55 The picture, of life size, is still at Naples in S. Lorenzo Maggiore. Schulz, Denkmäler der Kunst des Mittelalters in Unteritalien, Vol. III, p. 165, publishes a document dated 13 July, 1317, by which King Robert grants Simone Martini a pension of twenty gold florins.
56 It is perhaps not altogether unlikely that for a boy the port and Dogana would have extraordinary attractions. At any rate, Boccaccio in the tenth novel of the eighth day of the Decameron describes the ways of “maritime countries that have ports,” how that “all merchants arriving there with merchandise would on discharging bring all their goods into a warehouse, called in many places ‘Dogana’....”
57 Lib. XV, 10: “Sex annis nil aliud feci quam non recuperabile tempus in vacuum terere.” Note these six years, they will be valuable to us when we come to decide as to the year in which he first met Fiammetta, and thus to fix the date of his advent to Naples. See Appendix I.
58 “Laddove essi del tutto ignoranti, niuna cosa più oltre sanno, che quanti passi ha dal fondaco, o dalla bottega alla lor casa; e par loro ogni uomo, che di ciò egli volesse sgannare, aver vinto e confuso quando dicono: all’ uscio mi si pare, quasi in niun’ altra cosa stia il sapere, se non o in ingannare o in guadagnare.” Corbaccio in Opere Minori (Milano, 1879), p. 277. Cf. Egloga xiii., where the same sentiments are expressed.
59 Lib. XV, cap. x.
60 Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., pp. 109-11.
61 Cf. Filocolo, ed. cit., Lib. IV, p. 244 et seq.
62 Crescini, op. cit., p. 47.
63 This letter is printed in Corazzini, Le Lett. edite e ined. (Firenze, 1877), p. 457. “Te igitur carissime,” writes Boccaccio, “tam delectabilia tam animum attrahentia agentem cognovi, si recolis, et tui gratia tantæ dulcedinis effectus sum particeps tuus, insimul et amicus, in tam alto mysterio, in tam delectabili et sacro studio Providentia summa nos junxit, quos æqualis animi vinctos tenuit, retinet et tenebit....” This is the letter beginning “Sacræ famis et angelicæ viro,” which we shall allude to again.
64 Cf. De Blasiis, De Casibus, u.s., IX, 26, and Della Torre, op. cit., p. 112.
65 Cf. Faraglia, Barbato di Sulmona e gli uomini di lettere della Corte di Roberto d’ Angiò in Arch. St. Ital., Ser. V, Vol. III (1889), p. 343 et seq.
66 We fix the approximate date of Boccaccio’s presentation at court by his own words in the De Casibus Illustrium Virorum, Lib. IX, cap. 26: “Me adhuc adulescentulo versanteque Roberti Hierosolymorum et Sicilicæ Regis in aula...” As we have seen, adolescence began, according to the reckoning then, at fourteen years. To strengthen this supposition, we know that Boccaccino was in Naples at that time, and in relations with King Robert. See Appendix I.
67 See supra p. 5, n. 1.
68 Cf. De Blasiis, op. cit., p. 506, note 1. Davidsohn, Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz (Berlin, 1901), III, p. 182, note 911. Della Torre, op. cit., pp. 117-18. “Boccaccius de Certaldo de Societate Bardorum de Florencia, consiliarius, cambellanus, mercator, familiaris et fidelis noster,” wrote the king of him. Cf. Davidsohn, op. cit., III, p. 187, note 942; and Ibid., Il padre di Gio. Boccaccio in Arch. St. It., Ser. V, Vol. XXIII, p. 144.
69 Cf. De Genealogiis, XV, 10; “Quoniam visum est, aliquibus ostendentibus inditiis, me aptiorem literarum studiis, issuit ... ut pontificum sanctiones dives exinde futurus, auditurus intrarem.”
70 See supra, p. 19, n. 2, where, as we find in the De Genealogiis, he says that for six years he did nothing but waste irrecoverable time. Thus if he came to Naples in 1323 it was in 1329 that he began to study Law. The last we hear of his father in Naples is in 1329.
