In the 14th century, Naples was the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily, ruled by the kings of the Angevin dynasty, whose greatest exponent was Robert the Wise (1309-1343). His long reign saw the height of the splendor of the Neapolitan court, thanks above all to the cultural imprint that the sovereign wanted to give it. Robert, in fact, was personally involved in cultural production and promotion, surrounding himself with scholars and artists.
It was in this climate of intellectual effervescence that the two great writers of the post-Dante 14th century, Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio, stayed in Naples.
Petrarch met Robert personally when, in 1341, he left for a stay in Naples so that he could be examined by the sovereign before his solemn poetic coronation, which took place that same year on the Capitoline Hill. His relationship with the king was fruitful, albeit brief (Robert died in 1343), so much so that the scholar dedicated his Latin poem Africa, which he considered his masterpiece, to him and mentioned him with respect and gratitude in his Rerum memorandarum libri.
With the death of Robert and the accession of Joanna I to the throne, Naples, which had seemed to him the pleasant place that every scholar dreams of living in solely for his studies, fell into a state of profound moral misery (Familiares V, 1). This is evidenced by a series of letters addressed to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna (Familiares V, 3-6) when, at the end of 1343, he was sent to the city on diplomatic business. On that occasion, he found in the city “no pity, no truth, no faith.”. The characters who populate it are narrow-minded and violent. Not even the clergy are spared: the portrait of Fra Roberto da Mileto is particularly striking: “a hideous animal,” bent not by the weight of years but by that of hypocrisy, who, with his stern gaze, managed to dominate the Regency Council. But what upsets the poet most is the violence that pervades the city. At night, the streets of Naples are invaded by young nobles ready for any kind of brutality. During the day, however, the violence takes place in broad daylight: in the Carbonara area, real gladiatorial fights were held to the frenzied applause of the onlookers. At the sight of a handsome young man being killed, Petrarch can only flee in horror from that “infernal spectacle” (Familiares V, 6). The only moments of joy during this second stay are the excursions to the lakes of Averno and Lucrino and to the villages of the Gulf of Naples: the wonderful landscapes and visits to those places of antiquity bring Petrarch back to the memories of the classical writers he loved so much (Familiares V, 4).
Less dichotomous but more difficult to interpret is Boccaccio's Naples. Coming from a merchant family, he spent his youth in the gilded halls of the Neapolitan court during the reign of King Robert, beginning his literary career among the volumes of the royal library. The young Boccaccio was fascinated not only by chivalric novels but also by the idleness and leisure activities of the courtiers. Among the women of high society, he met ‘Fiammetta’, a figure poised between literary topos and reality. According to a long tradition, in fact, Fiammetta's senhal conceals Maria d'Aquino, an illegitimate daughter of Robert, about whom, however, there is no reliable archival or genealogical data. The adventures of the merry courtly brigade to which Fiammetta belonged may correspond to real situations experienced by Boccaccio: it was these experiences that contributed to his literary inspiration, flowing, after being suitably filtered, into many of his works from his Neapolitan period. His admiration for this carefree period prompted Boccaccio to use the local dialect in one of his letters (Letter to Franceschino de' Bardi).
Unlike Petrarch, Boccaccio does not dwell on immediate descriptions of Naples: in his work, the city always emerges through the filter of literature. For example, Benedetto Croce (Storie e leggende napoletane, edited by G. Galasso, Milan 1990) intuited how the novella of Andreuccio da Perugia (Decameron, II, 5) deeply reflects the Neapolitan environment. Nevertheless, in various places in Boccaccio's work, we can identify places, events, and characters from Angevin Naples: a peculiar example of this is the story of Raimondo de Cabanni, who rose from being an Ethiopian slave to become seneschal of the royal hospice, the highest official in the king's household. Equally admirable was the rise and fall of his wife Filippa: from a humble laundress in Catania to the Angevin court, she ended up on the scaffold accused of participating in the conspiracy against Andrew of Hungary, husband of Joanna I (De casibus virorum illustrium IX).
Leaving Naples was traumatic for Boccaccio: that “joyful, peaceful, abundant, magnificent” city remained forever in the heart of the man of letters, who long lamented the happy days spent with the offspring of the aristocracy in the royal salons.
