{> ".S'-? Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2020 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/commentaryideolo01park_1 Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance COMMENTARY AND IDEOLOGY Dante in the Renaissance DEBORAH PARKER DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and Dondon igg^ English translations of Dante’s Commedia have been taken from The “Divine Comedy” of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Allen Mandelbaum. Translation copyright © 1980 and © 1982 by Allen Mandelbaum. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. © 1993 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper °o Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. For my parents 85M t:>i93v pass I9‘=?3 Contents Preface tx I. Interpretation and the Commentary Tradition 1. Dante's Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth - and Twentieth- Century Constructions J 2. The Medieval Roots of Commentary in the Renaissance 25 II. Commentary and Ideology Interpretive Strategy and Ideological Commitment: The Brutus and Cassius Debate 5^ 4. Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele’s Critique of Lcindino 8g 5. Imitation, Plagiarism, and Textual Productivity: Bernardino Daniello’s Debt to Trifone Gabriele log 6. Material Production and Interpretations of the Comedy 124 Conclusion 759 Notes 161 Selected Bibliography 22^ Index 24^ Preface This study, by examining the social and historical circumstances under which commentaries were produced, seeks to c larify the criti- cal traditio n of com mentary and to ex plain the w ays in which this important b ody of m aterial can be used in interpreting Dante’s poem. Throughout the Renaissance, the Comedy stands in a productive rela¬ tion to c ultu re, at once re defining it and being redefine d by it. This book is not about commentary as a means to adjudicate critical dis¬ putes, nor does it see commentary as a mere appendage to Dante. It addresses the ways in which co mmentary recor ds the in teracti on be¬ tween a poem considered aut horitati ve and various s ocial formatio ns with differi.ngjieeds. It seeks to show how commentators have sought ways to incorporate the Comedy as an authority in ongoing-schemes of social legitimation. It examines how the civic, institutional, and social commitments of commentators shape their response to the poem. Above all, this study seeks to uncover the ways in which these phenomena have informed and conditioned interpretive strategies. Dante commentary—both in terms of sheer quantity and of propi¬ tious formal features—affords a rich legacy to anyone interested in mapping the s hifts and start s in the history of the p oem’s receptio n. As difficult as it is to r estore social or te xtual co ntext, commentary affords a means of recov ering these contex ts because it provides a record of the way in which the poem is realligned to fit different interpretive programs. Chapter i traces the ways in which c omment aries have been treated hv Dante schola rs: how critics have conceived of commen- tarysTelanonto the Comedy, what they thought commentators were doing, and what they used commentary for. It attempts to draw out the assumptions underlying these critical activities. Noting that p rojec ts tend to recu r, it argues that a more s elf-conscious attitu de be taken up by students of commentary. Chapter 2 takes up some of the same issues as the first, but with ■. ^ X Preface an important difference: where the first chapte r addresses the oiti- c al recept ion of commentary, the s econ d explores the reception of comrnentary within thejr^ition. Chapter 2 briefly recalls the salient features of fourteenth-century commentary in order to illuminate the practice of Renaissance commentators. Fifteenth- and sixteenth- century commentators inherited a wealth of interpretive techniques and conventions, but they generally used them in ways that essen¬ tially change their force. The next three chapters function as a unit; they focus on the figure of the commentator and his intellectual, social, and institu¬ tional commitments. Commentary in'the Renaissance becomes an increasingLy-flexible,genre. Its writers have a number of strategies at hand owing to the cumulative nature of medieval commentary, and these procedures enable commentators to appropriate the poem in a variety of ways. The histqricixy of the Comedy can best be docu¬ mented by attention to discussions of what was, for Renaissance com¬ mentators, a deeply pol itical episo de in the poem: the damnation of Brutus and Cassius. Chapter 3 takes up the difficulties that this part of the text posed for commentators. Such moments in the Comedy serve as litmus tests for the degree of political inflection not only of the commentator, but of the culture that informs him. Chapter 4 explores how Landino’s and Gabriele’s ties to vari¬ ous c ivic institutions condition their crit ical views, how their roles as intellectuals differ in their respective city-states of Florence and Venice, how their intended audiences inform their remarks on the poem, and how these circumstances have affected the subsequent fortunes of the two commentaries. Chapter 5 examines the relationship between Gabriele and his student Daniello in terms of contemporary ideas of imitation and authority. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine the relation of the C omedy to soci- et j in^the text. of the commen tary. Chapter 6 extends this inquiry to the format of these books. The last chapter analyzes the different material conditions under which Renaissance editions of the Comedy were produced and how they affected the critical fortune of com¬ mentary. It also proposes that publishing history be used in inter¬ pretation—that the intention implicit in choices of time, place, and form of publication be recovered; that a work’s production, repro- Preface xi duction, and circulation should figure in critical assessments; and that the book itself be treated as an expressive form. The intent is to try to develop a bibliographic code, which, in turn would help us to understand the situation of the critic. The relation then, between chapters 3, 4, and 5, on the one hand, and chapter 6, on the other, is a dynamic one. Critical study along either line informs the other approach. Books not only, as Umberto Eco reminds us, “talk among themselves,” they speak in a variety of ways — through words as well as forms.' Quotations from the Commedia are taken Irom the edition by Giorgio Petrocchi, ha Commedia secondo I’antica vulgata, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1966-67). English translations are from Allen Mandelbaum, The "Divine Comedy" of Dante Alighieri (New York; Bantam, 1980-84). I have, in the interest of readability, modernized slightly the spell¬ ing of Renaissance Italian texts. Generally, I have modernized the spelling when it does not alter the pronunciation of a word. Unless otherwise specified, translations of texts are my own. It is a pleasure to express my gratitude for the assistance and encouragement I received during the writing of this book. I am in¬ debted to the colleagues and friends who improved the manuscript by giving their time to read various chapters: Alastair Minnis, Zyg- munt Baranski, Lino Fertile, William Kennedy, Craig Kallendorl, Arthur Field, Tibor Wlassics, Jeffrey Schnapp, Julian Weiss, Renzo Bragantini, and Jerome McGann. I am indebted to the curators of rare books and special collections at Harvard, at the University of Virginia, at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, at the Library of Con¬ gress, and above all at the Folger Shakespeare Library. This study would not have been possible without the generous grants provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shake¬ speare Library, the University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Fellow¬ ship, the University of Virginia summer research fellowship, and the University of Virginia and University of Rome scholar exchange pro¬ gram. I am grateful to the editors at Modern Language Notes and Renaissance Quarterly for their permission to reprint the sections of Chapters 4 and 5 that appeared in their journals. Bantam Books has xii Preface permitted me to cite Allen Mandelbaum’s translation of the Divine Comedy. I would also like to thank Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press, with whom it has been a pleasure to work. Finally, I would like to thank my husband Mark for his patience and support throughout this project. I Interpretation and the Commentary Tradition /. Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth - and Twentieth-Century Constructions Criticism of Dante’s medieval and Renaissance commentators in the last ten years encompasses a wide range of philological activity: de¬ tailed investigations into the earliest commentators’ use of sources; new attempts to settle questions concerning dating, dependencies, and attribution; and in-depth studies of one commentator or of a period of commentary.' These studies testify eloquently to the recent resurgenc e of interest in Dante commentaries.^ However, there is an uncanny sense of repetition to this situation. Resurgences of interest in commentary are periodic. The diverse interests of the last ten years have been m part conditioned by the kinds of studies of commentary that dominated the nineteenth century, the period in which com¬ mentary first emerges as an o bject of criticism . The legacies of these earlier nineteenth-century studies still crisscross the surface of recen t work—largely unexamined, yet exerting a considerable influence on later critical activity. Positivism, Nationalism, and Antiquarianism Although no brief narrative can account for all the particulars, it is nonetheless possible to identify the influences significant to the move from commentary to criticism of the commentaries. This reorien- _ ration was largely due to the effects of p ositivism , nationalism, and an tiquarianism . These three impulses, each of which produces a dif¬ ferent thread of the critical legacy, underwrite the r enewed intere st in Dante in the nineteenth century. The work of scholars like Alessandro D’Ancona, Adolfo Bar- toli, Giuseppe Vandelli, and Isidoro Del Lungo is associated with the historical sch ool of criticism that flourished in Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The locus of most of these studies was Florence, which had a long tradition of Dante studies and was the center of other philological-historical researches. Posi- 4 Dante in the Renaissance t ivist research on Dante tended to focus on the state of the te xt of the Comedo , on the r ernnsrmrn on of the poet's historical moment, and on the identihcation ol Dante’s literary precursors. We can best get a sense of the spirit and practice of these positivist researches by exam¬ ining their contribution to one of the m ost prominent critical is sues of the latter half of the nineteenth century': the matter of whether B eatrice was strictly a s^rnnho l or a hi storical per son. D’-\ncona con¬ tended that she was a real wo man . BartoH . on the other hand, argued that Beatrice was based on a feminine idea l inspired by a num¬ ber of women admired by Dante. This issue was resolved, in part, through r ecourse to an early commentary on the poem.^ Bartoli, after being informed by one of his students, Luigi Rocca. that Pietro Ali¬ ghieri refers to Beatrice Porrinari as the woman whom his father loved, pubhshed a letter to D’.Ancona in the Florentine newspaper La Xazione. This letter, writes Rodolfo Renier, was widely regarded as una mezza ritrattazione on the part of Bartoli."’ ^^Tat is signih - cant in this debate is the part icular use made of comment an’ at this time—as a means of adju dicating a dispu te, as a kind of critical rejeiee. Such a use was by no means unprecedented or unusual: in the previous century’ protessional scholars and aristocratic connoisseurs had often consulted the medieval and Renaissance commentaries to determine the meaning of obscure points in the poem. Motivated by antiquarian interests, scholars such as .Antonio Rosso Martini had e xamin ed the codices in the hbraries of the .Accademia della Crusca and San Lorenzo to check the meaning of words like cruna (Purga- torio 21.37) brigata (Purgatorio 14.106) in the commentaries of Francesco da Buti. Landino, and \LUutello.’ OccasionaUy these for¬ ays would lead to speculations concernmg the commentaries’ dating and provenance. Bartoli, like other scholars, consulted the commen¬ taries as one might other early documents in order to cast light on critical issues of the day. This unre flexive use ol commenta ix' is t\ pi- cal: Pietro Ali ghieri’s remar ks acquire imm ediately an authoritati ve status because of his vicini u' to the p oet—as a cont empora ry and as Danre’«j so n. His comments settle, prematurely, a hotly contested in¬ terpretive point, with a serene innocence as to the historical status of this commentary in general. This aspect of positivist scholarsh ip, an “obiective description of a series of events in an isolated past,” fails to consider the hismrici n- of either the C omedy or co mmentaries to it.* Part of its seemingly authoritative status in settling modern disputes Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 5 results from the particular twists and turns of the ensuing commen¬ tary tradition. The tradition of commentary has, in part, worked to produce modern readers who would perceive a force to and authority in Pietro’s remarks. The powe r of Pi etro’s work to settle interpreta¬ tive disputes is not so much ow ing to the commentator’s sa gaci ty as to the sit uation of read ers such as Bartoli, who have been p repar ed to see a iirhnritu in Pietro’s work by the commentarv' tradition in which they participate and by which they were formed. A more direct evaluation of the commentaries is offered by Kar l Witt e, whose work on the poet represents the culmination of the golden age of Dante scholarship in Germany between the 1820s and 1860s. As elsewhere in Europe, historical studies flourished in Ger¬ many, but the pa rticul ar contribution of German scholarship was the emphasis accorded p hilolog y. In an essay that with typical directness he titles “The Art of Misunderstanding Dante” (1823), Witte called for gre ater philological-historical scrupulousne ss in textual matters. Witte’s hopes of producing a m ore accurate te xt of the Comedy led him to examine hun dreds of manuscrip ts of the early commentaries for what he hoped would be more ’'^“liahlr rran^nprinnc of the poem. Although Witte’s archival researches yielded little in the way of a more correct text of the Comedy, his increasing f amiliari ty with the commentaries did provide him with a new object of study. He amended, for example, many of Paul Colomb De Batines’s conjec¬ tures concerning the d ating and dependenc ies between Jacopo della Lana and the Ottimo commentator, and many of his observations inform Luigi Rocca’s later assessment of these two commentators. Witte’s comparisons between these commentaries and those of his own day also increased critics’ awareness of the contributions of early commentaries. In Witte’s eyes, nineteenth-centuiy commen¬ tators were insensitive to the poem’s religious meaning, and their p olitical readi ngs were so farfetch ed that they were markedly in¬ ferior to their medieval predecessors. “E. xegesis ,” writes Witte, “is pre-emi nently the happy hunting ground of caprice and ignoran ce.” ** Witte singles out for condemnation the failures of Pompeo \’enturi (1732) and Baldassare Lombardi (1791) to consult the earliest glosses in the preparation of their commentaries. These sobering compari¬ sons often revealed that readings touted by recent commentators as new had already been proffered by the poem’s earliest readers. The effect of such research on the resurgence of critical interest cannot 6 Dante in the Renaissance be underestimated.’ By the end of the century a small commentary industry had sprung up. D’Ancona’s study of the figure of Beatrice was publ ished in i8 6c;. The date is significan t: it coincides with the height of nati£!U.alistic sentimenpfnjtaly and with the sixth cen^nary of D ante’s birth— hence also the complexity of the legacy I have been tracing: posi¬ tivist scholarship is taken up into a system of purposes provided by partisan sentiment. The Risorgimento fueled tremendous inter¬ est in the Middle Ages in general, but particularly in authors who, like Dante and Machiavelli, were perceived as patriotic. Dante in ¬ c arnated nationalism : he was the first important author to write a significant work in Italian; he had eloquently defended the volgare illustre as a literary language; and in the De vulgari eloquentia he had argued for the necessity of a national language. Even the hardship s of exile had nnr diminished Dante’s Invp for his hofneland. There was no shortage of material well suited for the g lorificatio n of the poet: studies and tributes to Dante abound between the 1820s and the 1860s and culminate in May 1865 with three days of national fes¬ tivities. Hailed as the prophet of the new united Italy, the figure of Dante galvanized the popular imagination throughout the country.'*’ Critics like Bartoli and D’Ancona and poets like Carducci wrote on Dante, at least in part, out of a nationalistic spirit. D’Ancona’s inter¬ est in the poet, for example, was initially inspired by Francesco De Sanctis’s impassioned Dante lectures in Turin (1854-55) during his exile from Naples. “La prima ventura che mi e stata concessa,” writes D’Ancona, “e della quale giorno per giorno, ora per ora, ringrazio la Provvidenza, e I’esser nato e vissuto nei tempi del Risorgimento ita- liano (The first fortune that has been conceded to me, for which day by day, hour by hour, I thank Providence, is to have been born and to have lived in the time of the Italian Risorgimento)’’." The figure of Dante exemplified the political cornmitment, rebirth, and national unity that pervaded the scholarly and civic activities of patriotic crit¬ ics like D’Ancona and De Sanctis. De Sanctis’s lectures on Dante are shot through with nationalistic statements. His essay on Inferno 10 is a monument to the spirit of the Risorgimento. Its focus is Farinata degli Uberti, the great captain of the Ghibellines whom Dante encounters among the heretics. The essay’s revolutionary spirit is evident from the first page: De Sanc¬ tis recalls the passions that brought about the French Revolution in Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 7 an effort to reproduce the sentiments underlying Dante’s concezione colossale —Farinata. For De Sanctis, the canto’s overriding theme is amor della patria, a sentiment that Dante himself embodies: “fatto parte per se stesso, alzatosi sopra amici e nemici, le ire e le ingius- tizie partigiane sono in lui temperate da un sentimento piu nobile: dall’amor della patria (having made a party unto himself, having risen above friends and enemies, the anger and partisan injustices in him were tempered by a more noble sentiment: by the love of his homeland).”'^ Who could better exemplify the transcendence of par¬ tisan feelings than Dante? It is difficult to imagine how D’Ancona could not have been moved by such rousing statements. Just as patriots claimed Dante as a symbol of national unity from the past, so did many see in Giosue Carducci’s poems a contempo¬ rary expression of the new Italy. It comes as little surprise therefore that Carducci was invited to write an article on Dante’s critical for¬ tune for the sixth centenary. One section of this piece, “Gli editori e i primi commentatori della Divina Commedia" (1867), represents the first overview of the commentaries of Jacopo Alighieri, Graziolo Bambaglioli, Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo commentator, Guido da Pisa, and Pietro Alighieri.*^ Carducci is essentially interested in pro¬ viding an account of the reception of the Comedy among Dante’s contemporaries and near contemporaries; therefore his focus is not so much on the commentaries themselves as on ascertaining who were the poem’s supporters and detractors. Carducci seeks evidence of a continuity between the past and the present; hence, he empha¬ sizes recognition by Dante’s contemporaries of the poet’s patriotism and greatness. Viewed in this way, the commentaries serve to aug¬ ment and supplement the Risorgimento’s vision of Dante as an in¬ spirational symbol of unity and nationalism. Nevertheless Carducci’s work, like that of Witte earlier, provided later scholars with a basis for more detailed analyses of the early commentaries. Although Car¬ ducci is largely interested in tracing the activity of “gli ombrosi della gloria di Dante,” he also discusses dependencies among the commen¬ taries.'^ Antiquarianism also played an important role in the move from commentary to criticism of the commentaries. A significant num¬ ber of the nineteenth-century editions were made possible by the English Dantophile Lord George Vernon, who provided the funds for the publication of the commentaries of Jacopo Alighieri, Graziolo 8 Dante in the Renaissance Bambaglioli, Pietro Alighieri, and the falso Boccaccio. After Ver¬ non’s death, his son William Vernon paid for the publication of J. P. Lacaita’s five-volume edition of Benvenuto da Imola.'^ By the turn of the century the majority of Dante’s fourteenth- and fifteenth-century commentaries were available in modern editions.'^ Given this re¬ markable output, it comes as little surprise that in a review of an edi¬ tion of Graziolo Bambaglioli one critic describes this period as being imbued with a “fervore di studi sugli antichi commentatori.” Many of the men who were involved in the production of these editions were friends, and this community exemplifies the mutual reliance of amateur and scholar. George Vernon, for example, numbered among his friends J. P. Lacaita, editor of Benvenuto da Imola, and Vincenzo Nannucci, editor of Pietro Alighieri as well as Pietro Fraticelli (1852) and Brunone Bianchi (1844), both of whom had written their own commentaries to the poem. Vernon’s son, William Vernon, shared his father’s fascination with Dante.'