O Fortuna

O Fortune,

like the moon

you are changeable,

ever waxing

and waning;

hateful life

first oppresses

and then soothes

as the sharp mind takes it;

poverty

and power

it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous

and empty,

you whirling wheel,

you are malevolent,

well-being is vain

and always fades to nothing,

shadowed

and veiled

you plague me too;

now through the game

I bring my bare back

to your villainy.

Fate is against me

in health

and virtue,

driven on

and weighted down,

always enslaved.

So at this hour

without delay

pluck the vibrating strings;

since Fate

strikes down the strong man,

everyone weep with me!

The Decameron Excerpt

Boccaccio, The Decameron, Introduction

---

The onset of the Black Death was described by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375).


I say, then, that the years of the beatific incarnation of the Son of God had reached the tale of one thousand three hundred and forty eight, when in the illustrious city of Florence, the fairest of all the cities of Italy, there made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which, whether disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our iniquities, had had its origin some years before in the East, whence, after destroying an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without respite from place to place, and so calamitously, had spread into the West.
 In Florence, despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health; despite also humble supplications addressed to God, and often repeated both in public procession and otherwise by the devout; towards the beginning of the spring of the said year the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly apparent by symptoms that shewed as if miraculous.
 Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men a women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, then minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been and still were an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they shewed themselves. Which maladies seemed set entirely at naught both the art of the physician and the virtue of physic; indeed, whether it was that the disorder was of a nature to defy such treatment, or that the physicians were at fault - besides the qualified there was now a multitude both of men and of women who practiced without having received the slightest tincture of medical science - and, being in ignorance of its source, failed to apply the proper remedies; in either case, not merely were those that covered few, but almost all within three days from the appearance of the said symptoms, sooner or later, died, and in most cases without any fever or other attendant malady.
 Moreover, the virulence of the pest was the greater by reason the intercourse was apt to convey it from the sick to the whole, just as fire devours things dry or greasy when they are brought close to it, the evil went yet further, for not merely by speech or association with the sick was the malady communicated to the healthy with consequent peril of common death; but any that touched the clothes the sick or aught else that had been touched, or used by these seemed thereby to contract the disease.
 So marvelous sounds that which I have now to relate, that, had not many, and I among them, observed it with their own eyes, I had hardly dared to credit it, much less to set it down in writing, though I had had it from the lips of a credible witness.
 I say, then, that such was the energy of the contagion of the said pestilence, that it was not merely propagated from man to mail, but, what is much more startling, it was frequently observed, that things which had belonged to one sick or dead of the disease, if touched by some other living creature, not of the human species, were the occasion, not merely of sickening, but of an almost instantaneous death. Whereof my own eyes (as I said a little before) had cognisance, one day among others, by the following experience. The rags of a poor man who had died of the disease being strewn about the open street, two hogs came thither, and after, as is their wont, no little trifling with their snouts, took the rags between their teeth and tossed them to and fro about their chaps; whereupon, almost immediately, they gave a few turns, and fell down dead, as if by poison, upon the rags which in an evil hour they had disturbed.
 In which circumstances, not to speak of many others of a similar or even graver complexion, divers apprehensions and imaginations were engendered in the minds of such as were left alive, inclining almost all of them to the same harsh resolution, to wit, to shun and abhor all contact with the sick and all that belonged to them, thinking thereby to make each his own health secure. Among whom there were those who thought that to live temperately and avoid all excess would count for much as a preservative against seizures of this kind. Wherefore they banded together, and dissociating themselves from all others, formed communities in houses where there were no sick, and lived a separate and secluded life, which they regulated with the utmost care, avoiding every kind of luxury, but eating and drinking moderately of the most delicate viands and the finest wines, holding converse with none but one another, lest tidings of sickness or death should reach them, and diverting their minds with music and such other delights as they could devise. Others, the bias of whose minds was in the opposite direction, maintained, that to drink freely, frequent places of public resort, and take their pleasure with song and revel, sparing to satisfy no appetite, and to laugh and mock at no event, was the sovereign remedy for so great an evil: and that which they affirmed they also put in practice, so far as they were able, resorting day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking with an entire disregard of rule or measure, and by preference making the houses of others, as it were, their inns, if they but saw in them aught that was particularly to their taste or liking; which they, were readily able to do, because the owners, seeing death imminent, had become as reckless of their property as of their lives; so that most of the houses were open to all comers, and no distinction was observed between the stranger who presented himself and the rightful lord. Thus, adhering ever to their inhuman determination to shun the sick, as far as possible, they ordered their life. In this extremity of our city's suffering and tribulation the venerable authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick or so hard bested for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.
 Not a few there were who belonged to neither of the two said parties, but kept a middle course between them, neither laying t same restraint upon their diet as the former, nor allowing themselves the same license in drinking and other dissipations as the latter, but living with a degree of freedom sufficient to satisfy their appetite and not as recluses. They therefore walked abroad, carrying in the hands flowers or fragrant herbs or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses, deeming it an excellent thing thus to comfort the brain with such perfumes, because the air seemed be everywhere laden and reeking with the stench emitted by the dead and the dying, and the odours of drugs.
 Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they were also the most harsh in temper, of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease superior or equal in efficacv to flight; following which prescription a multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their city, their houses, their estates, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts, as if God in visiting men with this pestilence in requital of their iniquities would not pursue them with His wrath wherever they might be, but intended the destruction of such alone as remained within the circuit of the walls of the city; or deeming perchance, that it was now time for all to flee from it, and that its last hour was come.
 Of the adherents of these divers opinions not all died, neither did all escape; but rather there were, of each sort and in every place many that sickened, and by those who retained their health were treated after the example which they themselves, while whole, had set, being everywhere left to languish in almost total neglect. Tedious were it to recount, how citizen avoided citizen, how among neighbors was scarce found any that shewed fellow-feeling for another, how kinsfolk held aloof, and never met, or but rarely; enough that this sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of men a women, that in the horror thereof brother was forsaken by brother nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes husband by wife: nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and few such there were), or the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had at high rates and on unseemly terms, and being, moreover, one and all, men and women of gross understanding, and for the most part unused to such offices, concerned themselves no further than to supply the immediate and expressed wants of the sick, and to watch them die; in which service they themselves not seldom perished with their gains. In consequence of which dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbors, kinsfolk and friends, it came to pass-a thing, perhaps, never before heard of-that no woman, however dainty, fair or well-born she might be, shrank, when stricken with the disease, from the ministrations of a man, no matter whether he were young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body, with no more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that which her malady required; wherefrom, perchance, there resulted in after time some loss of modesty in such as recovered. Besides which many succumbed, who with proper attendance, would, perhaps, have escaped death; so that, what with the virulence of the plague and the lack of due attendance of the sick, the multitude of the deaths, that daily and nightly took place in the city, was such that those who heard the tale-not to say witnessed the fact-were struck dumb with amazement. Whereby, practices contrary to the former habits of the citizens could hardly fail to grow up among the survivors.
 It had been, as to-day it still is, the custom for the women that were neighbors and of kin to the deceased to gather in his house with the women that were most closely connected with him, to wail with them in common, while on the other hand his male kinsfolk and neighbors, with not a few of the other citizens, and a due proportion of the clergy according to his quality, assembled without, in front of the house, to receive the corpse; and so the dead man was borne on the shoulders of his peers, with funeral pomp of taper and dirge, to the church selected by him before his death. Which rites, as the pestilence waxed in fury, were either in whole or in great part disused, and gave way to others of a novel order. For not only did no crowd of women surround the bed of the dying, but many passed from this life unregarded, and few indeed were they to whom were accorded the lamentations and bitter tears of sorrowing relations; nay, for the most part, their place was taken by the laugh, the jest, the festal gathering; observances which the women, domestic piety in large measure set aside, had adopted with very great advantage to their health. Few also there were whose bodies were attended to the church by more than ten or twelve of their neighbors, and those not the honorable and respected citizens; but a sort of corpse-carriers drawn from the baser ranks, who called themselves becchini and performed such offices for hire, would shoulder the bier, and with hurried steps carry it, not to the church of the dead man's choice, but to that which was nearest at hand, with four or six priests in front and a candle or two, or, perhaps, none; nor did the priests distress themselves with too long and solemn an office, but with the aid of the becchini hastily consigned the corpse to the first tomb which they found untenanted. The condition of the lower, and, perhaps, in great measure of the middle ranks, of the people shewed even worse and more deplorable; for, deluded by hope or constrained by poverty, they stayed in their quarters, in their houses where they sickened by thousands a day, and, being without service or help of any kind, were, so to speak, irredeemably devoted to the death which overtook them. Many died daily or nightly in the public streets; of many others, who died at home, the departure was hardly observed by their neighbors, until the stench of their putrefying bodies carried the tidings; and what with their corpses and the corpses of others who died on every hand the whole place was a sepulchre.
 It was the common practice of most of the neighbors, moved no less by fear of contamination by the putrefying bodies than by charity towards the deceased, to drag the corpses out of the houses with their own hands, aided, perhaps, by a porter, if a porter was to be had, and to lay them in front of the doors, where any one who made the round might have seen, especially in the morning, more of them than he could count; afterwards they would have biers brought up or in default, planks, whereon they laid them. Nor was it once twice only that one and the same bier carried two or three corpses at once; but quite a considerable number of such cases occurred, one bier sufficing for husband and wife, two or three brothers, father and son, and so forth. And times without number it happened, that as two priests, bearing the cross, were on their way to perform the last office for some one, three or four biers were brought up by the porters in rear of them, so that, whereas the priests supposed that they had but one corpse to bury, they discovered that there were six or eight, or sometimes more. Nor, for all their number, were their obsequies honored by either tears or lights or crowds of mourners rather, it was come to this, that a dead man was then of no more account than a dead goat would be to-day.

