Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

So she takes him, but even to him she lies, for she tells him she has loved and been loved by no one but her dead husband, whom she served loyally:—

This character, vain, false, and light, but absolutely living and a very woman, is opposed to the loyal character of Pandarus, and is doubtless subtly modelled without too much exaggeration on that of Fiammetta. In direct contrast to it is the character of Troilus, the most beautiful in the poem: so eager, so ardent, so perfectly youth itself. He knows no country, no religion, no filial affection, but lives and sees only Criseyde. Every day he will thrust himself into the thickest of the fight in search of glory that he may lay it at her feet and win her praise. It is love that has made him a hero, as it made Boccaccio a poet: but both Criseyde and Fiammetta were women; what should they care for that? Troilus is a real creation, the first of those marvellous living figures who later people the Decameron: the first and the most charming, the most youthful, the most beautiful. But the whole poem is marvellously original alike in its characters and in its versification.

As for the story, Boccaccio, it seems, got it partly from Benoît de Sainte-More, whose Roman de Troie had been composed from the uncertainly dated works of "Dictys Cretensis" and "Dares Phrygius," and partly from the prose Latin Hystoria Troiana of Guido delle Colonne; there is certainly nothing of the Iliad there. But the Filostrato is really an original composition, owing little or nothing to any previous work. If there be any imitations to be found in it they are not of the Roman de Troie or of Guido delle Colonne, but of Dante:[250] the Divine Comedy even at this time having cast its shadow over Boccaccio.

In the ninth and last book of the poem, which is not indeed a part of it, but rather a sort of epilogue, he dedicates his work to Fiammetta,

and tells her that she may find there his own tears and sighs because of—

These words to some extent date the poem, which was apparently finished before Fiammetta had betrayed him, and it seems likely even that he had not as yet obtained from her the favours he valued so highly and of which she was so generous to so many. These are the reasons why I have considered the Filostrato so early a work in spite of its perfection.

The poem was published for the first time about 1480 by Luca Veneto in Venice; it was translated into French[251] by Louis de Beauveau, Seneschal d'Anjou, and as we shall see, Chaucer drew from it his exquisite poem Troilus and Criseyde.

In turning now to the Teseide we come apparently to the third work, in point of time, of Boccaccio's youth. In the Filocolo, itself a labour of love, he has told us of his first joy; in the Filostrato of his hopes, torments, doubts, and waiting; in the Teseide we see the agonies of his jealousy. It was written to some extent under the influence of Virgil as we should suppose, since it was begun, as we may think, in the shadow of his tomb when Boccaccio had left the city of Naples,[252] and it proves indeed to be written in twelve books, and to have precisely the same number of lines as the Æneid, namely 9896; it is therefore about twice as long as the Filostrato. It is prefaced by a letter "To Fiammetta," in which he tells us why he has written the poem, while "thinking of past joy in present misery." The work professes to be a story of ancient times, and to be concerned with the love two brothers in arms, Palemon and Arcite, bear Emilia; but this is merely an excuse. "It is to please you," he tells Fiammetta, "that I have composed this love story." Was it with some idea of winning back her love by this stupendous manuscript? How charming and how naive, how like Giovanni too; but how absurd to dream of thus influencing Fiammetta. Did she ever read these nine thousand odd verses? Che! che!

The story is meagrely as follows:—

In the barbarous land of Scythia,[253] on the shores of the Black Sea, dwelt the Amazons under Ippolyta, their queen. Now certain Greeks cast up on that coast in a tempest had been ill-treated there, and Theseus, Duke of Athens, undertakes a war of vengeance against that kingdom, and in spite of a valorous defence conquers it.[254] His price of peace is absolute submission and the hand of the Queen Ippolyta. And it was so, and many of the Greeks too, longing for women after the campaign, married also. And when Theseus had lived in peace there with his wife Ippolyta for more than a year,[255] scarce thinking of Athens, his friend Peritoo appeared to him in a dream urging his return. So he set out and came to Athens with Ippolyta and her younger sister Emilia.

Scarcely is he come to Athens when he is urged by a deputation of the Greek princesses to declare war on Creon, who will not permit the burial rites to be performed for those who fell in the war of succession. Theseus conquers Thebes and Creon is killed, the bodies of the Greek princes are solemnly burned and their ashes conserved.

So far the introduction, in which Boccaccio has followed tradition with an almost perfect faithfulness: now begins his own work, to which these adventures of Theseus are but the preface.

