138 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
ing period, however, as the interest of humanism became
more self-conscious, we notice an increasing split between
the interests and activities of the lawyers and those of the
scholars who called themselves humanists. This is first ap-
parent in Petrarch’s lifetime and it can be illustrated by sev-
eral examples in the corpus of Petrarch’s writings.
Petrarch himself, like many others who afterwards be-
came men of letters, had begun by studying civil law at
Bologna. He had, however, afterwards revolted against it,
and his judgment is well expressed in a letter written in 1340
to a young man of Genoa who had sought Petrarch’s advice
on the question of the merits of the legal profession as a ca-
reer. Petrarch replied with an account of his own studies of
the law and related that he had spent seven years first at
Montpelfier and afterwards at BoIogna in the study of this
subject. “If you ask,” he wrote, “whether I regret this time
today, I say I do. For I wish to have seen all things insofar
as it may be permitted to me, and I regret and will regret,
as long as breath is in me, so large a part of my life passed by.
For I could have done anything else during these years which
would either have been more noble or more apt to my na-
ture.” He says that he recognizes that great glory was form-
erly sought and achieved by many individuals in the study
of the civil law. He cites ancient examples such as Solon
who, however, he says gave himself in his old age to the pur-
suit of poetry. “The greater part of our legists,” he declared,
“who care nothing for knowing about the origins of law and
about the founders of jurisprudence and have no other pre-
occupation than to gain as much as they can from their pro-
fession, are content to Ieam whatever is written in the law
about contracts, judgments, or wills and it never occurs to
them that the knowledge of arts, and of origins, and of Btera-