“The successors of a troop of fishermen,” he says, “have forgotten their origin.  They are not contented, like the first followers of Christ, who gained their livelihood by the Lake of Gennesareth, with modest habitations, but they must build themselves splendid palaces, and go about covered with gold and purple.  They are fishers of men, who catch a credulous multitude, and devour them for their prey.”  This “Liber Epistolarum” includes some descriptions of the debaucheries of the churchmen, which are too scandalous for translation.  They are nevertheless curious relics of history.

In this year, Gherardo, the brother of our poet, retired, by his advice, to the Carthusian monastery of Montrieux, which they had both visited in the pilgrimage to Baume three years before.  Gherardo had been struck down with affliction by the death of a beautiful woman at Avignon, to whom he was devoted.  Her name and history are quite unknown, but it may be hoped, if not conjectured, that she was not married, and could be more liberal in her affections than the poet’s Laura.

Amidst all the incidents of this period of his life, the attachment of Petrarch to Laura continued unabated.  It appears, too, that, since his return from Parma, she treated him with more than wonted complacency.  He passed the greater part of the year 1342 at Avignon, and went to Vaucluse but seldom and for short intervals.

In the meantime, love, that makes other people idle, interfered not with Petrarch’s fondness for study.  He found an opportunity of commencing the study of Greek, and seized it with avidity.  That language had never been totally extinct in Italy; but at the time on which we are touching, there were not probably six persons in the whole country acquainted with it.  Dante had quoted Greek authors, but without having known the Greek alphabet.  The person who favoured Petrarch with this coveted instruction was Bernardo Barlaamo, a Calabrian monk, who had been three years before at Avignon, having come as envoy from Andronicus, the eastern Emperor, on pretext of proposing a union between the Greek and Roman churches, but, in reality for the purpose of trying to borrow money from the Pope for the Emperor.  Some of Petrarch’s biographers date his commencement of the study of Greek from the period of Barlaamo’s first visit to Avignon; but I am inclined to postpone it to 1342, when Barlaamo returned to the west and settled at Avignon.  Petrarch began studying Greek by the reading of Plato.  He never obtained instruction sufficient to make him a good Grecian, but he imbibed much of the spirit of Plato from the labour which he bestowed on his works.  He was very anxious to continue his Greek readings with Barlaamo; but his stay in Avignon was very short; and, though it was his interest to detain him as his preceptor, Petrarch, finding that he was anxious for a settlement in Italy, helped him to obtain the bishopric of Geraci, in Calabria.