When Petracco observed that his son made no great progress in his legal studies at Montpelier, he removed him, in 1323, to Bologna, celebrated for the study of the canon and civil law, probably imagining that the superior fame of the latter place might attract him to love the law.  To Bologna Petrarch was accompanied by his brother Gherardo, and by his inseparable friend, young Guido Settimo.

But neither the abilities of the several professors in that celebrated academy, nor the strongest exhortations of his father, were sufficient to conquer the deeply-rooted aversion which our poet had conceived for the law.  Accordingly, Petracco hastened to Bologna, that he might endeavour to check his son’s indulgence in literature, which disconcerted his favourite designs.  Petrarch, guessing at the motive of his arrival, hid the copies of Cicero, Virgil, and some other authors, which composed his small library, and to purchase which he had deprived himself of almost the necessaries of life.  His father, however, soon discovered the place of their concealment, and threw them into the fire.  Petrarch exhibited as much agony as if he had been himself the martyr of his father’s resentment.  Petracco was so much affected by his son’s tears, that he rescued from the flames Cicero and Virgil, and, presenting them to Petrarch, he said, “Virgil will console you for the loss of your other MSS., and Cicero will prepare you for the study of the law.”

It is by no means wonderful that a mind like Petrarch’s could but ill relish the glosses of the Code and the commentaries on the Decretals.

At Bologna, however, he met with an accomplished literary man and no inelegant poet in one of the professors, who, if he failed in persuading Petrarch to make the law his profession, certainly quickened his relish and ambition for poetry.  This man was Cino da Pistoia, who is esteemed by Italians as the most tender and harmonious lyric poet in the native language anterior to Petrarch.

During his residence at Bologna, Petrarch made an excursion as far as Venice, a city that struck him with enthusiastic admiration.  In one of his letters he calls it “orbem alterum.”  Whilst Italy was harassed, he says, on all sides by continual dissensions, like the sea in a storm, Venice alone appeared like a safe harbour, which overlooked the tempest without feeling its commotion.  The resolute and independent spirit of that republic made an indelible impression on Petrarch’s heart.  The young poet, perhaps, at this time little imagined that Venice was to be the last scene of his triumphant eloquence.