Saving Rome With a Laurel Wreath

April 8, 1341

Rome was an empty and broken city in 1341.

The popes had fled to France where the castles weren’t crumbling and families weren’t holding grudges against them. Its population had dwindled to a mere 20,000 (the city had been built for 50 times as many people) and houses on the Tiber stood empty. It had no time or resources to develop culture and art — it was simply trying to survive.

It was so broken that some theologians and philosophers speculated that perhaps what was most important about Rome was its civilizational and cultural influence. If that were the case, it was clear to them that the spirit of Rome had moved to someplace like Paris, where 200,000 souls kept the city alive and bustling, and where the university drove cultural and intellectual innovations for the rest of Europe.

But Rome wouldn’t die so easily.

Its senators (yes, the city was still ruled by a Senate) were determined to be relevant once again. The problem, they determined, was that Rome was not artistic enough. It needed to drive the culture, not be an addendum to it.

So they started looking around for a poet.

The man they found wasn’t Roman, but he wished he were. He was well-connected in Paris and Avignon and was an Italian patriot even though Italy wasn’t unified, although he wished it were. He was a bit of a dreamer (over nearly 50 years he wrote some 366 love sonnets to a girl who had died in his youth. One for each day of the year).

Crucially, Francesco Petrarca thought Rome was the best thing to have happened to Western civilization. He loved its history, ancient ruins, philosophers, and dead politicians. Most importantly, though, he believed in its rebirth.

And he was writing a poem.

The poem wasn’t about Rome (it’s called Africa), and it wasn’t finished — it wouldn’t be finished for another two years and wouldn’t be available to the public for another 54 years after that.

Petrarch had dreamed for years of being crowned as a poet on the Capitoline Hill in Rome — the way the ancient Roman poets had been. Rome needed relevance, so the Senate and King Robert of Naples put their heads together and decided to crown him on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1341.

For some reason, it worked.

By sheer luck, Rome’s senators and the King of Naples had chosen to crown the man responsible for beginning the Renaissance. There was no immediate change (the popes didn’t move back to Rome until 1374 when St. Catherine of Sienna talked them into it). But, with time, the Renaissance picked up steam. Crucially, it was first an Italian movement that looked to Rome for inspiration rather than Paris.

Rome’s Senate couldn’t have known it then, but putting a laurel wreath on Petrarch’s head was perhaps the single most effective thing they could have done to save the Eternal City.