1 We wish to thank the Committee on Research of Vassar College for several grantsin- aid toward the purchase of microfilms of the manuscripts used in this edition. Mr. Kohl has been responsible for the introduction and notes; Mr. Day contributed to the introduction a paragraph on Giovanni's Latinity; we jointly established text for the edition of the letter, and our work throughout has had the benefit of reciprocal criticism. We are, finally, in the debt of Mr. Paul Oskar Kristeller for a characteristically thorough reading of our assembled effort; his suggestions have enabled us to eliminate several errors and to put right our text at two difficult points.

2 The works of Wilkins, E. H., especially his Life of Petrarch (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar and Petrarch's Later Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), provide much of the background information for this introduction. On the circumstances of Petrarch's death, see Life, p. 251, and Later Years, p. 271. In addition, I have consulted the rather more colorful account in Jerrold, Maud F., Francesco Petrarca, Poet and Humanist (London, 1909), pp. 242–243 Google Scholar.

3 The letter is published in Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere latine minori, ed. A. F. Massera (Bari, 1928), pp. 222-227; it has been translated in part into English in Jerrold, pp. 243-246.

4 The texts are published in Coluccio Salutati, Epistolario, ed. F. Novati, 4 vols. (Rome, 1891-1911), 1, 176-187,198-201; there is now an English translation of the first of these letters in Thompson, D. and Nagel, A. F., ed. and transl., The Three Crowns of Florence: Humanist Assessments of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio (New York, 1972), pp. 3–13 Google Scholar. On the nature of Salutati's appraisal, see Oliver, R. P., ‘Salutati's Criticism of Petrarch’, Italica, 2 (1939), 49–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 50-52.

5 Published in Sabbadini, R., Giovanni da Ravenna, insigne figura d'umanista (1343-1408) (Como, 1924), pp. 248–249 Google Scholar.

6 For a fairly cursory review of the literature on Petrarch produced in the half century following his death, see Handschin, Werner, Francesco Petrarca als Cestalt der Historiographie (Basel, 1964), pp. 4–25 Google Scholar. There is at present no detailed assessment of the immediate response to Petrarch's death; Mr. Kohl is preparing a paper on this theme, entitled ‘Mourners of Petrarch,’ for presentation at the symposium, to be held in 1974 at the Newberry Library in Chicago, in observance of the 600th anniversary of the humanist's death.

7 Published in Sabbadini, pp. 221-224.

8 Cf. Wilkins, Life, pp. 235-236, 241-250.

9 Ibid., p. 181.

10 Wilkins, Later Years, pp. 18, 56, 75-76.

11 Ibid., pp. 87, 92-93.

12 On this incident, see Pertusi, A., Leonzio Pilatofra Petrarca e Boccaccio (Venice, 1964), PP- 35–37 Google Scholar.

13 Seniles vm.6; see Wilkins, Later Years, pp. 119-120. The Senile Letters are completely available only in the sixteenth-century editions of Petrarch's works; I have used the text of the Opera omnia published in Basel, 1554 (rpt. Amsterdam, 1964), vol. 2.

14 Seniles x.4; see Wilkins, Later Years, p. 155. There is a partial English translation in Bishop, M., Letters from Petrarch (Bloomington, 1966), pp. 274–276 Google Scholar.

15 See Mommsen, T.E., Petrarch's Testament (Ithaca, 1957)Google Scholar. pp. 31-32, 80-81.

16 Seniles xv.9; cf. Wilkins, Later Years, pp. 281-282; 309, on the problem of dating.

17 Seniles xm.5; see Wilkins, Later Years, p. 201.

18 On Donato's move back to Ravenna, see Sabbadini, pp. 46-47.

19 I follow largely the account in Sabbadini, pp. 27-39.

20 Ibid., pp. 40-42, and (from the autobiography, Rationarium vite) pp. 153-155. Cf. notes 4, 8, and 42 adjoined to the text below.

