TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Modern practice in Italian texts contracts (removes the space from) vowel elisions, for example l'anno not l' anno, ch'io not ch' io. This book, in common with some similar English books of the time, has a space in these elisions in the original text. This space has been retained in the etext. The only exceptions, in both the text and etext, are in French names and phrases, such as d'Aquino and d'Anjou.

More details can be found at the [end of the book].

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FREDERIC UVEDALE. A Romance. 1901.

STUDIES IN THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. 1902.

ITALY AND THE ITALIANS. Second Edition. 1902.

THE CITIES OF UMBRIA. Third Edition. 1905.

THE CITIES OF SPAIN. Third Edition. 1906.

SIGISMONDO MALATESTA. 1906.

FLORENCE AND NORTHERN TUSCANY. Second Edition. 1907.

COUNTRY WALKS ABOUT FLORENCE. 1908.

IN UNKNOWN TUSCANY. 1909.

EDITED BY EDWARD HUTTON

MEMOIRS OF THE DUKES OF URBINO.
By James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and Literature of Italy, from 1440 to 1630. New Edition, with upwards of 100 Illustrations. 3 vols. Demy 8vo. 1908.

CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE'S A NEW HISTORY OF PAINTING IN ITALY.
3 vols. 8vo. 1908-9.

Traditional Portraits of Boccaccio & Fiammetta (Maria d'Aquino)

From the Frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of S. Maria Novella, Florence.

GIOVANNI

BOCCACCIO

A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
BY EDWARD HUTTON

WITH PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE
& NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

But if the love that hath and still doth burn me

No love at length return me,

Out of my thoughts I'll set her:

Heart let her go, O heart I pray thee let her!

Say shall she go?

O no, no, no, no, no!

Fix'd in the heart, how can the heart forget her.

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX

PLYMOUTH: WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS

TO MY FRIEND
J. L. GARVIN
THIS STUDY OF AN HEROIC LIFE

[PREFACE]

It might seem proper, in England at least, to preface any book dealing frankly with the author of the Decameron with an apology for, and perhaps a defence of, its subject. I shall do nothing of the kind. Indeed, this is not the place, if any be, to undertake the defence of Boccaccio. His life, the facts of his life, his love, his humanity, and his labours, plentifully set forth in this work, will defend him with the simple of heart more eloquently than I could hope to do. And it might seem that one who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who gave Homer back to us, who founded or certainly fixed Italian prose, who was the friend of Petrarch, the passionate defender of Dante, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge, should need no defence anywhere from any one.

This book, on which I have been at work from time to time for some years, is the result of an endeavour to set out quite frankly and in order all that may be known of Boccaccio, his life, his love for Fiammetta, and his work, so splendid in the Tuscan, the fruit of such an enthusiastic and heroic labour in the Latin. It is an attempt at a biographical and critical study of one of the greatest creative writers of Europe, of one of the earliest humanists, in which, for the first time, in England certainly, all the facts are placed before the reader, and the sources and authority for these facts quoted, cited, and named. Yet while I have tried to be as scrupulous as possible in this respect, I hope the book will be read too by those for whom notes have no attraction; for it was written first for delight.

Among other things I have dealt with, the reader will find a study of Boccaccio's attitude to Woman, and in some sort this may be said to be the true subject of the book.

I have dealt too with Boccaccio's relation to both Dante and Petrarch; and it was my intention to have written a chapter on Boccaccio and Chaucer, but interesting as that subject is—and one of the greatest desiderata in the study of Chaucer—a chapter in a long book seemed too small for it; and again, it belongs rather to a book on Chaucer than to one about Boccaccio. I have left it, then, for another opportunity, or for another and a better student than myself.

In regard to the illustrations, I may say that I hoped to make them, as it were, a chapter on Boccaccio and his work in relation to the fine arts; but I found at last that it would be impossible to carry this out. To begin with, I was unable to get permission to reproduce M. Spiridon's and Mr. V. Watney's panels by Alunno di Domenico[1] illustrating the story of Nastagio degli Onesti (Decameron, V, 8), which are perhaps the most beautiful paintings ever made in illustration of one of Boccaccio's tales. In the second place, the subject was too big to treat of in the space at my command. I wish now that I had dealt only with the Decameron; but in spite of a certain want of completeness, the examples I have been able to reproduce will give the reader a very good idea of the large and exquisite mass of material of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries in Italy, France, Germany, and even in England which in its relation to Boccaccio has still to be dealt with. Nothing on this subject has yet been published, though something of the sort with regard to Petrarch has been attempted. Beyond the early part of the seventeenth century I have not sought to go, but an examination of the work of the eighteenth century in France at any rate should repay the student in this untouched field.

I have to thank a host of people who in many and various ways have given me their assistance in the writing of this book. It has been a labour of love for them as for me, and let us hope that Boccaccio "in the third heaven with his own Fiammetta" is as grateful for their kindness as I am.

Especially I wish to thank Mrs. Ross, of Poggio Gherardo, Mr. A. E. Benn, of Villa Ciliegio, Professor Guido Biagi, of Florence, Mr. Edmund Gardner, Professor Henri Hauvette, of Paris, Mr. William Heywood, Dr. Paget Toynbee, and Mr. Charles Whibley. And I must also express my gratitude to Messrs. J. and J. Leighton, of Brewer Street, London, W., for so kindly placing at my disposal many of the blocks which will be found in these pages.

EDWARD HUTTON.

Casa di Boccaccio,
Corbignano,
September, 1909.

[INTRODUCTION]

Of the three great writers who open the literature of the modern world, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, it is perhaps the last who has the greatest significance in the history of culture, of civilisation. Without the profound mysticism of Dante or the extraordinary sweetness and perfection of Petrarch, he was more complete than either of them, full at once of laughter and humility and love—that humanism which in him alone in his day was really a part of life. For him the centre of things was not to be found in the next world but in this. To the Divine Comedy he seems to oppose the Human Comedy, the Decameron, in which he not only created for Italy a classic prose, but gave the world an ever-living book full of men and women and the courtesy, generosity, and humanity of life, which was to be one of the greater literary influences in Europe during some three hundred years.

In England certainly, and indeed almost everywhere to-day, the name of Boccaccio stands for this book, the Decameron. Yet the volumes he wrote during a laborious and really uneventful life are very numerous both in verse and prose, in Latin and in Tuscan. He began to write before he was twenty years old, and he scarcely stayed his hand till he lay dying alone in Certaldo in 1375. That the Decameron, his greatest and most various work, should be that by which he is most widely known, is not remarkable; it is strange, however, that of all his works it should be the only one that is quite impersonal. His earlier romances are without exception romans à clef; under a transparent veil of allegory he tells us eagerly, even passionately, of himself, his love, his sufferings, his agony and delight. He too has confessed himself with the same intensity as St. Augustine; but we refuse to hear him. Over and over again he tells his story. One may follow it exactly from point to point, divide it into periods, name the beginning and the ending of his love, his enthusiasms, his youth and ripeness; yet we mark him not, but perhaps wisely reach down the Decameron from our shelves and silence him with his own words; for in the Decameron he is almost as completely hidden from us as is Shakespeare in his plays. And yet for all this, there is a profound unity in his work, which, if we can but see it, makes of all his books just the acts of a drama, the drama of his life. The Decameron is already to be found in essence in the Filocolo, as is the bitter melancholy of the Corbaccio, its mad folly too, and the sweetness of the songs. For the truth about Boccaccio can be summed up in one statement almost, he was a poet before all things, not only because he could express himself in perfect verse, nor even because of the grace and beauty of all his writing, his gifts of sentiment and sensibility, but because he is an interpreter of nature and of man, who knows that poetry is holy and sacred, and that one must accept it thankfully in fear and humility.

He was the most human writer the Renaissance produced in Italy; and since his life was so full and eager in its desire for knowledge, it is strange that nothing of any serious account has been written concerning him in English,[2] and this is even unaccountable when we remember how eagerly many among our greater poets have been his debtors. Though for no other cause yet for this it will be well to try here with what success the allegory of his life may be solved, the facts set in order, and the significance of his work expressed.

But no study of Boccaccio can be successful, or in any sense complete, without a glance at the period which produced him, and especially at those eight-and-forty years so confused in Italy, and not in Italy alone, which lie between the death of Frederic II and the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Henry VII and the birth of Boccaccio in 1313. This period, not less significant in the general history of Italy than in the history of her literature, begins with the fall of the Empire, its failure, that is, as the sum or at least the head, of Christendom; it includes the fall of the medieval Papacy in 1303 and the abandonment of the Eternal City, the exile of the Popes. These were years of immense disaster in which we see the passing of a whole civilisation and the birth of the modern world.

The Papacy had destroyed the Empire but had failed to establish itself in its place. It threatened a new tyranny, but already weapons were being forged to combat it, and little by little the Papal view of the world, of government, was to be met by an appeal to history, to the criticism of history, and to those political principles which were to be the result of that criticism. In this work both Petrarch and Boccaccio bear a noble part.

If we turn to the history of Florence we shall find that the last thirty-five years of the thirteenth century had been, perhaps, the happiest in her history. From the triumph of the Guelfs at Benevento to the quarrel of Neri and Bianchi she was at least at peace with herself, while in her relations with her sister cities she became the greatest power in Tuscany. Art and Poetry flourished within her walls. Dante, Cavalcanti, Giotto, the Pisani, and Arnolfo di Cambio were busy with their work, and the great churches we know so well, the beautiful palaces of the officers of the Republic were then built with pride and enthusiasm. In 1289, the last sparks, as it was thought, of Tuscan Ghibellinism had been stamped out at Campaldino. There followed the old quarrel and Dante's exile.

