Leaving Avignon, Petrarch passed through Genoa, where he heard of the follies and downfall of Rienzi; instead, therefore, of proceeding to Rome, he repaired to his house at Parma.
1348.
Ætat.
44.
The fatal year now began which cast mourning and gloom over the rest of his life. It was a year fatal to the whole world. The plague, which had been extending its ravages over Asia, entered Europe. As if for an omen of the greater calamity, a disastrous earthquake occurred on the 25th of January. Petrarch was timid: he feared thunder—he dreaded the sea; and the alarming concussion of nature that shook Italy filled him with terror. The plague then extended its inroads to increase his alarm. It spread its mortal ravages far and wide: nearly one half of the population of the world became its prey. Petrarch saw thousands die around him, and he trembled for his friends: he heard that it was at Avignon, and his friend Sennucio del Bene had fallen its victim. A thousand sad presentiments haunted his mind. He recollected the altered countenance of Laura when he last saw her; he dreamed of her as dead; her pale image hovered near his couch, bidding him never expect to see her more. At last, the fatal truth reached him: he received intelligence of her death on the 19th of May. By a singular coincidence, she died on the anniversary of the day when he first saw her. She was taken ill on the 3d of April, and languished but three days. As soon as the symptoms of the plague declared themselves, she prepared to die: she made her will, which is dated on the 3d of April[48], and received the sacraments of the church. On the 6th she died, surrounded to the last by her friends and the noble ladies of Avignon, who braved the danger of infection to attend on one so lovely and so beloved. On the evening of the same day on which she died, she was interred in the chapel of the Cross which her husband had lately built in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon. With her was buried a leaden box, fastened with wire, which enclosed a medal and a sealed parchment, on which was inscribed an Italian sonnet. If the sonnet were the composition of Petrarch, as the sense of it would intimate, although its want of merit renders it doubtful, this box must have been placed in the grave at a subsequent period.
The sensitive heart of Petrarch had often dwelt on the possibility of Laura's death. Although she was only three years his junior, he comforted himself by the reflection that as he had entered life first so he should be the first to quit it.[49] This fond hope was disapappointed: he lost her who, for more than twenty years, had continually been the object of all his thoughts: he lost her at a period when he began to hope that, while time diminished the violence of his passion, it might draw them nearer as friends. The sole melancholy consolation now afforded him was derived from the contemplation of the past. That at each hour of the day her memory might be more vividly present to his thoughts, he fixed to the binding of his copy of Virgil a record of her death, written in Latin, of which the following is a translation:—
"Laura, illustrious through her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, first appeared to me in my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth day of April, in the church of Ste. Claire, at Avignon, at the ninth hour[50] of the morning. And in the same city, during the same month of April, on the same day of the month, and at the same early hour, but in the year 1348, this light was withdrawn from the world; while I, alas! ignorant of my fate, chanced to be at Verona. The unhappy intelligence reached me through the letters of my friend Louis, at Parma, in the same year, on the morning of the nineteenth of May. Her chaste and beautiful body was deposited, on the evening of her death in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon.[51] Her soul, as Seneca says of Africanus, I believe to have returned to the heaven whence it came. To mingle some sweetness with the bitter memory of this miserable event, I have selected this place to record it, which often meets my eyes; so that by frequent view of these words, and by due estimation of the swift passage of time, I may be reminded that nothing henceforth can please me in life, and that, my chief tie being broken, it is time that I should escape from this Babylon; and, by the grace of God, I shall find this easy, while I resolutely and boldly reflect on the vain cares of years gone by, on my futile hopes, and on their unexpected downfall."[52]
