Boccaccio composed poems in Latin throughout life. They are mostly compositions of circumstance, amongst which have reached us two metric epistles on bucolic subjects, addressed to Checco di Meletto Rossi, which recall the themes and means of the Buccolicum Carmen. With Ytalie iam certus honos Boccaccio prophesises the imminent glory of Petrarch, to whom he sends as a gift a manuscript of the Divine Comedy. The cult of Dante is confirmed by the synthetic verses written below the poem (Finis adest longi Dantis cum laude laboris), an aside to the longer an more elaborate poem Versus ad Africam, conceived in praise of Petrarch’s poetry. This disorderly poetic collection of testimonies in verse is further sealed by the epitaph the author wrote himself:

 

Hac sub mole iacent cineres ac ossa Iohannis,

mens sedet ante Deum meritis ornata laborum

mortalis vite; genitor Boccaccius illi,

patria Certaldum, studium fuit alma poesis[1].

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[1]Carmina, a c. di G. Velli, in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Ed. V. Branca, vol. 5.1, Milan 1992, p. 454