finds such a stumbling-block in Boccaccio’s narrative. Its lyrics show
the influence of Guido Cavalcanti, particularly in the personification
of the faculties of the soul as _spiriti_, and in the somewhat
extravagant metaphors with which Dante depicts his torment in love.
But a complete change comes. The mysterious episode of Dante’s agony
at a wedding feast, where Beatrice mocks him, marks a crisis in his
new life. _Io tenni li piedi in quella parte de la vita di là da la
quale non si puote ire più per intendimento di ritornare_, “I have set
my feet on that part of life beyond the which one can go no further
with intention of returning.” He crushes the more personal element
out of his love, and will be content to worship her from afar; he has
sufficiently made manifest his own condition, even if he should ever
after abstain from addressing her. “It behoved me to take up a new
matter and one nobler than the past.”
This _matera nuova e più nobile che la passata_ is the subject
of the second part of the _Vita Nuova_ (xviii. to xxviii.). The
poet’s youthful love has become spiritual adoration for a living
personification of all beauty and nobleness. Since Beatrice denies him
her salutation, Love has placed all his beatitude in those words that
praise his lady: so he tells the lady of very sweet speech, _donna di
motto leggiadro parlare_, who questions him concerning this love, and
whose rebuke marks the turning-point of the whole book. And, for the
first time, the supreme poet is revealed in the great canzone:
Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,
“Ladies that have understanding of love,” uniting earth and heaven
in glorification of her who was the giver of blessing. Here the
apotheosis of womanhood, sketched by Guido Guinizelli, is developed
with mystical fullness, and there is even perhaps a hint of some future
work in honour of Beatrice that will deal with the world beyond the
grave. The two sonnets that follow are a kind of supplement; the first:
Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa,
“Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,” gives a definition of
love, elaborating the Guinizellian doctrine; the second:
Ne li occhi porta la mia donna Amore,
“Within her eyes my lady carries Love,” pursues the conception further,
to represent Beatrice herself as the creatrix of the divine gift of
_gentilezza_ by which the heart is capable of noble love. Two sonnets
on the death of Beatrice’s father lead up to a veritable lyrical
masterpiece, the canzone:
Donna pietosa e di novella etate,
“A lady pitiful and of tender age,” the anticipatory vision of
Beatrice’s death--the “Dante’s Dream” of Rossetti’s famous picture. The
following sonnet, in which Beatrice and Cavalcanti’s lady, Primavera or
Giovanna, appear together, is the only place in the _Vita Nuova_ where
Dante calls her whom he loved by the name by which she was actually
known--“Bice.” Love now no longer appears weeping, but speaks joyfully
in the poet’s heart. All that was personal in Dante’s worship seems to
have passed away with his earlier lamentations; his love has become a
transcendental rapture, an ecstasy of self-annihilation. This part of
the book culminates in the two sonnets:
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare,
“So noble and so pure seems my lady,” in which a similar sonnet of
Guinizelli’s is easily surpassed, and
Vede perfettamente onne salute,
“He seeth perfectly all bliss, who beholds my lady among the ladies”;
sonnets which are flawless gems of mediaeval poetry. Then abruptly, in
the composition of a canzone which should have shown how Love by means
of Beatrice regenerated his soul, the pen falls from his hand: Beatrice
has been called by God to Himself, to be glorious under the banner of
Mary, “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!”
Some falling off may be detected here and there in the third part of
the _Vita Nuova_ (xxix. to xli.), which includes the prose and poetry
connected with Beatrice’s death, the love for the lady who takes pity
upon the poet’s grief, his repentance and return to Beatrice’s memory.
A stately canzone:
Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core,
“The eyes that grieve for pity of the heart,” is a companion piece
to the opening canzone of the second part; the poet now speaks of
Beatrice’s death in the same form and to the same love-illumined
ladies to whom he had formerly sung her praises. More beautiful are
the closing lines of the shorter canzone, written for Dante’s second
friend, who was apparently Beatrice’s brother. After the charming
episode of the poet drawing an Angel on her anniversary, the “gentle
lady, young and very fair,” inspires him with four sonnets; and his
incipient love for her is dispelled by a “strong imagination,” a
vision of Beatrice as he had first seen her in her crimson raiment of
childhood. The bitterness of Dante’s repentance is a foretaste of the
confession upon Lethe’s bank in the _Purgatorio_. The pilgrims pass
through the city on their way to Rome, “in that season when many folk
go to see that blessed likeness which Jesus Christ left us as exemplar
of His most beauteous face, which my lady sees in glory” (_V. N._
xli.); and this third part closes with the sonnet in which Dante calls
upon the pilgrims to tarry a little, till they have heard how the city
lies desolate for the loss of Beatrice.
In the epilogue (xlii., xliii.), in answer to the request of two of
those noble ladies who throng the ways of Dante’s mystical city of
youth and love as God’s Angels guard the terraces of the Mount of
Purgation, Dante writes the last sonnet of the book; wherein a “new
intelligence,” born of Love, guides the pilgrim spirit beyond the
spheres into the Empyrean to behold the blessedness of Beatrice. It is
an anticipation of the spiritual ascent of the _Divina Commedia_, which
is confirmed in the famous passage which closes the “new life” of Love:
“After this sonnet there appeared unto me a wonderful vision: wherein
I saw things which made me purpose to say no more of this blessed one,
until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her.
And to attain to that I labour all I can, even as she knoweth verily.
Wherefore if it shall be His pleasure, through whom is the life of all
things, that my life continue for some years, I hope that I shall yet
utter concerning her what hath never been said of any woman. And then
may it seem good unto Him, who is the Lord of courtesy, that my soul
may go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed
Beatrice who gazeth gloriously upon the countenance of Him who is
blessed throughout all ages.”[10]
From the mention of the pilgrimage, and this wonderful vision, it has
been sometimes supposed that the closing chapters of the _Vita Nuova_
were written in 1300. It seems, however, almost certain that there is
no reference whatever to the year of Jubilee in the first case. When
Dante’s positive statement in the _Convivio_, that he wrote the _Vita
Nuova_ at the entrance of manhood (_gioventute_ being the twenty years
from twenty-five to forty-five, _Conv._ iv. 24), is compared with the
internal evidence of the book itself, the most probable date for its
completion would be between 1291 and 1293. It should, however, be
borne in mind that, while there is documentary evidence that some of
the single poems were in circulation before 1300, none of the extant
manuscripts of the whole work can be assigned to a date much earlier
than the middle of the fourteenth century. It is, therefore, not
inconceivable that the reference to the vision may be associated with
the spiritual experience of 1300 and slightly later than the rest of
the book.[11]
The form of the _Vita Nuova_, the setting of the lyrics in a prose
narrative and commentary, is one that Dante may well have invented
for himself. If he had models before his eyes, they were probably,
on the one hand, the _razos_ or prose explanations which accompanied
the poems of the troubadours, and, on the other, the commentaries of
St. Thomas Aquinas on the works of Aristotle, which Dante imitates
in his divisions and analyses of the various poems. His quotations
show that he had already studied astronomy, and made some rudimentary
acquaintance with Aristotle and with the four chief Latin poets; the
section in which he speaks of the latter, touching upon the relations
between classical and vernacular poetry (xxv.), suggests the germ of
the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_. The close of the book implies that he
regarded lack of scientific and literary equipment as keeping him from
the immediate fulfilment of the greater work that he had even then
conceived for the glory of Beatrice.
In the _Convivio_, where all else is allegorical, Beatrice is
still simply his first love, _lo primo amore_ (ii. 16). Even when
allegorically interpreting the canzone which describes how another
lady took her place in his heart, after her death, as referring to
Philosophy, there is no hint of any allegory about _quella viva
Beatrice beata_, “that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with
the Angels and on earth with my soul” (_Conv._ ii. 2). When about to
plunge more deeply into allegorical explanations, he ends what he has
to say concerning her by a digression upon the immortality of the soul
(_Conv._ ii. 9): “I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that I
shall pass after this to another better life, there where that glorious
lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.”
Those critics who question the reality of the story of the _Vita
Nuova_, or find it difficult to accept without an allegorical or
idealistic interpretation, are best answered in Dante’s own words:
_Questo dubbio è impossibile a solvere a chi non fosse in simile grado
fedele d’Amore; e a coloro che vi sono è manifesto ciò che solverebbe
le dubitose parole_; “This difficulty is impossible to solve for anyone
who is not in similar grade faithful unto Love; and to those who are
so, that is manifest which would solve the dubious words” (_V. N._
xiv.).
2. _The “Rime”_
The _Rime_--for which the more modern title, _Canzoniere_, has
sometimes been substituted--comprise all Dante’s lyrical poems,
together with others that are more doubtfully attributed to him. In
the _Vita Nuova_ were inserted three canzoni, two shorter poems in the
canzone mould, one ballata, twenty-five sonnets (including two double
sonnets). The “testo critico” of the _Rime_, edited by Michele Barbi
for the sexcentenary Dante, in addition to these accepts as authentic
sixteen canzoni (the sestina is merely a special form of canzone),
five ballate, thirty-four sonnets, and two stanzas. Dante himself
regards the canzone as the noblest form of poetry (_V. E._ ii. 3), and
he expounded three of his canzoni in the _Convivio_. From the middle
of the fourteenth century onwards, a large number of MSS. give these
three and twelve others (fifteen in all) as a connected whole in a
certain definite order, frequently with a special rubric in Latin
or Italian prefixed to each; this order and these rubrics are due
to Boccaccio.[12] It has been more difficult to distinguish between
the certainly genuine and the doubtful pieces among the ballate and
sonnets, and the authenticity of some of those now included by Barbi in
the canon is still more or less open to question. The _Rime_, on the
whole, are the most unequal of Dante’s works; a few of the sonnets,
particularly some of the earlier ones and those in answer to other
poets, have but slight poetic merit, while several of the later canzoni
rank among the world’s noblest lyrics. In the sexcentenary edition the
arrangement of the lyrics is tentatively chronological, with subsidiary
groupings according to subject-matter. While following the same general
scheme, I slightly modify the arrangement, as certain poems regarded by
Barbi as “rime d’amore” appear to me to be more probably allegorical.
(_a_) A first group belongs to the epoch of the _Vita Nuova_.
Conspicuous among them are two canzoni. One:
La dispietata mente che pur mira,
“Pitiless memory that still gazes back at the time gone by,” is
addressed directly to a woman (in this respect differing from Dante’s
other canzoni), who is probably the second lady represented as the
poet’s screen. The other:
E ’m’ incresce di me si duramente,
“I grieve for myself so bitterly,” seems to give fuller expression to
the first part of the _Vita Nuova_ with an alien note--the image of the
little maiden has yielded to that of the woman whose great beauty is
the object of unattainable desire. At times a lighter note is struck;
Dante is apparently simply supplying words for composers to set to
music, or revealing a spirit of playfulness of which there is no trace
in the _Vita Nuova_.[13] Besides sonnets in honour of Beatrice, we have
a few relating to other women, and in two ballate even their names are
given: Fioretta and Violetta. One delightful sonnet:
Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare,
“Beagles questing and huntsmen urging on,” reveals the poet taking
part in sport and appreciating a jape at his own expense. A number of
correspondence sonnets belong to this epoch, a small series addressed
to Dante da Maiano (of which no MS. has been preserved) being probably
earlier than the first sonnet of the _Vita Nuova_. A note of pure
romance is struck in the charming sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti, in which
the younger poet wishes that they two, with Lapo Gianni and their three
ladies (Dante’s being the first lady who screened his love), might
take a voyage over enchanted seas in Merlin’s magic barque. Several
admirable sonnets, now included in this group, were formerly attributed
to Cino da Pistoia.[14]
(_b_) The tenzone with Forese Donati forms a little group apart. Its
date is uncertain, but may be plausibly taken as between 1290 and
1296. These sonnets, though not free from bitterness which is perhaps
serious, may be regarded as exercises in that style of burlesque and
satirical poetry to which even Guido Guinizelli had once paid tribute,
and which Rustico di Filippo had made characteristically Florentine.
