THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA”--
I. Introductory.--II. The _Inferno_.--III. The _Purgatorio_.--IV.
The _Paradiso_ 136
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 223
DIAGRAMS AND TABLES 233
INDEX 249
DANTE
CHAPTER I
DANTE IN HIS TIMES
1. _The End of the Middle Ages_
FROM GREGORY VII. TO FREDERICK II.--The twelfth and thirteenth
centuries cover the last and more familiar portion of the Middle Ages.
They are the period of chivalry, of the crusades and of romance, when
the Neo-Latin languages bore fruit in the prose and poetry of France,
the lyrics of the Provençal troubadours, and the earliest vernacular
literature of Italy; the period which saw the development of Gothic
architecture, the rise of scholastic philosophy, the institution of
the Franciscan and Dominican orders, the recovery by western Europe
of the works of Aristotle, the elevation of Catholic theology into a
systematic harmony of reason and revelation under the influence of the
christianised Aristotelianism of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.
The vernacular literature of Italy developed comparatively late, and
(until the time of Aquinas and Bonaventura) her part in the scholastic
movement was secondary to that of France, but she had led the way in
the revival of the study of Roman law and jurisprudence, which centred
at Bologna, where the great Irnerius taught at the beginning of the
twelfth century. It was thus that the first European university,
_studium generale_, came into being, and Bologna boasts the proud title
_alma mater studiorum_.
There are two predominant political factors in Italy which appear at
the end of the twelfth century, and hold the field up to the time
of Dante’s birth. Out of the war of investitures between Pope and
Emperor, the struggle which we associate mainly with the name of
Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), emerged the Italian city-states, the free
communes of northern and central Italy, whose development culminated
in the heroic resistance offered by the first Lombard League to the
mightiest of mediaeval German Caesars, Frederick I. (Barbarossa), which
won the battle of Legnano (1176) and obtained the peace of Constance
(1183). In the south, the Normans--conquering Apulia and Calabria,
delivering Sicily from the Saracens--consolidated their rule into a
feudal monarchy, making their capital Palermo one of the most splendid
cities of the mediaeval world. The third and last of these Norman kings
of Sicily, William II. (_Par._ xx. 61-66), died in 1189. The son of
Barbarossa, Henry VI., claimed the kingdom in the right of his wife
Constance (_Par._ iii. 115-120), and established the Suabian dynasty on
the throne. His son, Frederick II., continued the cultured traditions
of the Norman kings; but the union in his person of the kingdom of
Sicily with the Empire led to a continuous struggle with the Italian
communes and the Papacy, which embittered his closing years until his
death in 1250. The reign of Frederick II. is the period of the Guelf
and Ghibelline factions, and the beginning of the rise of tyrants in
the Italian cities, tyrants of whom the most terrible example was
Ezzelino da Romano (_Inf._ xii. 110).
THE BATTLE OF BENEVENTO.--The policy of Frederick II. was continued by
his son Manfred (crowned King of Sicily in 1258), against whom Pope
Clement IV., claiming the right to dispose of the kingdom as a fief
of the Church, summoned Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis
of France. Charles entered Italy (_Purg._ xx. 67), encountered and
defeated Manfred on the plains of Grandella near Benevento, in February
1266, and the papal legate refused the rites of Christian burial to the
fallen king (_Purg._ iii. 124-132). This battle of Benevento marks an
epoch in Italian history. It ended for the time the struggle between
the Roman Pontiffs and the German Caesars; it initiated the new strife
between the Papacy and the royal house of France. Henceforth the old
ideal significance of “Guelf” and “Ghibelline,” as denoting adherents
of Church and Empire respectively, becomes lost in the local conflicts
of each Italian district and city. The imperial power was at an end
in Italy; but the Popes, by calling in this new foreign aid, had
prepared the way for the humiliation of Pope Boniface at Anagni and
the corruption of Avignon. The fall of the silver eagle from Manfred’s
helmet before the golden lilies on Charles’s standard may be taken as
symbolical. The preponderance in Italian politics had passed back from
Germany to France; the influence of the house of Capet was substituted
for the overthrown authority of the Emperor (_Purg._ xx. 43, 44). Three
weeks after the battle Charles entered Naples in triumph, King of
Apulia and Sicily; an Angevin dynasty was established upon the throne
of the most potent state of Italy.
ART AND LETTERS.--This political transformation was profoundly felt
in Italian literature. A new courtly poetry, that of the so-called
“Sicilian School,” had come into being in the south, partly based on
Provençal models, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Its
poets--mainly Sicilians and Apulians, but with recruits from other
parts of the peninsula--had almost given to Italy a literary language.
“The Sicilian vernacular,” writes Dante in his _De Vulgari Eloquentia_,
“seems to have gained for itself a renown beyond the others; for
whatever Italians produce in poetry is called Sicilian, and we find
that many native poets have sung weightily.” This he ascribes to the
fostering influence of the imperial rule of the house of Suabia:
“Those illustrious heroes, Frederick Caesar and his well-begotten
son Manfred, showing their nobility and rectitude of soul, as long
as fortune lasted, followed human things, disdaining the bestial;
wherefore the noble in heart and endowed with graces strove to cleave
to the majesty of such great princes; so that, in their time, whatever
the excellent among Italians attempted first appeared at the court of
these great sovereigns. And, because the royal throne was Sicily, it
came about that whatever our predecessors produced in the vernacular is
called Sicilian” (_V. E._ i. 12). The house of Anjou made Naples their
capital, and treated Sicily as a conquered province. After Benevento
the literary centre of Italy shifted from Palermo and the royal court
of the south to Bologna and the republican cities of Tuscany. Guittone
d’Arezzo (_Purg._ xxvi. 124-126) founded a school of Tuscan poets,
extending the field of Italian lyrical poetry to political and ethical
themes as well as love (which had been the sole subject of the Sicilian
School). The beginnings of Italian literary prose had already appeared
at Bologna, with the first vernacular models for composition of the
rhetoricians, the masters of the _ars dictandi_. Here, within the next
eight years, St. Thomas Aquinas published the first and second parts
of the _Summa Theologica_; and the poetry of the first great singer
of modern Italy, Guido Guinizelli (_Purg._ xxvi. 91-114), rose to
spiritual heights undreamed of in the older schools, in his canzone
on Love and true nobility: _Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore_; “To
the gentle heart doth Love ever repair.” And, in the sphere of the
plastic arts, these were the years that saw the last triumphs of
Niccolò Pisano, “the Father of Sculpture to Italy,” and the earliest
masterpieces of Cimabue, the teacher of Giotto (_Purg._ xi. 94-96), the
shepherd boy who came from the fields to free Italian painting from
Byzantine fetters, and who “developed an artistic language which was
the true expression of the Italian national character.”
2. _Dante’s Childhood and Adolescence_
BIRTH AND FAMILY.--Dante Alighieri, in its Latin form Alagherii, was
born at Florence in 1265, probably in the latter part of May, some
nine months before the battle of Benevento. His father, Alighiero di
Bellincione di Alighiero, came of an ancient and honourable family
of that section of the city named from the Porta San Piero. Although
Guelfs, the Alighieri were probably of the same stock as the Elisei,
decadent nobles of supposed Roman descent, who took the Ghibelline side
in the days of Frederick II., when the city was first involved in these
factions after the murder of young Buondelmonte in her “last peace” in
1215 (_Par._ xvi. 136-147). Among the warriors of the Cross, in the
Heaven of Mars, Dante meets his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida.
Born probably in 1091, Cacciaguida married a wife from the valley of
the Po, a member of one or other of the families afterwards known
as the Aldighieri or Alighieri at Ferrara, Parma, and Bologna, was
knighted by Conrad III., and died in battle against the infidels in the
disastrous second crusade (_Par._ xv. 137-148). None of Cacciaguida’s
descendants had attained to any distinction in the Republic. Brunetto
di Bellincione, Dante’s uncle, probably fought for the Guelfs at
Montaperti in 1260, where he may have been one of those in charge of
the _carroccio_, the battle-car which accompanied the army. Besides
Cacciaguida and his son Alaghiero, or Alighiero, the first to bear the
name, who is said by his father to be still in the purgatorial terrace
of the proud (_Par._ xv. 91-96), the only other member of the family
introduced into the _Divina Commedia_ is Geri del Bello, a grandson of
the elder Alighiero and cousin of Dante’s father, a sower of discord
and a murderer (_Inf._ xxix. 13-36), whose violent and well-deserved
death had not yet been avenged.
THE FLORENTINE REPUBLIC.--As far as Florence was concerned, the real
strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines was a struggle for supremacy, first
without and then within the city, of a democracy of merchants and
traders, with a military aristocracy of partly Teutonic descent, who
were gradually being deprived of their territorial and feudal sway,
which they had held nominally from the Emperor in the _contado_, the
country districts of Tuscany included in the continually extending
Florentine commune. Although the party names were first introduced into
Florence in 1215, the struggle had virtually begun after the death of
the great Countess Matilda in 1115; and had resulted in a regular and
constitutional advance of the power of the people, interrupted by a few
intervals. It was in one of these intervals that Dante was born. The
popular government (_Primo Popolo_), which had been established shortly
before the death of Frederick II. in 1250, and worked victoriously
for ten years, had been overthrown in 1260 at the disastrous battle
of Montaperti, “the havoc and the great slaughter, which dyed the
Arbia red” (_Inf._ x. 85, 86). The patriotism of Farinata degli Uberti
saved Florence from total destruction, but all the leading Guelf
families were driven out, and the government remained in the power
of a despotic Ghibelline aristocracy, under Manfred’s vicar, Count
Guido Novello, supported by German mercenaries. After the fall of
Manfred, an attempt was made to effect a peace between the Ghibellines
and the people; but a revolution on St. Martin’s Day, November 11th,
1266, led to the expulsion of Guido Novello and his forces, and the
formation of a provisional democratic government. In January 1267 the
banished Guelfs--many of whom had fought under the papal banner at
Benevento--returned; on Easter Day French troops entered Florence,
the Ghibellines fled, the Guelfs made Charles of Anjou suzerain of
the city, and accepted his vicar as podestà. The government was
reorganised, with a new institution, the _Parte Guelfa_, to secure the
Guelf predominance in the Republic.
The defeat of young Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., at Tagliacozzo
in 1268, followed by his judicial murder (_Purg._ xx. 68), confirmed
the triumph of the Guelfs and the power of Charles in Italy. In
Florence the future conflict lay between the new Guelf aristocracy
and the burghers and people, between the _Grandi_ and the _Popolani_;
the magnates in their palaces and towers, associated into societies
and groups of families, surrounding themselves with retainers and
swordsmen, but always divided among themselves; and the people, soon
to become “very fierce and hot in lordship,” as Villani says, artisans
and traders ready to rush out from stalls and workshops to follow
the standards of their Arts or Guilds in defence of liberty. In the
year after the House of Suabia ended with Conradin upon the scaffold,
the Florentines took partial vengeance for Montaperti at the battle
of Colle di Valdelsa (_Purg._ xiii. 115-120), where the Sienese were
routed and Provenzano Salvani (_Purg._ xi. 109-114) killed. It is said
to have been Provenzano Salvani who, in the great Ghibelline council at
Empoli, had proposed that Florence should be destroyed.
