An admiring correspondent of Petrarch, he spent much of his salary on amassing a collection of 800 books, the largest library in Florence at the time.

The faculty numbered among its illustrious pupils of law Petrarch, who spent four years at Montpellier, and among its lecturers Guillaume de Nogaret, chancellor to Philip the Fair, Guillaume de Grimoard, afterwards pope under the name of Urban V, and Pedro de Luna, antipope as Benedict XIII.

In better days, among Montpellier's illustrious pupils of law were Petrarch, who spent four years at Montpellier, and among its lecturers were William of Nogaret, chancellor to Philip IV, Guillaume de Grimoard, afterwards Pope Urban V, and Pedro de Luna, afterwards antipope Benedict XIII.

The works of Petrarch first displayed the new interest in the intellectual values of the Classical world in the early 14th century and the romance of this era as rediscovered in the Renaissance period can be seen expressed by Boccaccio.

Boccaccio returned to Florence in early 1341, avoiding the plague in that city of 1340, but also missing the visit of Petrarch to Naples in 1341.

Boccaccio and Petrarch were also two of the most educated people in early Renaissance in the field of archaeology.

Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri ( 1265 – 1321 ) and Guido Cavalcanti ( c. 1250 – 1300 ) wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarca ( known in English as Petrarch ).

Under Carrarese rule the early humanist circles in the university were effectively disbanded: Albertino Mussato, the first modern poet laureate, died in exile at Chiogga in 1329, and the eventual heir of the Paduan tradition was the Tuscan Petrarch.

Jean Buridan climbed the mountain early in the fourteenth century ; Petrarch ( accompanied by his brother ) repeated the feat on April 26, 1336, and claimed to have been the first to climb the mountain since antiquity.

On the one hand, some of his early readers such as William Jones saw in him a conventional lyricist similar to European love poets such as Petrarch.

The poems he chose to set for his early books include examples by Pietro Bembo, Petrarch and Ariosto.

His preferred poets changed as well: while early in his career he had used Bembo and Petrarch, and later Ariosto, he shifted to Guarini and Torquato Tasso.

Despite his young age, Landini was already active in the early 1350s and it is likely that he was very close to Petrarch.

The English period began far later than the Italian, which is usually considered to begin with Dante, Petrarch and Giotto in the early 14th century, and was moving into Mannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier.

Taken by his father to Florence to pursue the studies for which he appeared so apt, he studied Latin under Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna, the friend and protégé of Petrarch, and some Greek in Rome His distinguished abilities and his dexterity as a copyist of manuscripts brought him into early notice with the chief scholars of Florence: both Coluccio Salutati and Niccolò Niccoli befriended him.

The work of the Makar of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was in part marked out by an adoption in vernacular languages of the new and greater variety in metrics and prosody current across Europe after the influence of such figures as Dante and Petrarch and similar to the route which Chaucer followed in England.

Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown.

About 1368 Petrarch and his daughter Francesca ( with her family ) moved to the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation.

The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state ; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that Planudes was the contemporary of Petrarch.

The inhabitants of Rome came to believe that it was the tomb of Remus ( Meta Remi ) and that its counterpart near the Vatican was the tomb of Romulus, a belief recorded by Petrarch.

The period featured considerable formal innovation, including possibly the introduction of the Sicilian octave to Florence, where it influenced Petrarch.

In October 1350, he was delegated to greet Francesco Petrarch as he entered Florence and also to have the great man as a guest at his home during his stay.

They met again in Padua in 1351, Boccaccio on an official mission to invite Petrarch to take a chair at the university in Florence.

He did not undertake further missions for Florence until 1365, and traveled to Naples and then on to Padua and Venice, where he met up with Petrarch in grand style at Palazzo Molina, Petrarch's residence as well as the place of Petrarch's library.

In 1350 the king was visited at Prague by the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo, who urged him to go to Italy, where the poet Petrarch and the citizens of Florence also implored his presence.

At the time of his birth, Petrarch and the students of Florence had already brought the first act in the recovery of classic culture to conclusion.

The vulgar ( ie, spoken ) language of Florence gained prestige in the 14th century after Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca ( Petrarch ) and Giovanni Boccaccio wrote major works in it: the Divina Commedia, the Canzoniere and the Decameron.

Many worked for the organized Church and were in holy orders ( like Petrarch ), while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, like Petrarch's disciple, Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence, and thus had access to book copying workshops.

At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies.

There is a visible move towards neoplatonic models, which will be embraced by Dolce Stil Novo in the later 13th century Bologna and Florence, and more markedly by Petrarch.

In addition, a number of individuals are known to have read the text or have been indirectly influenced by it, including: Vussin, Hrabanus Maurus, Hermann of Reichenau, Hugo of St. Victor, Gervase of Melkey, William of Malmesbury, Theoderich of St. Trond, Petrus Diaconus, Albertus Magnus, Filippo Villani, Jean de Montreuil, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giovanni de Dondi, Domenico di Bandino, Niccolò Acciaioli bequeathed copy to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Bernward of Hildesheim, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

* 1327 – The poet Petrarch first sees his idealized love, Laura, in the church of Saint Clare in Avignon.

* 1336 – Francesco Petrarca ( Petrarch ) ascends Mont Ventoux.

The Italian scholar and poet Petrarch is credited with being the pursuit's first and most famous aficionado.

The celebrated poet Petrarch, was a great friend of the family, in particular of Giovanni Colonna and often lived in Rome as a guest of the family.

Petrarch, for example, devoted much time to his Africa, a dactylic hexameter epic on Scipio Africanus, but this work was unappreciated in his time and remains little read today.

Paulus de Liazariis and Johannes de Sancto Georgio were among his students, and he counted the humanists Cino da Pistoia and Petrarch among his friends.

Giovanni Boccaccio (; 1313 – 21 December 1375 ) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular.

The meeting between the two was extremely fruitful and they were friends from then on, Boccaccio calling Petrarch his teacher and magister.

Petrarch at that time encouraged Boccaccio to study classical Greek and Latin literature.

Certain sources also see a conversion of Boccaccio by Petrarch from the open humanist of the Decameron to a more ascetic style, closer to the dominant fourteenth century ethos.

For example, he followed Petrarch ( and Dante ) in the unsuccessful championing of an archaic and deeply allusive form of Latin poetry.

In 1359 following a meeting with Pope Innocent VI and further meetings with Petrarch it is probable that Boccaccio took some kind of religious mantle.

He met Petrarch only once again, in Padua in 1368.

Upon hearing of the death of Petrarch ( July 19, 1374 ), Boccaccio wrote a commemorative poem, including it in his collection of lyric poems, the Rime.

Boccaccio's change in writing style in the 1350s was not due just to meeting with Petrarch.

Petrarch describes how Pietro Petrone ( a Carthusian monk ) on Boccaccio's death bed sent another Carthusian ( Gioacchino Ciani ) to urge him to renounce his worldly studies.

Petrarch then dissuaded Boccaccio from burning his own works and selling off his personal library, letters, books, and manuscripts.

Petrarch even offered to purchase Boccaccio's library, so that it would become part of Petrarch's library.