[CHAPTER X]
1350-1351
BOCCACCIO AS AMBASSADOR—THE MEETING WITH PETRARCH
As we have seen, Boccaccio returned to Florence probably in the end of 1349. His father, who was certainly living in July, 1348, for he then added a codicil to his Will,[387] seems still to have been alive in May, 1349,[388] but by January, 1350, he is spoken of as dead and Giovanni is named as one of his heirs.[389] And in the same month of January, 1350, on the 26th of the month, Boccaccio was appointed guardian of his brother Jacopo,[390] then still a child. But these were not the only duties which fell to him in that year, which, as it proved, was to mark a new departure in his life. It is in 1350 that we find him, for the first time as we may think, acting as ambassador for the Florentine Republic, and it is in 1350 that he first met Petrarch face to face and entertained him in his house in Florence.
The condition of Italy at this time was, as may be easily understood, absolutely anarchical. While Florence and Naples were still in the throes of revolution and war, the Visconti of Milan had not been idle. Using every discontent that could be found in Italy, chiefly of Ghibelline origin, they were in the way to threaten whatsoever was left of liberty and independence. In the worst of this confusion the plague had suddenly appeared in 1348 with the same result as an earthquake might have caused. Old landmarks were overthrown, wealth was, as it were, redistributed, and the whole social condition, often bad enough, became indescribably confused.
THE STORY OF GRISELDA. (DEC. X, 10.)
i. The Marquis of Saluzzo, while out hunting, meets with Griselda, a peasant girl, and falls in love; he clothes her in fine things. From the picture in the National Gallery by (?) Bernardino Fungai.
The economical results of that awful catastrophe, not only for Italy, but for Europe, were not easily defined or realised anywhere, and least of all perhaps in Italy, where the conditions of life were so complex. An enormous displacement of riches had taken place. All those in any way concerned with the ministration to the sick or the burial of the dead were, if they survived, greatly enriched; and among these was such a society as that of the Or San Michele. But individuals also found themselves suddenly wealthy: doctors and druggists, undertakers, drapers, and poulterers, and such, all who had been able to render help were seemingly benefited, but the farmers and the merchants were ruined. Something perhaps of the awful transformation brought about by the plague may berealised when we consider that, according to Boccaccio, Florence lost three out of every five[391] of her inhabitants, that is about 100,000 persons, that at Pisa six out of every seven died, that Genoa lost 40,000 people, Siena 80,000, while every one died at Trapani, in Sicily, not a soul escaping. Old Agnola de Tura, the Sienese historian, tells us that he buried five of his sons in the same grave, and this was not extraordinary. The economic result of such disaster may then be better imagined than described in detail. No one realised what had happened: it was inconceivable. Even the governments did not understand the new position. They saw the needy suddenly rich, those who had been clothed in rags went in silks and French fashions, and they came to the conclusion that the state was suffering from too great wealth: they revived sumptuary laws, raised taxes, fixed prices, and did, in fact, no good, but much harm. The problem to be solved was that of population and the prices of production. The moral condition was as disastrous as the economic and left a more lasting scar.
In this helpless and disastrous condition of the major part of Italy, from which indeed some of the communes never wholly recovered,[392] we find what in fact we might have expected, that those who had suffered least threatened to become dominant. Now, as it happened, of all Italy upper and lower Milan had escaped most easily, and it was in fact a domination of Milan that, with Naples in the grip of the invader and Tuscany almost depopulated, Florence had to face.
Things came to a head when the Visconti, in October, 1350, possessed themselves of Bologna. In such a case Florence might have expected help or at least resentment, one might think, from the Romagna, but the unruly barons of that region were fighting for their lives and their lordships with Duraforte, whom the Pope had sent to bring them to order. Nor were Venice and Genoa able to render her aid, for they had entered on a mortal duel and cared for nothing else. Naples of course was helpless, and Siena and Perugia, the one stricken almost to death by the plague, the other confident in her mountain passes, thought themselves too far for the ambition of Milan.