Renaissance Studies Vol. No.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2012.00815.x

Petrarchs letters of recommendation

Kenneth Austin Letters of recommendation were a staple of the Renaissance, and indeed of the early modern period as a whole: they were used, for instance, in the spheres of cultural and political patronage, international diplomacy, and within confessional groups during the Reformation. But while historians have demonstrated a growing interest in the role such letters could play, especially within patronage networks, only limited attention has been given to the character of the letters themselves; there has been even less concern with the humanist models on which their writers might draw.1 This is in marked contrast to the ancient period, where letters of recommendation, both real and literary, have been the subject of several studies.2 My aim is to ll this lacuna by framing a discussion around the letters of recommendation written by Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), the gure who exerted the greatest inuence on Renaissance letter-writing as a whole.3 It draws particular attention to the dynamics between the letter writer, the recipient, and the person recommended, as reected in the letters; it also examines the rhetorical strategies that were deployed. As we will see, friendship played a critical role in shaping the context, and determining the content, of these exchanges.4 Moreover, I
1 Letters of recommendation within Renaissance patronage relationships are discussed for instance in Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici. Faction in Florence 14261434 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. 83104; Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network. Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), esp. 15069; and Vincent Ilardi, Crosses and Carets: Renaissance Patronage and Coded Letters of Recommendation, American Historical Review 92 (1987), 112749. A rare example of subjecting a humanists letters of recommendation to scrutiny is provided by Mark Morford, Lipsius Letters of Recommendation in Toon van Houdt et al. (eds.), Self-Presentation and Social Identication. The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 18398. Also relevant is Elizabeth May McCahill, Finding a Job as a Humanist: The Epistolary Collection of Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 130845, though this deals with Lapos letters as a whole rather than his letters of recommendation specically; in any case, as a relatively minor gure, it is to be doubted that his letters were especially inuential. 2 Especially Chan-Hie Kim, Form and Structure of the Familiar Greek Letter of Recommendation. (Montana: University of Montana, 1972); Hannah M. Cotton, Miricum Genus Commendationis: Cicero and the Latin Letter of Recommendation, American Journal of Philology 106 (1985), 32834; eadem, The Role of Ciceros Letters of Recommendation: Iustitia versus Gratia, Hermes 114 (1986), 44360. 3 On Petrarch, see for instance Ernest H. Wilkins, Life of Petrarch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); Craig Kallendorf, The Historical Petrarch, American Historical Review 101 (1996), 13041. 4 The literature on friendship in the medieval and early modern periods is vast. Among the most useful works are Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: the Monastic Experience, 3501250 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Studies, 1998); Reginald Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship. The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early

2012 The Author Renaissance Studies 2012 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Kenneth Austin

will consider the extent to which the letters placement within Petrarchs published letter collections affected how they were read; and this, in turn, will shed light on the relationship between letter collections and letter-writing manuals.5 Petrarch has long been acknowledged as a crucial gure in the Renaissance adoption of the letter as a literary form.6 Famously, after discovering a copy of Ciceros Letters to Atticus in the cathedral library of Verona in 1345, he set about arranging his own letters. Over the following two decades he gathered together twenty-four books of Letters on Familiar Matters and a further eighteen books of Letters of Old Age.7 After their publication, they would exert a considerable inuence on many of the most celebrated letter writers of the Renaissance including Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino, Desiderius Erasmus and Pietro Bembo. As a series of scholars has demonstrated, however, the process of organizing these letters for publication involved rewriting certain ones, changing their order, and even creating new letters.8 In other words, while these letters provide us with many details about Petrarchs career (and have often been plundered by his biographers accordingly), it is important to bear in mind that they were constructed texts. The letter of recommendation is one of the best-known genres within the epistolary canon. It held a prominent position in the two surviving ancient treatises on the art of letter-writing: Pseudo-Demetrius identied the commendatory letter as the second of twenty-one different types of letter, while Pseudo-Libanius treated the commending style of letter as the fourth of
Renaissance Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Ullrich Langer, Perfect Friendship. Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille (Geneva: Droz, 1994); Julian Haseldine (ed.), Friendship in Medieval Europe (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999). 5 On Renaissance letter writing see Cecil H. Clough, The Cult of Antiquity: Letters and Letter Collections in Clough (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 3367; Claudio Guilln, Notes towards the Study of the Renaissance Letter in Barbara K. Lewalski (ed.), Renaissance Genres. Essays on Theory, History and Interpretation (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1986), 70101; John M. Najemy, Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 15131515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1857; Toon van Houdt et al. (eds.), Self-Presentation and Social Identication. The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002). 6 E.g. John E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19038), 2:78; cf. Ronald Witt, Medieval Ars Dictaminis and the Beginnings of Humanism: a New Construction of the Problem, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982), 135. For a recent illuminating discussion, see Carol E. Quillen, Rereading the Renaissance. Petrarch, Augustine and the Language of Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), esp. Chap. 3: Petrarchs Correspondence and Humanist Practice. 7 Francesco Petrarca, Le Familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi and Umberto Bosco, 4 vols. (Florence: G. C. Sansoni Editore, 193342). In the footnotes below, references are to this edition. English translations are taken from Aldo S. Bernardo (trans.), Letters on Familiar Matters. Rerum familiarum libri, 3 vols. (Vol. 1, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975; Vols 2 and 3, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 198285) and Letters of Old Age, Rerum senilium libri IXVIII trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). On Petrarchs letters, see Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarca letterato, Vol. 1, Lo scrittoio del Petrarca (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1947), 155; Ernest Hatch Williams, Petrarchs Correspondence (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1960). 8 See especially Aldo S. Bernardo, Letter-Splitting in Petrarchs Familiares, Speculum 33 (1958), 23641; idem, The Selection of Letters in Petrarchs Familiares, Speculum 35 (1960), 28088.

