The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri Part 4

[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 pa.s.sage of the _Purgatorio_.

[72] Serf.a.ge 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 n.o.bles, 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 n.o.bles 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 Ampere in his charming _Voyage Dantesque_ devoted no chapter to San Gemigniano, than which no Tuscan city has more thoroughly preserved its mediaeval character. There is no authority for the a.s.sertion that Dante was employed on several Florentine emba.s.sies. 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 t.i.tle 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 h.e.l.l (_Inf._ xix. 53); and he is elsewhere frequently referred to. In one great pa.s.sage 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 mult.i.tude 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._ x.x.x. 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 a.s.signed 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 pa.s.sage in which he excuses himself for not having come to the funeral:--'It was not negligence or ingrat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sage 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 sc.r.a.ps, 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 n.o.bles, 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ment 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.