





































Humanist Studies & the Digital Age, 5.1 (2017) 
ISSN: 2158-3846 (online) 
http://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/ 
DOI: 10.7264/N3GT5KK4 

 

 
 

Geospatial Visualizations for the Study of Boccaccio  

Michael Papio 

 

Abstract 

This essay asks a very general question: what can mapmaking do to help us better understand the life 
and work of a medieval author such as Boccaccio? This question relates to Papio’s own engagement 
with Boccaccio’s work as a “geographer” and “topographer” in De Montibus, and draws on 
pedagogical practices recently developed within the framework of the oldest among the VHL 
projects, the Decameron Web, that Papio contributed to create, back in the late 1990s. 

 

What can mapmaking do to help us better understand the life and work of Giovanni Boccaccio?1 
The short answer is that we cannot know until we do it. A fuller response would begin with a look at 
what analogous work has been done and then move on to some introductory experimentation. This, 
in short, is the purpose of this brief essay. We shall open this analysis with a sort of interpretive 
framework, one that establishes at least in broad strokes the approach that will be of use to us. The 
field of geocriticism has emerged from the basic idea, which is nothing new to medievalists, that the 
study of literature may be enriched by methodologies traditionally used in other disciplines, 
especially in the social sciences. In geocriticism, literary theorists use tools related to the study of 
geographic space to investigate literature.2 As usually happens in the early years of new theories, 
some proponents of geocriticism have vigorously sought to provoke reactions, and these reactions 
tend to range from stubborn antagonism to wholehearted discipleship. One interesting example of 
intellectual provocation may be found on the back dustjacket of Franco Moretti’s 2005 study 
entitled Graphs, Maps, Trees. There we read: 

Franco Moretti argues heretically that literature scholars should stop reading books 
and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. He insists that such a move 

                                                 
1 Everything useful in this essay comes from work done by Albert Lloret and myself on our critical edition of the De 

montibus, which has been generously sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities. All translations not 

attributed to others are my own. 

2 The bibliography of this burgeoning field is in a fervidly productive period. For the general outlines, see Tally, 

Westphal (Géocritique). Westphal (Le ravage) presents a series of ideas that are specifically thought-provoking in relation to 

the present essay.  

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could bring new lustre to a tired field, one that in some respects is among “the most 
backward disciplines in the academy.” 

In the light of Moretti’s actual use of maps inside the book, however, it is clear that the blurb on the 
outside was likely stuck on by the marketing department. There is quite a lot of utility in his 
approach here, and perhaps even more in his earlier study of the European novel (Atlas), which 
presents roughly one hundred visual representations of space in a variety of a literary works. Among 
some of the most fascinating are geographical relationships in “Jane Austen’s Britain,” the curious 
distribution of the settings of “British Gothic tales” across the map of Europe, and a map that 
portrays the paths of Manzoni’s Lucia and Renzo across a countryside that, as we can see at a glance, 
was enclosed in the triangle formed by Milan, Bergamo, and the Castle of the Innominato. Far from 
a substitute for the time-tested avenue of literary studies, at least in my opinion, these new views 
serve to complement them, to enhance our understanding of what we were reading before we were 
told to stop. In his introduction, he makes a statement that is as helpful as it is unprovocative: 

[G]eography is not an inert container, is not a box where cultural history “happens,” 
but an active force, that pervades the literary field and shapes it in depth. Making the 
connection between geography and literature explicit, then – mapping it: because a 
map is precisely that, a connection made visible – will allow us to see some 
significant relationships that have so far escaped us. (Moretti Atlas, 3) 

In this same spirit, we hypothesize here that geospatial representations of Boccaccio’s world – a few 
pages taken from an unfinished Boccaccio atlas, so to speak – may similarly provide insights into 
additional things that had escaped our notice.  

Before charging right in, though, it is prudent to define a bit more explicitly which parts of 
Boccaccio’s work will be put into sharper focus. Ultimately, we are interested in the way that he 
conceives of spaces, from oceans and large regions to towns and even small hills, particularly those 
he does not know firsthand, and what these conceptions can subsequently tell us. But this enormous 
mosaic can be made only a few tiles at a time. Although he did not travel as widely as Petrarch, 
Boccaccio’s geographical knowledge was far better than that of the vast majority of his coevals. 
Nevertheless, his firsthand acquaintance with locations and topographical features was perforce 
limited. The distance and speed of overland travel depended on a variety of factors, including not 
only the mode of transportation (e.g., walking, on horseback, with a 2- or 4-wheeled cart, alone or 
with others, and so on), but also the conditions and the terrain (e.g., good or bad weather, solid or 
muddy roads, ascents and descents, the width of the track, bridges and ferries). What is more, we 
know that Boccaccio was a rather robust man and, if we believe Petrarch (Sen. 5.1), was not 
especially well suited to long journeys. He probably lived his entire life in a geographic area bounded 
by the extremes of Avignon in the west, Venice in the north and Calabria in the south. All other 
locations that appear in his works were known to him through the words of authors and 
acquaintances.  

