The Myth of Prometheus in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron

Abstract

In his article "La Dignitas hominis e la letteratura Patristica"—a "too often neglected article," as Charles Trinkaus holds in In Our Image and Likeness—Eugenio Garin showed that humanist spirituality took new inspiration from Early Church Fathers such as Nemesius of Emesa, Arnobius, and Lactantius. Before Garin, Renaissance scholars had stressed the spiritual character of Humanism and its focus on the philosophy of man. 1 The humanists' predominant interest in moral philosophy and theological anthropology led them to recover the Patristic tradition, for in this tradition the questioning about the nature of man and his function in the cosmos had been pivotal. The Fathers had cast the Christian idea of the Incarnated God in the Judaic theological anthropology, which was based on the biblical narration of the Creation of man in God's image (Gen. 1.27). Their vision, as Garin argues, combined conceit for the frailty of human [End Page S120] nature and exaltation for the divine imprint man bears in his soul. 2 Like the early Fathers, the humanists were a product of a civic culture, committed to the social and political lives of their cities and, like them, seeking to reconcile Christian ideals and secular world. In this ideal of Christian civilization, the poet's intellectual and educative role was determinant for the construction of a just and pious society. The humanists' recovery of both Patristics and classical antiquity, including the encyclopedic compilations of mythological repertoires such as Boccaccio's Genealogie deorum gentilium, should be considered against this backdrop, where the poet was conceived of as a moral philosopher.