The Ghibellines were no more, but the Grandi, those Guelf magnates who had done so well at Campaldino, hating the burgher rule as bitterly as the old nobility had done, began to exert themselves. In the very year of the great battle we find that the peasants of the contrada were enfranchised to combat them. In 1293 the famous Ordinances of Justice which excluded them from office were passed, and the Gonfaloniere was appointed to enforce these laws against them. A temporary alliance of burghers and Grandi in 1295 drove Giano della Bella, the hero of these reforms, into exile, and the government remained in the hands of the Grandi. That year saw Dante's entrance into public life.

The quarrel thus begun came to crisis in 1300, the famous year of the jubilee, when Boniface VIII seemed to hold the whole world in his hands. The dissensions in Florence had not been lost upon the Pope, who, apparently hoping to repress the Republic altogether and win the obedience of the city, intrigued with the Neri, those among the magnates who, unlike their fellows of the Bianchi faction, among whom Dante is the most conspicuous figure, refused to admit the Ordinances of Justice, even in their revised form, and wished for the tyrannical rule of the old Parte Guelfa. Already, as was well known, the Pope was pressing Albert of Austria for a renunciation of the Imperial claim over Tuscany in favour of the Holy See; and Florence, finally distracted now by the quarrels of Neri and Bianchi, seemed to be in imminent danger of losing her liberty. It became necessary to redress the balance of power, destroyed at Benevento, by an attempt to recreate the Empire. This was the real work of the Bianchi—their solution of the greatest question of their time. The actual solution was to come, however, from their opponents: not from the leaders of the Neri it is true, but from the people themselves. These leaders were but tyrants in disguise: they served any cause to establish their own lordship. Corso Donati, for instance, the head and front of the Neri, was of an old Ghibelline stock, yet he trafficked with the Pope, not for the Church, we may be sure, nor to give Florence to the Holy See, but that he might himself rule the city. Nor did the Pope disdain to use him. Alarmed even in Rome by the republican sentiments of the populace, who wished to rule themselves even as the Florentines, he desired above all things to bring Florence into his power. On May 15, 1300, the Pope despatched a letter to the Bishop of Florence, in which he asked: "Is not the Pontiff supreme lord over all, and particularly over Florence, which for especial reasons is bound to be subject to him? Do not emperors and kings of the Romans yield submission to us, yet are they not superior to Florence? During the vacancy of the Imperial throne, did not the Holy See appoint King Charles of Anjou Vicar-General of Tuscany?" Thus as Villari says, "in a rising crescendo," he threatened the Florentines that he would "not only launch his interdict and excommunication against them, but inflict the utmost injury on their citizens and merchants, cause their property to be pillaged and confiscated in all parts of the world, and release all their debtors from the duty of payment." The Neri, fearing the people might, with that impudent claim before them, side with the Bianchi, induced the Pope to send the Cardinal of Acquasparta to arrange a pacification. But though the city gave him many promises, she would not invest him with the Balia.

Meanwhile the Pope, set on the subjection of Florence, without counting the cost, urged Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip IV of France, to march into Tuscany. Nor was Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, less eager to have his aid against the Sicilians. Joined by the exiles in November, 1301, he entered Florence with some 1200 horse, part French, part Italian. His mission was to crush the Bianchi and the people, and to uplift the Neri. He came at the request of the Pope, and, so far as he himself was interested, for booty; yet he swore in S. Maria Novella to keep the peace. On that same day, November 5, Corso Donati entered the city with an armed force. The French joined in the riot, the Priors were driven from their new palace, and the city sacked by the soldiers with the help of the Neri. The Pope had succeeded in substituting black for white, that was all. A new "peace-maker" failed altogether. The proscription, already begun, continued, and before January 27, 1302, Dante went into exile.

But if the Pope had failed to do more than establish the Neri in the government of Florence, Corso Donati had failed also; he had not won the lordship of the city. He tried again, splitting the Neri into two factions, and Florence was not to possess herself in peace till his death in a last attempt in 1308. It was during these years so full of disaster that Petrarch was born at Arezzo on July 20, 1304.

The medieval idea of the Papacy has been expressed once and for all by S. Thomas Aquinas. In his mind so profoundly theological, abhorring variety, the world was to be governed, if at all, by a constitutional monarchy, strong enough to enforce order, but not to establish a tyranny. The first object of every Christian society, the salvation of the soul, was to be achieved by the priest under the absolute rule of the Pope. Under the old dispensation, as he admitted, the priest had been subject to the king, but under the new dispensation the king was subject to the priest in matters touching the law of Christ. Thus if the king were careless of religion or schismatic or heretical, the Church might deprive him of his power and by excommunication release his subjects from their allegiance. This supreme authority is vested in the Pope, who is infallible, and from whom there can be no appeal at any time as to what is to be believed or what condemned.

Before these claims the Empire had fallen in 1266; but a reaction, the result of the success of Boniface, soon set in, and we find the most perfect expression of the revived and reformed claims of the Empire in the De Monarchia, which Dante Alighieri wrote in exile. Dante's Empire was by no means merely a revival of what the Imperial idea had become in its conflicts with the Holy See. It was nevertheless as hopeless an anachronism as the dream of S. Thomas Aquinas, and even less clairvoyant of the future, for it disregarded altogether the spirit to which the future belonged, the spirit of nationalism. With a mind as theological as S. Thomas's, Dante hated variety not less than he, and rather than tolerate the confusion of the innumerable cities and communes into which Italy was divided, where there was life, he would have thrust the world back into Feudalism and the Middle Age from which it was already emerging, he would have established over all Italy a German king. He was dreaming of the Roman Empire. The end for which we must strive, he would seem to say in the De Monarchia, that epitaph of the Empire, is unity; let that be granted. And since that is the end of all society, how shall we obtain it but by obedience to one head—the Emperor. And this Empire—so easy is it to mistake the past for the future—belongs of right to the Roman people who won it long ago. And what they won Christ sanctioned, for He was born within its confines. And yet again He recognised it, for He received at the hands of a Roman judge the sentence under which He bore our sorrows. Nor does the Empire derive from the Pope or through the Pope, but from God immediately; for the foundation of the Church is Christ, but the Empire was before the Church. Yet let Cæsar be reverent to Peter, as the first-born should be reverent to his father.

So much for the philosophical defence of the reaction. It is rarely, after all, that a rigidly logical conception of society, of the State, has any existence in reality. The future, as we know, lay with quite another theory. Yet which of us to-day but in his secret heart dreams ever more hopefully of a new unity, that is indeed no stranger to the old, but in fact the resurrection of the Empire, of Christendom, in which alone we can be one? After all, is it not now as then, the noblest hope that can inspire our lives?

Already, before the death of Boniface VIII, the last Pope to die in Rome for nearly a hundred years, Philip IV of France had asserted the rights of the State against the claims of the Papal monarchy. The future was his, and his success was to be so great that for more than seventy years the Papacy was altogether under the influence of France, the first of the great nations of the Continent to become self-conscious. Thus when Boniface died broken-hearted in 1303, it was the medieval Papacy which lay in state beside him. Two years later, after the pathetic and ineffectual nine months' reign of Benedict XI, Clement V, Bertrand de Goth, an Aquitanian, was elected, and, like his predecessor, fearful before the turbulent Romans and the confusion of Italy, in 1305 fled away to Avignon, which King Charles II of Naples held as Count of Anjou on the borders of the French kingdom. The Papacy had abandoned the Eternal City and had come under the influence of the French king. Yet in spite of every disaster the Pope and the Emperor remained the opposed centres of European affairs. No one as yet realised the possibility of doing without them, but each power sought rather to use them for its own end. In this political struggle France held the best position; the Pope was a Frenchman and so her son; there remained as spoil, the Empire.

On May 1, 1308, Albert of Hapsburg had been murdered by his nephew; the election of a new King of the Romans, the future Emperor, fell pat to Philip's ambitions. He immediately supported the candidature of his brother, Charles of Valois; but in this he reckoned without the Pope, who with the Angevins in Naples and himself in Avignon had no wish to see the Empire also in the hands of France. His position forbade him openly to oppose Philip, but secretly he gave his support to Henry of Luxemburg, who was elected as Henry VII on 27 November, 1308.

A German educated in France, the lord of a petty state, Henry, in spite of the nobility of his nature, of which we hear so much and see so little, had but feeble Latin sympathies and no real power of his own. He dreamed of the universal empire like a true German, believing that the feudal union of Germany and Italy which had always been impossible was the future of the world. With this mirage before his eyes he raised the imperial flag and set out southward; and for a moment it seemed as though the stars had stopped in their courses.

For he was by no means alone in his dream. Every disappointed ambition in Italy, noble and ignoble, greeted him with a feverish enthusiasm. The Bianchi and the exiled Ghibellines joined hands, enormous hopes were conceived, and in his triumph private vengeance and public hate thought to find achievement. But when Henry entered Italy in September, 1310, he soon found he had reckoned without the Florentines, who had called together the Guelf cities, and, leaguing themselves with King Robert the Wise of Naples, formed what was, in fact, an Italian confederation to defend freedom and their common independence. It is true that in these acts Florence thought only of present safety: she was both right and fortunate; but in allying herself with King Robert and espousing the cause of France and the Pope she contributed to that triumph which was to prove for centuries the most dangerous of all to Italian liberty and independence.

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]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

[GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO]

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

[CHAPTER I]

1313-1323

BOCCACCIO'S PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND CHILDHOOD

The facts concerning the life and work of Giovanni Boccaccio, though they have been traversed over and over again by modern students,[3] are still for the most part insecure and doubtful; while certain questions, of chronology especially, seem to be almost insoluble. To begin with, we are uncertain of the place of his birth and of the identity of his mother, of whom in his own person he never speaks. And though it is true that he calls himself "of Certaldo,"[4] a small town at that time in the Florentine contado where he had some property, and where indeed he came at last to die, we have reason to believe that it was not his birthplace. The opinion now most generally professed by Italian scholars is that he was born in Paris of a French mother; and, while we cannot assert this as a fact, very strong evidence, both from within and from without his work, can be brought to support it. It will be best, perhaps, to examine this evidence, whose corner-stone is his assertion to Petrarch that he was born in 1313,[5] as briefly as possible.