(_c_) Next comes a group of poems, connected with the allegory of the
_Convivio_, in which an intellectual ideal is pursued with the passion
and wooed in the language of the lover who adores an earthly mistress.
“I say and affirm that the lady, of whom I was enamoured after my first
love, was the most beautiful and most pure daughter of the Emperor of
the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name Philosophy” (_Conv._ ii.
16). By some, not entirely reconcilable, process the _donna gentile_,
who appears at the end of the _Vita Nuova_, has become a symbol of
Philosophy, and the poet’s love for her a most noble devotion. The
canzone:
Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,
“Ye who by understanding move the third heaven” describing the conflict
in Dante’s mind between this new love and the memory of Beatrice, deals
again with the matter of one of the sonnets of the _Vita Nuova_; but
the allegory is perhaps an after-thought. It is commented upon in the
second treatise of the _Convivio_ and quoted in Canto viii. of the
_Paradiso_. The other poems of this group seem purely allegorical:
“By love, in this allegory, is always intended that study which is
the application of the enamoured mind to that thing of which it is
enamoured” (_Conv._ ii. 16). At first this service is painful and
laborious; and the mystical lady seems a cruel and proud mistress, as
she is represented in the “pitiful ballata”:
Voi che savete ragionar d’Amore,
“Ye who know how to discourse of love,” which is referred to in the
third treatise of the _Convivio_ (iii. 9). But the defect is on the
lover’s own part, and in her light the difficulties which sundered him
and her are dispersed like morning clouds before the face of the sun.
This mystical worship culminates in the supreme hymn to his spiritual
mistress, whose body is Wisdom and whose soul is Love:
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,
“Love that in my mind discourses to me of my lady desirously,” which
is the second canzone of the _Convivio_ (quoted in _V. E._ ii. 6),
the amorous song that Casella was to sing “met in the milder shades
of Purgatory.” It is one of Dante’s lyrical masterpieces. Hardly less
beautiful is the canzone, likewise cited in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_
(_V. E._ ii. 5, II):
Amor, che movi tua vertù dal cielo,
“Love that movest thy power from heaven”; with a mystical comparison
of the workings of love to those of the sun and striking lines on the
supernatural power of the illumined imagination. This allegorical group
may be regarded as closed by the canzone:
Io sento si d’Amor la gran possanza,
“I feel so the great power of love,” in which Dante represents himself
as too young to obtain his lady’s grace, but is content to serve on,
finding the quest of philosophic truth its own reward. This poem has
two _commiati_ (the _commiato_, or _tornata_, being the stanza or
part of a stanza, or a few independent lines, added as an address or
farewell at the end of a canzone); both seem to imply that philosophic
verse may be the instrument of political or social reform.[15]
(_d_) Dante originally held that Italian poetry should only be used for
writing upon love, and therefore, in his younger days, a philosophical
poem would naturally take the form of a love ode. In the _Vita Nuova_,
he argues “against those who rhyme upon any matter other than amorous;
seeing that such mode of speech was originally found for speaking of
love” (_V. N._ xxv). His views naturally widened before he wrote his
later canzoni (_cf. V. E._ ii. 2); but when, lacking inspiration for a
higher lyrical flight or baffled by some metaphysical problem, he turns
to set erring men right in didactic canzoni on some humbler ethical
subject, he represents himself as so doing because out of favour with
his lady or deserted by love. Thus, “The sweet rhymes of love, which I
was wont to seek in my thoughts, needs must I leave”--
Le dolci rime d’amor, ch’i’ solia
--opens the canzone on the spiritual nature of true _gentilezza_
(inspired in part by Guinizelli), which is expounded in the fourth
treatise of the _Convivio_, and, although somewhat unequal, contains
one ineffable stanza upon the noble soul in life’s four stages. A
companion poem:
Poscia ch’Amor del tutto m’ ha lasciato,
“Since love has left me utterly,” deals with _leggiadria_, the
outward expression of a chivalrous soul, and shows the influence of
the _Tesoretto_ of Brunetto Latini. These two canzoni, which contain
transcripts from the Aristotelian _Ethics_, only here and there
become poetry. In the larger proportion of short lines in the stanza,
Dante seems feeling his way to a more popular metrical form and a
freer treatment, as well as a wider range of subject. The second has
satirical sketches of vicious or offensive types of men, with whom he
will deal more severely in the _Commedia_.
(_e_) There are certain lyrics of Dante’s which can hardly admit of an
allegorical interpretation, but are almost certainly the expression of
passionate love for real women. Most notable among these are a group
of four canzoni, known as the _rime per la donna pietra_, which are
characterised by a peculiar incessant playing upon the word _pietra_,
or “stone,” which has led to the hypothesis that they were inspired by
a lady named Pietra, or at least by one who had been as cold and rigid
as Beatrice had been the giver of blessing. The canzone of the _aspro
parlare_:
Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro,
“So in my speech would I be harsh, as this fair stone is in her acts,”
shows that Dante could be as terrible in his love as in his hate, and
has a suggestion of sensuality which we hardly find elsewhere in his
poetry. It is indirectly referred to in the _Convivio_, and quoted
by Petrarch. The other three canzoni of this “stony” group show very
strongly the influence of the Provençal Arnaut Daniel in their form,
and all their imagery is drawn from nature in winter. The sestina:
Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra,
“To the short day and the large circle of shade have I come,” is the
first Italian example of that peculiar variety of the canzone which was
invented by Arnaut (_V. E._, ii. 10, 13). It gives a most wonderful
picture of this strange green-robed girl, her golden hair crowned with
grass like Botticelli’s Libyan Sibyl, in the meadow “girdled about with
very lofty hills.” Less beautiful and more artificial, the canzone:
Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna,
“Love, thou seest well that this lady cares not for thy power,”
is likewise quoted with complacency, for its novelty and metrical
peculiarity, in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (ii. 13). And the passion
of the whole group is summed up in the poem on Love and Winter:
Io son venuto al punto de la rota,
“I am come to the point of the wheel,” where, stanza by stanza, the
external phenomena of the world in winter are contrasted with the state
of the poet’s soul, ever burning in the “sweet martyrdom” of love’s
fire. It is the ultimate perfection of a species of poem employed by
Arnaut and other troubadours; another lyrical masterpiece, anticipating
in its degree the treatment of nature which we find in the _Commedia_.
These four poems were probably composed shortly before Dante’s
banishment, but another canzone of somewhat similar tone was certainly
written in exile--the famous and much discussed “mountain song”:
Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia,
“Love, since I needs must make complaint,” apparently describing an
overwhelming passion for the fair lady of the Casentino; its pathetic
close, with its reference to Florence, has been already quoted. The
striking sonnet to Cino da Pistoia about the same time:
Io sono stato con Amore insieme.
“I have been in company with love since the circling of my ninth sun,”
affords further testimony that, at certain epochs of his life, earthly
love took captive Dante’s freewill.
(_f_) To the earlier years of Dante’s exile belongs the noblest and
most sublime of his lyrics, the canzone:
Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute,
“Three ladies are come around my heart and are seated without, for
within sits Love who is in lordship of my life.” They are Justice
and her spiritual children; Love prophesies the ultimate triumph of
righteousness, and the poet, with such high companionship in outward
misfortune, declares that he counts his exile as an honour. While
recalling the legend of the apparition of Lady Poverty and her two
companions to St. Francis of Assisi, and a poem of Giraut de Borneil
on the decay of chivalry, the canzone echoes Isaiah (ch. li.). Its key
may be found in the prophet’s words: “Hearken unto me, ye that know
Justice, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach
of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.” It was probably
written between 1303 and 1306; its opening lines have been found
transcribed in a document of 1310.[16] To about the same epoch must be
assigned the powerful canzone against vice in general and avarice in
particular:
Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire,
“Grief brings daring into my heart,” which is cited in the _De Vulgari
Eloquentia_ (associated with another poem of Giraut de Borneil) as
a typical poem on _rectitudo_, “righteousness,” “the direction of
the will” (_V. E._ ii. 2). These two canzoni are the connecting link
between the _Rime_ and the _Commedia_; the first contains the germ of
Dante’s prophecy of the _Veltro_, his Messianic hope of the Deliverer
to come, who shall make Love’s darts shine with new lustre and renovate
the world; in the second, we already catch the first notes of the
_saeva indignatio_ of the sacred poem. With the exception of the
“montanina canzone” and some sonnets to Cino da Pistoia, Dante wrote
few other lyrics at this period[17]; indeed, one of the sonnets seems
to imply that he had finally turned away from such poetry (_da queste
nostre rime_) in contemplation of his greater task:
Io mi credea del tutto esser partito,
“I deemed myself to have utterly departed from these our rhymes, Messer
Cino, for henceforth another path befits my ship and further from the
shore.”
3. _The “Convivio”_
The _Convivio_, or “Banquet,” bears a somewhat similar relation to
the work of Dante’s second period as the _Vita Nuova_ did to that of
his adolescence. Just as after the death of Beatrice he collected his
earlier lyrics, furnishing them with prose narrative and commentary, so
now in exile he intended to put together fourteen of his later canzoni
and write a prose commentary upon them, to the honour and glory of his
mystical lady, Philosophy. Dante was certainly not acquainted with
Plato’s _Symposium_. It was from the _De Consolatione Philosophiae_
of Boëthius that the idea came to him of representing Philosophy as a
woman; but the “woman of ful greet reverence by semblaunt,” who “was
ful of so greet age, that men ne wolde nat trowen, in no manere, that
she were of oure elde” (so Chaucer renders Boëthius), is transformed to
the likeness of a _donna gentile_, the idealised human personality of
the poetry of the “dolce stil nuovo”:
“And I imagined her fashioned as a gentle lady; and I could not
imagine her in any bearing save that of compassion; wherefore so
willingly did the sense of truth look upon her, that scarcely could
I turn it from her. And from this imagining I began to go there
where she revealed herself in very sooth, to wit, in the schools of
religious and at the disputations of philosophers; so that in a short
time, perchance of thirty months, I began to feel so much of her
sweetness, that her love drove out and destroyed every other thought”
(_Conv._ ii. 13).
