Important as are the first two dialogues for the light they shed upon the poet's inner life, his motives and doubts, the interest of the Confessions culminates perhaps in the conversation of the third and last day, during which Petrarch's love for Laura and his longing for fame are considered.
Of the woman who is the theme of nearly all of Petrarch's Italian lyrics we know almost nothing. There is the memorable record of her death on the fly-leaf of her lovers favourite copy of Virgil, and two or three more or less vague references to his passion for her in his voluminous prose correspondence. In a Latin metrical epistle he has something to say of the matter to his friend Giacomo Colonna. The Confessions, however, afford us the clearest picture of the lover turned philosopher, and no one can read them without understanding the Italian sonnets better and grasping more clearly a fundamental contrast between the mediæval and modern theory of life.[3]
One of the most serious of Petrarch's earlier moral conflicts was that waged in his bosom between the monk and the lover. He was forced, if he would find rest, to reconcile, or decide between, the mediæval ecclesiastical and the modern secular conception of man's love for woman. By the ecclesiastical or monkish view of love is meant, of course, the belief in its essential depravity and inherent sinfulness, quite regardless of the particular relations between the lover and his beloved. Petrarch, although quite averse to theology, held some of the great Church Fathers, especially Augustine, in high esteem, and their doctrines of the close association of sexual love and original sin were familiar to him. He was, moreover, a priest himself and a devout adherent of the traditional faith of his Church. On the other hand he knew his classics well, and loved and revered the authors of antiquity to whom love was no sin. He revolted by nature against the theory that the deep and permanent fascination which woman exercises over man is devilish in its origin, as was taught by the mediæval preachers and illustrated by many a coarse and licentious tale; and in the dialogue, to which we now turn, he hotly defends the higher and purer conception of his affection. His veneration for Augustine, who consistently maintains the debasing nature of earthly love is, however, too profound to permit him in the end to repudiate altogether the teachings of asceticism.
To return to the dialogue. Augustine would finally strike off two golden manacles, love and fame, whose specious glitter so dazzles the poor captive that he reckons them his most precious possessions. None of his aspirations have ever seemed to him more noble than the very ones Augustine now reproaches him for. "What have I done to you," Francesco indignantly asks, "that you should seek to deprive me of my most glorious preoccupations and condemn to perpetual night the brightest portions of my soul?" It seems to him that his Confessor is indiscriminately condemning two quite different things when he declares love to be the maddest of all forms of madness. If love is sometimes the lowest form of passion it may also be the noblest activity of the soul. He can imagine nothing happier than the attraction which a truly noble woman has exercised over him. He has never loved aught but the beautiful, and if he is mistaken in his conception of love he prefers to remain so. To Augustine's ready objection that one may love even the beautiful shamefully, he replies, with ill-timed levity, that he has sinned neither in noun nor adverb and that Augustine must prove him to be ill before he tries his remedies, since physic has often undone a well man.
Augustine expresses his frank astonishment that a person of such parts should have allowed himself to be deceived by false blandishments during no less than sixteen years past. His lady's eyes will, however, one day be closed by death, then the lover will recall with shame his infatuation for the poor perishable body. Sickness and successive trials have already told upon her, and her lovely person has lost much of its pristine vigour. He does not question her virtues. He will grant that she is a queen, a saint, a goddess,—Phoebus's own sister, if her lover will have it so. Her supreme qualities, however, furnish no excuse for Francesco's errors. Obviously the most virtuous may be the object of an unworthy passion.
One thing at least I will say [Francesco exclaims], whatever I have achieved is due to her. I should never have been what I am, if there be any distinction or glory in that, had not the scattered seeds of virtue, which nature implanted in this breast, been cultivated by her through my noble attachment. She restrained my youthful spirit from every shameful act;... she led me to look toward higher things. Is it wonderful [he continues], that her noble fame has provoked in me a longing for a like reputation and has lightened the strenuous effort with which I pursued my object? How could I have done better in my youthful days than to please her who alone pleased me? For I cast aside a thousand seductions of pleasure in order to take up the serious tasks of life before my time. You know this well and yet you command me to forget, or love in only a half-hearted fashion, her who separated me from the vulgar company and guided me in all my chosen paths, stimulating my sluggish nature and rousing my dull intellect.[4]
To all this Augustine has two objections. In the first place, although Francesco's love may have saved him from minor errors, his anxiety for fame, which he attributes to it, has put him on the shortest road to spiritual death. In the second place, it is vain for him to maintain that he loves chiefly the soul; that he would have loved her spirit in even "a foul and knotty body (in squalido et nodoso corpore)," for he has but to interrogate the past to see that he has steadily degenerated since first he met his lady. She, indeed, has done all she could to keep him right. In spite of his prayers and allurements she maintained her womanly integrity, and although their ages and circumstances would have shaken the stoutest resolutions, she remained firm and unapproachable. In his effort to absolve and exalt her Petrarch of course condemns himself, and so justifies Augustine's contention. Love, in spite of our illusions about it, is but a passion for temporal things, and nothing so surely separates man from God. Let Francesco consider its pestiferous effects in his own case; how, suddenly, his life was dissolved in tears and sighs, how he spent sleepless nights with the name of the beloved ever on his lips; how he despised his usual pursuits, hated life, fled his fellow-beings and longed for sad death. Wasted and pale and restless, his eyes ever moist, his mind confused, his voice weak and hoarse,—no more miserable and distracted creature could be imagined.