21 The letter is in MS Z (described below), fs. 137r/b-137v/a; the quotation is on f. I37v/a: ‘Ecce preterea hanc epistolam super beate recordacionis Petrarcham Donato legendam. Hanc illi (obsecro quanto †… eius †.) mitte et—si iuuat—perlege. Cuperem ut pater ille perlegeret, quamquam mea ipse quantumuis expolita nedum ista nausearet inculta olim. Juuante Christo, cernes ex me fortassis que affecrionem qua me zelas exhilarent. Vale.’

1 Psalmi en. 15 (Vulgate numbering).

2 On the closeness of Petrarch and Donato Albanzani in the last decade of the poet's life, see the introduction above. Between 1366 and his death eight years later Petrarch addressed at least nine letters to Donato on a variety of subjects; at the end of this period, Donato probably began to consider undertaking the translation into Italian of the De viris illustribus, and this he completed in 1397.

3 When he composed this letter late in the summer of 1374, Giovanni was employed as a schoolmaster in the Veneto hill-town of Belluno. Donato had left Venice in 1372 for his adopted city of Ravenna where he taught Latin and probably served as tutor to the sons of Guido III da Polenta, lord of that city. See Sabbadini, R., Giovanni da Ravenna, insigne figura d'umanista (1343-1408) (Como, 1924), pp. 42–48 Google Scholar; hereafter cited as ‘Sabbadini.’

4 Giovanni is referring to his first meeting with Petrarch in Venice in 1364; Donato was the intermediary. Giovanni's remark suggests that he saw this meeting as warm and important, though rather brief. Soon after, Giovanni left for Bologna; he did not see the poet again until meeting him in Venice in the autumn of 1373 and visiting him in Arqua that Christmas. See Sabbadini, pp. 27-28.

5 Giovanni had first been a student of Donato's at the tender age of five years when, in 1348, he entered a school in Ravenna recently established by Donato (then probably a little more than twenty). He received further schooling from Donato in Ravenna in the 1350s; both became friends of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), at the time serving as Florentine ambassador to the court of Bernardino da Polenta, lord of Ravenna (1347- 1359)- See S. Bernicoli, ‘Maestri e scuole letterarie in Ravenna nel secolo XIV’, Felix Ravenna, fasc. 32 (Dec. 1927), 61-69; and Sabbadini, pp. 8, 15-16.

6 ‘Virtually from his infancy’: the early esteem held for Petrarch alludes to the protection and patronage afforded by the Colonna family when he was a youthful poet in Avignon. ‘The world's ruler’: the emperor in question is Charles IV of Luxemburg (1347-1378). Petrarch's relations with Charles were long and amicable; they began with a letter (Familiares x.i) written in 1351 urging the emperor to bring peace to the warring states of Italy and ended only after Charles's second Italian trip in 1368. In the intervening years, Petrarch had corresponded frequendy with the Emperor on Italian political affairs, greeted him on the occasions of both his descents into Italy in 1354 and 1368, and visited Charles in Prague as an ambassador for the Visconti lords of Milan in 1356. ‘The supreme pontiff’; it is not possible to state with absolute certainty which Roman pontiff Giovanni had in mind. Petrarch owed many of his early appointments to ecclesiastical livings to Pope Clement VI (1342-1352). In die view of Conversini, however, Petrarch's closest papal friend and admirer would probably have been Urban V (1362-1370). The humanist greatly admired Urban's sanctity and piety, repeatedly urged him to return the papacy to Rome, and lauded his eventual entry into that city in 1367. See, most conveniently, Wilkins, E.H., Life of Petrarch (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar, passim.