Two youths of the royal Theban stock, Palemon and Arcite, have been made prisoners by Theseus and taken to Athens. There they see from the window of their prison the beautiful Emilia of the blonde hair, sister of the Amazonian queen. She is walking in the garden when they see her and she them. She quickly finds that she likes to be admired, and in all innocence coquets with the two young prisoners,[256] who for six months lament their love without hope.

Now as it happens, by the help of Peritoo, Arcite is set at liberty, on condition that he goes into exile and only returns to Athens under pain of death. Profoundly sorrowful to leave Emilia, he sets out in company with some esquires as a knight-errant, and wanders all over Greece, until at last his love compels him to return to Athens.[257] Once more in Athens, he enters the service of Theseus, undiscovered and unknown, but that the little Emilia recognises him, though she does not betray him. He is, however, discovered and betrayed by his own imprudence. For he arouses the jealousy of Palemon, who escapes from his prison, and finding his friend and rival in a wood, forces him to fight in order to decide who shall have Emilia.[258]

While they were calling on Mars, Venus, and Emilia,[259] in the same way as the Christian knights called on Madonna and their lady, suddenly Emilia, who was hunting in that very wood, came upon them, and they, made fiercer by her presence, start in earnest.[260] But at last Theseus arrives called by Emilia, to end the combat and learn the cause of the quarrel. Hearing it he pardons them, for he himself has been young and has loved too, but he attaches to his pardon a condition, to wit, that each of them, aided by a hundred knights, shall combat in public for Emilia's hand.[261]

The young lovers must send into all lands messengers to enrol two hundred knights,[262] and these at last are gathered together in the place of combat. Among the rest came Peleus, still a youth, the great twin brethren Castor and Pollux, Agamemnon and Paris, Narcissus, Nestor, Ulysses, Pygmalion, prince of Tyre, Sichæus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, who have abandoned their judgment seats in Orcus to witness the fight. Indeed, as Landau has well said, if Homer had been there, he would certainly have been delighted to find again so many he had known of old, but he would also have marvelled to find among them so many jongleurs.

Before beginning the struggle Theseus, Palemon, and Arcite hold long discourses; the two rivals and Emilia recite long prayers.

The prayer of Arcite is to Mars, who lives in the mists of Thrace amid snow and ice. There in a thick wood of stout oaks stands his palace of iron with gates of diamond, at which mount guard Mad Fury, Murder, and Eternal Anger red as fire.

On the other hand, Palemon's prayer is to Venus, who lives in a garden full of fountains and streams and singing birds. There meet Grace, Courtesy, Delight, Beauty, Youth, and Mad Ardour. At the entrance sits Madonna Pace (Peace), and near her Patience and Cunning in Love. Within, however, Jealousy tortures his victims; while the door which leads to the sanctuary where Venus reposes between Bacchus and Ceres is guarded by Riches.[263]

The tourney is then described in the usual way, and ends in the defeat of Palemon. However, as Arcite only asked Mars for victory, he cannot enjoy it or its fruit. Palemon, it seems, asked not for victory, but that he might have Emilia. So the gods decide it. And therefore Venus sends a Fury who throws Arcite, and he is mortally wounded after his victory.[264] Before his death, however, he is married to Emilia,[265] makes his will, in which he leaves his wife and fortune to his friend and rival, and ends by swearing to him that he has only had of Emilia a single kiss.[266] After this Arcite is buried with great pomp, and tourneys are held in his honour, and there follows the marriage of Emilia and Palemon.[267]

What are we to make of such a work as this? Ambitious and complicated though it be, it is out of all comparison feebler than the simple tale of Troilus and Criseyde. Nor has it the gift of life, nor the subtle characterisation of the Filostrato. The two youths Palemon and Arcite are alike in their artificiality; they have never breathed the air we breathe, and we care nothing for or against them. And it would be the same with Emilia, but that her absolute stupidity angers us, and we soon come to find her unbearable. She is always praying the gods to give her the man she loves for a husband, but she herself is absolutely ignorant which of the two he may be.

