44 Meinolf Schumacher, “Toleranz, Kaufmannsgeist und Heiligkeit im Kulturkontakt mit den ‘Heiden’” (2010), 55.
45 I would like to express my gratitude to Anne Scott, Northern Arizona University, for her careful reading of this chapter and for providing me with valuable suggestions and corrections.
5 Reaching Out to the Other Side in Fourteenth-Century Italian Literature
Literary Efforts to Establish Friendship and Tolerant Relationships in Boccaccio’s Decameron
Some of the greatest medieval poets have achieved their fame because they endeavored to project new forms of human communities and human bonds across all traditional, cultural, and religious divides by means of communication and tolerant attitudes. We noticed that in the case of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s works and of Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart. The same applies to literary luminaries such as Juan Ruiz, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, to mention three representatives from the late Middle Ages.
Even though the concept of utopia is commonly associated with early modern literature and philosophy exclusively (Thomas More, or Morus, 1516),1 there are already numerous examples of medieval texts where innovative concepts, approaches, and ideas can be observed that come rather close to the idea of a utopia. Here, I mean social concepts of an ideal society where people from different cultural and religious backgrounds and ethnic origins manage to reach out to each other and to join hands in forming a new social identity.2 This applies especially to the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, whom we commonly associate with the early Renaissance but who was still deeply anchored in the Middle Ages, especially with respect to his earlier literary endeavors.3 In this sense, we can include him also in our search for pre-modern voices addressing toleration and tolerance. I would not call him a utopian writer, but in some examples within his œuvre, it would be possible to recognize statements about ideals concerning a future world without prejudice and racism.
Considering that his Decameron, composed around 1350, belongs to world literature and has been edited, translated, and interpreted countless times all over the world, it would be tantamount to carrying proverbial coals to Newcastle or owls to Athens if I were to reintroduce him here one more time. No literary history dealing with Italian medieval or Renaissance poet could ignore him. There is much detailed information about Boccaccio both in print and online, and it is easy to learn about his biography. Nevertheless, since I am pursuing such a universal topic, that is, toleration, or tolerance, within the medieval and early modern context, which requires a highly interdisciplinary approach, it seems appropriate at least to provide a sketch of Boccaccio’s life and works in order to establish the necessary framework for our investigation.4 In particular, we need to keep in mind the phenomenon that Boccaccio developed some of these themes in several of his tales and boldly challenged his audience to reflect more about the meaning of toleration and even tolerance as fundamental values in human life.
There is no doubt about Boccaccio’s first-rate education and his great learning, his considerable political influence and experience as a diplomat and administrator, and about his significant contributions to fourteenth-century Italian literature and philosophy. Together with Francesco Petrarca, in the Anglophone world known to us simply as Petrarch, Boccaccio laid the foundation for what we call today the Italian Renaissance. He straddled both periods and built intellectual bridges from the Middle Ages to the modern world, very similarly to Petrarch, whom he met for the first time in Rome in 1350.5 Both formed a close friendship over the following years, studying classical literature and imitating classical Latin for their own writings. As Lucia Battaglia Ricci formulates,
Boccaccio non scrive trattati di poetica, ma opera frequenti contaminazioni tra i vari piani del suo discorso, sí che la voce dell’autore si mescola con quella del narratore, dell’ esegeta, del critici, ora a giustificare le proprie scelte e a chiarire la posizione dell’opera nel sistema dei generi letterari …6
[Boccaccio does not write treatises on poetry, but frequently blends various levels of discourse, such that the author’s voice mixes with the one of the narrator, and then with the voice of the exegete, the critic, to justify the proper selection and to elucidate the position of the work within the system of literary genres …]
One of the most dramatic examples of a tolerant attitude surfaces in the third story of the first day, dealing with the parable of the three rings. I will examine this at great length below, but here we need to keep in mind that Boccaccio drew from several medieval sources, such as the Novellino, also known as Ciento novelle antiche (second half of the thirteenth century; no. 73: “Come il Soldano, avendo bisogno di moneta, vuolle cogliere cagione a un giudeo”),7 the Gesta romanorum (late thirteenth century), and possibly even older examples.8 However, perhaps more than anyone else, Boccaccio developed a literary framework within which new alternative forms of human freedom and individuality were explored, hence where the idea of tolerance became a possibility of great significance. As to that narrative framework, we might be able to refer, as an earlier example, already the collection of tales by Caesarius of Heisterbach in his Dialogus miraculorum from ca. 1240, and maybe also the famous Arabic masterpiece of One Thousand and One Night, but Boccaccio’s work constitutes a new beginning after all with its secular, erotic, strongly entertaining, and yet also didactic intentions. In particular, the Decameron is deeply determined by the panorama of human life where we encounter representatives of all social estates and even ages, including members of the Jewish and Muslim communities. More than once, the poet explored constellations in which the free and tolerant exchange of ideas and values is claimed to be possible and desirable.