The _Convivio_ is an attempt to bring philosophy out of the schools of
religious and away from the disputations of philosophers, to render
her beauty accessible even, to the unlearned. “The _Convivio_”, says
Dr. Wicksteed, “might very well be described as an attempt to throw
into popular form the matter of the Aristotelian treatises of Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.” Dante’s text is the opening sentence of
Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_: “All men by nature desire to know”; which
he elaborates from the commentary of Aquinas and the latter’s _Summa
contra gentiles_. He would gather up the crumbs which fall from the
table where the bread of Angels is eaten, and give a banquet to all who
are deprived of this spiritual food. It is the first important work
on philosophy written in Italian--an innovation which Dante thinks
necessary to defend in the chapters of the introductory treatise,
where he explains his reasons for commenting upon these canzoni in the
vernacular instead of Latin, and incidentally utters an impassioned
defence of his mother-tongue, with noteworthy passages on the vanity
of translating poetry into another language and the potentialities of
Italian prose (_Conv._ i. 7, 10).
In addition to this principal motive for writing the work, the desire
of giving instruction, Dante himself alleges another--the fear of
infamy, _timore d’infamia_ (_Conv._ i. 2): “I fear the infamy of
having followed such great passion as whoso reads the above-mentioned
canzoni will conceive to have held sway over me; the which infamy
ceases entirely by the present speaking of myself, which shows that
not passion, but virtue, has been the moving cause.” It would seem
that Dante intended to comment upon certain of the canzoni connected
with real women, and to represent them as allegorical; it may be that,
consumed with a more than Shelleyan passion for reforming the world, he
chose this method of getting rid of certain episodes in the past which
he, with too much self-severity, regarded as rendering him unworthy of
the sublime office he had undertaken. And, by a work of lofty style and
authority, he would rehabilitate the man who, in his exiled wanderings,
had “perchance cheapened himself more than truth wills” (i. 4).
Only the introductory treatise and three of the commentaries were
actually written: those on the canzoni _Voi cite ’ntendendo_, _Amor
che ne la mente mi ragiona_, _Le dolci rime d’amor_. If the whole
work had been completed on the same scale as these four treatises, a
great part of the field of knowledge open to the fourteenth century
would have been traversed in the ardent service of this mystical
lady, whom the poet in the second treatise--not without considerable
inconsistency--represents as the same as the _donna gentile_ who
appeared towards the end of the _Vita Nuova_ (_Conv._ ii. 2). As it
is, the movements of the celestial bodies, the ministry of the angelic
orders, the nature of the human soul and the grades of psychic life,
the mystical significance and universality of love, are among the
subjects discussed in the second and third treatises. The fourth
treatise is primarily ethical: nobility as inseparable from love and
virtue, wealth, the Aristotelian definition of moral virtue and human
felicity, the goal of human life, the virtues suitable to each age,
are among the themes considered. Under one aspect the _Convivio_ is a
vernacular encyclopaedia (like the _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini), but
distinguished from previous mediaeval works of the kind by its peculiar
form, its artistic beauty, and its personal note. From the first
treatise it is evident that the whole work had been fully planned;
but it is not possible to reconstruct it with any plausibility, or
to decide upon the question of which of the extant canzoni were to
be included, and in what order. From iv. 26, it may be conjectured
that the passionate canzone, _Così nel mio parlar voglio esser
aspro_ (_Rime_ ciii., O. canz. xii.), was to be allegorised in the
seventh treatise; while, from i. 12, ii. 1, iv. 27, it appears fairly
certain that the canzone of the three ladies, _Tre donne intorno al
cor_ (_Rime_ civ., O. canz. xx.), would have been expounded in the
fourteenth, where Justice and Allegory were to have been discussed;
and, from i. 8 and iii. 15, that the canzone against the vices, _Doglia
mi reca_ (_Rime_ cvi., O. canz. x.), was destined for the poetical
basis of the last treatise of all. It is thus clear that the _Convivio_
would have ended with the two canzoni which form the connecting link
between the lyrical poems and the _Divina Commedia_. For the rest, it
is certain that there would have been no mention of Beatrice in any of
the unwritten treatises. In touching upon the immortality of the soul
(_Conv._ ii. 9), Dante had seen fit to end what he wished to say of
“that living blessed Beatrice, of whom I do not intend to speak more in
this book.” There seems also good reason for supposing that the canzone
for the beautiful lady of the Casentino (_Rime_ cxvi., O. canz. xi.),
which may be of a slightly later date than the others, would not have
formed part of the completed work.
Witte and others after him have supposed that the _Convivio_ represents
an alienation from Beatrice; that the Philosophy, which Dante defines
as the amorous use of wisdom, is a presumptuous human science leading
man astray from truth and felicity along the dangerous and deceptive
paths of free speculation. There is, however, nothing in the book
itself to support this interpretation,[18] and, indeed, a comparison
between the second canzone, _Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona_, and
the first canzone of the _Vita Nuova_ points to the conclusion that
the personification of philosophy is but a phase in the apotheosis of
Beatrice herself. The _Convivio_ is the first fruit of Dante’s labours
to fulfil the promise made at the end of the book of his youth; his
knowledge of literature and philosophy has immeasurably widened, his
speculations on human life and nature have matured, and his prose
style, in its comparative freedom and variety, its articulation and
passages of spontaneous eloquence, shows a vast progress from that of
the _Vita Nuova_.
There are passages in the _Convivio_ which appear to be contradicted
in the _Divina Commedia_. One of the most curious is the treatment
of Guido da Montefeltro, who, in _Conv._ iv. 28, is “our most noble
Italian,” and a type of the noble soul returning to God in the last
stage of life, whereas, in the _Inferno_ (Canto xxvii.), he is found
in the torturing flames of the evil counsellors. Several opinions are
directly or indirectly withdrawn in the _Paradiso_; but these are
to be rather regarded as mistakes which, in the light of subsequent
knowledge, Dante desired to rectify or repudiate; such as the theory
of the shadow on the moon being caused by rarity and density, based
upon Averroës, and a peculiar arrangement of the celestial hierarchies,
derived from the _Moralia_ of St. Gregory the Great. And, in the
_Purgatorio_, the poet discards his “dread of infamy,” when he dares
not meet Beatrice’s gaze in the Garden of Eden; he casts aside the
allegorical veil he had tried to draw over a portion of the past, and
makes the full confession which we find in Cantos xxx. and xxxi. In
the fourth treatise, an erroneous sentence attributed to Frederick
II. (in reality a mutilated version of the definition of nobility
given by Aristotle in the _Politics_) leads Dante to examine the
limits and foundation of the imperial authority, the divine origin of
Rome and the universal dominion of the Roman people, the relation of
philosophy to government; a theme which he will work out more fully
and scientifically in the _Monarchia_. The result is two singularly
beautiful chapters (iv.-v.); a prose hymn to Rome, an idealised history
of the city and her empire. It is the first indication of the poet’s
conversion from the narrower political creed of the Florentine citizen
to the ideal imperialism which inspires his later works.
It has sometimes been held that portions of the _Convivio_ were written
before exile. Nevertheless, while two of the canzoni were composed
before 1300, it seems most probable that the prose commentaries took
their present shape between Dante’s breaking with his fellow-exiles
and the advent of Henry VII. A passage concerning Frederick II., “the
last emperor of the Romans with respect to the present time, although
Rudolph and Adolph and Albert were elected after his death and that of
his descendants” (_Conv._ iv. 3), shows that the fourth treatise was
written before the election of Henry VII., in November 1308; while a
reference to Gherardo da Cammino, lord of Treviso (iv. 14), seems to
have been written after his death in March 1306. From the mention of
Dante’s wanderings in exile through so many regions of Italy (i. 3), it
has sometimes been argued that the first is later than the subsequent
treatises. It is tempting to associate the breaking off the work with
Boccaccio’s story of the recovery of the beginning of the _Inferno_.
Be that as it may, the advent of the new Caesar, Dante’s own return
for a while to political activity, probably interrupted his life of
study; and, when the storm passed away and left the poet disillusioned,
his ideals had changed, another world lay open to his gaze, and the
_Convivio_ was finally abandoned.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] _Io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d’alcuna_:
_dicer_ (_dire_) and _detta_, have here (as elsewhere in Dante) the
sense of artistic utterance, and more particularly composition in
poetry, whether in Latin or the vernacular. _Cf._ _V. N._ xxv.
[11] Livi has shown that the first documentary evidence of the
existence of the _Vita Nuova_ as a book is found at Bologna in June
1306.
[12] The Sexcentenary Dante admits as authentic one canzone not
included in this series: _Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce_ (_Rime_
lxviii., O. canz. xvi.*); which is evidently an early composition.
[13] _Cf._ _Rime_ xlviii., lvi., lxiii. and the later xcix.; O. son.
xlviii.*, ball. viii., son. I.*, son. xxxvii.*
[14] Note especially Rime lix., lxvi.; O. sonnets lv., xxxviii*.
[15] To this group I would assign the sonnet, _Chi guarderà già
mai sanza paura_, and the ballata, _I’ mi son pargoletta bella e
nova_, without attaching any special significance to the fact that
“pargoletta” (“maiden” or “young girl”) occurs also in the canzone,
_Io son venuto al punto de la rota_, and in Beatrice’s rebuke, _Purg._
xxxi. 59.
[16] _Cf._ G. Livi, _Dante suoi primi cultori sua gente in Bologna_, p.
24.
[17] Barbi adds to the _Rime_ written in exile the impressive political
sonnet, yearning for justice and peace, _Se vedi li docchi miei di
pianger vaghi_ (of which the attribution to Dante has sometimes been
questioned), and the sonnet on Lisetta, _Per quella via che la bellezza
corre_, a beautiful piece of unquestionable authenticity, but which
may, perhaps, belong to an earlier epoch in the poet’s life.
[18] But _cf._ Wicksteed, _From Vita Nuova to Paradiso_, pp. 93-121.
CHAPTER III
DANTE’S LATIN WORKS
1. _The “De Vulgari Eloquentia”_
In the first treatise of the _Convivio_ (i. 5), Dante announces his
intention of making a book upon _Volgare Eloquenza_, artistic utterance
in the vernacular. Like the _Convivio_, the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_
remains incomplete; only two books, instead of four, were written,
and of these the second is not finished. In the first book the poet
seeks the highest form of the vernacular, a perfect and imperial
Italian language, to rule in unity and concord over all the dialects,
as the Roman Empire over all the nations; in the second book he was
proceeding to show how this illustrious vulgar tongue should be used
for the art of poetry. Villani’s description of the work applies only
to the first book: “Here, in strong and ornate Latin, and with fair
reasons, he reproves all the dialects of Italy”; Boccaccio’s mainly
to the second: “A little book in Latin prose, in which he intended to
give instruction, to whoso would receive it, concerning composition in
rhyme.”[19]
BOOK I.--At the outset Dante strikes a slightly different note from
that of the _Convivio_, by boldly asserting that vernacular in general
(as the natural speech of man) is nobler than “grammar,” literary
languages like Latin or Greek, which he regards as artificially formed
(_V. E._ i. 1). To discover the noblest form of the Italian vernacular,
the poet starts from the very origin of language itself. To man
alone of creatures has the intercourse of speech been given: speech,
the rational and sensible sign needed for the intercommunication of
ideas. Adam and his descendants spoke Hebrew until the confusion of
Babel (_cf._ the totally different theory in _Par._ xxvi. 124), after
which this sacred speech remained only with the children of Heber
(i. 2-7). From this point onwards the work becomes amazingly modern.
