Inponit, suaque arma viro remumque tubamque
Monte sub aereo, qui nunc Misenus ab illo
Dicitur æternumque tenet per sæcula nomen."
[220] Supra, [p. 6] et seq. See Filocolo, ed. cit., II, Lib. V, 236 et seq.
[221] In the French romance on which the Filocolo is founded the hero on his return imposes Christianity on his people, and those who will not be converted he burns and massacres. Boccaccio has none of this barbarism. Italy has never understood religious persecution. It has always been imposed on her from outside—by Spain, for instance. I do not forget the rubrics de hereticis in so many of the Statutes of the free Communes.
[222] Floire et Blanceflor, poèmes du XIII. siècle, pub. d'après les MSS., etc., par Edélestand du Méril (Paris, 1856). I say from whom he had the story, because it seems to me certain that in Naples he must have seen or heard these poems. The Provençal troubadours, especially Rambaldo di Vaqueiras, sang the loves of Florio and Biancofiore, and Boccaccio himself in the Filocolo affirms that the legend was known and popular in Naples. It has been contended by Clerc, Discours sur l'état des lettres au XIV. siècle in Hist. Littér., II, 97, that Boccaccio's work is only an imitation of the French poems. This cannot be upheld. The legend was everywhere in the Middle Age. It was derived from a Greek romance, and many of the happenings and descriptions used by Boccaccio are to be found in the Greek romances. Cf. Zumbini, Il Filocolo, in Nuova Antologia, December, 1879, and January, 1880.
[223] It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the reader that it is seven ladies and three gentlemen who tell the tales of the Decameron. Cf. Rajna, L' Episodio delle Questioni d' Amore nel "Filocolo" del B. in Romania, XXXI (1902), pp. 28-81.
[224] Bartoli, I precursi del B. (Firenze, 1876), p. 64.
[225] An English translation of these Questioni appeared in 1567 and was reprinted in 1587. The title runs: "Thirteen | Most pleasaunt and | delecable Que | stions: entituled | a Disport of Diverse | noble Personages written in Itali | an by M. John Boccacce Flo | rentine and poet Laure | at, in his booke | named | Philocopo: | English by H. G[rantham] | Imprinted at Lon | don by A.J. and are | to be sold in Paules Church | yard, by Thomas | Woodcocke | 1587."
[226] The order of the production of these youthful works is extremely uncertain. I do not believe it possible to give their true order, because they were not necessarily begun and finished in the same sequence. We may be sure that the Filocolo is the first work he began: it seems almost equally certain that the Filostrato is the first of his long poems. That no work was completed in Naples I think equally certain; but it is possible that the Ameto, begun in Florence, was finished before any other book. The Filostrato was begun in Naples, but it s so much finer than the Filocolo or the Ameto, and is perhaps the finest work of his youth, that many critics have wished to place it later.