Why do you think Petrarch placed so much emphasis on the study of history during renaissance?

The Renaissance scholar Petrarch warned against history:

" O inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, it's mother, to whom it owes every noble art... What can be said in defense of men of education who ought not to be ignorant of antiquity and yet are plunged in... darkness and delusion?"

Petrarch's ideas would affect education fro many years. Education and new ways of spreading information would take the Renaissance far beyond Italy.