DANTE AND BOCCACCIO--THE _VITA_--AND THE _COMENTO_
In the summer of the year 1373 when Boccaccio was sixty years old
the Signoria of Florence was petitioned by a number of citizens to
appoint a lecturer who should publicly expound "librum qui vulgariter
appellatur el Dante," the work which is commonly called "el Dante,"
the _Divine Comedy_, that is to say, the work of one who little by
little was coming to be known as a very great poet, as a very great
man, but who more than seventy years before had been ignominiously
expelled from Florence and had died in exile.
The petition, a copy of which may still be found in the Florentine
_Libro delle Provvisioni_ for 1373, is as follows:--[566] "Whereas
divers citizens of Florence, being minded as well for themselves and
others, their fellow-citizens, as for their posterity, to follow
after virtue, are desirous of being instructed in the book of Dante,
wherefrom, both to the shunning of vice and to the acquisition
of virtue, no less than in the ornaments of eloquence, even the
unlearned may receive instruction; The said citizens humbly pray you,
the worshipful Government of the People and Commonwealth of Florence,
that you be pleased, at a fitting time, to provide and formally
to determine, that a worthy and learned man, well versed in the
knowledge of the poem aforesaid, shall be by you elected, for such
term as you may appoint, being not longer than one year, to read the
book which is commonly called _el Dante_ in the city of Florence, to
all such as shall be desirous of hearing him, on consecutive days,
not being holidays, and in consecutive lectures, as is customary in
like cases; and with such salary as you may determine, not exceeding
the sum of one hundred gold florins for the said year, and in such
manner and under such conditions as may seem proper to you; and
further that the said salary be paid to the said lecturer from the
funds of the Commonwealth in two terminal payments, to wit, one
moiety about the end of the month of December, and the other moiety
about the end of the month of April, such sum to be free of all
deduction for taxes whatsoever...."
[Illustration: BOCCACCIO DISCUSSING
_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. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XII.)_]
The petition was favourably considered by the Signoria on August
9, and was put to the vote of the assembly. Two hundred and five
persons voted in all, one hundredand eighty-six in its favour,
and nineteen against it.[567] The voting was by ballot and secret,
and no names have come down to us, but it is perhaps permitted us to
suppose, as Mr. Toynbee suggests, that the opposition came from those
whose ancestors, whose fathers and grandfathers, Dante had placed
in Hell, or had otherwise insulted and condemned. The decision come
to on August 9 was carried on the 25th, when the Signoria appointed
"Dominus Johannes de Certaldo, honorabilis civis Florentinus," to
lecture on the _Divine Comedy_[568] for a year from the 18th October
at a salary of one hundred gold florins, half of which, as the
petition had suggested, was paid to him on December 31, 1373.[569]
And on Sunday, October 23, 1373,[570] Boccaccio delivered his first
lecture in S. Stefano della Badia.[571]
In thus appointing Boccaccio to the first _Cathedra Dantesca_ that
had anywhere been established, the Signoria not only in some sort
made official amends for the cruel sentence by which the greatest
son of Florence had been proclaimed and exiled,[572] but they also
showed their goodwill by choosing for lecturer the man who above all
others was best fitted to expound his work and to defend his memory.
As we have already seen, Boccaccio had been an eager student of
Dante in the first years of his literary life.[573] It is probable
that he was first introduced to Dante's work by Cino da Pistoja,
whom he seems to have met in Naples between October, 1330, and July,
1331,[574] and in his first book, the _Filocolo_, he imitates and
speaks of him;[575] in the _Filostrato_ he copies him so closely
that in fact he quotes from him;[576] in the _Rime_ he not only, to
a large extent, models his work on the sonnets of Dante, but he
appeals to him and mentions his name more than once, in one case, in
the sonnet already quoted addressed to Dante in Paradise after the
death of Fiammetta, certainly before the _Vita_ was written or the
lectures begun.
"Dante, if thou within the sphere of love,
As I believe, remain'st contemplating
Beautiful Beatrice whom thou didst sing
Erewhile ..."
while the _Corbaccio_ is in some sort modelled on the allegory of the
_Divine Comedy_.[577] This was in 1355, and immediately after the
completion of the _Corbaccio_ we find him at work, about 1356-7, on
the _Vita di Dante_.[578] About this time too he seems to have begun
to copy the _Divine Comedy_[579] with his own hand in order to send
it to Petrarch, and we may understand perhaps how great a pioneer he
was in the appreciation of Dante when from that fact we learn that
Petrarch had no copy in his library. With this MS. in his own hand
he sent a _Carme_ to Petrarch of forty lines written in Latin in
praise of Dante,[580] and before 1359 he evidently wrote to Petrarch
excusing himself for his enthusiastic praise of Dante. That letter
is unfortunately lost, but happily we have Petrarch's answer, in
which he most unsuccessfully tries to excuse himself for his coldness
towards the _Divine Comedy_, and indeed attempts to set the charge
aside.
"In your letter," he writes in 1359,[581] "there are many things that
need no answer, for instance those of which we have lately spoken
face to face. But there are two besides, which I have singled out,
and these I do not wish to pass over in silence.... Firstly, then,
you excuse yourself with some eagerness for having been so prodigal
in your praise of our countryman, a poet for the people assuredly
as to his style,[582] yet undoubtedly noble if one consider the
subject of which he writes. But you seek to justify yourself as
though I might see in your praise of him or another a stain on my
own reputation. You say too that all the praise you give him--if I
look at it closely--turns to my glory. And you excuse too yourself
by saying that in your youth he was the first guide, the first light
in your studies. Well, then, you are acting with justice, with
gratitude, in not forgetting him, and in short, with piety. If we owe
everything to those who have given us life, if we owe much to those
who have enriched us, what do we not owe to those who have nurtured
and formed our spirits? Those who have cultivated our souls have
indeed greater titles to our remembrance than those who have cared
for our bodies.... Courage, then; I not only permit you, I invite you
to celebrate and to honour this torch of your mind who has given
you of his heat and of his light in this path along which you pass
towards a glorious goal. It has been long blown upon and, so to say,
wearied by the windy applause of the vulgar, and I bid you elevate
it then even to the heaven by true praises worthy of him and of
yourself. Such will be pleasing to me, because he is worthy of this
commendation and, as you say, it is for you a duty. I approve then
your commendatory verses,[583] and in my turn I crown with praise the
poet you commend.
But in your letter of excuse the only thing that has really hurt me
is to see how little you know me even now; yet I thought you at least
knew me altogether. What is this? You think I should not rejoice,
that I should not even glory in the praise of illustrious men? But
believe me, nothing is stranger to my character than envy, nothing is
more unknown...."
Perhaps Petrarch protests too much. Yet one may well think that,
noble as he was, he was at least above envying Dante Alighieri, for
he knew very little about him, and sincerely thought him of small
account since his greatest work was written not in Latin, the tongue
as he so wonderfully thought absolutely necessary to immortality, but
in the sweeter and lovelier "Florentine idiom," the "glory" of which,
as Boccaccio had already said in the _Vita_, Dante had revealed.
Thus all his life long we see Boccaccio as the enthusiastic lover
and defender of the greatest of Italian poets, gently protesting
against Petrarch's neglect of him, passionately protesting against
the treatment "Florence, noblest among all the cities of Italy,"
had measured out to him, fiercely contemptuous of "those witless
ones," priests and the scholastics, who considered his works to be
"vain and silly fables or marvels," and could not perceive that
"they have concealed within them the sweetest fruits of historical
or philosophical truth." Indeed, alone among his contemporaries
he values the _Divine Comedy_ at its true worth and for the right
reasons. Nor in fact should we know half we do know concerning
Dante--much more that is than we know of Chaucer and Shakespeare,
for instance--if Boccaccio had not loved him and shared, as he says,
"the general debt to his honour" in so far as he could, "that is to
say in letters, poor though they be for so great a task. But hereof I
have, hereof I will give; lest foreign peoples should have power to
say that his fatherland had been alike unthankful to so great a poet,
whether taken generally or man by man."
It has become the fashion of late, and yet maybe it was always so,
to sneer at, to doubt and to find fault with Boccaccio's _Vita di
Dante_[584] in season and out of season on all possible points, and
on some that are impossible. Scholars of Dante generally, with some
eminent exceptions, seem to consider it a kind of impertinence in the
author of the _Decameron_ to have interested himself in Dante.