7 Cicero, De amicitia III.ll.

8 This catalogue of Petrarch's intellectual accomplishments derives from Giovanni's knowledge of the letters, tracts, orations—and of the events of Petrarch's later years. Some of the allusions are too general to be readily traceable, but others may perhaps be identified. The allusion to ‘sowing peace’ probably refers to Petrarch's embassy to Venice as guardian and spokesman for Francesco Novello da Carrara at die conclusion of the border war between Venice and Padua in the autumn of 1373. And there was another occasion: Petrarch served as peacemaker participating on behalf of Galeazzo Visconti in the conclusion of a treaty with the papal legate at Pavia in the summer of 1368. ‘Those sorrowing’: doubdess a reference to the famous consolatio addressed to Donato in the autumn of 1368 (Seniles x.4) on the deaths of his friend's young son, Solone, and of his own infant grandson Francesco. ‘Profit to the happy’: an example of encouragement that. Giovanni perhaps knew is a letter (Seniles xvi.4) congratulating Philippe de Cabassoles upon his appointment as papal legate in Perugia in 1372. The notion of Petrarch working and praying in seclusion was one that the humanist himself cultivated in his last days. Its most famous articulation is to be found in Petrarch's valedictory letter to Boccaccio (Seniles xvn.2) written in the late spring of 1373. Boccaccio in his own consolatio on the death of Petrarch used some of the same words as Conversini to describe the humanist's regimen at Arquà. See Opere latine minori, ed. A. F. Massèra (Bari, 1928), p. 223: ‘Remembering his uprightness, his morals, his fasts, vigils, and prayers, his innate piety, his love of God and his neighbor, I am certain that, having laid down the difficulties of this wretched life, he has gone up into the presence of the high Father and there with Christ enjoys perpetual glory’ (Certus enim vivo, dum memini honestatis morum ieiuniorum vigiliarum orationumque et innate pietatis eiusdem et Dei dilectionis et proximi, quod dimissis erumnis misere vite huius in'conspectu summi Patris evolaverit et ibidem Christo suo et eterna fruatur gloria). Since it is impossible that Boccaccio's and Conversini's accounts could derive either of them from the other, Giovanni da Ravenna's report of Petrarch's mode of life will have originated in his own observation during his Christmas visit in 1373. This gives Conversini's description an eye-witness quality that is rather rare in estimates of Petrarch's habits.

9 Psalmi XXIII.4 (Vulgate numbering).

10 Psalmi XXIIII.5 (Vulgate numbering).

11 Cf. Joan, v.24: ‘habet vitam aeternam, et iudicium non venit, sed transiit a morte in vitam.’

12 Horace, Odes rv.viii.28-29.

13 Rom. VI.9.

14 An echo of 1 Cor. xm.12: ‘tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex parte; tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum.’

15 Sapientia v.16.

16 Career corporeus: this was to become a commonplace in the ecclesiastical language of the West at least from the time of Magnus Felix Ennodius (473-521), a bishop of Pavia; cf. his De vita beati Antonio, in Opera, ed. F. Vogel, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, VII (Berlin, 1885), 189: ‘Quid agimus mens adhuc mundani oneris fasce depressa, quam nondum ad auctorem suum corporeus career evomuit?’

17 Philip. 1.23.

18 Rom. VII.24.

19 Giovanni's knowledge of the pagans’ disdain for death seems to have derived mainly from his reading of Book 1 of Cicero's Tusculanae disputationes, which, as the following notes will show, he had studied and digested well.

20 The Facta et dicta memorabilia of the Roman historian Valerius Maximus (fl. A.D. 30), on which Giovanni had lectured a decade before in Bologna, provided the source (at n.vi.7) for the allusion to this custom of the citizens of Marseilles: they administered poison to the infirm.

21 The fortitude of M. Porcius Cato Uticensis is recorded both in Valerius Maximus, III.ii.14, and Tusc. disp. I.xxx.74.

22 Socrates’ obstinacy before his judges: see Valerius Maximus, m.viii. ext. 3, and Tusc. disp. I.xxix.71.

23 For this allusion to the confrontation between King Lysimachus of Sparta and the philosopher Theodorus of Cyrene, see Valerius Maximus VI.ii. ext. 3, and Tusc. disp. i.xliii.102.