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forty-one.9 Various examples are found in the Bible, and they form a signicant proportion of the surviving Greek papyrus letters.10 Book 13 of Ciceros Epistolae ad Familiares consists entirely of letters of recommendation; in fact, it has been suggested for that reason that this book may have been conceived of as a separate manual.11 In the most famous Renaissance letter-writing manual, Erasmus De conscribendis epistolis (1522), the Dutch humanist divides letters into three classes: persuasive, encomiastic and judicial. Letters of recommendation he includes under the rst of these, alongside letters of conciliation, encouragement, persuasion, consolation, petition, admonition and others.12 He later devotes substantial space to discussing this genre, and includes references to more than forty classical letters which might be consulted as exemplars by his readers.13 The letter of recommendation is particularly useful as a genre for the investigation of Petrarchs epistolary practice for several reasons. In the rst place, it constitutes a relatively small and manageable element within his published correspondence. Of the almost 480 letters contained in his two collections of letters, thirteen are specically identied by their titles as letters of recommendation (there are, in addition, a number of other letters which have elements that might allow them to be considered as belonging to this category, but for the purposes of this article, I will focus only on those letters specically identied as such). This group of letters is large enough to illustrate a fair degree of variety on Petrarchs part as a letter writer, yet small enough to allow for close textual analysis. In addition, the letter of recommendation occupies an unusual position as a genre. Because such letters were written for a specic purpose requesting a favour from the recipient of the letter on behalf of its bearer they have traditionally been quite formulaic. In his analysis of Greek papyrus letters of recommendation, Chan-Hie Kim established the normative structure of such letters. This consisted of: an opening (including a salutation formula); the background (which identies the person being recommended and provides
9 Pseudo-Demetrius, Epistolary Types, in Abraham J. Malherbe (ed.), Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholar Press, 1988), 3033; Pseudo-Libanius, Epistolary Styles, in Malherbe (ed.), Ancient Epistolary Theorists, 6675. 10 Kims Form and Structure is based on an analysis of eighty-three papyrus letters of recommendation. See also AnneMarie Luijenijk, Greetings in the Lord. Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 10211. 11 This suggestion, originally made by L. Gurlitt in a dissertation of 1879, is discussed by Cotton, Miricum Genus Commendationis, 328. See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistolae ad Familiares, ed. D. R. Shackleton-Bailey, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 12 Desiderius Erasmus, De conscribendis epistolis, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin, in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi I, II (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1971), 311. For an English translation, see On the Writing of Letters/ De conscribendis epistolis translated and annotated by Charles Fantazzi, in J. K. Sowards (ed.), Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 25: Literary and Educational Writings 3 (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1985) 71. On this text, see, for instance, Judith Rice Henderson, Erasmus on the Art of Letter-Writing in James J. Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (1983), 33155. 13 Erasmus, On the Writing of Letters, 1819.

Kenneth Austin

something of a context); the request period (in which the thing being requested is set out); the appreciation (less common, but pre-emptively conveying gratitude to the letters recipient); and a closing (which includes a nal salutation).14 Moreover, as Kim and others have shown, such letters commonly relied on stock phrases and formulas.15 Little had changed, at least as regards the typical letter of recommendation, by the fteenth century.16 This approach was, however, in stark contrast to that associated with the familiar type of letter for which Petrarch is renowned.17 In the letter of dedication, addressed to his friend Socrates (Ludwig van Kempen), which opens his Letters on Familiar Matters, Petrarch offers a rather self-deprecating characterization of the collection which follows: In it you will nd very few letters that can be called masterpieces, and many others written on a variety of personal matters in a rather simple and unstudied manner, though sometimes, when the subject matter so requires, seasoned with interspersed moral considerations, an approach observed by Cicero himself.18 The two types of letter did not necessarily t easily together. As has already been noted, Ciceros letters of recommendation had been gathered together into one book of his Epistolae ad Familiares (a collection to which Petrarch did not have access), suggesting perhaps that it was felt that they constituted a distinct group. In a similar vein, the authors of Renaissance letter-writing manuals tended to distinguish the two. As noted above, Erasmus argued that letters could be divided into three main classes; however, he then conceded: To these three it will be possible to add a fourth class which, if you please, we shall call the familiar.19 Yet, whereas the theorists separated letters of recommendation from the familiar letter, Petrarch, in his published collections, did
Kim, Form and Structure passim, but see esp. p.7 where this structure is rst set out. Clinton W. Keyes, The Greek Letter of Introduction, American Journal of Philology 56 (1935), 2844. 16 McLean, Art of the Network, writes the letter of recommendation . . . was typically terse and formulaic. No better type of letter could be found than this on the basis of which to assert that Florentine patronage interaction was a thoroughly patterned corpus of discourse (150). 17 As is frequently noted, the familiar letter stood in marked contrast to the more formal ars dictaminis of the Middle Ages. On medieval letter writing, see for instance Jean Leclerq, Le Genre Epistolaire au Moyen Age, Revue des Moyen Age Latin 2 (1946), 6370. On the Ars Dictaminis see William D. Patt, The Early Ars Dictaminis as Response to a Changing Society, Viator 9 (1978), 13355; Ronald Witt, Medieval Ars Dictaminis and the Beginnings of Humanism: A Construction of the Problem, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982), 135; James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, 1981), Chap. 5. More recently, see the special edition of Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 19, 2 (2001), which was dedicated to the waning of Medieval Ars Dictaminis. 18 Petrarch Fam I, 1 (Sec 35, ll.2437): In quo pauca scilicet admodum exquisite, multa familiariter deque rebus familiaribus scripta erant; etsi interdum, exigente materia, simplex et inelaborata narratio quibusdam interiectis moralibus condiatur; quod et ab ipso Cicerone servatum est. 19 Erasmus, De conscribendis epistolis, 311, l.8: Hic tribus quartum genus accersere licebit, quod si placet, familiare nominemus; Erasmus, On the Writing of Letters, 71. Erasmus elaborates: Eius eiusmodi ferme species esse possunt: Narratoria, qua rem apud nos gestam, longe positis exponimus. Nunciatoria, qua nouarum rerum quippiam annuciamus, siue de publicis, siue priuatis, siue etiam domesticis. Gratulatoria, qua amicorum felicitatem nobis iucundam esse testamur. Lamentatoria, qua vel nostra, vel necessariorum incommoda deploramus. Mandatoria, qua negocii quippiam alii nostro nomine gerendum committimus. (lines 914). It may include the following types: narrative, when we describe for those at a distance an event that has taken place
15 14

