----"'Tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd
In life; to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone:
--Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of Him,--who now is but a name;
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his, by him unheard, unheeded, fame."
LORD BYRON's _Prophecy of Dante_, Canto I.
Among the illustrious fathers of song who, in their own land, cannot
cease to exercise dominion over the minds, characters, and destinies of
all posterity,--and who, beyond its frontiers, must continue to
influence the taste, and help to form the genius, of those who shall
exercise like authority in other countries,--Dante Alighieri is,
undoubtedly, one of the most remarkable.
This poet was descended from a very ancient stock, which, according to
Boccaccio, traced its lineage to the Roman house of Frangipani,--one of
whose members, surnamed Eliseo, was said to have been an early settler,
if not a principal founder, of the restored city of Florence, in the
reign of Charlemagne, after it had lain desolate for several centuries,
subsequently to its destruction by Attila the Hun. From this Eliseo
sprang a family, of which Dante gives, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
cantos of his "Paradiso," such information, as he thought proper; making
Cacciaguida (one of its most distinguished chiefs, who fell fighting in
the crusade under the emperor Conrad III.,) say, rather ambiguously, of
those who went before him, that "who they were, and whence they came, it
is more honest to keep silence than to tell,"--probably, however,
intending no more than to disclaim vain boasting, but not by any means
to disparage his progenitors, for whom, in the fifteenth canto of the
"Inferno," he seems to claim the glory of having been of Roman descent,
and fathers of Florence. Cacciaguida, having married a noble lady of
Ferrara, gave to one of his sons by her the name of Aldighieri
(afterwards softened to Alighieri), in honour of his consort. This
Alighieri was the grandfather of Dante; and concerning him, Cacciaguida,
in the last-mentioned canto, informs the poet, that, for some unnamed
offence, his spirit has been more than a hundred years pacing round the
first circle of the mountain of purgatory; adding,--
"Ben si convien, che la lunga fatica
Tu gli raccorci con l' opere tue."
"And well it would be, were his long fatigue
Shorten'd by thy good deeds."
Dante was born in the spring of the year 1265. Benvenuta da Immola calls
his father a lawyer; but little more is recorded of him except that he
was twice married, and left two sons and a daughter, at an early age, to
the guardianship of relatives. Dante (abridged from Durante) was born of
Bella, his father's second wife, of whom, during her pregnancy,
Boccaccio relates a very significant dream,--on what authority he does
not say, and with what truth the reader may judge for himself. She
imagined herself sitting under the shade of a lofty laurel, in the midst
of a green meadow, by the side of a brilliant fountain. Here she was
delivered of a boy, who, in as little time as might easily happen in a
dream, grew up into a man before her eyes, by feeding upon the berries
that fell from the tree, and drinking of the pure stream which watered
its roots. Presently he had become a shepherd; but, climbing too eagerly
up the stem to gather some leaves from the laurel, with the fruit of
which he had been hitherto nourished, he fell headlong to the ground,
and on rising appeared no longer a man, but a magnificent peacock. It
would be aggravating the offence of wasting time by quoting such a
fable, were we to give the obvious interpretation. This, however, the
great Boccaccio has done with most magniloquent gravity,--a task for
which, of all men, he was no doubt the most competent, as it is probable
that no soul living (the lady herself not excepted) besides himself was
in the secret either of the vision or the moral. One point of the
latter, which could not easily be guessed, may be mentioned; namely,
that the spots on the peacock's tail (the hundred eyes of Argus)
foreshowed the hundred cantos of the "Divina Commedia." The ingenious
author of the Decameron may have borrowed the idea of this dream from
Dante's own allusion to the laurel and its leaves,--the meed of poets
and of princes,--in his preposterous invocation of Apollo at the
commencement of the "Paradiso."
Dante himself never alludes to this notable omen, though often
referring, with conscious pride, to his genius, and the circumstances by
which it had been awakened and exercised. This he attributed to the
benign influence of the constellation Gemini, which ruled at his
nativity. In the "Paradiso," Canto XXII., mentioning his flight from the
planetary system to the eighth sphere, where the fixed stars have their
dwelling, he exclaims,--
"O Reader! as I hope once more to reach
That realm of holy triumph[1], for whose sake
I oft lament my sins and smite my breast,
Thou could'st not, in so brief a space, through fire
Have pass'd and pluck'd thy finger, as I saw
And was within the sign that follows Taurus.
O glorious stars! light full of highest virtue!
From whence, whate'er it be, my genius sprang,
With you arose, and set the Sire of life[2],
When first I breathed the Tuscan air. With you
My lot was cast, when grace was given to mount
The lofty wheel which guides your revolutions.
To you, devoutly, my whole soul aspires
To gather courage for the bold adventure
That draws me onward tow'rds itself."[3]
Brunetto Latini (his tutor afterwards) is reported to have foretold the
boy's illustrious destiny, on due consultation with the heavenly bodies
that presided at his birth. Yet, superstitious as Dante appears to have
been in this respect, in the twentieth canto of the "Inferno" he
punishes astrologers, and those who presume to predict events, by
twisting their heads over their shoulders, and making those for ever
look backward who, too daringly, had looked forward into inscrutable
futurity.
"People I saw within that nether glen,
Silent, and weeping as they went, with slow
Pace, like the chaunters of our litanies.[4]
As I gazed down on them, the chin of each
Seem'd marvellously perverted from the chest,
And from the reins the visage turn'd behind:
Wherefore, since none could look before him, all
Must needs walk backward;--so it may have chanced
To some one palsy-stricken, to be wrench'd
Thus all awry; but I have never seen
Aught like it, nor believe the like hath happened.
Reader,--so help thee Heaven to gather fruit
From this strange lesson!--think within thyself
If I could keep my countenance unwet
When I beheld our image so transposed,
That the eyes wept their tears between the shoulders."[5]
Though early deprived of his father by death, Dante appears to have been
well attended to by his relatives and guardians, who placed him for
education under Brunetto Latini and other eminent tutors. He was by them
instructed not only in polite letters, but in those liberal
accomplishments which became his rank and prospects in life. In these he
excelled; yet, while he delighted in horsemanship, falconry, and all the
manly as well as military exercises practised by persons of distinction
in those days, he was, at the same time, so diligent a scholar, that he
readily made himself master of all the crude learning then in vogue. It
is stated by Pelli that, while yet a boy, he entered upon his noviciate
at a convent of the Minor Friars. But his mind was too active and
enterprising to enslave itself to dulness in any form; and he withdrew
before the term of probation was ended.
