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ABSTRACT
Francesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch's invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.
Notes
1 Francesco Petrarch, “Invectives against a Physician,” in Invectives: Francesco Petrarca, ed. and trans. David Marsh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 59.
2 Francesco Petrarch, Rerum Familiarium Libri, trans. Aldo Bernardo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 278–79.
3 David Marsh, “Petrarch's Adversaries: The Invectives,” in Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, ed. Albert Russell Ascoli and Unn Falkeid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 170.
4 Ibid., 168.
5 Guisseppe Mazzota, The Worlds of Petrarch (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 45.
6 Charles Trinkaus, The Poet as Philosopher: Petrarch and the Formation of Renaissance Consciousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 112.
7 Harvard Crimson Editorial Board, “In Defense of the Humanities: Slashing Funds for the Humanities Is Dangerous to American Democracy,” Harvard Crimson, February 26, 2016, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/2/26/in-defense-of-humanities/.
8 Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 10.
9 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).
10 John M. Najemy, A History of Florence: 1200–1575 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 200.
11 Kenneth R. Bartlett, A Short History of the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 63 original emphasis.
12 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 77.
13 Leonardo Bruni, “In Praise of the City of Florence,” in Renaissance Humanism: An Anthology of Sources, ed. and trans. Margaret King (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2014), 77.
14 Nussbaum, Not for Profit, 10.
15 Stanley Fish, “Will the Humanities Save Us?” New York Times, January 6, 2008 https://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education (New York: Norton, 2015), 72, 75.
19 Ibid., 18–19.
20 Ibid., 19.
21 Petrarch, “Invectives against a Physician,” 10.
22 Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 246.
23 Charles G. Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 18.
24 Petrarch, “Invectives against a Physician,” 46.
25 Ibid., 33–34, 41.
26 Ibid., 1, 45–46.
27 Ibid., 76, 65.
28 Ibid., 7, 20–21, 63–65.
29 Ibid., 67.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 23, 28.
32 John Rappaport, “Philosophers (and Welders) React to Marco Rubio's Debate Comments,” New York Times, November 11, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/philosophers-and-welders-react-to-marco-rubios-debate-comments/.
33 Harvard Crimson Editorial Board, “In Defense of the Humanities.”
34 Katie Sola, “Sorry, Rubio, but Philosophers Make 78% more than Welders,” Forbes, November 11, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiesola/2015/11/11/rubio-welders-philosophers/#5cdc4a3c41b8.
35 Media Matters Staff, “Post Debate, Fox's Kilmeade Tries to Reinforce Marco Rubio's Controversial Welders Claim,” Media Matters, November 11, 2015, https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/11/post-debate-foxs-kilmeade-tries-to-reinforce-ma/206777.
36 Petrarch, “Invectives against a Physician,” 36–37.
37 Ibid., 36–37, 40.
38 Ibid., 40.
39 Marsh, “Petrarch's Adversaries,” 171–72.
40 Ibid., 121.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 120–21, 124.
43 Ibid., 177.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., 129.
47 Ibid., 151, 176.
48 Ibid., 158–60.
49 Ibid., 160.
50 Ibid., 161.
51 Fish, “Will the Humanities Save Us?”
52 Ibid.
53 Stefano Cracolici, “The Art of Invective: Invective Contra Medicum,” in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2009), 261.
54 Mazzota, The Worlds of Petrarch, 9.