The number of critical studies on Boccaccio at large and on his individual works is legion and cannot be reviewed here in detail.9 The same applies to his famous Decameron, which can be identified easily as a true literary masterpiece, universally recognized and appreciated, having exerted a tremendous influence on many generations of writers all over Europe, as mirrored by the countless translations, adaptations, imitations, etc.10 The title derives from the two Greek words deka (ten) and hēmera (day), meaning a collection of ten stories per day told over the period of ten days. The poet was familiar with the sacred nature of the number ten, as formulated already by Bonaventure, who had called it “numerus perfectissimus” (perfect number). More specifically, Boccaccio was intimately familiar with Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia (written between 1308 and 1321, originally called only “Commedia”) from early on, and later in his life, he gave sixty public lectures on this masterpiece upon the invitation of the city in St. Stefano in Florence from October 23, 1373 to January 1374. There is, hence, a direct correspondence between Dante’s hundred cantos and Boccaccio’s hundred tales. But the differences in genre and intent are striking, underscoring the unique character of the Decameron as a foundation of early modern Italian literature.
At first sight, there does not seem to be a concrete narrative structure for the entire collection apart from the progression of time, but there are specific themes as determined by the individual storytellers, except for the first and the ninth day.11 The narrator Dioneo enjoys the freedom to tell whatever story seems to him to be the most appropriate one, which allows him to round off each day with a final account, often with a humorous twist, except for the very last tale dealing with Griselda. Boccaccio might have developed this figure to introduce himself into the narrative, ironically reflecting upon the arguments exchanged among the storytellers. The presentation of these tales is predicated on the experience of the Black Death, which is raging in Florence and elsewhere, and from which the group of ten young aristocrats has escaped to their country estates. But the narratives do not deal with this epidemic at all and take us instead into the world of late medieval individuals from all walks of life. In this way, Boccaccio managed to create a literary mirror of his own time, reflecting on many different ideals, concerns, values, fears, interests, and concerns. Overall, howeve
r, the erotic, even sexual, themes dominate throughout.
As much as the medieval world continues to provide the essential framework for the entire collection, we recognize a different cultural-historical approach pursued by all narrators, embracing the material conditions of their existence more openly and more joyfully. Despite the employment of countless traditional motifs and topoi, the Decameron begins to mirror the real living conditions of that time, always viewed through a humorous lens. Hence, here we encounter the entire gamut of late medieval society, including knights, Jews, Arabs, pilgrims, soldiers, kings, abbots, craftsmen, noble ladies, merchants and their wives, monks, friars, and beggars. Commentators have often noticed the very open and relaxed attitude toward the erotic, and even toward sexuality, permeating the entire collection. However, it would be erroneous to assume that Boccaccio did not pursue serious ethical, moral, religious, political, and philosophical issues after all. Behind all jests and jokes, behind the complex comedy everywhere, we discover a rather philosophical approach toward a virtuous way of life, perhaps even informed by the Neoplatonic teachings of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (525).12
Even though Boccaccio drew from a vast amount of ancient and medieval sources, his Decameron still represents a genuine, innovative, maybe also authentic anthology characterized by a sophisticated thematic structure.13 Most intriguingly, Boccaccio’s collection of tales continues to attract wide readerships, probably because the tales in the Decameron address fundamental questions of human life and often make us laugh about ourselves. The irony and satire that surface in many tales target all kinds of aspects and individuals in fourteenth-century Italian society, although the narrators take us often to foreign lands as well.