This simple observation, combined with a map, already tells us something that might have 
escaped our notice. In Figure 1, you will find a section of a cluster map that illustrates places 
mentioned by Boccaccio in his masterpiece. Two aspects jump out immediately: first, the Decameron 
is tightly moored to those areas its author knew from actual experience; second, those places he had 
only heard or read about are still surprisingly present. The ramifications of such data, to use a rather 
impersonal term, are limited only by the scholar who considers them. For instance, one may be 
tempted to take another look at Boccaccio’s realism, a topic that has generated no small number of 
studies already. In a comparable way, his contacts with other Mediterranean cultures and realities 
different from his own could easily be addressed against a representational backdrop such as this. 



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Figure 1 

As we increase the granularity of the data, even more potentially suggestive ideas come to mind. 
Figure 2 shows that, in addition to being an Italian collection of tales, the Decameron is substantially 
Tuscan (which will come as a shock to no one), but with a very meaningful presence of the 
Mezzogiorno that is by no means limited to sites he visited during his Neapolitan years. Lying 
beyond those areas are many others, plus cities and islands, fortresses, ports and rivers. Each of 
these comes with its own ambience, characteristics and history (real or imaginary). 
 



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Figure 2 

Moving to the level of Florence’s centro storico (Fig. 3), one sees the distribution of specific named 
places in the text as dots spread with apparent homogeneity and impartiality across the landmarks 
you probably already recognize from tourist maps (alongside the number 72, which represents 
occurrences of the word Firenze). Upon closer inspection, however, this distribution may in reality 
tell us something different. Consider the shaded area of the Oltrarno, which represents the 
neighborhood of Boccaccio himself and of those with whom he had the closest relationships in 
1352.3 Now these dots take on a different feel; in a collection of tales that seem to have been kept 
generally close to geographical areas known personally by their author, never is there mention of 
that handful of city blocks he knew as his own. Like all new connections, whether or not these mean 
anything depends on the person who makes them. Our understanding of the world of the Decameron 
has at any rate been enhanced, even if only in the addition of one new “tile,” by the use of a 
decidedly uncomplicated tool of geospatial representation. This first experiment demonstrates 
plainly that a map, like an alphabetical index or a concordance, can provide an alluring new way to 
approach an author, a text or a corpus. Unlike other paratexts, though, maps offer a system of 
coordinates upon which we can plot not only textual elements, but also our own realities. For 
instance, if you looked at Figure 3 and imagined places in Florence where you have been, you 
effectively plotted your own experiences alongside some others that belong to the Decameron’s 
characters and author. One may furthermore set any other dataset upon this one and create new 
connections. It would be interesting, for example, to mark the position where Dante’s house once 
stood or that of the Badia (only a few steps away) where Boccaccio presented his Esposizioni. Most 
anything is possible provided that the plotted locations remain verifiable.4 

                                                 
3 See Porta Casucci 194. 

4 Obviously, one may also make maps of imaginary spaces, though that is not our primary concern here.  



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Figure 3 

Much more could be said about this text in particular, but the present essay is intended above all 
to provide a broad overview of the benefits of geocriticism in the study of Boccaccio. In fact, now 
that we have used the adjective “verifiable” in relation to physical space, we must take a step back to 
consider certain limitations of that term before proceeding to our next experiment. Useful in this 
regard is an observation made by Betrand Westphal, currently one of the leading practitioners of 
geocriticism: 

In the Middle Ages […] the hierarchy of places that […] authorities competed to 
establish is unstable. It evolves in function of the place of each one and the others in 
the canon of the moment. The projection in the real or imaginary space is a good 
tributary way to measure the reception that is accorded to the texts and their authors. 
Time establishes the classics, and without doubt it is time that designated 
masterpieces. In any case, time activates the trends and enables openings. As for the 
cleavage between the real and the imaginary, it covers only a limited reach. The trip is 
often too mental for the reference to reality to be objective and for the places to be 
dependable. It is the text that ensures the link between the prestigious past and the 
irresolute present.5 

                                                 
5 Westphal Plausible, 19. In the original: “Au Moyen Âge […] La hiérarchie des lieux que ces autorités concourent à 

établir est instable. Elle évolue en fonction de la place des uns et des autres dans le canon du moment. La projection 

dans l’espace réel ou imaginaire est dans une bonne mesure tributaire de la réception que l’on accorde aux textes et à 

leurs auteurs. Le temps fait son œuvre. Sans doute est-ce lui qui fait les chefs-d’œuvre. Il active en tout cas les modes et 



