1350-1351

BOCCACCIO AS AMBASSADOR—THE MEETING WITH PETRARCH

As we have seen, Boccaccio returned to Florence probably in the end of 1349. His father, who was certainly living in July, 1348, for he then added a codicil to his Will,[387] seems still to have been alive in May, 1349,[388] but by January, 1350, he is spoken of as dead and Giovanni is named as one of his heirs.[389] And in the same month of January, 1350, on the 26th of the month, Boccaccio was appointed guardian of his brother Jacopo,[390] then still a child. But these were not the only duties which fell to him in that year, which, as it proved, was to mark a new departure in his life. It is in 1350 that we find him, for the first time as we may think, acting as ambassador for the Florentine Republic, and it is in 1350 that he first met Petrarch face to face and entertained him in his house in Florence.

The condition of Italy at this time was, as may be easily understood, absolutely anarchical. While Florence and Naples were still in the throes of revolution and war, the Visconti of Milan had not been idle. Using every discontent that could be found in Italy, chiefly of Ghibelline origin, they were in the way to threaten whatsoever was left of liberty and independence. In the worst of this confusion the plague had suddenly appeared in 1348 with the same result as an earthquake might have caused. Old landmarks were overthrown, wealth was, as it were, redistributed, and the whole social condition, often bad enough, became indescribably confused.

The economical results of that awful catastrophe, not only for Italy, but for Europe, were not easily defined or realised anywhere, and least of all perhaps in Italy, where the conditions of life were so complex. An enormous displacement of riches had taken place. All those in any way concerned with the ministration to the sick or the burial of the dead were, if they survived, greatly enriched; and among these was such a society as that of the Or San Michele. But individuals also found themselves suddenly wealthy: doctors and druggists, undertakers, drapers, and poulterers, and such, all who had been able to render help were seemingly benefited, but the farmers and the merchants were ruined. Something perhaps of the awful transformation brought about by the plague may berealised when we consider that, according to Boccaccio, Florence lost three out of every five[391] of her inhabitants, that is about 100,000 persons, that at Pisa six out of every seven died, that Genoa lost 40,000 people, Siena 80,000, while every one died at Trapani, in Sicily, not a soul escaping. Old Agnola de Tura, the Sienese historian, tells us that he buried five of his sons in the same grave, and this was not extraordinary. The economic result of such disaster may then be better imagined than described in detail. No one realised what had happened: it was inconceivable. Even the governments did not understand the new position. They saw the needy suddenly rich, those who had been clothed in rags went in silks and French fashions, and they came to the conclusion that the state was suffering from too great wealth: they revived sumptuary laws, raised taxes, fixed prices, and did, in fact, no good, but much harm. The problem to be solved was that of population and the prices of production. The moral condition was as disastrous as the economic and left a more lasting scar.

In this helpless and disastrous condition of the major part of Italy, from which indeed some of the communes never wholly recovered,[392] we find what in fact we might have expected, that those who had suffered least threatened to become dominant. Now, as it happened, of all Italy upper and lower Milan had escaped most easily, and it was in fact a domination of Milan that, with Naples in the grip of the invader and Tuscany almost depopulated, Florence had to face.

Things came to a head when the Visconti, in October, 1350, possessed themselves of Bologna. In such a case Florence might have expected help or at least resentment, one might think, from the Romagna, but the unruly barons of that region were fighting for their lives and their lordships with Duraforte, whom the Pope had sent to bring them to order. Nor were Venice and Genoa able to render her aid, for they had entered on a mortal duel and cared for nothing else. Naples of course was helpless, and Siena and Perugia, the one stricken almost to death by the plague, the other confident in her mountain passes, thought themselves too far for the ambition of Milan.

So Florence faced the enemy alone, and while we admire her courage we must admit that she had no choice, for she would never have moved at all, nor in her condition would she have been justified in moving, but that she was directly threatened; for with Bologna in the hands of Milan her northern trade routes were at the mercy of the enemy. Thus it became necessary before all else to secure the Apennine passes, and this she foresaw so well that in February, 1350, she bought Prato from the Queen of Naples, who held her rights by inheritance from her father, Charles of Calabria; and not content with this, for Prato was no use without Pistoia, she tried to seize Pistoia also. There, however, she was not wholly or at first successful, but she was allowed to garrison the citadel as well as two important fortified places after guaranteeing full freedom to the Pistolese. In the former of these transactions, the donation of Prato, carried out by NiccolÒ Acciaiuoli, we catch a glimpse of Boccaccio, who was present as a witness in Florence.[393]