The family of Boccaccio[6] was originally from Certaldo in Valdelsa,[7] his father being the Florentine banker and money-changer Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, commonly called Boccaccino.[8] We know very little about him, but we are always told that he was of very humble condition. That he was of humble birth seems certain, but his career, what we know of his career, would suggest that he was in a position of considerable importance. We know that in 1318 he was in business in Florence, the name of his firm being Simon Jannis Orlandini, Cante et Jacobus fratres et filii q. Ammannati et Boccaccinus Chelini de Certaldo. In the first half of 1324 he was among the aggiunti deputati of the Arte del Cambio for the election of the Consiglieri della Mercanzia;[9] in 1326 he was himself one of the five Consiglieri; in the latter part of 1327 he represented the Società de' Bardi in Naples, and was very well known to King Robert;[10] while in 1332 he was one of the Fattori for the same Società in Paris, a post at least equivalent to that of a director of a bank to-day. These were positions of importance, and could not have been held by a person of no account.

As a young man, in 1310, we know he was in business in Paris, for on May 12 in that year fifty-four Knights Templars were slaughtered there,[11] and this Boccaccio tells us his father saw.[12] That there was at that time a considerable Florentine business in France in spite of those years of disaster—Henry VII had just entered Italy—is certain. In 1311, indeed, we find the Florentines addressing a letter to the King of France,[13] lamenting that at such a moment His Majesty should have taken measures hurtful to the interests of their merchants, upon whom the prosperity of their city so largely depended.

Boccaccio di Chellino seems to have remained in Paris in business;[14] that he was still there in 1313 we know, for in that year, on March 11, Jacques de Molay, Master of the Templars, was executed, and Giovanni tells us that his father was present.[15] If, then, Boccaccio was speaking the truth when he told Petrarch he was born in 1313, he must have been conceived, and was almost certainly born, in Paris.

THE BURNING OF THE MASTER OF THE TEMPLE
From a miniature in the French version of the "De Casibus Virorum," made in 1409 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Showcase V, MS. 126.)

Let us now examine such evidence as we may gather from the allegories of his own poems and plays, though there he speaks in parables. In two of his works at least—the Filocolo and the Ameto—Boccaccio seems to be speaking of himself in the characters of Idalagos[16] and Caleone and Ibrida. The Ameto, like the Filocolo, was written to give expression to his love for Fiammetta, the bastard daughter of King Robert of Naples. There he says that Caleone (whom we suppose to be in some sort himself) was born not far from the place whence Fiammetta's mother (whom he has told us was French) drew her origin. Again, in another part of the same book the story is related of a young Italian merchant, not distinguished by birth or gentle breeding, who went to Paris and there seduced a young French widow. The fruit of their intercourse was a boy, who received the name of Ibrida. The evidence to be gathered from the Filocolo is even more precise, but, briefly, it may be said to confirm the story in the Ameto.[17] We find there, however, that the name of the father was Eucomos, which may be bad Greek for Boccaccio; that the name of the mother was Gannai, which might seem to be an anagram for Giovanna or Gianna; and that the father deserted the mother in order to marry Gharamita,[18] which sounds like an anagram for Margherita, and in fact we find that Boccaccio di Chellino did marry almost certainly about 1314 Margherita di Gian Donato de' Martoli.[19]

The result then of these allegorical allusions in the Ameto and the Filocolo is to support the theory based on the few facts we possess, and to supplement it. That theory absolutely depends, so far as we rely upon facts for its confirmation, on Boccaccio's own statement, as reported by Petrarch, that he was born in 1313. If he was born in 1313, he was conceived and born in Paris, for we know that Boccaccio di Chellino was there in the years between 1310 and 1313. The Filocolo and the Ameto bear this out, and lead us to believe that his mother was a certain Gianna or Gannai (Jeanne, Giovanna), that he was born out of wedlock, and that his father deserted his mother, and not long after married Gharamita, as we suppose Margherita di Gian Donato de' Martoli.

Turning now to the evidence of his contemporaries, we shall find that just this was the opinion commonly received, so much so that the Italian translator of Filippo Villani's Lives actually changed the words of that author and forced him to agree with it. "His father," says this adapter,[20] "was Boccaccio of Certaldo, a village of the Florentine dominion. He was a man distinguished by excellence of manners. The course of his commercial affairs brought him to Paris, where he resided for a season, and being free and pleasant in the temper of his mind, was no less gay and well inclined to love by the complexion of his constitution. There then it befell that he was inspired by love for a girl of Paris, belonging to the class between nobility and bourgeoisie, for whom he conceived the most violent passion; and, as the admirers of Giovanni assert, she became his wife and afterwards the mother of Giovanni."

As his admirers assert! But others were not slow to say that his father and mother were never married; and indeed, this without doubt was the ordinary opinion.

In the true version of Filippo Villani's Lives,[21] written in Latin, we read that he was the son of his natural father,[22] and that he was born at Certaldo. Domenico Aretino[23] agrees that Certaldo was his birthplace, and adds that in his opinion Boccaccio was a bastard. Again, Salvini and Manni, following perhaps the well-known sonnet of Acquettino, say he was born in Florence.[24] In all this confusion we are like to lose our way, and it is therefore not surprising that modern scholars are divided in opinion. Tiraboschi[25] remains undecided. Baldelli[26] thinks he was born in Paris and was illegitimate; Ginguené, Witte, Carducci, Landau, Hortis, Antona Traversi, and Crescini agree with Baldelli—and, indeed, we find only two modern students who give Florence as his birthplace, to wit Corazzini[27] and Koerting[28], who agree, however, that he was a bastard.

It will thus be seen that the weight of opinion is on the side of the evidence, and that it certainly seems to have been shown that Boccaccio was born out of wedlock in Paris in 1313, and that his mother's name was Jeannette or Jeanne[29].

It is probable that Boccaccio was brought still a tiny baby to Florence, but we cannot be sure of this, for though his father seems to have returned in 1314,[30] and almost at once to have married Margherita di Gian Donato de' Martoli, it is not certain that Giovanni accompanied him. Indeed the Filocolo seems to suggest that he did not.[31] However that may be, he was "in his first infancy" when he came to Tuscany, as he tells us in the Ameto, "fanciullo, cercai i regni Etrurii." The first river he saw was the Arno, "mihi ante alios omnes ab ipsa infantia cognitus"; and his boyhood was spent on that little hill described in the Filocolo, "piccolo poggio pieno di marine chiocciole," and covered with "salvatichi cerri," in the house of his father, "nel suo grembo," as he says in the Fiammetta.

Where was this hill dark with oaks where one might find sea-shells, the tiny shells of sea-snails? We do not know for certain. Some have thought it to be the hill of Certaldo,[32] but this seems scarcely likely, for we know that old Boccaccio was resident in Florence in 1318, and Boccaccio himself tells us that his boyhood was spent not in a house belonging to his father, but "nel suo grembo," literally in his father's lap.[33] Again, the country which he loved best and has described with the greatest love and enthusiasm is that between the village of Settignano and the city of Fiesole, north and east of Florence. As though unable to forget the lines of just those hills, the shadows on the woods there, the darkness of the cypresses over the olives, he returns to them again and again. The Ninfale Fiesolano is entirely devoted to this country, its woods and hills and streams; he speaks of it also in the Ameto,[34] it is the setting of the Decameron; while the country about Certaldo does not seem to have specially appealed to him, certainly not in the way the countryside of one's childhood never ceases to do.

It is, then, to the hills about Settignano, to the woods above the Mensola and the valley of the Affrico, that we should naturally turn to look for the scenes of his boyhood. And indeed any doubt of his presence there might seem to be dismissed by a document discovered by Gherardi, which proves that on the 18th of May, 1336, by a contract drawn up by Ser Salvi di Dini, Messer Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, lately dwelling in the parish of S. Pier Maggiore and then in that of S. Felicità, sold to Niccolò di Vegna, who bought for Niccolò the son of Paolo his nephew, the poderi with houses called Corbignano, partly in the parish of S. Martino a Mensola and partly in that of S. Maria a Settignano.[35] This villa of old Boccaccio's exists to-day at Corbignano, and bears his name, Casa di Boccaccio, and though it has been rebuilt much remains from his day—part of the old tower that has been broken down and turned into a loggia, here a ruined fresco, there a spoiled inscription.[36] Here, doubtless, within sound of Mensola and Affrico, within sight of Florence and Fiesole, "not too far from the city nor too near the gate," Giovanni's childhood was passed.

Of those early years we have naturally very little knowledge. Before he was seven years old, as he himself tells us,[37] he was set to learn to read and write. Then he was placed in the care of Giovanni di Domenico Mazzuoli da Strada, father of the more famous Zanobi, to begin the study of "Grammatica."[38] With Mazzuoli he began Latin then,[39] but presently his father, who had already destined him for the counting-house, took him from the study of "Grammatica" and, as Giovanni tells us, made him give his time to "Arismetrica."[40] Then, if we may believe the Filocolo, he took him into his business, where he learned, no doubt, to keep books of account and saw some of the mysteries of banking and money-lending. Against this mode of life he conceived then a most lively hatred, which was to increase rather than to diminish as he grew older. Such work, he assures us in his Commentary on the Divine Comedy, cannot be followed without sin. Great wealth, he tells us in the Filocolo, prohibits, or at least spoils virtue: there is nothing better or more honest than to live in a moderate poverty; while in the De Genealogiis Deorum he says poverty means tranquillity of soul: for riches are the enemy of quietness and a torment of the mind.

