[403] "The luxury, vice, and iniquity of Avignon during the Papal residence became proverbial throughout Europe; and the corruption of the Church was most clearly visible in the immediate neighbourhood of its princely head. Luxury and vice, however, are costly, and during the Pope's absence from Italy the Papal States were in confusion and yielded scanty revenues. Money had to be raised from ecclesiastical property throughout Europe, and the Popes in Avignon carried extortion and oppression of the Church to an extent it had never reached before." (Creighton, History of the Papacy, Vol. I, p. 51.)
[404] Letter of November, 1350, in Arch., cit., u.s., p. 378.
[405] Arch. Stor. It., u.s., p. 376.
[406] It seems certain that they had been in correspondence for some years, perhaps for more than fifteen. In the letter to Boccaccio of January 7, 1351, Petrarch speaks of a poem that Boccaccio had long since sent him (? 1349) (Famil., XI, 1); while in the letter to Franceschino da Brossano, written after Petrarch's death in 1374, Boccaccio says "I was his for forty years or more" (Corazzini, op. cit., p. 382). This would seem to mean he had loved his work for so long, and brings us to 1341-4. It still seems to me just doubtful whether this meeting in Florence in 1350 was their first encounter. As I have said, Petrarch came to Florence in October; by November 2 he was in Rome, whence he wrote Boccaccio on that date an account of his journey. Now as we shall presently see, in a letter written much later (Epist. Fam., XXI, 15), he distinctly says that he first met Boccaccio, who had come to meet him when he was hurrying across Central Italy in midwinter. No one, least of all an Italian and a somewhat scrupulous scholar, would call October 15 midwinter. Perhaps then it will be said that he met him on his return from Rome in December. But already in November he is writing to Boccaccio—we have the letter—in the most familiar and affectionate terms. Can it be that they met after all (see supra, pp. 60 and 111) in 1341 or perhaps in 1343? The problem seems insoluble on our present information.
[407] Cf. Hortis, op. cit., pp. 509-10.
[408] I have already shown (supra, [p. 153, n. 2]) that it is possible to doubt whether the meeting in Florence was their first meeting. It is, however, generally accepted as the first by modern scholars. Cf. Landau and Antona Traversi.
[409] Cf. Epistol. Famil., Lib. XXI, 15.
[410] See Æneid, VIII, 162 et seq.
[411] Horace, Epistolæ, Lib. I, 14.
[412] Epistol. Famil., Lib. XI, 1.