CANTO I.

THE DIVINE COMEDY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI

[Illustration]

THE

DIVINE

COMEDY

OF

DANTE

ALIGHIERI

A TRANSLATION

BY

JAMES ROMANES SIBBALD

EDINBURGH

PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS

MDCCCLXXXIV

_All Rights Reserved._

Edinburgh University Press:

T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.

THE

INFERNO

A TRANSLATION

WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY

JAMES ROMANES SIBBALD

EDINBURGH

PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS

MDCCCLXXXIV

PREFACE.

A Translator who has never felt his self-imposed task to be a light one

may be excused from entering into explanations that would but too

naturally take the form of apologies. I will only say that while I have

striven to be as faithful as I could to the words as well as to the

sense of my author, the following translation is not offered as being

always closely literal. The kind of verse employed I believe to be that

best fitted to give some idea, however faint, of the rigidly measured

and yet easy strength of Dante's _terza rima_; but whoever chooses to

adopt it with its constantly recurring demand for rhymes necessarily

becomes in some degree its servant. Such students as wish to follow the

poet word by word will always find what they need in Dr. J. A. Carlyle's

excellent prose version of the _Inferno_, a work to which I have to

acknowledge my own indebtedness at many points.

The matter of the notes, it is needless to say, has been in very great

part found ready to my hand in existing Commentaries. My edition of John

Villani is that of Florence, 1823.

The Note at page cx was printed before it had been resolved to provide

the volume with a copy of Giotto's portrait of Dante. I have to thank

the Council of the Arundel Society for their kind permission to Messrs.

Dawson to make use of their lithograph of Mr. Seymour Kirkup's

invaluable sketch in the production of the Frontispiece--a privilege

that would have been taken more advantage of had it not been deemed

advisable to work chiefly from the photograph of the same sketch, given

in the third volume of the late Lord Vernon's sumptuous and rare edition

of the _Inferno_ (Florence, 1865). In this Vernon photograph, as well as

in the Arundel Society's chromolithograph, the disfiguring mark on the

face caused by the damage to the plaster of the fresco is faithfully

reproduced. A less degree of fidelity has been observed in the

Frontispiece; although the restoration has not been carried the length

of replacing the lost eye.

EDINBURGH, _February_, 1884.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

FLORENCE AND DANTE, xvii

GIOTTO'S PORTRAIT OF DANTE, cx

The Inferno.

CANTO I.

The Slumber--the Wood--the Hill--the three Beasts--Virgil--the

Veltro or Greyhound, 1

CANTO II.

Dante's misgivings--Virgil's account of how he was induced to

come to his help--the three Heavenly Ladies--the beginning of

the Journey, 9

CANTO III.

The Gate of Inferno--the Vestibule of the Caitiffs--the Great

Refusal--Acheron--Charon--the Earthquake--the Slumber of Dante, 17

CANTO IV.

The First Circle, which is the Limbo of the Unbaptized and of

the Virtuous Heathen--the Great Poets--the Noble Castle--the

Sages and Worthies of the ancient world, 24

CANTO V.

The Second Circle, which is that of Carnal Sinners--Minos--the

Tempest--The Troop of those who died because of their Love--

Francesca da Rimini--Dante's Swoon, 32

CANTO VI.

The Third Circle, which is that of the Gluttonous--the Hail and

Rain and Snow--Cerberus--Ciacco and his Prophecy, 40

CANTO VII.

The Fourth Circle, which is that of the Avaricious and the

Thriftless--Plutus--the Great Weights rolled by the sinners in

opposite directions--Fortune--the Fifth Circle, which is that

of the Wrathful--Styx--the Lofty Tower, 47

CANTO VIII.

The Fifth Circle continued--the Signals--Phlegyas--the Skiff--

Philip Argenti--the City of Dis--the Fallen Angels--the Rebuff

of Virgil, 55

CANTO IX.

The City of Dis, which is the Sixth Circle and that of the

Heretics--the Furies and the Medusa head--the Messenger of Heaven

who opens the gates for Virgil and Dante--the entrance to the

City--the red-hot Tombs, 62

CANTO X.

The Sixth Circle continued--Farinata degli Uberti--Cavalcante dei

Cavalcanti--Farinata's prophecy--Frederick II., 69

CANTO XI.

The Sixth Circle continued--Pope Anastasius--Virgil explains on

what principle sinners are classified in Inferno--Usury, 77

CANTO XII.

The Seventh Circle, First Division--the Minotaur--the River

of Blood, which forms the Outer Ring of the Seventh Circle--

in it are those guilty of Violence against others--the

Centaurs--Tyrants--Robbers and Murderers--Ezzelino Romano--

Guy of Montfort--the Passage of the River of Blood, 84

CANTO XIII.

The Seventh Circle continued--the Second Division consisting

of a Tangled Wood in which are those guilty of Violence against

themselves--the Harpies--Pier delle Vigne--Lano--Jacopo da Sant'

Andrea--Florence and its Patrons, 91

CANTO XIV.

The Seventh Circle continued--the Third Division of it, consisting

of a Waste of Sand on which descends an unceasing Shower of Fire--

in it are those guilty of Violence against God, against Nature,

and against Art--Capaneus--the Crimson Brook--the Statue of Time--

the Infernal Rivers, 98

CANTO XV.

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Nature--

Brunetto Latini--Francesco d'Accorso--Andrea de' Mozzi, Bishop

of Florence, 106

CANTO XVI.

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Nature--

Guidoguerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, and Jacopo Rusticucci--

the Cataract--the Cord--Geryon, 115

CANTO XVII.

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Art--Usurers--

the descent on Geryon's back into the Eighth Circle, 123

CANTO XVIII.

The Eighth Circle, otherwise named Malebolge, which consists of

ten concentric Pits or Moats connected by bridges of rock--in

these are punished those guilty of Fraud of different kinds--

First Bolgia or Moat, where are Panders and Seducers, scourged

by Demons--Venedico Caccianimico--Jason--Second Bolgia, where

are Flatterers plunged in filth--Alessio Interminei, 130

CANTO XIX.

The Eighth Circle--Third Bolgia, where are the Simoniacs, stuck

head downwards in holes in the rock--Pope Nicholas III.--the

Donation of Constantine, 137

CANTO XX.

The Eighth Circle--Fourth Bolgia, where are Diviners and Sorcerers

in endless procession, with their heads twisted on their necks--

Amphiaräus--Tiresias--Aruns--Manto and the foundation of Mantua--

Eurypylus--Michael Scott--Guido Bonatti--Asdente, 145

CANTO XXI.

The Eighth Circle--Fifth Bolgia, where the Barrators, or corrupt

officials, are plunged in the boiling pitch which fills the

Bolgia--a Senator of Lucca is thrown in--the Malebranche, or

Demons who guard the Moat--the Devilish Escort, 153

CANTO XXII.

The Eighth Circle--Fifth Bolgia continued--the Navarese--trick

played by him on the Demons--Fra Gomita--Michael Zanche--the

Demons fall foul of one another, 161

CANTO XXIII.

The Eighth Circle--escape from the Fifth to the Sixth Bolgia,

where the Hypocrites walk at a snail's pace, weighed down

by Gilded Cloaks of lead--the Merry Friars Catalano and

Loderingo--Caiaphas, 168

CANTO XXIV.

The Eighth Circle--arduous passage over the cliff into the Seventh

Bolgia, where the Thieves are tormented by Serpents, and are

constantly undergoing a hideous metamorphosis--Vanni Fucci, 176

CANTO XXV.

The Eighth Circle--Seventh Bolgia continued--Cacus--Agnello

Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa Donati,

and Guercio Cavalcanti, 184

CANTO XXVI.

The Eighth Circle--Eighth Bolgia, where are the Evil Counsellors,

wrapped each in his own Flame--Ulysses tells how he met with

death, 192

CANTO XXVII.

The Eighth Circle--Eighth Bolgia continued--Guido of Montefeltro--

the Cities of Romagna--Guido and Boniface VIII., 200

CANTO XXVIII.

The Eighth Circle--Ninth Bolgia, where the Schismatics in Church

and State are for ever being dismembered--Mahomet--Fra Dolcino--

Pier da Medicina--Curio--Mosca--Bertrand de Born, 209

CANTO XXIX.

The Eighth Circle--Ninth Bolgia continued--Geri del Bello--Tenth

Bolgia, where Counterfeiters of various kinds, as Alchemists and

Forgers, are tormented with loathsome diseases--Griffolino of

Arezzo--Capocchio on the Sienese, 217

CANTO XXX.

The Eighth Circle--Tenth Bolgia continued--Myrrha--Gianni

Schicchi--Master Adam and his confession--Sinon, 225

CANTO XXXI.

The Ninth Circle, outside of which they remain till the end of

this Canto--this, the Central Pit of Inferno, is encircled and

guarded by Giants--Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antæus--entrance to

the Pit, 233

CANTO XXXII.

The Ninth Circle--that of the Traitors, is divided into four

concentric rings, in which the sinners are plunged more or less

deep in the ice of the frozen Cocytus--the Outer Ring is Caïna,

where are those who contrived the murder of their Kindred--

Camicion de' Pazzi--Antenora, the Second Ring, where are such

as betrayed their Country--Bocca degli Abati--Buoso da Duera--

Ugolino, 241

CANTO XXXIII.

The Ninth Circle--Antenora continued--Ugolino and his tale--the

Third Ring, or Ptolomæa, where are those treacherous to their

Friends--Friar Alberigo--Branca d'Oria, 249

CANTO XXXIV.

The Ninth Circle--the Fourth Ring or Judecca, the deepest point

of the Inferno and the Centre of the Universe--it is the place

of those treacherous to their Lords or Benefactors--Lucifer with

Judas, Brutus, and Cassius hanging from his mouths--passage

through the Centre of the Earth--ascent from the depths to the

light of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere, 260

INDEX, 269

FLORENCE AND DANTE.

Dante is himself the hero of the _Divine Comedy_, and ere many stages of

the _Inferno_ have been passed the reader feels that all his steps are

being taken in a familiar companionship. When every allowance has been

made for what the exigencies of art required him to heighten or

suppress, it is still impossible not to be convinced that the author is

revealing himself much as he really was--in some of his weakness as well

as in all his strength. The poem itself, by many an unconscious touch,

does for his moral portraiture what the pencil of Giotto has done for

the features of his face. The one likeness answers marvellously to the

other; and, together, they have helped the world to recognise in him the

great example of a man of genius who, though at first sight he may seem

to be austere, is soon found to attract our love by the depth of his

feelings as much as he wins our admiration by the wealth of his fancy,

and by the clearness of his judgment on everything concerned with the

lives and destiny of men. His other writings in greater or less degree

confirm the impression of Dante's character to be obtained from the

_Comedy_. Some of them are partly autobiographical; and, studying as a

whole all that is left to us of him, we can gain a general notion of

the nature of his career--when he was born and what was his condition in

life; his early loves and friendships; his studies, military service,

and political aims; his hopes and illusions, and the weary purgatory of

his exile.

To the knowledge of Dante's life and character which is thus to be

acquired, the formal biographies of him have but little to add that is

both trustworthy and of value. Something of course there is in the

traditional story of his life that has come down from his time with the

seal of genuineness; and something that has been ascertained by careful

research among Florentine and other documents. But when all that old and

modern _Lives_ have to tell us has been sifted, the additional facts

regarding him are found to be but few; such at least as are beyond

dispute. Boccaccio, his earliest biographer, swells out his _Life_, as

the earlier commentators on the _Comedy_ do their notes, with what are

plainly but legendary amplifications of hints supplied by Dante's own

words; while more recent and critical writers succeed with infinite

pains in little beyond establishing, each to his own satisfaction, what

was the order of publication of the poet's works, where he may have

travelled to, and when and for how long a time he may have had this or

that great lord for a patron.

A very few pages would therefore be enough to tell the events of Dante's

life as far as they are certainly known. But, to be of use as an

introduction to the study of his great poem, any biographical sketch

must contain some account--more or less full--of Florentine affairs

before and during his lifetime; for among the actors in these are to be

found many of the persons of the _Comedy_. In reading the poem we are

never suffered for long to forget his exile. From one point of view it

is an appeal to future ages from Florentine injustice and ingratitude;

from another, it is a long and passionate plea with his native town to

shake her in her stubborn cruelty. In spite of the worst she can do

against him he remains no less her son. In the early copies of it, the

_Comedy_ is well described as the work of Dante Alighieri, the

Florentine; since not only does he people the other world by preference

with Florentines, but it is to Florence that, even when his words are

bitter against her, his heart is always feeling back. Among the glories

of Paradise he loves to let his memory rest on the church in which he

was baptized and the streets he used to tread. He takes pleasure in her

stones; and with her towers and palaces Florence stands for the

unchanging background to the changing scenes of his mystical pilgrimage.

The history of Florence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

agrees in general outline with that of most of its neighbours. At the

beginning of the period it was a place of but little importance, ranking

far below Pisa both in wealth and political influence. Though retaining

the names and forms of municipal government, inherited from early times,

it was in reality possessed of no effective control over its own

affairs, and was subject to its feudal superior almost as completely as

was ever any German village planted in the shadow of a castle. To

Florence, as to many a city of Northern and Central Italy, the first

opportunity of winning freedom came with the contest between Emperor

and Pope in the time of Hildebrand. In this quarrel the Church found its

best ally in Matilda, Countess of Tuscany. She, to secure the goodwill

of her subjects as against the Emperor, yielded first one and then

another of her rights in Florence, generally by way of a pious gift--an

endowment for a religious house or an increase of jurisdiction to the

bishop--these concessions, however veiled, being in effect so many

additions to the resources and liberties of the townsmen. She made Rome

her heir, and then Florence was able to play off the Papal against the

Imperial claims, yielding a kind of barren homage to both Emperor and

Pope, and only studious to complete a virtual independence of both.

Florence had been Matilda's favourite place of residence; and,

benefiting largely as it did by her easy rule, it is no wonder that her

name should have been cherished by the Florentines for ages after as a

household word.[1] Nor is the greatest Florentine unmindful of her. Foe

of the Empire though she was, he only remembers her piety; and it is by

Matilda, as representing the active religious life, that Dante is

ushered into the presence of Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise.[2]

It was a true instinct which led Florence and other cities to side

rather with the Pope than with the Emperor in the long-continued

struggle between them for predominance in Italy. With the Pope for

overlord they would at least have a master who was an Italian, and one

who, his title being imperfect, would in his own interest be led to

treat them with indulgence; while, in the permanent triumph of the

Emperor, Italy must have become subject and tributary to Germany, and

would have seen new estates carved out of her fertile soil for members

of the German garrison. The danger was brought home to many of the

youthful commonwealths during the eventful reign of Frederick Barbarossa

(1152-1190). Strong in Germany beyond most of his predecessors, that

monarch ascended the throne with high prerogative views, in which he was

confirmed by the slavish doctrine of some of the new civilians.

According to these there could be only one master in the world; as far

as regarded the things of time, but one source of authority in

Christendom. They maintained everything to be the Emperor's that he

chose to take. When he descended into Italy to enforce his claims, the

cities of the Lombard League met him in open battle. Those of Tuscany,

and especially Florence, bent before the blast, temporising as long as

they were able, and making the best terms they could when the choice lay

between submission and open revolt. Even Florence, it is true, strong in

her allies, did once take arms against an Imperial lieutenant; but as a

rule she never refused obedience in words, and never yielded it in fact

beyond what could not be helped. In her pursuit of advantages,

skilfully using every opportunity, and steadfast of aim even when most

she appeared to waver, she displayed something of the same address that

was long to be noted as a trait in the character of the individual

Florentine.

The storm was weathered, although not wholly without loss. When, towards

the close of his life, and after he had broken his strength against the

obstinate patriotism of Lombardy, Frederick visited Florence in 1185, it

was as a master justly displeased with servants who, while they had not

openly rebelled against him, had yet proved eminently unprofitable, and

whom he was concerned to punish if not to destroy. On the complaint of

the neighbouring nobles, that they were oppressed and had been plundered

by the city, he gave orders for the restoration to them of their lands

and castles. This accomplished, all the territory left to Florence was a

narrow belt around the walls. Villani even says that for the four years

during which Frederick still lived the Commonwealth was wholly landless.

And here, rather than lose ourselves among the endless treaties,

leagues, and campaigns which fill so many pages of the chronicles, it

may be worth while shortly to glance at the constitution of Florentine

society, and especially at the place held in it by the class which found

its protector in Barbarossa.

Much about the time at which the Commonwealth was relieved of its feudal

trammels, as a result of the favour or the necessities of Matilda, it

was beginning to extend its commerce and increase its industry. Starting

somewhat late on the career on which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were

already far advanced, Florence was as if strenuous to make up for lost

time, and soon displayed a rare comprehension of the nature of the

enterprise. It may be questioned if ever, until quite modern times,

there has been anywhere so clear an understanding of the truth that

public wellbeing is the sum of private prosperity, or such an

enlightened perception of what tends to economical progress. Florence

had no special command of raw material for her manufactures, no sea-port

of her own, and no monopoly unless in the natural genius of her people.

She could therefore thrive only by dint of holding open her

communications with the world at large, and grudged no pains either of

war or diplomacy to keep at Pisa a free way out and in for her

merchandise. Already in the twelfth century she received through that

port the rough woollens of Flanders, which, after being skilfully

dressed and dyed, were sent out at great profit to every market of

Europe. At a somewhat later period the Florentines were to give as

strong a proof of their financial capacity as this was of their

industrial. It was they who first conducted a large business in bills of

exchange, and who first struck a gold coin which, being kept of

invariable purity, passed current in every land where men bought and

sold--even in countries where the very name of Florence was unknown.[3]

In a community thus devoted to industry and commerce, it was natural

that a great place should be filled by merchants. These were divided

into six guilds, the members of which, with the notaries and lawyers,

who composed a seventh, formed the true body of the citizens.

Originally the consuls of these guilds were the only elected officials

in the city, and in the early days of its liberty they were even charged

with political duties, and are found, for example, signing a treaty of

peace with a neighbouring state. In the fully developed commune it was

only the wealthier citizens--the members, we may assume, of these

guilds--who, along with the nobles,[4] were eligible for and had the

right of electing to the public offices. Below them was the great body

of the people; all, that is, of servile condition or engaged in the

meaner kinds of business. From one point of view, the liberties of the

citizens were only their privileges. But although the labourers and

humbler tradesmen were without franchises, their interests were not

therefore neglected, being bound up with those of the one or two

thousand citizens who shared with the patricians the control of public

affairs.

There were two classes of nobles with whom Florence had to reckon as she

awoke to life--those within the walls, and those settled in the

neighbouring country. In later times it was a favourite boast among the

noble citizens--a boast indulged in by Dante--that they were descended

from ancient Roman settlers on the banks of the Arno. A safer boast

would in many cases have been that their ancestors had come to Italy in

the train of Otho and other conquering Emperors. Though settled in the

city, in some cases for generations, the patrician families were not

altogether of it, being distinguished from the other citizens, if not

always by the possession of ancestral landward estates, at least by

their delight in war and contempt for honest industry. But with the

faults of a noble class they had many of its good qualities. Of these

the Republic suffered them to make full proof, allowing them to lead in

war and hold civil offices out of all proportion to their numbers.

Like the city itself, the nobles in the country around had been feudally

subject to the Marquis of Tuscany. After Matilda's death they claimed to

hold direct from the Empire; which meant in practice to be above all

law. They exercised absolute jurisdiction over their serfs and

dependants, and, when favoured by the situation of their castles, took

toll, like the robber barons of Germany, of the goods which passed

beneath their walls. Already they had proved to be thorns in the side of

the industrious burghers; but at the beginning of the twelfth century

their neighbourhood became intolerable, and for a couple of generations

the chief political work of Florence was to bring them to reason. Those

whose lands came up almost to the city gates were first dealt with, and

then in a widening circle the country was cleared of the pest. Year

after year, when the days were lengthening out in spring, the roughly

organised city militia was mustered, war was declared against some

specially obnoxious noble and his fortress was taken by surprise, or,

failing that, was subjected to a siege. In the absence of a more

definite grievance, it was enough to declare his castle dangerously near

the city. These expeditions were led by the nobles who were already

citizens, while the country neighbours of the victim looked on with

indifference, or even helped to waste the lands or force the stronghold

of a rival. The castle once taken, it was either levelled with the

ground, or was restored to the owner on condition of his yielding

service to the Republic. And, both by way of securing a hold upon an

unwilling vassal and of adding a wealthy house and some strong arms to

the Commonwealth, he was compelled, along with his family, to reside in

Florence for a great part of every year.

