Alpha Book

But to the student of history Petrarch has seemed even more
important as the reflection, if not the source, of a brilliant
intellectual movement, which, taking rise in his century, was to grow
in brightness in the fifteenth and flood the sixteenth with resplendent
light.
In some respects Petrarch was a typical product of the fourteenth
century. He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian
culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was
pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in
his dislike for heretics. Moreover, he wrote what he professed to be
his best work in Latin and expressed naught but contempt for the new
Italian language, which, under the immortal Dante, had already acquired
literary polish. [Footnote: Ironically enough, it was not his Latin
writings but his beautiful Italian sonnets, of which he confessed to be
ashamed, that have preserved the popular fame of Petrarch to the
present day.] He showed no interest in natural science or in the
physical world about him--no sympathy for any novelty.


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