Of the threefold language brought to Europe after the dispersion,
the southernmost idiom has varied into three forms of vernacular
speech--the language of those who in affirmation say _oc_ (Spanish
and Provençal), the language of _oil_ (French), the language of _sì_
(Italian).[20] And this Italian vulgar tongue has itself varied into
a number of dialects, of which Dante distinguishes fourteen groups,
none of which represent the illustrious Italian language which he is
seeking. “He attacks,” wrote Mazzini, “all the Italian dialects, but
it is because he intends to found a language common to all Italy, to
create a form worthy of representing the national idea.” The Roman is
worst of all (i. 11). A certain ideal language was indeed employed
by the poets at the Sicilian court of Frederick and Manfred, but it
was not the Sicilian dialect (i. 12). The Tuscans speak a degraded
vernacular, although Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni and another
Florentine (Dante himself), and Cino da Pistoia have recognised the
excellence of the ideal vulgar tongue (i. 13). Bologna alone has a
“locution tempered to a laudable suavity”; but which, nevertheless,
cannot be the ideal language, or Guido Guinizelli and other Bolognese
poets would not have written their poems in a form of speech quite
different from the special dialect of their city (i. 15). “The
illustrious, cardinal, courtly, and curial vulgar tongue in Italy is
that which belongs to every Italian city, and yet seems to belong to
none, and by which all the local dialects of the Italians are measured,
weighed, and compared” (i. 16). This is that ideal Italian which has
been artistically developed by Cino and his friend (Dante himself) in
their canzoni, and which makes its familiars so glorious that “in the
sweetness of this glory we cast our exile behind our back” (_V. E._
i. 17). Such should be the language of the imperial Italian court
of justice, and, although as far as Italy is concerned there is no
prince, and that court is scattered in body, its members are united by
the gracious light of reason (i. 18). This standard language belongs
to the whole of Italy, and is called the Italian vernacular (_latinum
vulgare_); “for this has been used by the illustrious writers who
have written poetry in the vernacular throughout Italy, as Sicilians,
Apulians, Tuscans, natives of Romagna, and men of both the Marches” (i.
19).
The examination of the dialects is perhaps the most original feature
in the book; that Dante did not recognise that what was destined to be
the literary language of Italy was, in reality, the Tuscan dialect, but
adopted instead the theory of a conventional or artificial Italian, was
largely due to his theories being based upon the lyrical poetry of his
predecessors, in which he seemed to find this abstraction realised;
for, though natives of different regions of Italy, they used--or, in
the form in which their poems came to him, appeared to have used--a
common literary language. Nevertheless in the _Divina Commedia_, which
was to codify the national language, Dante recognised that he himself
was speaking Tuscan (_Inf._ xxiii. 76, _Purg._ xvi. 137).
BOOK II.--The unfinished second book is of the utmost value to the
student of Italian poetic form. It makes us realise, too, how zealously
Dante sought out technical perfection, studying subtle musical and
rhythmical effects, curiously weighing the divisions of his stanzas,
balancing lines, selecting words, harmonising syllables. No less
noteworthy are his modest references to his own work and his generous
appreciation of that of others, his predecessors and contemporaries,
with reference to whose poems, as well as to his own, he illustrates
his maxims. There is a certain limitation in that Dante conceives
of poetry as only lyrical and written to be set to music (ii. 4),
recognising only the most elaborate and least spontaneous forms of
lyrical poetry--the Canzone (of which the Sestina is a variety), the
Ballata, the Sonnet (ii. 3). There is no hint of that splendid rhythm,
at once epical and lyrical, in which the _Divina Commedia_ was to be
written; though it is possible that Dante would have dealt with it in
the fourth book, in which he intended to treat the discernment to be
exercised with a subject fit to be sung in the “comic” style, in which
sometimes the “middle” and sometimes the “lowly” vernacular may be used
(ii. 4), and also, dealing with poems in the “middle” vulgar tongue, to
treat specially of rhyme (ii. 13). The third book would perhaps have
been concerned with the use of the illustrious vernacular in Italian
prose (ii. 1.)
The illustrious vulgar tongue having been found, Dante proceeds thus to
show the noblest use to which it can be put by the poet. Only three
subjects are sufficiently exalted to be sung in this stateliest form of
Italian speech, this highest vernacular: _Salus_, _Venus_, _Virtus_; or
those things which specially relate to them: the rightful use of arms,
the fire of love, the direction of the will; and the first of these
themes had not been handled, according to Dante, by any Italian poet.
He cites Bertran de Born as having written on arms, Arnaut Daniel and
Cino da Pistoia on love, Giraut de Borneil and “the friend of Cino”
(himself) on _rectitudo_ (ii. 2). Of the three legitimate lyrical
forms the canzone is noblest, and contains what Rossetti called the
“fundamental brainwork” of the most illustrious poets (ii. 3). And the
ballata is nobler than the sonnet. It is in the canzone alone, in the
“tragic” or highest style, that these sublime themes are to be sung;
the style in which the stateliness of the lines, the loftiness of the
construction, and the excellence of the words agree with the dignity of
the subject. In this superexcellent sense, a canzone is a composition
in the loftiest style of equal stanzas, without a refrain, referring to
one subject.[21] And the rest of the book is occupied with rules for
its proper construction; the different lines to be used, the choice of
words, the structure of the various types of stanza, in which the whole
art of the canzone is contained, the arrangement of rhymes; the work
breaking off at the point where Dante was about to treat of the number
of lines and syllables in the stanza. It is noteworthy that, though
he illustrates his practical rules by examples from the Provençal
troubadours, his Italian predecessors and contemporaries, and his own
canzoni, the great Latin poets are set up as models: “The more closely
we imitate these, the more correctly we write poetry” (ii. 4). There
is some indication that the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ would have been
dedicated to Cino da Pistoia as the _Vita Nuova_ had been to Guido
Cavalcanti.
DATE OF COMPOSITION.--The _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ was probably written
about the same time as the _Convivio_ or slightly earlier. From a
mention of the Marquis Giovanni of Monferrato apparently as living (_V.
E._ i. 12), who died in January (?) 1305, it has been supposed that
Book i. cannot be much later than the beginning of that year. Dante’s
evident friendly feeling for Bologna (which altered before he wrote the
_Commedia_) may be connected with the time when the Florentine exiles
were welcomed in that city, before the decree of expulsion in 1306. It
has sometimes been thought that Book ii. may be a much later piece of
work, produced as a poetical textbook at Ravenna in Dante’s last years,
and broken off, as Boccaccio suggests, by his death. Nevertheless, when
the tone of the work and the probable dates of the lyrics quoted be
taken into account, it seems more probable that what we have of the _De
Vulgari Eloquentia_ was written between 1304 and 1306; it represents
part of the labours which were interrupted by the advent of Henry VII.,
or abandoned when the poet turned to the _Divina Commedia_.
2. _The “Monarchia”_
THE EMPIRE.--Upon all the political life of mediaeval Italy lay the
gigantic shadow of a stupendous edifice, the Holy Roman Empire.
Although the barbarians had struck down the body of the Empire of
Rome, the spirit of Julius Caesar was mighty yet, as in Shakespeare’s
tragedy. The monarchy of Augustus, of Trajan, of Constantine and
Justinian, still lived; not in the persons of the impotent Caesars
of Byzantium, but in those of the successors of Charlemagne. From
the coronation of Otto the Saxon (962) to the death of the Suabian
Frederick II. (1250), the mediaeval western world saw in the man whom
the Germans recognised as their sovereign the “King of the Romans
ever Augustus,” the Emperor-elect, who when crowned at Rome would be
“Romanorum Imperator,” the supreme head of the universal Monarchy and
the Vicar of God in things temporal, even as the Pope was the supreme
head of the universal Church and the Vicar of God in things spiritual.
In the eyes of Dante, the Papacy and the Empire alike proceeded from
God, and were inseparably wedded to Rome, the eternal city; from which
as two suns they should shed light upon man’s spiritual and temporal
paths, as divinely ordained by the infinite goodness of Him from whom
the power of Peter and of Caesar bifurcates as from a point (_Purg.
xvi._ 106-108, _Epist._ v. 5).
PAPAL CLAIMS.--With the increase of their temporal power, the
successors of Hildebrand, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had
extended their authority from spiritual into purely secular regions.
For them the imperial dignity was not of divine origin, but the gift
of the Church to Charlemagne and his German successors. “What is the
Teutonic King till consecrated at Rome?” wrote Adrian to Frederick
Barbarossa: “The chair of Peter has given and can withdraw its gifts.”
In the interregnum that followed the fall of the house of Suabia, the
Popes had claimed to exercise imperial rights in Italy, with disastrous
results. They had joined the sword with the pastoral staff; and the
Church, by confounding in herself the two governments, had fallen into
the mire (_Purg._ xvi. 109-112, 127-129). And this tendency in the
Papacy culminated in the extravagant pretensions of Boniface VIII.,
in his relations with both the Empire and France, and his famous Bull
_Unam Sanctam_ (November 1302), declaring that the temporal power of
kings is subject to the spiritual power of the priesthood, and directed
by it as the body by the soul.
DATE OF THE “MONARCHIA.”--The _Monarchia_ is Dante’s attempt to solve
this burning mediaeval question of the proper relations of Church and
State, of spiritual and temporal authority. Although it is undoubtedly
the most famous of his prose works, the most widely divergent views
have been held as to its date of composition. If the _Vita Nuova_
is the most ideal book of love, the _Monarchia_ is one of the most
purely idealistic works ever written on politics. Even as Beatrice is
the most glorious lady of the poet’s mind, _la gloriosa donna de la
mia mente_, so the temporal monarchy or Empire is to be considered by
the poet in its ideal aspect according to the divine intention, _typo
et secundum intentionem_ (_Mon._ i. 2). Like the _Vita Nuova_, and
unlike any other of Dante’s longer works, the _Monarchia_ contains no
mention of the poet’s exile, and no explicit references or allusions to
contemporary events or persons. From this, and other considerations,
it has sometimes been held that the _Monarchia_ was written during
his political life in Florence. Boccaccio, on the other hand, declares
that Dante made this book on the coming of Henry VII., and the trend of
criticism to-day is to accept 1313 as the approximate date. There are,
however, scholars who consider it more probable that the _Monarchia_
was written towards the close of the poet’s life.
BOOK I.--The _Monarchia_ is divided into three books, corresponding
to the three questions to be answered touching this most useful and
least explored amongst occult and useful truths, the knowledge of the
temporal monarchy (i. 1). In its ideal sense, the temporal Monarchy, or
Empire, is defined as “a unique princedom extending over all persons
in time, or in and over those things which are measured by time” (i.
2). And the first question arising concerning this temporal Monarchy
is--whether it is necessary for the well-being of the world.
The proper function of the human race taken as a whole, the ultimate
end or goal, for which the eternal God by His art, which is nature,
brings into being the human race in its universality, is constantly
to actualise or bring into play the whole capacity of the possible
intellect, for contemplation and for action, for speculation and for
operation (i. 3). And, for this almost divine function and goal, the
most direct means is universal peace (i. 4). Since it is ordained for
this goal, the human race must be guided by one ruling power, the
Emperor, with reference to whom all its parts have their order; in
subjection to whom, the human race becomes in its unity most like to
God (i. 5-9). There must be some one supreme judge to decide by his
judgment, mediately or immediately, all contentions; and such a judge
can only be the Monarch (i. 10).