Mr. Wicksteed, for instance, to whom we owe a charming translation of
the _Vita_[585]--so charming and so full of Boccaccio's own flavour
that in all modesty I have taken leave to use it when I must--though
he is himself its translator, finds it necessary not so much to
commend it to us as to give us "some needful warnings" and "further
cautions" in introducing us to it. He nowhere, I think, tells us how
very valuable it is, nor instructs us why above all other works of
the kind it is valuable to us. He nowhere takes the trouble to tell
his readers that Boccaccio was the most eminent student of Dante in
his day--the years that immediately followed the poet's death--nor
that he must have met and talked with many who had known Dante. He
nowhere thinks it necessary to record that Boccaccio spent more than
one considerable period of time in Romagna and the Marche, and even
in the very city and at the same court where Dante lived and died.
It did not occur to him as a point of honour before giving us his
"warnings" and "cautions" to state that Boccaccio was well acquainted
with Dante's daughter Beatrice, nor to mention that it was probably
during a sojourn in Ravenna, where she was a nun, that Boccaccio
conceived, or at any rate "pondered" the _Vita_ itself.[586] Mr.
Wicksteed does none of these things; but having spoken somewhat
vaguely of the "versions" of the _Vita_ and still more vaguely of
its date, he proceeds to discuss its "documentary value," assuring
us a little reluctantly that "scholars appear to be settling down
to the conclusion that ... [Boccaccio] is to be taken as a serious
biographer, who made careful investigations and who used the material
he had gathered with some degree of critical judgment."[587] It
will be seen, then, that such scholars are right, and that we have
indeed in the _Vita_ not only the earliest, but incomparably the most
authoritative life of Dante that has come down to us, for it was
written not merely by the greatest lover and defender of Dante in the
years that immediately followed his death in 1321, but by one who was
then already a boy of eight years old, and who in his manhood was
well acquainted with Dante's daughter Beatrice, and with others who
had known him in Ravenna and Romagna, where he had passed so much of
his time.
The _Vita_ then comes to us with a certain unassailable authority,
and is besides a work of piety, of love, of vindication. It opens
a little pedantically perhaps with an appeal to Solon, that "temple
of human wisdom," against the policy of the Florentine Commonwealth
in its failure to reward the deserving and to punish the guilty. A
passionate attack on those who had exiled Dante follows in which he
demands: "If all the wrongs Florence hath wrought could be hidden
from the all-seeing eye of God, would not this one alone suffice to
call down His wrath upon her? Yea, verily!" Then follows the reason
for his book, which it seems he has determined to write in expiation
of the sin of Florence, "recognising that I myself am a part,
though but a small one, of the same city whereof Dante Alighieri,
considering his deserts, his nobility, and his virtue, was a very
great one." His book will consist, he tells us, of "those things as
to which he [Dante] kept seemly silence concerning himself, to wit,
the nobility of his origin, his life, his studies, and his character;
and after that I will gather together the works he composed; wherein
he hath rendered himself so illustrious amongst those to come...."
And he will write in the vulgar "in style full humble, and light ...
and in our Florentine idiom, that it may not depart from what he
used in the greater part of his works." He returns more than once
to praise the vulgar tongue, praising Dante in one place as he who
"was first to open the way for the return of the Muses banished from
Italy. It was he who revealed the glory of the Florentine idiom. It
was he that brought under the rule of due numbers every beauty of the
vernacular speech. It was he who may be truly said to have brought
back dead poesy to life." In another place he says: "by his teachings
he trained many scholars in poetry, especially in the vulgar, which
to my thinking he first exalted and brought into repute among us
Italians, no otherwise than did Homer his amongst the Greeks or
Virgil his amongst the Latins.... He showed by the effect that every
lofty matter may be treated in it; and made our vernacular glorious
above every other."
Having thus introduced his work to us, he proceeds to speak of the
birth of Dante, who, he says, was born in 1265.[588] He speaks
then of his "boyhood continuously given to study in the liberal
arts"; of his reading of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Statius; of his
mastering history "by himself," and philosophy under divers teachers
by long study and toil. He then tells us of his places of study,
naming Florence, Bologna, and Paris.[589] He then passes on to his
meeting in his ninth year with Beatrice, who, he tells us, was the
little daughter of Folco Portinari, and recounts her death in her
twenty-fourth year and Dante's grief, his relations' purpose to cure
him by giving him a wife, and his marriage with Gemma. There follows
the famous interpolation against marriage which I have already quoted
at length,[590] but which, as he confesses, has nothing to do with
Dante.
Having thus brought Dante to manhood, Boccaccio speaks of his
entrance into politics, "wherein the vain honours that are attached
to public office so entangled him that, without considering whence
he had departed nor whither he was going, with loosened rein he gave
himself almost wholly up to the management of these things; and
therein fortune was so favourable to him that never an embassy was
heard nor answered, never a law enacted nor cancelled, never a peace
made, never a war undertaken, and, in short, never a deliberation of
any weight conducted till he first had given his opinion thereon."
We are told of the factions into which the city was divided, and how
the faction opposed to that of which Dante was in some sense the
leader got the mastery and "hurled Dante in a single moment from the
height of government of his city," so that he was cast out from
it an exile, his house gutted and plundered, and his real property
confiscated.
He shows us the poet wandering hither and thither through Tuscany
"without anxiety" on account of his wife and children, because
he knew Gemma "to be related to one of the chiefs of the hostile
faction ... and some little portion of his possessions she had with
difficulty defended from the rage of the citizens, under the title
of her dowry, on the proceeds of which she provided in narrow style
enough for herself and for his children; whilst he in his poverty
must needs provide for his own sustenance by industry, to which
he was all unused.... Year after year he remained (turning from
Verona, where he had gone to Messer Alberto della Scala on his first
flight, and had been graciously received by him), now with the Count
Salvatico in the Casentino, now with the Marquis Moruello Malespina
in the Lunigiana, now with the Della Faggiola in the mountains near
Urbino, held in much honour so far as consisted with the times and
with their power." Thence Boccaccio tells us he went to Bologna and
Padua, and again to Verona. It was at this time, seeing no way yet
of returning to Florence, that he went to Paris and there studied
philosophy and theology. While he was in Paris, Henry of Luxemburg
was elected King of the Romans and had left Germany to subdue Italy.
Dante "supposed for many reasons that he must prove victorious,
and conceived the hope of returning to Florence by his power ...
although he heard Florence had taken sides against him." So he
crossed the Alps, "he joined with the enemies of the Florentines,
and both by embassies and letters strove to draw the Emperor from
the siege of Brescia in order to lay siege to Florence ... declaring
that if she were overcome, little or no toil would remain to secure
the possession and dominion of all Italy free and unimpeded." This
proved a failure, for Florence was not to be beaten, and the
death of the Emperor "cast into despair all who were looking to
him, and Dante most of all; wherefore no longer going about to seek
his return, he passed the heights of the Apennines and departed to
Romagna, where his last day that was to put an end to all his toils
awaited him." There in Ravenna ruled Guido Novello da Polenta,
who, as Boccaccio says, "did not wait to be requested" to receive
him, "but considering with how great shame men of worth ask such
favours, with liberal mind and with free proffers he approached him,
requesting from Dante of special grace that which he knew Dante must
needs have begged of him, to wit, that it might please him to abide
with him.... Highly pleased by the liberality of the noble knight,
and also constrained by his necessities, Dante awaited no further
invitation but the first, and took his way to Ravenna...." There in
"the middle or thereabout of his fifty-sixth year he fell sick ...
and in the month of September in the years of Christ one thousand
three hundred and twenty-one, on the day whereon the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross is celebrated by the Church, not without the greatest
grief on the part of the aforesaid Guido, and generally all the
other Ravennese, he rendered up to his Creator his toilworn spirit,
the which I doubt not was received into the arms of his most noble
Beatrice, with whom ... he now lives most joyously in that life the
felicity of which expects no end." Then after speaking of the plans
of Guido for Dante's tomb, and again reproaching Florence for her
ingratitude, and inciting her for her own honour to demand his body,
"not but that I am certain he will not be surrendered to thee," what
we may call the first part of the _Vita_ comes to an end.
