Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero 's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the " Dark Ages ". Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city Arezzo on 20 July Dante Alighieri was a friend of his father.
Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa , near Florence. He spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras , where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V , who moved there in to begin the Avignon Papacy. Petrarch studied law at the University of Montpellier β20 and Bologna β23 with a lifelong friend and schoolmate, Guido Sette , future archbishop of Genoa.
Because his father was in the legal profession a notary , he insisted that Petrarch and his brother also study law. Petrarch, however, was primarily interested in writing and studying Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted.
Petrarch became so distracted by his non-legal interests that his father once threw his books into a fire, which he later lamented. He protested, "I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind", since he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice. Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Boccaccio among the notable friends with whom he regularly corresponded.
After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in , where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large-scale work, Africa , an epic poem in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus , Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity.