According to Boccaccio, before he could be either student, sportsman,
soldier, or monk, he became a lover; and a lover thenceforward to the
end of his life he appears to have remained, with a passion so pure and
unearthly, that it has been gravely questioned whether his mistress were
a real or an imaginary being. The former, however, happening to be quite
as probable as the latter, all true youths and maidens will naturally
choose to believe that which is most pleasant, and give the credence of
the heart to every eulogium which the poet, throughout his works, has
lavished upon his Beatrice, whatever greybeards may think of the
following story:--One fine May-day, when, according to the custom of the
country, parties of both sexes used to meet in family circles, and,
under the roofs of common friends, rejoice on the return of the genial
season, Folco Portinari, a Florentine of no mean parentage, had invited
a great number of neighbours to partake of his hospitality. As it was
common on such occasions for children to accompany their relatives,
Dante Alighieri, then in his ninth year, had the good fortune to be
present; where, mingling with many other young folks, in their afternoon
sports, he singled out, with the second sight of the future poet, that
one whom his verse was destined to eternise. The little lady, a year
younger than himself, was _Bicè_ (the familiar abbreviation of
_Beatricè_), daughter of the gentleman at whose house the festivities
were held. She need not be pictured here; for premature as such a fit
must have been, every one who remembers a first love, at any age, will
know how she looked, how she spoke, how she stepped, and how her hero
felt,--growing at every instant greater and better, and braver in his
own esteem, that he might become worthy of hers:--suffice it to say,
from Boccaccio, that Dante, though but a boy, received her beautiful
image into his heart with such fondness of affection, that, from that
day, it never departed thence.
In his "Vita Nuova" (a romantic and sentimental retrospect of his
youth), he has himself described his raptures and his agonies in the
commencement and progress of this passion; which was not extinguished,
but refined; not buried with her body, but translated with its object,
(her soul,) when Beatrice died, in 1290, at the age of twenty-four
years. Judging from the general tenor of his poetry, of which his
mistress was at once the inspirer and the theme, it must be presumed
that the lady returned his noble attachment with corresponding
tenderness and delicacy; though why they were not united by marriage has
never been told. He intimates, indeed, that it was long before he could
learn, by any token from herself, that his faithful passion was not
hopeless. As usual in cases of this kind, a most unpoetical accident has
been ill-naturedly interposed, by truth or tradition, to spoil a charm
almost too exquisite to be more than a charm which the breath of five
words might break. On the evidence of a marriage certificate, which Time
unluckily dropped in his flight, and some poring antiquary picked up a
century or two afterwards, it seems as though Beatrice became the wife
of a cavalier de Bardi. Dante himself, however (who pretends to no
bosom-secrets too dark to be uttered), never alludes to such a blight of
his prospects on this side of that threefold world which he was
afterwards privileged to explore, at her spontaneous intercession, that
he might be purged from every baser flame than entire affection to
herself, while she gave him in the eighth heaven a heart divided only
with her God. After her decease, he intimates that he was tempted to
infidelity to her memory (in which she was the bride of his soul), by
the appearance at a window of a lady who so much resembled his "late
deceased saint," that he almost forgot _her_ in retracing her own
loveliness in the features of this new apparition. His tears flowed
freely at the sight; and he felt comforted by the sympathy of the
beautiful stranger in his sufferings. But when, after a little while, he
found love to the living symbol growing up like a serpent among the
flowers, he fled in terror from it, before the gaze which had gained
such power over his senses had irrevocably fascinated him to
destruction; and he bewailed, in the most humiliating terms, the frailty
of his heart and the wandering of his eyes. It is, moreover, the glory
of his great work that the posthumous affection of Beatrice herself is
represented as having so troubled her spirit, that, even amidst the
blessedness of Paradise, she devised means whereby her lover might be
reclaimed from the irregularities into which he had fallen after her
restraining presence had been withdrawn from him on earth, and that he
might be prepared, by visions of the eternal world, for future and
everlasting companionship with her in heaven.
Dante, as he grew up to manhood, and for several years afterwards,
continued successfully to pursue his studies in the universities of
Padua, Bologna, and Paris. In the latter city he is said to have held
various theological disputations, alike creditable to his learning,
eloquence, and acuteness; though, from the failure of pecuniary means,
he could not remain long enough there to obtain academical honours. On
the authority of Giovanni da Serraville, bishop of Fermo, it has been
believed that he also visited Oxford, where, as elsewhere, his different
exercises gained him,--according to the respective tastes of his
admirers,--from some the praise of being a great philosopher, from
others a great divine, and, from the rest, a great poet. Serraville, at
the request of cardinal Saluzzo and two English bishops, (Nicholas
Bubwith, of Bath, and Robert Halam, of Salisbury,) whom he met at the
council of Constance, translated Dante's "Divina Commedia" into Latin
prose; of which one manuscript copy only, with a commentary annexed, is
known to be in existence, in the Vatican library. The extraordinary
interest which the two English prelates took in Dante's poem may be
regarded as indirect, though of course very indecisive, evidence of his
having been personally known at our famous university, and having been
honourably remembered there. It is, however, certain that, soon after
his decease, the "Divina Commedia" was in high repute among the few in
this country who, during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., in a
chivalrous age, cultivated polite letters. This is apparent from the
numerous imitations of passages in it by Chaucer, who was then
attempting to do for England what his magnificent prototype had recently
done for Italy.
