Voluntas and Potentia in Secretum (Petrarch)
Voluntas and Potentia in Secretum (Petrarch)

Summary/Abstract: The autobiographical treatise Secretum constitutes a valuable testimony of the manner in which a literary topos such as the image of the self (illustrated in Augustine’s Confessiones) was projected on the Humanist background. In this paper, I intend to analyze the philosophical and theological relationship established between the concepts of voluntas and potentia, as highlighted within the dialogue between Petrarch and Augustinus, by starting from the premise that they function as terminological vectors in the composition of the author’s self-image. In Augustinian philosophy, these terms are used as symbolic notions in the theory of free will, in the definition of human strength as a direct consequence of the will. Petrarch shares the Augustinian vision with an exacerbated fidelity, but, at the discursive level, he tends to emphasize the pragmatic side of the relationship between will and power. The author insists on the regenerative power of man by insisting on the importance of the decision-making factor in elevating the spirit.

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