TO THE READERS

Now that Italian minds have returned to the purity of their own language—which had been sullied and bastardized by foreign ways during the time when not only bodies but minds, and even speech itself, had to groan under the transalpine yoke A reference to French political and linguistic influence in Italy, particularly during the Napoleonic era.—we believe we are performing a useful service for our fatherland by producing a text which, like a hidden treasure of many beauties, is rich in its command of the language. Indeed, it abounds in elegant expressions that are sought after even in the Crusca Vocabulary The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, first published in 1612, was the primary authority on the "pure" Italian language based on 14th-century Florentine standards. itself.

Therefore, let the readers not believe that this translation by Master Donato is one of those 14th-century scrapbooks original: "scartabelli del Trecento" which offer you very little gold and much dross; rather, it is a source of rare beauty, which we bestow upon those who dedicate themselves to the Italian tongue and are protective of its purity.

We hope that readers will not wish to blame us for too much boldness if the archaic spelling of the Codex has been adapted to modern fashion, in such a way that there is no change of any kind in the words or the meaning. And since in our copy there is no punctuation whatsoever to divide sentences and distinguish one sense from another, we supplied this lack not according to our own whims, but as the Latin text of Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), author of the Decameron. This suggests the manuscript is an early Italian translation of one of Boccaccio's Latin works. required.