Uncertain as the traditions concerning this portion of Dante's life (and
indeed of every other) may be, there is no doubt that he became early
and intimately acquainted with the reliques of all the Roman writers
then known in Italy. Among these, Virgil, Ovid, and Statius were his
favourites, and naturally so, as excelling (each according to his
peculiar genius) in marvellous and beautiful narrative, to which their
youthful admirer's own sublime and daring genius intuitively led him. At
the same time, he not less courageously and patiently groped his way
through the labyrinths of school divinity, and the dark caverns of what
was then deemed philosophy, under the bewildering guidance of Duns
Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Full proof of the improvement which he made,
both under classical and polemical tutors and prototypes, may be traced
in all his compositions, prose as well as verse, from the earliest to
the last: yet, that which was his own, it must be acknowledged, is ever
the best; and if, in addition to a large proportion of this, there had
not been a savour of originality communicated to every thing which he
borrowed or had been taught, his works must have perished with those of
his contemporaries, who are now either nameless, or survive only as
names in the titles of unread and unreadable volumes.
During this season of seed time for the mind, we are told that,
notwithstanding his indefatigable labours in the acquirement and
cultivation of knowledge, he appeared so cheerful, frank, and generous
in deportment and disposition, that nobody would have imagined him to be
such a devotee to literature in the stillness of the closet, or the open
field of college exercises. On the contrary, he passed in public for a
gallant and highbred man of the world; following its customs and
fashions, so far as might be deemed consistent in a person of honour,
and independence,--qualities on which he sufficiently prided himself;
for which, also, in after life, he dearly paid the price,--and paid it,
like Aristides, by banishment.
But Beatrice dying in 1290[6], her lover is reported to have fallen into
such a state of despondency, that his friends, fearing the most
frightful effects upon his reason not less than upon his health,
persuaded him, as a last resource, to marry. Accordingly he took to wife
Madonna Gemma, of the house of Donati; one of the most powerful families
of Tuscany, and unhappily one of the most turbulent where few could be
called pacific. By her he had five sons and a daughter. Her husband's
biographers (with few exceptions) have conspired to darken this lady's
memory with the stigma of being an insufferable shrew, who rendered his
life a martyrdom by domestic discomforts. Aline in the "Inferno," Canto
XVI., in which one of the lost spirits, Jacopo Rusticci, says,
"La fiera moglie, più ch' altro, mi nuoce,"
"More than aught else, my furious wife annoys me,"--
has often been quoted as referring, with indirect bitterness, to his own
miserable union with a firebrand of a woman: yet, in no passage
throughout the whole of his long poem, does Dante cast the slightest
shade upon her character; though, with the frankness of honest censure
or undisguised resentment, he spares nobody else, friend or foe, in the
distribution of what he deemed impartial justice. One thing is
exceedingly in favour of his own amiable and affectionate nature, in the
nearest connections of life: whenever he mentions children in his
similes (and he mentions them often), it is always with exquisite
delicacy or endearing playfulness; while, in the tenderest tones, he
descants on their beauty, their innocence, their sports, and their
sufferings. Mothers, too, are among the loveliest objects which he
presents in those sweet interludes of real life which he delights to
bring in, and does so with consummate address, to relieve the horrors of
the infernal pit, the wearying pains of purgatory, and the insufferable
glories of Paradise. Concerning Dante's wife it may therefore be fairly
presumed, that she was less of either termagant or tormentor than has
been generally imagined by his over-zealous editors. The petulance of
Boccaccio and the gravity of Aretino (two of his earliest biographers)
on this subject are ludicrously contrasted. The former affects to be
quite shocked at the idea of the sublime and contemplative poet being
forced to lead the dull household life of other men, and submit to
certain petty annoyances of daily occurrence.--On these he expatiates
most pathetically, as things which _might have been_, though he fairly
acknowledges that he does not know that any of them _were_, the causes
of long unhappiness and final separation between the parties. Aretino,
on the other hand, in sober sadness (without any reference to the ill
qualities of either), justifies Dante for condescending to be married,
on the ground that many illustrious philosophers, including Socrates,
the greatest of all, were husbands and fathers, and held offices of
state, in perfect compatibility with their intellectual pursuits!
It should not be overlooked, in mitigation of her occasional asperities,
that, Madonna Gemma being the near kinswoman of Corso Donati, Dante's
most formidable and inveterate rival in the party feuds of Florence,
some drops of the gall of political rancour may have been infused into
the matrimonial cup. The poet's known and avowed passion for Beatrice,
living and dead, was alone sufficient to afflict a high-minded woman
with the rankling consciousness that she had not all her husband's
heart. It is, moreover, no small proof of her submission to his will and
pleasure, that their only daughter bore the name of his
first--last--only love, if we are to believe all the protestations of
his verse. Be these things as they may, it must be concluded that he was
coupled with a most unpoetical yoke-mate; and she with a lord and master
not easy to be ruled by her or any body else. It has been loosely stated
that "the poet, not possessing the patience of Socrates, separated
himself from his wife, with such vehement expressions of dislike that he
never afterwards allowed her to sit down in his presence." When this
happened--if it ever so happened--does not appear; nothing further seems
certain, except that she did not follow her husband into exile: but
Boccaccio himself acknowledges, that after that event, having secured
(not without difficulty) a small portion of his effects from
confiscation as her dower, she preserved herself and their little
children from the wretchedness of absolute poverty, by such expedients
of industry and economy as she had never before been accustomed to
practise.
It has been already intimated, that, though in all the logomachies of
the schools Dante was an eager and skilful disputant, yet he was left
behind by none of his contemporaries in those personal accomplishments
which became his station. In the mean while he cultivated with
constitutional ardour and diligence those higher qualifications, which,
in the sequel, enabled him to serve his country as a citizen, a soldier,
and a magistrate, under circumstances that called forth all his talents,
valour, firmness, wisdom, and discretion; though, judging from the
issue, the latter failed him oftener than the former. Eloquent, brave,
and resolute he always was; but not always wise and discreet. This,
indeed, might be presumed; for in the pursuit of distinction,--instead
of attaching himself to the selfish and mercenary professions which
oftenest lead to wealth, power, and family aggrandisement,--he preferred
those generous studies which most exalt, enrich, and adorn the mind, but
yet, while they gratify the taste of their votary, rather advance him in
moral and intellectual eminence than to temporal and substantial
prosperity. These, therefore, were exercises calculated to awaken and
display the energies and resources of a temper formed to conceive,
attempt, and achieve great things, so far--and perhaps so far only--as
depended on his individual exertions. In the solitary case wherein he
had official authority to direct difficult public affairs he failed so
irrecoverably, that, during the residue of his life, he was more a
sufferer than an actor in the troubles of those hideous times.
