On Good Friday in 1327, one hundred and four years before Filelfo fell out with Cosimo de’ Medici, the young poet and diplomat Francesco Petrarca went to church in the papal city of Avignon. As he later told the story, it was there, on the most solemn day in the whole Christian calendar, that he first laid eyes on a woman called Laura. She was probably (but not definitely) Laura de Noves, recently married to the nobleman Count Hugh de Sade.