But it might seem that the last thing Boccaccio thought of here was the creation of an impersonal work of art. His intention was rather to express his own sufferings. In the agonies of Palemon and Arcite he wished Fiammetta to see his own misery; and it may be that in the protection of Venus by which Palemon got at last what he most desired, he wished to tell Fiammetta that he too expected to triumph, even then, by virtue of his passion, the singleness of his love. Certainly, he seemed to say, you are worthy of the love of heroes, but it is the heart of a poet that Venus protects and satisfies; then give me your grace, since I am so faithful. That something of this sort was in his mind is obvious from the dedicatory letter to Fiammetta.[268]

As for the sources from which Boccaccio had the tale, we have seen that he certainly knew the Thebais of Statius,[269] but it was not only from Statius that he borrowed; he used also, as Crescini[270] has proved, the Roman de Thèbes, especially towards the end of his poem. Nor must we altogether pass over the influence of the Æneid, in which he found not only the form, but often the substance of his work.[271]

The first edition of the Teseide, full of faults, was published in Ferrara in 1475 by Pietro Andrea Bassi. As for translations, there have been many, the first being a Greek version issued in Venice in 1529. There followed an Italian prose paraphrase published in Lucca in 1579; while in 1597 a French version was published in Paris. The most famous translation or rather paraphrase was made, however, by Chaucer for the Knight's Tale in the Canterbury Tales; and of this I speak elsewhere.

In the shadow of Virgil's tomb, in a classic country still full of an old renown, Boccaccio had followed classic models, had written two epics and a romance in the manner of Apuleius; but in Tuscany, the country of Dante and Petrarch, he came under the influence of different work, and we find him writing pastorals. The Ameto is a pastoral romance written in prose scattered with verses, and to the superficial reader it cannot but be full of weariness. The action takes place in the country about Florence under the hills of Fiesole in the woods there, and begins with the description of the rude hunter Ameto (ἄδμητος), who only thinks of the chase and of the way through the forest[272]. Then he comes upon a nymph, Lia by name, and scarcely has he seen her and heard her sing than he loves her. After many pages of description of the love of Ameto, the struggle between his love and his timidity, he tells Lia at last that he loves her, and makes her accompany him in the chase. Winter comes, however, and separates them. But in the spring Ameto finds her again near a temple in which are gathered a company of fauns, dryads, satyrs, and naiads. There too in a private place a party of nymphs and shepherds meet close to Ameto and Lia. Many pages of description follow concerning each of the six nymphs, Mopsa, Emilia, Fiammetta, Acrimonia, Agapes, and Adiona. These descriptions are very wearying, for they are almost exactly alike, so like, indeed, that we may think Boccaccio was describing one woman and that Fiammetta. One after another these nymphs tell their amorous adventures, and each closes her account with a song in terza rima. Then Venus appears in the form of a column of fire,[273] and Ameto not being able to support the sight of the goddess, the nymphs come to his aid. When he is himself again, he prays the goddess to be favourable to his love.

Till now the pagan and sensual character of the book is complete, but here Ameto suddenly sees the error of his ways, all is changed in a moment, the spiritual beauty of the nymphs seems to him to surpass altogether their physical beauty. He understands that their loves are not men; the gods and temples about which they discourse are not those of the Pagans, and he is ashamed to have loved one of them as he might have loved any mortal girl. Then suddenly he breaks into a hymn in honour of the Trinity, and they all return to their own homes. Thus the work ends without telling us of the fate of Ameto or the nymphs.

The book, however, full as it is of imitations of Dante, is an allegory within an allegory. The nymphs and shepherds are not real people, but it seems personifications of the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues and their opposites. Thus Mopsa is Wisdom, and she loves Afron, Foolishness; Emilia is Justice, and she loves Ibrida, Pride; Adiona is Temperance, and she loves Dioneo, Licence; Acrimonia is Fortitude, and she loves Apaten, Insensibility; Agapes is Charity, and she loves Apiros, Indifference; Fiammetta is Hope, and she loves Caleone, Despair; Lia is Faith, and she loves Ameto, Ignorance. In their songs the seven nymphs praise and exalt the seven divinities that correspond to the seven virtues which they impersonate; thus Pallas is praised by Mopsa (Wisdom), Diana by Emilia (Justice), Pomona by Adiona (Temperance), Bellona by Acrimonia (Fortitude), Venus by Agapes (Charity), Vesta by Fiammetta (Hope), and Cibele by Lia (Faith). The whole action of the work then becomes symbolical, and Boccaccio, it has been said, had the intention of showing that a man, however rude and savage, can find God only by means of the seven virtues which are the foundation of all morals. If such were his intention he has indeed chosen strange means of carrying it out. The stories of the seven nymphs are extremely licentious, and all confess that they do not love their husbands and are seeking to make the shepherds fall in love with them. All this is, as we see, obscure, medieval, and far-fetched. Let it be what it may be. It is not in this allegory we shall find much to interest us, but in certain other allusions in which the work is rich. Thus we shall note that Fiammetta is Hope, and that she gives Hope to Caleone, who is Despair. That Caleone is Boccaccio himself there can be no manner of doubt. We see then that at the time the Ameto was written he still had some hope of winning Fiammetta again. In fact in the Ameto Fiammetta has the mission of saving Caleone from death, for he is resolved to kill himself. I have spoken of the autobiographical allusions in the Ameto, however, elsewhere.[274] It will be sufficient to say here that the Ameto was written, as Boccaccio himself tells us, in order that he might tell freely without regret or fear what he had seen and heard. It is all his life that we find in the stories of the nymphs. Emilia tells of Boccaccino's love for Jeanne (Gannai), his desertion of her, his marriage, and his ruin. Fiammetta tells how her mother was seduced by King Robert, who is here called Midas.[275] Then she describes the passion of Caleone (Boccaccio), his nocturnal surprise of her, and his triumph. The work is in fact a complete biography; and since this is so, there are in fact no sources from which it can be said to be derived. We find there some imitations of the Divine Comedy, some hints from Ovid and Virgil, of Moschus and Theocritus. The Ameto was dedicated to Niccola di Bartolo del Bruno, his "only friend in time of trouble." It was first published in small quarto in Rome in 1478. It has never been translated into any language.