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not. An examination of the tensions between these two forms, and Petrarchs efforts to reconcile them, will allow us to gain a better understanding of the nature of his intentions as a letter writer. The remainder of this article will look at how the relationships that Petrarch enjoyed with the recipients of his letters of recommendation, and the individuals who were being recommended, are reected in his letters. Then, attention will turn to the requests that Petrarch made, and the rhetorical strategies that he adopted in order to support them. In several cases, these were tied to the character of his relationships, or to the nature of the request; but more generally, these were also couched in the language of amicitia. In the third section, the article will look more broadly at these letters as part of Petrarchs published correspondence, emphasizing how their place within the collection inuences the way in which they are read; this in turn will make it possible to suggest how Petrarch envisaged his letter collections might be used. *** In a recent article on letters of recommendation in the ancient world, Roger Rees refers to what he calls the amicitia triangle.20 While in that context, Rees uses the expression with a fairly narrow meaning specically the emphasis on friendship relationships within such letters it might be applied more broadly to represent the dynamics of a letter of recommendation. Person A recommends Person B to Person C; Person A already knows both Person B and Person C, and if the recommendation is successful, the triangle is completed, with Person B and Person C being united by means of the letter (see Fig. 1).21 In this process, the relationship that the recommender enjoys with the two other parties has an important role to play in shaping how the letter is written; this often helps determine the grounds on which the recommendation itself is made. This is certainly the case when one looks at Petrarchs letters of recommendation. The thirteen letters of recommendation that Petrarch wrote were addressed to nine individuals. Three were addressed to Emperor Charles IV; two each were addressed to Guglielmo da Pastrengo, an orator, and to Jan ze Streda (Johann von Neumarkt), a Bohemian humanist, who served in the Imperial Chancellery, before becoming Bishop of Naumburg, and later Bishop of Olmtz. In addition, individual letters were sent to Rinaldo Cavalchini da
near us; informative, when we announce a piece of news, whether of a public, private or domestic nature; congratulatory, when we are pleased at our friends happiness; mournful, when we bewail either our own troubles or those of our acquaintances; mandatory, when we entrust to another a piece of business to be carried out on our behalf. 20 Roger Rees, Letters of Recommendation and the Rhetoric of Praise in Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison (eds.), Ancient Letters. Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 14968 (at 1569). 21 McLean, Art of the Network, 158 includes a series of similar visual portrayals of this process.

Kenneth Austin
A (Recommender)

Existing Relationship

Existing Relationship

(Recommended) B

C (Recipient of letter)

United by Letter of Recommendation

Fig. 1 The Recommendation Triangle

Villafranca, a poet; Bernardo Anguissola, the Governor of Como; Francesco Nelli, a pastor of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Florence; Ernest, the Archbishop of Prague; Francesco Bruni, a papal secretary; and Ugo di Sanseverino, a military commander and member of the court of Naples. As one might expect, the majority of these gures were of considerable status: after all, it was to men of power and inuence that one commonly turned for assistance. However, there is a sufcient range of characters here to allow us to determine the extent to which social standing affected the tenor of Petrarchs letters. At the same time, though, it was not simply the status of the recipient that affected the character of their exchange. Equally important was the level of familiarity between Petrarch and his correspondents. An indication of this can be derived from considering the frequency with which they exchanged letters more generally. For instance, in the published collections there are fourteen letters to the emperor;22 in addition, there is one to his wife, the empress Anna, following the birth of her daughter.23 Nelli was the recipient of twentynine letters, making him one of Petrarchs most frequent correspondents.24 Jan, the Bishop of Olmtz, received eight letters;25 Francesco Bruni eleven;26 Guglielmo da Pastrengo four.27 Anguissola, the Governor of Como, was the recipient of two letters,28 as was Ernest, the Archbishop of Prague.29 Only the poet Rinaldo Cavalchini and Ugo di Sanseverino were not recipients of other letters. Also notable is that with the exception of these last two gures, the
22 Fam 10.1, 12.1, 18.1, 19.1, 19.4, 19.12, 21.7, 23.2, 23.3, 23.8, 23.9, 23.15, 23.21; Sen 16.5. [NB: The letters of recommendation are indicated in bold within these letter sequences] 23 Fam 21.8. 24 Fam 12.4, 12.5, 12.9, 12.12, 12.13, 13.5, 13.6, 13.8, 15.2, 16.11, 16.12, 16.13, 16.14, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 18.10, 18.11, 19.6, 19.7, 19.13, 19.14, 19.15, 20.6, 20.7, 21.12, 21.13, 21.14, 22.10. 25 Fam 10.6, 21.2, 21.5, 23.6, 23.7, 23.10, 23.14, 23.16. 26 Sen 1.6, 1.7, 2.2, 2.3, 6.3, 9.2, 11.2, 11.3, 11.8, 13.13, 13.14. 27 Fam 9.15, 9.16, 13.3, 22.11. 28 Fam 17.6, 17.7. 29 Fam 21.1, 21.6.

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letter of recommendation was not the rst letter to be sent to an individual; this is a point to which I will return in the nal section. The group most fully represented within Petrarchs letters of recommendation was that associated with the imperial court in Prague.30 Petrarch had written a couple of open letters to the emperor, urging him to turn his attention to Italy,31 before he visited Prague in 1356.32 Thereafter the emperor attempted to persuade Petrarch to move there permanently. While he did not take up this option, he remained in regular contact, sending a sizeable number of letters to Charles, Jan his chancellor, and Ernest, the Archbishop of Prague. Unsurprisingly, these warm relations, and the desire of the Prague court to attract Petrarch were reected in the letters of recommendation that he sent to them. To the emperor, he was, without question, highly deferential.33 As was his regular practice, he addresses Charles as Caesar in all three of his letters of recommendation, but in the rst he also employs the expressions O greatest Caesar, O most learned of princes, and O most invincible Caesar. This reverence also characterizes the way that Petrarch presents his requests. In the rst, for instance, he opens by stating: See how much hope and courage your kindness affords, O Caesar; so much indeed that I dare recommend to your clemency not only myself . . . but also other people.34 In the second, he apologizes for the boldness of his request, asking rhetorically, how would I dare, except out of great love, to speak this freely to Caesar?35 Petrarchs deference is clearly conveyed by his characterisation of himself as daring to make these requests of the emperor. In the third letter, however, he adopts a different tone. It is a sequel to the second and was written because the emperor had not acted on Petrarchs original request. Petrarch begins this letter somewhat abruptly: I determined to remain silent, but writing to you compelled me to speak as much out of respect for you as out of love for the person for whom I write.36 After briey restating his recommendation, he returns to a more humble tone, perhaps fearing that he has spoken inappropriately: I beseech you to forgive my frankness and self-assurance, since without considerable self-assurance so

