Petrarch had set out late in 1347 to visit Italy for the fifth time.  He arrived at Genoa towards the end of November, 1347, on his way to Florence, where he was eagerly expected by his friends.  They had obtained from the Government permission for his return; and he was absolved from the sentence of banishment in which he had been included with his father.  But, whether Petrarch was offended with the Florentines for refusing to restore his paternal estate, or whether he was detained by accident in Lombardy, he put off his expedition to Florence and repaired to Parma.  It was there that he learned the certainty of the Tribune’s fall.

From Parma he went to Verona, where he arrived on the evening of the 25th of January, 1348.  His son, we have already mentioned, was placed at Verona, under the tuition of Rinaldo di Villa Franca.  Here, soon after his arrival, as he was sitting among his books, Petrarch felt the shock of a tremendous earthquake.  It seemed as if the whole city was to be overturned from its foundations.  He rushed immediately into the streets, where the inhabitants were gathered together in consternation; and, whilst terror was depicted in every countenance, there was a general cry that the end of the world was come.  All contemporary historians mention this earthquake, and agree that it originated at the foot of the Alps.  It made sad ravages at Pisa, Bologna, Padua, and Venice, and still more in the Frioul and Bavaria.  If we may trust the narrators of this event, sixty villages in one canton were buried under two mountains that fell and filled up a valley five leagues in length.  A whole castle, it is added, was exploded out of the earth from its foundation, and its ruins scattered many miles from the spot.  The latter anecdote has undoubtedly an air of the marvellous; and yet the convulsions of nature have produced equally strange effects.  Stones have been thrown out of Mount AEtna to the distance of eighteen miles.

The earthquake was the forerunner of awful calamities; and it is possible that it might be physically connected with that memorable plague in 1348, which reached, in succession, all parts of the known world, and thinned the population of every country which it visited.  Historians generally agree that this great plague began in China and Tartary, whence, in the space of a year, it spread its desolation over the whole of Asia.  It extended itself over Italy early in 1348; but its severest ravages had not yet been made, when Petrarch returned from Verona to Parma in the month of March, 1348.  He brought with him his son John, whom he had withdrawn from the school of Rinaldo di Villa Franca, and placed under Gilberto di Parma, a good grammarian.  His motive for this change of tutorship probably was, that he reckoned on Parma being henceforward his own principal place of residence, and his wish to have his son beside him.

Petrarch had scarcely arrived at Parma when he received a letter from Luchino Visconti, who had lately received the lordship of that city.  Hearing of Petrarch’s arrival there, the Prince, being at Milan, wrote to the poet, requesting some orange plants from his garden, together with a copy of verses.  Petrarch sent him both, accompanied with a letter, in which he praises Luchino for his encouragement of learning and his cultivation of the Muses.