During the period of the Decameron’s composition Boccac-
cio received a series of appointments as ambassador, and
in 1351 he was sent to recall the exiled Petrarch to Flo-
rence. His friendship with Petrarch was very significant;
under his influence Boccaccio turned more and more to-
wards scholarship, and together they traced the paths
along which humanism was to develop. One result of
these interests was that Boccaccio worked until the end of
his life on a huge encyclopedia of ancient mythologies, the
De genealogiis deorum. His biographical compilations, De
casibus virorum illustrium (“On the fates of famous men”)
and De claris mulieribus (“On famous women”) were
mines of material for later writers. He wrote a biography
of Dante (c. 1355) and in 1373 lectured in Florence on the
Divina commedia. Later that year illness forced him to re-
tire to Certaldo, where he died. When he died, within 18
months of Petrarch, Franco SACCHETTIexpressed the feel-
ings of many when he said that all poetry was now extinct.
Individual stories from the Decameron circulated
throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and there have
been numerous modern editions. Henry Parker, Lord
Morley (1476–1556) translated into English 46 of the
lives in De claris mulieribus, probably using the text of the
Latin edition published at Louvain in 1487 (manuscript at
Chatsworth House, England; printed Early English Text
Society, 1970). A new translation by Virginia Brown was
published by Harvard University Press in 2003.
Further reading: Corradina Caporello Szykman, The
Boccaccian Novella: Creation and Waning of a Genre (New
York: Peter Lang, 1990).
Boccador, Le See DOMENICO DA CORTONA
Boccanegra, Simone (c. 1301–1363) Doge of Genoa
(1339–44, 1356–63)
Born into a prominent Genoese family, Boccanegra was
first appointed doge in the Guelf–Ghibelline crisis of
1339, the Genoese hoping that he would show leadership
qualities similar to those of his great-uncle, Guglielmo
(captain of the people, 1257–62). However, he failed to
end the conflict, and his greed and heavy tax exactions led
to his exile to Pisa (1344). He later participated in Genoa’s
revolt (1355) against the Visconti of Milan, who had taken
control of the city in 1353, and was reappointed doge the
next year. He remained in office until his sudden death,
traditionally explained as the result of poisoning at a ban-
quet. The composer Verdi made him the hero of an ideal-
ized opera (1857).
Bodin, Jean (1530–1596) French lawyer and political
philosopher
Born at Angers, he became professor of Roman law at
Toulouse until he entered the service of the French Crown
(1567). In 1581 he was involved in negotiations for the
projected marriage of Elizabeth I of England and FRANCIS,
DUKE OF ALENÇON. His reputation rests on his political
writings, in particular, Six livres de la république (1576),
which he himself translated into Latin (1586). The work
expounds his theories of an ideal government based on a
powerful hereditary monarchy kept in check by certain
political institutions. It established Bodin as the founder
of political science in France and was to exert a great in-
fluence on later thinkers such as Hobbes, Montesquieu,
and Rousseau. His wide-ranging works include De la dé-
monomanie (1580), a denunciation of witchcraft, and a
comparative study of religions, the Colloquium Heptaplom-
eres, written in 1588 but not published until the 19th cen-
tury. He died in Laôn of the plague.Bodleian Library The main library of Oxford University
and one of the oldest and most important non-lending ref-
erence libraries in Great Britain. Founded originally in the
14th century, its first major benefactor was Humfrey, duke
of Gloucester (1391–1447), but by the mid-16th century
his collection of rare manuscripts had been dispersed. The
library was refounded in 1598 by Thomas Bodley
(1545–1613), diplomat and scholar. Originally designed
as a fortress of Protestant learning, the library soon be-
came a storehouse of valuable books and manuscripts.
This was largely owing to Bodley’s arrangement (1610)
with the Stationers’ Company of London, in which they
undertook to give the library a copy of every book they
printed, but also to a series of important acquisitions since
Bodley’s time; these included the library of the antiquarian
John Selden in 1659, and the Tanner, Rawlinson, Malone,
and Douce collections.Boehme, Jakob (Jakob Behmen) (1575–1624) German
mystic
The son of a farmer at Altseidenberg in Upper Lusatia,
Boehme became a shoemaker in 1589. He moved to Gör-
litz in Silesia where he published his first work Aurora,
oder die Morgenröte im Aufgang (1612). This mystical work
aroused the wrath of the Lutheran pastor, Gregory Richter,
who persuaded the municipal council to suppress
Boehme’s works. Boehme, however, continued writing;
several more treatises, some of them published posthu-
mously, were completed before his death at Görlitz. These
include the devotional work Der Weg zu Christo (1623),
De signatura rerum (1623) on cosmology (see SIGNATURES,
THEORY OF), and Mysterium Magnum (1623), a mystical in-
terpretation of Genesis. Although obscure (especially in
their use of Paracelsian terminology) and open to dualist
and pantheistic interpretations, his works had a lasting in-
fluence on people as diverse as the Quaker George Fox,
the Cambridge Platonists, and the great German Roman-
tics.Bohemian Brethren See CZECH BRETHRENBBoohheemmiiaann BBrreetthhrreenn 5599