Petrarch, Canzoniere
Petrarch, Canzoniere, translated by Mark Musa
Number of quotes: 1
Book ID: 326 Page: 1
Section: 2B2,4B
John’s summary of the book:In the introduction to his translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Mark Musa wrote, “It would be difficult to calculate the limits of Petrarch’s influence [on Western literature]…. For readers of the fourteenth century, Petrarch was best known as the Christian Cicero.” Dante and, after him, Petrarch served as stepping stone for Western civilization to exit the Dark Ages and begin its trek to the Enlightenment.
The Canzoniereis packed with references, obscure and overt, to mythological figures and events as well as to historical figures and events from both the Bible and the world at large. Not only are there, throughout that work, references to the major gods of the ancient world, but personifications also of such as Love (5.2), Death (14.5), Fortune (53.85), Reason (73.25), and so forth, just as Greek and Roman writers would have done, that is, as minor deities. As with Homer, Virgil, and other ancient poets, the real and the mythological are treated as one by Petrarch.
Even granting poetic license to allow for his blending of the historical with the mythical, Petrarch cannot be excused for his blending of the holy and the unholy. His obvious reverence for the gods of the Classical world (condemned as demons by true men of God) is blended with reverence for Christ and other righteous biblical characters, and that is a sacrilege. He honors Christ along with Jove, Mary with Apollo, Peter with Mars, contradicting Peter’s famous assertion that, “We did not follow cunningly fabricated myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2Pet. 1:16). Petrarch’s writings would throw that clear assertion into doubt. He states that David fought Goliath and that the goddess Minerva created the olive tree, thus promoting, with no obvious distinction, a biblical story and an ancient Greek myth.
Petrarch could not have written the Canzoniere without Greek and Roman mythology, and what would Dante have done without the pagan poet Virgil, his “master” who led him through the underworld? They both were devout Christians, and in preserving the ancient world’s respect for Classical gods and goddesses, they were not denigrating their religion, but promoting it, for Christianity was the product of a blending of faith in Jesus with the paganism of the Roman Empire.
The following are just a few examples of Petrarch’s view toward the gods and Christ:
creator
In Canzoniere #4.4, Petrarch mentions Jove and Mars as creations of the same God who called Peter and John by the Sea of Galilee.
In Canzoniere #24.8, Petrarch gives the goddess Minerva credit for the creation of the olive tree, in accord with an ancient myth.
In Canzoniere #28.64–65, Petrarch gives the god Apollo credit for granting men the gift of poetry.
In Canzoniere #190.11, Petrarch calls God Caesar.
fear
In Canzoniere #137.1–4, Petrarch says that the papacy is corrupt because it has exchanged its reverence for Jove and Athena for that of Venus and Bacchus.
In Canzoniere #5.12, Petrarch expresses fear of Apollo’s displeasure.
In Canzoniere #10.3, 24.2, Petrarch describes stormy weather as an expression of Jove’s wrath, exactly as Homer would have done.
In Canzoniere #138.8, Petrarch refers to the wrath of Christ.
immorality
In Canzoniere #23.161–163, Petrarch refers to Jove’s adulterous fathering of Perseus as if it were a historical event.
In Canzoniere #28.79, Petrarch promulgates the long-standing Roman tradition, that Romulus (Rome’s legendary founder and first king) was the bastard son of the war-god, Mars.
In Canzoniere #266., Petrarch describes his bondage to lust, which overrides his love for Jesus.
In Canzoniere #323.4–5, Petrarch refers to human beauty inflaming Jove’s lust [as it does his own].
real and mythological figures
In Canzoniere #53.26, Petrarch mentions Mars along with the historical figures of Scipio, Brutus, Fabricius, and Hannibal (#53.36, 41, 65).
In Canzoniere #105.16, 20, Petrarch mentions both Saint Peter and Phaeton as real persons.
In Canzoniere #128.7, 13, 49 Petrarch mentions Jesus, Mars, and Caesar as if they we’re all real persons.
In Canzoniere #155.1, Petrarch mentions Jove and Caesar together, as if they are real persons.
In Canzoniere #166.13, Petrarch calls Jove eternal.
In Canzoniere #232.1–11, Petrarch mentions Alexander, Philip his father, Tydeus and Melanippus (from The Iliad), Sulla, Valentinianus, Ajax (from The Iliad), and others as real persons. Some were; some were not.
In Canzoniere #186.6, Petrarch gives credit to Greek mythological demigods such as Achilles and Ulysses.
In Canzoniere #41, Petrarch refers to nine of the gods as if they were real beings: Phoebus (Apollo), Vulcan, Jove, Janus, Mars, Saturn, Aeolus, Neptune, Juno.
In Canzoniere #52, Petrarch refers to the goddess Diana, from a myth by Ovid.
In Canzoniere #225.13–14, Petrarch mentions Automedon (Achilles’ charioteer) and Tiphys (the Argo pilot) as real persons.
Mythological events
In Canzoniere #34.1–2, Petrarch refers to Daphne’s transformation from a woman to a laurel tree as a historical fact.
In Canzoniere #43.1, Petrarch refers to Leto and her son (the god Apollo), and his longing for Daphne.
In Canzoniere #166.1–4, Petrarch includes the cave where Apollo became a prophet in a list of real places.
In Canzoniere #179.10–11 and #197.5–6, Petrarch refers to the myth of Medusa’s face turning people to stone.
In Canzoniere #332.50–51, Petrarch wishes he could get a certain beautiful woman back from death “as Orpheus did Eurydice”.
biblical characters
In Canzoniere #44, Petrarch refers to David and Goliath.
In Canzoniere #62, Petrarch refers to the “Father of Heaven” as being crucified.
In Canzoniere #95.12, Petrarch mentions Mary and Peter.
In Canzoniere #206.27, Petrarch refers to Pharaoh pursuing the Jews.
miscellaneous
In Canzoniere #68.1, Petrarch calls seeing Rome a “sacred sight”.
Quote ID: 7780
Time Periods: 7
End of quotes