too remained unfinished. The Father had intended to collect examples of cardinal virtues, but he managed to prepare only the rough draft of a small part of the work: the first four books, which were composed between December 1343 and February 1345, when the Father fled from the besieged Parma.

h) De remediis utriusque fortunae: a vast manual written for anyone wishing to conduct themselves well in every circumstance of prosperous or adverse fortune. The work is dedicated to Azzo da Correggio and divided into two parts, with 122 and 132 dialogues respectively between Reason, Joy, Hope and between Reason, Pain, Fear. This moral encyclopedia offers, for every circumstance of life, the example of a great man of the past, and thus invites one to conform existence to the classical ideal. It is believed, on the basis of a testimony by Boccaccio, that the work was published at the end of 1366.

i) Invectiva contra quendam magni status hominem sed nullius scientiae aut virtutis: this is the exact title of the brief work, long known by the erroneous title of Invectiva contra quendam Gallum innominatum sed in dignitate positum. The personal enemy against whom the Father violently vents his spleen is Cardinal Giovanni di Caraman. The invective was composed during his stay with the Visconti, between 1354 and 1359.

l) Invectiva contra medicum: a work in four books of violent polemic against an unidentified physician of Pope Clement VI. More than as an outlet for personal resentment, the work is of interest for its defence of poetry against science and practical activities. The first book (originally a letter in which the Father replied to a writing by the physician) was composed in 1332; a reply by the physician provoked another lengthy response by the Father (books II–IV), composed in 1353.

m) De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia: in this pamphlet, dedicated to Donato degli Albanzani, the Father reaffirms his aversion to any science that does not adhere strictly to the moral problem and reacts against the blind and excessive reverence for Aristotle. The occasion for the pamphlet was provided by four Venetian Averroists who had defined the Father as a good man, but ignorant. Completed in 1367, the De ignorantia then underwent several textual revisions in the two autographs that survive: Vat. lat. 3359 and Hamilt. 493.

n) Epystola contra eum qui maledixit Italie: the Father argued, in a letter to Urban V, for the advisability of returning the seat of the Church to Rome. Friar Giovanni di Hesdin replied, interpreting the thought of those who considered Avignon preferable. The Father replied with this letter, composed in 1373 and addressed to Uguccione da Tiene, in which he extols Rome and the superiority of the Latins. Since the 16th century, the letter has been erroneously titled Apologia contra cuiusdam Galli calumnias.

o) Rerum familiarium libri: a collection of 350 letters, written over a span of forty years. The idea for such a collection arose in the Father as early as 1349, but the definitive arrangement was only achieved in 1366. The Father dedicated the collection to his friend Ludovico di Campinia.

p) Rerum senilium libri: a collection of letters in 17 books, dedicated to Francesco Nelli. It comprises about 125 epistles, written between 1361 and 1374. Death prevented the Father from giving the Senilia the definitive arrangement that the Familiares had received.

q) Liber sine nomine: a collection of 19 letters of a political-religious nature and of the harshest criticism against the Avignon curia. By publishing letters in which unpleasant truths were openly stated for many, the Father wished to protect the recipients by omitting their names.

r) About seventy letters that did not find a place in the collections prepared by the Father have been preserved by his admirers. These are the so-called Variae.

s) Incomplete is the epistle Posteritati, in which the Father recounts his life up to 1351; it was probably written in 1371–72, though some consider it to be twenty years earlier.

### III. PERSONALITY

The lyrics of the *Canzoniere* are almost all of amorous subject; yet the Poet expresses, beneath the words of love’s sorrow, that more profound sorrow which constitutes the secret of his personality. This is in perfect accord with that literary tradition, particularly of the Stilnovisti, which counselled reducing every other experience to the meaning of love and the beloved woman. He was not a philosopher; and one of the most striking features distinguishing him from the Stilnovisti is precisely the absence of that theorizing with a scholastic background which occupies their verses. But he was a psychologist; and here, instead, the contacts between the Poet and the Stilnovisti are evident: the psychological inquiry into the entire course of his own spirit constitutes precisely the matter of the *Canzoniere*.

