Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  The enthusiasm, the unselfishness of that! But he does not stop there. Petrarch is as admirable morally as he is as an artist or as a scholar.

  “Petrarch,” he tells us,526 “living from his youth up as a celibate, had such a horror of the impurities of the excess of love that for those who know him he is the best example of honesty. A mortal enemy of liars, he detests all vices. For he is a venerable sanctuary of truth, and honours and joys in virtue, the model of Catholic holiness. Pious, gentle, and full of devotion, he is so modest that one might name him a second Parthenias [i.e. Virgil]. He is too the glory of the poetic art. An agreeable and eloquent orator, philosophy has for him no secrets. His spirit is of a superhuman perspicacity; his mind is tenacious and full of all knowledge that man may have. It is for this reason that his writings, both in prose and in verse, numerous as they are, shine so brilliantly, breathe so much charm, are adorned with so many flowers, enclosing in their words so sweet a harmony, and in their thoughts an essence so marvellous that one believes them the work of a divine genius rather than the work of a man. In short he is assuredly more than a man and far surpasses human powers. I am not singing the praises of some ancient, long since dead. On the contrary, I am speaking of the merits of a living man.... If you do not believe these words, you can go and see him with your eyes. I do not fear that it will happen to him as to so many famous men, as Claudius says, ‘Their presence diminishes their reputation.’ Rather I affirm boldly that he surpasses his reputation. He is distinguished by such dignity of character, by an eloquence so charming, by an urbanity and old age so well ordered, that one can say of him what Seneca said of Socrates, that ‘one learns more from his manners than from his discourse.’”

  In this enormous praise, in this humility, Petrarch does not seem to have seen anything extraordinary; in fact he seems to have taken it as the most natural thing in the world. We gather that he considered it was to have much regard for Boccaccio to let him hope for some little glory after him.527 And we may suspect that he found in him a friend after his own heart. He showed his gratitude by addressing a number of letters to him and by leaving him in his Will fifty florins of gold to buy a mantle to protect him against the cold during the long and studious nights of winter.528 Boccaccio was ill when he heard of that benefaction and the death of his beloved master. The letter he then wrote in praise of the dead, his hand trembling with emotion and weakness, his eyes full of tears, is perhaps the most beautiful, if not the most touching, document of their friendship.529

  And then, as we have already seen, the love of Boccaccio for his master, his solicitude for his memory, did not cease with Petrarch’s death. His first thought was for the Africa of which his master had made, in imitation of Virgil perhaps, so great a mystery, and, as it was said, had wished to burn it. Though he was as ignorant as others of its contents, believing as he did in Petrarch, he was altogether convinced that it was a great and marvellous poem, worthy of Homer and full of a divine inspiration.530 While some said Petrarch had left instructions to burn it, others declared that he had appointed a commission to decide whether it should live or die. Boccaccio does not seem to have thought that he himself would necessarily have been on any such commission; but immediately addressed a supplication in verse to the tribunal, which he feared would be composed of lawyers, demanding in the name of the Muses, of kings, of peoples, of cities that this masterpiece should not be allowed to perish.

  So Boccaccio loved Petrarch. And that Petrarch was good for him, as we might say, who can doubt after reading that noble letter on the vision of the Blessed Pietro? But that Boccaccio was intellectually altogether at his mercy unhappily we cannot doubt either after reading his Latin works. He follows Petrarch so far as he can, but nearly always blindly, exaggerating the predilections or prejudices of his master even in little things. In all his works in Latin he makes no allusion to his works in the vulgar: Petrarch often mentions his, but always with an affected disdain. Yet Boccaccio was by no means destitute of a passion for literary glory. He desired it as eagerly as Petrarch, but more modestly; and following the precept of his master to the letter, he does not believe he can attain to it by any other means than by classical studies. Like his master too, he regretted the writings of his youth, and would have destroyed them if they had not been spread through all Italy and well out of his reach. In all these things Boccaccio is but the follower of Petrarch, and nothing can be more to the point than to compare them, not indeed as artists, but as students, as scholars, as philosophers.

  And here let us admit, to begin with, that as a student, as a man of culture, in a sense of the reality of history and in a due sense of the proportion of things, Petrarch is as much Boccaccio’s superior as Boccaccio is Petrarch’s as a creative artist. For Petrarch antiquity was a practical school of life. Convinced of the superiority of his spirit, he possessed himself of what he read and assimilated what he wanted.531 Boccaccio, on the other hand, remained entirely outside, and can claim no merit as a scholar but that of industry. As a student he is a mere compiler. His continual ambition is to extend his knowledge, but Petrarch dreams only of making his more profound. He too in reading the ancients has collected an incalculable number of extracts, but after putting them in order from various points of view he has only begun; he proceeds to draw from them his own works.