DANTE’S BOYHOOD.--It is not clear how Dante came to be born in
Florence, since he gives us to understand (_Inf._ x. 46-50) that his
family were fiercely adverse to the Ghibellines and would naturally
have been in exile until the close of 1266. Probably his father, of
whom scarcely anything is known, took no prominent part in politics
and had been allowed to remain in the city. Besides the houses in
the Piazza San Martino, he possessed two farms and some land in the
country. Dante’s mother, Bella (perhaps an abbreviation of Gabriella),
is believed to have been Alighiero’s first wife, and to have died
soon after the poet’s birth. Her family is not known, though it has
been suggested that she may have been the daughter of Durante di
Scolaio degli Abati, a Guelf noble. Alighiero married again, Lapa di
Chiarissimo Cialuffi, the daughter of a prominent Guelf popolano; by
this second marriage he had a son, Francesco, and a daughter, Tana
(Gaetana), who married Lapo Riccomanni. Another daughter, whose name
is not known, married Leone Poggi; it is not quite certain whether
her mother was Bella or Lapa. Dante never mentions his mother nor his
father, whom he also lost in boyhood, in any of his works (excepting
such indirect references as _Inf._ viii. 45, and _Conv._ i. 13); but,
in the _Vita Nuova_, a “young and gentle lady, who was united to me by
very near kindred,” appears watching by the poet in his illness. In the
loveliest of his early lyrics she is described as
Adorna assai di gentilezze umane,
which Rossetti renders:
Exceeding rich in human sympathies.
This lady was, perhaps, one of these two sisters; and it is tempting
to infer from Dante’s words that a tender affection existed between
him and her. It was from Dante’s nephew, Andrea Poggi, that Boccaccio
obtained some of his information concerning the poet, and it would be
pleasant to think that Andrea’s mother is the heroine of this canzone
(_V. N._ xxiii.); but there are chronological difficulties in the
identification.
SOURCES.--Our sources for Dante’s biography, in addition to his own
works, are primarily a short chapter in the Chronicle of his neighbour
Giovanni Villani, the epoch-making work of Boccaccio, Filippo Villani’s
unimportant sketch at the end of the fourteenth and the brief but
reliable life by Leonardo Bruni at the beginning of the fifteenth
century. In addition we have some scanty hints given by the early
commentators on the _Divina Commedia_, and a few documents, including
the _consulte_ or reports of the deliberations of the various councils
of the Florentine Republic. Boccaccio’s work has come down to us in
two forms: the _Vita di Dante_ (or _Trattatello in laude di Dante_)
and the so-called _Compendio_ (itself in two redactions, the _Primo_
and _Secondo Compendio_); the researches of Michele Barbi have finally
established that both are authentic, the _Compendio_ being the author’s
own later revision. The tendency of recent scholarship has in a
considerable measure rehabilitated the once discredited authority of
Boccaccio, and rejected the excessive scepticism represented in the
nineteenth century by Bartoli and Scartazzini.
BEATRICE.--Although Leonardo Bruni rebukes Boccaccio, “our Boccaccio
that most sweet and pleasant man,” for having lingered so long over
Dante’s love affairs, still the story of the poet’s first love
remains the one salient fact of his youth and early manhood. We may
surmise from the _Vita Nuova_ that at the end of his eighteenth year,
presumably in May 1283, Dante became enamoured of the glorious lady
of his mind, Beatrice, who had first appeared to him as a child in
her ninth year, nine years before. It is not quite certain whether
Beatrice was her real name or one beneath which Dante conceals her
identity; assuredly she was “Beatrice,” the giver of blessing, to him
and through him to all lovers of the noblest and fairest things in
literature. Tradition, following Boccaccio, has identified her with
Bice, the daughter of Folco Portinari, a wealthy Florentine who founded
the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, and died in 1289 (_cf._ _V. N._ xxii.).
Folco’s daughter is shown by her father’s will to have been the wife
of Simone dei Bardi, a rich and noble banker. This has been confirmed
by the discovery that, while the printed commentary of Dante’s son
Pietro upon the _Commedia_ hardly suggests that Beatrice was a real
woman at all, there exists a fuller and later recension by Pietro
of his own work which contains a distinct statement that the lady
raised to fame in his father’s poem was in very fact Bice Portinari.
Nevertheless, there are still found critics who see in Beatrice not a
real woman, but a mystically exalted ideal of womanhood or a merely
allegorical figure; while Scartazzini at one time maintained that the
woman Dante loved was an unknown Florentine maiden, who would have
been his wife but for her untimely death. This can hardly be deduced
from the _Vita Nuova_; in its noblest passages the woman of Dante’s
worship is scarcely regarded as an object that can be possessed; death
has not robbed him of an expected beatitude, but all the world of an
earthly miracle. But, although it was in the fullest correspondence
with mediaeval ideals and fashions that chivalrous love and devotion
should be directed by preference to a married woman, the love of Dante
for Beatrice was something at once more real and more exalted than the
artificial passion of the troubadours; a true romantic love that linked
heaven to earth, and was a revelation for the whole course of life.
POETRY, FRIENDSHIP, STUDY.--Already, at the age of eighteen, Dante
was a poet: “I had already seen for myself the art of saying words
in rhyme” (_V. N._ iii.). It was on the occasion of what we take as
the real beginning of his love that he wrote the opening sonnet of
the _Vita Nuova_, in which he demands an explanation of a dream from
“all the faithful of Love.” The new poet was at once recognised. Among
the many answers came a sonnet from the most famous Italian lyrist
then living, Guido Cavalcanti, henceforth to be the first of Dante’s
friends: “And this was, as it were, the beginning of the friendship
between him and me, when he knew that I was he who had sent that sonnet
to him” (_cf._ _Inf._ x. 60). In the same year, 1283, Dante’s name
first occurs in a document concerning some business transactions as his
late father’s heir.
There are no external events recorded in Dante’s life between 1283
and 1289. Boccaccio represents him as devoted to study. He certainly
owed much to the paternal advice of the old rhetorician and statesman,
Brunetto Latini, who had been secretary of the commune and, until
his death in 1294, was one of the most influential citizens in the
state: “For in my memory is fixed, and now goes to my heart, the dear,
kind, paternal image of you, when in the world, from time to time,
you taught me how man makes himself eternal” (_Inf._ xv. 82). Of his
growing maturity in art, the lyrics of the _Vita Nuova_ bear witness;
the prose narrative shows that he had studied the Latin poets as well
as the new singers of Provence and Italy, had already dipped into
scholastic philosophy, and was not unacquainted with Aristotle. At the
same time, Leonardo Bruni was obviously right in describing Dante as
not severing himself from the world, but excelling in every youthful
exercise; and it would seem from the _Vita Nuova_ that, in spite of
his supreme devotion for Beatrice, there were other Florentine damsels
who moved his heart for a time. Dante speaks of “one who, according to
the degrees of friendship, is my friend immediately after the first,”
and than whom there was no one nearer in kinship to Beatrice (_V.
N._ xxxiii.). Those who identify Dante’s Beatrice with the daughter
of Messer Folco suppose that this second friend was one of her three
brothers, probably Manetto Portinari, to whom a sonnet of Guido’s may
have been addressed. Casella the musician, and Lapo Gianni the poet,
are mentioned with affection in the _Purgatorio_ (Canto ii.), and in
one of Dante’s sonnets respectively; Lippo de’ Bardi, evidently like
Casella a musician, and a certain Meuccio likewise appear as friends in
other of his earliest lyrics. Cino da Pistoia, like Cavalcanti, seems
to have answered Dante’s dream; their friendship was perhaps at present
mainly confined to exchanging poems. Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola
speak of an early visit of Dante’s to the universities of Bologna and
Padua, and there is some evidence for thinking that he was at Bologna
some time not later than 1287. He may possibly have served in some
cavalry expedition to check the harrying parties of Aretines in 1288;
for, when the great battle of the following year was fought, it found
Dante “no novice in arms,” as a fragment of one of his lost letters
puts it, _non fanciullo nell’ armi_.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT.--Twenty years had now passed since the victory
of Colle di Valdelsa in 1269. Great changes had taken place in the
meanwhile. The estrangement between Charles of Anjou and the Popes,
Gregory X. and Nicholas III., the attempts of these latter to
weaken the king’s power by reconciling the Florentine Guelfs with
the Ghibelline exiles, and the dissensions among the Guelf magnates
themselves within the city, had led, in 1280, to the peace arranged
by Cardinal Latino Frangipani. A government was set up of fourteen
_buonuomini_, magnates and popolani, eight Guelfs and six Ghibellines.
But the city remained strenuously Guelf. Nicholas III. had deprived
King Charles of the offices of Senator of Rome and Vicar Imperial
and had allowed Rudolph of Hapsburg to establish a vicar in Tuscany
(_Inf._ xix. 99). In 1282 came the Vespers of Palermo (_Par._ viii.
75). The Sicilians rose, massacred Charles’s adherents, and received
as their king Peter of Aragon, the husband of Manfred’s daughter
Constance (_Purg._ iii. 143). The hitherto united kingdom of Sicily,
which had been the heritage of the imperial Suabians from the Norman
heroes of the house of Hauteville, was thus divided between a French
and a Spanish line of kings (_Par._ xx. 63); the former at Naples as
kings of “Sicily and Jerusalem,” the latter in the island as kings
of “Trinacria.” Charles was henceforth too much occupied in war with
the Sicilians and Aragonese to interfere in the internal affairs of
Tuscany. In the June of this year a peaceful revolution took place in
Florence. Instead of the fourteen _buonuomini_, the government was put
into the hands of the Priors of the Arts or Guilds, who, associated
with the Captain, were henceforth recognised as the chief magistrates
of the Republic, composing the Signoria, during the two months for
which they were elected to hold office. Their number, originally three,
was raised to six; both _grandi_ and _popolani_ were at first eligible,
provided the former left their order by enrolling themselves in one
of the Guilds. A thorough organisation of these Guilds, the _Arti
maggiori_ (which were mainly engaged in wholesale commerce, exportation
and importation, and the mercantile relations of Florence with foreign
countries) and _Arti minori_ (which carried on the retail traffic and
internal trade of the city), secured the administration in the hands of
the trading classes.
Thus was established the democratic constitution of the state in
which Dante was afterwards to play his part. There was the central
administration of the six Priors, one for each _sesto_ of the city,
with the council of a hundred “good men of the people without whose
deliberation no great thing or expenditure could be done” (Villani,
vii. 16). The executive was composed of the Captain of the People and
the Podestà, both Italian nobles from other states, holding office
for six months, each with his two councils, a special and a general
council, the general council of the Podestà being the general council
of the Commune. The great Guilds had their own council (_Consiglio
delle Capitudini delle Arti_), and their consuls or rectors, while
specially associated with the two councils of the Captain, were
sometimes admitted to those of the Podestà; the nobles were excluded
from all these councils, excepting the special council of the Podestà
and the general council of the Commune. But, while the central
government of the Republic was thus entirely popular, the magnates
still retained control over the captains of the Guelf Society, with
their two councils, and exerted considerable influence upon the
Podestà, always one of their own order and an alien, in whose councils
they still sat. The Podestà, however, was now little more than a chief
justice; “the Priors, with the Captain of the People, had to determine
the great and weighty matters of the commonwealth, and to summon and
conduct councils and make regulations” (Villani).
BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO.--A period of prosperity and victory followed
for Florence. The crushing defeat inflicted upon Pisa by Genoa at the
great naval battle of Meloria in 1284 was much to her advantage; as
was also, perhaps, the decline of the Angevin power after the victory
of Peter of Aragon’s fleet (_Purg._ xx. 79). Charles II., the “cripple
of Jerusalem,” who succeeded his father as king of Naples, was a less
formidable suzerain. On June 11th, 1289, the Tuscan Ghibellines were
utterly defeated by the Florentines and their allies at the battle of
Campaldino. According to Leonardo Bruni--and there seems no adequate
reason for rejecting his testimony--Dante was present, “fighting
valiantly on horseback in the front rank,” apparently among the 150 who
volunteered or were chosen as _feditori_, amongst whom was Vieri de’
Cerchi, who was later to acquire a more dubious reputation in politics.
Bruni states that in a letter Dante draws a plan of the fight; and
he quotes what seems to be a fragment of another letter, written
later, where Dante speaks of “the battle of Campaldino, in which the
Ghibelline party was almost utterly destroyed and undone; where I found
myself no novice in arms, and where I had much fear, and in the end
very great gladness, by reason of the varying chances of that battle.”
