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Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite indifferently. At first, humanism met with some opposition from ardent churchmen who feared that the revival of pagan literature might exert an unwholesome influence upon Christianity.
The catalogue shows that the Duke's store had consisted mainly of the writings of the Fathers and Arabian works on science: there were a few classics, including a Quintilian, and Aristotle and Plato in Latin: the works of Capgrave and Higden were the only English chronicles; but the Duke was a devotee of the Italian learning, and his gifts to Oxford included more than one copy of the Divina Commedia, three separate copies of Boccaccio, and no less than seven of Petrarch.
He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in his dislike for heretics. Yet despite a good deal of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one significant element to the former medieval culture.
What's the matter, sir?" "Love desperation patience on a monument couldn't sit there forever heart ache only one thing to save him." "Indeed! and what is that?" "He loves you, madam, passionately, devotedly, enormously Petrarch, Abelard, lukewarm lovers in comparison. Throws himself at your feet save him! marry him quick! or you'll lose him! say yes."
The ascent of a mountain for its own sake was unheard of, and there could be no thought of the companionship of friends or acquaintances. Petrarch took with him only his younger brother and two country people from the last place where he halted.
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Thus did Milton, in his transcendent epic, show how a Paradise was regained when woman gave her generous sympathy to man, and reproduced for all coming ages the image of Spiritual Love, the inamorata of Dante and Petrarch, the inspired and consoling guide.
Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon!
Therefore the anecdote which Squarzafichi relates in his life of Petrarch, and has taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary, is quite credible namely, that when Petrarch was at the court of Visconti, and among many men and titled people, Galeazzo Visconti asked his son, who was still a boy in years and was afterwards the first Duke of Milan, to pick out the wisest man of those present.
His ideal of antique culture as the everlasting solace and the universal education of the human race, his lifelong effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of the Renaissance its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After Petrarch, Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of freedom.
Petrarch, who lives in the memory of most people nowadays chiefly as a great Italian poet, owed his fame among his contemporaries far rather to the fact that he was a kind of living representative of antiquity, that he imitated all styles of Latin poetry, endeavored by his voluminous historical and philosophical writings not to supplant, but to make known, the works of the ancients, and wrote letters that, as treatises on matters of antiquarian interest, obtained a reputation which to us is unintelligible, but which was natural enough in an age without handbooks.