This visit to his father's native city of Florence had suggested to its people the idea of re-establishing the distinguished son of their exiled fellow-citizen in his rights; they even extended to him an invitation to occupy a position in their newly founded university. For these attentions the poet thanked the Florentines warmly, but discreetly put aside the suggestion of the university position. He had estimated fairly the quality of Florentine admiration, and preferred the patronage of the despots. He felt, instinctively, the danger to his reputation from continued contact with his carping, novelty-loving, outspoken compatriots. Some years later (1363), in a moment of irritation at the comments made by the Florentines upon a portion of his great epic which had, by accident, fallen into their hands, he writes to Boccaccio that the wise prince, Frederick II., who knew the nation well, concluded that "all familiarity with the Italians should be avoided, since they are extremely curious and perceive all too quickly the defects of others. They pass judgment upon everything, not only upon the truth, but upon what they have entirely misconceived, so that everything is turned to ridicule that is not just what they would have it. Such is their presumption that they esteem themselves capable of criticising anything and everything." "I will not," Petrarch continues, "discuss the truth of this opinion, but I believe myself to be right in saying that if these words were applied not to the Italians at large but to our fellow-citizens, nothing could be truer or more to the point. With them there is no such thing as intimacy and friendship, but only censure, and that by no means mild and benevolent, but harsh and inexorable. There is no one among them who, although he may be more lax than Sardanapalus in his conduct, does not outdo Fabricius or Cato in the severity of his judgments. But I will not discuss their views of things which have nothing to do with my case. In dealing with literature they seem to assume that nothing is properly expressed which does not tickle their own great spreading ears.... Elsewhere, even beyond the Alps and the Danube, my poor verses have encountered no fault-finders; but nothing fills the Florentines with such horror as the mention of a fellow-citizen. It is not I alone who suffer; anyone who would rise above the common level becomes thereby a public enemy. Believe me, my friend, you who sympathise so fully in my indignation at the wrong I suffer, believe me, we were born in a city[83] where to praise one, is to reproach many."[84] Petrarch had doubtless long harboured such feelings, and wisely chose not to risk the danger, upon which both he and Dante dwell, of the contempt which comes from close intercourse.
In June, 1351, after four years filled with bereavement and anxiety, we find Petrarch back in his old surroundings at Vaucluse. During his brief stay here he was called upon to co-operate in no less a task than the drafting of a constitution for Rome. The Pope, convinced by the disorders of the past years that some change was necessary, deputed a commission of cardinals to prepare a new form of government, and they, aware of Petrarch's familiarity with the conditions in Rome, asked his co-operation. Those curious to study the poet as constitution-monger will find his plan among his letters.[85] The power, he urged, should be given back to the people, and the barons should be excluded, for the time being, from the government. It was about this time that he avoided accepting an onerous papal secretaryship which his friends were anxious to force upon him, by ingeniously submitting so elegant a sample of his style that he was rejected on the ground that he could not write in the barbarous but official forms of the curia.[86]
Pope Innocent VI., who followed Clement VI. at the close of the year 1352, was an exceptionally unenlightened person, who, from Petrarch's well-known fondness for Virgil, inferred that he must be addicted to magic. After the confidence and respect that he had enjoyed under the preceding popes, Innocent's suspicions appeared to him intolerable, and doubtless supplied one of the motives which led him definitely to abandon his old haunts. The death, or departure from Avignon, of many of his friends, and the loss of his trusted and faithful housekeeper at Vaucluse, had helped to render the city and its surroundings more distasteful than ever, and in May, 1353, he left the region forever and joyfully saluted his own dear Italy:
Salve cara Deo tellus sanctissima salve,
... agnosco patriam gaudensque saluto,
Salve pulchra parens, terrarum gloria salve.[87]
Luchino Visconti had, at his death in 1349, been succeeded in Milan by his brother, the famous Bishop Giovanni, from all accounts one of the greatest rulers of his century. Like his brother, he was an admirer of literature, or at least he realised that the presence of distinguished scholars at his court might enhance his influence; and by the mild but potent aid of science and letters he sought, as Rousseau declares the tyrant is wont to do, "to overspread his iron chains with garlands of flowers." His rule could not but receive a certain sanction, which would serve to give it an air of legitimacy in the eyes of the Italians, if Petrarch, the exponent of Italian patriotism, could be induced to come and reside in his capital. The now homeless poet, while doubtless flattered by the august attentions of the Bishop, evidently felt some hesitation in accepting his hospitality. He objected on the ground that the noise of a city disturbed him; he feared, too, that his duties towards his new lord might restrict his now inveterate and somewhat vagrant fondness for liberty and change. But upon his inquiring what was expected of him, the Bishop replied that he asked only his presence, "which, he believed, would grace both himself and his reign."[88] To his scandalised friends in republican Florence the poet confesses that he was induced to stay, partly because he was quite at a loss where else to go, and partly out of respect for the ill-disguised commands of "the greatest of the Italians." He defends himself against the reproaches of Boccaccio and other friends on the ground that he has in no way sacrificed his freedom; but he admits that it will be no such easy matter to convince the public of the purity of his motives.[89]
