The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-04-04

DOCCACCIO was Petrarch's jun
ID ior by seven years, and outliyed
him by one. He too was destined
for the law: but vanity proved
stronger than gold, and lured him
into literature. Like PetrarCh he
thought to find immortality in Tesur-
recting ancient works and days; he
spent years in compiling a Cen
eslogy of Pagan Gods" and tried to
rival Plutarch in writing the lives
of illustrious Romans and Greeks.
Not till he was forty did he write
the "Decameron,' or Ten Days
Tales" A great plague had stricken
Florence in 1348, and had Criven
from the city all who could afford
to leave it. Boccaccio represents a
group of aristocratic men and wo-
men trying to while away their exile
from home by telling stories, very
much as Chaucer's pilgrims would
mitigate the WEAKNESS Of travel with
their merry tales.
Boccaccio seldom invented the
stories he wrote down; some o. them
we're as old as Florence, many Of
them were current among the polite
society Of his time; the reader may
imagine what stories, then, we're
current in 1mpolite society. The
Jolly raconteur took them as he
found them. gave them literary
form. and-quite without knowing
it-founded the modern novel. He
wrote Human Comedy, as Dante had
written the Divine I'd
We picture him as at Italian Bal
FAC, fat and jovial, loving his Jest,
and careless of propriety. 1t was an
age of liberated instinct. and Boo
Caccio rioted i'll the new freedom; he
loved to hear of people who had
lived full lives. and had given way
to impulse recklcsSly.
He was not conscious of immoral
ity: he thought he was honestly pic
turing the truth. The men ana wo-
men of his day we're as he painted
them; even now, among simple and
natural tribes like the French-Ca-
nadians, strong stories make the
welkin ring when good folk get to-
gether; and this "indeCency' is far
healthier for body and soul than
Puritan pretense.
n
THERE is not single lasclVious
i image or immoral description in
the whole "Decameron,' says owen,
% that might not be paralleled in
the lives and writings of the clergy
of the time" Indeed, it is dcscrib-
ing and assailing the sins Of the
clergy that Boccaccio pens his most
shocking pages.
He is never tired Of pointing TO the
rampant corruption and simony of
the priesthood, the worship OF
images. the abuses of the confess
Sional, the sale of relics and pardons,
the superstitions, charms, and bogus
miracles, the materialistic concep-
ton of heaven. purgatory and hell,
that characterized-not so much the
doctrine and hierarchy o. the
church itself. but the lower ranks
of the clergy and the people.
Even while writing his greatest
tales Boccaccio thought of himself
as a reformer of immortality and
bigotry. All his life long he fought
ecclesiastical evils; and then, like
most sensual and sensible persons,
he relapsed in his old age into the
simplest faith, and became a relig-
ious devotee as shortly as possible
before his death.
His English analogue, of course,
is Godfrey Chaucer Q340-1400 =,
who came a quarter century after
him, and chose from the French
word for shoemaker, and was prob
ably pronounced sho-sayr,; SO pos
terity plays tricks with our very
names, and remakes us to its Whim
before conSenting to hold us in its
memory.
When he grew up, educated So
ciety in England spoke both the
Anglo and the French which
the Norman5 had brought; the two
not merged yet into the most COM
pick and flexible of modern lam
guageS; in Chaucer they are partly
juxtoposed, and partly merged; he
did his part to fuse them, and so be-
came one of the founders OF our
English speech.
Il
LIE WAS a man of the world, near
4 Il at least to high station, but
sufficiently touched with suffering
to deepen him into poetry. We hear
of him first as a serving-lad in an
aristocratic home; then, at nineteen,
he is off to war in France, and picks
up there some Of his very Gallo
English. To make a great writer of
him the French take him prisoner;
aud to lift him III, % glory the very