Again, the world is best disposed when justice is paramount therein;
but this can only be under the Monarch or Emperor, who alone, free from
covetousness and supreme in authority, will have the purest will and
the greatest power to practise justice upon the earth (i. 11). Under
him the human race will be most free, since it will have the fullest
use of freewill, the greatest gift of God to man (i. 12). He alone,
adorned with judgment and justice in the highest degree, will be best
disposed for ruling, and able to dispose others best (i. 13). From him
the particular princes receive the common rule by which the human race
is guided to peace; his is the dominating will that rules the wills of
mortals, disposing them to unity and concord (i. 14, 15). All these
and other reasons show that, for the well-being of the world, it is
necessary that there should be the Monarchy. And they are confirmed
by the sacred fact that Christ willed to become man in the “fullness
of time,” when the world was blessed with universal peace under the
perfect monarchy of Augustus, the seamless garment that has since been
rent by the nail of cupidity (i. 16).
To the modern mind the first book of the _Monarchia_ is the most
important. The conception that the goal of civilisation is the
realising of all human potentialities is one of abiding significance.
Divested of its mediaeval garb, the Empire itself becomes a permanent
court of international justice, a supreme and impartial tribunal
of international arbitration. Within such a restored unity of
civilisation, nations and kingdoms and cities will develop freely and
peacefully, in accordance with their own conditions and laws (_cf._ i.
10, 12, 14, and _Conv._ iv. 4). Here Dante anticipates what Mazzini
called the “United States of Europe,” or, more broadly, “Humanity.”
BOOK II.--The second book answers the question whether the Roman people
took to itself this dignity of Monarchy, or Empire, by right. But right
in things is nothing else than the similitude of the Divine Will,
and what God wills in human society is to be held as true and pure
right. God’s will is invisible; but it is manifested in this matter
by the whole history of Rome (ii. 1, 2). The surpassing nobleness of
Aeneas, and therefore of his descendants (ii. 3); the traditional
miracles wrought for the Romans (ii. 4); the devotion of the great
Roman citizens from Cincinnatus to Cato, showing that the Roman people,
in subjecting the world to itself, contemplated the good of the
Commonwealth, and therefore the end of right (ii. 5, 6); the manifest
adaptation of the Roman people by nature for ruling the nations with
imperial sway (ii. 7);--all these prove that it was by right that the
Romans acquired the Empire. The hidden judgment of God is sometimes
revealed by contest, whether in the clash of champions in an ordeal or
in the contention of rivals striving together for some prize (ii. 8).
Such a prize was the empire of the world, which by divine judgment fell
to the Roman people, when all were wrestling for it, and the kings of
the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Persians, and even Alexander himself had
failed (ii. 9). Their wars, too, from the earliest times were under
the form of an ordeal; and Divine Providence declared in their favour.
Thus arguments resting on principles of reason prove that the Roman
people acquired the supreme and universal jurisdiction by right (ii.
10, 11). And arguments based upon principles of Christian faith support
it. Christ, by His birth under the edict of Augustus, confirmed the
imperial jurisdiction from which that edict proceeded; and, by His
death under the vicar of Tiberius, He confirmed the universal penal
jurisdiction of the Emperor over all the human race which was to be
punished in His flesh (ii. 12, 13). “Let them cease to reproach the
Roman Empire, who feign themselves to be sons of the Church; when they
see that the Bridegroom, Christ, thus confirmed it at either limit of
His warfare” (_i.e._ at the beginning and at the end of His life upon
earth).
BOOK III.--And this rebuke to the clergy, from whom the main opposition
to the Empire proceeded, naturally leads to the great question of the
third book, the pith of the whole treatise.[22] Does the authority of
the Roman Monarch or Emperor, who is thus by right the monarch of the
world, depend immediately upon God, or upon some vicar of God, the
successor of Peter? (iii. 1, 2, 3). The stock arguments of those who
assert from passages of Scripture, such as the creation of the sun
and moon, or the two swords mentioned in St. Luke’s Gospel, that the
authority of the Empire depends upon that of the Church, are readily
brushed away (iii. 4-9). And, as for their historical evidence, the
donation of Constantine, if genuine, was invalid; the coronation of
Charlemagne was an act of usurpation (iii. 10, 11). The authority of
the Church cannot be the cause of the imperial authority, since the
latter was efficient, and was confirmed by Christ, before the Church
existed (iii. 13). Neither has the Church this power of authorising the
Emperor from God, nor from herself, nor from any Emperor, nor from the
consent of the majority of mankind; indeed, such power is absolutely
contrary to her very nature and the words of her Divine Founder (iii.
14, 15).
But it may be directly shown that the authority of the Emperor
depends immediately upon God. For man, since he alone partakes of
corruptibility and incorruptibility, is ordained for two ultimate
ends--blessedness of this life, which is figured in the Earthly
Paradise, and blessedness of life eternal, which consists in the
fruition of the Divine Aspect in the Celestial Paradise.[23] To these
two beatitudes, as to diverse ends, man must come by diverse means. For
to the first we come by philosophic teachings, provided that we follow
them by acting in accordance with the moral and intellectual virtues;
to the second by spiritual teachings, transcending human reason, as
we follow them by acting in accordance with the theological virtues,
Faith, Hope, Charity. But in spite of reason and revelation, which
make these ends and means known to us, human cupidity would reject
them, “were not men, like horses going astray in their brutishness,
held in the way by bit and rein.” “Wherefore man had need of a twofold
directive power according to his twofold end, to wit, the supreme
Pontiff, to lead the human race, in accordance with things revealed,
to eternal life; and the Emperor, to direct the human race to temporal
felicity in accordance with the teachings of philosophy.” It is
the special function of the Emperor to establish liberty and peace
upon earth, to make the world correspond to the divinely ordained
disposition of the heavens. Therefore he is chosen and confirmed
by God alone; the so-called Electors are only the proclaimers
(_denuntiatores_) of Divine Providence. “Thus, then, it is plain that
the authority of the temporal monarch descends upon him without any
mean from the fountain of universal authority.” Yet it must not be
taken that the Roman Prince is not subordinate in anything to the Roman
Pontiff, since this mortal felicity is in some sort ordained with
reference to immortal felicity. “Let Caesar, therefore, observe that
reverence to Peter which a firstborn son should observe to a father, so
that, illuminated by the light of paternal grace, he may with greater
power irradiate the world, over which he is set by Him alone who is
ruler of all things spiritual and temporal” (_Mon._ iii. 16).
RECEPTION OF THE WORK.--The _Monarchia_ remained almost unknown until
the great conflict between Louis of Bavaria and Pope John XXII., after
Dante’s death. Boccaccio tells us that the Imperialists used arguments
from the book in support of their claims, and it became in consequence
very famous. A tempest of clerical indignation roared round it. A
Dominican friar, Guido Vernani, wrote a virulent but occasionally acute
treatise, “on the power of the Supreme Pontiff and in confutation of
the _Monarchy_ composed by Dante Alighieri,” which he dedicated as
a warning to Ser Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, chancellor of Bologna,
Dante’s commentator and apologist. The notorious Cardinal Bertrando del
Poggetto, who had been sent as papal legate to Italy by John XXII., had
the _Monarchia_ burnt as heretical, and followed this up--apparently
in 1329--by an infamous attempt to desecrate Dante’s tomb. In the
sixteenth century it was placed upon the Index of Prohibited Books.
Dante had anticipated this, and the splendid passage which opens the
third book of the _Monarchia_ strikes the keynote, not only of this
treatise, but of all his life-work for what he conceived the service of
God and the welfare of man:
“Since the truth about it cannot be laid bare without putting certain
to the blush, perchance it will be the cause of some indignation
against me. But since Truth from her immutable throne demands it, and
Solomon, too, as he enters the forest of the Proverbs, teaches us by
his own example to meditate upon the truth and abjure the impious
man, and the Philosopher, teacher of morals, urges us to sacrifice
friendship for truth, therefore I take courage from the words of
Daniel, wherein the divine power, the shield of such as defend the
truth, is proffered; and, putting on the breastplate of faith,
according to the admonition of Paul, in the warmth of that coal which
one of the Seraphim took from the celestial altar and touched the lips
of Isaiah withal, I will enter upon the present wrestling-ground, and,
by the arm of Him who delivered us from the power of darkness by His
blood, will I hurl the impious and the liar out of the ring in the
sight of all the world. What should I fear, since the Spirit, coeternal
with the Father and with the Son, says by the mouth of David: ‘The just
shall be had in everlasting remembrance; he shall not be afraid of an
evil report’?”
3. _The “Epistolae”_
Dante tells us in the _Vita Nuova_ that, on the death of Beatrice, he
wrote a Latin letter to the chief persons of the city, concerning its
desolate and widowed condition, beginning with the text of Jeremiah:
“How doth the city sit solitary.” Neither this nor the letter mentioned
by Leonardo Bruni, in which Dante described the fight at Campaldino,
has survived. Many epistles ascribed to Dante were extant in the
days of Boccaccio and Bruni. Bruni tells us that, after the affair
at Lastra, Dante wrote for permission to return to Florence both to
individual citizens in the government and to the people, especially
a long letter beginning: “O my people, what have I done unto thee?”
This may perhaps have been the letter which Bruni records, in which
the poet defends his impartiality when the leaders of the two factions
were banished; but there appears to have been another, denying that
he had accompanied the Emperor against Florence. From one of these
the perplexing fragment may have come, about his want of prudence in
the priorate and his service at Campaldino. Giovanni Villani mentions
three noble epistles, the style of which he praises highly: one to
the government of Florence, “complaining of his unjust exile,” which
is probably the lost letter mentioned by Bruni; the second, to the
Emperor Henry, and the third, to the Italian cardinals, have both
been preserved. Flavio Biondo, in the fifteenth century, professes to
have seen letters at Forlì dictated by Dante, notably one addressed
by the poet, in his own name and on behalf of the exiled Bianchi, to
Can Grande della Scala concerning the reply of the Florentines to the
ambassadors of the Emperor.
There are now thirteen extant Latin letters ascribed to Dante. They
have come down to us mainly in two fourteenth-century manuscripts;
three have been preserved in Boccaccio’s handwriting in the Laurentian
MS., known as the _Zibaldone Boccaccesco_; nine others in a Vatican
MS., of which Boccaccio was perhaps the original compiler. Two of
these latter have also been found in another MS. of the fourteenth
century--the San Pantaleo MS. at Rome. No MS. of the letter to Can
Grande is known earlier than the fifteenth century.[24]
EPISTLES I. AND II.--Epistles i. and ii. are connected with Count
Alessandro da Romena, who, Bruni states, was appointed captain of the
Bianchi in their meeting at Gargonza, and whom Dante brands with infamy
in _Inferno_ xxx. The former is addressed in the name of Alessandro,
the council and whole body of the White party, to the Cardinal Niccolò
da Prato, legate of Benedict XI., assuring him of their gratitude and
confidence, promising to refrain from hostilities in expectation of his
good offices in the pacification of Florence. It may be accepted as an
authentic document of 1304; but whether it was written by Dante, who
had perhaps already left his fellow-exiles, is still open to question.
