EPITHARIS
A woodcut from the "De Claris Mulieribus." (Ulm, 1493). Cap. 91. (By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)
In all these things and in many others Boccaccio is little more than Petrarch's disciple, following him without discrimination, more violent in his abuse, more extreme in his advocacy of those things or professions or ideas or people whom his master had come to consider bad or good, reasonable or unreasonable. And it is in the Latin works that we find him most a disciple, really obeying orders that he has by no means understood, compiling with an immense and heroic labour a vast collection of facts or supposed facts which have no relation to one another, and reformed and revivified by no composing or commanding idea, are for the most part just a heap of dead and grotesque extravagances that for us at least can have no meaning.
Let me confess it at once: after labouring with an immense weariness through the whole of these works in Latin, I have found but one complete work and two fragments which seem to have been written with any personal conviction: the Eclogues, parts of the De Montibus, and the fourteenth book of the De Genealogiis Deorum. The rest are vast compilations, made, one cannot say without enthusiasm, for nothing but an immense enthusiasm could have carried him through such a labour, but without any unifying idea, without personal conviction or art or delight. They are the notebooks of an omnivorous but indiscreet and undiscerning reader.[541]
The earliest among them, as we may think,[542] the De Claris Mulieribus, constitutes as it were the transition from the writings full of imagination and life in the vulgar tongue to the works of erudition. Its chief purpose would seem to be rather to entertain and to amuse women than to write history or biography, and though now and then a more serious idea might seem to discover itself, it remains for the most part a wretched and awkward piece of work, in which virtue and vice are dealt with and distinguished, if at all, to hide the droll pleasantries which are intended to divert the reader. In this Boccaccio was successful, and the book had a great vogue in spite of its absurdity.[543]
The idea of the work was, as he confesses in the proem suggested to him by Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus. Ordered chronologically, beginning with Eve, much space is given to women of antiquity—Greek, Roman, and Barbarian, little to Jewesses and Christians, saints and martyrs, because, says Boccaccio, "I wish to spare them the neighbourhood of Pagans." He has little to say either, of the women of his own and the preceding age. He mentions, however, Pope Joan, the virtuous Gualdrada,[544] the Empress Constance, mother of Frederic II, and Queen Giovanna of Naples, whom he praises for her personality and character as one of the most remarkable women of his time.
But it is in dealing with the more modern characters that he dates his work for us. We find there the same contempt for, the same aversion from women in general as have already come upon in the Corbaccio and the Vita di Dante. It is possible that his contempt in some sort excuses, or at least explains, the wretchedness of this work. For if it was written for women, we know that he considered that culture and learning were not only useless to women, but even harmful, since they helped them to evil. And he himself tells us with the most amazing humour or effrontery that he has composed this work "less with a view to general usefulness than for the greater honour of the sex,"[545] yet, as we shall see, he abuses women roundly on almost every possible occasion, and introduces a tale like that of Paolina, which would not be out of place in the Decameron.
"Paolina, the Roman lady," says Boccaccio, "lived in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, and above all the ladies of her time she was famous for the beauty of her body and the loveliness of her face, and, married as she was, she was reputed the especial mirror of modesty. She cared for nothing else, she studied no other thing, save to please her husband and to worship and reverence Anubis, god of the Egyptians, for whom she had so much devotion, that in everything she did she hoped to merit his grace whom she so much venerated. But, as we know, wherever there is a beautiful woman there are young men who would be her lovers, and especially if she be reputed chaste and honest, so here a young Roman fell in love beyond hope of redemption with the beautiful Paolina. His name was Mundo, he was very rich, and of the noblest family in Rome. He followed her with his eyes, and with much amorous and humble service as lovers are wont to do, and with prayers too, and with promises and presents, but he found her not to be won, for that she, modest and pure as she was, placed all her affection in her husband, and considered all those words and promises as nothing but air. Mundo, seeing all this, almost hopeless at last, turned all his thoughts to wickedness and fraud."
PAULINA, MUNDUS AND THE GOD ANUBIS
A woodcut from the "De Claris Mulieribus" (Ulm, 1473), cap. 89. (By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)