Letters without a Name (Liber sine nomine)
A collection of Latin letters in which the poet Petrarch attacks the papal court at Avignon, issued without the names of those addressed. The fifth calls Avignon the Babylon of the West.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗The same translation in the printed collection, with its reference to the Latin (Translations and Reprints, vol. 3) ↗
Petrarch writes as a resident: “I am now living in France, in the Babylon of the West.” The collection’s title means that the letters carry no addressee. The Fordham sourcebook dates the one cited here between 1340 and 1353.
The letter is invective. It sets the poverty of the apostles against the gold, palaces and horses of their successors and accuses the court of selling its documents. It tells how the court looked to a hostile Italian man of letters who wished the popes back in Rome; it is not a measured description.
Cited in
- 1309 to 1377, estimated date