1351-1352

TWO EMBASSIES

Boccaccio did well to be anxious. The greed of the Visconti, the venality and indifference of the Pope, threatened the very liberty of Tuscany, and though Boccaccio had till now held no permanent public office in Florence, we have seen him as a witness to the donation of Prato, as ambassador for the Republic in Romagna, and as its representative offering Petrarch a chair in the new university. He was now to be entrusted with a more delicate and serious mission. But first, on his return from Padua in January-February, 1351, he became one of the Camarlinghi del Comune.[419] During the remainder of that year we seem to see him quietly at work in Florence,[420] most probably on the Decameron, and then suddenly in December he was called upon to go on a mission to Ludwig of Brandenburg, Count of Tyrol.[421]Florence was tired of appealing to the Pope always in vain and had at last looked for another champion against the Visconti. Deserted by the Church, at war with the Visconti, Florence had either to submit or to find a way out for herself, and with her usual astuteness she hoped to achieve the latter by calling to her aid the excommunicated Ludwig. The moment was well chosen. Ludwig was just reconciled with Charles IV, King of the Romans, the greatest enemy of his house. He was poor and in need of money, little loved in his own country, and not indisposed to try any adventure that offered. So Boccaccio set out. The letters given to him December 12, 1351, were directed to Conrad, Duke of Teck, who had already visited Florence in 1341, and to Ludwig himself.[422] We know, however, nothing personal to Boccaccio with regard to this mission. In fact save that it was so far successful that Ludwig sent Diapoldo Katzensteiner to Florence to continue the overtures we know little about it at all. Katzensteiner's pretensions, however, proved to be such that the Florentines would not accept them, and communications were broken off.[423] That was in March, 1352. On May 1 a new project was on foot. Florence decided to call the prospective Emperor Charles IV, the grandson of her old enemy Henry VII, into Italy to her assistance.[424]

That a Guelf republic should turn for assistance to the head of the Ghibelline cause seems perhaps more strange than in fact it was. Guelf and Ghibelline had become mere names beneath which local jealousies hid and flourished, caring nothing for the greater but less real quarrel between Empire and Papacy. Charles, however, was to fail Florence; for at the last moment he withdrew from the treaty, fearing to leave Germany; when he did descend later, things had so far improved for her that she was anything but glad to see him especially when she was forced to remember that it was she who had called him there. After these two failures Florence was compelled to make terms with the Visconti at Sarzana in April, 1353, promising not to interfere in Lombardy or Bologna, while Visconti for his part undertook not to molest Tuscany.[425] But by this treaty the Visconti gained a recognition of their hold in Bologna from the only power that wished to dispute it. They profited too by the peace, extending their dominion in Northern Italy. In this, though fortune favoured them, they began to threaten others who had looked on with composure when they were busy with Tuscany. Among these were the Venetians, who made an alliance with Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, and Padua, and were soon trying to persuade Florence, Siena, and Perugia to join them.[426] Nor did they stop there, for in December, 1353, they too tried to interest Charles IV in Italian affairs. When it was seen that Charles was likely to listen to the Venetians the Visconti too sent ambassadors to him, nor was the Papacy slow to make friends.

In 1352 Clement VI had died, and in his stead Innocent VI reigned in Avignon. He was determined to assert his claims in Italy, and especially in the Romagna, and to this end despatched Cardinal Albornoz, the redoubtable Spaniard, to bring the unruly barons of that region to order. The whole situation was delicate and complicated. Florence was in a particularly difficult position. She had called Charles into Italy without the Pope's leave—she, the head of the Guelf cause. He had not come. Now when she no longer wanted him he seemed to be coming in spite of her and with the Pope's goodwill. She seems to have doubted the reality of that, as well she might. Moreover, though she and her allies would have been glad enough to join the Venetians, the situation was too complicated for hurried action, especially as a treaty only two years old bound them not to interfere in Lombardy and Bologna so long as they were left alone.