There follows the Amorosa Visione, which was almost certainly begun immediately after the Ameto; at any rate, all modern authorities are agreed that it was written between 1341 and 1344. It recalls the happier time of his love, and Fiammetta is the very soul of the poem. Written in terza rima, not its only likeness to the Divine Comedy, it is dedicated to Maria d'Aquino (Fiammetta) in an acrostic, which is solved by reading the initial letters of the first verse of each terzina; the result being two sonnets and a ballata.[276] The name of "Madonna Maria" is formed by the initials of the twelfth to the twenty-second terzine of chapter x, and the name "Fiamma" by those of the twenty-fifth to the thirty-first of chapter xiii. Here is no allegory at all, but a clear statement; the three last lines of the first sonnet reading:—

As the title proclaims, the poem is a Vision—a vision which Love discovers to the poet-lover. While he is falling asleep a lady appears to him who is to be his guide. He follows her in a dream, and together they come to a noble castello; there by a steep stairway they enter into the promised land, as it were, of Happiness, choosing not the wearying road of Good to the left, but passing through a wide portal into a spacious room on the right, whence come delicious sounds of festa. Two youths, one dressed in white, the other in red, after disputing with his guide, lead him into the festa, where he sees four triumphs—of Wisdom, of Fame, of Love, and of Fortune. In the triumph of Wisdom he sees all the learned men, philosophers, and poets of the world, among them Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, Horace, Sallust, Livy, Galen, Cato, Apuleius, Claudian, Martial, and Dante.[277] In the triumph of Fame he sees all the famous heroes and heroines of Antiquity and the Middle Age, among them Saturn, Electra, Baal, Paris, Absalom, Hecuba, Brutus, Jason, Medea, Hannibal, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Giulia, and Solomon, Charlemagne, Charles of Apulia, and Corradino.[278] The uniformity of the descriptions is pleasantly interrupted by certain apparitions, among them Robert of Naples[279] and Boccaccino, [280] besides a host of priests.[281] Once in speaking of the sufferings of poverty he seems to be writing of his own experiences:—

After all, it is the experience of all who have been poor for a season.

There follows the triumph of Love, in which he sees all the fortunate and unfortunate lovers famous in poetry from the mythology of Greece to Lancelot and Guinevere, and Tristram and Iseult; and among these he sees Fiammetta.

So we pass to the triumph of Fortune, in which we learn the stories of Thebes, of Troy, of Carthage, of Alexander, of Pompey, of Niobe, and we are told of the inconstancy of terrestrial things.[283] And thus disillusioned, the poet makes the firm resolve to follow his guide in spite of every temptation. Yet almost at once a certain beautiful garden destroys his resolve. For he enters there and finds a marvellous fountain of marble, and a company of fair women who are presented to him under mysterious pseudonyms.[284] Among these are the bella Lombarda, the Lia of the Ameto, and finally the lady who writes her name in letters of gold in the heart of the poet.[285] And this lady he chooses for his sun, with the approval of his guide, who seems to have forgotten, as he has certainly done, the resolves so lately taken. However, the guide now discreetly leaves him in a somewhat compromising position; and it is thus Fiammetta who leads him into the abandoned road of virtue.[286]

These Trionfi were written before the Trionfi of Petrarch, and their true source is to be found not in any of Petrarch's work, but in the Divine Comedy and in the sources Dante used.[287] Boccaccio has evidently studied the great poem very closely. He imitates it not only in motives and symbols and words, but, as we have seen, in the form of his verse, and to some extent in the construction of his poem, which consists of fifty capitoli, each composed of twenty-nine terzine and a verse of chiusa, that is of eighty-eight verses in each.