With a wider territory and an increasing commerce, it was natural for

Florence to assume more and more the attitude of a sovereign state,

ready, when need was, to impose its will upon its neighbours, or to join

with them for the common defence of Tuscany. In the noble class and its

retainers, recruited as has been described, it was possessed of a

standing army which, whether from love of adventure or greed of plunder,

was never so well pleased as when in active employment. Not that the

commons left the fighting wholly to the men of family, for they too, at

the summons of the war-bell, had to arm for the field; but at the best

they did it from a sense of duty, and, without the aid of professional

men-at-arms, they must have failed more frequently in their enterprises,

or at any rate have had to endure a greatly prolonged absence from their

counters and workshops. And yet, esteem this advantage as highly as we

will, Florence surely lost more than it gained by compelling the crowd

of idle gentlemen to come within its walls. In the course of time some

of them indeed condescended to engage in trade--sank, as the phrase

went, into the ranks of the _Popolani_, or mere wealthy citizens; but

the great body of them, while their landed property was being largely

increased in value in consequence of the general prosperity, held

themselves haughtily aloof from honest industry in every form. Each

family, or rather each clan of them, lived apart in its own group of

houses, from among which towers shot aloft for scores of yards into the

air, dominating the humbler dwellings of the common burghers. These,

whenever they came to the front for a time in the government, were used

to decree that all private towers were to be lopped down to within a

certain distance from the ground.

It is a favourite exercise of Villani and other historians to trace the

troubles and revolutions in the state of Florence to chance quarrels

between noble families, arising from an angry word or a broken troth.

Here, they tell, was sown the seed of the Guelf and Ghibeline wars in

Florence; and here that of the feuds of Black and White. Such quarrels

and party names were symptoms and nothing more. The enduring source of

trouble was the presence within the city of a powerful idle class,

constantly eager to recover the privilege it had lost, and to secure

itself by every available means, including that of outside help, in the

possession of what it still retained; which chafed against the curbs put

upon its lawlessness, and whose ambitions were all opposed to the

general interest. The citizens, for their part, had nothing better to

hope for than that Italy should be left to the Italians, Florence to the

Florentines. On the occasion of the celebrated Buondelmonti feud (1215),

some of the nobles definitely went over to the side of the people,

either because they judged it likely to win in the long-run, or

impelled unconsciously by the forces that in every society divide

ambitious men into two camps, and in one form or another develop party

strife. They who made a profession of popular sympathy did it with a

view of using rather than of helping the people at large. Both of the

noble parties held the same end in sight--control of the Commonwealth;

and this would be worth the more the fewer there were to share it. The

faction irreconcilable with the Republic on any terms included many of

the oldest and proudest houses. Their hope lay in the advent of a strong

Emperor, who should depute to them his rights over the money-getting,

low-born crowd.

II.

The opportunity of this class might seem to have come when the

Hohenstaufen Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, ascended the throne,

and still more when, on attaining full age, he claimed the whole of the

Peninsula as his family inheritance. Other Emperors had withstood the

Papal claims, but none had ever proved an antagonist like Frederick. His

quarrel seemed indeed to be with the Church itself, with its doctrines

and morals as well as with the ambition of churchmen; and he offered the

strange spectacle of a Roman Emperor--one of the twin lights in the

Christian firmament--whose favour was less easily won by Christian

piety, however eminent, than by the learning of the Arab or the Jew.

When compelled at last to fulfil a promise extorted from him of

conducting a crusade to the Holy Land, he scandalised Christendom by

making friends of the Sultan, and by using his presence in the East, not

for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, but for the furtherance of

learning and commerce. Thrice excommunicated, he had his revenge by

proving with how little concern the heaviest anathemas of the Church

could be met by one who was armed in unbelief. Literature, art, and

manners were sedulously cultivated in his Sicilian court, and among the

able ministers whom he selected or formed, the modern idea of the State

may be said to have had its birth. Free thinker and free liver, poet,

warrior, and statesman, he stood forward against the sombre background

of the Middle Ages a figure in every respect so brilliant and original

as well to earn from his contemporaries the title of the Wonder of the

World.

On the goodwill of Italians Frederick had the claim of being the most

Italian of all the Emperors since the revival of the Western Empire, and

the only one of them whose throne was permanently set on Italian soil.

Yet he never won the popular heart. To the common mind he always

appeared as something outlandish and terrible--as the man who had driven

a profitable but impious trade in the Sultan's land. Dante, in his

childhood, must have heard many a tale of him; and we find him keenly

interested in the character of the Emperor who came nearest to uniting

Italy into a great nation, in whose court there had been a welcome for

every man of intellect, and in whom a great original poet would have

found a willing and munificent patron. In the _Inferno_, by the mouth of

Pier delle Vigne, the Imperial Chancellor, he pronounces Frederick to

have been worthy of all honour;[5] yet justice requires him to lodge

this flower of kings in the burning tomb of the Epicureans, as having

been guilty of the arch-heresy of denying the moral government of the

world, and holding that with the death of the body all is ended.[6] It

was a heresy fostered by the lives of many churchmen, high and low; but

the example of Frederick encouraged the profession of it by nobles and

learned laymen. On Frederick's character there was a still darker stain

than this of religious indifference--that of cold-blooded cruelty. Even

in an age which had produced Ezzelino Romano, the Emperor's cloaks of

lead were renowned as the highest refinement in torture.[7] But, with

all his genius, and his want of scruple in the choice of means, he built

nothing politically that was not ere his death crumbling to dust. His

enduring work was that of an intellectual reformer under whose

protection and with whose personal help his native language was refined,

Europe was enriched with a learning new to it or long forgotten, and the

minds of men, as they lost their blind reverence for Rome, were prepared

for a freer treatment of all the questions with which religion deals. He

was thus in some respects a precursor of Dante.

More than once in the course of Frederick's career it seemed as if he

might become master of Tuscany in fact as well as in name, had Florence

only been as well affected to him as were Siena and Pisa. But already,

as has been said, the popular interest had been strengthened by

accessions from among the nobles. Others of them, without descending

into the ranks of the citizens, had set their hopes on being the first

in a commonwealth rather than privates in the Imperial garrison. These

men, with their restless and narrow ambitions, were as dangerous to have

for allies as for foes, but by throwing their weight into the popular

scale they at least served to hold the Imperialist magnates in check,

and established something like a balance in the fighting power of

Florence; and so, as in the days of Barbarossa, the city was preserved

from taking a side too strongly. The hearts of the Florentine traders

were in their own affairs--in extending their commerce and increasing

their territory and influence in landward Tuscany. As regarded the

general politics of Italy, their sympathy was still with the Roman See;

but it was a sympathy without devotion or gratitude. For refusing to

join in the crusade of 1238 the town was placed under interdict by

Gregory IX. The Emperor meanwhile was acknowledged as its lawful

overlord, and his vicar received something more than nominal obedience,

the choice of the chief magistrates being made subject to his approval.

Yet with all this, and although his party was powerful in the city, it

was but a grudging service that was yielded to Frederick. More than once

fines were levied on the Florentines; and worse punishments were

threatened for their persevering and active enmity to Siena, now

dominated by its nobles and held in the Imperial interest. Volunteers

from Florence might join the Emperor in his Lombard campaigns; but they

were left equally free by the Commonwealth to join the other side. At

last, when he was growing old, and when like his grandfather he had been

foiled by the stubborn Lombards, he turned on the Florentines as an

easier prey, and sent word to the nobles of his party to seize the city.

For months the streets were filled with battle. In January 1248,

Frederick of Antioch, the natural son of the Emperor, entered Florence

with some squadrons of men-at-arms, and a few days later the nobles that

had fought on the popular side were driven into banishment. This is

known in the Florentine annals as the first dispersion of the Guelfs.

Long before they were adopted in Italy, the names of Guelf and Ghibeline

had been employed in Germany to mark the partisans of the Bavarian Welf

and of the Hohenstaufen lords of Waiblingen. On Italian soil they

received an extended meaning: Ghibeline stood for Imperialist; Guelf for

anti-Imperialist, Papalist, or simply Nationalist. When the names began

to be freely used in Florence, which was towards the close of

Frederick's reign and about a century after their first invention, they

denoted no new start in politics, but only supplied a nomenclature for

parties already in existence. As far as Florence was concerned, the

designations were the more convenient that they were not too closely

descriptive. The Ghibeline was the Emperor's man, when it served his

purpose to be so; while the Guelf, constant only in his enmity to the

Ghibelines, was free to think of the Pope as he chose, and to serve him

no more than he wished or needed to. Ultimately, indeed, all Florence

may be said to have become Guelf. To begin with, the name distinguished

the nobles who sought alliance with the citizens, from the nobles who

looked on these as they might have done on serfs newly thriven into

wealth. Each party was to come up in turn. Within a period of twenty

years each was twice driven into banishment, a measure always

accompanied with decrees of confiscation and the levelling of private

strongholds in Florence. The exiles kept well together, retreating, as

it were in the order of war, to camps of observation they found ready

prepared for them in the nearest cities and fortresses held by those of

their own way of thinking. All their wits were then bent on how, by dint

of some fighting and much diplomacy, they might shake the strength and

undermine the credit of their successful rivals in the city, and secure

their own return in triumph. It was an art they were proud to be adepts

in.[8]

In a rapid sketch like this it would be impossible to tell half the

changes made on the constitution of Florence during the second part of

the thirteenth century. Dante in a well-known passage reproaches

Florence with the political restlessness which afflicted her like a

disease. Laws, he says, made in October were fallen into desuetude ere

mid-November.[9] And yet it may be that in this constant readiness to

change, lies the best proof of the political capacity of the

Florentines. It was to meet new necessities that they made provision of

new laws. Especial watchfulness was called for against the encroachments

of the grandees, whose constant tendency--whatever their party

name--was to weaken legal authority, and play the part of lords and

masters of the citizens. But these were no mere weavers and

quill-drivers to be plundered at will. Even before the return of the

Guelfs, banished in 1248, the citizens, taking advantage of a check

suffered in the field by the dominant Ghibelines, had begun to recast

the constitution in a popular sense, and to organise the townsmen as a

militia on a permanent footing. When, on the death of Frederick in 1250,

the Imperialist nobles were left without foreign aid, there began a

period of ten years, favourably known in Florentine history as the

Government of the _Primo Popolo_ or _Popolo Vecchio_; that is, of the

true body of the citizens, commoners possessed of franchises, as

distinguished from the nobles above them and the multitude below. For it

is never to be forgotten that Florence, like Athens, and like the other

Italian Republics, was far from being a true democracy. The time was yet

to come, and it was not far distant, when the ranks of citizenship were

to be more widely opened than now to those below, and more closely shut

to those above. In the meantime the comparatively small number of

wealthy citizens who legally composed the 'People' made good use of

their ten years of breathing-time, entering on commercial treaties and

widening the possessions of the Commonwealth, now by war, and now by

shrewd bargains with great barons. To balance the influence of the

Podesta, who had hitherto been the one great officer of State--criminal

judge, civil governor, and commander-in-chief all in one--they created

the office of Captain of the People. The office of Podesta was not

peculiar to Florence. There, as in other cities, in order to secure his

impartiality, it was provided that he should be a foreigner, and hold

office only for six months. But he was also required to be of gentle

birth; and his councils were so composed that, like his own, their

sympathies were usually with the nobles. The Captain of the People was

therefore created partly as a tribune for the protection of the popular

rights, and partly to act as permanent head of the popular forces. Like

the Podesta, he had two councils assigned to him; but these were

strictly representative of the citizens, and sat to control his conduct

as well as to lend to his action the weight of public opinion.

Such of the Ghibelines as had not been banished from Florence on the

death of Frederick, lived there on sufferance, as it were, and under a

rigid supervision. Once more they were to find a patron and ally in a

member of the great house of Hohenstaufen; and with his aid they were

again for a few years to become supreme in Florence, and to prove by

their abuse of power how well justified was the mistrust the people had

of them. In many ways Manfred, one of Frederick's bastards, was a worthy

son of his father. Like him he was endowed with great personal charm,

and was enamoured of all that opened new regions to intellectual

curiosity or gave refinement to sensual pleasure. In his public as well

as in his private behaviour, he was reckless of what the Church and its

doctrines might promise or threaten; and equally so, his enemies

declared, of the dictates of common humanity. Hostile eyes detected in

the green clothes which were his favourite dress a secret attachment to

Islam; and hostile tongues charged him with the murder of a father and

of a brother, and the attempted murder of a nephew. His ambition did not

aim at the Empire, but only at being King of Sicily and Naples, lands

which the Hohenstaufens claimed as their own through the Norman mother

of Frederick. Of these kingdoms he was actual ruler, even while his

legitimate brother Conrad lived. On the death of that prince he brushed

aside the claims of Conradin, his nephew, and bid boldly for recognition

by the Pope, who claimed to be overlord of the southern kingdoms--a

recognition refused, or given only to be immediately withdrawn. In the

eyes of Rome he was no more than Prince of Tarentum, but by arms and

policy he won what seemed a firm footing in the South; and eight years

after the rule of the _Popolo Vecchio_ began in Florence he was the

acknowledged patron of all in Italy who had been Imperialist--for the

Imperial throne was now practically vacant. And Manfred was trusted all

the more that he cared nothing for Germany, and stood out even more

purely an Italian monarch than his father had ever been. The Ghibelines

of Florence looked to him to free them of the yoke under which they

groaned.

When it was discovered that they were treating with Manfred, there was

an outburst of popular wrath against the disaffected nobles. Some of

them were seized and put to death, a fate shared by the Abbot of

Vallombrosa, whom neither his priestly office nor his rank as Papal

Legate availed to save from torture and a shameful end.[10] Well

accustomed as was the age to violence and cruelty, it was shocked at

this free disposal of a great ecclesiastic by a mercantile community;

and even to the Guelf chronicler Villani the terrible defeat of

Montaperti seemed no more than a just vengeance taken by Heaven upon a

crime so heinous.[11] In the meantime the city was laid under interdict,

and those concerned in the Abbot's death were excommunicated; while the

Ghibelines, taking refuge in Siena, began to plot and scheme with the

greater spirit against foes who, in the very face of a grave peril, had

offended in the Pope their strongest natural ally.

The leader of the exiles was Farinata, one of the Uberti, a family

which, so long ago as 1180, had raised a civil war to force their way

into the consulship. Ever since, they had been the most powerful,

perhaps, and certainly the most restless, clan in Florence, rich in men

of strong character, fiercely tenacious of their purpose. Such was

Farinata. To the Florentines of a later age he was to stand for the type

of the great Ghibeline gentleman, haughty as Lucifer, a Christian in

name though scarcely by profession, and yet almost beloved for his frank

excess of pride. It detracted nothing from the grandeur of his

character, in the judgment of his countrymen, that he could be cunning

as well as brave. Manfred was coy to afford help to the Tuscan

Ghibelines, standing out for an exorbitant price for the loan of his

men-at-arms; and to Farinata was attributed the device by which his

point of honour was effectually touched.[12] When at last a

reinforcement of eight hundred cavalry entered Siena, the exiles and

their allies felt themselves more than a match for the militia of

Florence, and set themselves to decoy it into the field. Earlier in the

same year the Florentines had encamped before Siena, and sought in vain

to bring on a general engagement. They were now misled by false

messengers, primed by Farinata, into a belief that the Sienese, weary of

the arrogance of Provenzano Salvani,[13] then all-powerful in Siena,

were ready to betray a gate to them. In vain did Tegghiaio

Aldobrandi,[14] one of the Guelf nobles, counsel delay till the German

men-at-arms, wearied with waiting on and perhaps dissatisfied with their

wages, should be recalled by Manfred. A march in full strength upon the

hostile city was resolved on by the eager townsmen.

The battle of Montaperti was fought in September 1260, among the earthy

hills washed by the Arbia and its tributary rivulets, a few miles to the

east of Siena. It marked the close of the rule of the _Popolo Vecchio_.

Till then no such disastrous day had come to Florence; and the defeat

was all the more intolerable that it was counted for a victory to Siena.

Yet the battle was far from being a test of the strength of the two

rival cities. Out of the thirty thousand foot in the Guelf army, there

were only about five thousand Florentines. In the host which poured out

on them from Siena, beside the militia of that city and the Florentine

exiles, were included the Ghibelines of Arezzo, the retainers of great

lords still unsubdued by any city, and, above all, the German

men-at-arms of Manfred.[15] But the worst enemies of Florence were the

traitors in her own ranks. She bore it long in mind that it was her

merchants and handicraftsmen who stood stubbornly at bay, and tinged the

Arbia red with their life-blood; while it was among the men of high

degree that the traitors were found. On one of them, Bocca degli Abati,

who struck off the right hand of the standard-bearer of the cavalry, and

so helped on the confusion and the rout, Dante takes vengeance in his

pitiless verse.[16]

The fortifications of Florence had been recently completed and

strengthened, and it was capable of a long defence. But the spirit of

the people was broken for the time, and the conquerors found the gates

open. Then it was that Farinata almost atoned for any wrong he ever did

his native town, by withstanding a proposal made by the Ghibelines of

the rival Tuscan cities, that Florence should be destroyed, and Empoli

advanced to fill her room. 'Alone, with open face I defended her,' Dante

makes him say.[17] But the wonder would rather be if he had voted to

destroy a city of which he was about to be one of the tyrants. Florence

had now a fuller experience than ever of the oppression which it was in

the character of the Ghibelines to exercise. A rich booty lay ready to

their hands; for in the panic after Montaperti crowds of the best in

Florence had fled, leaving all behind them except their wives and

children, whom they would not trust to the cruel mercy of the victors.

It was in this exile that for the first time the industrious citizen was

associated with the Guelf noble. From Lucca, not powerful enough to

grant them protection for long, they were driven to Bologna, suffering

terribly on the passage of the Apennines from cold and want of food, but

safe when the mountains lay between them and the Val d'Arno. While the

nobles and young men with a taste for fighting found their livelihood in

service against the Lombard Ghibelines, the more sober-minded scattered

themselves to seek out their commercial correspondents and increase

their acquaintance with the markets of Europe. When at length the way

was open for them to return home, they came back educated by travel, as

men must always be who travel for a purpose; and from this second exile

of the Guelfs dates a vast extension of the commerce of Florence.

Their return was a fruit of the policy followed by the Papal Court The

interests of both were the same. The Roman See could have as little

independence of action while a hostile monarch was possessed of the

southern kingdoms, as the people of Florence could have freedom while

the Ghibeline nobility had for patron a military prince, to whom their

gates lay open by way of Siena and Pisa. To Sicily and Naples the Pope

laid claim by an alternative title--they were either dependent on the

See of Rome, or, if they were Imperial fiefs, then, in the vacancy of

the Empire, the Pope, as the only head of Christendom, had a right to

dispose of them as he would. A champion was needed to maintain the

claim, and at length the man was found in Charles of Anjou, brother of

St. Louis. This was a prince of intellectual powers far beyond the

common, of untiring industry in affairs, pious, 'chaste as a monk,' and

cold-hearted as a usurer; gifted with all the qualities, in short, that

make a man feared and well served, and with none that make him beloved.

He was not one to risk failure for want of deliberation and foresight,

and his measures were taken with such prudence that by the time he

landed in Italy his victory was almost assured. He found his enemy at

Benevento, in the Neapolitan territory (February 1266). In order to get

time for reinforcements to come up, Manfred sought to enter into

negotiations; but Charles was ready, and knew his advantage. He answered

with the splendid confidence of a man sure of a heavenly if he missed

an earthly triumph. 'Go tell the Sultan of Lucera,'[18] was his reply,

'that to-day I shall send him to Hell, or he will send me to Paradise.'

Manfred was slain, and his body, discovered only after long search, was

denied Christian burial. Yet, excommunicated though he was, and

suspected of being at heart as much Mohammedan as Christian, he, as well

as his great rival, is found by Dante in Purgatory.[19] And, while the

Christian poet pours his invective on the pious Charles,[20] he is at no

pains to hide how pitiful appeared to him the fate of the frank and

handsome Manfred, all whose followers adored him. He, as more than once

it happens in the _Comedy_ to those whose memory is dear to the poet, is

saved from Inferno by the fiction that in the hour of death he sent one

thought heavenward--'so wide is the embrace of infinite mercy.'[21]

To Florence Charles proved a useful if a greedy and exacting protector.