71 “E come gli altri giovani le chiare bellezze delle donne di questa terra andavano riguardando, ed io” (Ameto, ed. cit., p. 225). In the Filocolo (ed. cit., Lib. IV, p. 246) he tells us that this was especially true in the spring.
72 Crescini, op. cit., p. 50. Whether Abrotonia and Pampinea were the earliest of his loves seems doubtful. Cf. Renier, La Vita Nuova e Fiammetta, p. 225 et seq. Who was the Lia of the Ameto, and when did he meet her? Cf. Antonia Traversi, La Lia dell’ Ameto in Giornale di Filologia romanza, n. 9, p. 130 et seq., and Crescini, Due Studi riguardanti opere minori del B. (Padova, 1882). Was she the same person as the Lucia of the Amorosa Visione? Or is the Lucia of the Amorosa Visione not a person at all? See Crescini, lucia non Lucia in Giorn. St. della Lett. It., III, fasc. 9, pp. 422-3. These are questions too difficult for a mere Englishman. An excellent paper on Boccaccio’s loves is that by Antona Traversi, Le prime amanti di G. B. in Fanfulla della Domenica, IV, 19.
73 Della Torre finds these love affairs to have befallen 1329. I have, as in almost all concerning the youth of Boccaccio, found myself in agreement with him. But cf. Hauvette, Une confession de Boccace — Il Corbaccio in Bull. Ital., I, p. 5 et seq.
74 “O giovani schernitrici de’ danni dati e di chi con sommo studio per addietro v’ ha onorate; levatevi di qui, questa noia non si conviene a me per premio de’ cantati versi in vostra laude, e delle avute fatiche.”
75 Cf. Crescini, op. cit., p. 108, note 1.
76 Lib. XV, cap. x.: “... jussit genitor idem, ut pontificum sanctiones dives exinde futurus, auditurus intrarem et sub preceptore clarissimo fere tantumdem temporis in cassum etiam laboravi.”
77 A letter forged probably by Doni, who posed as its discoverer, would have confirmed this. The letter ran: “Di Pisa alli xix di aprile, 1338 — Giovanni di Boccaccio da Certaldo discepolo e ubbidientissimo figliulo infinitamente vi si raccomanda.” As is well known, Cino da Pistoja died at the end of 1336 or beginning of 1337.
78 Cf. H. Cochin, Boccaccio (Sansoni, Firenze, 1901), trad. di Vitaliani.
79 De Blasiis, Cino da Pistoia nella Università di Napoli in Arch. St. per le prov. Nap., Ann. XI (1886), p. 149. Again, the course seems to have been for six years under the same master, and although Cino was called to Naples in August, 1330, he was in Perugia in 1332. Cf. De Blasiis, op. cit., p. 149.
80 Baldelli, Vita, p. 6, note 1, thinks this master was Dionisio Roberti da Borgo Sansepolcro. He adds that this man was in Paris in 1329, and that Boccaccio there in that year began work under him. In defence of this theory he cites a letter from Boccaccio himself to Niccola Acciaiuoli of 28th August, 1341, in which he says: “Nè è nuova questa speranza, ma antica; perocchè altra non mi rimase, poichè il reverendo mio padre e signore, maestro Dionigi, forse per lo migliore, da Dio mi fu tolto.” (Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 18.) We may dismiss Baldelli’s argument, for we have decided that Boccaccio was in Naples in 1329, when he began the study of Canon Law. But the conjecture itself gains a certain new strength from the fact that Roberti was a professor in Naples. (See Renier, La Vita Nuova e La Fiammetta, Torino, 1879. Cf. Gigli, I sonetti Baiani del Boccaccio in Giornale St. della Lett. Ital., XLIII (1904), p. 299 et seq.) In 1328, however, he proves to have been in Paris, and in fact he did not arrive in Naples till 1338. As I have said, the course lasted six years, and even though we concede that Boccaccio began his studies under Roberti in 1338, we know that three years later, in 1341, Roberti died (Della Torre, op. cit., p. 146). Besides, in 1341 Boccaccio had returned to Florence. Roberti seems, indeed, to have been the protector rather than the master of Boccaccio, even as Acciaiuoli was, and it is for this reason that Boccaccio alludes to him in writing to Acciaiuoli in 1341 when Roberti was dead. The doctors in Naples in 1329 are named by De Blasiis, op. cit., p. 149. Among them were Giovanni di Torre, Lorenzo di Ravello, Giovanni di Lando, Niccola Rufolo, Biagio Paccone, Gio. Grillo, Niccola Alunno.
