CHAPTER III
1331
HIS MEETING WITH FIAMMETTA AND THE PERIODS OF THEIR LOVE STORY
For it was in the midst of this gay life, full of poetry and study, that he met her who was so much more beautiful than all the other “ninfe Partenopee,” and who seemed to him “quella che in Cipri già fu adorata,” that is to say, Venus herself. He saw her first on a Holy Saturday, on the Vigil of Easter, as he himself tells us, and as we think on 30th March, 1331.89 He had gone to Mass, it seems, about ten o’clock in the morning, the fashionable hour of the day, rather to see the people than to attend the service, in the church of S. Lorenzo of the Franciscans. And there amid that great throng of all sorts and conditions of men he first caught sight of the woman who was so profoundly to influence his life and shape his work.
“I found myself,” he says, “in a fine church of Naples, named after him who endured to be offered as a sacrifice upon the gridiron. And there, there was a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was listening to the Holy Mass celebrated by a priest, successor to him who first girt himself humbly with the cord, exalting poverty and adopting it. Now while I stood there, the fourth hour of the day, according to my reckoning, having already passed down the eastern sky, there appeared to my eyes the wondrous beauty of a young woman, come thither to hear what I too heard attentively. I had no sooner seen her than my heart began to throb so strongly that I felt it in my slightest pulses; and not knowing why nor yet perceiving what had happened, I began to say, ‘Ohimè, what is this?’... But at length, being unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, ‘O Love, most noble Lord, whose strength not even the gods were able to resist,90 I thank thee for setting happiness before my eyes!’... I had no sooner said these words than the flashing eyes of that lovely lady fixed themselves on mine....”91
Fiammetta, for it was she, was tall and slanciata; her hair, he tells us, “is so blonde that the world holds nothing like it; it shades a white forehead of noble width, beneath which are the curves of two black and most slender eyebrows ... and under these two roguish eyes ... cheeks of no other colour than milk.” This description, even in the hands of Boccaccio, is little more than the immortal “Item, two lips, indifferent red....”92 Yet little by little in his work Fiammetta lives for us. On that day she was dressed in a bruna vesta,93 and wearing a veil that fell from her head crowned with a garland.94 After her golden hair, it is her eyes and her mouth that he loves best in her.
“Due begli occhi luccan, sì che fiammetta
Parea ciascun d’ amore luminosa;
E la sua bocca bella e piccioletta
Vermiglia rosa e fresca somigliava.”95
He seems to have asked one of his companions who she was, but he knew not.
“Io stetti molto a lei mirar sospeso
Per guardar s’ io l’ udissi nominare,
O ch’ io ‘l vedessi scritto breve o steso
Lì nol vid’ io nè ‘l seppi immaginare.”96
When she saw that he continued to stare at her, she screened herself with her veil.97 But he changed his position and found a place by a column whence he could see her very well— “dirittissimamente opposto, ... appoggiato ad una colonna marmorea” — and there, while the priest sang the Office, “con canto pieno di dolce melodia,”98 he drank in her blonde beauty which the dark clothes made more splendid — the golden hair and the milk-white skin, the shining eyes and the mouth like a rose in a field of lilies.99 Once she looked at him,— “Li occhi, con debita gravità elevati, in tra la moltitudine de’ circostanti giovani, con acuto ragguardamento distesi.”100 So he stayed where he was till the service was over, “senza mutare luogo.” Then he joined his companions, waiting with them at the door to see the girls pass out. And it was then, in the midst of other ladies, that he saw her for the second time, watching her pass out of S. Lorenzo on her way home. When she was gone he went back to his room with his friends, who remained a short time with him. These, as soon as might be, excusing himself, he sent away, and remained alone with his thoughts.
The morrow was Easter Day, and again he went to S. Lorenzo to see her only. And she was there indeed, “di molto oro lucente”— “adorned with gems and dressed in most fair green, beautiful both by nature and by art.”101 Then remembering all things, he said to himself: “This is that lady who in my boyhood (puerizia) and again not so long ago, appeared to me in my dreams; this is she who, with a joyful countenance and gracious, welcomed me to this city; this is she who was ordained to rule my mind, and who was promised me for lady, in my dreams.”102 From this moment began for him “the new life.”
Who was this lady “promised to him in his dreams,” whose love was indeed the great prize of his youth? We know really very little about her, though he speaks of her so often, but in three well-known places, in the Filocolo, the Ameto, and the Amorosa Visione, he tells us of her origin. It is in the Ameto that he gives us the fullest account of her. In that comedy103 he tells us that at the court of King Robert there was a gentleman of the wealthy and powerful house of Aquino who held in Naples “the highest place beside the throne of him who reigned there.” This noble had married, we learn, a young Provençal, “per bellezza da lodare molto,” who with her husband lived in the royal palace.104 Of this pair were born “some daughters whom Fiammetta called sisters,”105 and a son who was assassinated.106 Fiammetta’s own birth is, we understand, surrounded by a kind of mystery, “voluttuoso e lascivo,” corresponding, as we shall see, to her own temperament.107
LUCRECE
A woodcut from “De Claris Mulieribus.” (Berne, 1539.) (By the courtesy of Mssrs. J. & J. Leighton.)
