Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

Boccaccio suggests that her birth is connected with the great festa which celebrated the coronation of King Robert, that took place in Avignon in September, 1309.[108] The king returned to Naples by way of Florence, where he arrived on September 30, 1310;[109] he was still there in October, and there was much fighting to be done, for Henry VII was making war in Italy; so that it was not till February 2, 1313,[110] that the king opened the first general parliament in Naples after his coronation. Della Torre[111] thinks that it was on this occasion the great festa described by Boccaccio took place. Its chief feature seems to have been a banquet of the greatest magnificence, to which all the court as well as many of the leading subjects of the Kingdom were bidden. Amid all this splendour Boccaccio describes the king's gaze passing over a host of beautiful women, to rest, always with new delight, on the beauty of the young wife of D'Aquino, who, since her husband belonged to the court, was naturally present. Well, to make a long story short, a little later the king seduced this lady, but as it seems, on or about the same night she slept also with her husband, so that when nine months later a daughter was born to her, both the king and her husband believed themselves to be the father. It is like a story out of the Decameron.

This daughter, the Fiammetta of his dreams, was born, he tells us, in the spring[112]—the spring then of 1314[113]—and was named Maria.[114] Before very long she lost her mother, who however, before she died, told her as well as she could, considering her tender age, the mystery of her birth. Not long after, her father—or rather her mother's husband—died also, leaving the piccoletta "a vestali vergini a lui di sangue congiunte ... acciocchè quelle di costumi e d' arte inviolata servandomi, ornassero la giovanezza mia";[115] which is Boccaccio's way of saying that she was placed in the care of nuns, the nuns, as Casetti[116] supposes, of the Order of St. Benedict, to whom belonged the very ancient church of S. Arcangelo a Baiano.[117] There she grew up, and, like very many others of an eager and sensuous temperament, totally unfitted for the life of a religious, she desired too to be a nun, and this desire, we learn, became definite in her after an ecstatic vision in which S. Scholastica appeared to her[118] and invited her to take the vow. But happily this was not to be. Her golden hair was not to fall under the shears of the Church, but to be a poet's crown. She was too beautiful for the cloister, and indeed already the fame of her beauty had gone beyond the convent walls, which were in fact by no means very secure or unassailable. In those days, people "in the world," men as well as women, were received even by the "enclosed" in the parlour of the convent, where it was customary to hold receptions.[119]

So, we learn, there presently began a struggle in Fiammetta's heart—it was not of very long duration—between her resolution to take the veil and her feminine vanity. Little by little she began to adorn herself,[120] she received offers of marriage which by no means shocked her, she became reconciled to the life of the world for which she was so perfectly fitted by nature. Among the suitors, and apparently they were many, was "uno dei più nobili giovani ... di fortuna grazioso, de' beni Giunonichi copioso, e chiaro di sangue."[121] To him, as to the rest, she replied with a refusal, to which she was doubtless encouraged by the nuns, who could not easily suffer so well-born and powerful a pupil to escape them. The young man, however—we do not know his name—was not easily discouraged, and, renewing his suit, was accepted. So she was married perhaps when she was about fifteen years old, in 1329.[122]

Her beauty[123] was famous, and she seems scarcely to have been married when she gave herself up to all the voluptuousness of her nature, more or less mute in the convent. That she could read we know, for she read not only Giovanni's letters, but Ovid,[124] probably a translation of the Ars Amandi, and the French Romances.[125] She was greatly run after by the youth of the Neapolitan court, who swore no festa was complete without her. Her husband's house, too, was in such a position that not only the citizens, but strangers, who must on arrival or departure pass it by, might spy her at her window or on her balcony.[126] Her excuse is this universal admiration, and the eagerness of her temperament, which allowed her to pass with ease from one lover to another.[127] And then she also found that stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.[128] She excuses herself for having betrayed the husband who loved her so much, and can say: "What is lawfully pursued is apt to be considered of small account, even though it be most excellent, but what is difficult of attainment, even if contemptible, is held in high esteem."[129] But, like all vain and sensual natures, she was cruel, and encouraged her suitors to squander their substance on her, giving them nothing in return, and leading each to suppose that he was the only one she loved, and that she was about to make him happy. "And I," she says to Boccaccio in the character of Alleiram, "and I have laughed at them all, choosing, however, those who took my fancy and who were judged apt to give me pleasure. But no sooner was the fire spent than I broke the vase which contained the water and flung away the pieces." These words, so cynically moving, not only show us the cruelty of Maria's nature, but cast a strange light on the general condition of society in what was then, as later, the most corrupt city in Italy. Such, then, was the blonde Fiammetta whom Boccaccio loved.