                                  For those interested in experiencing the entire work.

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The Plague

The Plague

There is an enormous amount of scholarship on the Plague and the discussion about its causes, origins and effects on 14th-century culture and society is still raging. Two classic studies on this topic are: David Herlihy,The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997; and Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, London, Collins, 1979. Among more recent contributions, in English: John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, Bedford Saint Martin, 2005; Shona Kelly Wray, "Boccaccio and the doctors: medicine and compassion in the face of the plague," Journal of Medieval History; Sept. 2004, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p.301-322, and Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr., “The Black Death: The End of a Paradigm,” The American Historical Review 107.3 (June 2002): p.703 (36).

In this section, you will find accounts by Boccaccio's contemporaries, as well as some information on how the Plague was viewed and interpreted in Medieval Medical and Religious Tracts.

• Contemporary Perspectives
  • Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti
  • Gabriele de' Mussi
  • Petrarch on the Plague
  • Francesco Petrarca: Ad Seipsum (To Himself) (Epistola Metrica I, 14: lines 1-55)
• Origins
  • How the Plague Spread to Italy
• Causes
  • Overview
  • Religious Interpretations
  • Scientific Causes of the Plague
  • Treatise of the Paris Consilium
  • The Brigata: Pleasure and Plague
• Effects
  • Social and Economic Effects of the Plague
  • The Death Toll

• The Plague as Literary Motif

Boccaccio's Life and Works

Boccaccio's Life and Works

1313

Boccaccio is born (July or August) in Certaldo or in Florence to an unknown woman and Boccaccino di Chellino, a wealthy merchant who officially and without hesitation recognizes him: an official document, dated November 2, 1360  with which Pope Innocent VI confers to Giovanni, then a Florentine ambassador at his court, the canonicatus, in other words ordains him as a priest specifically mentions his "birth-defect" ("super defectu natalium"), i.e. the fact that he was born of "mother unknown." In 1313, the Boccacci are among the official residents of the San Pier Maggiore quarter, one of the centers of Florentine mercantile life. In the same year, it appears from some documents (the Parisian livre de la Taille, a sort of tax and fee ledger) that Boccaccino and his brother were in Paris for business, lodging near the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. Biographers in the 19th-century gave some currency to the romantic tale of Giovanni's birth from his father's supposed affair with a king's daughter, in far away Paris. That his mother was most likely not a Parisian but a Florentine is indirectly confirmed by the fact that Boccaccino's trip to Paris happened in late 1313 and Giovanni was already born, in July or August of the same year.