CASA DI BOCCACCIO, CORBIGNANO, NEAR FLORENCE

But we know nothing of his childhood, only it seems to have been unhappy. Till his return from Naples many year later, in spite of his hatred for business, he seems always to have got on well with his father.[41] In remembering words which he then wrote concerning him[42] we must remind ourselves that Boccaccino was at that time an old man, and had probably lost those "excellent manners" of which Villani speaks; and by then, too, Giovanni had altogether disappointed him, by forsaking first business, and later the study of Canon Law. His childhood seems to have been unhappy then not from any fault or want of care on his father's part, though no doubt his hatred of business had something to do with it; but the true cause of the unhappiness, and even, as he says, of the fear which haunted his boyhood, was almost certainly Margherita, his stepmother, with whom he doubtless managed to live well enough till her son Francesco was born.

We have already relied so much on the Filocolo and the Ameto that it will only confuse us to forsake them now. In the former,[43] he tells us that one day the young shepherd, Idalagos (himself), following his father, saw two bears, who glared at him with fierce and terrible eyes in which he saw a desire for his death, so that he was afraid and fled away from the paternal fields to follow his calling in other woods. These two bears who chased Giovanni from home, not directly but indirectly, by causing the fear which hatred always rouses in the young, were, it seems, Margherita and her son Francesco, born about 1321.

It may well be that Boccaccino had come to the conclusion about this time that Giovanni would never make a banker, and hoping yet to see him prosperous in the Florentine manner, sent him to Naples to learn to be a merchant. If we add to this inference the evidence of the allegory of the two bears in the Filocolo, we may conclude that his father, disappointed with him already, was not hard to persuade when Margherita, loath to see the little bastard beside her own son Francesco, urged his departure.

All this, however, is conjecture. We know nothing of Boccaccio's early years save that his father sent him to Naples to learn business while he was still young, as is generally believed in 1330, but as we may now think, not without good reason, in 1323, when he was ten years old.[44]

[CHAPTER II]

1323-1330

HIS ARRIVAL IN NAPLES—HIS YEARS WITH THE MERCHANT—HIS ABANDONMENT OF TRADE AND ENTRY ON THE STUDY OF CANON LAW

In the fourteenth century the journey from Florence by way of Siena, Perugia, Rieti, Aquila, and Sulmona, thence across the Apennines at Il Sangro, and so through Isernia and Venafro, through Teano and Capua to Naples, occupied some ten or eleven days.[45] The way was difficult and tiring, especially for a lad of ten years old, and it seems as though Giovanni was altogether tired out, for, if we may believe the Ameto,[46] as he drew near the city at last he fell asleep on his horse. And as he slept, a dream came to him. Full of fear as he was, lonely and bewildered, those "two bears" still pursuing him, doubtless, in his heart, suddenly it seemed to him that he was already arrived in the city. "The new streets," he says in the Ameto,[47] "held my heart with delight, and as I passed on my way there appeared to the eyes of my mind a most beautiful girl, in aspect gracious and fair, dressed all in garments of green, which befitted her age and recalled the ancient dress of the city; and with joy she gave me welcome, first taking me by the hand, and she kissed me and I her; and then she said sweetly, 'Come where you shall find good luck and happiness.'"[48] It was thus Giovanni was welcomed into Naples with a kiss.

Naples was then at the height of its splendour, under Robert the Wise, King of Jerusalem and the Two Sicilies, Count of Provence. If his titles had little reality, for that of Jerusalem merely commemorated an episode of history, and Sicily itself had passed into the hands of Aragon, as King of Naples and Count of Provence he possessed an exceptional influence in the affairs of Europe, while in Italy he was in some sort at the head of the triumphant Guelf cause. The son of Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples, Duke Robert, had seized the crown of Italy and Apulia, not without suspicion of fratricide; for the tale goes that none knew better than he the cause of the sudden illness which carried off his elder brother, Dante's beloved Charles Martel. However that may be, in June, 1309, Duke Robert went by sea from Naples to Provence to the Papal Court there, "with a great fleet of galleys," Villani[49] tells us, "and a great company, and was crowned King of Sicily and of Apulia by Pope Clement on S. Mary's Day in September." A year later we find him in Florence on his way back from Avignon. He stayed in the house of the Peruzzi dal Parlagio, and Villani[50] says: "The Florentines did him much honour and held jousts and gave him large presents of money, and he abode in Florence until the 24th day of October to reconcile the Guelfs together ... and to treat of warding off the Emperor." He was, in fact, the great opponent, as we have seen, of Henry VII, and in 1312 Villani[51] records that he sent 600 Catalan and Apulian horse to Rome to defend the City, while the people of Florence, Lucca, and Siena, and of other cities of Tuscany who were in league with him, sent help also; yet though they held half Rome between them, Henry was crowned in the Lateran after all. It was in the very year of the Emperor's death that the Florentines gave him the lordship of their city, as did the Lucchese, the Pistoians, and the men of Prato.[52] Later, after much fighting, the Genoese did the same; so that in the year 1323 King Robert was in some sort drawing tribute from more than half the Communes of Central Italy. The brilliancy of his statecraft, or even, perhaps, of his statesmanship, added to the splendour of Naples, whither his magnanimity and the brilliance of his court attracted some of the greatest men of the time.[53]

"Cernite Robertum

Regem virtute refertum"

wrote Petrarch of him later—"full of virtue." While in a letter written in 1340 to Cardinal Colonna he says that of all men he would most readily have accepted King Robert as a judge of his ability. Nor were they poets and men of learning alone whom he gathered about him. In 1330 Giotto, who had known Charles of Calabria in Florence in 1328,[54] came to Naples on his invitation; while so early as 1310, certainly, Simone Martini was known to him, and seems about that time to have painted his portrait, later representing him in S. Chiara as crowned by his brother S. Louis of Toulouse.[55] It was then into a city where learning and the arts were the fashion that Boccaccio came in 1323.

There were other things too: the amenity of one's days passed so much in the open air, the splendour of a city rich and secure, the capital of a kingdom, and the residence of a king—the only king in Italy—above all, perhaps, the gaiety of that southern life in the brilliant sunshine. Boccaccio never tires of telling us about this city of his youth. "Naples," he says in the Fiammetta, "was gay, peaceful, rich, and splendid above any other Italian city, full of festas, games, and shows." "One only thought, how to occupy oneself," he says again, "how to amuse oneself, dancing to the sound of music, discussing affairs of love, and losing one's heart over sweet words, and Venus there was indeed a goddess, so that more than one who came thither a Lucrece returned a Cleopatra. Sometimes," he continues, "the youths and maidens went in the gayest companies into the woods, where tables were prepared for them on which were set out all manner of delicate meats; and the picnic over, they would set themselves to dance and to romp and play. Some would glide in boats along the shore, others, dispensing with shoes and stockings, and lifting high their petticoats, would venture among the rocks or into the water to find sea shells; others again would fish with lines." And then there were the Courts of Love held in the spring, when the girls, adorned with splendid jewels, he tells us in the Filocolo, tried to outshine one another, and while the old people looked on, the young men danced with them, touching their delicate hands. And seeing that he was surrounded by a life like this, is it any wonder that he fell in love with love, with beauty?

Anderson.

KING ROBERT OF NAPLES CROWNED BY S. LOUIS OF TOULOUSE
From the fresco by Simone Martini in S. Lorenzo, Naples.

Of the first years of his sojourn in that beautiful southern place we have only the vaguest hints.[56] In the De Genealogiis[57] he says that "for six years he did nothing but waste irrecoverable time" with the merchant to whom his father had confided him. He always hated business, and precocious as he was in his love for literature, in the gaiety and beauty of Naples he grew to despise those engaged in money-making; for, as he says in the Corbaccio, they knew nothing of any beautiful thing, but only how to fill their pockets.[58] Indeed Boccaccio might seem to have had no taste or even capacity for anything but study and the art of literature. He most bitterly reproaches his father in the De Genealogiis[59] for having turned him for so many years from his vocation. "If my father had dealt wisely with me I might have been among the great poets," he writes. "But he forced me, in vain, to give my mind to money-making, and to such a paying thing as the Canon Law. I became neither a man of affairs nor a canonist, and I lost all chance of succeeding in poetry."

Those six irrecoverable years had indeed almost passed away before even in Naples he was able to find, unlearned as he was, "rozza mente" as he calls himself, any opportunity of culture. It was in 1328,[60] it seems, that those conversazioni astronomiche began with Calmeta, which aroused in him the desire of wisdom.[61] By that time his father was in Naples, having come thither in the autumn of 1327, and it may have been in his company that Giovanni first met this the earliest friend of his youth. But who was this Calmeta, this benefactor to whom, after all, we owe so much? Andalò di Negro, says Crescini;[62] but as Della Torre reminds us, his work was done in Latin, and Giovanni knew but little of the tongue. It will be seen in the Filocolo, to which we must turn again for guidance, that Calmeta and Idalagos have the same profession; they are both shepherds, and it is in their leisure that Calmeta teaches Idalagos astronomy. It seems then that Calmeta was also in business in Naples. That such an one there was Della Torre proves by drawing attention to a letter he will not allow to be apocryphal.[63] Calmeta, then, as we see, like Giovanni, was inclined to study, and more fortunate than he, had been able "tuam puerilem ætatem coram educatoribus roborare, et vago atque interno intuiti elementa grammaticæ ruminare...." that is to say, to finish his elementary course of study, which consisted of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.

