Dante's veneration for the ancient writers.
While Dante shows a keen interest in the theological studies so popular in his time and still speaks of Aristotle as "the Philosopher," he exhibits a profound admiration for the other great authors of Rome and Greece. When in a vision he visits the lower world, Virgil is his guide. He is permitted to behold the region inhabited by the spirits of virtuous pagans, and there he finds Horace and Ovid, and Homer, the sovereign poet. As he reclines upon the green turf he sees a goodly company of ancient worthies,—Socrates, Plato, and other Greek philosophers, Cæsar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and many others. He is so overcome by the honor of sitting among such great men that he finds no words to report what passed between them. He feels no horror for their paganism, and while he believes that they are not admitted to the beatific joys of heaven, he assigns them a comfortable abode, where they hold dignified converse with "faces neither sad nor glad."[221]
Petrarch, 1304–1374.
121. The veneration for the ancient writers felt by Dante becomes a burning enthusiasm with Petrarch, who has been well called "the first modern man." He was the first scholar and man of letters to desert entirely the mediæval learning and lead his contemporaries back to a realization of the beauty and value of Greek and Roman literature. In the mediæval universities, logic, theology, and the interpretation of Aristotle were the chief subjects of study. While scholars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries possessed and read most of the Latin writers who have come down to us, they failed to appreciate their beauty and would never have dreamed of making them the basis of a liberal education.[222]
Petrarch
Petrarch declares that when a boy he delighted in the sonorous language of Cicero even before he could understand its meaning. As the years went on he became convinced that he could have no higher aim in life than that of collecting copies of all the Latin classics upon which he could lay hands. He was not only an indefatigable scholar himself, but he possessed the power of stimulating, by his example, the intellectual ambition of those with whom he came in contact. He rendered the study of the Latin classics popular among cultivated persons; and by his own untiring efforts to discover the lost or forgotten works of the great writers of antiquity he roused a new enthusiasm for the formation of libraries.[223]
Obstacles to the study of the classics.
It is hard for us to imagine the obstacles which confronted Petrarch and the scholars of the early Renaissance. They possessed no good editions of the Roman and Greek authors, in which the correct wording had been determined by a careful comparison of all the known ancient copies. They considered themselves fortunate to secure a single manuscript of even the best known authors, and they could have no assurance that it was not full of mistakes. Indeed, the texts were so corrupted by the carelessness of the copyists that Petrarch declares that if Cicero or Livy should return and stumblingly read his own writings, he would promptly pronounce them the work of another, perhaps a barbarian.
Petrarch's European reputation and influence.