Bitter with loneliness, imprisoned in the adamant of his personality, Dante, amid the rocks of the Casentino, hurled his curses on Florence, and not on Florence alone. Is there, I wonder, anything but hatred and abuse of the cities of his Fatherland in all his work? He has judged his country as God Himself will not judge it, and he kept his anger for ever. In the astonishing and disgraceful letters written in the spring of 1311 he urged Henry to attack his native city. Hailing this German king—and the Florentines would call him nothing else—as the "Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world," he asks him: "What may it profit thee to subdue Cremona? Brescia, Bergamo, and other cities will continue to revolt until thou hast extirpated the root of the evil. Art thou ignorant perhaps where the rank fox lurketh in hiding? The beast drinketh from the Arno, polluting the waters with its jaws. Knowest thou not that Florence is its name?..." Henry, however, took no heed as yet of that terrible voice crying in the wilderness. He entered Rome before attacking Florence, in May, 1312. He easily won the Capitol, but was fiercely opposed by King Robert when he tried to reach S. Peter's to win the imperial crown, and from Castel S. Angelo he was repulsed with heavy loss. The Roman people, however, presently took his part, and by threats and violence compelled the bishops to crown him in the Lateran on June 29.

If Rome greeted him, however, she was alone. Florence remained the head and front of the unbroken League. Those scelestissimi Florentini, as Dante calls them, still refused to hail him as anything but Enemy, German King and Tyrant. The fine political sagacity of Florence, which makes hers the only history worth reading among the cities of Central Italy, was never shown to better advantage or more fully justified in the event than when she dared to send her greatest son into exile and to proclaim his Emperor "German king" and "enemy." "Remember," she wrote to the people of Brescia, "that the safety of all Italy and all the Guelfs depends on your resistance. The Latins must always hold the Germans in enmity, seeing that they are opposed in act and deed, in manners and soul; not only is it impossible to serve, but even to hold any intercourse with that race."

At last the Emperor decided to follow Dante's advice and "slay the new Goliath." This was easier to talk of in the Casentino than to do. From mid-September to the end of October the Imperial army lay about the City of the Lily, never daring to attack. Then the Emperor raised the siege and set out for Poggibonsi, his health ruined by anxiety and hardship, and his army, as was always the case both before and since, broken and spoiled by the Italian summer. He spent the winter and spring between Poggibonsi and Pisa, then with some idea of retrieving all by invading Naples, he set off southward in August to meet his death on S. Bartholomew's Day, poisoned, as some say, at Buonconvento.

And Florence announced to her allies: "Jesus Christ hath procured the death of that most haughty tyrant Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the rebellious persecutors of the Church and the treacherous foes of ourselves and you call King of the Romans and Emperor."

In the very year of Henry's death, as we suppose, Boccaccio was born in Paris. The Middle Age had come to an end. The morning of the Renaissance had already broken on the world.


[CONTENTS]

PAGE
Preface[vii]
Introduction[xi]
CHAPTER
I.Boccaccio's Parentage, Birth, and Childhood[3]
II.His Arrival in Naples—His Years with the Merchant—His Abandonment of Trade and Entry on the Study of Canon Law[15]
III.His Meeting with Fiammetta and the Periods of their Love Story[27]
IV.The Years of Courtship—The Reward—The Betrayal—The Return To Florence[41]
V.Boccaccio's Early Works—The Filocolo—The Filostrato—The Teseide—The Ameto—The Fiammetta—The Ninfale Fiesolano[61]
VI.In Florence—His Father's Second Marriage—The Duke of Athens[96]
VII.In Naples—The Accession of Giovanna—The Murder of Andrew of Hungary—The Vengeance[108]
VIII.In Romagna—The Plague—The Death of Fiammetta[119]
IX.The Rime—The Sonnets To Fiammetta[130]
X.Boccaccio as Ambassador—The Meeting with Petrarch[145]
XI.Two Embassies[162]
XII.Boccaccio's Attitude to Woman—The Corbaccio[170]
XIII.Leon Pilatus and the Translation of Homer—The Conversion of Boccaccio[189]
XIV.The Embassies to the Pope—Visits to Venice and Naples—Boccaccio's Love of Children[207]
XV.Petrarch and Boccaccio—The Latin Works[223]
XVI.Dante and Boccaccio—The Vita—and the Comento[249]
XVII.Illness and Death[279]
XVIII.The Decameron[291]
APPENDICES
I.The Dates of Boccaccio's Arrival in Naples and of his Meeting with Fiammetta[319]
II.Document of the Sale of "Corbignano" (called now "Casa di Boccaccio") by Boccaccio in 1336[325]
III.From "La Villeggiatura di Maiano," a MS. by Ruberto Gherardi; a Copy of which is in Possession of Mrs. Ross, of Poggio Gherardo, near Settignano, Florence[335]
IV.The Acrostic of the Amorosa Visione dedicating the Poem to Fiammetta[348]
V.The Will of Giovanni Boccaccio[350]
VI.English Works on Boccaccio[355]
VII.Boccaccio and Chaucer and Shakespeare[360]
VIII.Synopsis of the Decameron, together with some Works to be consulted[367]
IX.An Index to the Decameron[394]
Index[409]