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The unstable medieval hierarchy of places was greatly dependent upon the exigencies of those who 
sought to establish it, just as the selection of such places was conditioned by an interpretive 
framework that created meaning from a canon, the most obvious of which included the bible itself 
and, secondarily, related geographical portions of texts such as Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos and 
Isidore’s Etymologiae. In other words, the primary geographical canon comprised locations that were 
important to an accurate understanding of the most culturally and spiritually important narrative of 
them all: Holy Scripture. Now, just as medieval thinkers regularly imagined a sort of anagogical 
Moebius strip that united the two parts of the Christian Bible into a single narrative despite obvious 
ontological discrepancies, medieval enthusiasts of geography tended to fuse locations together 
without much regard for temporal instability. Heraclitus’ adage that you cannot step into the same 
river twice is just as true for any other geographical feature. Quite simply put, the Egypt of the 
Pharaohs is not the same as the Egypt into which Mary and Joseph fled when Herod began killing 
infants. Nevertheless, the mental trip to this “prestigious past” was as irresistible as it was essential. 
Moreover, it is not only the hierarchy of geography that is unstable; precisely because of the changes 
wrought by time, even the locations themselves are unstable entities. The idea that geographical 
locations were unstable may seem to us, who have Google maps in our phones and a GPS in our 
cars, to be a curious concept. Indeed, we have become so comfortable with cartography and 
coordinates that even looking at a map not presented with North toward its topmost edge (as on the 
emblem of the United Nations) can be mildly disorienting. Of course, these are all skills and 
conventions born from cartography, a science that was still in its infancy in the Middle Ages and 
accessible to a very small percentage of the population.6 The fourteenth century was a time in which 
cartography comfortably comprised at least three main representational tools.7 Symbolic mappaemundi 
based on the T-O type, portolan charts, and what we may describe as accuracy-driven maps 
coexisted (frequently indifferent to one another) throughout all of Boccaccio’s lifetime. Each of 
these gave geospatial information within its own context and for a specific audience. Hence, 
returning to our previous example, Egypt’s representation on each of these types of maps obviously 
varied.  

The instability of geolocations across time and space is an especially productive notion for 
Boccaccio Studies for two principal reasons. First, as we have already noticed, he must necessarily 
have had only an approximate conception of those places where he had never been. Indeed, his 

                                                 
ménage les ouvertures. Quant au clivage entre le réel et l’imaginaire, il ne recouvre qu’une portée limitée. Le voyage est 

trop souvent mental pour que la référence à la réalité objective des lieux soit fiable. C’est le texte qui assure le relais entre 

le passé prestigieux et un présent irrésolu” (monde, 51-52). 

6 Before we get too smug in the assessment of our modern capacity for understanding the meaning of maps, we should 

pause to consider some of the results of the National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study: 

88% of young Americans then aged 18-24 were unable to locate Afghanistan on a map; 70% could not find North 

Korea; 50% could not find the state of New York; 38% consider speaking another language to be “not too important”; 

21% say it is “not too important” to know where countries in the news are located. 

7 In order not to overburden this essay, we shall limit our bibliographical references related to late antiquity and the 

Middle Ages to a representative few. See Harley and Woodward, Lelewel, Almagià, Merrills. 



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generation had nothing but these disparate drawings and maps to help them visualize the landscapes 
that were so important to them. Second, he was intensely concerned not merely with contemporary 
geography but also – and perhaps especially – with locations that had been mentioned or described 
in ancient literature. This lack of fixedness could be assessed in both geographic and temporal terms. 
Mount Helicon, for example, was undeniably far away in Boeotia but its location as the home of the 
Muses was inaccessibly distant in the mythical past. Any voyage there was logically mental in nature. 
We can get an idea of what this meant by recalling the words of Cassiodorus to his monastic 
brothers:  

I also encourage you, not without good reason, to consider the information of the 
cosmographers, for you must definitely know each place mentioned in the holy 
books you read and in which part of the world it is located. This is something you 
will clearly manage to do if you read, carefully and without delay, the little book of 
Julius the Orator I left for you. In his four-part treatise, he speaks so fully of seas, 
islands, famous mountains, provinces, cities, rivers and peoples that his work 
contains almost all information pertaining to the study of cosmography. […] Then 
study Dionysius’ map, which is easily comprehended, so that you may carefully 
observe with your own eyes what you had heard about with your ears in the 
aforementioned book. Then, should some bit of important information stir your 
mind, you have Ptolemy’s codex, which so clearly shows each place that you would 
practically think he had lived in every region. Then, though you may remain in one 
place, as is appropriate for monks, you shall contemplate in your mind what others 
have acquired during laborious travels.8 

These sage words of advice were penned in the sixth century, but the geo-literary experience they 
suggest is timeless. A devout soul in his cell who searches a map in eager anticipation to find 
Jerusalem and the River Jordan is quite comparable to a modern scholar who enthusiastically plots 
places mentioned in the Decameron. In both cases, maps aid in the discovery of elements that, as 
Moretti explained, would otherwise remain elusive. 

