So Florence faced the enemy alone, and while we admire her courage we must admit that she had no choice, for she would never have moved at all, nor in her condition would she have been justified in moving, but that she was directly threatened; for with Bologna in the hands of Milan her northern trade routes were at the mercy of the enemy. Thus it became necessary before all else to secure the Apennine passes, and this she foresaw so well that in February, 1350, she bought Prato from the Queen of Naples, who held her rights by inheritance from her father, Charles of Calabria; and not content with this, for Prato was no use without Pistoia, she tried to seize Pistoia also. There, however, she was not wholly or at first successful, but she was allowed to garrison the citadel as well as two important fortified places after guaranteeing full freedom to the Pistolese. In the former of these transactions, the donation of Prato, carried out by Niccolò Acciaiuoli, we catch a glimpse of Boccaccio, who was present as a witness in Florence.[393]
Just before the sale of Bologna to the Visconti we find Boccaccio in Romagna at Ravenna, whither he had gone apparently in September, as we have seen,[394] on the delicate and honourable mission entrusted to him by the Society of Or San Michele, of presenting a gift of ten gold florins to the daughter of Dante, a nun in the convent of S. Stefano dell' Uliva in that city. Thence he seems to have gone as ambassador for the republic to Francesco degli Ordelaffi of Forlì, who was of course already known to him. This, however, is unfortunately but conjecture. We know in fact almost nothing of what, for reasons which will presently appear, I consider to have been Boccaccio's first embassy. All that we can assert is that before November 11, 1350, he went as ambassador into Romagna, and this we know from a document cited by the Abate Mehus,[395] bearing that date which says, "Dominus Johannes Boccacci olim ambasciator transmissus ad partes Romandioliæ."[396] Baldelli tells us[397] without supporting his assertions by a single document that Boccaccio went three times as ambassador for the republic into Romagna: first in the time of Ostasio da Polenta; later in October, 1350; and again a few months after. The first of these embassies, that to Ostasio, he bases on Petrarch's letter of 1365, which we have already quoted and used.[398] There Petrarch says: "Ortus est Adriæ in litore ea ferme ætate, nisi fallor, qua tu ibi agebas cum antiquo plagæ illius Domino ejus avo, qui nunc præsidet." That is to say, he says to Boccaccio: "Unless I am mistaken, you were on the shores of the Adriatic in the time of the grandfather of him who now rules there." He is speaking of Ravenna, not of Rimini, and quite apart from the fact that he says, "unless I am mistaken"—and he may have been mistaken—there is no mention there of an embassy, but only of a visit, a visit to Ostasio da Polenta, who died in 1346, and was the grandfather of Guido da Polenta, who ruled in Ravenna when that letter was written in 1365. We have already used this letter to prove the date of that visit, in doing which we are making legitimate use of it, but to try to prove an embassy from it is to use it improperly.
The second embassy, Baldelli tells us, was to Francesco degli Ordelaffi, in October, 1350, "after the sale of Bologna on the 14th of that month." This again is pure conjecture, the only document which supports it being that quoted above, discovered by Mehus. We have, however, reason to suppose that Baldelli may be right here,[399] and may possibly have been in possession of a document or documents since lost to us, which unfortunately he has not quoted or even named. We know at least that Boccaccio was ambassador in Romagna before November 11, 1350. Now until late in 1349 we have seen him in Naples, and in January and February, 1350, in Florence. In October, 1350, we know him to have been in Florence again, for he there entertained Petrarch, as he did in December. What was he doing between February and October in that year? Well, in September he was in Romagna, in Ravenna fulfilling his mission from the Or San Michele to the daughter of Dante. It seems likely, therefore, that it was at this time he was acting as Florentine ambassador at the court of the Ordelaffi of Forlì.
