Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  Nor is Mr. Wicksteed any more ready to believe that Dante was a lover of women. When Boccaccio tells us that Dante fell into the sin of lechery not only in his youth but in his maturity, it is on the face of it certain that he is compelled to say so, that he has irrefutable evidence for it, since he excuses himself for the necessity of his assertion. Nor is there a tittle of evidence to refute Boccaccio. Mr. Wicksteed, like a good Protestant, prefers his own private judgment. He prefers to think of Dante as in all respects what he would have him. “On the whole,” he says, “I think the student may safely form his own judgment from the material in his hands [viz. Dante’s own works, I think] without attaching any authoritative significance whatever to Boccaccio’s assertion. It is safe to go even a step further and to say that the dominating impression which that assertion leaves is definitely false...!” It is clear that Mr. Wicksteed is not going to allow Boccaccio to involve Dante in any of his Decameron stories!

  Mr. Wicksteed is equally indignant that Boccaccio should have asserted that Dante when he parted from Gemma never returned to her nor suffered her to come to him. It seems, then, that Dante too must become a respectable and sedate person in the modern middle-class manner. He was not a bitter party politician; he was not a lover of women; far from it: he lived as peaceably and continuously as circumstances allowed him with his wife, whom he cherished with all the tenderness we might expect of a nature so docile, so well controlled, and so considerate of the sin and weakness of others. “What was Boccaccio’s source of information as to Dante and Gemma never having met after the former’s exile,” Mr. Wicksteed angrily declares, “it is impossible to say.” But that does not invalidate the statement. What is Mr. Wicksteed’s source of doubt? Is there any evidence that they did meet? And if they did not, why curse Boccaccio? Boccaccio tells us they never did meet. Yet having no evidence at all to offer us in the matter Mr. Wicksteed has the extraordinary temerity to close his tirade, one cannot call it an argument, by this weird confession: “It would be straining the evidence [? what evidence] to say that we can establish a positive case on the other side.” I agree with him; it would, it would. But enough! Such is the virtue of certain prepossessions that, though the sun be as full of spots as a housewife’s pudding is full of raisins, if it please us not we will deny it.

  588 Elsewhere in the Vita he tells us the month (September), but nowhere the day (21st). He makes a slip in saying Urban IV was then Pope. Clement IV had been elected in February.

  589 But it is also Boccaccio who seems to suggest that Dante may have come to England, to Oxford. This visit Tiraboschi supposed to stand merely on the assertion of Giovanni di Serravalle (1416-17), who says Dante had studied “Paduæ, Bononiæ, demum Oxoniis et Parisiis”; but in the Carme, which accompanied the copy of the Divine Comedy Boccaccio sent to Petrarch (Corazzini, op. cit., p. 53), he shows us Dante led by Apollo: —

  “per celsa nivosi

  Cyrreos, mediosque sinus tacitosque recessus

  Naturæ, cœlique vias, terræque, marisque

  Aonios fontes, Parnasi culmen et antra

  Julia, Parisios dudum, extremosque Britannos.”

  Cf. Mazzinghi, A Brief Notice of Recent Researches respecting Dante (1844), quoted by Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature (Methuen, 1909), Vol. II, p. 696 et seq.

  590 See supra, p. 185 et seq. As we have seen, this tirade is not altogether original, but is founded on a passage of Theophrastus, translated by Jerome, and copied out by Boccaccio. Cf. Macri Leone, Vita di Dante (Firenze, 1888).

  591 Mr. Wicksteed’s translation, p. 53.

  592 On what Boccaccio has to say on Dante’s pride see pp. 58 and 77 of Mr. Wicksteed’s translation.

  593 He treats of the Divine Comedy more fully than of the rest. “The question is moved at large by many men, and amongst them sapient ones,” he writes, “why Dante, a man perfectly versed in knowledge, chose to write in the Florentine idiom so grand a work, of such exalted matter and so notable as this comedy; and why not rather in Latin verses, as other poets before him had done. In reply to which question, two chief reasons, amongst many others, come to my mind. The first of which is that he might be of more general use to his fellow-citizens and the other Italians; for he knew that if he had written metrically in Latin, as the other poets of past times had done, he would only have done service to men of letters, whereas writing in the vernacular he did a deed ne’er done before, and (without any let to men of letters whereby they should not understand him) showing the beauty of our idiom and his own excelling art therein, gave delight and understanding of himself to the unlearned, who had hitherto been abandoned of every one. The second reason which moved him thereto was this: seeing that liberal studies were utterly abandoned, and especially by the princes and other great men, to whom poetic toils were wont to be dedicated (wherefore the divine works of Virgil and the other poets had not only sunk into neglect, but well nigh into contempt at the hands of many), having himself begun, according as the loftiness of the matter demanded, after this guise —