The Poet admits in the *Secretum* to having cultivated earthly passions; two above all: love for Laura and the desire for glory. Yet in him the moral sense was no less awake, and he felt deeply the problem of human destiny; all in full correspondence with sincere religious faith and with the disposition, indeed with the taste, for meditation. What pleased him in earthly things thus acquired, in his eyes, the character of a sinful bond, and spontaneously gave rise to the anguished questions he posed, aware that attachment to earthly things is irreconcilable with full dedication to God. His brother Gherardo reached this state; not he: “I hate my sins, yet I am crushed beneath the mountain of my miseries, and it takes my breath away. Many times I have sought to flee and have thought to shake off the ancient yoke; but I have done so in vain.” In reality, he does not love the good as much as would be necessary to resist the allure of what is sinful. What remains to him? To prostrate himself before God, to implore His aid, and tenaciously to seek liberation, endeavoring to break one by one the many snares that bind him to the earth. The hope was for complete liberation, but since this did not come to pass, the *Canzoniere* remains to bear witness to the conflict between the human and the divine.

Such is the essential character of the sorrow born of love; yet that which arises from an unresolved discord intertwines and complicates itself with other veins of sorrow. Observe, indeed: the Poet’s position is not that of one who, though deploring his own weakness, fully enjoys earthly things; on the contrary, he is far from finding complete satisfaction. What prevents this in the Poet is, obsessively, the sense of the fleeting nature of life. In every work of his one may discern allusions to time that flies, to our life which is a precipitate rush toward death, to the world which likewise hastens toward its ineluctable end. Profound and manifold are the consequences: first, a dismay that saddens his entire life, and then a concern to intensively use the little time granted, and by contrast the fear of seeing vanish in an instant what is dear, and the desperate reaching out toward something not subject to decay. All this produces an anxious state that immensely wearies the Poet: a state of anxiety to which are joined a sense of weariness and a desire for repose. Two paths alone are possible: to find quiet either in the human or in the divine (and as we have seen, this is unrealizable), or else to entrust oneself to death. But not even this: in death the Poet sees the supreme evil of life, the seal of transience that dismays him, the definitive renunciation of that earthly happiness which in him is a powerful desire.

This, in its most apparent lines, is the definition of the emotional matter of which the *Canzoniere* is woven; yet other observations may easily be gathered when one seeks to define the character of the poetry born of love. It has been noted more than once in the *Canzoniere* the almost absolute absence of realistic details; lacking, to put it with Mazzoni, “a more vivid approach by the poet to a precise reality.” The explanation is not difficult. The Poet wished to entrust to the *Canzoniere* those secret thoughts not bound to the various events of each day, but which constitute the intimate substance of spiritual life; they lie latent, yet surface in meditation when the individual is in colloquy with his own conscience. Then it is not the events of daily life that stand out in fantasy, but another sequence: that which corresponds to the main lines of our personality. Hence it is that in the *Canzoniere* we see ever the same evanescent landscape: it is that unique one which the Poet dreamed and which alone perfectly harmonized with his spiritual climate. The same may be said of the image of Laura: her attitudes, her words, her aspect are not those of reality, but represent a figuration constantly cherished by the Poet’s fancy. And indeed the *Canzoniere* expresses the yearning for a profound and distant love, whose memory and whose regret have ended by personifying the vaster sorrow that is in the poet’s very nature. What the Poet contemplates does not exist in reality, and lives only, immutable, in his spirit. This is the reason why no difference is felt between the lyrics of the first and second parts of the *Canzoniere*, which therefore cannot be considered as the history of a love affair; rather as testimony that the desires, hopes, anguishes, and sorrows of the Poet were ever the same, at thirty as at sixty. This observation is important because it reveals that the Poet’s spiritual climate underwent no development, even if the arrangement of the lyrics in the *Canzoniere* would seem to show a progressive ascent from the human to the divine; a point confirmed by the *Trionfi*, which likewise reveal the intention of underscoring how that “longed-for peaceful haven” was attained. Death is there finally accepted as serene detachment from earthly things and calm repose in eternal rest.

Yet in the *Triumph of Eternity*, which belongs to the last months and would be the triumph of the divine, that is of the immutable, over the transience of earthly things, the Poet’s thought turns to Laura to imagine an otherworldly realm in which the story of his love might be renewed, purified of all that is painful, conflicting, fleeting. Thus the Poet makes his supreme, vain attempt to reconcile heaven and earth by drying up the very source of his suffering.

On the other hand, it would be mistaken to suppose that the spiritual problems afflicting the Poet find in the *Canzoniere* their immediate and anguished urgency. It is indeed true, as many have noted, that when the Poet analyzes and judges and strives to express in literary form the discord and the inquietude that derive from it, he looks from on high and, so to speak, dominates his suffering. Hence the passions that constitute the emotional substance of the *Canzoniere* are filtered through a counterbalancing confession characteristic of one who looks into himself to render rationally account of his own spiritual vicissitudes. And he is right who observes that literary elaboration constitutes one aspect of this mastery over passion: the sole, true joy granted the Poet. He himself knew well that in one of his poems he has St. Augustine say in the *Secretum*: “I delighted in its sweetness and marveled how such a sweet song could burst forth from the depths of the soul.”