Thus far, we have considered the benefits of using maps to reconstruct a literary reality, even 
one distorted by time, which existed hundreds of years ago. We are intrigued by a new window on 
the Middle Ages, just as the monks at Cassiodorus’ Vivarium were fascinated by imagining the places 
mentioned in the Bible. Now we may usefully complicate this dynamic a bit by establishing a third 

                                                 
8 Institutiones 1.25.1-2: “Cosmographiae quoque notitiam vobis percurrendam esse non immerito suademus, ut loca 

singula, quae in libris sanctis legitis, in qua parte mundi sint posita evidenter cognoscere debeatis. quod vobis proveniet 

absolute, si libellum Iulii Oratoris, quem vobis reliqui, studiose legere festinetis; qui maria, insulas, montes famosos, 

provincias, civitates, flumina, gentes ita quadrifaria distinctione complexus est, ut paene nihil libro ipsi desit, quod ad 

cosmographiae notitiam cognoscitur pertinere. […] Deinde penacem Dionisii discite breviter comprehensum, ut quod 

auribus in supradicto libro percipitis, paene oculis intuentibus videre possitis. tum si vos notitiae nobilis cura 

flammaverit, habetis Ptolomei codicem, qui sic omnia loca evidenter expressit, ut eum cunctarum regionum paene 

incolam fuisse iudicetis, eoque fiat ut uno loco positi, sicut monachos decet, animo percurratis quod aliquorum 

peregrinatio plurimo labore collegit.”  



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temporal reality. The peculiarly human fascination with distant times and places was also shared by 
Boccaccio himself, of course. In fact, readers of these pages already appreciate the vast importance 
of the ancient world and its geography to Boccaccio and his contemporaries. For this reason, it is 
superfluous to cite the normal examples.9 Instead, I would like to call to your attention one of my 
favorite passages. After explaining Caesar’s appearance in Dante’s Inferno, Boccaccio writes: 

After Caesar’s death, the escape of the conspirators, and the clearing of the judicial 
seats in the hall (which were called “rostra”), they prepared a pyre according to 
ancient custom and there burned Caesar’s body with great reverence. His ashes were 
very diligently collected and placed within the bronze globe, which may still be seen 
atop the tall, pointed, quadrangular stone that is today located behind St Peter’s 
Church in Rome. Commoners call this stone Aguglia, although its true name is 
Julia.10 

Though much could be said in a geocritical vein about these lines, one quick “footnote” is enough. 
On the one hand, Boccaccio is reporting information he had read in Suetonius and one or more 
versions of the Mirabilia; on the other, he is telling us that he had actually seen this monument in 
person. The third temporal reality mentioned above comes into being with the realization that this 
“tall, pointed, quadrangular stone” is the obelisk that stands today in the spacious square in front of 
the “new” St. Peter’s at the Vatican, the same one the reader may have seen in person or on 
television. The bronze globe is now lost, having been replaced by a cross, but the stone is the same. 
Similarly, its geographic coordinates have shifted a bit, yet the tangible reality is still extant. Even 
better than imagining Dante standing beneath the leaning Garisenda, at least to me, is imagining 
Boccaccio as he in turn imagined another time, now gone, at those same coordinates. Three 
temporal realities – Suetonius’, Boccaccio’s, and our own – are linked together in a single unstable 
geography: the placement of that one solemn obelisk. One may imagine a 3D-map or graph, not 
unlike the one below, where any single geographic point may be stretched upward or downward to 
represent the progression of time. You cannot step into the same Arno twice, but you can make a 
mental journey to other years in its existence. All this may come across as a bit mawkish, to tell the 
truth; nevertheless, it is a sensation enthusiastically shared by Boccaccio himself, not to mention 
Petrarch (whose yearning to live in a previous era was not simply rhetorical). 

                                                 
9 The bibliography pertaining specifically to Italian humanistic geography is not at all vast. Bouloux has done an excellent 

job of collecting bits and pieces into a helpful whole. See also Pastore Stocchi. 

10 The original reads: “Appresso, fuggitisi i congiurati ed egli essendo morto, disfatte le sedie giudiciali della corte, le quali 

si chiamano «rostri», gliene fu fatto, secondo l’antico costume, un rogo, e con grandissimo onore fu il corpo suo arso, e 

le ceneri, racolte diligentemente, furon messe in quel vaso ritondo di bronzo, il quale ancora si vede sopra quella pietra 

quadrangula aguta ed alta, che è oggi dietro alla chiesa di san Piero in Roma, la quale il vulgo chiama Aguglia, come che il 

suo vero nome sia Giulia” (Esposizioni 4.lit.200). 



