Note 287 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

As against Dante, the great literary influence for tolerance and liberalism if not rationalism of thought was Boccaccio (1313–1375), whose Decameron287 anticipates every lighter aspect of the Renaissance—its levity, its licence, its humour, its anti-clericalism, its incipient tolerance, its irreverence, its partial freethinking, as well as its exuberance in the joy of living. On the side of anti-clericalism, the key-note is struck so strongly and so defiantly in some of the opening tales that the toleration of the book by the papal authorities can be accounted for only by their appreciation of the humour of the stories therein told against them, as that288 of the Jew who, after seeing the utter corruption of the clergy at Rome, turned Christian on the score that only by divine support could such a system survive. No Protestant ever passed a more scathing aspersion on the whole body of the curia than is thus set in the forefront of the Decameron. Still more deeply significant of innovating thought, however, is the famous story of The Three Rings,289 embodied later by Lessing in his Nathan the Wise as an apologue of tolerance. Such a story, introduced with whatever parade of orthodox faith, could not but make for rational skepticism, summarizing as it does the whole effect of the inevitable comparison of the rival creeds made by the men of Italy and those of the east in their intercourse. The story itself, centring on Saladin, is of eastern origin,290 and so tells of even more freethinking than meets the eye in the history of Islam.291 It is noteworthy that the Rabbi Simeon Duran (1360–1444), who follows on this period, appears to be the first Jewish teacher to plead for mutual toleration among the conflicting schools of his race.292