Petrarch’s doctrine, which in the ancient world sought refuge, finding his own time contemptible, and the sympathy with which he approached that great past, caused an enormous quantity of material drawn from classical sources to flow into his writings. Two to four groups can be distinguished: there are quotations of others’ words with explicit declaration of the source; then reminiscences: some expressions of a classical author embedded in the period for the sake of elegance; then derivations from others’ pages subjected to profound verbal alteration; and finally—this being the group that closely concerns the poet in the vernacular—the elements that Petrarch deeply re-lived and that, filtering through his taste, culture, and spiritual climate, emerge in his writings as something new and entirely Petrarchan. Thus he sought to confer upon vernacular poetry that new dignity which would place it alongside Latin. From regularity, composed and flowing, he aimed at an unruffled and untwisted style, clear and lucid; he selected his vocabulary, making it refined and harmonious; and enveloped it in a new music that possessed the soul of a melodious elegy. Thus Petrarch bequeathed to the centuries the Italian poetic language, accompanied by a taste for noble and modulated expression, within an aristocratic and somewhat precious atmosphere.

The aspiration toward an ideal world, removed from the inadequacies of concrete reality, lies at the root of Petrarchan humanism: the study of antiquity out of hatred for the present and the search for a spiritual perfection that Petrarch saw neither in himself nor around him.

Without a precise line, his thought was contradictory, his practical activity inconsistent, and his declarations of patriotism insincere. Little credence was given to his accents of love for Italy and his laments over its wounds, judged as the fruit and inspiration of something not serious and largely literary. Even today it is repeated that Petrarch, enclosed in the egoism of his own humanistic and iconoclastic ideal, subordinated everything to it and praised what could favor it, while he scorned what might disturb II. Yet in the numerous pages of political subject matter, which constitute no small part of his Latin production, it is not difficult to find proofs of clear thought and ardent feeling. More than once he proclaimed himself a Roman citizen with pride and set forth that faith and reverence which led him to venerate and love Rome above all other cities. To those who pointed out how degraded his own time’s Rome was compared to the ancient one, he replied: “The walls and palaces have fallen into ruin, but the glory of her name remains immortal.” And he exalted Rome as “the capital of the world, queen of all cities, seat of the Empire, stronghold of the Catholic faith, source of every memorable example.” According to Petrarch, only the dominion of Rome, restored as mistress of the world with the aid of all Italian forces, can provide for the well-being of peoples in universal peace and the wisdom of just government. Hence, in his eyes, everything that delays or impedes the restoration of the ancient Empire is execrable: the discord among Rome’s own citizens, the strife among Italian cities springing from local ambitions that fail to consider the general interest, the exile of the Church kept away from Rome by the predominance of the French clergy, the recalcitrance of the “barbarian” peoples to the august Roman dominion, and the sluggishness and somnolence of the Italians. Conversely, every attempt to restore to Rome and Italy dignity and power seemed to him praiseworthy and inspiring. Upon hearing of Cola di Rienzo’s attempt to renew the ancient Roman republic, he extolled the enterprise and mourned it until the last days of his life. He recalled how “by his counsel and deed alone not Rome alone but all Italy arose to such hope, and the Italian name resounded far, and the glory of Rome shone forth with new light.” Thus in 1352, and again more than twenty years later: “How all Italy rose at once; how the Roman name, illustrious and formidable, reached to the ends of the earth!” Petrarch believed that the first step toward the restoration of the ancient Empire, indispensable for orderly human coexistence, was the calming of discord within Rome itself; and that the city, both classical and Christian, should regain dignity and power through the presence of both Church and Empire.

When the Pope returned to Rome, Petrarch believed, Rome would regain itself, Rome would regain peace, and Italy and the world would regain honor and an end to misfortune. For this reason he entreated Benedict XII, then Clement VI, and finally Urban V, joining his voice to those of St. Catherine and St. Bridget in imploring the Pope’s return to the place where Peter died, to the city hallowed by the blood of so many martyrs. Urban had granted this longing, but only briefly; and when the Pope again set sail into exile, Petrarch administered him great reproach: “Quo vadis, Domine?” This conception of a classical and Christian Rome, seat of Empire and Church, teacher of justice and piety to the world, also resolved for Petrarch the problem of liberty. More than once he declared that true liberty is enjoyed only under the rule of a mild and just king. Yet, he observed, such government does not exist in the world; and therefore “tyranny is everywhere; if there are no tyrants, the peoples tyrannize.”

