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]

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?

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]

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—

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.