Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  It might seem inexplicable! Unfortunately, however, Boccaccio also believed that those about to die can participate in the spirit of prophecy.473 Thus he was for the moment, at any rate, altogether at the mercy of the Blessed Pietro. The splendid common-sense, the caustic wit of Petrarch helped him, it is true, to recover himself, but that bitter and humiliating experience left a permanent mark upon him. He was a changed man. With an immense regret he looked back on his life, and would have destroyed if he could the gay works of his youth, even the Decameron, and, for a time at least, he would have been content to sacrifice everything, not only his poetry in the vulgar and his romances and stories, but the new learning itself, the study of antiquity, and to enter into some monastery.

  That he did not do so we owe in part at least to Petrarch. For when he had read his letter and come to himself, he returned to Pilatus and the translation of Homer.474

  That translation was scarcely finished when Pilatus wished to be gone, and he seems in fact to have accompanied Boccaccio to Venice on his visit to Petrarch probably in May, 1363.475 That visit was a kind of flight; he seems to have taken refuge with Petrarch from the fears of his own heart, and that it was as full of pleasure and enjoyment for Petrarch, as of consolation for Boccaccio, happily we know and can assert.

  “I have always thought,” Petrarch writes to him after his return to Tuscany,476 “I have always thought that your presence would give me pleasure, I knew it would, and I felt that it would please you too. What I did not know, however, was that it would bring good fortune. For during the very few months, gone so quickly, that you have cared to dwell with me in this house that I call mine, and which is yours, it seems to me, in truth, that I have contracted a truce with fortune who, while you were here, dared not spoil my happiness....”

  We know nothing more of that visit save that Boccaccio must have returned to Tuscany before the writing of that letter, before the 7th of September then. As for Pilatus, he too left Venice “at the end of the summer”477 to return to Constantinople, “cursing Italy and the Latin name,” as Petrarch says. “One would have thought him scarcely arrived there,” Petrarch continues, “when I received a badly written and very long letter, more untidy than his beard or his hair, in which among other things he said he loved and longed for Italy as for some heavenly country, that he hated Greece which he had loved and execrated Byzantium which he had praised, and he supplicated me to send for him back as eagerly as Peter, about to be shipwrecked, prayed Christ to still the waves.”

  To make a long story short, Petrarch ignored his petition. This, however, did not stop Pilatus. He embarked for Italy, but a storm wrecked the ship in which he sailed in the Adriatic, and though he was not drowned he was struck and killed by lightning. Petrarch wonders if amid his “wretched baggage, which, thanks to the honesty of the sailors, is in safety, I shall find the Euripides, Sophocles, and other manuscripts which he had promised to procure for me.”478 The two friends mourned him sincerely, forgetting their disgust in remembering that Pilatus had known Greek, and finding touching words to deplore the tragic death of the first translator of Homer.

  TITLE OF THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF THE “DECAMERON.” (VALLADOLID, 1539)

  (By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)

  As for the translation he had made, Petrarch did not see it for some years. The first time he asks for it is in a letter of March 1, 1364.479 There he asks for a fragment of the Odyssey, “partem illam Odysseæ qua Ulyxes it ad inferos et locorum quæ in vestibulo Erebi sunt descriptionem ab Homero factam ... quam primum potes ... utcumque tuis digitis exaratam.” Later he asks for the whole: “In futurum autem, si me amas, vide obsecro an tuo studio, mea impensa fieri possit ut Homerus integer bibliothecam hanc ubi pridem graecus habitat, tandem latinos accedat.” These words are very clear. Petrarch says he will pay the copyist himself. So that, as Hortis asserts, the first version of Homer was made at the suggestion of Petrarch by Pilatus at the expense of Boccaccio.

