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Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri), Volume 1
This translation makes available for the first time to English-speaking readers Petrarch's earliest and perhaps most important collection of prose letters. They were written for the most part between 1325 and 1366, and were organized into the present collection of twenty-four books between 1345 and 1366. The collection represents a portrait of the artist as a young man seen through the eyes of the mature artist. Whether in the writing of poetry, or being crowned poet laureate, or in confessing his faults, describing the dissolution of the kingdom of Naples, summoning up the grandeur of ancient Rome, or in writing to pope or emperor, Petrarch was always the consummate artist, deeply concerned with creating a desired effect by means of a dignified gracefulness, and always conscious that his private life and thoughts could be the object of high art and public interest. As early as 1436 Leonardo Bruni wrote in his Life of "Petrarch was the first man to have had a sufficiently fine mind to recognize the gracefulness of the lost ancient style and to bring it back to life." It was indeed the very style or manner in which Petrarch consciously sought to create the impression of continuity with the past that was responsible for the enormous impact he made on subsequent generations. This complete translation by Aldo S. Bernardo has long been out of print and is reproduced here in its entirety in three volumes. Introduction, notes, bibliography. Vol. 1 includes Books I-VIII.
- GenresRenaissance
472 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1863
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114 people want to read
About the author
Francesco Petrarca
1,149 books364 followersFamous Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, collected love lyrics in
Canzoniere
.
People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.
People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 28, 2015
Petrarch is adorable.
Reading these letters slowly over the last months I frequently wanted to hug him. He loves his friends, and sometimes they die and usually they're far away. The Black Death happens. He loves the ancient world, and he's afraid it's gone forever. Sometimes he has to suck up to cardinals. He is made poet laureate, for the first time since antiquity, and then he's robbed by bandits on his way home...
Words can not express what a delight reading these letters is. I am so glad there are more volumes.
Everyone should read this. You might want a bit of context on the period first, and there's no useful context in the book, but really, this is about as much fun as it gets.
Reading these letters slowly over the last months I frequently wanted to hug him. He loves his friends, and sometimes they die and usually they're far away. The Black Death happens. He loves the ancient world, and he's afraid it's gone forever. Sometimes he has to suck up to cardinals. He is made poet laureate, for the first time since antiquity, and then he's robbed by bandits on his way home...
Words can not express what a delight reading these letters is. I am so glad there are more volumes.
Everyone should read this. You might want a bit of context on the period first, and there's no useful context in the book, but really, this is about as much fun as it gets.
November 30, 2017
A suitable review for the works of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch, as he is most often referred to) ought to consider the entire sum of the Rerum Familiarium, but the Italica Press edition has these "Familiar Letters" divided into three volumes, each of some non-inconsequential size. As such, I might as well right a little bit about each as a I proceed through them. It took me about a year, reading a letter at a time, to finish Volume 1 - Petrarch has been my constant companion for reflection, not study, for leisure, not work, and, as such, he has long-occupied the "little-by-little" slot on my regular readings - so this whole review project might take me a little whiles. That is suitable. Rome was not built in a day, and neither did Petrarch write his letters in even the course of one year. I should take the same care in reading them.
For those unfamiliar, Petrarch is the exemplar of the Italian Renaissance. In some sense, he is the defining force of its resurgence of Classical studies (= the "liberal arts"). It was Petrarch, more than perhaps any other humanist in the history of philology, who brought fresh attention to the translation and preservation of the works of Cicero, Seneca, Catullus, Maro, and their ilk. His contemporaries (and his near-contemporaries) focused their humanisms on the works of Augustine or other theologians, or on the crafting of new masterpieces (like Dante or Boccaccio did): Petrarch re-birthed ("Renaissance") the Greco-Roman classics.
But his aim was not just the caretaking of the texts, their good translation, or their preservation (although all these were part of his work); he was committed to a cultural work, to seeing the way of life of Cicero, et al. revived. That is, in all-too-short of words, the genius of the Rerum Familiarium. In a world before even the printing press, Petrarch's goal was one of culture-making, culture-shaping, and culture-forming, something he aimed to accomplish through impassioned letters to his friends, mentors, even enemies. He had an integrated sense of what the purpose of the liberal arts was to be: one of virtue-formation, in a sense, and he thought it his role to disseminate that paideia in all the world (or, at least, throughout Italy). One gets a sense of his frustration as, despite his cultural-formative project, the winds of Fortune blow against him, as various parts of Italy fall into war or the Plague, as his friends die all-too-young, and even as his beloved King Robert dies.
