1357-1363
LEON PILATUS AND THE TRANSLATION OF HOMER--THE CONVERSION OF BOCCACCIO
That a profound change had already taken place in Boccaccio's
point of view, in his attitude towards life, in his whole moral
consciousness, it might seem impossible to doubt after reading the
_Corbaccio_ and the _Vita di Dante_; but though its full significance
only became apparent some years after the publication of those works,
the curious psychologist may perhaps find signs of it before the
year 1355. For while that change was on the one hand the inevitable
consequence of his youth and early manhood, a development from
causes that had always been hidden in his soul, it was also a
result, as it was a sign, of his age, of his passing from youth to
middle age, and it declares itself with the first grey hairs, the
first sign of failing powers and loss of activity, in a sort of
disillusion and pessimism. From this time his life was to be a kind
of looking backward, with a wild regret for the mistakes and wasted
opportunities then perhaps for the first time horribly visible.
Yes, a part at least of that bitterness, scorn, and anger against
woman might seem to be but the approach of old age. But side by side
with that moral and spiritual revolution that by no means reached
its crisis in 1355, we may see an intellectual change not less
profound, that in its own way too is also a "looking backward." His
creative powers were paralysed. The _Corbaccio_ is the last original
or "creative" work that he achieved; henceforth his life was to be
devoted to scholarship and to criticism, and however eager we may be
to acknowledge the debt we owe him for his labours in those fields,
we cannot but admit that they are a sign of failing power, of a lost
grip on life, on reality; and though we can hardly have hoped for
another _Decameron_, we are forced to allow that the energy which
created the one we have was of quite another and a higher sort than
that which produced the works of learning which fill the last twenty
years of his life.
When Petrarch first met Boccaccio, as we have seen, it was not so
much of Italian letters as of antiquity that they spoke; and ever
after we find that the elder poet brings the conversation back
to that, to him the most important of subjects, when Boccaccio,
with his keener sense of life and greater vitality, would have
involved him in political discussion, or persuaded him to consider
such aspects of the life of his own time as are to be found, for
instance, so plentifully in the _Decameron_. Seeing the way Petrarch
was determined to follow, venerating him as his master and leader,
always ready to give him the first place, it is not surprising that
Boccaccio interested himself more and more in what so engrossed his
friend. In 1354 Petrarch thanks him[447] for an anthology from the
works of Cicero and Varro that he had composed and given him, and in
the same year he thanks him again for S. Augustine's Commentary on
the Psalms.
Long before he met Boccaccio in Florence in 1350, however, Petrarch
had begun the study of Greek in Avignon in 1342 under the Basilian
monk Barlaam,[448] whom he had met there in 1339. According to
Boccaccio, Barlaam was a man of small stature but of prodigious
learning, the Abbot of the monastery of S. Gregory, a bitter
theological disputant with many enemies, but in high favour at the
court of Constantinople, whence the Emperor Andronicus had sent him
to Avignon ostensibly on a mission for the reunion of the Churches,
but really to ask for the assistance of the West in the struggle with
the Turks. Barlaam was in fact a Calabrian, but most of his life
had been spent in Salonica and Constantinople. He knew Greek; that
was his value in Petrarch's eyes, and he seems to have read with
the poet certain dialogues of Plato.[449] In 1342, however, Barlaam
become Bishop of Gerace,[450] and Petrarch lost him before his
greatest desire had begun to be satisfied, to wit, the translation
of Homer, which, with the Middle Age, he only knew in the mediocre
abridgment _Ilias Latina_, the weakness of which he recognised.[451]
Eleven years later, in 1353, however, Petrarch met in Avignon Nicolas
Sigeros, another ambassador of the Emperor of Constantinople, come
on a similar mission to Barlaam's. They spoke together of Homer, and
in the following year when Sigeros was departed, he sent Petrarch
as a gift the Greek text of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. This the
poet received with an enthusiastic letter of thanks, at the same time
confessing his insufficiency as a Hellenist.[452]
Now in the winter of 1358-9, during a sojourn at Padua, there was
introduced to Petrarch by one of his friends a certain Leon Pilatus,
who gave himself out for a Greek; and the poet seized the opportunity
to get a translation of a part of his MS. of Homer.[453] In the
spring, however, he went to Milan, and it was there, on March 16,
1359, that Boccaccio visited him, finding him in his garden "in orto
Sanctæ Valeriæ Mediolani."[454]
That visit, from one point of view so consoling for Boccaccio, must
have cost him a pang; for he had, as we have seen, always blamed
Petrarch for accepting the hospitality of the Visconti, those enemies
of his country. But he had not allowed the fact that Petrarch had
disregarded his protests to interfere with their friendship. Keen
patriot as he always remained, Boccaccio, without in any way changing
his opinion, accepted Petrarch's strange conduct, his indifference to
nationalism, with a modesty as charming as it is rare, and allowing
himself to take up the attitude of a disciple, made a pilgrimage to
the city he hated for the sake of the friend he loved; and cost what
it may have done, that visit, long planned we gather, must have
been full of refreshment for Boccaccio. We see them in that quiet
garden in Visconti's city planting a laurel, a favourite amusement of
Petrarch's, for it reminded him alike of Laura and of his coronation
as poet;[455] and, "as the pleasant days slipped by," talking of
poetry, of learning, above all of Greek and of that Leon Pilatus
recently come into Italy, whom Petrarch had met in Padua.
