MADONNA FRANCESCA AND HER LOVERS. (DEC. IX, I)
From a miniature in the French version of the "Decameron," made in 1414 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XIV.)
King Louis of Hungary, as we know, had not been many months in the Kingdom when he was forced to fly for his life, not by a mortal foe, but by the plague—the Black Death of 1348. It was brought to Italy by two Genoese galleys which had been trading in the East and had touched at Pisa. In April it had spread to Florence, a month later to Siena, before Midsummer all Italy was in its grip, and by the following year the greater part of Europe. No chronicler of the time in Italy but has more than enough to say of this "judgment of God"; and beside the wonderful description by Boccaccio in the introduction to the Decameron, there is scarcely a novelist who does not recount some tale or other concerning it.[352]
Perhaps Tuscany suffered most severely. "In our city of Florence," writes Matteo Villani,[353] for old Giovanni Villani perished in the pestilence—"in our city of Florence the plague became general in the beginning of April of the year 1348, and lasted till the beginning of September. And there died in the city, the contado, and the district, of both sexes and of all ages, three out of every five persons and more, for the poor suffered most, since it began with them who were utterly without aid, and more disposed by weakness to be attacked." Already Giovanni Villani had noted that in 1347 "there began in Florence and in the contado a sort of sickness which always follows famine and hunger, and this especially fell on women and children among the poor."[354] Giovanni Morelli[355] tells us that in Florence it was a common thing to see people laughing and talking together, and then in the same hour to see them dead. People fell down dead in the streets, and were left where they fell. "Many went mad and cast themselves into wells or out of windows into the Arno by reason of their great pain and horrible fear. Vast numbers died unnoticed in their houses, and were left to putrefy upon their beds. Many were buried before they were actually dead. Priests went bearing the cross to accompany a corpse to burial, and before they reached the church there were three or four biers following them. The grass grew in the streets. So completely were all obligations of blood and of affection forgotten, that men left their nearest and dearest to die alone rather than incur the danger of infection."[356] Nor was this all. Every sort of moral obligation was forgotten. Boccaccio more than hints at this, and we have evidence from many others. In the continual fear of death men and women often forgot everything but the present moment, which they were content to enjoy in each other's arms, even though they were strangers. Ah, poor souls! Amid the terror and loneliness of the summer, when the hot sunshine was more terrible than the darkness, which at least hid the shame, the disorder, and the visible horror, there was no lack of opportunities. All social barriers were gone, and rich and poor, bond and free, took what they might desire. It was the same in Siena; and if in Naples and the Romagna the deaths were less numerous, what are a few thousands when the lowest mortality was more than two in every five? People said the end of the world was come. In a sense they were right. It was the end of the Middle Age.
In Florence there perished among the rest Giovanni Villani, as I have said, and, as we may believe, Bice, the second wife of Boccaccino. In Naples it seems certain that Fiammetta died.
But where was Boccaccio during those dreadful five months of 1348? Was he with Fiammetta in Naples? Did he perhaps close her eyes and bear her to the grave? Or was he in Florence with his father, or in Forlì with the Ordelaffi? All we know is that he was not in Florence,[357] and it therefore seems certain that he was either in Naples, though we cannot say with Fiammetta, or in Forlì with Ordelaffo. Wherever he was, he did not escape the terrible sights that the plague brought in its train. He tells us of one of these which he himself had seen in the Introduction to the Decameron. On the whole, however, it seems likely that Boccaccio was in Naples at this time, and Baldelli even cites the letter to Franceschino de' Bardi, which he tells us bears the date of May 15, 1349,[358] and which was certainly written in Naples. Wherever he may have been, however, he was recalled to Florence by the death of his father, which befell not in the plague, for in July, 1348, he added a codicil to his Will,[359] but between that date and January, 1350, when, as Manni proved, Giovanni was appointed tutor to his brother Jacopo.[360]
In that year, 1350, Boccaccio was thirty-seven years old, and, save for his stepbrother Jacopo, he was now alone in the world. His father was dead, his stepbrother Francesco had long since been in the grave, and now Fiammetta also was departed. And those last ten years, which had robbed him of so much, of his youth also, had been among the most terrible that even Italy can ever have endured. He had seen Florence run with blood, and every sort of torture and horror stalk abroad in Naples. Rome, if he ventured there, can have appeared to him but little less than a shambles. Rienzi, with all that hope, had come and vanished like a ghost. The fairest province in Italy lay under the heel of a barbarian invader. And as though to add a necessary touch of irony to the tragedy that had passed before his eyes, he had taken refuge and found such peace as he enjoyed among the unruly and riotous signorotti and bandits of the Romagna, where properly peace was never found, but which amid the greater revolutions on the western side of the Apennines seemed perhaps peaceful enough. And then had come the pestilence, which cared nothing for right or wrong, innocent or guilty, young or old, bond or free, but slew all equally with an impartial and appalling cruelty that was like a vengeance—the vengeance of God, men said. In that vengeance, whether of God or of outraged nature, all that he loved or cared for had been lost to him. That he always loved his mother, dead so long ago, better than his father goes for nothing; that he loved his father as all men love him who has given them life is certain, he could not choose but love him. But in spite of the easy laugh, too like a sneer to be quite true or sincere, at the beginning of the Decameron, the wound he felt most nearly, that he never really forgot or quite forgave, was the death of Fiammetta, whom he had loved at first sight, with all the eagerness and fire of his youth, with all his heart, as we might say, ruthlessly keeping nothing back. From this time love meant nothing to him; there were other women doubtless in his life, mirages that almost lured him to despair or distraction, for he was always at the mercy of women; but the passion, if we may so call it, which henceforth fills his life is that of friendship—friendship for a great and a good man which, with all its comfort, left him still with that vain shadow, that emptiness in his heart—
"The grief which I have borne since she is dead."