Tag: Petrarch

I’ve come close to the legacy left by Petrarch a number of times—on a train zipping between Bologna and Venice; in the Beinecke Library holding his parchments in my hands; and in Parma, which was once his home town.

His connection to Parma was an intermittent one because his residence there was one of a handful across the region to which he had access as the Canon and the Archbishop of the diocese, a career choice he made so he could spend as much time writing as possible. He could have had far greater material rewards in his choices of positions but he refused appointments that would have taken him higher in the church’s political pecking order so that he could concentrate on his literary works.

The heights to which he did rise were strenuous enough, requiring a fair amount of travel, and demanding he be a confidant to and a sounding board for popes, bishops, emperors and kings. The fact he was on the church’s dole gave him enough financial support that he was able to carve out a fair amount of time for crafting poetry, but it also meant he was expected to live a celibate life. It was truly thrilling to sit for a while just outside the courtyard of the Bishop’s Palace in the Piazza del Duomo looking toward the cathedral—both extant when Petrarch was a clergyman in town.