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DANTE
HIS TIMES AND HIS WORK
THE PURGATORY OF DANTE. Edited, with Translation and Notes, by
A. J. BUTLER, M.A. Crown 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._
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READINGS ON DANTE. By the Hon. WILLIAM WARREN VERNON, M.A.
THE PURGATORIO. With Introduction by Dean CHURCH. 2 vols. Crown
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LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
DANTE
HIS TIMES AND HIS WORK
BY
ARTHUR JOHN BUTLER, M.A.
LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
~London~
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
PREFACE
This little book is mainly compounded of papers which appeared, part in
the _Monthly Packet_, and part in the Magazine of the Home Reading
Union. It will be seen, therefore, that it is not intended for those
whom Italians call "Dantists," but for students at an early stage of
their studies. To the former class there will be nothing in the book
that is not already familiar--except where they happen to find mistakes,
from which, in so extensive a field for blundering as Dante affords, I
cannot hope to have kept it free. In the domain of history alone fresh
facts are constantly rewarding the indefatigable research of German and
Italian scholars--a research of which only the most highly specialised
specialist can possibly keep abreast. Even since the following pages
were for the most part in print, we have had Professor Villari's _Two
Centuries of Florentine History_, correcting in many particulars the
chroniclers on whom the Dante student has been wont to rely. This book
should most emphatically be added to those named in the appendix as
essential to the study of our author.
In connection with some of the remarks in the opening chapter, Professor
Butcher's Essay on _The Dawn of Romanticism in Greek Poetry_ should be
noticed. I do not think that the accomplished author's view is
incompatible with mine; though I admit that I had not taken much account
of the Greek writers whom we call "post-classical." But it is to be
noted, as bearing on the question raised in the second footnote on p. 9,
that most or all of the writers whom he cites were either Asiatics or
nearly touched by Asiatic influences.
I have made some attempt to deal in a concise way with two subjects
which have not, I think, hitherto been handled in English books on
Dante, other than translations. One of these is the development of the
Guelf and Ghibeline struggle from a rivalry between two German houses to
a partisan warfare which rent Italy for generations. I am quite aware
that I have merely touched the surface of the subject, which seems to
me to contain in it the essence of all political philosophy, with
special features such as could only exist in a country which, like
Italy, had, after giving the law to the civilised world, been unable to
consolidate itself into a nation like the other nations of Europe. I
have, I find, even omitted to notice what seem to have been the ruling
aims of at any rate the honest partisans on either side: unity, that of
the Ghibelines; independence, that of the Guelfs. Nor have I drawn
attention to a remarkable trait in Dante's own character, which, so far
as I know, has never been discussed--I mean his apparent disregard of
the "lower classes." Except for one or two similes drawn from the
"villano" and his habits, and one or two contemptuous allusions to
"Monna Berta e Ser Martino" and their like, it would seem as if for him
the world consisted of what now would be called "the upper ten
thousand." In an ordinary politician or partisan, or even in a mere man
of letters this would not be strange; but when we reflect that Dante was
a man who went deeply into social and religious questions, that he was
born less than forty years after the death of St. Francis, and was at
least closely enough associated with Franciscans for legend to make him
a member of the order, and that most of the so-called heretical sects of
the time--Paterines, Cathari, Poor Men--started really more from social
than from religious discontent, it is certainly surprising that his
interest in the "dim, common populations" should have been so slight.