But this new friendship was not the only thing that about this time helped to strengthen Giovanni's dislike of business and to encourage him in his love of learning and literature. For in the same year, 1328, it seems likely that he was presented at the court of King Robert,[64] a court, as we have already said, full of gay, delightful people and learned men.[65] It seems certain too that he was presented by his father who, as we have seen, between September and November, 1327, came to Naples as a member of the Società de' Bardi.[66] Now old Boccaccio not only went frequently to court during his sojourn in Naples, for he was very honourably received there, but was probably one of the most considerable Florentine merchants in the city,[67] and then he had known Carlo, Duke of Calabria, in Florence, before setting out.[68] There can therefore be very little doubt as to where Giovanni got his introduction.

Before his father left Naples, Giovanni, who was then about sixteen years of age, had had the courage to tell him that he could not pursue a business career.[69] His father seems at last to have been convinced of this, and gave his consent for study in the Arts, but, practical man as he was, he believed in a fixed profession, and therefore set Giovanni in 1329[70] to study Canon Law, which might well bring him a career. So his father left him.

Whatever his duties had been or were to be, neither they nor his studies with his friend the young merchant occupied all his time. He enjoyed life, entering with gusto into the gaiety of what was certainly the gayest city in Italy then and later. He speaks often of the beauty of the women[71] amid that splendour of earth and sky and sea; and the beautiful names of two he courted and loved, being in love with love, have come down to us, to wit Pampinea, that white dove "bianca columba," and Abrotonia, the "nera merla" of the Filocolo.[72] Like Romeo, Boccaccio had his Rosaline. These were not profound passions, of course, but the sentimental or sensual ardours of youth that were nevertheless an introduction to love himself.[73] They soon passed away, though not without a momentary chagrin, for if he betrayed the first, the second seems to have forsaken him.

After that disillusion he tells us he retired into his room, and there, tired as he was, fell asleep half in tears. And again, as once before, a vision came to him. He seemed to be sitting, where indeed he was, all sorrowful, when suddenly Abrotonia and Pampinea appeared to him. For some time they watched him weeping, and then began to make fun of his tears. He prayed them to leave him alone since they were the first and only cause of his grief, but the two damsels redoubled their laughter, so that at last he turned to them and said: "Begone, begone! Is your laughter then the price of my verses in your honour and of all my trouble?"[74] But they answered that it was for another that he had really sung. Then he awoke; it was still night, and, tearful as he was, he rose to light the lamp, and sat thus thinking for a time. But weary at last he returned to bed, and presently falling asleep he dreamed again. Once more the two girls stood before him, but with them was another, fairer far, all dressed in green. Her they presented to him, saying that it was she who would be the real "tyrant of his heart." Then he looked at her, and behold, she was the same lady he had seen in the first vision when, weary with the long roads, he first drew near to Naples; the very lady indeed who bade him welcome and kissed him, and whom he kissed again. So the dream ended.

What are we to think of these visions? Did they really happen, or are they merely an artistic method of stating certain facts—among the rest that Fiammetta was about to renew his life? But we have gone too far to turn back now; we have already relied so much on the allegories of the Ameto, the Filocolo, and the Fiammetta, that we dare not at this point question them too curiously. The visions are all probably true in substance if not in detail. We must accept them, though not necessarily the explanations that have been offered of them.[75]

POPE JOAN
A woodcut from the "De Claris Mulieribus." (Berne, 1539.) (By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)

All this probably happened at the end of 1329, and Fiammetta was still more than a year away. By this time, however, Boccaccio was already studying Canon Law. Who was his master? He does not himself tell us. All he says is in the De Genealogiis,[76] and many reading that passage have at once thought of Cino da Pistoja, chiefly perhaps because it is so delightful to link together two famous men.[77] But while it is true that Cino was a doctor of Law in Naples in 1330,[78] we know that Boccaccio studied Canon Law, and that Cino was a Doctor of Civil Law and a very bitter enemy of the Canonisti.[79] It seems indeed impossible to name his master.[80] Whoever he may have been, the study of Canon Law which presently became so repugnant to Giovanni must have been at first, at any rate, much more delightful than business. It probably gave him more liberty for reading and for pleasure. He had, of course, begun to study Latin again, and no doubt he read Ovid, whom he so especially loved—

"Lo quale poetando

Iscrisse tanti versi per amore

Come acquistar si potesse mostrando."[81]

No doubt, too, he read the Ars Amandi, "in which," he says in the Filocolo, "the greatest of poets shows how the sacred fire of Venus may be made to burn with care even in the coldest," and knew it all by heart.

We may believe too that he read the Heroides, which he imitated later in the letters of Florio to Biancofiore and of Biancofiore to Florio; and the Metamorphoses, which indeed we find on every page of the Filocolo.[82]

Delia Torre thinks[83] that although Cino da Pistoja was not his master, he certainly met him during his stay in Naples between October, 1330, and July, 1331,[84] and it was possibly through him that Boccaccio first read Dante. At any rate, he read him, and shortly after he imitates and speaks of him.[85] He also studied at this time under Andalò di Negro,[86] the celebrated astrologer, one of the most learned men of his time, and we shall see to what use he put the knowledge he acquired; but who was it who introduced to him the French Romances? Perhaps it was one of the many friends he doubtless had among the rich Florentine merchants and their sons then in Naples;[87] but indeed he could hardly have failed to meet with them in that Angevin Court. That he knew the romance of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table we know,[88] but he knew even better the legends of the Romans and the Trojans, which he told Fiammetta, who now comes into his life never really to leave him again.

[CHAPTER III]

1331

HIS MEETING WITH FIAMMETTA AND THE PERIODS OF THEIR LOVE STORY

For it was in the midst of this gay life, full of poetry and study, that he met her who was so much more beautiful than all the other "ninfe Partenopee," and who seemed to him "quella che in Cipri già fu adorata," that is to say, Venus herself. He saw her first on a Holy Saturday, on the Vigil of Easter, as he himself tells us, and as we think on 30th March, 1331.[89] He had gone to Mass, it seems, about ten o'clock in the morning, the fashionable hour of the day, rather to see the people than to attend the service, in the church of S. Lorenzo of the Franciscans. And there amid that great throng of all sorts and conditions of men he first caught sight of the woman who was so profoundly to influence his life and shape his work.

"I found myself," he says, "in a fine church of Naples, named after him who endured to be offered as a sacrifice upon the gridiron. And there, there was a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was listening to the Holy Mass celebrated by a priest, successor to him who first girt himself humbly with the cord, exalting poverty and adopting it. Now while I stood there, the fourth hour of the day, according to my reckoning, having already passed down the eastern sky, there appeared to my eyes the wondrous beauty of a young woman, come thither to hear what I too heard attentively. I had no sooner seen her than my heart began to throb so strongly that I felt it in my slightest pulses; and not knowing why nor yet perceiving what had happened, I began to say, 'Ohimè, what is this?'... But at length, being unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, 'O Love, most noble Lord, whose strength not even the gods were able to resist,[90] I thank thee for setting happiness before my eyes!'... I had no sooner said these words than the flashing eyes of that lovely lady fixed themselves on mine...."[91]

Fiammetta, for it was she, was tall and slanciata; her hair, he tells us, "is so blonde that the world holds nothing like it; it shades a white forehead of noble width, beneath which are the curves of two black and most slender eyebrows ... and under these two roguish eyes ... cheeks of no other colour than milk." This description, even in the hands of Boccaccio, is little more than the immortal "Item, two lips, indifferent red...."[92] Yet little by little in his work Fiammetta lives for us. On that day she was dressed in a bruna vesta,[93] and wearing a veil that fell from her head crowned with a garland.[94] After her golden hair, it is her eyes and her mouth that he loves best in her.

"Due begli occhi luccan, sì che fiammetta

Parea ciascun d' amore luminosa;

E la sua bocca bella e piccioletta

Vermiglia rosa e fresca somigliava."[95]

He seems to have asked one of his companions who she was, but he knew not.

"Io stetti molto a lei mirar sospeso

Per guardar s' io l' udissi nominare,

O ch' io 'l vedessi scritto breve o steso

Lì nol vid' io nè 'l seppi immaginare."[96]

When she saw that he continued to stare at her, she screened herself with her veil.[97] But he changed his position and found a place by a column whence he could see her very well—"dirittissimamente opposto, ... appoggiato ad una colonna marmorea"—and there, while the priest sang the Office, "con canto pieno di dolce melodia,"[98] he drank in her blonde beauty which the dark clothes made more splendid—the golden hair and the milk-white skin, the shining eyes and the mouth like a rose in a field of lilies.[99] Once she looked at him,—"Li occhi, con debita gravità elevati, in tra la moltitudine de' circostanti giovani, con acuto ragguardamento distesi."[100] So he stayed where he was till the service was over, "senza mutare luogo." Then he joined his companions, waiting with them at the door to see the girls pass out. And it was then, in the midst of other ladies, that he saw her for the second time, watching her pass out of S. Lorenzo on her way home. When she was gone he went back to his room with his friends, who remained a short time with him. These, as soon as might be, excusing himself, he sent away, and remained alone with his thoughts.

The morrow was Easter Day, and again he went to S. Lorenzo to see her only. And she was there indeed, "di molto oro lucente"—"adorned with gems and dressed in most fair green, beautiful both by nature and by art."[101] Then remembering all things, he said to himself: "This is that lady who in my boyhood (puerizia) and again not so long ago, appeared to me in my dreams; this is she who, with a joyful countenance and gracious, welcomed me to this city; this is she who was ordained to rule my mind, and who was promised me for lady, in my dreams."[102] From this moment began for him "the new life."

