Francesco Petrarca
Petrarch (1304-c. 1374) was an Italian
poet and scholar. His muse was Laura de
Noves, a married woman whom Petrarch
first saw in Avignon in his youth.
Scholars are not quite sure if he ever
even talked to her, but we do know that
he dedicated hundreds of poems to her.
She died of the plague—as did his son,
grandson, and many friends.
Petrarch learned of her death in a letter
he received from a friend in May of 1348.
Petrarch, portrait by Altichiero, c. 1370-80 (Wikipedia)
Petrarch wrote the following in the margins of a manuscript of Virgil
Laura, illustrious by her virtues, and long celebrated in my songs, first greeted my eyes in the
days of my youth, the 6th of April, 1327, at Avignon; and in the same city, at the same hour of
the same 6th of April, but in the year 1348, withdrew from life, while I was at Verona, unconscious
of my loss. . . . Her chaste and lovely body was interred on the evening of the same day in the
church of the Minorites: her soul, as I believe, returned to heaven, whence it came. To write
these lines in bitter memory of this event, and in the place where they will most often meet my
eyes, has in it something of a cruel sweetness, but I forget that nothing more ought in this life to
please me.
Petrarch wrote to his brother Gherardo , who lived in a monastery in Monrieux. His brother, the
story goes, was the only survivor out of thirty-five people there, and had remained, alone with his
dog, to guard and tend the monastery.
My brother! My brother! My brother! A new beginning to a letter, though used by Marcus Tullius
[Cicero] fourteen hundred years ago. Alas! my beloved brother, what shall I say? How shall I
begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that
I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times. How will posterity believe that
there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or the fires of earth, without wars
or other visible slaughter, not this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has
remained without inhabitants. When has any such thing been even heard or seen; in what annals
has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the
fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth?... Oh
happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries and perchance will class our
testimony with the fables. We have, indeed, deserved these [punishments] and even greater; but
our forefathers also have deserved them, and may our posterity not also merit the same.
Petrarch also wrote to his friend Louis Sanctus (whom he fondly called “Socrates”).
If you wish to bemoan the fates of all mortal men, one breast and one tongue will not
suffice for you. You have taken on an enormous, miserable, and irksome subject, useless,
inexplicable. Tears must be sought from another source: Indeed, they are always springing up
out of some recent and unending cause of sorrow, and the two eyes, already worn out,
exhausted and dried up, can pour out only a little melancholy moisture. What therefore can
you do to forget, except spread the poison, proffered as medicine, to your friends, not being
content with your own misery and sickness, in which you keep knowing and wishing that you
would fall? . . .
In the year 1348, one that I deplore, we were deprived not only of our friends but of
peoples throughout all the world. If anyone escaped, the following year mowed down others,
and whatever had been passed over by the storm, is then pursued by a deadly scythe. When
will posterity believe this to have been a time in which nearly the whole world – not just this or
that part of the earth – is bereft of inhabitants, without there having occurred a conflagration in
the heavens or on land, without wars or other visible disasters? When at any time has such a
thing been seen or spoken of? Has what happened in these years ever been read about: empty
houses, derelict cities, ruined estates, fields strewn with cadavers, a horrible and vast solitude
encompassing the whole world? Consult historians, they are silent; ask physicians, they are
stupefied; seek the answer from philosophers, they shrug their shoulders, furrow their brows,
and with fingers pressed against their lips, bid you be silent. Will posterity believe these things,
when we who have seen it can scarcely believe it, thinking it a dream except that we are awake
and see these things with our open eyes, and when we know that what we bemoan is
absolutely true, as in a city fully lit by the torches of its funerals we head for home, finding our
longed-for security in its emptiness? O happy people of the next generation, who will not know
these miseries and most probably will reckon our testimony as a fable!