The other object at which I have aimed is the introduction of English
students to the theories which seem to have taken possession of the most
eminent Continental Dante scholars, and of which some certainly seem to
be quite as much opposed to common sense and knowledge of human nature
as the conjectures of Troya and Balbo, for instance, were to sound
historical criticism. Here, again, I have but touched on the more
salient points; feeling sure that before long some of the scholarship in
our Universities and elsewhere, which at present devotes itself to Greek
and Latin, having reached the point of realizing that Greek and Latin
texts may be worth studying though written outside of so-called
classical periods, will presently extend the principle to the further
point of applying to mediaeval literature, which hitherto has been too
much the sport of _dilettanti_, the methods that have till now been
reserved for the two favoured (and rightly favoured) languages. Unless I
am much mistaken, the finest Latin scholar will find that a close study
of early Italian will teach him "a thing or two" that he did not know
before in his own special subject; so that his labour will not be lost,
even from that point of view. Then we shall get the authoritative
edition of Dante, which I am insular enough to believe will never come
from either Germany or Italy, or from any intervening country.
_February_, 1895.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 1
II. GUELFS AND GHIBELINES 16
III. DANTE'S EARLY DAYS 38
IV. FLORENTINE AFFAIRS TILL DANTE'S EXILE 52
V. DANTE'S EXILE 69
VI. THE "COMMEDIA" 89
VII. THE MINOR WORKS 171
APPENDIX I.--SOME HINTS TO BEGINNERS 189
APPENDIX II.--DANTE'S USE OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 198
DANTE: HIS TIMES AND HIS WORK
CHAPTER I.
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The person who sets to work to write about Dante at the present day has
two great difficulties to reckon with: the quantity which has already
been written on the subject, and the quantity which remains to be
written. The first involves the reading of an enormous mass of
literature in several languages, and very various in quality; but for
the comfort of the young student, it may at once, and once for all, be
stated that he can pretty safely ignore everything written between 1400
and 1800. The subject of commentaries, biographies, and other helps, or
would-be helps, will be treated of later on. Here we need only say that
the Renaissance practically stifled anything like an intelligent study
of Dante for those four centuries; and it was not until a new critical
spirit began to apply to it the methods which had hitherto been reserved
for the Greek and Latin classics, that the study got any chance of
development. How enormously it has developed during the present century
needs not to be said. It may suffice to point out that the British
Museum Catalogue shows editions of the _Commedia_ at the rate of one for
every year since 1800, and other works on Dante in probably five times
that proportion.
Now, it has been said of the _Commedia_, and the remark is equally true
of Dante's other works, that it is like the Bible in this respect: every
man finds in it what he himself brings to it. The poet finds poetry, the
philosopher philosophy; the scientific man science as it was known in
1300; the politician politics; heretics have even found heresy. Nor is
this very surprising when we consider what were the author's
surroundings. Naturally, no doubt, a man of study and contemplation, his
lot was cast in the midst of a stirring, even a turbulent, society,
where it was hardly possible for any individual to escape his share of
the public burdens. Ablebodied men could not be spared when, as was
usually the case, fighting was toward; all men of mental capacity were
needed in council or in administration. And, after all, the area to be
administered, the ground to be fought over, were so small, that the man
of letters might do his duty by the community and yet have plenty of
time to spare for his studies. He might handle his pike at Caprona or
Campaldino one day, and be at home among his books the next. Then,
again, the society was a cultivated and quick-witted one, with many
interests. Arts and letters were in high esteem, and eminence in them as
sure a road to fame as warlike prowess or political distinction. From
all this it is clear that the Florentine of the thirteenth century had
points of contact with life on every side; every gate of knowledge lay
open to him, and he could explore, if he pleased, every one of its
paths. They have now been carried further, and a lifetime is too short
for one man to investigate thoroughly more than one or two; but in those
days it was still possible for a man of keen intelligence, added to the
almost incredible diligence, as it appears to us, of the Middle Ages, to
make himself acquainted with all the best that had been done and said
in the world.
This it is which forms at once the fascination and the difficulty of
Dante's great work. Of course, if we content ourselves with reading it
merely for its "beauties," for the aesthetic enjoyment of an image here
and an allusion there, for the trenchant expression of some thought or
feeling at the roots of human nature, there will be no need of any
harder study than is involved in going through it with a translation.