Under his influence as Pacificator of Tuscany--an office created for him

by the Pope--the Guelfs were enabled slowly to return from exile, and

the Ghibelines were gradually depressed into a condition of dependence

on the goodwill of the citizens over whom they had so lately domineered.

Henceforth failure attended every effort they made to lift their heads.

The stubbornly irreconcilable were banished or put to death. Elaborate

provisions were enacted in obedience to the Pope's commands, by which

the rest were to be at peace with their old foes. Now they were to live

in the city, but under disabilities as regarded eligibility to offices;

now they were to be represented in the public councils, but so as to be

always in a minority. The result of the measures taken, and of the

natural drift of things, was that ere many more years had passed there

were no avowed Ghibelines in Florence.

One influence constantly at work in this direction was that of the

_Parte Guelfa_, a Florentine society formed to guard the interests of

the Guelfs, and which was possessed of the greater part of the Ghibeline

property confiscated after the triumph of Charles had turned the balance

of power in Italy. This organisation has been well described as a state

within a state, and it seems as if the part it played in the Florentine

politics of this period were not yet fully known. This much seems sure,

that the members of the Society were mostly Guelf nobles; that its

power, derived from the administration of vast wealth to a political

end, was so great that the Captain of the _Parte Guelfa_ held a place

almost on a level with that of the chief officials of the Commonwealth;

and that it made loans of ready money to Florence and the Pope, on

condition of their being used to the damage of the Ghibelines.[22]

The Commonwealth, busy in resettling its government, was but slightly

interested in much that went on around it. The boy Conradin, grandson of

Frederick, nephew of Manfred, and in a sense the last of the

Hohenstaufens, came to Italy to measure himself with Charles, and paid

for his audacity upon the scaffold.[23] Charles deputed Guy of Montfort,

son of the great Earl Simon, to be his vicar in Florence. The Pope

smiled and frowned in turn on the Florentines, as their devotion to him

waxed and waned; and so he did on his champion Charles, whose ambition

was apt to outrun his piety. All this was of less importance to the

Commonwealth than the promotion of its domestic interests. It saw with

equanimity a check given to Charles by the election of a new Emperor in

Rudolf of Hapsburg (1273), and a further check by the Sicilian Vespers,

which lost him half his kingdom (1283). But Siena and Pisa, Arezzo, and

even Pistoia, were the objects of a sleepless anxiety. Pisa was the

chief source of danger, being both from sentiment and interest

stubbornly Ghibeline. When at length its power was broken by Genoa, its

great maritime rival, in the naval battle of Meloria (1284), there was

no longer any city in Tuscany to be compared for wealth and strength

with Florence.

III.

It was at this period that Dante, reaching the age of manhood, began to

perform the duties that fell to him as a youthful citizen--duties which,

till the age of thirty was reached, were chiefly those of military

service. The family to which he belonged was a branch of the Elisei,

who are included by Villani in the earliest catalogue given by him of

the great Florentine houses. Cacciaguida, one of the Elisei, born in

1106, married a daughter of the Aldighieri, a family of Ferrara. Their

son was christened Aldighiero, and this was adopted by the family as a

surname, afterwards changed to Alighieri. The son of Aldighiero was

Bellincione, father of Aldighiero II., the father of Dante.

It serves no purpose to fill a page of biography with genealogical

details when the hero's course in life was in no way affected by the

accident of who was his grandfather. In the case of Dante, his position

in the State, his political creed, and his whole fashion of regarding

life, were vitally influenced by the circumstances of his birth. He knew

that his genius, and his genius alone, was to procure him fame; he

declares a virtuous and gentle life to be the true proof of nobility:

and yet his family pride is always breaking through. In real life, from

his family's being decayed in wealth and fallen in consideration

compared with its neighbours, he may have been led to put emphasis on

his assertion of gentility; and amid the poverty and humiliations of his

exile he may have found a tonic in the thought that by birth, not to

speak of other things, he was the equal of those who spurned him or

coldly lent him aid. However this may be, there is a tacit claim of

equality with them in the easy grace with which he encounters great

nobles in the world of shades. The bent of his mind in relation to this

subject is shown by such a touch as that when he esteems it among the

glories of Francis of Assisi not to have been ashamed of his base

extraction.[24] In Paradise he meets his great crusading ancestor

Cacciaguida, and feigns contrition for the pleasure with which he

listens to a declaration of the unmixed purity of their common

blood.[25] In Inferno he catches a glimpse, sudden and terrible, of a

kinsman whose violent death had remained unavenged; and, for the nonce,

the philosopher-poet is nothing but the member of an injured Florentine

clan, and winces at the thought of a neglected blood feud.[26] And when

Farinata, the great Ghibeline, and haughtiest of all the Florentines of

the past generation, asks him, 'Who were thine ancestors?' Dante says

with a proud pretence of humility, 'Anxious to obey, I hid nothing, but

told him all he demanded.'[27]

Dante was born in Florence in the May of 1265.[28] A brother of his

father had been one of the guards of the Florentine Caroccio, or

standard-bearing car, at the battle of Montaperti (1260). Whether

Dante's father necessarily shared in the exile of his party may be

doubted. He is said--on slight authority--to have been a jurisconsult:

there is no reason to suppose he was at Montaperti. It is difficult to

believe that Florence was quite emptied of its lawyers and merchants as

a consequence of the Ghibeline victory. In any case, it is certain that

while the fugitive Guelfs were mostly accompanied by their wives, and

did not return till 1267, we have Dante's own word for it that he was

born in the great city by the Arno,[29] and was baptized in the

Baptistery, his beautiful St. John's.[30] At the font he received the

name of Durante, shortened, as he bore it, into Dante. It is in this

form that it finds a place in the _Comedy_,[31] once, and only once,

written down of necessity, the poet says--the necessity of being

faithful in the report of Beatrice's words: from the wider necessity, we

may assume, of imbedding in the work itself the name by which the author

was commonly known, and by which he desired to be called for all time.

When Dante was about ten years old he lost his father. Of his mother

nothing but her Christian name of Bella is known. Neither of them is

mentioned in the _Comedy_,[32] nor indeed are his wife and children.

Boccaccio describes the Alighieri as having been in easy though not in

wealthy circumstances; and Leonardo Bruni, who in the fifteenth century

sought out what he could learn of Dante, says of him that he was

possessed of a patrimony sufficient for an honourable livelihood. That

he was so might be inferred from the character of the education he

received. His studies, says Boccaccio, were not directed to any object

of worldly profit. That there is no sign of their having been directed

by churchmen tends to prove the existence in his native town of a class

of cultivated laymen; and that there was such appears from the ease

with which, when, passing from boyhood to manhood, he felt a craving for

intellectual and congenial society, he found in nobles of the stamp of

Guido Cavalcanti men like-minded with himself. It was indeed impossible

but that the revival of the study of the civil law, the importation of

new learning from the East, and the sceptical spirit fostered in Italy

by the influence of Frederick II. and his court, should all have told on

the keen-witted Florentines, of whom a great proportion--even of the

common people--could read; while the class with leisure had every

opportunity of knowing what was going on in the world.[33] Heresy, the

rough word for intellectual life as well as for religious aspiration,

had found in Florence a congenial soil.[34] In the thirteenth century,

which modern ignorance loves to reckon as having been in a special sense

an age of faith, there were many Florentines who, in spite of their

outward conformity, had drifted as far from spiritual allegiance to the

Church as the furthest point reached by any of their descendants who

some two ages later belonged to the school of Florentine Platonists.

Chief among these free-thinkers, and, sooth to say, free-livers--though

in this respect they were less distinguished from the orthodox--was

Brunetto Latini, for some time Secretary to the Republic, and the

foremost Italian man of letters of his day. Meagre though his greatest

work, the _Tesoro_, or _Treasure_, must seem to any one who now glances

over its pages, to his contemporaries it answered the promise of its

title and stood for a magazine of almost complete information in the

domains of natural history, ethics, and politics. It was written in

French, as being a more agreeable language than Italian; and was

composed, there is reason to believe, while Latini lived in Paris as an

exiled Guelf after Montaperti. His _Tesoretto_, or _Little Treasure_, a

poem in jingling eight-syllabled Italian verse, has been thought by some

to have supplied hints to Dante for the _Comedy_.[35] By neither of

these works is he evinced a man of strong intellect, or even of good

taste. Yet there is the testimony of Villani that he did much to refine

the language of his contemporaries, and to apply fixed principles to the

conduct of State affairs.[36] Dante meets him in Inferno, and hails him

as his intellectual father--as the master who taught him from day to day

how fame is to be won.[37] But it is too much to infer from these words

that Latini served as his teacher, in the common sense of the word. It

is true they imply an intimacy between the veteran scholar and his

young townsman; but the closeness of their intercourse is perhaps best

accounted for by supposing that Latini had been acquainted with Dante's

father, and by the great promise of Dante's boyhood was led to take a

warm interest in his intellectual development. Their intimacy, to judge

from the tone of their conversation down in Inferno, had lasted till

Latini's death. But no tender reminiscence of the days they spent

together avails to save him from condemnation at the hands of his severe

disciple. By the manners of Brunetto, and the Epicurean heresies of

others of his friends, Dante, we may be sure, was never infected or

defiled.

Dante describes himself as having begun the serious study of philosophy

and theology only at the mature age of twenty-seven. But ere that time

he had studied to good effect, and not books alone, but the world around

him too, and the world within. The poet was formed before the theologian

and philosopher. From his earliest years he was used to write in verse;

and he seems to have esteemed as one of his best endowments the easy

command of his mother tongue acquired by him while still in boyhood.

Of the poems written in his youth he made a selection, and with a

commentary gave them to the world as his first work.[38] All the sonnets

and canzoni contained in it bear more or less directly on his love for

Beatrice Portinari. This lady, whose name is so indissolubly associated

with that of Dante, was the daughter of a rich citizen of good family.

When Dante saw her first he was a child of nine, and she a few months

younger. It would seem fabulous, he says, if he related what things he

did, and of what a passion he was the victim during his boyhood. He

seized opportunities of beholding her, but for long never passed beyond

a silent worship; and he was eighteen before she spoke to him, and then

only in the way of a passing salutation. On this he had a vision, and

that inspired him with a sonnet, certainly not the first he had written,

but the first he put into circulation. The mode of publication he

adopted was the common one of sending copies of it to such other poets

as were within reach. The sonnet in itself contains a challenge to

interpret his dream. Several poets attempted the riddle--among them the

philosopher and poet Guido Cavalcanti. They all failed in the solution;

but with some of them he was thus brought into terms of intimacy, and

with Cavalcanti of the closest friendship. Some new grace of style in

Dante's verse, some art in the presentation of his mystical meaning that

escapes the modern reader, may have revealed to the middle-aged man of

letters that a new genius had arisen. It was by Guido's advice that the

poems of which this sonnet stands the first were some years later

collected and published with the explanatory narrative. To him, in a

sense, the whole work is addressed; and it agreed with his taste, as

well as Dante's own, that it should contain nothing but what was written

in the vulgar tongue. Others besides Guido must have recognised in the

little book, as it passed from hand to hand, the masterpiece of Italian

prose, as well as of Italian verse. In the simple title of _Vita Nuova_,

or _The New Life_,[39] we can fancy that a claim is laid to originality

of both subject and treatment. Through the body of the work, though not

so clearly as in the _Comedy_, there rings the note of assurance of

safety from present neglect and future oblivion.

It may be owing to the free use of personification and symbol in the

_Vita Nuova_ that some critics, while not denying the existence of a

real Beatrice, have held that she is introduced only to help out an

allegory, and that, under the veil of love for her, the poet would

express his youthful passion for truth. Others, going to the opposite

extreme, are found wondering why he never sought, or, seeking, failed to

win, the hand of Beatrice. To those who would refine the Beatrice of the

early work into a being as purely allegorical as she of the _Comedy_, it

may be conceded that the _Vita Nuova_ is not so much the history of a

first love as of the new emotional and intellectual life to which a

first love, as Dante experienced it, opens the door. Out of the

incidents of their intercourse he chooses only such as serve for motives

to the joys and sorrows of the passionate aspiring soul. On the other

hand, they who seek reasons why Dante did not marry Beatrice have this

to justify their curiosity, that she did marry another man. But her

husband was one of the rich and powerful Bardi; and her father was so

wealthy that after providing for his children he could endow a hospital

in Florence. The marriage was doubtless arranged as a matter of family

convenience, due regard being had to her dower and her husband's

fortune; and we may assume that when Dante, too, was married later on,

his wife was found for him by the good offices of his friends.[40] Our

manners as regards these things are not those of the Italy of the

thirteenth century. It may safely be said that Dante never dreamed of

Beatrice for his wife; that the expectation of wedding her would have

sealed his lips from uttering to the world any word of his love; and

that she would have lost something in his esteem if, out of love for

him, she had refused the man her father chose for her.

We must not seek in the _Vita Nuova_ what it does not profess to give.

There was a real Beatrice Portinari, to a careless glance perhaps not

differing much from other Florentine ladies of her age and condition;

but her we do not find in Dante's pages. These are devoted to a record

of the dreams and visions, the new thoughts and feelings of which she

was the occasion or the object. He worshipped at a distance, and in a

single glance found reward enough for months of adoration; he read all

heaven into a smile. So high strung is the narrative, that did we come

on any hint of loving dalliance it would jar with all the rest She is

always at a distance from him, less a woman than an angel.

In all this there is certainly as much of reticence as of exaggeration.

When he comes to speak of her death he uses a phrase on which it would

seem as if too little value had been set. He cannot dwell on the

circumstances of her departure, he says, without being his own

panegyrist. Taken along with some other expressions in the _Vita Nuova_,

and the tone of her words to him when they meet in the Earthly Paradise,

we may gather from this that not only was she aware of his long

devotion, but that, ere she died, he had been given to understand how

highly she rated it. And on the occasion of her death, one described as

being her nearest relative by blood and, after Cavalcanti, Dante's chief

friend--her brother, no doubt--came to him and begged him to write

something concerning her. It would be strange indeed if they had never

looked frankly into one another's faces; and yet, for anything that is

directly told in the _Vita Nuova_, they never did.

The chief value of the _Vita Nuova_ is therefore psychological. It is a

mine of materials illustrative of the author's mental and emotional

development, but as regards historical details it is wanting in fulness

and precision. Yet, even in such a sketch of Dante's life as this tries

to be, it is necessary to dwell on the turning-points of the narrative

contained in the _Vita Nuova_; the reader always remembering that on one

side Dante says more than the fact that so he may glorify his love, and

less on another that he may not fail in consideration for Beatrice. She

is first a maiden whom no public breath is to disturb in her virgin

calm; and afterwards a chaste wife, whose lover is as jealous of her

reputation as any husband could be. The youthful lover had begun by

propounding the riddle of his love so obscurely that even by his

fellow-poets it had been found insoluble, adepts though they themselves

were in the art of smothering a thought. Then, though all his longing is

for Beatrice, lest she become the subject of common talk he feigns that

he is in love first with one lady and then with another.[41] He even

pushes his deceit so far that she rebukes him for his fickleness to one

of his sham loves by denying him the customary salutation when they

meet--this salutation being the only sign of friendship she has ever

shown. It is already some few years since the first sonnet was written.

Now, in a ballad containing a more direct avowal of his love than he has

yet ventured on,[42] he protests that it was always Beatrice his heart

was busy with, and that to her, though his eyes may have seemed to

wander, his affection was always true. In the very next poem we find him

as if debating with himself whether he shall persevere. He weighs the

ennobling influence of a pure love and the sweetness it gives to life,

against the pains and self-denial to which it condemns its servant.

Here, he tells us in his commentary, he was like a traveller who has

come to where the ways divide. His only means of escape--and he feels it

is a poor one--is to throw himself into the arms of Pity.

From internal evidence it seems reasonably certain that the marriage of

Beatrice fell at the time when he describes himself as standing at the

parting of the ways. Before that he has been careful to write of his

love in terms so general as to be understood only by those in possession

of the key. Now he makes direct mention of her, and seeks to be in her

company; and he even leads us to infer that it was owing to his poems

that she became a well-known personage in the streets of Florence.

Immediately after the sonnet in which he has recourse to Pity, he tells

how he was led by a friend into the house of a lady, married only that

day, whom they find surrounded by her lady friends, met to celebrate her

home-coming after marriage. It was the fashion for young gentlemen to

offer their services at such a feast. On this occasion Dante for one can

give no help. A sudden trembling seizes him; he leans for support

against the painted wall of the chamber; then, lifting his eyes to see

if the ladies have remarked his plight, he is troubled at beholding

Beatrice among them, with a smile on her lips, as, leaning towards her,

they mock at her lover's weakness. To his friend, who, as he leads him

from the chamber, asks what ails him, he replies: 'My feet have reached

that point beyond which if they pass they can never return.' It was only

matrons that gathered round a bride at her home-coming; Beatrice was

therefore by this time a married woman. That she was but newly married

we may infer from Dante's confusion on finding her there.[43] His secret

has now been discovered, and he must either renounce his love, or, as he

is at length free to do, Beatrice being married, declare it openly, and

spend his life in loyal devotion to her as the mistress of his

imagination and of his heart.[44]

But how is he to pursue his devotion to her, and make use of his new

privilege of freer intercourse, when the very sight of her so unmans

him? He writes three sonnets explaining what may seem pusillanimity in

him, and resolves to write no more. Now comes the most fruitful episode

in the history. Questioned by a bevy of fair ladies what is the end of a

love like his, that cannot even face the object of its desire, he

answers that his happiness lies in the words by which he shows forth the

praises of his mistress. He has now discovered that his passion is its

own reward. In other words, he has succeeded in spiritualising his love;

although to a careless reader it might seem in little need of passing

through the process. Then, soon after, as he walks by a crystal brook,

he is inspired with the words which begin the noblest poem he had yet

produced,[45] and that as the author of which he is hailed by a

fellow-poet in Purgatory. It is the first to glorify Beatrice as one in

whom Heaven is more concerned than Earth; and in it, too, he anticipates

his journey through the other world. She dies,[46] and we are surprised

to find that within a year of her death he wavers in his allegiance to

her memory. A fair face, expressing a tender compassion, looks down on

him from a window as he goes nursing his great sorrow; and he loves the

owner of the face because she pities him. But seeing Beatrice in a

vision he is restored, and the closing sonnet tells how his whole desire

goes forth to her, and how his spirit is borne above the highest sphere

to behold her receiving honour, and shedding radiance on all around her.

The narrative closes with a reference to a vision which he does not

recount, but which incites him to severe study in order that he may

learn to write of her as she deserves. And the last sentence of the

_Vita Nuova_ expresses a hope--a hope which would be arrogant coming

after anything less perfect than the _Vita Nuova_--that, concerning her,

he shall yet say things never said before of any woman. Thus the poet's

earliest work contains an earnest of the latest, and his morning makes

one day with his evening.

The narrative of the _Vita Nuova_ is fluent and graceful, in this

contrasting strongly with the analytical arguments attached to the

various poems. Dante treats his readers as if they were able to catch

the meaning of the most recondite allegory, and yet were ignorant of the

alphabet of literary form. And, as is the case with other poets of the

time, the free movement of his fancy is often hampered by the necessity

he felt of expressing himself in the language of the popular scholastic

philosophy. All this is but to say that he was a man of his period, as

well as a great genius. And even in this his first work he bettered the

example of Guido Cavalcanti, Guido of Bologna, and the others whom he

found, but did not long suffer to remain, the masters of Italian

verse.[47] These inherited from the Provençal and Sicilian poets much

of the cant of which European poetry has been so slow to clear itself;

and chiefly that of presenting all human emotion and volition under the

figure of love for a mistress, who was often merely a creature of fancy,

set up to act as Queen of Beauty while the poet ran his intellectual

jousts. But Dante dealt in no feigned inspiration, and distinguishes

himself from the whole school of philosophical and artificial poets as

'one who can only speak as love inspires.'[48] He may deal in allegory

and utter sayings dark enough, but the first suggestions of his thoughts

are obtained from facts of emotion or of real life. His lady was no

creature of fancy, but his neighbour Beatrice Portinari: and she who

ends in the _Paradiso_ as the embodied beauty of holiness was, to begin

with, a fair Florentine girl.

