In his famous canzone “Italia Mia,” Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) exhorts the warring families of Italy to lay down their arms, stop hiring mercenaries, and take up more peaceful pursuits. “If only,” he tells them, “you would show some pity, then virtue would take up arms against rage, and the battle would be short.” He invokes the “ancient valor” in the “Italian heart” to urge the families to stop fighting one another. At the end, he addresses himself to the poem itself, asking it to go “courteously” among the “haughty” people: “I go my way beseeching: peace, peace, peace.”