[Illustration: GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
_From the fresco in S. Apollonia, Florence. By Andrea dal Castagno.
(1396(?)-1457)_
_Alinari._]
The second part opens with a portrait of the poet very careful and
minute in its description.
"This our poet, then, was of middle height; and when he had reached
maturity he went somewhat bowed, his gait grave and gentle, and ever
clad in most seemly apparel, in such garb as befitted his ripe years.
His face was long, his nose aquiline, and his eyes rather large
than small; his jaws big, and the under lip protruding beyond the
upper. His complexion was dark, his hair and beard thick, black, and
curling, and his expression was ever melancholy and thoughtful."[591]
There follow several stories about him in Verona and at Paris. And
Boccaccio seems to have come very near to the secret of Dante's
tragedy when he tells us at last that "he longed most ardently for
honour and glory; perchance more than befitted his illustrious
virtue." He understood the enormous pride of the man, his insatiable
superiority, his scorn of those who had wronged him; and he is full
of excuses for him, full of pity too for his sorrows and eager to
heap praise on praise of the great poet he so much reverenced and
loved.[592]
The rest of the _Vita_ is concerned with Dante's work, and forms, as
it were, a third part, introduced by a long dissertation on poetry
and poets, followed by a short chapter on Dante's pride and some
in which he gives certain instances of it. Then he passes to the
consideration of the _Vita Nuova_, of the _Divine Comedy_,[593] the
_De Monarchia_, the _Convivio_, the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, and
the _Rime_ in the briefest possible manner. As a critic it must be
confessed Boccaccio is lacking in judgment, but the facts he gives
us, the assertions he makes in matters of fact regarding these
works must be received, I think, with the utmost seriousness. It is
impossible to doubt that Boccaccio wrote in all good faith, and it
must be remembered that there were any number of people living who
had he departed from the truth could have contradicted him. No one
of whom we have any record did contradict him; we hear no whisper of
any protest. Most of those who busied themselves with Dante, on the
contrary, gladly copied him. Had he been a liar with regard to Dante
the Republic of Florence would scarcely have appointed him to the
first _Cathedra Dantesca_; but they gave him the lectureship just
because he was the one person who could fill it with honour.
And so when he tells us that in his maturer years Dante was ashamed
of the _Vita Nuova_ we must accept it, reminding ourselves that this
was no impossibility, for Petrarch too was ashamed of his Italian
sonnets, while Boccaccio actually destroyed a great part of his own.
When he tells us again that Dante left behind him seven cantos of the
_Inferno_ when he fled from Florence, we must accept it in the same
way as we must accept the story of the recovery of the last thirteen
cantos of the _Paradiso_ by Dante's son Jacopo. Indeed, there is no
good reason to find Boccaccio either careless or a liar anywhere in
the work. The immense care he bestowed upon the collection of his
facts has, on the contrary, been admitted by one of the best Dante
scholars of our day[594] and proved by another not less learned,[595]
so that we have no right at all to regard his work as anything less
than the most valuable document we possess on Dante's life. It has
often been treated as a mere romance, it has been sneered at and
abused, but it has never yet been proved to be at fault in any
matter of the least importance touching Dante, or in any matter of
personal fact. Of course it is not the work of a modern historian;
it has not the reassurance of dullness or the mechanical accuracy of
"scientific" history. But to sneer at it because its "account of the
Guelf and Ghibelline disputes and of the political events in which
Dante was chiefly concerned" may seem "vague and inadequate in the
extreme" is merely absurd. Boccaccio is not writing of these events,
he does not propose to give an account of them; he confesses in the
most sincere fashion that he does not rightly know what the words
Guelf and Ghibelline originally implied. He is writing of Dante; and
on Dante's life, on Dante's work, he had enquired and studied and
read and, as he himself says, "pondered" for many years.
We must not demand from the _Vita_ more than it will readily give
us. It was written with a purpose. Its intention was both to praise
Dante and to arrest the attention of the Florentines to the wrong
they had done him; Boccaccio wished to set the facts before them as
an advocate of the dead. The facts: he had known Beatrice, Dante's
daughter, and three other relations or friends of Dante's whom he
names, Pier Giardino of Ravenna,[596] one of Dante's most intimate
friends; Andrea Poggio,[597] Dante's nephew, and Dino Perini,
Andrea's rival in the discovery of the lost cantos of the _Inferno_,
and many others who had known both Dante and Beatrice;[598] thus he
could if he wished come by facts; and that he set down just facts has
been proved over and over again. And then there were still living
those who had hated Dante bitterly and would gladly have found fault
if they could. There were others too who would certainly have allowed
nothing entirely to the detriment of Dante to pass unchallenged: they
made no sign. That they were silent is in itself a sufficient tribute
to the truthfulness of the book.
I have already said something as to the versions of the Life:[599]
it remains to add that though the MSS. of the _Compendium_ are rare,
those of the _Vita_ are very numerous,[600] while the first printed
edition of the work was published in Venice in 1477 by Vindelin da
Spira before the edition of the _Divine Comedy_ with the comment of
Jacopo della Lana, erroneously attributed to Benvenuto da Imola.
Prof. Macri Leone describes nineteen later editions, making with his
own some twenty-one in all.[601]
It is not surprising that the author of this eager defence of
Dante, of the first life of the poet, should on the petition of
the Florentines for a lecturer in the _Divine Comedy_ have been
chosen by the Signoria to fill that honourable and difficult post.
His first lecture, as we have seen, was delivered in the church
of Santo Stefano on Sunday, October 23, 1373. Already an old man,
infirm in health, he can scarcely have hoped to finish his work, and
as it proved he was not able to complete a sixth part of it, for
attacked by illness in the winter of 1373, he broke off abruptly
at the seventeenth verse of the seventeenth canto of the _Inferno_
and returned to Certaldo really to die. That, after that sudden
breakdown, if such it was, he never resumed his lectures seems
certain, and although it was at the time supposed that Boccaccio
had written a complete commentary on the _Divine Comedy_, and a
fourteenth-century _Comento_, now commonly known as _Il Falso
Boccaccio_,[602] was accepted even by the Academicians of the Crusca
as his work,[603] it seems certain that the fragment we know as his
_Comento_ was all that was ever written, though how much of it was
actually delivered in lectures it is impossible to say.[604]
That the _Comento_ we have and no other is really the work of
Boccaccio was proved long ago by Manni,[605] for it seems, that
when Boccaccio died at last, a dispute arose among his heirs as
to the meaning of his Will, the bone of contention being this
very _Comento_, which both Fra Martino da Signa of Santo Spirito
in Florence, to whom he had left his books, claimed as part of
his library, and also Jacopo his half-brother, to whose children
Boccaccio had left all the other property he had.[606] The affair
was at last referred to the Consoli dell' Arte del Cambio, the two
sides submitting their claims in writing. We find there that Fra
Martino, if the _Comento_ were adjudged his property, professed his
willingness to let Jacopo have it, a sheet at a time, to copy.
Jacopo, however, makes no such offer; we should nevertheless be
grateful to him--he was the victor--for in his claim he minutely
describes the MS. in question and so enables us to identify it with
those we possess.[607] "Dinanzi a voi domando," we read there,
"ventiquattro quaderni, et quattordici quadernucci, tutti in carta
di bambágia, non legati insieme, ma l' uno dall' altro diviso, d'
uno iscritto, o _vero isposizione sopra sedici Capitoli, e parte del
diciassettesimo del Dante, il quale scritto il detto Messer Giovanni
di Boccaccio non compiè_...."
