100:, and immediately came upon "And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." Petrarch fell silent on the trip down, reflecting on the vanity of human wishes and the nobility of uncorrupted human thought. When they arrived back in the village in the middle of the night, Petrarch wrote this letter "hastily and extemporaneously" - or so he says.
31:
118:
mountain. In fact, whether
Petrarch himself climbed the mountain has been doubted by modern scholars; according to Pierre Courcelle and Giuseppe Billanovich, the letter is essentially a fiction written almost fifteen years after its supposed date, and almost a decade after the death of its addressee, Francesco Dionigi da Borgo San Sepulcro. Lyell Asher argued, indeed, that the ascent of the mountain was a
179:, uses the story of Petrarch's ascent to illustrate his argument that the outer world of nature is mirrored by an equally vast inner world of images. Both worlds exist apart from the human being. The outer world may have motivated Petrarch to climb Mont Ventoux, but the inner world is what he discovered when he reached the top and read the passage from Augustine's
79:
at the foot of the mountain. On the way up, they met an old shepherd who said he had climbed the mountain some fifty years before, finding only rocks and brambles and that no one else had done it before or since. The brothers continued, Gherardo continuing up the ridge they were following, Petrarch
139:
declared
Petrarch "a truly modern man" because of the significance of nature for his "receptive spirit"; even if he did not yet have the skill to describe nature. Petrarch's implication that he was the first to climb mountains for pleasure, and Burckhardt's insistence on Petrarch's sensitivity to
117:
before the year 1334, climbed Mt. Ventoux "to make some meteorological observations." It seems implausible that
Petrarch sat down and wrote the six thousand words we have, in elegant Latin with correct quotations from the classical poets, before dinner after an eighteen-hour hike up and down a
108:
It is often claimed that
Petrarch was the first to climb Mont Ventoux, although he did not suggest so himself. The mountain was likely already climbed in prehistoric times. There is even a slightly older written account of an ascent by
167:. He also uses it to illustrate his theory of intellectual history: "The description of the ascent of Mont Ventoux exemplifies graphically what is meant by the 'reality' of history as the reoccupation of formal systems of positions."
144:
is not a hard climb, and is not usually considered part of the Alps. This implicit claim of
Petrarch and Burckhardt, that Petrarch was the first to climb a mountain for pleasure since antiquity, was disproven by
251:
385:, tr. Hans Nachod, p.28:"The colorful description of this enterprise has startled many readers who have been amazed to see a man of his epoch venturing to climb a mountain for a view like a modern alpinist"
59:
to have climbed a mountain for the view. Although the historical accuracy of his account has been questioned by modern scholars, it is often cited in discussions of the new spirit of the
188:
The findings support this argument, that aesthetic experiences of nature and landscape can also be found in medieval accounts, such as the ascent of the volcanic mountain
248:
196:. Therefore, what is new for Petrarch compared to medieval reports is the artistic representation of his mountain ascent as a subjective experience of autonomy.
135:
75:. It says he ascended the mountain with his brother Gherardo and two servants exactly ten years after they had left Bologna. They began at the village of
899:
909:
84:, "Little Son"; Petrarch reflected on the past ten years and the waste of his earthly love for Laura. They looked out from that spot, seeing the
816:
343:
159:
describes
Petrarch's ascent of Ventoux as "one of the great moments that oscillate indecisively between the epochs," namely between the
945:
597:
960:
508:
444:
268:
459:
Mehr, Christian: Vor
Petrarca. Die Bergbesteigung eines Mönchs auf Vulcano. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 101, 2 (2019), p. 317-346.
531:; Johnson, Francis R; Kristeller, Paul Oskar; Lockwood, Dean P; Thorndike, Lynn (January 1943). "Renaissance or Prenaissance?".
238:
Bishop, pp.102-112; quotes and translation from Bishop, as is the choice of points to summarize and the comment on the
Pyrenees.
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671:
678:
211:
Petrarch himself applies this to his spiritual failures; this passage is one of the reasons the whole letter is regarded as
794:
72:
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nature have been often repeated since. There are also numerous references to
Petrarch as an "alpinist",. However
309:
9 (1966), pp. 389-401, and
Courcelle, Pierre, "Petrarque entre Saint Augustin et les Augustins du XIVe siecle,"
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359:, E.g. Bishop, p.104:"the first recorded Alpinist, the first to climb a mountain because it is there."
