Petrarch’s ascent on Mount Ventoux is an example of Renaissance synthesis of secular and Christian ideas. Petrarch makes this climb on the mountain simply to see the view from the top. The desire for something simply for its aesthetics and leisure are both a humanistic element of the Renaissance. By climbing the mountain, Petrarch was doing both of these things, which ties in Renaissance thinking. The Renaissance was the “rebirth” of Roman and Greek culture, and in the text Petrarch analyzes these cultures with a Christian perspective. Thus, bringing together a Renaissance synthesis of secularism and Christianity.
At the time Petrarch was making his ascent on Mount Ventoux, he was living at the end of the medieval age and the start of the Renaissance which was in the fourteenth century, "an enlightenment that saw nature in a new and enlarged view of the earth and the universe.” Many scholars say that Petrarch was climbing this mountain just for the sake of seeing the view from the top. He was dependent on just his faith that he could do so. His purpose for climbing this dangerously tall mountain wasn’t to prove something to anyone, he was doing it for the pure sake of knowing what the view was like from the top and experience the feeling of accomplishing something not many people in his time had done. This shows us that Petrarch was embracing the new Renaissance way of thinking.
To start off this letter, he addresses it to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro who was a friend to Petrarch and professor of theology at the university of Paris. Petrarch made this ascent accompanied by his brother and a few of his servants. He brought his brother along with him because he could not find a friend that was suitable with “the right combination of personal taste and characteristics.” Climbing to the peak of Mount Ventoux was not an easy task for these men to complete, the base of the mountain was full of stony soil and very steep rocks.
While climbing, they came across an old shepherd man, who tried to dissuade them from continuing their journey. He said he had made the same ascent some fifty years ago, when he was a young man who had the strength and agility to climb this mountain, and has nothing but pain and fatigue for doing so. No one had attempted this climb before or after him to anyones knowledge. Since his efforts to get the group of men to turn around was unfruitful, he went up the mountain a bit of the way with them, pointing out rocky paths and things they should avoid. His brother, Gherardo went directly up the mountain, whilst Petrarch decided to wander, to look for the simplest route whether or not it was longer. To his dismay, he didn’t end up finding a better path to take, all it did was tire him out while his brother was resting, waiting for him closer to the top of the mountain. “Petrarch saw this experience as a profound metaphor for the way he had been leading his life, in that the "easy paths" that do not lead the soul to heaven.”
When Petrarch reached the top he reflected on his successful climb. He opened his copy of St. Augustine’s confessions and opened to the passage that read “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.” This makes him look inwardly to himself and reflect on his rigorous journey up the mountain. On his descent from the mountain he didn’t say a word, he reflected on himself. He discovers that the journey for enlightenment he was looking for couldn’t be found through physical exertion, but it is an inward journey that one needs to find spiritually. Climbing the mountain wasn’t actually helpful to the journey he was seeking. Petrarch’s writing about his ascent up the mountain expressed a new way of thinking towards the enlightenment. This was a turning point in the development of humanism. Before this, people would rely only on they're reading the Bible or praying to reach enlightenment, now Petrarch represents a way to reach this goal through secular experiences of going out and experiencing the world for himself. This was a very modern and forward way of thinking.
We see that Petrarch, although identifying with stoicism, analyzes the rebirth of Roman and Greek cultures with a christian perspective. “ The great psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung said that Petrarch’s ascent marked the start of a new age, the renaissance because it was the documentation of his climbing experience that men began to see the world in a new way”
Petrarch was upset with himself on his descent from the mountain because eh thought he should be paying more attention and appreciating the earthly things around him. He gained from reading St. Augustine’s writings that the soul, when great itself doesn’t seek other things. He goes on to say that we are mortals so concerned with the earthly things and put or energy into all of these mindless things around us that we lose sight of what we are actually seeking. But we cant find what we are seeking for our souls in the world, it has to be found within.
Francesco Petrarch is considered to be the father of renaissance of the fourteenth century. Although he didn’t live during the Renaissance period, he portrayed a new way of thinking and embraced new ideas. His writings about the ascent on Mount Ventoux changed the way people used Christianity as part of the process of their self-enlightenment. Petrarch sought to sever the link from Christianity’s root in natural philosophy and instead join it to the humanistic thinking, that we can see in the works of Cicero with the emphasis on ethics and “religious imagination.”
Petrarch’s writings about his ascent on Mount Ventoux is a synthesis on secular and christian ideas. In the text Petrarch analyzes the rebirth of Greek and Roman cultures with a christian perspective. We see that through his new way of thinking portrayed in his writings, Petrarch catalyzes the start of the renaissance and makes people see the world in a new way. At first, he was making this ascent just for the aesthetics and leisure, which are both a humanistic element of Renaissance thinking. On his ascent up the mountain, he doesn’t know that what he is searching for is inside him, but it isn’t until he reaches the peak of the mountain. When he reads the passage from book 10 of St. Augustine’s confessions, that he realizes he needed to look inwardly on himself to achieve the enlightenment he was seeking from making the rigorous climb up Mount Ventoux. Before Petrarch, people would only rely on Bible passages and praying to reach the self-enlightenment that they sought out. Now, he represented a way to reach this goal of self-enlightenment by going out and experiencing the world and seeing God’s creations for himself. This is why Petrarch is considered to be one of the most influential people in the start of the Renaissance era.
Bibliography
Petrarch, Ascent of Mount Ventoux
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Letters from Petrarch. Selected and translated by Morris Bishop. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press.)