Born in 1313 (he died in 1375), the poet quickly turned into one of the most important early Renaissance writers in Italy, or the triumphant last medieval poets—though it would be difficult to draw a clear line. His works include Il Filostrato (1335/1340) and Teseida (before 1341), then La caccia di Diana (1334–1337), the fifty-canto allegorical poem Amorosa visione (1342); and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (1343–1344), Corbaccio (ca. 1356), and Decameron, the latter directly in the aftermath of the Black Death, ca. 1351. We can also mention his Genealogia deorum gentilium (1360) and De mulieribus claris (1361), among many others.
Altogether, we can recognize in Boccaccio a major voice in fourteenth-century intellectual life—a famous poet, a respected diplomat and scholar, and a most open-minded individual—especially if we think about some of the tales in his Decameron where worthy Jews and Muslims interact with their Christian counterparts. Whether those fictional examples might be sufficient enough to claim that Boccaccio represented a shift in his society, a transformation of the dominant mentality, or some fundamental changes within everyday life in fourteenth-century Italy cannot be fully answered here. We can only be certain about some literary-historical facts, such as the enormous popularity that the Decameron enjoyed, as reflected, for instance, by the profound and long-term reception history all over Europe. Whatever message is contained in any of Boccaccio’s tales, it must have been met with a certain degree of approval, at least by his lay audience in the cities, while the Decameron was at times criticized by the Church and later, in the 1580s, even condemned and put on the index of forbidden works. In other words, although the tales contained in this collection represent literary projections, those did not meet any opposition or objections by the wider readership, as far as we can tell, despite, or maybe just because of, much anti-clericalism and social criticism. Hence, it appears rather likely that there was a certain degree of agreement between Boccaccio and his audience. The literary document emerges, thus, as a mirror of broadly conceived cultural conditions, popular attitudes, general assumptions, even such that pertain to the interaction between Christians and Jews, and occasionally also Muslims. As we will observe, the Decameron allows us to pursue further the topic of toleration and tolerance in the late Middle Ages or the Renaissance.14
Decameron I/2
In the second story told on the first day by the lady Neifile, we are taken to Paris where the Christian merchant Jehannot de Chevigny enjoys a close friendship with the Jew Abraham, who apparently pursues the same business and has amassed a large fortune.15 This friendship is sustained by their shared ethical system, and the narrator highlights, above all, Abraham’s loyalty, righteousness, and rectitude. Moreover, Jehannot is convinced of his friend’s wisdom and worthiness, so he highly respects him as a most honorable person. All these epithets underscore that for Boccaccio, there was no reason to reject any Jew just on the basis of religious differences. For him, it was very conceivable that such a friendship could exist and that religion hardly mattered when it concerned friendship and collegiality.
However, for Jehannot, it is still deeply troublesome that his best friend is not a Christian. He is driven by a personal concern for Abraham’s soul and worries that this worthy man might end up in hell after his death. Soon enough, he begins to plead with his friend to reconsider his Jewish faith and to recognize its errors and rapid decline as a false religion. Abraham, however, counters steadfastly that he is convinced that his own faith is the only true one, and hence he would not even consider converting to Christianity. This proves to be unsettling for Jehannot, who reiterates his rhetorical efforts a few days later.
The narrator emphasizes that Abraham is a learned Jew and knows all the Jewish laws; yet, he begins to pay more attention to his friend’s words. Finally, Abraham feels so much coerced that he declares his willingness to reconsider the matter, but only after he would have visited Rome and taken a good look at the upper-church authority, that means, above all, the pope himself and the cardinals. For him, the true faith would manifest itself in the comportment of the religious representatives, whereas Jehannot’s words have only a limited effect, making him reconsider his position.
