Francesco Petrarca (generally known in the English-speaking world as Petrarch) had moved with his family from his native Arezzo to Avignon, where his father, a Florentine notary in political exile, had taken up residence.
Petrarch had begun legal studies in nearby Montpellier in 1316, and from 1320, with his brother, Gherardo, he attended the University of Bologna.
The Petrarca brothers had returned to Avignon after their father's death in 1326, where Petrarch had for some time led the life of a fashionable young man-about-town and came in contact with members of the Roman Colonna family, who had become his patrons.
In the Church of Santa Clara, on April 6, 1327, Petrarch had seen, and fallen in love with, a woman he calls Laura (but whose true identity remains uncertain).
Despite this emotional event, he had decides to enter the church, taking the minor orders in 1330.
In the employ of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, he had traveled in 1333 to France, Belgium, and Germany.
Petrarch had moved in 1337 to Vaucluse, at the source of the river Sorgue; while living there, he wrote or began many of his works.
His unfinished “Africa,” on which he worked from 1338 to 1341, is an epic in Latin hexameters on the Second Punic War and the exploits of Scipio Africanus.
In 1341, Petrarch is crowned poet laureate in Rome.
