Theological Origins of Modernity

50 chapter two
Th e church hierarchy in his view was corrupt. 23 He reproved the notoriously
greedy Cardinal Annibaldo, on one occasion, suggesting that it was
important for the church to possess gold but not be possessed by it. 24 In
Petrarch’s view this corruption was due in part to the subjection of Rome
to Avignon and the French, but it was also the manifestation of a deeper
spiritual failure that lay at the heart of medieval Christianity.
Petrarch believed that European history fell into four periods. Th e fi rst
two periods were guided by reason. 25 Th e fi rst of these was dominated by
Platonic metaphysics, and the second by the moral wisdom of Seneca and
the Stoics. In both of these reason aided human virtue. Th e third period,
which began with the Incarnation and ended in the fi ft h century, was supernaturally
guided. Th e fourth period, which drew on Aristotle’s attack
on Plato, was dominated by scholasticism and Averroism in particular. 26
Reason rather than revelation guided human life in this period as well, but
in this case it served to undermine rather than promote virtue.
Petrarch was dissatisfi ed with both realist scholasticism and nominalism
but for diff erent reasons. He was unequivocal in his attack on Averroism,
which he considered the most extreme form of realism. Th e basic
principle of Averroism places the intellect above every form of individuation,
considering it not as divided but as a unity. It is thus not the individual
self but being that is the object of thought. 27 Petrarch, like the nominalists,
saw this position as heretical. 28 Like the nominalists he also thought that
realist scholasticism was lost in Aristotelian categories and thus did not
encounter the ultimate reality of individual things. 29 While he may have
agreed with the nominalists on these matters, he detested their dialectical
approach, which seemed to him too oft en to be a mere fi ghting with words
with little concern for the truth. Here he was particularly irritated with
the “Brittani,” among whom he apparently included Scotus, Ockham, and
their followers. 30 Like many of his time he was fed up with what seemed to
be an interminable squabbling about matters distant from reality in terminology
that was impossible to understand. Th eology, he felt, was becoming
increasingly distinct from piety, and, with its abstract language and
technical terms, it had moved as far as possible from anything that might
actually persuade or inspire ordinary human beings. 31
Petrarch’s relations with the Franciscans were also ambivalent. He
discussed Francis of Assisi in Th e Solitary Life, although only briefl y, and
while he seems to have admired the general goals of the Franciscan order,
he vacillated between a view that their austerity was overly severe and his
suspicion that it was oft en insincere. 32 Moreover, it is doubtful that Petrarch
wished to see all Christians living according to Franciscan standards. In