This incomplete work,[608] which breaks off so suddenly really in the
middle of a paragraph, might seem to be rather a true commentary, a
sort of full notes on the work in question, such as is still common
in Italy, than a series of lectures delivered _vivâ voce_. Indeed
the living voice is almost entirely absent, and as Dr. Toynbee
says, "if it were not for a single passage at the beginning of his
opening lecture in which he directly addresses his audience as 'Voi,
Signori fiorentini,' it would be difficult to gather from the work
itself that it was composed originally for public delivery."[609] He
seems to have composed it as he would have composed a book, with the
utmost care and foresight, often referring some point forward to be
discussed later; and thus we may see that he had already considered
as a critic and as a commentator the whole of the work, and had made
up his mind that such and such a reference would be better discussed
at some point in the _Purgatorio_ or at another in the _Paradiso_,
and so refused to discuss it at the moment. His work too is not
only filled with Dantesque thought and phraseology, but is in its
form composed in the manner of Dante, that is to say, he expounds
first the literal meaning, the obvious sense, and then the secondary
meaning or sense allegorical, just as Dante does in the _Convivio_
when speaking of his _Canzoni_, and as he had already begun to do
even in the _Vita Nuova_. Nor was this anything new for Boccaccio;
all his life he had himself written in allegory, and had been used to
condemn those who found no secondary meaning in the poets.[610]
But the most characteristic part of the _Comento_, its greatest
surprise for us too, is perhaps to be found in its opening. For after
excusing himself with his usual modesty as wholly insufficient for
the task, he addresses his audience as "men of lofty understanding
and of wonderful quickness of understanding"--facts his commentary
does not altogether lead us to endorse, for he feels called upon to
explain the simplest things,[611] and then after quoting Plato[612]
in the _Timæus_ as to the propriety of invoking divine aid, he asks
for God's help not in any Christian prayer, but in the words of
Anchises in the second _Æneid_:--
"Jupiter omnipotens, precibus si flecteris ullis,
Aspice nos: hoc tantum: et, si pietate meremur
Da deinde auxilium, pater!"[613]
He was so much a man of the Renaissance that he does not seem to have
felt it at all inappropriate to ask thus for God's aid in expounding
the greatest of Christian poems, by addressing himself to Jupiter: he
merely explains that as the work he is to explain is in verse it is
proper to invoke God in verse also.
Having thus asked for God's blessing, he proceeds to open his
lecture. He first examines the work he is to discuss as to its kind,
then as to its causes, its title and school of philosophy. In doing
so he shows us that he was aware of the doubtful letter of Dante to
Can Grande della Scala,[614] for he quotes it, though he names it
not. He does not approve of the title--_The Comedy_--for such is used
for low subjects and common people; but Dante's poem is concerned
with the greatest persons and deeds, with sin and penitence, the
ways of angels and the secrets of God. The style too of comedy,
he asserts, is humble and simple, while Dante's poem is lofty and
ornate, although it is written in the vulgar tongue, and he is
obliged to admit that in the Latin it would have had a finer dignity.
From this he proceeds to discuss Dante's name and its significance
much as he had already done in the _Vita_, and having decided that
the poem belongs to moral philosophy, proceeds, after formally
submitting all he may say to the judgment of the Catholic Church,
to deal with the _Inferno_. Yet even now he cannot come at the poem
without discussing the _Inferno_ itself, whether there be a Hell,
or maybe more than one, where it is placed, how it is approached,
what are its shape and size and its purpose, and lastly why it is
called _Infernus_.[615] Then on the very brink of the poem he turns
away again to discuss why Dante wrote in Tuscan instead of in Latin;
and having given practically the same explanation as that we have
already noted in the _Vita_,[616] he proceeds at long last to the
_Commentary_ proper.
And here we cannot but be astonished at the extraordinary mixture
of simplicity and subtlety, of elementary knowledge and profound
learning which are heaped together without any discrimination. There
is something here of the endless leisure of the Middle Age in which
Boccaccio seems determined to say everything. "One wonders," says
Dr. Toynbee, "for what sort of audience Boccaccio's lectures were
intended." In the terms of the petition the lecturer was to expound
the _Commedia_ for the benefit of "_etiam non grammatici_." But it
is difficult to conceive that any audience of Florentines, even of
Florentine children, however ignorant of Latin, let alone the "uomini
d' alto intendemento e di mirabile perspicacità" to whom Boccaccio
refers in such flattering terms in his opening lecture, could require
to be informed, as Boccaccio carefully informs it, that an anchor is
"an instrument of iron which has at one end several grapples, and at
the other a ring by which it is attached to a rope whereby it is let
down to the bottom of the sea,"[617] or that "every ship has three
principal parts, of which one is called the bows, which is sharp and
narrow, because it is in front and has to cut the water; the second
is called the poop and is behind, where the steersman stands to work
the tiller, by means of which, according as it is moved to one side
or the other, the ship is made to go where the steersman wishes;
while the third part is called the keel, which is the bottom of the
ship, and lies between the bows and the stern,"[618] and so on.
Nor is this all, for even the Bible stories are retold at
length,[619] and a whole discourse is given upon Æneas.[620] The
elementary subjects dealt with at such length cheek by jowl with the
most profound questions seems to us extraordinary, nor apparently are
we the only readers to be surprised; for possibly on this account
Boccaccio was bitterly reproached in his own day for lecturing on the
_Commedia_ to the vulgar. He replied, really admitting the offence,
and pleading poverty as his excuse in two sonnets,[621] one of which
I quote here:--[622]
"If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd
(As touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee)
This were my grievous pain; and certainly
My proper blame should not be disavow'd;
Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud
Were due to others, not alone to me.
False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
The blended judgment of a host of friends,
And their entreaties, made that I did this.
But of all this there is no gain at all
Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
Nothing agrees that's great or generous."
So much for the vulgar. But, as I have already said, beside these
elementary discourses we find a vast mass of learning and research
that bears eloquent testimony not only to the extent of Boccaccio's
reading, but also to his eager and careful study of the works of
Dante.
Dr. Toynbee has suggested that it was probably owing to his failing
health and energy that he introduced into the _Comento_ so many and
so copious extracts from his own previous works, the _De Claris
Mulieribus_,[623] the _De Casibus Virorum Illustrium_,[624] the _De
Montibus_, _Sylvis_, _Lacubus_, etc.,[625] and the _De Genealogiis
Deorum_,[626] but I think probably Boccaccio never gave the matter a
thought. His business was to expound, and he used his own previous
works as works of reference--the best works of the sort, we must
remember, that were to be had in his day. To have named these
works--he never does refer to them--would have been useless in those
days before the invention of the printing press; and then they were
themselves mere collections for the most part, the vast notebooks of
his enormous reading.
It is not, however, by any means on them alone he relies, for he uses
and lays under contribution, as it might seem almost every writer
with whose works he was acquainted.[627] Of these, two are especially
notable, namely, Homer and Tacitus. He quotes the former six times in
all, four times in the _Iliad_[628] and twice in the _Odyssey_;[629]
the last quotation from the _Iliad_ being verbatim from the Latin
translation of Pilatus which Petrarch had copied, the MS., as we have
already noted, being now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at
Paris.[630] As for Tacitus--and Boccaccio is the first modern writer
to show any acquaintance with his work--he uses the fifteenth book of
the _Annals_[631] for his account of the death of Lucan, and names
his source of information,[632] and books twelve to fifteen for his
account of the death of Seneca.[633] The _Comento_ is thus not only
a most precious source of information with regard to the _Divine
Comedy_, but a kind of _Encyclopædia Dantesca_ into which the whole
learning of the age, the whole reading of Boccaccio had been emptied.
We may perhaps gather something of its significance, its importance,
and its extraordinary reputation if we consider for a moment the
freedom with which it was exploited by the commentators who came
after.[634] Beginning with the Anonimo Fiorentino, who wrote some
thirty years after Boccaccio's death, perhaps the worst offender, for
he never once mentions Boccaccio's name, while he copies from him
page after page, there follow Benvenuto da Imola (1373), Francesco
da Buti (1385), who make a very considerable use of his work, the
latter especially, while Landino (1481), the best of the Renaissance
commentators, freely quotes him,[635] calling him "huomo, et per
dottrina, et per costumi, et per essere propinquo a' tempi di Dante,
degno di fede." In the sixteenth century Gelli, who lectured before
the Academy of Florence between 1541 and 1561, quotes Boccaccio
sixty times, "oftener," says Dr. Toynbee, "than he quotes any other
commentator save Landino." He more than once declares that Boccaccio
has explained a passage so well that he can only repeat his words:
"Non saprei io per me trovarci miglior esposizione che quella del
Boccaccio." He at least and indeed for the first time appreciates the
_Comento_ truly.
