HIS109Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Leonardo Bruni, Medieval Latin, Shared Experience
07/10/2015
Lecture 6
Italian Humanism
PETRARCH (1304-1374)
CANZONIERE???
SECRETUM (SECRET BOOK)
COLUCCIO SALUTATI (D. 1406)
LEONARDO BRUNI (D. 1444)
NICCOLO MACCHIAVELI (D. 1527)
BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE (D. 1528)
Petrarch:
• Petrarch was born into a family of Florentine exiles
• Father decided he needed a job, so they went to Avignon where the Pope was (he
became a writer for the papacy)
• Petrarch never felt a sense of belonging with his extended family
• Went to law school (smart)
• Not interested in studying law but eae iterested i studig Ciero’s speehes
• Remarkable sense of language
• Decided to study words instead of law
• Cicero was his role model, thought he was amazing
• “a the orld as still largel feudal, defied i ters of God’s pla for a
• Put his skills to use in the community
• Rejected medieval Latin, as opposed to the refined Latin that Cicero spoke
• Words are an index to who you are, you are what you write and say
• Began to draw connections linked to medieval past
• Fasiatio ith ords’ oetio to other humans
• Humans are humans because they have developed language—the only species to do so
through the exercise of reason and theologically have a soul
• Externalization of selves
• Lead him to understand the world of the ancient Romans and their words
• 14th century revolutionary concept
• Thus developed a sense of self, wrote letters to people (wrote one to posterity)
• The more he wrote about himself, the more narcissistic he became
• Began editing his letters so they had coherence
• Started writing dialogue about himself which he called the secret book/SECRETUM
• In the book there is a dialogue between him and St. Augustine (psychological
autobiography)
• Writing, thinking, analyzing almost everything
• Realized that he was in charge of his own life
• Was a traditional Christian
• Traditional concept of courtly love at the time
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Document Summary
07/10/2015: believed in the affair of the mind, not the body. Investigated how he was feeling and wrote this in poems to laura the woman he was i(cid:374) lo(cid:448)e (cid:449)ith (cid:449)ho did(cid:374)"t k(cid:374)o(cid:449) he e(cid:454)isted. She married two french aristocrats: basically life is a romcom, petrarch validated his reality of having an emotional life with feelings. Whe(cid:374) he (cid:449)e(cid:374)t to paris he shared petrar(cid:272)h"s (cid:271)elief a(cid:374)d po(cid:449)er of (cid:449)ords that words can externalize understanding community based on shared experience. Hired people to do his work as pop grew. Took the ideas of petrarch and applied them to his groupies. Took hi(cid:373)self a(cid:374)d applied it to others" li(cid:448)es: petrarch will always remain a distant and scholarly scholar, another disciple was leonardo bruni. Said florence was a republic, so everyone was in charge of their own success and ambition. Dignity of the individual became florentine ideology.