24 The anecdote about Theramenes derives from Tusc. disp. l.xl.96.

25 Sources for the story of Codrus, king of Athens, welcoming death upon the field of battle are Valerius Maximus, v.vi. ext. l, and Tusc. disp. l.xlviii.116.

26 This list is taken from Tusc. disp. l.xxxvii.89.

27 The Thracians’ manner of conducting funeral exequies is recorded in Valerius Maximus II.vi.12.

28 Tusc. disp. i.xl.96.

29 Tusc. disp. i.xlv.109.

30 Seneca, De providentia v.5.

31 Valerius Maximus, n.vi.7 (the same section where the custom of poisoning the sick is mentioned; cf. note 20 above).

32 Somnium Scipionis 13 (= De republica VI.13), which was known in the fourteenth century only through its inclusion in the commentary by Macrobius.

33 Coloss. III.i.

34 Dan. XII.3.

35 Seneca, Troades 77-78.

36 ‘Commotions of the academic life’: an allusion to the difficulties faced by a teacher in disciplining his charges; in fact, Giovanni failed to have his post continued at Belluno mainly because of his inability at controlling his students. See Sabbadini, pp. 48-49. About this time, a Venetian friend, Paolo de Bernardo, wrote to Giovanni from Treviso sympathizing with the vexations of daily classroom teaching; see the letter published in Lazzarini, Lino, Paolo de Bernardo e i primordi dell'umanesimo a Venezia (Geneva, 1930), pp. 192–193 Google Scholar.

37 Seneca, Hercules furens 208-209; the speech is, however, by Amphitryon, the husband of Alcmena, and not by the heroine Megara (as Giovanni's description ‘woman of high birth’ suggests).

38 Ecclesiastkus x.9.

39 Cicero, De qfficiis i.xxix.102 ff., was probably Giovanni's source for this commonplace antithesis between man the rational creature and man the appetitive brute.

40 Giovanni is alluding to Methuselah and other early descendants of Adam whose fantastic life-spans are recorded in Genesis.

41 Giovanni was guessing very well as to Petrarch's age; he was born on 20 July 1304 and died on 18 July 1374. He departed but two days before he would have celebrated his seventieth birthday.

42 There seems to be no other contemporary account that makes so much of Petrarch's youthful physique and bearing at the end of his life. Since Giovanni is generally precise in his description of the humanist's attributes and accomplishments, and had visited him only half a year earlier, this may be taken as an accurate (and previously unknown) report about Petrarch's flourishing appearance in his later years.

43 Job 34.12.

44 Seneca, Hercules furens 181-182; the speech is by the chorus.

45 Aeneid vi.750-751; the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls was well known in poetic fashion from Aeneid VI.724 ff.; for Giovanni, there was as well Cicero's discussion in Tusc. disp. i.xi.23 ff.

46 Antiphyla: not identified; the Antiphyla of Terence's Heautontimoroumenos offers nothing to clarify the present passage.

47 Juvenal XIII.11-12.

48 Giovanni here refers to the distance between Arqua and Ravenna. Since one stade equals about six hundred feet, the distance of 1,200 stades may be reckoned in its American equivalent as about 135 miles. This is somewhat longer than the actual distance between the two points—a fact that may be explained by Giovanni's ignorance of the real distance, or his use of a different value for a stade.

49 Petrarch's more famous orations—the ones spoken at his laureation at Rome in 1341, at Paris in 1361, and at Venice in 1354 and 1373—were all doubtless known to Giovanni. In fact he very probably witnessed this last, delivered on behalf of the Carrara of Padua before the Venetian government in the autumn before the humanist's death. Such a recent encounter with Petrarch's rhetoric may have caused Giovanni to choose the orationes, instead of poetry or letters, as characteristic products of the humanist's intellectual abilities. The treatise dedicated to Donato was the invective De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, composed as a reply to the criticism of a group of Venetian Aristotelians, criticism communicated by Donato to Petrarch in 1366. The finished dedication copy was presented to Donato only in 1371. The plural opuscula, in Giovanni's text, seems an exaggeration; although Donato did, as noted above, receive a number of letters from Petrarch's pen, he received the dedication of only one tract.

