Petrarch is often described as the first modern man, and, even before Renaissance painters worked out the rules for perspective, the poet had been able to develop an historical perspective on the past.  His decision to climb Mt. Ventoux is interpreted as the first sign of the individual restlessness that bore fruit (much of it sour) during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.  What Petrarch really gained from his mountain-top perspective on the world, however, was a longing to return to his beloved Italy and a renewed sense of humility. 

At the time fixed we left the house, and by evening reached Malaucene, which lies at the foot of the mountain, to the north.  Having rested there a day, we finally made the ascent this morning, with no companions except two servants; and a most difficult task it was.  The mountain is a very steep and almost inaccessible mass of stony soil.  But, as the poet has well said, “Remorseless toil conquers all.”  It was a long day, the air fine.  We enjoyed the advantages of vigour of mind and strength and agility of body, and everything else essential to those engaged in such an undertaking and so had no other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.  We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some 50 years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars.  No one, so far as he or his companions knew, had ever tried the ascent before or after him.  But his counsels increased rather than diminished our desire to proceed, since youth is suspicious of warnings. . . . 

I finally sat down in a valley and transferred my winged thoughts from things corporeal to the immaterial, addressing myself as follows: “What thou hast repeatedly experienced to-day in the ascent of this mountain, happens to thee, as to many, in the journey toward the blessed life.  But this is not so readily perceived by men, since the motions of the body are obvious and external while those of the soul are invisible and hidden.  Yes, the life which we call blessed is to be sought for on a high eminence, and strait is the way that leads to it.  Many, also, are the hills that lie between, and we must ascend, by a glorious stairway, from strength to strength.  At the top is at once the end of our struggles and the goal for which we are bound.  All wish to reach this goal, but, as Ovid says, ‘To wish is little; we must long with the utmost eagerness to gain our end.’  Thou certainly dost ardently desire, as well as simply wish, unless thou deceivest thyself in this matter, as in so many others.  What, then, doth hold thee back?  Nothing, assuredly, except that thou wouldst take a path which seems, at first thought, more easy, leading through low and worldly pleasures.  But nevertheless in the end, after long wanderings, thou must perforce either climb the steeper path, under the burden of tasks foolishly deferred, to its blessed culmination, or lie down in the valley of thy sins, and (I shudder to think of it!), if the shadow of death overtake thee, spend an eternal night amid constant torments.”  These thoughts stimulated both body and mind in a wonderful degree for facing the difficulties which yet remained. . . .

Then a new idea took possession of me, and I shifted my thoughts to a consideration of time rather than place.  “To-day it is ten years since, having completed thy youthful studies, thou didst leave Bologna.  Eternal God!  In the name of immutable wisdom, think what alterations in thy character this intervening period has beheld!  I pass over a thousand instances.  I am not yet in a safe harbour where I can calmly recall past storms.  The time may come when I can review in due order all the experiences of the past, saying with St. Augustine, ‘I desire to recall my foul actions and the carnal corruption of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may the more love thee, O my God.’ Much that is doubtful and evil still clings to me, but what I once loved, that I love no longer.  And yet what am I saying?  I still love it, but with shame, but with heaviness of heart.  Now, at last, I have confessed the truth.  So it is.  I love, but love what I would not love, what I would that I might hate.  Though loath to do so, though constrained, though sad and sorrowing, still I do love, and I feel in my miserable self the truth of the well known words, ‘I will hate if I can; if not, I will love against my will.’” . . .

While I was thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now raising my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions . . . I opened the compact little volume, small indeed in size, but of infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever came to hand, for I could happen upon nothing that would be otherwise than edifying and devout.  Now it chanced that the tenth book presented itself.  My brother, waiting to hear something of St. Augustine’s from my lips, stood attentively by.  I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.”  I was abashed, and, asking my brother (who was anxious to hear more), not to annoy me, I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself.  Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again.  Those words had given me occupation enough, for I could not believe that it was by a mere accident that I happened upon them.  What I had there read I believed to be addressed to me and to no other, remembering that St. Augustine had once suspected the same thing in his own case, when, on opening the book of the Apostle, as he himself tells us, the first words that he saw there were, “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.  But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

        —From Petrarch: The First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters,
James Harvey Robinson, editor and translator