Italy, it must be observed, was still distracted with strife, in every
form that strife could assume, between the factions of the Guelfs and
Ghibellines;--the former, adherents of the pope; the latter, of the
emperor of Germany. These factions not only arrayed state against state,
but frequently divided people of the same province, the same city, and
the same family against one another, in the most violent and implacable
hostility,--hostility, violent in proportion as it was irrational, and
implacable in proportion as it was unnatural; being, in every instance,
and on both sides, contrary to the interests of their respective
communities. Lombardy, especially since the Cisalpine conquests of
Charlemagne, had never ceased to be a snare to his successors. The
popes, who at first had affected spiritual dominion only, after the
grant of territorial possessions, by that deed of Constantine to
Silvester, which, having disappeared from earth, may be found, according
to the veritable testimony of Ariosto, in the moon, the receptacle of
all lost things[7], gradually aspired to secular power. But all their
ambition and influence failed, in the end, to spread their secular
sovereignty beyond those provinces adjacent to Rome, which they yet
retain by courtesy of the catholic potentates of Europe.
At the time of Dante's birth, the Guelf or papal party had recently
recovered their ascendancy at Florence, after having been expatriated
for several years, in consequence of their disastrous overthrow at the
battle of Monte Aperto. The poet was therefore educated in Guelfic
principles, and adhered to them till his banishment, when the perfidious
interference of the pope with the independence of his native city, and
the atrocious hostility of its citizens against himself and his friends,
compelled him to take part with the imperialists.
The first public character in which we find the patriotic poet
distinguishing himself was that of a soldier. In one of the petty wars
that were perpetually occurring between the little irascible republics
in the north of Italy, the Florentines gained a decisive victory over
their neighbours of Arezzo (who had harboured the Ghibelline refugees),
at the battle of Campaldino, A. D. 1289. On this occasion, Dante, who
served among the cavalry, was not only exposed to imminent peril at the
commencement of the action, when that body was partially routed by the
impetuosity of the enemy's charge, but when the squadron had rallied
again on reaching the lines of infantry, and thence returned to the
attack, he fought in the first rank, and displayed such extraordinary
valour, as to claim a proud share in the glory of that day. To this
conflict, and the particular service in which he had been engaged, he
seems to allude in Canto XXII. of the Inferno. Having mentioned the
signal given by Barbariccia (serjeant of a file of demons, appointed to
escort Dante and Virgil over a certain dangerous pass on their
journey,)--a signal too absurd to be repeated here, either in English or
Italian, he says:--
"I have seen cavalry upon their march,
Hush to the combat, rally on the field,
And sometimes seek for safety in retreat:
I have seen jousts and tournaments array'd;
Seen clouds of skirmishers sweep through your fields,
Ye Aretines! and spoilers, lay them waste;
Drum, cymbal, trumpet, beacon from tower-top,
And other strange or native things their signals;
But never, at the blast of instrument
So barbarous have witness'd horse or foot,
Or ship, by star or landmark, put in motion:
--With those ten demons thus we took our way;
Fell company! but, as the proverb saith,
At church with saints, with gluttons in the tavern."[8]
In the following year Dante was again in the field, at the siege of
Caprona. To this he alludes in Canto XXI. of the Inferno, where, under
convoy of the aforementioned fiends, he compares his fears lest they
should break truce with him and his companion, to the apprehensions of
the garrison of that fortress when they marched out on condition of
being permitted to depart unmolested with their arms and property; but
were so terrified, on seeing the multitude and the rage of their
enemies, who cried, "Stop them! stop them! kill them! kill them!" as
they passed along, that they submitted to be sent in irons, as
prisoners, to Lucca, for safeguard.
"Wherefore I moved right on towards my guide,
The devils marshalling themselves before,
For much I fear'd lest they should not keep faith:
So saw I once Caprona's garrison
Come trembling forth, upon capitulation,
To find themselves among so many foes.
I crouch'd with my whole frame beside my master,
Nor could I turn mine eyes away from watching
Their physiognomy, which was not good."[9]
During this active period of his citizenship, Dante is stated to have
been frequently employed on important embassies; and, among others, to
the kings of Naples, Hungary, and France; in all of which his eloquence
and address enabled him to acquit himself with honour and advantage to
his country: but as there is no allusion in any of his works, even to
the most distinguished of these, it is very questionable whether the
traditions are not, in many cases, wholly unwarranted; and probably
founded upon misapprehension of the verbiage and bombast of Boccaccio,
in his account of the political, philosophical, and literary labours of
his hero.
In the year 1300, Dante was chosen, by the suffrages of the people,
chief prior of his native city; and from that era of his arrival at the
highest honour to which his ambition could aspire, he himself dated all
the miseries which (like the file of evil spirits above mentioned)
accompanied him thenceforward to the end of his life. In one of his
epistles, quoted by Aretino, he says,--"All my calamities had their
origin and occasion in my unhappy priorship, of which, though I might
not for my wisdom have been worthy, yet on the ground of age and
fidelity was I not unworthy; ten years having elapsed since the battle
of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline party was routed and nearly
exterminated; wherein, also, I proved myself no novice in arms, but
experienced great perils in the various fortunes of the fight, and the
highest gratification in the issue of it." Since that triumph, the
Guelfs had maintained undisputed predominance in Tuscany; but the
citizens of Florence split into two minor factions as bitterly opposed
to each other as the Guelfs and Ghibellines.