30 On this group, see Frank L. Borchardt, Petrarch: the German Connection in Aldo Scaglione (ed.), Francis Petrarch Six Centuries Later: A Symposium (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 41831. 31 Fam 10.1 and 12.1. 32 Wilkins, Life of Petrarch, 1523. 33 The status of the emperor is also implied by the placement of the earliest letters addressed to him within Petrarchs correspondence: they open books 10, 12, 18 and 19 of the Familiar Letters. 34 Fam 19.4 (Sec.1, ll.25): Vide quantum michi spei quantum ve animi prestat humanitas tua, Cesar, ut non me tantum . . . sed alios quoque clementie tue commendare ausim. 35 Fam 21.7 (Sec.1, ll.911): quando ego, nisi vehementer amarem, romano imperatori auderem ita dicere? 36 Fam 23.3 (Sec.1, ll.23): Tacitus transire decreveram, sed cogit ut loquar non minus tui reverentia quam eius amor pro quo loquor.

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much frankness would never suggest itself.37 This letter reveals a tension which was ordinarily concealed: the high status of the emperor, and the fact that Petrarch was making a request, required a deferential tone to be used; but the cordial relations which existed between them, and Petrarchs disappointment, pushed him into transgressing these expectations, albeit in exceptional circumstances, and even then only briey. There may have been similar tensions in the background, but to a lesser extent, connected with Petrarchs interactions with his other correspondents; since, however, there is no indication that they did not acquiesce to his requests, and since there was less of a difference in status, these tensions are not as apparent. Instead, the impression that one gains by looking at the letters that Petrarch sent to most of the other gures is that he enjoyed warm relationships with them. This naturally spills over into the letters of recommendation themselves. This is clear, for instance, in his interactions with Jan, Bishop of Olmtz. In one of the letters of recommendation, Petrarch alludes to receiving a gift from Jan, which he insists is unnecessary, but which he accepts gratefully and happily.38 In another, Petrarch mentions that he is sending a copy of his Bucolicum Carmen, which, he claims, no one else has seen in its entirety.39 The exchange of gifts and the privileged access to his writings were both markers of warm relations between the pair. While the recipients of Petrarchs letters of recommendation can all be easily identied, the picture is rather different when one turns to the people on whose behalf he wrote. In the majority of cases, the individual for whom the letter has been written is not named, though it is frequently possible to identify who is meant. Two letters are written on behalf of Petrarchs son, Giovanni; he is not actually named, though there is an allusion to their blood relationship.40 A second pair of letters were written in relation to a young student; this was Giovanni Malpaghini, who had worked with Petrarch for several years as a copyist, during which time he had helped him transcribe and order his letters and the Canzoniere; in both letters, Petrarch begins by insisting that this individual was like a son to him.41 A further letter was written for one of his closest friends, Lelius (Lello di Pietro Stefano dei Tosetti), whom he had known since a trip to Rome in 1330.42 There are four letters recommending Sagremor de Pommiers, a French nobleman who worked as a courier conveying letters between Petrarch and the imperial court; he is only mentioned in the earliest of these, but the rst three form an interlinked group,

37 Fam 23.3 (Sec.2, ll.1415): Da, obsecro, libertati deique mee veniam; nunquam, nisi des multa esset, tanta suppeteret libertas. 38 Fam 21.5 (Sec.6, l.36): non grato tantum animo sed iocundo. 39 Fam 23.6. 40 Fam 13.2, 13.3: quam michi sit iunctus sanguine (13.2, Sec.1, l.3). 41 Sen 11.8, 11.9. 42 Fam 19.4.

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and the fourth refers back to one of these, although only obliquely.43 There are a further three letters where it is not possible to identify who is being recommended.44 It is perhaps not so surprising that the people for whom the recommendations were being made prove harder to identify; this was at least partly a natural consequence of the practical circumstances in which the letters were written. In several instances, the person recommended was already known to the recipient of the letter, so fuller identication was unnecessary; in addition, the fact that the individual in question would be arriving bearing the letter would make it even more superuous. At the same time, this was clearly a conscious decision on Petrarchs part. As far as he was concerned, it was apparently sufcient that these people should be identied either as a family member (or, failing that, like a son) or a friend; this was enough to justify writing on their behalf. But in terms of the dynamics of the recommendation triangle, the relationship between the letters writer and its recipient was more important. This was all the more signicant when it came to expressing his requests. *** When one turns to the nature of the requests that Petrarch made of the recipients of his letters of recommendation, one can discern both how his relationships with his correspondents helped to shape these letters, particularly in terms of the manner in which he expressed his requests, and also how he often sought to subvert some of the expectations associated with the genre. A good example of the former is the letter of recommendation that Petrarch addressed to Francesco Nelli, on behalf of a friend going to Rome. Petrarch begins by describing this friend in terms likely to appeal to a man of the church: This man whom you see is a humble little man devoted to Christ, a true despiser of the world and transitory things and zealous for eternal things.45 Later in the letter, he alludes to Nellis responsibilities as a Christian: For what could be more acceptable to Christ whom you serve, or to his Apostles who are your guests, than for you gladly to give assistance and advice to this devout man who has left behind the courts deafening roar to make his way to their silent dwellings?46 In a particularly evocative postscript, Petrarch further emphasizes the Christian context from which this request is being made: This letter I have written in haste from a remote corner of Milan, from
43 Fam 21.5, 21.6, 21.7; 23.3. In 21.2 he was identied as the bearer. See Ernest H. Wilkins, On the Carriage of Petrarchs Letters, Speculum 35 (1960), 21423. 44 Fam 17.7, 19.6, 22.11, 23.7. 45 Fam 19.6 (Sec. 1, ll.34): Hic quem cernis homuncio Cristo devotus, mundi rerumque fugacium spretor ingens et cupidissimus eternarum. 46 Fam 19.6 (Sec. 2, ll.1114): Nam quid Cristo cui servis, quid Apostolis eius, hospitibus tuis, acceptius potes, quam si cristianissimum hunc virum cupide, dimissis frementis aule fragoribus, ad illorum quietissima limina gradientem iuveris atque direxeris?