It is probable that Boccaccio met this man in Milan before he
returned to Florence;[456] it is certain that Petrarch spoke to
him of Pilatus, and that Boccaccio asked him to visit him. That
invitation was accepted, and before the end of the year we see
Pilatus established in Florence.
This man who makes such a bizarre figure in Boccaccio's life seems
to have belonged to that numerous race of adventurers half Greek,
half Calabrian, needy, unscrupulous, casual, and avaricious, who
ceaselessly wandered about Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries seeking fortune. It might seem strange that such an one
should play the part of a teacher and professor, but he certainly was
not particular, and Petrarch and Boccaccio were compelled to put up
with what they could get. Pilatus, however, seems to have wearied and
disgusted Petrarch; it was Boccaccio, more gentle and more heroic,
who devoted himself to him for the sake of learning. Having persuaded
Pilatus to follow him to Florence, he caused a Chair of Greek to be
given to him in the university, and for almost four years imposed
upon himself the society of this disagreeable barbarian. For as it
seems he was nothing else; his one claim on the attention of Petrarch
and Boccaccio being that he could, or said he could, speak Greek.
We know very little about him. He boasted that he was born in
Thessaly, but later owned that he was a Calabrian.[457] His
appearance, according to Boccaccio[458] and Petrarch,[459] had
something repellent about it. His crabbed countenance was covered
with bristles of black hair, an untrimmed beard completing the
effect; and his ragged mantle only half covered his dirty person. Nor
were his manners more refined than his physique; while his character
seems to have been particularly disagreeable, sombre, capricious, and
surly. Petrarch confesses that he had given up trying to civilise
this rustic, this "magna bellua."[460]
Such was Leon Pilatus; but for the love of Greek Boccaccio pardoned
everything, and he and two or three friends, the only persons
in Florence indeed able to do so, followed the lectures[461] of
this improvised professor. But it was above all in admitting this
creature to his own home that Boccaccio appears most heroic. There he
submitted him to long interviews and interminable _séances_ in order
that he might accomplish the great task of a complete translation of
Homer.
[Illustration: A WOODCUT FROM THE "DECAMERON." (STRASBURG, 1553)
_(By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)_]
Afar off Petrarch associated himself with this work and tried to
direct it with wise counsels that Leon Pilatus was doubtless too
little of a scholar to understand and too ignorant to follow blindly.
In fact but for Petrarch, as the following letter proves, they would
have lacked the text itself:--
"You ask me," he writes in 1360,[462] "to lend you, if as you
think I have bought it, the book of Homer that was for sale at Padua,
in order that our friend Leon may translate it from Greek into Latin
for you and for our other studious compatriots, for you say I have
long since had another example. I have seen this book, but I have
neglected it, because it appeared to me inferior to my own. One
could easily get it, however, through the person who procured me the
friendship of Leon; a letter of his would be all-powerful and I will
write him myself. If by chance this book escapes us, which I do not
believe, I will lend you mine. For I have always been desirous of
this translation in particular and of Greek literature in general,
and if Fortune had not been envious of my beginnings in the miserable
death of my excellent master (? Barlaam), I should perhaps have
to-day something more of Greek than the alphabet.
"I applaud, then, with all my heart and strength your enterprise....
I am sorry to see so much solicitude for the bad and so much
negligence of the good. But what would you? One must resign oneself
to it....