* Like his father, William Vernon also numbered among his friends many scholars, including Edward Moore, Paget Toynbee, and Charles Eliot Norton. The extent of the community inhabited by the younger Vernon is remarkable. His acquaintance with Norton’s work, for instance, was largely conducted through correspondence. Their abiding love of Dante and interest in commentaries are evi¬ dent in their correspondence: in a letter of 1888 Norton lists among the books “indispensable” to a student of Dante, the commentaries of “Boccaccio, Buti, Benvenuto and . . . Landino.”'^ William Ver¬ non’s and Charles Eliot Norton’s correspondence, along with their related publications, testify to the resurgence of scholarly interest in the commentaries in different countries. A remarkable parallel be¬ tween Italy’s elevation of Dante as symbol of patriotism and national unity can be found in Norton’s moralizing on the poet: in the midst of the Civil War, Norton, too, offered Dante as a symbol of courage and sacrifice to American youths.^® A different kind of involvement and promotion of commentaries can be seen in the activities of the bibliophile Willard Fiske. Pri¬ marily between 1893 and 1896, he amassed one of the most extensive Dante collections in the world. Fiske’s activities as a bibliophile put him in contact with Norton, who recommended that the librarian, Wesley Koch, catalog Fiske’s collection when it was donated to Cor¬ nell. Although this fascination of antiquarian patrons and biblio- Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 9 philes with the commentaries is confined to a relatively small circle of individuals, their effect on Dante studies was significant?' The concentrated efforts of this small but influential group of individuals constitutes an important aspect of the critical tradition. By the end of the nineteenth century these forces had combined to produce a steady interest in the commentaries. The positivist studies of scholars such as Adolfo Bartoli and Alessandro D’Ancona; the bibliographical data and initial evaluations furnished by Colomb De Batines, Carducci, and Witte; the elevation of Dante to a figure of national unity; the publication of critical editions of the early com¬ mentaries; and the antiquarian interests of a variety of scholars and aristocratic connoisseurs all contribute to this development. But the different impulses underlying these activities bequeath a varied and somewhat fragmented legacy. Carducci’s and Witte’s studies seek to distinguish the different critical contributions of the earliest com¬ mentators; the work of D’Ancona and Bartoli provide the basis for a philological-historical approach to literature. Nevertheless, the sud¬ den availability of critical editions provides new opportunities for scholars: a shift in focus from the poem itself to the nature of its interpretive legacy was now possible. The Legacy of the Historical School The continuation of interest in the commentaries at the turn of the century was largely owing to the personal legacy of critics like D’Ancona and Bartoli. Projects envisioned by these scholars were subsequently realized by some of their students. At Bartoli’s insti¬ gation, Luigi Rocca undertook a detailed examination of Dante’s earliest commentators. Michele Barbi wrote a thesis on Dante’s re¬ ception in the Renaissance under the directorship of Alessandro D’Ancona. Rocca’s Di alcuni commenti composti net primi vent’anni dopo la mortedi Dante (1891) and Michele Barbi’sLa fortuna di Dante nel secolo XVI (1890) are among the first book-length studies of Dante’s respective medieval and Renaissance commentators.^- Some¬ what later, another of Bartoli’s students, Guido Biagi, helped realize perhaps the most ambitious of his teacher’s ideas, the compilation of an anthology of the commentaries. Rocca’s book addresses many of the issues that have come to form the basis of later studies of commentaries: assessing the status of the 10 Dante in the Renaissance codices; resolving questions relating to provenance, attribution, and dating; clarifying dependencies between various commentaries; com¬ paring the relation between different versions; identifying sources; and pointing out the commentators’ familiarity with Dante’s other works.^^ Rocca’s study appeared in the midst of a series of historical investigations into the Middle Ages in general and Dante’s world in particular. The turn of the century witnessed the consolidation and institutionalization of Dante researches in Italy. By 1910 a number of societies and journals devoted to the study of Dante had been formed; the Societa dantesca was established in 1888, 1 ’Alighieri com¬ menced publishing in 1889, the Giornale dantesco in 1893, and the Bulletino della Societa Dantesca Italiana in 1890. In addition, the years 1890-1910 saw the publication of a number of ambitious historical studies as well as many useful compilations, manuals, concordances, and guides: F. A. Vincent’s Concordance of the "Divina Commedia” (1888); Edward Moore’s Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the “Divine Comedy” (1889); Giacomo Poletto’s Dizionario dantesco (1892); Isidoro Del Lungo’s two works. Dal secolo e dal poema di Dante (1898) and Dante nei tempi di Dante \ and G. A. Scartazzini’s Enciclopedia dantesca (1896-99). The publication of more critical edi¬ tions of Trecento and Quattrocento commentaries during this period reflects an overall interest in providing a more accurate documenta¬ tion of Dante’s literary culture.^^ Interest in the commentaries during and after World War I is understandably sparse. The most significant project was undoubtedly Biagi’s massive undertaking, his attempt to fulfill Bartoh s vision of a “supercommentary” that would contain “il megho di tutti gh espo- sitori antichi e moderni, cronologicamente ordinato (the best of all the early and modern commentators, chronologically arranged). Such a project has had an enduring appeal. In the eighteenth century Francesco Cionacci had envisioned a similar but far larger project; one hundred volumes, one for each canto, that would include all the commentary written to date.-^ Some twenty years after the pub¬ lication of Biagi’s work Michele Barbi emphasizes the importance of a compilation of commentaries for Dante criticism by calling for “uno spoglio giudizioso che raccoghesse quello che veramente giovi alia critica odierna (a judicious culling that would gather together what would be most useful to criticism of the present day). A selec¬ tion, adds Barbi, is especially desirable with respect to the earliest Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 11 commentaries, many of which were perceived to be minori o troppo abbondantiP Cionacci’s idea, though in the form of Biagi’s more manageable project, was finally realized in La "Divina Commedia" nella figuraztone artistica e nelsecolare commento. This Dantone, to use Biagi’s term, amassed in three volumes illustrations from early manu¬ scripts and selections of seven centuries of lecturae DantisP Published in 1921 to commemorate the seventh centenary of the poet’s death, Biagi dedicates the first volume to Vfittorio Emanuele III “che die aU’Italia i termini auspicati da Dante.” Once again, the nationalism that had inspired so many of the nineteenth-century studies of Dante surfaces in patriotic sentiments after the war. Hailed splendida e importantissima, the Secolare commento repre¬ sents an important milestone in Dante studies.^^ Few libraries, espe¬ cially outside of Italy, could boast copies of all the commentaries included in this edition. The Secolare commento enabled students everywhere to consult the contributions of twenty-three of the poem’s commentators ranging from Jacopo Alighieri to Raffaele Andreoli. Biagi’s work was truly a boon to scholarship, yet attention should be paid to the nature of the passages that were omitted. There is a pat¬ tern to these omissions, one that has in turn subtly determined our understanding of the content of the commentaries. The omissions are most readily discernible in the medieval and Renaissance com¬ mentaries, many of which feature long discussions on philosophical, theological, or mythological points. Although many of these discus¬ sions are considerably abbreviated, the editors still take pains to retain passages from the commentators’ doctrinal and allegorical explica¬ tions. What tends to be omitted, for example, in the commentaries of Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo commentator, Boccaccio, and Benve¬ nuto da Imola are passages in which myths are recounted, anecdotes concerning fictional and historical personages mentioned by Dante, lists of authorities, and observations of a more personal nature. Also excluded are the general proemi to the commentaries and introduc¬ tory prefaces to individual cantos, features commonly employed by the fourteenth-century commentators. Generally, doctrinal and alle¬ gorical readings are retained at the expense of more informal or less analytic glosses. The result is a flattening of perspective: that which was previously uneven, varied, and heteroglot becomes univocal and homogenous. The omission of the often-elaborate framing prefaces also contributes to this uniformity. 12 Dante in the Renaissance Although a few brief examples cannot do justice to the issue of selection, they can help to typify the editors’ procedures. For instance, in his discussion of Dante’s condemnation of Brutus and Cassius, Cristoforo Landino, wishing to distance himself from Dante’s judg¬ ment, goes to considerable lengths to temper the poet’s presentation. He attributes Dante’s decision to his imperial sympathies, a position that Landino, a staunch Guelf, considers misguided. Landino further suggests that others would place Brutus in Paradise. In the excerpt of Landino’s reading in the Secolare commento there is no trace of this disagreement with Dante. This passage, which has clear relevance to an understanding of Landino’s critical disposition, is perhaps too personal for the analytical bias of the Secolare commento. Similarly, Boccaccio’s lively description of Paolo and Francesca’s intrigue is omitted. Admittedly fanciful, his story is typical of the colorful narra¬ tions that pepper the glosses of the early commentators. Narration of all kinds suffer from the Secolare commento\ penchant for analysis. Another example of the kind of cuts made can be found in the ex¬ cerpts from Jacopo della Lana’s discussion of the dance of preachers alluded to in Paradiso 29.110.^“ In the midst of his lengthy disquisi¬ tion on the qualities of angels, Lana suddenly interrupts his analysis in order to provide two examples of the long-winded speeches of contemporary clerics. The abrupt shift in tone and subject matter is remarkable: an amusing anecdote has been woven into a dry techni¬ cal exposition. Such striking shifts are common in the commentaries of Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo commentator, Boccaccio, Benve¬ nuto da Imola, and the Anonimo Fiorentino, who frequently move from scholastic expositions to narratives about mythical and histori¬ cal figures. This plurality of voices reflects different rhetorical and intellectual orientations. The editors’ omission of such passages in the Secolare commento, however, tends to homogenize the variety of discourses present in the medieval commentaries. The excerpts in¬ cluded in this edition rarely provide a glimpse of this interplay of nar¬ rative and analysis. These omissions stem largely from a somewhat limited view of commentary, which prevents the editors from seeing commentary as a complex response to the poem that can encom¬ pass many styles of discourse: narrations, scholastic analysis, personal anecdote, and didactic retelling of myth or history. Despite such omissions, however, the Secolare commento consti¬ tutes the first concerted effort to provide scholars with a sense of the Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 13 range and variety of the commentary tradition. This was a monu¬ mental project, which in the absence of widely accessible critical editions made it possible for students everywhere to consult pre¬ vious readings on a passage. The editors of the Secolare commento deserve much credit for drawing attention to commentaries as an im¬ portant part of the Comedy’s remarkable fortune. But in weighing the selections toward more analytical glosses, the Secolare commento also conditioned perceptions of the texts themselves. A number of recent studies have emphasized the importance of viewing commen¬ tary as texts in their own right and not simply as an “appendage” to Dante s poem.^’ In many respects, the Secolare commento exempli¬ fies and reproduces the perception of commentary as little more than an appendage to the Comedy. Subsequent critical use of the Secolare commento has tended to ossify this view. As Carlo Dionisotti has ob¬ served, this is largely because modern critics tend to subordinate the individual views of Dante’s earliest critics “al testo di Dante, alia nos¬ tra lettura del testo.”A monumental compilation like the Secolare commento facilitates the subordination of commentary to a reading of Dante’s poem. It is a powerful critical tool, offering a ready— and seemingly irresistible—means of adjudicating textual and inter¬ pretive questions. Yet it is important to recall that what the Secolare commento offers are essentially disembodied fragments: specific lit¬ erary conventions and historical particulars are all but obscured by this formidable presentation. I explore the ramifications of this in the conclusion to this chapter, in which I discuss the way in which the Dartmouth Dante Project—another immense compilation—might inform critical practice. The Secolare commento was not the only work in the 1920s to focus attention on the early commentaries. A number of interpre¬ tive studies appeared. Michele Barbi, Giuseppe Vandelli, F. P. Luiso, Elisabetta Cavallari, and Paget Toynbee, many of whom had studied with scholars at the forefront of the historical school, published articles clarifying questions of attribution and dating as well as essays that focused on the nature of the contribution of a particular com¬ mentator.” Besides sharing a similar intellectual formation, many of this second generation of scholars were also archivists. Paget Toynbee helped Edward Moore organize a collation of Oxford’s manuscripts of the Comedy, Guido Biagi was the director of Florence’s libraries as well as chief inspector of all of Italy’s libraries; and Michele Barbi, 14 Dante in the Renaissance before becoming a professor, was assistant librarian of the Laurentian Library and conservationist of manuscripts at the National Library of Florence. A bibliographic background was often instrumental in providing these critics with material crucial for their research. The most influential study to emerge from this period, however, was Benedetto Croce’s La poesia di Dante (1921). Beginning his revo¬ lutionary analysis with the question, C e ragione alcuna per la quale la poesia di Dante debba esser letta e giudicata con metodo diverso da quello di ogni altra poesia.? (Is there any reason for which Dante’s poetry should be read and judged in a way different from that of every other poem.?),” Croce argued strenuously for a different ap¬ proach to the Comedy —one that would have little use for extratex- tual considerations, much less for detailed historical investigations. The effect of Croce’s work on positivist studies was devastat¬ ing. He dismissed critical investigations that did not contribute to an aesthetic critique as allotria or extraneous matter. Particularly sus¬ pect were allegorical readings and the accumulation of historical minutiae, which in Croce’s eyes drew attention to doctrinal matters and away from the more lyrical and “poetic” passages he favored in the Comedy. Some commentary is guilty by association: the fact that many of the critics who interpreted the poem allegorically often tended to substantiate their readings with references to the Tre¬ cento commentators ultimately made the latter somewhat suspect to Croce. He locates the beginnings of the ethical, religious, and philo¬ sophical interpretations he dislikes in the works of the poem s first readers—“notai e frati e lettori d’universita . . . gh stessi fighuoh del poeta (notaries and monks and university lecturers . . . Dante s very own sons).”^^ Critics have long noted Croce’s negative effect on studies of the commentary tradition. As positivism gave way to a more intrinsic ap¬ proach to literature, interest in extratextual concerns, which by impli¬ cation included the texts employed in the reconstruction of Dante s historical moment, declined, as did interest in the commentary tra¬ dition. The consequences for further study were dramatic. Between 1930 and 1950 there is a dearth of publications on the commentaries. Francesco Mazzoni, for example, equates Croce s negative effect on studies of the early commentaries to un freno alia ricerca.^^ Yet Mazzoni’s pronouncement overlooks the influence of some of Croce’s contemporaries. The work of Michele Barhi, in particu- Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 15 lar, constitutes one of the most concerted efforts to trace Dante’s fortune. In addition to his numerous publications on this subject, Barbi’s influence can also be seen in his directorship of the Bulletino della Societa Dantesca Italiana. Under Barbi’s guidance the journal acquired a distinctly bibliographic stamp. Even a cursory examina¬ tion of the issues published under his tenure reveals the preference accorded to textual studies. Croce’s aesthetic criticism, although un¬ deniably dominant at this moment, should be viewed in terms of the work of other influential figures like Barbi, whose nuova filologia had its adherents as well. If anything, subsequent critics have tended to combine aspects of both Barbi’s and Croce’s methodologies. For example, in xhc filologia estetica of Luigi Russo one finds traces of both critics’ interpretive legacies. Ironically, Attilio Momigliano, one of the most respected propo¬ nents of Croce’s aestheticism, becomes a catalyst to renewed interest in the commentary tradition. In 1946 Momigliano suggested Dante’s Trecento commentators as a dissertation topic to one of his students, Francesco Mazzoni. Momigliano believed that the moment was pro¬ pitious for an investigation into medieval aesthetics and, more par¬ ticularly, for a reevaluation of Rocca’s study. Mazzoni has frequently cited Momigliano’s role, as well as that of his other adviser, Mario Casella, in directing his scholarly activity. In addition to writing a series of important articles on Jacopo Alighieri, Graziolo Bam- baglioli (1951), Guido da Pisa (1958), Pietro Alighieri (1963), and Jacopo della Lana (1967), Mazzoni has authored all the entries on these commentators in the Enciclopedia dantesca F As a result of this concentrated effort, Mazzoni’s work has come to inform greatly cur¬ rent critical opinion of the early commentaries. Mazzoni’s articles tend to emphasize the importance of two con¬ cerns: the commentator’s literary culture and the degree to which he understands the principles outlined in the Epistle to Cangrande. From his first article Mazzoni’s insistence on the importance of the former has informed his evaluations: I singoli commenti vanno studiati come il prodotto d’una precisa operazione culturale e spirituale, in rapporto alia secolare interpre- tazione della Commedia. Verrano allora in luce i diversi orrizzonti che dettero colore e tono ai vari momenti della ricerca: balzera fuori dal commento il colore del tempo, il carattere della tradizione culturale che lo condiziona, colta nei motivi vital! che scaturiscono 16 Dante in the Renaissance dagli interessi del momento, che incorporano e convergono nella interpretazione del Divino Poema. The individual commentaries should be studied as the product of a precise cultural and spiritual operation in relation to the secular interpretation of the Comedy. The different situations that gave color and tone to the various moments of research will come to light: the color of the time, the character of the cultural tradition which conditions it will leap forth, plucked from the vital motives that spring from the interests of the moment that incorporate and converge on the interpretation of the Divine Poem.^* Mazzoni’s attention to the influence of medieval culture has yielded some perceptive observations regarding the background of some of the earliest commentators. In his analysis of Jacopo della Lana, for example, he attributes the commentary’s encyclopedic cast to “gli orientamenti dello Studio bolognese.”^® Similarly, Graziolo Bamba- glioli’s training as a notary accounts for the ornateness of his stile cancelleresco^^ Central to Mazzoni’s method is a comparison of the literary cul¬ ture of the commentators to Dante’s. One could find no better ex¬ pression of the poet’s views, declares Mazzoni, than Dante’s own works. In addition to citing the Convivio and xhcMonarchia, Mazzoni singles out the Epistle to Cangrande (which he takes to be authen¬ tic) as providing the best information on how to read the Comedy. For Mazzoni, the Epistle represents “la piu compiuta sintesi che II Trecento abbia dato del Poema (the most complete synthesis that the Trecento gave of the poem).’’ In terms of the Trecento com¬ mentaries, the Epistle, in his eyes, constitutes a prezioso ausilto, it is a sound index of “chi sa ancora rivivere I’esperienza di vita e di pensiero che fu di Dante (who still knows how to relive the experi¬ ence of life and of thought that was Dante’s).”''' Viewed in this way, the Epistle becomes a kind of referee, a means of conferring appro¬ bation or disapproval of a commentator’s understanding of Dante. For Mazzoni, the commentators most sensitive to Dante’s poetics are Graziolo Bambaglioli and Pietro Alighieri. In contrast, he finds that the scholastic background of Jacopo della Lana and the Ottimo com¬ mentator produce a less coherent, more fragmentary reading. Lana s failure to grasp the “universal” significance of the pilgrim s concreta attivitd morale becomes in Mazzoni’s eyes a measure of his distance from Dante’s literary culture.''