Edward Hutton's chapter on Certaldo is mainly taken up with an extended account of the life of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Certaldo's most famous resident. In 1909, a year before he published Siena and Southern Tuscany, Hutton had written a biography of Boccaccio, a writer famous for his own life as well as for his Decameron, a collection of stories told by men and women trying to escape the ravages of the plague.
Long before you come to Certaldo on its great hill over the narrowing valley of the Elsa, which in fact it holds and closes, the Castello shines before you, still very far off, a rugged cluster of houses and towers against the sky. When at last you find yourself on that great and beautiful road beside the river, at the foot of the beautiful hill, it is to discover a town very like Castel-Fiorentino in this at least, that the Castello, the walled and ancient town, is on the hill and the modern borgo in the plain. But as you soon realise, Certaldo is more splendid, more rugged, and more ancient than her sister, though, as you see her from the north, you have the worst view of her, her true splendor looking southward.
Most of us who in the modern hurry stay here, perhaps for a few hours on our way to Siena or to Florence, come not for any ancient loveliness she may have kept for us, but for Boccaccio’s sake, for he died here in the ancient house of his family still to be seen in the Castello….
Boccaccio:
That great and heroic man who has entranced the whole world with his stories, who gave Homer back to us, and was the first defender of Dante Alighieri, the devoted friend of Petrarch, the lover of Fiammetta; who remained poor his whole life long for the sake of learning, and who indeed is the most human and the most modest and heroic spirit of the earliest Renaissance…. (13-14)
In his fiftieth year he began to regret the irresponsibility of his past life. On the threshold of old age, poor and alone, he thought to love God with the same enthusiasm with which he had loved woman. He was not capable of it; his whole life rose up to deny him that impassioned consolation….
Boccaccio’s days of creation were, however, over. He retired to Certaldo to the house of his ancestors, and there read without ceasing the works of antiquity, annotating as he read…
In addition to all his other reading Boccaccio had never ceased to study the “Divine Comedy,” nor did he till his death… *
In 1373 he was called from his retirement in Certaldo to lecture publicly on the “Divine Comedy” in Florence. He began to read on 23 October, 1373, in the church of S. Stefano alla Badia, and continued on each succeeding day that was not a festival. He had got so far as the sixtieth lezione, when he was taken ill and had to cease. This was no sudden disease; he had never really recovered from his “conversion.” Really ill, he retired to Certaldo, where, utterly miserable and suffering from his disease, but more from the ignorance of doctors, he groped about far from Petrarch, looking for more certainty. He had thought he might find it in the monastic life, and it was in a solitude almost as profound that he came to die at last on this hill in Val d’Elsa in the house of his ancestors—a magician, as was said, like Virgil or Ovid to the folk of Naples and Sulmona, knowing all the secrets of nature. He must often have passed slowly, because of failing health, up and down the picturesque streets of the old town, which holds as many sudden peeps as Assisi; and at sunset, perhaps he lingered by the gates as we do, for they are wonderfully placed for beauty. From his room he looked over a world as fair as any in Tuscany—a land of hills about a quiet valley where the olives are tossed to silver in the wind and the grapes are kissed by the sun into gold and purple, where the corn whispers between the vines; till for him, too, at last the grasshopper became a burden.
There, on 21 December, 1375, he died, and was buried, as he had desired above the quiet waters of the Elsa which puts all to sleep. In passing through the old streets of Certaldo to-day, it is part of our heritage to remember him. (24-25).
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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.
*Note: Click on this link to watch a seven minute video of Roberto Benigni, Italy's most famous modern comedian, reading the first canto of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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