The following circumstance (considerably varied in particulars by
different narrators) has been mentioned as the origin of this
schism:--Two branches of the family of Cancellieri divided the patronage
of Pistoia, which was then subject to Florence, between them. The heads
of these were Gulielmo and Bertaccio. In playing at snow-balls, a son of
the first happened to give the son of the second a black eye. Gulielmo,
knowing the savage disposition of his kinsman, immediately sent his son
to offer submission for the unlucky hit. Bertaccio, eager to avail
himself of a pretext for quarrelling with the rival section of his
house, seized the boy, and chopped off the hand which flung the
snowball, drily observing, that blows could only be compensated by
blows--not with words. Another version of the story is, that the young
gentlemen, quarrelling over some game, drew their swords, when one
wounded the other in the face; in retribution for which, Foccacio,
brother to the latter, cut off his offending cousin's hand. The father
of the mutilated lad immediately called upon his friends to avenge the
inhuman outrage; Bertaccio's dependants not less promptly armed
themselves to maintain his cause; and a civil war was ready to break out
in the heart of the city. An ancestor of the Cancellieri family having
married a lady named _Bianchi_, in honour of her one of the parties took
the denomination of _Bianchi_ (whites), when the other, in defiance,
assumed the reverse, and styled themselves _Neri_ (blacks).
This happened during the priorship of Dante, who, with the approbation
of his colleagues, summoned the leaders of the antagonist factions to
repair to Florence, to prevent that extremity of violence with which
they threatened not Pistoia only, but the whole commonwealth. This, as
Leonardo Bruni observes, was importing the plague to the capital,
instead of taking means to repress it upon the spot where it had already
appeared. For it so fell out, that Florence itself was principally under
the influence of two great families,--the Cerchi and the
Donati,--habitually jealous of one another, and each watching for
opportunity to obtain the ascendancy. When, therefore, the hostages for
preserving the peace of Pistoia arrived, the Bianchi were hospitably
entertained by the Cerchi, and the Neri by the Donati; the natural
consequence of which was, that the people of Florence were far more
annoyed by the acquisition, than those of the neighbouring city were
benefited by the riddance of so troublesome a crew. What these
incendiary spirits had been doing in a small place, on a small scale,
they forthwith began to do on a large scale, in a large place.
Jealousies, fears, and antipathies were easily awakened among the
families with which the partisans respectively associated. From these,
through every rank of citizens down to the lowest, the contagion spread;
first seizing the youth, who were sanguine and restless, but soon
infecting persons of all ages; till every man who had a mind or an arm
to influence or to act, enlisted himself with one side or the other. In
the course of a few months, from whisperings the discontents rose to
clamours, from words to blows, and from feuds in private dwellings to
battles in the streets; so that not the metropolis only, but the whole
territory, became involved in unnatural contention.
While this was in process, the heads of the Neri held a meeting by night
in the church of the Holy Trinity, at which a plan was suggested to
induce pope Boniface VIII. to constitute Charles of Valois, (who was
brother to Philip the Fair, king of France, and then commanded an army
under his holiness against the emperor,) mediator of differences and
reformer-general of abuses in the state. The Bianchi, having received
information of this clandestine assembly, and the unpatriotic project
which had been devised at it, took grievous umbrage, and went in a body,
with arms in their hands, to the chief prior, with whom they
remonstrated sharply upon what they deemed a privy conspiracy hatched
for the purpose of expelling themselves and their friends from the city;
at the same time demanding summary punishment on the offenders. The
Neri, alarmed in their turn, flew likewise to arms, and assailed the
prior with the same complaint and demand reversed,--namely, that their
adversaries had plotted to drive them (the Neri) into exile under false
pretences; and requiring that they (the Bianchi) should be sent into
banishment, to preserve the public tranquillity.
The danger was imminent, and prompt decision to avert it indispensable.
The prior and magistrates, therefore, by the advice of Dante their
chief, who was the Cicero in this double conspiracy, though neither so
politic nor so fortunate as his eloquent archetype, appealed to the
people at large to support the executive government; and, having
conciliated their favour, banished the principal instigators of tumult
on both sides, including Corso Donati (Dante's wife's kinsman) of the
Neri party, who, with his accomplices, was confined in the castle of
Pieve in Perugia; while Guido Cavalcanti (Dante's own particular friend)
and others of the Bianchi faction were sent to Serrazana.
This disturbance, and the severe remedy necessary to be adopted,
painfully tried the best feelings of Dante, who seems to have acted on
truly independent principles in the affair, though suspected at the time
of favouring the Bianchi. That, indeed, was probable; for though as
chief magistrate he knew no man by his colours, yet, being a genuine
Florentine,--and such he remained when Florence had banished and
proscribed him,--he could not but he opposed to so preposterous a scheme
as that of bringing in a stranger to lord it over his native city, under
pretence of assuaging the animosities of malecontents, who cared for
nothing but their own personal, family, or party aggrandisement, at the
expense of the common weal.
This apparent impartiality was openly arraigned, when the Bianchi exiles
were permitted to come back after a short absence, while the Neri
remained under proscription. Dante vindicated himself by saying, that he
had attached himself to neither party; that in condemning the heads of
both he had acted solely for the public safety; and at home had used his
utmost endeavours to reconcile the adverse families, who had implicated
all their fellow-citizens in their feuds. With respect to the return of
the Bianchi, he denied that it had been allowed on his authority, his
priorate having expired before that event took place; and, moreover,
that their release had been rendered necessary by the premature death of
Guido Cavalcanti, who had been killed by the pestilent air of Serrazana.
The pope, however, eagerly availed himself of the opportunity as a plea
for sending Charles of Valois to Florence, to restore tranquillity by
conciliation. That prince accordingly entered the city in triumph at the
head of his troops, with a solemn assurance that liberty, property, and
personal safety should in no instance be violated. In consequence of
this he was well received by the people; but he had no sooner seated
himself in influence than he obtained the recall of the Neri, who were
his partisans. Then, having secured his authority by their presence, he
threw off the mask, and began to play the part of dictator within the
walls, as well as throughout the adjacent territory, by causing 600 of
the principal men of the Bianchi to be driven forth into exile.
At the time of this expatriation of his friends, Dante was absent,
having undertaken an embassy to Rome to solicit the good offices of the
pope towards pacifying his fellow-citizens without foreign interference.
