Satisfied with the tranquillity which he enjoyed at Parma, he resisted the frequent and earnest solicitations of his friends at Avignon to return among them. He did not forget Laura. Her image often occupied him. It was here we may believe that he wrote the canzone before quoted, and many sonnets, which showed with what lively and earnest thoughts he cherished the passion which had so long reigned over him. He could not write letters; but as it is a lover's dearest solace to make his mistress aware that his attachment survives time and absence, Petrarch, we may easily suppose, was glad, by the medium of his heartfelt poetry, to communicate with her who, he hoped, prized his affection, even if she did not silently return it. Still love, while far from her, did not so pertinaciously and cruelly torment, and he was unwilling to trust himself within the influence of her presence. It required a powerful motive to induce him to pass the Alps; but this occurred after no long period of time. Italy, and especially Rome, was torn by domestic faction and the lawlessness of the nobles. Petrarch saw in the secession of the popes to Avignon the cause of these disasters. His patriotic spirit kindled with indignation, that the head of the church and the world should desert the queen of cities, and inhabit an insignificant province. He had often exerted all his eloquence to induce successive popes to return to the palaces and temples of Italy. Pope Benedict XII. died at this time, and Clement VI. was elected to fill the papal chair. One of the first incidents of his reign was the arrival of an embassy from Rome, soliciting the restoration of the papal residence. Petrarch, having been already made citizen of that city, was chosen one of the deputies.[46] 1342.
Ætat.
38. He and Rienzi (who afterwards played so celebrated a part) addressed the pope. Their representations were of no avail; but Clement rewarded the poet by naming him prior of Migliarino in the diocese of Pisa.
Petrarch remained at Avignon. The sight of Laura gave fresh energy to a passion which had survived the lapse of fifteen years. She was no longer the blooming girl who had first charmed him. The cares of life had dimmed her beauty. She was the mother of many children, and had been afflicted at various times by illnesses. Her home was not happy. Her husband, without loving or appreciating her, was ill-tempered and jealous. Petrarch acknowledged that if her personal charms had been her sole attraction he had already ceased to love her. But his passion was nourished by sympathy and esteem; and above all, by that mysterious tyranny of love, which, while it exists, the mind of man seems to have no power of resisting, though in feebler minds it sometimes vanishes like a dream. Petrarch was also changed in personal appearance. His hair was sprinkled with grey, and lines of care and sorrow trenched his face. On both sides the tenderness of affection began to replace, in him the violence of passion, in her the coyness and severity she had found necessary to check his pursuit. The jealousy of her husband opposed obstacles to their seeing each other.[47] They met as they could in public walks and assemblies. Laura sang to him, and a soothing familiarity grew up between them as her fears became allayed, and he looked forward to the time when they might sit together and converse without dread. He had a confidant in a Florentine poet, Sennucio del Bene, attached to the service of cardinal Colonna, to whom many of his sonnets are addressed, now asking him for advice, now relating the slight but valued incidents of a lover's life.
He had another confidant into whose ear to pour the history of his heart. This was the public. In those days, when books were rare, reading was a luxury reserved for a few, and it was chiefly by oral communication that a poet's contemporaries became acquainted with his productions; and there was a class of men, not poets themselves, who chiefly subsisted by repeating the productions of others:—"men," writes Petrarch, "of no genius, but endowed with memory and industry. Unable to compose themselves, they recite the verses of others at the tables of the great, and receive gifts in return. They are chiefly solicitous to please their audience by novelty. How often have they importuned me with entreaties for my yet unfinished poems! Often I refused. Sometimes, moved by the poverty or worth of my applicants, I yield to their desires. The loss is small to me, the gain to them is great. Many have visited me, poor and naked, who, having obtained what they asked, returned, loaded with presents, and dressed in silk, to thank me." These were the booksellers of the middle ages. It was thus that the Italian poetry of Petrarch became known; and he, finding that it was often disfigured in repetition, took pains at last to collect and revise it. He performed the latter task with much care; and afterwards said, that though he saw a thousand faults in his other works, he had brought his Italian poetry to as great a degree of perfection as he was capable of bestowing.
He applied himself to Greek at this time under Bernardo Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but educated at Constantinople. He had come to Avignon as ambassador from the Greek emperor Andronicus, for the purpose of reconciling the Greek and Roman churches. They read several of the Dialogues of Plato together. The hook entitled "The Secret of Francesco Petrarca" was written at this period. This work is in the form of dialogues with St. Augustin. Petrarch, assisted by the questions and remarks of the saint, examines the state of his mind, laying bare every secret of his soul, its weaknesses and its fears, with the utmost ingenuousness. He relates the struggles of his passion for Laura, and accuses himself of that love of glory which was the spur of so many of his actions. He speaks of the constitutional melancholy of his disposition, which often rendered him gloomy and almost despairing; and he is hid by the saint to seek a remedy for his sorrows, and make atonement for his faults, by dedicating hereafter all his faculties to God.
