[288] Decam., Gior. i, nov. 2. [↑]
[290] Dr. Marcus Landau, Die Quellen des Dekameron, 2te Aufl. 1884, p. 182. [↑]
[291] The story is recorded to have been current among the Motecallemîn—a party kindred to the Motazilites—in Bagdad. Renan, Averroès, p. 293, citing Dozy. Renan thinks it may have been of Jewish origin. Id. p. 294, note. [↑]
[292] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 207–208. [↑]
[293] It is found some time before Boccaccio in the Cento Novelle antiche (No. 72 or 73) in a simpler form; but Landau (p. 183) thinks Boccaccio’s immediate source was the version of Busone da Gubbio (b. 1280), who had improved on the version in the Cento Novelle, while Boccaccio in turn improved on him by treating the Jew more tolerantly. Bartoli (I Precursori del Boccaccio, 1876, pp. 26–28) disputes any immediate debt to Busone; as does Owen, Skeptics of the Ital. Renais., p. 29, note. [↑]
[294] Burckhardt (Renaissance in Italy, p. 493, note) points out that Boccaccio is the first to name the Christian religion, his Italian predecessors avoiding the idea; and that in one eastern version the story is used polemically against the Christians. [↑]
[295] Owen, p. 142, and refs. [↑]
[296] Id. pp. 143–45. He was even so far terrorized by the menaces of a monk (who appeared to him to have occult knowledge of some of his secrets) as to propose to give up his classical studies; and would have done so but for Petrarch’s dissuasion. Petrarch’s letter (Epist. Senil., i, 5) is translated (Lett. xii) by M. Develay, Lettres de Péttrarque à Boccace. [↑]
[297] Gasquet, The Great Pestilence, 1893, pp. 28, 32, 37, and refs. [↑]