Finally, I note that the voice of the peacock is horrible, and this, although at first blush there seems great sweetness in the words of our poet, is perfectly in accord therewith, if we will closely observe the inner marrow. Who cries out more horribly than he, when in the bitterest fiction he censures the faults of many who are living, and chastises those of the dead? What voice is more terrible than that of the chastiser to him who is inclined to sin? Certainly none. By his demonstrations he in the same breath terrifies the good and casts down the wicked. Therefore, as far as this point concerns us, he truly may be said to have a horrible voice. For this reason and for the others touched on above, it is sufficiently clear why he, who, when alive, was a shepherd, after his death became a peacock; even as we may believe it to have been revealed by divine inspiration to his dear mother in her sleep.
I know that I have made this explanation of the dream of our poet’s mother very superficially; and this for many reasons. In the first place, because I may not possess the ability required for such a task. Secondly, assuming that I had the ability, my main theme would not permit it. And finally, even if I had the ability, and the subject had suffered it, I should have done well not to say more than has been said, in order that something should be left for him who has greater ability than I, and greater desire. So now that I have spoken as much as is sufficient and proper for me, let whatever is lacking be left to the care of him who follows.
My little bark is come to the port whither it directed its prow on leaving the opposite shore. Although its voyage has been short, and the sea it has ploughed tranquil and not deep, none the less, since it has come without hindrance, thanks are due to Him who has lent a fair wind to its sails, to whom with all the humility, all the devotion, all the affection that I can command, I render not such thanks as are fitting, but such as I can give, blessing his name and his might for ever and ever.
The Biographies
Certaldo, a town in Tuscany, Italy, was the home of the family of Boccaccio. The author died and was buried here in 1375.
Portrait of Boccaccio in his later years, detail from a cycle of frescoes of the ancient seat of the Art of Judges and Notaries, Florence
Giovanni Boccaccio: A Biographical Study by Edward Hutton
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX II
APPENDIX III
APPENDIX IV
APPENDIX V
APPENDIX VI
APPENDIX VII
APPENDIX VIII
ENDNOTES.
Traditional Portraits of Boccaccio & Fiammetta (Maria d’Aquino) From the Frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of S. Maria Novella, Florence.
TO MY FRIEND
J. L. GARVIN
THIS STUDY OF AN HEROIC LIFE
PREFACE
IT MIGHT SEEM proper, in England at least, to preface any book dealing frankly with the author of the Decameron with an apology for, and perhaps a defence of, its subject. I shall do nothing of the kind. Indeed, this is not the place, if any be, to undertake the defence of Boccaccio. His life, the facts of his life, his love, his humanity, and his labours, plentifully set forth in this work, will defend him with the simple of heart more eloquently than I could hope to do. And it might seem that one who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who gave Homer back to us, who founded or certainly fixed Italian prose, who was the friend of Petrarch, the passionate defender of Dante, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge, should need no defence anywhere from any one.
This book, on which I have been at work from time to time for some years, is the result of an endeavour to set out quite frankly and in order all that may be known of Boccaccio, his life, his love for Fiammetta, and his work, so splendid in the Tuscan, the fruit of such an enthusiastic and heroic labour in the Latin. It is an attempt at a biographical and critical study of one of the greatest creative writers of Europe, of one of the earliest humanists, in which, for the first time, in England certainly, all the facts are placed before the reader, and the sources and authority[viii] for these facts quoted, cited, and named. Yet while I have tried to be as scrupulous as possible in this respect, I hope the book will be read too by those for whom notes have no attraction; for it was written first for delight.
Among other things I have dealt with, the reader will find a study of Boccaccio’s attitude to Woman, and in some sort this may be said to be the true subject of the book.
I have dealt too with Boccaccio’s relation to both Dante and Petrarch; and it was my intention to have written a chapter on Boccaccio and Chaucer, but interesting as that subject is — and one of the greatest desiderata in the study of Chaucer — a chapter in a long book seemed too small for it; and again, it belongs rather to a book on Chaucer than to one about Boccaccio. I have left it, then, for another opportunity, or for another and a better student than myself.
In regard to the illustrations, I may say that I hoped to make them, as it were, a chapter on Boccaccio and his work in relation to the fine arts; but I found at last that it would be impossible to carry this out. To begin with, I was unable to get permission to reproduce M. Spiridon’s and Mr. V. Watney’s panels by Alunno di Domenico1 illustrating the story of Nastagio degli Onesti (Decameron, V, 8), which are perhaps the most beautiful paintings ever made in illustration of one of Boccaccio’s tales. In the second place, the subject was too big to treat of in the space at my command. I wish now that I had dealt only with the Decameron; but in spite of a certain want of completeness, the examples I have been able to reproduce[ix] will give the reader a very good idea of the large and exquisite mass of material of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries in Italy, France, Germany, and even in England which in its relation to Boccaccio has still to be dealt with. Nothing on this subject has yet been published, though something of the sort with regard to Petrarch has been attempted. Beyond the early part of the seventeenth century I have not sought to go, but an examination of the work of the eighteenth century in France at any rate should repay the student in this untouched field.
