Studies in canonical law and the sciences
In Naples Boccaccio perfected, as per his father’s will, his training as a merchant begun in Florence, attending the Bardi’s Ruga Cambiorum, but it soon became obvious he had little inclination for commercial and financial activities.
Having given up on turning him into a merchant, Boccaccino tried to get his son to study canonical law. It was probably thus that Giovanni began to go to the Studium in Naples, which had among its teachers men such as the professor of civil law Cino da Pistoia. The encounter with Cino corroborated and favoured Boccaccio’s literary inclinations, rather than fire him with enthusiasm for juridical subjects. It was indeed through this mentor that Boccaccio first learned about the work of Tuscan poets who wrote in the vernacular, and, in particular, it was then that he began to be especially influenced by the stilnovo and Dante’s poetry. His encounter with other jurists who were also men of letters, such as Giovanni Barrili and Barbato da Sulmona, and above all his conversations with the Augustinian father Dionigi from Borgo San Sepolcro, brought Boccaccio into close contact with Petrarch’s circle of friends and correspondents, lighting within him an interest for this poet from Rieti and his humanistic interests. It was very probably then that, thanks to this indirect contact, the seed of that fruitful relationship of admiration and intellectual exchange that was to tie Boccaccio to Petrarch for all his life was sown, a relationship strengthened and consolidated over time.
If commerce and law did not appeal to the young Boccaccio, the same cannot be said of the sciences, towards which he showed lively and constant interest. Key figures in his scientific initiation were the mathematician Paolo dell’Abaco and the astronomer Andalò del Negro. Above all the latter, allusively recalled in the famous autobiographical passage in Filocolo: V, 8[1], was to fascinate Boccaccio with his teachings, capable of mediating between astrological doctrine and ancient mythology.
[1]Filocolo, ed. A.E. Quaglio, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Ed. V. Branca, vol. 1, Milan 1967, pp. 558-567.