Dante probably took part in the subsequent events of the campaign; the
wasting of the Aretine territory, the unsuccessful attack upon Arezzo,
the surrender of the Pisan fortress of Caprona. “Thus once I saw the
footmen, who marched out under treaty from Caprona, fear at seeing
themselves among so many enemies” (_Inf._ xxi. 94-96). There appears to
be a direct reference to his personal experiences of the campaign in
the opening of _Inferno_ xxii.: “I have seen ere now horsemen moving
camp and beginning the assault, and holding their muster, and at times
retiring to escape; coursers have I seen upon your land, O Aretines!
and seen the march of foragers, the shock of tournaments and race of
jousts, now with trumpets and now with bells, with drums and castle
signals.” He has sung of Campaldino in peculiarly pathetic strains in
Canto V. of the _Purgatorio_. On the lower slopes of the Mountain of
Purgation wanders the soul of Buonconte da Montefeltro, who led the
Aretine cavalry, and whose body was never found; mortally wounded and
forsaken by all, he had died gasping out the name of Mary, and his
Giovanna had forgotten even to pray for his soul.
DEATH OF BEATRICE.--In the following year, 1290, Beatrice died: “The
Lord of justice called this most gentle one to glory under the banner
of that blessed queen Mary virgin, whose name was in very great
reverence in the words of this blessed Beatrice” (_V. N._ xxix.).
Although Dante complicates the date by a reference to “the usage of
Arabia,” she appears to have died on the evening of June 8th;[1] and
the poet lifts up his voice with the prophet: “How doth the city sit
solitary that was full of people! How is she become as a widow, she
that was great among the nations!”
3. _After the Death of Beatrice_
PHILOSOPHIC REFUGE.--It is not easy to get a very definite idea of
Dante’s private life during the next ten years. With the completion
of the _Vita Nuova_, shortly after Beatrice’s death, an epoch
closes in his life, as in his work. From the _Convivio_ it would
appear that in his sorrow Dante took refuge in the study of the _De
Consolatione Philosophiae_ of Boëthius and Cicero’s _De Amicitia_;
that he frequented “the schools of the religious and the disputations
of philosophers,” where he became deeply enamoured of Philosophy.
Cino da Pistoia addressed to him an exceedingly beautiful canzone,
consoling him for the loss of Beatrice, bidding him take comfort in the
contemplation of her glory among the saints and angels of Paradise,
where she is praying to God for her lover’s peace. This poem is quoted
years later by Dante himself in the second book of the _De Vulgari
Eloquentia_ (ii. 6), where he couples it with his own canzone--
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,
“Love that in my mind discourses to me,” with which Casella consoles
the penitent spirits upon the shore of Purgatory: “The amorous chant
which was wont to quiet all my desires.”
ABERRATIONS.--It would seem, however, that neither the memory of
Beatrice nor his philosophical devotion kept Dante from falling
into what he afterwards came to regard as a morally unworthy life.
_Tanto giù cadde_, “so low he fell” (_Purg._ xxx. 136). It is almost
impossible to hold, as Witte and Scartazzini would have us do, that
the poignant reproaches which Beatrice addresses to Dante, when he
meets her on Lethe’s banks, are connected mainly with intellectual
errors, with culpable neglect of Theology or speculative wanderings
from revealed truth, for there are but scanty, if any, traces of this
in the poet’s writings at any period of his career. The dark wood in
which he wandered, led by the world and the flesh, was that of sensual
passion and moral aberration for a while from the light of reason and
the virtue which is the “ordering of love.”
FRIENDSHIP WITH FORESE DONATI.--Dante was evidently intimate with the
great Donati family, whose houses were in the same district of the
city. Corso di Simone Donati, a turbulent and ambitious spirit, had
done heroically at Campaldino, and was now intent upon having his
own way in the state. A close and familiar friendship united Dante
with Corso’s brother Forese, a sensual man of pleasure. Six sonnets
interchanged between these two friends, though now only in part
intelligible, do little credit to either. “If thou recall to mind,”
Dante says to Forese in the sixth terrace of Purgatory, “what thou
wast with me and I was with thee, the present memory will still be
grievous” (_Purg._ xxiii, 115). Forese died in July 1296; the author
of the _Ottimo Commento_, who wrote about 1334, and professes to have
known the divine poet, tells us that Dante induced his friend when on
his death-bed to repent and receive the last sacraments. Another sonnet
of Dante’s shows him in friendly correspondence with Brunetto (Betto)
Brunelleschi, a noble who later played a sinister part in the factions
and, like Corso Donati, met a violent death.
LOVES, MARRIAGE, AND DEBTS.--Several very striking canzoni, written
for a lady whom Dante represents under various stony images, and whose
name may possibly have been Pietra, are frequently assigned to this
period of the poet’s life, but may perhaps have been written in the
early days of his exile. From other lyrics and sonnets we dimly discern
that several women may have crossed Dante’s life now and later, of
whom nothing can be known. Dante married Gemma di Manetto Donati, a
distant kinswoman of Corso and Forese. In the _Paradiso_ (xvi. 119)
he refers with complacency to his wife’s ancestor, Ubertino Donati,
Manetto’s great-grandfather, whose family pride scorned any alliance
with the Adimari. According to Boccaccio, the marriage took place some
time after the death of Beatrice, and it was certainly not later than
1297; but there is documentary evidence that Gemma’s dowry was settled
in 1277, which points to an early betrothal. The union has generally
been supposed--on somewhat inadequate grounds--to have been an unhappy
one. Gemma bore Dante two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, and either one or
two daughters. Boccaccio’s statement, that she did not share the poet’s
exile, is usually accepted; she was living in Florence after his death,
and died there after 1332.[2] During the following years, between 1297
and 1300, Dante was contracting debts (Durante di Scolaio degli Abati
and Manetto Donati being among his sureties), which altogether amounted
to a very large sum, but which were cleared off from the poet’s estate
after his death.
4. _Dante’s Political Life_
ELECTION OF BONIFACE VIII.--Upon the abdication of Celestine V.,
Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani was made Pope on Christmas Eve 1294, under
the title of Boniface VIII. (_Inf._ xix. 52-57), an event ominous for
Florence and for Dante. Although canonised by the Church, there is
little doubt that St. Celestine is the first soul met by Dante in the
vestibule of Hell: _Colui che fece per viltà il gran rifiuto_ (_Inf._
iii. 58-60), “He who made from cowardice the great renunciation.”
GIANO DELLA BELLA.--Florence had just confirmed the democratic
character of her constitution by the reforms of Giano della Bella,
a noble who had identified himself with the popular cause (_Par._
xvi. 132). By the Ordinances of Justice in 1293 stringent provisions
were enacted against the nobles, who since Campaldino had grown
increasingly aggressive towards the people and factious against each
other. They were henceforth more rigorously excluded from the Priorate
and Council of the Hundred, as also from the councils of the Captain
and Capitudini; severe penalties were exacted for offences against
_popolani_; and, in order that these ordinances should be carried out,
a new magistrate, the Gonfaloniere di Guistizia or Standard-bearer of
Justice, was added to the Signoria to hold office like the Priors for
two months in rotation from the different districts of the city. Thus
was completed the _secondo popolo_, the second democratic constitution
of Florence. The third of these standard-bearers was Dino Compagni, the
chronicler. Giano della Bella was meditating the continuation of his
work by depriving the captains of the Guelf Society of their power and
resources, when a riot, in which Corso Donati played a prominent part,
caused his overthrow in March 1295. By his fall the government remained
in the hands of the rich burghers, being practically an oligarchy of
merchants and bankers.
FIRST STEPS IN POLITICAL LIFE.--In this same year 1295, the first year
of the pontificate of Boniface VIII., Dante entered political life.
Although of noble descent, the Alighieri do not seem to have ranked as
magnates. By a modification in the Ordinances of Justice in July 1295,
citizens, without actually exercising an “art,” were admitted to office
provided they had matriculated and were not knights, if not more than
two persons in their family had held knighthood within the last twenty
years. Dante now (or perhaps a little later) enrolled his name in the
_matricola_ of the Art of Physicians and Apothecaries, which included
painters and booksellers. For the six months from November 1st, 1295,
to April 30th, 1296, he was a member of the Special Council of the
Captain. On December 14th, as one of the savi or specially summoned
counsellors, he gave his opinion (_consuluit_) in the Council of the
Capitudini of the Arts on the procedure to be adopted for the election
of the new Signoria. On January 23rd, 1296, the Pope inaugurated his
aggressive policy towards the Republic by addressing a bull to the
Podestà, Captain, Ancients, Priors and Rectors of the Arts, to the
Council and the Commune of Florence (purposely ignoring the new office
of Gonfaloniere). After denouncing in unmeasured terms the wickedness
of that “rock of scandal,” Giano della Bella, and extolling the
prudence of the Florentines in expelling him, the Pope, hearing that
certain persons are striving to obtain his recall, utterly forbids
anything of the kind without special licence from the Holy See, under
penalty of excommunication and interdict. The Pope further protests his
great and special affection for Florence, amongst the cities devoted to
God and the Apostolic See. “I love France so well,” says Shakespeare’s
King Henry, “that I will not part with a village of it; I will have it
all mine.”
Although Boccaccio, and others in his steps, have somewhat exaggerated
Dante’s influence in the politics of the Republic, there can be no
doubt that he soon came to take a decided attitude in direct opposition
to all lawlessness, and in resistance to any external interference in
Florentine matters, whether from Rome, Naples, or France. The eldest
son of Charles II., Carlo Martello, whom Dante had “loved much and
with good cause” (_Par._ viii. 55) during his visit to Florence in
the spring of 1294, had died in the following year; and his father
was harassing the Florentines for money to carry on the Sicilian war.
Dante, on leaving the Council of the Captain, had been elected to
the Council of the Hundred, in which, on June 5th, 1296, he spoke in
support of various proposals, including one on the embellishment of
the cathedral and baptistery by the removal of the old hospital, and
another undertaking not to receive men under ban of the Commune of
Pistoia in the city and contado of Florence. In the previous May, in
consequence of internal factions, Pistoia had given Florence control of
the city, with power to send a podestà and a captain every six months.
After this we do not hear of Dante again until May 7th, 1300, when he
acted as ambassador to San Gemignano to announce that a parliament was
to be held for the purpose of electing a captain for the Guelf League
of Tuscany, and to invite the Commune to send representatives. But
already the storm cloud which loomed on the horizon had burst upon the
city on May Day 1300.
BLACKS AND WHITES.--The new division of parties in Florence became
associated with the feud between two noble families, the Donati and the
Cerchi, headed respectively by two of the heroes of Campaldino, Corso
Donati and Vieri de’ Cerchi. The names Neri and Bianchi, Black Guelfs
and White Guelfs, by which the two factions became known, seem to have
been derived from a similar division in Pistoia, the ringleaders of
which, being banished to Florence, embittered the quarrels already
in progress in the ruling city. But the roots of the trouble went
deeper and were political, connected with the discontent of both
magnates and _popolo minuto_ under the hegemony of the Greater Arts.
The Bianchi were opposed to a costly policy of expansion; the Neri,
who had wider international and mercantile connections, looked beyond
the affairs of the Commune, and favoured intimate relations with the
Angevin sovereigns of Naples and the Pope. To the Bianchi adhered those
nobles who had matriculated in the Arts, the more moderate spirits
among the burghers, the remains of the party of Giano della Bella who
supported the Ordinances of Justice in a modified form. While the
Bianchi drew closer to the constitutional government, the strength of
the Neri lay in the councils of the Guelf Society and the influence
of the aristocratic bankers. Guido Cavalcanti (who, even after the
modification of the Ordinances, would have been excluded from office)
was allied with the Cerchi, but probably less influenced by political
considerations than by his personal hostility towards Messer Corso, who
was in high favour with the Pope. Florence was now indeed “disposed
for woeful ruin” (_Purg._ xxiv. 81), but there had been a “long
contention” (_Inf._ vi. 64) before the parties came to bloodshed.