1319-20

Boccaccio spent his childhood in Florence, in the House of San Pier Maggiore -- with a few trips to the countryside, to Certaldo. Boccaccino marries Margherita de' Mardoli, noblewoman who gave him another son, Francesco, Giovanni's half-brother, born in 1320. Margherita's family boasted ancestral connection with the family of Dante's Beatrice, the beautiful daughter of Folco Portinari, a cousin of Lippa de' Mardoli, Margherita's mother, and thus Giovanni himself could claim to be a distant relative of the great poet he so admired and celebrated in his writings throughout his life.

1322-24

Boccaccino is a consul (or main officer) of the Arte del Cambio (the influential Guild of the moneychangers and money lenders) and in the same year he is among the City Priors, the highest elective office of the commune, for the customary two-month term. As the scion (however illegitimate) of a prominent and prosperous citizen of Florence, Giovanni receives a sound education: by age six, he is taught to read and write, entrusted to a private tutor, Giovanni di Domenico Mazzuoli da Strada; our Giovanni also learns to spell from the children's psalm-book and already as a child, like his own characters Florio and Biancifiore, protagonists of Filocolo, he studies grammar (Latin) on Ovid. His education follows the standard curriculum of the times: the seven "liberal arts" or disciplines - divided by Boetius in the fifth-century in the arts of the "trivium" -- the three arts of the word -- grammar (Latin) the art of reading and speaking correctly -- rhetoric, or the art of speaking and writing elegantly and persuasively; dialectic (or the art of correct and effective arguing); and then the "quadrivium", the four arts or disciplines of the number: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.  But also very important for the son of a merchant and businessman was the practical training in business and the study of law (canon law).

1327

Boccaccio travels to Naples with his father, agent of the Bardi Bank. A fundamental turning point in the life of B. is his departure for Naples, in 1327, age thirteen, following his father who (as we said) became the "director" of the Bardi office at the court of their most important client, King Robert d'Anjou. The King was also Florence's most important political ally, in the first half of the 14th-century.In Naples, Giovanni's life was full and rich of opportunities: on the one hand he attended, as an apprentice, at the changing desk of his father's company; on the other, through his good friend Nicola Acciauoli, he mingled with the local aristocracy, gravitating around the Angevin court. In addition, he also perfected his literary education. As Thomas Bergin writes: "Between banking and schooling Giovanni spent thirteen years in Naples; they were the truly formative years of his life and the happiest as well.  In one of his letters (written in Latin), he tells us (Ep. XII**) that he lived in some elegance and the young bloods of the city were not unwilling to visit his quarters. Naples in fact gave him the triple experience of court life, the business world, and the kingdom of letters..."

1330

Possibly attends lessons of Cino da Pistoia, jurist-poet and friend of Dante and Petrarch, and takes up the study of canon law. The Studio (Neapolitan university), founded in 1224 (for instance, more than a century before the studio in Florence, founded in 1349, but more than a couple of centuries after that of Bologna, founded in 988) was renowned in those days for its famous jurists -- specialists in the canon or ecclesiastical law. The most celebrated of them all was Cino da Pistoia,  also a representative of the new school of vernacular poetry known as "dolce stil novo" (sweet new style). Cino taught law at the studio in 1330-31, constantly quarreling with the canonists and lawyers and their aridity.