The instance of Beatrice is the strongest, although others might be

adduced, to illustrate Dante's economy of actual experience; the skilful

use, that is, of real emotions and incidents to serve for suggestion and

material of poetical thought. As has been told, towards the close of the

_Vita Nuova_ he describes how he found a temporary consolation for the

loss of Beatrice in the pity of a fair and noble lady. In his next work,

the _Convito_, or _Banquet_, she appears as the personification of

philosophy. The plan of the _Convito_ is that of a commentary on odes

which are interpreted as having various meanings--among others the

literal as distinguished from the allegorical or essentially true. As

far as this lady is concerned, Dante shows some eagerness to pass from

the literal meaning; desirous, it may be, to correct the belief that he

had ever wavered in his exclusive devotion to Beatrice. That for a time

he did transfer his thoughts from Beatrice in Heaven to the fair lady of

the window is almost certain, and by the time he wrote the _Purgatorio_

he was able to make confession of such a fault. But at the earlier

period at which the _Convito_[49] was written, he may have come to

regard the avowal in the _Vita Nuova_ as an oversight dishonouring to

himself as well as to his first love, and so have slurred it over,

leaving the fact to stand enveloped in an allegory. At any rate, to his

gloss upon this passage in his life we are indebted for an interesting

account of how, at the age of twenty-seven, he put himself to school:--

'After losing the earliest joy of my life, I was so smitten with

sorrow that in nothing could I find any comfort. Yet after some

time my mind, eager to recover its tone, since nought that I or

others could do availed to restore me, directed itself to find how

people, being disconsolate, had been comforted. And so I took to

reading that little-known book by Boethius, by writing which he,

captive and in exile, had obtained relief. Next, hearing that Tully

as well had written a book in which, treating of friendship, he had

consoled the worthy Laelius on the occasion of the loss of his

friend Scipio, I read that too. And though at the first I found

their meaning hard, at last I comprehended it as far as my

knowledge of the language and some little command of mother-wit

enabled me to do: which same mother-wit had already helped me to

much, as may be seen by the _Vita Nuova_. And as it often happens

that a man goes seeking silver, and lights on gold he is not

looking for--the result of chance, or of some divine provision; so

I, besides finding the consolation I was in search of to dry my

tears, became possessed of wisdom from authors and sciences and

books. Weighing this well, I deemed that philosophy, the mistress

of these authors, sciences, and books, must be the best of all

things. And imagining her to myself fashioned like a great lady,

rich in compassion, my admiration of her was so unbounded that I

was always delighting myself in her image. And from thus beholding

her in fancy I went on to frequent the places where she is to be

found in very deed--in the schools of theology, to wit, and the

debates of philosophers. So that in a little time, thirty months or

so, I began to taste so much of her sweetness that the love I bore

to her effaced or banished every other thought.'[50]

No one would guess from this description of how he grew enamoured of

philosophy, that at the beginning of his arduous studies Dante took a

wife. She was Gemma, the daughter of Manetto Donati, but related only

distantly, if at all, to the great Corso Donati. They were married in

1292, he being twenty-seven; and in the course of the nine years that

elapsed till his exile she bore him five sons and two daughters.[51]

From his silence regarding her in his works, and from some words of

Boccaccio's which apply only to the period of his exile, it has been

inferred that the union was unhappy. But Dante makes no mention in his

writings of his parents or children any more than of Gemma.[52] And why

should not his wife be included among the things dearest to him which,

he tells us, he had to leave behind him on his banishment? For anything

we know to the contrary, their wedded life up to the time of his exile

may have been happy enough; although most probably the marriage was one

of convenience, and almost certainly Dante found little in Gemma's mind

that answered to his own.[53] In any case it is not safe to lay stress

upon his silence. During the period covered by the _Vita Nuova_ he

served more than once in the field, and to this none of his earlier

works make any reference. In 1289, Arezzo having warmly espoused the

Ghibeline cause, the Florentines, led by Corso Donati and the great

merchant Vieri dei Cerchi, took up arms and met the foe in the field of

Campaldino, on the edge of the upland region of the Casentino. Dante, as

a young man of means and family, fought in the vanguard;[54] and in a

letter partly preserved by one of his early biographers[55] he describes

himself as being then no tiro in arms, and as having with varying

emotions watched the fortunes of the day. From this it is clear that he

had served before, probably in an expedition into the Aretine territory

made in the previous year, and referred to in the _Inferno_.[56] In the

same year as Campaldino was won he was present at the surrender of

Caprona, a fortress belonging to Pisa.[57] But of all this he is silent

in his works, or only makes casual mention of it by way of illustration.

It is, therefore, a waste of time trying to prove his domestic misery

from his silence about his marriage.

IV.

So hard a student was Dante that he now for a time nearly lost the use

of his eyes.[58] But he was cured by regimen, and came to see as well as

ever, he tells us; which we can easily believe was very well indeed. For

his work, as he planned it out, he needed all his powers. The _Convito_,

for example, was designed to admit of a full treatment of all that

concerns philosophy. It marks an earlier stage of his intellectual and

spiritual life than does the opening of the _Inferno_. In it we have the

fruit of the years during which he was wandering astray from his early

ideal, misled by what he afterwards came to count as a vain and

profitless curiosity. Most of its contents, as we have it,[59] are only

indirectly interesting. It is impossible for most people to care for

discussions, conducted with all the nicety of scholastic definition, on

such subjects as the system of the universe as it was evolved out of the

brains of philosophers; the subject-matter of knowledge; and how we

know. But there is one section of it possessed of a very special

interest, the Fourth, in which he treats of the nature of nobility.

This he affirms to be independent of wealth or ancestry, and he finds

every one to be noble who practises the virtues proper to his time of

life. 'None of the Uberti of Florence or the Visconti of Milan can say

he is noble because belonging to such or such a race; for the Divine

seed is sown not in a family but in the individual man.' This amounts,

it must be admitted, to no more than saying that high birth is one

thing, and nobility of character another; but it is significant of what

were the current opinions, that Dante should be at such pains to

distinguish between the two qualities. The canzone which supplies the

text for the treatise closes with a picture of the noble soul at every

stage of life, to which Chaucer may well have been indebted for his

description of the true gentleman:[60]--'The soul that is adorned by

this grace does not keep it hid, but from the day when soul is wed to

body shows it forth even until death. In early life she is modest,

obedient, and gentle, investing the outward form and all its members

with a gracious beauty: in youth she is temperate and strong, full of

love and courteous ways, delighting in loyal deeds: in mature age she is

prudent, and just, and apt to liberality, rejoicing to hear of others'

good. Then in the fourth stage of life she is married again to God,[61]

and contemplates her approaching end with thankfulness for all the

past.'[62]

In this passage it is less the poet that is heard than the sober

moralist, one with a ripe experience of life, and contemptuous of the

vulgar objects of ambition. The calm is on the surface. As has been said

above, he was proud of his own birth, the more proud perhaps that his

station was but a middling one; and to the close of his life he hated

upstarts with their sudden riches, while the Philip Argenti on whom in

the _Inferno_ he takes what has much the air of a private revenge may

have been only a specimen of the violent and haughty nobles with whom he

stood on an uneasy footing.

Yet the impression we get of Dante's surroundings in Florence from the

_Vita Nuova_ and other poems, from references in the _Comedy_, and from

some anecdotes more or less true which survive in the pages of Boccaccio

and elsewhere, is on the whole a pleasant one. We should mistake did we

think of him as always in the guise of absorbed student or tearful

lover. Friends he had, and society of various kinds. He tells how in a

severe illness he was nursed by a young and noble lady, nearly related

to him by blood--his sister most probably; and other ladies are

mentioned as watching in his sick-chamber.[63] With Forese and Piccarda

Donati, brother and sister of the great Corso Donati, he was on terms of

the warmest friendship.[64] From the _Vita Nuova_ we can gather that,

even when his whole heart fainted and failed at the mere sight of

Beatrice, he was a favourite with other ladies and conversed familiarly

with them. The brother of Beatrice was his dear friend; while among

those of the elder generation he could reckon on the friendship of such

men as Guido Cavalcanti and Brunetto Latini. Through Latini he would,

even as a young man, get the entry of the most lettered and

intellectually active society of Florence. The tradition of his intimacy

with Giotto is supported by the mention he makes of the painter,[65] and

by the fact, referred to in the _Vita Nuova_, that he was himself a

draughtsman. It is to be regretted there are not more anecdotes of him

on record like that which tells how one day as he drew an angel on his

tablets he was broken in upon by 'certain people of importance.' The

musician Casella, whom he 'woes to sing in Purgatory'[66] and Belacqua,

the indolent good-humoured lutemaker,[67] are greeted by him in a tone

of friendly warmth in the one case and of easy familiarity in the other,

which help us to know the terms on which he stood with the quick-witted

artist class in Florence.[68] Already he was in the enjoyment of a high

reputation as a poet and scholar, and there seemed no limit to the

greatness he might attain to in his native town as a man of action as

well as a man of thought.

In most respects the Florence of that day was as fitting a home for a

man of genius as could well be imagined. It was full of a life which

seemed restless only because the possibilities of improvement for the

individual and the community seemed infinite. A true measure of its

political progress and of the activity of men's minds is supplied by the

changes then being made in the outward aspect of the city. The duties of

the Government were as much municipal as political, and it would have

surprised a Florentine to be told that the one kind of service was of

less dignity than the other. The population grew apace, and, to provide

the means for extending the city walls, every citizen, on pain of his

testament being found invalid, was required to bequeath a part of his

estate to the public. Already the banks of the Arno were joined by three

bridges of stone, and the main streets were paved with the

irregularly-shaped blocks of lava still familiar to the sojourner in

Florence. But between the time of Dante's boyhood and the close of the

century the other outstanding features of the city were greatly altered,

or were in the course of change. The most important churches of

Florence, as he first knew it, were the Baptistery and the neighbouring

small cathedral church of Santa Reparata; after these ranked the church

of the Trinity, Santo Stefano, and some other churches which are now

replaced by larger ones, or of which the site alone can be discovered.

On the other side of the river, Samminiato with its elegant façade rose

as now upon its hill.[69] The only great civic building was the Palace

of the Podesta. The Old Market was and had long been the true centre of

the city's life.

At the time Dante went into exile Arnolfo was already working on the

great new cathedral of St. Mary of the Flowers, the spacious Santa

Croce, and the graceful Badia; and Santa Maria Novella was slowly

assuming the perfection of form that was later to make it the favourite

of Michel Angelo. The Palace of the Signory was already planned, though

half a century was to elapse before its tower soared aloft to daunt the

private strongholds which bristled, fierce and threatening, all over the

city. The bell-tower of Giotto, too, was of later erection--the only

pile we can almost regret that Dante never saw. The architect of it was

however already adorning the walls of palace and cloister with paintings

whose inspiration was no longer, like that of the works they

overshadowed, drawn from the outworn motives of Byzantine art, but from

the faithful observation of nature.[70] He in painting and the Pisan

school in sculpture were furnishing the world with novel types of beauty

in the plastic arts, answering to the 'sweet new style' in verse of

which it was Dante that discovered the secret.[71]

Florence was now by far the leading city in Tuscany. Its merchants and

money-dealers were in correspondence with every Mediterranean port and

with every country of the West. Along with bales of goods and letters of

exchange new ideas and fresh intelligence were always on the road to

Florence. The knowledge of what was going on in the world, and of what

men were thinking, was part of the stock-in-trade of the quick-witted

citizens, and they were beginning to be employed throughout Europe in

diplomatic work, till then almost a monopoly of churchmen. 'These

Florentines seem to me to form a fifth element,' said Boniface, who had

ample experience of how accomplished they were.

At home they had full employment for their political genius; and still

upon the old problem, of how to curb the arrogance of the class that, in

place of being satisfied to share in the general prosperity, sought its

profit in the maintenance of privilege. It is necessary, at the cost of

what may look like repetition, to revert to the presence and activity of

this class in Florence, if we are to form a true idea of the

circumstances of Dante's life, and enter into the spirit with which much

of the _Comedy_ is informed. Though many of the nobles were now engaged

in commerce and figured among the popular leaders, most of the greater

houses stood proudly aloof from everything that might corrupt their

gentility. These were styled the magnates: they found, as it were, a

vocation for themselves in being nobles. Among them the true distinctive

spirit of Ghibelinism survived, although none of them would now have

dared to describe himself as a Ghibeline. Their strength lay partly in

the unlimited control they retained over the serfs on their landward

estates; in the loyalty with which the members of a family held by one

another; in their great command of resources as the administrators of

the _Parte Guelfa_; and in the popularity they enjoyed with the smaller

people in consequence of their lavish expenditure, and frank if insolent

manners. By law scarcely the equals of the full citizens, in point of

fact they tyrannised over them. Their houses, set like fortresses in the

crowded streets, frequently served as prisons and torture-chambers for

the low-born traders or artisans who might offend them.

Measures enough had been passed towards the close of the century with a

view to curb the insolence of the magnates; but the difficulty was to

get them put in force. At length, in 1294, they, with many additional

reforms, were embodied in the celebrated Ordinances of Justice. These

for long were counted back to as the Great Charter of Florence--a Great

Charter defining the popular rights and the disabilities of the

baronage. Punishments of special severity were enacted for nobles who

should wrong a plebeian, and the whole of a family or clan was made

responsible for the crimes and liabilities of its several members. The

smaller tradesmen were conciliated by being admitted to a share in

political influence. If serfage was already abolished in the State of

Florence, it was the Ordinances which made it possible for the serf to

use his liberty.[72] But the greatest blow dealt to the nobles by the

new laws was their exclusion, as nobles, from all civil and political

offices. These they could hold only by becoming members of one of the

trade guilds.[73] And to deprive a citizen of his rights it was enough

to inscribe his name in the list of magnates.

It is not known in what year Dante became a member of the Guild of

Apothecaries. Without much reason it has been assumed that he was one of

the nobles who took advantage of the law of 1294. But there is no

evidence that in his time the Alighieri ranked as magnates, and much

ground for believing that for some considerable time past they had

belonged to the order of full citizens.

It was not necessary for every guildsman to practise the art or engage

in the business to which his guild was devoted, and we are not required

to imagine Dante as having anything to do with medicine or with the

spices and precious stones in which the apothecaries traded. The guilds

were political as much as industrial associations, and of the public

duties of his membership he took his full share. The constitution of the

Republic, jealously careful to limit the power of the individual

citizen, provided that the two chief executive officers, the Podesta and

the Captain of the People, should always be foreigners. They held office

only for six months. To each of them was assigned a numerous Council,

and before a law could be abrogated or a new one passed it needed the

approval of both these Councils, as well as that of the Priors, and of

the heads of the principal guilds. The Priors were six in number, one

for each district of the city. With them lay the administration in

general of the laws, and the conduct of foreign affairs. Their office

was elective, and held for two months.[74] Of one or other of the

Councils Dante is known to have been a member in 1295, 1296, 1300, and

1301.[75] In 1299 he is found engaged on a political mission to the

little hill-city of San Gemigniano, where in the town-house they still

show the pulpit from which he addressed the local senate.[76] From the

middle of June till the middle of August 1300 he served as one of the

Priors.[77]

At the time when Dante entered on this office, Florence was distracted

by the feud of Blacks and Whites, names borrowed from the factions of

Pistoia, but fated to become best known from their use in the city which

adopted them. The strength of the Blacks lay in the nobles whom the

Ordinances of Justice had been designed to depress; both such of them as

had retained their standing as magnates, and such as, under the new law,

had unwillingly entered the ranks of the citizens. Already they had

succeeded in driving into exile Giano della Bella,[78] the chief author

of the Ordinances; and their efforts--and those of the citizens who,

fearing the growing power of the lesser guilds, were in sympathy with

them--were steadily directed to upset the reforms. An obvious means to

this end was to lower in popular esteem the public men whose policy it

was to govern firmly on the new lines. The leader of the discontented

party was Corso Donati, a man of small fortune, but of high birth; of

splendid personal appearance, open-handed, and of popular manners. He

and they who went with him affected a violent Guelfism, their chance of

recovering the control of domestic affairs being the better the more

they could frighten the Florentines with threats of evils like those

incurred by the Aretines and Pisans from Ghibeline oppression. It may be

imagined what meaning the cry of Ghibeline possessed in days when there

was still a class of beggars in Florence--men of good names--whose eyes

had been torn out by Farinata and his kind.

One strong claim which Corso Donati had on the goodwill of his

fellow-townsmen was that by his ready courage in pushing on the

reserves, against superior orders, at the battle of Campaldino,[79] the

day had been won to Florence and her allies. As he rode gallantly

through the streets he was hailed as the Baron (_il Barone_), much as in

the last generation the victor of Waterloo was sufficiently

distinguished as the Duke. At the same battle, Vieri dei Cerchi, the

leader of the opposite party of the Whites, had shown no less bravery,

but he was ignorant of the art, or despised it, of making political

capital out of the performance of his duty. In almost every respect he

offered a contrast to Donati. He was of a new family, and his influence

depended not on landed possessions, though he had these too, but on

wealth derived from commerce.[80] According to John Villani, a competent

authority on such a point,[81] he was at the head of one of the greatest

trading houses in the world. The same crowds that cheered Corso as the

great Baron sneered at the reticent and cold-tempered merchant as the

Ghibeline. It was a strange perversion of ideas, and yet had this of

justification, that all the nobles of Ghibeline tendency and all the

citizens who, on account of their birth, were suspected of leaning that

way were driven into the party of the Whites by the mere fact of the

Blacks hoisting so defiantly the Guelf flag, and commanding the

resources of the _Parte Guelfa_. But if Ghibelinism meant, as fifty

years previously it did mean, a tendency to exalt privilege as against

the general liberties and to court foreign interference in the affairs

of Florence, it was the Blacks and not the Whites who had served

themselves heirs to Ghibelinism. That the appeal was now taken to the

Pope instead of to the Emperor did not matter; or that French soldiers

in place of German were called in to settle domestic differences.

The Roman See was at this time filled by Boniface VIII., who six years

previously, by violence and fraud, had procured the resignation of

Celestine V.--him who made the great refusal.[82] Boniface was at once

arrogant and subtle, wholly faithless, and hampered by no scruple

either of religion or humanity. But these qualities were too common

among those who before and after him filled the Papal throne, to secure

him in a special infamy. That he has won from the ruthless hatred which

blazes out against him in many a verse of Dante's,[83] and for this

hatred he is indebted to his interference in the affairs of Florence,

and what came as one of the fruits of it--the poet's exile.

And yet, from the point of view not only of the interest of Rome but

also of Italy, there is much to be said for the policy of Boniface.

German domination was a just subject of fear, and the Imperialist

element was still so strong in Northern and Central Italy, that if the

Emperor Albert[84] had been a man of a more resolute ambition, he

might--so contemporaries deemed--have conquered Italy at the cost of a

march through it. The cities of Romagna were already in Ghibeline

revolt, and it was natural that the Pope should seek to secure Florence

on the Papal side. It was for the Florentines rather than for him to

judge what they would lose or gain by being dragged into the current of

general politics. He made a fair beginning with an attempt to reconcile

the two parties. The Whites were then the dominant faction, and to them

reconciliation meant that their foes would at once divide the

government with them, and at the long-run sap the popular liberties,

while the Pope's hand would soon be allowed to dip freely into the

communal purse. The policy of the Whites was therefore one of steady

opposition to all foreign meddling with Florence. But it failed to

secure general support, for without being Ghibeline in fact it had the

air of being so; and the name of Ghibeline was one that no reasoning

could rob of its terrors.[85]

As was usual in Florence when political feeling ran high, the hotter

partisans came to blows, and the streets were more than once disturbed

by violence and bloodshed. To an onlooker it must have seemed as if the

interposition of some external authority was desirable; and almost on

the same day as the new Priors, of whom Dante was one and who were all

Whites, took office in the June of 1300, the Cardinal Acquasparta

entered the city, deputed by the Pope to establish peace. His proposals

were declined by the party in power, and having failed in his mission he

left the city, and took the priestly revenge upon it of placing it under

interdict.[86] Ere many months were passed, the Blacks, at a meeting of

the heads of the party, resolved to open negotiations anew with

Boniface. For this illegal step some of them, including Corso Donati,

were ordered into exile by the authorities, who, to give an appearance

of impartiality to their proceedings, at the same time banished some of

the Whites, and among them Guido Cavalcanti. It was afterwards made a

charge against Dante that he had procured the recall of his friend Guido

and the other Whites from exile; but to this he could answer that he was

not then in office.[87] Corso in the meantime was using his enforced

absence from Florence to treat freely with the Pope.