I have to thank a host of people who in many and various ways have given me their assistance in the writing of this book. It has been a labour of love for them as for me, and let us hope that Boccaccio “in the third heaven with his own Fiammetta” is as grateful for their kindness as I am.
Especially I wish to thank Mrs. Ross, of Poggio Gherardo, Mr. A. E. Benn, of Villa Ciliegio, Professor Guido Biagi, of Florence, Mr. Edmund Gardner, Professor Henri Hauvette, of Paris, Mr. William Heywood, Dr. Paget Toynbee, and Mr. Charles Whibley. And I must also express my gratitude to Messrs. J. and J. Leighton, of Brewer Street, London, W., for so kindly placing at my disposal many of the blocks which will be found in these pages.
EDWARD HUTTON.
Casa di Boccaccio,
Corbignano,
September, 1909.
INTRODUCTION
OF THE THREE great writers who open the literature of the modern world, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, it is perhaps the last who has the greatest significance in the history of culture, of civilisation. Without the profound mysticism of Dante or the extraordinary sweetness and perfection of Petrarch, he was more complete than either of them, full at once of laughter and humility and love — that humanism which in him alone in his day was really a part of life. For him the centre of things was not to be found in the next world but in this. To the Divine Comedy he seems to oppose the Human Comedy, the Decameron
, in which he not only created for Italy a classic prose, but gave the world an ever-living book full of men and women and the courtesy, generosity, and humanity of life, which was to be one of the greater literary influences in Europe during some three hundred years.
In England certainly, and indeed almost everywhere to-day, the name of Boccaccio stands for this book, the Decameron. Yet the volumes he wrote during a laborious and really uneventful life are very numerous both in verse and prose, in Latin and in Tuscan. He began to write before he was twenty years old, and he scarcely stayed his hand till he lay dying alone in Certaldo in 1375. That the Decameron, his greatest and most various work, should be that by which he is most widely known, is not remarkable; it is strange, however, that of all his works it should be the only one that is quite impersonal.[xii] His earlier romances are without exception romans à clef; under a transparent veil of allegory he tells us eagerly, even passionately, of himself, his love, his sufferings, his agony and delight. He too has confessed himself with the same intensity as St. Augustine; but we refuse to hear him. Over and over again he tells his story. One may follow it exactly from point to point, divide it into periods, name the beginning and the ending of his love, his enthusiasms, his youth and ripeness; yet we mark him not, but perhaps wisely reach down the Decameron from our shelves and silence him with his own words; for in the Decameron he is almost as completely hidden from us as is Shakespeare in his plays. And yet for all this, there is a profound unity in his work, which, if we can but see it, makes of all his books just the acts of a drama, the drama of his life. The Decameron is already to be found in essence in the Filocolo, as is the bitter melancholy of the Corbaccio, its mad folly too, and the sweetness of the songs. For the truth about Boccaccio can be summed up in one statement almost, he was a poet before all things, not only because he could express himself in perfect verse, nor even because of the grace and beauty of all his writing, his gifts of sentiment and sensibility, but because he is an interpreter of nature and of man, who knows that poetry is holy and sacred, and that one must accept it thankfully in fear and humility.
He was the most human writer the Renaissance produced in Italy; and since his life was so full and eager in its desire for knowledge, it is strange that nothing of any serious account has been written concerning him in English,2 and this is even unaccountable when we remember how eagerly many among our greater poets have been his debtors. Though for no other cause yet for this it will[xiii] be well to try here with what success the allegory of his life may be solved, the facts set in order, and the significance of his work expressed.
But no study of Boccaccio can be successful, or in any sense complete, without a glance at the period which produced him, and especially at those eight-and-forty years so confused in Italy, and not in Italy alone, which lie between the death of Frederic II and the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Henry VII and the birth of Boccaccio in 1313. This period, not less significant in the general history of Italy than in the history of her literature, begins with the fall of the Empire, its failure, that is, as the sum or at least the head, of Christendom; it includes the fall of the medieval Papacy in 1303 and the abandonment of the Eternal City, the exile of the Popes. These were years of immense disaster in which we see the passing of a whole civilisation and the birth of the modern world.
The Papacy had destroyed the Empire but had failed to establish itself in its place. It threatened a new tyranny, but already weapons were being forged to combat it, and little by little the Papal view of the world, of government, was to be met by an appeal to history, to the criticism of history, and to those political principles which were to be the result of that criticism. In this work both Petrarch and Boccaccio bear a noble part.
If we turn to the history of Florence we shall find that the last thirty-five years of the thirteenth century had been, perhaps, the happiest in her history. From the triumph of the Guelfs at Benevento to the quarrel of Neri and Bianchi she was at least at peace with herself, while in her relations with her sister cities she became the greatest power in Tuscany. Art and Poetry flourished within her walls. Dante, Cavalcanti, Giotto, the Pisani, and Arnolfo di Cambio were busy with their work, and the great churches we know so well, the beautiful palaces of[xiv] the officers of the Republic were then built with pride and enthusiasm. In 1289, the last sparks, as it was thought, of Tuscan Ghibellinism had been stamped out at Campaldino. There followed the old quarrel and Dante’s exile.
