EiS Short: On Petrarch's Ascent

689 years ago, in April, the Italian poet now known as Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux in Provence. By the standards of recreational hikers in my home state, Colorado, it wasn't much of a climb—Mont Ventoux is just a little over 6,200 feet, and Petrarch was done with his climb well before dinner. But by the standards of his day, the climb was apparently sensational. In a widely-published letter he wrote about the ascent, Petrarch claimed to be the first person since antiquity to climb a mountain solely for the view—that is, the first person to climb a mountain not for work, or exploration, or conquering, or to glorify God, or for any practical reason, but simply… because he wanted to. This self-absorbed focus on his own wellbeing was a revolutionary act in an age still ruled by the Church, so revolutionary that many scholars today point to Petrarch's springtime hike as the beginning of what we now call the Renaissance.