- Such a valuation is problematic for a Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 17 number of reasons: it presumes that commentaries are organic and monologic, and it shows little sensitivity to the Comedy’s historicity. Mazzoni tends to view the poem as a static entity, one that presents one timeless, unchanging, and transcendental vision to all readers. Although Mazzoni’s call for a more historical orientation is a wel¬ come change, his method has limitations. His equation of the letter, for example, with il genuino pensiero di Dante is problematic. Maz¬ zoni’s use of the letter tends to privilege one form of engagement with the text. Invariably those commentators whose literary culture seems consistent with that of the letter are accorded a more favorable standing. Although this kind of evaluation provides some insight into the commentators’ deployment of certain aspects of the accessus scheme, it casts no light on other influences. This is exemplified in Mazzoni’s discussion of Jacopo della Lana’s/?roem/o. Lana notes that the poem shows the removal of persons from a state of misery to one of grace—thereby echoing one of the statements in the Epistle to Cangrande. Lana makes this point with another—that one of Dante’s finale cagione in writing the Comedy was to narrate novelle. In Mazzoni’s eyes, Lana’s failure to elaborate on the point from the Epistle signals a lack of comprehension: Lana has not entered into the interpretive spirit of the letter.''^ Little is said of the importance Lana accords to narrating novelle. Mazzoni’s focus on the influence exercised by the Epistle to Cangrande tends to obscure the variety of factors often present in the production of the commentaries. Nevertheless, Mazzoni deserves much of the credit for illustrat¬ ing the different approaches and assumptions that underlie the Tre¬ cento commentators’ reading of the Comedy. Few critics have so keen a sense of the alterity of medieval literature. Mazzoni also clari¬ fied issues pertaining to influence by illustrating Boccaccio’s use of Guido da Pisa’s commentary and the nature of Pietro Alighieri’s polemic with Guido da Pisa. Moreover, he has shown that, far from presenting a homogenous view of the Comedy, commentators from Jacopo Alighieri to Pietro Alighieri display a remarkable range of ap¬ proaches. His summons to a greater historical consciousness is laud¬ able. He rightly emphasizes the importance of viewing commentaries in the light of the sociohistorical conditions and literary conventions that inform them. His work remains a fundamental point of depar¬ ture in studies of the Trecento commentary tradition. Mazzoni’s work reflects a general trend in Italy toward a more 18 Dante in the Renaissance historically informed and philologically based approach to Dante after Croce’s aestheticism. Whereas Croce tended to view as preisto- ria everything that did not contribute to an appreciation of a work’s specifically poetic equalities, subsecquent scholars (questioned the ap plicability of such an approach to the Comedy, a work whose poetics were arguably inseparable from its metaphysical underpinnings. This reaction was an understandable response to Croce s insistent separa¬ tion of the poem from history. In the wake of Croce s intervention subsecquent studies have contributed substantially to an understand¬ ing of the cultural and social forces that shaped Dante’s vision. Our knowledge of Dante’s culture and its dissemination has been greatly enhanced by studies of Dante’s manipulation of classical and ver¬ nacular sources, the influence of scholasticism on the poet s thought, examinations of the early manuscript tradition, investigations into medieval mysticism, and analyses of medieval exegetical procedures. Not surprisingly, such researches are often facilitated or corroborated by information found in the early commentaries. As indispensable as commentaries have proven as a repository of information on the Comedy in the past, scholarly attention has begun to focus on com¬ mentaries as an object of study in their own right. Recent Developments in Scholai'ship on the Commentaries Recently, a wide range of philological activities have contributed much toward a more detailed reading of commentary. This resur¬ gence of interest in commentary has taken a number of forms, new critical editions or reissues of medieval and Renaissance commen¬ taries ( Jacopo Alighieri, Filippo Villani, the Anonimo Lombardo, the Chiose Ambrosiane, Francesco da Buti, and Bernardino Daniello), overviews of particular periods of commentary, surveys of the sources employed by Trecento commentators, investigations of medieval poetics, and examinations of Dante as a commentator to his own work.^^ The most ambitious undertaking is undoubtedly the Dart¬ mouth Dante Project, which will make available through a data base roughly sixty of the poem’s major commentaries. As this range of ac¬ tivity attests, commentary is being explored on a number of levels editorial, rhetorical, historical, and theoretical. One of the most significant contributions is the publication of Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 19 a number of excellent critical editions. Exemplary in this respect is Saverio Bellomo’s edition of Jacopo Alighieri’s Chiose to the In¬ ferno, which meticulously indicates textual variants and provides a thorough account of the manuscript tradition.'*^ Critics have long lamented the absence of reliable editions of the Trecento commen¬ tators. The availability of dependable editions such as Bellomo’s is a vital precondition for further studies. Commentary studies have also been recently enhanced by a number of useful critical overviews, an¬ thologies, and monographs. Carlo Dionisotti’s seminal essay, “Varia fortuna di Dante” (1967), underlines the importance of historical, geographical, and cultural circumstances in any assessment of the poet’s reception. Also noteworthy is Aldo Vallone’s Storia della critica dantesca (1981), which constitutes the first concerted effort to offer an assessment of Dante’s remarkable fortune from the earliest com¬ mentators to the work of contemporary Dante scholars. Such over¬ views are important because they provide the conceptual framework necessary for more specialized studies. Equally important to the conceptual framework is recent work done on medieval poetics. Many of these studies examine the conven¬ tions that governed reading and interpretation in the Middle Ages. One of the most common of these exegetical procedures, allegore- sis, is the subject of a recent volume edited by Michelangelo Picone, which emphasizes allegory as a mode of reading and not simply as a form of symbolic representation.^'^ This volume sheds light on both Dante’s sell-commentary and on the interpretive techniques employed by his first critics. Similarly, a number of detailed inves¬ tigations into the sources employed by Guido da Pisa, the Ottimo commentator, and Pietro Alighieri have yielded new insights into the literary culture of Dante’s first readers. Dante scholars have put commentaries to various uses. Scholars interested in identifying sources for the Comedy have combed the commentaries for echoes and resonances of earlier texts. Trecento commentaries are especially valuable in this activity as they were pro¬ duced by readers who might have shared Dante’s literary culture. The commentaries have also been employed in the adjudication of critical disputes. Scholars who wish to support a particular interpre¬ tation of a passage often cite similar readings from commentaries. Robert Hollander’s careful accumulation of various readings of inter¬ pretive cruxes in the Comedy come to mind; his meticulous sifting of 20 Dante in the Renaissance documentary evidence is exemplary.'*^ Scholars who wish to argue for a particular interpretive method also seek evidence in commentaries. For example, both detractors and adherents of the interpretive proce¬ dure of the Epistle to Cangrande—the fourfold exegetical method— cite early commentaries: sometimes to argue the authenticity of the letter, sometimes to argue that the interpretive method set out by the letter was commonly practiced, and, of course, to argue the converse of these positions. Finally, scholars have used the commentaries to provide information about historical events in the Comedy as well as about the medieval worldview more generally. Critics often consult the earliest commentaries when writing modern commentary. These are all valuable undertakings. Recent work by Alastair Minnis has offered an important concep¬ tual advance in the study of commentary. By treating commentary as a genre Minnis focuses attention on it as an object of study in its own right.'** For Minnis, commentary is a productive mode of medieval criticism that has important ramifications for later periods such as the Renaissance. Minnis’s work bespeaks a more inclusive approach, one that sees commentary as a European phenomenon. Although most of Minnis’s work has focused on commentaries to the Bible and ancient works, a recent anthology that he helped edit includes excerpts from fourteenth-century commentaries on the Comedy. By addressing the larger issue of commentary in general, it provides a revealing perspective on critical treatments of Dante commentators and commentaries. It is in this way that attention to Minnis’s work can be useful: not so much as a model, but as a guide to producing a model suited to the particular requirements and problems of study¬ ing the commentary tradition to the Comedy. Specialized studies on dating, sources, and attribution are important, but they are often carried out in isolation from larger theoretical concerns. These in¬ vestigations would benefit from a more comprehensive view of the range and force of medieval commentary. Most of this recent work has focused on production and represen¬ tation: on what the text, considered from a formal standpoint, means. I believe that we might profitably turn to the related issues of recep¬ tion and influence. Two theorists, one recent and one whose work has recently come to light, serve as cogent reminders of concerns less often addressed in criticism of the commentaries. More attention needs to be paid to other aspects of textuality in Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 21 medieval commentary. Critics have often remarked on the frequent absence of a unifying perspective in the Trecento and Quattrocento commentaries. Such statements, however, tell us more about the pre¬ conceptions of scholars than about the manner in which Dante’s first readers approached the text. Medieval textual meaning is essentially pluralistic; a wide range of voices—theological, philosophical, popu¬ lar, legal, and analytic—are often prominent. What is needed is a way of gauging the social force and ultimately the meaning of these different registers of speech. Bakhtin’s sociohistorical method, which sees all utterances as phenomena marked with their concrete origins and history, is helpful here. For Bakhtin, words have particular in¬ flections—that is, their meanings vary according to their different social environments and historical moments. Each word, for Bakh¬ tin, becomes a locus of competing forces, and criticism must take account of this vital ideological struggle for meaning. Hence a given word or phrase in a commentary is soaked with meaning(s)—some particular to the commentary tradition, some oriented toward a cur¬ rent philosophical question, some imbued with political overtones— and all present to the word at once.'*® This account of language also has a diachronic element. Such concepts as dialogism ultimately lead to a consideration of the dia¬ lectic between a work’s originary moment and its point of reception. Future treatments of the commentaries would also benefit from a consideration of Hans Robert Jauss’s theories of reception, which would do much to promote a more historical understanding of medi¬ eval modes of reading. For Jauss, literary history is formed, at least in part, by previous readings and valuations. The Comedy does not exist in a static world of universal values presenting one unchanging face through time. Jauss’s work on reception stresses the importance of attending to the manner in which a work is successively trans¬ formed and redefined at the hands of various readers or receivers. Because commentaries tend to reflect the sociohistorical and cultural circumstances of their time of composition, they provide an excel¬ lent view of the Comedy’s historicity and its productive potential. Attention to recent studies of medieval exegesis and poetics, Bakh¬ tin’s notion of dialogism, and Jauss’s emphasis on the historicity of a work might slow us down just enough to appreciate the inflections of commentaries—that is, the social function of Dante’s poem at a given time. 22 Dante in the Renaissance Future evaluations of the commentaries must take into consider¬ ation the entire complex of influences that informs medieval and Renaissance commentaries. This kind of analysis can best be achieved through a heightened awareness of the critical tradition that has come to shape our present views. Only through an understanding of our own unconscious formation as critics can we hope to under¬ stand the way in which commentary functions as a genre, as a flex¬ ible, at times creative, response to Dante’s poem. This awareness, in my view, must be accompanied by a self-conscious and self-critical stance if we are to avoid the reification that has accompanied the less reflexive historical criticism of the past. Such caution and deliberation is especially desirable at this mo¬ ment. Criticism of the commentaries, as the foregoing examina¬ tion shows, has approximated a periodic form. The current resur¬ gence of interest, which follows a period of relative inactivity be¬ tween i960 and 1975, resembles the late-nineteenth-century fasci¬ nation with commentary.^® A similar complex of influences and in¬ vestments informs the study of commentary both then and now. Although the parallels are necessarily inexact, there are enough repe¬ titions that a careful consideration of the features of this earlier mo¬ ment can assist in directing studies on commentary today. Forms of patronage, for example, are important to the circulation of commen¬ taries in both moments. Although it is easy to overlook the activities of George and William Vernon as those of amateurs and dilettantes, especially because few would praise the precision or scholarship of the editions they subsidized, this dismissal would be to mistake the effect of the Vernons’ intervention. By reproducing and circulat¬ ing commentaries long unavailable or inaccessible, George Vernon helped amass a kind of scholarly capital on which critics could draw. Today, the National Endowment for the Humanities (neh) has con¬ tributed over half a million dollars to the creation of the Dartmouth Dante Project, and this action is a modern equivalent to the financial backing of figures such as Vernon. I have taken liberties in drawing this analogy, but the effects of the Vernons’ philanthropy and that of the neh’s grants are similar—both are preconditions that enable the diffusion and further study of the commentaries. Parallels between our moment and the end of the nineteenth century can also be found in the kind of projects envisioned. The periodic nature of interest in commentaries is perhaps best seen in Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators 23 the conceptions of massive compilations and distribution of the com¬ mentaries. In the nineteenth century, Adolfo Bartoli conceived of an anthology “che avrebbe dovuto contenere il meglio di tutti gli esposi- tori antichi e moderni (that should contain the best of all the early and modern commentators).” In 1982, Robert Hollander, was “struck by the idea that a computerized database of the commentaries” would alleviate the inadequate holdings of libraries everywhere.^* In broad terms, the Dartmouth Dante Project is the computer counterpart to Bartoli’s and Cionacci’s earlier conceptions. The explosion of information that a data base brings with it re¬ quires careful thought. Ultimately, the Dartmouth Dante Project does not come with instructions for critical use. When we address commands to the data base, we are making, albeit surreptitiously, methodological choices. This aspect needs careful consideration, be¬ cause the particular form in which the project offers commentaries encourages, unconsciously and unintentionally, certain kinds of in¬ terpretation. Its very strengths carry with them certain weaknesses. For example, it is tempting for anyone discussing a given passage to simply call up the information from the commentaries on those lines. This is not, however, a neutral activity: boundaries are being drawn in the very specifications. It is easy, given the wealth of information that appears, to lose oneself in what is basically a formalism and a textualism whose thickness may well serve to insulate the interpreter from other questions. What easily gets occluded by the power of the Dartmouth Dante Project is historical context. Commentaries, like all texts, are social products whose social dimensions are reflected in their physical constitutions.^^ The introduction of this new set of ma¬ terial conditions for the study of commentary must be accompanied by a critical self-consciousness. Put another way, one must be sensitive to the difference in form between manuscripts or books and a data base. This difference marks a drastic change in bibliographic coding. In manuscript or book form, a version or an edition of a commentary reminds us with re¬ lentless particularity that commentary is a social act, that each text is imbued with cultural, social, and historical specificity. The physical form of the version testifies to these conditions. Only by attending to the social and cultural circumstances that conditioned the responses of each commentator can we begin to understand the complex of material presented in them. Although the Dartmouth Dante Project 24 Dante in the Renaissance contains the entirety of the commentaries included in it, in practice, one reads selections from many commentaries. Using the Dartmouth Dante Project as it is designed allows the user to produce a personal text—essentially one’s own book—a highly subjective version that suggests that commentary is one large text, rather than a collection of books. When we avail ourselves of the Olympian overview provided by the data base, it is important to remember that our perspective can mislead us. The Dartmouth Dante Project is a re-presentation of commentary, and it should be handled as such. Using the project is like viewing the ground from a great height, and we must keep in mind that what looks like a number of indistinguishable ants are in fact a number of individual authors. It is only when we have a clear sense of the contents and discontents of a project, of what it fore¬ grounds and what it occludes, of what choices are implicit in the act of constructing a method, that we can begin to use a given critical apparatus effectively. Such considerations, although important, only hint at the meth¬ odological questions that the Dartmouth Dante Project raises. For instance, we have to come to terms with issues of coverage, because it is not reasonable, nor perhaps even possible, to have more than a cur¬ sory familiarity with all the commentaries. We may have to develop reliable sampling techniques in order to map the face of the com¬ mentary tradition. Perhaps cartography can be taken as the leading metaphor for our new relation to the commentaries; they represent a largely unchartered continent, and we need shrewd scholarly strate¬ gies to open up this new world. But unlike Miranda in the Tempest, this world is new to us less out of innocence than because of a sys¬ tematic rethinking of our relation to the past—one that displaces the positivist scholarship of the nineteenth century in favor of a different, and more demanding, hermeneutic. 2 . The Medieval Roots of Commentary in the Renaissance St. Jerome in his Contra Rufinum defines commentary in the follow¬ ing terms: What is the function of commentators.^ They expound the state¬ ments of someone else; they express in simple language views that have been expressed in an obscure manner; they quote the opin¬ ions of many individuals and they say “Some interpret this passage in this sense, others, in another sense”; they attempt to support their own understanding and interpretation with these testimonies in this fashion, so that the prudent reader, after reading the dif¬ ferent interpretations and studying which of these many views are to be accepted and which rejected, will judge for himself which is the more correct; and like an expert money-changer, will reject the falsely minted coin.* One might take, as some critics have, St. Jerome’s words as a neu¬ tral or objective definition of what commentary does. But a look at the circumstances under which St. Jerome writes suggests otherwise. The definition emerges in the context of charges and countercharges made by St. Jerome and Rufinus. Rufinus, in his 399 translation of Ongen’s Periarchon, had claimed to be following St. Jerome’s method. Friends of St. Jerome interpreted Rufinus’s remarks as an attempt to compromise St. Jerome. St. Jerome then translated the Periarchon himself, correcting some of Rufinus’s freer renderings of the text. He then wrote two letters: one a private communication to Rufinus couched in mild and friendly terms, the other a more public and more dismissive performance. His friends suppressed the former and circulated the latter. Rufinus, pressured by these events and others even more threatening, felt compelled to defend himself to the pope and in his Apologia ad Anastasium (400) declared that his method of translation was similar to that of St. Jerome in earlier works.