The Ghibellines were no more, but the Grandi, those Guelf magnates who had done so well at Campaldino, hating the burgher rule as bitterly as the old nobility had done, began to exert themselves. In the very year of the great battle we find that the peasants of the contrada were enfranchised to combat them. In 1293 the famous Ordinances of Justice which excluded them from office were passed, and the Gonfaloniere was appointed to enforce these laws against them. A temporary alliance of burghers and Grandi in 1295 drove Giano della Bella, the hero of these reforms, into exile, and the government remained in the hands of the Grandi. That year saw Dante’s entrance into public life.
The quarrel thus begun came to crisis in 1300, the famous year of the jubilee, when Boniface VIII seemed to hold the whole world in his hands. The dissensions in Florence had not been lost upon the Pope, who, apparently hoping to repress the Republic altogether and win the obedience of the city, intrigued with the Neri, those among the magnates who, unlike their fellows of the Bianchi faction, among whom Dante is the most conspicuous figure, refused to admit the Ordinances of Justice, even in their revised form, and wished for the tyrannical rule of the old Parte Guelfa. Already, as was well known, the Pope was pressing Albert of Austria for a renunciation of the Imperial claim over Tuscany in favour of the Holy See; and Florence, finally distracted now by the quarrels of Neri and Bianchi, seemed to be in imminent danger of losing her liberty. It became necessary to redress the balance of power, destroyed at Benevento, by an attempt to recreate the Empire. This was the real work of the Bianchi — their solution[xv] of the greatest question of their time. The actual solution was to come, however, from their opponents: not from the leaders of the Neri it is true, but from the people themselves. These leaders were but tyrants in disguise: they served any cause to establish their own lordship. Corso Donati, for instance, the head and front of the Neri, was of an old Ghibelline stock, yet he trafficked with the Pope, not for the Church, we may be sure, nor to give Florence to the Holy See, but that he might himself rule the city. Nor did the Pope disdain to use him. Alarmed even in Rome by the republican sentiments of the populace, who wished to rule themselves even as the Florentines, he desired above all things to bring Florence into his power. On May 15, 1300, the Pope despatched a letter to the Bishop of Florence, in which he asked: “Is not the Pontiff supreme lord over all, and particularly over Florence, which for especial reasons is bound to be subject to him? Do not emperors and kings of the Romans yield submission to us, yet are they not superior to Florence? During the vacancy of the Imperial throne, did not the Holy See appoint King Charles of Anjou Vicar-General of Tuscany?” Thus as Villari says, “in a rising crescendo,” he threatened the Florentines that he would “not only launch his interdict and excommunication against them, but inflict the utmost injury on their citizens and merchants, cause their property to be pillaged and confiscated in all parts of the world, and release all their debtors from the duty of payment.” The Neri, fearing the people might, with that impudent claim before them, side with the Bianchi, induced the Pope to send the Cardinal of Acquasparta to arrange a pacification. But though the city gave him many promises, she would not invest him with the Balia.
Meanwhile the Pope, set on the subjection of Florence, without counting the cost, urged Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip IV of France, to march into Tuscany.[xvi] Nor was Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, less eager to have his aid against the Sicilians. Joined by the exiles in November, 1301, he entered Florence with some 1200 horse, part French, part Italian. His mission was to crus
h the Bianchi and the people, and to uplift the Neri. He came at the request of the Pope, and, so far as he himself was interested, for booty; yet he swore in S. Maria Novella to keep the peace. On that same day, November 5, Corso Donati entered the city with an armed force. The French joined in the riot, the Priors were driven from their new palace, and the city sacked by the soldiers with the help of the Neri. The Pope had succeeded in substituting black for white, that was all. A new “peace-maker” failed altogether. The proscription, already begun, continued, and before January 27, 1302, Dante went into exile.
But if the Pope had failed to do more than establish the Neri in the government of Florence, Corso Donati had failed also; he had not won the lordship of the city. He tried again, splitting the Neri into two factions, and Florence was not to possess herself in peace till his death in a last attempt in 1308. It was during these years so full of disaster that Petrarch was born at Arezzo on July 20, 1304.
The medieval idea of the Papacy has been expressed once and for all by S. Thomas Aquinas. In his mind so profoundly theological, abhorring variety, the world was to be governed, if at all, by a constitutional monarchy, strong enough to enforce order, but not to establish a tyranny. The first object of every Christian society, the salvation of the soul, was to be achieved by the priest under the absolute rule of the Pope. Under the old dispensation, as he admitted, the priest had been subject to the king, but under the new dispensation the king was subject to the priest in matters touching the law of Christ. Thus if the king were careless of religion[xvii] or schismatic or heretical, the Church might deprive him of his power and by excommunication release his subjects from their allegiance. This supreme authority is vested in the Pope, who is infallible, and from whom there can be no appeal at any time as to what is to be believed or what condemned.
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 454
