Mont Ventoux

Universe, but he also believed God placed the beauty of nature here in the present for us to enjoy so we should live in the moment. Petrarch created parables through his stories and sonnets creating experiences of life which would represent our daily internal struggles with faith and belief. Petrarch truly believed everything pointed us to finding our purpose on earth. Humanism and the ability for mankind to find an inner purpose, a reason for living other than to bring happiness to God would be the basic key to unlock a changing and shifting world view from very medieval to a much more new and relaxed idea of life where we do things as humans just to make ourselves happy. For example, Petrarch’s needless expedition to the top of Mount Ventoux, in his first internal battle of the adventure he chose his brother because at first he couldn’t think of anyone else he could spend more than a few minutes with who wouldn’t annoy him to death, His most important decision was his reasoning to climb the mountain. “The wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer.” He was adamant in his thoughts and chose the paths that seemed easy at first only to find they would become the most perilous. Petrarch compared his choices of the easy paths, and his brother’s choices of the most direct paths to the daily struggles “toward the blessed life.” Taking the road less traveled even when it seems the human nature of a lazy man would choose the longer path as more easily traversed, and a…

Petrarch's model of religious and personal virtue in his Ascent of Mont Ventoux is similar to the beliefs of both Saint Francis and the Rule of Saint Benedict. This is significant because it brings to light the influence that the Church had on Humanism. In the Rule of Saint Benedict, Benedict writes that no monk is to "bear false witness" (124). Petrarch exhibits the same thought process while writing to Dionigi, when he continues to correct himself for lying about what he loves. This could be…