^ Furthermore, he noted that in his Commentary on the Ephe¬ sians St. Jerome had espoused opinions that he now denounced as heretical. It is in his subsequent admission that he had followed the 26 Dante in the Renaissance opinions of Origen, Didymus, and Apollinaris that St. Jerome defines commentary. The job of the commentator, explains St. Jerome, is to clarify the work of another writer by relaying the opinions of other critics. Commentators merely report other authors’ opinions; they do not pronounce judgment on their merit. Moreover, St. Jerome con¬ cludes, it is the reader who must ultimately distinguish what is true from what is false. Hence St. Jerome’s definition is defensive—an essentially interested discourse, an activity in its own right. A comparison with later definitions of commentary makes the legitimative function of St. Jerome’s comments even more clear. Other definitions are far less interested in detailing the role of the reader. Conrad of Hirsau states that “commentators are those who can work out many ideas, beginning with just a few facts and illumi¬ nating the obscure sayings of others.’’^ For St. Bonaventure, a com¬ mentator is someone who “writes the words of other men and also his own, but with those of other men comprising the principal part while his own are annexed merely to make clear the argument.”'' Neither Conrad of Hirsau nor St. Bonaventure mentions the reader: both accord the commentator some kind of interpretive role, albeit a limited one. These rather formulaic accounts provide an index to St. Jerome’s defensive operations: St. Jerome attempts to deflect atten¬ tion from his activity, which he presents as simply one of providing a range of interpretations, to the freedom of the reader to choose among these offerings. St. Jerome’s definition of commentary is stra¬ tegic; it is directed less toward the text than to his audience. The definition says one thing and does another—there is a performative aspect to it. The time, place, and occasion under which statements are made are important, and the meaning of commentary often emerges between texts or between the text and the society in which it is writ¬ ten. Commentary, as the St. Jerome incident exemplifies, is always inflected. The first chapter of this book sought to clarify what Dante schol¬ ars have made of commentary: how they conceived of its relation to the Comedy, what they thought commentators were doing, and what they used commentary for. The second chapter takes up many of the same questions, but with an important difference: where the first chapter spoke of the critical reception of commentary, the sec¬ ond examines the reception of commentary within the tradition ot writing commentary—how Renaissance commentators viewed their Medieval Roots of Commentary 27 predecessors and how they put older techniques and conventions to use. The exegetical procedures of medieval commentary are largely transformed by Renaissance commentators, but the essential differ¬ ence is one of purpose: Trecento commentators worked to establish Dante as an authority; Renaissance commentators, who no longer needed to argue this point, tended to deploy Dante’s authority in a variety of socially inflected ways. The forms of commentary persist, but with different implications. The Genesis of Dante Commentary Dante commentary begins with Dante himself Dante’s self-exegesis assumes a wide variety of forms: he engages in poetic exchanges with other writers like Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia; he recon¬ textualizes his own earlier poems by inserting them into a narrative matrix in the Vita Nuova, by reading them allegorically in the Con- vivio, and by citing them directly in the Comedy, and he classifies the genre of his own work with respect to classical and contempo¬ rary poets in the De vulgari eloquentta. Although the scope of this examination does not allow for an account of Dante’s activities as a commentator to his own works (a large and complex topic that would require more extensive treatment), in tracing the shift from medieval to Renaissance projects it is necessary to mention some of Dante’s more notable interpretive activities and provide a few brief examples of his use of earlier exegetical techniques.^ Dante’s ongoing autoexegesis is most evident in the commentary he provides to the poems in the Vita Nuova and the Convivio. In the prose narrative that accompanies the Vita Nuova'% poems, Dante reports the circumstances underlying the writing of the poems and then analyzes the compositions themselves. His meticulous division of the poems into coherent sections is derived from the scholastic technique of divisio textusl' As Dante informs us in chapter 19 of the Vita Nuova, this division and subdivision of the poems enable the reader to comprehend the work’s meaning more fully.^ Commen¬ tary in the Vita Nuova is presented within a broad framework that includes both the poems themselves and the narrative surrounding them. It is not simply an external apparatus for extracting inten¬ tion; it serves as a heuristic device to clarify and enhance the poet’s 28 Dante in the Renaissance conception of Beatrice. Dante also makes use of a number of time- honored exegetical procedures in the Convivio. As Alastair Minnis has pointed out, the prologue’s investigation of the causes that in¬ hibit man’s natural desire for knowledge is based on an Aristotelian model that had been employed in the exposition of Scripture and ancient texts.* The poet’s debt to earlier critical procedures can also be seen in his allusion to the four levels of scriptural interpretation in his analysis of the line “In exitu Israel de Aegypto” (Psalm 113) in Convivio, II.i.6-7. As the interpretive procedures in these two works testify, Dante reevaluates and recasts his own past work throughout his writings. With the Comedy, Dante does not so much actively engage in the interpretation of his work as invite others to decipher his poem. The poet’s very choice of the Comedy as the title of his work consti¬ tutes an interpretive challenge.® Dante’s Comedy far exceeded tradi¬ tional notions of the genre, which in the Middle Ages was associated with works that began badly but ended happily, dealt with rustic affairs, had a wide stylistic range, and featured characters from soci¬ ety’s lower classes. The Comedy's encyclopedic breadth, its stylistic diversity, and sublime subject matter seemed to transcend existing conceptions of the comic genre. Notwithstanding Dante’s innovative treatment of comedy, the poet was also working within a period known for its highly convention-bound reading practices. Dante was keenly aware of the literary and rhetorical traditions of his time—he himself wrote a rhetorical treatise. “Thus, even though Dante was almost certainly employing the term comedia in a new and uncon¬ ventional manner,” writes Zygmunt Barahski, “this does not mean that he wanted his readers, trained in the ways of the accessus, to ignore his titulus'.' Hence the Comedy did not appear on the liter¬ ary horizon as a sudden and unprecedented phenomenon. Although revolutionary in many respects, the poem also recalled aspects of other works—the Bible in its use of different stylistic registers and its universalism, Virgil’s Aeneid in its presentation of Hell, and St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum in its account of a spiritual pilgrimage to God—to name but a few notable literary and patristic models. The Comedy did not appear in “an informational vacuum, but predisposes its audience to a very specific kind of reception by announcements, overt and covert signals, familiar characteristics, or Medieval Roots of Commentary 29 implicit allusions.”" Thus, although the poem presented numerous interpretive challenges—in its choice of title, its selection of Italian over Latin, its insertion of contemporary historical figures into an epic genre, its plurilingualism, and its treatment of pagans, it did so within a framework that was recognizable to its first readers. The Comedy evokes the “horizon of expectations” of genre, style, and form yet amplifies and redefines them. Dante expected his readers to encounter difficulties in the interpretation of his great poem. Indeed his addresses to the reader in the Comedy emphasize the importance of penetrating the letter of his text. This challenge to provide commentary did not go unanswered. Within twenty years after Dante’s death in 1321, there appeared eight commentaries on the Comedy. To date there is little consen¬ sus concerning their chronology or the dependencies among them. Moreover, the identity of some of their authors has yet to be deter¬ mined. Among these works are Jacopo Alighieri’s Chiose to the In¬ ferno (1322), written in Italian; the Anonimo Lombardo’s incomplete Latin commentary (1322-25); Graziolo Bambaglioli’s Latin gloss to the Inferno (1324); Jacopo della Lana’s commentary in Italian, the first to cover all three canticles (1324-28); the Ottimo commento, also written in Italian, commonly believed to have been written by the Florentine notary Andrea Lancia (first version, 1329); Pietro Ali¬ ghieri’s Latin commentary (first version, 1340); Guido da Pisa’s Latin commentary to the Inferno (dated as early as 1321-22 by some, as late as 1333 by others); and the anonymous Chiose Selmiani in Italian, so called after their editor (dated by some as 1325, by others as 1337)." In addition to these commentaries, sets of individual glosses, para¬ phrases, poetic imitations, marginal annotations, and summaries ap¬ peared. Moreover the Comedy also lent itself to various forms of social and cultural appropriation. As Vittorio Rossi points out, the poem appealed to a wide range of audiences; students studied it in grammar schools and universities throughout northern Italy; men and women of all classes heard lectures on the Comedy in places as diverse as the church and the marketplace." The poem had an enormous impact on many levels of society. This response to a vernacular text was unprecedented. The appli¬ cation of a critical idiom that had been employed in the interpretation of Scripture and classical texts represents a remarkable conceptual 30 Dante in the Renaissance shift. In extending to the Comedy the theoretical procedures that had been applied to sacred and ancient texts, commentators conferred on this contemporary work a status previously accorded only the established canon of auctores}‘‘ The Dijfering Projects of Medieval and Renaissance Commentary In tracing the shift from medieval to Renaissance commentaries, it is appropriate here to recall briefly the impact of the poem on its earliest audiences—a reception marked by sharp disputes about the nature of Dante’s achievement. Dante’s eventual position as an au¬ thority was by no means automatic; it was the result of a gradual pro¬ cess of legitimation. The initial response to the Comedy was far from uniform; the poem was considered controversial in many respects. In 1319, two years before Dante’s death, Giovanni del Virgilio, a noted professor and commentator of classics at the University of Bologna, expressed misgivings typical of later commentators. Although Gio¬ vanni had great admiration for the Comedy —he had invited Dante to come to Bologna to receive the laurel crown—he questioned the decision to cast such profound matters in the vernacular. Giovanni was but the first in a long line of scholars to express such reserva¬ tions. His contemporaries objected to the universal accessibility that Italian— sermo forensis —afforded.'^ Dante’s first readers also objected to his treatment of historical figures. On the one hand the poet’s ruthless exposure of his con¬ temporaries and near contemporaries in the Comedy infuriated their relatives. But Dante’s references to real men and women in the Com¬ edy also presented a considerable interpretive challenge to his first critics. Subsequent scholars of the commentary tradition have often lamented the scanty, error-ridden information provided by the earli¬ est commentators on contemporary events and people. The dearth of reliable information, however, is in part attributable to the absence of secondary material on these matters. Unlike the wealth of material available on mythological figures and on Roman history, there were no compilations, encyclopedias, or commentaries to help identify fig¬ ures such as Ciacco or Belacqua. Explanation of contemporary events did not improve significantly until the chronicles of Dino Compagni Medieval Roots of Commentary 31 and Giovanni Villani became widely available. Other commentators preferred to avoid problems of reference to contemporaries by an eva¬ sive treatment of these figures. They seem to indicate their dismay or disapproval by simply denying the historical reality of the people to whom Dante refers. For Jacopo Alighieri, Guido da Pisa, and Jacopo della Lana, they are not so much historical personages as exempla of vices and virtues. The insertion of contemporary men and women into the Comedy was not the only aspect of the poem that elicited anxiety or outright hostility. The personal rancor of families incensed over the place¬ ment of their ancestors in Hell pales in comparison to the outrage generated by some of Dante’s political and religious views. In 1329 the Cardinal Bertrando del Poggetto ordered the Monarchia to be burned publicly in Bologna — a ban that was not lifted until 1881. Two years earlier, the Dominican friar Guido Vernani had writ¬ ten a condemnation of the political treatise titled De reprobatione Monarchiae (1327). At the heart of this censure of the Monarchia was Dante’s condemnation of ecclesiastical interference in temporal rule. The Comedy, by extension, was also implicated, because passages like Marco Lombardo’s account of the power of the two suns — repre¬ senting the empire and the papacy — extol the same view {Purgatorio 16.106-9). Such novelties—Dante’s use of the vernacular, his treatment of historical and contemporary figures, and his apparent doctrinal lapses — shape the project of commentary for the earliest commentators. Trecento commentators tend to speak of the Comedy as fixed, as a polestar by which to chart the position of contemporary culture and thought. But their defensive critical practice often belies this con¬ cept of a timeless, authoritative, universal Dante. Such a contradic¬ tion shows the force of their desire — their wish to make the poem authoritative. We can trace the obstacles presented by the Comedy in Graziolo Bambaglioli’s commentary, which was written in the midst of the initial controversy surrounding Dante’s poem. Bologna’s rich intel¬ lectual climate harbored both the Comedy's earliest supporters and its first detractors. Graziolo’s commentary was composed at roughly the same time that Cecco d’Ascoli, a professor of astrology, was launch¬ ing his attacks on the Comedy. In his lectures at the University of Bologna, Cecco is likely to have denounced Dante in terms similar 32 Dante in the Renaissance to those of the Acerba, in which he criticized the poet’s treatment of nobility, fortune, and astral influences.*^ Critics have interpreted Graziolo’s defense of Dante’s treatment of these issues as a response to Cecco. Graziolo’s work, in turn, was subjected to the correction of Vernani’s De reprobatione Monarchiae. Dedicated to Graziolo, it was clearly intended as a warning that he desist from any further promotion of the Comedy. Graziolo’s concern over the ecclesiastical censure that had fallen on the poem is evident in his gloss to two episodes: Dante’s discus¬ sion of Fortune {Inferno 7.67-96) and Piero della Vigne’s claim that the bodies of the suicides are not to be reunited with their souls after the Day of Judgment {Inferno 13.103-108). In detailing the ultimate fate of the suicides, Piero reveals Come I’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, ma non pero ch’alcuna sen rivesta, che non e giusto aver cio ch’om si toglie. Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi, ciascuno al prun de I’ombra sua molesta. Like other souls, we shall seek out the flesh that we have left, but none of us shall wear it; it is not right for any man to have what he himself has cast aside. We’ll drag our bodies here; they’ll hang in this sad wood, each on the stump of its vindictive shade. Both passages elicit a defense of Dante’s orthodoxy. Significantly, Graziolo’s remarks are less a response to or clarification of what is in the poem than a response to existing criticisms of the Comedy. his remarks address the horizon of expectations as he currently sees it, not so much the text itself.'^ In his discussion of the workings of Fortune, for example, he emphasizes that Dante’s treatment does not conflict with the doctrine of free will. Graziolo’s defense of the poet often echoes the language of the poet’s detractors on this point. Such criticisms are carefully countered with arguments culled from several patristic and classical authorities. Similarly, Graziolo stresses Dante’s conformity with Church doctrine in his gloss on the ulti¬ mate fate of the suicides: “Credo tamen auctorem prefatum tanquam fidelem cattolicum et omni prudentia et scientia clarum suo tenuisse Medieval Roots of Commentary 33 iudicio quod ecclesiastica tenet videlicet (Nevertheless I believe the aforementioned author to be a faithful Catholic and to have held evident that which the Church maintains with prudence and knowl¬ edge).” This episode, adds Graziolo, is not to be taken literally— rather Dante is seeking to emphasize the moral repercussions of sui¬ cide. Some ten years later, Graziolo’s defense of Dante was dismissed as unnecessary by the Ottimo commentator. Whereas Graziolo had read the fate of the suicides didactically, Ottimo is more interested in the poetic effect of Dante’s presentation. Moreover, Ottimo con¬ siders Dante’s orthodoxy unimpeachable. It is inconceivable, writes the Ottimo commentator, that Dante, “uomo di si alto intelletto,” could be ignorant of the Church’s position on resurrection, a doctrine that “ogni fanciullo, e vecchierella sa per lo frequente cantare” (every child and little old woman knows through their frequent chanting of it) ” 19 Ottimo commentator’s correction of Graziolo’s defensive tendency suggests that Graziolo and others who proclaimed Dante’s orthodoxy were winning the battle for the meaning of the poem; the horizon of expectations was changing. Both Graziolo’s and Ottimo’s treatments of these passages are marked by their insistence on the orthodoxy of Dante’s views. The poet’s authority is never directly impugned. Calling into question Dante’s opinions would have been counterproductive to their efforts to make the poem authoritative. To this end they defend the poet in a variety of ways—by listing relevant authorities, by reading a perceived controversial passage allegorically, or by simply asserting vigorously Dante’s adherence to Church doctrine. But by the turn of the fourteenth century this kind of defensive gesture is becoming superfluous. The interpretive project has changed. Renaissance com¬ mentators do not feel obliged to defend Dante from the same charges or to defend his claims so dogmatically. They can simply disagree with the text: Trifone Gabriele, for example, bluntly declares that Dante ebbe gran torto in damning Brutus and Cassius. This does not mean that there are no longer interpretive anxieties, but that the focus of these anxieties has changed. The concern is no longer how to make the poem authoritative, but how to use this authoritative text, how to make Dante’s poem persuasive to a different culture. In a sense the sales pitch is over—the question now is how to convince consumers of the enduring quality of the product. 34 Dante in the Renaissance Between the acquiescence of Graziolo and the Ottimo commen¬ tator and Gabriele’s magisterial dismissal lies a middle ground in which commentators negotiate the relation between the poem and their society. A glance at Benvenuto’s commentary (first version, 1375) reveals this more open attitude toward Dante’s authority. Here we can see the malleability of commentary as a form under the pres¬ sure of institutional investments. Benvenuto wrote his commentary at the court of Niccolo II d’Este. As he operates between medi¬ eval and Renaissance formations, his commentary is an early record of the increasing flexibility of the form. Dante’s systematic denun¬ ciations of the Este pose a particular problem for Benvenuto. For example, in Purgatorio 8.73-81, Nino Visconti bitterly laments the second marriage of his wife, Beatrice, daughter of Obizzo II d’Este, to Galeazzo Visconti. Nino’s disillusion gives way to a denunciation of the fickleness of women; Per lei assai di lieve si comprende quanto in femmina foco d’amor dura se I’occhio o ’1 tatto spesso non I’accende Through her, one understands so easily how brief, in woman, is love’s fire—when not rekindled frequently by eye or touch {Purgatorio 8.76-78) Benvenuto seeks to allay Dante’s condemnation of Beatrice’s charac¬ ter through a variety of arguments. Benvenuto declares that Dante is addressing the vanam curam of those men who ex nimio amore, quern habent ad uxores, a quibus videntur diligi in vita, solliciti sunt quid acturae sint post mortem eorum, et vel- lent eis praescribere legem ne transirent ad secunda vota, cum tamen possint dici satis felices si in vita servetur par debitum, aequalis amor, et mutua fides coniugii. out of too much love for their wives, by whom they seemed to have been loved in life, are disturbed about what they might do after their death. Although they might be said to have been happy enough if in life the conjugal debt was met, an equal love was maintained, and mutual faith was kept, they wish to restrain them lest they assume a second vow.-° Medieval Roots of Commentary 35 Although many commentators, both before and after Benvenuto, find Nino Visconti’s dritto zelo {Purgatorio 8.83) a righteous indigna¬ tion, Benvenuto suggests that Dante has been too harsh on Beatrice. He adduces a number of extenuating circumstances for her remar¬ riage. Although praising the old Roman custom of a templum pudici- tiae, according to which women who did not remarry after the death of their husbands were honored, he asserts that such restrictions no longer apply: “sed certe venit lex nova quae dicit: mulier soluta lege viri, quotiens vult nubat in Domino (but certainly a new law has come about which states: a woman having been freed from the bonds of marriage might wed in the Lord as many times as she wishes).” Benvenuto defends Beatrice further by asking: “Ista nobilis domina, quid debebat facere vidua, quae erat juvenis et formosa, et sine filiis masculis.