I do not deny that we deserve these misfortunes and even worse; but our forebears
deserved them too, and may posterity not deserve them in turn. Therefore why is it, most Just
of judges, why is it that the seething rage of Your vengeance has fallen so particularly hard
upon our times? Why is it that in times when guilt was not lacking, the lessons of punishment
were withheld? While all have sinned alike, we alone bear the lash. We alone, I say; for I hear it
affirmed that compared to the number we receive at present, the lashes inflicted upon all men
after that most famous ark [of Noah] had borne the remnants of humanity upon the formless
sea would have been a delight, a joke, and a respite. Even when it behooves us to wage
countless wars against these evils, in the course of which many kinds of remedies are tried, in
the end it is not permitted to men to at least die with dignity. For it is a rare solace of death to
die well. No remedy is exactly right, and there is no solace. And to the accumulated disaster is
added not knowing the causes and origin of the evil. For neither ignorance nor even the plague
itself is more hateful than the nonsense and tall tales of certain men, who profess to know
everything but in fact know nothing. Nonetheless their mouths, although accustomed to ling,
are in the end silent, and although at first impudence had opened them out of habit, at last
they are closed by stupidity.
But I return to my inquiry: Whether for those making a long journey it happens that one
part of the way is tiring, another easy. For so it is with us that Your forbearance, God, has
slackened little by little toward human crimes, and under the heavy burden of Your yoke, the
Omnipotent now must set down His provisions, and You, the best traveler, no longer able to
support us, throws us onto Your back and in Your anger avert Your eyes of mercy from us. What
if we are making atonement not just for our crimes, but also for those of our fathers, whether
these be worse I do not know, but certainly they were more pitiable. Or could it be perhaps
that certain great truths are to be held suspect, that God does not care for mortal men? But let
us drive these foolish thoughts from our minds. If God did not care for us, there would be
nothing left to sustain us. For who will provide these necessities for us, if they are not
attributed to God, but to nature; what feeling will be left to us, why give ourselves over to the
quest for truth? Since Seneca calls most ungrateful all those who neglect their duties to God,
under a different name, are they not denying His due of heavenly majesty by impiously mocking
Him? Surely You do care for us and our affairs, God. But there is some reason, hidden and
unknown to us, why down through all the ages we, who are the most dignified of Your
creatures, seem to be the ones most severely punished. Not that Your justice is less because it
is concealed, for the depth of Your judgements is inscrutable and inaccessible to human senses.
Therefore either we are truly the worst of all beings, which I would like to deny but dare not, or
God is reserving us for some future good the more He is exercising and purging us from these
present evils, or there is something there that we are altogether unable to conceive. In any
case, whatever the reasons may be and however many are hidden from us, the results are most
evident…
Where are our sweet friends now? Where are the beloved faces? Where are the
agreeable words, where the soothing and pleasant conversation? What lightning bolt devoured
them? What earthquake overturned them? What storm submerged them? What abyss
swallowed them? Once we were all together, now we are quite alone. We should make new
friends, but where or with whom, when the human race is nearly extinct, and it is predicted
that the end of the world is soon at hand? We are—why pretend? —truly alone . . . You see
that our great band of friends is reduced in number. And behold, even as we speak we too are
drifting apart, and we vanish like shadows. And in the same moment that one hears that the
other is gone, he is soon following in his footsteps. . . .
Never does it seem to me to be a sadder occasion than when one inquires with
trepidation after a friend. How goes it? How is our friend doing? But as soon as he has heard
you say “farewell,” he is filled with dread and very quickly his face is wet with tears. And indeed
he—I cannot say this without shedding many tears, and I would shed many now when I say this,
except that with all the evil events that have happened these eyes have become exhausted and
I would rather save all the rest of my tears, if there are any left, for when they are needed – I
say that he is suddenly seized by this pestilential disease, which is now ravaging the world,
toward evening, after a dinner with friends and that at sundown he goes to bed, after having
digested so much from our conversation in the remembrance of our friendship and our exploits
together. He passes that night among his last sorrows in a greatly terrified frame of mind. But in
the morning he succumbs to a quick death, and as if this misfortune were not enough, within
three days, his sons and all his family follow him.
Epsitolae Familiares [Familar Letters] (c.1351-53)