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Not surprisingly, the use of maps can be helpful in imagining Boccaccio’s own mental 

reconstructions, and especially helpful in understanding more fully how he uses them as backdrops 
for his own literary inventions. In fact, it is Boccaccio himself who explains why geography should 
interest us. “It is very rare that anyone [inspired by poetry] ever manages to compose noteworthy 
works if he does not possess the necessary tools for expressing the images he has dreamt up,” he 
tells us. “Hence, he must know the principles of the liberal arts, ethics and science. He must also be 
aware of his ancestors’ achievements and, indeed, mindful of the histories of nations, and their 
locations in the world, as well as those of seas, rivers and mountains.”11 There is no doubt that a 
knowledge of geography is important not only to understand the poets of the past, but also in order 
to become a good one in the present. Furthermore, we know that Boccaccio sincerely believed in 
this advice, inasmuch as his note to Teseida 1.40.7 shows that he himself had made use of a carta da 
navicare to understand how the Turkish Straits were arranged. About fifty years ago, Virginio 
Bertolini published a fascinating discovery related to Boccaccio’s use of maps in the narration of 
Florio’s fictional journey in the Filocolo, a work completed immediately before the Teseida. Bertolini’s 
impressive philological work demonstrates very convincingly that our author had used a copy of 
Marino Sanudo’s Mapa de mari mediterraneo to compose the following description of the maritime 
journey that Florio (under the assumed name Filocolo) made from Trapani to Alexandria: 

So Filocolo sailed off. Each day the winds reinvigorated Filocolo and blew him ever 
more forcefully onward, to the point that, after leaving Gozo and Malta behind, he 
found himself on the high seas and speeding away from land. On account of the 
slackening of the winds, and in order to arrive in Rhodes, he chose the route toward 
Alexandria. Having passed Schiza [Crava], Venetiko [Venedigo], Kithira [Cetri], 
Antikithira [Sechilo] and Pontikonisi [Pondico], he arrived at the ancient land of 
Minos, whence Saturn was chased away by his son. He stayed in Candia for a few 
days and then departed again. Shortly after passing Cape Sideros [Caposermon], 

                                                 
11 “[P]erraro inpulsus [scil. quidam poeta] commendabile perficit aliquid, si instrumenta, quibus meditate perfici 

consuevere, defecerint. […] Hinc et liberalium […] artium et moralium atque naturalium […] novisse principia necesse 

est; nec non et vidisse monimenta maiorum, ac etiam meminisse et hystorias nationum et regionum orbis, marium, 

fluviorum et montium dispositiones” (Genealogie 14.7.2-3). 

LONGITUDE

LATITUDE
TI
M
E



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Kasos [Casso] and Karpathos [Scarpanto], he reached Prasonisi [Trachilo] and from 
there went on to Lindos [Lendego].12 

Sadly, there are only two extant witnesses of this map. However, one of them (Vat. lat. 2972) gave 
Bertolini just what he was hoping to find on c. 108r. Figure 4 presents a tiny portion of that carta, 
rotated 90° clockwise so that the island of Crete is more readily recognizable in the center of the 
image. (Fig. 5 shows the same information on a modern map.) The section of Florio’s journey that 
corresponds to the passage above is marked with a solid orange line, a bit thicker than the thin 
straight rhumblines, that runs west to east across the map. Though not easy to see, these exotic place 
names (with a single exception) are all represented in perfect order and their variants are so slight 
that there can be little doubt that Bertolini had found something special. Without a map of this sort, 
Boccaccio – or anyone else who had never sailed there – would have had difficulty reconstructing 
Florio’s fictional voyage across this timeless stretch of sea with any geographical accuracy. And 
precision was an indispensable part of that fiction.  

 

Figure 4 

                                                 
12 “Navica adunque Filocolo: e ciascun giorno più venti rinfrescano e pigliano forza in aiuto di Filocolo, sì che in brieve, 

lasciandosi dietro Gozo e Moata, piglia l’alto mare fuggendo la terra. Ma per mancamento di vento e per venire in Rodi, 

torse il cammino d’Alessandria, e passando Crava, Venedigo, Cetri, Sechilo e Pondico, trovò l’antica terra di Minòs, della 

quale Saturno fu dal figliuolo cacciato. Quivi alcun giorno dimorò in Candia, e quindi partito, Caposermon e Casso e 

Scarpanto trapassò in brieve e venne a Trachilo, e di quindi a Lendego” (Filocolo 4.78.1-2) 



