Explain Petrarch's attitude towards Classic literature.

Petrarch actively rejected the present because his passion for antiquity led him to claim a privileged relationship with Classic culture. He believed that reading Classical literature was a way for mankind to gaze into itself and understand itself in a morally-charged perspective. His fondness for Classic literature brought him to attentively study many ancient codes and to compare different copies of the same work and apostillating them to guarantee as much accuracy as possible. He can be considered the first Philologist in the modern sense on the word because of his new modus legendi.
Petrarch also consistenly tried to harmonise the teachings of Classical culture with the Christian doctrine. He valued human dignity, believing that the combination of moral philosophy of Agostinian and Platonic matrix and of religion resulted in an original Humanism.