As an undergraduate, I studied Petrarch’s sonnets in a pre-1800 literature survey course and remember learning about his rhyme scheme and great unrequited love for Laura. I cannot recall whether at that time I knew of his admiration for Augustine. That surely is my fault, for I am certain that my professor Dr. Robert Miola, known for his impressive learning in classics, early modern literature, and Catholic theology, would have mentioned it.

Recently I have become more interested in the connection between Augustine and Petrarch as I have sought to gain a better understanding of Augustine’s reception in the Italian Renaissance (for those interested in embarking on such an endeavor, I highly recommend the scholarship of Erik Leland Saak and Meredith J. Gill, two authors whom the Augustine Blog has featured already in this “Augustine Among the Moderns” series). With delight, I have learned that Petrarch engaged with Augustinianism not only by reading and quoting much of the bishop’s corpus but also through connection to the Augustinians. Petrarch (and Boccaccio) was friends with the Augustinian monk Luigi Marsili (1342-1394), who led a literary circle in his monastery cell in the Basilica of Santo Spirito, the Augustinian church south of the Arno in Florence. Petrarch bequeathed to Marsili his pocket-sized copy of the Confessions (gifted to him by Augustinian Dioni da Borgo San Sepolcro) that he took on his famous ascent of Mount Ventoux.

Discovering these biographical connections led me at last to read Petrarch’s Secretum, a text that I should have read far sooner and recommend to our readers. The Secretum (c. 1353) is a series of three dialogues between Franciscus (a fictional version of Petrarch) and Augustinus (a fictional version of Augustine). Over the course of the dialogues, Augustinus tries to convince Franciscus that to avoid distress in this life he ought to “meditate on death and the misery of the human condition” so that he can develop a “passionate desire and eagerness to rise” (tr. Carol E. Quillen, 2003, 52). Franciscus wants to follow Augustinus’ advice, but he cannot abandon his attachment to temporal things, especially his love for Laura.

In the third dialogue, Augustinus chides Franciscus: “How can you be so blind? Do you still not understand how demented it is to have entrusted your soul to mortal things that inflame it with the heat of passion, that will never bring it rest, and that are not able to endure forever?” (Secretum 108). Readers of the Confessions will recognize the Augustinian themes of mortality, restlessness, and ordo amoris here. As Augustine writes in book 4 of the Confessions after the death of his unnamed friend, “I had poured out my soul into the sand by loving a man doomed to death as though he were never to die” (conf. 4.8.13; tr. Boulding).

When Franciscus defends his love for Laura and her virtuous influence on himself, Augustinus insists that “there is no doubt that this woman [Laura] whom you celebrate, this woman to whom you claim to owe everything actually destroys you” (Secretum 111). Franciscus responds, “Good God, how will you ever persuade me of this?” (111). Indeed, Augustinus cannot. Franciscus persists in his love for Laura and refuses to abandon her. The dialogue concludes with Franciscus asserting that while he will try to find the right path toward salvation he “cannot restrain [his] desire for the world” (148).

In diverging from Augustinus and refusing to abandon earthly desires at the end of the dialogue, Petrarch never makes explicit that his choice not to let go of his love of Laura is the opposite of that made by the historical Augustine. Augustine did abandon his concubine (conf. 6.15.25) and thereafter chose to pursue a monastic and ascetic life. Was Augustine in the right for his choice and Petrarch in the wrong for his? Does either example illustrate the right way to love another human being, if such a right way even exists?

In ways that are certainly theologically troubling, I cannot help but be a bit proud of Franciscus (and thus Petrarch) for resisting Augustinus throughout the dialogue. I recognize the weightiness of Augustinus’ (and Augustine’s) belief that in the ordo amoris the love of God must come first. But the ascetism and morbidity of Augustinus’ position feels suffocating (and only partially accurate to how demanding and rigid the real Augustine’s thought can be at times when describing how we ought to approach heavenly versus earthly goods). Perhaps, like Petrarch, I am too much of a modern, but I admire his refusal to curtail his commitment to this world and to Laura.

Nevertheless, as moderns (post-moderns?), I think it important to recognize that our attachments to the world, to one another, and to our own health and longevity are often at odds with ancient and medieval worldviews that are more likely to appreciate and not seek to overcome mortality. There is a humility there, a sense of what it means to be created, that seems lacking in much modern thinking. Perhaps Petrarch’s Augustinus is right that we can clarify our thinking and alleviate our distress by not shying away from temporality and createdness.