But how could he, a mere merchant's son, ever hope to reach the arms of this disdainful, indifferent lady? By means of poetry? It seems so. But before replying fully to this question it will be necessary to establish the chronological limits and divisions of this love affair, and this is the most difficult question in all the difficult history of the youth of Boccaccio.

We may find, as it happens, two dates to begin with in the Amorosa Visione. They have not escaped Crescini,[130] who, founding himself on them, has concluded, though not too certainly, that between the day of innamoramento and that of possesso completo 159 days passed. He arrives at this tentative conclusion in the following manner. In chapter xliv. of the Amorosa Visione Boccaccio tells us that when he became enamoured of Fiammetta, at first he marvelled greatly, as though something incredible had befallen him. Then he began to make fun of himself, "farsi beffa," for having thought of a lady so far above him. But at last, when

it appeared that his courting pleased his lady, and he seemed to understand from her that there was no distance however great, between lover and beloved, that love could not annihilate. But, said she, one ought to serve her only, and not to run after other ladies.

Crescini interprets this to mean that twenty-four days after Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta, she gave him reason to hope. And he arrives at this conclusion because he considers that the sun is in conjunction with the horizon only once a day, whereas it might seem to be so twice a day, at sunrise as at sunset. The other 135 days of Crescini's chronology come from the following verses of chapter xlvi. of the Amorosa Visione, in which Boccaccio tells us that he was able to possess Maria after

Thus, says Crescini, we have twenty-four days from the first meeting to the acceptance of his court, and 135 days thenceforward to the possession, that is 159 days.[131]

Della Torre,[132] however, will have none of this reckoning, and seems to have proved that it is indeed inexact. To begin with, according to the Ptolemaic system, the sun moved round the earth and touched it as it were not only at its rising but also at its setting, so that the twenty-four days become twelve. This, however, is but a small matter, merely reducing the 159 days to 147. Crescini's chief error, according to Della Torre, is that he has added the first period of twelve (or twenty-four) days to the second of 135—making them immediately consecutive. Let us examine this matter somewhat closely.

In the Ameto Boccaccio tells us that the happy night which came at the end of the 135 days, the night in which he possessed Fiammetta, fell "temperante Apollo i veleni freddi di Scorpione." Now at what time precisely is the sun in the sign of the Scorpion? Andalò[133] tells us that at the end of the 20th October the sun is three and a half gradi in Scorpio, and that by the 15th November it is already entering Sagittarius. The sun then entered Scorpio on the 17th October and left it on the 14th November.[134] Somewhere between those two dates the loves of Giovanni and Fiammetta were consummated.

Boccaccio tells us, if we interpret him aright, that twelve days after his innamoramento his lady showed him that she was pleased by his love. He then passes on to describe the long and faithful service he gave her:—

Taken thus we may divide the story of his love for Fiammetta into three periods. The first of these ends twelve days after the first meeting, and is the period of uncertainty. The second period is that in which he is accepted as courtier, as it were, on his trial. The third begins when his lady, moved by long service and repeated proofs of his devotions, returns his love; it is the period of "dolce signoria" and lasts one hundred and thirty-five days, at the end of which she gives herself to him.[137]

Of these periods we know only the length, then, of the first and the last. The first began on the 30th March and lasted till the 12th April, 1331, when the second began, to last how long? Well, at least two months, it seems,[138] perhaps three. In that case all three periods belong to the same year. If this be not so, the second period was of longer duration than three months, perhaps much longer. Boccaccio himself tells us that it was "non senza molto affanno lunga stagione."[139] Now it seems reasonable to suppose that even so eager a lover as Boccaccio cannot call three months "lunga stagione," though he were dying for her and each minute was an eternity. He can scarcely have hoped to seduce a woman of his own class in less time. Common sense, then, is on our side when reminding ourselves that Maria d'Aquino was of the noblest family, married, too, to a husband who loved her, and generally courted by all the golden youth of Naples—while Giovanni was the son of a merchant—we insist that he cannot mean a paltry three months when he speaks of a long time.[140] But if the second period lasted more than three months, and so does not belong to the year 1331, to what year or years does it belong?

