Petrarch climbs Mont Ventoux

April 1336

On a clear April morning, Petrarch and his brother walked up the windswept Provencal mountain for no purpose but the view. From the summit he opened Augustine's Confessions to a passage rebuking those who admire mountains while ignoring their own souls. The tension between worldly beauty and spiritual introspection would define humanism itself. He climbed back down chastened, modern.