50 These journeys from the ‘Adriatic gulf’ must refer to Donato's visits to his friend in Arquà when he himself was still in Venice. It seems unlikely that Donato often made the trek from Ravenna to Arquà (over one hundred miles), thus absenting himself for some time from his post of schoolmaster and tutor. For a discussion of Petrarch's letters arising from Donato's visits in 1370 and 1371, see Wilkins, E.H., Petrarch's Later Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 201–202 Google Scholar, 281-282.

51 A reference to the letters that the humanist sent to Donato in his later years.There are at least three letters that Giovanni might have known which carried a moral message: Seniles VIII.6, advising penitence and study of Christian authors, written in June 1367; Seniles x.4, the letter of consolation (mentioned in note 8 above) on the deaths of Donato's son Solone and Petrarch's own grandson Francesco; and Seniles XIII.5, sent early in 1371 reproving Donato's propensity for lavishing gifts on Petrarch.

52 Cicero, De amicitia III.10.

53 Cf. Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto IV.ii.36: ‘immensum gloria calcar habet’, probably a commonplace by Giovanni's time.

54 Another allusion to Petrarch's penchant for criticizing and reforming through numerous letters, invectives, treatises. Aside from the constant stream of advice and exhortations that the humanist offered his friends, in his mature years Petrarch wrote invectives on the nature of learning, in defense of Italy, against criticism of acceptance of Visconti patronage, and against certain practices of medical doctors. In addition, he wrote letters of advice to such international political figures as the Emperor Charles IV, Pope Urban V, Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara, Niccold Acciaiuoli, and Pandolfo Malatesta. That Giovanni viewed such criticism as a natural function of an intellectual is obvious from the tone of his comment.

55 1 Cor. IX.22.

56 Sapientia vi.26.

57 Horace, Epistulae n.i, urges this notion at length.

58 Valerius Maximus, IV.vii. ext. 2.

59 Horace, Epistulae II.i.31.

60 Cicero, Tusc. disp. l.xlix.118 f.

61 Philip, II.8.

62 n Cor. v.i.

63 It seems certain that Giovanni was naming the Vallis Sarentinis, or the Sarentino, a region in the southern Tyrol to the northwest of Belluno. See J. Graesse, G.T., Orbis Latinus (Dresden, 1861), p. 204 Google Scholar.

64 Leopold, duke of Austria and Carinthia (d. 1386), had received the towns of Belluno, Feltre, and Cividale, as well as the region of the upper Adige (i.e., the Sarentino), from Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara in February 1373, in return for a pledge of neutrality in the border conflict that had broken out in 1372 between Venice and the Carrara of Padua. At the time Giovanni was composing this letter, Leopold was waging a war against the northern borders of the territory under control of the Carrara of Padua, a war that was ended in November 1376 by a truce arranged by King Louis of Hungary. For the documents on the cession of the region to Leopold and on the truce, see Verci, G.B., Storia delta Marca Trivigiana e Veronese (Venice, 1786-1791)Google Scholar, Docs. 1666-1667, 1693.

65 Giovanni is referring to an incident that occurred the previous autumn while guest of his uncle, Tommaso da Frignano. The incident (mentioned in the introduction above) is treated at length in his autobiography, the Rationarium vite. The household of his uncle (who, as Patriarch of Grado, had his residence in Venice) was overseen by a Franciscan, one Vittore da Genova; when Tommaso fell ill, Vittore usurped total control of the household, offended several guests, and, taking a severe dislike for Giovanni, tried to force the nephew to leave Venice and pursue legal studies in Bologna. At this point, Giovanni sought advice of a friend, the physician Guglielmo da Ravenna, who answered that Giovanni ought well to go to Bologna; this had been the Patriarch's own suggestion. Thereupon Giovanni flew into one of his not infrequent rages and threatened to kill his uncle. By the intercession of Marco Morosini, Giovanni was calmed down and removed from the household through the promise (never fulfdled) of a position as tutor to the children of Federico Corner. Soon thereafter Giovanni left for the village of Stra on the Brenta, made visits to Padua and Arquà, and, eventually, took his post as schoolmaster in Belluno. See Sabbadini, pp. 40-42, 153-155.

