Il De vita solitaria e le sue fonti nascoste

Petrarch worked many years to compose his De vita solitaria: the dedication copy was sent to Philippe de Cabassole in 1366, twenty years after he began to write this treatise. Identifications of sources and information obtainable from Petrarch’s correspondence allow to discover the progressive increase of De vita solitaria, as it was furthered by new readings. Especially in order to sketch biographical portraits of the viri illustres solitarii in book II, Petrarch drew on a large stock of patristic and medieval sources. Hagiographic texts, including the Martyrology of Usuardus, prooved to be relevant for this topic and their study sheds light on a section of Petrarch’s library, which was left little investigated up to now.