442 See the interesting study of the Corbaccio by Hauvette in Bulletin Italien (Bordeaux, 1901), Vol. I, No. I. Boccaccio says in the Corbaccio: “E primieramente la tua età, per la quale, se le tempie già bianche e la canuta barba non m’ ingannano, tu dovresti avere li costumi del mondo, fuor delle fasce già sono degli anni quaranta e già venticinque, cominciatili a conoscere” (Ed. Moutier, 183). Hauvette interprets this: “Grown out of swaddling clothes as you are these forty years, you have known the world for twenty-five....” The majority of critics agree that the Corbaccio was written ca. 1355, in which year Boccaccio was forty-two years old. Twenty-five years before brings us to 1330, or almost to the dates on which he (1) deserted trade, and (2) first saw Fiammetta. But in another place in the same book he suggests that the book was written when the new year was about to begin: “l’ anno ... è tosto per entrar nuovo,” so that we may refer this unfortunate contretemps, and the writing of the Corbaccio in consequence, to December, 1355, i.e. February, 1356, new style, which brings us almost exactly to March, 1331, the day of the meeting with Fiammetta.
As to the title of this book we know nothing. If it signifies the Evil Raven and is derived from corbo, corvo, we cannot decide whether it refers to the widow, or her husband, or to Boccaccio himself. On the other hand, it may be derived from corba (Latin, corbis), a basket or trap, and this would be explicable. All we know is that in by far the greater number of MSS., and these the oldest, the work bears the title Corbaccio or Corbaccino; but whether this is owing to Boccaccio or not we cannot decide. The word does not occur in the text. The copyists were certainly unaware of its significance, and have always given it a sub-title, e.g. Corbaccio: libro del rimedio dello amore, ... detto il Corbaccio, or Corbaccius sive contra sceleratam viduam et alias feminas invectivæ, or Corbaccio nimico delle femmine. The false title Laberinto d’ amore does not occur till the sixteenth century. Cf. Hauvette, op. cit., p. 3. n. 1.
443 The sources of this amazing and amusing book are not far to seek. In the Divine Comedy it had been love which had let Dante out of the selva oscura; here the selva oscura is love and it is reason or experience who delivers Boccaccio. Another source, as Pinelli, Corbaccio in Propugnatore, XVI (Bologna, 1883), pp. 169-92, has shown, is found in Giovenale. “L’ imitazione,” says Pinelli, “del Boccaccio non è pedestre, ma artifiziosa come quella che cogliendo sempre il solo punto capitale del pensiero, e trascurando la particolarità meno interessanti, aggiunge di suo tante inestimabili bellezze da rendere l’ opera originale.”
444 We shall consider the Vita di Dante later when we discuss Boccaccio’s whole relation to Dante. It is necessary perhaps to decide here so far as we can the date at which it was written. Baldelli (op. cit., pp. 378-9) tells us that Buonmattei was of opinion that Boccaccio wrote the Vita di Dante while he was still young. But Baldelli assures us that it must have been written after the Ameto and before the Decameron, as its style is more pure and formed than the one and less so than the other. The Decameron first saw the light in 1353; and so Baldelli tells us the Vita was written in 1351. On such a question no foreigner has a right to an opinion. But if I may break my own rule, I shall say that I find myself in agreement with (among others) Antona Traversi, in his translation of Landau’s life of Boccaccio (Giovanni Boccaccio sua vita, etc. (Naples, 1882), p. 786, n. 3), when he says that no really satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at on the evidence of a prose style alone; for nothing is more fluid or more subject to mood, and nothing, we might add, is more difficult to judge. Foscolo, with whom Carducci finds himself in agreement, tells us that “Fra quante opere abbiamo del Boccaccio la più luminosa di stile e di pensieri a me pare la Vita di Dante. Cf. Foscolo, Discorso storico sul testo del Decameron (Lugano, 1828), p. 94. But we need not admit so much to refute Baldelli. If the Decameron was published in 1353, it was certainly begun some years, four or five at least, before that. It is generally supposed, and with much reason, to have been begun in 1348-9. But Baldelli gives the Vita to 1351. It follows then that the work less pure in style than the Decameron was written two years after the Decameron was begun. If we accept Baldelli’s evidence we must conclude that the Vita was written before 1348.