Charles's own position can have been not less difficult. Now that he seemed really eager to enter Italy, both sides seemed eager for him to do so. Should he enter Italy as the "Imperatore de' Preti," and so make sure of a coronation, or descend as the avenger of the imperial claims? He hesitated. In these circumstances it seemed to the Florentines that there was but one thing to do—to inform themselves of the real intentions of the Pope, and when these were known, to decide on a course of action. In these very delicate missions his countrymen again had recourse to Boccaccio. He set out on April 28, 1354.[427] His instructions were to find out whether the Emperor was coming into Italy with consent of His Holiness, to speak of the loyalty of Florence to the Holy See, and to protest her willingness to do whatever the Pope desired. At the same time he had to obtain at least this, that the Pope should exert himself to save the honour and independence of the republic. Again, if the Pope pretended that heknew nothing of the advent of Charles, but asked the intentions of Florence in case he should enter Italy, Boccaccio was instructed to say that he was only sent to ask the intentions of His Holiness. In any case he was to return as quickly as possible.

The Pope's answer seems to have been far from clear. Boccaccio returned, but a few months later Dietifeci di Michele was sent as ambassador to Avignon with almost the same instructions and with the same object in view.

Can it be that Florence really did not understand the situation as we see it, or was that situation in reality very dangerous to her liberty? It is difficult to understand how she can have failed to see that the Pope had already won. It was obvious that he had come to some arrangement with Charles, which proved to be that the Church would crown him on condition that he only spent the day of his incoronation in Rome and respected the sovereignty of the Pope in the states of the Church. Moreover, if this were not enough, as Florence knew, the presence of Albornoz in Romagna had already drawn the teeth of the Visconti so far as they were dangerous to Tuscany. However, it seems to have been in considerable fear and perplexity that she saw Charles enter Padua early in November, 1354. Now if ever, some thought doubtless, the White Guelf ideal was to be realised. Among these idealists was, alas, Petrarch, whose hymn, not long written perhaps, Italia Mia, surely dreamed of quite another king than a German prince. Boccaccio was, as I think, better advised. In his seventh Eclogue he mercilessly ridicules Charles, who in fact, though not maybe in seeming, was the instrument of the Pope. He entered Italy by the Pope's leave. Padua received him with honour, but Cane della Scala of Verona clanged to his gates, and the Visconti with bared teeth waited to see what he would do. He went to Mantua and Gonzaga received him well. There he expected the ambassador of Tuscany, but as the Pope's friend the Ghibellines knew him not, they smiled bitterly at the "Priests' Emperor," only Pisa pathetically stretching out her hands to CÆsar's ghost, while, as claimant of the imperial title the Guelf republics would have none of him. Florence need have had no fear, the Church had out-manoeuvred her enemies as in old time.

Charles, however, was not contemptible. Simple German as he was, he soon grasped the situation. He made friends in some sort with Visconti, and in this doubtless Petrarch, who had urged him on, was able to assist him. From them he received the iron crown, though not indeed at Monza, but in Milan, in the church of S. Ambrogio, and at their hands. That must have been a remarkable and unhappy time for the King of the Romans, in spite of Petrarch's talk and friendship. Presently he set out for Pisa and so to Rome, where he received the imperial crown on April 4, 1355, and, returning to Pisa, as though in irony of Petrarch's enthusiastic politics, crowned the grammarian Zanobi da Strada poet laureate. Yet this was surely but a German joke. As for Florence, still trembling it seems, she took as firm a stand as she could, and asked only the protection and friendship of the Emperor, offering no homage or subordination. The Sienese, on the other hand, in spite of their treaty with Florence, offered him their lordship. Others followed their example, and Pisa was filled with Ghibellines claiming the destruction of Florence, the head and front of the Guelf faction. Charles, however, refused to adventure. He demanded from Florence only money, as a fine, by paying which she was to be restored to his favour, and that her magistrates should be called Vicars of the Empire. She forfeited nothing of her liberty and none of her privileges as a free republic. Yet at first she refused to acquiesce. It was only after an infinite number of explanations that she was brought to consent. Indeed, we read that the "very notary who read out the deed broke down, and the Senate was so affected that it dissolved. On the next day the Act was rejected seven times before it was passed. The bells were the only merry folk in Florence, so jealous were her citizens of the liberty of their state."