ON THE PATHS OF THINKING AND THE WORLD – FRANCESCO PETRARCA AS A SPIRITUAL NOMAD AND THE FIRST MODERN TOURIST
Authors: Zowisło Maria 
Published: July 2024

Purpose. The aim of the article is to create a biographic and a philosophical interpretation of the wandering life of Francesco Petrarca, one of the greatest poets, writers and thinkers of the Italian trecento, who was nicknamed “the first modern tourist” and “the first modern mountaineer”. To justify the validity of these epithets, Petrarch’s numerous journeys around Europe and their various motifs and forms, which anticipate the attitudes of modern tourists, are recalled and analysed interpretively. Petrarch’s busy life developed on two planes, which are called “internal landscape” and “external landscape” in the article. The consequence of this interpretive approach is a view of Petrarch as a “spiritual nomad” and the progenitor of modern tourism.Method. The article is doxographic in nature, using desk research methods, interpretative method of understanding (Germ. Verstehen), focused on the study of existential meanings and values, as well as critical and literary analysis.Findings. Petrarch, both in his “spiritual” (internal) wanderings and real (external) journeys, as well as in their authorial, mainly epistolary, interpretation, revealed his deeply conflicted nature. He is presented here as homoduplex, in accordance with analyses of “split self” proposed by American philosopher and psychologist William James. As a Franciscan Tertian, a man of faith, the poet felt he was the heir of Christianitas, the Christian tradition, whose main representative for him was Saint Augustine. It was in the writings of this Father of the Church that Petrarch found spiritual and religious dilemmas similar to his own. At the same time, the poet felt like a proud successor of ancient Latin culture. Philosophy and ancient literature not only provided him with lasting solace, but also marked secular, humanistic paths of development in the spirit of complete formation of the soul (Gr. paideia and psychagogy) and Ciceronian meliorism (the pursuit of personal excellence). In Petrarch’s experiences and writing activity, spiritual man was united with earthly man, Christianitas was integrated with humanitas, and Petrarch himself, standing at the crossroads of two eras, can be considered a proto-Renaissance thinker. The “duality” of Petrarch’s personality was evident in his numerous travels. His Christian sensibility made him a “spiritual nomad”, while his comprehensive humanistic passion for exploring the world entitles one to treat Petrarch (as many of the scholars cited in the article do) as the “first modern tourist”. The latter term is, of course, not historical (for Petrarch was a “modern tourist” before the actual emergence of modernity and tourism itself), but purely eidetic, i.e. highlighting certain essential determinants that characterise the modern tourist in genere. These characteristics include cognitive intentionality, travelling for pleasure, relaxation, using local guides for better orientation in the area and access to direct knowledge of attractions, customs and the lifestyles of locals. Therefore, these are issues of both motivation and travel organisation. Added to this is the motif of athletic challenge, important in the case of climbing Mont Ventoux, as well as contemplation of the landscape. Also, modern is the new style of reporting on the trip, full of subjective and personal confessions that predate romanticised descriptions of the journey.Research and conclusions limitations. There are extremely rich literature items on so-called “petrarchism”, however, it was impossible to refer to the entirety of academic and literary research in the article. It was limited to selected Polish and foreign literature, which did not in any way disturb the image or understanding of the topic, and allowed for a more synthetic approach.Practical implications. The article supplements the critical literary analysis of Petrarch’s works with travel and tourism themes, and can be used by researchers and travel historians for further humanistic studies in the field of tourism science.Originality. In the work, analysis is concentrated on the theme of travel and wandering in Petrarch’s extremely active and creative life, creating an itinerant biography of one of Europe’s greatest writers.Type of paper. Monographic article.