The Black Plague, which plays a vital role in the frame of the Decameron and the formation of the brigata of storytellers, ravaged the city of Florence in 1348. It has been suggested that this new demographic was Boccaccio’s intended audience for his Decameron and that the tales represented a way for him to advocate an ideal ethos for this influential group. The emergence of such a powerful mercantile class that did not belong to the noble aristocracy that traditionally held power led to social and political unrest. They not only served as financial advisers to the Angevin king of Naples, but also lent money across Europe to such figures as the English king Edward III. The strength and far-reaching influence of Italian commerce can be measured by the success of the Bardi banking house, which employed Boccaccio’s father. He cultivated a court culture that perhaps served as a practical model for Boccaccio’s literary valuing of courtliness in the Decameron. Robert d’Anjou, the king of Naples during Boccaccio’s day, was a powerful figure in Italian politics and an important patron of the arts. Naples was, furthermore, a highly important center for trade and a cultural crossroads that undoubtedly served as an important resource for Boccaccio’s wide-ranging tales in the Decameron. The intellectual currents were running high, with a vibrant university culture in Naples and Bologna and a new enthusiasm for Ancient Greek and Roman culture that was aided by the rediscovery of many lost texts of the ancient world. In the Decameron, Boccaccio’s young story tellers escape death literally and literarily by fleeing to the countryside.īoccaccio lived in a period of transition, when a new and powerful mercantile class had emerged as economic prosperity took cities like Florence by storm. (Wikimedia Commons) Such works portraying the inexorable universality of death were a common motif in urban centers throughout medieval Europe. The Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre, by Michael Wolgemut, 1493.
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