Who was this lady "promised to him in his dreams," whose love was indeed the great prize of his youth? We know really very little about her, though he speaks of her so often, but in three well-known places, in the Filocolo, the Ameto, and the Amorosa Visione, he tells us of her origin. It is in the Ameto that he gives us the fullest account of her. In that comedy[103] he tells us that at the court of King Robert there was a gentleman of the wealthy and powerful house of Aquino who held in Naples "the highest place beside the throne of him who reigned there." This noble had married, we learn, a young Provençal, "per bellezza da lodare molto," who with her husband lived in the royal palace.[104] Of this pair were born "some daughters whom Fiammetta called sisters,"[105] and a son who was assassinated.[106] Fiammetta's own birth is, we understand, surrounded by a kind of mystery, "voluttuoso e lascivo," corresponding, as we shall see, to her own temperament.[107]

LUCRECE
A woodcut from "De Claris Mulieribus." (Berne, 1539.) (By the courtesy of Mssrs. J. & J. Leighton.)

Boccaccio suggests that her birth is connected with the great festa which celebrated the coronation of King Robert, that took place in Avignon in September, 1309.[108] The king returned to Naples by way of Florence, where he arrived on September 30, 1310;[109] he was still there in October, and there was much fighting to be done, for Henry VII was making war in Italy; so that it was not till February 2, 1313,[110] that the king opened the first general parliament in Naples after his coronation. Della Torre[111] thinks that it was on this occasion the great festa described by Boccaccio took place. Its chief feature seems to have been a banquet of the greatest magnificence, to which all the court as well as many of the leading subjects of the Kingdom were bidden. Amid all this splendour Boccaccio describes the king's gaze passing over a host of beautiful women, to rest, always with new delight, on the beauty of the young wife of D'Aquino, who, since her husband belonged to the court, was naturally present. Well, to make a long story short, a little later the king seduced this lady, but as it seems, on or about the same night she slept also with her husband, so that when nine months later a daughter was born to her, both the king and her husband believed themselves to be the father. It is like a story out of the Decameron.

This daughter, the Fiammetta of his dreams, was born, he tells us, in the spring[112]—the spring then of 1314[113]—and was named Maria.[114] Before very long she lost her mother, who however, before she died, told her as well as she could, considering her tender age, the mystery of her birth. Not long after, her father—or rather her mother's husband—died also, leaving the piccoletta "a vestali vergini a lui di sangue congiunte ... acciocchè quelle di costumi e d' arte inviolata servandomi, ornassero la giovanezza mia";[115] which is Boccaccio's way of saying that she was placed in the care of nuns, the nuns, as Casetti[116] supposes, of the Order of St. Benedict, to whom belonged the very ancient church of S. Arcangelo a Baiano.[117] There she grew up, and, like very many others of an eager and sensuous temperament, totally unfitted for the life of a religious, she desired too to be a nun, and this desire, we learn, became definite in her after an ecstatic vision in which S. Scholastica appeared to her[118] and invited her to take the vow. But happily this was not to be. Her golden hair was not to fall under the shears of the Church, but to be a poet's crown. She was too beautiful for the cloister, and indeed already the fame of her beauty had gone beyond the convent walls, which were in fact by no means very secure or unassailable. In those days, people "in the world," men as well as women, were received even by the "enclosed" in the parlour of the convent, where it was customary to hold receptions.[119]

So, we learn, there presently began a struggle in Fiammetta's heart—it was not of very long duration—between her resolution to take the veil and her feminine vanity. Little by little she began to adorn herself,[120] she received offers of marriage which by no means shocked her, she became reconciled to the life of the world for which she was so perfectly fitted by nature. Among the suitors, and apparently they were many, was "uno dei più nobili giovani ... di fortuna grazioso, de' beni Giunonichi copioso, e chiaro di sangue."[121] To him, as to the rest, she replied with a refusal, to which she was doubtless encouraged by the nuns, who could not easily suffer so well-born and powerful a pupil to escape them. The young man, however—we do not know his name—was not easily discouraged, and, renewing his suit, was accepted. So she was married perhaps when she was about fifteen years old, in 1329.[122]

Her beauty[123] was famous, and she seems scarcely to have been married when she gave herself up to all the voluptuousness of her nature, more or less mute in the convent. That she could read we know, for she read not only Giovanni's letters, but Ovid,[124] probably a translation of the Ars Amandi, and the French Romances.[125] She was greatly run after by the youth of the Neapolitan court, who swore no festa was complete without her. Her husband's house, too, was in such a position that not only the citizens, but strangers, who must on arrival or departure pass it by, might spy her at her window or on her balcony.[126] Her excuse is this universal admiration, and the eagerness of her temperament, which allowed her to pass with ease from one lover to another.[127] And then she also found that stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.[128] She excuses herself for having betrayed the husband who loved her so much, and can say: "What is lawfully pursued is apt to be considered of small account, even though it be most excellent, but what is difficult of attainment, even if contemptible, is held in high esteem."[129] But, like all vain and sensual natures, she was cruel, and encouraged her suitors to squander their substance on her, giving them nothing in return, and leading each to suppose that he was the only one she loved, and that she was about to make him happy. "And I," she says to Boccaccio in the character of Alleiram, "and I have laughed at them all, choosing, however, those who took my fancy and who were judged apt to give me pleasure. But no sooner was the fire spent than I broke the vase which contained the water and flung away the pieces." These words, so cynically moving, not only show us the cruelty of Maria's nature, but cast a strange light on the general condition of society in what was then, as later, the most corrupt city in Italy. Such, then, was the blonde Fiammetta whom Boccaccio loved.

But how could he, a mere merchant's son, ever hope to reach the arms of this disdainful, indifferent lady? By means of poetry? It seems so. But before replying fully to this question it will be necessary to establish the chronological limits and divisions of this love affair, and this is the most difficult question in all the difficult history of the youth of Boccaccio.

We may find, as it happens, two dates to begin with in the Amorosa Visione. They have not escaped Crescini,[130] who, founding himself on them, has concluded, though not too certainly, that between the day of innamoramento and that of possesso completo 159 days passed. He arrives at this tentative conclusion in the following manner. In chapter xliv. of the Amorosa Visione Boccaccio tells us that when he became enamoured of Fiammetta, at first he marvelled greatly, as though something incredible had befallen him. Then he began to make fun of himself, "farsi beffa," for having thought of a lady so far above him. But at last, when

"Quattro via sei volte il sole

Con l' orizzonte il ciel congiunto aveva ..."

it appeared that his courting pleased his lady, and he seemed to understand from her that there was no distance however great, between lover and beloved, that love could not annihilate. But, said she, one ought to serve her only, and not to run after other ladies.

Crescini interprets this to mean that twenty-four days after Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta, she gave him reason to hope. And he arrives at this conclusion because he considers that the sun is in conjunction with the horizon only once a day, whereas it might seem to be so twice a day, at sunrise as at sunset. The other 135 days of Crescini's chronology come from the following verses of chapter xlvi. of the Amorosa Visione, in which Boccaccio tells us that he was able to possess Maria after

"Cinque fiate tre via nove giorni

Sotto la dolce signoria di questa

Trovato m' era in diversi soggiorni."

Thus, says Crescini, we have twenty-four days from the first meeting to the acceptance of his court, and 135 days thenceforward to the possession, that is 159 days.[131]

Della Torre,[132] however, will have none of this reckoning, and seems to have proved that it is indeed inexact. To begin with, according to the Ptolemaic system, the sun moved round the earth and touched it as it were not only at its rising but also at its setting, so that the twenty-four days become twelve. This, however, is but a small matter, merely reducing the 159 days to 147. Crescini's chief error, according to Della Torre, is that he has added the first period of twelve (or twenty-four) days to the second of 135—making them immediately consecutive. Let us examine this matter somewhat closely.

In the Ameto Boccaccio tells us that the happy night which came at the end of the 135 days, the night in which he possessed Fiammetta, fell "temperante Apollo i veleni freddi di Scorpione." Now at what time precisely is the sun in the sign of the Scorpion? Andalò[133] tells us that at the end of the 20th October the sun is three and a half gradi in Scorpio, and that by the 15th November it is already entering Sagittarius. The sun then entered Scorpio on the 17th October and left it on the 14th November.[134] Somewhere between those two dates the loves of Giovanni and Fiammetta were consummated.

BOCCACCIO AND MAINARDI CAVALACANTI
By the Dutch engraver called "The Master of the Subjects in the Boccaccio."
"De Casibus Virorum." (Strasburg, 1476.)

Boccaccio tells us, if we interpret him aright, that twelve days after his innamoramento his lady showed him that she was pleased by his love. He then passes on to describe the long and faithful service he gave her:—

"Lungamente seguendo sua pietate

Ora in avversi ed ora in graziosi

Casi reggendo la mia voluntate,"[135]

and so on. Then he says:—

"Traendomi più là e con sommesso

Parlar le chiesi, che al mio dolore

Fine ponesse, qual doveva ad esso,

Ognor servando quel debito onore

Che si conviene a' suoi costumi adorni,

Di gentilezza pieni e di valore,"[136]

and at last adds the lines already quoted,

"Cinque fiate tre via nove giorni

Sotto la dolce signoria di questa

Trovato m' era in diversi soggiorni";

when

"nella braccia la Donna pietosa

Istupefatto gli parea tenere."

Taken thus we may divide the story of his love for Fiammetta into three periods. The first of these ends twelve days after the first meeting, and is the period of uncertainty. The second period is that in which he is accepted as courtier, as it were, on his trial. The third begins when his lady, moved by long service and repeated proofs of his devotions, returns his love; it is the period of "dolce signoria" and lasts one hundred and thirty-five days, at the end of which she gives herself to him.[137]

Of these periods we know only the length, then, of the first and the last. The first began on the 30th March and lasted till the 12th April, 1331, when the second began, to last how long? Well, at least two months, it seems,[138] perhaps three. In that case all three periods belong to the same year. If this be not so, the second period was of longer duration than three months, perhaps much longer. Boccaccio himself tells us that it was "non senza molto affanno lunga stagione."[139] Now it seems reasonable to suppose that even so eager a lover as Boccaccio cannot call three months "lunga stagione," though he were dying for her and each minute was an eternity. He can scarcely have hoped to seduce a woman of his own class in less time. Common sense, then, is on our side when reminding ourselves that Maria d'Aquino was of the noblest family, married, too, to a husband who loved her, and generally courted by all the golden youth of Naples—while Giovanni was the son of a merchant—we insist that he cannot mean a paltry three months when he speaks of a long time.[140] But if the second period lasted more than three months, and so does not belong to the year 1331, to what year or years does it belong?