"I hope also here and now to prevent you in one thing, so as not to
repent myself later for having passed it by in silence. You say that
the translation will be word for word. Hear how on this point S.
Jerome expresses himself in the preface to the book _De Temporibus_
of Eusebius of Cæsarea that he translated into Latin. It pleases me
to send you the very words of one so learned in both tongues and in
many others, and especially in the art of translation. 'Let him who
says that in translation one does not lose the grace of the original
try to translate Homer literally into Latin, and into any tongue
which he has, and he will see how ridiculous is the order of the
words and how the most eloquent of poets is made tostammer like a
child.' I tell you this for your advice whilst there is yet time, so
that such a great work may not be useless.
"For myself I desire only that the thing be well done.... In truth
the portion I have which the same Leon translated for me into Latin
prose--the beginning of Homer--has given me a foretaste of the
complete work.... It contains indeed a secret charm.... Go on then
with the aid of Heaven; give us back Homer who was lost to us....
"In asking me at the same time for the volume of Plato that I have
with me and that escaped the fire in my house across the Alps, you
give me a proof of your ardour, and I will hold this book at your
disposition when you want it. I will second with all my power such
noble enterprises. But take care that the union of these two great
Princes of Greece be not unseemly, and that the weight of these two
geniuses does not crush the shoulders of mortals.... And remember
that the one wrote many centuries before the other. Good-bye. Milan,
18 August (1360)."[463]
From that letter we may gather how eagerly Boccaccio had turned to
this new labour. Was it in order to escape from himself? Certainly
it might seem that in his new enthusiasm he found for a time, at any
rate, a certain consolation; but the crisis was not long delayed. In
those long months while the wretched Pilatus was with him, however,
he was able for a time to ward off the danger; and realising this,
the comedy of that friendship is almost pathetic.
We seem to see him eagerly drinking in the words that fell from the
surly Calabrian, pressing him with questions, taking note of all
and trying to understand everything--even what his master himself
could not understand. As for the master, flattered and puffed up
by the confidence that Boccaccio seems to have felt in him, he no
doubt replied to all his questionings in the tone of a man who knew
perfectly what he was talking about, and had nothing to fear or to
hide. Sometimes, no doubt, the adventurer showed itself. Weary and
bored by the incessant work, his sullen humour exasperated by the
sedentary life, Pilatus would demand his liberty. Then Boccaccio
would have to arm himself with all his patience, and by sweetness and
gentleness and good-humour would at last persuade the wretched man to
remain a little longer with him.
Suddenly in the midst of this difficult work with Pilatus his trouble
descended upon him, with a supernatural force as he thought. He
received a message from a dying saint--a message that warned him of
his approaching end and certain damnation unless he should repent.
When exactly this message reached him we do not know. It may well
have been in the end of 1361, but it was more probably in the first
months of 1362. He was in any case in no fit state to meet the blow.
In those days when political crises followed hard on one another,
and the very aspect of a city might change in the course of a few
years, Boccaccio's youth must then have seemed infinitely far away.
His _Corbaccio_ had been written "to open the eyes of the young" to
the horror of woman. While in very many ways he is the pioneer of
the Renaissance, in his heart there lingered yet something, if only
a shadow, of the fear of joy. All his joys had been adventures on
which he scarcely dared to enter, and while he was never a puritan,
as one sometimes thinks Petrarch may have been, he was so perfectly
of his own time as to "repent him of his past life." For a nature
like that of Boccaccio was capable only of enthusiasm. He had loved
Fiammetta to distraction, and those who only see there a lust of the
flesh have never understood Boccaccio. His other loves were what you
will, what they always are and must be; but when Fiammetta died,
the very centre of his world was shaken.[464] He could not follow
her through Hell and Purgatory into the meadows of Paradise as Dante
had followed Beatrice: he was of the modern world. For Dante, earth,
heaven, purgatory, and hell were but chambers in the universe of God.
For Boccaccio there remained just the world.
Having the religious sense, he accused himself of sin as St. Paul
had done, as St. John of the Cross was to do, with an astonishing
eccentricity, an exaggeration which lost sight of the truth, in a
profound self-humiliation. Of such is the lust of the spirit. He too
had found it difficult "to keep in the right way amid the temptations
of the world." And then, suddenly it seems, on the threshold of old
age, poor and alone, he thought to love God with the same enthusiasm
with which he had loved woman. He was not capable of it; his whole
life rose up to deny him this impassioned consolation, and his
"spirit was troubled," as the wise and steadfast eyes of Petrarch had
seen.
