Note 414 — Chapter X

The chair was to be in any faculty Petrarch chose. D. Rosetti insists that it was offered at Boccaccio's suggestion (Petrarca, Giulio Celso e Boccaccio (Trieste, 1823), p. 351), and asserts that the short biography of Petrarch which he attributes to Boccaccio was composed to persuade the Government of Florence to repair Petrarch's wrongs. Tiraboschi (op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 253-4), with tears in his voice, cannot decide whether the affair did more honour to Petrarch or to Florence. So far as Florence is concerned, I see no honour in the affair at all. She was asking Petrarch to do her an inestimable service by bolstering up her third-rate university. In order to get him to do this, she was willing to pay back what she had stolen and (a poor gift when she was begging for foreigners as citizens) to repeal the edict of banishment against him. Petrarch treated the whole impudent attempt to get round him in the right way. And Florence, when she found nothing was to be got out of him, repealed the repeal. But surely we know the Florentines!