The motets of Philippe de Vitry and the fourteenth-century renaissance

Abstract

Towards the end of August 1350, Petrarch wrote from his home at Padua to Philippe de Vitry, chastising his friend for a letter that he had sent to their mutual patron, Cardinal Guy de Boulogne, papal legate in Italy. Vitry's mind has slowed since their first acquaintance, writes Petrarch, so that he now considers even a glorious absence from France undesirable. The man who, when asked where he was from, answered that he was a citizen of the world, now thinks any departure from France an exile. The dust of France lies too heavily on his shoes; the Petit-Pont in Paris, ‘its arch not quite in the shape of a tortoise shell’, is too appealing to him, and the murmur of the Seine delights his ear too much.