But though Laura’s actual existence is certain, her identity is a subject of everlasting controversy. The popular belief near to Petrarch’s own day is expressed by an anonymous biographer, who, writing, as is thought, near the end of the fourteenth century, calls her Loretta, and, by adding that the Pope offered Petrarch a dispensation from his ecclesiastical vows in order to marry her, clearly indicates that she was believed to be a single woman. The Abbé de Sade, however, in his life of Petrarch, published in 1767, adduces much documentary and other evidence to identify her with Laura, born De Noves, wife of Hugo de Sade, and an ancestress of the Abbé’s own. With one important exception, to be mentioned shortly, the Abbé’s proofs are of little weight; they establish the existence of a Laura de Sade, but by no means that she was Petrarch’s Laura. An account of the discovery of Laura de Sade’s tomb in 1533, authenticated by some very bad verses attributed to Petrarch found within it, although itself genuine, evidently records a clumsy fabrication.
One advantage the Abbé’s theory certainly has, the production of an unanswerable reason why Petrarch did not marry Laura; but, on the other hand, his ecclesiastical orders might be a sufficient impediment. The Papal dispensation which might have relieved him of them must surely have relieved him of his preferments also; and if the story is authentic, the offer came in all probability from Clement VI., the Pope by whom he was chiefly favoured, who did not attain the tiara until 1342, fifteen years after his first acquaintance with Laura, when Laura’s health seems to have been much impaired, and he may well have thought the time gone by. The objections to his suit having been addressed to a married woman seem almost insurmountable. If his flame was Laura de Sade, she was the mother of a very numerous family, and it appears all but incredible that he should have inscribed so much verse to her both in her lifetime and after her death, and discussed his passion so freely in his Dialogae without the slightest allusion to husband or children; or that the identity of a lady holding so high a position, and celebrated in verses read all over Italy, should so long have remained obscure; or that he should have enjoyed such freedom of access to her as he evidently did. The idea, moreover, seems quite inconsistent with the tenor of the celebrated sonnet,Tranquillo porto avea mostrato Amore:
Love had at length a tranquil port displayed
To travailed soul, long vexed by toil and teen,
In calm maturity, where naked seen
Is Vice, and Virtue in fair garb arrayed.
Bare to her eyes my heart should now be laid,
Disquieted no more their peace serene—
O Death! what harvest of long years hath been
Ruin by thee in one brief moment made!
The hour when unreproved I might invoke
Her chaste ear’s favour, and disburden there
My breast of fond and ancient thought, drew nigh:
And she, perchance, considering as I spoke
Each bloomless face and either’s silvered hair,
Some blessed word had uttered with a sigh.
The thought manifestly is, that if Laura had lived a short time longer their intimacy would have given no occasion for scandal. This might be true of an unmarried lady or a widow, hardly of a wife. The sonnet also proves that Petrarch and Laura were nearly of an age, refuting Vellutello’s opinion on this point. Salvatore Betti, moreover, has found another Laura, fulfilling, in his estimation, all requisites as well as the Abbé de Sade’s.
It must, notwithstanding, be acknowledged that there is one piece of documentary evidence almost sufficient to prove the Abbé’s theory in the teeth of all objections, could we but be certain of its genuineness. This is the will of Laura de Sade, made in a condition of extreme sickness on April 3, 1348. We know on Petrarch’s own authority that his Laura died on April 6, for the genuineness of the note in his Virgil where he records this fact is now regarded as incontestable. That two ladies of the name of Laura were dying at or near Avignon at the same time is clearly improbable. But is the will itself authentic? or may it not have been altered or interpolated? The Abbé cites it as a document in his family archives; its existence is attested by several persons in the eighteenth century; but it does not appear to have been submitted to the scrutiny of any expert, nor can we learn whether such an examination has ever been made since, or whether the testament is now producible[7]. Should its authenticity ever be demonstrated, but hardly otherwise, we shall be almost compelled to embrace a belief liable in every other point of view to formidable objections.
Although Laura, as depicted by Petrarch, is the most ethereal feminine ideal ever conceived, his passion was certainly not of the Platonic kind. The contrary has been asserted, but is contradicted by every page of the Canzoniere, which is full of reproaches to Laura for her cruelty, incomprehensible if she was not withholding very substantial favours. He certainly did not want for encouragements of a more spiritual nature:
The mist of pallor in such beauteous wise
The sweetness of her smile did overscreen,
That my thrilled heart, upon my visage seen,
Sprang to encounter it in swift surprise.
How soul by soul is scanned in Paradise
Then knew I, unto whom disclosed had been
That thought pathetic by all gaze unseen
Save mine, who solely for such sight have eyes.
All look angelical, all tender gest
That e’er on man by grace of woman beamed
At side of this had shown discourtesy.
The gentle visage, modestly depressed
Earthward, inquired with silence, as meseemed,
'Who draws my faithful friend away from me?'
Long after this, which surely should have satisfied a Platonic lover, he is looking forward to a more perfect consummation of his wishes:
Love sends me messengers of gentle thought,
Since days of yore our trusty go-between,
And comforts me, who ne’er, he saith, have been
So near as now to hopes fruition brought.
What hope’s fruition was we learn from numerous sonnets composed after the death of Laura, in which the poet expresses his thankfulness that his mistress did not yield to his too ardent entreaties, but kept him in order by her frowns, a function attributed to her even in the first book of sonnets: