Before these claims the Empire had fallen in 1266; but a reaction, the result of the success of Boniface, soon set in, and we find the most perfect expression of the revived and reformed claims of the Empire in the De Monarchia, which Dante Alighieri wrote in exile. Dante’s Empire was by no means merely a revival of what the Imperial idea had become in its conflicts with the Holy See. It was nevertheless as hopeless an anachronism as the dream of S. Thomas Aquinas, and even less clairvoyant of the future, for it disregarded altogether the spirit to which the future belonged, the spirit of nationalism. With a mind as theological as S. Thomas’s, Dante hated variety not less than he, and rather than tolerate the confusion of the innumerable cities and communes into which Italy was divided, where there was life, he would have thrust the world back into Feudalism and the Middle Age from which it was already emerging, he would have established over all Italy a German king. He was dreaming of the Roman Empire. The end for which we must strive, he would seem to say in the De Monarchia, that epitaph of the Empire, is unity; let that be granted. And since that is the end of all society, how shall we obtain it but by obedience to one head — the Emperor. And this Empire — so easy is it to mistake the past for the future — belongs of right to the Roman people who won it long ago. And what they won Christ sanctioned, for He was born within its confines. And yet again He recognised it, for He received at the hands of a Roman judge the sentence under which He bore our sorrows. Nor does the Empire derive from the Pope or through the Pope, but from God immediately;[xviii] for the foundation of the Church is Christ, but the Empire was before the Church. Yet let Cæsar be reverent to Peter, as the first-born should be reverent to his father.
So much for the philosophical defence of the reaction. It is rarely, after all, that a rigidly logical conception of society, of the State, has any existence in reality. The future, as we know, lay with quite another theory. Yet which of us to-day but in his secret heart dreams ever more hopefully of a new unity, that is indeed no stranger to the old, but in fact the resurrection of the Empire, of Christendom, in which alone we can be one? After all, is it not now as then, the noblest hope that can inspire our lives?
Already, before the death of Boniface VIII, the last Pope to die in Rome for nearly a hundred years, Philip IV of France had asserted the rights of the State against the claims of the Papal monarchy. The future was his, and his success was to be so great that for more than seventy years the Papacy was altogether under the influence of France, the first of the great nations of the Continent to become self-conscious. Thus when Boniface died broken-hearted in 1303, it was the medieval Papacy which lay in state beside him. Two years later, after the pathetic and ineffectual nine months’ reign of Benedict XI, Clement V, Bertrand de Goth, an Aquitanian, was elected, and, like his predecessor, fearful before the turbulent Romans and the confusion of Italy, in 1305 fled away to Avignon, which King Charles II of Naples held as Count of Anjou on the borders of the French kingdom. The Papacy had abandoned the Eternal City and had come under the influence of the French king. Yet in spite of every disaster the Pope and the Emperor remained the opposed centres of European affairs. No one as yet realised the possibility of doing without them, but each power sought rather to use them for its own end.[xix] In this political struggle France held the best position; the Pope was a Frenchman and so her son; there remained as spoil, the Empire.
On May 1, 1308, Albert of Hapsburg had been murdered by his nephew; the election of a new King of the Romans, the future Emperor, fell pat to Philip’s ambitions. He immediately supported the candidature of his brother, Charles of Valois; but in this he reckoned without the Pope, who with the Angevins in Naples and himself in Avignon had no wish to see the Empire also in the hands of France. His position forbade him openly to oppose Philip, but secretly he gave his support to Henry of Luxemburg, who was elected as Henry VII on 27 November, 1308.
A German educated in France, the lord of a petty state, Henry, in spite of the nobility of his nature, of which we hear so much and see so little, had but feeble Latin sympathies and no real power of his own. He dreamed of the universal empire like a true German, believing that the feudal union of Germany and Italy which had always been impossible was the future of the world. With this mirage before his eyes he raised the imperial flag and set out southward; and for a moment it seemed as though the stars had stopped in their courses.
