BOCCACCIO AND THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313 in Paris, the son of a Florentine merchant and a French-woman. His father had property in the hamlet of Certaldo, and the author always signed himself "Boccaccio da Certaldo." He was destined, first for commerce, then for the study of the law, but finding neither avocation congenial, he after his father's death, devoted himself entirely to his favourite pursuits. He was honoured with the favour of King Robert of Naples and with the love of the King's daughter, Maria, whom he celebrates in his poems under the name of Fiammetta. His zeal for the writers of antiquity was not inferior to that of Petrarch. He sent for Leontius Pilatus to teach him Greek. He devoted large sums to the purchase and reproduction of the works of classical writers. He seems to have been an amiable and honourable man, free alike from pride like that of Dante, and from vanity like that of Petrarch. He repented in later years of the somewhat frivolous character of many of his writings, took holy orders, and spent the last days of his life at Certaldo. When Florence endowed a chair for the explanation of the Divine Comedy, Boccaccio was the first to be appointed. He wrote a life of Dante and began a commentary on the Inferno, which, however, he did not live to finish, dying at Certaldo on the 21st of December, 1375.
Boccaccio was a most fertile writer, both in Latin and in Italian. His Latin works have but little merit and are vastly inferior to those of Petrarch in strength and originality of thought. His Italian poems are heavy and uninteresting, but he has the credit of inventing the "Ottava Rima," the stanza in which Ariosto and Tasso subsequently wrote their immortal epics. Praise-worthy as these works were for the time in which they were written, he would not occupy a high position in the literature of his country, had he not proved himself in other productions to be the first great writer of Italian prose. His romantic stories, Il Filocopo, La Fiammetta, l'Admeto, are written in a flowing and pleasing style; his Life of Dante and Commentary on the Inferno are valuable for the information they impart, but the crowning glory of his literary career is the collection of stories published under the title of Il Decamerone.
The terrible plague that swept over the earth in the middle of the Thirteenth Century, known in history as the "Black Death,"[1] ravaged Florence with peculiar malignity, and Boccaccio feigns that five ladies and their cavaliers took refuge in a villa in the neighbourhood and beguiled their leisure by telling stories to each other. Being a collection of tales told by various characters, the Decamerone bears a certain resemblance to another memorable work of the Fourteenth Century, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but happier than his great contemporary, Boccaccio lived to complete his design.
The work opens with a noble description of the Plague of Florence, but this gloomy and terrible introduction gives no forecast of the light, festive and occasionally indecorous character of many of the tales. Others, however, are highly picturesque and even poetical, and some have a special interest for English readers as being the sources whence Shakespeare drew All's Well that Ends Well, and Cymbeline,—Dryden, Theodore and Honoria and Sigismonda and Guiscardo, and Keats Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.
Boccaccio had every quality of a great novelist. His style is varied, flexible and animated, and his idiom is so purely Tuscan that it was held up as a standard by the Accademia della Crusca, and if any fault can be found with it, it is that the copiousness of his vocabulary sometimes leads him into florid and redundant amplifications. His characters are drawn with considerable skill. His dialogue is invariably natural and appropriate. His incidents, though sometimes overstepping the limits of decorum, are ingenious and entertaining. The work gives a brilliant panorama of the men and manners of Italy in the Fourteenth Century.
No writer has derived more advantage from the admiration of other writers than Boccaccio. Great poets are indebted to him for the plots of some of their most successful works. Great painters have vied with each other in illustrating the brilliant scenes of his Decamerone. Great philologians and grammarians have expressed their admiration for the purity and elegance of his style. Brilliant as his services were to the literature of his country, they have received a more than ample measure of reward from the gratitude of posterity.
Italy produced in the Fourteenth Century many other prose writers of note, though none so eminent as Boccaccio.
First and foremost we must mention the invaluable Chronicle of Giovanni Villani. This historian rose in the service of the Florentine Republic until he became Prior. He was one of the many victims of the Black Death, and his unfinished work was continued by his brother Matteo, and this continuation was completed by Matteo's son, Filippo. All these are quoted as classics by the Accademia della Crusca. According to competent judges, Giovanni was the most brilliant, Matteo the most noteworthy for the important events he narrates, and Filippo remarkable rather for industry and research than for ability as a writer.
The Travels of Marco Polo, a Venetian, were an inestimable contribution to the knowledge of remote countries. For centuries he lay very unjustly under the suspicion of falsehood and exaggeration, and it was only at a comparatively recent date that his veracity, nay, his scrupulous exactness, received a tardy vindication.
Jacopo Passavanti, a Dominican. Friar, wrote a devotional book, entitled, Lo Specchio della Penitenza, written in prose so musical and flowing as to be preferred by some to the prose of Boccaccio, because Passavanti never indulges in the over-elaboration sometimes to be detected in the pages of the Decamerone.
Giovanni Da Catignano known in the Calendar as the Blessed John of the Cells, after a dissolute youth was converted by the ardent exhortations of the Abbot of Vallombrosa, and in deep contrition ended his days as a hermit. Some letters from this interesting penitent are extant, written in a style so exquisitely Tuscan that they are quoted by the Accademia della Crusca as models of propriety and elegance.
Another canonized celebrity, Saint Catherine of Siena, is no less remarkable for the beauty of her style than for the beauty of her character.
A Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, entitled Fioretti di San Francesco, has been highly praised for the freshness and simplicity of the language. The piety or the modesty of the author induced him to conceal his identity.
These religious writers, though treating of subjects so different, almost equalled Boccaccio in perfection of style, but the two authors who produced collections of stories somewhat similar to his, Franco Sacchetti and Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, were very far indeed from approaching his mastery.
On reviewing the literary development of Italy in the Fourteenth Century, we find that the language attained the fullest perfection both in prose and verse, only the lighter kinds of poetry remaining uncultivated. The appearance in one century of two such great poets as Dante and Petrarch was quite phenomenal and threw a lustre over the age which has attracted the whole world. But another fact, less universally known, is equally worthy of attention, namely the extraordinary merit of the prose writers of the period. It may well be doubted whether any compositions in Italian prose of a later date exhibit the rare qualities of those of the Fourteenth Century. Leopardi, indeed, produced marvels of style, but they were the result of art and study, whereas the writers of the Fourteenth Century display an ease and a simplicity, a freshness and a graphic power, combined with the most exquisite lightness and harmony in their phrases, that must ever render them more admirable models than the artificial and laborious productions of later ages.
[1] For details on the subject of this most terrible pestilence, probably the worst that ever afflicted humanity, we may refer the reader to Father Gasquet's valuable and interesting work on the subject.