Boccaccio records a singular specimen at once of his self-confidence,
and his disparagement of others, which, if true, betrays the most
unamiable feature of his character, and throws additional light on a
circumstance not otherwise well accounted for,--why, with all his
admirable qualities, Dante was unhappy in domestic life, and in public
life made so many and such inveterate enemies.--When his associates in
the government proposed this embassy to him, he haughtily enquired,--"If
I go, who will stay? If I stay, who will go?" It was fortunate for the
poet that his holiness and himself, on this occasion, were unconsciously
playing at cross purposes, though he was beaten in the game,--the very
intervention which he had gone to deprecate taking place whilst he was
on the journey. Had he been at home, it is not improbable that death,
rather than banishment with the Bianchi, would have been his lot, from
the exasperation of the Neri against him individually, whom they
regarded as the chief agent in their disgrace and exile, as well as the
patron of their rivals. It is remarkable that the pretext on which the
failing party were now expelled was, that _they_ had secretly intrigued
with Pietro Ferranti, the confidant of Charles of Valois, to give him
the castle of Prato, on condition that he prevailed upon his master to
allow them the ascendancy under him in Florence. Charles himself
countenanced the accusation, and affected high displeasure at the
insulting offer, as derogatory to his immaculate purity; though the
purport of it was no other than to concede to him the express object of
his ambition, if he would grant to the Bianchi faction what he did grant
to the perfidious Neri. A document was long preserved as the genuine
letter to Ferranti, with the seals and signatures of the principal
Bianchi attached, containing the traitorous proposal; but Leonardo
Aretino, who had himself seen it in the public archives, declares his
perfect conviction that it was a forgery.
Of participation in such baseness (had his partisans been really guilty
of it), Dante must stand clearly acquitted by every one who takes his
character from the matter-of-fact statements, perverted as they are, of
his adversaries themselves, much more from the unimpeachable evidence of
his own writings;--open, undaunted, high-spirited, and generous as a
friend, he was not less violent, acrimonious, and undisguisedly
vindictive as an enemy. So exasperated, however, were the Neri against
him, that they demolished his dwelling, confiscated his property, and
decreed a fine of 8000 lire against him, with banishment for two years;
not for any crime of which he had been convicted, but under pretence of
contumacy, because he did not appear to a citation which had been issued
when they knew him to be absent,--absent, it might be said, on their own
business (his mission to Rome), where he could not be aware of the
nature of his imputed offence till he heard of the condign punishment
with which it had been thus prematurely visited. In the course of a few
weeks a further inculpation of Dante and his associates was promulged,
under which they were condemned to perpetual exile, with the merciless
provision that, if any of them thereafter fell into the hands of their
persecutors, they should be burnt alive. And this execrable measure
seems to have been determined upon before the exiled party had made any
attempt, by force of arms, to reenter Florence.
When Dante was informed at Rome of the revolution in Florence, he
hastened to Siena, where, learning the full extent of his misfortune, he
was driven, it may be said, by necessity to join himself to his homeless
countrymen in that neighbourhood, who were concerting (though with
little of mutual confidence, and miserably inadequate means) how they
might compel their fellow-citizens to receive them back. Arezzo, the
city of the Aretines (with whom Dante had combated at Campaldino),
afforded them an asylum, and became the headquarters of the Bianchi; who
thenceforward, from being, like the Neri, Guelfs, transferred their
affections, or rather their wrongs and their vengeance, to the
Ghibellines; deeming the adherents of the emperor less the enemies of
their country than their adversaries were. Their affairs were managed by
a council of twelve, of whom Dante was one. Great numbers of
malecontents from Bologna, Pistoia, and the adjacent provinces of
Northern Italy, gradually flocking to their standard,--in the course of
two years they were sufficiently strong to take the field with a force
of cavalry and foot exceeding 10,000, under count Alessandro da Romena,
and to commence active hostilities. By a bold and sudden march, they
attempted to surprise Florence itself, and were so far successful that
their advanced guard got possession of one of the gates; but the main
body being attacked and defeated on the outside of the walls, the former
gallant corps was overpowered by the garrison; and the enterprise
itself, after the campaign of a few days, was abandoned altogether.
Dante, according to general belief, accompanied this unfortunate
expedition; and so did Pietro Petracco, the father of the celebrated
Petrarca (Petrarch), who had been expelled with the Bianchi from
Florence; and it is stated, that on the very night on which the army of
the exiles marched against the city, Petracco's wife Eletta gave birth
to the poet who was to succeed Dante as the glory of his country's
literature.
After this miscarriage Dante quitted the confederacy, disgusted by the
bickerings, jealousies, and bad faith of the heterogeneous and
unmanageable multitude, which, common calamities had driven together,
but could not cement by common interests. The poet refers to this motley
and discordant crew in the latter lines of the celebrated passage, in
which he represents his ancestor. Cacciaguida, as prophesying his future
banishment with the miseries and mortifications which he should suffer
from the ingratitude of his countrymen:--
"For thou must leave behind thee every thing
Thine heart holds dearest.--This will be the first
Shaft which the bow of exile shoots against thee:
And thou must prove how salt the bread that's eaten
At others' tables, and how hard the path
To climb and to go down a stranger's stairs:
But what shall weigh the heaviest on thy shoulders,
Will be the base and evil company
With which thy lot hath cast thee in that valley;
For every thankless, lawless, reckless wretch
Shall turn against thee:--yet confusion, soon,
Of face shall cover them, not thee, with blushes;
Their brutishness will be so manifest,
That to have stood alone will be thy glory."[10]
_Del Paradiso_, XVII.
To the personal humiliations of which he chewed the cud in hitter
secrecy, through years of heart-breaking dependence on the precarious
bounty of others, there is a striking but forced allusion at the close
of the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio." Dante enquires concerning a
proud spirit bent double under a huge burden of stones, which he is
condemned to carry for as many years as he had lived, till he shall he
sufficiently humbled to pass muster through the flames into Paradise.
This is Provenzano Salvani, who for his acts of outrageous tyranny would
have been doomed to a much harder penance, but for one good deed.--A
friend of his being kept prisoner by Charles of Anjou, and threatened
with death unless a ransom of 10,000 golden florins were paid for his
freedom, Salvani so far degraded himself as to stand (to kneel, say
some,) in the public market-place of Siena, with a carpet spread on the
ground before him, imploring, with the cries and importunity of a common
beggar, the charitable contributions of every passenger towards raising
the required sum. This he accomplished, and his friend was saved.