  Nor is Petrarch deceived in his own superiority. He was by far the most cultured man of his time; as a critic he had already for himself disposed of the much-abused claims of the Church and the Empire. For instance, with what assurance he recognises as pure invention, with what certainty he annihilates with his criticism the privileges the Austrians claimed to hold from Cæsar and Nero.532 And even face to face with antiquity he is not afraid; he is sure of the integrity of his mind; he analyses and weighs, yes, already in a just balance, the opinions of the writers of antiquity; while Boccaccio mixes up in the most extraordinary way the various antiquities of all sorts of epochs. Nor has Boccaccio the courage of his opinions; all seems to him worthy of faith, of acceptance. He cannot, even in an elementary way, discern the false from the true; and even when he seems on the point of doing so he has not the courage to express himself. When he reads in Vincent de Beauvais that the Franks came from Franc the son of Hector, he does not accept it altogether, it is true, but, on the other hand, he dare not deny it, “because nothing is impossible to the omnipotence of God.”533 He accepts the gods and heroes of antiquity; the characters in Homer and the writers of Greece, of Rome, are equally real, equally authentic, equally worthy of faith, and we might add equally unintelligible. They are as wonderful, as delightful, as impossible to judge as the saints. What they do or say he accepts with the same credulity as that with which he accepted the visions of Blessed Pietro. Petrarch only had to look Blessed Pietro in the eye, and he shrivelled up into lies and absurdities. But to dispose of a charlatan and a rascal of one’s own day is comparatively easy: the true superiority of Petrarch is shown when he is face to face with the realities of antiquity — when, for instance, venerating Cicero as he did, he does not hesitate to blame him on a question of morals. But Boccaccio speaks of Cicero as though he scarcely knew him;534 he praises him as though he were a mere abstraction, calls him “a divine spirit,” a “luminous star whose light still waxes.”535 He does not know him. He goes to him for certain details because Petrarch has told him to do so.

  The truth seems to be that as soon as Boccaccio was separated from life he became a nonentity. If this is not so, how are we to explain the fact that he who was utterly incapable of criticism, of any sense of difference or proportion in regard to the ancients, could appreciate Petrarch so exquisitely, not only as a writer, where he is often at sea, but as a man? He has a philosophy of life, but he cannot apply it to antiquity because he cannot realise antiquity. Nor does he perceive that Petrarch is continually opposing the philosophy of life to the philosophy of the schools. It is true he defends Petrarch against the more obvious absurdities of scholastic philosophy; but, like hi
s opponents, philosophy for him is nothing but the trick, we cannot say the art, of reasoning, of dialectic.536 While Petrarch with an immense and admirable courage bravely dares to attack the tyranny of Aristotle in the world of thought, he remains for Boccaccio “the most worthy authority in all things of importance.”537 And so, for example, when Aristotle affirms that the founders of religion were the poets, Boccaccio does not hesitate to oppose this theory to the theologians of his time.538 Where in fact Petrarch shows himself really superior to the vulgar prejudices of his time his disciple cannot follow him. For instance, in regard to astrology: Boccaccio attributed an immense importance to it, but Petrarch never misses a chance of ridiculing it even in his letters to Boccaccio.539 Nevertheless Boccaccio remains persuaded that the art of astrology combines in itself much truth, and at any rate rests on a solid basis. If it sometimes deceives us, we must seek the cause in the greatness of the heavens, so difficult to explore, and in the imperfect knowledge we have of the movements and conjunctions of the planets.540

  In all these things and in many others Boccaccio is little more than Petrarch’s disciple, following him without discrimination, more violent in his abuse, more extreme in his advocacy of those things or professions or ideas or people whom his master had come to consider bad or good, reasonable or unreasonable. And it is in the Latin works that we find him most a disciple, really obeying orders that he has by no means understood, compiling with an immense and heroic labour a vast collection of facts or supposed facts which have no relation to one another, and reformed and revivified by no composing or commanding idea, are for the most part just a heap of dead and grotesque extravagances that for us at least can have no meaning.

  Let me confess it at once: after labouring with an immense weariness through the whole of these works in Latin, I have found but one complete work and two fragments which seem to have been written with any personal conviction: the Eclogues, parts of the De Montibus, and the fourteenth book of the De Genealogiis Deorum. The rest are vast compilations, made, one cannot say without enthusiasm, for nothing but an immense enthusiasm could have carried him through such a labour, but without any unifying idea, without personal conviction or art or delight. They are the notebooks of an omnivorous but indiscreet and undiscerning reader.541

  The earliest among them, as we may think,542 the De Claris Mulieribus, constitutes as it were the transition from the writings full of imagination and life in the vulgar tongue to the works of erudition. Its chief purpose would seem to be rather to entertain and to amuse women than to write history or biography, and though now and then a more serious idea might seem to discover itself, it remains for the most part a wretched and awkward piece of work, in which virtue and vice are dealt with and distinguished, if at all, to hide the droll pleasantries which are intended to divert the reader. In this Boccaccio was successful, and the book had a great vogue in spite of its absurdity.543

  The idea of the work was, as he confesses in the proem suggested to him by Petrarch’s De Viris Illustribus. Ordered chronologically, beginning with Eve, much space is given to women of antiquity — Greek, Roman, and Barbarian, little to Jewesses and Christians, saints and martyrs, because, says Boccaccio, “I wish to spare them the neighbourhood of Pagans.” He has little to say either, of the women of his own and the preceding age. He mentions, however, Pope Joan, the virtuous Gualdrada,544 the Empress Constance, mother of Frederic II, and Queen Giovanna of Naples, whom he praises for her personality and character as one of the most remarkable women of his time.