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a secluded section in the convent of St Ambrose on the day and at the hour when a living light from earth shone upon a world immersed in shadows and upon blind mortals.47 With this touch, he reinforces the piety of his friend with his own; in so doing he makes it all but impossible for Nelli to reject the request. Everything in the letter has been tailored to what he knows of his correspondents priorities. In other letters, Petrarch sought to justify his requests for support on behalf of the individual he was recommending with somewhat broader arguments. This was true, for instance, of the letter that he wrote to Anguissola, the Governor of Como, on behalf of an unnamed German friend who was about to cross the Alps. Having alluded to Anguissolas duties as a friend (to which I will turn shortly), Petrarch sets out two further grounds on which this individual was deserving of his assistance. In a somewhat over-the-top passage, he explains that there are strong personal reasons for doing this:
he has an aged mother; he fervently wishes to arrive home before her last day and thus fears too much delay. Among his other qualities we nd this admirable lial devotion, and by measuring his mothers wishes by his own desire to see her, his becomes even more consuming. You too can easily imagine his mothers state of mind if you recall your own mother, and your compassion will match his devotion when you consider that he is the only child of an aged widow.48

As if this were not enough, Petrarch builds up the set of factors which urge this individual to return home: even before coming to Italy, he was far from his mother, but now his innate patriotism and his friends expectation, but especially his mothers age and solitude, hasten him onward.49 Finally, he urges the governor: Return a son to his mother, return a citizen to his beloved country, lest we consider foreign hearts incapable of feeling the sweetness of their land, and are tempted to limit such feelings to Italians or Greeks.50 In this way, the letter moves from asking Anguissola to support the students lial devotion and laudable patriotism, to a request that he simply do what is right, in almost abstract terms. When he felt it necessary, Petrarch was able to pen a traditional letter of recommendation. For example, in a letter on behalf of Lelius to the emperor, he writes of his friend:
47 Fam 19.6: (Sec.3, ll.1822); Hec tibi raptim scripsi in extremo angulo Mediolani, ambrosiane domus in parte remotissima, ea luce eaque lucis hora qua mundo tenebris presso cecisque mortalibus, de terra olim viva lux orta est. 48 Fam 17.7 (Sec.23, ll.1421): matrem habet annosam, cuius fatalem prevenire diem ardet et nimium distulisse formidat. Est enim inter cetera pietate mirabili maternumque desiderium proprio metitur eoque suum magis ac magis accenditur. Tu quoque matris eius animum perfacile metire, si et tibi tue genitricis imago succurrat et pietati pietas astipuletur, si cogitare ceperis anui vidue lium talem atque unicum abesse. 49 Fam 17.7 (Sec.3, ll.2426): abfuerat etiam priusquam ad Italiam veniret, et nunc cum pietas insita tum amicorum expectatio et in primis matris etas ac solitudo solicitant. 50 Fam 17.7 (Sec.4, ll.2932): Redde natum matri anxie, redde civem patrie exoptate, nisi forte barbaricos animos non putamus natalis soli sentire dulcedinem et hunc affectum nonnisi italicum denimus aut grecum.

Petrarchs letters of recommendation

This man, O greatest Caesar, who comes to your feet with my letter is a Roman citizen and of noble blood, yet even more noble in virtue. It would require much time to sing his praises (for copious and abundant is the subject matter offered me were I to speak of his prudence, delity, industry, eloquence, versatile foresight, and other virtues), but I have decided to entrust him completely to you and to your opinion, O most learned of princes.51

11

Here, one can identify a number of the classic elements of the genre. Charles is addressed in deferential terms, while it is indicated that Lelius also acknowledges their difference in status: he comes to the emperors feet. Second, Lelius many virtues are set out, albeit in quite generic terms; later in the letter, Petrarch also records the high regard in which Lelius is held by other important gures. Both were familiar means of establishing the worth of an individual. Finally, Petrarch passes over responsibility to the emperor to make the nal judgement of Lelius. Yet while in the letters discussed so far, Petrarch advances a range of factors which might be expected to persuade his correspondents to accede to his requests, in others he demonstrated himself ready to subvert the genre. This is especially true of the letter that he wrote to Rinaldo Cavalchini on behalf of his son. Having re-introduced his son to Cavalchini (who had taught Giovanni some years previously), rather than exaggerating the qualities of the man standing before him, he offers a candid assessment: I have never seen a young man with greater hatred for letters. He neither hates nor fears anyone except the book, his only enemy.52 These are hardly the words to inspire condence or enthusiasm in a proposed teacher! But as Petrarch goes on to explain, I do not intend to compose an epic about him or to describe a distinguished young man, but simply my boy.53 In other words, he claims that he is providing an honest assessment of his sons failings, rather than conforming to the traditional expectations associated with the letter of recommendation. Certainly, his insistence on honesty was itself a rhetorical pose, but it does give a particular quality to the request with which Petrarch ends his letter to Cavalchini:
What more shall I say? I entrust this man to you, whom, I hope, you will return to me a better man, as Socrates promised Eschines. So that you may proceed more willingly I shall say to you what Philip said to Aristotle: I indeed rejoice that he was born in your times, since you can make something of him if any man can. Nor do I conceal from you that, in my concern for him and in carefully
51 Fam 19.4 (Sec.2, ll.814): Hic vir, o maxime Cesar, qui ad pedes tuos cum literis meis venit, romanus est civis et sanguine nobilis et virtute nobilior; cuius in laudibus multus essem nam copiosa et larga materia est de prudentia de de de industria de facundia de circumspectione multiplici ceterisque virtutibus hominis huius loqui , nisi quia totum tibi, sapientissime principum, atque extimationi tue committendum credidi. 52 Fam 13.2 (Sec.2, ll.1416): hominem nullum vidi magis a literis abhorentem; neminem odit aut metuit preter librum, illum unicum hostem habet. 53 Fam 13.2 (Sec.3, ll.7119): neque enim heroycum carmen in manibus est, non egregium adolescentem describere est animus, sed nostrum.