Considering then this long chorus of praise, though it be more
often the silent praise of imitation than the frank commendation of
acknowledgment, it is strange that only four MSS. of the _Comento_
have come down to us, three in the Magliabecchiana and one in the
Riccardiana libraries in Florence;[636] while of these only three
are complete.[637] Nor is it less surprising that the first printed
edition of such a work should not have appeared till 1724.[638] This
edition and that by Moutier,[639] which followed it nearly a hundred
years later, founded on the same single MS., are of little critical
value, and that of Fratticelli, published in 1844, is but a reprint
of the Moutier text. It remained for Gaetano Milanesi, that man of
herculean labour and vast learning, to produce the first critical
text in 1863, three more MSS. of the _Comento_ having been discovered
in the meantime. He divided the book into _lezioni_, which are but
doubtfully of any authority; but his text holds the field, and he was
not slow or cold in his recognition of the value of the work of one
who, almost a contemporary of Dante, had loved and honoured him, not
only in writing his life and composing a commentary on his work, but
in verse too, as in this inscription for his portrait:--
"Dante Alighieri, a dark oracle
Of wisdom and of art, I am; whose mind
Has to my country such great gifts assign'd
That men account my powers a miracle.
My lofty fancy passed as low as Hell
As high as Heaven, secure and unconfined;
And in my noble book doth every kind
Of earthly love and heavenly doctrine dwell.
Renounèd Florence was my mother,--nay,
Stepmother unto me her piteous son,
Through sin of cursed slander's tongue and tooth.
Ravenna sheltered me so cast away;
My body is with her,--my soul with One
For Whom no envy can make dim the truth."[640]
FOOTNOTES:
[566] Cf. MILANESI, _Il Comento di G.B. sopra la Commedia di
Dante_ (Firenze, 1863), in two volumes. This is the best edition
of Boccaccio's _Comento_. The redaction of the petition I borrow
from Dr. PAGET TOYNBEE'S excellent article already alluded to, on
_Boccaccio's Commentary on the Divina Commedia_ in _Modern Language
Review_ (Cambridge, 1907), Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 97 _et seq._, to
which I am much indebted. I give the Latin text of the petition from
MILANESI, _u.s._, Vol. I, p. 1 _et seq._: "Pro parte quamplurium
civium civitatis Florentie desiderantium tam pro se ipsis, quam
pro aliis civibus aspirare desiderantibus ad virtutes, quam etiam
pro eorum posteris et descendentibus, instrui in libro Dantis, ex
quo tam in fuga vitiorum, quam in acquisitione virtutum, quam in
ornatu eloquentie possunt etiam non grammatici informari; reverenter
supplicatur vobis dominis Prioribus artium et Vexillifero Justitie
populi et comunis Florentie, quatenus dignemini opportune providere
et facere solempniter reformari, quod vos possitis eligere unum
valentem et sapientem virum in huiusmodi poesie scientia bene doctum,
pro eo tempore quo velitis, non maiore unius anni, ad legendum
librum qui vulgariter appellatur el Dante in civitate Florentie,
omnibus audire volentibus, continuatis diebus non feriatis, et per
continuatas lectiones, ut in similibus fieri solet; et cum eo salario
quo voletis, non majore centum florenorum auri pro anno predicto et
cum modis, formis, articulis et tenoribus, de quibus vobis videbitur
convenire. Et quod camerarii Camere comunis predicti ... debeant
dictum salarium dicto sic electo dare et solvere de pecunia dicti
Comunis in duobus terminis sive paghis, videlicet medietatem circa
finem mensis decembris, et reliquam medietatem circa finem mensis
aprilis, absque ulla retentione gabelle; habita dumtaxat apodixa
officii dominorum Priorum; et visa electione per vos facta de aliquo
ad lecturam predictam et absque aliqua alia probatione vel fide
fienda de predictis vel aliquo predictorum vel solempnitate aliqua
observanda."
[567] The record is preserved in the _Libro delle Provvisioni_, and
is printed by MILANESI, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. ii:--
"Super qua quidem petitione ... dicti domini Priores et Vexellifer
habita invicem et una cum officio gonfaloneriorum Sotietatum
populi et cum officio Duodecim bonorum virorum Comunis Florentie
deliberatione solempni, et demum inter ipsos omnes in sufficienti
numero congregatos in palatio populi Florentie, premisso et facto
diligenti et secreto scruptineo et obtento partito ad fabas nigras
et albas per vigintiocto ex eis pro utilitate Comunis eiusdem ...
deliberaverunt die VIIII mensis augusti anno dominice Incarnationis
MCCCLXXIII indictione XI, quod dicta petitio et omnia et singula in
ea contenta, admictantur, ... et observentur, ... secundum petitionis
eiusdem continentiam et tenorem....
"Item supradicto Preposito, modo et forma predictis proponente et
partitum faciente inter dictos omnes consiliarios dicti consilii in
ipso consilio presentes, quod cui placet et videtur suprascriptam
quartam provisionem disponentem pro eligendo unum ad legendum librum
Dantis, que sic incipit: 'Pro parte quamplurium civium etc.' ...
admicti et observari ... et executioni mandari posse et debere
... det fabam nigram pro _sic_; et quod cui contrarium seu aliud
videretur, det fabam pro _non_. Et ipsis fabis datis recollectis,
segregatis et numeratis ... et ipsorum consiliariorum voluntatibus
exquisitis ad fabas nigras et albas, ut moris est, repertum fuit
CLXXXVI ex ipsis consiliariis repertis dedisse fabas nigras pro
_sic_. Et sic secundum formam provisionis eiusdem obtentum, firmatum
et reformatum fuit, non obstantibus reliquis XVIIII ex ipsis
consiliariis repertis dedisse fabas albas in contrarium pro _non_."
It will be seen that they voted with beans--a white bean for "No," a
black bean for "Yes."
[568] Cf. MILANESI, _op. cit._, _u.s._, Vol. I, p. iii, and TOYNBEE,
_op. cit._, p. 99. The record in the _Libro delle Provvisioni_
ad annum 1373 has been destroyed since 1604, when Filippo Valori
(cf. GAMBA, _Serie dei Testi di Lingua_, ed. quarta, p. 554, col.
a. No. 2006), saw it. He says: "Il qual Boccaccio, oltre al dirsi
Maestro dell' Eloquenza, fu stimato di tal dottrina, che e' potesse
dichiarare quella di Dante, e perciò, l' anno mille trecento
settanta tre, lo elesse la Città per Lettor pubblico, con salario
di cento fiorini, che fu notabile; _e vedesi questo nel Libro delle
Provvisioni_." Cf. MANNI, _Istoria del Decamerone_, p. 101. The facts
are, however, recorded in the _Libro dell' uscita della Camera_, now
in the _Archivio di Stato di Firenze_. MILANESI, _op. cit._, p. iii,
quotes this document: "1373, 31 Decembris. Domino Johanni de Certaldo
honorabili civi florentino electo per dominos Priores Artium et
Vexilliferum Justitie dicti populi et Comunis, die XXV mensis augusti
proxime preteriti ad legendum librum qui vulgariter appellatur il
Dante, in civitate Florentie, pro tempore et termino unius anni
incepti die decimo ottavo mensis ottubris proxime preteriti et
cum salario centum florenorum auri pio anno quolibet, solvendorum
secundum formam reformationis consilii dicti populi et Comunis de
hac materia loquentis, pro ipsius domini Johannis salario et paga
primorum sex mensium dicti temporis, initiatis die decimo ottavo
mensis ottubris proxime preteriti, pro dimidio totius dicti salarii,
vigore electionis de eo facte, in summa florenorum quinquaginta auri."
[569] Cf. GEROLA, _Alcuni documenti inediti per la biografia del
Boccaccio_ in _Giornale Stor. della Lett. Ital._, Vol. XXXII (1898),
p. 345 _et seq._
[570] So GUIDO MONALDI tells us in his _Diario_ (ed. Prato, 1835):
"Domenica a dì ventitrè di ottobre cominciò in Firenze a leggere il
Dante M. Giovanni Boccaccio."
[571] Cf. _Boll. di Soc. Dant. Ital._, n.s., III, p. 38 note.
Milanesi in his Introduction to the _Comento_ tells us, mistakenly,
that Boccaccio lectured in S. Stefano al Ponte Vecchio. This church,
since the church of S. Cecilia was destroyed in Piazza Signoria at
the end of the eighteenth century, has been called SS. Stefano e
Cecilia, but from the thirteenth century till then it was called S.
