Petrarch’s Demarcation of Humanism

Based on Petrarch’s epistle De ignorantia, the present paper offers a critique of the thesis of the modern demarcation of humanism proposed by Th. E. Mommsen, a thesis that still causes reverberations within the scholarly literature that focuses on Petrarch. The paper analyses Petrarch’s stance on what he calls medium nostrum tempus in relation with Antiquity and the way in which his notion of darkness represents a means to delimit humanism within a Christian philosophy of history based on ethics. The conclusion of the paper shows that Th. E. Mommsen’s interpretation, together with other contemporary readings of humanism must be recalibrated in accordance with the practical and eschatological finality that Petrarch gave to his notion of studia humanitatis.

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