The first edition was published in Milan in 1521 with an Apologia contro ai detrattori della poesia del Boccaccio by Girolamo Claricio of Imola. No translation has ever been made.[288]

We turn now to the Fiammetta,[289] which must have been the last of the works directly concerned with his passion for Maria d'Aquino. Crescini[290] thinks it was written in 1343, but others[291] assure us that it is later work.[292] Crescini's argument is, however, so formidable that we shall do better to accept his conclusions and to consider the Fiammetta as a work of this first Florentine period. Though concerned with the same subject, his love, the allegory is worth noting, for while in all the other books concerned with Fiammetta he assures us he was betrayed by her, here he asserts that Panfilo (himself) betrayed Fiammetta! Moreover, he warns us that here he speaks the truth,[293] but in fact it is only here he is a liar. It is impossible to believe that every one had not penetrated his various disguises, and he must have known that this was, and would be, so. Wishing, then, both to revenge and to vindicate himself—for his "betrayal" still hurt him keenly—and guessing that Fiammetta would read the book, he tells us that it was he who left her, not she him. The book then is very amusing for us who are behind the scenes, as it was, doubtless, for many of those who read it in his day.

The action is very simple, the story being told by Fiammetta as though it were an autobiography. It begins with a dream in which Fiammetta is warned that great unhappiness is in store for her. She knows Panfilo,[294] and suddenly there arises between them an eager love. Warned of the danger they run in entertaining so impetuous a passion, they yet take no heed; till quite as suddenly as it had begun, their love is broken. Panfilo must go away, it seems, being recalled to Florence by his old father. In vain Fiammetta tries to detain him; she can only obtain from him a promise that he will return to Naples in four months. The ingenious lying in that!

All alone she passes her days and nights in weeping. The four months pass and Panfilo does not come back to her. One day she hears from a merchant that he has taken a wife in Florence. This news increases her agony, and she asks aid of Venus. Then her husband, seeing her to be ill, but unaware of the cause of her sufferings, takes her to Baia; but no distraction helps her, and Baia only reminds her of the bygone days she spent there with Panfilo. At last she hears from a faithful servant come from Florence that Panfilo has not taken a wife, that the young woman in his house is the new wife of his old father; but it seems though he be unmarried he is in love with another lady, which is even worse. New jealousy and lamentations of Fiammetta. She refuses to be comforted and thinks only of death and suicide, and even tries to throw herself from her window, but is prevented. Finally the return of Panfilo is announced. Fiammetta thanks Venus and adorns herself again. She waits; but Panfilo does not come, and at last she is reduced to comforting herself by thinking of all those who suffer from love even as she. The work closes with a sort of epilogue.

As a work of art the Fiammetta is the best thing Boccaccio has yet achieved. The psychology is fine, subtle, and full of insight, but not so dramatic nor so simple and profound as that in the Filostrato. He shows again that he understands a woman's innermost nature, her continual doubts of herself, her gift of introspection. The torment of soul that a deserted woman suffers, the helpless fury of jealousy, are studied and explained with marvellous knowledge and coolness. The husband, who, ignorant of all, is so sorry for his wife's unhappiness, and seeks to console and comfort her, really lives and is the fine prototype of a lot of base work done later in which the cruel absurdity of the situation and the ridiculous figure he cuts who plays his part in it are insisted on. In fact, in the Fiammetta we find many of the finest features of the Decameron. It is the first novel of psychology ever written in Europe.

The sources of the Fiammetta are hard and perhaps impossible to trace. It seems to have no forbears.[295] One thinks of Ovid's Heroides, but that has little to do with it. Among the minor works of Boccaccio it is the one that has been most read. First published in Padova in 1472, it was translated into English in 1587 by B. Young.[296]

From this intense psychological novel Boccaccio seems to have turned away with a sort of relief, the relief the poet always finds in mere singing, to the Ninfale Fiesolano. Licentious, and yet full of a marvellous charm, full of that love of nature, too, which is by no means a mere convention, the Ninfale Fiesolano is the most mature of his poems in the vulgar tongue.