It seems extremely unlikely, however, that the Vita was written before 1353, for its whole tone, serious, even religious, and its extraordinary antipathy to marriage and contempt for women are entirely out of keeping with the eager love and sensuality of the Ameto and the gaiety of the Decameron. It has, on the other hand, much in common with the Corbaccio, which belongs to the years 1355 or 1356. With this conclusion Carducci — and no finer critic ever lived — is in agreement. He agrees with Foscolo, op. cit., p. 14, that the Corbaccio and the Vita di Dante were composed about the same time. To establish the very year in which Boccaccio wrote the Vita seems to me impossible. But I think it may be possible to prove that it was begun after the Corbaccio, though not long after, let us say in 1356-7, and finished some years later; according to Macri Leone (La Vita di Dante, Firenze, 1888), in 1363-4. We see in the Vita almost the same attitude towards women that we have already found in the Corbaccio, but less fiercely bitter, more reasoned, and less personal. But the immediate cause of Boccaccio’s change from an eager and self-flattering love of women to a hatred for and contempt of them was his deception by the widow of the Corbaccio. We may psychologically have been certain of this hatred from the first, for it is in fact a logical development from his attitude to woman from his youth on; but the immediate and provocative cause of the change was the perfidy of the widow. It therefore seems to me that we must necessarily see in the Vita a later work than the Corbaccio, though not so much later. Doubtless he had been gathering facts all his life, and only in 1356-7 began to put them in order. That it was so seems probable from the fact that the invective against marriage is altogether an interpolation and has almost nothing to do with Dante; it is in fact largely a quotation from a quotation of Jerome’s.
445 I use the translation of Mr. P. H. Wicksteed, The Early Lives of Dante (Chatto and Windus, 1907).
446 Cf. Machiavelli, Lettere, Lettera di Dec. 10.
447 Petrarch, Fam., XVIII, 3 and 4.
448 But see Lo Parco, Petrarca e Barlaam da nuove ricerche e documenti inediti e rari (Reggio, Calabria, 1905).
449 See De Nohlac, Les Scholies inédites de Pétrarque sur Homère in Revue de Philologie, de Littérature et d’Histoire anciennes, Vol. XI (Paris, 1887), p. 97 et seq.; and Idem, Pétrarque e Barlaam in Revue des Études grecques (Paris, 1892).
450 Petrarch, Fam., XVIII (Fracassetti, 2nd ed., Vol. II, p. 474).
451 He says of it: “Libellus, ille vulgo qui tuus fertur, et si cuius sit non constet, tibi excerptus tibique inscriptus tuus utique non est.” — Fam., XXIV, 12 (Fracassetti, Vol. III, p. 293). Cf. also Fam., X (Fracassetti, Vol. II, p. 89), and the critical edition of F. Plessis, Italici Ilias Latina (Paris 1885).
452 Fam., XVIII, 2.
453 See the letter to Boccaccio, to be quoted later. Var., XXV.
454 Cf. Petrarch, Fam., XX, 6, 7 (To Francesco Nelli, III, Id. Ap.). This visit of Boccaccio’s to Petrarch has been long known to have taken place in the spring of 1359; but the date is fixed for us by a MS. in Petrarch’s hand found by De Nohlac in his Apuleius (Vatican MS. 2193, fol. 156). Cf. De Nohlac, Pétrarque et son jardin in Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, Vol. XI (1887), p. 404 et seq. I give below that part of the MS. which refers to 1359: —
“Anno 1359, sabato, hora quasi nona martie die xvjo retentare huiusce rei fortunam libuit. Itaque et lauros Cumo [? Como] transmissas per Tadeum nostrum profundis itidem scrobibus seuimus in orto Sancte Valerie Mediolani, luna decrescente; et fuerunt due tenere, tres duriores. Aliquot post dies nubila fuerunt et pars anni melior quam in superioribus (imo et pluviosi mirum in modum crebris et immensis imbribus quotidie, ut sepe de orto quasi lacus fieret; denique usque ad kalendas apriles non appariut sol). Inter cetera multum prodesse deberet et profectum sacrarum arbuscularum, quod insignis vir. d. Io. Boccaccii de Ce
rtaldo, ipsis amicissimus et mihi, casu in has horas tunc aduectus satimi intrefuit. Videbimus eventum. Omnibus radices fuerunt, quibusdam quoque telluris patrie aliquantulum, et præterea diligentissime obuolute non radices modo sed truncos aduecte sunt, et recentes valde. Denique præter soli naturam, nihil videtur adversum, attenta qualitate æris et quod non diu ante montes nivium adamantinaque glacies omnia tegebant vixque dum penitus abiere.
“Jam nunc circa medium aprilem due majores crescent; alie vero non letos successus spondent. Credo firmiter terram hanc hinc arbori inimicam.”
Cf. also Cochin, Un Amico del Petrarca. Le Lettere di Nelli al Petrarcha (Bib. Petrarchesca), Firenze, 1901.
455 In planting the laurel Petrarch expressed the hope that the presence of Boccaccio might prove “fortunate” to “these little sacred laurels.” Boccaccio had protested to Petrarch that he was not worthy of the name of poet. Petrarch insisted that he was. “It is a strange thing,” he says, “that you should have aimed at being a poet only to shrink from the name.” This affair of the laurel may refer to that incident. “The laurel,” says Boccaccio in the Vita di Dante, “which is never struck by lightning, crowns poets....”