It was in the midst of this disease, to escape from which, as we
may think, he had so eagerly thrown himself into the translation
of Homer with Pilatus, that a certain Gioacchino Ciani sought him
out to warn him, as he intended to warn Petrarch, of the nearness
of death. In doing this the monk, for he was a Carthusian, was but
obeying the dying commands of the Beato Pietro Petroni,[465] a
Sienese who had seen on his death-bed "the present, the past, and the
future." Already drawn towards a new life--a life which under the
direction of the Church he was told would be without the consolations
of literature--at the sudden intervention, as it seemed, of Heaven,
Boccaccio did the wisest thing of his whole life--he asked for the
advice of Petrarch.
The letter which Petrarch wrote him takes its rank among the noblest
of his writings, and is indeed one of the most beautiful letters ever
written.
"Your letter," he says--"Your letter, my brother, has filled me with
an extraordinary trouble. In reading it I became the prey of a great
astonishment, and also of a great chagrin: after reading it both the
one and the other have disappeared. How could I read without weeping
the story of your tears and of your approaching death, being totally
ignorant of the facts and only paying attention to the words? But at
last when I had turned and fixed my thoughts on the thing itself,
the state of my soul changed altogether, and both astonishment and
chagrin fled away....
"You tell me that this holy man had a vision of our Lord, and so
was able to discern all truth--a great sight for mortal eyes to
see. Great indeed, I agree with you, if genuine; but how often have
we not known this tale of a vision made a cloak for an imposture?
And having visited you, this messenger proposed, I understand, to
go to Naples, thence to Gaul and Britain, and so to me. Well, when
he comes I will examine him closely; his looks, his demeanour, his
behaviour under questioning, and so forth, shall help me to judge of
his truthfulness. And the holy man on his death-bed saw us two and
a few others to whom he had a secret message, which he charged this
visitor of yours to give us; so, if I understand you rightly, runs
the story. Well, the message to you is twofold: you have not long
to live, and you must give up poetry. Hence your trouble, which I
made my own while reading your letter, but which I put away from me
on thinking it over, as you will do also; for if you will only give
heed to me, or rather to your own natural good sense, you will see
that you have been distressing yourself about a thing that should
have pleased you. Now if this message is really from the Lord, it
must be pure truth. But is it from the Lord? Or has its real author
used the Lord's name to give weight to his own saying? I grant you
the frequency of death-bed prophecies; the histories of Greece and
Rome are full of instances; but even though we allow that these old
stories and your monitor's present tale are all true, still what is
there to distress you so terribly? What is there new in all this?
You knew without his telling you that you could not have a very long
space of life before you. And is not our life here labour and sorrow,
and is it not its chief merit that it is the road to a better?...
Ah! but you have come to old age, says your monitor. Death cannot
be far off. Look to your soul. Well, I grant you that scholarship
may be an unreasonable and even bitter pursuit for the old, if they
take it up then for the first time; but if you and your scholarship
have grown old together, 'tis the pleasantest of comforts. Forsake
the Muses, says he: many things that may grace a lad are a disgrace
to an old man; wit and the senses fail you. Nay, I answer, when he
bids you pluck sin from your heart, he speaks well and prudently.
But why forsake learning, in which you are no novice but an expert,
able to discern what to choose and what to refuse?... All history is
full of examples of good men who have loved learning, and though many
unlettered men have attained to holiness, no man was ever debarred
from holiness by letters.... But if in spite of all this you persist
in your intention, and if you must needs throw away not only your
learning, but the poor instruments of it, then I thank you for giving
me the refusal of your books. I will buy your library, if it must
be sold, for I would not that the books of so great a man should be
dispersed abroad and hawked about by unworthy hands. I will buy it
and unite it with my own; then some day this mood of yours will pass,
some day you will come back to your old devotion. Then you shall make
your home with me, you will find your books side by side with mine,
which are equally yours. Thenceforth we shall share a common life
and a common library, and when the survivor of us is dead, the books
shall go to some place where they will be kept together and dutifully
tended, in perpetual memory of us who owned them."[466]
That noble letter, so sane in its piety, in some sort cured
Boccaccio. We hear no more of the fanatic monk, and the books were
never bought, for they were never sold. Petrarch, however, did not
forget his friend. He caused the office of Apostolic Secretary to be
offered him, and that Boccaccio had the strength and independence to
refuse the sinecure assures us of his restored sanity.