Stefano _ad portam ferram_. That it was not here but at S. Stefano
della Badia that Boccaccio lectured we know from Monaldi's diary,
and it is confirmed for us by Benvenuto da Imola: "In interiori
circulo est Abbatia monachorum sancti Benedicti, cuius ecclesia
dicitur Sanctus Stephanus, ubi certius et ordinatius pulsabantur
horæ quam in aliqua alia ecclesia civitatis; quæ tamen hodie est
inordinata et neglecta, ut vidi, dum audirem venerabilem præceptorem
meum Boccaccium de Certaldo legentem istum nobilem poetam in dicta
ecclesia" (_Comentum_ (ed. Vernon), Vol. V, p. 145). Dr. Toynbee
thinks that S. Stefano is the ancient dedication of the Badia,
which was later placed under the protection of S. Mary. If this was
so, then it was in the Badia itself that Boccaccio lectured. Mr.
Carmichael, however (_On the Old Road through France to Florence_
(Murray), p. 254), states that Boccaccio lectured not in the abbey,
but in the little church of S. Stefano ad Abbatiam, formerly
adjoining the abbey, and indeed almost a part of it. Unfortunately he
gives no authority for this important statement, nor can he now give
any. It is, however, a very interesting suggestion, worth examining
closely.
[572] It will be remembered that Dante was not only expelled from
Florence, but condemned by the Florentines to be burned alive, "igne
comburatur sic quod moriatur," should he be taken. This sentence
bears date March 10, 1302.
[573] See _supra_, p. 20.
[574] DE BLASIIS, _op. cit._, p. 139 _et seq._
[575] _Filocolo_, _ed. cit._, II, p. 377. Cf. DOBELLI, _Il culto
del Boccaccio per Dante_ in _Giornale Dantesca_ (1897), Vol. V,
p. 207 _et seq._ Signor Dobelli seems to me to lay far too much
emphasis on the sheer imitations of Boccaccio. Now and then we find
a mere copying, but not often. This learned article of Dobelli's is
traversed, and I think very happily, by a writer in the _Giornale
Stor. della Lett. Ital._, XXXII (1898), p. 219 _et seq._
[576] For instance, in the opening of the third part, _Filostrato_,
_ed. cit._, Pt. III, p. 80, which may be compared with _Paradiso_, I,
vv. 13 _et seq._
Fulvida luce, il raggio della quale
Infino a questo loco m' ha guidato,
Com' io volea per l' amorose sale;
Or convien che 'l tuo lume duplicato
Guidi l' ingegno mio, e faccil tale,
Che in particella alcuna dichiarato
Per me appaia il ben del dolce regno
D' Amor, del qual fu fatto Troilo degno.
_Filostrato._
O buono Apollo, all' ultimo lavoro
Fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso,
Come dimandi a dar l' amato alloro.
Insino a qui l' un giogo di Parnaso
Assai mi fu, ma or con ambedue
M' è uopo entrar nell' aringo rimaso.
. . . . . .
O divina virtù, se mi ti presti
Tanto, che l' ombra del beato regno
Segnata nel mio capo io manifesti
Venir vedra 'mi al tuo diletto legno
E coronarmi allor di quelle foglie
Che la materia e tu mi farai degno.
_Paradiso._
Or, again, compare _Filostrato_, Pt. VIII, p. 249, with _Purgatorio_,
VI, vv. 118 _et seq._
. . . . . .
O sommo Giove ...
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
Son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove?
_Filostrato._
E se licito m' è, o sommo Giove
Che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso
Son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove?
_Purgatorio._
Or, again, compare _Filostrato_, Pt. II, p. 58, with _Inferno_, II,
vv. 127 _et seq._
Quali i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl' imbianca
Tutti s' apron diritti in loro stelo;
Cotal si fe' di sua virtude stanca
Troilo allora....
_Filostrato._
Quali i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl' imbianca
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo;
Tal mi fec' io di mia virtute stanca:
_Inferno._
Nor are these by any means the only instances; there are very
many others. I content myself, however, with a comparison between
_Filostrato_, Pt. VII, p. 238, and the _Convito_, Trattato IX, which
would seem to show that before 1345 Boccaccio knew this work as well
as the _Comedy_.
È gentilezza dovunque è virtute.
_Filostrato._
È gentilezza dovunque virtute.
_Convito._
[577] See _supra_, p. 183, n. 1.
[578] For date of composition see _supra_, p. 183, n. 2.
[579] He seems to have copied too the _Vita Nuova_. BARBI in his
edition of the _Vita Nuova_, p. xiv _et seq._, speaks of Boccaccio's
MSS. relating to Dante, and notes in a MS. _Laurenziano_ (xc, _sup._
136), "scripto per lo modo che lo scripse Messere Giovanni Boccaccio
da Certaldo."
[580] The _Carme_ is given by CORAZZINI, _op. cit._, p. 53.
[581] _Fam._, XXI, 15.
[582] Here we see Petrarch's absurd hatred of the vulgar tongue. How
a man so intelligent and so far in advance of his age in all else
could deceive himself so easily as to believe that Latin in his day
could be anything but a tongue for priests to bark in is difficult to
understand. Apart from the Liturgy and the Divine Office and a few
hymns and religious works maybe, no work of art has been produced in
it. Had Petrarch been an ecclesiastic, it might be comprehensible;
but he was the first man of the modern world. No doubt he was
dreaming of the Empire.
[583] ? The _Carme_.
[584] It must be observed that the _Vita_ appears in many forms, but
it will be enough for us to consider the two principal, both of which
claim to be by Boccaccio. The whole question is thoroughly dealt with
by MACRI LEONE in his edition of the _Vita_ (Firenze, 1888), and more
briefly by WITTE, _The two versions of Boccaccio's life of Dante_ in
_Essays on Dante_ (London, 1898), p. 262 _et seq._, and by Dr. E.
MOORE, _Dante and his early Biographers_ (London, 1890).
Of these two versions the longer we shall call the _Vita_, the
shorter the _Compendio_, but the latter is by no means a mere epitome
of the former, for some of the episodes are more fully treated in
it, while others are ignored. We shall find ourselves in agreement
with the great majority of modern critics if we regard the _Vita_ as
the original and the _Compendio_ as a modification of it executed
either by Boccaccio or by another, and if we assert that the _Vita_
is by Boccaccio and the _Compendio_ an unauthorised redraft of it,
we shall be supported not only by so great an authority as MACRI
LEONE, but by Biscioni, Pelli, Tiraboschi, Gamba, Baldelli, Foscolo,
Paur, Witte (who hesitates to condemn the _Compendio_ altogether),
Scartazzini, Koerting, and Dr. Moore. On the other hand, Dionisi
and Mussi held that the _Compendio_ was the original and the _Vita_
a _rifacimento_; while Schaeffer-Boichorst thought both to be the
work of Boccaccio, the _Vita_ being the original; and the editors
of the Paduan edition of the _Divine Comedy_ (1822) thought both to
be genuine, but the _Compendio_ the first draft. Dr. Witte enters
into the differences between the two, printing passages in parallel
columns; Macri Leone is even fuller in his comparison; Dr. Moore
also compares them. Briefly we may say that the _Compendio_ is
shorter, that it "hedges" when it can and softens and abbreviates
the denunciation of Florence, and omits much: e.g. the _Vita's_
assertion of Dante's devotion to Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Statius,
while inserting certain personal suggestions: e.g. that in his later
years Dante having quite recovered from his love for Beatrice ran
after other women especially in his exile in Lucca, where he became
enamoured of a young girl called Pargoletta, and in the Casentino of
another who "had a pretty face but was afflicted with a goitre." As
for Pargoletta, it is not a proper name at all, as Boccaccio knew,
for in the same chapter of the _Vita_ he writes: "in sua pargoletta
età." He was incapable of falling into this error, which apparently
arose from a confusion of _Purgatorio_, XXIV, 34-6, and XXXI, 59. In
the _Compendio_ the attacks on marriage are not less bitter, only
whereas in the _Vita_ they are only against marriage in general,
in the _Compendio_ we get an amusing description of the hindrances
to Dante's studies caused by his wife's complaints of his solitary
habits and her absurd interruptions of his meditations by asking him
to pay nurse's wages and see to children's clothes. The _Compendio_
too in all matters concerning Dante's contemporaries is more vague.