456 He was back in Florence certainly by May. Cf. Hortis, Studi, etc., p. 22 note. Petrarch in his letter to Nelli says that Boccaccio’s visit was brief.
457 Petrarch, Epist. Sen., III, 6, and V, 3.
458 Boccaccio, De Geneal. Deor., XV, 6.
459 Epist. Sen., III, 6, and V, 3.
460 Cf. Hauvette, Le Professeur de Grec de Pétrarque et de Boccace (Chartres, 1891).
461 Cf. De Nohlac, Les scholies, u.s., p. 101. He began to lecture in the end of 1359.
462 Petrarch, Var., XXV. In this year Pino de’ Rossi was exiled for conspiracy against the Guelfs. Boccaccio had dedicated the Ameto to him, and now wrote to console him. In that letter (Corazzini, op. cit., p. 67) Boccaccio says he has gone to Certaldo to avoid contact with these vile people (p. 96).
463 Petrarch, Varie, XXV.
464 Because Boccaccio’s love for Fiammetta was not a passion wholly or almost wholly spiritual, as we may suppose Dante’s to have been for Beatrice, we are eager to deny it any permanence or strength. Why? Perhaps a passion almost wholly sensual if really profound is more persistent than any desire in which the mind alone is involved.
465 Our source of information is Petrarch’s letter, quoted below in the text (Ep. Sen., I, 5). The affair is recounted in the life of Beato Pietro Petroni, who died May 29, 1361, by Giovanni Columbini. This life has been conserved and enriched with notes by the Carthusian of Siena, Bartholommeo, in 1619. It is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, May 29 (Tom. VII, Antwerp, 1668, p. 186 et seq.). Boccaccio’s story is told at p. 228. There seems to be nothing there not gleaned from Petrarch’s letter. Cf. also Traversari, Il Beato Pietro Petroni e la conversione del B. (Teani, 1905), and Graf, Fu superstizioso il B.? in Miti, Leggende e Superstiz. del Medioevo (Torino, 1893), Vol. II, p. 167 et seq.
466 I quote to some extent the excellent redaction of Mr. Hollway-Calthrop, Petrarch and his Times (Methuen, 1907), p. 237 et seq.
467 De Geneal. Deorum, I, 31, De Casibus, II, 7.
468 De Geneal. Deorum, I, 10; III, 22; IX, 4. Comento sopra Dante (Milanesi, Firenze, 1863), Vol. I, p. 480 et seq.
469 Comento sopra Dante, ed. cit., II, p. 56; i.e. he believed in the evil eye; so did Pio Nono’s cardinals.
470 Ibid., u.s., II, p. 156.
471 Ibid., u.s., I, p. 216.
472 Decameron, VI, 10. I deal with Boccaccio’s treatment of monks and friars and the clergy generally in my chapter on the Decameron (see infra).
473 Comento, ed. cit., Vol. II, p. 19.
474 Baldelli tells us that Pilatus left Boccaccio in 1362, but this is not so, for they went together to see Petrarch in Venice in 1363 (see infra). Baldelli’s assertion is probably founded on the obscure and doubtful letter of Boccaccio to Francesco Nelli (Corazzini, p. 131), from which we learn that Boccaccio went to Naples on the invitation of Acciaiuoli, as we suppose, in 1362. This letter, which is very long, is dated, according to Corazzini, August 28, 1363. Now before September 7, 1363, Nelli was dead of the plague in Naples, as appears from Petrarch’s letter (Sen., III, i., September 7, 1363). Hortis (Studi, p. 20, n. 3) is of opinion that this letter is apocryphal. Todeschini (Opinione sulla epistola del priore di S. Apostolo [sic] attribuita al Boccaccio, Venice, 1832) convinced Hortis of this. Todeschini does not believe in this visit to Naples, and in fact the only notice we have of it is contained in the letter he discards. His arguments are as follows. Until May, 1362, Boccaccio dwelt certainly in Tuscany, where in 1361, or more probably in 1362, Ciani visited him, and whence he wrote Petrarch the letter we have lost to which Petrarch replied in the noble letter I have cited above (Sen., I, 5) on May 28, 1362. (Cf. Fracassetti’s note to this letter.) It is not possible that Boccaccio can have been in Naples between the autumn of 1361 and May, 1362, because he himself tells us that for three years he was with Pilatus, who enjoyed his hospitality and from whom he learned to understand Homer. Now it is certain that he did not know Pilatus before 1360, and was with him till 1363, when, as we shall see, they visited Petrarch together in Venice. (Cf. Fracassetti his note to Fam., XVIII, 2.)