But we may well ask ourselves what had brought Boccaccio to such a
pass that he was at the mercy of such infernal humbugs and liars as
the Blessed Pietro and his rascal friend. That he was in a wretched
state of mind and soul we know, and the causes we know too in part,
but they by no means account for the fact that the first enemy of
monks and friars and all their blackguardism should have fallen
so easily into their hands. Was Boccaccio superstitious? That he
was less superstitious, less credulous, than the men of his time
generally is certain; that he was content to believe what Petrarch
attacked and laughed at we shall presently see; but that he can be
properly accused of superstition remains doubtful. Certainly he
believed in dreams;[467] he believed in astrology;[468] he believed
that a strabism or squint was an indication of an evil soul;[469]
he believed in visible devils;[470] he believed that Æneas truly
descended into Hades and that Virgil was a magician.[471] He may well
have believed all such things and have been no worse off than many a
Prince of the Church to-day; at any rate, such beliefs, unreasonable
as they may appear to us, cannot have led him to the incredible folly
of believing in the Blessed Pietro and his messenger.
It might seem inexplicable that he who had exposed the lies and
tricks of the monks so often should have been himself so easily
deceived. Had he not exposed them? There was Fra Cipolla--true he
was a friar--part of whose stock-in-trade was a tale of relics--"the
finger of the Holy Ghost as whole and entire as ever it was, the tuft
of the seraph that appeared to S. Francis and one of the nails of
the cherubim, one of the ribs of the Verbum caro fatti alle finestre
(factum est) and some of the vestment of the Holy Catholic Faith,
some of the rays of the star that appeared to the Magi, a phial of
the sweat of S. Michael abattling with the Devil, the jaws of death
of S. Lazarus, and other relics."[472]
It might seem inexplicable! Unfortunately, however, Boccaccio also
believed that those about to die can participate in the spirit of
prophecy.[473] Thus he was for the moment, at any rate, altogether
at the mercy of the Blessed Pietro. The splendid common-sense, the
caustic wit of Petrarch helped him, it is true, to recover himself,
but that bitter and humiliating experience left a permanent mark upon
him. He was a changed man. With an immense regret he looked back on
his life, and would have destroyed if he could the gay works of his
youth, even the _Decameron_, and, for a time at least, he would have
been content to sacrifice everything, not only his poetry in the
vulgar and his romances and stories, but the new learning itself, the
study of antiquity, and to enter into some monastery.
That he did not do so we owe in part at least to Petrarch. For when
he had read his letter and come to himself, he returned to Pilatus
and the translation of Homer.[474]
That translation was scarcely finished when Pilatus wished to be
gone, and he seems in fact to have accompanied Boccaccio to Venice
on his visit to Petrarch probably in May, 1363.[475] That visit was
a kind of flight; he seems to have taken refuge with Petrarch from
the fears of his own heart, and that it was as full of pleasure and
enjoyment for Petrarch, as of consolation for Boccaccio, happily we
know and can assert. "I have always thought," Petrarch writes to him
after his return to Tuscany,[476] "I have always thought that your
presence would give me pleasure, I knew it would, and I felt that it
would please you too. What I did not know, however, was that it would
bring good fortune. For during the very few months, gone so quickly,
that you have cared to dwell with me in this house that I call mine,
and which is yours, it seems to me, in truth, that I have contracted
a truce with fortune who, while you were here, dared not spoil my
happiness...."
We know nothing more of that visit save that Boccaccio must have
returned to Tuscany before the writing of that letter, before the
7th of September then. As for Pilatus, he too left Venice "at the
end of the summer"[477] to return to Constantinople, "cursing Italy
and the Latin name," as Petrarch says. "One would have thought him
scarcely arrived there," Petrarch continues, "when I received a badly
written and very long letter, more untidy than his beard or his hair,
in which among other things he said he loved and longed for Italy as
for some heavenly country, that he hated Greece which he had loved
and execrated Byzantium which he had praised, and he supplicated me
to send for him back as eagerly as Peter, about to be shipwrecked,
prayed Christ to still the waves."