  In the letter of December 14, 1365,480 Petrarch thanks Boccaccio for sending him the Iliad and a part of the Odyssey; but that part did not contain the details he wanted concerning the descent of Ulysses into Hades and his voyage along the Italian shores. Even this incomplete copy, though sent off in 1365 by Boccaccio, was a long time in reaching him. On January 27, 1366, he had not yet received it.481 But at last it arrived, and Petrarch wrote to thank Boccaccio for it.482 This letter, however, is not dated, and its contents do not help us to decide exactly when it was written. At any rate, it was after January, 1366, that Petrarch received the precious work. He promised to return this MS. to Boccaccio when he had had it copied; but he seems to have found it difficult to get a capable person to do this; and when he had found him we see him travelling about with him, that the work might be done under his constant supervision.483

  It is this MS., which M. de Nohlac discusses and describes, that is now in Paris (Bib. Nat., 7880, 1). In it we are able to judge of the extent of Pilatus’s knowledge. That he knew Greek seems incontrovertible, but that he knew the Homeric idiom very imperfectly is not less certain; he seems too to have had a poor knowledge of Latin. His translation is full of obscurity, platitude, and mistranslations — in fact, crammed with all the errors of a schoolboy: when he does not know a word, and has to confess it, he writes the Greek word in Latin characters; what we see in fact is not a faithful but a blind translation. And it was for this that Petrarch had waited so patiently! “Penelope,” he says, “had not more ardently longed for Ulysses.”484 He studied it with passion, often deceived, no doubt, but never discouraged. The notes with which he covered page after page show us the growing feebleness of his hand, but never of his spirit. He died while he was annotating the Odyssey.

  Boccaccio, on the other hand, with a charming and naive sincerity, owns that he did not understand much, but adds that the little he did understand seemed to him beautiful. He was very proud of his victory, and rightly; for by its means the Renaissance was able to give Homer his rightful place in its culture.

  CHAPTER XIV

  1363-1372

  THE EMBASSIES TO THE POPE — VISITS TO VENICE AND NAPLES — BOCCACCIO’S LOVE OF CHILDREN

  Boccaccio returned from Venice to Tuscany some time before September, 1363, not long before, as we may think, for the letter Petrarch wrote him on September 7485 seems to have followed close on his heels. It appears that as he was on the eve of leaving Petrarch, for the last time as it proved, he had learned that the plague which was raging in Central and Southern Italy had carried off Lello di Pietro Stefano and Francesco Nelli, their common friends, Lelius and Simonides, as Petrarch calls them. Disliking to be the bearer of ill-tidings, Boccaccio had departed from Venice, leaving Petrarch to learn of this disaster from others, and a good part of the letter Petrarch wrote him, immediately after he was gone, it seems, is devoted to deploring the death of their friends.

  “An hour after your departure,” he writes, “the priest whom I had charged to carry a letter to my friend Lelius returned bringing me my letter unopened. It was not necessary for him to speak; his face told me the news.... But while with my hand I soothed this new wound, and tried to catch my breath, a second blow fell upon me. He in whose arms he expired told me of the death of our Simonides.... You are almost the only companion in learning left to me.... This year 1363, which is the sixteenth from the beginning of our miseries [from the plague of 1348], has renewed the attack on many noble cities, among others on Florence.... To this disaster is added the fury of a war against the Pisans ... of which the issue is still uncertain.”

  Petrarch might well be uneasy. Though never a good patriot as Boccaccio always was, he could not but be moved at the misfortunes of Florence, which had only escaped the attentions of Pandolfo Malatesta by placing herself almost at the mercy of Hawkwood and his White Company of Englishmen, fighting in the Pisan service. That winter, to the astonishment of all, a campaign was fought, for the English laughed at the Italian winter, colder maybe, but so much
drier than their own, and by the spring Visconti had made peace with the Pope and with the Marquis of Montferrat, so that they were able to send Baumgarten’s German company, 3000 strong, to the assistance of the Pisans, who had now not less than 6000 mercenaries in their service. Those were very anxious times in Florence, the whole contado being at the mercy of Hawkwood, and when, by the intervention of the Pope, peace was signed in the autumn of 1364, she must have been thankful, more especially as Pisa engaged to pay her 100,000 florins indemnity within ten years.

  The Pope, however, was far from satisfied with Florence. He found her to have been lukewarm in the service of the Church when Romagna and the Marche rebelled, which, if true, was not surprising, for he had played fast and loose with her liberty, and now accused her of neglecting his interests and of attempting to detach other cities from his cause. These among other accusations; in return he threatened no longer to grant her his goodwill.