When one seeks to grasp panoramically the influence exerted by Petrarch on the formation of literary civilization, one has the impression of standing before one of the most notable currents in the history of the human spirit. To Petrarch the poet and humanist, Renaissance Italy owes everything: the poetic language, taste, the manner of conceiving life, the character of culture. In our own nineteenth century an attempt was made to create the myth of Dante as the tutelary deity of much of our literature; this is an error: it is to Petrarchism that we owe those resonances which, woven through the centuries, have constituted a profound unitary character. “Vedi tav. LXXXIII.”

BIBL.:
et multorum ignorantia, ed. by M. Cappelli, Paris 1905; Epistola contra eum qui maledixit Italie, V. text ed. by E. Cocchia, in Atti Reale Acc. Arch., Lett. e B. Arti di Napoli, new series, 7 (1919), pp. 91-202; Rerum familiararium libri, critical text ed. by V. Rossi and U. Bosco, Florence 1933-42 (vols. X-XIII of the national ed.); Rerum senilium libri, V. text in the 16th-c. ed., trans. by G. Fracassetti, 2 vols., Florence 1869-70; Liber sine nomine, V. critical text in P. Puiz, Petrarches «Buch ohne Namen» und die päpstliche Kurie, Halle 1925; Epistola de rebus familiaribus et variae, ed. by G. Fracassetti, Florence 1863; Posteritati, V. text and trans. by E. Carrara, in F. P., Lettere autobiografiche, Milan 1928; for some other writings ed. by A. Hortis, Scritti inediti di F. P., Trieste 1874 and M. Vattasso, I codici petrarcheschi della Bibl. Vaticana, Rome 1908, app. III.
Bibliographical repertories: A. Hortis, Catalogo delle opere a stampa di F. P., esistenti nella Petrarchesca rossettiana, Trieste 1874; F. Ferrazzi, Bibliogr. petrarchesca, Bassano 1877; E. Calvi, Bibl. analitica petrarchesca (1877-1904), Rome 1904; L. Suttina, Bibl. delle opere a stampa intorno a F. P., esistenti nella Biblioteca rossettiana, Trieste 1908; M. Fowler, Catalogue of the Petrarch collection bequeathed by W. Fiske to Cornell University Library, Oxford 1916; G. Prezzolini, Petrorio bibl. della storia e della critica della lett. di dal 1902 al 1923, Rome 1937-39, pp. 765-80; id., Dal 1933 al '42, New York 1946, pp. 108-16; N. D. Evola, Bibl. degli studi sulla lett. di (1920-34), Milan 1941; P. G. Ricci, Studi sull'Umanesimo e sul Rinascimento ital. nel 1950, in Rinascimento, 2 (1951), pp. 385-447; important bibliographical contributions in the journal Studi petrarcheschi, directed by C. Calcaterra, of whom see also the volume Nella lettera del P., Bologna 1942.

Studies: general treatments: E. Carrara, P., Rome 1937; N. Sapegno, Il Trecento, 3rd ed., Milan 1940, pp. 165-276; C. Calcaterra, Il P. e il petrarchesimo, in the volume Questi e corretti di storia letteraria, 1915, pp. 167-273; on biography: A. Foresti, Aneddoti della vita di F. P., Brescia 1928; on the dating of the letters: E. H. Wilkins, The Prose Letters of Petrarch: A Manual, New York 1951; on Petrarch as poet: F. De Sanctis, Saggio critico su P., new ed. by B. Croce, Naples 1907; B. Croce, La poesia del P., in Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte, Bari 1933, pp. 65-80; on the internal arrangement of the «Canzoniere» and its various stages: E. H. Wilkins, The Making of the «Canzoniere» and other Petrarchan Studies, Rome 1951; on Petrarch’s humanism: P. de Nolhac, Pétarque et l'humanisme, 2 vols., 2nd ed., Paris 1907, supplemented by U. Bosco, Il P. e l'umanesimo filologico, in Giorn. stor. della letter. it., 120 (1943), pp. 65 ff.; G. Billanovich, Lo scritto del P., Rome 1947; on Petrarch’s politics: R. De Mattei, Il sentimento politico del P., Florence 1944; on his religious thought and relations with Christian writers: G. Gerosa, L'unanimesimo religioso del P., Turin 1927; A. Carlini, Il pensiero filosofico-religioso di F. P., Jesi 1944; U. Mariani, Il P. e gli Agostiniani, Rome 1946; on Petrarch’s influence, cf. the cited study by Calcaterra in Questioni e correnti di storia letteraria.