"Basterebbe," says Carducci,[297] "Basterebbe, io credo, il Ninfale Fiesolano perchè non fosse negato al Boccaccio l' onore di poeta anche in versi." It was probably begun about 1342 in Florence, and finished in Naples in 1346. The theme is still love:

he tells us in the first lines. The story tells how the shepherd Affrico falls in love with Mensola, nymph of Diana,[298] and how the nymph, penitent for having broken her vow of chastity, abandons the poor shepherd.[299] In desperation, Affrico kills himself on the bank of the brook that has witnessed their happiness and that is now called Affrico after him;[300] and Mensola, after bearing a son, is changed too into the stream Mensola hard by.[301] Pruneo, their offspring, when he is eighteen years old, enters the service of Atlas, founder of Fiesole, who marries him to Tironea. She receives as dote the country between the Mensola and the Mugnone.[302]

The sources he drew from for this beautiful poem, so full of learning, but fuller still of a genuine love of nature, prove to us that it was, in its completeness, a mature work. It is derived in part from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, from the Æneid, and from Achilles Tatius, a Greek romancer of Alexandria who lived in the fifth century a.d.[303] Moreover, the Ninfale is a pastoral poem that is in no way at all concerned with chivalry; it is wholly Latin, full of nature and the bright fields, expressed with a Latin rhetoric. Curiously enough it has never had much success, especially out of Italy; and though it be voluptuous, it is by no means the immoral book it has been called.

This, as we have seen, is the third poem which Boccaccio wrote in ottave, and it has been stated, not without insistence, that he was in fact the inventor, or at any rate the renewer, of that metre in Italian.[304]

The truth seems to lie with Baldelli. The Sicilians had written ottave, but they had but two rime, and were akin to those of the Provençals. What Boccaccio did was to take this somewhat arid scheme and give it life by reforming it out of all recognition. Moreover, if he was not actually the first poet to write ottave in Italian, he was the first to put them to epic use. There are in fact, properly speaking, no Italian epics before the poems of Boccaccio.

As for the Ninfale Fiesolano, it was first published in Venice in 1477 by Bruno Valla and Tommaso d' Alessandria. It has only been translated once—into French—by Anton Guercin du Crest, who published it in Lyons in 1556 at the shop of Gabriel Cotier. This was apparently the last poem on which Boccaccio was engaged—though it may have been put aside for the sake of the Fiammetta, and taken up again—before, about 1344, it seems, he returned to Naples.

CHAPTER VI

1341-1343

IN FLORENCE—HIS FATHER'S SECOND MARRIAGE—THE DUKE OF ATHENS

Those years which Boccaccio spent in Florence between 1341 and 1345, and which would seem for the most part to have been devoted to literature, the completion of the works already begun in Naples, the composition of the Amorosa Visione, the Fiammetta, and the Ninfale Fiesolano, were personally among the most unhappy of his life, while publicly they brought the republic of Florence to the verge of ruin. And indeed he was an unwilling victim. That he hated leaving Naples might seem obvious from his own circumstances at that time; nor were the political conditions of Florence encouraging. He had left a city friendly to men of letters, full of all manner of splendour, rich, peaceful, and, above all, governed by one authority, the king, for a distracted republic divided against itself and scarcely able to support a costly foreign war.[305] Nor were the conditions of his father's house any more pleasing to him.

Soured by misfortune, Boccaccino seems at this time to have been a melancholy and hard old man. The picture Giovanni gives us of him is perhaps coloured by resentment, and indeed he had never forgiven his father for the desertion of the girl he had seduced, the little French girl Jeanne, Giovanni's mother;[306] but it is with a quite personal sense of resentment he describes the home to which he returned from Naples—that house in the S. Felicità quarter which Boccaccino had bought in 1333:[307] "Here one laughs but seldom. The dark, silent, melancholy house keeps and holds me altogether against my will, where the dour and terrible aspect of an old man frigid, uncouth, and miserly continually adds affliction to my saddened mood."[308] That was in 1341 one may think; and no doubt the loss of Fiammetta, his own poverty, and the confusion of public affairs in Florence added to his depression; and then he was always easily cast down. But as it happened, things were already improving for him.

It will be remembered that in the romance which passes under her name Fiammetta tells us that Panfilo (Giovanni), when he deserted her, promised to return in four months. Later[309] she says, when the promised time of his return had passed by more than a month, she heard from a merchant lately arrived in Naples that her lover fifteen days before had taken a wife in Florence.[310] Great distress on the part of Fiammetta; but, as she soon learnt, it was not Giovanni, but his father, who had married himself.