For he was by no means alone in his dream. Every disappointed ambition in Italy, noble and ignoble, greeted him with a feverish enthusiasm. The Bianchi and the exiled Ghibellines joined hands, enormous hopes were conceived, and in his triumph private vengeance and public hate thought to find achievement. But when Henry entered Italy in September, 1310, he soon found he had reckoned without the Florentines, who had called together the Guelf cities, and, leaguing themselves with King Robert the Wise of Naples, formed what was, in fact, an Italian confederation to defend freedom and their common independence. It is true that in these acts Florence thought only of present safety: she was both[xx] right and fortunate; but in allying herself with King Robert and espousing the cause of France and the Pope she contributed to that triumph which was to prove for centuries the most dangerous of all to Italian liberty and independence.
Bitter with loneliness, imprisoned in the adamant of his personality, Dante, amid the rocks of the Casentino, hurled his curses on Florence, and not on Florence alone. Is there, I wonder, anything but hatred and abuse of the cities of his Fatherland in all his work? He has judged his country as God Himself will not judge it, and he kept his anger for ever. In the astonishing and disgraceful letters written in the spring of 1311 he urged Henry to attack his native city. Hailing this German king — and the Florentines would call him nothing else — as the “Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world,” he asks him: “What may it profit thee to subdue Cremona? Brescia, Bergamo, and other cities will continue to revolt until thou hast extirpated the root of the evil. Art thou ignorant perhaps where the rank fox lurketh in hiding? The beast drinketh from the Arno, polluting the waters with its jaws. Knowest thou not that Florence is its name?...” Henry, however, took no heed as yet of that terrible voice crying in the wilderness. He entered Rome before attacking Florence, in May, 1312. He easily won the Capitol, but was fiercely opposed by King Robert when he tried to reach S. Peter’s to win the imperial crown, and from Castel S. Angelo he was repulsed with heavy loss. The Roman people, however, presently took his part, and by threats and violence compelled the bishops to crown him in the Lateran on June 29.
If Rome greeted him, however, she was alone. Florence remained the head and front of the unbroken League. Those scelestissimi Florentini, as Dante calls them, still refused to hail him as anything but Enemy, German King[xxi] and Tyrant. The fine political sagacity of Florence, which makes hers the only history worth reading among the cities of Central Italy, was never shown to better advantage or more fully justified in the event than when she dared to send her greatest son into exile and to proclaim his Emperor “German king” and “enemy.” “Remember,” she wrote to the people of Brescia, “that the safety of all Italy and all the Guelfs depends on your resistance. The Latins must always hold the Germans in enmity, seeing that they are opposed in act and deed, in manners and soul; not only is it impossible to serve, but even to hold any intercourse with that race.”
At last the Emperor decided to follow Dante’s advice and “slay the new Goliath.” This was easier to talk of in the Casentino than to do. From mid-September to the end of October the Imperial army lay about the City of the Lily, never daring to attack. Then the Emperor raised the siege and set out for Poggibonsi, his health ruined by anxiety and hardship, and his army, as was always the case both before and since, broken and spoiled by the Italian summer. He spent the winter and spring between Poggibonsi and Pisa, then with some idea of retrieving all by invading Naples, he set off southward in August to meet his death on S. Bartholomew’s Day, poisoned, as some say, at Buonconvento.
And Florence
announced to her allies: “Jesus Christ hath procured the death of that most haughty tyrant Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the rebellious persecutors of the Church and the treacherous foes of ourselves and you call King of the Romans and Emperor.”
In the very year of Henry’s death, as we suppose, Boccaccio was born in Paris. The Middle Age had come to an end. The morning of the Renaissance had already broken on the world.
CHAPTER I
1313-1323
BOCCACCIO’S PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND CHILDHOOD
The facts concerning the life and work of Giovanni Boccaccio, though they have been traversed over and over again by modern students,3 are still for the most part insecure and doubtful; while certain questions, of chronology especially, seem to be almost insoluble. To begin with, we are uncertain of the place of his birth and of the identity of his mother, of whom in his own person he never speaks. And though it is true that he calls himself “of Certaldo,”4 a small town at that time in the Florentine contado where he had some property, and where indeed he came at last to die, we have reason to believe that it was not his birthplace. The opinion now most generally professed by Italian scholars is that he was born in Paris of a French mother; and, while we cannot assert this as a fact, very strong evidence, both from within and from without his work, can be brought to support it. It will be best, perhaps, to examine this evidence, whose corner-stone is his assertion to Petrarch that he was born in 1313,5 as briefly as possible.
