#25 – Boccaccio Part One

* Let’s talk about the other, slightly more creepy and rapey father of the Renaissance. * For books in the vernacular to appear in considerable quantities, there must be a demand for them. * There must exist a class of people who have had enough education to be considered literate and to have an interest in reading for leisure, but who are more fluent in the vernacular than in Latin. * In Italy, these were the merchants. * Interestingly, the rise of the merchant class was also a consequence of the increase in literacy and the use of the vernacular. * Until the twelfth century merchants tended to travel around through Europe, conducting their business on the spot. * But two major developments changed this. * The first was the development of better accounting techniques which would eventually lead to the invention of double-entry accounting. * The second were the increased possibilities for correspondence. * With these new developments, merchants could stay at home and conduct business through agents. * This meant that merchants no longer had to be on the road all the time, and therefore had time for leisure. * Although these merchants were literate, their education had been mainly focused on numeracy and most of them had no knowledge of Latin. * For them, the vernacular was the only language in which to read or write * In civil government big changes also occurred. * City councils in the north of Italy increasingly began to rely on written records, and the legal system also. * This meant that there was an ever greater demand for notaries, lawyers and judges. * This administrative literacy developed earlier in Italy than elsewhere. * In the middle of the thirteenth century, Italian city-government was highly bureaucratic, and minute records were being kept of council meetings and court proceedings, most of them in the vernacular. * The combination of higher levels of literacy in society and the acceptance of the vernacular as a written language led to the development of literature in the vernacular. * Giovanni Villani, the Florentine chronicler, states that in 1339 in Florence, eight to ten thousand boys received elementary education. * On a total of about 90.000 inhabitants, this would mean that 10% of the population was receiving some education at any given time. * Villani further states that one fourth of the boys would go on to one of six abacco schools in the city to learn commercial mathematics, and a further 550 to 600 of the pupils would receive further education at one of four grammar schools in Florence. * In 1288, a schoolmaster in Milan, Bonvicinus de Ripa, estimated that there where at least seventy ‘teachers of beginning letters’ and a further eight ‘professors of grammar’. * Giovanni Boccaccio * Interesting guy. * One of the father’s of the Renaissance. * But also… a little creepy and rapey. * Little known fact: originally pronounced Bukakkio * He invented bukakke * If you don’t know what the means… * It’s when a Mommy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy all decide that Mommy needs some special facial moisturiser * Most people haven’t heard of him. * If you’ve studied literature, you might know him as one of the world’s greatest story-tellers, as the author of the Decameron. *