Indeed, it will hardly be worth while to go to the original at all. The
pleasure, one might almost say the physical pleasure, derived from
sonorous juxtaposition of words, such as we obtain from Milton or from
Shelley, is scarcely to be genuinely felt in the case of a foreign
language; and the beauties of matter, as distinguished from those of
form, are faithfully enough rendered by Cary or Longfellow.
It may, however, be safely assumed that few intelligent students will
rest content with this amount of study. They will find at every turn
allusions calling for explanation, philosophical doctrines to be traced
to their sources, judgements on contemporary persons and events to be
verified. On every page they will meet with problems the solution of
which has not yet been attempted, or attempted only in the most
perfunctory way. For generation after generation readers have gone on
accepting received interpretations which only tell them what their own
wits could divine without any other assistance than the text itself
gives. No commentator seems yet to have realised that, in order to
understand Dante thoroughly, he must put himself on Dante's level so far
as regards a knowledge of all the available literature. The more obvious
quarries from which Dante obtained the materials for his mighty
structure--the Bible, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle--have no
doubt been pretty thoroughly examined, and many obscurities which the
comments of Landino and others only left more obscure have thus been
cleared up; but a great deal remains to be done. Look where one may in
the literature which was open to Dante, one finds evidence of his
universal reading. We take up such a book as Otto of Freising's _Annals_
(to which, with his _Acts of Frederick I._, we shall have to refer
again), and find the good bishop moralising thus on the mutability of
human affairs, with especial reference to the break-up of the Empire in
the middle of the ninth century:--
"Does not worldly honour seem to turn round and round after the
fashion of one stricken with fever? For such place their hope of
rest in a change of posture, and so, when they are in pain,
throw themselves from side to side, turning over
continually."[1]
It is hard not to suppose that Dante had this passage in his mind when
he wrote that bitter apostrophe to his own city with which the sixth
canto of the _Purgatory_ ends:--
"E se ben ti ricorda, e vedi lume,
Vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma,
Che non puo trovar posa in su le piume,
Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma."
It is hardly too much to say that one cannot turn over a couple of pages
of any book which Dante may conceivably have read without coming on some
passage which one feels certain he had read, or at the very least
containing some information which one feels certain he possessed. A real
"Dante's library"[2] would comprise pretty well every book in Latin,
Italian, French, or Provencal, "published," if we may use the term, up
to the year 1300. Of course a good many Latin books were (may one say
fortunately?) in temporary retirement at that time; but even of these,
whether, as has been suggested, through volumes, now lost, of "Elegant
Extracts," or by whatever other means, more was evidently known than is
always realised.
We must, however, beware of treating Dante merely as a repertory of
curious lore or museum of literary _bric-a-brac_--a danger almost as
great as that of looking at him from a purely aesthetic point of view. He
had no doubt read more widely than any man of his age, and he is one of
the half-dozen greatest poets of all time. But his claim on our
attention rests on even a wider basis than these two qualities would
afford. He represents as it were the re-opening of the lips of the human
race: "While I was musing, the fire kindled, and at last I spake with my
tongue." The old classical literature had said its last word when
Claudian died; and though men continued to compose, often with ability
and intelligence, the histories and chronicles which practically formed
the only non-theological writings of the so-called "Dark Ages," letters
in the full sense of the term lay dormant for centuries. Not till the
twelfth century was far advanced did any signs of a re-awakening appear.
Then, to use a phrase of Dante's, the dead poetry arose, and a burst of
song came almost simultaneously from all Western Europe. To this period
belong the Minnesingers of Germany, the Troubadours of Provence, the
unknown authors of the lovely romance--poetical in feeling, though cast
chiefly in a prose form--_Aucassin et Nicolete_, and of several not less
lovely English ballads and lyrics. Even the heavy rhymed chronicles
begin to be replaced by romances in which the true poetic fire breaks
out, such as the _Nibelungen Lied_ (in its definitive form) and the
_Chronicle of the Cid_.