To make a long story short, Petrarch ignored his petition. This,
however, did not stop Pilatus. He embarked for Italy, but a storm
wrecked the ship in which he sailed in the Adriatic, and though he
was not drowned he was struck and killed by lightning. Petrarch
wonders if amid his "wretched baggage, which, thanks to the honesty
of the sailors, is in safety, I shall find the Euripides, Sophocles,
and other manuscripts which he had promised to procure for me."[478]
The two friends mourned him sincerely, forgetting their disgust in
remembering that Pilatus had known Greek, and finding touching
words to deplore the tragic death of the first translator of Homer.
[Illustration: TITLE OF THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF THE "DECAMERON."
(VALLADOLID, 1539)
_(By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)_]
As for the translation he had made, Petrarch did not see it for some
years. The first time he asks for it is in a letter of March 1,
1364.[479] There he asks for a fragment of the _Odyssey_, "partem
illam Odysseæ qua Ulyxes it ad inferos et locorum quæ in vestibulo
Erebi sunt descriptionem ab Homero factam ... quam primum potes ...
utcumque tuis digitis exaratam." Later he asks for the whole: "In
futurum autem, si me amas, vide obsecro an tuo studio, mea impensa
fieri possit ut Homerus integer bibliothecam hanc ubi pridem graecus
habitat, tandem latinos accedat." These words are very clear.
Petrarch says he will pay the copyist himself. So that, as Hortis
asserts, the first version of Homer was made at the suggestion of
Petrarch by Pilatus at the expense of Boccaccio.
In the letter of December 14, 1365,[480] Petrarch thanks Boccaccio
for sending him the _Iliad_ and a part of the _Odyssey_; but that
part did not contain the details he wanted concerning the descent
of Ulysses into Hades and his voyage along the Italian shores. Even
this incomplete copy, though sent off in 1365 by Boccaccio, was
a long time in reaching him. On January 27, 1366, he had not yet
received it.[481] But at last it arrived, and Petrarch wrote to thank
Boccaccio for it.[482] This letter, however, is not dated, and its
contents do not help us to decide exactly when it was written. At any
rate, it was after January, 1366, that Petrarch received the precious
work. He promised to return this MS. to Boccaccio when he had had
it copied; but he seems to have found it difficult to get a capable
person to do this; and when he had found him we see him travelling
about with him, that the work might be done under his constant
supervision.[483]
It is this MS., which M. de Nohlac discusses and describes, that
is now in Paris (Bib. Nat., 7880, 1). In it we are able to judge
of the extent of Pilatus's knowledge. That he knew Greek seems
incontrovertible, but that he knew the Homeric idiom very imperfectly
is not less certain; he seems too to have had a poor knowledge
of Latin. His translation is full of obscurity, platitude, and
mistranslations--in fact, crammed with all the errors of a schoolboy:
when he does not know a word, and has to confess it, he writes the
Greek word in Latin characters; what we see in fact is not a faithful
but a blind translation. And it was for this that Petrarch had waited
so patiently! "Penelope," he says, "had not more ardently longed for
Ulysses."[484] He studied it with passion, often deceived, no doubt,
but never discouraged. The notes with which he covered page after
page show us the growing feebleness of his hand, but never of his
spirit. He died while he was annotating the _Odyssey_.
Boccaccio, on the other hand, with a charming and naive sincerity,
owns that he did not understand much, but adds that the little he did
understand seemed to him beautiful. He was very proud of his victory,
and rightly; for by its means the Renaissance was able to give Homer
his rightful place in its culture.
FOOTNOTES:
[447] PETRARCH, _Fam._, XVIII, 3 and 4.
[448] But see LO PARCO, _Petrarca e Barlaam da nuove ricerche e
documenti inediti e rari_ (Reggio, Calabria, 1905).
[449] See DE NOHLAC, _Les Scholies inédites de Pétrarque sur Homère_
in _Revue de Philologie, de Littérature et d'Histoire anciennes_,
Vol. XI (Paris, 1887), p. 97 _et seq._; and IDEM, _Pétrarque e
Barlaam_ in _Revue des Études grecques_ (Paris, 1892).
[450] PETRARCH, _Fam._, XVIII (Fracassetti, 2nd ed., Vol. II, p. 474).
[451] He says of it: "Libellus, ille vulgo qui tuus fertur, et si
cuius sit non constet, tibi excerptus tibique inscriptus tuus utique
non est."--_Fam._, XXIV, 12 (Fracassetti, Vol. III, p. 293). Cf. also
_Fam._, X (Fracassetti, Vol. II, p. 89), and the critical edition of
F. PLESSIS, _Italici Ilias Latina_ (Paris 1885).
[452] _Fam._, XVIII, 2.