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considering all possibilities, I could have done otherwise, yet I preferred that he stay in Verona, believing nothing more desirable than you and your virtues.54

Comparing Cavalchini to both Socrates and Aristotle as an educator may be a little hyperbolic; given the extent to which Petrarch has emphasized the limitations of his son, one might even wonder whether these allusions were tongue-in-cheek. Even so, his willingness to point out the failings of the person he was recommending was not restricted to his son. In his recommendations of Malpaghini addressed to Francesco Bruni and Ugo di Sanseverino, he outlines both his good qualities and his failings.55 In relation to both individuals whom he recommended, one can see some of the tensions that Petrarch had to address in writing these letters. It was to be expected that such a letter would portray the recommended person in a favourable light. Writing to Sanseverino, Petrarch comments that Malpaghini had specically requested the letter of recommendation in the belief that this would carry weight with its recipient. At the same time, though, Petrarch wanted to demonstrate that he approached his correspondents with honesty. There may also have been a concern that he would devalue the currency if he exaggerated the strengths of the people on whose behalf he wrote. All of this was a particular issue for Petrarch because he did not conceive of himself as writing standard letters of recommendation associated with patronage networks; rather his were letters exchanged with friends. Indeed, friendship is probably the most important concept running through Petrarchs letters of recommendation.56 Of course, this was, in a sense, to be expected. The very nature of the activity, and the model set out above, certainly implies friendship, a theme in letters of the period that has received considerable recent attention.57 In addition, the importance of friendship to Petrarch has often been noted.58 But a close investigation of these letters allows one to discern quite how central a role it played. In the rst place, the individuals involved in the process are themselves frequently identied as Petrarchs friends. This occurs in the titles of the letters: in ve of the thirteen letters of
54 Fam 13.2 (Sec.7, ll.4755): Quid ulterius dicam? dono hunc hominem tibi, quem meliorem michi restitues, ut spero, quod Socrates promisit Eschini. Id ut libentius prestes, dicam quod Philippus Aristotili: Gaudeo equidem et ego hunc tua etate natum esse, qui per te aliquid at, si per hominem eri potest; nec dissimulo me, dum sibi anxius invigilo cuntaque circumspicio, nil magis quam te tuasque virtutes intuentem, cum alia possem, veronense illi habitaculum elegisse. 55 Sen 11.8, 11.9. 56 On the role of friendship in medieval letter collections, see for instance Julian Haseldine, Understanding the language of amicitia. The friendship circle of Peter of Celle (c. 11151183), Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994), 23760; Walter Ysebaert, Medieval Letter-Collections as a Mirror of Circles of Friendship? The Example of Stephen of Tournai, 11281203, Revue belge de philologie et dhistoire 83, 2 (2005), 285300. 57 E.g. Judith Bryce, Between Friends? Two Letters of Ippolita Sforza to Lorenzo de Medici, Renaissance Studies 21 (2007), 34065; Amyrose McCue Gill. Fraught Relations in the Letters of Laura Cereta: Marriage, Friendship and Humanist Epistolarity, Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009), 10981129; Yvonne Charlier, Erasme et lamiti daprs sa correspondance (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1977). 58 Dolora Chapelle Wojciehowski, Francis Petrarch: First Modern Friend, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 47 (2005), 26998.

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recommendation, the beneciary is described as a friend59 while two others are described as being about the same subject when that subject has just been identied as relating to a friend;60 to this list might be added a letter described as a recommendation of his Lelius (commendatio Lelii sui).61 However, it is when one looks at the ideas advanced in these letters that one truly gets a sense of how Petrarch made use of the language, and expectations, associated with friendship. In the rst place, he frequently made allusions to the obligations of hospitality which friendship incurred. While obligations arising from religious duty, patriotism, and doing what is right tended, as we have seen, to be dealt with head-on, confronting a correspondent with the demands of friendship was evidently a more delicate matter. This was the case, for instance, with Petrarchs letter to the Bishop of Olmtz, recommending Sagremor, in which he writes: It would be tting and worthy of you, then, were you to reciprocate his love by proving that, just as no one can surpass you in intelligence or eloquence or virtue, no one can outdo you in kindness and love.62 With these words, Petrarch combines attery with a notion of mutual obligation: the bishop should aid Sagremor in order to reciprocate the love that Sagremor has shown to him. But these obligations could be hinted at in still more subtle ways. In the letter preceding this one in the collection, addressed to Bartolommeo da Genova, a student at the University of Bologna, Petrarch spoke of his burgeoning friendship with Bartolommeo and closed with a reference to his readiness to offer assistance: If you ever have need of anyone, then use me as you will, and consider me condently among your friends.63 Obviously, the bishop would not have read this letter, but the pairing was undoubtedly not accidental; although addressed to another gure, it highlights for the reader the culture of mutual obligation. An even clearer example of this was the letter that Petrarch wrote to Bernardo Anguissola, on behalf of the German crossing the Alps;64 in the previous letter, to the same addressee, Petrarch had emphazised how keen he was to visit his great friend Anguissola. In a sense, this laid the foundation for the request that came in the next letter. In this regard, it is remarkable that with the exception of two correspondents (to whom he only sent one letter each) all the recipients of a letter of recommendation had received a previous letter from Petrarch; in other words, for each of them, that letter was part of an ongoing exchange of favours. Another strategy that Petrarch adopted in this respect was to identify himself closely with the person whom he was recommending. In one letter, he urges
Fam 17.7, 19.6, 21.5, 23.3, 23.7. Fam 21.6, 21.7. 61 Fam 19.4. 62 Fam 21.5 (Sec.4, ll.2124): Rite ergo teque rem dignam feceris si eum reciproca caritate complexus, ostenderis te ut ingenio ut eloquio ut virtute animi, sic benivolentia et amore a nemine vinci posse. 63 Fam 21.4 (Sec.4, ll.2728): Proinde me, siquis est usus, iure tuo utere, inque amicis certa dutia habeto. 64 Fam 17.7. This letter is discussed more fully in the next section.
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Francesco Nelli to look upon him as you would me;65 this idea is echoed in the letter which follows it in the collection, again to Nelli, where Petrarch indicates that he has heard from the pilgrim that he was well received: Through it I have perceived what I once learned through experience: the way you would receive me, judging from your reception of my friend on his way to Rome. . . .66 A still more striking example comes from the letter to the Emperor on behalf of Lelius, in which he notes: although to speak truthfully and properly, it is not another whom my devotion now recommends to you, but another me, as they say.67 In this last expression, Petrarch taps into a classic concept from discourses on friendship, namely the friend as another self.68 In this letter to the emperor, Petrarch exemplies a nal strand that further illustrates the extent to which friendship helped shape his thinking, and had an impact on the letters of recommendation which he wrote: this was the explicit reference to the notion of friendship itself. Of course, the very fact that Petrarch has named his friend Lelius was an allusion to Ciceros De amicitia.69 But towards the end of his letter, Petrarch spells it out: His name is Lelius, who among the ancients, according to Cicero, was a wise man distinguished for his faithfulness and friendship; among us he has acquired a reputation in both areas. The ancient Laelius had Scipio as a friend: I am not Scipio, but I am his friend, and as a suppliant I intercede with my lord in my friends behalf.70 By taking on the role of Scipio (though claiming to distance himself from him), and placing the request full square in the context of amicitia, Petrarch demonstrates how he considers his request should be read by its recipient; again, it is apparent that he believes the evocation of the language of friendship should be sufcient to persuade the Emperor to acquiesce. *** In this nal section, I will consider the ways in which Petrarchs placement of his letters of recommendation within the published collections inuenced their form. This will shed light both on certain elements of Petrarchs construction of these texts, and also make it possible to suggest how these letters might have been read. As has already been noted, he is known to have devoted considerable attention to the construction of his letter collections, and this case study can help to reveal elements of his method.