Della Torre seems to have found a clue in the following sonnet, whose authenticity, though doubted by Crescini,[141] he insists upon:—

which we may explain as "O my lady, I shall be the happiest of mortals if in the five years that I shall pay you court, I should break through your indifference...." Five years brings us from 30th March, 1331, to 1336.

Now let us see whither the other facts we have will lead us.

In 1339 Boccaccio and Fiammetta had parted,[143] Boccaccio having been "betrayed" by her, as he tells us in Sonnets iv. and xxxiii.,[144] during the bathing season at Baia—the bathing season then of 1338—whither she had forbidden him to accompany her. But we know from Sonnets xlvii. and xlviii. that the end of the second period and the beginning of the third took place during the bathing season, and that there was also a season in which he accompanied her to Baia as her acknowledged lover.[145] There must, then, have been three seasons before April, 1339, and these three years lead us again to the year 1336.

So we believe that the first period "of uncertainty" in his love began on 30th March and ended on 12th April, 1331; that the second period "of service" began on 12th April, 1331, and ended between 3rd June and 2nd July, 1336, when the third period began, ending three years later. This third period is divided, as we have seen, into three parts, and comprises three bathing seasons. The first of these falls between 3rd June—2nd July, 1336, and the 17th October to 15th November, i.e. 135 days; an act of audacity on Giovanni's part, as we shall see, giving him possession of Fiammetta. The second is a period in which their love had become calmer: it fills the season of 1337 in which he was her cavaliere servente. The third falls in 1338, when, probably on account of the suspicions aroused by their intimacy, Fiammetta forbade him to accompany her to Baia, where in his absence she "betrayed" him.

Having thus found a chronology of Boccaccio's love-story, we must consider more particularly his life during its three periods.

CHAPTER IV

1331-1340

THE YEARS OF COURTSHIP—THE REWARD—THE BETRAYAL—THE RETURN TO FLORENCE

Of the first period of Giovanni's love-story, the period of uncertainty which lasted but twelve days, we know almost nothing, save that he was used to remind himself very often of his unworthiness, and to tell himself that he was only the son of a merchant, while Fiammetta, it was said, was the daughter of a king, and at any rate belonged to one of the richest and most powerful families in the Kingdom. That she was married does not seem to have distressed him or appeared as an obstacle at all, for the court was corrupt;[146] but he seems to have been disturbed by the knowledge that she was surrounded by a hundred adorers richer, nobler, and with better opportunities than himself. And so he seems to have come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but to make fun of himself for having entertained a thought of her. It was apparently in these states of mind that he passed the days from Holy Saturday to 12th April, 1331, when he found suddenly to his surprise that she was content he should love her if he would.

What happened is described in the forty-fourth chapter of the Amorosa Visione. The twelve days were passed, he tells us in this allegory, when he heard a voice like a terrible thunder cry to him:—

How can we interpret this? It seems that there was evidently an occasion in which Fiammetta gave him to understand that she was not averse from his love. What was this occasion? Della Torre[147]—certainly the most subtle and curious of his interpreters—thinks he has found it: that he can identify it with that in which Fiammetta bade him write the Filocolo.

In the prologue to that romance Boccaccio tells us that after leaving the temple of S. Lorenzo with full heart, and having sighed many days, he found himself by chance—he does not remember how—with some companions "in un santo tempio del Principe de' celestiali uccelli nominato": that is to say, as Casetti interprets it, in the convent of S. Arcangelo a Baiano, where Fiammetta had been. I have said that it was quite usual for nuns to receive visitors, both men and women, from the outside; the Fiammetta[148] itself confirms it if need be. The convents were in some sort fashionable resorts where one went to spend an hour in talk. On some such occasion Boccaccio went to S. Arcangelo with a friend, and finding Fiammetta there, probably told her stories from the French romances "del valoroso giovane Florio figliuolo di Felice grandissimo Re di Spagna," or of Lancelot and Guinivere, "con amorose parole," stuffed with piteous words. When he had finished, she, altogether charmed, turned to the young poet and bade him write such a romance as that—for her—"a little book in which the beginning of love, the courtship, and the fortune of the two lovers even to their death shall be told." Well, what could he do but obey gladly? "Hearing the sweetness of the words which came from that gracious mouth," he tells us, "and remembering that never once till this day had that noble lady asked anything of me, I took her prayer for a command, and saw therein hope for my desires";[149] so he answered that he would do his best to please her. She thanked him, and Boccaccio, "costretto più da ragione che da volontà," went home and began at once to compose his romance.[150] So ends the first period of his love-story, and the second, the period of courtship, begins.