Just before the sale of Bologna to the Visconti we find Boccaccio in Romagna at Ravenna, whither he had gone apparently in September, as we have seen,[394] on the delicate and honourable mission entrusted to him by the Society of Or San Michele, of presenting a gift of ten gold florins to the daughter of Dante, a nun in the convent of S. Stefano dell' Uliva in that city. Thence he seems to have gone as ambassador for the republic to Francesco degli Ordelaffi of ForlÌ, who was of course already known to him. This, however, is unfortunately but conjecture. We know in fact almost nothing of what, for reasons which will presently appear, I consider to have been Boccaccio's first embassy. All that we can assert is that before November 11, 1350, he went as ambassador into Romagna, and this we know from a document cited by the Abate Mehus,[395] bearing that date which says, "Dominus Johannes Boccacci olim ambasciator transmissus ad partes RomandioliÆ."[396] Baldelli tells us[397] without supporting his assertions by a single document that Boccaccio went three times as ambassador for the republic into Romagna: first in the time of Ostasio da Polenta; later in October, 1350; and again a few months after. The first of these embassies, that to Ostasio, he bases on Petrarch's letter of 1365, which we have already quoted and used.[398] There Petrarch says: "Ortus est AdriÆ in litore ea ferme Ætate, nisi fallor, qua tu ibi agebas cum antiquo plagÆ illius Domino ejus avo, qui nunc prÆsidet." That is to say, he says to Boccaccio: "Unless I am mistaken, you were on the shores of the Adriatic in the time of the grandfather of him who now rules there." He is speaking of Ravenna, not of Rimini, and quite apart from the fact that he says, "unless I am mistaken"—and he may have been mistaken—there is no mention there of an embassy, but only of a visit, a visit to Ostasio da Polenta, who died in 1346, and was the grandfather of Guido da Polenta, who ruled in Ravenna when that letter was written in 1365. We have already used this letter to prove the date of that visit, in doing which we are making legitimate use of it, but to try to prove an embassy from it is to use it improperly.

The second embassy, Baldelli tells us, was to Francesco degli Ordelaffi, in October, 1350, "after the sale of Bologna on the 14th of that month." This again is pure conjecture, the only document which supports it being that quoted above, discovered by Mehus. We have, however, reason to suppose that Baldelli may be right here,[399] and may possibly have been in possession of a document or documents since lost to us, which unfortunately he has not quoted or even named. We know at least that Boccaccio was ambassador in Romagna before November 11, 1350. Now until late in 1349 we have seen him in Naples, and in January and February, 1350, in Florence. In October, 1350, we know him to have been in Florence again, for he there entertained Petrarch, as he did in December. What was he doing between February and October in that year? Well, in September he was in Romagna, in Ravenna fulfilling his mission from the Or San Michele to the daughter of Dante. It seems likely, therefore, that it was at this time he was acting as Florentine ambassador at the court of the Ordelaffi of ForlÌ.

As to the third embassy of which Baldelli speaks, that to Bernardino da Polenta "a few months after" the second, we know nothing of it, and it remains absolutely in the air—a mere conjecture.[400]

Putting aside Baldelli's assertion, we may take it on the evidence as most probable that Boccaccio was the ambassador of Florence in Romagna at some time between March and October, 1350. If we are right in thinking so, his mission was of very great importance. What Florence feared, as we have seen, was the growing power of Milan, and, after the sale of Bologna, the loss of her trade routes north, and finally perhaps even her liberty. Already, in the latter part of 1349,[401] she had offered again and again to mediate between the Pope and Bologna and Romagna, fearing that in their distraction Milan would be tempted to interfere for her own ends. In the first months of 1350 she had written to the Pope, to Perugia, Siena, and to the Senate of Rome, that they should send ambassadors to the congress at Arezzo to form a confederation for their common protection.[402] In September she wrote the Pope more than once explaining affairs to him; but he had touched Visconti gold, and far away in Avignon cared nothing and paid but little heed. The sale of Bologna, however, brought things to a crisis so far as the policy of Florence was concerned, and having secured Prato, Pistoia, and the passes, her ambassadors in Romagna had apparently induced the Pepoli to replace Bologna under the protection of the communes of Florence, Siena, and Perugia, till the Papal army was ready to act. But the Papal army was not likely to be ready so long as Visconti was willing to pay,[403] and we find the Pope, while he thanks Florence effusively, refusing to acknowledge the claim of the League to protect Bologna. The sale of Bologna to Milan, its seizure by the Visconti, brought all the diplomacy of Florence to naught for the moment, and in another letter, written on November 9, 1350,[404] she returns once more to plead with the Pope and to point out to him the danger of the invasions of the Visconti in Lombardy and in Bologna, which placed in peril not only the Parte Guelfa, but the territories of the Church and the Florentine contado. By the time that letter was written Boccaccio was back in Florence, and it must have been evident to the Florentines that the Pope had no intention of giving them any assistance and that they must look elsewhere for an ally.

