«Italia mia» (Rvf 128). Petrarca suasor pacis

This article discusses how Petrarch's self-portrayal as a spokesman for peace, armed with quill and inkpot, is brought forward in the canzone "Italia mia benche 'l parlar sia indarno" and in his epistles of the 1350s. The poet's activity as peace mediator appears in this famous canzone dedicated to Italy well before the epistles were written. Dated to 1344, the poems thematic kernel seems to have been subsequently unfolded and broken down into the epistles that Petrarch later sent to the political leaders of his day. Petrarch's cry for peace in the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta is threefold: he invokes spiritual, societal, and teleological peace. The different faces of this threefold pining for harmonic conciliation find an outlet in the invocations of, respectively, Chiare fresche e dolci acque, "Italia mia,11 and the Canzone alla Vergine. "Italia mia," his most distinctly political text as well as heartfelt plea to the lords of Italy, marks Petrarch's last attempt to recompose the political fractures of Italy within the peninsula itself, from the 1350s onward, Petrarch addresses his political appeals solely to foreign rulers, a sign of the waning independence of Italian states.