writers, lawyers, and notaries had such training, and it could be described as the true mark of most intellectuals of the period. And the study of rhetoric led, in many cases almost instinctively, to an interest in the classics. If by humanist were meant simply someone who was interested in the classics, or for whom there is evidence that he had read classical writers, one would have to use the term right back into the thirteenth century and indeed before. Classical culture had never been totally absent; it was only that interest in it was growing. Historians tend, however, to use the term humanist (from 'Istudia humanitatis', a term already common in the fifteenth century) to mean people for whom the study of the classics was of overriding importance or an end in itself, and whose activities in whatever field are deeply imbued by that study. The most prominent among these in the fourteenth century was Francesco Petrarca (known to the English-speaking world as Petrarch), who is often called the father of humanism. Another Florentine, although born in exile and destined to spend much of his life near Avignon, Petrarch is an example of a new kind of intellectual in that he depended for his living on writing for and advising a sequence of patrons. We might call him a freelancer.
Petrarch's career drew on many of the traditions described above (although one, scholasticism, he rejected decisively). His interests ranged across many disciplines and literary genres. A trained lawyer and a cleric, he is as famous for his love-poetry and his letters as for his treatises. The most significant feature, though, which he bequeathed to posterity was his love and pursuit of the classical authors, his search for manuscripts, his admiration for Cicero in particular. Petrarch is also important because his personality was what might be called high-profile. He thrived on influential contacts, was fascinated by power, and was extremely adept at self-publicization. He did much to establish a model or ideal of the humanist. The late fourteenth century saw a growth in the number of his emulators, and with this growth came, crucially, an emergent sense of community between them. These men were active in many fields, and between them they turned what had been a growing fashion into the established activity for secular intellectuals.
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