Thus the _Vita_ (possibly wrongly) tells us that in Verona Dante took
refuge with Alberto della Scala; the _Compendio_, more cautious, says
with the "Signore della terra." It also omits the stories concerning
Dante at Siena and Paris, and entirely remodels the digressions in
chapters ix. and x. of the _Vita_ on Poetry. It omits the extremely
characteristic excuse for lechery of the _Vita_ and omits all dates:
e.g. that Dante began the _Vita Nuova_ in his twenty-sixth year, as
well as the assertion that he was in his later years ashamed of it.
There are many other differences also. But it might seem impossible
in the face of the evidence brought forward by Macri Leone and others
to doubt that the _Vita_ is Boccaccio's work and not the _Compendio_.
We shall therefore here leave the latter and devote ourselves to
the former, only remarking that if Boccaccio wrote the _Vita_ it is
improbable that he wrote another work on the same subject, since, if
he did so, it must have been written in the last two years of his
life, for only one work is referred to by him in the _Comento_, viz.
the _Trattatello in lode di Dante_. We consider then the _Compendio_
as a _rifacimento_ not from Boccaccio's hand. The evidence is
thoroughly sifted by MACRI LEONE, _op. cit._, whom the reader should
consult for a complete treatment of the matter.
[585] _The Early Lives of Dante_, tr. by P. H. Wicksteed, M.A.
(King's Classics, Chatto and Windus, 1907). This little book, besides
preface and introduction, contains Boccaccio's _Vita_ in English, as
well as Leonardo Bruni's and three appendices.
[586] Cf. Mr. Wicksteed's translation, p. 41.
[587] As Mr. Wicksteed's translation is the version of the _Vita_
most likely to come into the hands of English readers, I propose here
to traverse his "warnings" and "cautions." Whatever scholars may
"appear to be settling down to," this at least is certain, that of
writers upon Dante, Boccaccio is the only one who in professing to
write a life can have had absolutely first-hand evidence. The points
that Mr. Wicksteed wishes to warn us against are three. Boccaccio
asserts that Dante was licentious, that he was a bitter political
partisan, and that when he had once left Gemma he never returned
to her or allowed her to follow him. In order that we may be quite
sure what Boccaccio says, as well as what Mr. Wicksteed thinks he
says, I quote Mr. Wicksteed's translation (p. 79): "... there was no
fiercer Ghibelline than he, nor more opposed to the Guelfs. And that
for which I most blush, in the interest of his memory, is that in
Romagna it is matter of greatest notoriety that any feeble woman or
little child who had but spoken, in party talk, in condemnation of
the Ghibelline faction would have stirred him to such madness as to
move him to hurl stones at such, had they not held their peace; and
in such bitterness he lived even until his death. And assuredly I
blush _to be forced_ to taint the fame of such a man with any defect;
but the order of things on which I have begun in some sort demands
it; _because that if I hold my peace concerning those things in him
which are less worthy of praise_, I shall withdraw much faith from
the praiseworthy things already recounted. So do I plead my excuse
to him himself, who perchance, even as I write, looketh down with
scornful eye from some lofty region of heaven. Amid all the virtue,
amid all the knowledge that hath been shown above to have belonged to
this wondrous poet, lechery found most ample place not only in the
years of his youth, but also of his maturity; the which vice, though
it be natural and common and scarce to be avoided, yet in truth is so
far from being commendable that it cannot even be suitably excused.
But who amongst mortals shall be a righteous judge to condemn it? Not
I. Oh, the impurity, oh, the brutish appetite of men." The passage
as to Gemma will be found at the end of the interpolation against
marriage (p. 27), at the end of which he says: "Assuredly I do not
affirm that these things chanced to Dante; for I do not know it;
_though true it is_ that (whether such like things or others were the
cause) when once he had parted from her [Gemma] who had been given
him as a consolation in his sufferings! never would he go where she
was, nor suffer her to come to where he was, albeit he was the father
of several children by her." Let us take these things in order.
Boccaccio asserts, much to Mr. Wicksteed's distress, it seems,
that Dante was a bitter and intolerant politician. He will have
none of it. Well, let Dante speak for himself. When he hails as
the "Lamb of God" a German king whom the Guelfs defeated and most
probably poisoned; when he speaks of Florence, the Guelf city, as
"the rank fox that lurketh in hiding, the beast that drinketh from
the Arno, polluting its waters with its jaws, the viper that stings
its mother's heart, the black sheep that corrupts the whole flock,
the Myrrha guilty of incest with her father," according to Mr.
Wicksteed, we ought not to consider him a bitter politician at all;
indeed only an "ill-informed" and "superficial" person like Boccaccio
would call him so. To ordinary men, however, such semi-scholastic,
semi-Biblico-classical language sounds like politics, and fierce
party politics too, and one cannot conceive what other explanation
Mr. Wicksteed would offer us of it. Mr. Wicksteed tells us that
when Boccaccio declares that it was well known in Romagna that he
would have flung stones at any who "in party talk had but spoken in
condemnation of the Ghibelline cause" he was speaking figuratively.
Perhaps so; but I doubt if Mr. Wicksteed, had he had the happiness to
be a Guelf, would have cared to put Dante to the proof. And we may
well ask what would have deterred the man, who in hell thought it
virtuous to cheat Frate Alberigo and leave him blinded by his frozen
tears, from hurling a few stones on behalf of his cause?
Nor is Mr. Wicksteed any more ready to believe that Dante was a lover
of women. When Boccaccio tells us that Dante fell into the sin of
lechery not only in his youth but in his maturity, it is on the face
of it certain that he is compelled to say so, that he has irrefutable
evidence for it, since he excuses himself for the necessity of his
assertion. Nor is there a tittle of evidence to refute Boccaccio.
Mr. Wicksteed, like a good Protestant, prefers his own private
judgment. He prefers to think of Dante as in all respects what he
would have him. "On the whole," he says, "I think the student may
safely form his own judgment from the material in his hands [viz.
Dante's own works, I think] _without attaching any authoritative
significance whatever to Boccaccio's assertion. It is safe to go
even a step further and to say that the dominating impression which
that assertion leaves is definitely false_...!" It is clear that Mr.
Wicksteed is not going to allow Boccaccio to involve Dante in any of
his _Decameron_ stories!
Mr. Wicksteed is equally indignant that Boccaccio should have
asserted that Dante when he parted from Gemma never returned to her
nor suffered her to come to him. It seems, then, that Dante too must
become a respectable and sedate person in the modern middle-class
manner. He was not a bitter party politician; he was not a lover
of women; far from it: he lived as peaceably and continuously as
circumstances allowed him with his wife, whom he cherished with
all the tenderness we might expect of a nature so docile, so well
controlled, and so considerate of the sin and weakness of others.
"What was Boccaccio's source of information as to Dante and Gemma
never having met after the former's exile," Mr. Wicksteed angrily
declares, "it is impossible to say." But that does not invalidate
the statement. What is Mr. Wicksteed's source of doubt? Is there
any evidence that they did meet? And if they did not, why curse
Boccaccio? Boccaccio tells us they never did meet. Yet having no
evidence at all to offer us in the matter Mr. Wicksteed has the
extraordinary temerity to close his tirade, one cannot call it an
argument, by this weird confession: "It would be straining the
evidence [? what evidence] to say that we can establish a positive
case on the other side." I agree with him; it would, it would. But
enough! Such is the virtue of certain prepossessions that, though the
sun be as full of spots as a housewife's pudding is full of raisins,
if it please us not we will deny it.
[588] Elsewhere in the _Vita_ he tells us the month (September), but
nowhere the day (21st). He makes a slip in saying Urban IV was then
Pope. Clement IV had been elected in February.
[589] But it is also Boccaccio who seems to suggest that Dante may
have come to England, to Oxford. This visit Tiraboschi supposed to
stand merely on the assertion of Giovanni di Serravalle (1416-17),
who says Dante had studied "Paduæ, Bononiæ, demum Oxoniis et
Parisiis"; but in the _Carme_, which accompanied the copy of the
_Divine Comedy_ Boccaccio sent to Petrarch (CORAZZINI, _op. cit._, p.
53), he shows us Dante led by Apollo:--
"per celsa nivosi
Cyrreos, mediosque sinus tacitosque recessus
Naturæ, cœlique vias, terræque, marisque
Aonios fontes, Parnasi culmen et antra
Julia, Parisios dudum, extremosque Britannos."