^ Et quomodo potuisset etiam si voluisset contradicere mar- chioni frati suo potentissimo.? (Such a noble woman, w'hy ought she remain a widow, since she was so young and beautiful, and without male children? And how would she be able, even if she wished, to contradict the very powerful Marquis, her brother?).”^' In Benve¬ nuto’s eyes, there is no reason why Beatrice could not have remarried: the Church sanctions remarriage, she was young and beautiful, she had no male heirs, and she was obliged to follow the wishes of her brother, Azzo VIII. Against Dante’s negative presentation, Benve¬ nuto provides a more sympathetic and positive portrait of Beatrice. In pointing to the lex nova that allows a woman to remarry, Benve¬ nuto has effectively revised Dante’s judgment of Beatrice. There is no anxiety to Benvenuto’s modification of Dante’s pre¬ sentation. Unlike Graziolo and the Ottimo commentator, Benvenuto does not feel compelled to defend the poet. His more open attitude toward the poet’s authority reflects a different interpretive project. Dante’s authority has been established; the task is now to fit the Comedy to the sensibilities and needs of a particular audience—the Este court—which, understandably, would not have been well dis¬ posed to seeing one of their ancestors provide the occasion for an attack on the fidelity of all women. Hence the commentary tradition affords us an exemplary glimpse of the mutually informing relation between the Comedy and the horizon of expectations of successive cultural formations. 36 Dante in the Renaissance The Redefinition of Formal Features and Interpretive Techniques One might expect great formal disruption to accompany the shift from medieval to Renaissance projects of commentary. But if com¬ mentary is, as the pioneering studies of scholars such as Beryl Smalley, J. B. Allen, and, more recently, Alastair Minnis have argued, a genre in its own right, it is a genre with remarkable flexibility. Most of the features of Trecento commentary are available to the Renaissance commentators, who put them to use in ways that essentially change the force of each technique or practice. The form persists, but its effect has been redefined. The shift in the project of commentary was in many ways echoed by a shift in institutional alliances; once Dante’s poem had authoritative status commentaries tended to address more local and specific issues. This section takes up three features of Trecento commentary the accessus, digressions, and allegory—and follows them through the Renaissance. I have chosen these three because they are among the most prominent features of commentary and because they best show the plasticity of the genre under the pressure of historical change. It is appropriate to recall here the features of medieval commen¬ tary. From the twelfth century on, commentaries to the Bible, to classical works, and to patristic authors such as St. Augustine were generally preceded by an introductory prologue (ficcessus ad auctoiesi that identified the work’s formal interpretive procedures. Scholastic prologues typically explained the author s intention (intentio auctoi ts\ the work’s title {titulus), its stylistic and didactic mode of procedure (modus agendi or modus tractandi), its subject matter (mate)la), the branch of learning to which it belonged (cui parti philosophiae sup- ponitur), its arrangement (ordo), and its moral worth (utilitas)P The majority of the earliest Dante commentators outline their prologues in accordance with this common scheme.^^ Through this apparatus, medieval commentators strove to elucidate the structure and content of a work. The accessus was followed by an exposition that tended to con¬ sist of a line-by-line analysis—at times, a word-by-word explication. This method, derived from late classical commentaries such as that of Servius to Virgil, continued up to the Renaissance. Commenta¬ tors typically sought to clarify the literal meaning of a text through Medieval Roots of Commentary 37 paraphrase, to annotate references to pagan myth and Roman his¬ tory, to explain the etymology of words, and to point out the use of rhetorical figures. These explications were generally accompanied by citations from biblical and classical authorities. Occasionally, expo¬ sitions would turn into long digressions, many of which had only a peripheral relation to the subject of the text. References to mytho¬ logical figures and ancient history in particular tended to elicit long explications, the general objective of which was the illustration of an exemplum. The shift from medieval to Renaissance cultural formations is codified by a significant structural change: where Trecento commen¬ tators tended to use a prologue modeled on those of medieval bibli¬ cal and classical commentaries. Renaissance commentators use their proemi to situate their works in terms of a variety of attachments. From Jacopo Alighieri to Boccaccio, commentators tend to confine their prologues to answering the six questions typical of the accessus scheme concerning the Comedy s subject, authorship, form, purpose, title, and the branch of philosophy to which it belongs. Although the prologues vary in length and emphasize different issues, they tend to be consistent in their expository procedures. By the end of the Trecento, however, prologues to the Comedy increasingly encompass a wide range of local issues that are more social. The tendency in the Renaissance is toward greater specificity and greater inflection in these framing devices. As with other transitions from medieval to Renaissance commen¬ tary, we can best trace the beginnings of the changes in the prologue’s format with Benvenuto. Benvenuto begins his proemio with a six-line poem dedicated to Niccolo II d Este. The effect of patronage on the writing of his commentary is immediately evident; roughly a third of the prologue is devoted to an encomium of the Este. The cele¬ bration of the family is followed by a carmina in laudem poetae and a long praise of Dante’s remarkable achievement. Only after these first two sections does Benvenuto turn to the usual six questions covered in the accessus. Moreover, even in following the interpretive proce¬ dures of his predecessors, Benvenuto’s discussion of Dante’s style is considerably more complex and sophisticated. The most spectacular example of the incorporation of the local and particular in Renaissance commentary, however, is Landino’s proemio, which, in Roberto Cardini’s edition, covers sixty-four 38 Dante in the Renaissance pages. After declaring his intention in the first two pages to expli¬ cate Dante da piu alto principio, Landino furnishes, in succession, an “Apologia nella quale si difende Dante e Florenzia da’ falsi calun- niatori”; ample evidence of Florentine’s excellence in dottrina, elo- quenzia, musica, pittura e scultura, lus civile, and mercatura, a Vita e costumi del Poeta”; and three discussions delineating the Neopla¬ tonic bas-is of poetry: “Che cosa sia poesia e poeta e della origine sua divina e antichissima,” “Furore divino, and Che 1 origine de poeti sia antica.” These sections are followed by a letter written in Latin by Marsilio Ficino proclaiming Dante’s triumphant return to Florence and the merits of Landino’s commentary. The proemio ends with a description of the “Sito, forma, e misura dello ’nferno e statura de giganti e di Lucifero.”^'' As these titles testify, L&nd'mo’s proemio is an unabashed celebration of Florentine nationalism and Neoplatonism. Landino’s presentation of the poem as expression of Florentine cul¬ ture seemed persuasive: the commentary acquired almost as much renown in the Renaissance as the poem it seeks to explicate. Although no subsequent commentator surpasses Landino’s gran¬ diloquent opening gesture, many do follow his use of the proemio to voice more local and personal opinions. Alessandro Vellutello, for example, makes a number of pointed statements in the first part of \\\s proemio (1544). Some of his remarks are barely disguised attacks on earlier commentators and editors. He is skeptical, for example, of commentators who in his eyes are overzealous in their pursuit of the Comedy's, allegorical significance. Vellutello’s most severe criti¬ cisms are directed at “moderni impressi a stampa incorettissimi, e sopra tutti quello impresso e stampato da Aldo Manucci. Other criticisms include Vellutello s observation that Landino had added nothing to Benvenuto’s exposition and his derision of those ignoranti whose idea of a scholar is someone who lives a life oi otium secluded from others. 2 ^ -phe latter remark is likely directed at Pietro Bembo’s circle, which included his friend Trifone Gabriele, a noble Venetian who gave lectures on the classics and contemporary works to a small group of devotees in his country villas. Two other striking features of Vellutello’s proemio are the finely executed engravings of each circle of Hell, accompanied by a brief description of their inhabitants and their punishments, and an exhaustive delineation of Hell s topog¬ raphy. Landino, Gabriele, and Daniello display a similar interest in specifying Hell’s topographical features, a preoccupation that clearly Medieval Roots of Commentary 39 reflects the growing interest in cartography and exploration in the Renaissance. Hence the proemio becomes an open forum for a wide variety of debates. It affords a freedom for the commentator that is indispensible in the highly inflected world of Renaissance literary politics. Much of the work that has been done on medieval commentary to date has focused on the prologues. This introductory apparatus, as the recent work of Alastair Minnis has shown, constitutes an im¬ portant repository of medieval ideas of authority and authorship. Less attention, however, has been devoted to the body of commen¬ tary itself and the mode of interpretation therein. The accessus is unquestionably an important document: it is this apparatus that pro¬ vides the most succinct overview of a commentator’s conception of the work and his interpretive procedures. Nevertheless, the acces¬ sus constitutes only a small portion of a commentary, and there are good reasons to be cautious about presuming a continuity between it and the commentary that follows.^^ The critical practice of focus¬ ing on the accessus suggests that the rest of the commentary is of a piece. Yet the very form of explication in the commentary—a line- by-line analysis—leads to a fragmented, topical response to the poem that is very different from the more unified conception of commen¬ tary projected by the accessus. The medieval prologue, by taking up issues of intention, of subject matter, of interpretive technique, or of philosophical concerns tends to project a static, timeless vision of the Comedy's agency. Although loosely bound by the prologues’ discus¬ sions of method and purpose, commentary increasingly works in a more time-bound arena, one soaked by social considerations and by the historical moment. Hence the static vision of the prologue gives way to the more worldly, more mutable contingencies of the act of interpretation itself. By the end of the Trecento, this increased degree of inflection begins to affect the proemio, and the entire commentary becomes more richly nuanced. Essentially, the body of commentary, the tradition-bound practical criticism, tends to counter, or at least exceed, the more theoretical claims of the medieval accessus. Often traditional features of the body of commentary provide subtle resistances to the critical principles set out in various prefa¬ tory materials. One of the most common features of commentary is its cumulative nature, the way in which individual expositions tend to conserve traces of readings and interpretive procedures that have 40 Dante in the Renaissance been developed over time. Because each new commentary contains substantial portions of earlier readings, it often furnishes a record of previous rewritings and reauthorizations of Dante s poem. But the practice of recording various opinions—St. Jerome’s comment that “some interpret the passage in this sense, others, in another pro¬ vides more than a historical record for later critics; such a continuous aggregation of opinion functions as a kind of collective memory from which they can draw old readings or interpretive procedures and em¬ ploy them in constructing new interpretations. On the one hand, this practice produces numbing repetitions, but it also lays the founda¬ tion for the generation of new readings. Moreover, it often serves to legitimate them. Subsequent commentators can incorporate, modify, reject, or elaborate the readings of their predecessors. Like the ongoing accumulation of opinion, the commentary tra¬ dition’s tolerance of digression makes for a particularly open form of exegesis. The critic’s audience, notes Anthony Grafton, “expected him to turn any suitable word or phrase into the occasion for an ex¬ tended digression: into the etymology of a word, into the formation of compounds from it, into its shades of meaning.” This form of presentation produces a centrifugal effect: each time commentators expatiate on a word or allusion, they inevitably shift the focus from the work to the subject of the digression. We can trace this tendency in Boccaccio’s commentary.^® One of the most distinctive features of Boccaccio’s commentary is its eclecticism. His glosses are noted for their dramatic shifts in tone and style. Boccaccio shuttles from illus¬ trating Dante’s use of rhetorical figures, to expounding moral points, to developing arcane points of learning, to telling stories. This last feature constitutes one of the most engaging aspects of Boccaccio’s commentary. He seldom fails to turn a reference to myth, ancient his¬ tory, or contemporary figures into a spirited story. Two of the more famous examples of Boccaccio’s spirited narrations center on the fig¬ ures of Ciacco and Filippo Argenti.'” At times, one story gives rise to another. For example, in his discussion of Spurima, a handsome Roman, Boccaccio passes from a description of the youth’s disregard for his beauty to a derision of the foppery of contemporary Florentine dandies.^' Boccaccio’s commentary exhibits—spectacularly the centrifu¬ gal effects of digression. His narrative facility accentuates this ten¬ dency. Generally, Boccaccio’s narrations are triggered by allusions to Medieval Roots of Commentary 41 classical myths and ancient history. Guido da Pisa, Graziolo, Lana, the Ottimo commentator, and Boccaccio all tend to recapitulate myths at great length as they assumed that their audiences were un¬ familiar with these matters. In most cases, commentators’ retellings reflect standard versions found in medieval compilations. Lana and Boccaccio, however, occasionally embroider their summaries with fanciful details.^^ Lana, for example, reports in his discussion of Achilles {Inferno 5.65-66: “... e vedi ’1 grande Achille, che con amore al fine combatteo”) that Thetis locked the Greek hero in a convent (not the court of King Lycomedes) in order to prevent his partici¬ pation in the Trojan War. Although Lana’s summaries of myths are often aimed at illustrating an exemplum, in many instances the com¬ mentator seems less interested in didacticism than in telling a story for its own sake. Lana clearly finds the narrative potential of Dante’s allusions to classical literature irresistible, and he seizes on these op¬ portunities for elaboration.^^ Dante’s references to contemporary figures and customs also spark a number of entertaining narratives. Lana recounts anecdotes on Frederick II, Ezzolino da Romano, Obizzo II d’Este, and Brunetto Latini. One of Lana’s more entertaining stories occurs in a discussion of the ciance of modern preachers {Paradiso 29.109-11). In this pas¬ sage, Dante compares Christ’s practices to those of later preachers; Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento “Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance”; ma diede lor verace fondamento Christ did not say to his first company: “Go, and preach idle stories to the world”; but he gave them the teaching that is truth. Lana suddenly interrupts a lengthy scholastic disquisition on angelic intelligences in order to provide two examples of the quips with which contemporary clerics regale their audiences.^^ Similarly, the Ottimo commentator provides some anecdotes on Dante himself. In his gloss to the line “tal orazion fa far nel nostro tempio” {Inferno 10.87), Ottimo (the only one of the early commentators to claim a personal acquaintance with the poet) reports that Dante told him that his word choice was never dictated by reasons of rhyme.^^ Many critics have remarked on the style of these narrations. Lana’s fanciful treatments of myths, observes Karl Witte, possess “a comic 42 Dante in the Renaissance charm of [their] own.” For Witte, Lana’s narrative style is “naive, unembarrassed, pure,” contrasting dramatically with the clumsy, semi-latinised” tone of his scholastic, doctrinal expositions. Similarly, Francesco Mazzoni observes that Graziolo’s gloss seems to come alive in his interest “per la favola, la bella veste.” In the same vein, Aldo Vallone refers to the Anonimo Fiorentino’s (c. \/\oo) gusto del narrare}^ Generally the commentators’ style in recounting popular anecdotes is uninhibited and animated. The lively style of their story telling contrasts distinctly with the often arid discourse of medieval scholasticism, in which the doctrinal expositions seem little more than a routine transfer of philosophical and theological material to commentary of Dante. Consequently, commentary, as a genre, at times appears to be bursting within its seams, to be a structure that cannot help burgeoning into story, a form constantly transgressing the laws set out by its analytic aims. The interplay of narrative and analysis is constant, and the discursive styles contrast vividly with one another. Other forms of digression are less entertaining than narration, but they, too, merit critical attention. In expounding the Comedy, com¬ mentators often make a kind of Lucretian swerve into morahsm. Virtually all the early fourteenth-century commentators provide long moral illustrations. Both the Ottimo commentator and Guido da Pisa, for example, dwell on Dante’s allusions to different sins. Guido da Pisa’s treatment of gluttony, sloth, and envy is so comprehensive that it constitutes itself a small summa vitiorumF However, that the tendency to moralize is ubiquitous—almost a cliche should not disguise the fact that it is nevertheless a form of digression. Readers of these commentaries are still confronted with an analytic, critical structure, one that is intent on dividing, classifying, and producing a taxonomy of the Comedy, which is in a kind of tension with various forms of digression. Perhaps the pervasiveness of digression in these texts is best seen as a symptom of another prominent feature—the urge toward en- cyclopedism. Recent studies of the sources employed by the Ottimo commentator, Guido da Pisa, and Pietro Alighieri provide a reveal¬ ing glimpse into their exegetical procedures.^* The length of many moral illustrations and recapitulations of classical myths reflects both the influence of medieval rhetorical treatises, which often recom¬ mended amplification of a subject, and the compilational nature of Medieval Roots of Commentary 43 the sources employed by the commentators. Dante’s first readers typi¬ cally derived their remarks on Roman history, on classical allusions, and on scientific and philosophical—even patristic—matters from medieval Xexxcons,florilegia, vulgarizations, and commentaries. This reliance on compilations accounts for the similarities between glosses and commentators’ encyclopedic processing of information and, by extension, the pervasiveness of digression in these texts: commenta¬ tors tended to repeat what they found in their sources.^^ The commentary tradition’s tolerance for digression and penchant for encyclopedic aggregation afford a crucial flexibility to the genre. These features ultimately play an important role in enabling the transition from medieval to Renaissance commentary. They largely buffer the changes and readjustments that take place, giving the im¬ pression of a comfortable conservatism. Digression and encyclopedic collection of material provide a space for the development of new readings and techniques, an internal frontier to be exploited by sub¬ sequent commentators. In addition to redefining certain formal features, the shift from medieval to Renaissance commentary reorients interpretive tech¬ niques. The explication of the Comedy's allegorical significance re¬ mains unchanged on the methodological level, but its effect can vary considerably. The majority of the earliest commentators shared a deep interest in the moral dimension of the poem. Virtually all the early commentators grapple with the relation between the Comedy's literal and allegorical meanings. In this respect, they share a belief that interpretations of the poem should not be confined to relaying the Comedy's literal meaning. Yet their commitments to polysemy vary. Although nearly all the Trecento commentators refer to the four levels of exegetical interpretation in their prologues, in practice, they tend to confine themselves to pointing out the poem’s moral significance. The commentators differ widely in the extent to which each seeks to uncover other levels of allegorical meaning. The first two commentaries, those of Jacopo Alighieri and Gra- ziolo Bambaglioh, present the extremes of these two positions. The former is marked by the author’s proposal of an allegorical corre¬ spondence for every detail; the latter provides a predominantly literal focus. For Dante’s son Jacopo, the Comedy is a meditation on the three moral states of man. Dante’s object, writes Jacopo, “e di dimos- trare di sotto allegorico colore le tre quahtadi dell’umana generazione 44 Dante in the Renaissance (to show in allegorical form the three qualities of human kind).”'’'’ His analysis consists primarily in illustrating universal, timeless moral truths. Jacopo sees the souls who populate the landscape of the In¬ ferno as little more than abstract personifications of the various sins. His overriding interest in allegory is evident from his exposition of the first canto, in which he presents Dante’s sleep as the obscurity of ignorance, the valley as the baseness of this ignorance, and the sun as the clarity of truth. In contrast, Graziolo’s explication of the poem’s allegorical mean¬ ing is largely confined to his analysis of the first two cantos. Moreover, Graziolo recognizes a more personal dimension to Dante’s predica¬ ment at the beginning. Dante is presented not only as the Comedy s author, but also as its agens, its active protagonist. Graziolo conse¬ quently differs from Jacopo in his treatment of the poem’s allusions to historical events. He provides details on these matters in order to facilitate his readers’ understanding of them. The fact that Graziolo furnishes such information, in addition to suggesting that he does not expect an automatic familiarity on the part of his contempo¬ raries with these occurrences, testifies to his sensitivity to the poem s historical dimension. Subsequent discussions of the poem s allegori¬ cal significance fall between the extremes marked by Jacopo and Graziolo. The explication of the poem’s literal and allegorical significance is further refined by Guido da Pisa, who is the first commentator to explore the two meanings under separate categories. Guido’s discus¬ sion of each canto is divided into four sections beginning with a brief introduction. This exposition is followed by a Latin paraphrase of the canto (“deductio textus de vulgari in latinum”), a discussion of its literal and allegorical (but primarily the latter) meaning, and a list of each canto’s comparationes, notabilia, and similes."*' The separation of the poem’s literal meaning from its allegorical significance consti¬ tutes Guido’s most notable formal modification of the commentary tradition to the Comedy. The incorporation of this procedure by both Pietro Alighieri and Boccaccio suggests that, by the middle of the Trecento, commentators had started to pursue the poem s allegories more systematically. This codification of allegory is notable. Whereas Jacopo and Gra¬ ziolo offer largely allegorical or literal readings, Guido includes both Medieval Roots of Commentary 45 positions in his commentary. Allegory is an option m Guido’s text, not something to be embraced or excluded out of hand. The striking difference between allegorical and literal readings has been incorpo¬ rated into commentary more generally. Hence two widely varying attitudes to the text are included in the tradition: the literal approach, which would be sensitive to historical fact, to issues of style, to the clarification of meaning, and the allegorical approach, which largely erases this surface in its progress to another level of meaning. The possibilities of such a displacement of the literal are not lost on later commentators, notably Landino, who often uses allegory to provide opportunities for Neoplatonic speculation. For a commentator inter¬ ested in the social agency of the Comedy, such a tool is invaluable. Toward a Dynamic Theory of Commentary Despite the pervasiveness of digression, however, critics have tended to dismiss this feature of medieval commentary in favor of the alle¬ gorical or doctrinal sections. For those who presume that a commen¬ tary should be organic or unified, digression constitutes a kind of vio¬ lation. The bias toward organicism is obvious in many assessments: Graziolo lacks una vista d insieme” (Cavallari), “un’organica strut- tura (Mazzoni); Jacopo della Lana’s long narrations of myths show him “allontanandosi dal piano prestabilito” (Rocca); the Ottimo com¬ mentator is unable to “armonizzare in un tutto organico” his various sources (Rocca); Benvenuto’s fabulation, “se pur piacevole ai con- temporanei dello scrittore, non puo piacere a noi” (La Favia).^^ Such assessments display little sensitivity to the tradition of digression in medieval commentaries, which has a long history dating back to Greek scholta^^ Servius’s commentary to Virgil, one of the most in¬ fluential models for commentary in the Middle Ages and the Renais¬ sance, abounds with digressions on a wide range of topics. Modern critics need to come to terms with the ubiquitous pairing of analysis and digression. Given that these are common responses, we need to accept them as valid and rephrase the question we ask about com¬ mentary. Instead of a dismissive, rhetorical Why is this here? we need to ask the same question literally, knowing that these digressions are part and parcel of what it meant for these readers to explicate the 46 Dante in the Renaissance Comedy. There is a tension between the taxonomic, analytical side of commentary and its digressive aspects that should be viewed as productive. The tendency to dismiss digression has resulted in a somewhat narrow view of these works, one that tends to define their content in terms of commentators’ espousal of allegory and doctrine. This focus on the more analytic component of these works tends to homogenize the variety of discourses present in commentaries. Such a disposi¬ tion betrays a post-Romantic bias toward unity that does little to illuminate the pluralistic nature of medieval textual meaning. Com¬ mentaries tend to display a diversity of styles, tones, and treatments. Medieval commentary eschews the univocal, and this multiplicity of voices reflects different affective and intellectual orientations. There is a wide range of discourses present in each commentary deriv¬ ing from different professional, institutional, oral, popular, religious, philosophical, and social influences. Criticism has a constricted gaze of the commentaries. It is time that critics refigure their apprehension of commentary. As a term for describing a feature of commentary, “digression” has serious draw¬ backs. What is needed now is a conception of commentary that allows for heterogeneity, for the profusion of responses that many commentaries provide—a theory and a critical vocabulary that illu¬ minates discontinuity in these texts and is sensitive to the essentially dialogic nature of the medieval text. Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglos- sia is helpful here. For Bakhtin, discourse is a social phenomenon displaying a variety of voices and stylistic registers.^^ Because utter¬ ances are governed by specific historical conditions, an emphasis on the social diversity of speech types provides a useful model for read¬ ing medieval and Renaissance Dante commentaries. The frequent coexistence of both an analytic and a loose narrative style in the com¬ mentaries are but two examples of the essentially dialogic nature of discourse in these works. Heteroglossia is partly the result of commentary’s most promi¬ nent feature; its persistent consideration of the agency of the poem in contemporary society. Commentary at its most basic level is a con¬ sideration of the Comedy as a social act. In secondary moments of reception like the Renaissance, commentary is increasingly concerned with an accommodation of the Comedy, whose features have through time become strange to current social realities. What is most inter- Medieval Roots of Commentary 47 esting—and in some respects most unusual—as a generic feature of commentary is its continuing record of the attempts by various com¬ mentators to bring an authoritative work in line with contemporary cultural, social, and political norms. The question that commentaries answer is not simply the obvious one of the poem’s meaning, but of meaning as informed by a shifting array of ideological commitments. Commentaries reflect and participate in the “struggle for the real” that each cultural formation wages.''^ It should be recalled that this continual renegotiation of the meaning of the poem by Renaissance commentators has an analogue in the critical practice of Dante him¬ self. As the Renaissance commentators produce new meanings for the Comedy, so did Dante recontextualize and reinterpret his past poetic performances in the light of new religious and philosophical needs. Dante’s poems simply do not present one, unchanging face through time. What Dante does explicitly. Renaissance commenta¬ tors do implicitly. By the turn of the fourteenth century commentary had become noticeably more flexible. This plasticity was exploited by early Re¬ naissance critics in smoothing the transition to a commentary tradition made up of more socially oriented thinkers and writers. Commentary in the Renaissance is no longer being written on the margins of the social text; it is written, even commissioned, under the auspices of powerful ruling families like the Este, Visconti, and Medici. Many of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento commentators were either courtiers writing for a ruler or teachers lecturing in an institution. They moved in distinguished circles and engaged in lit¬ erary exchanges with other humanists. Benvenuto, although a pre- Renaissance figure, wrote the final version of his commentary at the court of Niccolo II d’Este; Guiniforte Barzizza, son of the fa¬ mous pedagogue and courtier, Gasparino Barzizza, wrote his com¬ mentary at the request of Filippo Maria Visconti; Nidobeato edited Jacopo della Lana’s commentary for Guglielmo, marquis of Monfer- rato; Landino held the chair of rhetoric and poetry at the Floren¬ tine Studio, and wrote his commentary under the patronage of the Medici. Others, although not working for a specific patron, were well integrated in powerful and well-defined intellectual, ecclesiastical, or artistic circles. Giovanni Serravalle, a Franciscan, wrote his com¬ mentary at the Council of Constance at the request of two English bishops, and Trifone Gabriele was at the center of an elite commu- 48 Dante in the Renaissance nity of Venetian intellectuals that included Pietro Bembo. As one might expect from these allegiances, entanglements, and alliances, commentary in the Renaissance was often permeated with political nuance and implication. Intellectuals appropriated the Comedy for a range of functions, and the manner in which they exploited the poem IS a revealing index of their own cultural and political assumptions. As a result of their civic integration we have more information about these men themselves and their professional ties, in stark contrast to the paucity of biographical and institutional information on the earliest commentators, which constrains our understanding of the circumstances affecting their reading of the Comedy. Hence the dia¬ logic tendencies of commentary that are hinted at in medieval glosses are more easily understood in the commentary of the Renaissance. The fact that many of the Renaissance commentaries were printed also facilitates the gathering of information. The material condi¬ tions under which the commentaries of Cristoforo Landino, Trifone Gabriele, Alessandro Vellutello, and Bernardino Daniello were pub¬ lished and produced greatly affected their critical fortune. Moreover, the print history of a text is crucial to interpretation because, as his- toricist critics have recently argued, an author’s intentions are im¬ plicit in his choice of time and mode of publication. Through an examination of the circumstances of a commentary’s production and circulation, we can acquire greater insight into the social, economic, and political aspects of their inception and reception. Such consider¬ ations become a readable code that figures a displaced politics in which Dante’s poem often becomes the focus of intense regional rivalries. For example, the pointed claims about linguistic or dialec¬ tal superiority in Nidobeato s and Landino s commentaries, often a way of asserting political hegemony, are echoed in the circumstances of their printing. (I discuss the printing of these commentaries in the last chapter.) The rich body of material that constitutes the commentary tradi¬ tion of the Comedy in the Renaissance provides an ideal instrument for an investigation of the sociology of the text. Dante s poem be¬ comes a lightning rod for a host of humanist debates over the poet s impoverished knowledge of classical culture, his historical errors, his linguistic improprieties, and his adherence to a discredited scholas¬ ticism and an imperial ideology. Earlier commentators interest in the theological and philosophical basis of the poem gives way to a Medieval Roots of Commentary 49 concern with its formal qualities and to a consideration of the Com¬ edy as a rhetorical performance rather than as a summa of doctrine. Whereas medieval commentators figure Dante as the poet teologus, humanists see Dante as xhefilosofo politico as well.''^ By the middle of the fourteenth century, the consensus that had existed, for all its conceptual differences, is disintegrating. Critics are unanimous in marking the onset of humanism with a rupture with Dante’s Welt¬ anschauung. Great admiration for Dante’s achievement continues, but the nature of it is variously qualified. As one might expect, along with the exploration of different concerns comes a strong desire to redirect the meaning of the Comedy. This transformation of the poem’s content cannot be understood outside of the social, politi¬ cal, and cultural motivations underlying humanists’ re-presentation of the poem’s meaning and significance.^^ II Commentary and Ideology li I Interp7‘etive Strategy and Ideological Commitment: The Brutus and Cassius Debate On December 21, 1431, the noted Greek scholar Francesco Filelfo delivered a spirited public lecture on Dante in Florence. This lecture, as well as subsequent ones given by Filelfo or read by his students, was nothing short of a civic event. An approving resolution was issued three days later by officials of the Florentine Studio: “unam cathedram transportandam et collocandam in ecclesia Sancte Marie del Fiore, seu alibi ut eidem domino Francisco placuerit, pro lec- tura Dantis (a chair ought to be carried to and placed in the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore, or elsewhere, as it may please the said master Francesco, for the purpose of reading of Dante).”' Accord¬ ing to Vespasiano da Bisticci, the lectures were regularly attended by approximately two hundred people.^ Among those present were Filelfo’s supporters, members of the anti-Medicean faction, as well as adherents of Cosimo de’ Medici.^ These orations take place dur¬ ing a struggle for control of Florence between Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo de’ Medici—the turbulent years 1433-35 witnessed the banishment of Cosimo and his followers in October 1433, his return in November of the following year, and the subsequent exile of Palla Strozzi, the great patron of the arts. As a consequence the lectures were occasions for violent skirmishes. Filelfo himself fanned the flames of these hostilities in the Decem¬ ber oration by referring to his pro-Medicean adversaries as fools who misconstrued Dante’s audience and intentions: “Et avvegnadioche il leggere di questo divino poeta, chiamato da miei ignorantissimi emuli leggere da calzolai e da fornai, quanta benevolenza e favore m’ha acquistata appresso la vostra magnificenza, in tanto odio e per- secuzione ha me indotto presso de’ miei invidi, non pero mi ritrarro ne scostero dal mio onesto e laudabile principio (And although on the one hand, my reading of this divine poet, called by my most ignorant emulators, the reading material of cobblers and bakers, has brought me so much benevolence and favor through your generosity; on the other hand, so has it brought much hate and persecution among 54 Dante in the Renaissance those envious of me; however, I will not withdraw nor stray from my honest and praiseworthy beginning). ^ Filelfo s critical remarks enable an appropriation of Dante’s poem by the party of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Palla Strozzi as a means of denouncing the views of their adversaries. A June 29, 1432, oration delivered by one of Filelfo’s students sheds much light on this cultivation of Dante as a partisan authority. In a remarkable series of exhortations, Florentines are urged to fol¬ low Dante’s example and fight tyranny. O liberatore della amplissima tua republica, . . . Tu solo infinite persecuzioni d’uomeni per difensione della patria incorresti; tu nelle crudeli invidie di mold scelerati per difensione de la patria intrasti; . . . . tu finalmente in esilio fosti mandato, per difensione della patria. E piu ancora diro io degno di gran memoria, che nello esilio Dante ritrovandosi, sempre la patria lodava, sempre la magnificava, sempre la difendeva. Vedete dunque, prudentissimi cittadini, per difensione della patria il divino poeta Dante quanti pericoli... per quella sostenne. Or che dovete far voi al presente, florentini civi . . . } Dovete i vostri pestiferi inimici, siccome il fortissimo Dante, ad eversione audacemente perseguitare. Che quando riguardo i vostri generosi animi, mi rapresentano quelli clarissimi cittadini romani, Affri- cani, Decii, Metelli, Lucii, Fabrizii, e Scipioni, della loro citta tante volte liberatori. . . . ^’oi avete al presente intorno intorno tutte le guerre contro di voi fremitanti, e popoli la eversione della nobile citta vostra con ogni studio cercanti, e crudeli tiranni che sotto il o-ioso della mortale servitu mettere si sforzano. O liberator of your most ample republic ... you alone incurred the infinite persecutions of men for the defense of the patria. \ou bore the cruel envies of many scoundrels for the defense of the patria. Finally you were sent into exile for the defense of the patria. And I will say something even more worthy of recollection that Dante, finding himself in exile, always praised his patria, always exulted it, and always defended it. So you see then, most prudent citizens, how many dangers Dante bore for the defense of patria. Now what should you do, Florentine citizens? When I look into your generous hearts I see before me those brightest Roman citizens ... the Decii, the Metelli, the Lucii, the Fabrizii, and the Scipioni— several times liberators of their cities. \ou should boldly persecute to destruction your deadliest enemies as did the very bold Dante. The Brutus and Cassius Debate 55 Presently you have wars all around you, agitators against you, cruel tyrants, who are carefully seeking the destruction of your city, who are striving to impose a yoke of mortal servitude.’ The success, or at least the force of the threat embodied in Filelfo’s incorporation of Dante as inspirational patriot and defender of lib¬ erty can be measured by the events of May 1433, when Filelfo was savagely attacked by the Mediceans. Filelfo’s face was slashed, and he remained disfigured for the rest of his life.^ One of the most striking features of this episode is the disruption that results from the act of reading and commenting on the poem. The Filelfo affair illustrates, in a sensational but nevertheless precise way, that a reading of Dante could be a political statement in the Quattrocento. It portrays vividly the complex historicity of Dante’s poem in the Renaissance: the dynamic shifts in reception that re¬ shape the poem’s meaning according to various political and social investments. Filelfo is clearly referring to a present state of unrest and Florence’s war with Lucca during this time (“voi avete al pre¬ sente intorno intorno tutte le guerre . . .”), and his remarks on Dante are meant to affect politics at the local level in Florence. The figure of Dante and his poem are melded into an authoritative cultural text in an attempt to support the status quo, in this instance, the Albizzi faction. The incident dramatizes the efforts of the anti-Mediceans to exploit a republican ideology. Filelfo appends to his praise of Dante, defensore della patria, a list of republican heroes, all of whom are presented as staunch defenders of liberty. Here, as so often in the Renaissance, the word “liberty” is ideologically charged and imbued with a particular inflection.^ It is tempting to read Filelfo’s disfigurement as an allegory of the dismantling of Dante’s text by various politically interested parties. One might see in Filelfo’s scars an apt figure for the mutilation of the text at the hands of an unruly mob of commentators—but that would be to succumb to the temptation of seeing works like the Comedy as existing in a timeless world of universal values. It would be to deny—again—the use that has been made of the poem: its historicity and its productive potential. The use to which Dante’s poem is put in this incident is but one of several similar political appropriations.* Throughout the Renaissance, the Comedy stands in a productive relation to culture, at once redefining it and being re- 56 Dante in the Renaissance defined by it. Dante commentary is an important means, in my view, for charting the various ways in which powerful groups use the poem to legitimate themselves. Attention to the circumstances under which commentary is produced allows us to take the various measures of the poem in history; it is a way of gauging the transformation of the Comedy, not only at the hands of particular critics or commentators, but also in its ongoing relation to society. We can get a glimpse of the rich veins of historical deposits avail¬ able in commentary by returning to the Filelfo incident—specifically to his mention of the ignorantissimi emuli who consider the Comedy the poem of cobblers and bakers. This reference constitutes a pointed and richly historical attack on the Medici party. More specifically, Filelfo is likely alluding to Niccolb Niccoli, the infamous scourge of the three crowns of Florence.