  “Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo,

  Spiritibus que lata patent que premia solvunt

  Pro meritis cuicumque suis ...”

  he abandoned it; for he conceived it was a vain thing to put crusts of bread into the mouths of such as were still sucking milk; wherefore he began his work again in style suited to modern tastes, and followed it up in the vernacular.” He adds that Dante, “as some maintain,” dedicated the Inferno to Uguccione della Faggiuola, the Purgatorio to Marquis Moruello Malespina, and the Paradiso to Frederic third King of Sicily; but as others assert, the whole poem was dedicated to Messer Cane della Scala. He does not resolve the question.

  594 Cf. Dr. Moore, op. cit.

  595 Cf. Paget Toynbee, Life of Dante (Methuen, 1904), pp. 130 and 147.

  596 Cf. Comento, ed. cit., Lez. 2, Vol. I, p. 104.

  597 Cf. Comento, ed. cit., Lez. 33, Vol. II, p. 129.

  598 He tells us this in the Comento as well as in the Vita, where he gives certain facts as “as others to whom his desire was known declare” (Wicksteed, op. cit., p. 18).

  599 Cf. supra, p. 257, n. 1.

  600 Cf. Macri Leone, op. cit., cap. ix., who describes twenty-two in Italy.

  601 The Compendio has been printed four times — first in 1809 in Milan, before the Divine of Comedy as published by Luigi Mussi.

  602 Printed by Lord Vernon at Florence in 1846 under title Chiose sopra Dante.

  603 Cf. their Vocabolario, eds. 1612, 1623, 1691. Mazzuccheli also in the eighteenth century accepted it. Yet Betussi knew it was incomplete in 1547. Cf. his translation of De Genealogiis.

  604 Mr. Paget Toynbee, whose learned article on the Comento in Modern Language Review, Vol. II, No 2, January, 1907, I have already referred to, and return to with profit and pleasure, says: “It is not unreasonable to suppose that though too ill to lecture publicly, Boccaccio may have occupied himself at Certaldo in continuing the Commentary in the hope of eventually resuming his course at Florence.”

  605 Cf. Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, pp. 104-6, who prints all the documents of the lawsuit.

  606 Cf. Appendix V, where I print the Will.

  607 He valued the MS. at 18 gold florins.

  608 The best edition is Milanesi’s (Florence, Le Monnier, 1863). He divided it first into sixty lezioni which do not necessarily accord with Boccaccio’s lectures.

  609 Cf. Paget Toynbee, op. cit., p. 112. It is significant too, as Dr. Toynbee does not fail to note, that Boccaccio often uses scrivere instead of parlare in speaking of his lectures. Cf. Lez. 2 and Lez. 20; Milanesi, Vol. I, 120 and 148, also Lez. 52, Vol. II, 366.

  610 Cf. De Genealogiis, XIV, 7 and 10, and supra, p. 247.

  611 For instance, he explains that an oar is “a long thick piece of wood with which the boatman propels his boat and guides and directs it from one place to another” (Comento, I, 286). Cf. Toynbee, op. cit., p. 116.

  612 Through the medium of Chalcidius, whom he d
oes not name. In this form the medieval world knew the Timæus. Cf. Toynbee, op. cit., p. 113.

  613 Æneid, II, 689-91.

  614 Cf. Comento, I, 82-5, and Epist., X, par. 8, 9, 15, 10, and see Toynbee, op. cit., p. 113 and n. 7.

  615 Nor was all this original matter. “To the discussion of these points,” says Dr. Toynbee, “he devotes what amounts to some ten printed pages in Milanesi’s edition of the Commentary (Comento, I, p. 92 et seq.), at least half of the matter being translated word for word from a previous work of his own, the De Genealogiis Deorum....”

  616 Cf. supra, p. 262.

  617 Comento, II, 454.

  618 Ibid., II, 139.

  619 Ibid., I, 304 et seq.

  620 Ibid., I, 347-50.

  621 Rime, ed. cit., sonnets vii. and viii.

  622 In Rossetti’s beautiful translation.

  623 Cf. Comento, I, 143-4, 214, 359, 361, 362, 367, 437, 448-51, 451-6, 457-62, 463-6, 498, and II, 190, 435.

  624 Cf. Comento, I, 177, 180, 362, 435, and II, 18, 36, 65.

  625 Cf. Comento, I, 479, and II, 51, 149, 184, 220, 368, 385, 448-9; and see Paget Toynbee, op. cit., p. 117 and notes.

  626 From this book Boccaccio translated more than three times as much as from any other. Cf. Comento, I, 92-5, 99-101, 123-6, 128-35, etc. etc.