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Figure 5 

It is quite logical and likely, then, that Boccaccio continued to consult maps during the 
composition of the Decameron. Figure 6 shows another Mediterranean journey, this time the one 
made by Alatiel (2.7). Figure 7 is the same Aegean map Boccaccio used to create a realistic trip for 
Florio, this time with Alatiel’s route traced upon it. Did he use Sanudo’s mapa here as well? No one 
has suggested it until now, but it seems indeed quite likely. The proximity of Chios (where 
Constanzio was residing “in lasciva vita con una sua donna,” 2.7.76) to Smyrna (where Osbech 
[a.k.a. Sultan Mohammed Öz Beg] happened to appear in the plot) creates a compelling geographical 
boundary between East and West. Not unlike Paris who crossed from Asia Minor to the 
Peloponnesus and returned with Helen, Osbech leaves Smyrna for Chios and returns home with the 
similarly irresistible Alatiel. In fact, the Aegean was once a sort of magical geographical space, one 
that Ulysses and Aeneas both crossed as they sailed away from Asia Minor, which Petrarch describes 
in his Itinerarium as “once the most pleasant of provinces, filled with Greek farmers after the fall of 
Troy, and now the fierce territory of the Turks, enemies of truth.”13 Time had negatively changed 
the complexion of the spaces according to Boccaccio as well. In the De montibus’ entry dedicated to 
this area of the world, he writes: “The Aegean Sea was once just as full of kingdoms, famous men 
and wonderful things as it was of islands, but nowadays it languishes under the vile scourge of 
servitude.”14 He evidently felt very strongly here (as in almost all his works, honestly) that the 
Venetians had spread corruption, exploitation and decay, that the heyday of ancient Greece was 
irrecoverably lost to the past. Setting the action of any story in this region (cf. also Dec. 4.3) adds the 
patina of an imagined past’s former glory to an otherwise sad, modern shabbiness. And viceversa. 

                                                 
13 “Olim provinciarum mitissima, post Troie ruinam Grecis referta cultoribus, nunc Turcorum veri hostium ferox regio” 

(Petrarca Itinerario, 72). 

14 “Egeum mare insularum eque et regnorum atque virorum illustrium et mirandarum rerum plenum fuit, hodie torpet 

vero turpi servitio obnoxium.” 



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Figure 6 

 



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Figure 7 

Having looked at maps in reference to the Filocolo and the Decameron, anyone who is familiar with 
Boccaccio’s Latin works is by now expecting further considereation of his De montibus as well, and 
for very good reason.15 It contains an impressive wealth of geographical information, gleaned from 
the texts Boccaccio knew earlier in his life, together with discoveries made in works that he was able 
to consult only much later, most importantly Pomponius Mela’s Chorographia.16 Although scholars 

                                                 
15 The bibliography of the De montibus is slight. The studies of greatest interest are Pastore Stocchi, Bouloux, Greppi and 

Cachey, but much work remains to be done.  

16 The importance of Pliny to the De montibus is extraordinary. Although scholars once thought that Petrarch had 

provided Boccaccio’s principal copy of the Naturalis historia in the form of Par. Lat. 6802 (e.g, Pastore Stocchi, 

Martellotti, Zaccaria), which Boccaccio had consulted (see Fiorilla 41-64), more recent studies have demonstrated that he 

used a different witness for the passages transcribed in the Zibaldone Magliabechiano (Perucchi, Petoletti, Reeve). Pastore 



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have expressed varying opinions about the work, it seems that everyone is in agreement that much 
more needs to be done. Organized like a geographical dictionary, the entries are arranged by type: 
first mountains, then forests, springs, lakes, rivers, marshes, and finally seas. Each headword was 
probably prepared first on a strip of paper and then incorporated into the proper section and in 
alphabetical order.17 In a very real sense, the geographical data he collected were treated already as 
discrete units that could be arranged, compared and contrasted with others. This configuration 
seems to be calling out for GIS. As the work stands now, it is rather unwieldy and difficult to study. 
There are two other unfortunate facts: there is no extant autograph copy and currently no reliable 
critical edition of the work. Since Pastore Stocchi’s 1998 edition, scholars have had the advantage of 
a readily accessible text, but with the disadvantage of an edition prepared, as he admits, “con criteri 
indubbiamente eclettici.”18 We have turned to philology because it, too, is a fundamental part of 
geocriticism, at least with regard to medieval studies. Up to now preference has been given to how 
geospatial approaches can open doors in literary studies; the reverse is of course just as true. 
Philology enabled Bertolini to announce the discovery of Boccaccio’s use of Sanudo’s cartographic 
skills in his literary recreation of the seascape of ancient Greece that we saw in the flights of Florio 
and Alatiel toward the east. With a sounder critical edition of Boccaccio’s geographical dictionary, it 
will soon be possible to identify other maps with which he was familiar.  

The remainder of this essay will deal with an experiment of this sort. In 2012, Francesco Rubat 
Borel published a brief paper in which he notes lexical similarities between the Peutinger Table and 
names in the entry related to the Po River in the De montibus. He states: 

The fact that Boccaccio refers to Naburni and Nantuani immediately leads one to 
surmise that he knew a document analogous to the Tabula Peutingeriana, whether a 
map, an itinerary or a geographic treatise that, though now lost, was extremely 
similar. There’s more: the reading Nantuani, which is to my knowledge a hapax, for 
the common Nantuates suggests a common source.19 

He goes on to suggest the possibility that the Peutinger Table (or one of its close relatives) could 
have been the one Petrarch sent to Boccaccio in the summer of 1357 with a letter in which the 
former wrote: “Alongside these [the volumes of the Invective contra medicum], I am sending you this 
book, frayed from a long life and the worse for wear and tear, and also the ancient map of mine that 

                                                 
Stocchi’s theory that this same manuscript had nonetheless been used in the redaction of the later De montibus (1963, 64-

72) remains to be verified. Albert Lloret and I are not of the opinion that this is the case.  