The family of Boccaccio6 was originally from Certaldo in Valdelsa,7 his father being the Florentine banker and money-changer Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, commonly called Boccaccino.8 We know very little about him, but we are always told that he was of very humble condition. That he was of humble birth seems certain, but his career, what we know of his career, would suggest that he was in a position of considerable importance. We know that in 1318 he was in business in Florence, the name of his firm being Simon Jannis Orlandini, Cante et Jacobus fratres et filii q. Ammannati et Boccaccinus Chelini de Certaldo. In the first half of 1324 he was among the aggiunti deputati of the Arte del Cambio for the election of the Consiglieri della Mercanzia;9 in 1326 he was himself one of the five Consiglieri; in the latter part of 1327 he represented the Società de’ Bardi in Naples, and was very well known to King Robert;10 while in 1332 he was one of the Fattori for the same Società in Paris, a post at least equivalent to that of a director of a bank to-day. These were positions of importance, and could not have been held by a person of no account.
As a young man, in 1310, we know he was in business in Paris, for on May 12 in that year fifty-four Knights Templars were slaughtered there,11 and this Boccaccio tells us his father saw.12 That there was at that time a considerable Florentine business in France in spite of those years of disaster — Henry VII had just entered Italy — is certain. In 1311, indeed, we find the Florentines addressing a letter to the King of France,13 lamenting that at such a moment His Majesty should have taken measures hurtful to the interests of their merchants, upon whom the prosperity of their city so largely depended.
Boccaccio di Chellino seems to have remained in Paris in business;14 that he was still there in 1313 we know, for in that year, on March 11, Jacques de Molay, Master of the Templars, was executed, and Giovanni tells us that his father was present.15 If, then, Boccaccio was speaking the truth when he told Petrarch he was born in 1313, he must have been conceived, and was almost certainly born, in Paris.
THE BURNING OF THE MASTER OF THE TEMPLE
From a miniature in the French version of the “De Casibus Virorum,” made in 1409 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Showcase V, MS. 126.)
Let us now examine such evidence as we may gather from the allegories of his own poems and plays, though there he speaks in parables. In two of his works at least — the Filocolo and the Ameto — Boccaccio seems to be speaking of himself in the characters of Idalagos16 and Caleone and Ibrida. The Ameto, like the Filocolo, was written to give expression to his love for Fiammetta, the bastard daughter of King Robert of Naples. There he says that Caleone (whom we suppose to be in some sort himself) was born not far from the place whence Fiammetta’s mother (whom he has told us was French) drew her origin. Again, in another part of the same book the story is related of a young Italian merchant, not distinguished by birth or gentle breeding, who went to Paris and there seduced a young French widow. The fruit of their intercourse was a boy, who received the name of Ibrida. The evidence to be gathered from the Filocolo is even more precise, but, briefly, it may be said to confirm the story in the Ameto.17 We find there, however, that the name of the father was Eucomos, which may be bad Greek for Boccaccio; that the name of the mother was Gannai, which might seem to be an anagram for Giovanna or Gianna; and that the father deserted the mother in order to marry Gharamita,18 which sounds like an anagram for Margherita, and in fact we find that Boccaccio di Chellino did marry almost certainly about 1314 Margherita di Gian Donato de’ Martoli.19
The result then of these allegorical allusions in the Ameto and the Filocolo is to support the theory based on the few facts we possess, and to supplement it. That theory absolutely depends, so far as we rely upon facts for its confirmation, on Boccaccio’s own statement, as reported by Petrarch, that he was born in 1313. If he was born in 1313, he was conceived and born in Paris, for we know that Boccaccio di Chellino was there in the years between 1310 and 1313. The Filocolo and the Ameto bear this out, and lead us to believe that his mother was a certain Gianna or Gannai (Jeanne, Giovanna), that he was born out of wedlock, and that his father deserted his mother, and not long after married Gharamita, as we suppose Margherita di Gian Donato de’ Martoli.
Turning now to the evidence of his contemporaries, we shall find that just this was the opinion commonly received, so much so that the Italian translator of Filippo Villani’s Lives actually changed the words of that author and forced him to agree with it. “His father,” says this adapter,20 “was Boccaccio of Certaldo, a village of the Florentine dominion. He was a man distinguished by excellence of manners. The course of his commercial affairs brought him to Paris, where he resided for a season, and being free and pleasant in the temper of his mind, was no less gay and well inclined to love by the complexion of his constitution. There then it befell that he was inspired by love for a girl of Paris, belonging to the class between nobility and bourgeoisie, for whom he conceived the most violent passion; and, as the admirers of Giovanni assert, she became his wife and afterwards the mother of Giovanni.”