In the new poetry two features strike us at once. The sentiment of love
between man and woman, which with the ancients and even with early
Christian writers scarcely ever rises beyond the level of a sensual
passion,[3] becomes transfigured into a profound emotion touching the
deepest roots of a man's nature, and acting as an incentive to noble
conduct; and, closely connected with this, the influence of external
nature upon the observer begins for the first time to be recognised and
to form a subject for poetical treatment.[4] Horace has several charming
descriptions of the sights and sounds of spring; but they suggest to him
merely that life is short, or that he is thirsty, and in either case he
cannot do better than have another drink in company with a friend. So
with Homer and Virgil. External nature and its beauty are often touched
off in two or three lines which, once read, are never forgotten; but it
is always as ornament to a picture, not auxiliary to the expression of a
mood. You may search classical literature in vain for such passages as
Walther von der Vogelweide's:--
"Do der sumer komen was
Und die bluomen durch daz gras
Wunnecliche ensprungen,
Ald[=a] die vogele sungen,
Dar kom ich gegangen
An einer anger langen,
Da ein luter brunne entspranc;
Vor dem walde was s[=i]n ganc,
Da diu nahtegale sanc;"[5]
or the unknown Frenchman's:--
"Ce fu el tans d'este, el mois de mai, que li jor sont caut,
lonc, et cler, et les nuits coies et series. Nicolete jut une
nuit en son lit, et vit la lune cler par une fenestre, et si oi
le lorseilnol center en garding, se li sovint d'Aucassin sen ami
qu'ele tant aimoit;"[6]
or the equally unknown Englishman's:--
"Bytuene Mershe and Averil,
When spray biginneth to springe,
The lutel foul hath hire wyl
On hyre lud to synge;
Ich libbe in love-longinge
For semlokest of alle thinge,
He may me blisse bringe,
Icham in hire baundoun."[7]
But it is hardly necessary to multiply instances. By the middle of the
thirteenth century the spring, and the nightingales, and the flowering
meadows had become a commonplace of amatory and emotional poetry.
So far, however, poetry was exclusively lyrical. The average standard of
versifying was higher, perhaps, than it has ever been before or since.
Every man of education seems to have been able to turn a sonnet or ode.
Men of religion, like St. Francis or Brother Jacopone of Todi;
statesmen, like Frederick II. and his confidant, Peter de Vineis;
professional or official persons, like Jacopo the notary of Lentino, or
Guido dalle Colonne the judge of Messina; fighting men, like several of
the Troubadours; political intriguers, like Bertrand del Born--all have
left verses which, for beauty of thought and melody of rhythm, have
seldom been matched. But the great poem was yet to come, which was to
give to the age a voice worthy of its brilliant performance. It is not
only in literature that it displays renewed vitality. Turn where we
will, in every department of human energy it must have been brilliant
beyond any that the world has ever seen. It stood between two worlds,
but we cannot say of them that they were
"One dead,
The other powerless to be born."
The old monarchy was dying, had indeed, as Dante regretfully perceived,
died before he was born, and the trumpet-call of the _De Monarchia_,
wherewith he sought to revive it, was addressed to a generation which
had other ideals of government; but it had set in a blaze of splendour,
and its last wielder, Frederick II., was, not unfitly, known as the
Wonder of the World. The mediaeval Papacy, though about to undergo a loss
of prestige which it never retrieved, outlived its rival, and had
seldom been a greater force in the political world than it was in the
hands of the ambitious and capable Boniface VIII. The scholastic
philosophy, which had directed the minds of men for many generations,
was soon to make way for other forms of reasoning and other modes of
thought; but its greatest exponent, St. Thomas Aquinas, was Dante's
contemporary for nine years. These examples will serve to show that the
old systems were capable to the very last of producing and influencing
great men.