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O'Connell, Michael, "Authority and the Truth of Experience in Petrarch's 'Ascent of Mount Ventoux,'"
299:
O'Connell, Michael, "Authority and the Truth of Experience in Petrarch's 'Ascent of Mount Ventoux,'"
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49:(in Provence; elevation 1912 meters) on 26 April 1336 in a well-known letter published as one of his
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55:(IV, 1). In this letter, written around 1350, Petrarch claimed to be the first person since
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96:(which are 200 miles away). At this point, Petrarch sat down, opened Augustine's
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ever trying for an easier, if longer, path. At the top, they found a peak called
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368:, E.g. Kimmelman, who sees Petrarch's letter as early environmental writing.
305:, 62 (1983), p.507, citing Billanovich, Giuseppe. "Petrarca e il Ventuso,"
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497:(tr. Robert M. Wallace). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1983.
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487:. ; Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Press 1963
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Petrarch's letter is addressed to his former confessor,
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504:, (1868) tr. Middlemore; New York, Macmillan 1890.
539:(1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 65–74.
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502:The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
136:The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
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258:in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography
910:Influence of Italian humanism on Chaucer
113:, who, on his way to the papal court in
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122:account of writing the letter itself.
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900:Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets
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383:The Renaissance Philosophy of Man
495:The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
153:The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
533:Journal of the History of Ideas
679:De remediis utriusque fortunae
307:Italia medioevale e umanisrica
27:Petrarch's ascent during 1336.
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795:Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro
73:Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro
324:Petrarch at the Peak of Fame
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633:(Rerum vulgarium fragmenta
45:wrote about his ascent of
34:View of Mont Ventoux from
946:History of mountaineering
346:February 3, 2007, at the
339:, Part IV §3, beginning.
277:, June 6, 1999. See also
961:Mountaineering in France
800:Francescuolo da Brossano
699:Rerum memorandarum libri
509:"NOT Because it's There"
412:Blumenberg, pp. 341, 342
269:"NOT Because it's There"
567:English translation of
428:Re-Visioning Psychology
192:by the Dominican friar
176:Re-Visioning Psychology
941:14th-century documents
864:Robert, King of Naples
859:Philippe de Cabassoles
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522:Philological Quarterly
485:Petrarch and His World
302:Philological Quarterly
194:Burchard of Mount Sion
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36:Mirabel-aux-Baronnies
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769:Itinerarium syriacum
693:De otio religiosorum
672:De viris illustribus
403:Thorndike, pp. 69-74
313:7 (1961), pp. 51-71.
200:Notes and references
52:Epistolae familiares
18:Birthday of alpinism
744:Letter to Posterity
507:Michael Kimmelman,
500:Burckhardt, Jacob.
267:Michael Kimmelman,
890:Petrarch's library
836:Ildebrandino Conti
810:Giovanni Boccaccio
514:The New York Times
311:Studipetrarcheschi
274:The New York Times
254:2021-02-13 at the
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951:Letters (message)
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895:Petrarchan sonnet
846:Lodewijk Heyligen
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686:De vita solitaria
394:Bishop, p.102,104
290:So Bishop, p. 112
41:The Italian poet
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435:. pp.
226:Confessions
182:Confessions
163:period and
98:Confessions
61:Renaissance
935:Categories
716:Familiares
629:Canzoniere
120:figurative
815:Cardinal
664:Treatises
545:0022-5037
165:modernity
149:in 1943.
77:Malaucène
57:antiquity
956:Petrarch
853:Petracco
762:Secretum
708:Epistles
607:Petrarch
569:Ep. Fam.
466:See also
425:(1977).
344:Archived
252:Archived
213:allegory
161:medieval
94:Pyrenees
90:CĂ©vennes
88:and the
82:Filiolus
67:Contents
43:Petrarch
737:Seniles
647:Trionfi
553:2707236
190:Vulcano
115:Avignon
754:Others
640:Africa
621:Poetry
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228:X.8.15
614:Works
549:JSTOR
377:E.g.
173:, in
133:, in
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823:Fra
571:IV 1
541:ISSN
441:ISBN
437:197
155:by
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