Petrarch's genius: pentimento and prophecy (review)

138 Reviews and throne towards more abstract reflection on persona, is of great originality. The reflection on historical time in the writings of Abelard is idiosyncratic and not informed by profound specialist knowledge. Yet it succeeds in identifying Abelard's sense of the historicity of theological reflection. The lecture on patron saints is not as rigourously thought through as the writing of Peter Brown on the subject in the late antique period but raises questions about their multiple roles. The tendency to anecdotal reflection in Borst's lectures can lead to triviality in some cases. The lecture on women and art in the Middle Ages runs such a risk by its use of a few isolated examples. Yet his insights can be quite original, hi 'Science and Games' Borst relates medieval fascination with number games to the rediscovery of game theory in a post-modern period without falling into the trap of false identifications. He reminds us that long before Wittgenstein, Aquinas and Albert the Great reflected on games as an image of hfe, intertwining chance and order. The absence of scholarly apparatus to these essays is frustrating for those who wish to follow up the detail of his argument. Undoubtedly, specialists in each of the many areas Borst touches on will take issue with particular interpretations. Nonetheless, the volume stands as a testament to a profound humane vision of medieval society, which succeeds in raising enduring questions. Constant M e w s Department of History Monash University Boyle, Marjorie O'Rourke, Petrarch's genius: pentimento and prophecy, Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford, University of California Press, 1991; cloth; pp. ix, 216; R.R.P. US$34.95. This trenchant and powerful volume by a serious theologian seeks to offer a new perspective on Petrarch. Or, is it an enlightened form of an older one? It is a revisionary approach, at least for the later twentieth-century perception of the poet as a voice of plaintive love. H e is now presented as a theologian, in an overview which combines the religious, historical and literary contexts. In particular Boyle stresses Petrarch's criticism of the Avignon papacy, his republican sentiments, and oratorical and conscience-based addresses to various princes. This done, she illuminates the theological base of bis poetics, found notably in the semi-epical or allegorical Trionfi: the triumphs of love, chastity, death, fame, time and divinity. Despite their indifferent 'poetic inspiration', they are justly respected for their controlled emotion, pathos, and harmoniousness, revered in the sixteenth century by the Protestant apologist Johannes Wolf, who Reviews 139 put the great humanist in the ranks of such visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena. The designation of Petrarch as 'the herald of modernity' (p. 153) both 'secularized' his work and dismissed his strenuous assertions of divine inspiration and prophetic vocation. In his own mind he saw no clash between being the heir of Ennius and of Vergil and being persecuted much as Christ was by those who would not heed His messages. The classical ideal of the poet 'enlightened by Apolline inspiration about national destiny' furnished a role for the Italian's art, but it was all produced by the conviction of conscience, and of his steadfastness of soul, as in his De contemptu mundi. For him there was never any schism between classical Rome's humanism and the sacred inspiration of Galilee, so focussed in his various meditations on Christ crucified. In moral philosophy his De remediis utriusquefortunae, a treatise on human happiness and unhappiness, and his De vita solitaria, a panegyric on solitude, are model texts at the centre of his work and thought and they speak out to the modern spirit Despite his passionate love of the writings of the ancients, and the perception and sympathy which enabled him rightly to interpret them, he never sought to establish or substitute any form of pagan ideal for the Christian. While this study is a relatively short one, it is remarkable for its enormous scholarship sotightlyborne and for its links with both patristic and Renaissance and Reformation thought and culture. A particular feature is the generous quoting, in translation, of many surprisingly phrased religious perceptions of the nature...