The first result of this interview and of the hope and fear it gave him—for whatever may have been the case with Fiammetta now and later, Giovanni was genuinely in love—was that he wandered away "dall' usato cammino" from the highway that had brought him so far and abandoned "le imprese cose," things already begun.[151] And if we ask ourselves what was this highway, we may answer his way of life; and the things already begun—his study of the Canon Law. About this time, then, he began to go more to court, to enter eagerly into the joy of Neapolitan life in search of Fiammetta. At the same time his studies suffered—he neglected them to the dismay, as we shall see, not only of his father, but of his friends.

Something has already been said of the life at the court of King Robert. The very soul of it was the three ladies: Agnes de Perigord, wife of Jean D'Anjou, brother of King Robert; Marie de Valois, wife of Charles, Duke of Calabria, son of the king; and Catherine de Courteney, who at twelve years of age had married Philip of Taranto, another of the King's brothers.[152] The luxury in the city was by far the greatest to be found in Italy. The merchants of Florence, Lucca, Venice, and Genoa furnished to the court "scarlatti di Gant," "sciamiti, panni ricamati ad uso orientale," "oggetti d' oro ed argento," and "gemmas et lapides pretiosas ad camere regie usum." Boccaccio himself describes Naples: "Città, oltre a tutte l' altre italiche, di lietissime feste abbondevole, non solamente rallegra i suoi cittadini o con le nozze o con li bagni o con li marini liti, ma, copiosa di molti giuochi, sovente or con uno, or con un altro letifica la sua gente: ma tra l' altre cose, nelle quali essa appare splendidissima, è nel sovente armeggiare."[153] Or again of the spring there: "I giovani, quando sopra i correnti cavalli con le fiere armi giostravano, e quando circondati da' sonanti sonagli armeggiavano, quando con ammaestrata mano lieti mostravano come gli arditi cavalli con ispumante freno si debbano reggere. Le giovani donne di queste cose vaghe, inghirlandate di nuove frondi, lieti sguardi porgevano ai loro amanti, ora dall' alte finestre ed ora dalle basse porte; e quale con nuovo dono, e quale con sembiante, e quale con parole confortava il suo del suo amore."[154]

If he thus spent his time in play and love there can have been little enough left, when the Filocolo was laid aside, for study. We find his father complaining of his slackness. Old Boccaccio had already been grievously disappointed when Giovanni abandoned trade, and now that he threw up or was not eager to pursue his law studies, he was both distressed and angry; nor were Giovanni's friends more content. All the Florentines at Naples, he tells us, seemed to speak with his father's voice. It was well to be in love, they told him, even better to write poetry, but to ruin oneself for love, Monna mia! what madness, and then poetry never made any one rich.[155]

So spoke and thought the practical Tuscan soul, and the English have but echoed it for centuries. However, Giovanni only immersed himself more in Ovid, and doubtless the throb of hexameter and pentameter silenced the prose of the merchants. Later, about 1334, he began to read Petrarch;[156] their personal friendship, however, did not begin till much later, in 1350.[157] His reading then, like his love, inspired him to write verses, and as he tells us, when the days of uncertainty were over, "Under the new lordship of love I desired to know what power splendid words had to move human hearts."[158] And these ornate parole were all in honour of his love. How he praises her!

Presumptuous or no, he tells us very eloquently and sweetly that her teeth were candid Eastern pearls, her lips, living rubies clear and red, her cheeks, roses mixed with lilies, her hair, all gold like an aureole about her happy face:—

And then her eyes, it is always them he praises best:—

But he speaks of her beauty in a thousand verses in a thousand places, in many disguises.