17 Cf. Blair 96-99, 210-13 et passim. 

18 In Boccaccio 1998, 2034.  

19 “Il fatto che Boccaccio citi i Naburni e i Nantuani induce subito a supporre che conoscesse un documento analogo alla 

Tabula Peutingeriana, fosse una carta o un itinerario o un trattato geografico oggi perduto fortemente affine a quella. C’è di 

più: la lezione Nantuani, che a me consta essere un hapax, invece del comune Nantuates, fa propendere per una fonte 

comune” (Rubat Borel 81). 



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you asked for.”20 We know that Petrarch had a collection of old maps,21 but it is impossible to say 
with any level of certainty if this was one of them. In fact, and especially in the wake of recent proof 
that Petrarch’s Pliny was not the source of the excerpts in the Zibaldone Magliabechiano, it seems 
imprudent to assume that everything of particular interest on Boccaccio’s desk had somehow been 
provided by the older poet.  

At any rate, we may set aside the question of where Boccaccio had found a Peutingerian map 
and examine Rubat Borel’s claim more closely. For this, we need a few more images: Figure 8 
provides a map of the northern Apennines flanked by those cities Boccaccio mentions in the first 
part of his description of the range; Figure 9 shows the same area with an overlay of the roads and 
towns mentioned in the Peutinger Table,22 in such a way that one may more easily make sense of 
Figures 10 and 11.23 In essence, Rubat Borel noticed that the Peutinger Table locates the source of 
the Po (the dark squiggle labeled Padus) between two populations: the Nantuani and the Naburni 
(Fig. 10). Upon reading in the De montibus that the Po “begins at the very base of Monte Viso, 
establishing its initial course between the Nantuani and the Naburni,”24 it then occurred to him that 
this map could have been Boccaccio’s source. While Naburni is apparently a hapax related to the 
Peutingerian tradition, that single observation is perhaps insufficient to support the idea that 
Boccaccio knew a version of the 11-section parchment scroll (roughly one foot tall and twenty-two 
feet in length) that now exists in a single surviving witness.25 More evidence is required.  

Let’s now turn to another section of the De montibus, this time the entry dedicated to the 
Apennines: 

Indeed, some say that it begins, like the Alps, at the promontory of Monaco near 
edge of the Ligurian Sea and tends roughly northward together with the Alps, 
passing the Bagienni [Bagitennos] on its right. When it reaches the Nantuates 

                                                 
20 “Cum quibus et librum istum senio victum, et canum morsibus lacerum, simul et vetustissimam meam quam postulas 

cartam mitto” (Petrarca Opera, 1199). The timeworn book mentioned here is the one Pastore Stocchi thought could be 

ms. Par. Lat. 6802. Rubat Borel suggests interesting conjectures, based on the work of Guatier Dalché, about the 

provenance and the eventual fate of this Peutingerian map.  

21 See Petrarca postille, 329-30. 

22 Fig. 9 was provided by René Voorburg’s online project OmnesViae: Roman Routeplanner (omnesviae.org). 

23 Images of the Peutinger Table were taken from the dynamic viewer (http://peutinger.atlantides.org/map-a/) 

published online as ancillary material to Talbert. Note that Fig. 10 belongs to the left of Fig. 11 and that when put 

together word Liguri should then be legible.  

24 “Alii dicunt quod in infimis radicibus Vesuli oriatur et inter Naburnos et Nantuanos arripiat primo cursum.” Despite 

the fact that the reading is identical in this case to Pastore Stocchi’s (in Boccaccio De montibus, 1961), all quotations of the 

De montibus are taken from the as yet unpublished edition being prepared by Albert Lloret and myself. 

25 Conventional wisdom holds that the Peutinger Table is an early thirteenth-century copy of an original from Late 

Antiquity, but Emily Albu has convincingly argued that the original was instead a Carolingian display map. 