Boccaccio’s true intention might well have been to create a story determined by anti-clericalism, as the subsequent developments clearly indicate. First, Jehannot regards Abraham’s decision as calamitous, confirming to him that all of his efforts to convert his friend to Christianity must have failed. Rome would be the worst place for Abraham to learn the basic teachings of his faith because, as he knows, the Holy See has turned into a swamp of sinfulness and vice, and no one in his sane mind would accept Christianity if s/he would witness the depravities of even the highest-ranking ecclesiastics. There is no doubt in his mind that the openly displayed hypocrisy of the clerics in Rome and their irreverent foulness of their mind would disgust Abraham so much that he would certainly relapse and return to his Jewish faith, even if he had already embraced Christianity.
Boccaccio is brutal in his sarcasm condemning the entire Holy See as the worst place for Christian faithfuls, describing Jehannot’s desperate attempts to hold his friend back and to seek advice about difficult points in religious matters in Paris, instead of carrying out such a burdensome and perilous journey. His arguments are not fully convincing, as he knows only too well, and Abraham also proves to be too adamant in his determination to journey to Rome and to witness for himself what the Catholic Church might look like in terms of its representatives. There are plenty of other tales in the Decameron confirming Boccaccio’s great interest in dealing with anti-clericalism, which became a mainstay of late medieval story-telling all over Europe.16 Surprisingly, however, Abraham is undeterred and goes on his journey to Rome, where he witnesses, indeed, all the horrors of corruption, lewdness, and greed pursued by virtually every cleric there.
But we need to pause briefly because it is worth noting that Abraham is honorably welcomed by the Jewish community in Rome and treated most respectfully, which signals to us that, as far as Boccaccio was concerned, Jewish groups were naturally present in that city, who apparently recognized Abraham and took him as one of their own. Irrespective of the countless reports about pogroms directed at Jewish communities, especially in the areas north of the Alps, but also beyond to the Sou
th and the West, the poet projects a social urban panorama commonly populated by Jews who are fully allowed to pursue their businesses and to live where it pleases them. Abraham, to be sure, operates as a successful, independent, wealthy, learned, and much liked individual within the urban community of Paris and has this good friend, his Christian neighbor. He does not live in a ghetto, he enjoys a free and unhampered life, can easily travel wherever he might want to go, and apparently proves to be very successful in his business.
Deliberately, Abraham does not reveal to his co-religionists in Rome what his true reasons for the visit to Rome might be; instead, he secretly observes the Christian clerics carefully, relying on his own intelligence, and so he quickly realizes the true horror of sinfulness prevalent in the Holy City everywhere, which involves, as we are told, the deadly sin of homosexuality. The worthy Jew emerges as a strong contrastive figure to the entire cast of ecclesiastics and indirectly, thus, gains greatly in respect, especially because of the difference in honor, self-respect, virtuosity, wisdom, and incorruptibility. Abraham fully perceives how much every member of the Holy See utilizes their clerical authority to enrich themselves, and that no one has the least qualms to abuse their power to the fullest, acting with the greatest disrespect to their own principles, ideals, and values, utterly betraying their faith and making a sham of all of Christ’s teachings.
Abraham returns home after he has learned about the truth behind the Christian clergy, and he is happily welcomed back in Paris by Jehannot, who does not dare to inquire with him for several days what his experience might have been. Once again, they renew their friendship and demonstrate great joy about their companionship, with religion not mattering at all in their initial conversations. Of course, the Christian merchant eventually begins to probe about his experiences in Rome and what he thinks about the clergy there. Abraham does not hold back and reveals the truth to him, identifying the clergy globally as the worst enemies of the Christian Church. Nevertheless, as he then comments, since those vicious and totally unethical ecclesiastics could not achieve any of their goals of bringing down their own church, the Holy Spirit must apparently be strong enough to resist all their vices. This confirms for him that Christianity is, despite his previous perception, the true faith to which he now wants to convert.
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