"'He in his height of glory,' said the other,
'Casting aside all shame, spontaneously,
Stood in the market of Siena, begging;
He, to redeem his friend from infamy
And death, in Charles's dungeons, did what made him
Tremble through every vein.--No more; my speech
Is dark; thy countrymen, ere long, will do
That which will help thee to interpret it."[11]
In despair of being able to force his way, sword in hand, back to
Florence, Dante next endeavoured, by supplicating the good offices of
individuals connected with the government, by expostulatory addresses to
the people, and even by appeals to foreign princes, to obtain a reversal
of his unrighteous sentence. Disappointment, however, followed upon
disappointment, till, hope deferred having made the heart sick, he grew
so impatient under the sense of wrong and ignominy, that he again had
recourse to the summary but perilous redress of violence;--not indeed by
force which _he_ could command, though one in a million for energy,
courage, and perseverance; but a powerful auxiliary having appeared in
1308, he gave up his whole soul to the main object of his desire at this
time,--the chastisement of his inexorable fellow-citizens. Henry of
Luxembourg, having been raised to the throne of Germany, eagerly
engaged, like his predecessors, in the delusive contest for the "Iron
crown" of Italy, though "Luke's iron crown"[12] (placed red hot on the
brow of an unsuccessful aspirant to that of Hungary) was hardly more
painful or more certainly fatal than this, except that it was far more
expeditious in putting the wearer out of torture. Dante now rose from
the dust of self-abasement, openly professed himself a Ghibelline, and
changed his tones of supplication into those of menace against his
refractory countrymen. Henry himself denounced terrible retribution upon
the Guelfs, and at the head of an army invaded the Florentine territory;
from which, however, he was compelled to make an early retreat; and the
magnificent flourish of drums and trumpets, with which the imperial
actor entered, was followed by a dead march, that closed the scene
before he had turned round upon the stage--except to hurry away. He died
in 1313, poisoned, it was reported, by a consecrated wafer. To this
prince Dante dedicated his political treatise, in Latin, "De Monarchia,"
in which he eloquently asserts the rights of the emperor in Italy
against the usurpations of the pope. He has been accused of exciting
Henry to abandon the siege of Brescia, and undertake that of Florence;
though, from regard to his native land, he himself forebore to accompany
the expedition. He had affected no such scruple when the Bianchi, like
trodden worms, turned upon the parent foot which spurned them from the
soil where they were bred. There must, therefore, have been some other
motive than patriotism,--nobody will suspect that it was
cowardice,--which restrained him from witnessing the expected
humiliation of his persecutors.
Several of his biographers state, that after this consummation of his
ruin,--a third decree having been passed against him at Florence,--the
poet retired into France, and strove to reconcile his unsubdued spirit
to his fate, or to forget both it and himself in those fashionable
theological controversies, for which he was, perhaps, better qualified
than either for the council-chamber or the battle-field. This, however,
is doubtful, and, in fact, very improbable, when we recollect that, next
to the malice of the Neri, he was indebted for his misfortunes to
Charles of Valois, their patron, who was brother to Philip the Fair,
king of France. Be this as it may, the remainder of Dante's life was
spent in wandering from one petty court to another, in exile and
poverty, accepting the means of subsistence, almost as alms, from
lukewarm friends, from hospitable strangers, and even from generous
adversaries. Hence we trace him, at uncertain periods, through Lombardy,
Tuscany, and Romagna, as an admitted, welcomed, admired, or merely a
tolerated guest, according to the liberality or caprice of his patrons
for the time being. Little more can be recorded of these "evil days" and
"years," of which he was compelled to say, "I have no pleasure in them,"
than a few questionable anecdotes of his caustic humour, and the names
of some of those who showed him kindness in his affliction.
Among the latter may be honourably mentioned Busone da Gubbio, who first
afforded him shelter at Arezzo, whither he himself had been banished
from Florence as an incorrigible Ghibelline; but being a brother poet,
he was too noble to let political prejudice (Dante was at that time a
Guelf) interfere either with his compassion towards an illustrious
fugitive, or his veneration for those rare talents which ought every
where to have raised the unhappy possessor above contempt, though, in
some instances, they seem to have exposed him to it. Yet he knew well
how to resent indignity. While residing at Verona with Can' Grande de la
Scala (one of his most distinguished protectors), it happened one day,
according to the rude usages of those times, that the prince's jester,
or some casual buffoon about the palace, was introduced at table, to
divert the high-born company there with his waggeries. In this the arch
fellow succeeded so egregiously, that Dante, from scorn or
mortification, showed signs of chagrin, whereupon Can'Grande
sarcastically asked,--"How comes it, Dante, that you, with all your
learning and genius, cannot delight me and my friends half so much as
this fool does with his ribaldry and grimaces?"--"Because _like loves
like_," was the pithy retort of the poet, in the phrase of the proverb.
Another story of the kind is told by Cinthio Geraldi.--On occasion of a
jovial entertainment, Can' Grande, or his jester, had placed a little
boy under the table, to gather all the bones that were thrown down upon
the floor by the guests, and lay them about the feet of Dante. After
dinner these were unexpectedly shown above board, as tokens of his
feasting prowess. "You have done great things to day!" exclaimed the
prince, affecting surprise at such an exhibition. "Far otherwise,"
returned the poet; "for if I had been a dog, (_Cane_, his patron's
name,) I should have devoured bones and all, as it appears you have
done."[13]
Other grandees, who gave the indignant wanderer an occasional asylum
from the blasts of persecution, were the marchese Malespina, who, though
belonging to the antagonist party, cordially entertained him in
Lunigiana; the conte Guido Salvatico, of Cassentino; the signori della
Faggiuolo, among the mountains of Urbino; and also the fathers of the
monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, in the district of Gubbio.
In this romantic retreat, according to the Latin inscription under a
marble bust of him against a wall in one of the chambers, Dante is
recorded to have written a considerable portion of the "Divina
Commedia." In a tower belonging to the conti Falucci, in the same
territory, there is a tradition that he was often employed in the like
manner. At the castle of Tulmino, the residence of the patriarch of
Aquileia, a rock has been pointed out as a favourite resort of the
inspired poet, while engaged in that marvellous and melancholy
composition.