THE JUBILEE.--On February 22nd, 1300, Pope Boniface issued the bull
proclaiming the first papal jubilee. It began with the previous
Christmas Day and lasted through the year 1300. Amongst the throngs
of pilgrims from all parts of the world to Rome were Giovanni Villani
and, probably, Dante (_Inf._ xviii. 29). This visit to Rome inspired
Villani to undertake his great chronicle; and it is the epoch to which
Dante assigns the vision which is the subject of the _Divina Commedia_
(_Purg._ ii. 98). The Pope, however, had his eyes on Florence, and
had apparently resolved to make Tuscany a part of the Papal States.
Possibly he had already opened negotiations with the Neri through
his agents and bankers, the Spini. A plot against the state on the
part of three Florentines in the service of the Pope was discovered
to the Signoria, and sentence passed against the offenders on April
18th.[3] Boniface wrote to the Bishop of Florence, on April 24th, 1300,
demanding from the Commune that the sentences should be annulled and
the accusers sent to him. The Priors having refused compliance and
denied his jurisdiction in the matter, the Pope issued a second bull,
declaring that he had no intention of derogating from the jurisdiction
or liberty of Florence, which he intended to increase; but asserting
the absolute supremacy of the Roman Pontiff both in spiritual and
temporal things over all peoples and kingdoms, and demanding again,
with threats of vengeance spiritual and temporal, that the sentences
against his adherents should be annulled, that the three accusers with
six of the most violent against his authority should appear before him,
and that the officers of the Republic should send representatives to
answer for their conduct. This was on May 15th, but, two days earlier,
the Pope had written to the Duke of Saxony, and sent the Bishop of
Ancona to Germany, to demand from Albert of Austria the renunciation
absolutely to the Holy See of all rights claimed by the Emperors in
Tuscany.
DANTE’S PRIORATE.--But in the meantime bloodshed had taken place in
Florence. On May 1st the two factions came to blows in the Piazza di
Santa Trinita; and on May 4th full powers had been given to the Priors
to defend the liberty of the Commune and People of Florence against
dangers from within and without (which had evidently irritated the
Pope). The whole city was now divided; magnates and burghers alike
became bitter partisans of one or other faction. The Pope, who had
previously made a vain attempt to reconcile Vieri de’ Cerchi with
the Donati, sent the Franciscan Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta as
legate and peacemaker to Florence, in the interests of the captains
of the Guelf Society and the Neri, who accused the Signoria of
Ghibelline tendencies. The Cardinal arrived in June. From June 15th
to August 14th Dante was one of the six Priors by election. “All my
misfortunes,” he says in the letter quoted by Leonardo Bruni, “had
their cause and origin in my ill-omened election to the Priorate; of
which Priorate, though by prudence I was not worthy, still by faith and
age I was not unworthy.” We know too little of the facts to be able
to comment upon this cryptic utterance. On the first day of office
(June 15th), the sentence passed in the previous April against the
three Florentines in the papal service was formally consigned to Dante
and his colleagues--Lapo Gianni (probably the same person as his poet
friend of that name) acting as notary. There were disturbances in the
city. On St. John’s Eve an assault was made upon the Consuls of the
Arts by certain magnates of the Neri, and their opponents threatened to
take up arms. The Priors, perhaps on Dante’s motion, exiled (or, more
accurately, put under bounds outside the territory of the Republic)
some prominent members of both factions, including Corso Donati and
Guido Cavalcanti. The Neri attempted to resist, expecting aid from the
Cardinal and from Lucca; the Bianchi obeyed. Negotiations continued
between the Signoria and the Cardinal, Dante and his colleagues
resisting the papal demands without coming to a formal rupture.
THE BIANCHI IN POWER.--The succeeding Signoria was less prudent. The
banished Bianchi were allowed to return just after Dante had left
office (as he himself states in a lost letter seen by Leonardo Bruni),
on the plea of the illness of Guido Cavalcanti, who had contracted
malaria at Sarzana, and died at Florence in the last days of August.
At the end of September a complete rupture ensued with Cardinal Matteo
d’Acquasparta, who broke off negotiations and retired to Bologna,
leaving the city under an interdict. Corso Donati had broken bounds and
gone to the Pope, who, towards the close of 1300, nominated Charles
of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, captain-general of the papal
states, and summoned him to Italy to aid Charles of Naples against
Frederick of Aragon in Sicily and reduce the “rebels” of Tuscany to
submission.
We meet the name of Dante on several occasions among the _consulte_ of
the Florentine Republic during 1301. It is probable that he was one
of the _savi_ called to council on March 15th, and that he opposed
the granting of a subsidy in money which the King of Naples had
demanded for the Sicilian war and which was made by the Council of
the Hundred.[4] On April 14th he was among the _savi_ in the Council
of the Capitudini for the election of the new Signoria, of which
Palmieri Altoviti was the leading spirit. On April 28th Dante was
appointed _officialis et superestans_, in connection with the works
in the street of San Procolo, possibly with the object of more readily
bringing up troops from the country. During the priorate of Palmieri
Altoviti (April 15th to June 14th), a conspiracy was discovered,
hatched at a meeting of the Neri in the church of S. Trinita, to
overthrow the government and invite the Pope to send Charles of Valois
to Florence. In consequence a number of Neri were banished and their
possessions confiscated, a fresh sentence being passed against Corso
Donati. The Bianchi were all potent in Florence; and, in May 1301, they
procured the expulsion of the Neri from Pistoia (ruthlessly carried out
by the Florentine captain, Andrea Gherardini), which was the beginning
of the end (_Inf._ xxiv. 143): “Pistoia first is thinned of Neri; then
Florence renovates folk and rule.”
THE COMING OF CHARLES OF VALOIS.--The government still shrank from
directly opposing the Pope, who, by letter from Cardinal Matteo
d’Acquasparta, demanded the continuation of the service of a hundred
horsemen. On June 19th, 1301, in a united meeting of the Councils of
the Hundred, of the Captain, and of the Capitudini, and again in the
Council of the Hundred apart, Dante spoke against compliance, urging
“quod de servitio faciendo domini Papae nihil fiat”--with the result
that the matter was postponed. In the united Councils of the Hundred,
the Captain, the Podestà, and the Capitudini, on September 13th, he
pleaded for the preservation of the Ordinances of Justice (a sign
that the State was regarded as in peril). On this occasion all the
twenty-one arts were represented, which we may connect with Leonardo
Bruni’s statement that Dante had advised the Priors to strengthen
themselves with the support of the “moltitudine del popolo.” On
September 20th, in the Council of the Captain, he supported a request
of the ambassadors of the Commune of Bologna (then allied with the
Bianchi) for free passage for their importation of grain. On September
28th, again in the Council of the Captain, he defended a certain Neri
di Gherardino Diedati (whose father was destined to share the poet’s
fate) from an injust charge. This is the last recorded time that
_Dantes Alagherii consuluit_ in Florence. Already Charles of Valois was
on his way, preparing to “joust with the lance of Judas” (_Purg._ xx.
70-78). On November 1st, after giving solemn pledges to the Signoria
(Dino Compagni being one of the Priors), Charles with 1200 horsemen
entered Florence without opposition.
Leonardo Bruni asserts that Dante was absent at Rome on an embassy to
the Pope when the latter’s “peacemaker” entered Florence. It would
appear that the Florentine government had requested the allied Commune
of Bologna to send an embassy to Boniface, simultaneously with an
embassy from Siena with which were associated three ambassadors from
Florence: Maso di Ruggierino Minerbetti, Corazza da Signa, and Dante
Alighieri. Their purpose was to make their own terms with the Pontiff
in order to avert the intervention of Charles. The mission set out
at the beginning of October; but one of the Bolognese ambassadors,
Ubaldino Malavolti, having business of his own with the Florentine
government, delayed the others so long that they did not arrive in
time.[5] Boccaccio asserts that, when the Bianchi proposed to send
Dante on such an embassy, he answered somewhat arrogantly: “If I go,
who stays? and if I stay, who goes?” According to Dino Compagni,
Boniface sent two of the Florentines--Maso Minerbetti and Corazza
da Signa--back to Florence to demand submission to his will, but
detained Dante at his court. The fact of Dante taking part in such
an embassy is confirmed by the author of the _Ottimo Commento_, as
also by an anonymous commentator on the canzone of the _Tre donne_,
and, though seriously questioned by many Dante scholars, it is now
generally accepted as historical. The other two ambassadors returned
almost simultaneously with the arrival of the French prince. Yielding
to necessity and trusting to his solemn oath, the Signoria, in a
parliament held in S. Maria Novella, gave Charles authority to pacify
the city; which he set about doing by restoring the Neri to power.
Corso Donati with his allies entered Florence in arms, to plunder and
massacre at their pleasure, the last Signoria of the Bianchi being
compelled to resign on November 7th (cf. _Purg._ vi. 143, 144). A
second effort by the Cardinal Matteo from the Pope to reconcile the
two factions was resisted by Charles and the Neri; and the work of
proscription began. The new Podestà, Cante de’ Gabrielli da Gubbio,
passed sentence after sentence against the ruined Bianchi. Finally,
at the beginning of April, their chiefs were betrayed into a real
or pretended conspiracy against Charles, and driven out with their
followers and adherents, both nobles and burghers, six hundred in
number; their houses were destroyed, and their goods confiscated,
themselves sentenced as rebels. On April 4th, 1302, Charles left
Florence, covered with disgrace and full of plunder, leaving the
government entirely in the hands of the Neri. “Having cast forth the
greatest part of the flowers from thy bosom, O Florence,” writes Dante
in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, “the second Totila went fruitlessly to
Sicily” (_V. E._ ii. 6).
SENTENCES AGAINST DANTE.--The first sentence against Dante is dated
January 27th, 1302, and includes four other names. Gherardino Diedati,
formerly Prior, is accused of taking bribes for the release of a
prisoner, and has not appeared when summoned. Palmieri Altoviti (who
had taken the lead in putting down the conspiracy hatched in Santa
Trinita), Dante Alighieri, Lippo Becchi (one of the denouncers of
Boniface’s agents in 1300), and Orlanduccio Orlandi are accused of
“barratry,” fraud and corrupt practices, unlawful gains and extortions
and the like, in office and out of office; of having corruptly and
fraudulently used the money and resources of the Commune against the
Supreme Pontiff, and to resist the coming of Messer Carlo, or against
the pacific state of Florence and the Guelf Party; of having caused the
expulsion of the Neri from Pistoia, and severed that city from Florence
and the Church. Since they have contumaciously absented themselves,
when summoned to appear before the Podestà’s court, they are held to
have confessed their guilt, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine and
restore what they have extorted. If not paid in three days, all their
goods shall be confiscated; even if they pay, they are exiled for two
years and perpetually excluded as falsifiers and barrators, _tamquam
falsarii et barattarii_, from holding any office or benefice under the
Commune of Florence. On March 10th, a further sentence condemns these
five with ten others to be burned to death, if any of them at any time
shall come into the power of the Commune. In this latter sentence
there is no mention of any political offence, but only of malversation
and contumacy. None of Dante’s six colleagues in the Signoria are
included in either sentence; but in the second appear the names of Lapo
Salterelli, who had headed the opposition to Boniface in the spring
of 1300, but whom the poet judges sternly (cf. _Par._ xv. 128), and
Andrea Gherardini, who had been Florentine captain at Pistoia.
There can be little doubt that, in spite of the wording of these two
sentences, Dante’s real offence was his opposition to the policy of
Pope Boniface. In the _De Volgari Eloquentia_ (i. 6) he declares that
he is suffering exile unjustly because of his love for Florence.
