Travels on behalf of the Municipality of Florence
The considerable social prestige acquired and his growing literary fame earned Boccaccio a position of importance in Florentine political life in the decade between 1350 and 1360. Among the various posts held was that of Camerlengo of the Municipal Chamber in 1351; in 1355 he was at the Ufficio della Condotta. He also undertook several embassies on behalf of Florence, during which he showed great talent in diplomacy. In 1350 he was given the task of giving Dante’s daughter, sister Beatrice, who was at the monastery of Santo Stefano dell’Uliva at Ravenna, a symbolic indemnity of ten gold florins, on behalf of the captains of the Compagnia d’Orsanmichele, as compensation for the losses suffered by the Alighieri family.
A year later he went to see Ludovico il Bavaro in order to negotiate a pact against archbishop Giovanni Visconti. In 1353 he went back to Romagna, to Ravenna and Forlì, in an attempt to safeguard Florence from the Visconti family’s expansionist aims; in 1354, on occasion of Charles IV’s descent, he went to Avignon on an embassy to Pope Innocent VI; in 1359 he and his stepbrother Iacopo were sent ad partes Lombardie (to Lombardy). In 1360 a coup d’état that involved many of Giovanni Boccaccio’s friends failed; Domenico Bandini and Niccolò Bartolo del Buono were sentenced to death; Pino de’ Rossi, Luca Ugolini and Andrea dell’Ischia were exiled. Giovanni Boccaccio was suspended from all offices and defenestrated from the political scene. It was on 2nd November of that year that the Papal Bull authorising him to take care of souls and allowing him to become a priest was published, officially sanctioning his position as cleric.
It was only in 1365 that Boccaccio once more became Florence’s legate to Avignon, in support of the plan to have Pope Urban V return to Rome and, two years later, he reached the Pope in the Vatican, in his capacity as Florence’s emissary, in order to congratulate him for the change of seat.