81 Amorosa Visione, v. 171-3.
82 Cf. Hortis, Studi sulle Opere Latine di Gio. Boccaccio, etc. (Trieste, 1879), p. 399.
83 Della Torre, op. cit., p. 151. But the strongest proof that Boccaccio and Cino were friends is furnished by Volpi, Una Canzone di Cino da Pistoia nel “Filostrato” del Boccaccio in Bull. St. Pistoiese (1899), Vol. I, fasc. 3, p. 116 et seq., who finds a song of Cino’s in the Filostrato. It seems probable, then, since they were in personal relations, that Cino introduced the wor
ks of Dante to Boccaccio.
84 De Blasiis, op. cit., p. 139 et seq.
85 In the Filocolo (ed. cit.), II, 377, begun according to our theory in 1331. I quote the following: “Nè ti sia cura di volere essere dove i misurati versi del Fiorentino Dante si cantino, il quale tu, siccome piccolo servidore, molto dei reverente seguire.” Cf. Dobelli, Il culto del Boccaccio per Dante in Giornale Dantesca (1898), V, p. 207 et seq. See too the quotations from Dante, for they are really just that in the Filostrato, part ii. strofa 50, et passim, and see infra, pp. 77, n. 2, and 253, n. 5.
86 Cf. Bertolotto, Il Trattato dell’ Astrolabio di A. di N. in Atti della Soc. Liguria di St. Pat. (1892), Vol. XXV, p. 55 et seq. Also the De Genealogiis, XV, 6, and Hortis, Studi, p. 158 and notes 1-3. Andalò di Negro was born in 1260, it seems, at Genoa. In 1314 he was chosen by the Signoria of Genoa as ambassador to Alessio Comneno of Trebizond, and he carried out his mission excellently. He had already travelled much, and after his embassy seems to have gone to Cyprus (Genealogiis, u.s.). He passed his last years at the court of King Robert in Naples, who appointed him astrologer and physician to the court. His pay was six ounces of gold annually (Bertolotto, u.s.). He died in the early summer of 1334. He was a learned astronomer and astrologer, and probably one of the most remarkable men of his time.
87 Cf. De. Blasiis, op. cit., p. 494.
88 Cf. Amorosa Visione, cap. xxix.
89 See Appendix I.
90 Cf. Sophocles, Antigone, 781 et seq.
“Ἔρως ἀνίκατε μάχαν
Ἔρος ὃς ἐν κτήμασι πίπτεις,
ὃς ἐν μαλακαῖς παρειαίς
νεάνιδος ἐννυχεύεις,
φοιτᾷς δ’ ὑπερπόντιος ἔν τ’ ἀγρονόμοις αὐλαῖς·
καί σ’ οὔτ’ ἀθανάτων φύξιμος οὐδεὶς
οὔθ’ ἁμερίων ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπων, ὁ δ’ ἔχων μέμηνεν·”
Yet when he wrote the Filocolo Boccaccio knew no Greek.
91 See Filocolo, ed. cit., I, p. 5 et seq. The scene is described also in the Filostrato, i. xxvi.-xxxiv. In the Fiammetta, cap. i., it is described from Fiammetta’s point of view.
92 In the Fiammetta (Opere Minori, Milano, 1879, p. 25) Boccaccio thus describes himself on that morning through the eyes of Fiammetta; it is in keeping with the topsy-turveydom of that extraordinary work: “Dico che, secondo il mio giudicio, il quale ancora non era da amore occupato, elli era di forma bellissimo, nelli atti piacevolissimo ed onestissimo nell’ abito suo, e della sua giovinezza dava manifesto segnale la crespa lanugine, che pur ora occupava le guancie sue; e me non meno pietoso che cauto rimirava tra uomo e uomo.”
93 Ameto (ed. cit.), p. 228. We should have expected a green dress to agree with the prevision; but it was Sabbato Santo. On Easter Day she is in green. See infra.
