Theological Origins of Modernity

48 chapter two
little to settle his soul, and he struggled throughout his life to master this
passion. 8
Having run through his inheritance, Petrarch found himself in need
of money and decided to pursue a clerical career, taking up minor orders
and entering the service of Cardinal Colonna in 1330. 9 Colonna was more
a patron than an employer and allowed Petrarch considerable time for
traveling, book collecting, reading, and especially writing. He remained
nominally in Colonna’s service until 1347, although during this period
he traveled a great deal and spent much of his time in a small house he
had purchased in a beautiful valley not far from Avignon, known as the
Vaucluse. Aft er leaving Colonna’s service, Petrarch derived support from
various benefi ces he had obtained over the years and from several other
patrons, including the infamous Visconti, a family of Milanese tyrants.
He lived chiefl y in Parma, Milan, Padua, and Venice. His literary production
was voluminous, although due to his habit of repeated revision it
was not all published during his lifetime. Early in his service to Cardinal
Colonna, he produced the fi rst scholarly edition of Livy. A series of important
works followed: his great collection of lyric poems generally known as
the Songbook (Canzoniere); a collection of exemplary lives entitled Illustrative
Lives (De viris illustribus); an epic poem on Scipio Africanus’s triumph
over Hannibal called Africa; an intensely introspective and self-critical dialogue
between himself and Augustine called My Secret (Secretum meum);
a great work extolling the private over the public life called On the Solitary
Life (De vita solitario); and his most popular work, Remedies for Fortune
Fair and Foul (De remediis utriusque fortunae), which was widely read
throughout Europe for well over three hundred years. In addition, on the
model of Cicero’s quasi-autobiographical Letters to Atticus, Petrarch published
four diff erent collections of his letters, including a number of letters
to ancient authors. 10 He received the laurel crown for poetry in Rome in
1341 and was compared favorably both while alive and aft er his death to
Cicero and Virgil.
While Petrarch’s literary production had a profound impact upon his
contemporaries and successors, his lifelong attempt to resurrect and popularize
the great literary and philosophical works of the ancient world was
equally important to the humanist enterprise and to the Renaissance itself.
By the time of his death Petrarch possessed the largest private library in
Europe, and it was this collection that served as the foundation for the
studia humanitatis. 11 Petrarch was also a lifelong supporter not merely of
the resurrection of Roman literature but of the reinstitution of the Roman
state and the return of the papacy to Rome. He supported the attempts of