Cf. MAZZINGHI, _A Brief Notice of Recent Researches respecting Dante_
(1844), quoted by PAGET TOYNBEE, _Dante in English Literature_
(Methuen, 1909), Vol. II, p. 696 _et seq._
[590] See _supra_, p. 185 _et seq._ As we have seen, this tirade is
not altogether original, but is founded on a passage of Theophrastus,
translated by Jerome, and copied out by Boccaccio. Cf. MACRI LEONE,
_Vita di Dante_ (Firenze, 1888).
[591] Mr. Wicksteed's translation, p. 53.
[592] On what Boccaccio has to say on Dante's pride see pp. 58 and 77
of Mr. Wicksteed's translation.
[593] He treats of the _Divine Comedy_ more fully than of the rest.
"The question is moved at large by many men, and amongst them sapient
ones," he writes, "why Dante, a man perfectly versed in knowledge,
chose to write in the Florentine idiom so grand a work, of such
exalted matter and so notable as this comedy; and why not rather in
Latin verses, as other poets before him had done. In reply to which
question, two chief reasons, amongst many others, come to my mind.
The first of which is that he might be of more general use to his
fellow-citizens and the other Italians; for he knew that if he had
written metrically in Latin, as the other poets of past times had
done, he would only have done service to men of letters, whereas
writing in the vernacular he did a deed ne'er done before, and
(without any let to men of letters whereby they should not understand
him) showing the beauty of our idiom and his own excelling art
therein, gave delight and understanding of himself to the unlearned,
who had hitherto been abandoned of every one. The second reason which
moved him thereto was this: seeing that liberal studies were utterly
abandoned, and especially by the princes and other great men, to whom
poetic toils were wont to be dedicated (wherefore the divine works
of Virgil and the other poets had not only sunk into neglect, but
well nigh into contempt at the hands of many), having himself begun,
according as the loftiness of the matter demanded, after this guise--
"Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo,
Spiritibus que lata patent que premia solvunt
Pro meritis cuicumque suis ..."
he abandoned it; for he conceived it was a vain thing to put crusts
of bread into the mouths of such as were still sucking milk;
wherefore he began his work again in style suited to modern tastes,
and followed it up in the vernacular." He adds that Dante, "as some
maintain," dedicated the _Inferno_ to Uguccione della Faggiuola, the
_Purgatorio_ to Marquis Moruello Malespina, and the _Paradiso_ to
Frederic third King of Sicily; but as others assert, the whole poem
was dedicated to Messer Cane della Scala. He does not resolve the
question.
[594] Cf. Dr. Moore, _op. cit._
[595] Cf. Paget Toynbee, _Life of Dante_ (Methuen, 1904), pp. 130 and
147.
[596] Cf. _Comento_, _ed. cit._, _Lez. 2_, Vol. I, p. 104.
[597] Cf. _Comento_, _ed. cit._, _Lez._ 33, Vol. II, p. 129.
[598] He tells us this in the _Comento_ as well as in the _Vita_,
where he gives certain facts as "as others to whom his desire was
known declare" (WICKSTEED, _op. cit._, p. 18).
[599] Cf. _supra_, p. 257, n. 1.
[600] Cf. MACRI LEONE, _op. cit._, cap. ix., who describes twenty-two
in Italy.
[601] The _Compendio_ has been printed four times--first in 1809 in
Milan, before the _Divine of Comedy_ as published by Luigi Mussi.
[602] Printed by Lord Vernon at Florence in 1846 under title _Chiose
sopra Dante_.
[603] Cf. their _Vocabolario_, eds. 1612, 1623, 1691. Mazzuccheli
also in the eighteenth century accepted it. Yet Betussi knew it was
incomplete in 1547. Cf. his translation of _De Genealogiis_.
[604] Mr. Paget Toynbee, whose learned article on the _Comento_
in _Modern Language Review_, Vol. II, No 2, January, 1907, I have
already referred to, and return to with profit and pleasure, says:
"It is not unreasonable to suppose that though too ill to lecture
publicly, Boccaccio may have occupied himself at Certaldo in
continuing the Commentary in the hope of eventually resuming his
course at Florence."
[605] Cf. MANNI, _Istoria del Decamerone_, pp. 104-6, who prints all
the documents of the lawsuit.
[606] Cf. Appendix V, where I print the Will.
[607] He valued the MS. at 18 gold florins.
[608] The best edition is Milanesi's (Florence, Le Monnier, 1863). He
divided it first into sixty _lezioni_ which do not necessarily accord
with Boccaccio's lectures.
[609] Cf. PAGET TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, p. 112. It is significant too,
as Dr. Toynbee does not fail to note, that Boccaccio often uses
_scrivere_ instead of _parlare_ in speaking of his lectures. Cf.
_Lez._ 2 and _Lez._ 20; MILANESI, Vol. I, 120 and 148, also _Lez._
52, Vol. II, 366.
[610] Cf. _De Genealogiis_, XIV, 7 and 10, and _supra_, p. 247.
[611] For instance, he explains that an oar is "a long thick piece of
wood with which the boatman propels his boat and guides and directs
it from one place to another" (_Comento_, I, 286). Cf. TOYNBEE, _op.
cit._, p. 116.
[612] Through the medium of Chalcidius, whom he does not name. In
this form the medieval world knew the _Timæus_. Cf. TOYNBEE, _op.
cit._, p. 113.
[613] _Æneid_, II, 689-91.
[614] Cf. _Comento_, I, 82-5, and _Epist._, X, par. 8, 9, 15, 10, and
see TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, p. 113 and n. 7.
[615] Nor was all this original matter. "To the discussion of these
points," says Dr. Toynbee, "he devotes what amounts to some ten
printed pages in Milanesi's edition of the _Commentary_ (_Comento_,
I, p. 92 _et seq._), at least half of the matter being translated
word for word from a previous work of his own, the _De Genealogiis
Deorum_...."
[616] Cf. _supra_, p. 262.
[617] _Comento_, II, 454.
[618] _Ibid._, II, 139.
[619] _Ibid._, I, 304 _et seq._
[620] _Ibid._, I, 347-50.
[621] _Rime_, _ed. cit._, sonnets vii. and viii.
[622] In Rossetti's beautiful translation.
[623] Cf. _Comento_, I, 143-4, 214, 359, 361, 362, 367, 437, 448-51,
451-6, 457-62, 463-6, 498, and II, 190, 435.
[624] Cf. _Comento_, I, 177, 180, 362, 435, and II, 18, 36, 65.
[625] Cf. _Comento_, I, 479, and II, 51, 149, 184, 220, 368, 385,
448-9; and see PAGET TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, p. 117 and notes.
[626] From this book Boccaccio translated more than three times
as much as from any other. Cf. _Comento_, I, 92-5, 99-101, 123-6,
128-35, etc. etc.
[627] Dr. Toynbee has long promised to publish a paper on this
matter. It will be very welcome.
[628] Cf. _Comento_, I, 347, 462, 467, 511.
[629] Cf. _Comento_, I, 97, 466.
[630] See _supra_, p. 205 _et seq._
[631] At caps. 56-7 and 69-70.
[632] Cf. _Comento_, I, 333-4.
[633] Cf. _Comento_, I, 397-402. See PAGET TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, pp.
118-19. He notes that Boccaccio "nowhere employs the title _Annals_
... but uses the term _storie_ ... even when he is quoting from the
_Annals_" as in _Comento_, I, 400. He seems to have made no use of
the _Histories_ in his _Comento_.
[634] As to this see PAGET TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, p. 105.
[635] Eight times in all. Besides these quotations he uses him freely.
[636] Cf. PAGET TOYNBEE, _op. cit._, 110. All trace of Boccaccio's
own MS. about which there was the lawsuit has vanished.
[637] Cf. MILANESI, _Comento_, Vol. I, p. v.
[638] At Naples (imprint Florence), two vols., 1724, in _Opere
Volgari in Prosa del Boccaccio_, published by Lorenzo Ciccarelli
(Cellurio Zacclori).
[639] In _Opere Volgari_ (1827-34, Florence, Magheri), Vols. X, XI,
XII.
[640] _Rime_, _ed. cit._, cviii. (Rossetti's translation).