Boniface had already entered into correspondence with Charles of Valois,

brother of Philip, the reigning King of France, with the view of

securing the services of a strongly-connected champion. It was the game

that had been played before by the Roman Court when Charles of Anjou was

called to Italy to crush the Hohenstaufens. This second Charles was a

man of ability of a sort, as he had given cruel proof in his brother's

Flemish wars. By the death of his wife, daughter of his kinsman Charles

II. of Naples and so grand-daughter of Charles of Anjou, he had lost the

dominions of Maine and Anjou, and had got the nickname of Lackland from

his want of a kingdom. He lent a willing ear to Boniface, who presented

him with the crown of Sicily on condition that he first wrested it from

the Spaniard who wore it.[88] All the Papal influence was exerted to get

money for the expenses of the descent on Sicily. Even churchmen were

required to contribute, for it was a holy war, and the hope was that

when Charles, the champion of the Church, had reduced Italy to

obedience, won Sicily for himself by arms, and perhaps the Eastern

Empire by marriage, he would win the Holy Sepulchre for Christendom.

Charles crossed the Alps in August 1301, with five hundred men-at-arms,

and, avoiding Florence on his southward march, found Boniface at his

favourite residence of Anagni. He was created Pacificator of Tuscany,

and loaded with other honours. What better served the purpose of his

ambition, he was urged to retrace his steps and justify his new title by

restoring peace to Florence. There the Whites were still in power, but

they dared not declare themselves openly hostile to the Papal and Guelf

interest by refusing him admission to the city. He came with gentle

words, and ready to take the most stringent oaths not to tamper with the

liberties of the Commonwealth; but once he had gained an entrance

(November 1301) and secured his hold on Florence, he threw off every

disguise, gave full play to his avarice, and amused himself with looking

on at the pillage of the dwellings and warehouses of the Whites by the

party of Corso Donati. By all this, says Dante, Charles 'gained no

land,' Lackland as he was, 'but only sin and shame.'[89]

There is a want of precise information as to the events of this time.

But it seems probable that Dante formed one of an embassy sent by the

rulers of Florence to the Pope in the autumn of this year; and that on

the occasion of the entrance of Charles he was absent from Florence.

What the embassy had to propose which Boniface could be expected to be

satisfied with, short of complete submission, is not known and is not

easy to guess. It seems clear at least that Dante cannot have been

chosen as a person likely to be specially pleasing to the Roman Court.

Within the two years preceding he had made himself prominent in the

various Councils of which he was a member, by his sturdy opposition to

affording aid to the Pope in his Romagnese wars. It is even possible

that his theory of the Empire was already more or less known to

Boniface, and as that Pontiff claimed Imperial authority over such

states as Florence, this would be sufficient to secure him a rough

reception.[90] Where he was when the terrible news came to him that for

some days there had been no law in Florence, and that Corso Donati was

sharing in the triumph of Charles, we do not know. Presageful of worse

things to come, he did not seek to return, and is said to have been in

Siena when he heard that, on the 27th January 1302, he had been

sentenced to a heavy fine and political disabilities for having been

guilty of extortion while a Prior, of opposing the coming of Charles,

and of crimes against the peace of Florence and the interest of the

_Parte Guelfa_. If the fine was not paid within three days his goods and

property were to be confiscated. This condemnation he shared with three

others. In the following March he was one of twelve condemned, for

contumacy, to be burned alive if ever they fell into the hands of the

Florentine authorities. We may perhaps assume that the cruel sentence,

as well as the charge of peculation, was uttered only in order to

conform to some respectable precedents.

V.

Besides Dante many other Whites had been expelled from Florence.[91]

Whether they liked it or not, they were forced to seek aid from the

Ghibelines of Arezzo and Romagna. This led naturally to a change of

political views, and though at the time of their banishment all of them

were Guelfs in various degrees, as months and years went on they

developed into Ghibelines, more or less declared. Dissensions, too,

would be bred among them out of recriminations touching the past, and

charges of deserting the general interest for the sake of securing

private advantage in the way of making peace with the Republic. For a

time, however, the common desire of gaining a return to Florence held

them together. Of the Council constituted to bring this about, Dante was

a member. Once only with his associates does he appear to have come the

length of formal negotiations with a view to getting back. Charles of

Valois had passed away from the temporary scene of his extortions and

treachery, upon the futile quest of a crown. Boniface, ere being

persecuted to death by his old ally, Philip of France (1303), had vainly

attempted to check the cruelty of the Blacks; and Benedict, his

successor, sent the Cardinal of Ostia to Florence with powers to

reconcile the two parties. Dante is usually credited with the

composition of the letter in which Vieri dei Cerchi and his

fellow-exiles answered the call of the Cardinal to discuss the

conditions of their return home. All that had been done by the banished

party, said the letter, had been done for the public good.[92] The

negotiations came to nothing; nor were the exiles more fortunate in

arms. Along with their allies they did once succeed by a sudden dash in

penetrating to the market-place, and Florence lay within their grasp

when, seized with panic, they turned and fled from the city, which many

of them were never to see again.

Almost certainly Dante took no active part in this attempt, and indeed

there is little to show that he was ever heartily associated with the

exiles. In his own words, he was compelled to break with his companions

owing to their imbecility and wickedness, and to form a party by

himself.[93] With the Whites, then, he had little more to do; and the

story of their fortunes need not longer detain us. It is enough to say

that while, like Dante, the chief men among them were for ever excluded

from Florence, the principles for which they had contended survived, and

even obtained something like a triumph within its walls. The success of

Donati and his party, though won with the help of the people, was too

clearly opposed to the popular interest to be permanent. Ere long the

inveterate contradiction between magnate and merchant was again to

change the course of Florentine politics; the disabilities against

lawless nobles were again to be enforced; and Corso Donati himself was

to be crushed in the collision of passions he had evoked but could not

control (1308). Though tenderly attached to members of his family, Dante

bore Corso a grudge as having been the chief agent in procuring his

exile--a grudge which years could do nothing to wipe out. He places in

the mouth of Forese Donati a prophecy of the great Baron's shameful

death, expressed in curt and scornful words, terrible from a

brother.[94] It is no figure of speech to say that Dante nursed revenge.

For some few years his hopes were set on Henry of Luxemburg, elected

Emperor in 1308. A Ghibeline, in the ordinary sense of the term, Dante

never was. We have in his _De Monarchia_ a full account of the

conception he had formed of the Empire--that of authority in temporal

affairs embodied in a just ruler, who, being already supreme, would be

delivered from all personal ambition; who should decree justice and be a

refuge for all that were oppressed. He was to be the captain of

Christian society and the guardian of civil right; as in another sphere

the Pope was to be the shepherd of souls and the guardian of the deposit

of Divine truth. In Dante's eyes the one great officer was as much God's

vicegerent as the other. While the most that a Ghibeline or a moderate

Guelf would concede was that there should be a division of power between

Pope and Emperor--the Ghibeline leaving it to the Emperor and the Guelf

to the Pope to define their provinces--Dante held, and in this he stood

almost alone among politicians, that they ought to be concerned with

wholly different kingdoms, and that Christendom was wronged by the

trespass of either upon the other's domain. An equal wrong was done by

the neglect by either of his duty, and both, as Dante judged, had been

shamefully neglecting it. For more than half a century no Emperor had

set foot in Italy; and since the Papal Court had under Clement V. been

removed to Avignon (1305), the Pope had ceased to be a free agent, owing

to his neighbourhood to France and the unscrupulous Philip.[95]

Dante trusted that the virtuous single-minded Henry VII. would prove a

monarch round whom all the best in Italy might gather to make him

Emperor in deed as well as in name. His judgment took the colour of his

hopes, for under the awful shadow of the Emperor he trusted to enter

Florence. Although no Ghibeline or Imperialist in the vulgar sense, he

constituted himself Henry's apologist and herald; and in letters

addressed to the 'wicked Florentines,' to the Emperor, and to the

Princes and Peoples of Italy, he blew as it were a trumpet-blast of

triumph over the Emperor's enemies and his own. Henry had crossed the

Alps, and was tarrying in the north of Italy, when Dante, with a keen

eye for where the key of the situation lay, sharpened by his own wishes,

urged him to lose no more time in reducing the Lombard cities to

obedience, but to descend on Florence, the rotten sheep which was

corrupting all the Italian flock. The men of Florence he bids prepare to

receive the just reward of their crimes.

The Florentines answered Dante's bitter invective and the Emperor's

milder promises by an unwearied opposition with the arms which their

increasing command of all that tends to soften life made them now less

willing to take up, and by the diplomacy in which they were supreme The

exiles were recalled, always excepting the more stubborn or dangerous;

and among these was reckoned Dante. Alliances were made on all hands, an

art which Henry was notably wanting in the trick of. Wherever he turned

he was met and checkmated by the Florentines, who, wise by experience,

were set on retaining control of their own affairs. After his coronation

at Rome (1312),[96] he marched northwards, and with his Pisan and

Aretine allies for six weeks laid fruitless siege to Florence. King

Robert of Naples, whose aid he had hoped to gain by means of a family

alliance, was joined to the league of Guelfs, and Henry passed away from

Florence to engage in an enterprise against the Southern Kingdom, a

design cut short by his death (1313). He was the last Emperor that ever

sought to take the part in Italian affairs which on Dante's theory

belonged to the Imperial office. Well-meaning but weak, he was not the

man to succeed in reducing to practice a scheme of government which had

broken down even in the strong hands of the two Fredericks, and ere the

Commonwealths of Italy had become each as powerful as a Northern

kingdom. To explain his failure, Dante finds that his descent into Italy

was unseasonable: he came too soon. Rather, it may be said, he came far

too late.[97]

When, on the death of Henry, Dante was disappointed in his hopes of a

true revival of the Empire, he devoted himself for a time to urging the

restoration of the Papal Court to Rome, so that Italy might at least not

be left without some centre of authority. In a letter addressed to the

Italian Cardinals, he besought them to replace Clement V., who died in

1314,[98] by an Italian Pope. Why should they, he asked, resign this

great office into Gascon hands? Why should Rome, the true centre of

Christendom, be left deserted and despised? His appeal was fruitless, as

indeed it could not fail to be with only six Italian Cardinals in a

College of twenty-four; and after a vacancy of two years the Gascon

Clement was succeeded by another Gascon. Although Dante's motives in

making this attempt were doubtless as purely patriotic as those which

inspired Catherine of Siena to similar action a century later, he met,

we may be sure, with but little sympathy from his former

fellow-citizens. They were intent upon the interests of Florence alone,

and even of these they may sometimes have taken a narrow view. His was

the wider patriotism of the Italian, and it was the whole Peninsula

that he longed to see delivered from French influence and once more

provided with a seat of authority in its midst, even if it were only

that of spiritual power. The Florentines for their part, desirous of

security against the incursions of the northern horde, were rather set

on retaining the goodwill of France than on enjoying the neighbourhood

of the Pope. In this they were guilty of no desertion of their

principles. Their Guelfism had never been more than a mode of minding

themselves.

For about three years (1313-1316) the most dangerous foe of Florence was

Uguccione de la Faggiuola, a partisan Ghibeline chief, sprung from the

mountain-land of Urbino, which lies between Tuscany and Romagna. He made

himself lord of Pisa and Lucca, and defeated the Florentines and their

allies in the great battle of Montecatini (1315). To him Dante is

believed to have attached himself.[99] It would be easy for the Republic

to form an exaggerated idea of the part which the exile had in shaping

the policy or contributing to the success of his patron; and we are not

surprised to find that, although Dante's fighting days were done, he was

after the defeat subjected to a third condemnation (November 1315). If

caught, he was to lose his head; and his sons, or some of them, were

threatened with the same fate. The terms of the sentence may again have

been more severe than the intentions of those who uttered it. However

this may be, an amnesty was passed in the course of the following year,

and Dante was urged to take advantage of it. He found the conditions of

pardon too humiliating. Like a malefactor he would require to walk,

taper in hand and a shameful mitre on his head, to the church of St

John, and there make an oblation for his crimes. It was not in this

fashion that in his more hopeful hours the exile had imagined his

restoration. If ever he trod again the pavement of his beautiful St

John's, it was to be proudly, as a patriot touching whom his country had

confessed her sins; or, with a poet's more bashful pride, to receive the

laurel crown beside the font in which he was baptized. But as he would

not enter his well beloved, well hated Florence on the terms imposed by

his enemies, so he never had the chance of entering it on his own. The

spirit in which he, as it were, turned from the open gates of his native

town is well expressed in a letter to a friend, who would seem to have

been a churchman who had tried to win his compliance with the terms of

the pardon. After thanking his correspondent for his kindly eagerness to

recover him, and referring to the submission required, he says:--'And is

it in this glorious fashion that Dante Alighieri, wearied with an almost

trilustral exile, is recalled to his country? Is this the desert of an

innocence known to all, and of laborious study which for long has kept

him asweat?... But, Father, this is no way for me to return to my

country by; though if by you or others one can be hit upon through which

the honour and fame of Dante will take no hurt, it shall be followed by

me with no tardy steps. If by none such Florence is to be entered, I

will never enter Florence. What then! Can I not, wherever I may be,

behold the sun and stars? Is not meditation upon the sweetness of truth

as free to me in one place as another? To enjoy this, no need to submit

myself ingloriously and with ignominy to the State and People of

Florence! And wherever I may be thrown, in any case I trust at least to

find daily bread.'

The cruelty and injustice of Florence to her greatest son have been the

subject of much eloquent blame. But, in justice to his contemporaries,

we must try to see Dante as they saw him, and bear in mind that the very

qualities fame makes so much of--his fervent temper and devotion to

great ideas--placed him out of the reach of common sympathy. Others

besides him had been banished from Florence, with as much or as little

reason, and had known the saltness of bread which has been begged, and

the steepness of strange stairs. The pains of banishment made them the

more eager to have it brought to a close. With Dante all that he

suffered went to swell the count of grievances for which a reckoning was

some day to be exacted. The art of returning was, as he himself knew

well, one he was slow to learn.[100] His noble obstinacy, which would

stoop to no loss of dignity or sacrifice of principle, must excite our

admiration; it also goes far to account for his difficulty in getting

back. We can even imagine that in Florence his refusal to abate one

tittle of what was due to him in the way of apology was, for a time, the

subject of wondering speculation to the citizens, ere they turned again

to their everyday affairs of politics and merchandise. Had they been

more used to deal with men in whom a great genius was allied to a

stubborn sense of honour, they would certainly have left less room in

their treatment of Dante for happier ages to cavil at.

How did the case stand? In the letter above quoted from, Dante says that

his innocence was known to all. As far as the charge of corruption in

his office-bearing went, his banishment--no one can doubt it for a

moment--was certainly unjust; and the political changes in Florence

since the death of Corso Donati had taken all the life out of the other

charges. But by his eager appeals to the Emperor to chastise the

Florentines he had raised fresh barriers against his return. The

governors of the Republic could not be expected to adopt his theory of

the Empire and share his views of the Imperial claims; and to them Dante

must have seemed as much guilty of disloyalty to the Commonwealth in

inviting the presence of Henry, as Corso Donati had been in Dante's eyes

for his share in bringing Charles of Valois to harry Florence. His

political writings since his exile--and all his writings were more or

less political--had been such as might well confirm or create an opinion

of him as a man difficult to live with, as one whose intellectual

arrogance had a ready organ in his unsparing tongue or pen. Rumour

would most willingly dwell upon and distort the features of his

character and conduct that separated him from the common herd. And to

add to all this, even after he had deserted the party of the Whites in

exile, and had become a party to himself, he found his friends and

patrons--for where else could he find them?--among the foes of Florence.

VI.

History never abhors a vacuum so much as when she has to deal with the

life of a great man, and for those who must have details of Dante's

career during the nineteen years which elapsed between his banishment

and his death, the industry of his biographers has exhausted every

available hint, while some of them press into their service much that

has only the remotest bearing on their hero. If even one-half of their

suppositions were adopted, we should be forced to the conclusion that

the _Comedy_ and all the other works of his exile were composed in the

intervals of a very busy life. We have his own word for this much,

(_Convito_ i. 3,) that since he was cast forth out of Florence--in which

he would 'fain rest his wearied soul and fulfil his appointed time'--he

had been 'a pilgrim, nay, even a mendicant,' in every quarter of

Italy,[101] and had 'been held cheap by many who, because of his fame,

had looked to find him come in another guise.' But he gives no journal

of his wanderings, and, as will have been observed, says no word of any

country but Italy. Keeping close to well-ascertained facts, it seems

established that in the earlier period of his exile he sojourned with

members of the great family of the Counts Guidi,[102] and that he also

found hospitality with the Malaspini,[103] lords of the Val di Magra,

between Genoa and Lucca. At a still earlier date (August 1306) he is

found witnessing a deed in Padua. It was most probably in the same year

that Dante found Giotto there, painting the walls of the Scrovegni

Chapel, and was courteously welcomed by the artist, and taken to his

house.[104] At some time of his life he studied at Bologna: John Villani

says, during his exile.[105] Of his supposed residence in Paris, though

it is highly probable, there is a want of proof; of a visit to England,

none at all that is worth a moment's consideration. Some of his

commentators and biographers seem to think he was so short-witted that

he must have been in a place before it could occur to him to name it in

his verse.

We have Dante's own word for it that he found his exile almost

intolerable. Besides the bitter resentment which he felt at the

injustice of it, he probably cherished the conviction that his career

had been cut short when he was on the point of acquiring great influence

in affairs. The illusion may have been his--one not uncommon among men

of a powerful imagination--that, given only due opportunity, he could

mould the active life of his time as easily as he moulded and fashioned

the creations of his fancy. It was, perhaps, owing to no fault of his

own that when a partial opportunity had offered itself, he failed to get

his views adopted in Florence; indeed, to judge from the kind of

employment in which he was more than once engaged for his patrons, he

must have been possessed of no little business tact. Yet, as when his

feelings were deeply concerned his words knew no restraint, so his hopes

would partake of the largeness of his genius. In the restored Empire,

which he was almost alone in longing for as he conceived of it, he may

have imagined for himself a place beside Henry like what in Frederick's

court had been filled by Pier delle Vigne--the man who held both keys to

the Emperor's heart, and opened and shut it as he would.[106]

Thus, as his exile ran on it would grow sadder with the accumulating

memories of hopes deferred and then destroyed, and of dreams which had

faded away in the light of a cheerless reality. But some consolations he

must have found even in the conditions of his exile. He had leisure for

meditation, and time enough to spend in that other world which was all

his own. With the miseries of a wanderer's life would come not a few of

its sweets--freedom from routine, and the intellectual stimulus supplied

by change of place. Here and there he would find society such as he

cared for--that of scholars, theologians, and men familiar with every

court and school of Christendom. And, beyond all, he would get access to

books that at home he might never have seen. It was no spare diet that

would serve his mind while he was making such ample calls on it for his

great work. As it proceeds we seem to detect a growing fulness of

knowledge, and it is by reason of the more learned treatment, as well as

the loftier theme of the Third Cantica, that so many readers, when once

well at sea in the _Paradiso_, recognise the force of the warning with

which it begins.[107]

What amount of intercourse he was able to maintain with Florence during

his wanderings is a matter of mere speculation, although of a more

interesting kind than that concerned with the chronology of his uneasy

travels. That he kept up at least some correspondence with his friends

is proved by the letter regarding the terms of his pardon. There is also

the well-known anecdote told by Boccaccio as to the discovery and

despatch to him of the opening Cantos of the _Inferno_--an anecdote we

may safely accept as founded on fact, although Boccaccio's informants

may have failed to note at the time what the manuscript consisted of,

and in the course of years may have magnified the importance of their

discovery. With his wife he would naturally communicate on subjects of

common interest--as, for instance, that of how best to save or recover

part of his property--and especially regarding the welfare of his sons,

of whom two are found to be with him when he acquires something like a

settlement in Verona.

It is quite credible that, as Boccaccio asserts, he would never after

his exile was once begun 'go to his wife or suffer her to join him where

he was;' although the statement is probably an extension of the fact

that she never did join him. In any case it is to make too large a use

of the words to find in them evidence, as has frequently been done, of

the unhappiness of all his married life, and of his utter estrangement

from Gemma during his banishment. The union--marriage of convenience

though it was--might be harmonious enough as long as things went

moderately well with the pair. Dante was never wealthy, but he seems to

have had his own house in Florence and small landed possessions in its

neighbourhood.[108] That before his banishment he was considerably in

debt appears to be ascertained;[109] but, without knowing the

circumstances in which he borrowed, it is impossible to be sure whether

he may not only have been making use of his credit in order to put out

part of his means to advantage in some of the numerous commercial

enterprises in which his neighbours were engaged. In any case his career

must have seemed full of promise till he was driven into banishment.

