Petrarch's work to fashion a devout community of friends by means of letter-writing was often seen as a central feature of his life and writings. Yet while scholarly assessments of Petrarch's epistolary community have traditionally celebrated it as a precursor to the global "republic of letters", more recent accounts have critiqued what they see as the exclusive, authoritarian, and masculinist aspects of his humanist community. Looking at several key letters from his two major letter-collections, the Familiares and the Seniles, the article shows how Petrarch's community-building is continually divided between two distinct visions of community. While Petrarch certainly aims to fashion in his letters a community of virtuous, self-sufficient, and like-minded individuals, who come together through shared Stoic ideals of reason and virtue, the letters also repeatedly – perhaps at times unwittingly – acknowledge their protagonists' inescapable vulnerability and suggest that what brings them together is, in effect, the affective bond of compassion.