History of the Catholic Church, vol 1 | Page 8

degradation, when the capital deserted
by the Popes was fast going to ruin, and when foreigners and native
tyrants were struggling for the possession of their fairest territories, the
memory of the imperial authority of their country, and the crumbling

monuments that bore witness to it still standing in their midst, served to
turn their patriotic ardour towards the great literary treasures
bequeathed to them by Pagan Rome. Greek literature, too, was not
forgotten, though in the thirteenth century few western scholars
possessed any acquaintance with the language. Many causes, however,
combined to prepare the way for a revival of Greek. The commercial
cities of Italy were in close touch with the Eastern Empire, especially
since the Crusades; ambassadors, sent by the Emperors to seek the
assistance of the Pope and of the Western rulers in the struggle against
the Turks, were passing from court to court; the negotiations for a
reunion of the Churches, which had been going on since the days of the
first Council of Lyons, rendered a knowledge of Greek and of the
writings of the Greek Fathers necessary for some of the leading
ecclesiastics of the West; while, finally, the fall of Constantinople in
1453 forced many Greek scholars to seek a refuge in Italy or France,
and provided the agents sent by the Popes and Italian rulers with a
splendid opportunity of securing priceless treasures for the Western
libraries.
Though Dante (1265-1321) is sometimes regarded as the earliest of the
Humanist school[2] on account of his professed admiration for some of
the Pagan masters and of the blending in his /Divina Comedia/ of the
beauties of Roman literature with the teaching of the Fathers and
Scholastics, still, the spirit that inspired him was the spirit of
Christianity, and his outlook on life was frankly the outlook of the
Middle Ages. To Petrarch (1304-74) rather belongs the honour of
having been the most prominent, if not the very first writer, whose
works were influenced largely by Humanist ideals. Born in Arezzo in
1304, he accompanied his father to Avignon when the latter was exiled
from Florence. His friends wished him to study law; but, his poetic
tendencies proving too strong for him, he abandoned his professional
pursuits to devote his energies to literature. The patronage and help
afforded him willingly by the Avignonese Popes[3] and other
ecclesiastics provided him with the means of pursuing his favourite
studies, and helped him considerably in his searches for manuscripts of
the classics. Though only a cleric in minor orders, he was appointed
Canon of Lombez (1335), papal ambassador to Naples (1343),

prothonotary apostolic (1346), and archdeacon of Parma (1348). These
positions secured to him a competent income, and, at the same time,
brought him into touch with libraries and influential men.
The ruin of Italy and Rome, caused in great measure by the absence of
the Popes during their residence at Avignon, roused all the patriotic
instincts of Petrarch, and urged him to strive with all his might for the
restoration of the ancient glory of his country. Hence in his politics he
was strongly nationalist, and hence, too, he threw the whole weight of
his influence on the side of Cola di Rienzi, when in 1347 the latter
proclaimed from the Capitol the establishment of the Roman Republic.
Nor did he hesitate to attack the Popes, to whom he was indebted so
deeply, for their neglect of Rome and the Papal States, as well as for
the evils which he thought had fallen upon Italy owing to the
withdrawal of the Popes to Avignon. He himself strove to awaken in
the minds of his countrymen memories of the past by forming
collections of old Roman coins, by restoring or protecting wherever
possible the Pagan monuments, and by searching after and copying
manuscripts of the classical writers. In poetry, Virgil was his favourite
guide. As a rule he wrote in Italian, but his writings were saturated with
the spirit of the early Pagan authors; while in his pursuit of glory and
his love for natural, sensible beauty, he manifested tendencies opposed
directly to the self-restraint, symbolism, and purity of the Middle Ages.
His longest poem is /Africa/, devoted to a rehearsal of the glories of
ancient Rome and breathing a spirit of patriotism and zeal for a long
lost culture, but it is rather for his love songs, the /canzoni/, that he is
best remembered.
Petrarch, though a Humanist,[4] was no enemy of the Christian religion,
nor did he imagine for a moment that the study of the Pagan classics
could prove dangerous in the least degree to revealed religion. It is true
that his private life did not always correspond to Christian principles of
morality, and it is equally true that at times his patriotism led him to
speak