  627 Dr. Toynbee has long promised to publish a paper on this matter. It will be very welcome.

  628 Cf. Comento, I, 347, 462, 467, 511.

  629 Cf. Comento, I, 97, 466.

  630 See supra, p. 205 et seq.

  631 At caps. 56-7 and 69-70.

  632 Cf. Comento, I, 333-4.

  633 Cf. Comento, I, 397-402. See Paget Toynbee, op. cit., pp. 118-19. He notes that Boccaccio “nowhere employs the title Annals ... but uses the term storie ... even when he is quoting from the Annals” as in Comento, I, 400. He seems to have made no use of the Histories in his Comento.

  634 As to this see Paget Toynbee, op. cit., p. 105.

  635 Eight times in all. Besides these quotations he uses him freely.

  636 Cf. Paget Toynbee, op. cit., 110. All trace of Boccaccio’s own MS. about which there was the lawsuit has vanished.

  637 Cf. Milanesi, Comento, Vol. I, p. v.

  638 At Naples (imprint Florence), two vols., 1724, in Opere Volgari in Prosa del Boccaccio, published by Lorenzo Ciccarelli (Cellurio Zacclori).

  639 In Opere Volgari (1827-34, Florence, Magheri), Vols. X, XI, XII.

  640 Rime, ed. cit., cviii. (Rossetti’s translation).

  641 Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 281. The disease which Boccaccio thus describes has been thought to be a form of diabetes. Cf. Cochin, Études Italiennes Boccace, p. 167, n. 1. Petrarch too suffered from la scabbia.

  642 In a letter to Maghinardo, September 13, 1373, he thanks him with effusion for sending him a vase of gold full of gold pieces. Thanks to that, he says, he can buy a cloak for his poor feverish body. Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 287. Villani is apparently wrong when he says he had many friends, but that none came to his assistance. One did. All the early biographies agree about his poverty.

  643 Rime, ed. cit., sonnet xxxvi. “It is a hard thing and a very horrible to wait for death; it is a thing which fills one with fear: yet death is more certain and infallible than anything else that has been, that is, or that will ever be. The course of life is short and one cannot return along it, and on earth there is no joy so great that it does not end in tears and regrets. Then why should we not seek to extend by work our renown, and by that to make long our days so short? This thought gives me and keeps me in courage. It spares me the regret of the years which are fled away, it gives me the splendour of a long life.”

  644 Petrarch died at Arquà on July 18, 1374. The news was known in Florence on July 25, when Coluccio Salutati wrote to Benvenuto da Imola and mentioned it.

  645 Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 377. He received Franceschino’s letter “pridie XIII kalendas novembris,” that is October 31.

  646 “Verum jam decimus elapsus est mensis, postquam in patria publice legentem Comoediam Dantis magis longa, atque tædiosa, quam discrimine aliquo dubia ægritudo oppressit....” The letter was written about November 7, ten months before which was January 7. Thus we know it was in the winter of 1373 (Fl. St.), or January, 1374, that he broke down.

  647 This refers doubtless to Petrarch’s Will, by which he left Boccaccio fifty florins of gold with which to buy a warm cloak to cover himself in the nights of study.

  648 This is hard to explain. So far as we know, Boccaccio first met Petrarch in 1350 in Florence, but see supra, p. 153, n. 2.

  649 “Scribendi finis Certaldi datus tertio nonas novembris.”