1332

Boccaccino moves to Paris. Giovanni, with greater freedom, pursues his humanistic interests in literature as is attested by his first essays in Latin (the Elegia di Costanza and the Allegoria mitologica, both certainly composed before 1334) and his first vernacular poetry. Just twenty years old, Boccaccio was admitted to the circle of learned men who gathered in the famous Royal library, where he could find and read, along with the classical Latin literature (Ovid, Vergil etc.) Provençal and Old French romances, and scholarly compilations dealing with mythology, astrology, history, etc., even magic and alchemy, the source of his truly encyclopedic culture. His professors and companions in these cultural explorations were such famous learned men as Paolo da Perugia, Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, Barbato da Sulmona, Giovanni Barrili. Here lie the true foundations of Boccaccio.'s twofold culture, poeticin a Modern, humanistic, and encyclopedic, in a Medieval sense.

1333-34

Boccaccio's first exposure to the poetry of Petrarch.

1334-37

Composition of La caccia di Diana.

1336-39

Boccaccio finishes the Filocolo, a long romance divided into five books: for the first time in Italian prose it recounts the adventures of Florio, son of the king of Marmorina, and Biancifiore, a poor girl received into that court without anyone knowing of her princely Roman origins.  It tells of their love from childhood, their cruel separation, the romantic quest of Florio to find his beloved, their splendid joyful wedding, their conversion to Christianity in Rome, and their victorious and joyous return home.  This legend of Byzantine origin (reworked in French as early as the 13th-century and later in an Italian cantare) is ornamented by B. with many learned digressions and autobiographical allusions. During this time, Giovanni ends his period of study. 

1339

Giovanni writes the following Latin epistles: The Crepor celsitudinis, dedicated to Carlo, duke of Durazzo; theMavortis milex, dedicated to Petrarch; the Nereus amphitribus and the Sacre famis, to unidentified friends.

1339-40

Composition of the Teseida.

1340

The Filostrato is completed (other scholars fix the date as circa 1335) between fall and winter.

1340-41

Boccaccio returns to Florence. Most likely Giovanni left Naples in the winter of 1340-41, thus unable to witness the coronation, in 1341, of Petrarca as the king's poet laureate. Back in Florence, he found a city ravaged by the Plague of the year before, which (according to Giovanni Villani's Chronicle) killed a sixth of the population; he also found political turmoil, linked to the financial difficulties of the "compagnie," including his father's employer, the Bardi, and the other major, the Peruzzi. Both had lent enormous sums of money to the King of England (Edward III) to finance his military expedition against France (which, in 1336, started a war destined to last for more than a hundred years -- the hundred years war). When the king defaulted on his debt, they went bankrupt. In the attempt to stave off the bankruptcy, a group of prominent citizens of Florence arranged a coup: Walter of Brienne, a French military leader, was named signore of the city in 1342. His dictatorship lasted only a year and he was driven out of Florence in August 1343 by a coalition of magnates (the old aristocrats), popolani (the nouveaux riches) and artisans. Within weeks of this uprising, conflict broke out between the magnates and the popolani. The latter won and the regime established by them was broadly representative of the guild community. In the meantime, in the same year 1343, king Robert died in Naples and a struggle for succession began: B.'s hopes to quickly return to the city of his youth, with the help of his now powerful and influential friend Nicola Acciaiuoli, were repeatedly stifled.

1341-42

Composition of the Comedia Ninfe (also known as the Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine and later with the uncertain title Ninfale d'Ameto) dedicated to Niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono. First draft of De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi.

1342-43

First version of the Amorosa visione.

1343-44

Composition of the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta.

1344-45

Composition of the Ninfale fiesolano.

1347-48

Eager to leave the paternal house in Florence (his stepmother Margherita had died and his father, Boccaccino, had remarried with Bice de' Bostichi) Giovanni tried to conquer financial independence in order to pursue a literary career. Perhaps looking for a patron, he went to Ravenna (guest of Ostagio da Polenta) in 1346, and Forlì (guest of Francesco Ordelaffi) between '47 and '48, where he exchanges sonnets and carmina with the grammarian Checco di Meletto Rossi. It is during this period that Boccaccio first learns news of Dante's last years, spent in Ravenna. Composition of the first eclogues which will later be collected in Buccolicum carmen.

