[CHAPTER XVI]
DANTE AND BOCCACCIO—THE VITA—AND THE COMENTO
In the summer of the year 1373 when Boccaccio was sixty years old the Signoria of Florence was petitioned by a number of citizens to appoint a lecturer who should publicly expound "librum qui vulgariter appellatur el Dante," the work which is commonly called "el Dante," the Divine Comedy, that is to say, the work of one who little by little was coming to be known as a very great poet, as a very great man, but who more than seventy years before had been ignominiously expelled from Florence and had died in exile.
The petition, a copy of which may still be found in the Florentine Libro delle Provvisioni for 1373, is as follows:—[566]
"Whereas divers citizens of Florence, being minded as well for themselves and others, their fellow-citizens, as for their posterity, to follow after virtue, are desirous of being instructed in the book of Dante, wherefrom, both to the shunning of vice and to the acquisition of virtue, no less than in the ornaments of eloquence, even the unlearned may receive instruction; The said citizens humbly pray you, the worshipful Government of the People and Commonwealth of Florence, that you be pleased, at a fitting time, to provide and formally to determine, that a worthy and learned man, well versed in the knowledge of the poem aforesaid, shall be by you elected, for such term as you may appoint, being not longer than one year, to read the book which is commonly called el Dante in the city of Florence, to all such as shall be desirous of hearing him, on consecutive days, not being holidays, and in consecutive lectures, as is customary in like cases; and with such salary as you may determine, not exceeding the sum of one hundred gold florins for the said year, and in such manner and under such conditions as may seem proper to you; and further that the said salary be paid to the said lecturer from the funds of the Commonwealth in two terminal payments, to wit, one moiety about the end of the month of December, and the other moiety about the end of the month of April, such sum to be free of all deduction for taxes whatsoever...."
BOCCACCIO DISCUSSING
From a miniature in the French version of the "De Casibus Virorum," made in 1409 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XII.)
The petition was favourably considered by the Signoria on August 9, and was put to the vote of the assembly. Two hundred and five persons voted in all, one hundredand eighty-six in its favour, and nineteen against it.[567] The voting was by ballot and secret, and no names have come down to us, but it is perhaps permitted us to suppose, as Mr. Toynbee suggests, that the opposition came from those whose ancestors, whose fathers and grandfathers, Dante had placed in Hell, or had otherwise insulted and condemned. The decision come to on August 9 was carried on the 25th, when the Signoria appointed "Dominus Johannes de Certaldo, honorabilis civis Florentinus," to lecture on the Divine Comedy[568] for a year from the 18th October at a salary of one hundred gold florins, half of which, as the petition had suggested, was paid to him on December 31, 1373.[569] And on Sunday, October 23, 1373,[570] Boccaccio delivered his first lecture in S. Stefano della Badia.[571]
In thus appointing Boccaccio to the first Cathedra Dantesca that had anywhere been established, the Signoria not only in some sort made official amends for the cruel sentence by which the greatest son of Florence had been proclaimed and exiled,[572] but they also showed their goodwill by choosing for lecturer the man who above all others was best fitted to expound his work and to defend his memory.
As we have already seen, Boccaccio had been an eager student of Dante in the first years of his literary life.[573] It is probable that he was first introduced to Dante's work by Cino da Pistoja, whom he seems to have met in Naples between October, 1330, and July, 1331,[574] and in his first book, the Filocolo, he imitates and speaks of him;[575] in the Filostrato he copies him so closely that in fact he quotes from him;[576] in the Rime he not only, to a large extent, models his work on the sonnets of Dante, but he appeals to him and mentions his name more than once, in one case, in the sonnet already quoted addressed to Dante in Paradise after the death of Fiammetta, certainly before the Vita was written or the lectures begun.