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Updated: June 29, 2025
The source of Boccaccio's highest reputation, and that which entitles him to rank as the third founder of the national literature, is his "Decameron," a collection of tales written during the period when the plague desolated the south of Europe, with a view to amuse the ladies of the court during that dreadful visitation.
Here indeed was what he had come for; it rather paralyzed his receptivity for the moment, but gradually the thing found its way to him. At one o'clock he was standing before the collection of studies done for Boccaccio's Garden when he heard a voice at his elbow. "Pardon, sir, but I was just about to lock up and go to lunch. Are you lookin' for the figure study of Boccaccio 'imself?"
Of the ways to Fiesole, one goes by Mugnone and one by S. Gervasio, but it will not be by them that I shall go, but out of Barriera delle Cure; and I shall pass behind the gardens of Villa Palmieri, whither after the second day of the Decamerone Boccaccio's fair ladies and gay lords passed from Poggio Gherardo by a little path "but little used, which was covered with herbs and flowers, that opened under the rising sun, while they listened to the song of the nightingales and other birds."
It is probable that Boccaccio's father was one of the victims of the pestilence; for he was dead in 1350, when his son returned to Florence to live thenceforth on the modest patrimony which he inherited.
The immediate source of Chaucer's poem is Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, "the love-smitten one"; but he uses his material very freely, to reflect the ideals of his own age and society, and so gives to the whole story a dramatic force and beauty which it had never known before.
We will visit Montmorency and the haunts of Rousseau, sail on the lake at moonlight, dine at gypsy restaurants under trees not yet embrowned by summer heats, discuss literature and politics, "Shakspeare and the musical glasses," and be as sociable and pleasant as Boccaccio's tale-tellers, at Fiesole.
It is chiefly famous now for its Filippino Lippi and two tombs by Mino da Fiesole, but historically it is interesting as being the burial-place of the chief Florentine families in the Middle Ages and as being the scene of Boccaccio's lectures on Dante in 1373.
In this he is referred to as in his sixth year "in sexto tuo aetatis anno." This, assuming Boccaccio's letter to be correct in the matter of April being the month of Cesare's birth, fixes the year of his birth as 1475. A Bull of Sixtus IV, appointing Roderigo Borgia administrator of Cesare's benefices. A Bull of Sixtus IV, appointing Cesare treasurer of the Church of Carthage.
In walking to Fiesole one follows the high walls of the Villa Palmieri, which is now very private American property, but is famous for ever as the first refuge of Boccaccio's seven young women and three young men when they fled from plague-stricken Florence in 1348 and told tales for ten halcyon days. It is now generally agreed that if Boccaccio had any particular house in his mind it was this.
"I like to fancy we are fugitives like Boccaccio's merry company from the plague of our daily prose, to this garden of sweet poetry!" cried Miss Du Prel. They all kindled at the idea. Valeria made some fanciful laws that she said were to govern the little realm. Everyone might express himself freely, and all that he said would be held as sacred, as if it were in confidence.
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