Financial difficulties
Giovanni Boccaccio’s return to Florence was marked by family and economic problems, caused by his father Boccaccino’s break with the Bardi and the change in financial relationship between the Angevins and the Municipality of Florence. The cultural wealth and elegance of the Neapolitan court were replaced by the modest reality of a bourgeois city, rent by class conflict and undermined by political factiousness, as the author portrayed it in the Elegy to madonna Fiammetta: II, 6, 20[1]:
la tua città è piena di voci pompose e di pusillanimi fatti, serva non a mille leggi, ma a tanti pareri quanti v'ha uomini, e tutta in arme e in guerra così cittadina come forestiera fremisce, di superba, avara e invidiosa gente fornita, e piena d'innumerabili sollecitudini: cose tutte male all'animo tuo conformi. E quella che di lasciare t'apparecchi so che conosci lieta, pacefica, abondevole, magnifica e sotto ad uno solo re: le quali cose, se io alcuna conoscenza ho di te, assai ti sono gradevoli.
Florence experienced a political turn when in 1342 Gualtieri di Brienne, Duke of Athens, became the lord of the city. The new regime did not however last and was overthrown the following year. Political instability was made all the worse by the adverse economic situation with the bankruptcy of the Florentine banks of the Bardi and the Peruzzi, respectively in1343 and 1346.
Within this context of strong political and financial uncertainty Boccaccio did not cope with the change at all well, so much so that he wrote a bitter letter to his friend Acciaiuoli: “dell’essere mio a Firenze contra piacere niente vi scrivo, però che più tosto con lagrime che con inchiostro sarebbe da dimostrare” or of my being in Florence against my will naught shall I tell you, rather should I write with tears than ink Ep.: V, 6[2].
Naples and its court had become the subject of nostalgia, and, strongly idealised in their remembrance, become a sought-after goal, to which he hoped to be able to return.
[1]Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, a c. di C. Delcorno, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. a c. di V. Branca, vol. 5.2, Milano 1994, pp. 57-58.
[2]Epistole e lettere, a c. di G. Auzzas, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. a c. di V. Branca, vol. 5.1, Milano 1976, pp. 542-543.
