9/20/2023 0 Comments Eloquent words concerning death![]() An awareness of human mortality was hardwired into his consciousness in a way that it is not for most living today - at least those privileged to enjoy relative health and prosperity, and a life free of all but the minimum of violence, which, of course, is not true for all. So many people whom Petrarch knew well, who defined the inner fabric of his world, died in successive waves of plague. 31 Yet in some sense, Petrarch had been doing this ever since 1348 by collecting his own plague tales, finding different ways to express the full spectrum of emotions that this disease evoked. “I have told your story in my own words". Petrarch paid his friend the ultimate compliment by translating the final tale (regarding the patience and fortitude of a young peasant woman named Griselda married to an arrogant nobleman who tested her in every possible way) from Tuscan into Latin to make it more widely available to readers unfamiliar with the author’s native language. He especially praised the book’s beginning, admiring the magnificent perfection of Boccaccio’s vivid description of Florence under siege during “that plague-ridden time". Petrarch forgave the author’s moral lapses in the most salacious tales because he appreciated the seriousness of its message, about how human failings - greed, lust, arrogance, and the corruption of church and state - helped to incubate a pestilential world. As he wrote in a letter reflecting on the twenty years since the 1348 outbreak, “I shall admit that I know not what is happening among the Indians and Chinese, but Egypt and Syria and all of Asia Minor show no more increase in wealth and no better lot than we do". He saw the late medieval economy contract, observing the rippling effects far beyond his own world. War, politics, the decline of commerce, the sorry state of the church, earthquakes, bitterly cold winters, and general lawlessness were also to blame. ![]() Once again, he found himself thinking about how his world had changed - and not only because of plague. The medieval Italian communes were economic powerhouses whose business dealings traversed the entirety of Eurasia but this prosperity was imperiled. Nonetheless, he could not say in all honesty that Verona, or indeed any city that he knew, was as magnificent and prosperous as it had been before 1348. ![]() The city had suffered greatly during the second pandemic but there were signs of revival underway. Boccaccio was among Petrarch’s friends who wondered if Laura ever existed outside of his poetic imagination, but he never questioned Petrarch’s determination to remember that year as transformative.Ī year later, in 1367, Petrarch returned to Verona – the place where he’d joyfully rediscovered Cicero’s lost letters in a monastic library in happier times, and where he’d heard of Laura’s death, so many years ago. He did not want to forget the searing pain of this moment that awakened his soul and sharpened his consciousness of the passage of time. On its flyleaf, he inscribed these unforgettable words: “I decided to write down the harsh memory of this painful loss, and I did so, I suppose, with a certain bitter sweetness, in the very place that so often passes before my eyes". Petrarch resolved to use every ounce of his eloquence to make her eternally present in his poetry but also in his Virgil. He began this practice of commemoration by recording the death - from three years earlier, in 1348 - of his beloved Laura, the subject of so many of his poems. Others advised flight and proposed temporary public health measures such as quarantine, but Petrarch seems to have felt that he might think and write his way through this pandemic.Īround 1351, Petrarch began to memorialize those whom he loved and lost by inscribing his recollections of them on the pages of a much-treasured possession - his copy of Virgil’s works adorned with a beautiful frontispiece by the Sienese painter Simone Martini. Life had become cruel and death unrelenting but he compensated by taking pen in hand - the only useful weapon he had besides prayer and the one he preferred. The act of writing, which had initially been impossibly painful, began to elevate his spirits. He wrote a poem commemorating the tragic death of Laura, a woman he had known and loved in southern France, only to discover that the person to which he’d sent the poem, the Tuscan poet Sennuccio del Bene, later died of plague as well, making Petrarch wonder if his words bore the contagion. During the following year, Petrarch continued to enumerate plague victims as well as the cumulative effects of quarantine and depopulation. This was an astute and ultimately accurate observation. At the end of this awful year, Petrarch predicted that anyone who escaped the first assault should prepare for the viciousness of plague’s return.
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