In May, 1367, Pope Urban accomplished his determination to remove his court from Avignon in spite of the obstinacy of his Cardinals; but he did not arrive at Rome till the month of October.  He was joyously received by the Romans; and, in addition to other compliments, had a long letter from Petrarch, who was then at Venice.  Some days after the date of this letter, our poet received one from Galeazzo Visconti.  The Pope, it seems, wished, at whatever price, to exterminate the Visconti.  He thundered this year against Barnabo with a terrible bull, in which he published a crusade against him.  Barnabo, to whom, with all his faults, the praise of courage cannot be denied, brought down his troops from the Po, in order to ravage Mantua, and to make himself master of that city.  Galeazzo, his brother, less warlike, thought of employing negotiation for appeasing the storm; and he invited Petrarch to Pavia, whither our poet arrived in 1368.  He attempted to procure a peace for the Visconti, but was not successful.

It was not, however, solely to treat for a peace with his enemies that Galeazzo drew our poet to his court.  He was glad that he should be present at the marriage of his daughter Violante with Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England.  The young English prince, followed by many nobles of our land, passed through France, and arrived at Milan on the 14th of May.  His nuptials took place about a month later.  At the marriage-dinner Petrarch was seated at the table where there were only princes, or nobles of the first rank.  It is a curious circumstance that Froissart, so well known as an historian of England, came at this time to Milan, in the suite of the Duke of Clarence, and yet formed no acquaintance with our poet.  Froissart was then only about thirty years old.  It might have been hoped that the two geniuses would have become intimate friends; but there is no trace of their having even spoken to each other.  Petrarch’s neglect of Froissart may not have been so wonderful; but it is strange that the latter should not have been ambitious to pay his court to the greatest poet then alive.  It is imaginable, however, that Petrarch, with all his natural gentleness, was proud in his demeanour to strangers; and if so, Froissart was excusable for an equally-proud reserve.

In the midst of the fetes that were given for the nuptials of the English prince, Petrarch received news of the death of his grandchild.  This little boy had died at Pavia, on the very day of the marriage of Lionel and Violante, when only two years and four months old.  Petrarch caused a marble mausoleum to be erected over him, and twelve Latin lines of his own composition to be engraved upon it.  He was deeply touched by the loss of his little grandson.  “This child,” he says, “had a singular resemblance to me, insomuch that any one who had not seen its mother would have taken me for its father.”