When that blow had fallen, it is easy to conceive how what if it was not

mutual affection had come to serve instead of it--esteem and

forbearance--would be changed into indifference with the lapse of months

and years of enforced separation, embittered and filled on both sides

with the mean cares of indigence, and, it may be, on Gemma's side with

the conviction that her husband had brought her with himself into

disgrace. If all that is said by Boccaccio and some of Dante's enemies

as to his temperament and behaviour were true, we could only hope that

Gemma's indifference was deep enough to save her from the pangs of

jealousy. And on the other hand, if we are to push suspicion to its

utmost length, we may find an allusion to his own experience in the

lines where Dante complains of how soon a widow forgets her

husband.[110] But this is all matter of the merest speculation. Gemma

is known to have been alive in 1314.[111] She brought up her children,

says Boccaccio, upon a trifling part of her husband's confiscated

estate, recovered on the plea that it was a portion of her dowry. There

may have been difficulties of a material kind, insuperable save to an

ardent love that was not theirs, in the way of Gemma's joining her

husband in any of his cities of refuge.

Complete evidence exists of Dante's having in his later years lived for

a longer or shorter time in the three cities of Lucca, Verona, and

Ravenna. In Purgatory he meets a shade from Lucca, in the murmur of

whose words he catches he 'knows not what of Gentucca;'[112] and when he

charges the Lucchese to speak plainly out, he is told that Lucca shall

yet be found pleasant by him because of a girl not yet grown to

womanhood. Uguccione, acting in the interest of Pisa, took possession of

Lucca in 1314, and Dante is supposed to have taken up his residence

there for some considerable time. What we may certainly infer from his

own words in the _Purgatorio_ is that they were written after a stay in

Lucca had been sweetened to him by the society of a lady named Gentucca.

He cannot well have found shelter there before the city was held by

Uguccione; and research has established that at least two ladies of the

uncommon name of Gentucca were resident there in 1314. From the whole

tone of his allusion--the mention of her very name and of her innocent

girlhood--we may gather that there was nothing in his liking for her of

which he had any reason to feel ashamed. In the _Inferno_ he had covered

the whole people of Lucca with his scorn.[113] By the time he got thus

far with the _Purgatorio_ his thoughts of the place were all softened by

his memory of one fair face--or shall we rather say, of one

compassionate and womanly soul? That Dante was more than susceptible to

feminine charms is coarsely asserted by Boccaccio.[114] But on such a

matter Boccaccio is a prejudiced witness, and, in the absence of

sufficient proof to the contrary, justice requires us to assume that the

tenor of Dante's life was not at variance with that of his writings. He

who was so severe a judge of others was not, as we can infer from more

than one passage of the _Comedy_, a lenient judge when his own failings

were concerned.[115] That his conduct never fell short of his standard

no one will venture to maintain. But what should have hindered him, in

his hours of weariness and when even his hold on the future seemed to

slacken, in lonely castle or strange town, to seek sympathy from some

fair woman who might remind him in something of Beatrice?[116]

When, in 1316, Uguccione was driven out of Lucca and Pisa, that great

partisan took military service with Can Grande. It has been disputed

whether Dante had earlier enjoyed the hospitality of the Scaligers, or

was indebted for his first reception in Verona to the good offices of

Uguccione. It is barely credible that by this time in his life he stood

in need of any one to answer for him in the court of Can Grande. His

fame as a political writer must have preceded him; and it was of a

character to commend him to the good graces of the great Imperialist. In

his _De Monarchia_ he had, by an exhaustive treatment of propositions

which now seem childish or else the mere commonplaces of everyday

political argument, established the right of the civil power to

independence of Church authority; and though to the Scaliger who aimed

at becoming Imperial lieutenant for all the North of Italy he might seem

needlessly tender to the spiritual lordship of the Holy Father, yet the

drift of his reasoning was all in favour of the Ghibeline position.[117]

Besides this he had written on the need of refining the dialects of

Italian, and reducing them to a language fit for general use in the

whole of the Peninsula; and this with a novelty of treatment and wealth

of illustration unequalled before or since in any first work on such a

subject.[118] And, what would recommend him still more to a youthful

prince of lofty taste, he was the poet of the 'sweet new style' of the

_Vita Nuova_, and of sonnets, ballads, and canzoni rich in language and

thought beyond the works of all previous poets in the vulgar tongues.

Add to this that the _Comedy_ was already written, and published up,

perhaps, to the close of the _Purgatorio_, and that all Italy was eager

to find who had a place, and what kind of place, in the strange new

world from which the veil was being withdrawn; and it is easy to imagine

that Dante's reception at Can Grande's court was rather that of a man

both admired and feared for his great genius, than that of a wandering

scholar and grumbling exile.

At what time Dante came to Verona, and for how long he stayed, we have

no means of fixing with certainty. He himself mentions being there in

1320,[119] and it is usually supposed that his residence covered three

years previous to that date; as also that it was shared by his two sons,

Piero and Jacopo. One of these was afterwards to find a settlement at

Verona in a high legal post. Except some frivolous legends, there is no

evidence that Dante met with anything but generous treatment from Can

Grande. A passage of the _Paradiso_, written either towards the close of

the poet's residence at Verona, or after he had left it, is full of a

praise of the great Scaliger so magnificent[120] as fully to make amends

for the contemptuous mention in the _Purgatorio_ of his father and

brother.[121] To Can Grande the _Paradiso_ was dedicated by the author

in a long epistle containing an exposition of how the first Canto of

that Cantica, and, by implication, the whole of the poem, is to be

interpreted. The letter is full of gratitude for favours already

received, and of expectation of others yet to come. From the terms of

the dedication it has been assumed that ere it was made the whole of the

_Paradiso_ was written, and that Dante praises the lord of Verona after

a long experience of his bounty.[122]

Whether owing to the restlessness of an exile, or to some prospect of

attaining a state of greater ease or of having the command of more

congenial society, we cannot tell; but from the splendid court of Can

Grande he moved down into Romagna, to Ravenna, the city which of all in

Italy would now be fixed upon by the traveller as the fittest place for

a man of genius, weighed down by infinite sorrows, to close his days in

and find a tomb. Some writers on the life of Dante will have it that in

Ravenna he spent the greater part of his exile, and that when he is

found elsewhere--in Lucca or Verona--he is only on a temporary absence

from his permanent home.[123] But this conclusion requires some facts to

be ignored, and others unduly dwelt on. In any case his patron there,

during at least the last year or two of his life, was Guido Novello of

Polenta, lord of Ravenna, the nephew of her who above all the persons of

the _Comedy_ lives in the hearts of its readers.

Bernardino, the brother of Francesca and uncle of Guido, had fought on

the side of Florence at the battle of Campaldino, and Dante may then

have become acquainted with him. The family had the reputation of being

moderate Guelfs; but ere this the exile, with his ripe experience of

men, had doubtless learned, while retaining intact his own opinions as

to what was the true theory of government, to set good-heartedness and

a noble aim in life above political orthodoxy. This Guido Novello--the

younger Guido--bears the reputation of having been well-informed, of

gentle manners, and fond of gathering around him men accomplished in

literature and the fine arts. On the death of Dante he made a formal

oration in honour of the poet. If his welcome of Dante was as cordial as

is generally supposed, and as there is no reason to doubt that it was,

it proved his magnanimity; for in the _Purgatorio_ a family specially

hostile to the Polentas had been mentioned with honour,[124] while that

to which his wife belonged had been lightly spoken of. How he got over

the condemnation of his kinswoman to Inferno--even under such gentle

conditions--it would be more difficult to understand were there not

reason to believe that ere Dante went to Ravenna it had come to be a

matter of pride in Italy for a family to have any of its members placed

anywhere in that other world of which Dante held the key.

It seems as if we might assume that the poet's last months or years were

soothed by the society of his daughter--the child whom he had named

after the object of his first and most enduring love.[125] Whether or

not he was acting as Ambassador for Guido to Venice when he caught his

last illness, it appears to be pretty well established that he was held

in honour by his patron and all around him.[126] For his hours of

meditation he had the solemn churches of Ravenna with their storied

walls,[127] and the still more solemn pine forest of Classis, by him

first annexed to the world of Romance.[128] For hours of relaxation,

when they came, he had neighbours who dabbled in letters and who could

at any rate sympathise with him in his love of study. He maintained

correspondence with poets and scholars in other cities. In at least one

instance this was conducted in the bitter fashion with which the

humanists of a century or two later were to make the world

familiar;[129] but with the Bolognese scholar, Giovanni del Virgilio, he

engaged in a good-humoured, half-bantering exchange of Latin pastoral

poems, through the artificial imagery of which there sometimes breaks a

natural thought, as when in answer to the pedant's counsel to renounce

the vulgar tongue and produce in Latin something that will entitle him

to receive the laurel crown in Bologna, he declares that if ever he is

crowned as a poet it will be on the banks of the Arno.

Most of the material for forming a judgment of how Dante stood affected

to the religious beliefs of his time is to be gathered from the

_Comedy_, and the place for considering it would rather be in an essay

on that work than in a sketch of his life which necessity compels to be

swift. A few words may however be here devoted to the subject, as it is

one with some bearing on the manner in which he would be regarded by

those around him, and through that on the tenor of his life. That Dante

conformed to Church observances, and, except with a few malevolent

critics, bore the reputation of a good Catholic, there can be no doubt.

It was as a politician and not as a heretic that he suffered

persecution; and when he died he was buried in great honour within the

Franciscan Church at Ravenna. Some few years after his death, it is

true, his _De Monarchia_ was burned as heretical by orders of the Papal

Legate in Lombardy, who would gladly, if he could, have had the bones of

the author exhumed to share the fate of his book. But all this was only

because the partisans of Lewis of Bavaria were making political capital

out of the treatise.

Attempts have been made to demonstrate that in spite of his outward

conformity Dante was an unbeliever at heart, and that the _Comedy_ is

devoted to the promulgation of a Ghibeline heresy--of which, we may be

sure, no Ghibeline ever heard--and to the overthrow of all that the

author professed most devoutly to believe.[130] Other critics of a more

sober temper in speculation would find in him a Catholic who held the

Catholic beliefs with the same slack grasp as the teaching of Luther was

held by Lessing or Goethe.[131] But this is surely to misread the

_Comedy_, which is steeped from beginning to end in a spirit of the

warmest faith in the great Christian doctrines. It was no mere

intellectual perception of these that Dante had--or professed to

have--for when in Paradise he has satisfied Saint Peter of his being

possessed of a just conception of the nature of faith, and is next asked

if, besides knowing what is the alloy of the coin and the weight of it,

he has it in his own purse, he answers boldly, 'Yea, and so shining and

round that of a surety it has the lawful stamp.'[132] And further on,

when required to declare in what he believes, nothing against the

fulness of his creed is to be inferred from the fact that he stops short

after pronouncing his belief in the existence of God and in the Trinity.

This article he gives as implying all the others; it is 'the spark which

spreads out into a vivid flame.'[133]

Yet if the inquiry were to be pushed further, and it were sought to find

how much of free thought he allowed himself in matters of religion,

Dante might be discovered to have reached his orthodox position by ways

hateful to the bigots who then took order for preserving the purity of

the faith. The office of the Pope he deeply revered, but the Papal

absolution avails nothing in his eyes compared with one tear of

heartfelt repentance.[134] It is not on the word of Pope or Council that

he rests his faith, but on the Scriptures, and on the evidences of the

truth of Christianity, freely examined and weighed.[135] Chief among

these evidences, it must however be noted, he esteemed the fact of the

existence of the Church as he found it;[136] and in his inquiries he

accepted as guides the Scholastic Doctors on whose reasonings the Church

had set its seal of approbation. It was a foregone conclusion he reached

by stages of his own. Yet that he sympathised at least as much with the

honest search for truth as with the arrogant profession of orthodoxy, is

shown by his treatment of heretics. He could not condemn severely such

as erred only because their reason would not consent to rest like his in

the prevalent dogmatic system; and so we find that he makes heresy

consist less in intellectual error than in beliefs that tend to vitiate

conduct, or to cause schism in societies divinely constituted.[137] For

his own part, orthodox although he was, or believed himself to be--which

is all that needs to be contended for,--in no sense was he

priest-ridden. It was liberty that he went seeking on his great

journey;[138] and he gives no hint that it is to be gained by the

observance of forms or in submission to sacerdotal authority. He knows

it is in his reach only when he has been crowned, and mitred too, lord

of himself[139]--subject to Him alone of whom even Popes were

servants.[140]

Although in what were to prove his last months Dante might amuse himself

with the composition of learned trifles, and in the society and

correspondence of men who along with him, if on lines apart from his,

were preparing the way for the revival of classical studies, the best

part of his mind, then as for long before, was devoted to the _Comedy_;

and he was counting on the suffrages of a wider audience than courts and

universities could supply.

Here there is no room to treat at length of that work, to which when we

turn our thoughts all else he wrote--though that was enough to secure

him fame--seems to fall into the background as if unworthy of his

genius. What can hardly be passed over in silence is that in the

_Comedy_, once it was begun, he must have found a refuge for his soul

from all petty cares, and a shield against all adverse fortune. We must

search its pages, and not the meagre records of his biographers, to find

what was the life he lived during the years of his exile; for, in a

sense, it contains the true journal of his thoughts, of his hopes, and

of his sorrows. The plan was laid wide enough to embrace the

observations he made of nature and of man, the fruits of his painful

studies, and the intelligence he gathered from those experienced in

travel, politics, and war. It was not only his imagination and artistic

skill that were spent upon the poem: he gave his life to it. The future

reward he knew was sure--an immortal fame; but he hoped for a nearer

profit on his venture. Florence might at last relent, if not because of

his innocence and at the spectacle of his inconsolable exile, at least

on hearing the rumour of his genius borne to her from every corner of

Italy:--

If e'er it comes that this my sacred Lay,

To which both Heaven and Earth have set their hand--

Through which these many years I waste away--

Shall quell the cruelty that keeps me banned

From the fair fold where I, a lamb, was found

Hostile to wolves who 'gainst it violence planned;

With other fleece and voice of other sound,

Poet will I return, and at the font

Where I was christened be with laurel crowned.[141]

But with the completion of the _Comedy_ Dante's life too came to a

close. He died at Ravenna in the month of September 1321.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Matilda died in 1115. The name Tessa, the contraction of Contessa,

was still, long after her time, sometimes given to Florentine girls. See

Perrens, _Histoire de Florence_, vol. i. p. 126.

[2] Whether by Matilda the great Countess is meant has been eagerly

disputed, and many of the best critics--such as Witte and

Scartazzini--prefer to find in her one of the ladies of the _Vita

Nuova_. In spite of their pains it seems as if more can be said for the

great Matilda than for any other. The one strong argument against her

is, that while she died old, in the poem she appears as young.

[3] See note on _Inferno_ xxx. 73.

[4] It might, perhaps, be more correct to say that to some offices the

nobles were eligible, but did not elect.

[5] _Inf._ xiii. 75.

[6] _Inf._ x. 119.

[7] _Inf._ xxiii. 66.

[8] _Inf._ x. 51.

[9] _Purg._ vi. 144.

[10] Dante sets the Abbot among the traitors in Inferno, and says

scornfully of him that his throat was cut at Florence (_Inf._ xxxii.

119).

[11] Villani throws doubt on the guilt of the Abbot. There were some

cases of churchmen being Ghibelines, as for instance that of the

Cardinal Ubaldini (_Inf._ x. 120). Twenty years before the Abbot's death

the General of the Franciscans had been jeered at in the streets of

Florence for turning his coat and joining the Emperor. On the other

hand, many civilians were to be found among the Guelfs.

[12] Manfred, says John Villani (_Cronica_, vi. 74 and 75), at first

sent only a hundred men. Having by Farinata's advice been filled with

wine before a skirmish in which they were induced to engage, they were

easily cut in pieces by the Florentines; and the royal standard was

dragged in the dust. The truth of the story matters less than that it

was believed in Florence.

[13] Provenzano is found by Dante in Purgatory, which he has been

admitted to, in spite of his sins, because of his self-sacrificing

devotion to a friend (_Purg._ xi. 121).

[14] For this good advice he gets a word of praise in Inferno (_Inf._

xvi. 42).

[15] These mercenaries, though called Germans, were of various races.

There were even Greeks and Saracens among them. The mixture corresponded

with the motley civilisation of Manfred's court.

[16] _Inf._ xxxii. 79.

[17] _Inf._ x. 93.

[18] Lucera was a fortress which had been peopled with Saracens by

Frederick.

[19] Manfred, _Purg._ iii. 112; Charles, _Purg._ vii. 113.

[20] _Purg._ xx. 67.

[21] _Purg._ iii. 122.

[22] For an account of the constitution and activity of the _Parte

Guelfa_ at a later period, see Perrens, _Hist. de Florence_, vol. iv. p.

482.

[23] _Purg._ xx. 68.

[24] _Parad._ xi. 89.

[25] _Parad._ xvi. 40, etc.

[26] _Inf._ xxix. 31.

[27] _Inf._ x. 42. Though Dante was descended from nobles, his rank in

Florence was not that of a noble or magnate, but of a commoner.

[28] The month is indicated by Dante himself, _Parad._ xxii. 110. The

year has recently been disputed. For 1265 we have J. Villani and the

earliest biographers; and Dante's own expression at the beginning of the

_Comedy_ is in favour of it.

[29] _Inf._ xxiii. 95.

[30] _Inf._ xix. 17; _Parad._ xxv. 9.

[31] _Purg._ xxx. 55.

[32] _Inf._ viii. 45, where Virgil says of Dante that blessed was she

that bore him, can scarcely be regarded as an exception to this

statement.

[33] In 1326, out of a population of ninety thousand, from eight to ten

thousand children were being taught to read; and from five to six

hundred were being taught grammar and logic in four high schools. There

was not in Dante's time, or till much later, a University in Florence.

See J. Villani, xi. 94, and Burckhardt, _Cultur der Renaissance_, vol.

i. p. 76.

[34] For an interesting account of Heresy in Florence from the eleventh

to the thirteenth centuries, see Perrens, _Hist. de Florence_, vol. i.

livre ii. chap. iii.

[35] It opens with Brunetto's being lost in the forest of Roncesvalles,

and there are some other features of resemblance--all on the

surface--between his experience and Dante's.

[36] G. Villani, viii. 10. Latini died in 1294. Villani gives the old

scholar a very bad moral character.

[37] _Inf._ xv. 84.

[38] We may, I think, assume the _Vita Nuova_ to have been published

some time between 1291 and 1300; but the dates of Dante's works are far

from being ascertained.

[39] So long as even Italian critics are not agreed as to whether the

title means _New Life_, or _Youth_, I suppose one is free to take his

choice; and it seems most natural to regard it as referring to the new

world into which the lover is transported by his passion.

[40] As, indeed, Boccaccio, _Vita di Dante_, expressly says was the

case.

[41] In this adopting a device frequently used by the love-poets of the

period.--Witte, _Dante-Forschungen_, vol. ii. p. 312.

[42] The _Vita Nuova_ contains some thirty poems.

[43] See Sir Theodore Martin's Introduction to his Translation of _Vita

Nuova_, page xxi.

[44] In this matter we must not judge the conduct of Dante by English

customs.

[45] _Donne, ch' avete intelletto d' amore_: Ladies that are acquainted

well with love. Quoted in _Purg._ xxiv. 51.

[46] Beatrice died in June 1290, having been born in April 1266.

[47] _Purg._ xi. 98.

[48] _Purg._ xxiv. 52.

[49] The date of the _Convito_ is still the subject of controversy, as

is that of most of Dante's works. But it certainly was composed between

the _Vita Nuova_ and the _Comedy_.

There is a remarkable sonnet by Guido Cavalcanti addressed to Dante,

reproaching him for the deterioration in his thoughts and habits, and

urging him to rid himself of the woman who has bred the trouble. This

may refer to the time after the death of Beatrice. See also _Purg._ xxx.

124.

[50] _Convito_ ii. 13.

[51] Some recent writers set his marriage five years later, and reduce

the number of his children to three.

[52] His sister is probably meant by the 'young and gentle lady, most

nearly related to him by blood' mentioned in the _Vita Nuova_.

