Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History
Petrarch and the Lost Ancient Texts of Europe
In this episode, we trace the intellectual awakening that began not in a grand palace, but in the quiet margins of medieval manuscripts. We explore how Petrarch, often called the father of humanism, spent decades hunting for lost works of Cicero, Livy, and Seneca hidden in monastery libraries across France and Germany. His meticulous copying and rediscovery of these texts helped shift European thought from medieval scholasticism toward the values of the Renaissance. Alongside him, his contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio championed vernacular literature and classical mythology, helping to…
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