The second is a letter of condolence to Alessandro’s nephews, Oberto
and Guido, on the occasion of their uncle’s death, which probably
occurred in the same year. Its authenticity is highly doubtful. Both
letters are found only in the Vatican manuscript.
EPISTLES III. AND IV.--Epistles iii. and iv. are directly connected
with the _Rime_. The third, which occurs in the Boccaccian autograph,
seems to be to Cino da Pistoia, affectionate greetings from the
Florentine exile to the Pistoian, explaining how one passion may be
replaced by another in the soul. It was accompanied by a poem, which
is identified with the sonnet, “Io sono stato con Amore insieme.” If
authentic, its date would be not later than 1306, when Cino’s exile
ended. The fourth letter, found in the Vatican MS., is addressed to
the Marquis Moroello Malaspina, apparently from the Casentino, and
describes in forcible language how the writer was suddenly enamoured
of a woman’s beauty. It, too, was accompanied by a poem, evidently the
canzone, “Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia.” The more probable
date is 1307 or thereabouts.[25] The authenticity of these two letters
is doubtful, but on the whole probable.
EPISTLES V., VI. AND VII.--Next come the three great political letters,
glorified pamphlets on the enterprise of Henry of Luxemburg. Letter
v., the manifesto to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, seems to have
been written in September or October, 1310, before Henry crossed the
Alps. It announces the advent of Henry, the bridegroom and glory of
Italy, as bringing a new era of peace, declares the rightful authority
and historical sanctity of the Empire, exhorting the peoples to free
and joyous submission, and those who, like the writer himself, have
suffered injustice to be merciful in their anticipated triumph. The
letter, one of the noblest of Dante’s utterances, is a landmark in the
growth of the national idea in Italy; rulers and peoples are admonished
as members of one body; the good tidings are announced to the nation
as a whole; the writer’s Italian citizenship is placed before his
Florentine origin, when he subscribes himself: “The humble Italian,
Dante Alighieri, a Florentine unjustly exiled.” It was in the bitter
indignation caused by the Guelf opposition, the alliance between
Florence and King Robert, and the doubt occasioned by the Emperor’s own
delay in Lombardy, that Dante from the Casentino wrote the terrible
Letters vi. and vii., on March 31st, 1311, to the Florentines, “the
most wicked Florentines within,” and on April 17th to Henry himself,
“the most sacred triumphant and only lord.” The former denounces
the Florentines for their rebellion, their “shrinking from the yoke
of liberty,” their attempt to make their civic life independent of
that of Rome, and, in prophetic fashion, warns them of their coming
destruction at the hands of “the prince who is the giver of the law.”
In the latter, adopting the part of Curio towards Caesar (which he
himself condemns in the _Inferno_), Dante urges the Emperor without
further delay to turn his forces upon Florence, who “sharpens the horns
of rebellion against Rome which made her in her own image and after
her likeness.” The poet’s attitude is that of the Hebrew prophets;
his motive, the conviction that his native city had adopted a line of
policy opposed to the true interests of Italy. These three letters are
contained in the Vatican MS.; Letters v. and vii. (of both of which
early Italian translations are extant) also in the S. Pantaleo MS., and
there is a third (fifteenth century) MS. of the letter to the Emperor.
EPISTLES VII.*, VII.** AND VII.***.--These three letters are a humble
pendant to the three just considered. They are addressed to Margaret of
Brabant, the wife of the Emperor Henry, in the name of the Countess of
Battifolle (Gherardesca, daughter of Count Ugolino, married to Guido
di Simone of the Conti Guidi). They are in answer to letters from the
Empress, and, while containing mere expressions of loyal devotion and
aspirations for the triumph of the imperial cause, their place in
the Vatican MS. among the letters of Dante, together with the close
resemblance in style and phraseology with the latter, has led to a
general acceptance of the view that they were written by the poet. They
were written in the spring of 1311, the third being dated from Poppi on
May 18th.
EPISTLE VIII.--The letter to the Italian Cardinals, which is mentioned
by Villani, and echoed by Petrarch in his canzone on Rome (“Spirto
gentil che quelle membra reggi”), is found only in Boccaccio’s
autograph manuscript. It was written shortly after the death of Clement
V. (April 20, 1314), when the cardinals were assembled in conclave at
Carpentras; lamenting the desolation of the sacred city, it exhorts
them, “for the bride of Christ, for the seat of the bride, which is
Rome, for our Italy, and, to speak more fully, for the whole estate
of those on pilgrimage on earth,” to restore the Apostolic See to
its consecrated place. It is a noble protest of a devout and learned
layman against a corrupt and ignorant clergy, of a Catholic and an
Italian patriot against the papal desertion of Rome, in which Dante
stands forth as the new Jeremiah, renewing for the sacred city of
Christendom the lamentation of his Hebrew predecessor for Jerusalem.
The letter presents striking analogies with the canto of the simonist
popes (_Inf._ xix.), but is more moderate in tone, as the poet is here
less denouncing than attempting to convert the cardinals to his point
of view. There is extant a letter to the French King from Cardinal
Napoleone Orsini (whom Dante admonishes by name in the epistle) with
passages of a somewhat similar kind; it is tempting to suppose that the
cardinal had actually received the exhortation and caught fire from the
burning words of his fellow Italian.
EPISTLE IX.--The occasion of the letter refusing the amnesty has been
already considered (chap. i.). It was probably written in the latter
part of May 1315. In the Boccaccian autograph (in which alone it is
found) it has no title; the traditional _Amico florentino_, “to a
Florentine friend,” is a later addition. It is practically the only
example of the poet’s personal correspondence that has been preserved.
Barbi has thrown grave doubts upon the identification of the person
to whom the letter is addressed with Teruccio di Manetto Donati, the
brother of Dante’s wife; the nephew mentioned may perhaps be Andrea
Poggi (_cf._ chap. i.) or, more probably, Niccolò Donati, the son of
Gemma’s brother Foresino. It is here that Dante calls himself the
preacher of justice, _vir praedicans iustitiam_, a claim which is the
key of the _Commedia_ and may be traced from the canzone of the “Tre
donne.” Nor is it without significance that the closing words of the
letter, _nec panis deficiet_, “nor will bread fail me,” echo the same
chapter of Isaiah (li. 14) which inspired the canzone in which Dante
holds his exile as an honour.
EPISTLE X.--The Epistle to Can Grande stands apart from the others.
Although eight MSS. are now known, none are earlier than the fifteenth
century, and the two earliest contain no more than the opening
sections. Some of the early commentators--Pietro Alighieri, Fra Guido
da Pisa, and Boccaccio--were evidently acquainted with it; it was first
expressly quoted by Filippo Villani in 1391, and published first in
1700, before any of Dante’s letters had seen the light, excepting the
unsatisfactory Italian version of the Epistle to Henry of Luxemburg.
If genuine, and its authenticity though much disputed seems now almost
certain, it was probably written in 1318 or early in 1319, apparently
before the first Eclogue.
Beginning with language of enthusiastic praise and grateful friendship,
which recalls analogous passages in Canto xvii., the poet prepares
to pay back the benefits he has received with the dedication of the
_Paradiso_. So far (1-4), the epistolary form has been maintained, and
this is the only portion of the letter found in the earlier MSS.; but
now the writer assumes the office of a lecturer, and, with a quotation
from the _Metaphysics_ of Aristotle, proceeds to give an introduction
to the _Commedia_ and a commentary upon the first canto of the third
cantica. He distinguishes the literal and allegorical meanings, defines
the title of the whole (“The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by
birth, not by character”) and of the part, and explains the difference
between comedy and tragedy from a somewhat different point of view
from that of the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (ii. 4). The subject of the
_Paradiso_, in the literal sense, is the state of the blessed after
death; in the allegorical sense, man according as by meriting he is
subject to Justice rewarding. “The end of the whole and of the part is
to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to
lead them to the state of felicity” (_Epist._ x. 15). Dante emphasises
the ethical aspect of the poem: “The whole as well as the part was
conceived, not for speculation, but with a practical object” (x. 16).
Then follows a minute scholastic and mystical interpretation of the
opening lines of the first canto of the _Paradiso_ in the literal
sense, closing in an eloquent and very beautiful summary of the ascent
through the spheres of Paradise to find true beatitude in the vision
of the Divine Essence. Throughout this part of the letter Dante, when
touching upon the details of his vision, always speaks of himself in
the third person, evidently following the example of St. Paul in the
Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He unmistakably implies that he has
actually been the recipient of some personal spiritual experience,
which he is unable adequately to relate. That passionate self-reproach,
which sounds in so many passages of the _Divina Commedia_, makes itself
heard here too. If the invidious do not believe in the power of the
human intellect so to transcend the measure of humanity, let them read
the examples cited from Scripture and the mystical treatises of Richard
of St. Victor, Bernard, Augustine. But, if the unworthiness of the
speaker makes them question such an elevation, let them see in Daniel
how Nebuchodonosor by divine inspiration had a vision against sinners:
“For He who ‘maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,’ sometimes in mercy for
their conversion, sometimes in wrath for their punishment, reveals His
glory, in greater or less measure, as He wills, to those who live never
so evily” (_Epist._ x. 28). This section of the letter, for the student
of mystical experience, is of the highest significance.
4. _The “Eclogae”_
Belonging, like the tenth Epistle, to that closing period of Dante’s
life when he was engaged on the _Paradiso_, are two delightful pastoral
poems in Latin hexameters. Here, too, we owe much to the piety of
Boccaccio. The earliest and most authoritative of the five manuscripts
is again in his handwriting, in the _Zibaldone Boccaccesco_ (where the
poems are accompanied by explanatory notes), in the Laurentian Library.
Giovanni del Virgilio, a young lecturer and a poet, had written
to Dante from Bologna a letter in Latin verse, expressing his
profound admiration for the singer of the Commedia, but respectfully
remonstrating with him for writing in Italian, and suggesting some
stirring contemporary subjects as worthy matters for his muse: the
death of Henry VII., the battle of Montecatini, a victory of Can Grande
over the Paduans, the struggle by sea and land between King Robert of
Naples and the Visconti for the possession of Genoa. The reference
to this last event shows that the letter cannot have been written
before July 1318, while a passage towards the close clearly indicates
the early part of the following year. It further contains a pressing
invitation to come and take the laurel crown at Bologna, or, at least,
to answer the letter, “if it vex thee not, to have read first the
feeble numbers which the rash goose cackles to the clear-voiced swan.”
Dante’s first Eclogue is the answer. Adopting the pastoral style, he
himself and his companion Dino Perini (whom Boccaccio afterwards knew)
appear as shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus, discussing the invitation
from Mopsus. It was probably written in the spring or early summer of
1319. In a medley of generous praise and kindly banter, Dante declines
to visit Bologna, “that knows not the gods,” and still hopes to receive
the poet’s crown at Florence. When the _Paradiso_ is finished, then
will it be time to think of ivy and laurel; and in the meanwhile, to
convert Mopsus from his errors with respect to vernacular poetry, he
will send him ten measures of milk fresh from the best-loved ewe of all
his flock--ten cantos from the _Paradiso_, which evidently are not yet
published, since the sheep is yet unmilked.
Mopsus in his answer expresses the intense admiration with which he and
his fellow Arcadians have heard this song, and adopts the same style.
Condoling with Dante on his unjust exile, he foresees his return home
and reunion with Phyllis, who may perhaps be Gemma or (as Carducci
suggested) an impersonification of Florence. But, in the meanwhile,
pastoral pleasures and an enthusiastic welcome await him at Bologna,
if Iolas (Guido da Polenta) will let him go. A reference to “Phrygian
Muso” enables us to fix approximately the date; towards the beginning
of September, 1319, Albertino Mussato, the Paduan poet and patriot,
was at Bologna, endeavouring to get aid from the Guelf communes for
his native city against Can Grande. Dante could hardly have with
consistency accepted the invitation.
The writer of the notes on the Laurentian manuscript, whether
Boccaccio himself or another, commenting upon a poem sent by Giovanni
del Virgilio to Albertino Mussato, states that Dante delayed a year
before answering this Eclogue, and that his reply was forwarded after
his death by his son. His second Eclogue is in narrative form, and
professes to be no more than the report by the writer of a conversation
between Dante and his friends which is overheard by Guido da Polenta. A
new associate of the poet’s last days is introduced to us: the shepherd
Alphesiboeus, who is identified with Fiducio de’ Milotti of Certaldo,
a distinguished physician resident at Ravenna. The tone is the same as
that of the other Eclogue. Ravenna becomes the pastures of Pelorus,
while Bologna is the Cyclops’ cave, to which Dante still refuses to go,
for fear of Polyphemus, whose atrocities in the past are recorded.[26]
And the crown expected now is, perhaps, no longer one which any earthly
city can give: “For this illustrious head already the Pruner is
hastening to award an everlasting garland.”
These two Eclogues are of priceless value. Nowhere else is such a
comparatively bright picture of Dante’s closing days given us. The
genuine and hearty laughter which greets Giovanni’s two letters, the
generous tone of the supreme singer towards the young scholar poet,
the kindly joking at the expense of Dino, make delightful reading and
show us quite another side of Dante’s character. Giovanni’s first
letter implies that the earlier parts of the _Commedia_ had not only
been published, but had acquired a certain popularity. From Dante’s
first Eclogue it follows that, by 1319, both _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_
were completed, and that the _Paradiso_ was in preparation: “When the
bodies that flow round the world, and they that dwell among the stars,
shall be shown forth in my song, even as the lower realms, then shall
I delight to crown my head with ivy and with laurel.” And after this
the passage in the second Eclogue, written apparently in 1321, however
we interpret it, has the same pathos and sanctity as Petrarch’s note
on the last line of his _Triumph of Eternity_, or the abrupt ending of
Shelley’s _Triumph of Life_:
Hoc illustre caput, cui iam frondator in alta
virgine perpetuas festinat cernere frondes.[27]
5. _The “Quaestio de Aqua et Terra”_
The _Quaestio de Aqua et Terra_--which purports to be a discourse or
lecture delivered by Dante in the church of Sant’ Elena at Verona on
January 20th, 1320--was first published in 1508 by an Augustinian
friar, Giovan Benedetto Moncetti. No manuscript of it is known to
exist, and there is no reference to the work or to the event in
any earlier writer, though Antonio Pucci (after the middle of the
fourteenth century) implies that Dante sought disputations of this
kind. In this work the poet--in accordance with the physical science
of his age--discusses the question of the relative position of the
element earth and the element water upon the surface of the globe. The
_Quaestio_ was until recently regarded as a fabrication of the early
sixteenth century, but Moore in England and Vincenzo Biagi in Italy,
mainly on the internal evidence of the work itself, have convinced
many Dante scholars that it may be regarded with some probability as
authentic.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] In the recently discovered codex at Berlin--the earliest of
the four extant MSS.--the work is entitled _Rectorica Dantis_ (“The
Rhetoric of Dante”), which would associate it with the similarly named
treatises of the masters of the _ars dictandi_, such as Boncompagno da
Signa, who wrote a _Rhetorica novissima_.
[20] This southern idiom (_nostrum ydioma_, i. 10)--from which Dante
apparently regards both classical Latin and the modern romance
languages derived--would be what we now call Vulgar Latin; but he
restricts the phrase _vulgare latinum_ (or _latium_) to Italian,
which--when discussing the rival claims of the three vernaculars to
pre-eminence--he rightly recognises to be closest to classical Latin.
[21] _Equalium stantiarum sine responsorio ad unam sententiam tragica
coniugatio_ (ii. 8). The _sine responsorio_ distinguishes the true
canzone, _canzone distesa_, from the ballata, _canzone a ballo_, in
which the _ripresa_ of from two to four lines was repeated after each
stanza as well as sung as a prelude to the whole. Dante’s example is
his own _Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore_, the poem which began
“le nove rime” (_Purg._ xxiv. 49-51). The _tragica coniugatio_ is
most nearly realised in English poetry by the ode, while the closest
counterpart to the canzone with stanzas divisible into metrical periods
is offered by Spenser’s _Epithalamion_. The sestina has been employed
by English poets from the Elizabethans to Swinburne and Rudyard Kipling.
[22] Cipolla showed that the matter of the first two books more
directly controverts the anti-imperialist and anti-Roman arguments
of the French political writers of the beginning of the fourteenth
century--writers like the Dominican, John of Paris. But these or
similar views were now being adduced by Robert of Naples and supported
by Clement V.
[23] These two ends are the two cities--the earthly and the
heavenly--of St. Augustine’s _De Civitate Dei_; but the earthly city,
blessedness of this life, is more significant for Dante than it was for
Augustine. Felicity in peace and freedom is in some sort man’s right:
_Che è quello per che esso è nato_ (_Conv._ iv. 4).
[24] For the whole history of the Letters, the reader is referred to
Dr. Paget Toynbee’s introduction, _Dantis Alagherii Epistolae_, Oxford,
1920.
[25] Torraca would assign it to 1311.
[26] Polyphemus, as Biscaro has shown, is most probably Fulcieri da
Calboli, the ferocious podestà of Florence in 1303, who had been
elected Captain of the People at Bologna for the first six months of
1321 (his predecessor having died in office). _Cf. Ecl._ ii. (iv.)
76-83 with _Purg._ xiv. 58-66. See _Giornale storico della letteratura
italiana_, lxxxi. p. 128. Others have taken the person meant as Robert
of Naples, or, with Ricci, a kinsman of Venedico Caccianemico whom
Dante had covered with infamy in _Inf._ xviii.
[27] “This illustrious head, for which the Pruner is already hastening
to select unwithering leaves from the noble laurel,” or “to decree an
everlasting garland in the divine justice,” according to whether the
Virgin is taken as Daphne or Astraea.
CHAPTER IV
THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA”
1. _Introductory_
LETTER AND ALLEGORY.--The _Divina Commedia_ is a vision and an
allegory. It is a vision of the world beyond the grave; it is an
allegory, based upon that vision, of the life and destiny of man, his
need of light and guidance, his duties to the temporal and spiritual
powers, to the Empire and the Church. In the literal sense, the
subject is the state of souls after death. In the allegorical sense,
according to the Epistle to Can Grande, the subject is “man as by
freedom of will, meriting and demeriting, he is subject to Justice
rewarding or punishing” (_Epist._ x. 11). There is, therefore, the
distinction between the essential Hell, Purgatory, Paradise of
separated spirits--the lost and the redeemed--after death; and the
moral or spiritual Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, of men still united to
their bodies in this life, using their free will for good or for evil;
sinning, doing penance, living virtuously. The _Inferno_ represents the
state of ignorance and vice; the _Purgatorio_ is the life of converted
sinners, obeying Caesar and reconciled to Peter, doing penance and
striving God-wards; after the state of felicity has been regained in
the Earthly Paradise, the _Paradiso_ represents the ideal life of
action and contemplation, closing in an anticipation, here and now, of
the Beatific Vision. The whole poem is the mystical epic of the freedom
of man’s will in time and in eternity, the soul after conversion
passing through the stages of purification and illumination to the
attainment of union and fruition.
It must be admitted that the allegorical interpretation of the
_Commedia_ has frequently been carried to excess. This has led to a
reaction, represented now by Benedetto Croce, who would separate the
allegorical and didactic elements from the poetry, in which alone
the true value of the work consists. Such a tendency in its turn, if
pressed too far, derogates from Dante’s greatness and mars the unity of
the poem. In Dante the poet and the practical man--teacher, prophet,
politician, philosopher, reformer--are inseparable; more often purely
doctrinal themes become so fused in his imagination, so identified with
his personality, that the result is lyrical and great poetry.
TITLE.--Dante unquestionably called his work simply _Commedia_, which
he wrote _Comedia_ and pronounced _Comedìa_ (_Inf._ xvi. 128, xxi. 2).
The epithet _divina_ first appears in the sixteenth-century editions;
but it would be almost as pedantic to discard it now as it would be,
except when reading the word where it occurs in the poem, to return to
the original pronunciation, _comedìa_.[28]
METRICAL STRUCTURE.--Each of the three parts, or cantiche, is divided
into cantos: the _Inferno_ into thirty-four, the _Purgatorio_ into
thirty-three, the _Paradiso_ into thirty-three--thus making up a
hundred cantos, the square of the perfect number. Each canto is
composed of from one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and sixty
lines, forming thirty-eight to fifty-three terzine, a continuous
measure of three hendecasyllabic lines, woven together by the rhymes of
the middle lines, with an extra line rhyming with the second line of
the last terzina to close the canto:
ABA, BCB, CDC, DED ... XYX, YZY, Z.
The normal hendecasyllabic line is the _endecasillabo piano_, in which
the rhyme has the accent upon the penultimate syllable (_rima piana_,
trochaic ending). Occasionally, but rarely, we find the _endecasillabo
sdrucciolo_, with the rhyme accentuated on the antepenultimate syllable
(_rima sdrucciola_, dactylic ending), or the _endecasillabo tronco_,
with the accent on the final syllable (_rima tronca_). Italian prosody
regards both these latter forms (which appear to have twelve and ten
syllables respectively) as lines of eleven syllables.[29]
The _terza rima_ seems to be derived from the _serventese incatenato_
(“linked serventese”), one of the rather numerous forms of the Italian
_serventese_ or _sermontese_, a species of poem introduced from
Provence in the first half of the thirteenth century. The Provençal
_sirventes_ was a serviceable composition employed mainly for
satirical, political, and ethical purposes, in contrast with the more
stately and “tragical” canzone of love. Although the Italians extended
its range of subject and developed its metres, no one before Dante had
used it for a great poem or had transfigured it into this superb new
measure, at once lyrical and epical. In his hand, indeed, “the thing
became a trumpet,” sounding from earth to heaven, to call the dead to
judgment.
SOURCES.--The earlier mediaeval visions of the spirit world, of which
the most famous are Irish in origin, bear the same relation, in a
much slighter degree, to the spiritual content of the _Commedia_ as
the Provençal _sirventes_ does to its metrical form. Even if Dante
was acquainted with them (and there are episodes occasionally in the
poem which recall the vision of Tundal or Tnuthgal), he was absolutely
justified in asserting, in _Purgatorio_ xvi., that God willed that he
should see His court “by method wholly out of modern use”:
Per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso.