[453] See the letter to Boccaccio, to be quoted later. _Var._, XXV.
[454] Cf. PETRARCH, _Fam._, XX, 6, 7 (To Francesco Nelli, III, Id.
Ap.). This visit of Boccaccio's to Petrarch has been long known to
have taken place in the spring of 1359; but the date is fixed for
us by a MS. in Petrarch's hand found by De Nohlac in his Apuleius
(Vatican MS. 2193, fol. 156). Cf. DE NOHLAC, _Pétrarque et son
jardin_ in _Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana_, Vol. XI
(1887), p. 404 _et seq._ I give below that part of the MS. which
refers to 1359:--
"Anno 1359, sabato, hora quasi nona martie die xvj^o retentare
huiusce rei fortunam libuit. Itaque et lauros Cumo [? Como]
transmissas per Tadeum nostrum profundis itidem scrobibus seuimus
in orto Sancte Valerie Mediolani, luna decrescente; et fuerunt due
tenere, tres duriores. Aliquot post dies nubila fuerunt et pars anni
melior quam in superioribus (imo et pluviosi mirum in modum crebris
et immensis imbribus quotidie, ut sepe de orto quasi lacus fieret;
denique usque ad kalendas apriles non appariut sol). Inter cetera
multum prodesse deberet et profectum sacrarum arbuscularum, quod
insignis vir. d. Io. Boccaccii de Certaldo, ipsis amicissimus et
mihi, casu in has horas tunc aduectus satimi intrefuit. Videbimus
eventum. Omnibus radices fuerunt, quibusdam quoque telluris patrie
aliquantulum, et præterea diligentissime obuolute non radices modo
sed truncos aduecte sunt, et recentes valde. Denique præter soli
naturam, nihil videtur adversum, attenta qualitate æris et quod non
diu ante montes nivium adamantinaque glacies omnia tegebant vixque
dum penitus abiere.
"Jam nunc circa medium aprilem due majores crescent; alie vero non
letos successus spondent. Credo firmiter terram hanc hinc arbori
inimicam."
Cf. also COCHIN, _Un Amico del Petrarca. Le Lettere di Nelli al
Petrarcha_ (Bib. Petrarchesca), Firenze, 1901.
[455] In planting the laurel Petrarch expressed the hope that the
presence of Boccaccio might prove "fortunate" to "these little sacred
laurels." Boccaccio had protested to Petrarch that he was not worthy
of the name of poet. Petrarch insisted that he was. "It is a strange
thing," he says, "that you should have aimed at being a poet only to
shrink from the name." This affair of the laurel may refer to that
incident. "The laurel," says Boccaccio in the _Vita di Dante_, "which
is never struck by lightning, crowns poets...."
[456] He was back in Florence certainly by May. Cf. HORTIS, _Studi_,
etc., p. 22 note. Petrarch in his letter to Nelli says that
Boccaccio's visit was brief.
[457] PETRARCH, _Epist. Sen._, III, 6, and V, 3.
[458] BOCCACCIO, _De Geneal. Deor._, XV, 6.
[459] _Epist. Sen._, III, 6, and V, 3.
[460] Cf. HAUVETTE, _Le Professeur de Grec de Pétrarque et de
Boccace_ (Chartres, 1891).
[461] Cf. DE NOHLAC, _Les scholies_, _u.s._, p. 101. He began to
lecture in the end of 1359.
[462] PETRARCH, _Var._, XXV. In this year Pino de' Rossi was
exiled for conspiracy against the Guelfs. Boccaccio had dedicated
the _Ameto_ to him, and now wrote to console him. In that letter
(CORAZZINI, _op. cit._, p. 67) Boccaccio says he has gone to Certaldo
to avoid contact with these vile people (p. 96).
[463] PETRARCH, _Varie_, XXV.
[464] Because Boccaccio's love for Fiammetta was not a passion wholly
or almost wholly spiritual, as we may suppose Dante's to have been
for Beatrice, we are eager to deny it any permanence or strength.
Why? Perhaps a passion almost wholly sensual if really profound is
more persistent than any desire in which the mind alone is involved.
[465] Our source of information is Petrarch's letter, quoted below
in the text (_Ep. Sen._, I, 5). The affair is recounted in the
life of Beato Pietro Petroni, who died May 29, 1361, by Giovanni
Columbini. This life has been conserved and enriched with notes by
the Carthusian of Siena, Bartholommeo, in 1619. It is printed in the
_Acta Sanctorum_, May 29 (Tom. VII, Antwerp, 1668, p. 186 _et seq._).