As his admirers assert! But others were not slow to say that his father and mother were never married; and indeed, this without doubt was the ordinary opinion.
In the true version of Filippo Villani’s Lives,21 written in Latin, we read that he was the son of his natural father,22 and that he was born at Certaldo. Domenico Aretino23 agrees that Certaldo was his birthplace, and adds that in his opinion Boccaccio was a bastard. Again, Salvini and Manni, following perhaps the well-known sonnet of Acquettino, say he was born in Florence.24 In all this confusion we are like to lose our way, and it is therefore not surprising that modern scholars are divided in opinion. Tiraboschi25 remains undecided. Baldelli26 thinks he was born in Paris and was illegitimate; Ginguené, Witte, Carducci, Landau, Hortis, Antona Traversi, and Crescini agree with Baldelli — and, indeed, we find only two modern students who give Florence as his birthplace, to wit Corazzini27 and Koerting28, who agree, however, that he was a bastard.
It will thus be seen that the weight of opinion is on the side of the evidence, and that it certainly seems to have been shown that Boccaccio was born out of wedlock in Paris in 1313, and that his mother’s name was Jeannette or Jeanne29.
It is probable that Boccaccio was brought still a tiny baby to Florence, but we cannot be sure of this, for though his father seems to have returned in 1314,30 and almost at once to have married Margherita di Gian Donato de’ Martoli, it is not certain that Giovanni accompanied him. Indeed the Filocolo seems to sug
gest that he did not.31 However that may be, he was “in his first infancy” when he came to Tuscany, as he tells us in the Ameto, “fanciullo, cercai i regni Etrurii.” The first river he saw was the Arno, “mihi ante alios omnes ab ipsa infantia cognitus”; and his boyhood was spent on that little hill described in the Filocolo, “piccolo poggio pieno di marine chiocciole,” and covered with “salvatichi cerri,” in the house of his father, “nel suo grembo,” as he says in the Fiammetta.
Where was this hill dark with oaks where one might find sea-shells, the tiny shells of sea-snails? We do not know for certain. Some have thought it to be the hill of Certaldo,32 but this seems scarcely likely, for we know that old Boccaccio was resident in Florence in 1318, and Boccaccio himself tells us that his boyhood was spent not in a house belonging to his father, but “nel suo grembo,” literally in his father’s lap.33 Again, the country which he loved best and has described with the greatest love and enthusiasm is that between the village of Settignano and the city of Fiesole, north and east of Florence. As though unable to forget the lines of just those hills, the shadows on the woods there, the darkness of the cypresses over the olives, he returns to them again and again. The Ninfale Fiesolano is entirely devoted to this country, its woods and hills and streams; he speaks of it also in the Ameto,34 it is the setting of the Decameron; while the country about Certaldo does not seem to have specially appealed to him, certainly not in the way the countryside of one’s childhood never ceases to do.
It is, then, to the hills about Settignano, to the woods above the Mensola and the valley of the Affrico, that we should naturally turn to look for the scenes of his boyhood. And indeed any doubt of his presence there might seem to be dismissed by a document discovered by Gherardi, which proves that on the 18th of May, 1336, by a contract drawn up by Ser Salvi di Dini, Messer Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, lately dwelling in the parish of S. Pier Maggiore and then in that of S. Felicità, sold to Niccolò di Vegna, who bought for Niccolò the son of Paolo his nephew, the poderi with houses called Corbignano, partly in the parish of S. Martino a Mensola and partly in that of S. Maria a Settignano.35 This villa of old Boccaccio’s exists to-day at Corbignano, and bears his name, Casa di Boccaccio, and though it has been rebuilt much remains from his day — part of the old tower that has been broken down and turned into a loggia, here a ruined fresco, there a spoiled inscription.36 Here, doubtless, within sound of Mensola and Affrico, within sight of Florence and Fiesole, “not too far from the city nor too near the gate,” Giovanni’s childhood was passed.
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 455