Death consecrates and deepens the sentiment with which we regard a beloved object; it is no wonder, therefore, that Petrarch, whose sensibility and warmth of feeling surpassed that of all other men, should have gone beyond himself in the poems he wrote subsequent to Laura's death. Nothing can be more tender, more instinct with the spirit of passionate melancholy, and, at the same time, more beautiful, than the sonnets and canzoni which lament her loss. It was his only consolation to recur to all the marks of affection he had ever received from her, and to believe that she regarded him with tender interest from her place of bliss in heaven. He indulged, also, in another truly catholic mode of testifying his affection, by giving large sums in charity for the sake of her soul, and causing so many masses to be said for the same purpose, that, as a priest who was his contemporary, informed his congregation, in a sermon, "they had been sufficient to withdraw her from the hands of the devil, had she been the worst woman in the world; while, on the contrary, her death was holy."[53]
The death of Laura, overwhelming as it was, was but a prelude to numerous others. Petrarch had lived among many dear friends; but the plague appeared, and their silent graves were soon all that remained to him of them. Cardinal Colonna died in the course of this same year. He was the last surviving son of the hero Stefano, who lived to become childless in his old age. Petrarch relates in a letter, that during his first visit to Rome, he was walking one evening with Stefano in the wide street that led from the Colonna palace to the Capitol, and they paused in an open place formed by the meeting of several streets. They both leant their elbows on an antique marble, and their conversation turned on the actual condition of the Colonna family: after other observations that fell from Stefano, he turned to Petrarch with tears in his eyes, saying, "With regard to the heir of my possessions, I desire and ought to leave them to my sons; but fate has ordered otherwise. By a reversal of the order of nature, which I deplore, it is I—decrepit old man as I am—who will inherit from all my children." As he spoke, grief seized upon his heart, and interrupted further speech. Now this singular prophecy was fulfilled; and Petrarch, in his letter of condolence, reminds the unhappy father of this scene. The old man, however, survived but a few months the last of his sons.
Petrarch, during the autumn, visited Giacomo da Carrara, lord of Padua, who had often invited him with a warmth and pertinacity, which he found it at length impossible to resist. Pie passed many months in that town, visiting occasionally Parma, Mantua, and Ferrara, being much favoured and beloved by the various lords of these cities. 1350.
Ætat.
46. On occasion of the jubilee, he went to Rome in pilgrimage, to avail himself of the religious indulgences afforded on that occasion. On his way through Florence, which he visited for the first time, he saw Boccaccio, with whom he had lately entered into a correspondence. Continuing his journey, he met with a serious injury from the kick of a horse on his knee, on the road near Bolsena, which occasioned him great pain, and on his arrival at Rome confined him to his bed for some days. As soon as he was able to rise, he performed his religious duties, and, with earnest prayers and good resolutions, dedicated his future life to the practices of virtue and piety.
Returning from Rome, he passed through his native town of Arezzo. The inhabitants received him with every mark of honour: they showed him the house in which he was born, which they had never permitted to be pulled down nor altered, and attended on him during his visit with zealous affection. On his arrival at Padua he was afflicted by hearing of the death of his friend and protector Giacomo da Carrara; who, but a few days before, had been assassinated by a relative. The son of Giacomo succeeded to him, and though the difference of age prevented the same intimacy of friendship, the young lord loved and honoured Petrarch as his father had done; so that he continued to reside in the city, over which the youth ruled. Sometimes he visited Venice, to which beautiful and singular town he was much attached. The doge, Andrea Dandolo, was his friend; and he exerted his influence to put an end to the destructive war carried on between Venice and Genoa, writing forcible and eloquent letters to the doge. His endeavours were without success; but the injuries which the republics mutually inflicted and received might make them afterwards repent that they had not listened to the voice of the peace-maker.
Nor was the poet's heart wholly closed against the feelings of love; nor could the image of the dead Laura possess all the empire which had been hers, cold and reserved as she was, during her life. His sonnets give evidence that passion had spread fresh nets to ensnare him, when the new object of his admiration died, and death quenched and scattered once again the fire which he was unable to resist.[54] Again, he could think only of Laura; and, on the third anniversary of her death, exclaimed, "How sweet it had been to die three years ago!" 1351.
Ætat.
47. It was on this anniversary that Boccaccio arrived at Padua, bringing the decree of the Florentine republic, which reinstated him in his paternal inheritance, together with letters inviting him to accept of a professor's chair in their new university.