All his early biographers bear testimony to his absolute innocence
of the charge of malversation and barratry; it has been left to
modern commentators to question it. In the letter to a Florentine
friend, Dante speaks of his innocence manifest to all, _innocentia
manifesta quibuslibet_, as though in direct answer to the _fama
publica referente_ of the Podestà’s sentence. His likening himself
to Hippolytus is a no less emphatic protestation of innocence: “As
Hippolytus departed from Athens, by reason of his pitiless and
treacherous stepmother, so from Florence needs must thou depart. This
is willed, this is already being sought, and soon will it be done for
him who thinks it, there where Christ is put to sale each day” (_Par._
xvii. 46-51). “I hold my exile as an honour”:
L’essilio che m’è dato, on or mi tegno,
he says in his canzone of the _Tre donne_. Had Dante completed the
_Convivio_, he would probably have furnished us with a complete
apologia in the fourteenth treatise, where he intended to comment upon
this canzone and discuss Justice. “Justice,” he says in _Conv._ i.
12, “is so lovable that, as the philosopher says in the fifth of the
Ethics, even her enemies love her, such as thieves and robbers; and
therefore we see that her contrary, which is injustice, is especially
hated (as is treachery, ingratitude, falseness, theft, rapine, deceit,
and their like). The which are such inhuman sins that, to defend
himself from the infamy of these, it is conceded by long usance that
a man may speak of himself, and may declare himself to be faithful
and loyal. Of this virtue I shall speak more fully in the fourteenth
treatise.”
5. _First Period of Exile_
“Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and
most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth from her sweet
bosom (in which I was born and nourished up to the summit of my life,
and in which, with her goodwill, I desire with all my heart to rest
my wearied mind and to end the time given me), I have gone through
almost all the parts to which this language extends, a pilgrim, almost
a beggar, showing against my will the wound of fortune, which is wont
unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to the wounded.”
In these words (_Conv._ i. 3), Dante sums up the earlier portion of
his exile. There are few lines of poetry more noble in pathos, more
dignified in reticence, than those which he has put into the mouth of
Cacciaguida (_Par._ xvii. 55-60): “Thou shalt leave everything beloved
most dearly, and this is that arrow which the bow of exile first
shoots. Thou shalt test how savours of salt another’s bread, and how
hard the ascending and descending by another’s stairs.”
EARLY DAYS OF EXILE.--The terms of the first sentence against Dante
seem to imply that, if he had returned to Florence, he fled from
the city before January 27th, 1302. We do not know where he went.
Boccaccio, apparently from a misunderstanding of _Par._ xvii. 70,
says Verona; if we suppose it to have been Siena, this would explain
Leonardo Bruni’s account of Dante’s first hearing particulars of his
ruin at the latter city. The sentence against Messer Vieri de’ Cerchi,
with the other leaders, is dated April 5th in the terrible _Libro del
Chiodo_, the black book of the Guelf Party. Arezzo, Forlì, Siena,
Bologna, were the chief resorts of the exiled Bianchi; in Bologna they
seem for some time to have been especially welcome. Dante first joined
them in a meeting held at Gargonza, where they are said by Bruni to
have made the poet one of their twelve councillors, and to have fixed
their headquarters at Arezzo. For a short time Dante made common cause
with them, but found their society extremely uncongenial (_Par._
xvii. 61-66). On June 8th, 1302, there is documentary evidence of his
presence with some others in the choir of San Godenzo at the foot of
the Apennines, where the Bianchi allied with the Ghibelline Ubaldini
to make war upon Florence. The fact of this meeting having been held in
Florentine territory and followed by several cavalry raids induced a
fresh sentence in July from the new Podestà, Gherardino da Gambara of
Brescia, in which, however, Dante is not mentioned.
FAILURE OF THE BIANCHI.--A heavy blow was inflicted upon the exiles by
the treachery of Carlino di Pazzi (_Inf._ xxxii. 69), who surrendered
the castle of Piantravigne in Valdarno to the Neri, when many Bianchi
were slain or taken. The cruelty of the Romagnole, Count Fulcieri
da Calboli, the next Podestà of Florence from January to September
1303, towards such of the unfortunate Bianchi as fell into his hands
has received its meed of infamy in _Purg._ xiv. 58-66. It is perhaps
noteworthy (as bearing upon the date of Dante’s separation from his
fellow-exiles) that the poet’s name does not appear among the Bianchi
who, under the leadership of the Ghibelline captain, Scarpetta degli
Ordelaffi of Forlì, signed an agreement with their allies in Bologna on
June 18th in this year; but this may merely imply that he did not go
to Bologna. He was possibly associated with Scarpetta at Forlì about
this time. These renewed attempts to recover the state by force of arms
resulted only in the disastrous defeat of Pulicciano in Mugello.
DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.--In this same year Sciarra Colonna and William
of Nogaret, in the name of Philip the Fair, seized Boniface VIII. at
Anagni, and treated the old Pontiff with such barbarity that he died in
a few days, October 11th, 1303. The seizure had been arranged by the
infamous Musciatto Franzesi, who had been instrumental in the bringing
of Charles of Valois to Florence. “I see the golden lilies enter
Alagna,” cries Hugh Capet in the _Purgatorio_; “and in His vicar Christ
made captive. I see Him mocked a second time. I see renewed the vinegar
and gall, and Him slain between thieves that live” (_Purg._ xx. 86-90).
BENEDICT XI.--In succession to Boniface, Nicholas of Treviso, the
master-general of the Dominicans, a man of humble birth and of saintly
life, was made Pope on October 22nd, 1303, as Benedict XI. He at
once devoted himself to healing the wounds of Italy, and sent to
Florence as peacemaker the Dominican Cardinal, Niccolò da Prato, who
was of Ghibelline origin. The peacemaker arrived in March 1304, and
was received with great honour. Representatives of the Bianchi and
Ghibellines came to the city at his invitation; and, when May opened,
there was an attempt to revive the traditional festivities which had
ended on that fatal May Day of 1300. But a terrible disaster on the
Ponte alla Carraia cast an ominous gloom over the city, and the Neri
treacherously forced the Cardinal to leave. Hardly had he gone when,
on June 10th, fighting broke out in the streets, and a fire, purposely
started by the Neri, devastated Florence. On July 7th Pope Benedict
died, perhaps poisoned, at Perugia; and, seeing this last hope taken
from them, the irreconcilable portion of the Bianchi, led by Baschiera
della Tosa, aided by the Ghibellines of Tuscany under Tolosato degli
Uberti, with allies from Bologna and Arezzo, made a valiant attempt
to surprise Florence on July 20th from Lastra. Baschiera, with about
a thousand horsemen, captured a part of the suburbs, and drew up his
force near San Marco, “with white standards displayed, and garlands
of olives, with drawn swords, crying peace” (Compagni). Through his
impetuosity and not awaiting the coming of Tolosato, this enterprise
ended in utter disaster, and with its failure the last hopes of the
Bianchi were dashed to the ground.
SEPARATION FROM THE BIANCHI AND WANDERINGS IN EXILE.--After the defeat
of Lastra, Bruni represents Dante as going from Arezzo to Verona,
utterly humbled. We learn from the _Paradiso_ (xvii. 61-69) that,
estranged from his fellow-exiles who had turned violently against
him, he had been compelled to form a party to himself. It is held by
some scholars that he had broken away from them in the previous year,
and that, towards the end of 1303, he had found his first refuge at
Verona in “the courtesy of the great Lombard,” Bartolommeo della
Scala, at whose court he now first saw his young brother, afterwards
famous as Can Grande, and already in boyhood showing sparks of future
greatness (_ibid._ 70-78). Others would identify _il gran Lombardo_
with Bartolommeo’s brother and successor, Albuino della Scala, who
ruled in Verona from March 1304 until October 1311, and associated Can
Grande with him as the commander of his troops. There is no certain
documentary evidence of Dante’s movements between June 1302 and October
1306. It is not improbable that, in 1304 or 1305, he stayed some time
at Bologna. The first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ seems in many
respects to bear witness to this stay at Bologna, where the exiles
were still welcome; a certain kindliness towards the Bolognese, very
different from his treatment of them later in the _Divina Commedia_,
is apparent, together with a peculiar acquaintance with their dialect.
But on March 1st, 1306, the Bolognese made a pact with the Neri,
after which they expelled the Florentine exiles, ordering that no
Bianchi or Ghibellines should be found in Bolognese territory on pain
of death. Dante perhaps went to Padua from Bologna, and, though the
supposed documentary proof of his residence in Padua on August 27th,
1306, cannot be accepted without reserve, it is tempting to accept the
statement of Benvenuto da Imola that the poet was entertained by Giotto
when the painter was engaged upon the frescoes of the Madonna dell’
Arena. In October, Dante was in Lunigiana, a guest of the Malaspina,
that honoured race adorned with the glory of purse and sword (_Purg._
viii. 121-139). Here, according to Boccaccio, he recovered from
Florence some manuscript which he had left behind him in his flight;
possibly what he afterwards rewrote as the first seven cantos of the
_Inferno_. On October 6th he acted as ambassador and _nuncio_ of the
Marquis Franceschino Malaspina in establishing peace between his house
and the Bishop of Luni. This is the last certain trace of Dante’s feet
in Italy for nearly five years. There is a strangely beautiful canzone
of his which may have been written at this time. Love has seized upon
the poet in the midst of the Alps (_i.e._ Apennines): “In the valley
of the river by whose side thou hast ever power upon me”; “Thou goest,
my mountain song; perchance shalt see Florence, my city, that bars me
out of herself, void of love and nude of pity; if thou dost enter in,
go saying: Now my maker can no more make war upon you; there, whence I
come, such a chain binds him that, even if your cruelty relax, he has
no liberty to return hither.”[6]
Dante had probably, as Bruni tells us, been abstaining from any hostile
action towards Florence, and hoping to be recalled by the government
spontaneously. There are traces of this state of mind in the _Convivio_
(i. 3). It would be about this time that he wrote in vain the letter
mentioned by Bruni, but now lost, _Popule mee quid feci tibi_.
CLEMENT V.--DEATH OF CORSO DONATI.--In the meantime Clement V., a
Gascon, and formerly Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been elected Pope.
“From westward there shall come a lawless shepherd of uglier deeds”
than even Boniface VIII., writes Dante in _Inferno_ xix. He translated
the Papal Court from Rome to Avignon, and thus in 1305 initiated the
Babylonian captivity of the Popes, which lasted for more than seventy
years, “to the great damage of all Christendom, but especially of Rome”
(Platina). Scandalous as was his subservience to the French king,
and utterly unworthy of the Papacy as he showed himself, it must be
admitted that Clement made serious efforts to relieve the persecuted
Bianchi and Ghibellines--efforts which were cut short by the surrender
of Pistoia in 1306 and the incompetence of his legate, the Cardinal
Napoleone Orsini. In October 1308, Corso Donati came to the violent end
mentioned as a prophecy in _Purg._ xxiv.; suspected, with good reason,
of aiming at the lordship of Florence with the aid of the Ghibelline
captain, Uguccione della Faggiuola, whose daughter he had married, he
was denounced as a traitor and killed in his flight from the city.
DANTE POSSIBLY AT PARIS.--Villani tells us that Dante, after exile,
went to the Studio at Bologna, and then to Paris and to many parts
of the world. The visit to Paris is also affirmed by Boccaccio, and
it is not impossible that Dante went thither, between 1307 and 1309,
by way of the Riviera and Provence. A highly improbable legend of
his presence at Oxford is based upon an ambiguous line in a poetical
epistle from Boccaccio to Petrarch and the later testimony of Giovanni
da Serravalle at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Dante’s stay
in Paris has been seriously questioned, and still remains uncertain.
The University of Paris was then the first in the world in theology
and scholastic philosophy. Boccaccio tells us that the disputations
which Dante sustained there were regarded as most marvellous triumphs
of scholastic subtlety. According to Giovanni da Serravalle (who has,
however, placed his Parisian experiences too early), Dante was forced
to return before taking the doctorate of theology, for which he had
already fulfilled the preliminaries. He may have stayed in Paris until
1310, when tremendous events put an end to his studies and imperatively
summoned him back to Italy.
