Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

by Edward Hutton

[CHAPTER VIII]

1346-1350

IN ROMAGNA—THE PLAGUE—THE DEATH OF FIAMMETTA

The few notices we have of Boccaccio's life at this time are almost entirely mere hints which enable us to assert that in such a year he was in such a place: they in no way help us to discover why he was there or what he was doing. Thus we are able to affirm that probably between 1344 and 1346, certainly in 1345, he was in Naples, but why he went there, unless it were for the sake of Fiammetta, we cannot suggest, for if Florence was a shambles, so was Naples. In much the same way we know that he was in Ravenna with Ostasio da Polenta not later than 1346; for in a letter Petrarch wrote him in 1365 he reminds him that he was in Ravenna "in the time of the grandfather of him who now rules there."[334] But why Boccaccio went to Ravenna, unless it were that, finding Naples too hot to hold him and Florence impossible, he took refuge with some relations he had there, or with the Polenta who had befriended Dante, we do not know. Nor do we know what he did there. It may be that during his stay in Naples he had already begun to think of writing a life of Dante; and hearing that the great poet had left a daughter Beatrice in Ravenna he set out to see her. This, however, is but the merest conjecture. Baldelli,[335] indeed, thinks that Boccaccio was at this time in Romagna as ambassador for Florence. For Ravenna was not the only place he visited about this time. If we may believe the third Eclogue, he was also the guest of Francesco degli Ordelaffi, the great enemy of the Church in Romagna and of King Robert the Wise.[336]

In the third Eclogue Palemone reproves Pamfilo for idly reposing in his cave while all around the woods ring with the cries of Testili infuriated against Fauno. Now Fauno, as Boccaccio tells us in his letter to Frate Martino da Signa,[337] where he explains some of the disguises of the Eclogues, is Francesco degli Ordelaffi, and Testili, although Boccaccio does not say so, is without doubt the Church, which had in fact no greater enemy in all Romagna than Ordelaffo, the usurper, if you will, of the ecclesiastical dominion, who held in contempt the many excommunications launched against him, replying always by an attack on some bishop, and by making continual war on the legates sent against him.[338]

Those cries, and the anger which causes them, fill the first part of the Eclogue. In the second part, it is clearly recounted how King Louis of Hungary came down into Italy to avenge the murder of his brother Andrew. Argo, the head shepherd worthy to be praised by all, has perforce abandoned the sheep.[339] Argo is Robert King of Naples,[340] wise as King Solomon, who follows the Muses. Alexis is Andrew of Hungary and Naples, who, made free of the woods by Argo, being careless and without caution, has been assailed by a she-wolf, pregnant and enraged, that is by Queen Giovanna; for here, at any rate, Boccaccio eagerly sides with the rabble and accepts the guilt of the Queen as fact. They say, he adds, that the woods held many cruel wild beasts and lions, and that Alexis met the death of Adonis. Now Tityrus, that is King Louis of Hungary, the brother of the dead Alexis, heard of this beyond Ister or the Danube, and set forth with innumerable hunters to punish the wolf and the lions.[341] And many Italians joined with Tityrus, says Boccaccio; among them was Faunus, although Testili threatened him and cursed him sore.[342]

What this means is obvious. The Pope, dismayed by the descent of King Louis into Italy,[343] having tried unsuccessfully in a thousand ways to turn him from his purpose, hindered him as best he could when he had once set out. The Vicar in Romagna, Astorgio di Duraforte, was ordered not to allow him to enter any city; a papal legate met him at Foligno, forbidding him on pain of excommunication to enter the Kingdom. In spite of the papal prohibition the signorotti of Romagna gladly entertained the king. Francesco Ordelaffi above all, as Villani tells us,[344] "bade him welcome, and went out to meet him in the contado of Bologna with two hundred horse and a thousand foot, all under arms. On December 13 he received him in Forlì with the greatest honour, furnishing his needs and those of all his people. And there they sojourned three days with much feasting and dancing of men and women, and the king made knights of the lord of Forlì and of his two sons."

This, however, did not content Ordelaffo, for with three hundred of his best horse he followed King Louis to help him in his undertaking on December 17, 1347.[345] Now Ordelaffo was not only a lover of the chase and of war, but in his way a humanist also, who, like Sigismondo Malatesta later, surrounded himself with poets and men of letters. Among his friends and counsellors was that Cecco da Meleto who was the friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio.[346] He was a great admirer of Petrarch, and merited the title Boccaccio gave him in that letter to Zanobi: Pieridum hospes gratissimus.

If that letter is authentic,[347] then Boccaccio not only met King Louis of Hungary[348] at Forlì, but accompanied him and Francesco degli Ordelaffi into the Kingdom in the end of the year 1347 and the beginning of 1348.[349] His sentiments with regard to the murder and the war which followed it are clearly expressed there. He speaks of the King's arms as "arma justissima," and though it surprises us to find Boccaccio on that side, the letter only states clearly the sentiments already set down in allegory in the third and eighth Eclogues, and clearly but more discreetly stated in the De Casibus Virorum. In the fourth Eclogue, however, he commiserates the unhappy fate of Louis of Taranto, and hymns his return. Can it be that, at first persuaded of the Queen's guilt, he learned better later? We do not know. The whole affair of the murder, as of Boccaccio's actions at this time and of his sentiments with regard to it, are mysterious. If in the third and eighth Eclogues he tells us that Giovanna and Louis of Taranto were the real murderers of Andrew and wishes success to the arms of the avenger; in the fourth, fifth, and sixth Eclogues he sympathises with Louis and tells of the misery of the Kingdom after the descent of the Hungarians, and at last joyfully celebrates the return of Giovanna and her husband.[350] And this contradiction is emphasised by his actions. So far as we may follow him at all in these years, we see him in Naples horrified and disgusted at the state of affairs, leaving the city after the torture and death of the Catanesi and repairing to the courts of the Polenta and of the Ordelaffi, the enemies of the Church which held Giovanna innocent, and of the champions of the Church, Robert and Naples. Nor does he stop there, but apparently follows Ordelaffo in his descent with King Louis on Naples in the end of 1347 and the beginning of 1348. Yet in 1350 he was in Naples, and in 1352 he was celebrating the return of those against whom he had sided and written. The contradiction is evident, and we cannot explain it; but in a manner it gives us the reason why, when Frate Martino da Segna asked for an explanation and key to the Eclogues, he supplied him with one so meagre and imperfect.[351]