"There, nobly pensive, _Dante_ sat and thought."
Marius, banished from his country, and resting upon the ruins of
Carthage, may have appeared a more august and mournful object; but
Dante, in exile, want, and degradation, on a lonely crag, meditating
thoughts, combining images, and creating a language for both in which
they should for ever speak, presents a far more sublime and touching
spectacle of fallen grandeur renovating itself under decay. Marius,
having "mewed his mighty youth," flew back to Rome like the eagle to his
quarry, surfeited himself with vengeance, and died in a debauch of
blood, leaving a name to be execrated through all generations: Dante did
not return to Florence; living or dead he did not return; but his name,
cast out and abhorred as it had been, stands the earliest and the
greatest of a long line of Tuscan poets, rivalling the most illustrious
of their country, not excepting those of even Rome and Ferrara.
Dante's last and most magnanimous patron was Guido Novello da Polenta,
lord of Ravenna, who was himself a poet, and a munificent benefactor of
men of letters. This nobleman was the father of Francesca di Rimini,
whose fatal love has given her a place on the most splendid page of the
"Divina Commedia;" no other episode being told with equal beauty and
pathos: yet so brief and simple is the narrative, that, even if the
circumstances were as unexceptionably pure as they are insidiously
delicate, translation ought hardly to be attempted; for the labour would
be fruitless. Dante himself could not have given his masterpiece in
precisely corresponding terms in another language; though, had any other
been his own, it need not be doubted that in it he would have found
words to tell his tale as well. It is not what a poet finds a language
to be, but what he makes it, that constitutes the charm, not to be
imitated, of his style. This is the despair of translators, though few
seem to have suspected the existence of such a secret.
The mental sufferings of the poet during his nineteen years of
banishment, ending in death, oftener find utterance, through his
writings, in bitter invectives and prophetic denunciations against his
enemies and traducers, than in strains of lamentation; yet would his
wounds bleed afresh, and the anguish of his spirit be renewed with all
the tenderness of wronged but passionate attachment, at every endeared
recollection of the land of his nativity;--the city where he had been
cradled and had grown up--where Beatrice was born, beloved, and
buried--where he had himself attained the highest honours of the state,
and, in his own esteem, deserved the lasting gratitude of his
fellow-citizens, instead of experiencing their implacable hatred.
Haughty yet humbled, vindictive yet forgiving, it is manifest, even in
his darkest moods, that his heart yearned for reconciliation; that he
pined in home-sickness wherever he went, and would gladly have renounced
all his wrath, and submitted to any self-denial consistent with honour,
to be received back into his country. For, much as he loved the
latter,--nay, madly as he loved it in his paroxysms of exasperation,--he
wrapt himself up tighter in the mantle of his integrity as the storm
raged more vehemently; and, as the conflict went harder against him,
grasped his honour, like his sword, never to be surrendered but with
life: to preserve these, he submitted to lose all beside.
Boccaccio says, that, at a certain time, some friend obtained from the
Florentine government leave for Dante to return, on condition that he
should remain a while in prison, then do penance at the principal church
during a festival solemnity, and afterwards be exempt from further
punishment for his offences against the state. As might be expected, he
spurned the ignominious terms. A letter, preserved in the Laurentian
library[14], seems to refer to this circumstance, which, till the modern
discovery of that document, required stronger testimony than the random
verbiage of Boccaccio to confirm its credibility. It is addressed to a
correspondent at Florence, whom the writer styles "father." The
following are extracts; the original is in Latin. Having alluded to some
overtures for pardon and return, nearly corresponding with those above
mentioned, he proceeds:--
"Can such a recall to his country, after fifteen years' exile, be
glorious to Dante Alighieri? Has innocence, which is manifest to every
one,--have toil and fatigue in perpetuated studies, merited this? Away
from the man trained up in philosophy, the dastard humiliation of an
earth-born heart, that, like some petty pretender to knowledge, or other
base wretch, he should endure to be delivered up in chains! Away from
the man who demands justice, the thought that, after having suffered
wrong, he should make terms by his money with those who have injured
him, as though they had done righteously!--No, father! this is not the
way of return to my country for me. Yet, if you, or any body else, can
find another which shall not compromise the fame and the honour of
Dante, I will not be slow to take it. But if by such an one he may not
return to Florence,--to Florence he will never return. What then? May I
not every where behold the sun and the stars? Can I not every where
under heaven meditate on the most noble and delightful truths, without
first rendering myself inglorious, aye infamous, before the people and
city of Florence,--and this, for fear I should want bread!"
Far different return to Florence, and far other scene in his favourite
church there, had he sometimes ventured to anticipate as possible. This
we learn from the opening of the twenty-fifth canto of the "Paradiso,"
where, even in the presence of Beatrice and St. Peter, he thus unbosoms
the long-cherished hope; conscious of high desert, as well as grievous
injustice, which he would nevertheless most fervently forgive, could
restoration to his country be obtained on terms "consistent with the
fame and honour of Dante."
"If e'er the sacred song, which heaven arid earth
Have lent a hand to frame,--which, many a year,
Hath kept me lean with thought,--o'ercome the rage
That bars re-entrance to the lovely fold,
Where, like a lamb, I slept; the foe of wolves,
Waging inveterate war against its life;
With other voice, with other fleece, will I
Return, a poet, and receive the laurel
At that baptismal font, where I was brought
Into the faith which makes souls dear to God."[15]
In the same church here alluded to (San Giovanni), at Florence, there
remained till lately a stone-remembrancer of Dante, in his prosperous
days, scarcely less likely than "storied urn or animated bust," to
awaken that sweet and voluntary sadness by which we love to associate
dead things with the memory of those who once have lived. This was no
other than an ancient bench of masonry which ran along the wall,
"South of the church, east of the belfry-tower,"
on which, according to long-believed tradition, the future poet of the
other world was wont to
"Sit conversing in the sultry time,"
with those,
"Who little thought that in his hand he held
The balance, and assign'd, at his good pleasure,
To each his place in the invisible world."