475 This visit must have been between March 13 and September 7, 1363, on both of which dates Petrarch wrote to him. The letter of September 7 seems to have been written immediately after his departure (Senili, II, 1, and III, 1). Cf. also De Nohlac, op. cit., p. 102. Cf. also Boccaccio’s letter to Pietro di Monteforte, which Hortis, op. cit., thinks refers to this visit. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 337.
476 Senili, III, 1.
477 Ibid., III, 6 (March, 1365).
478 Ibid., VI, 1.
479 Senili, VII, 5. Fracassetti gives this letter the wrong date of 1365 in his translation, but in a note to Fam., XVII, 2 (q.v. for the visit of Boccaccio), he adopts the right year.
480 Senili, VII.
481 Ibid., VI, 1.
482 Ibid., VI, 2.
483 De Nohlac, op. cit., p. 102.
484 Epist. Fam., XXIV, 12.
485 Sen., III, 1.
486 On August 9 and 16 the Republic had written letters to the Maestri della Fraternità and to Francesco Bruni rebutting the charges the Pope had made against her. These letters were to be shown to the Pope. On August 20 the instructions of the Republic to Giovanni Boccaccio were drawn up in a long memorandum. See Arch. Stor. Ital., Ser. I, App., Vol. VII, p. 413 et seq. The Pope replies more than a year later on September 8, 1366, thanking the Republic for the letters with which Francesco Bruni had acquainted him, especially for soliciting him to return to Italy. He says he is determined to return for the good of the Church and of Italy, and particularly of Florence, who has shown herself so devoted to the Holy See. Ibid. See also Corazzini op. cit., p. 395, and Hortis, G. B. Ambasciatore in Avignone (Trieste, 1875).
487 Hortis (G. B. Ambasciatore) has published this letter.
488 Senil., V. 1. Boccaccio had received instructions to hurry back to Italy. “Vos autem domine Johannes sollicitetis commissionem vestrum et rescribentes vestrum etiam reditum festinetis.”
489 Cf. Hortis, G. B. Ambasciatore.
490 For the following particulars see Boccaccio’s letter to Petrarch. Ut te viderem, Corazzini, op. cit., p. 123.
491 The Eclogue XIV tells us much that otherwise we should never have known as to Boccaccio’s children. It is there we hear of his little daughter Violante, whom he there calls Olympia, and who died “at an age when one goes straight to heaven.” “Pro Olympia,” he says, in the letter already quoted, to Matteo da Signa, “intelligo parvulam filiam meam olim mortuam, ea in ætate, in qua morientes cœlestes effici cives credimus; et ideo ex Violante cum viveret, mortuam cœlestem idest Olympiam voco.” Boccaccio conceived this Eclogue in a wood, and therefore he calls himself Silvio. The Eclogue roughly is as follows: Boccaccio in a sleepless and restless night full of unhappy regrets longs for the day. Suddenly a light illumines all and he hear
s a singing. It is the voice of Violante (Olympia), who salutes her father. “Fear not,” she says, “I am thy daughter. Why should you be afraid? Canst thou doubt? Dost thou think that Violante would deceive her father? I come to thee to sweeten thy sorrow.” To her Boccaccio (Silvio) answers: “I recognise thee, love does not deceive me nor my dreams; O my great delight, only hope of thy father. What god has taken thee from me, O my little daughter? They told me when I returned to Naples thou wert dead, and believing this, how long, how long I wept for thee, how long, how long I mourned thee, calling thee back to me. But what splendour surrounds thee; who are thy companions? O marvel, that in such a little space of time you should have grown so, for you seem, little daughter mine, to be already marriageable.” And Violante answers: “It was but my earthly vesture that, dear, you buried in the lap of earth. These vestments, this form, this resplendent body the Madonna herself has given me. But look on my companions, have you never seen them?” And Boccaccio: “I do not remember them, but neither Narcissus, nor Daphnis, nor Alexis were more beautiful.” And Violante: “And dost thou not recognise thy Mario, thy Giulio, and my sweet sisters? They are thy children.” And Boccaccio: “Come, O children mine, whom I have held in my arms, on my breast, and with glad kisses heal my heart. Let us make a joyful festa, and intone a hymn of joy. Let the wood be silent, and let Arno run noiselessly.” Then follows a hymn sung by Violante in honour of Jesus Christ (Codro) and of the Blessed Virgin: the most beautiful of all Boccaccio’s Latin songs. And Violante departs promising, when her father will hardly let her go, that he shall soon be with her for ever in heaven.
We see here that Boccaccio had two sons, Giulio and Mario, and at least three daughters, Violante and her sisters.
492 Cf. Crescini, op. cit., p. 259. I give the document he quotes: —
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 493
