Note 571 — Chapter XVI

Cf. Boll. di Soc. Dant. Ital., n.s., III, p. 38 note. Milanesi in his Introduction to the Comento tells us, mistakenly, that Boccaccio lectured in S. Stefano al Ponte Vecchio. This church, since the church of S. Cecilia was destroyed in Piazza Signoria at the end of the eighteenth century, has been called SS. Stefano e Cecilia, but from the thirteenth century till then it was called S. Stefano ad portam ferram. That it was not here but at S. Stefano della Badia that Boccaccio lectured we know from Monaldi's diary, and it is confirmed for us by Benvenuto da Imola: "In interiori circulo est Abbatia monachorum sancti Benedicti, cuius ecclesia dicitur Sanctus Stephanus, ubi certius et ordinatius pulsabantur horæ quam in aliqua alia ecclesia civitatis; quæ tamen hodie est inordinata et neglecta, ut vidi, dum audirem venerabilem præceptorem meum Boccaccium de Certaldo legentem istum nobilem poetam in dicta ecclesia" (Comentum (ed. Vernon), Vol. V, p. 145). Dr. Toynbee thinks that S. Stefano is the ancient dedication of the Badia, which was later placed under the protection of S. Mary. If this was so, then it was in the Badia itself that Boccaccio lectured. Mr. Carmichael, however (On the Old Road through France to Florence (Murray), p. 254), states that Boccaccio lectured not in the abbey, but in the little church of S. Stefano ad Abbatiam, formerly adjoining the abbey, and indeed almost a part of it. Unfortunately he gives no authority for this important statement, nor can he now give any. It is, however, a very interesting suggestion, worth examining closely.