  The whole situation was serious. The temporal power of the Church with the victories of Albornoz was again growing in Italy; it was now certain that the Pope would one day return. It was necessary to placate him. And again in this delicate mission the Florentines employed Boccaccio.

  It cannot have been with very great enthusiasm that Boccaccio learned he was once more to cross the Alps on a mission as difficult as any he had handled. He had returned from Venice in 1363 quieted, altogether reconciled, for a time at any rate, with himself, determined not to abandon his work. Ever since 1359, certainly, he had devoted himself to learning, to the study of Greek and the Latin classics, of the great early Christian writers, and to the accumulation of knowledge. For ten years now, ever since the failure of his mission in 1354, he had not been asked to undertake diplomatic business, and whether or no that neglect had been due to his failure or to his intercourse with Pino de’ Rossi, who in 1360 was implicated in a conspiracy against the Guelfs, it cannot have been anything but distressing, we may think, to one so patriotic, so interested in politics too, as Boccaccio, to have been so long neglected, only to be made use of again in his old age. But the true patriot is always ready to serve his country, be she never so neglectful, and so, in spite of the interference with his plans, and the hardness and trials of the journey, it was not altogether, we may be sure, without a sort of pride and gladness that he set out for Avignon in August, 1365.486

  His business was to convince the Pope that the Florentines were “the most faithful and most devout servants of Holy Church.” Besides the letters which he bore for Francesco Bruni and others in Avignon, Boccaccio also carried one from the Republic to the Doge of Genoa,487 and he remained in that city for a season. It is to his stay there that, as he tells us in the argomento, his thirteenth Eclogue refers. In that poem he tells us that he and the poet called Dafni had a discussion with a merchant Stilbone, of which Criti was judge. Stilbone eagerly praises riches at the expense of poetry, reminding Dafni how many are the perils that menace that fragile glory which poets value so highly, such as fire and war, which may easily destroy their works. Dafni, on the other hand, celebrates the power of poetry, which recalls the minds of men from the depths of Erebus. Criti praises both riches and poetry, but does not decide between them.

  While Boccaccio was in Genoa, it seems, Petrarch thought he should have visited him in Pavia on his way to Avignon, but owing to the need for haste, the fatigue of the way, and the difficulties he feared to encounter at his age on the route, he was compelled not to do so. Later, on December 14, Petrarch wrote him of his disappointment: — 488

  “You have done well to visit me at least by letter, since you did not care, or you were unable, to visit me in person. Having heard that you were crossing the Alps to see the Babylon of the West, far worse than that of the East, because she is nearer to us, I was uneasy about the result of your voyage until I heard that you had returned. Knowing now for many years, by my frequent journeys, the difficulties of the roads, and remembering the weightiness of your body and the gravity of your spirit, friends of a studious leisure, and by consequence enemies of such cares and of such business, not a day, not a night has passed tranquilly for me. I thank God that you have remained safe and sound.... Assuredly, if you had not been very pressed, it would not have been difficult, since you were in Genoa, to come on here. It is only two days’ journey. You would have seen me ... and you would have seen what you have not seen it seems to me — the town of Pavia (Ticinum) on the banks of the Ticino.... But since circumstances have willed that I should be deprived of your greeting, as you say, because of the fatigue of the journey and your mistrust of your strength, and because of the shortness of the time at your disposal and the order of the fatherland which awaits your return, I could have desired at least that you should have met my friend Guido [Guido Settimo], Archbishop of Genoa. In seeing him you would have seen me, for since infancy I have lived with him in perfect conformity of will and sentiment. And, believe me, you would have seen a man who, though weak in body, has a spirit of great energy; you would have said you had never seen any one more full of vitality....”

  Petrarch was evidently hurt that Boccaccio had not been able to go to Pavia. It was necessary, however, for him to reach Avignon with all speed. And there, indeed, he was welcomed by Petrarch’s friends. For that letter, so full of regrets, continues: —

  “But to end my complaints with a congratulation, I am glad that in Babylon itself you have seen those friends that death has left me, and, above all, him who, as you say, is a veritable father: my dear Filippo, Patriarch of Jerusalem. To paint him in a few words, he is a man as great as his title, and indeed he is worthy of the Papacy if one day that should add itself to his merits. You write me that without having known you till then, he held you in a long embrace and pressed you closely and affectionately, even as I myself would have done, in the utmost friendship, in the presence of the sovereign pontiff and his astonished cardinals....”