® This derogatory characterization of the poet’s readers echoes a pronouncement made by the character of Niccoli in Leonardo Bruni’s Dialogi Ad Petrum Paulum Histrum: “ego istum poetam tuum a concilio litteratorum seiungam atque eum lanariis, pistoribus atque eiusmodi turbae relinquam (I will remove that poet of yours from the number of the lettered and leave him to wool workers, bakers and the like).”The reference harks back to a previous and equally heated debate among the intellectuals of Coluc- cio Salutati’s circle. Originally, the reference to cobblers and bakers was a way of classifying the Comedy's readers; it refers disparagingly to claims about the universality of the poem, its potential appeal to a wide audience. It recalls similar assessments made earlier by Gio¬ vanni del Virgilio and Petrarch; the latter had characterized Dante’s audience as ydiotas in tabernis in a letter to Boccaccio. This debate can be pursued as far back as 1319, when Giovanni del Virgilio, a noted professor of classics at the University of Bologna, expressed his misgivings over the poet’s writing of the poem in Italian. The reference to cobblers and bakers is a part of the penumbra of asso¬ ciation and interpretation that follows the Comedy, an informal part of the commentary tradition. As a recurring part of the discourse surrounding the Comedy, the ideas associated with this remark are available to Filelfo for reorientation in his attack on the Medici. The remark attributed to Niccoli arises in the context of a debate about the Comedy: in Bruni’s Dialogi it is primarily a literary statement with political overtones. In the hands of Filelfo, however, this politi¬ cal content becomes more prominent. The negative class associations The Brutus and Cassius Debate 57 in the statement are evoked and imbued with a new political urgency. Filelfo effectively marshals this bit of apocrypha in a strong reinter¬ pretation of the cultural force of the poem. Filelfo, in revaluing the interaction of the Comedy and society, has attempted to redefine the cultural text. Generally, moments in which the interaction of poem and society are being redefined are difficult to locate. Yet they are crucial to the task of tracing the reception of a work. The problem is considerably lessened in the case of the Comedy, however; Dante commentary — both in terms of sheer quantity and of propitious formal features — affords a rich legacy to anyone interested in mapping the shifts and starts in the history of the poem’s reception. One of the most dis¬ tinctive features of commentary is its cumulative nature; individual commentaries tend to conserve traces of readings and interpretations that have been constructed over time. Each new exposition invariably retains substantial portions of earlier glosses. An individual commen¬ tary, in addition to being positioned between the poem and society, often provides a record of previous rewritings and reauthorizations of the Comedy. When the tradition of conservation, essentially medi¬ eval, meets the emerging discursive formation of the Renaissance, the shifts in ideology become even more apparent. The task of tracing the redeployments of the Comedy by various commentators is also made easier by the fact that critical treatments of Dante in the Renaissance are often politically inflected. Hence, the dynamic relations between poem and society are more clear than at other moments. Literary critics and historians are in general agree¬ ment on the political component of the poem’s turbulent fortune during this period. “Ai tempi di Salutati e del Bruni, o del Filelfo e del Marsuppini, come poi a quelli del Landino e del Benivieni,” ob¬ serves Garin, “la filigrana della controversia dantesca non e stilistica o linguistica, ma politica. . . . il fatto culturale e indissolubilmente connesso con vicende piu gravi (At the times of Salutati and Bruni, or of Filelfo and Marsuppini — as later at the times of Landino and Benivieni — the distinctive mark of the Dante controversy is not sty¬ listic or linguistic, but political. . . . cultural fact is indissolubly con¬ nected with more serious vicissitudes).’’" What the Filelfo episode reveals — the role Dante plays in politics on the local level, the use of the poem as an authoritative text, the association of Dante with cer¬ tain ideologies, in essence, the historicity of the Comedy — can best be 58 Dante in the Renaissance documented by attention to discussions of what was, for Renaissance commentators, a deeply political episode in the poem—the damna¬ tion of Brutus and Cassius. Not only the fact of the two Romans’ damnation, but also the severity of their punishment, pose great dif¬ ficulties for many Renaissance commentators. Such moments in the Comedy serve as litmus tests for the degree of political inflection of not only the commentator but also the culture that informs him. Commentary, for the most part, presents itself as a fairly disinter¬ ested activity. Like much other criticism, it works under claims of objectivity that conceal its relations with the political and social pres¬ sures of its moment. But in commentators’ treatments of Brutus and Cassius, the fluctuations of ideology can be detected with a clarity that is elusive elsewhere. Let us recall briefly Dante’s view of Caesar and the Roman Em¬ pire. Like many medieval thinkers his conception of the empire was influenced by the period’s theocentrism. Dante viewed the Roman Empire as part of a providential scheme.’^ In the Monarchia, Dante seeks to establish the Roman Empire as the legitimate political au¬ thority for men on earth; book 2 of the treatise undertakes to prove that the Roman people acquired the empire by divine right.'^ Ac¬ cordingly, Caesar’s authority derives from God. Rome stands at the center of Dante’s vision of a universal history—the Roman Empire gives way to the Holy Roman Empire. The Church and the empire were both divinely established for the spiritual and temporal govern¬ ment of men—their founders, Caesar and Christ, are God’s supreme authorities on earth. By extension, those who sought to overthrow Christ and Caesar are the ultimate malefactors. In Dante’s scheme, the infamy of the betrayal of Caesar by Brutus and Cassius is ex¬ ceeded only by Judas’s betrayal of Christ. In the Comedy, Dante rele¬ gates the three traitors to Cocytus, the lowest circle of Hell. Pointing to Judas, Virgil notes “Quell’anima la su c’ha maggior pena,” disse ’1 maestro, “e Giuda Scariotto, che ’1 capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena. De li altri due c’hanno il capo di sotto, quel che pende dal nero ceffo e Bruto: vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!; e I’altro e Cassio, che par si membruto.” The Brutus and Cassius Debate 59 “That soul up there who has to suffer most,” my master said: “Judas Iscariot— his head inside, he Jerks his legs without. Of those two others, with their heads beneath, the one that hangs from that black snout is Brutus— see how he writhes and does not say a word ! That other, who seems so robust, is Cassius.” {Inferno 34.61-67) Elsewhere in the Comedy, the Emperor Justinian praise he Justness of Brutus’s and Cassius’s punishment by noting how the two “howl” in Hell for their betrayal of Caesar {Paradiso 6.74). The difference be¬ tween the fates of Brutus and Cassius and that of Caesar could not be more dramatic: Dante places Caesar, “armato con li occhi grifagni,” in Limbo {Inferno 4.123).’'' In contrast to Dante’s valuation. Renaissance writers tend to view Brutus’s and Cassius’s actions sympathetically. Many humanists saw the two Romans as heroic defenders of the values of the Roman Republic. As a result, Dante’s treatment ol Brutus and Cassius pre¬ sented quite an obstacle to interpretation in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Inferno 34 presents an imperialist politics — buttressed by the commentary tradition from Jacopo Alighieri to Pietro Ali¬ ghieri — to w'hich few humanists subscribed. Hence Dante’s Renais¬ sance commentators tend to take a position on the Brutus and Cas¬ sius controversy. The episode often elicits commentary on a w'ide range of subjects including liberty, tyranny, Caesar’s character, and the Justice of regicide. Such statements constitute a highly inter¬ ested discourse, one that tends to reflect the political circumstances under which different commentators lived. Although critics have often noted the political component to commentators’ treatments of this episode, they have not explored how the particular politics dif¬ fer in each case — how' commentary manages to accommodate shifts and fluctuations in specific political landscapes.’’ The manner in which commentators deal with this passage — the reaffirmation, dis¬ missal, or displacement of medieval imperialism — provides a reveal¬ ing glimpse into their own cultural assumptions. Other references to Caesar in the Comedy occasionally elicit politi¬ cal remarks. On the wEole, however, these responses are brief and generally repeat what is said in the discussions of Inferno 34. At such moments commentators seem much more preoccupied with para- 6o Dante in the Renaissance phrasing the passage, providing historical particulars, listing clas¬ sical sources, or pointing out Dante’s use of certain rhetorical and stylistic devices. Because the Brutus and Cassius episode provides the conditions under which ideologies surface, the balance of this chapter examines treatments of Inferno 34 by Benvenuto da Imola, Giovanni Serravalle, Guiniforte Barzizza, Cristoforo Landino, Tri- fone Gabriele, Alessandro Vellutello, and Bernardino Daniello in the light of the variety of social and cultural complexes that condi¬ tioned them.‘^ When relevant, I refer to commentary on other pas¬ sages mentioning Caesar or important to an understanding of a given commentator’s treatment of political questions.'^ Benvenuto da Imola and the Trecento Commentary Tradition The heightened political sensitivity that often permeates the expo¬ sition of the Comedy in the Renaissance is first glimpsed in Benve¬ nuto da Imola’s commentary. Benvenuto was the first commentator to question Dante’s presentation of Brutus and Cassius. As a result his commentary constitutes a key transitional text, one that mediates between the earlier Trecento tradition and later humanist valuations of Dante.’* One of the most distinctive features of Benvenuto’s commentary is his treatment of history. Critics have widely praised Benvenuto’s documentation of both ancient and contemporary history. His admi¬ rable attention to classical sources occasionally leads him to correct and even reject some of Dante’s claims. He dismisses, for example, the poem’s suggestion that Florence was founded by the Fiesolans and the Romans. Brunetto Latini’s lament {Inferno 15.61-63) over the infelicitous conjunction of the “ungrateful,” “malicious” Fiesolans and the noble Romans who remained in Tuscany after their cap¬ ture of Catiline had legendary status in the Trecento. For Benve¬ nuto, however, this is little more than an unsubstantiated rumor. He points out that at this time Caesar was himself implicated in Cati¬ line’s conspiracy: hence, he would not have had the time to found Florence. Then, on the authority of Cicero, Benvenuto notes that Caesar himself had difficulty in justifying his own conduct in this affair. Benvenuto also finds it difficult to believe that it would have The Brutus and Cassius Debate 6i taken the Romans so much time to take Fiesole in an era in which they conquered half the world. The more reasons Benvenuto ad¬ duces to counter Dante’s claim, the more doubtful he becomes. He concedes that, although Pliny may be correct in his designation of Fiesole as the origin of Florence, it is impossible to determine when exactly this founding took place and by whom it was done.’’ What is interesting in Benvenuto’s rejection of Dante’s account is his use of sources; the commentator utilizes Cicero’s remarks concerning Caesar’s role in Catiline’s conspiracy to debunk medieval legends on the founding of Florence. Benvenuto is unwilling to endorse claims that cannot be substantiated. His skepticism derives from an incipi¬ ent humanist ideology, one that places a premium on attaining a historical grasp of Latin culture. Other moments in the Comedy cannot be handled with such dis¬ patch. If we turn to the Brutus and Cassius episode in Inferno 34, we are confronted with a variety of interpretations. It costs Benvenuto little to deny Florentine claims for Roman descent; the reputation of Caesar and his murderers, however, is quite another matter. Benve¬ nuto’s discussion of Brutus and Cassius becomes a remarkable exer¬ cise in historical negotiation, displacement, and outright evasion.^® Whereas earlier commentators had tended to confine their remarks to specifying the particular sin of the two Romans and to providing a few supporting historical particulars, Benvenuto begins his inves¬ tigation with an account of Brutus’s and Cassius’s deaths. He then describes the noble burial that Mark Antony arranged for Brutus. The integrity and justness of Antony’s actions are then compared to Augustus Caesar’s cruel response: the exhumation of Brutus’s corpse, its decapitation, and the subsequent draping of the head on top of a statue of Julius Caesar as a reminder to all Romans of the punishment accorded traitors. Augustus, notes Benvenuto, “non tem- peravit prosperitatem victoriae . . . et in omnes nobiles adversarios crudeliter se habuit factis et verbis (did not moderate the good for¬ tune of victory. ... he was cruel in deeds and in words to all noble adversaries).’’^' Dante, Benvenuto adds, is imposing an eternal pun¬ ishment beyond the earthly punishment already inflicted on Brutus and Cassius. This observation, along with his remarks on the honor¬ able burial to which Brutus, a noble Roman, was entitled, is an indi¬ cation of Benvenuto’s doubts over the justness of Dante’s presenta¬ tion. One element, however, in Benvenuto’s consideration of Dante’s 62 Dante in the Renaissance damnation of Brutus particularly stands out—the apparently absurd proposal that Dante refers to Decimus Brutus, not Marcus Brutus, in the passage. We should not underestimate the complexity of Benvenuto’s treat¬ ment of Brutus and Cassius. Benvenuto’s interpretive decisions are the product of a combination of several critical criteria: his partici¬ pation in an incipient humanist aesthetic; the medieval tradition of commentary on Brutus and Cassius; and his immediate situation at the court of Niccolo II d’Este. A brief discussion of humanist and medieval elements in Benve¬ nuto’s commentary clarifies the terms under which he is working. These investments, the object of much of the critical interest in his work, have made Benvenuto one of the most highly esteemed of the Trecento commentators: critics have praised his numerous allusions to classical authors, his coverage of historical events, his discussion of the poem’s language and style, and his sensitivity to the Com¬ edy's overall structure.^^ Benvenuto’s erudition is in part owing to his friendships with protohumanists like Boccaccio, Petrarch, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Salutati.^^ The conflicts between an incipient humanist aesthetic and the medieval tradition of commentary to the Comedy are predictable. Benvenuto himself underlines the differ¬ ences between these two aesthetics by often referring derisively to his predecessors, as we have seen in his rejection of medieval legends on Florence’s origins. Despite such efforts to distance himself from the interpretive procedures and readings of his predecessors, how¬ ever, Benvenuto’s exposition resembles earlier glosses in a number of ways: for example, his commentary is peppered with the spirited narrations and popular anecdotes often found in the commentaries of the Ottimo commentator, Jacopo della Lana, and Guido da Pisa. In addition, Benvenuto’s informal, colloquial Latin is a far cry from the elegant epistolary style of humanists such as Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini.^'* Benvenuto’s proemio also exhibits some struc¬ tural similarities to the medieval accessus: he defines poetry in accor¬ dance to its relation to theology, and he analyzes the poem’s intentio, its utilitas, and the part of philosophy to which it belongs.^^ In addition to these affiliations, Benvenuto’s commentary is con¬ ditioned by his residence at the court of Niccolo II. Ferrara was a natural choice of refuge for Benvenuto for a number of reasons. Ben¬ venuto was personally acquainted with Niccolo II, whom he had met The Brutus and Cassius Debate 63 at the Avignon papal court. Furthermore, the Este were accustomed to harboring refugees from Bologna. The Este had made several at¬ tempts to annex Bologna between 1360 and 1361, and their efforts were facilitated by pro-Este factions within the city.^^ As one might expect, those hostile to an Este takeover sought to oust sympathiz¬ ers, and in such instances Ferrara was an obvious place of refuge. Although Benvenuto’s move to Ferrara was not related to Este am¬ bitions in Bologna, it nevertheless follows an established pattern. Moreover, Benvenuto would have been welcome at the Este court for his literary accomplishments. By all accounts, Niccolo IFs court during this period was not especially distinguished. Ermanno Lan- zoni’s characterization of it as modestissimo is widely shared by histo¬ rians of Ferrara.^^ Because Ferrara did not establish a university until 1391, the city did not tend to attract scholars. As a result, as Werner Gundersheimer points out, foreigners were recruited to add luster to the court.^* Benvenuto, along with Donato degli Albanzani (who arrived in 1377), Nicolo dei Beccari, and Aldobrandino di Zilfredo, were among the first intellectuals to work at the Este court. Benvenuto dedicates his Dante commentary to Niccolo II. More than half the proemio consists of an encomium to the Este family. This fact alone distinguishes Benvenuto’s prologue from those of earlier Trecento commentators.^’ Flis lavish praise of the family viv¬ idly records the effect of patronage on the writing of his commen¬ tary. This allegiance makes for a rather strained critical position, as Dante systematically attacked the Estensi in his poem. Obizzo II and his son, Azzo VIII, are singled out for condemnation. Dante damns Obizzo as a tyrant, the gravity of whose crimes is underscored by the fact that he is immersed infino al ciglio {Inferno 12.103) river of blood that boils the violent against others. In the same episode the poet also manages to condemn Azzo VIII as the figliastro who killed his own father.^’ The Este are also implicated in Dante’s meet¬ ing with the panderer, Venedico de’ Caccianemici, who is damned for his betrayal of his sister Ghisolabella, whom he induced “a far la voglia del marchese” {Inferno 18.56).^' Another shady Este trans¬ action is exposed in Purgatorio 20.79 where the poet repeats another rumor, according to which Charles II, the king of Naples, “sold” his own flesh by agreeing to the marriage of his youngest daughter, Beatrice, to an aging Azzo VIII. Reportedly Charles accepted this ar¬ rangement after receiving an enormous sum of money from the Este. 64 Dante in the Renaissance Elsewhere in Purgatory, Jacopo del Cassero reveals his violent death at the hands of Azzo VIII, who had him killed because of Jacopo’s efforts to thwart Ferrara’s attempts to annex Bologna {Purgatorio 5.76-78). Dante also casts aspersions on the fidelity of Beatrice, the daughter of Obizzo II and sister of Azzo VIII. In Purgatorio 8.73-81, Nino Visconti, her first husband, bitterly alludes to Beatrice’s sec¬ ond marriage to Galeazzo Visconti as an example of woman’s fickle nature.^^ Benvenuto, however, extols the Este as great champions of liberty, lavishing praise on Niccolo’s noble lineage and on the military ac¬ complishments of his predecessors—especially on exploits that show the Este as defenders of the Church. Azzo VII’s participation in a Guelf victory over Frederick II, for example, is likened to Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal: just as Scipio was a great liberator of Italy in an¬ cient times, so is Azzo VII a contemporary champion of liberty. Ben¬ venuto also glorifies the achievements of Obizzo II and Azzo VIII, the former as “petitor gloriae, contemptor pecuniae,” and victorious conqueror of Parma and Bologna.^^ Azzo VIII is praised for his suc¬ cessful defense of Ferrara against the French. In the light of Dante’s scathing treatment of the Este, Benvenuto’s praise of Obizzo II and Azzo VIII acquires a corrective purpose: he seeks to anticipate and temper judgments made in the Comedy?'' Benvenuto also employs classical comparisons in his discussion of Niccolo II, whose clem¬ ency he celebrates: “ut de te dicere audeam, quod de Caesare inquit Cicero: nulla de virtutibus tuis major misericordia est (so that I shall dare say to you, what Cicero said about Caesar: none of your virtues is greater than your pity).” Of course, Niccolo is not the only one ele¬ vated by this comparison: Benvenuto implicitly places himself in the role of Cicero. In itself, Benvenuto’s comparison of Niccolo’s clem¬ ency to Caesar’s is not unusual: rulers of principates were frequently compared to Caesar by their courtiers.^^ Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the particular context in which this analogy is made. Benvenuto’s generally positive depiction of Caesar was conditioned, at least in part, by his residence in what was essentially a despotic city-state. Having compared Niccolo II to Caesar in the proemio, Benvenuto’s audience at the Este court would have been attentive to his discussions of Caesar elsewhere in the commentary.^^ Benvenuto’s situation at the Este court is clearly not determining in all respects. The Brutus and Cassius Debate 65 but it should not be overlooked as a factor in his treatment of Caesar, another tyrant. Given this complex of factors—the influence of a humanist ideol¬ ogy, the weight exerted by the medieval commentary tradition, and Benvenuto’s situation at the Este court, it comes as little surprise that historians like Hans Baron and Ronald Witt have characterized Benvenuto’s attitude toward medieval imperialism as ambiguous or even ambivalent.^* But more important to a study of the relation be¬ tween Benvenuto’s commentary to his society is an examination of the rhetorical effects of his presentation in terms of earlier commen¬ tators’ discussions. Commentators from Jacopo Alighieri to Pietro Alighieri, far from being ambivalent, view Brutus and Cassius negatively. They tend to remark on one aspect of their ingratitude — that Brutus and Cassius took benefits from Caesar, yet betrayed him.