This burning and eager love was, however, hindered in one thing—he had the greatest difficulty in seeing Fiammetta:—

For at this time certainly Fiammetta does not seem to have considered his love of any importance to her, so that she gave him very few opportunities of seeing her, and then in everything he had to be careful not to rouse her husband's suspicions.[163] Sometimes, too, she went far away into the country to some property of her family, whither he could not follow, and always every year to Baia for the season; so that we find him writing:—

He managed to see her, however, sometimes in church, or at her window, or in the gardens, and once he followed her to Baia, but only to see her "a long way off." Yet, as he reminds himself, he always had her, a vision in his heart:—

Then there were moments of wild hope, till the indifference of Fiammetta put it out; and he would resolve to break the "love chains," but it was useless. He humiliated himself, and at last came to despair. It was in some such moment, during her absence, we may think, that he began the Filostrato,[166] and at length finally abandoned those studies which in some sort his love had killed.

In this feverish state of mind, of soul, sometimes hopeful, sometimes in despair, Boccaccio passed the next five years of his life, from the spring of 1331 to the spring of 1336. It was during this time, in 1335[167] it seems, that with his father's unwilling permission he discontinued the law studies he had begun in 1329, but had for long neglected, and gave himself up to literature, "without a master," but not without a counsellor—his old companion in the study of astronomy, Calmeta. Other friends, too, were able to assist him, among them Giovanni Barrili, the jurisconsult, a man of fine culture, later Seneschal of King Robert for the kingdom of Provence,[168] and Paolo da Perugia, King Robert's learned librarian, elected to that office in 1332. Him Boccaccio held in the highest veneration, and no doubt Paolo was very useful to him.[169]

We know nothing of his first literary studies, but we may be sure he continued to read Ovid, and now read or re-read Virgil—these if only for the study of versification. As for prose, it is possible that he now read the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which he certainly knew and admired. However that may be, his work at this time cannot have been very severe or serious, for his mind was full of uneasiness about Fiammetta, and this excitement no doubt increased in the early summer of 1336, when she grew "kinder," and deigned even to encourage him; he met her "con humil voce e con atti piacenti."[170]

What was the real cause of this "kindness" it seems impossible we should ever know. Perhaps at the moment Fiammetta lacked a lover, though that is hard measure for her. Some cause there must have been, for a woman does not surely let a lover sigh for five years unheard, and then for no reason at all suddenly requite him. Certainly Giovanni had made many beautiful verses for her, but when did that touch a woman's heart? Yet, be the cause what it may, in the summer of 1336 she would suddenly grow pale when he passed her by, and then as suddenly turn her "starry eyes" on him languidly, voluptuously:—

All this seems to have come to pass at Baia, perhaps, as Boccaccio seems himself to suggest, one day in the woods of Monte Miseno whither they were gone with a gay company holding festa there in the golden spring weather.[171] And there were other days too: long delicious noons in the woods, still evenings by the seashore, where, though not alone, he might talk freely to her, by chance or strategy, or in a low voice whisper his latest verses beating with her heart. Giovanni, we may be sure, was no mean strategist; he was capable of playing his part in the game of hide-and-seek with the world.[172] He seems eagerly to have sought the friendship of her husband and of her relations and Fiammetta herself tells us in the romance that bears her name that filled "non solamente dello amoroso ardore, ma ancora di cautela perfetta il vidi pieno; il che sommamente mi fu a grado. Esso, con intera considerazione vago di servare il mio onore e adempiere, quando i luoghi e li tempi il concedessero, li suoi desii credo non senza gravissima pena, usando molte arti, s' ingegnò d' aver la familiarità di qualunque mi era parente, ed ultimamente del mio marito: la quale non solamente ebbe, ma ancora con tanta grazia la possedette, che a niuno niuna cosa era a grado, se non tanto quanto con lui la comunicava...."[173]

Well, the one hundred and thirty-five days had begun.[174] There were difficulties still to be overcome, however, before he won that for which, as he says, he had always begged. Fiammetta, like a very woman, denied it him over and over again, though very willingly she would have given it to him. Expert as he had become in a woman's heart—in this woman's heart at least—Giovanni guessed all this and knew besides that she could not give him what he desired unless he took it with a show at least of violence. Such, even to-day, are Italian manners.[175] He awaited the opportunity. It seems to have come during the absence of the husband in Capua.[176] Screwing his courage to the sticking-point, he resolved to go to her chamber, and to this end persuaded or bribed her maid to help him.[177]