[53] The difference between the Teutonic and Southern conception of

marriage must be kept in mind.

[54] He describes the weather on the day of the battle with the

exactness of one who had been there (_Purg._ v. 155).

[55] Leonardo Bruni.

[56] _Inf._ xxii. 4.

[57] _Inf._ xxi. 95.

[58] _Conv._ iii. 9, where he illustrates what he has to say about the

nature of vision, by telling that for some time the stars, when he

looked at them, seemed lost in a pearly haze.

[59] The _Convito_ was to have consisted of fifteen books. Only four

were written.

[60] _Wife of Bath's Tale._ In the context he quotes _Purg._ vii. 121,

and takes ideas from the _Convito_.

[61] Dies to sensual pleasure and is abstracted from all worldly affairs

and interests. See _Convito_ iv. 28.

[62] From the last canzone of the _Convito_.

[63] In the _Vita Nuova_.

[64] _Purg._ xxiii. 115, xxiv. 75; _Parad._ iii. 49.

[65] _Purg._ xi. 95.

[66] _Purg._ ii. 91.

[67] _Purg._ iv. 123.

[68] Sacchetti's stories of how Dante showed displeasure with the

blacksmith and the donkey-driver who murdered his _canzoni_ are

interesting only as showing what kind of legends about him were current

in the streets of Florence.--Sacchetti, _Novelle_, cxiv, cxv.

[69] _Purg._ xii. 101.

[70] _Purg._ xi. 94:--

'In painting Cimabue deemed the field

His own, but now on Giotto goes the cry,

Till by his fame the other's is concealed.'

[71] Giotto is often said to have drawn inspiration from the _Comedy_;

but that Dante, on his side, was indebted to the new school of painting

and sculpture appears from many a passage of the _Purgatorio_.

[72] Serfage had been abolished in 1289. But doubt has been thrown on

the authenticity of the deed of abolition. See Perrens, _Hist. de

Florence_, vol. ii. p. 349.

[73] No unusual provision in the industrious Italian cities. Harsh

though it may seem, it was probably regarded as a valuable concession to

the nobles, for their disaffection appears to have been greatly caused

by their uneasiness under disabilities. There is much obscurity on

several points. How, for example, came the nobles to be allowed to

retain the command of the vast resources of the _Parte Guelfa_? This

made them almost independent of the Commonwealth.

[74] At a later period the Priors were known as the Signory.

[75] Fraticelli, _Storia della Vita di Dante_, page 112 and note.

[76] It is to be regretted that Ampère in his charming _Voyage

Dantesque_ devoted no chapter to San Gemigniano, than which no Tuscan

city has more thoroughly preserved its mediæval character. There is no

authority for the assertion that Dante was employed on several

Florentine embassies. The tendency of his early biographers is to

exaggerate his political importance and activity.

[77] Under the date of April 1301 Dante is deputed by the Road Committee

to see to the widening, levelling, and general improvement of a street

in the suburbs.--Witte, _Dante-Forschungen_, vol. ii. p. 279.

[78] Dante has a word of praise for Giano, at _Parad._ xvi. 127.

[79] At which Dante fought. See page lxii.

[80] Vieri was called Messer, a title reserved for magnates, knights,

and lawyers of a certain rank--notaries and jurisconsults; Dante, for

example, never gets it.

[81] Villani acted for some time as an agent abroad of the great

business house of Peruzzi.

[82] _Inf._ iii. 60.

[83] He is 'the Prince of the modern Pharisees' (_Inf._ xxvii. 85); his

place is ready for him in hell (_Inf._ xix. 53); and he is elsewhere

frequently referred to. In one great passage Dante seems to relent

towards him (_Purg._ xx. 86).

[84] Albert of Hapsburg was chosen Emperor in 1298, but was never

crowned at Rome.

[85] As in the days of Guelf and Ghibeline, so now in those of Blacks

and Whites, the common multitude of townsmen belonged to neither party.

[86] An interdict means that priests are to refuse sacred offices to all

in the community, who are thus virtually subjected to the minor

excommunication.

[87] Guido died soon after his return in 1301. He had suffered in health

during his exile. See _Inf._ x. 63.

[88] Charles of Anjou had lost Sicily at the Sicilian Vespers, 1282.

[89] _Purg._ xx. 76.

[90] Witte attributes the composition of the _De Monarchia_ to a period

before 1301 (_Dante-Forschungen_, vol. i. Fourth Art.), but the general

opinion of critics sets it much later.

[91] _Inf._ vi. 66, where their expulsion is prophesied.

[92] Dante's authorship of the letter is now much questioned. The drift

of recent inquiries has been rather to lessen than to swell the bulk of

materials for his biography.

[93] _Parad._ xvii. 61.

[94] _Purg._ xxiv. 82.

[95] See at _Purg._ xx. 43 Dante's invective against Philip and the

Capets in general.

[96] Henry had come to Italy with the Pope's approval. He was crowned by

the Cardinals who were in Rome as Legates.

[97] _Parad._ xxx. 136. High in Heaven Dante sees an ample chair with a

crown on it, and is told it is reserved for Henry. He is to sit among

those who are clothed in white. The date assigned to the action of the

_Comedy_, it will be remembered, is the year 1300.

[98] _Inf._ xix. 82, where the Gascon Clement is described as a 'Lawless

Pastor from the West.'

[99] The ingenious speculations of Troya (_Del Veltro Allegorico di

Dante_) will always mark a stage in the history of the study of Dante,

but as is often the case with books on the subject, his shows a

considerable gap between the evidence adduced and the conclusions drawn

from it. He would make Dante to have been for many years a satellite of

the great Ghibeline chief. Dante's temper or pride, however we call it,

seems to have been such as to preserve him from ever remaining attached

for long to any patron.

[100] _Inf._ x. 81.

[101] The _Convito_ is in Italian, and his words are: 'wherever this

language is spoken.'

[102] His letter to the Florentines and that to the Emperor are dated in

1311, from 'Near the sources of the Arno'--that is, from the Casentino,

where the Guidi of Romena dwelt. If the letter of condolence with the

Counts Oberto and Guido of Romena on the death of their uncle is

genuine, it has great value for the passage in which he excuses himself

for not having come to the funeral:--'It was not negligence or

ingratitude, but the poverty into which I am fallen by reason of my

exile. This, like a cruel persecutor, holds me as in a prison-house

where I have neither horse nor arms; and though I do all I can to free

myself, I have failed as yet.' The letter has no date. Like the other

ten or twelve epistles attributed to Dante, it is in Latin.

[103] There is a splendid passage in praise of this family, _Purg._

viii. 121. A treaty is on record in which Dante acts as representative

of the Malaspini in settling the terms of a peace between them and the

Bishop of Luni in October 1306.

[104] The authority for this is Benvenuto of Imola in his comment on the

_Comedy_ (_Purg._ xi.). The portrait of Dante by Giotto, still in

Florence, but ruined by modern bungling restoration, is usually believed

to have been executed in 1301 or 1302. But with regard to this, see the

note at the end of this essay.

[105] It is true that Villani not only says that 'he went to study at

Bologna,' but also that 'he went to Paris and many parts of the world'

(_Cronica_, ix. 136), and that Villani, of all contemporary or nearly

contemporary writers, is by far the most worthy of credence. But he

proves to be more than once in error regarding Dante; making him,

_e.g._, die in a wrong month and be buried in a wrong church at Ravenna.

And the 'many parts of the world' shows that here he is dealing in

hearsay of the vaguest sort. Nor can much weight be given to Boccaccio

when he sends Dante to Bologna and Paris. But Benvenuto of Imola, who

lectured on the _Comedy_ at Bologna within fifty years of Dante's death,

says that Dante studied there. It would indeed be strange if he did not,

and at more than one period, Bologna being the University nearest

Florence. Proof of Dante's residence in Paris has been found in his

familiar reference to the Rue du Fouarre (_Parad._ x. 137). His graphic

description of the coast between Lerici and Turbia (_Purg._ iii. 49, iv.

25) certainly seems to show a familiarity with the Western as well as

the Eastern Rivieras of Genoa. But it scarcely follows that he was on

his way to Paris when he visited them.

[106] _Inf._ xiii. 58.

[107] 'O ye, who have hitherto been following me in some small

craft, ... put not further to sea, lest, losing sight of me, you lose

yourselves' (_Parad._ ii. 1). But, to tell the truth, Dante is never so

weak as a poet as when he is most the philosopher or the theologian.

The following list of books more or less known to him is not given as

complete:--The Vulgate, beginning with St. Jerome's Prologue; Aristotle,

through the Latin translation then in vogue; Averroes, etc.; Thomas

Aquinas and the other Schoolmen; much of the Civil and Canon law;

Boethius; Homer only in scraps, through Aristotle, etc.; Virgil, Cicero

in part, Livy, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Lucan, and Statius; the works of

Brunetto Latini; the poetical literature of Provence, France, and Italy,

including the Arthurian Romances--the favourite reading of the Italian

nobles, and the tales of Charlemagne and his Peers--equally in favour

with the common people. There is little reason to suppose that among the

treatises of a scientific and quasi-scientific kind that he fell in

with, and of which he was an eager student, were included the works of

Roger Bacon. These there was a conspiracy among priests and schoolmen to

keep buried. Dante seems to have set little store on ecclesiastical

legends of wonder; at least he gives them a wide berth in his works.

[108] In the notes to Fraticelli's _Vita di Dante_ (Florence 1861) are

given copies of documents relating to the property of the Alighieri, and

of Dante in particular. In 1343 his son Jacopo, by payment of a small

fine, recovered vineyards and farms that had been his father's.--Notes

to Chap. iii. Fraticelli's admirable Life is now in many respects out of

date. He accepts, _e.g._, Dino Compagni as an authority, and believes in

the romantic story of the letter of Fra Ilario.

[109] The details are given by Witte, _Dante-Forschungen_, vol ii. p.

61. The amount borrowed by Dante and his brother (and a friend) comes to

nearly a thousand gold florins. Witte takes this as equivalent to 37,000

francs, _i.e._ nearly £1500. But the florin being the eighth of an

ounce, or about ten shillings' worth of gold, a thousand florins would

be equal only to £500--representing, of course, an immensely greater sum

now-a-days.

[110] _Purg._ viii. 76.

[111] See in Scartazzini, _Dante Alighieri_, 1879, page 552, extract

from the will of her mother Maria Donati, dated February 1314. Many of

these Florentine dates are subject to correction, the year being usually

counted from Lady-Day. 'In 1880 a document was discovered which proves

Gemma to have been engaged in a law-suit in 1332.--_Il Propugnatore_,

xiii^a. 156,'--Scheffer-Boichorst, _Aus Dantes Verbannung_, page 213.

[112] _Purg._ xxiv. 37.

[113] _Inf._ xxi. 40.

[114] _In questo mirifico poeta trovò ampissimo luego la lussuria; e non

solamente ne' giovanili anni, ma ancora ne' maturi._--Boccaccio, _La

Vita di Dante_. After mentioning that Dante was married, he indulges in

a long invective against marriage; confessing, however, that he is

ignorant of whether Dante experienced the miseries he describes. His

conclusion on the subject is that philosophers should leave marriage to

rich fools, to nobles, and to handicraftsmen.

[115] In Purgatory his conscience accuses him of pride, and he already

seems to feel the weight of the grievous burden beneath which the proud

bend as they purge themselves of their sin (_Purg._ xiii. 136). Some

amount of self-accusation seems to be implied in such passages as

_Inf._, v. 142 and _Purg._ xxvii. 15, etc.; but too much must not be

made of it.

[116] In a letter of a few lines to one of the Marquises Malaspina,

written probably in the earlier years of his exile, he tells how his

purpose of renouncing ladies' society and the writing of love-songs had

been upset by the view of a lady of marvellous beauty who 'in all

respects answered to his tastes, habits, and circumstances.' He says he

sends with the letter a poem containing a fuller account of his

subjection to this new passion. The poem is not found attached to the

copy of the letter, but with good reason it is guessed to be the Canzone

beginning _Amor, dacchè convien_, which describes how he was

overmastered by a passion born 'in the heart of the mountains in the

valley of that river beside which he had always been the victim of

love.' This points to the Casentino as the scene. He also calls the

Canzone his 'mountain song.' The passion it expresses may be real, but

that he makes the most of it appears from the close, which is occupied

by the thought of how the verses will be taken in Florence.

[117] However early the _De Monarchia_ may have been written, it is

difficult to think that it can be of a later date than the death of

Henry.

[118] The _De Vulgari Eloquio_ is in Latin. Dante's own Italian is

richer and more elastic than that of contemporary writers. Its base is

the Tuscan dialect, as refined by the example of the Sicilian poets. His

Latin, on the contrary, is I believe regarded as being somewhat

barbarous, even for the period.

[119] In his _Quæstio de Aqua et Terra_. In it he speaks of having been

in Mantua. The thesis was maintained in Verona, but of course he may,

after a prolonged absence, have returned to that city.

[120] _Parad._ xvii. 70.

[121] _Purg._ xviii. 121.

[122] But in urgent need of more of it.--He says of 'the sublime

Cantica, adorned with the title of the _Paradiso_', that '_illam sub

præsenti epistola, tamquam sub epigrammate proprio dedicatam, vobis

adscribo, vobis offero, vobis denique recommendo_.' But it may be

questioned if this involves that the Cantica was already finished.

[123] As, for instance, Herr Scheffer-Boichorst in his _Aus Dantes

Verbannung_, 1882.

[124] The Traversari (_Purg._ xiv. 107). Guido's wife was of the

Bagnacavalli (_Purg._ xiv. 115). The only mention of the Polenta family,

apart from that of Francesca, is at _Inf._ xxvii. 41.

[125] In 1350 a sum of ten gold florins was sent from Florence by the

hands of Boccaccio to Beatrice, daughter of Dante; she being then a nun

at Ravenna.

[126] The embassy to Venice is mentioned by Villani, and there was a

treaty concluded in 1321 between the Republic and Guido. But Dante's

name does not appear in it among those of the envoys from Ravenna. A

letter, probably apocryphal, to Guido from Dante in Venice is dated

1314. If Dante, as is maintained by some writers, was engaged in tuition

while in Ravenna, it is to be feared that his pupils would find in him

an impatient master.

[127] Not that Dante ever mentions these any more than a hundred other

churches in which he must have spent thoughtful hours.

[128] _Purg._ xxviii. 20.

[129] A certain Cecco d'Ascoli stuck to him like a bur, charging him,

among other things, with lust, and a want of religious faith which would

one day secure him a place in his own Inferno. Cecco was himself burned

in Florence, in 1327, for making too much of evil spirits, and holding

that human actions are necessarily affected by the position of the

stars. He had been at one time a professor of astronomy.

[130] Gabriel Rossetti, _Comment on the Divina Commedia_, 1826, and

Aroux, _Dante, Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste_, 1854.

[131] Scartazzini, _Dante Alighieri, Seine Zeit_, etc., 1879, page 268.

[132] _Parad._ xxiv. 86.

[133] _Parad._ xxiv. 145.

[134] _Inf._ xxvii. 101; _Purg._ iii. 118.

[135] _Parad._ xxiv. 91.

[136] _Parad._ xxiv. 106.

[137] _Inf._ x. and xxviii. There is no place in Purgatory where those

who in their lives had once held heretical opinions are purified of the

sin; leaving us to infer that it could be repented of in the world so as

to obliterate the stain. See also _Parad._ iv. 67.

[138] _Purg._ i. 71.

[139] _Purg._ xxvii. 139.

[140] _Purg._ xix. 134.

[141] _Parad._ xxv. 1.

GIOTTO'S PORTRAIT OF DANTE.[142]

Vasari, in his _Lives of the Painters_, tells that in his day the

portrait of Dante by Giotto was still to be seen in the chapel of the

Podesta's palace in Florence. Writers of an earlier date had already

drawn attention to this work.[143] But in the course of an age when

Italians cared little for Dante, and less for Giotto, it was allowed to

be buried out of sight; and when at length there came a revival of

esteem for these great men, the alterations in the interior arrangement

of the palace were found to have been so sweeping that it was even

uncertain which out of many chambers had formerly served as the chapel.

Twenty years after a fruitless attempt had been made to discover whether

or not the portrait was still in existence, Signor Aubrey Bezzi,

encouraged by Mr. Wilde and Mr. Kirkup, took the first step in a search

(1839) which was to end by restoring to the world what is certainly the

most interesting of all portraits, if account be taken of its beauty,

as well as of who was its author and who its subject.

On the removal from it of a layer of lime, one of the end walls of what

had been the chapel was found to be covered by a fresco painting,

evidently the work of Giotto, and representing a Paradise--the subject

in which Dante's portrait was known to occur. As is usual in such works,

from the time of Giotto downwards, the subject is treated so as to allow

of the free introduction of contemporary personages. Among these was a

figure in a red gown, which there was no difficulty in recognising as

the portrait of Dante. It shows him younger and with a sweeter

expression than does Raphael's Dante, or Masaccio's,[144] or that in the

Cathedral of Florence,[145] or that of the mask said to have been taken

after his death. But to all of them it bears a strong resemblance.

The question of when this portrait was painted will easily be seen to be

one of much importance in connection with Dante's biography. The fresco

it belongs to is found to contain a cardinal, and a young man, who,

because he wears his hair long and has a coronet set on his cap, is

known to be meant for a French prince.[146] If, as is usually assumed,

this prince is Charles of Valois, then the date of the event celebrated

in the fresco is 1301 or 1302. With regard to when the work was

executed, Messrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their valuable book, say as

follows:[147]--

'All inferences to be deduced from the subject and form of these

frescos point to the date of 1301-2. It may be inquired whether

they were executed by Giotto at the time, and this inquiry can only

be satisfied approximatively. It may be inferred that Dante's

portrait would hardly have been introduced into a picture so

conspicuously visible as this, had not the poet at the time been

influent in Florence.... Dante's age in the fresco corresponds with

the date of 1302, and is that of a man of thirty-five. He had

himself enjoyed the highest office of Florence from June to August

1300.[148] In the fresco he does not wear the dress of the

"Priori," but he holds in the ranks of those near Charles of Valois

an honourable place. It may be presumed that the frescos were

executed previous[149] to Dante's exile, and this view is confirmed

by the technical and artistic progress which they reveal. They

exhibit, indeed, the master in a higher sphere of development than

at Assisi and Rome.'

This account of the subject of the work and the probable date of its

execution may, I think, be accepted as containing all that is to be said

in favour of the current opinion on the matter. That writer after writer

has adopted that opinion without a sign of doubt as to its credibility

must surely have arisen from failure to observe the insuperable

difficulties it presents.

Both Charles of Valois and the Cardinal Acquasparta were in Florence

during part of the winter of 1301-1302; but the circumstances under

which they were there make it highly improbable that the Commonwealth

was anxious to do them honour beyond granting them the outward show of

respect which it would have been dangerous to refuse. Earlier in the

year 1301 the Cardinal Acquasparta, having failed in gaining the object

which brought him to Florence, had, as it were, shaken the dust of the

city from off his feet and left the people of it under interdict. While

Charles of Valois was in Florence the Cardinal returned to make a second

attempt to reconcile the opposing parties, failed a second time, and

again left the city under an interdict--if indeed the first had ever

been raised. On the occasion of his first visit, the Whites, who were

then in power, would have none of his counsels; on his second, the

Blacks in their turn despised them.[150] There would therefore have been

something almost satirical in the compliment, had the Commonwealth

resolved to give him a place in a triumphal picture.

As for Charles of Valois, though much was expected from an alliance with

him while he was still at a distance, the very party that invited his

presence was soon disgusted with him owing to his faithlessness and

greed. The earlier part of his stay was disturbed by pillage and

bloodshed. Nor is it easy to imagine how, at any time during his

residence of five months, the leading citizens could have either the

time or the wish to arrange for honouring him in a fashion he was not

the man to care for. His one craving was for money, and still more

money; and any leisure the members of public bodies had to spare from

giving heed to their own interests and securing vengeance upon their

opponents, was devoted to holding the common purse shut as tightly as

they could against their avaricious Pacificator. When he at last

delivered the city from his presence no one would have the heart to

revive the memory of his disastrous visit.

But if, in all this confusion of Florentine affairs, Giotto did receive

a commission to paint in the palace of the Podesta, yet it remains

incredible that he should have been suffered to assign to Dante, of all

men, a place of honour in the picture. No citizen had more stubbornly

opposed the policy which brought Charles of Valois to Florence, and that

Charles was in the city was reason enough for Dante to keep out of it.