A commodious house was selected for the new-comer in the retired western portion of the city, where he could look out upon the church of St. Ambrose, and, far beyond the walls, could see the snowy circle of the Alps. Eight years were spent in Milan, which, under the Visconti, was rapidly becoming the busy capital of a small but important European state. There is no reason to think that Petrarch did not sincerely love the solitude and quiet delights of the country, but, like many a modern man of letters, he recognised that urban life, if an evil, was after all a necessary one. It is probable, too, that, like the later Humanists, he was dependent upon princely patronage for the funds required to support himself and to hire the necessary copyists, since his benefices appear to have afforded him an insufficient income. Whatever his motives, the precedent was established, and later Humanists were not only subservient to princes, but even resorted to a species of blackmail, by threatening, if money was not forthcoming for dedications, to blast the reputation of the offender to all coming generations.[90]
That Petrarch was a member of the Bishop's council of state is not probable, but he certainly delivered more than one address upon solemn occasions, and undertook several embassies for the Visconti. Bishop Giovanni lived but a year and a half after his arrival, and was succeeded by his three notorious nephews, Matteo, Bernabò, and Galeazzo, the first of whom soon died, leaving the possessions of the Visconti to be divided between the two other brothers.
No very satisfactory history of the Visconti has been written; the opinions of their contemporary judges, as well as of later writers, are exceedingly contradictory. In reaching a conclusion as to the character of the more prominent members of the family, the reader may always choose between the seemingly irreconcilable epithets of vir diabolicus and pater patriæ. There is nothing extraordinary in this, however, and when the earnest investigator has examined all the testimony he will doubtless accept both titles, for they are not really incompatible. All periods offer instances of the most conflicting qualities in the leaders of men, and the Renaissance was especially rich in examples, from the conduct of Boniface VI., that upright and conscientious savage, who read the hours in a loud voice as he walked up and down near the place of torture, listening to the cries of his aged victims,[91] to the licentious pranks which Cellini narrates of himself and his fellow-artists. Especially common are the examples of bad men who were unquestionably great statesmen. It may be true that Galeazzo Visconti introduced the most hideous system of producing death, by a carefully graduated process of mutilation, but it may be equally true that he himself suffered tortures of gout little inferior to those of the unfortunate criminal with a fortitude and equanimity which brought tears to the eyes of his attendants. For years he not only endured these torments with patience, but, according to Petrarch, carried on his government with magnanimity and foresight, and when fortune went against him,[92] exhibited a high degree of philosophical resignation. The same man who induced his courtiers to play at dice to their undoing, might conciliate the learned by supporting scholars or establishing a university. The magnificent palace at Pavia, although one of the most beautiful in the whole world, as Corio declares,[93] may well have sadly afflicted the tax-payer. The public man, whatever his character and aims, is pretty sure, if he rises above mediocrity, to be accused of unscrupulousness. The expedients of a fifteenth-century tyrant were doubtless of a fiercer stamp than the shifts of to-day, but that need not prevent our understanding the admiration expressed by Petrarch or Machiavelli for the better qualities of a Giacomo di Carrara, a Galeazzo Visconti, or a Cæsar Borgia.
The sojourn at Milan was interrupted, as we have said, by several diplomatic missions. In November, 1353, Petrarch was sent to Venice to try to arrange a peace between that city and Genoa. But his eloquence was vain, and the war was continued, in spite of a personal letter of expostulation to the Doge.[94] Of Petrarch's relations with the Emperor Charles IV. something will be said later.[95] In 1356, the year after he first met Charles in Italy, Petrarch was sent to Prague as the representative of the ruler of Milan. He tells us little or nothing of his experiences, but he evidently made several friends in this northern centre of culture, with whom he continued to correspond after his return, thereby greatly widening the scope of his influence.[96] Still a third mission remained, which was to carry him beyond the Alps. King John of France had, in 1356, been defeated by the Black Prince and carried a prisoner to England, where, four years later, he gained his freedom only by the payment of an enormous ransom. At this juncture Galeazzo Visconti offered him timely pecuniary aid, upon condition that his son, Gian Galeazzo, should marry King John's daughter. The match was promptly arranged, and the nuptials took place in October, 1360. It then seemed only proper that Galeazzo should give some formal proof of the satisfaction he felt at King John's release, and Petrarch was chosen as a fitting person to carry his congratulations. The King and his court were so delighted with the poet that they would gladly have induced him to remain at Paris. This was, as Petrarch complacently points out in a letter to the Emperor Charles, but another proof of the skill of the astrologer who had long before predicted that he would be upon terms of intimacy with almost all the great princes of his age.[97]