The Long-Desired and Promised Chemical-Philosophical Touchstone

...you have, and so that you may join me in asking Virgil's forgiveness. I inadvertently stole a small thing from him, even though he himself stole so much from Homer, Ennius, Lucretius, and others.

Not long after Petrarch had sent this praise of his young friend, the youth was seized by an irresistible desire to see the world. All the arguments the troubled Petrarch made to the enthusiastic young man about the recklessness and danger of his decision were useless. It is impossible to describe the struggle between the benefactor and teacher and the straying, stubborn pupil more touchingly or attractively than Petrarch did in a letter to the grammarian Donatus Original footnote: "Lib. V. Rerum similium ep. 6." This likely refers to the "Rerum Senilium" Letters of Old Age, Book 5, Letter 6.. It is difficult to determine from this letter or those that follow exactly when Johann von Ravenna Giovanni di Ravenna, also known as Giovanni Malpaghini came to his second teacher, or when he first left him. The young Malpaghini was likely only fourteen, or at most fifteen years old, when Petrarch first took him in. Therefore, his first departure from this great teacher occurred at the beginning of the seventeenth or eighteenth year of our Johann of Ravenna's life.

I count among the greatest unpleasantries of my life, Petrarch writes to Donatus, those which I experienced yesterday. That same youth whom you once adopted as a son, and I after you; whose praise I used to fill the ears of my friends who were present and the eyes of my friends who were absent, to spur him toward glory; whose presence in my house was useful to me and my studies, but even more useful to him and his own studies, and whom I considered a permanent fixture for the sake of these mutual advantages; who spared me much labor in copying my works, while he himself grew from day to day through reading, writing, imitating, and reflecting, appearing to move toward great fame; whom I treated at the table, on travels, in social circles, and even in my most secret pleasures, labors, and connections, not as a servant, but as a dear assistant; not as a stranger, but as a beloved son; whom, as you know, I intended for the clerical state the priesthood or religious life as the most secure and peaceful path; and just the day before yesterday, through the intervention of the venerable Bishop of his home city, I had gladdened with the reliable hope of an ecclesiastical benefice a church office providing an income, the income of which was intended not so much to ease the costs I have spent on him, but to preserve his own modesty:—

original: "Zu" (catchword: "to" or "at")