In the fourteenth century the journey from Florence by way of Siena, Perugia, Rieti, Aquila, and Sulmona, thence across the Apennines at Il Sangro, and so through Isernia and Venafro, through Teano and Capua to Naples, occupied some ten or eleven days.[45] The way was difficult and tiring, especially for a lad of ten years old, and it seems as though Giovanni was altogether tired out, for, if we may believe the Ameto,[46] as he drew near the city at last he fell asleep on his horse. And as he slept, a dream came to him. Full of fear as he was, lonely and bewildered, those "two bears" still pursuing him, doubtless, in his heart, suddenly it seemed to him that he was already arrived in the city. "The new streets," he says in the Ameto,[47] "held my heart with delight, and as I passed on my way there appeared to the eyes of my mind a most beautiful girl, in aspect gracious and fair, dressed all in garments of green, which befitted her age and recalled the ancient dress of the city; and with joy she gave me welcome, first taking me by the hand, and she kissed me and I her; and then she said sweetly, 'Come where you shall find good luck and happiness.'"[48] It was thus Giovanni was welcomed into Naples with a kiss.
Naples was then at the height of its splendour, under Robert the Wise, King of Jerusalem and the Two Sicilies, Count of Provence. If his titles had little reality, for that of Jerusalem merely commemorated an episode of history, and Sicily itself had passed into the hands of Aragon, as King of Naples and Count of Provence he possessed an exceptional influence in the affairs of Europe, while in Italy he was in some sort at the head of the triumphant Guelf cause. The son of Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples, Duke Robert, had seized the crown of Italy and Apulia, not without suspicion of fratricide; for the tale goes that none knew better than he the cause of the sudden illness which carried off his elder brother, Dante's beloved Charles Martel. However that may be, in June, 1309, Duke Robert went by sea from Naples to Provence to the Papal Court there, "with a great fleet of galleys," Villani[49] tells us, "and a great company, and was crowned King of Sicily and of Apulia by Pope Clement on S. Mary's Day in September." A year later we find him in Florence on his way back from Avignon. He stayed in the house of the Peruzzi dal Parlagio, and Villani[50] says: "The Florentines did him much honour and held jousts and gave him large presents of money, and he abode in Florence until the 24th day of October to reconcile the Guelfs together ... and to treat of warding off the Emperor." He was, in fact, the great opponent, as we have seen, of Henry VII, and in 1312 Villani[51] records that he sent 600 Catalan and Apulian horse to Rome to defend the City, while the people of Florence, Lucca, and Siena, and of other cities of Tuscany who were in league with him, sent help also; yet though they held half Rome between them, Henry was crowned in the Lateran after all. It was in the very year of the Emperor's death that the Florentines gave him the lordship of their city, as did the Lucchese, the Pistoians, and the men of Prato.[52] Later, after much fighting, the Genoese did the same; so that in the year 1323 King Robert was in some sort drawing tribute from more than half the Communes of Central Italy. The brilliancy of his statecraft, or even, perhaps, of his statesmanship, added to the splendour of Naples, whither his magnanimity and the brilliance of his court attracted some of the greatest men of the time.[53]
"Cernite Robertum
Regem virtute refertum"
wrote Petrarch of him later—"full of virtue." While in a letter written in 1340 to Cardinal Colonna he says that of all men he would most readily have accepted King Robert as a judge of his ability. Nor were they poets and men of learning alone whom he gathered about him. In 1330 Giotto, who had known Charles of Calabria in Florence in 1328,[54] came to Naples on his invitation; while so early as 1310, certainly, Simone Martini was known to him, and seems about that time to have painted his portrait, later representing him in S. Chiara as crowned by his brother S. Louis of Toulouse.[55] It was then into a city where learning and the arts were the fashion that Boccaccio came in 1323.
There were other things too: the amenity of one's days passed so much in the open air, the splendour of a city rich and secure, the capital of a kingdom, and the residence of a king—the only king in Italy—above all, perhaps, the gaiety of that southern life in the brilliant sunshine. Boccaccio never tires of telling us about this city of his youth. "Naples," he says in the Fiammetta, "was gay, peaceful, rich, and splendid above any other Italian city, full of festas, games, and shows." "One only thought, how to occupy oneself," he says again, "how to amuse oneself, dancing to the sound of music, discussing affairs of love, and losing one's heart over sweet words, and Venus there was indeed a goddess, so that more than one who came thither a Lucrece returned a Cleopatra. Sometimes," he continues, "the youths and maidens went in the gayest companies into the woods, where tables were prepared for them on which were set out all manner of delicate meats; and the picnic over, they would set themselves to dance and to romp and play. Some would glide in boats along the shore, others, dispensing with shoes and stockings, and lifting high their petticoats, would venture among the rocks or into the water to find sea shells; others again would fish with lines." And then there were the Courts of Love held in the spring, when the girls, adorned with splendid jewels, he tells us in the Filocolo, tried to outshine one another, and while the old people looked on, the young men danced with them, touching their delicate hands. And seeing that he was surrounded by a life like this, is it any wonder that he fell in love with love, with beauty?
Anderson.
KING ROBERT OF NAPLES CROWNED BY S. LOUIS OF TOULOUSE
From the fresco by Simone Martini in S. Lorenzo, Naples.
Of the first years of his sojourn in that beautiful southern place we have only the vaguest hints.[56] In the De Genealogiis[57] he says that "for six years he did nothing but waste irrecoverable time" with the merchant to whom his father had confided him. He always hated business, and precocious as he was in his love for literature, in the gaiety and beauty of Naples he grew to despise those engaged in money-making; for, as he says in the Corbaccio, they knew nothing of any beautiful thing, but only how to fill their pockets.[58] Indeed Boccaccio might seem to have had no taste or even capacity for anything but study and the art of literature. He most bitterly reproaches his father in the De Genealogiis[59] for having turned him for so many years from his vocation. "If my father had dealt wisely with me I might have been among the great poets," he writes. "But he forced me, in vain, to give my mind to money-making, and to such a paying thing as the Canon Law. I became neither a man of affairs nor a canonist, and I lost all chance of succeeding in poetry."