Petrarch himself gives us an account of their first meeting.[408]
"In days gone by," he says in a letter to Boccaccio,[409] "I was hurrying across Central Italy in midwinter; you hastened to greet me, not only with affection, the message of soul to soul, but in person, impelled by a wonderful desire to see one you had never yet beheld, but whom nevertheless you were minded to love. You had sent before you a piece of beautiful verse, thus showing me first the aspect of your genius and then of your person. It was evening and the light was fading, when, returning from my long exile, I found myself at last within my native walls. You welcomed me with a courtesy and respect greater than I merited, recalling the poetic meeting of Anchises with the king of Arcadia, who, "in the ardour of youth," longed to speak with the hero and to press his hand.[410] Although I did not, like him, stand "above all others," but rather beneath, your zeal was none the less ardent. You introduced me, not within the walls of Pheneus, but into the sacred penetralia of your friendship. Nor did I present you with a "superb quiver and arrows of Lycia," but rather with my sincere and unchangeable affection. While acknowledging my inferiority in many respects, I will never willingly concede it in this either to Nisus or to Pythias or to Lælius.—Farewell."
Thus began a friendship that lasted nearly twenty-five years. They were, says Filippo Villani, "one soul in two bodies."
But Petrarch did not remain long in Florence; after a few days he hurried on to Rome, whence he wrote to Boccaccio on his arrival:—
"... After leaving you I betook myself, as you know, to Rome, where the year of Jubilee has called—sinners that we are—almost all Christendom. In order not to be condemned to the burden of travelling alone I chose some companions for the way; of whom one, the oldest, by the prestige of his age and his religious profession, another by his knowledge and talk, others by their experience of affairs and their kind affection, seemed likely to sweeten the journey that nevertheless was very tiring. I took these precautions, which were rather wise than happy as the event proved, and I went with a fervent heart, ready to make an end at last of my iniquities. For, as Horace says, 'I am not ashamed of past follies, but I should be, if now I did not end them.'[411] Fortune, I hope, has not and will not be able to alter my resolution in anything...."[412]
But as he himself seems to have feared, he was unlucky that day, for as he passed with his companions up the hillside out of Bolsena he was kicked badly on the leg by his companion's horse and came to Rome with difficulty, suffering great pain all the time he was there. He seems to have reached the City on November 1, and to have left it again early in December for Arezzo, his birthplace, where he was received with extraordinary honour. Thence he returned to Florence, where he again saw Boccaccio with his friends Lapo da Castiglionchio and Francescho Nelli, whose father had been Gonfalonier of Justice and who himself became Secretary to Niccolò Acciaiuoli when he was Grand Seneschal of Naples. Nelli was in Holy Orders and Prior of SS. Apostoli. Lapo was a man of great learning; he now presented Petrarch with a copy of the newly discovered Institutions of Quintillian.
In the New Year Petrarch left Florence, and three months later we find Boccaccio visiting him in Padua as ambassador for the republic, which, no doubt to his delight and very probably at his suggestion, wished to offer the great poet a chair in her new university. For partly in rivalry with Pisa, partly to attract foreigners and even new citizens after the plague,[413] the republic had founded a new university in Florence at the end of 1348, to which, in May, 1349, Pope Clement VI had conceded all the privileges and liberties of the universities of Paris and Bologna. For some reason or another, however, the new university had not brought to Florence either the fame or the population she desired. It was therefore a brilliant and characteristic policy which prompted her to invite the most famous man of learning of the day to accept a chair in it; for if Petrarch could have been persuaded to accept the offer, the university of Florence would have easily outshone any other then in existence: all Italy and half Europe might well have flocked thither.
The offer thus made, and if at Boccaccio's suggestion, then so far as he was concerned in all good faith, was characteristic in its impudence or astonishing in its generosity according to the point of view, for it will be remembered that Florence had banished Petrarch's father and confiscated his goods and all such property as it could lay its hands on two years before the birth of his son in 1302. With him into exile went his young wife. They found a refuge in the Ghibelline city of Arezzo, where for this cause Petrarch was born. Even in 1350, the year in which the poet entered Florence for the first time, the decree of banishment was in force against him; had he been less famous, less well protected, he would have been in peril of his life. As it was, Florence dared not attack him; nor, seeing the glory he had won, did she wish to do anything but claim a share in it.
It was doubtless this consideration and some remembrance of her humiliation before the contempt of that other exile who had died in Ravenna, that prompted Florence, always so business-like, to try to repair the wrong she had done to Petrarch. So she decided to return him in money the value of the property confiscated from his father, and to send Boccaccio on the delicate mission of persuading him to accept the offer she now made him of a chair in her university.[414] With a letter then from the Republic, Boccaccio set out for Padua in the spring of 1351, meeting Petrarch there, as De Sade tells us, on April 6, the anniversary of the day of Petrarch's first meeting with Laura and of her death.
