1304-1374
Poet And Scholar

Beginnings. Born in Arezzo, Italy, to a family in exile from its native city of Florence, Francesco Petrarch was raised in Avignon, France, where his father, a lawyer, gained a position at the papal court in 1312. He studied law at the University of Bologna until the death of his father in 1326, and then he returned to Avignon. There at church on Good Friday in 1327, he first saw Laura, a married Frenchwoman whose name he immortalized in his poems and who inspired him with a passion that has become proverbial for its constancy and purity. Despite his love for her, or perhaps because of it, he entered the clergy but was never ordained a priest. He received an income from his church position, although he lived as a layman. As a young man he traveled widely in the Low Countries and Germany as...