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The Medieval Church · 1367–1371
On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
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What it is
A reply to young Aristotelians who called him unlearned, arguing that knowing what virtue is matters less than wanting it, and preferring Cicero and Augustine to the schools.
Why it lasted
The manifesto of humanism against scholasticism, and the clearest statement of why the Renaissance turned back to rhetoric and the fathers.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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