Is there any truth in this story? Assuredly there is. We know, indeed, that Boccaccino did marry a second wife, whose name was Bice de' Bostichi, and that she bore him a son, Jacopo;[311] but we do not know when either of these events happened. If we may trust the Fiammetta, which says clearly that Giovanni's father married again about five months after his son returned home, and if we are right in thinking that that return took place in January, 1341, then Boccaccino married his second wife in the spring, or more precisely in May, 1341. That they were man and wife in May, 1343,[312] we know, for, thanks to Crescini, we have a document which proves it. Beyond that fact all is conjecture in this matter. Yet it is significant that we find Boccaccino, on December 13, 1342, acquiring half a house in the popolo di S. Ambrogio in Florence,[313] and yet, as we know from the document just quoted,[314] in May, 1343, he was still living in popolo di S. Felicità.[315] For what possible reason could Boccaccino, ruined as he was, want half a house in which he did not propose to live? Had family history repeated itself? Was Giovanni in some sort again turned out of his father's house by his second stepmother as he had been by the first, and for a like reason—the birth of a legitimate son? It was for him, then, that Boccaccino bought the half-house in popolo di S. Ambrogio, and the occasion was the birth of Jacopo his son by Madonna Bice? It is possible, at any rate; and when we remember the efforts the old man had already made in his poverty for the comfort of a son who had disappointed him in everything, it seems more than likely. Nor can we but accuse Giovanni of ingratitude when we think of his constant allusions to his father's avarice and remember these benefits.[316]

Such, then, are the few and meagre personal events that have in any way come down to us of Boccaccio's life while he was writing all or nearly all those works of his youth which we have already examined, between his return to Florence in January, 1341, and his departure once more for Naples in 1344 or 1345.

These years, materially none too happy for him but full after all of successful work, were disastrous for Florence. That tranquillity and internal peace which so happily followed the death of Castruccio Castracani and of Charles of Calabria in 1328, in which, among other splendid things, Giotto's tower was built, had been broken in 1340, when the grandi, who held the government, having grown oppressive, a rebellion headed by Piero de' Baldi and Bardo Frescobaldi was only crushed by a rising of the people. Things were quiet then for a moment, but the grandi would heed no warning, and as one might expect, their insolence grew with their power. Nor was it only at home that things were going unhappily for Florence. When Louis of Bavaria, who claimed the empire against the will of the Pope, left Italy—it was the Visconti who had called him across the Alps in fear of the House of Anjou—some of his Germans, after Castruccio's death, seized Lucca and offered to sell it to the Florentines, who refused it. They repented later; and when it had come into the hands of Martino della Scala of Verona and Parma, who, in straits himself on account of Visconti, offered to sell it again, they found a competitor in Pisa, who was ready to dispute the city with them. Nevertheless they bought it, only to find that the Pisans, knowing the wealth of Florence and expecting this, had sat down before it. A war followed in which nothing but dishonour came the way of Florence, and Lucca fell into the hands of Pisa. This so enraged the Florentines that they rose against the grandi, who, at their wits' end what to do, asked their old ally Robert of Naples for help. This was in 1341. It was not, therefore, to a very prosperous or joyful city that Boccaccio returned from Naples; the words he put into the mouth of Fiammetta[317] were fully justified.

King Robert, however, did not send help to Florence at once. He was thinking always of Sicily and had been busy with the conquest of the Lipari Islands,[318] but when he did send it, in the person of Walter, Duke of Athens and Count of Brienne, a French baron, it proved to be the worst disaster of all. Yet at first the Florentines rejoiced, for they knew Walter of old, who had been vicegerent in Florence for Charles of Calabria in 1325, and as Machiavelli tells us, his behaviour had been so modest that every one loved him. That was not his attitude now, nor does it tally with Boccaccio's lively account of him,[319] which certainly reads like the work of an eye-witness and supports our belief that he was in Florence during 1342 and 1343—those disastrous years.

For as it happened, the Duke arrived in Florence at the very time when the enterprise of Lucca was utterly lost. The grandi, however, hoping to appease the people, at once made him Conservator and later General. But they had alienated every one. The nobili, long since their enemies, had always maintained a correspondence with the Duke ever since he had been vicegerent for Charles of Calabria; they thought now that their chance was come when they might be avenged alike on the grandi and the people; so they pressed him to take the government wholly into his hands. The people, on the other hand, smarting under new taxes and oppression and insolence and defeat, to a large extent joined the nobili against the grandi. In this conspiracy we find all the names of the great popular families, Peruzzi, Acciaiuoli, Antellesi, and Buonaccorsi, whom the unsuccessful war, among other things, had ruined, and who hoped thus to free themselves from their creditors.

The Duke's ambition, being thus pampered and exasperated, over-reached itself. To please the people he put to death those who had the management of the war, Giovanni de' Medici, Nardo Rucellai, and Guglielmo Altoviti, and banished some and fined others. And thus his reputation was increased, and indeed a general fear of him spread through the city, so that to show their affection towards him people caused his arms to be painted upon their houses, and nothing but the bare title was wanting to make him their Prince.

