Petrarch(1304–1374)
Petrarch, or Francesco Petrarca, the Italian humanist, poet, and scholar, was born in Arezzo into an exiled Florentine family. He was taken to Avignon in 1312, and there he spent most of his life until 1353, except for a period as a student of law at Montpellier and Bologna and several long journeys to Italy. After 1353 he lived in Italy, mainly in Milan, Venice, and Padua; he died in Arquà near Padua. Petrarch held several ecclesiastical benefices and also enjoyed the patronage of the Colonna and the Visconti.
Petrarch's fame rests first on his Italian poems and second on his work as a scholar and Latin writer. His Latin writings include poems, orations, invectives, historical works, a large body of letters, and a few moral treatises. Among the treatises we may mention especially De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae (On the remedies of good and bad fortune; 1366), De Secreto Conflictu Curarum Mearum, better known as Secretum (On the secret conflict of my worries; completed before 1358), De Vita Solitaria (On the solitary life; 1356), and De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia (On his own and many other people's ignorance; 1367).
Petrarch was no philosopher in the technical sense, and even his treatises on moral subjects are loosely written and lack a firm structure or method.