It was in the early days of November probably, days so pensive in that beautiful southern country, that it befell even as he had planned. Led by the maid into Fiammetta's chamber, he hid himself behind the curtains of the great marital bed. Presently she came in with the maid, who undressed her and put her to bed, and left her, half laughing, half in tears. Again he waited, and when at last, desperate with anxiety and hope, he dared to come out of his hiding, she was sleeping as quietly as a child. For a time he looked at her, then trembling and scarce daring to breathe the while, he crept into the great bed beside her, in verity as though he were her newly wedded husband. Then softly he kissed her, sleeping still, and drawing aside the curtain that hid the light,[178] discovered to his amorous eyes "il delicato petto, e con desiderosa mano toccava le ritonde mammelle, bacciandola molte volte," and already held her in his arms when she awakened. She opened her mouth to cry for help, he closed it with kisses; she strove to get out of bed, but he held her firm, bidding her have no fear. She was defeated, of course, but that her yielding might not seem too easy she reproached him[179] in a trembling voice—trembling with fear and pleasure—for the violence with which he had stolen what she had always denied him; adding that all was quite useless as she did not wish it.

Then Giovanni, putting all to the proof, drew a dagger from his belt, and retiring to a corner of the bed, in a low and distressed voice said—we find the words in the Ameto—"I come not, O lady, to defile the chastity of thy bed, but as an ardent lover to obtain relief for my burning desires; thou alone canst assuage them, or tell me to die: surely I will only leave thee satisfied or dead, not that I seek to gratify my passion by violence or to compel any to raise cruel hands against me; but if thou art deaf to my entreaties with my dagger I shall pierce my heart."

To kill himself—there. O no, Giovanni! Certainly she did not want that. What then? Well, not a dead man in her room, at any rate, for all the world to talk about.[180] Yes, she was paid in her own coin. She was conquered; her silence gave consent. "O no, Giovanni!"

"Donna mia," he whispered, "I came thus because it was pleasing to the gods...."[181]

"Thou lovest me so?" she answered. "And when then, and how, and why ... and why?" So he told her all over again from the beginning, and she, yielding little by little, seemed doubtful even yet. Then he asked again, "Che farò O Donna? Passerà il freddo ferro il solecito petto o lieto sarà dal tuo riscaldato?" At this renewed menace the poor lady, without more ado, reached for the iron and flung it away. Then he, putting his arms about her and kissing her furiously, whispered: "Lady, the gods, my passion, and thy beauty, have wounded my soul, and thus as was already told thee in dreams I shall for ever be thine: I do not think I need implore thee to be mine, but if necessary I pray thee now once for all...."

That night was but the first of a long series, as we may suppose. "Oh," says Fiammetta, in the romance which bears her name, "how he loved my room and with what joy it saw him arrive. He held it in greater reverence than any church (temple). Ah me, what pleasant kisses! What loving embraces! How many nights passed as though they had been bright days in sweet converse without sleep! How many delights, dear to every lover, have we enjoyed there in those happy days."[182]

So autumn passed into winter and the long nights grew short, and all the world was at the spring; and for them too it was the golden age—so long ago. Well, do we not know how they spent their lives? It was ever Giovanni's way to kiss and tell. Has he not spoken of the festas and the jousts, and the rare encounters that in Naples greeted Primavera?[183] We see him with Fiammetta at the Courts of Love, in the deep shade of the gardens, in the joyful fields,[184] on the seashore at Baia,[185] and at the Bagno beside the lake of Avernus,[186] while we may catch a glimpse of them too at a wedding feast.[187] So passed what proved to be the one happy year of their love, and perhaps the happiest of Giovanni's life.

That year so full of wild joy soon passed away. With the dawn of 1338 his troubles began. At first jealousy. He found it waiting to torture him on returning from a journey we know not whither,[188] in which he had encountered dangers by flood and field; a winter journey then, doubtless. He came home to find Fiammetta disdainful, angry, even indifferent. All the annoyance of the road came back to him threefold:—[189]