66 Sabbadini, p. 43, has regarded this treatise as a small work on the incident with Vittore, Guglielmo, and the Patriarch, that is now to be presumed lost. There is some reason to believe, however, that Sabbadini has construed Giovanni's remarks too strictly, and that the treatise in question is Defato, completed in 1377, which does include some autobiographical material as well as a long discussion of adverse fortune. In any case, we are presently engaged in an edition and English translation of this opusculum, based on the unique MS witness, Venice, Biblioteca Querini-Stampalia, CI. IX, no. 11, fs. 58v/b- 64v/b.

67 A reference to Guglielmo da Ravenna, the physician mentioned in the incident described in note 65 above. Guglielmo, who had probably been a schoolmate of Giovanni's in Ravenna in the 1350s, was a close enough friend to Donato to be named one of the executors of his will (made in Venice in October 1371). In the previous decade Guglielmo had been honored as the recipient of a letter by Petrarch on the duties ot physicians (Seniles III.8). From Giovanni's harsh words (which we know—see the introduction above—were intended for Guglielmo's eyes) it is clear that Giovanni had not forgiven the physician for siding with Vittore and Tommaso in the dispute over his fate as member of the Patriarch's household in the autumn of 1373. However, Giovanni did continue to rely on Guglielmo's good offices: in the covering letter (Z, fs. I37r/b- I37v/a), discussed above in the introduction, he asked the physician to intercede for him in procuring from Tommaso a legacy of three crates of books from his father's estate. See Wilkins, Later Years, pp. 137-138, and Sabbadini, pp. 15, 41, and (for the date of the will) 254.

68 ‘Our magnificent lord’: Guido III da Polenta, lord of Raveiina (1359-1389), a friend of Giovanni from boyhood; in 1368 Guido had named him as one of the Ravennate notaries to serve for a term in the court of the podestà in Florence. The rather fulsome quality of Giovanni's remark suggests that perhaps he was seeking preferment from his childhood friend. See Sabbadini, pp. 34-35.

69 Another reference to Donato's position as a teacher in Ravenna, with allusion to his responsibility as a molder of the character of the young—in diis instance, very probably the offspring of Guido da Polenta.

70 ‘The physician’: doubtless Odorico da Ravenna with whom Giovanni seems to have been on rather intimate terms. In his two letters to him Giovanni addressed Odorico by die affectionate tide of conpater: ‘good friend’, compare. The first of these letters (Z, fs. I40r/b-i40v/b), written late in 1374, contains a claim by Giovanni of sexual continence following the death of his first wife, Margarita Furlan, and explains his desire to live in solitude in Belluno. This expression of yearning for the solitary life prompts a description of Giovanni's visit with Petrarch at Arqua the previous Christmas and the retelling of an anecdote concerning Petrarch's own desire for solitude. Giovanni then concludes widi thanks for Odorico's support and steadfast concern for his welfare. The second letter (Z, fs. I40v/b-l4ir/a), written early in 1375, continues the same dieme of mutual respect and affection, and thanks Odorico for the friendship manifested in the plediora of letters that he has sent. There is, however, no further evidence of correspondence between the two, and Odorico drops from sight. See Sabbadini, pp. 47, 225.

71 This last phrase suggests that Giovanni was still well known in the city of his boyhood, of his early marriage, and the base for his wanderings in the Goliardic period that, in his life, had now ended.