1348

Back in Florence, he eye-witnessed the devastating plague of 1348 (Black Death), in which tens of thousand of people died, at least three times  the number of those who died in 1340. Among the victims, Giovanni''s father and new stepmother. All of a sudden, Giovanni inherited what was left of the family fortune -- and a household to run and maintain.

 

1349-51

Composition of the Decameron. These (1348-51) are in fact the years of the Decameron and we know very little about them. We know that Giovanni was briefly back in Ravenna in 1350, this time on a special mission from the compagnia of Or San Michele: to give suor Beatrice (Dante's daughter, a nun in the monastery of San Stefano in Ravenna) ten golden florins as a belated restitution to the heir of the great exiled poet who had died there, thirty years earlier.

1350

First meeting with Petrarch in Florence. Work begins on the Genealogia deorum gentilium, a work which is not finished until 1374. On the way to Rome for the Jubilee of 1350, the most famous of 14th-century's litterati (Petrarch) was met and greeted just outside Florence by a delegation of Florentine intellectuals and scholars, led by Boccaccio. It's the beginning of a correspondence and a literary friendship that lasted until their death, a year apart from one another, in 1374 (Petrarca) and 1375 (Boccaccio). A friendship, renewed several times by Giovanni's visits to Petrarch., in his many residences: in Padua (1351), Milan (1359), Venice (1363), and again in Arquà, near Padua (1368). iovanni. devotedly called Petrarch. his magister, or teacher and continued to call him so, even after Petrarca, in 1351, frustrated Boccaccio's expectations and greatly disappointed his Florentine admirers by refusing to accept their invitation to come and teach at the newly founded Florentine Studio.

1351

Boccaccio moves to Padua where he again meets Petrarch. He joins the court of Ludwig of Bavaria as embassador from the city-state of Florence. The first draft of the Trattatello in laude di Dante reaches completion.

 

1355

Boccaccio attempts a return to Naples (always hopeful for the help of Nicola Acciaiuoli, now become chamberlain of the troubled kingdom). This time, he is hoping to replace Zanobi da Strada as Nicola's personal secretary and aid: it will be another bitter disappoinment (he will try again, with even worse results, in the winter of 1362-63) but the trip will give him the opportunity to stop at the famous abbey of Montecassino and explore one of the richest monastic libraries of the Western world. Earliest feasible date of the second draft of the Amorosa visione which is definitively completed in 1360. Work begins on the De casibus virorum illustrium and the De montibus, silvis, fontibus et de nominibus maris liber finished respectively in 1363 and 1364. 1355 is also the year of little Violante's death; she is one of at least five children of Boccaccio, all illegitimate (as far as we know, Boccaccio never married and, as we said, was ordained in 1360). Violante is the only child whose name (and a faint, affectionate memory) is recorded in her father's writings.

1357

Boccaccio, in Ravenna, probably receives the Invective contra medicum from Petrarch.

1359

Third meeting with Petrarch, this time in Milan. Boccaccio named ambassador to Lombardy, perhaps at the court of Bernabò Visconti.

1360

First complete version of the De casibus and first abridged edition of the Trattatello. Pope Innocent VI inducts Boccaccio into the clergy. In an aborted coup d'état in Florence, several of Boccaccio's friends and acquaintances are implicated, some of whom (including Niccolò di Bartolo Del Buono and others) are subsequently executed. For the next four years, Boccaccio receives no further official Florentine appointments. The coup, as the chronicler Matteo Villani has it, was meant to overturn the iniquitous law imposed by "certain great and popular men [Albizzi and Ricci] for the evil purpose of becoming tyrants" (this is a refrain in Florentine political life, dominated by the factious Guelf party, the Parte Guelfa). Even the presence in Florence of B.'s ambivalent friend, powerful Nicola Acciaiuoli, in the last months of 1360, was considered suspicious by the ruling party.

1361

Boccaccio withdraws to Certaldo. Work begins on De mulieribus claris.

