And all these things befell in Florence while Giovanni Boccaccio was writing in the popolo di S. Felicità and in the popolo di S. Ambrogio in the years 1341, 1342, and 1343. In 1344, as we may believe, Boccaccio returned to Naples.
[CHAPTER VII]
1344-1346
IN NAPLES—THE ACCESSION OF GIOVANNA—THE MURDER OF ANDREW OF HUNGARY—THE VENGEANCE
Those three years of tumult in Florence cannot but have made a profound impression on a man like Boccaccio. "Florence is full of boastful voices and cowardly deeds," he writes in the Fiammetta, while his account of the Duke in the De Casibus Virorum Illustrium tells us clearly enough what he thought of that business. Was it the public confusion in Florence that sent him back to Naples in 1344 or 1345,[322] on an invitation from Niccolò Acciaiuolo, or just a hope of seeing once more Madonna Fiammetta, whom, as we have seen, even amid the dreadful excitement of those three years, he had never been able really to forget for a moment? We shall never know; but if it were any expectation of peace or hope of finding in that far city the old splendour and gaiety he had once enjoyed there, he must indeed have been disappointed. Already, before he returned to Florence in 1341, the rule of King Robert, who was then in his last years, had weakened; and factions were already forming which, when the wise king passed away, were not slow to divide the city against itself. No doubt the splendid reception offered to Petrarch, the gaiety of all that, served to hide the dangerous condition of affairs, which was not rendered less insecure by the fact that King Robert's heir was a girl still in her first youth, Giovanna the beautiful, daughter of Charles of Calabria.
"Giovanna Regina
Grassa nè magra, bella el viso tondo
Dotata bene de la virtù divina