6. _The Invasion of Henry VII._
“Lo, now is the acceptable time wherein arise the signs of consolation
and peace. For a new day is breaking from the east, showing forth the
dawn which already is dispersing the darkness of our long calamity; and
already the eastern breezes begin to blow, the face of heaven glows
red, and confirms the hopes of the nations with a caressing calm. And
we too shall see the looked-for joy, we who have kept vigil through the
long night in the desert” (_Epist._ v. 1).
ELECTION OF HENRY VII.--On May 1st, 1308, Albert of Austria, who,
by his neglect of Italy, had suffered the garden of the Empire to
be desert, was assassinated by his nephew (_Purg._ vi. 97-105). In
November, with the concurrence of the Pope and in opposition to the
royal house of France, Henry of Luxemburg was elected Emperor. In
January 1309 he was crowned at Aix as Henry VII.; in May 1310 he
announced to the Italian cities his intention of coming to Rome for
the imperial crown. Here was a true King of the Romans and successor
of Caesar, such as the Italians had not recognised since the death of
Frederick II. (_Conv._ iv. 3). The saddle was no longer empty; Italy
had once more a king and Rome a spouse. It is in the glory of this
imperial sunrise that Dante appears again, and, in the letter just
quoted to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, his voice is heard, hailing
the advent of this new Moses, this most clement Henry, _divus Augustus
Caesar_, who is hastening to the nuptials, illuminated in the rays of
the Apostolic benediction. The letter seems to have been written after
the beginning of September, when the Pope issued an encyclical on
Henry’s behalf, and before the latter part of October 1310, when the
Emperor arrived in Italy. According to the fifteenth-century historian,
Flavio Biondo, Dante was at this time at Forlì with Scarpetta
degli Ordelaffi. In January 1311 Henry took the iron crown (or its
substitute) at Milan. Dante, sometime before the end of March, paid
his homage to the Emperor (_Epist._ vii. 2): “I saw thee, as beseems
Imperial Majesty, most benignant, and heard thee most clement, when
that my hands handled thy feet and my lips paid their debt. Then did
my spirit exult in thee, and I spoke silently with myself: ‘Behold the
Lamb of God. Behold Him who hath taken away the sins of the world.’”
NATIONAL POLICY OF FLORENCE.--The Emperor himself shared the golden
dream of the Italian idealists, and, believing in the possibility
of the union of Church and Empire in a peaceful Italy healed of her
wounds, addressed himself ardently to his impossible task, forcing
cities to take back their exiles, patching up old quarrels. Opposed
to him arises the less sympathetic figure of King Robert of Naples,
who, having succeeded his father, Charles II., in May 1309, was
preparing--though still for a while negotiating on his own account
with Henry--to head the Guelf opposition. While others temporised,
Florence openly defied the Emperor, insulted his envoys, and refused to
send ambassadors to his coronation. While the Emperor put his imperial
vicars into Italian cities, as though he were another Frederick
Barbarossa, the Florentines drew closer their alliance with Robert,
formed a confederation of Guelf cities, and aided with money and men
all who made head against the German King. In spite of the bitter
language used by Dante in his letters, modern historians have naturally
recognised in this one of the most glorious chapters in the history of
the Republic. “Florence,” writes Pasquale Villari, “called on the Guelf
cities, and all seeking to preserve freedom and escape foreign tyranny,
to join in an Italian confederation, with herself at its head. This
is, indeed, the moment in which the small merchant republic initiates
a truly national policy, and becomes a great Italian power. So, in
the medieval shape of a feudal and universal Empire, on the one hand,
and in that of a municipal confederation on the other, a gleam of the
national idea first began to appear, though still in the far distance
and veiled in clouds.”
LETTERS AND FRESH SENTENCE.--On March 31st, 1311, from “the boundaries
of Tuscany under the source of the Arno,” and on April 17th, from
“Tuscany under the source of the Arno,” Dante addressed two terrible
letters to “the most wicked Florentines within,” and to “the most
sacred triumphant and only lord, Henry by divine providence King of
the Romans, ever Augustus.” In the former he reasserts the rights and
sanctity of the Empire, and, whilst hurling the fiercest invective
upon the Florentine government, foretells their utter destruction and
warns them of their inability to withstand the might of the Emperor.
In the latter he rebukes the “minister of God and son of the Church
and promoter of Roman glory” for his delay in Lombardy, and urges
him on against Florence, “the sick sheep that infects all the flock
of the Lord with her contagion.” Let him lay her low and Israel will
be delivered. “Then shall our heritage, the taking away of which we
weep without ceasing, be restored to us again; and even as we now
groan, remembering the holy Jerusalem, exiles in Babylon, so then,
citizens breathing again in peace, we shall look back in our joy upon
the miseries of confusion.” These letters were evidently written from
the Casentino, where Dante had gone probably on an imperial mission to
one or other of the Conti Guidi. He was perhaps staying at the castle
of Poppi, and there is a tradition that the Florentine government sent
agents to arrest him there. Probably in consequence of these letters,
a new condemnation was pronounced against him; on September 2nd, 1311,
Dante is included in the long list of exiles who, in the “reform”
of Baldo d’Aguglione, are to be excepted from amnesty and for ever
excluded from Florence.
FAILURE OF THE EMPEROR.--But in the meantime Brescia, “the lioness of
Italy,” who had offered as heroic a resistance to Henry VII. as she was
to do five centuries later to the Austrians of Haynau, had been forced
to surrender; and the Emperor had at last moved southwards to Genoa
and thence to Pisa, from which parties of imperialists ravaged the
Florentine territory. From Genoa, on December 24th, 1311, he issued a
decree placing Florence under the ban of the Empire, and declaring the
Florentine exiles under his special protection. Dante (with Palmieri
Altoviti and other exiles) was probably at Pisa in the early spring
of 1312, and it may well have been there that Petrarch--then a little
boy in his eighth year--saw his great predecessor. Rome itself was
partly held by the troops of King Robert and the Florentines; with
difficulty was Henry crowned by the Pope’s legates in the Church of
St. John Lateran on June 29th, 1312. From September 19th to October
31st Henry besieged Florence, himself ill with fever. “Do ye trust in
any defence girt by your contemptible rampart?” Dante had written to
the Florentines: “What shall it avail to have girt you with a rampart
and to have fortified yourselves with outworks and battlements,
when, terrible in gold, that eagle shall swoop down on you which,
soaring now over the Pyrenees, now over Caucasus, now over Atlas,
ever strengthened by the support of the soldiery of heaven, looked
down of old upon vast oceans in its flight?” But the golden eagle
did not venture upon an assault. Wasting the country as it went, the
imperial army retreated. Early in 1313 the Florentines gave the signory
of their city to King Robert for five years, while the Emperor from
Pisa placed the king under the ban of the Empire, and declared him a
public enemy. The Pope himself had deserted the imperial cause, and
was fulminating excommunication if Henry invaded Robert’s kingdom
(cf. _Par._ xvii. 82; xxx. 144), when the Emperor, moving from Pisa
with reinforcements from Germany and Sicily, died on the march towards
Naples at Buonconvento, near Siena, on August 24th, 1313. Dante had not
accompanied the imperialists against Florence; he yet retained so much
reverence for his fatherland, as Bruni writes, apparently from some
lost letter of the poet’s. We do not know where he was when the fatal
news reached him. Cino da Pistoia and Sennuccio del Bene broke out into
elegiac canzoni on the dead hero; Dante was silent, and waited till he
could more worthily write the apotheosis of his _alto Arrigo_ in the
Empyrean (_Par._ xxx. 133-138).
7. _Last Period of Exile_
DANTE’S WANDERINGS--DEATH OF CLEMENT V.--Dante was again a proscribed
fugitive. His movements are hardly known, excepting by more or less
happy conjecture, from the spring of 1311 in the Casentino to the
close of his days at Ravenna. Boccaccio and Bruni agree that he had
now given up all hope of return to Florence. According to the latter,
he wandered about in great poverty, under the protection of various
lords, in different parts of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Romagna. There is
a tradition, perhaps mainly based upon a passage in the _Paradiso_
(_Par._ xxi. 106-120), that Dante retired to the convent of Santa Croce
di Fonte Avellana in the Apennines, from which he gazed forth upon the
perishing world of the Middle Ages, which was finding imperishable
monument in his work. To this epoch might possibly be assigned--for
what it may be worth--the story of his visit to the other convent of
Santa Croce del Corvo in Lunigiana in quest of peace; but the only
authority for this episode is the letter of Frate Ilario to Uguccione
della Faggiuola, now almost universally regarded as a fabrication. But,
if his steps are hidden, his voice is heard, and with no uncertain
sound. On April 20th, 1314, Clement V. died in Provence (_Par._ xxx.
145); and, early in the interregnum that followed, Dante addressed
a famous letter to the Italian cardinals, rebuking them for their
backsliding and corruption, urging them to make amends by striving
manfully for the restoration of the papacy to Rome. It is a noble
production, full of zeal and dignity, impregnated with the sublimest
spirit of mediaeval Catholicity. It had no immediate effect; after a
long interval the Cahorsine, John XXII., was elected in August 1316;
and the disgrace of Avignon continued. The ideal Emperor had failed;
no ideal Pope was forthcoming; conscious at last of his own greatness,
with _luci chiare ed acute_ (_Par._ xxii. 126), eyes clear from passion
and acute with discernment, the divine poet turned to the completion of
his _Commedia_.
REJECTION OF THE AMNESTY.--After the death of the Emperor, the
Ghibelline leader, Uguccione della Faggiuola, had been chosen lord
of Pisa; he captured Lucca in June, 1314, and began a brief career
of conquest in Tuscany which seriously alarmed Florence. In this
crisis the Florentine government on May 19th, 1315, decreed a general
_ribandimento_, or recall of exiles, under condition of a small fine,
a merely formal imprisonment, and the ceremony of “oblation” in the
Baptistery. Dante was probably at Lucca when he received letters to
the effect that he was included.[7] The famous letter to a Florentine
friend contains his rejection of this amnesty. While deeply and
affectionately grateful to the friends who have striven for his return,
the conditions of this “revocatio gratiosa” seem to Dante derogatory to
his fame and honour, and with calm dignity he refuses to avail himself
of it: “This is not the way of return to our native land, my father;
but if another may be found, first by you and then by others, which
does not derogate from Dante’s fame and honour, that will I accept
with no lagging feet. But, if by no such way Florence may be entered,
I will never enter Florence. What then? May I not anywhere gaze upon
the mirror of the sun and stars? Can I not ponder on the sweetest
truths anywhere beneath the heaven, unless first I return to the city,
inglorious, nay dishonoured, in the sight of the Florentine people?
Nor, assuredly, will bread fail me” (Epist. ix 4).[8]
NEW CONDEMNATION.--On August 29th, 1315, Uguccione utterly defeated
the united armies of Florence and Naples at the great battle of
Montecatini; the Pisan ploughman had crushed the flowers and the
lilies, as Giovanni del Virgilio afterwards wrote to Dante. Dante’s two
sons, Jacopo and Pietro, had perhaps joined him in Lucca. The original
death sentence had apparently been commuted (probably because of his
having refrained from joining in the imperialist attack upon Florence
in 1312) to being placed under bounds in some defined locality; and
in October 1315 the poet, with his two sons, and others were cited
to appear before Ranieri di Zaccaria of Orvieto, royal vicar in
the city of Florence and its district (King Robert’s vicars having
replaced the podestàs), to give surety as to going and staying in the
places appointed. On their neglecting to appear, “Dante Alighieri and
his sons,” in Ranieri’s sentence of November 6th, are condemned as
contumacious and rebels, and sentenced to be beheaded if they ever
come into the power of the royal vicar or of the Commune of Florence.
“And, lest they should glory in their contumacy, we put all and each
of them under ban of the city of Florence and district, giving licence
to anyone to offend all and any one of them in goods and in person,
according to the form of the statutes of Florence.” All the Portinari
are included in this decree, with the exception of Manetto and fourteen
others who have given security.
