[682] Cf. Biagi, La Rassettatura del Decamerone in Aneddoti Letterari (Milan, 1887), p. 262 et seq., and Foscolo, Disc. sul testo del D. in Opere (Firenze, 1850), III. The facts seem quite clear about the action of the Church with regard to the Decameron. It was condemned by the Council of Trent. The earliest edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in which I have found it, is that published in Rome in 1559. Since then it has figured in every Roman edition of the Index (as far as I have tested them), the entry against it being "Donec expurg. Ind. Trent," which means, "Until expurgated, indexed by the Council of Trent." It appears to have remained thus provisionally condemned and prohibited until the last years of the nineteenth century. I find it still in the Index of 1881; but it no longer figures in that of 1900. The amusing point is that the Church does not seem to have minded the licentiousness of the tales as such; but to have objected to them being told of Monks, Friars, Nuns, and the Clergy, in regard to whom, as we have seen, they were merely the truth. Editions with a clerical "imprimatur" have been always published where laymen have been substituted for these. For instance, the edition printed in Florence, 1587, "con permissione de' superiori," etc., substitutes the avarice of magistrates for the hypocrisy of the clergy in Dec., I, 6.
[683] Cf. Biagi, Il Decameron giudicato da un contemporaneo in op. cit., p. 377 et seq.
[684] Cf. Hauvette, Della parentela esistente fra il MS. berlinese del Dec. e il codice Mannelli in Giorn. St. d. Lett. It. (1895), XXXI, p. 162 et seq.
[685] In Sylvia, Alfred de Musset says very happily, "La Fontaine a ri dans Boccace où Shakespeare fondait en pleurs."
[686] In his Cimon, Sigismonda, and Theodore he used Nov. v. 1, iv. 1, and v. 8 respectively.
[687] In his Isabella (iv. 5).
[688] In his Falcon (v. 9) and Golden Supper (x. 4).
[689] Nevertheless I think it probable that the reason the Decameron had, as a work of art, so little influence on our prose literature may have been the publication of King James's Bible in 1611, nine years before the complete translation of the Decameron (1620).
[690] On the other hand, though Chaucer was considerably in Boccaccio's debt, he never mentions his name, but, as we know, he speaks of Dante and Petrarch.
[691] Cf. Kuhns, Dante and the English Poets (New York, 1904), and Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature (Methuen, 1909).