The central power of Petrarch's letters is his constant resourcing of classical texts for his work. There is a strong deference to the authority of the Ancients here - though Petrarch is never shy in letting his opinion differ with his authorities (he in particular seems to give Aristotle some contention; unsurprisingly, given the scholastic Aristotelean establishment of his day). Some letters have an intimacy of tremendous force, exemplifying Cicero's value of the nature of friendship; others have a more devotional quality, especially in his conversations with various Roman bishops; and still others have a more academic, more poetic, more literary tone to them. Their diversity is delightful.
Volume 1 includes several of Petrarch's more familiar letters, including the powerful account of his ascent of Mount Venteaux (a crucial turn for Renaissance humanism). Underlying that account is the existential classicism of St. Augustine, which speaks a little (and other letters speak more) of Petrarch's unique expression of Christian faith, one absolutely catholic and orthodox, and, yet, distinct and separate from the politics of the Roman Curia and the folk-theology of the people.
I would remiss in my review if I did not mention a grievous thing regarding this Italica Press edition: the print is weak. There are times where entire pages are half-inked (though legible), or where strange blank streaks run across the page. The binding is weak too, and I have a handful of pages that plopped right out of the leaf without as much as a tug. This is disappointing, given how nice the volumes look both on the shelf and in the hand. It is even more disappointing seeing as how the Italica Press edition is, to my knowledge, the only English translation of the complete Rerum Familiarium. I wish either that Italica Press would redouble their efforts in providing a suitably sturdy and polished product, or that some other enterprising scholar would publish a rival edition (maybe one with critical notes?). For Petrarch lovers, however - as well as all modern Renaissance humanists - this edition will have to do, if only for the eloquence of its text.
For those unfamiliar, Petrarch is the exemplar of the Italian Renaissance. In some sense, he is the defining force of its resurgence of Classical studies (= the "liberal arts"). It was Petrarch, more than perhaps any other humanist in the history of philology, who brought fresh attention to the translation and preservation of the works of Cicero, Seneca, Catullus, Maro, and their ilk. His contemporaries (and his near-contemporaries) focused their humanisms on the works of Augustine or other theologians, or on the crafting of new masterpieces (like Dante or Boccaccio did): Petrarch re-birthed ("Renaissance") the Greco-Roman classics.
But his aim was not just the caretaking of the texts, their good translation, or their preservation (although all these were part of his work); he was committed to a cultural work, to seeing the way of life of Cicero, et al. revived. That is, in all-too-short of words, the genius of the Rerum Familiarium. In a world before even the printing press, Petrarch's goal was one of culture-making, culture-shaping, and culture-forming, something he aimed to accomplish through impassioned letters to his friends, mentors, even enemies. He had an integrated sense of what the purpose of the liberal arts was to be: one of virtue-formation, in a sense, and he thought it his role to disseminate that paideia in all the world (or, at least, throughout Italy). One gets a sense of his frustration as, despite his cultural-formative project, the winds of Fortune blow against him, as various parts of Italy fall into war or the Plague, as his friends die all-too-young, and even as his beloved King Robert dies.
The central power of Petrarch's letters is his constant resourcing of classical texts for his work. There is a strong deference to the authority of the Ancients here - though Petrarch is never shy in letting his opinion differ with his authorities (he in particular seems to give Aristotle some contention; unsurprisingly, given the scholastic Aristotelean establishment of his day). Some letters have an intimacy of tremendous force, exemplifying Cicero's value of the nature of friendship; others have a more devotional quality, especially in his conversations with various Roman bishops; and still others have a more academic, more poetic, more literary tone to them. Their diversity is delightful.