That year, so troubled in Italy, incongruous as it may seem to us, had been proclaimed by the Pope a year of Jubilee, not without some intention that the Papal coffers should benefit from the faithful, then eager to express their piety and their thankfulness for the passing of the plague. To gain the indulgence of the Jubilee it was necessary to spend fifteen days in Rome. On April 17, 1350, the commune of Florence prayed the Papal Legate, partly, no doubt, on account of the unsettled condition of the City, and partly, perhaps, that Florence itself might not be long without as many citizens as possible, to reduce the term of fifteen days to eight for all Florentines and for those who dwelt in the contado.[405]

Now Petrarch, always a man of sincere piety, and especially at this time when he was mourning for Laura, had spent the earlier months of the year in Padua, Parma, and Verona. On February 14, the feast of S. Valentine, he had been present at the translation of the body of S. Anthony of Padua from its first resting-place to the church just built in its honour—Il Santo. On June 20 he had taken formal possession of his archdeaconry in Parma; and so it was not till the beginning of October that he set out, alone, on pilgrimage for Rome to win the indulgences of the Jubilee. As it happened, he travelled by way of Florence, entering that city for the first time about the middle of the month, and there, as is generally supposed, for the first time too, he met Boccaccio face to face.[406]

Petrarch, born in Arezzo on July 20, 1304, was nine years older than Boccaccio, and differed from him so much both in intellect and character that the two friends may almost be said to complement one another. Of a very noble nature, Petrarch was nevertheless introspective, jealous of his reputation, and absolutely personal in his attitude towards life, of which, as his work shows, he was in many ways so shy. Nor was he without a certain puritanism which was his weakness as well as his strength. As a scholar he was at this time, as he always remained, incomparably Boccaccio's superior. For Boccaccio the ancient world was a kind of wonder and miracle that had no relation to himself or to the modern world. But Petrarch regarded antiquity almost as we do, and, though necessarily without our knowledge of detail, such as it is, with a real historic sense—as a living thing with which it was possible, though hardly, to hold communion, by which it was possible to be guided, governed, and taught, a reality out of which the modern world was born. Moreover, in 1350, at the time of his meeting with Boccaccio, Petrarch was indubitably the most renowned poet and man of letters in Europe. Every one knew his sonnets, and his incoronation as Laureate on the Capitol had sufficed in the imagination of the world, quite apart from the intrinsic and very real value of his work, to set him above all other poets of his time. He was the Pope's friend, and was honoured and welcomed in every court in Italy—at the court, for instance, of King Robert of Naples, where he had left so splendid a memory on his way to the triumph of the Capitol, at the courts of the signorotti of the Romagna. The youth of Italy had his sonnets by heart; all women read with envy his praise of Madonna Laura; the learned reverenced him as the most learned man of his time and thought him the peer of Virgil and of Cicero. Nor was the Church behind in an admiration wherein all the world was agreed, for she saw in the lettered canonico the glory of the priesthood, and would gladly have led him forward to the highest honours.[407] It was this man, one of the most famous and as it happened one of the best of the age, that Boccaccio met in Florence in 1350.

Petrarch himself gives us an account of their first meeting.[408]

"In days gone by," he says in a letter to Boccaccio,[409] "I was hurrying across Central Italy in midwinter; you hastened to greet me, not only with affection, the message of soul to soul, but in person, impelled by a wonderful desire to see one you had never yet beheld, but whom nevertheless you were minded to love. You had sent before you a piece of beautiful verse, thus showing me first the aspect of your genius and then of your person. It was evening and the light was fading, when, returning from my long exile, I found myself at last within my native walls. You welcomed me with a courtesy and respect greater than I merited, recalling the poetic meeting of Anchises with the king of Arcadia, who, "in the ardour of youth," longed to speak with the hero and to press his hand.[410] Although I did not, like him, stand "above all others," but rather beneath, your zeal was none the less ardent. You introduced me, not within the walls of Pheneus, but into the sacred penetralia of your friendship. Nor did I present you with a "superb quiver and arrows of Lycia," but rather with my sincere and unchangeable affection. While acknowledging my inferiority in many respects, I will never willingly concede it in this either to Nisus or to Pythias or to LÆlius.—Farewell."