  But it is in dealing with the more modern characters that he dates his work for us. We find there the same contempt for, the same aversion from women in general as have already come upon in the Corbaccio and the Vita di Dante. It is possible that his contempt in some sort excuses, or at least explains, the wretchedness of this work. For if it was written for women, we know that he considered that culture and learning were not only useless to women, but even harmful, since they helped them to evil. And he himself tells us with the most amazing humour or effrontery that he has composed this work “less with a view to general usefulness than for the greater honour of the sex,”545 yet, as we shall see, he abuses women roundly on almost every possible occasion, and introduces a tale like that of Paolina, which would not be out of place in the Decameron.

  “Paolina, the Roman lady,” says Boccaccio, “lived in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, and above all the ladies of her time she was famous for the beauty of her body and the loveliness of her face, and, married as she was, she was reputed the especial mirror of modesty. She cared for nothing else, she studied no other thing, save to please her husband and to worship and reverence Anubis, god of the Egyptians, for whom she had so much devotion, that in everything she did she hoped to merit his grace whom she so much venerated. But, as we know, wherever there is a beautiful woman there are young men who would be her lovers, and especially if she be reputed chaste and honest, so here a young Roman fell in love beyond hope of redemption with the beautiful Paolina. His name was Mundo, he was very rich, and of the noblest family in Rome. He followed her with his eyes, and with much amorous and humble service as lovers are wont to do, and with prayers too, and with promises and presents, but he found her not to be won, for that she, modest and pure as she was, placed all her affection in her husband, and considered all those words and promises as nothing but air. Mundo, seeing all this, almost hopeless at last, turned all his thoughts to wickedness and fraud.”

  “It seems that Paolina used to visit almost every day the Temple of Isis, where, with continual oblations and sacred offerings, she worshipped and honoured the god Anubis with the greatest devotion; which, when the young man knew of it, love showed him a way, and he thought and imagined in his heart an unheard-of evil. Telling himself then that the priests and ministers of Anubis would be able to assist and favour his desires, he went to them, and after many prayers and many rich gifts opened to them the matter. And it happened as he wished. For when Paolina next came to the temple the most venerable high priest himself, in a quiet and humble voice, told her that the god Anubis had appeared to him in the night and had bidden him say to her that he, Anubis himself, was well pleased and delighted with her devotion, and that in that temple where she worshipped him he would, for her good and repose of heart, speak with her in the darkness of night. Now when Paolina heard this from so venerable a priest, judging that this had come to her though her devotion and holiness, she rejoiced without measure at the words, and returning home told all to her husband, who, like a fool, believing all to be true, consented that she should spend the following night in the temple. And so it befell at nightfall Paolina came to the preordained place, and after solemn ceremonies and holy prayers alone she entered the rich bed to await Anubis, the god of her devotion. And when she had fallen asleep, came, introduced by the priests, Mundo, covered with the vestments and ornaments of Anubis and full of the most ardent desire; then with a soft voice, taking her in his arms, he awakened her.546 And Mundo, in the voice of Anubis, seeing her afraid and confused at first waking, bade her be of good heart, saying that he was Anubis whom she had for so long venerated and worshipped, and that he was come from heaven because of her prayers and devotions that he might lie with her, and of her have a son a god like to himself. Which, when Paolina heard, before all else she asked if it were the custom of the supernal powers to mix themselves with mortals; to whom Mundo answered, even so, and gave the example of Jove, who had descended from heaven and passed through the roof where Danäe lay, into her lap, from which intercourse Perseus, now in heaven, was born. And hearing this Paolina most joyfully consented. Then Mundo, all naked, entered into the bed of Anubis, and so won the desired embraces and kisses and pleasures; and when it was dawn he left her, saying that she had that night conceived a son. And when it was day Paolina arose, and, carried by the priests, returned to her house, believing everything and recounting all to her foolish husband, who received his wife joyfully with the greatest honour, thinking that s
he would be the mother of a god. Nor would either have doubted this but for the want of caution on the part of the too ardent Mundo. For it seemed to him that Paolina had returned his embraces with the greatest readiness and delight, and thinking therefore that he had conquered her modesty and hoping to enjoy her again, he went to her one day in the temple, and coming close to her whispered, ‘Blessed art thou who hast conceived of the god Anubis.’ But the result was quite other than he had expected. For stupefied beyond measure, Paolina, bringing all things to her remembrance that had befallen on that night, understood the fraud, and altogether broken-hearted told her husband, opening all her thoughts; and he went immediately in the greatest sorrow and distress to Tiberius Cæsar. And Cæsar ordered that all the priests should be slain with grievous torments, and that Mundo should be sent into exile; and as for the simple and deceived Paolina, she became the laughing-stock of the Roman people.”