Della Torre seems to have found a clue in the following sonnet, whose authenticity, though doubted by Crescini,[141] he insists upon:—

"Se io potessi creder che in cinqu' anni

Ch' egli è che vostro fui, tanto caluto

Di me vi fosse, che aver saputo

Il nome mio voleste, de' miei danni

Per ristorato avermi, de' miei affanni

Potrei forse sperare ancora aiuto,

Nè mi parrebbe il tempo aver perduto

A condolermi de' miei stessi inganni...."[142]

which we may explain as "O my lady, I shall be the happiest of mortals if in the five years that I shall pay you court, I should break through your indifference...." Five years brings us from 30th March, 1331, to 1336.

Now let us see whither the other facts we have will lead us.

In 1339 Boccaccio and Fiammetta had parted,[143] Boccaccio having been "betrayed" by her, as he tells us in Sonnets iv. and xxxiii.,[144] during the bathing season at Baia—the bathing season then of 1338—whither she had forbidden him to accompany her. But we know from Sonnets xlvii. and xlviii. that the end of the second period and the beginning of the third took place during the bathing season, and that there was also a season in which he accompanied her to Baia as her acknowledged lover.[145] There must, then, have been three seasons before April, 1339, and these three years lead us again to the year 1336.

So we believe that the first period "of uncertainty" in his love began on 30th March and ended on 12th April, 1331; that the second period "of service" began on 12th April, 1331, and ended between 3rd June and 2nd July, 1336, when the third period began, ending three years later. This third period is divided, as we have seen, into three parts, and comprises three bathing seasons. The first of these falls between 3rd June—2nd July, 1336, and the 17th October to 15th November, i.e. 135 days; an act of audacity on Giovanni's part, as we shall see, giving him possession of Fiammetta. The second is a period in which their love had become calmer: it fills the season of 1337 in which he was her cavaliere servente. The third falls in 1338, when, probably on account of the suspicions aroused by their intimacy, Fiammetta forbade him to accompany her to Baia, where in his absence she "betrayed" him.

Having thus found a chronology of Boccaccio's love-story, we must consider more particularly his life during its three periods.

[CHAPTER IV]

1331-1340

THE YEARS OF COURTSHIP—THE REWARD—THE BETRAYAL—THE RETURN TO FLORENCE

Of the first period of Giovanni's love-story, the period of uncertainty which lasted but twelve days, we know almost nothing, save that he was used to remind himself very often of his unworthiness, and to tell himself that he was only the son of a merchant, while Fiammetta, it was said, was the daughter of a king, and at any rate belonged to one of the richest and most powerful families in the Kingdom. That she was married does not seem to have distressed him or appeared as an obstacle at all, for the court was corrupt;[146] but he seems to have been disturbed by the knowledge that she was surrounded by a hundred adorers richer, nobler, and with better opportunities than himself. And so he seems to have come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but to make fun of himself for having entertained a thought of her. It was apparently in these states of mind that he passed the days from Holy Saturday to 12th April, 1331, when he found suddenly to his surprise that she was content he should love her if he would.

What happened is described in the forty-fourth chapter of the Amorosa Visione. The twelve days were passed, he tells us in this allegory, when he heard a voice like a terrible thunder cry to him:—

"O tu ... che nel chiaro giorno

Del dolce lume della luce mia,

Che a te vago sì raggia d' intorno,

Non ischernir con gabbo mia balìa

Nè dubitar però per mia grandezza,

La quale umil, quando vorrai, ti fia,

Onora con amor la mia bellezza,

Nè d' alcun' altra più non ti curare,

Se tu non vo' provar mia rigidezza."

How can we interpret this? It seems that there was evidently an occasion in which Fiammetta gave him to understand that she was not averse from his love. What was this occasion? Della Torre[147]—certainly the most subtle and curious of his interpreters—thinks he has found it: that he can identify it with that in which Fiammetta bade him write the Filocolo.

SAPOR MOUNTING OVER THE PROSTRATE VALERIAN
By the Dutch engraver called "The Master of the Subjects in the Boccaccio." "De Casibus Virorum." (Strasburg, 1476.)

In the prologue to that romance Boccaccio tells us that after leaving the temple of S. Lorenzo with full heart, and having sighed many days, he found himself by chance—he does not remember how—with some companions "in un santo tempio del Principe de' celestiali uccelli nominato": that is to say, as Casetti interprets it, in the convent of S. Arcangelo a Baiano, where Fiammetta had been. I have said that it was quite usual for nuns to receive visitors, both men and women, from the outside; the Fiammetta[148] itself confirms it if need be. The convents were in some sort fashionable resorts where one went to spend an hour in talk. On some such occasion Boccaccio went to S. Arcangelo with a friend, and finding Fiammetta there, probably told her stories from the French romances "del valoroso giovane Florio figliuolo di Felice grandissimo Re di Spagna," or of Lancelot and Guinivere, "con amorose parole," stuffed with piteous words. When he had finished, she, altogether charmed, turned to the young poet and bade him write such a romance as that—for her—"a little book in which the beginning of love, the courtship, and the fortune of the two lovers even to their death shall be told." Well, what could he do but obey gladly? "Hearing the sweetness of the words which came from that gracious mouth," he tells us, "and remembering that never once till this day had that noble lady asked anything of me, I took her prayer for a command, and saw therein hope for my desires";[149] so he answered that he would do his best to please her. She thanked him, and Boccaccio, "costretto più da ragione che da volontà," went home and began at once to compose his romance.[150] So ends the first period of his love-story, and the second, the period of courtship, begins.

The first result of this interview and of the hope and fear it gave him—for whatever may have been the case with Fiammetta now and later, Giovanni was genuinely in love—was that he wandered away "dall' usato cammino" from the highway that had brought him so far and abandoned "le imprese cose," things already begun.[151] And if we ask ourselves what was this highway, we may answer his way of life; and the things already begun—his study of the Canon Law. About this time, then, he began to go more to court, to enter eagerly into the joy of Neapolitan life in search of Fiammetta. At the same time his studies suffered—he neglected them to the dismay, as we shall see, not only of his father, but of his friends.

Something has already been said of the life at the court of King Robert. The very soul of it was the three ladies: Agnes de Perigord, wife of Jean D'Anjou, brother of King Robert; Marie de Valois, wife of Charles, Duke of Calabria, son of the king; and Catherine de Courteney, who at twelve years of age had married Philip of Taranto, another of the King's brothers.[152] The luxury in the city was by far the greatest to be found in Italy. The merchants of Florence, Lucca, Venice, and Genoa furnished to the court "scarlatti di Gant," "sciamiti, panni ricamati ad uso orientale," "oggetti d' oro ed argento," and "gemmas et lapides pretiosas ad camere regie usum." Boccaccio himself describes Naples: "Città, oltre a tutte l' altre italiche, di lietissime feste abbondevole, non solamente rallegra i suoi cittadini o con le nozze o con li bagni o con li marini liti, ma, copiosa di molti giuochi, sovente or con uno, or con un altro letifica la sua gente: ma tra l' altre cose, nelle quali essa appare splendidissima, è nel sovente armeggiare."[153] Or again of the spring there: "I giovani, quando sopra i correnti cavalli con le fiere armi giostravano, e quando circondati da' sonanti sonagli armeggiavano, quando con ammaestrata mano lieti mostravano come gli arditi cavalli con ispumante freno si debbano reggere. Le giovani donne di queste cose vaghe, inghirlandate di nuove frondi, lieti sguardi porgevano ai loro amanti, ora dall' alte finestre ed ora dalle basse porte; e quale con nuovo dono, e quale con sembiante, e quale con parole confortava il suo del suo amore."[154]

If he thus spent his time in play and love there can have been little enough left, when the Filocolo was laid aside, for study. We find his father complaining of his slackness. Old Boccaccio had already been grievously disappointed when Giovanni abandoned trade, and now that he threw up or was not eager to pursue his law studies, he was both distressed and angry; nor were Giovanni's friends more content. All the Florentines at Naples, he tells us, seemed to speak with his father's voice. It was well to be in love, they told him, even better to write poetry, but to ruin oneself for love, Monna mia! what madness, and then poetry never made any one rich.[155]

So spoke and thought the practical Tuscan soul, and the English have but echoed it for centuries. However, Giovanni only immersed himself more in Ovid, and doubtless the throb of hexameter and pentameter silenced the prose of the merchants. Later, about 1334, he began to read Petrarch;[156] their personal friendship, however, did not begin till much later, in 1350.[157] His reading then, like his love, inspired him to write verses, and as he tells us, when the days of uncertainty were over, "Under the new lordship of love I desired to know what power splendid words had to move human hearts."[158] And these ornate parole were all in honour of his love. How he praises her!

"Ed io presumo in versi diseguali

Di disegnarle in canto senza suono?

Vedete se son folli i pensier miei!"[159]

Presumptuous or no, he tells us very eloquently and sweetly that her teeth were candid Eastern pearls, her lips, living rubies clear and red, her cheeks, roses mixed with lilies, her hair, all gold like an aureole about her happy face:—

"E l' altre parti tutte si confanno

Alle predette in proporzione eguale

Di costei ch' i ver angioli simiglia."[160]

And then her eyes, it is always them he praises best:—

"L' angelico leggiadro e dolce riso

Nel qual quando scintillan quelle stelle

Che la luce del ciel fanno minore

Par s' apra 'l cielo e rida il mundo tutto."[161]

But he speaks of her beauty in a thousand verses in a thousand places, in many disguises.