Volume 1 includes several of Petrarch's more familiar letters, including the powerful account of his ascent of Mount Venteaux (a crucial turn for Renaissance humanism). Underlying that account is the existential classicism of St. Augustine, which speaks a little (and other letters speak more) of Petrarch's unique expression of Christian faith, one absolutely catholic and orthodox, and, yet, distinct and separate from the politics of the Roman Curia and the folk-theology of the people.
I would remiss in my review if I did not mention a grievous thing regarding this Italica Press edition: the print is weak. There are times where entire pages are half-inked (though legible), or where strange blank streaks run across the page. The binding is weak too, and I have a handful of pages that plopped right out of the leaf without as much as a tug. This is disappointing, given how nice the volumes look both on the shelf and in the hand. It is even more disappointing seeing as how the Italica Press edition is, to my knowledge, the only English translation of the complete Rerum Familiarium. I wish either that Italica Press would redouble their efforts in providing a suitably sturdy and polished product, or that some other enterprising scholar would publish a rival edition (maybe one with critical notes?). For Petrarch lovers, however - as well as all modern Renaissance humanists - this edition will have to do, if only for the eloquence of its text.
September 28, 2008
The first Humanist... I only read a smattering of these letters in my current class, but I would love to read them all.
Want to read
January 18, 2010Read in particular his letter on the Ascent of Mont Ventoux.
August 29, 2025
I've always been a bit mystified by Petrarch's benign reputation as an overall 'good guy', as evidenced by the reviews on this page. The very title of this book should hint at the fact that there's a lot of mafia-like clientelism going on here (much of which is even centred around Sicily and Robert, King of Naples), and founding documents of existentialism can also clearly be read as Petrarch toadying to power, showing that he will be a willing client.
Catching all these subterranean and suggestive politics is an interesting process, while Petrarch's own awareness of being a prison to his persona and subjectivity is reflected in 'Ventoux' but especially in letters like V.2 to his don, Giovanni Colonna. This letter conveys that Petrarch was selected, at a very early age, to be a renegade, a scapegoat, to have the rules not apply to him - his stoic freedom is, essentially, enslavement to his identity (a very relevant issue). People in the Anglosphere (and other colder western climes) might see this as triumphant, but Petrarch himself is decidedly less pleased about it, as he should have been; this is mafia behaviour. The tone is literary and biting, but there's a whole lot of suffering going on as well, not just because of the plague. It was, if anything, the plague that justified Petrarch's humanist purpose, however, despite all the suffering it caused him (and, ultimately, us).
Catching all these subterranean and suggestive politics is an interesting process, while Petrarch's own awareness of being a prison to his persona and subjectivity is reflected in 'Ventoux' but especially in letters like V.2 to his don, Giovanni Colonna. This letter conveys that Petrarch was selected, at a very early age, to be a renegade, a scapegoat, to have the rules not apply to him - his stoic freedom is, essentially, enslavement to his identity (a very relevant issue). People in the Anglosphere (and other colder western climes) might see this as triumphant, but Petrarch himself is decidedly less pleased about it, as he should have been; this is mafia behaviour. The tone is literary and biting, but there's a whole lot of suffering going on as well, not just because of the plague. It was, if anything, the plague that justified Petrarch's humanist purpose, however, despite all the suffering it caused him (and, ultimately, us).
October 11, 2024
petrarch is like a cute grandpa who just wants the best for everyone and for everyone to be the best person that they can be. lots of these letters were really heartwarming; some of them contained nothing except “i thought of writing to you, but realised that i have not much to say—regardless, i keep you in my thoughts;” some were directed towards the great (and dead) latin orators like seneca and cicero, others towards his best friend boccaccio (whom petrarch describes as “mentally disturbed” at one point…).
messy thoughts from the supplementary readings and class: intimacy (loyalty, imitation), practice & prudentia
messy thoughts from the supplementary readings and class: intimacy (loyalty, imitation), practice & prudentia
October 12, 2024
Montaigne and Rousseau in the beginning of their famous books announced to the readers that they will find, among the pages, the man himself, the one doing the writing. Well, Petrarch anticipated them. In Petrarch's letters we do find the man, the scholar, the friend; the one who enjoys life and the one who laments death. Reading these letters will be a unique experience for any reader. I highly recommend them, since they could be a great companion for life.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews