He remained a Catholic Christian, but he
assailed the monks.
(2) Petrarch possessed a confidence in himself, which in the constant
repetition in his writings of first-person pronouns partook of
boastfulness. He replaced a reliance upon Divine Providence by a sense
of his own human ability and power.
(3) Petrarch entertained a clear notion of a living bond between
himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. Greek and Roman
civilization was to him no dead and buried antiquity, but its poets and
thinkers lived again as if they were his neighbors. His love for the
past amounted almost to an ecstatic enthusiasm.
(4) Petrarch tremendously influenced his contemporaries. He was no
local, or even national, figure. He was revered and respected as "the
scholar of Europe." Kings vied with each other in heaping benefits upon
him. The Venetian senate gave him the freedom of the city. Both the
University of Paris and the municipality of Rome crowned him with
laurel.
[Sidenote: "Humanism" and the "Humanities"; Definitions]
The admirers and disciples of Petrarch were attracted by the fresh and
original human ideas of life with which such classical writers as
Virgil, Horace, and Cicero overflowed.
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