Meantime the new order was showing no lack of power to be born. Two of
our countrymen, Roger Bacon and, somewhat later, William of Ockham,
sowed, each in his own way, the seeds which were to bear fruit in the
science and speculation of far distant ages. In the arts, architecture
reached its highest pitch of splendour; and painting was at the outset
of the course which was to culminate, more than two hundred years later,
in Titian and Raffaelle. But in no field did the energy of the
thirteenth century manifest itself as in that of politics. With the
collapse of the Empire came the first birth of the "nationalities" of
modern Europe. The process indeed went on at very different rates. The
representative constitution of England, the centralised government of
France were by the end of the century fairly started on the lines which
they have followed ever since. But England had never owned allegiance to
the Emperor, while France had pretty well forgotten whence it had got
the name which had replaced that of Gaul. In the countries where the
Empire had till recently been an ever-present power, Germany and Italy,
the work of consolidation went on far less rapidly; indeed, it has been
reserved for our own age to see it completed. With Germany we have here
nothing directly to do; but it is all-important to the right
understanding of Dante's position that we should glance briefly at the
political state of Italy and especially of Tuscany during the latter
half of the thirteenth century. By good fortune we have very copious
information on this matter. A contemporary and neighbour of Dante's, by
name John Villani, happened to be at Rome during the great Jubilee of
1300. The sight of the imperial city and all its ancient glories set him
meditating on its history, written, as he says (in a collocation of
names which looks odd to us, but was usual enough then), "by Virgil, by
Sallust and Lucan, by Titus Livius, Valerius, and Paulus Orosius," and
moved him, as an unworthy disciple, to do for his native city what they
had done for Rome. The result was the most genial and generally
delightful work of history that has been written since Herodotus.
Villani, who lived till 1348, when the plague carried him off, seems to
have been a man of an equable disposition and sober judgement. Like
Dante and all the Florentines of that day, he belonged to the Guelf
party; and, unlike his great fellow-citizen, he adhered to it
throughout, though by no means approving all the actions of its leaders.
After the fashion of the time, he begins his chronicle with the Tower of
Babel; touches on Dardanus, Priam, and the Trojan war; records the
origin of the Tuscan cities; and so by easy stages comes down towards
the age in which he lived. The earlier portions, of course, are more
entertaining and suggestive than trustworthy in detail; but as he
approaches a time for which he had access to living memory, and still
more when he records the events of which he was himself a witness, he is
our best authority.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Otho Fris., _Annales_, v. 36.
[2] A useful list, with some account of the authors cited by
Dante, is given by Mr. J. S. Black, in a volume entitled
_Dante_; _Illustrations and Notes_, privately printed by Messrs.
T. & A. Constable, at Edinburgh, 1890. He does not, however,
include (save in one or two cases, and those rather doubtful)
authors of whom Dante's knowledge rests on inference only.
[3] I do not forget Ulysses and Penelope, Hector and Andromache,
or Ovid's _Heroides_; but the love of husband and wife is
another matter altogether. The only instance in classical
literature that I can recall of what may be termed the modern
view of the subject is that of Haemon and Antigone. See, on this
subject, and in connection with these paragraphs generally,
Symonds, _Introduction to the Study of Dante_, ch. viii.
[4] This must be taken as referring only to European literature.
Such a passage as Canticles ii. 10-14 shows that Oriental poets
felt the sentiment from very early times. Is it possible that
contact with the East evoked it in Europeans?
[5] "When the summer was come, and the flowers sprang joyously
up through the grass, right there the birds were singing;
thither came I, on my way over a long meadow where a clear well
gushed forth; its course was by the wood where the nightingale
sang."
[6] "It was summer time, the month of May, when the days are
warm, and long, and clear, and the nights still and serene.
Nicolete lay one night on her bed, and saw the moon shine clear
through a window, yea, and heard the nightingale sing in the
garden, so she minded her of Aucassin, her lover, whom she loved
so well" (Lang's translation).
[7] Lud = song; semlokest = seemliest; he = she; in hire
baundoun = at her command.