Boccaccio suggests that her birth is connected with the great festa which celebrated the coronation of King Robert, that took place in Avignon in September, 1309.108 The king returned to Naples by way of Florence, where he arrived on September 30, 1310;109 he was still there in October, and there was much fighting to be done, for Henry VII was making war in Italy; so that it was not till February 2, 1313,110 that the king opened the first general parliament in Naples after his coronation. Della Torre111 thinks that it was on this occasion the great festa described by Boccaccio took place. Its chief feature seems to have been a banquet of the greatest magnificence, to which all the court as well as many of the leading subjects of the Kingdom were bidden. Amid all this splendour Boccaccio describes the king’s gaze passing over a host of beautiful women, to rest, always with new delight, on the beauty of the young wife of D’Aquino, who, since her husband belonged to the court, was naturally present. Well, to make a long story short, a little later the king seduced this lady, but as it seems, on or about the same night she slept also with her husband, so that when nine months later a daughter was born to her, both the king and her husband believed themselves to be the father. It is like a story out of the Decameron.
This daughter, the Fiammetta of his dreams, was born, he tells us, in the spring112 — the spring then of 1314113 — and was named Maria.114 Before very long she lost her mother, who however, before she died, told her as well as she could, considering her tender age, the mystery of her birth. Not long after, her father — or rather her mother’s husband — died also, leaving the piccoletta “a vestali vergini a lui di sangue congiunte ... acciocchè quelle di costumi e d’ arte inviolata servandomi, ornassero la giovanezza mia”;115 which is Boccaccio’s way of saying that she was placed in the care of nuns, the nuns, as Casetti116 supposes, of the Order of St. Benedict, to whom belonged the very ancient church of S. Arcangelo a Baiano.117 There she grew up, and, like very many others of an eager and sensuous temperament, totally unfitted for the life of a religious, she desired too to be a nun, and this desire, we learn, became definite in her after an ecstatic vision in which S. Scholastica appeared to her118 and invited her to take the vow. But happily this was not to be. Her golden hair was not to fall under the shears of the Church, but to be a poet’s crown. She was too beautiful for the cloister, and indeed already the fame of her beauty had gone beyond th
e convent walls, which were in fact by no means very secure or unassailable. In those days, people “in the world,” men as well as women, were received even by the “enclosed” in the parlour of the convent, where it was customary to hold receptions.119
So, we learn, there presently began a struggle in Fiammetta’s heart — it was not of very long duration — between her resolution to take the veil and her feminine vanity. Little by little she began to adorn herself,120 she received offers of marriage which by no means shocked her, she became reconciled to the life of the world for which she was so perfectly fitted by nature. Among the suitors, and apparently they were many, was “uno dei più nobili giovani ... di fortuna grazioso, de’ beni Giunonichi copioso, e chiaro di sangue.”121 To him, as to the rest, she replied with a refusal, to which she was doubtless encouraged by the nuns, who could not easily suffer so well-born and powerful a pupil to escape them. The young man, however — we do not know his name — was not easily discouraged, and, renewing his suit, was accepted. So she was married perhaps when she was about fifteen years old, in 1329.122
Her beauty123 was famous, and she seems scarcely to have been married when she gave herself up to all the voluptuousness of her nature, more or less mute in the convent. That she could read we know, for she read not only Giovanni’s letters, but Ovid,124 probably a translation of the Ars Amandi, and the French Romances.125 She was greatly run after by the youth of the Neapolitan court, who swore no festa was complete without her. Her husband’s house, too, was in such a position that not only the citizens, but strangers, who must on arrival or departure pass it by, might spy her at her window or on her balcony.126 Her excuse is this universal admiration, and the eagerness of her temperament, which allowed her to pass with ease from one lover to another.127 And then she also found that stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.128 She excuses herself for having betrayed the husband who loved her so much, and can say: “What is lawfully pursued is apt to be considered of small account, even though it be most excellent, but what is difficult of attainment, even if contemptible, is held in high esteem.”129 But, like all vain and sensual natures, she was cruel, and encouraged her suitors to squander their substance on her, giving them nothing in return, and leading each to suppose that he was the only one she loved, and that she was about to make him happy. “And I,” she says to Boccaccio in the character of Alleiram, “and I have laughed at them all, choosing, however, those who took my fancy and who were judged apt to give me pleasure. But no sooner was the fire spent than I broke the vase which contained the water and flung away the pieces.” These words, so cynically moving, not only show us the cruelty of Maria’s nature, but cast a strange light on the general condition of society in what was then, as later, the most corrupt city in Italy. Such, then, was the blonde Fiammetta whom Boccaccio loved.
But how could he, a mere merchant’s son, ever hope to reach the arms of this disdainful, indifferent lady? By means of poetry? It seems so. But before replying fully to this question it will be necessary to establish the chronological limits and divisions of this love affair, and this is the most difficult question in all the difficult history of the youth of Boccaccio.