His literary pursuits were interrupted by a public duty. His friend Robert, king of Naples, died, and was succeeded by his daughter Giovanna, married to Andrea, prince of Hungary. 1343.
Ætat.
39. The greatest dissension reigned between the royal pair; besides which, the young queen was not of an age to govern, and the pope had pretensions to supremacy during her minority. Petrarch was sent as ambassador to establish the papal claim; and he was commissioned, also, by cardinal Colonna, to obtain the release of some prisoners of rank unjustly detained at Naples.
During this mission he became attached to the party of queen Giovanna, who inherited her father's love of letters; so that afterwards, when her husband was murdered, he believed her to be innocent of all share in the crime. He was displeased, however, with the court and the gladiatorial exhibitions in fashion there. Having obtained the liberty of the prisoners, and brought his mission from the pope to a successful conclusion, he returned to Parma. This part of Italy was in a state of dreadful disturbance, arising from the wars carried on by the various lords of Parma, Verona, Ferrara, Bologna, and Padua. Petrarch, besieged, as it were, in the first-named town, was obliged to remain. He had still the house he had bought, and the books he had collected and left in Italy. He loved his cisalpine Parnassus, as he named his Italian home, in contradistinction to his transalpine Parnassus at Vaucluse; and, occupying himself with his poem of Africa, he was content to prolong his stay in his native country. 1345.
Ætat.
41. At length the roads became safe, and he returned to Avignon.
And now an event occurred which electrified Italy, and filled the papal court with astonishment and disquietude. Nicola di Rienzi, inspired by a desire to free his townsmen from the cruel tyranny of the nobles, with wonderful promptitude and energy, seized upon the government of Rome, assumed the name of tribune, and reduced all the men of rank, with Stefano Colonna at their head, to make public submission to his power. The change he produced in the state of the country was miraculous. Before, travellers scarcely ventured, though armed and in bodies, to traverse the various states: under him the roads became secure; and his emissaries, bearing merely a white wand in their hands, passed unmolested from one end of Italy to the other. Order and plenty reigned through the land. The pope and cardinals were filled with alarm; while Petrarch hailed with glowing enthusiasm the restoration of peace and empire to his beloved country. He wrote the tribune letters full of encouragement and praise. His heart swelled with delight at the prospect of the renewed glories of Rome; and such was his blind exultation, that he scarcely mourned the death of several of the most distinguished members of the Colonna family, who fell in the straggle between the nobles and Rienzi.
He desired to return to Italy to enjoy the triumph of liberty and law over oppression and licence. More and more he hated Avignon. Pope Clement VI. was a man of refinement, and a munificent prince: but he was luxurious and dissolute; so that the vices of the court, which filled the poet with immeasurable abhorrence, increased during his reign. He had offered Petrarch the dignity of bishop, and the honourable and influential post of apostolic secretary; but the poet declined to accept the proferred rank. Love of independence was strong in his heart; and he desired no wealth beyond competence, which was secured to him by the preferment he already enjoyed. He was at this time archdeacon of Parma, as well as canon of various cathedrals. He obtained with difficulty the consent of his friends to abandon Avignon for Italy. Cardinal Colonna reproached him bitterly for deserting him; and Laura saw him depart with regret. When he went to take leave of her, he found her (as he describes in several of his sonnets) surrounded by a circle of ladies. Her mien was dejected; a cloud overcast her face, whose expression seemed to say, "Who takes my faithful friend from me?" Petrarch was struck to the heart by a sad presentiment: the emotion was mutual; they both seemed to feel that they should never meet again.
Yet, restless and discontented, he would not stay. He had no ties of home. His brother Gerard had taken vows, and become a Carthusian monk: he invited Petrarch to follow his example; but the poet's love of independence prevented this, as well as every other servitude. Belonging to the Romish church, he could not marry; and though he had two children he was not attached to their mother, of whom nothing more is known except the declaration, in the letters of legitimacy obtained afterwards for her son, that she was not a married woman. Of these two children the daughter was yet an infant. The boy, now ten years of age, he had placed at Verona, under the care of Rinaldo da Villafranca.
1347.
Ætat.
43.