Thus began a friendship that lasted nearly twenty-five years. They were, says Filippo Villani, "one soul in two bodies."

But Petrarch did not remain long in Florence; after a few days he hurried on to Rome, whence he wrote to Boccaccio on his arrival:—

"... After leaving you I betook myself, as you know, to Rome, where the year of Jubilee has called—sinners that we are—almost all Christendom. In order not to be condemned to the burden of travelling alone I chose some companions for the way; of whom one, the oldest, by the prestige of his age and his religious profession, another by his knowledge and talk, others by their experience of affairs and their kind affection, seemed likely to sweeten the journey that nevertheless was very tiring. I took these precautions, which were rather wise than happy as the event proved, and I went with a fervent heart, ready to make an end at last of my iniquities. For, as Horace says, 'I am not ashamed of past follies, but I should be, if now I did not end them.'[411] Fortune, I hope, has not and will not be able to alter my resolution in anything...."[412]

But as he himself seems to have feared, he was unlucky that day, for as he passed with his companions up the hillside out of Bolsena he was kicked badly on the leg by his companion's horse and came to Rome with difficulty, suffering great pain all the time he was there. He seems to have reached the City on November 1, and to have left it again early in December for Arezzo, his birthplace, where he was received with extraordinary honour. Thence he returned to Florence, where he again saw Boccaccio with his friends Lapo da Castiglionchio and Francescho Nelli, whose father had been Gonfalonier of Justice and who himself became Secretary to NiccolÒ Acciaiuoli when he was Grand Seneschal of Naples. Nelli was in Holy Orders and Prior of SS. Apostoli. Lapo was a man of great learning; he now presented Petrarch with a copy of the newly discovered Institutions of Quintillian.In the New Year Petrarch left Florence, and three months later we find Boccaccio visiting him in Padua as ambassador for the republic, which, no doubt to his delight and very probably at his suggestion, wished to offer the great poet a chair in her new university. For partly in rivalry with Pisa, partly to attract foreigners and even new citizens after the plague,[413] the republic had founded a new university in Florence at the end of 1348, to which, in May, 1349, Pope Clement VI had conceded all the privileges and liberties of the universities of Paris and Bologna. For some reason or another, however, the new university had not brought to Florence either the fame or the population she desired. It was therefore a brilliant and characteristic policy which prompted her to invite the most famous man of learning of the day to accept a chair in it; for if Petrarch could have been persuaded to accept the offer, the university of Florence would have easily outshone any other then in existence: all Italy and half Europe might well have flocked thither.

The offer thus made, and if at Boccaccio's suggestion, then so far as he was concerned in all good faith, was characteristic in its impudence or astonishing in its generosity according to the point of view, for it will be remembered that Florence had banished Petrarch's father and confiscated his goods and all such property as it could lay its hands on two years before the birth of his son in 1302. With him into exile went his young wife. They found a refuge in the Ghibelline city of Arezzo, where for this cause Petrarch was born. Even in 1350, the year in which the poet entered Florence for the first time, the decree of banishment was in force against him; had he been less famous, less well protected, he would have been in peril of his life. As it was, Florence dared not attack him; nor, seeing the glory he had won, did she wish to do anything but claim a share in it. It was doubtless this consideration and some remembrance of her humiliation before the contempt of that other exile who had died in Ravenna, that prompted Florence, always so business-like, to try to repair the wrong she had done to Petrarch. So she decided to return him in money the value of the property confiscated from his father, and to send Boccaccio on the delicate mission of persuading him to accept the offer she now made him of a chair in her university.[414] With a letter then from the Republic, Boccaccio set out for Padua in the spring of 1351, meeting Petrarch there, as De Sade tells us, on April 6, the anniversary of the day of Petrarch's first meeting with Laura and of her death.

