Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
A bifolium from De Otio Religioso, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy, second half 15th century].
A handsome bifolium from a humanist copy of one of Petrarch’s existential contemplative works, his ‘On Religious Leisure’.

Each leaf 291 x 200mm. 36 lines written in a rounded humanist hand, ruled space: 233 x 137mm, the text of the bifolium not consecutive, beginning ‘[...] hinc liber. Et alio loco: atqu[e] i[n] plerisqu[e] civitatib[us]’ and ending on the verso of f.1 ‘’Dum ho[min]es ad celu[m] no[n] quidem[m] veritate sed [...], and continuing on f.2 ‘[...] eloquia ut v[er]bo eius utar’, ending ‘disputavit Cicero’, catchword survives, contemporary marginal annotations (a few minor stains).

Provenance:
(1) 16th-century inscription in upper margin of f.1 dated 1570.
(2) Colker MS 434; acquired from Quaritch in 1991.

Petrarch’s ‘On Religious Leisure’ takes the form of a letter addressed to his brother Gherardo, written after a visit to see him in the Carthusian monastery at Montrieux in 1347. It is to be juxtaposed with Petrarch’s other contemplative work, his ‘On Life of Solitude’ (De vita solitaria), in that they present opposed visions of life that reveal the different existential choices of Francesco and his brother (the pastoral and literary vs the monastic). It is not, though, a simple work exalting monastic spirituality, but rather an attempt to recast religious solitude in a humanist light (on this, see S. Barsella, ‘A humanistic approach to Religious Solitude: ‘De otio religioso’, in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, 2009, pp.197-208).

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