The Black Death

Petrarch and the Plague

Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), the Italian poet, scholar, and proto-humanist, was one of the most significant literary figures to experience the Black Death. The pandemic claimed many of his closest friends and, most devastatingly, his beloved Laura — the woman who inspired his lyric poetry and who died of plague in Avignon on 6 April 1348. Petrarch’s response to the plague, expressed in his poetry, letters, and philosophical writings, provides one of the most profound and personal accounts of the pandemic in medieval literature.

Petrarch’s Life and the Plague

Petrarch was born in Arezzo, Tuscany, but spent much of his life in Avignon, where the papal court provided patronage for scholars and poets. He was a prolific correspondent, maintaining an extensive network of letters with friends, scholars, and political figures across Europe. His letters, which survive in large numbers, provide a detailed record of his intellectual life and his emotional responses to the events of his time.

The Black Death struck Avignon in early 1348, and Petrarch witnessed the catastrophe from within the papal city. He lost many friends and acquaintances, including the poet Sennuccio del Bene and the cardinal Giovanni Colonna. But the loss that affected him most deeply was the death of Laura, the woman he had loved and celebrated in his poetry for more than twenty years.

Laura and the Canzoniere

Laura died on 6 April 1348, the same day that Petrarch later identified as the anniversary of his first sight of her, on 6 April 1327. Whether this coincidence is historical or literary is debated, but it gave the date a symbolic significance that Petrarch exploited in his poetry.

The Canzoniere (Songbook), Petrarch’s collection of lyric poems, is divided into two parts: poems written during Laura’s life and poems written after her death. The poems written after 1348 are among the most moving expressions of grief in Western literature. They express the poet’s anguish at the loss of his beloved, his struggle to find meaning in the face of death, and his search for consolation in philosophy and faith.

The plague appears in the Canzoniere not as a historical event but as a personal catastrophe — the loss of the specific individual who had given meaning to the poet’s life. This personalisation of the plague — the focus on individual loss rather than collective catastrophe — was a distinctive feature of Petrarch’s response and reflected his humanist emphasis on the individual experience.

The Letters

Petrarch’s letters provide a more direct and more detailed account of his experience of the plague. In a famous letter to his friend Ludwig van Kempen (known as Socrates), written in 1348, Petrarch described the devastation of Avignon and the loss of his friends:

“Where are our dear friends now? … We are almost alone. Of the vast number of companions we once had, scarcely any remain. The plague has swept them away, not one by one, but in wholesale destruction.”

Petrarch’s letters also express his philosophical reflections on the plague. He drew on the Stoic tradition — particularly the writings of Seneca and Cicero — to argue that the plague, while terrible, was a natural event that should be met with fortitude and acceptance. He rejected the superstitious responses that he observed around him — the Flagellant processions, the persecution of Jews, the search for scapegoats — and advocated a rational, philosophical approach to the catastrophe.

The Secretum

Petrarch’s Secretum (My Secret Book), written between 1347 and 1353, is a philosophical dialogue in which the poet converses with Saint Augustine about the nature of his spiritual struggles. The plague provides the context for the dialogue: the confrontation with mortality forces Petrarch to examine his life, his values, and his relationship with God.

The Secretum reflects the crisis of faith that the plague generated. Petrarch struggles to reconcile his love of classical learning and worldly beauty with the demands of Christian faith. The plague, by confronting him with the reality of death, forces this struggle to a crisis point.

Petrarch’s Legacy

Petrarch’s response to the plague — a combination of personal grief, philosophical reflection, and literary expression — exemplifies the humanist approach to catastrophe. Rather than seeking supernatural explanations or collective scapegoats, Petrarch turned inward, examining his own experience and seeking meaning in the classical tradition and in personal relationships.

This approach would influence subsequent generations of writers and thinkers. The humanist emphasis on the individual experience, on the value of classical learning, and on the importance of personal relationships in the face of mortality became central features of the Renaissance culture that emerged in the decades following the plague.