1361-62

Return, for unidentified reasons, to Ravenna. Here he collects information regarding San Pier Damiani for Petrarch who is working on De vita solitaria.

1362

Definitive version of the De mulieribus. Composition of Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani.

1363

Following a serious crisis of faith, Boccaccio dedicates himself exclusively to spiritual pursuits. He travels again to Naples but stays there only for a relatively short period on account of his luke warm reception. After returning to Florence, he goes to Padua to see Petrarch but eventually meets him in Venice where the latter had moved. In July Boccaccio proceeds to Certaldo. The final version of the Genealogie is brought to its conclusion. The 1360s are indeed years of spiritual crisis for Giovanni.  In a famous episode (as V. Branca tells it in his biography of Boccaccio): upon receiving, in 1361, a message by the Sienese Blessed Pietro Petroni, admonishing him about his imminent death, Boccaccio rashly thought to abandon his studies and turn over his library to his magister, Petrarch. The latter wrote to him, nominally accepting the gift and yet encouraging his friend and disciple to continue his literary efforts, in the name of the very spiritual reasons adduced against them. And Boccaccio resumed his love's labors.

1364-65

Boccaccio engages in an enduring epistolary debate with Petrarch on compositions in the vernacular.

1365

Travels to the papal court of Urban V in Avignon as Florentine ambassador. Composition of the Corbaccio. Boccaccio dedicates himself to the second abridged edition of the Trattatello.

1367

Visit to Venice where Boccaccio does not have the opportunity to meet with Petrarch but does find Petrarch's daughter and son-in-law. Boccaccio takes ambassadorship to the papal court in Rome.

1368

Meeting with Petrarch in Padua around whom many intellectuals and literary figures have gathered.

1369-70

Boccaccio oversees the publication of the Buccolicum carmen.

1370-71

After a last trip to Naples, of which we have no information, Boccaccio (now a famous poet) retires to Certaldo: he is ill, very fat, almost obese, and yet still able to dedicate himself entirely to his studies.

1372

Boccaccio is increasingly troubled by obesity, and also by a form of dropsy which impedes his movement, together with attacks of scabies and high fevers.

1373

Dedication of the definitive version of the De casibus to Mainardo Cavalcanti. Continuation of revisions of theGenealogie. Boccaccio is entrusted by Florence to conduct a series of readings and lectures on the Divina Commedia, in the Church of Santo Stefano di Badia. The contract called for a cycle of lectures, lasting for a year, and a compensation of one hundred florins. He gives his first lecture on October 23d, 1373; after a few months, too ill to continue and among some opposition from the most factious of the Guelf extremists, who never forgave Dante his "ghibellin" (pro-Empire) ideas, and some mumbling from orthodox religious figures, the lectures are interrupted.

1374

In a state of financial troubles and ailing health, Boccaccio returns to Certaldo where he learns of Petrarch's death. The passing of his long-time friend inspires the last sonnet of his mature poems. Work continues on the Genealogie.

1375

Boccaccio dies on December 21 at his home in Certaldo. Giovanni will close his eyes for ever in the quiet of Certaldo, on December 21, 1375, a year after his worshipped magister, the second crown of Florence, Francesco Petrarca.

(G.M., M.P., M.R.) Adapted from: Muscetta, Carlo. "Giovanni Boccaccio". Letteratura italiana Laterza. Bari: Laterza, 1989. Ferroni, Giulio. Storia della letteratura italiana vol. I "Dalle origini al Quattrocento" Turin: Einaudi, 1991.