This burning and eager love was, however, hindered in one thing—he had the greatest difficulty in seeing Fiammetta:—

"Qualor mi mena Amor dov' io vi veggia

Ch' assai di rado avvien, sì cara sete...."[162]

For at this time certainly Fiammetta does not seem to have considered his love of any importance to her, so that she gave him very few opportunities of seeing her, and then in everything he had to be careful not to rouse her husband's suspicions.[163] Sometimes, too, she went far away into the country to some property of her family, whither he could not follow, and always every year to Baia for the season; so that we find him writing:—

"... colla bellezza sua mi spoglia

Ogn' anno nella più lieta stagione

Di quella donna ch' è sol mio desire;

A sè la chiama, ed io, contra mia voglia

Rimango senza il cuore, in gran quistione,

Qual men dorriemi il vivere o 'l morire."[164]

He managed to see her, however, sometimes in church, or at her window, or in the gardens, and once he followed her to Baia, but only to see her "a long way off." Yet, as he reminds himself, he always had her, a vision in his heart:—

"Onde contra mia voglia, s' io non voglio

Lei riguardando, perder di vederla,

In altra parte mi convien voltare.

Oh grieve caso! ond' io forte mi doglio;

Colei qui cerco di poter vederla

Sempre non posso poi lei riguardare."[165]

Then there were moments of wild hope, till the indifference of Fiammetta put it out; and he would resolve to break the "love chains," but it was useless. He humiliated himself, and at last came to despair. It was in some such moment, during her absence, we may think, that he began the Filostrato,[166] and at length finally abandoned those studies which in some sort his love had killed.

In this feverish state of mind, of soul, sometimes hopeful, sometimes in despair, Boccaccio passed the next five years of his life, from the spring of 1331 to the spring of 1336. It was during this time, in 1335[167] it seems, that with his father's unwilling permission he discontinued the law studies he had begun in 1329, but had for long neglected, and gave himself up to literature, "without a master," but not without a counsellor—his old companion in the study of astronomy, Calmeta. Other friends, too, were able to assist him, among them Giovanni Barrili, the jurisconsult, a man of fine culture, later Seneschal of King Robert for the kingdom of Provence,[168] and Paolo da Perugia, King Robert's learned librarian, elected to that office in 1332. Him Boccaccio held in the highest veneration, and no doubt Paolo was very useful to him.[169]

We know nothing of his first literary studies, but we may be sure he continued to read Ovid, and now read or re-read Virgil—these if only for the study of versification. As for prose, it is possible that he now read the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which he certainly knew and admired. However that may be, his work at this time cannot have been very severe or serious, for his mind was full of uneasiness about Fiammetta, and this excitement no doubt increased in the early summer of 1336, when she grew "kinder," and deigned even to encourage him; he met her "con humil voce e con atti piacenti."[170]

MANLIUS THROWN INTO THE TIBER
By the Dutch engraver called "The Master of the Subjects in the Boccaccio." "De Casibus Virorum." (Strasburg, 1476.)

What was the real cause of this "kindness" it seems impossible we should ever know. Perhaps at the moment Fiammetta lacked a lover, though that is hard measure for her. Some cause there must have been, for a woman does not surely let a lover sigh for five years unheard, and then for no reason at all suddenly requite him. Certainly Giovanni had made many beautiful verses for her, but when did that touch a woman's heart? Yet, be the cause what it may, in the summer of 1336 she would suddenly grow pale when he passed her by, and then as suddenly turn her "starry eyes" on him languidly, voluptuously:—

"Amor, se questa donna non s' infinge

La mia speranza al suo termine viene...."

All this seems to have come to pass at Baia, perhaps, as Boccaccio seems himself to suggest, one day in the woods of Monte Miseno whither they were gone with a gay company holding festa there in the golden spring weather.[171] And there were other days too: long delicious noons in the woods, still evenings by the seashore, where, though not alone, he might talk freely to her, by chance or strategy, or in a low voice whisper his latest verses beating with her heart. Giovanni, we may be sure, was no mean strategist; he was capable of playing his part in the game of hide-and-seek with the world.[172] He seems eagerly to have sought the friendship of her husband and of her relations and Fiammetta herself tells us in the romance that bears her name that filled "non solamente dello amoroso ardore, ma ancora di cautela perfetta il vidi pieno; il che sommamente mi fu a grado. Esso, con intera considerazione vago di servare il mio onore e adempiere, quando i luoghi e li tempi il concedessero, li suoi desii credo non senza gravissima pena, usando molte arti, s' ingegnò d' aver la familiarità di qualunque mi era parente, ed ultimamente del mio marito: la quale non solamente ebbe, ma ancora con tanta grazia la possedette, che a niuno niuna cosa era a grado, se non tanto quanto con lui la comunicava...."[173]

Well, the one hundred and thirty-five days had begun.[174] There were difficulties still to be overcome, however, before he won that for which, as he says, he had always begged. Fiammetta, like a very woman, denied it him over and over again, though very willingly she would have given it to him. Expert as he had become in a woman's heart—in this woman's heart at least—Giovanni guessed all this and knew besides that she could not give him what he desired unless he took it with a show at least of violence. Such, even to-day, are Italian manners.[175] He awaited the opportunity. It seems to have come during the absence of the husband in Capua.[176] Screwing his courage to the sticking-point, he resolved to go to her chamber, and to this end persuaded or bribed her maid to help him.[177]

It was in the early days of November probably, days so pensive in that beautiful southern country, that it befell even as he had planned. Led by the maid into Fiammetta's chamber, he hid himself behind the curtains of the great marital bed. Presently she came in with the maid, who undressed her and put her to bed, and left her, half laughing, half in tears. Again he waited, and when at last, desperate with anxiety and hope, he dared to come out of his hiding, she was sleeping as quietly as a child. For a time he looked at her, then trembling and scarce daring to breathe the while, he crept into the great bed beside her, in verity as though he were her newly wedded husband. Then softly he kissed her, sleeping still, and drawing aside the curtain that hid the light,[178] discovered to his amorous eyes "il delicato petto, e con desiderosa mano toccava le ritonde mammelle, bacciandola molte volte," and already held her in his arms when she awakened. She opened her mouth to cry for help, he closed it with kisses; she strove to get out of bed, but he held her firm, bidding her have no fear. She was defeated, of course, but that her yielding might not seem too easy she reproached him[179] in a trembling voice—trembling with fear and pleasure—for the violence with which he had stolen what she had always denied him; adding that all was quite useless as she did not wish it.

Then Giovanni, putting all to the proof, drew a dagger from his belt, and retiring to a corner of the bed, in a low and distressed voice said—we find the words in the Ameto—"I come not, O lady, to defile the chastity of thy bed, but as an ardent lover to obtain relief for my burning desires; thou alone canst assuage them, or tell me to die: surely I will only leave thee satisfied or dead, not that I seek to gratify my passion by violence or to compel any to raise cruel hands against me; but if thou art deaf to my entreaties with my dagger I shall pierce my heart."

To kill himself—there. O no, Giovanni! Certainly she did not want that. What then? Well, not a dead man in her room, at any rate, for all the world to talk about.[180] Yes, she was paid in her own coin. She was conquered; her silence gave consent. "O no, Giovanni!"

"Donna mia," he whispered, "I came thus because it was pleasing to the gods...."[181]

"Thou lovest me so?" she answered. "And when then, and how, and why ... and why?" So he told her all over again from the beginning, and she, yielding little by little, seemed doubtful even yet. Then he asked again, "Che farò O Donna? Passerà il freddo ferro il solecito petto o lieto sarà dal tuo riscaldato?" At this renewed menace the poor lady, without more ado, reached for the iron and flung it away. Then he, putting his arms about her and kissing her furiously, whispered: "Lady, the gods, my passion, and thy beauty, have wounded my soul, and thus as was already told thee in dreams I shall for ever be thine: I do not think I need implore thee to be mine, but if necessary I pray thee now once for all...."

That night was but the first of a long series, as we may suppose. "Oh," says Fiammetta, in the romance which bears her name, "how he loved my room and with what joy it saw him arrive. He held it in greater reverence than any church (temple). Ah me, what pleasant kisses! What loving embraces! How many nights passed as though they had been bright days in sweet converse without sleep! How many delights, dear to every lover, have we enjoyed there in those happy days."[182]

So autumn passed into winter and the long nights grew short, and all the world was at the spring; and for them too it was the golden age—so long ago. Well, do we not know how they spent their lives? It was ever Giovanni's way to kiss and tell. Has he not spoken of the festas and the jousts, and the rare encounters that in Naples greeted Primavera?[183] We see him with Fiammetta at the Courts of Love, in the deep shade of the gardens, in the joyful fields,[184] on the seashore at Baia,[185] and at the Bagno beside the lake of Avernus,[186] while we may catch a glimpse of them too at a wedding feast.[187] So passed what proved to be the one happy year of their love, and perhaps the happiest of Giovanni's life.

That year so full of wild joy soon passed away. With the dawn of 1338 his troubles began. At first jealousy. He found it waiting to torture him on returning from a journey we know not whither,[188] in which he had encountered dangers by flood and field; a winter journey then, doubtless. He came home to find Fiammetta disdainful, angry, even indifferent. All the annoyance of the road came back to him threefold:—[189]

"... non ch' alcun tormento

Mi desser tornand 'io, ma fur gioconde,

Tanta dolce speranza mi recava

Spronato dal desio di rivederti,

Qual ver me ti lasciai, Donna, pietosa.

Or, oltre, a quel che io, lasso! stimava,

Trovo mi sdegni, e non so per quai merti;

Per che piange nel cor l' alma dogliosa,