Compared to other universities on Italian soil, the EUI looks back on a very recent foundation in 1976. But unlike other modern institutions, its main buildings are venerable and time-honoured as the rest of Florence. For intellectual historians in need of a patron, they actually offer a remarkable choice: Allegedly, the Badia Fiesolana served for some of the meetings of the Florentine neo-Platonists around Marsilio Ficino, and Villa Schifanoia, seat of the EUI's History Department, is said to have been the place in which Boccaccio laid the scene of the Decameron .

As is well-known, in the Decameron 's frame story seven ladies and three young men flee from plague-stricken Florence to sing and dance and tell stories for ten days. The group's wanderings lead it to a beautiful palace with an adjoining garden, situated in the hills above the city. With little historical scrutiny and a lot of imagination, this place has later been identified with Villa Palmieri, i.e. today's Villa Schifanoia, relating Boccaccio's literary description of the company's residence to the Villa's pleasant setting on the lower Fiesolean slope.

Following these suggestions, Intellectual History at the EUI runs under the name of Giovanni Boccaccio, famous literary figure of the Trecento . Boccacio's career started in the early 1330s, with works closely resembling the chivalrous taste of the court of Robert the Wise, king of Naples. But it was in Florence that his literary endeavours culminated in the Decameron , written c. 1349-50. In the same period, he made Petrarch's acquaintance and began to work on more humanistic themes until his death in 1375, most eminently in his Genealogia deorum , a learned description of the religious beliefs of antiquity.

Since his own times Boccaccio has been praised for his learnedness, eloquence and wit, and has become a classic of Italian and European literature, even though his inclination towards romance seemed a bit exaggerated to some people. Leonardo Bruni e.g. criticised his Vita of Dante as full of 'love and sighs and hot tears everywhere, as if man was born into this world only to find himself in those ten halcyon days in which the Hundred Novellas are told …'.

Despite such criticism, Intellectual History at the EUI has chosen Boccaccio's name as emblem. Different perhaps from 'Plato' he does not stand for an antiquated History of Ideas with its preference for 'ideal' contents while putting aside historical contingencies. On the contrary, 'Boccaccio' represents a different conception of knowledge, based on a keen sense of observation, a vivid imagination, and the detailed depiction of cultural habits and practices at a certain time. Therefore, 'Boccaccio' seems well suited for an Intellectual History that isn't interested in an hypostasis of intellectual life but rather tries to delineate and analyze its entanglement with various historical contexts.

One aspect of such contextualization is the departure from Intellectual History's long tradition of 'over-intellectual' attitudes towards history, literature, art and philosophy. Leo Spitzer once wrote that he didn't like the expression ‘intellectual history' precisely for this reason, preferring the German word Geistesgeschichte which was to include ‘ all the creative impulses of human mind'. But not by chance 'Boccaccio' takes its name from an author who confronts us exactly with these creative impulses by putting so strong an emphasis on the passions, on love and fortune, on art and literature.

Furthermore, within this framework of reorientation that characterizes 'Boccaccio', another 'poetical' concept will play a key role: imagination. This seems not only true for interdisciplinary works that move between the disciplinary boundaries of literature, art and philosophy, but also for political and moral theory in itself. As Bertrand Williams has argued, there is something like an 'imaginative truthfulness' in the arts that goes beyond 'argumentative accuracy'. For him, 'philosophy cannot be too pure, and must merge with other kinds of understanding', a task that does not exclude, but actually demands imagination.

From this point of view, it isn't too inappropriate that Boccaccio's patronage of Intellectual History at the EUI is based on little 'hard' historical evidence. In the end, the search for the 'real' location of the Decameron 's villa might turn out to be quite inconclusive.

By the way, Boccaccio had experience with problems of this kind himself. In his commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia, his own inquiries regarding the entrance of the underworld ended in aporia, given the differing opinions of his sources. Homer goes for the land of the Scythians, Virgil picks Cumae, let alone the Christian authors. Accordingly, today's intellectual historians trying to trace the thought and imagination of past writers might learn at least one important lesson from messer Giovanni: Imaginative places are difficult to map, they might be as paradisical as the hills around Florence, or as infernal as the gates of hell.

 

 

EBBO News & Events

27th February 2006 Evaluating EEBO organized by Prof. Martin van Gelderen. Workshop programme