94 Fiammetta (ed. cit.), p. 23.
95 Amorosa Visione, cap. xv.
96 Ibid., cap. xvi.
97 Fiammetta (ed. cit.), p. 24.
98 Filocolo (ed. cit.), I, p. 5.
99 Ameto (ed. cit.), pp. 65-6.
100 Fiammetta (ed. cit.), p. 24.
101 Ameto, ed. cit., p. 228.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., pp. 221-3.
104 Filocolo, ed. cit., I, p. 4.
105 Fiammetta, ed. cit., pp. 114-17.
106 Ibid., p. 101.
107 Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., p. 182.
108 Cf. Villani, Cronica, Lib. VIII, cap. 112.
109 Villani, op. cit., Lib. IX, cap. 8.
110 Cf. Arch. St. per le prov. nap., Vol. VII, pp. 220-1.
111 Della Torre, op. cit., p. 183.
112 Cf. Fiammetta, ed. cit., p. 21: “Nel tempo nel quale la rivestita terra più che tutto l’ altro anno si mostra bella.”
113 Cf. Baldelli, op. cit., p. 362, and Casetti, Il Boccaccio a Napoli, u s., p. 573. So that Boccaccio’s age did not differ much from Fiammetta’s.
114 Filocolo, ed. cit., Vol. I, p. 4. In the Fiammetta, ed. cit., p. 21, we learn that she was “in altissime delizie ... nutrita.”
115 Ameto, ed. cit., pp. 222-3.
116 Casetti, op. cit., p. 575.
117 See Filocolo, ed. cit., I, p. 6: “in un santo tempo del principe de’ celestiali uccelli nominato.” Cf. Catalogo di tutti gli edifici sacri della città di Napoli in Arch. St. per le prov. nap., VIII, p. 32.
118 Ameto, ed. cit., p. 223.
119 There are many examples of this.
120 “Con sollecitudini ed arti.” And again there came to her very soon “dalla natura ammaestrata, sentendo quali disii alli giovani possono porgere le vaghe donne, conobbi che la mia bellezza più miei coetanei giovanetti ed altri nobili accese di fuoco amoroso.” (Fiammetta, ed. cit., p. 21).
121 Ameto, ed. cit., p. 223.
122 Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., p. 188. As to these early marriages, cf. Decameron, X, 10. Griselda was but twelve years old, and Juliet, as we remember, was “not fourteen.” Fiammetta when Boccaccio first met her was seventeen years old, “dix-sept est étrangement belle,” and had already had time for more than one act of infidelity.
123 Fiammetta, ed. cit., p. 92.
124 Ibid., pp. 52-4.
125 Ibid., p. 130.
126 Filocolo, ed. cit., II, pp. 260-1.
127 Her excuse is also the morals of the time. There was temptation everywhere, as the Decameron alone without the evidence of the other novelle would amply prove. Every sort of shift was resorted to. Procuresses, hired by would-be lovers, forced themselves into the house of the young wife and compelled her to listen to them. They deceived even the most jealous husbands. The priest even acted as a pander sometimes and more often as a seducer. Decameron, III, 3, and Il Cortigiano di Castiglione, Lib. III, cap. xx. The society in which she moved had no moral horror of this sort of thing; as to-day, the sin lay in being found out. A woman’s onestà was not ruined by secret vice, but by the exposure of it, which brought ridicule and shame.
128
“L’ acqua furtiva, assai più dolce cosa
È che il vin con abbondanza avuto;
Così d’ amor la gioia, che nascosa,
Trapassa assai del sempre mai tenuto
Marito in braccio....”
Filostrato, parte ii. strofe 74.
129 Fiammetta, ed. cit., p. 102. She thought poorly of marriage, consoling herself when her lover marries by saying: “tutti coloro che moglie prendono, e che l’ hanno, l’ amino siccome fanno dell’ altre donne: la soperchia copia, che le mogli fanno di sè a’ loro mariti, è cagion di tostano rincrescimento, quando esse pur nel principio sommamente piacessero ...” (Fiammetta, ed. cit., pp. 69-70).
