Contemporary writers rapidly found an audience. In Dante’s lifetime his verse was chanted by blacksmiths and mule-drivers; fifty years later in 1373 the growth of reading caused the Signoria of Florence, at the petition of citizens, to offer a year’s course of public lectures on Dante’s work for which the sum of 100 gold florins was raised to pay the lecturer, who was to speak every day except holy days. The person appointed was Boccaccio, who had written the first biography of Dante and copied out the entire Divine Comedy himself as a gift for Petrarch.