  Boccaccio seems to have remained in Avignon till November. His mission did not meet with much success: the Pope was hard to persuade and to convince. For all this trouble and fatigue Boccaccio received from the Republic ninety florins of gold, at the rate of four florins a day. This certainly could by no means have met all his expenses. Poor as he was, he had to pay for the honour of serving his country.489

  That was probably the most important, though, as we shall see, not the last of Boccaccio’s missions. It was the eve of the Pope’s return to Rome, and once more Italy seemed to be in sight of a kind of peace.

  The year 1366 was probably spent by Boccaccio at Certaldo in meditation and work; but in 1367, troubled again in spirit, as it seems, and very poor, he suddenly decided to set out for Venice to see Petrarch.

  He left Certaldo on March 24,490 but coming to Florence, “the continual rains, the dissuasions of friends, and the fear of the dangers of the way,” added to the tales of those who had made the journey from Bologna, caused him to hesitate. Then he learned that Petrarch had left Venice for Pavia, and was once more a guest of the Visconti, so that he was on the point of giving up his journey. But the desire to see again some of those friends he had met before in Venice, and, above all, the thought of seeing Petrarch’s daughter and her husband, “Thy Tullia and her Francesco,” whom he had not met before, decided him to continue a journey he accomplished not without much weariness.

  On the way, as it happened, he met Petrarch’s son-in-law Franceschino da Brossano di Amicolo, whose character, voice, and beauty he praises so highly. “After festive and friendly greetings, after learning from him that you were safe and sound, and much other good news concerning you, I began to consider him, his form and beauty (cœpi aliquandiu mecum meditari pregrandem hominis formam), his quiet and pleasing face, his calm words ... how I praised your choice. Finally he left me, for he had business to do. And I in the earliest dawn went aboard my little boat (naviculam) and immediately set out for the Venetian shore, where I landed and would have sent at once to announce myself, but some of our brother citizens were already a
bout me and offering me hospitality.... In spite, however, of Donato’s pressing invitation, I went off with Francesco Allegri.... I tell you all this in all these words to excuse myself for not having accepted the offer you made me so warmly by letter; but if my friends had not been there to meet me I should have gone to an inn rather than have dwelt in the house of Tullia while her husband was absent. However, although you know in this and in many other things the integrity of my heart towards you, all others would not know it, and some would have jeered in spite of my white hair (canum caput) and my age and my fatness and feebleness, which should surely shut their mouths. This kind of thing is easily and willingly believed by evil-minded scandal-mongers, who prefer a lie to the truth.

  “After reposing myself a little I went to salute Tullia, who had already heard of my arrival.... She met me joyfully, blushing a little, and looking on the ground, with modesty and filial affection, and she saluted and embraced me....

  “Presently we were talking in your charming little garden with some friends, and she offered me with matronly serenity your house, your books, and all your things there. Suddenly little footsteps — and there came towards us thy Eletta, my delight, who, without knowing who I was, looked at me smiling. I was not only delighted, I greedily took her in my arms, imagining that I held my little one (virgunculam olim meam) that is lost to me. What shall I say? If you do not believe me, you will believe Guglielmo da Ravenna, the physician, and our Donato, who knew her. Your little one has the same aspect that she had who was my Eletta, the same expression, the same light in the eyes, the same laughter there, the same gestures, the same way of walking, the same way of carrying all her little person; only my Eletta was, it is true, a little taller when at the age of five and a half I saw her for the last time.491 Besides, she talks in the same way, uses the same words, and has the same simplicity. Indeed, indeed, there is no difference save that thy little one is golden-haired, while mine had chestnut tresses (aurea cesaries tuæ est, meæ inter nigram rufamque fuit). Ah me! how many times when I have held thine in my arms listening to her prattle the memory of my baby stolen away from me has brought tears to my eyes — which I let no one see.”