Giotto and the Arena Chapel

Giotto and the Arena Chapel

Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua

Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua

Giotto di Bondone

Documentary

Guillaume de Machaut: La Messe de Nostre Dame

Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377) is one of the undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music, and the most famous composer of the Middle Ages. Today his four-voice Mass of Notre Dame is a textbook example for medieval counterpoint, and has served sufficiently to maintain his reputation across shifts in fashion. However Machaut's work is extensive, with his French songs & poetry dominating the fourteenth century by both their quality and volume. A series of carefully prepared illuminated manuscripts, undertaken for members of the French royalty, preserve his complete artistic output. Along with these major sources, various pieces are duplicated in scattered sources throughout Europe. His life and work are thus extremely well-preserved for the period, and his position as the most distinguished composer of the century has never wavered.
Machaut was apparently born in the vicinity of Rheims in Champagne, around the year 1300. He is first known as the secretary of John of Luxembourg in 1323, and used the position to travel extensively for various battles and political events. In approximately 1340, Machaut returned to Rheims to take up the position of canon (he had previously been an absentee office-holder) together with his brother Jean. However, he continued to serve John of Luxembourg until the latter's death at Crécy in 1346, and then served his daughter Bonne, who appears in the Remède de Fortune. The remainder of the fourteenth century was an epic of wars and plagues, and one of the few periods in which the population of Europe declined, but Machaut's reputation continued to rise. He went on to serve two kings of France, and was charged with a task as important as accompanying hostages during the English war. In 1361 the Dauphine was received in Machaut's quarters, an exceptional event. By the 1370s Machaut's name was associated with Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, thus establishing his fame nearly as far as Asia.
Machaut is frequently portrayed today as an avant garde composer, especially because of his position with regard to the early Ars Nova (a new, more detailed rhythmic notation), but one must also emphasize the masterful continuity with which he employed established forms. While using the same basic formats, he made subtle changes to meter and rhyme scheme, allowing for more personal touches and a more dramatic presentation. Indeed, Machaut's poetry is one of the most impressive French outputs of the medieval era, serving as an example even for Chaucer. The theme of courtly love dominates his writing, becoming heavily symbolized in the guises of such characters as Fortune & Love, and the personal dramas in which they act. Machaut's poetic output, and by extension the subset of texts he chose to set to music, is both personal and ritualized, lending it a timeless quality. Some of the love themes date to Ovid and beyond, from whom they had been elaborated first by the troubadours of Provence and then by the northern trouvères, and so it is truly a classical tradition to which Machaut belongs.
Machaut marks the end of the lineage of the trouvères, and with it the development of the monophonic art song in the West. This aspect of his work is found in the virelais and especially the lengthy lais. He also acted decisively to refine the emerging polyphonic song forms ballade & rondeau, and these were to become the dominant fixed forms for the following generations. What Machaut achieved so eloquently is an idiomatic and natural combination of words with music, forcefully compelling in its lyrical grace and rhythmic sophistication. His songs are immediately enjoyable, because he was able to shape the smallest melodic nuances as well as to conceive forms on a larger scale. The latter is reflected especially in his poetic-musical creations Le Remède de Fortune and Le Voir Dit, as well as in his Messe de Notre Dame. One must not lose sight of Machaut's position within the sweep of medieval history, as his great "multimedia" productions had clear precedents in the Roman de la Rose and especially the Roman de Fauvel. It is Machaut's ability to unite cogent and elegant melodic thinking with the new rhythmic possibilities of the Ars Nova which ultimately makes his musical reputation.
Although he wrote music for more than one hundred of his French poems, and even for half a dozen motets in Latin, Machaut remains best-known for his Mass of Notre Dame. This mass was written as part of the commemoration of the Virgin endowed by the Machaut brothers at Rheims, and was intended for performance in a smaller setting by specialized soloists. The most striking aspect of the piece is not simply the high quality of the contrapuntal writing, but the architectural unity of the Ordinary sections as well. Machaut's mass is not the earliest surviving mass cycle (there are two which predate it), but it is the earliest by a single composer and indeed the earliest to display this degree of unity. While the chants used as cantus firmus do vary, opening gestures and motivic figures are used to confirm the cyclical nature of the work. Technique of this magnitude is frequently offered as evidence of Machaut's prescience, given the prominence of such forms a hundred or two hundred years later, but the musical quality of his cycle can be appreciated on its own terms. Of course, the same can be said for Machaut's oeuvre as a whole.