As to the third embassy of which Baldelli speaks, that to Bernardino da Polenta "a few months after" the second, we know nothing of it, and it remains absolutely in the air—a mere conjecture.[400]
Putting aside Baldelli's assertion, we may take it on the evidence as most probable that Boccaccio was the ambassador of Florence in Romagna at some time between March and October, 1350. If we are right in thinking so, his mission was of very great importance. What Florence feared, as we have seen, was the growing power of Milan, and, after the sale of Bologna, the loss of her trade routes north, and finally perhaps even her liberty. Already, in the latter part of 1349,[401] she had offered again and again to mediate between the Pope and Bologna and Romagna, fearing that in their distraction Milan would be tempted to interfere for her own ends. In the first months of 1350 she had written to the Pope, to Perugia, Siena, and to the Senate of Rome, that they should send ambassadors to the congress at Arezzo to form a confederation for their common protection.[402] In September she wrote the Pope more than once explaining affairs to him; but he had touched Visconti gold, and far away in Avignon cared nothing and paid but little heed. The sale of Bologna, however, brought things to a crisis so far as the policy of Florence was concerned, and having secured Prato, Pistoia, and the passes, her ambassadors in Romagna had apparently induced the Pepoli to replace Bologna under the protection of the communes of Florence, Siena, and Perugia, till the Papal army was ready to act. But the Papal army was not likely to be ready so long as Visconti was willing to pay,[403] and we find the Pope, while he thanks Florence effusively, refusing to acknowledge the claim of the League to protect Bologna. The sale of Bologna to Milan, its seizure by the Visconti, brought all the diplomacy of Florence to naught for the moment, and in another letter, written on November 9, 1350,[404] she returns once more to plead with the Pope and to point out to him the danger of the invasions of the Visconti in Lombardy and in Bologna, which placed in peril not only the Parte Guelfa, but the territories of the Church and the Florentine contado. By the time that letter was written Boccaccio was back in Florence, and it must have been evident to the Florentines that the Pope had no intention of giving them any assistance and that they must look elsewhere for an ally.
That year, so troubled in Italy, incongruous as it may seem to us, had been proclaimed by the Pope a year of Jubilee, not without some intention that the Papal coffers should benefit from the faithful, then eager to express their piety and their thankfulness for the passing of the plague. To gain the indulgence of the Jubilee it was necessary to spend fifteen days in Rome. On April 17, 1350, the commune of Florence prayed the Papal Legate, partly, no doubt, on account of the unsettled condition of the City, and partly, perhaps, that Florence itself might not be long without as many citizens as possible, to reduce the term of fifteen days to eight for all Florentines and for those who dwelt in the contado.[405]
THE STORY OF GRISELDA. (DEC. X, 10.)
ii. Her two children are taken from her, she is divorced, stripped, and sent back to her father's house. From the picture in the National Gallery by (?) Bernardino Fungai.
Now Petrarch, always a man of sincere piety, and especially at this time when he was mourning for Laura, had spent the earlier months of the year in Padua, Parma, and Verona. On February 14, the feast of S. Valentine, he had been present at the translation of the body of S. Anthony of Padua from its first resting-place to the church just built in its honour—Il Santo. On June 20 he had taken formal possession of his archdeaconry in Parma; and so it was not till the beginning of October that he set out, alone, on pilgrimage for Rome to win the indulgences of the Jubilee. As it happened, he travelled by way of Florence, entering that city for the first time about the middle of the month, and there, as is generally supposed, for the first time too, he met Boccaccio face to face.[406]
Petrarch, born in Arezzo on July 20, 1304, was nine years older than Boccaccio, and differed from him so much both in intellect and character that the two friends may almost be said to complement one another. Of a very noble nature, Petrarch was nevertheless introspective, jealous of his reputation, and absolutely personal in his attitude towards life, of which, as his work shows, he was in many ways so shy. Nor was he without a certain puritanism which was his weakness as well as his strength. As a scholar he was at this time, as he always remained, incomparably Boccaccio's superior. For Boccaccio the ancient world was a kind of wonder and miracle that had no relation to himself or to the modern world. But Petrarch regarded antiquity almost as we do, and, though necessarily without our knowledge of detail, such as it is, with a real historic sense—as a living thing with which it was possible, though hardly, to hold communion, by which it was possible to be guided, governed, and taught, a reality out of which the modern world was born. Moreover, in 1350, at the time of his meeting with Boccaccio, Petrarch was indubitably the most renowned poet and man of letters in Europe. Every one knew his sonnets, and his incoronation as Laureate on the Capitol had sufficed in the imagination of the world, quite apart from the intrinsic and very real value of his work, to set him above all other poets of his time. He was the Pope's friend, and was honoured and welcomed in every court in Italy—at the court, for instance, of King Robert of Naples, where he had left so splendid a memory on his way to the triumph of the Capitol, at the courts of the signorotti of the Romagna. The youth of Italy had his sonnets by heart; all women read with envy his praise of Madonna Laura; the learned reverenced him as the most learned man of his time and thought him the peer of Virgil and of Cicero. Nor was the Church behind in an admiration wherein all the world was agreed, for she saw in the lettered canonico the glory of the priesthood, and would gladly have led him forward to the highest honours.[407] It was this man, one of the most famous and as it happened one of the best of the age, that Boccaccio met in Florence in 1350.