Fam 19.6 (Sec.1., l.7): Sic eum aspicies ut me. Fam 19.7 (Sec.4, ll.2627): Sensi ex ea, quod olim didiceram expertus, qualiter me visurus sis, qui romipetam meum ita videris. 67 Fam 19.4 (Sec.1, ll.57): quanquam si vere et proprie loqui velim, non sit alter quem mea tibi nunc devotio recommendat, nisi forsan ut dici solet alter ego. 68 E.g. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, trans J. A. K. Thomson (London: Penguin, 1955, 2004) IX, 9 (at 246). 69 Cicero, Laelius: On Friendship [De Amicitia] in Cicero, On the Good Life, trans. Michael Grant (London: Penguin, 1971), 172227. 70 Fam 19.4.
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An obvious rst point is that the letters frequently appear as pairs, and on one occasion as a triplet. In fact, this is true of all but two of his thirteen letters of recommendation.71 On three occasions, the letters are adjacent and refer to the same individual. Two other pairs of recommendation letters are separated by only one or two letters; a reader working through the book in sequence would undoubtedly be aware of the parallels.72 Admittedly, one might contend that this was a product of the circumstances in which the letters were written: letters of recommendation for the same individual would, reasonably, be written at the same time (and indeed, sometimes the letters of recommendation share the same date). Against this, however, one has to recall that while Petrarchs letters are arranged in broadly chronological order, this order is very frequently disrupted; consequently, one must assume such disruption is far from arbitrary.73 This arrangement allowed Petrarch to do still more with his letters of recommendation. In the rst place, producing letters in pairs allows a sense of complementarity to emerge. Probably the clearest example of this is provided by the two letters that Petrarch wrote on behalf of his son: a sense of balance is implied from the outset. The letters are entitled: To Rinaldo da Verona, poet, a recommendation for the young man sent to him for educating and To Guglielmo da Verona, orator, on the same subject.74 The names by which his correspondents are addressed, and their professional occupations, enhance the sense of connection and balance. This impression is then supported by the content of the two letters: while Rinaldo is asked to be responsible for the education of Petrarchs son, Guglielmo is to oversee his behaviour. However, the sense of balance is perhaps undermined by the respective lengths of the two letters. The second letter is only about one quarter as long as the rst. It is certainly possible that Petrarch anticipated that the two Veronese recipients of his requests would share his letters between themselves, but it seems signicantly more likely that it was their placement within the collection of letters which was the more inuential factor (it is highly likely that the second letter of the pair was substantially rewritten when Petrarch decided to include it in his published collection). For readers of the volume, there was no need to provide the broader picture for the second letter, since the scene had been set by the rst; indeed, to have done so might have been to introduce a degree of repetition. This meant that literary concerns were pursued at the expense of due politeness.
71 72 73

The exception is Fam 17.7. Fam 19.4 and 19.6; Fam 23.3 and 23.7. Cf. Mary Beard, Ciceronian Correspondences: Making a Book Out of Letters in T. P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 10344 in which Beard argues that the decision to publish editions of Ciceros letters arranged in chronological order undermines the literary dimensions of the collections. 74 Fam 13.2, 13.3: Ad Rainaldum Veronensem poetam, commendatio adolescentis discendi gratia ad se missi and Ad Guillelmum Veronensem oratorem, de hoc ipso.

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The recommendation for a friend crossing the Alps, addressed to Bernardo Anguissola, stands alone, but even here it is apparent that reading the letter as part of the published collection adds a further dimension. In this letter, as we saw, Petrarch asked for the favour on various grounds, including the students devotion to his family and to the land of his birth. Arguably the strongest factor, however, was likely to be the relationship between Petrarch and Anguissola. The signicance of this is highlighted by the fact that the preceding letter was also addressed to Anguissola, and that in it, he emphasizes their closeness, expressing his desire to visit him: But much more readily would I see a friend such as yourself, for I rmly believe that nothing gives greater pleasure to my eyes than to behold the face of a much-desired friend.75 By stressing their friendship in this letter, Petrarch provides a context for the one containing his request and therefore he makes it more likely that Anguissola will accede to it. At the same time, the manner in which he achieves this is quite subtle: by spreading it over two letters, there is less a sense of his request being a demand for a directly reciprocal action; instead it is placed in a broader context of mutual support. The sense of connection between the two letters is further strengthened by their content. In the preceding letter, Petrarch anticipates travelling to see Anguissola, but at the last minute changes his mind, fearful about crossing the Alps in the dead of winter. Signicantly, this is the very same journey that the friend whom he recommends is about to undertake. In still other letters, the presentation helps draw the reader into a mininarrative; taken together, the letters reect a vignette. This is true, for instance, of the letters relating to the recommendation of Lelius. Before the letter written to the emperor on Lelius behalf, there is one to Lelius himself. Not only does this allow him to express their closeness (I speak with you as I would with myself),76 to make connections with Lelius namesake, and to offer thoughts on the nature of friendship (great is the faithfulness of friendship),77 all of which themes are echoed in the letter of recommendation, but he also uses it to introduce the one which follows: Along with this letter you will receive the letter that you wished from me to Caesar about you so that you could approach him with greater condence and familiarity . . . I hope that it . . . will open Caesars doors to you.78 Ending the letter in this way might almost constitute a cliffhanger. The letter that follows is the recommendation itself. It is not until eight letters later in the collection, when Petrarch wrote again to the emperor, that we learn
75 Fam 17.6 (Sec.1, ll.911): Talem vero amicum multo cupidius; aut enim ego fallor aut nulla dulcedo maior oculis quam exoptata facies amici. 76 Fam 19.3: ita tecum loquerer ut mecum. 77 Fam 19.3: magna des amicitie. 78 Fam 19.3: Epystolam quam ad Cesarem ipsum tuis me de rebus scribere voluisti, qua comitatus illum dentius atque familiarius adeas, cum hac simul accipies . . . Illa quidem, ut spero . . . cesareum tibi limen aperiet.