Being now sure of his success, he caused it to be signified to the Government that for the public good he judged it best that they should transfer their authority upon him, and that he desired their resignation. At first they refused, but when by proclamation he required all the people to appear before him in the Piazza di S. Croce (for he was living in the convent as a sign of his humility), they protested, and then consented that the government should be conferred upon him for a year with the same conditions as those with which it had been formerly given to Charles of Calabria.

So on September 8, 1342, the Duke, accompanied by Giovanni della Tosca and many citizens, came into the Piazza della Signoria with the Senate, and, mounting on the Rhingiera, he caused the articles of agreement between him and the Senate to be read. Now when he who read them came to the place where it was written that the government should be his for a year, the people cried out, "For his life. For his life." It is true, Francesco Rustichesi, one of the Signori, rose up and tried to speak, but they would not hear him. Thus the Duke was chosen lord by consent of the people not for a year, but for ever; and afterwards he was taken and carried through the multitude with general acclamation. Now the first thing he did was to seize the Palazzo della Signoria, where he set up his own standard, while the Palazzo itself was plundered by his servants; and all this was done to the satisfaction of those who maliciously or ignorantly had consented to his exaltation.

The Duke was no sooner secure in his dominion than he forbade the Signori to meet in the Palazzo, recalled the Baldi and the Frescobaldi, made peace with the Pisans, and took away their bills and assignments from the merchants who had lent money in the war of Lucca. He dissolved the authority of the Signori and set up in their place three Rettori, with whom he constantly advised. The taxes he laid upon the people were great, all his judgments were unjust, and all men saw his cruelty and pride, while many citizens of the more noble and wealthy sort were condemned, executed, and tortured. He was jealous of the nobili, so he applied himself to the people, cajoling them and scheming into their favour, hoping thus to secure his tyranny for ever. In the month of May, for instance, when the people were wont to be merry, he caused the common people to be disposed into several companies, gave them ensigns and money, so that half the city went up and down feasting and junketing, while the other half was busy to entertain them. And his fame grew abroad, so that many persons of French extraction repaired to him, and he preferred them all, for they were his faithful friends; so that in a short while Florence was not only subject to Frenchmen, but to French customs and garb, men and women both, without decency or moderation, imitating them in all things. But that which was incomparably the most displeasing was the violence he and his creatures used to the women. In these conditions it is not surprising that plots to get rid of him grew and multiplied. He cared not. When Matteo di Morrozzo, to ingratiate himself with the Duke, discovered to him a plot which the Medici had contrived with others against him, he caused him to be put to death. And when Bettone Cini spoke against the taxes he caused his tongue to be pulled out by the roots so that he died of it. Such was his cruelty and folly. But indeed this last outrage completed the rest. The people grew mad, for they who had been used to speak of everything freely could not brook to have their mouths stopped up by a stranger. "When," asks Machiavelli, "did the Florentines know how to maintain liberty or to endure slavery?" However, things were indeed at such a pass that the most servile people would have tried to recover its freedom.

Many citizens of every sort, we hear, resolved to destroy him, and out of this hatred grew three serious conspiracies by three sorts of people: the grandi, the people, and the arti. The grandi hated him for he had robbed them of the government, the people because he had not given it to them, the arti because they were ruined. With the first were concerned the Bardi, Rossi, Frescobaldi, Scali, Altoviti, Mazalotti, Strozzi, and Mancini, with the Archbishop of Florence; with the second, Manno and Corso Donati, the Pazzi, Cavicciulli, Cerchi, and Albizzi; with the third, Antonio Adimari, the Medici, Bordini, Rucellai, and Aldobrandini.

The plan was to kill him on the feast of S. John Baptist, June 24, 1343, in the house of the Albizzi, whither, as it was thought, he would go to see the palio.[320] But he went not and that design was lost. The next proposal was to kill him as he walked in the streets, but that was found difficult, because he was always well armed and attended and, moreover, very uncertain. Then it was debated to slay him in the Council, but this too was dangerous, for even should they succeed they would remain at the mercy of his guards. Suddenly all was discovered. The Duke learnt of the plots through the quite innocent action of a Sienese. He was both surprised and angry; and that is strange. At first he proposed to kill every man of all the families I have named; but he had not force enough to do it openly, so he in his turn plotted. He called the chief citizens to council, meaning to slay them there. But they got wind of it, and knowing not whom to trust, confessed at last to one another their three conspiracies and swore to stand together and get rid of the Duke.