De montibus

De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris is an erudite dictionary that  contains in alphabetical order the categories of different geographical types listed in the title. In the De montibus recourse to bibliographical sources is substituted by direct experience and firsthand knowledge of the places, which instead inspires, for example, the recounting of the journey in the De Canaria. The written word entirely substitutes the eyewitness’s report, also in those cases where there is a difference between erudite description and firsthand geographical knowledge, as underlined by Boccaccio himself:

Vidi quedam se aliter habere quam veterum rationes ostendant, quibus in tantum indulgens fui ut mallem potius eorum auctoritati quam oculis credere meis[1].

The spectrum of texts of reference for the composition of this geographical encyclopaedia is particularly vast. If Plinius’ Naturalis historia is the model to which the central part of the work aspires, on which Boccaccio worked between 1355 and 1360, it is however obvious that the text was reworked more than once and certainly until 1374. The number of sources identified confirms how biblical tradition had been contaminated by the Greek and Latin classics (Homer, lo Pseudo-Aristotle, Varrone, Caesar, Livio, Vitruvius, Pomponius Mela, Seneca, Flavian, Rufus, Cicero, Virgil, Lucian, Stazius). As to middle Latin authors we find echoes of Paolo Diacono, Servio, Orosio and Godfrey of Monmouth.

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[1]De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris, ed. M. Pastore Stocchi, in All the works of Giovanni Boccaccio, vol. VII-VIII, to. II, Milan 1998, pp. 1815-2122.