DANTE AT VERONA.--In the following year, 1316, Uguccione lost Pisa and
Lucca, and fled to Verona, where Can Grande della Scala, since the
death of his brother Albuino in 1311, held sovereign sway as imperial
vicar, and had become the champion of Ghibellinism in northern Italy;
in 1318 Cane was elected captain of the Ghibelline League, and in his
service Uguccione died during the siege of Padua in 1319 or 1320. It is
probable that, somewhere about this time, Dante’s wandering feet had
led him back to Verona to renew his friendship with Can Grande (_Par._
xvii. 85-90; _Epist._ x. 1). The old legend of Dante having met with
discourtesy at his hands is to be absolutely rejected, as indeed every
reference to Can Grande in his works demands. That, on his earlier
visit, there may have been some unpleasantness with Albuino (_Conv._
iv. 16) is more credible. But Dante needed a more peaceful refuge than
Verona to complete his life’s work; the city of the imperial vicar
resounded with the clash of warlike preparations:
But at this court, peace still must wrench
Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
By day they held high watch afar,
At night they cried across the trench;
And still, in Dante’s path, the fierce
Gaunt soldiers wrangled o’er their spears.
AT RAVENNA.--It was most likely towards the end of 1316, or early in
1317, that Dante finally settled at Ravenna; probably, as Boccaccio
tells us, on the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta, who had
succeeded to the lordship of Ravenna in June 1316. This Guido was
the nephew of Francesca da Rimini, the hapless heroine of one of the
most familiar episodes of the _Inferno_. These few remaining years of
Dante’s life are the pleasantest to contemplate. His two sons were
with him, though their mother apparently remained in Florence. Dino
Perini, a younger Florentine, seems to have been to some extent the
friend of Dante’s later days, as Guido Cavalcanti had been of his
youth. And there were other congenial companions round him, including
perhaps Giotto, who was probably working at Ravenna about this time.
It is possible that Dante held some kind of professorship in the
local university. Scholars and disciples came to be instructed in the
poetic art, among them, it would seem, Guido da Polenta himself. His
relations were still cordial with Can Grande, to whom, probably in
1318 or 1319, he addressed the epistle which contains the dedication
of the _Paradiso_. From the _Quaestio de Aqua et Terra_ (which is
now generally accepted as authentic) we gather that, at the end of
1319 or beginning of 1320, Dante paid a visit to Mantua, and that at
Verona, on January 20th, 1320, he delivered a discourse concerning
the relative position of the two elements, earth and water, on the
globe’s surface. A curious document of 1320--the report of a process at
Avignon in which Dante’s name is incidentally mentioned--seems to show
that the poet was regarded as an authority upon sorcery, but as one
whom persons intending to put this power to guilty use should abstain
from consulting. There is also some vague evidence that accusations of
heresy may have been brought against him.
LAST DAYS AND DEATH.--At Ravenna, amidst the monuments of ancient
Caesars and the records in mosaic of primitive Christianity, where the
church walls testified the glory of Justinian and the music of the Pine
Forest sounded in his ears, Dante finished his _Divina Commedia_. His
poetical correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio, a shining light of
the University of Bologna, reveals the kindliness and affability of the
austere “preacher of Justice.” But he was not to end his days in peace.
A storm cloud of war seemed about to burst over Ravenna. According
to Venetian accounts--and we have no version of the matter from the
other side--the Ravennese had taken Venetian ships and killed Venetian
sailors in time of peace without just cause. In consequence the Doge
entered into an alliance with the lords of Forlì and Rimini, and
prepared to make war upon Ravenna with forces far beyond Guido’s power
to meet. In August 1321 an embassy was sent by Guido to Venice, to
avert the war by diplomatic means. Of this embassy Dante formed part.
According to Filippo Villani, the Venetians refused the poet a hearing,
and forced him, sick with fever, to return by land. It is more probable
that Dante returned with offered terms by the quickest way, which would
bring him back through the Pineta to Ravenna. There he died in the
night between September 13th and 14th, 1321, in the fifty-seventh year
of his age. The poet of a renovated Empire and a purified Church had
passed away on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross--the Cross
which he represents as the mystical bond with which Christ had bound
the chariot of the Church to the tree of the Empire. He left his Church
sinking, though but for a time, still deeper into the scandal and
corruption of Avignon; his Empire preparing new degradation for itself,
now that the Eagle had passed into the greedy and unworthy hands of
Bavarian Louis; his Italy torn and rent by factions and dissensions;
his own Florence still ranking him as a proscribed rebel and criminal.
But the divine work of his life had been completed, and remains an
everlasting proof of the doctrine formulated by another poet, five
hundred years later: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the
world.”[9]
8. _Dante’s Work and First Interpreters_
FOUR PERIODS IN HUMAN LIFE.--In the _Convivio_ (iv. 23, 24) Dante
represents human life under the image of an arch, ascending and
descending. For the perfectly-natured the summit of this arch is in
the thirty-fifth year. Life is divided into four ages, like the four
seasons of the year. Adolescence, _Adolescenza_, the increase of
life, ascends from birth to the twenty-fifth year; Youth or Manhood,
_Gioventute_, the perfection and culmination of life, lasts from the
twenty-fifth to the forty-fifth year; Age, _Senettute_, descends from
the forty-fifth to the seventieth year; after which remains Old Age,
_Senio_, the winter of life.
THREE PERIODS IN DANTE’S WORK.--Dante’s work falls into three periods,
representing to some extent _Adolescenza_, _Gioventute_, _Senettute_.
The first is that of his “New Life,” the epoch of the romantic worship
of Beatrice in her life and after her death, in which the youthful poet
beheld many things by his intellect, as it were dreaming, _quasi come
sognado_ (_Conv._ ii. 13). This period comprises the _Vita Nuova_, with
the lyrics contemporaneous with it, and closes in the promise “yet
to utter concerning her what hath never been said of any woman.” The
second period corresponds to Dante’s second age, or _Gioventute_; it
is the period in which the image of Beatrice in the citadel of his mind
is somewhat obscured by the tempests of passion and political turmoil,
and for a while had become less paramount when her poet directed his
thoughts to the service of philosophical research. Joined to the first
period by the canzone addressed to the angelic movers of the sphere
of Venus, it includes the greater part of the collection of lyrics
(Canzoni, Bellate, Sonnets) included in the _Rime_ or _Canzoniere_;
the two unfinished prose treatises which expound the mystical meaning
and technical construction of these canzoni, the _Convivio_ and the
_De Vulgari Eloquentia_. The three political letters connected with
the Italian expedition of Henry VII. and, most probably, the special
treatise in Latin prose on the Empire, the _Monarchia_, connect the
second with the third period. This last period is the period of the
_Divina Commedia_; the return to Beatrice, but now the allegorical
Beatrice; the fulfilment of the supreme promise of the _Vita Nuova_;
the result of the labours in art and philosophy which the second period
had witnessed, of political experience, and of the spiritual and moral
revulsion of Dante’s later years, after the bitter disillusion of the
Emperor Henry’s enterprise and failure: “A fruit of sufferings excess.”
To this period, subsidiary to the _Divina Commedia_, belong the letters
to the Italian Cardinals, to the Florentine friend and to Can Grande,
the _Quaestio de Aqua et Terra_ (if authentic), and the two _Eclogues_.
In addition to these works, several Italian scholars of high repute
have attributed to Dante the _Fiore_--a rendering of the _Roman de
la Rose_ in 232 sonnets--the author of which twice calls himself
“Durante.” The editors of the sexcentenary _testo critico_ have wisely
excluded it from their volume, and it has been edited as an “appendice
dantiana” by Parodi. Also we know of several smaller things of Dante’s
now lost: the letters mentioned by Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo;
a _serventese_ containing the names of the sixty most beautiful women
in Florence, referred to in the _Vita Nuova_ (_V. N._ vi.), one of his
earliest poems; and a canzone on love, of peculiar structure, quoted in
the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (_V. E._ ii. 11).
EARLY COMMENTATORS.--No sooner had Dante passed away than his
apotheosis began with the epitaph by Giovanni del Virgilio:
Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers
--“Dante, the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge,” and
the canzone on his death by Cino da Pistoia:
Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte
--“Up the side, Love, of the lofty mountain.” Boccaccio tells us that
it was Dante’s custom to send the _Divina Commedia_ by instalments
to Can Grande at Verona, and he adds a striking story of how,
eight months after his death, the poet appeared in a vision, “clad
in whitest garments and his face shining with an unwonted light,”
to his son Jacopo, to reveal to the world where the manuscript of
the last thirteen cantos of the _Paradiso_ was hidden. It is a fact
that in April or May, 1322, Jacopo presented a complete copy of the
sacred poem to Guido da Polenta, who was then Captain of the People
at Bologna. Straightway the work of copyists and commentators began,
above all at Florence and Bologna. The earliest dated MSS. are the
_Codice Landiano_ at Piacenza and the _Codice Trivulziano_ at Milan
(the latter of Florentine origin), dated 1336 and 1337 respectively.
Of commentaries, the first two are those on the _Inferno_, written
in the twenties of the century, by Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri, in
Italian, and Ser Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, chancellor of the Commune
of Bologna, in Latin. The earliest extant commentators on the complete
poem are the Bolognese Jacopo della Lana and the Florentine author of
the _Ottimo Commento_, probably Andrea Lancia; the former wrote shortly
before and the latter shortly after 1330. Both wrote in Italian. Pietro
Alighieri composed a Latin commentary on his father’s work about 1340,
and revised it, with additions, some years later. An important Latin
commentary on the _Inferno_, by the Carmelite Guido da Pisa, dates from
the forties of the century. And, before the fourteenth century closed,
a new epoch in Dante scholarship was inaugurated by the lectures and
commentaries of Giovanni Boccaccio at Florence (1373), Benvenuto da
Imola at Bologna (1375-80), and Francesco da Buti at Pisa (1380-90).
Of all these earlier commentators, Benvenuto da Imola is by far the
greatest; and he unites mediaeval Dantology with England’s cult of the
divine poet in the first complete edition of his commentary which was
given to the world by Lacaita and William Warren Vernon.
In his proem, Ser Graziolo, or his contemporary translator, strikes
the keynote of all reverent criticism of the _Divina Commedia_, and
defines the attitude in which the divine poet and his works should be
approached:
“Although the unsearchable Providence of God hath made many men blessed
with prudence and virtue, yet before all hath it put Dante Alighieri,
a man of noble and profound wisdom, true fosterling of philosophy and
lofty poet, the author of this marvellous, singular, and most sapient
work. It hath made him a shining light of spiritual felicity and of
knowledge to the people and cities of the world, in order that every
science, whether of heavenly or of earthly things, should be amply
gathered up in this public and famous champion of prudence, and through
him be made manifest to the desires of men in witness of the Divine
Wisdom; so that, by the new sweetness and universal matter of his song,
he should draw the souls of his hearers to self-knowledge, and that,
raised above earthly desires, they should come to know not only the
beauties of this great author, but should attain to still higher grades
of knowledge. To him can be applied the text in Ecclesiasticus: ‘The
great Lord will fill him with the spirit of understanding, and he will
pour forth the words of his wisdom as showers.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _V. N._ xxx. _Cf._ Moore, _Studies in Dante_, ii. pp. 123, 124. Del
Lungo and others calculate the date as June 19th.
[2] Two daughters are mentioned: Antonia and Beatrice. It is probable
that they are one and the same person, Antonia being the name in the
world of the daughter who became a nun at Ravenna as “Suora Beatrice.”
A recent discovery has revealed the existence of a Giovanni di Dante
Alighieri, “Johannes filius Dantis Alagherii de Florentia,” at Lucca
in October 1308, who would then have been at least fourteen years old.
