Petrarch is born in Arezzo

July 1304

Francesco Petrarca arrived in the world of exile, his notary father banished with the Whites from Florence. He would grow into the first modern man of letters, climbing Mont Ventoux for the view, coining 'Dark Ages,' hunting lost Ciceros in monastery cupboards, inventing a personal humanism in Latin and composing the sonnets to Laura that would reshape European lyric poetry.