Such ideas, even in special details, were common property. Dante
transformed the mediaeval vision of the world beyond the grave into a
supreme work of art, making it the receptacle for all that was noblest
in the thought and aspiration of the centuries down to his own day. If
a hint or two came from _Ibernia fabulosa_, as Ariosto calls Ireland,
the main suggestion was Roman; and Virgil was his imperial master in
very fact, as he was his guide by poetical fiction (_Inf._ i. 82-87):
“O honour and light of the other poets, may the long study avail me,
and the great love, that has made me search thy volume. Thou art my
master and my author; thou alone art he from whom I took the fair style
that hath gained me honour.”
The influence of Virgil pervades the whole poem, and next to his
comes that of Lucan. Ovid was mainly a source of classical mythology
(frequently spiritualised in Dante’s hands); the contribution of
Horace, Statius, and Juvenal is slighter. And Dante was as familiar
with the Bible as with the _Aeneid_ and the _Pharsalia_; indeed, one
of the most salient characteristics of the _Commedia_ is the writer’s
adaptation of the message of the Hebrew prophets to his own times
in the language and with the consummate art of the Latin poets. In
its degree, the influence of Boëthius is as penetrating as that of
Virgil; Orosius has contributed as much history as has Livy. The
philosophy of the poem is naturally coloured by Aristotle, studied in
the Latin translations as interpreted by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas.
Augustine and Aquinas (more generally the latter) are the poet’s
chief theological sources; his mysticism has derived something from
Richard of St. Victor and Bonaventura as well as from Dionysius. But
he deals with his matter with independence, as a poet, in the light of
his own spiritual experience, his own imaginative interpretation of
life and history, his own observation of nature. Though versed in a
super-eminent degree with most of the knowledge, sacred and profane,
possible to a man of his epoch, and well-read to an almost incredible
extent when the circumstances of his life are considered, Dante’s
main and direct source of inspiration lay, not in books, but in that
wonderful world of the closing Middle Ages that lay open to his gaze,
as from a celestial watch-tower of contemplation: “The little space of
earth that maketh us so fierce, as I turned me with the eternal Twins,
all appeared to me from the hills to the sea” (_Par._ xxii. 151-153).
VIRGIL AND BEATRICE.--The end of the poem, as the Epistle to Can
Grande shows, is to remove those living in this life from the state of
misery, and lead them to the state of felicity. In the individual,
this will be accomplished by opening his eyes to the nature of vice; by
inducing him to contrition, confession, satisfaction; by leading him
to contemplation of eternal Truth. In the universality, it can only be
effected by the restoration of the Empire and the purification of the
Church. The dual scheme of the _Monarchia_ reappears in the _Commedia_,
but transferred from the sphere of Church and State to the field of
the individual soul. In the allegorical sense, Virgil may be taken
to represent Human Philosophy based on Reason; Beatrice to symbolize
Divine Philosophy, which includes the sacred science of Theology, and
is in possession of Revelation. But, primarily, Virgil and Beatrice
(like the other souls in the poem) are living personalities, not
allegorical types. Allegory may be forgotten in the tender relation
between Dante and Virgil, and, when that “sweetest father” leaves his
disciple in the Earthly Paradise to return to his own sad place in
Limbo, there is little of it left in Beatrice’s rebuke of her lover’s
past disloyalty; none when she is last seen enshrined in glory beneath
the Blessed Virgin’s throne.
There is then a universal and a personal meaning to be distinguished,
as well as the literal and allegorical significations. The _Divina
Commedia_ is the tribute of devotion from one poet to another; it
is the sequel to a real love, the glorification of the image of a
woman loved in youth; the story of one man’s conversion and spiritual
experience. Nor can we doubt that the study of the imperial poet of
_alma Roma_ helped Dante to his great political conception of the
destiny of the Empire, even as Philosophy first lifted him from the
moral aberrations that severed him from the ideal life (_Purg._ xxiii.
118). But, at the same time, Dante represents all mankind; as Witte
remarks, “the poet stands as the type of the whole race of fallen man,
called to salvation.”
DATES AND EPOCH.--Although the vision is poetically placed in the
spring of 1300, during the Pope’s jubilee and shortly before Dante’s
election to the priorate, the actual date of composition of the
poem--as far as concerns the first two parts--is still uncertain and
disputed. There are at present two principal theories. According to the
one (very strongly held by Parodi), the _Inferno_ was composed shortly
before the advent of Henry of Luxemburg, the _Purgatorio_ during his
Italian enterprise. According to the other, not only the _Paradiso_,
but the whole poem was written after the death of the Emperor, and must
therefore be regarded as the work of the closing years of the poet’s
life. On the former hypothesis, the allusion to the death of Clement
V., in _Inf._ xix., must be taken as an indefinite prediction or a
later insertion. It is possible to adopt a compromise between the two
views. The poem may have been begun some time between 1306 and 1308,
and portions of the _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ composed before the
catastrophe of 1313. After the death of the Emperor, Dante may well
have revised and completed these two canticles. Boccaccio tells us--and
the statement is confirmed (for the _Paradiso_) by a sonnet of Giovanni
Quirino--that the poet was wont to send his work in instalments to Can
Grande before any copies were made for others. There is no evidence of
any circulation before 1317, when some lines from _Inf._ iii. appear
among the papers of a notary at Bologna.[30] The first Eclogue shows
that, by 1319, the _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ had been, so to speak,
published, and the _Paradiso_ was in preparation; Boccaccio’s story
of the finding of the last thirteen cantos confirms the belief that
this final canticle, which crowns the poet’s whole life-work, was only
completed shortly before Dante’s death. Dante is in the position of a
man who is now relating to the world the vision vouchsafed to him many
years before. Hence everything that happened after April 1300 is spoken
of as future and by way of prophecy, beginning with Ciacco’s account in
_Inf._ vi. of the famous faction fight of May Day in that year. With
two exceptions--Frate Alberigo and Branca d’Oria (_Inf._ xxxiii.),
whose souls went down to Hell before their bodies died--every spirit
met with in the ecstatic pilgrimage is represented as having died
before April 1300. But Dante anticipates the certain damnation of some
who, though living in 1300, were dead when he wrote the poem; Corso
Donati, Popes Boniface and Clement, and a few less notorious sinners
as Carlino de’ Pazzi. In one instance, that of Venedico Caccianemico
(_Inf._ xviii.), he seems to have supposed a man dead in 1300 who in
reality lived a few years later.
TIME.--Dante’s conferences with the dead open at sunrise on Good
Friday, in his thirty-fifth year. He would impress upon us that his
visionary world is no mere dreamland, but a terrible reality, and
therefore his indications of time are frequent and precise. For
poetical purposes, he seems to represent this Good Friday as an
ideal Good Friday, March 25th, which was believed to have been the
actual date of the Crucifixion on the thirty-fourth anniversary of
the Annunciation (_cf. Inf._ xxi. 112, and the “three months” from
Christmas Day in _Purg._ ii. 98). In reality, it fell upon April 8th
in 1300; and, when Dante in his pilgrimage through Hell would mark
the time by reference to moon and stars, he perhaps has recourse to
the ecclesiastical calendar, in which the Paschal full moon was on
Thursday, April 7th (see Dr. Moore’s _Time-References in the Divine
Comedy_):
E già iernotte fu la luna tonda,
“And already yesternight the moon was round” (_Inf._ xx. 127); the
night of Maundy Thursday, that he has passed “so piteously” when the
poem opens.
2. _The “Inferno”_
CANTOS I. AND II.--At break of day on Good Friday, Dante, in his
thirty-fifth year, after a night of agonised wanderings, would fain
issue from the dark wood into which he has, as it were in slumber,
strayed. This tangled forest represents at once his own unworthy life
and the corruption of human society; both the “sin of the speaker” (§
28) and the “state of misery of those living in this life” (§ 15) of
the Epistle to Can Grande. He would climb the “mountain of delight”
which, for the individual, represents the state of felicity, and, for
mankind in general, the goal of civilisation; mystically, it is the
mountain of the Lord, to which only the innocent in hands and the clean
of heart shall ascend. But he is impeded by a swift and beautiful
leopard; terrified by a lion; driven back by a hideous she-wolf.
The three beasts are derived from Jeremiah (v. 6), where they stand
for the judgments to fall upon the people for their sins; here they
symbolise the chief vices that keep man from the felicity for which he
is born (_Conv._ iv. 4): Luxury in its mediaeval sense of Lust, Pride,
Avarice or Cupidity in its widest meaning. The comparatively modern
interpretation which would see in the beasts the three great Guelf
powers that opposed the Empire--the republic of Florence, the royal
house of France, the secular power of the Papacy--is now generally
discarded.
From this peril Dante is delivered by the spirit of Virgil, who bids
him take another way. The power of the wolf will extend until the
_Veltro_ or greyhound comes, who will deliver Italy and hunt the wolf
back to Hell. The advent of this Deliverer is mysteriously announced
(_Inf._ i. 100-111), and seems to be repeated in other forms at
intervals throughout the poem (_Purg._ xx. 10-15, xxxiii. 37-45;
_Par._ xxvii. 61-63). There can be little doubt that Virgil refers to
a future Emperor, who shall re-establish the imperial power and make
Roman law obeyed throughout the world, extirpate greed, bring about
and preserve universal peace in a restored unity of civilisation. His
mission will be the realisation of the ideals of the _Monarchia_, and
will work the salvation of Italy who will be restored to her former
leadership among the nations. At the same time, there may possibly be a
remoter reference to the second coming of Christ. This double prophecy
would have a certain fitness upon the lips of Virgil, who was believed
to have sung mystically of the first coming of Christ in the fourth
Eclogue (_cf. Purg._ xxii. 64-73), as well as of the foundation of Rome
and her Empire in the _Aeneid_. It has frequently been supposed that
Dante identified the _Veltro_ with some definite person; of the various
claimants to this honour Can Grande della Scala is, perhaps, the least
improbable. In any case, whatever the nationality of the deliverer,
the Empire of Dante’s dream was, in fact as well as name, Roman (_cf.
Epist. v._).
Human Philosophy can lead man from moral unworthiness and guide him to
temporal felicity; there are judgments of God to which human reason can
attain. Therefore Virgil will guide Dante through Hell and Purgatory,
that he may understand the nature of sin and the need of penance to
fill up the void in the moral order; after which a worthier soul will
lead him to Paradise and the contemplation of celestial things. Dante’s
sense of unworthiness keeps him back, until he learns that Virgil is
but the emissary of Beatrice, to whom in turn Lucia (St. Lucy) has
been sent to Dante’s aid by a noble Lady in Heaven--evidently the
Blessed Virgin Mary, who may not be named in Hell, and who symbolises
Divine Mercy, as Lucia does illuminating Grace. Thus encouraged, Dante
follows his guide and master upon “the arduous and rugged way.” Aeneas
had been vouchsafed his descent to the shades to learn things that
were the cause of the foundation of the Empire and the establishment
of the Papacy (_Inf._ ii. 20-27); Dante shall learn things which may
prepare men’s hearts for the restoration of the imperial throne, and
the cleansing of the papal mantle from the mire of temporal things. St.
Paul was caught up into paradise “to bring confirmation to that faith
which is the beginning of the way of salvation” (_ibid._ 29-30); Dante
shall follow him to lead men back to the purity of that faith, from
which they have wandered.