Boccaccio's story is told at p. 228. There seems to be nothing there
not gleaned from Petrarch's letter. Cf. also TRAVERSARI, _Il Beato
Pietro Petroni e la conversione del B._ (Teani, 1905), and GRAF, _Fu
superstizioso il B.?_ in _Miti, Leggende e Superstiz. del Medioevo_
(Torino, 1893), Vol. II, p. 167 _et seq._
[466] I quote to some extent the excellent redaction of Mr.
Hollway-Calthrop, _Petrarch and his Times_ (Methuen, 1907), p. 237
_et seq._
[467] _De Geneal. Deorum_, I, 31, _De Casibus_, II, 7.
[468] _De Geneal. Deorum_, I, 10; III, 22; IX, 4. _Comento sopra
Dante_ (Milanesi, Firenze, 1863), Vol. I, p. 480 _et seq._
[469] _Comento sopra Dante_, _ed. cit._, II, p. 56; i.e. he believed
in the evil eye; so did Pio Nono's cardinals.
[470] _Ibid., u.s._, II, p. 156.
[471] _Ibid., u.s._, I, p. 216.
[472] _Decameron_, VI, 10. I deal with Boccaccio's treatment of monks
and friars and the clergy generally in my chapter on the _Decameron_
(_see infra_).
[473] _Comento_, _ed. cit._, Vol. II, p. 19.
[474] Baldelli tells us that Pilatus left Boccaccio in 1362, but
this is not so, for they went together to see Petrarch in Venice
in 1363 (see _infra_). Baldelli's assertion is probably founded on
the obscure and doubtful letter of Boccaccio to Francesco Nelli
(CORAZZINI, p. 131), from which we learn that Boccaccio went to
Naples on the invitation of Acciaiuoli, as we suppose, in 1362.
This letter, which is very long, is dated, according to Corazzini,
August 28, 1363. Now before September 7, 1363, Nelli was dead of the
plague in Naples, as appears from Petrarch's letter (_Sen._, III, i.,
September 7, 1363). HORTIS (_Studi_, p. 20, n. 3) is of opinion that
this letter is apocryphal. TODESCHINI (_Opinione sulla epistola del
priore di S. Apostolo [sic] attribuita al Boccaccio_, Venice, 1832)
convinced Hortis of this. Todeschini does not believe in this visit
to Naples, and in fact the only notice we have of it is contained
in the letter he discards. His arguments are as follows. Until May,
1362, Boccaccio dwelt certainly in Tuscany, where in 1361, or more
probably in 1362, Ciani visited him, and whence he wrote Petrarch the
letter we have lost to which Petrarch replied in the noble letter I
have cited above (_Sen._, I, 5) on May 28, 1362. (Cf. FRACASSETTI'S
note to this letter.) It is not possible that Boccaccio can have
been in Naples between the autumn of 1361 and May, 1362, because
he himself tells us that for three years he was with Pilatus, who
enjoyed his hospitality and from whom he learned to understand Homer.
Now it is certain that he did not know Pilatus before 1360, and was
with him till 1363, when, as we shall see, they visited Petrarch
together in Venice. (Cf. FRACASSETTI his note to _Fam._, XVIII, 2.)
[475] This visit must have been between March 13 and September 7,
1363, on both of which dates Petrarch wrote to him. The letter
of September 7 seems to have been written immediately after his
departure (_Senili_, II, 1, and III, 1). Cf. also DE NOHLAC, _op.
cit._, p. 102. Cf. also Boccaccio's letter to Pietro di Monteforte,
which HORTIS, _op. cit._, thinks refers to this visit. CORAZZINI,
_op. cit._, p. 337.
[476] _Senili_, III, 1.
[477] _Ibid._, III, 6 (March, 1365).
[478] _Ibid._, VI, 1.
[479] _Senili_, VII, 5. Fracassetti gives this letter the wrong date
of 1365 in his translation, but in a note to _Fam._, XVII, 2 (q.v.
for the visit of Boccaccio), he adopts the right year.
[480] _Senili_, VII.
[481] _Ibid._, VI, 1.
[482] _Ibid._, VI, 2.
[483] DE NOHLAC, _op. cit._, p. 102.
[484] _Epist. Fam._, XXIV, 12.