The first Dialogue on True Wisdom by Francesco Petrarch, Poet Laureate, begins happily. The speakers are a Layman and an Orator.

A certain poor Layman original: "idiota"; in this context, it refers to an unlearned person or a commoner without formal academic training, rather than a lack of intelligence met a very wealthy Orator a professional scholar or rhetorician in the Roman Forum. Smiling wittily at him, he addressed him thus:

LAYMAN. I marvel at your pride. For although you exhaust yourself with constant reading, perusing innumerable books, you have not yet been led to humility. This is certainly because the knowledge of this world, in which you think you excel over others, is a kind of foolishness before God, and it puffs one up. From this swollen puffing-up arises pride, which, by a heavenly reckoning, always strives for the heights only to fall more heavily. But true knowledge humbles; weighed down by no puffing-up, it flies to the heights without falling. I would wish, therefore, that you would betake yourself to that knowledge, for there lies the treasure of joy.

ORATOR. What is this presumption of yours, poor layman and utterly ignorant man, that you should make so little of the study of letters, without which no one makes progress?

LAYMAN. It is not presumption, great Orator, that does not allow me to remain silent, but charity referring to Christian brotherly love or "caritas". For I see you devoted to seeking wisdom with much wasted labor, from which I desire to recall you, if I could. So that if you were to weigh your error, I think you would rejoice that you had escaped, the snare being broken an allusion to Psalm 124:7, "the snare is broken, and we are escaped". The opinion of authority has drawn you so that you are like a horse, naturally free, but by art bound to the manger with a halter, so that he eats nothing else