In his absence, he was sentenced in January 1302 to pay a ruinously

heavy fine, and in the following March he was condemned to be put to

death if ever he was caught. On fuller acquaintance his fellow-citizens

liked the Frenchman as little as he, but this had no effect in softening

their dislike or removing their fear of Dante. We may be sure that any

friends he may still have had in Florence, as their influence could not

protect his goods from confiscation or him from banishment, would hardly

care to risk their own safety by urging, while his condemnation was

still fresh, the admission of his portrait among those of illustrious

Florentines.[151] It is true that there have been instances of great

artists having reached so high a pitch of fame as to be able to dictate

terms to patrons, however exalted. In his later years Giotto could

perhaps have made such a point a matter of treaty with his employers,

but in 1301 he was still young,[152] and great although his fame already

was, he could scarcely have ventured to insist on the Republic's

confessing its injustice to his friend; as it would have done had it

consented that Dante, newly driven into exile, should obtain a place of

honour in a work painted at the public cost.

These considerations seem to make it highly improbable that Giotto's

wall-painting was meant to do honour to Charles of Valois and the

Cardinal Acquasparta. But if it should still be held that it was painted

in 1302, we must either cease to believe, in spite of all that Vasari

and the others say, that the portrait is meant for Dante; or else

confess it to be inexplicable how it got there. A way out of the

difficulty begins to open up as soon as we allow ourselves some latitude

in speculating as to when Giotto may have painted the fresco. The order

in which that artist's works were produced is very imperfectly settled;

and it may easily be that the position in Vasari's pages of the mention

made by him of this fresco has given rise to a misunderstanding

regarding the date of it. He speaks of it at the very beginning of his

Life of Giotto. But this he does because he needs an illustration of

what he has been saying in his opening sentences about the advance that

painter made on Cimabue. Only after making mention of Dante's portrait

does he begin his chronological list of Giotto's works; to the portrait

he never returns, and so, as far as Vasari is concerned, it is without a

date. Judging of it by means of Mr. Kirkup's careful and beautiful

sketch--and unfortunately we have now no other means of knowing what the

original was like--it may safely be asserted to be in Giotto's ripest

style.[153] Everything considered, it is therefore allowable to search

the Florentine chronicles lower down for an event more likely to be the

subject of Giotto's fresco than that usually fixed upon.

We read in John Villani that in the middle of the year 1326 the Cardinal

Gianni Orsini came to Florence as Papal Legate and Pacificator of

Tuscany. The city was greatly pleased at his coming, and as an earnest

of gratitude for his services presented him with a cup containing a

thousand florins.[154] A month later there arrived Charles Duke of

Calabria, the eldest son of King Robert of Naples, and great-grandson of

Charles of Anjou. He came as Protector of the Commonwealth, which

office--an extraordinary one, and with a great salary attached to it--he

had been elected to hold for five years. Never before had a spectacle

like that of his entry been offered to Florence. Villani gives a long

list of the barons who rode in his train, and tells that in his

squadrons of men-at-arms there were no fewer than two hundred knights.

The chronicler pauses to bid the reader note how great an enterprise his

fellow-citizens had shown in bringing to sojourn among them, and in

their interest, not only such a powerful lord as the Duke of Calabria

was, but a Papal Legate as well. Italy counted it a great thing, he

says, and he deems that the whole world ought to know of it.[155]

Charles took up his abode in the Podesta's palace. He appears to have

gained a better place in the hearts of the Florentines than what they

were used to give to strangers and princes. When a son was born to him,

all the city rejoiced, and it mourned with him when, in a few weeks, he

lost the child. After seventeen months' experience of his rule the

citizens were sorry to lose him, and bade him a farewell as hearty as

their welcome had been. To some of them, it is true, the policy seemed a

dangerous one which bore even the appearance of subjecting the Republic

to the Royal House of Naples; and some of them could have wished that he

'had shown more vigour in civil and military affairs. But he was a

gentle lord, popular with the townsfolk, and in the course of his

residence he greatly improved the condition of things in Florence, and

brought to a close many feuds.'[156] They felt that the nine hundred

thousand gold florins spent on him and his men had, on the whole, been

well laid out.

One detail of the Duke's personal appearance deserves remark. We have

seen that the prince in the fresco has long hair. John Villani had known

the Duke well by sight, and when he comes to record his death and

describe what kind of man he was to look upon, he specially says that

'he wore his hair loose.'[157]

A subject worthy of Giotto's pencil, and one likely to be offered to him

if he was then in Florence, we have therefore found in this visit of the

Duke and the Cardinal. But that Giotto was in Florence at that time is

certain. He painted a portrait[158] of the Duke in the Palace of the

Signory; and through that prince, as Vasari tells, he was invited by

King Robert to go down to work in Naples. All this, in the absence of

evidence of any value in favour of another date, makes it, at the very

least, highly probable that the fresco was a work of 1326 or 1327.

In 1326 Dante had been dead for five years. The grudge his

fellow-townsmen had nourished against him for so long was now worn out.

We know that very soon after his death Florence began to be proud of

him; and even such of his old enemies as still survived would be willing

that Giotto should set him in a place of honour among the great

Florentines who help to fill the fresco of the Paradise. That he was

already dead would be no hindrance to his finding room alongside of

Charles of Calabria; for the age was wisely tolerant of such

anachronisms.[159] Had Dante been still living the painter would have

been less at liberty to create, out of the records he doubtless

possessed of the features of the friend who had paid him beforehand with

one immortal line, the face which, as we look into it, we feel to be a

glorified transcript of what it was in the flesh. It is the face of one

who has wellnigh forgotten his earthly life, instead of having the worst

of it still before him; of one who, from that troubled Italy which like

his own Sapia he knew but as a pilgrim, has passed to the 'true city,'

of which he remains for evermore a citizen--the city faintly imaged by

Giotto upon the chapel wall.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] It is best known, and can now be judged of only through the

lithograph after a tracing made by Mr. Seymour Kirkup before it was

restored and ruined: published by the Arundel Society.

[143] Antonio Pucci, born in 1300, in his _Centiloquio_, describes the

figure of Dante as being clothed in blood-red. Philip Villani also

mentions it. He wrote towards the close of the fourteenth century;

Vasari towards the middle of the sixteenth.

[144] In the Munich collection of drawings, and ascribed to Masaccio,

but with how much reason I do not know.

[145] Painted by Domenico Michelino in 1465, after a sketch by Alessio

Baldovinetto.

[146] 'Wearing over the long hair of the Frenchmen of the period a

coroneted cap.'--Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in Italy_

(1864), i. 264.

[147] Vol. i. p. 269.

[148] The Priorate was the highest office to which a citizen could

aspire, but by no means the highest in Florence.

[149] I suppose the meaning is 'immediately previous.'

[150] John Villani, _Cronica_, viii. 40 and 49; and Perrens, _Hist. de

Florence_, under date of 1301. Charles entered Florence on the 1st of

November of that year, and left it in the following April.

[151] Who the other Florentines in the fresco are does not greatly

affect the present question. Villani says that along with Dante Giotto

painted Corso Donati and Brunetto Latini.

[152] Only twenty-five, if the commonly accepted date of his birth is

correct. In any case, he was still a young man.

[153] It is true that, on technical grounds, it has been questioned if

it is Giotto's at all; but there is more than sufficient reason to think

it is. With such doubts however we are scarcely here concerned. Even

were it proved to be by a pupil, everything in the text that applies to

the question of date would still remain in point.

[154] J. Villani, ix. 353.

[155] J. Villani, x. 1.

[156] _Ibid._ x. 49.

[157] J. Villani, x. 107.

[158] Long since destroyed.

[159] An anachronism of another kind would have been committed by

Giotto, if, before the _Comedy_ was even begun, he had represented Dante

as holding the closed book and cluster of three pomegranates--emblematical

of the three regions described by him and of the completion of his

work.--I say nothing of the Inferno found on another wall of the chapel,

since there seems good reason to doubt if it is by Giotto.

THE INFERNO.

CANTO I.

In middle[160] of the journey of our days

I found that I was in a darksome wood[161]--

The right road lost and vanished in the maze.

Ah me! how hard to make it understood

How rough that wood was, wild, and terrible:

By the mere thought my terror is renewed.

More bitter scarce were death. But ere I tell

At large of good which there by me was found,

I will relate what other things befell.

Scarce know I how I entered on that ground, 10

So deeply, at the moment when I passed

From the right way, was I in slumber drowned.

But when beneath a hill[162] arrived at last,

Which for the boundary of the valley stood,

That with such terror had my heart harassed,

I upwards looked and saw its shoulders glowed,

Radiant already with that planet's[163] light

Which guideth surely upon every road.

A little then was quieted by the sight

The fear which deep within my heart had lain 20

Through all my sore experience of the night.

And as the man, who, breathing short in pain,

Hath 'scaped the sea and struggled to the shore,

Turns back to gaze upon the perilous main;

Even so my soul which fear still forward bore

Turned to review the pass whence I egressed,

And which none, living, ever left before.

My wearied frame refreshed with scanty rest,

I to ascend the lonely hill essayed;

The lower foot[164] still that on which I pressed. 30

And lo! ere I had well beginning made,

A nimble leopard,[165] light upon her feet,

And in a skin all spotted o'er arrayed:

Nor ceased she e'er me full in the face to meet,

And to me in my path such hindrance threw

That many a time I wheeled me to retreat.

It was the hour of dawn; with retinue

Of stars[166] that were with him when Love Divine

In the beginning into motion drew

Those beauteous things, the sun began to shine; 40

And I took heart to be of better cheer

Touching the creature with the gaudy skin,

Seeing 'twas morn,[167] and spring-tide of the year;

Yet not so much but that when into sight

A lion[168] came, I was disturbed with fear.

Towards me he seemed advancing in his might,

Rabid with hunger and with head high thrown:

The very air was tremulous with fright.

A she-wolf,[169] too, beheld I further on;

All kinds of lust seemed in her leanness pent: 50

Through her, ere now, much folk have misery known.

By her oppressed, and altogether spent

By the terror breathing from her aspect fell,

I lost all hope of making the ascent.

And as the man who joys while thriving well,

When comes the time to lose what he has won

In all his thoughts weeps inconsolable,

So mourned I through the brute which rest knows none:

She barred my way again and yet again,

And thrust me back where silent is the sun. 60

And as I downward rushed to reach the plain,

Before mine eyes appeared there one aghast,

And dumb like those that silence long maintain.

When I beheld him in the desert vast,

'Whate'er thou art, or ghost or man,' I cried,

'I pray thee show such pity as thou hast.'

'No man,[170] though once I was; on either side

Lombard my parents were, and both of them

For native place had Mantua,' he replied.

'Though late, _sub Julio_,[171] to the world I came, 70

And lived at Rome in good Augustus' day,

While yet false gods and lying were supreme.

Poet I was, renowning in my lay

Anchises' righteous son, who fled from Troy

What time proud Ilion was to flames a prey.

But thou, why going back to such annoy?

The hill delectable why fear to mount,

The origin and ground of every joy?'

'And thou in sooth art Virgil, and the fount

Whence in a stream so full doth language flow?' 80

Abashed, I answered him with humble front.

'Of other poets light and honour thou!

Let the long study and great zeal I've shown

In searching well thy book, avail me now!

My master thou, and author[172] thou, alone!

From thee alone I, borrowing, could attain

The style[173] consummate which has made me known.

Behold the beast which makes me turn again:

Deliver me from her, illustrious Sage;

Because of her I tremble, pulse and vein.' 90

'Thou must attempt another pilgrimage,'

Observing that I wept, he made reply,

'If from this waste thyself thou 'dst disengage.

Because the beast thou art afflicted by

Will suffer none along her way to pass,

But, hindering them, harasses till they die.

So vile a nature and corrupt she has,

Her raging lust is still insatiate,

And food but makes it fiercer than it was.

Many a creature[174] hath she ta'en for mate, 100

And more she'll wed until the hound comes forth

To slay her and afflict with torment great.

He will not batten upon pelf or earth;

But he shall feed on valour, love, and lore;

Feltro and Feltro[175] 'tween shall be his birth.

He will save humbled Italy, and restore,

For which of old virgin Camilla[176] died;

Turnus, Euryalus, Nisus, died of yore.

Her through all cities chasing far and wide,

He at the last to Hell will thrust her down, 110

Whence envy[177] first unloosed her. I decide

Therefore and judge that thou hadst best come on

With me for guide;[178] and hence I'll lead thee where

A place eternal shall to thee be shown.

There shalt thou hear the howlings of despair

In which the ancient spirits make lament,

All of them fain the second death to share.

Next shalt thou them behold who are content,

Because they hope some time, though now in fire,

To join the blessed they will win consent. 120

And if to these thou later wouldst aspire,

A soul[179] shall guide thee, worthier far than I;

When I depart thee will I leave with her.

Because the Emperor[180] who reigns on high

Wills not, since 'gainst His laws I did rebel,[181]

That to His city I bring any nigh.

O'er all the world He rules, there reigns as well;

There is His city and exalted seat:

O happy whom He chooses there to dwell!'

And I to him: 'Poet, I thee entreat, 130

Even by that God who was to thee unknown,

That I may 'scape this present ill, nor meet

With worse, conduct me whither thou hast shown,

That I may see Saint Peter's gate,[182] and those

Whom thou reportest in such misery thrown.'

He moved away; behind him held I close.

FOOTNOTES:

[160] _Middle_: In his _Convito_ (iv. 23), comparing human life to an

arch, Dante says that at the age of thirty-five a man has reached the

top and begins to go down. As he was born in 1265 that was his own age

in 1300, the year in which the action of the poem is laid.

[161] _Darksome wood_: A state of spiritual darkness or despair into

which he has gradually drifted, not without fault of his own.

[162] _A hill_: Lower down this hill is termed 'the origin and cause of

all joy.' It is symbolical of spiritual freedom--of the peace and

security that spring from the practice of virtue. Only, as it seems, by

gaining such a vantage-ground can he escape from the wilderness of

doubt--the valley of the shadow of death--in which he is lost.

[163] _That planet_: On the Ptolemaic system, which, as perfected by the

Arabian astronomers, and with some Christian additions, was that

followed by Dante, the sun is reckoned as one of the seven planets; all

the others as well as the earth and the fixed stars deriving their light

from it. Here the sunlight may signify the Divine help granted to all

men in their efforts after virtue.

[164] _The lower foot, etc._: This describes a cautious, slow ascent.

[165] _A nimble leopard_: The leopard and the lion and wolf that come

with it are suggested by Jeremiah v. 6: 'A lion out of the forest shall

slay them,' etc. We have Dante's own authority for it, in his letter to

Can Grande, that several meanings are often hidden under the incidents

of the _Comedy_. But whatever else the beasts may signify, their chief

meaning is that of moral hindrances. It is plain that the lion and wolf

are the sins of others--pride and avarice. If the leopard agrees with

them in this, it most probably stands for the envy of those among whom

Dante lived: at _Inf._ vi. 74 we find envy, pride, and avarice classed

together as the sins that have corrupted Florence. But from _Inf._ xvi.

106 it appears that Dante hoped to get the better of the leopard by

means of a cord which he wore girt about his loins. The cord is

emblematical of self-control; and hence the leopard seems best to answer

the idea of sensual pleasure in the sense of a temptation that makes

difficult the pursuit of virtue. But it will be observed that this

hindrance Dante trusts to overcome.

[166] _Stars, etc._: The sun being then in Aries, as it was believed to

have been at the creation.

[167] _Morn, etc._: It is the morning of Friday the 25th of March in the

year 1300, and by the use of Florence, which began the year on the

anniversary of the incarnation, it is the first day of the New Year. The

Good Friday of 1300 fell a fortnight later; but the 25th of March was

held to be the true anniversary of the crucifixion as well as of the

incarnation and of the creation of the world. The date of the action is

fixed by _Inf._ xxi. 112. The day was of good omen for success in the

struggle with his lower self.

[168] _A lion_: Pride or arrogance; to be taken in its widest sense of

violent opposition to all that is good.

[169] _A she-wolf_: Used elsewhere in the _Comedy_ to represent avarice.

Dante may have had specially in his mind the greed and worldly ambition

of the Pope and the Court of Rome, but it is plain from line 110 that

the wolf stands primarily for a sin, and not for a person or corporate

body.

[170] _No man_: Brunetto Latini, the friend and master of Dante, says

'the soul is the life of man, but without the body is not man.'

[171] _Sub Julio_: Julius was not even consul when Virgil was born. But

Dante reckoned Julius as the founder of the Empire, and therefore makes

the time in which he flourished his. Virgil was only twenty-five years

of age when Cæsar was slain; and thus it was under Augustus that his

maturer life was spent.

[172] _Author_: Dante defines an author as 'one worthy to be believed

and obeyed' (_Convito_ iv. 6). For a guide and companion on his great

pilgrimage he chooses Virgil, not only because of his fame as a poet,

but also because he had himself described a descent to the Shades--had

been already there. The vulgar conception of Virgil was that of a

virtuous great magician.

[173] _The style, etc._: Some at least of Dante's minor works had been

given to the world before 1300, certainly the _Vita Nuova_ and others of

his poems. To his study of Virgil he may have felt himself indebted for

the purity of taste that kept him superior to the frigid and artificial

style of his contemporaries, He prided himself on suiting his language

to his theme, as well as on writing straight from the heart.

[174] _Many a creature, etc._: Great men and states, infected with

avarice in its extended sense of encroachment on the rights of others.

[175] _Feltro and Feltro, etc._: Who the deliverer was that Dante

prophesies the coming of is not known, and perhaps never can be. Against

the claims of Can Grande of Verona the objection is that, at any date

which can reasonably be assigned for the publication of the _Inferno_,

he had done nothing to justify such bright hopes of his future career.

There seems proof, too, that till the _Paradiso_ was written Dante

entertained no great respect for the Scala family (_Purg._ xvi. 118,

xviii. 121). Neither is Verona, or the widest territory over which Can

Grande ever ruled, at all described by saying it lay between Feltro and

Feltro.--I have preferred to translate _nazi-one_ as birth rather than

as nation or people. 'The birth of the deliverer will be found to have

been between feltro and feltro.' Feltro, as Dante wrote it, would have

no capital letter; and according to an old gloss the deliverer is to be

of humble birth; _feltro_ being the name of a poor sort of cloth. This

interpretation I give as a curiosity more than anything else; for the

most competent critics have decided against it, or ignored it.--Henry of

Luxemburg, chosen Emperor in November 1308, is an old claimant for the

post of the allegorical _veltro_ or greyhound. On him Dante's hopes were

long set as the man who should 'save Italy;' and it seems not out of

place to draw attention to what is said of him by John Villani, the

contemporary and fellow-townsman of Dante: 'He was of a magnanimous

nature, though, as regarded his family, of poor extraction' (_Cronica_,

ix. 1). Whatever may be made of the Feltros, the description in the text

of the deliverer as one superior to all personal ambition certainly

answers better to Dante's ideal of a righteous Emperor than to the

character of a partisan leader like Uguccione della Faggiuola, or an

ambitious prince like Can Grande.

[176] _Camilla, etc._: All persons of the _Æneid_.

[177] _Envy_: That of Satan.

[178] _Thou hadst best, etc._: As will be seen from the next Canto,

Virgil has been sent to the relief of Dante; but how that is to be

wrought out is left to his own judgment. He might secure a partial

deliverance for his ward by conducting him up the Delectable Mount--the

peaceful heights familiar to himself, and which are to be won by the

practice of natural piety. He chooses the other course, of guiding Dante

through the regions of the future state, where the pilgrim's trust in

the Divine government will be strengthened by what he sees, and his soul

acquire a larger peace.

[179] _A soul_: Beatrice.

[180] _The Emperor_: The attribution of this title to God is significant

of Dante's lofty conception of the Empire.

[181] _'Gainst his laws, etc._: Virgil was a rebel only in the sense of

being ignorant of the Christian revelation (_Inf._ iv. 37).

[182] _Saint Peter's gate_: Virgil has not mentioned Saint Peter. Dante

names him as if to proclaim that it is as a Christian, though under

heathen guidance, that he makes the pilgrimage. Here the gate seems to

be spoken of as if it formed the entrance to Paradise, as it was

popularly believed to do, and as if it were at that point Virgil would

cease to guide him. But they are to find it nearer at hand, and after it

has been passed Virgil is to act as guide through Purgatory.