  650 See Appendix V.

  651 Cf. Rossellini, Della casa di G. B. in Certaldo in Antologia (1825), n. lix.

  652 He leaves to the Friars of Santa Maria di Santo Sepolchro dal Pogetto or della Campora outside the walls of Florence “all and singular Holy Relics which the said dominus Johannes in a great while and with much labour has procured from divers parts of the world.” (S. Maria della Campora is outside the Porta Romana of Florence; there are still frescoes of the school of Giotto there.) To the church of S. Jacopo of Certaldo he leaves an alabaster plaque of the Blessed Virgin, a chasuble, stole, and maniple of red silk, and a small altar pallium of red Lucca cloth, an altar cushion of the same cloth, and three cases for corporals; a vase of pewter for holy water, and a small cloak of yellow silk and cloth. He leaves a diptych in which is painted on the one side Our Lady with her Son in her arms and on the other a skull to Madonna Sandra, “who to-day is wife of Franciesco di Lapo Buonamichi.” This extraordinary collection of things, which would only be in place in the house of a priest one might think, leads us to ask whether Boccaccio had received any Order. We cannot answer. Suares says he saw a papal bull that permitted him to receive Holy Orders in spite of his illegitimacy, and in his Will he is called “Dominus” and “Venerabilis.” It is perhaps in place to note that, like Dante and S. Francis, Boccaccio has been claimed as a Protestant born out of due time. This amazing nonsense was set forth in a book by one Hager, entitled Programmata III de Joanne Boccatio veritatis evangelicæ teste (Chemnic, 1765).

  653 He may not have been utterly alone. In his Will he leaves to “Bruna, daughter of the late Ciango da Montemagno, who has long been with me, the bed she was used to sleep in at Certaldo,” and other things.

  654 The title Il Decameron is badly composed from two Greek words, δέκα, ten, and ἡμέρα, day — ten days. Cf. Teza, La parola Decameron in Propugnatore (1889), II, p. 311 et seq., and Rajna, op. cit., who shows that the proper form is Decameron, not Decamerone. Later some one added the sub-title “cognominato il Principe Galeotto”; cf. Inferno, V, 137.

  655 Cf. Albertazzi, I novellatori e le novellatrici del Dec. in Parvenze e Sembianze (Bologna, 1892); Gebhart, Le prologue du Dec. et la Renaissance in Conteurs Florentins (Hachette, 1901), p. 65 et seq.; Morini, Il prologo del Dec. in Rivista Pol. e Lett., xvi. 3.

  656 The only interruption of the Decameron, if so it can be called, is the introduction of Tindaro and Licisca at the beginning of the sixth day. The diversion, however, has very little consequence.

  657 A few things we may gather, however. Pampinea was the eldest (Proem), and by inference Elisa the youngest. Some of the ladies were of Ghibelline stock (X, 8). For what life ingenuity can find in them, see Hauvette, Les Ballades du Décaméron in Journal des Savants (Paris, September, 1905), p. 489 et seq.

  658 He also tells two of the best tales in the book, that of Fra Cipolla and the Relics (VI, 10), and of the Patient Griselda (X, 10). These are the only stories he tells which are not licentious.

  659 See Mancini, Poggio Gherardo, primo ricetto alle novellatrici del B., frammento di R. Gherardo, etc. (Firenze, 1858); and Florentine Villas (Dent, 1901), by Janet Ross, p. 131. Mrs. Ross owns Poggio Gherardo to-day. Mr. J. M. Rigg denies that Poggio Gherardo is the place, but gives no reasons save that it does not tally with the description, which is
both true and untrue. It tallies as well as it could do after more than five hundred years; and perfectly as regards situation and distance from the city and the old roads. Cf. my Country Walks about Florence (Methuen, 1908), cap. i.

  660 See my Country Walks about Florence (Methuen, 1908), pp. 23 and 26 et seq. Mr. J. M. Rigg, in the introduction to his translation of the Decameron (Routledge, 1905), here again denies the identity of Villa Palmieri with the second palace of the Decameron. He says it does not stand “on a low hill” amid a plain, but on “the lower Fiesolan slope.” But Boccaccio even in Mr. Rigg’s excellent translation does not say that, but “they arrived at a palace ... which stood somewhat from the plain, being situate upon a low eminence.” This exactly describes Villa Palmieri, as even a casual glance at a big map will assure us.

  661 No doubt a vivid reminiscence of Madonna Fiammetta at Baia.

  662 See my Country Walks about Florence (Methuen, 1908), p. 23 et seq. The place has been drained to-day, and is now a garden of vines and olives in the podere of Villa Ciliegio belonging to A. W. Benn, Esq., whose kindness and courtesy in permitting me to see the place I wish here to acknowledge.

  663 Cf. Manni, Istoria del Decamerone (Firenze, 1742); Bartoli, I precursi del B. (Firenze, 1876); Landau, Die Quellen des Dekam. (Stuttgart, 1884); Cappelletti, Osserv. e notiz. sulle fonti del Decam. (Livorno, 1891).

  664 No doubt most of these stories were current up and down Italy.

  665 As with Shakespeare so with Boccaccio, the religious temperament is not represented.