But it seems more probable that the “Dante Alighieri” in question is
not the poet. See M. Barbi, _Un altro figlio di Dante?_ in _Studi
danteschi, v._ (Florence, 1922).
[3] It is to this conspiracy, as initiating the papal interference in
Florentine politics which led ultimately to Dante’s own exile, that the
poet alludes in _Par._ xvii. 49-51, where Cacciaguida speaks from the
standpoint of April 1300.
[4] See B. Barbadoro, _La condanna di Dante_, in _Studi danteschi
diretti da_ Michele Barbi, vol. ii.
[5] Cf. Del Lungo’s notes to _La Cronica di Dino Compagni_ in the
new Muratori (tom. ix. pt. ii.), and Luzzatto, _La Cronica di Dino
Compagni_, p. 70, n. 1. It is clear that both Bologna and Siena sent
ambassadors, but that Compagni (misled by the name) erroneously
supposed Malavolti to have been a Sienese.
[6] _Rime_ cxvi.: O. canz. xi. Torraca takes this canzone as written
when Dante was in the Casentino in 1311. Boccaccio speaks of an earlier
stay of the poet in that region. It should be noted that Del Lungo has
argued that Dante, after withdrawing from the active measures of the
Bianchi, remained in Tuscany, or near at hand, until the dissolution of
the party in 1307, when he may have gone to Verona.
[7] We know from the _Purgatorio_ that Dante at some time visited
Lucca, where a lady, said to have been Gentucca Morla, made the city
pleasant to him. Dante’s words seem to imply no more than an agreeable
friendship (_Purg._ xxiv. 43-45). This visit may have been at an
earlier date.
[8] Cf. A. Della Torre, _L’epistola all’ Amico fiorentino_, in
_Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana_, n.s. xii.; M. Barbi, _Per
un passo dell’ epistola all’ Amico fiorentino_, in _Studi danteschi_,
ii.
[9] In 1350 Boccaccio was commissioned by the captains of Or San
Michele, a religious confraternity at Florence, to convey a sum of
money to “Suora Beatrice, daughter of the late Dante Alighieri,” a
Dominican nun in the monastery of Santo Stefano degli Ulivi at Ravenna.
This Suora Beatrice is mentioned, as no longer living, in a document of
1371. In a document of 1332, the only children of the poet who appear,
together with his widow Gemma, are Jacopo, Pietro, and Antonia (of whom
we know nothing more). It seems, therefore, probable that Dante had
one daughter, Antonia, who, after 1332 (perhaps after the death of her
mother), entered religion at Ravenna as Suora Beatrice. See O. Bacci,
“Beatrice di Dante,” in _Giornale Dantesco_, viii. pp. 465-471.
CHAPTER II
DANTE’S MINOR ITALIAN WORKS
1. _The “Vita Nuova”_
Guido Guinizelli is acknowledged by Dante himself as his master in
poetic art and the founder of the great new school of Italian poetry:
“The father of me and of the others, my betters, who ever used sweet
and gracious rhymes of love” (_Purg._ xxvi. 97). Guido’s “Canzone of
the Gentle Heart”:
Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore,
“To the gentle heart doth Love ever repair,” the first great Italian
lyric of this _dolce stil nuovo_, set forth an ideal creed of love
which Dante made his own, and is the most fitting introduction to the
_Vita Nuova_ and the _Rime_. Love has its proper dwelling in the gentle
heart, as light in the sun, for Nature created them simultaneously for
each other, and they cannot exist apart. “The fire of Love is caught
in gentle heart as virtue in the precious stone, to which no power
descends from the star before the sun makes it a gentle thing. After
the sun has drawn forth from it all which there is vile, the star gives
it power. So the heart which is made by Nature true, pure, and noble,
a woman like a star enamours.” But a base nature will extinguish love
as water does fire. Unless a man has true gentlehood in his soul, no
high birth or ancient lineage will ennoble him. Even as God fills the
celestial intelligence with the Beatific Vision of His Essence, so
the _bella donna_ inspires him of gentle heart with the perfection
of faithful love. Nor need the poet fear to take divine things as
similitudes of his love, for such love as this is celestial, and will
be accepted in Paradise:
My lady, God shall ask, “What daredst thou?”
(When my soul stands with all her acts reviewed)
“Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
To make Me of vain love similitude.
To Me doth praise belong,
And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
Who slayeth fraud and wrong.”
Then may I plead: “As though from Thee he came,
Love wore an angel’s face:
Lord, if I loved her, count it not my shame.”
ROSSETTI’S _Translation_.
The poetry of the _dolce stil nuovo_ developed the spiritual conception
of love already in germ in the later troubadours, and added an infusion
of the new scholastic philosophy, but the real novelty lay in the
superiority of Guido Guinizelli as a poet over his predecessors. From
Bologna the pre-eminence passed to Florence with Guido Cavalcanti, who
took from the other Guido “la gloria de la lingua” (_Purg._ xi. 98),
and developed a complicated poetical psychology which culminates in
his famous canzone on the nature of love:
Donna me prega, perch’io voglio dire;
“A lady prays me, therefore I would tell of an accident which is often
fierce and is so lofty that it is called Love.” The _Vita Nuova_,
beginning under the influence of Cavalcanti, becomes the supreme
development in prose and verse of the doctrine of Guinizelli.
“This glorious poet,” writes Boccaccio, “first, when still weeping
for the death of his Beatrice, about in his twenty-sixth year put
together in a little volume, which he called the _New Life_, certain
small works, as sonnets and canzoni, made by him in diverse times
before and in rhyme, marvellously beautiful; writing at the head of
each, severally and in order, the occasions which had moved him to make
them, and adding at the end the divisions of each poem. And although,
in maturer years, he was much ashamed of having made this little book,
nevertheless, when his age is considered, it is very beautiful and
pleasing, and especially to the general reader.”
But this spotless lily of books is too delicate a flower in the garden
of art to be plucked by the hands of the writer of the _Decameron_.
A greater poet than Boccaccio has said of it: “Throughout the _Vita
Nuova_ there is a strain like the first falling murmur which reaches
the ear in some remote meadow, and prepares us to look upon the sea.”
It is a preparation for the _Commedia_, inasmuch as it tells us how the
divine singer became a poet, and how she crossed his path who was to
be his spiritual pilot over that mighty ocean. Boccaccio’s statement,
that Dante in maturer years was ashamed of having written this book, is
perhaps due to a misunderstanding or confused recollection of a passage
about certain canzoni in the _Convivio_ (i. 2). In the _Convivio_,
where he discusses the nature of allegory and interprets the whole of
certain later poems in an allegorical sense, Dante suggests no such
significance for Beatrice in the _Vita Nuova_; but, while declaring
that the _Vita Nuova_ was written at the entrance of manhood, he seems
to contrast it with his more mature work, to which alone he would apply
an allegorical interpretation. And he is most emphatic that this is in
no way to derogate from the _Vita Nuova_ (_Conv._ i. 1): “For it is
fitting to speak and act differently in one age than in another.”
The _Vita Nuova_ is the most spiritual and ethereal romance of love
that exists, but its purity is such as comes, not from innocent
simplicity of soul, but from self-repression. In the form of a
collection of lyrics connected together by a prose narrative (itself a
thing of rare and peculiar beauty), with quaint and curious scholastic
divisions and explanations, Dante tells the tale of his love for
Beatrice, from his first sight of her in their ninth year to a vision
which is the anticipation of her final apotheosis. Although conforming
with the poetic conventions of the age, especially in the earlier
portions, it is based upon a real love story, however deeply tinged
with mysticism and embellished with visionary episodes. The heroine in
her loveliness and purity becomes an image upon earth of the Divine
Beauty and Goodness; the poet’s love for her is the stepping-stone
to love of the Supreme Good. Dante has learned his lesson from Guido
Guinizelli, and does not fear to take God Himself as a similitude
of his love; Heaven itself requires his lady for its perfection of
beatitude (_V. N._ xix.); she has her precursor in Monna Giovanna, even
as St. John came before the True Light (xxiv.); nay, she is a very
miracle whose only root is the Blessed Trinity (xxx.).
Here beginneth the “New Life,” _Incipit vita nova!_ We shall probably
do well in taking the New Life not as merely meaning the poet’s youth,
but as referring to the new life that began with the dawn of love,
the regeneration of the soul. Dante’s first meeting with Beatrice at
the beginning of her ninth and at the end of his ninth year, when she
appeared to him robed in crimson, the colour of love and charity--and
her “most sweet salutation” nine years later, when she came dressed all
in pure white, the hue of Faith and Purity, between two gentle ladies
older than herself--these things may have a certain analogy with the
representation of his moral and political conversion, in the vision of
the _Commedia_, as happening in his thirty-fifth year, 1300, the year
of Jubilee. We may perhaps surmise that Dante, looking back from this
second meeting, from which his love really dates, artistically worked
up the recollections of his childhood to correspond with it; just as
many years later, when he turned to the composition of the sacred poem,
he looked back in his memory to some great spiritual experience when
“in the middle of the journey of our life.” And, although Dante’s own
words in the _Convivio_ seem absolutely to preclude any possibility of
allegorising the figure of Beatrice herself, it is clear that many of
the minor episodes in the _Vita Nuova_ must be regarded as symbolical.
After the proem, in which the poet’s intention is set forth, the _Vita
Nuova_ falls into three divisions. Each contains ten poems set as gems
in a golden prose framework, the end of each part being indicated by a
reference to new matter, _nuova matera_ (xvii., xxxi.). The whole book
is closed by an epilogue containing one sonnet, _una cosa nuova_, “a
new thing,” with an introductory episode and a visionary sequel. In the
first part Dante mainly depicts the effects in himself of Beatrice’s
beauty, the loveliness of the _belle membra_, “the fair members in
which I was enclosed” (_Purg._ xxxi. 50); in the second, the miracles
wrought by the splendour of her soul; the third contains his worship
of her memory, when “the delight of her fairness, departing from our
view, became great spiritual beauty that spreads through heaven a light
of love, gives bliss to the Angels, and makes their lofty and subtle
intellect wonder” (xxxiv.).
The first part (ii. to xvii.) contains nine of Dante’s earliest
sonnets and one ballata, with the story of his youthful love up to a
certain point, where, after having passed through a spiritual crisis,
he resolves to write upon a new and nobler matter than the past. We
have the wondrous effects of Beatrice’s salutation; the introductory
sonnet resulting in the friendship with Guido Cavalcanti, to whom the
book is dedicated, and who seems to have induced Dante to write in
Italian instead of Latin (_V. N._ xxxi.); his concealment of his love
by feigning himself enamoured of two other ladies. Throughout the _Vita
Nuova_, while Beatrice on earth or in heaven is, as it were, the one
central figure in the picture, there is a lovely background of girlish
faces behind her; just as, in the paintings of many early Italian
masters, there is shown in the centre the Madonna and her Divine Babe,
while around her all the clouds and sky are full of sweetly smiling
cherubs’ heads. There have been students of the book who supposed that,
while Beatrice represents the ideal of womanhood, these others are the
real Florentine women in whom Dante for a while sought this glorious
ideal of his mind; others have endeavoured in one or other of the
minor characters of the _Vita Nuova_ to recognise the Matelda of the
Earthly Paradise. And there are visions and dreams introduced, in which
Love himself appears in visible form, now as a lord of terrible aspect
within a cloud of fire with Beatrice in his arms, now by a river-side
in the garb of a traveller to bid Dante feign love for another lady,
now as a youth clad in very white raiment to console him when Beatrice
refuses her salutation. It may be that these two latter episodes mean
that Dante was for a time enamoured of some girl whom he afterwards
represented as the second lady who shielded his real love from
discovery, and that he resolved to turn from it to a nobler worship of
Beatrice. The most beautiful sonnet of this group is the fifth:
Cavalcando l’altr’ier per un cammino,
“As I rode the other day along a path, thinking of the journey that was
irksome to me,” the journey in question being probably to Bologna (cf.
p. 12).