Settling down in Florence in 1340, Boccaccio continued to pursue woman in life and verse and prose. The Amorosa Visione was dedicated to Fiammetta, and recalled in 4400 lines of terza rima the happier days of their liaison. In a psychological novel, Fiammetta, the bastard princess is made to tell the story of her deviation with Boccaccio; she analyzes the emotions of love, the torments of desire and jealousy and desertion, in Richardsonian detail; and when her conscience rebukes her infidelity she imagines Aphrodite chiding her for cowardice: “Make not thyself so timorous in saying, ‘I have a husband, and holy laws and promised faith forbid me these things.’ These are but vain conceits and frivolous objections against the power of Eros. For like a strong and mighty prince he plants his eternal laws; not caring for other laws of lower state, he accounts them base and servile rules.”37 Boccaccio, abusing the power of the pen, ends the book by having Fiammetta proclaim, to his glory, that it was he who deserted her, not she who deserted him. Returning to poetry, he sang in the Ninfale Fiesolano the love of a shepherd for a priestess of Diana; his triumph is described in fond detail, with some enthusiasm spared for natural scenery. This is almost the working formula of The Decameron.
It was shortly after the plague of 1348 that Boccaccio began to write this renowned concatenation of seductive tales. He was now thirty-five; the temperature of desire had fallen from poetry to prose; he could begin to see the humor of the mad pursuit. Fiammetta herself seems to have died in the plague, and Boccaccio was calm enough to use the name that he had given her for one of the least finicky raconteuses of his book. Though the whole was not published till 1353, some of it must have been issued in installments, for in the introduction to the Fourth Day the author replies to the criticism that had reproved the earlier narratives. As we have the book now it is a “century” of stories—a full hundred; they were not meant to be read in any great number at one time; published seriatim, they must have provided topics for many a Florentine evening.
The prelude describes the effects, in Florence, of the Black Death that struck all Europe in 1348 and afterward. Born apparently of the fertility and filth of Asiatic populations impoverished by war and weakened by famine, the infection crossed Arabia into Egypt, and the Black Sea into Russia and Byzantium. From Constantinople, Alexandria, and other ports of the Near East the merchants and vessels of Venice, Syracuse, Pisa, Genoa, and Marseille, aided by fleas and rats, brought it to Italy and France.38 A succession of famine years in western Europe—1333–4, 1337–42, 1345–7—probably sapped the resistance of the poor, who then communicated the disease to all classes.39 It took two forms: pulmonary, with high fever and spitting of blood, bringing death in three days; or bubonic, with fever, abscesses, and carbuncles, leading to death in five days. Half the population of Italy was carried off in the successive visitations of the plague from 1348 to 1365.40 A Sienese chronicler wrote, about 1354:
Neither relatives nor friends nor priests nor friars accompanied the corpses to the grave, nor was the office of the dead recited…. In many places of the city trenches were dug, very broad and deep, and into these the bodies were thrown, and covered with a little earth; and thus layer after layer until the trench was full; and then another trench was begun. And I, Agniolo di Tura… with my own hands buried five of my children in a single trench; and many others did the like. And many dead were so ill covered that the dogs dug them up and ate them, dispersing their limbs throughout the city. And no bells rang, and nobody wept no matter what his loss, because almost everyone expected death…. And people said and believed, “This is the end of the world.”41
In Florence, according to Matteo Villani, three out of five of the population died between April and September of 1348. Boccaccio estimated the Florentine dead at 100,000, Machiavelli at 96,000;42 these are transparent exaggerations, since the total population hardly exceeded 100,000. Boccaccio opens The Decameron with a frightful description of the plague:
Not only did converse and consorting with the sick give the infection to the sound, but the mere touching of the clothes, or of whatsoever had been touched or used by the sick, appeared of itself to communicate the malady…. A thing which had belonged to a man sick or dead of the sickness, being touched by an animal… in a brief time killed it… of this mine own eyes had experience. This tribulation struck such terror to the hearts of all… that brother forsook brother, uncle nephew… oftentimes wife husband; nay (what is yet more extraordinary and well nigh incredible), some fathers and mothers refused to visit or tend their very children, as though they had not been theirs…. The common people, being altogether untended and unsuccored, sickened by the thousand daily, and died well nigh without recourse. Many breathed their last in the open street, whilst other many, for all they died in their houses, made it known to the neighbors that they were dead rather by the stench of their rotting bodies than otherwise; and of these and others who died the whole city was full. The neighbors, moved more by fear lest the corruption of the dead bodies should imperil themselves than by any charity for the departed… brought the bodies forth from the houses and laid them before the doors, where, especially in the morning, those who went about might see corpses without number. Then they fetched biers, and some, in default thereof, they laid upon a board; nor was it only one bier that carried two or three corpses, nor did this happen but once; nay, many might have been counted which contained husband and wife, two or three brothers, father and son, and the like…. The thing was come to such a pass that folk reckoned no more of men that died than nowadays they would of goats.43
Out of this scene of desolation Boccaccio pictures his Decameron as taking form. The plan for the pagan outing is made in “the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella” by “seven young ladies, all knit one to another by friendship or neighborhood or kinship,” who had just heard Mass. They ranged between eighteen and twenty-eight years of age. “Each was discreet and of noble blood, fair of favor and well-mannered, and full of honest sprightliness.” One proposes that they should lessen their chances of infection by retiring to their country houses, not separately but together, with their servants, moving from one villa to another, “taking such pleasance and diversion as the season may afford…. There may we hear the small birds sing, there may we see the hills and plains clad in green and the fields full of corn wave even as doth the sea; there may we see trees, a thousand sorts; and there is the face of heaven more open to the view, the which, angered against us though it be, denieth not unto us its eternal beauties.”44 The suggestion is accepted, but Filomena improves upon it: since “we women are fickle, willful, suspicious, and timorous,” it might be well to have some men in the party. Providentially at that moment “there entered the church three young men… in whom neither the perversity of the time, nor loss of friends and kinsfolk… had availed to cool… the fire of love…. All were agreeable, well-bred, and they went seeking their supreme solace… to see their mistresses, who, as it chanced, were all three among the seven ladies aforesaid.” Pampinia recommends that the young gentlemen be invited to join the outing. Neifile fears that this will lead to scandal. Filomena answers: “So but I live honestly, and conscience prick me not of aught, let who will speak to the contrary.”