The letter which Boccaccio took with him was from the Prior of the Arti: Reverendo Viro D. Francisco Petrarcha, Canonico Padoano, Laureato PoetÆ, concivi nostro carissimo, Prior Artium Vexillifer JustitiÆ Populi et Communis FlorentiÆ. It was very flattering, laudatory, and moving. It greeted Petrarch as a citizen of Florence, spoke of his "admirable profession," his "excellent merit in studies," his "utter worthiness of the laurel crown," his "most rare genius which shall be an example to latest posterity," etc. etc. etc. Then it spoke of the offer. "No long time since," it said, "seeing our city deprived of learning and study, we wisely decided that henceforth the arts must flourish and ought to be cultivated among us, and that it would be necessary to introduce studies of every sort into our city so that by their help our Republic, like Rome of old, should be glorious above the other cities of Italy and grow always more happy and more illustrious. Now our fatherland believes that you are the one and only man by whom this result can be attained. The Republic prays you, then, as warmly as it may, to give yourself to these studies and to make them flourish...." So on and so forth, quoting Virgil, Sallust, and Cicero, with allusions to that "immortal work the Africa which...." Boccaccio was to do the rest. "Other things," the letter ends, "many and of infinitely greater consideration, you will hear from Giovanni Boccaccio, our citizen, who is sent to you by special commission...."[415]

With this letter in his pocket Boccaccio made his way to Padua, where, as we know, he was delighted to come, nor was Petrarch less happy to see him. And when he returned he bore Petrarch's answer to the Republic: "Boccaccio, the bearer of your letter and of your commands, will tell you how I desire to obey you and what are my projects." No doubt while Boccaccio was with him, seeing his sincerity, Petrarch felt half inclined to accept; but he was at all times infirm of purpose. "If I break my word that I have given to my friends," he writes,[416] "it is because of the variation of the human spirit, from which none is exempt except the perfect man. Uniformity is the mother of boredom, that one can only avoid by changing one's place." However that may be, when later in the year he left Padua, it was to return not to Florence, but to France.

If we know nothing else of this embassy, we know, at least, that this sojourn in Padua passed pleasantly for Boccaccio. In a letter written to Petrarch from Ravenna, in July, 1353,[417] he reminds his "best master" of his visit. "I think," he writes, "that you have not forgotten how, when less than three years ago I came to you in Padua the ambassador of our Senate, my commission fulfilled, I remained with you for some days, and how that those days were all passed in the same way: you gave yourself to sacred studies, and I, desiring your compositions, copied them. When the day waned to sunset we left work and went into your garden, already filled by spring with flowers and leaves.... Now sitting, now talking, we passed what remained of the day in placid and delightful idleness, even till night."

Some of that talk was doubtless given to Letters, but some too fell, as it could not but do, on politics. For that letter, so charming in the scene it brings before us of that garden at nightfall, goes on to speak in a transparent allegory of the affairs of Italy and of Petrarch's sudden change of plans, for whereas in 1351 he had promised to enter the service of Florence and had cursed the Visconti, when he returned to Italy in 1353, it was with these very Visconti he had taken shameful service—with the enemies of "his own country" Florence, whom he had spurned, and who in return had repealed the repeal of his banishment and refrained from returning to him the money value of his father's possessions. Is it in revenge for this, Boccaccio asks, that he has taken service with the enemy? He reproaches him in the subtlest and gentlest way, yet with an eager patriotism that does him the greatest honour, representing him to himself even as a third person, one Sylvanus, who "had been of their company" in Padua. Yet Boccaccio does not spare him, and though he loved and revered him beyond any other living man, he bravely tells him his mind and points out his treachery, when his country is at stake.

That Sylvanus, it seems—Petrarch himself really—had lamented bitterly enough the unhappy state of Italy, neglected by the Emperors and the Popes, and exposed to the brutality and tyranny of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti of Milan. More and more he cursed the tyrants, and especially the Visconti, and "how eagerly you agreed with him!... But now," the letter continues,[418] "I have heard that this Sylvanus is about to enter the service of those very Visconti, who even now menace his country. I would not have believed it had not I had a letter from him in which he tells me it is so himself. Who would ever have suspected him of so much mobility of character, or as likely to forswear his own faith out of greediness? But he has done so perhaps to avenge himself on his fellow-citizens who have retaken the property of his father, which they had once returned to him. But what man of honour, even when he has received a wrong from his country, would unite himself with her enemies? How much has Sylvanus mystified and compromised, by these acts, all his admirers and friends...."

Just here we come upon something noble and firm in the character of Boccaccio, something of the "nationalism" too which was to be the great force of the future, to which Petrarch was less clairvoyant and which Dante had never perceived at all. The Empire was dead; in less than a hundred years men were to protest they did not understand what it meant. The Papacy then too seemed almost as helpless as it is to-day. Internationalism—the latest cry of the modern decadent or dreamer—was already a mere ghost frightened and gibbering in the dawn, and the future lay in the growth of nationalities, in the variety and freedom of the world, perhaps in the federation of Italy. Were these the thoughts that occupied the two pioneers of the modern world on those spring nights in that garden at Padua?