From Boccaccio to Boccacelli
A history of Albergo Montreal
Giles Walker - Lecturer in Italian, Pembroke College, Oxford (GB), 25th March 2004
- We have often been asked why our hotel is called Albergo Montreal...
- Perturbed by the stench coming from the first floor, Jean climbed the stairs...
- As the hermit grew older, so he realised that he needed assistance...
We have often been asked why our hotel is called Albergo Montreal. The name calls to mind the great French-speaking city of Canada, Montréal, and we shall see later that a Canadian pilgrim plays an important part in our story. But the origins of the name Montreal go back much further, to the time of the great Florentine writer, Boccaccio.
His famous work, the Decameron portrays a society in which the growing merchant class was becoming ever more powerful, and two sectors were particularly strong: the wool trade and banking. The name Monte is the archaic Tuscan word for bank, and it is probable that the site of the current hotel formerly belonged to one of the great houses that lent money to borrowers all over Europe. During Boccaccio's time, Florentine bankers financed the frequent wars between England and France, as a result of which the bank on this site might have acquired the nickname Monte Reale, that is the Royal Bank. In 1337 the rival kings Edward III of England and Charles IV of Anjou are believed to have borrowed heavily to finance their latest war.
Three years later, after the Battle of Sluys, which he won, Edward suspended repayments until the war's end. Following another defeat at Crécy in 1346, Charles too defaulted. Unfortunately for the Monte Reale, the series of battles that followed was to become known as the Hunderd Years' War, and it remained deadlocked at the end of normal time, despite the burning at the stake of the French teenager Joan of Arc in Rouen in 1431. Sixteen years of extra time were required before the French emerged victorious under the Golden Battle rule in 1453.
Sadly, of course, the Monte Reale had long since been bankrupted by a century of missed repayments and so the site of our hotel became derelict for a number of centuries, although it is rumoured to have been inhabited for most of that time by a hermit, who had made the unusual vow never to wash his feet.
Certainly, the hermit was still there in August 1856 when a lumberjack from Québec passed through Florence as part of a pilgrimage from Santiago de Compostella to Rome. This lumberjack was called Jean Albert, and like many travellers from the time of Christ's birth until the present day, he couldn't find anywhere to spend the night. After hours of wandering the ancient streets with his pilgrim's staff and heavy backpack, at last Jean pushed at the open door of the delapidated palazzo that had once been Monte Reale.