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[Nantuanos] of Gaul, it bends eastward, leaving them to its left and the Sengauni to 
its right in the environs of Albintimilium, Albigaunum, Genoa and the Veleiates 
[Veliates] of Gaul, while on its other side are the Cisalpine Gauls and Augusta 
Taurinorum.26 

This description is really very remarkable. If one compares it to the section of the Table represented 
in Figure 10, it begins to seem more like a verbal sketch of this map than a portrayal of Cisalpine 
geography. The course of the Alps (represented by a faint, irregular undulating line that runs from 
the bottom left of Fig. 10 diagonally upwards to a lake in the top-right corner) is intersected by that 
of the Apennines which breaks off from it and runs between the “Nantuani” and the “Bagitenni,” 
precisely as Boccaccio relates. It is this second line that he is following. The line of the Apennines 
continues into Figure 11 where it runs more or less horizontally from left to right, dividing the image 
into two halves: a top (to the left of the mountain range) and a bottom (to its right). The range 
passes the “Senguani” (written on the map in black ink) and the “Veliate” (in red) to its right; to its 
left is Augusta Taurinorum. There is no additional hapax here, unfortunately, but the spelling 
“Bagitenni” is certainly not the most usual form (Arnaldi et al. 252-53). More interesting still is the 
next section of the Apennines’ description (much of which is visible in Fig. 12): 

From there, it bends southeastward toward the Tyrrhenian Sea, the city of Luna, 
Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia and the most noble Tuscan city of Florence to its south. To its 
north it passes the Po river, Parma, Vergil’s Mantua, Reggio Emilia, Modena and the 
university town of Bologna. Moving from that point onward, it passes Arezzo, 
Cortona, lake Trasimeno, Perugia, Foligno, Spoleto, Bevagna, Todi, Bolsena, Civita 
Castellana, Narni and Rome, the city that was once the master of the world. To its 
left, it passes Cornelii Forum, which we also call Imola, Faenza, Forlì and 
Forlimpopoli, then Curva Cesena, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano and Senigallia.27 

Instead of ancient indigenous peoples, cities now represent the boundaries of the Apennines. The 
description is made in two sections. In the first, Boccaccio names several cities along the old Via 

                                                 
26 “Hic autem secundum quosdam a promontorio Monichi circa finem Ligustini maris incipit, unde et Alpes, et in 

aquilonem fere tendens una cum Alpibus a dextris linquit Bagitennos, et cum ad Nantuanos Gallos devenit in orientem 

flectitur eis a sinistris derelictis et Sengaunis a dextris, ubi Albintimilium et Albingaunum et Ianuam et Veliates Galli, 

cum ex parte alia habeat Cispadanos et Augustam Taurinorum.” 

27 “Et inde in euroaustrum vergens Tyrrhenum mare, Lunam civitatem, Lucam, Pisas, Pistorium et nobilissimam Tuscie 

civitatem Florentiam ad meridiem sinit. Ad aquilonem autem Padum fluvium, Parmam, Mantuam Virgilii, Regium 

Lepidum, Mutinam et studiorum matrem Bononiam. Hinc a dextris ad ulteriora procedens Aretium, Cortonam, 

Trasimenum lacum, Perusium, Fulgineum, Spolitium, Mevaniam, Tudertum, Vulsinas, Faleros, Narnias et olim rerum 

dominam urbem Romam conspicit. A leva autem Cornelii Forum, quod et Ymolam dicimus, Faventiam et Ravennam 

Sabinorum coloniam, Forum Livii et Popilii, inde Curvam Cesenam, Ariminum, Pensaurum, Fortune Fanum et 

Senogalliam.” 



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Cassia from Luna to Florence, then more on the other side of the range along the old Via Aemilia 
from Parma to Bologna. In the second, he follows the same pattern: first naming the towns on the 
remainder of the Via Cassia from north to south, then the rest of the Via Aemilia to Rimini and 
along the Via Flaminia and the coast as far as Ancona. Insofar as these ancient roads skirt the 
foothills on either side of the Apennines, not much of unique solid evidence can be found here. Not 
much, that is, except the name Curva Cesena, which like Naburni has long been associated with the 
Peutinger Table (Fig. 13).28 Almost all of the De montibus’ extant witnesses carry this reading, 
including every one of those that can be considered most reliable.29 It seems that there is genuine 
proof that Rubat Borel was correct. This discovery will open the door to new studies of Boccaccio’s 
use of the Peutinger tradition and to new investigations of the Table’s own history. 

In the preceding pages, an attempt has been made, however modest, to suggest that intelligent 
maps based on thoughtful criteria can lead to new areas of research, or at the very least can provide 
geospatial paratexts that will be useful to research that is already in full swing. I would certainly stop 
short of proposing that they could add “new lustre to a tired field,” as Moretti’s publicist claimed, 
but it is not at all difficult to imagine literary mapping as an activity that can assist in opening 
unprecedented windows on Boccaccio’s world. 

 

Figure 8 

                                                 
28 See Solari, Santoro Bianchi and Talbert 160. 

29 Not recognizing the name Curva, Pastore Stocchi emended it to Cervia, which – though geographically sensible – is 

present only in the generally untrustworthy ms. 5316 of the Biblioteca Casanatense. 



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5.1 (2017)   41 

 

Figure 9 

 

Figure 10 



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5.1 (2017)   42 

 

Figure 11 

 

Figure 12 

 



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5.1 (2017)   43 

 

Figure 13 

 
  



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