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that the original recommendation had been a success.79 A similar impression emerges from the pair of letters sent by Petrarch to Francesco Nelli: the rst conveys the recommendation, while the second expresses gratitude for acting upon that recommendation.80 When authors composed letter-writing manuals, particularly in the vernacular, they would often weave stories through a sequence of model letters, so that their text was entertaining as well as useful.81 It seems highly likely that a similar intention contributed to Petrarchs presentation of the letters of recommendation within his published collections. While they were originally intended to serve a specic purpose, this was not of particular concern to the wider readership of Petrarchs letters; handling them in this way allowed him to inject additional interest into such exchanges. *** Petrarch only included a handful of letters of recommendation in his published collections. In certain respects, they typify the genre more widely; indeed, their purpose makes certain elements unavoidable. They are written for people close to him, including his son and one of his closest friends; they are addressed to other gures, often those who wield considerable power and status, but again who are generally bound to Petrarch in some way; and of course, Petrarch asks the latter for a favour on behalf of the former. And, as we saw particularly in relation to two of the letters to the emperor, he could conform to the traditional model when the circumstances required it. But on other occasions, he proved himself able to rise above the essentially mundane purpose of the letters of recommendation. Needless to say, a considerable part of this was encouraged by the fact that he was consciously writing familiar letters, which should be characterized by originality and personal qualities. In the letters considered here, we have seen that this was sometimes achieved by humour, sometimes by confounding the expectations of his recipient, and sometimes by broader philosophical reections. His letters were also very much tailored to the particular situation. The status of the recipient was not without signicance, but more important was the relationship that Petrarch enjoyed with him, and what he knew of his correspondents concerns. In seeking to make the recipients of his letters act upon his recommendation, he frequently made use of one or both factors to support his request. The hospitality and favours requested in the letters of recommendation were repeatedly presented as part and parcel of the reciprocity associated with friendship; in the language of his letters, Petrarch helped to strengthen that association. It was also this discourse of friendship
Fam 19.12 (Sec.7, ll.4748): Salutem michi Lelius meus tuis verbis attulit. Fam 19.6, 19.7. Katherine Gee Hornbeak, The Complete Letter Writer in English, 15681800, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages 15, 34 (1934), 1150.
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that helped him to overcome the potential tension between the essentially formulaic nature of the letter of recommendation, and the spontaneity of the style of letter-writing which he favoured. Gathering the letters together for publication added a further dimension to Petrarchs epistolarity. By often placing the letters of recommendation in close proximity to each other, he was able to demonstrate his versatility, offering different versions of essentially the same letter. In addition, such sets of letters could be used to build up a more layered impression of a given relationship. As we have also seen, the letters of recommendation are sometimes further explicated by the letters that surround them, and taken together, can even constitute narrative episodes. Reading them in that setting, moreover, demonstrates some of the ways in which friendship and patronage were woven together through his correspondence. For many individuals in the Renaissance, the letter of recommendation was a practical and ultimately formulaic mode of exchange; for Petrarch, by contrast, it was yet another arena in which he could show off his skills as a letter writer. University of Bristol
APPENDIX

Letters of Recommendation

Ad Fam 13.2 Ad Fam 13.3 Ad Fam 17.7 Ad Fam 19.4 Ad Fam 19.6 Ad Fam 21.5 Ad Fam 21.6 Ad Fam 21.7 Ad Fam 22.11 Ad Fam 23.3 Ad Fam 23.7 Sen 11.8 Sen 11.9

To Rinaldo da Verona, poet, a recommendation for the young man sent to him for educating. To Guglielmo da Verona, orator, on the same subject. [To Bernardo Anguissola, Governor of Como]*, a recommendation for a friend crossing the Alps. To Charles IV, a recommendation for his Lelius. To Francesco of the Church of the Holy Apostles, a recommendation for a friend going to Rome. To Jan, Bishop of Olmtz, a recommendation for a common friend. To Ernst, Archbishop of Prague, concerning the same matter. To the Emperor Charles, a recommendation for the same person so deserving of him and of the empire. To Gugliemo da Verona, a recommendation for a friend who had late but passionately turned to intellectual pursuits. [To our present Caesar]*, a rather urgent recommendation for a friend. [To Jan, Bishop of Olmtz, Chancellor of the Imperial Court]* a recommendation for a friend To Francesco Bruni, a recommendation of a young student To Ugo di Sanseverino, a recommendation for the same person

*The recipient is identied in the previous letter; these letters are, in their titles, addressed to the same correspondent.

Abstract
kenneth austin, Petrarchs letters of recommendation
This article uses the letters of recommendation that Petrarch included in his published collections of letters as a case study to illuminate several aspects of Renaissance epistolarity. It considers the relationships between Petrarch, the people he was recommending, and the recipients of his letters, and analyses the rhetorical strategies that he adopted in them. In particular, it highlights the signicance of friendship as providing both a context for, and a justication of, the requests these letters contained. More broadly, it examines how Petrarch sought to resolve the apparent contradiction between the supposedly spontaneous nature of the familiar letter and the rather more formulaic character associated with a letter intended for a specic purpose. In addition, these letters are considered as elements within constructed texts in order to shed light on the relationship between published letter collections and letter-writing manuals. These two genres have tended to be treated separately, but it is clear that they overlapped in a number of ways. Keywords: friendship; letters; Petrarch