We may find, as it happens, two dates to begin with in the Amorosa Visione. They have not escaped Crescini,130 who, founding himself on them, has concluded, though not too certainly, that between the day of innamoramento and that of possesso completo 159 days passed. He arrives at this tentative conclusion in the following manner. In chapter xliv. of the Amorosa Visione Boccaccio tells us that when he became enamoured of Fiammetta, at first he marvelled greatly, as though something incredible had befallen him. Then he began to make fun of himself, “farsi beffa,” for having thought of a lady so far above him. But at last, when
“Quattro via sei volte il sole
Con l’ orizzonte il ciel congiunto aveva ...”
it appeared that his courting pleased his lady, and he seemed to understand from her that there was no distance however great, between lover and beloved, that love could not annihilate. But, said she, one ought to serve her only, and not to run after other ladies.
Crescini interprets this to mean that twenty-four days after Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta, she gave him reason to hope. And he arrives at this conclusion because he considers that the sun is in conjunction with the horizon only once a day, whereas it might seem to be so twice a day, at sunrise as at sunset. The other 135 days of Crescini’s chronology come from the following verses of chapter xlvi. of the Amorosa Visione, in which Boccaccio tells us that he was able to possess Maria after
“Cinque fiate tre via nove giorni
Sotto la dolce signoria di questa
Trovato m’ era in diversi soggiorni.”
Thus, says Crescini, we have twenty-four days from the first meeting to the acceptance of his court, and 135 days thenceforward to the possession, that is 159 days.131
Della Torre,132 however, will have none of this reckoning, and seems to have proved that it is indeed inexact. To begin with, according to the Ptolemaic system, the sun moved round the earth and touched it as it were not only at its rising but also at its setting, so that the twenty-four days become twelve. This, however, is but a small matter, merely reducing the 159 days to 147. Crescini’s chief error, according to Della Torre, is that he has added the first period of twelve (or twenty-four) days to the second of 135 — making them immediately consecutive. Let us examine this matter somewhat closely.
In the Ameto Boccaccio tells us that the happy night which came at the end of the 135 days, the night in which he possessed Fiammetta, fell “temperante Apollo i veleni freddi di Scorpione.” Now at what time precisely is the sun in the sign of the Scorpion? Andalò133 tells us that at the end of the 20th October the sun is three and a half gradi in Scorpio, and that by the 15th November it is already entering Sagittarius. The sun then entered Scorpio on the 17th October and left it on the 14th November.134 Somewhere between those two dates the loves of Giovanni and Fiammetta were consummated.
Boccaccio tells us, if we interpret him aright, that twelve days after his innamoramento his lady showed him that she was pleased by his love. He then passes on to describe the long and faithful service he gave her: —
“Lungamente seguendo sua pietate
Ora in avversi ed ora in graziosi
Casi reggendo la mia voluntate,”135
and so on. Then he says: —
“Traendomi più là e con sommesso
Parlar le chiesi, che al mio dolore
Fine ponesse, qual doveva ad esso,
Ognor servando quel debito onore
Che si conviene a’ suoi costumi adorni,
Di gentilezza pieni e di valore,”136
and at last adds the lines already quoted,
“Cinque fiate tre via nove giorni
Sotto la dolce signoria di questa
Trovato m’ era in diversi soggiorni”;
when
“nella braccia la Donna pietosa
Istupefatto gli parea tenere.”
Taken thus we may divide the story of his love for Fiammetta into three periods. The first of these ends twelve days after the first meeting, and is the period of uncertainty. The second period is that in which he is accepted as courtier, as it were, on his trial. The third begins when his lady, moved by long service and repeated proofs of his devotions, returns his love; it is the period of “dolce signoria” and lasts one hundred and thirty-five days, at the end of which she gives herself to him.137
Of these periods we know only the length, then, of the first and the last. The first began on the 30th March and lasted till the 12th April, 1331, when the second began, to last how long? Well, at least two months, it seems,138 perhaps three. In that case all three periods belong to the same year. If this be not so, the second period was of longer duration than three months, perhaps much longer. Boccaccio himself tells us that it was “non senza molto affanno lunga stagione.”139 Now it seems reasonable to suppose that even so
eager a lover as Boccaccio cannot call three months “lunga stagione,” though he were dying for her and each minute was an eternity. He can scarcely have hoped to seduce a woman of his own class in less time. Common sense, then, is on our side when reminding ourselves that Maria d’Aquino was of the noblest family, married, too, to a husband who loved her, and generally courted by all the golden youth of Naples — while Giovanni was the son of a merchant — we insist that he cannot mean a paltry three months when he speaks of a long time.140 But if the second period lasted more than three months, and so does not belong to the year 1331, to what year or years does it belong?
Della Torre seems to have found a clue in the following sonnet, whose authenticity, though doubted by Crescini,141 he insists upon: —
“Se io potessi creder che in cinqu’ anni
Ch’ egli è che vostro fui, tanto caluto
Di me vi fosse, che aver saputo
Il nome mio voleste, de’ miei danni
Per ristorato avermi, de’ miei affanni
Potrei forse sperare ancora aiuto,
Nè mi parrebbe il tempo aver perduto
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 457