130 Crescini, op. cit., pp. 127 and 130, note 2.
131 Crescini, op. cit.
132 Della Torre, op. cit., p. 192 et seq.
133 In his Tabula ad situandos et concordandos menses cum signis in dorso astrolabii in Atti della soc. Ligure di Stor. Pat. (1892), Vol. XXV, p. 59.
134 Crescini thinks (op. cit.) that Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta on 11th April, 1338. Supposing, then, the date most favourable to him, to wit, that Boccaccio possessed Fiammetta in the night of 17-18 October: 135 days before that was 3rd June, and twenty-four before that was 10th May (twelve days before was 22nd May), not 11th April. Suppose we take our own date, 30th March, we are in worse case still. It seems then certain that between these two periods of 12 and 135 days there was an interval. To decide on its length is the difficulty.
135 Amorosa Visione, cap. xlv.
136 Ibid., cap. xlvi.
137 Cf. Filocolo, ed. cit., II, pp. 261-2.
138 Cf. supra, p. 36, n. 4.
139 Filocolo, ed. cit., II, p. 248.
140 Besides, all the romances are against it. How long did Lancelot serve for Guinivere? And he was the best knight that there was in the whole world.
141 Crescini, op. cit., p. 185.
142 Sonnet lxxxvi. in editi
on Moutier (Opere Volgari di G. B.), Vol. XVI (Firenze, 1834).
143 On 3rd April, 1339, Boccaccio writes to Carlo Duca di Durazzo that he cannot finish the poem he had asked for because his heart is killed by a love betrayed. Here is the letter, or part of it: “Crepor celsitudinis Epiri principatus, ac Procerum Italiæ claritas singularis, cui nisi fallor, a Superis fortuna candidior, reservatur ut vestra novit Serenitas, et pelignensis Ovidii reverenda testatur auctoritas:
‘Carmina proveniunt animo deducta sereno.’
Sed saevientis Rhamnusiæ causa, ac atrocitatis cupidinis importunæ:
‘Nubila sunt sibitis tempora nostra malis.’
prout parvus et exoticus sermo, caliopeo moderamine constitutus vestræ magnificentiæ declarabit inferius; verum tamen non ad plenum; quia si plene anxietates meas vellem ostendere nec sufficeret calamus, et multitudo fastudiret animum intuentis; qui etiam me vivum respiciens ulterius miraretur, quam si Ceæ Erigonis Cristibiæ, vel Medeæ inspiceret actiones. Propter quod si tantæ dominationis mandata, ad plenum inclyte Princeps, non pertraho, in excutationem animi anxiantis fata miserrima se ostendant....” Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., pp. 439-40.
144 Sonnet xxxiii.: —
“E che io vadia là mi è interdetto
Da lei, che può di me quel che le piace.”
145 Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., p. 207.
146 And such was the fashion.
147 Della Torre, op. cit., p. 213.
148 Fiammetta, ed. cit., pp. 63-4.
149 I give the Italian, my translation being somewhat free:— “Un piccolo libretto, volgarmente parlando, nel quale il nascimento, lo innamoramento, e gli accidenti delli detti due infino alla lor fine interamente si contenga ... Io sentendo la dolcezza delle parole procedenti dalla graziosa bocca e pensando che mai, cioè infino a questo giorno, di niuna cosa era stato dalla nobil donna pregato, il suo prego in luogo di comandamento mi reputai, prendendo per quello migliore speranza nel futuro de’ miei disii.”
150 In the Amorosa Visione we learn that she told him no longer to make fun of himself and to think no more of the social difference between them. In the Filocolo he tells us that he first began to hope after this interview. No doubt she wished to play with him as with the rest. Certainly he was not easy in his mind. “Quelle parole più paura d’ inganno che speranza di futuro frutto mi porsero,” he tells us in the Filocolo, ed. cit., II., p. 248. Then come the words I for one find so suspicious concerning his birth. In order, he says, to bring her nearer to him, he thinks of his birth which, different in social position as they are, was not unlike hers in its romance. His mother was noble, he tells her, and he feels this nobility in his heart. “Ma la nobilità del mio cuore tratta non dal pastor padre, ma dalla reale madre mi porse ardire e dissi: ‘Seguirolla e proverò se vera sarà nell’ effetto come nel parlar si mostra volonterosa.”
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 488