*^ This reading is a fairly stable one that derives from medieval views of universal monarchy and the period’s theocentrism. What is interesting in Benvenuto’s text is the persistence of some of these earlier arguments against Brutus and Cassius, even in a commentary that expresses sympathy for Brutus. It is as if—at least for Benvenuto—the charge that he received benefits is inexpungeable from the commentary tradition: Et hie nota quod Dantes de industria non expressit de quo Bruto potius intelligeret, ut relinqueret lectori locum inquirendi; tamen mihi videtur quod debeat intelligi potius de Decimo Bruto, quia fuit ingratior; nam semper fuerat cum Caesare, et in belhs civilibus et gallicis. . . . Videtur etiam posse intelligi de M. Bruto, qui licet fuisset semper infestus Caesari . . . tamen clementissimus prin- ceps, qui omnibus ignoverat, numquam solitus ulcisci, non mere- batur mortem a Bruto, qui venia donatus et provincia sublimatus aut debebat beneficia recusare, aut esse amicus eius [my emphasis]; et ipse fuit principalis in ista coniuratione. . . . Nota etiam quod Caesar visus dignissimus tali morte; quia qui totam terram civi- lis sanguinis fusione resperserat, suo sanguine totam curam debuit inundare, etiam quia talem mortem videbatur optare; nam paolo ante mortem eius orta quaestione in coena quod esset optimum genus mortis, ipse mortem subitam et inexpectatam praetulerat. And here note that Dante purposely does not say he knows more about Brutus, so that he leaves a place for the reader’s inquiry. 66 Dante in the Renaissance nevertheless, it seems to me that he ought to be taken as Decimus Brutus, who was more undeserving; for he was with Caesar, both in the civil and in the Gallic wars. ... It even seems that it is able to be known about Marcus Brutus, that although he was always hostile to Caesar . . . nevertheless this very clement prince who forgave everyone, who was never accustomed to take vengeance, did not merit death from Brutus, who having been given favors and having been raised to offices by Caesar, either should have refused the benefits or should have been his friend; and this man was one of the leaders of the conspiracy. . . . And note that Caesar seems very worthy of such a death; because the one who splashed all the land with the flow of civil blood was obliged to flood the whole curia with his own blood and because he even seemed to choose that death; for a little before his death, the question having arisen at dinner what was the best kind of death, he himself preferred a sudden and unexpected death.'"’ Benvenuto’s ambivalent attitude toward Caesar is evidenced by some of his observations. On the one hand, he praises Caesar’s clem¬ ency and justness; on the other, he sees an aptness to the emperor’s death—an epigrammatic quality to the events that culminates in Benvenuto’s own epigrammatic rendering of them. Brutus’s personal relation to Caesar is carefully scrutinized: having received benefits from Caesar, he should have either refused them or remained loyal. This ambivalence is likely owing both to the influence of a human¬ ist ideology, which placed a premium on accurate documentation of classical culture, and to Benvenuto’s situation at the Estense court. It would have been impolitic for Benvenuto to insist on the justness of Caesar’s death. Benvenuto’s reading is also noteworthy because of the means by which it attempts to change the commentary tradition on this issue; Benvenuto bolsters his defense of Brutus by recourse to what is essentially a literary strategy. Notably, Bruni and Landino later use a different one—allegory—to change it again. Benvenuto’s willing¬ ness to see Decimus Brutus as the Brutus in the Comedy seems at first glance preposterous. Only by ruthlessly cutting himself off from the cultural tradition that made Marcus Brutus and Cassius an inevitable pair in the conspiracy could one make the argument that Dante’s text is ambiguous. This requires an insistent refusal to see beyond the text itself—what could easily be termed a kind of New Critical herme- The Brutus and Cassius Debate 67 neutic. Where previous commentators had been content to use the cultural text, the penumbra of associations that trail in the wake of the Comedy, to determine that “Brutus” meant Marcus Brutus, Ben¬ venuto seizes on the verbal and formal ambiguity of the reference to Brutus in Inferno 34 in order to counter the commentary tradition. Once the reference of the name “Brutus” was so obviously defined by tradition that it worked unconsciously; now Dante’s text is seen as consciously and presciently redefining traditional associations of Marcus Brutus with Cassius and Caesar’s murder. The result is a de¬ nial of the authority of the medieval critical tradition, which sees in Satan’s mouth Marcus Brutus and Cassius. The line of Benvenuto’s argument is simple: if the text does not specify it, it is not necessarily there. This reasoning, we might admit, results in a very “strong” reading (in the Bloomian sense).^" Because Benvenuto is by no means a formalist in other situations, this interpretive move is all the more striking.^*^ One finds anxiety, inconsistency, even a discernible sense of strain in his contact with the text. Benvenuto can be seen here to be “negotiating the past” with earlier Trecento commentators—as he himself is subsumed in later negotiations.^^ Expanding the Interpretive Repertory: From Francesco da Buti to Martino Nidobeato If Benvenuto’s treatment of the Comedy is marked by his movement away from Trecento commentaries, other treatments, such as those of Francesco da Buti (1385), the Anonimo Fiorentino (c.1400), and Giovanni Serravalle (1416-17), are notable for their adherence to the methods and concerns of the earlier tradition. Both Buti and Ser¬ ravalle evince more interest in the poem’s allegorical meaning and its theological background than Benvenuto. The Anonimo Fioren¬ tino shares Benvenuto’s interest in history, but not the former’s sense of discrimination; the Anonimo’s accounts of historical events often read like rambling popular chronicles. Although Buti, the Anonimo, and Serravalle all write their expositions after Benvenuto, none sur¬ passes his erudition and innovation. Benvenuto’s superiority is owing to his impressive literary culture, in part the result of his friend¬ ships with authors like Boccaccio and Petrarch. Flis successors did not seem to move in such a distinguished literary circle. 68 Dante in the Renaissance Buti’s discussion of Dante’s condemnation of Brutus and Cas¬ sius is the least interesting. His comments are confined to identifying Brutus and Cassius as the men who betrayed Caesar: “nota e ancora la storiawrites Buti, “e pero la lascio.”'*'' The slim notice accorded this incident is typical of Buti’s treatment of Roman history. The most distinctive features of the commentary are his discussion of the Comedy's moral significance and its linguistic and rhetorical features. As Francesco Mazzoni has observed, one could easily imagine this commentary being written before Benvenuto’s.''^ The Anonimo Fiorentino’s and Serravalle’s treatments of the Bru¬ tus and Cassius episode are largely derivative: the former draws heavily on Jacopo della Lana and Boccaccio; the latter relies on Ben¬ venuto.'*^ Serravalle’s dependence on Benvenuto reflects his esteem for his magister, whose lectures on the Comedy he had attended.''^ His commentary, written during the Council of Constance at the re¬ quest of the cardinal Amedeo di Saluzzo and two English clerics, Nicholas of Bubwych and Robert Halam, who had expressed interest in the Comedy after hearing Serravalle’s praise of the poem, is chiefly concerned with expounding the poem’s theological background, an understandable feature given that he was a Franciscan. Although both the Anonimo and Serravalle incorporate criticisms of Caesar, they tend to stress the emperor’s good traits over his bad qualities. They lack the overall uniformity of Trecento accounts, which tend toward absolute support of Caesar, but they refrain from revisionary gestures such as Benvenuto’s proposal of Decimus Brutus for Marcus Brutus. On the level of form, however, the remarks of Serravalle and the Anonimo are similar to Trecento presentations: both commentators record a variety of classical (and unacknowl¬ edged contemporary) opinions on the subject of Brutus and Cassius. For example, Serravalle observes: Isti duo fuerunt illi, qui proditorie interfecerunt Cesarem, a quo receperant multa beneficia. Hie Cesar, primus Imperator, monar- cha fuit Romanorum: sed quod Cesar bene et licite fuit sic inter- fectus in sanguine suo, sicut ipse quasi fedavit universum orbem sanguine civili, non est dubium; sed hoc non defendit quin isti duo, Brutus et Cassius, fuerint proditores, quia receperant sin- gularissima bona a Cesare, scilicet provintias, Buriam, Macedo- niam: ideo ipsi maligne, ingrate, fecerunt, interficiendo Cesarem. The Brutus and Cassius Debate 69 Tamen aliqui laudant istum Brutum, sicut Tullius in Philippicis; sed Tullius fuit inimicus Cesahs. Idem dicit Lucanus. Those two were those who treacherously killed Caesar, from whom they had received many benefits. Caesar, the first emperor, was the king of the Romans but there is no doubt that he was killed justly and lawfully, since he polluted almost the entire world with civil blood. But this does not mean that those two, Brutus and Cassius, were not traitors, because they received very singular benefits from Caesar, namely the regions of Buria and Macedonia. Thus these men acted badly and ungratefully in killing Caesar. Nevertheless, some, such as Cicero in the Philippics, praise that wretch Brutus. But Cicero was an enemy of Caesar, as Lucan attests.''* The Anonimo provides an even more detailed account of Caesar’s positive and negative qualities. He begins his discussion of Inferno 34.61-67 by enumerating some of Caesar’s accomplishments: Caesar elevated Rome to unprecedented heights; he was the first emperor, Christ was born under imperial rule; and Caesar extended clemency to his enemies.^^ These remarks are then followed by some criticisms of Caesar. Yet this medley of opinion has an important, if unintentional effect on subsequent commentators and the tradition more generally: by recording a number of evaluations, these commentaries permit, although they do not promote, a gradual shift in the critical for¬ tunes of Caesar and the conspirators. Subsequent commentators are presented with possibilities, with a choice, rather than absolute ap¬ proval or damnation. This cumulative aspect of commentary serves as a kind of collective memory in which various readings are stored for future commentators. Change in the commentary tradition comes from the sheer aggregation of conflicting opinion as well as from the introduction of strong readings such as Benvenuto’s. The practice of recording various opinions—St. Jerome’s formulaic “some inter¬ pret the passage in this sense, others, in another sense”—lays the foundation, however unintentionally, for change in the commentary tradition. The past presents burdens, but it provides opportunities for innovation as well. The commentary tradition informs and is informed by other dis¬ cursive texts. Our account of commentaries from Francesco da Buti JO Dante in the Renaissance to Nidobeato would be incomplete without mention of Leonardo Bruni, whose Dialogi Ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, written between 1401-5, shows familiarity with the tradition and has great effect on subsequent writers in the tradition.^® The Dialogi relay a discussion of the state of the liberal arts over two days among four of Florence’s most distinguished humanist scholars; Leonardo Bruni, Coluccio Salutati, Niccolo Niccoli, and Roberto Rossi. A substantial portion of this debate is devoted to a consideration of the literary achievements of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. On the first day, Niccoli launches a withering attack on the Florentine triumvirate. On the second, he is obliged to reverse the denunciations of the previous day. Much of the controversy over the Dialog! has focused on Niccoli s change of position: critics have debated the sincerity of Niccoli’s recantation. Niccoli’s sharpest attacks are leveled at Dante. He singles out for condemnation three episodes in the Comedy. Dante’s apparent mistranslation of Virgil’s denunciation of avarice {Aeneid 3.56-57: “... quid non mortalia pectora cogis,/ auri sacra fames!”) in Purgato- rio 22.40-41 (“Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fama / de I’oro, I’appetito de’ mortali.?”); his portrayal of Cato, who died at the age of forty- eight, as an old man; and most contemptible of all, the relegation of Marcus Brutus to the lowest circle in Hell. In his defense of Dante the following day, Niccoli dispenses with the first two criticisms handily by ascribing Dante’s misreading of Virgil to scribal error and his depiction of Cato to poetic license. Niccoli admits as the pre¬ rogative of poetic genius Dante’s portrayal of Cato as an old man in order to convey his maturity, moral rectitude, and wisdom; justify¬ ing Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius, however, elicits more elaborate measures: An tu putas Dantem, virum omnium aetatis suae doctissimum, ignorasse quo pacto Caesar dominium adeptus fuerit.^ . . . cre- dis tantae virtutis fuisse ignarum, quanta M. Brutum praeditum fuisse omnes historiae consentiunt.? Nam illius iustitiam, integri- tatem, industriam, magnitudinem animi quis non laudat.? Non ignoravit haec Dantes, non; sed legitimum pnncipem et munda- narum rerum iustissimum monarcham in Caesare finxit; in Bruto autem seditiosum, turbulentum ac nefarium hominem, qui hunc principem per scelus trucidaret; non Brutus eius modi fuerit; nam si hoc esset, qua ratione a senatu laudatus fuisset tamquam liber- tatis recuperator.^ Sed cum Caesar quocumque modo regnasset. The Brutus and Cassius Debate 71 Brutus enim una cum amplius sexaginta nobilissimis civibus eum interfecissent, sumpsit poeta ex hoc fingendi materiam. Cur ergo optimum et iustissimum virum et libertatis recuperatorem in fau- cibus Luciferi collocavit? Cur Virgilius castissimam mulierem, quae pro pudicitia conservanda mori sustinuit, ita libidinosam fin- git, ut amoris gratia seipsam interimat? Pictoribus enim atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas. Quamquam non improbe fortasse, ut equidem puto, defenderetur M. Brutum in trucidando Caesare impium fuisse. Non desunt enim auctores, qui, vel propter affectionem illarum partium, vel ut imperatoribus placerent, factum illud Bruti scelestum atque impium vocent. Sed ad illam quasi parificationem Christi atque Caesaris prima defen- sio probabilior mihi videtur: idque sensisse poetam nostrum nullo modo ambigo. Do you suppose that Dante, the most learned man ot his age, did not know how Caesar attained power? . . . Do you think he was ignorant of the great virtue with which all histories agree Brutus had been endowed? For who does not praise that man’s justice, integrity, diligence and greatness of spirit ? No, Dante was not ignorant of this; but in Caesar he represented the legitimate prince and the just worldly monarch, in Brutus, the seditious, trouble-making criminal who sinfully slays this prince—not be¬ cause Brutus was of this sort, for if he were, on what ground would the Senate have praised him as the recoverer of liberty? But since Caesar had ruled, whatever the manner, and since Brutus together with more than sixty noble citizens had slain him, the poet took from this material for invention. Why therefore did he place in the jaws of Lucifer the best and most just man, the re¬ coverer of liberty? Well, why did Vergil make a pure woman, who suffered death in order to perserve her chastity, so libidinous that she killed herself for the sake of love? Painters and poets have always had equal license to dare anything. Though perhaps, to be sure, it could well be maintained that Brutus was impious in slaying Caesar; for there are not lacking authors who—whether on account of good will toward those parties, or to please the em¬ perors—call that deed of Brutus wicked and impious. But for that matching of Christ and Caesar the first defense seems more probable, and I have no doubt our poet felt so.^' But how “probable” is Niccoli’s defense? Niccoli argues that Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius should be read allegorically: Caesar 72 Dante in the Renaissance symbolizes the just earthly monarch; Brutus embodies the seditious villain who criminally murders him. In a recent study of the Dia- logi, David Quint has characterized Niccoli’s allegorization of In¬ ferno 34 as “far-fetched.”^^ Quint points out that the Niccoli of the second day provides several indications during his defense of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio that he has not really changed his positions of the prevrous day. In Quint’s eyes, Niccoh does not retract his criti¬ cisms; indeed, he explicitly returns to them. Niccoli’s recourse to an allegorical reading of Infeiyio 34 shows that his recantation is less than “genuine or complete.” “If one does not accept the rather far¬ fetched allegorization oilnf. 34 by which Niccoli seeks to argue away Dante’s notorious, historically documented monarchical politics,” ar¬ gues Quint, “the poet is guilty—along with Salutati—of upholding a misguided view of Caesar.”Niccoli can justify Dante s presenta¬ tion only by resorting to a particularly medieval mode of reading— namely, allegory. The way in which the Brutus and Cassius episode is salvaged here has significant repercussions for later discussions of Inferno 34. It is not only commentators who are subsumed into the commentary tradition. Bruni, in his allegorization of the two Romans damna¬ tion, resorts to interpretive strategies that become important to later commentators laboring under the conflicting demands of the tradi¬ tion and contemporary pressures. At the time of the composition of the Dialogi, as throughout the Quattrocento, Florence’s promulga¬ tion of a civic ideology modeled on the traditions of republican Rome underwrote a substantially different valuation of Brutus. Dante s un¬ abashed imperialism proved a major sticking point to Florentine humanists who wished to enroll Dante as an authoritative cultural figure; they were loathe to praise an imperialist Dante. Bruni’s treat¬ ment of Brutus and Caesar serves to deemphasize Dante’s imperial¬ ism. This strategic deployment of allegory proves remarkably endur¬ ing; Landino, whose treatment of Brutus and Cassius is discussed in detail below, also incorporates allegory defensively. Outside Florence, and notably in Milan, imperial sentiments con¬ tinue to be sounded in commentary. We have already seen the effects of the Este court on Benvenuto’s treatment of Caesar. An unam¬ biguous case of pro-imperial sentiment in the Quattrocento, and one more revealing in terms of the commentary tradition, is that of Guiniforte Barzizza (1406—63), whose glosses to the Inferno were The Brutus and Cassius Debate 73 written around 1438.’“' Son of the famous pedagogue, Gasparino Bar- zizza, Guiniforte wrote his commentary at the request of the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. Although Barzizza does not comment at length on Inferno 34, he sprinkles his commentary with remarks that, taken together, clearly show his feelings on the subject of Caesar. For example, in his gloss to Inferno 2.22, where Dante refers to Rome as the destined seat of the Church and the empire, Barzizza observes; “et nota che Dante d'xcead voler dir lo vero, peroche alchuni passionatamente voleno sos- tenere che I’imperio non sia iusto, quali sono quelli che in comunita tirannizzano sotto falso nome de liberta (and note that Dante says— if the truth be told, because some passionately insist on maintain¬ ing that the empire is not just—that there are some who tyrannize in a community under the false name of liberty).”” As Giacomo Ferrau has pointed out, Barzizza’s characterization of Florence as a tyranny that masks itself in republican rhetoric is highly remi¬ niscent of Antonio Loschi’s anti-Florentine propaganda.” Barzizza’s endorsement of imperialism is also evident in two other passages. In his discussion of Caesar {Inferno 4.123), Barzizza praises the em¬ peror’s military triumphs, his clemency, and his prudent govern¬ ing, and notes that Caesar has been slandered by many detractors.” Although the observations concerning Caesar’s military and personal acumen are typical, Barzizza’s last remark, that Caesar has been slan¬ dered by many detractors, is more pointed. This defense of Caesar acquires greater significance in the light of Barzizza’s discussion of Ciacco’s prophecy {Inferno 6.64-75), which in this situation becomes another highly inflected passage. Reluctant to dwell on past instances of Florentine civic discord, Barzizza adds that Filippo Maria would consider drawing attention to earlier disputes inappropriate because of present political circumstances between Florence and Milan: ed il clementissimo signor nostro illustrissimo duca non lo per- metterebbe, el quale, nel tempo presente, usando di consueta sua clemencia, rimettendo ogni odio iniuria et offensione con beni- gnita concede pace alia comunita de Firenze, ama de vederla in reposo e pensa in che modo a lei doni copioso favore si che la possa restorarsi de suoi danni. our most clement leader and illustrious duke would not allow it; presently adopting his customary clemency, forgiving every hate. 74 Dante in the Renaissance injury, and offence, with kindness he concedes peace to the Floren¬ tine community; he loves to see it in repose; and he thinks about what way he might show her abundant favor, so that Florence can recover from past damages.^* This last statement, along with Barzizza’s discussion of Inferno 2.22, clearly refers to contemporary political affairs between Florence and Milan. On the basis of a letter written in August 1438, Fer- rau takes this to be an allusion to April 1438, when Filippo Maria signed a peace treaty with Florence—one of several that punctuated the hostile relations between the two city-states. There are notable similarities between the sociopolitical circumstances underlying Bar¬ zizza’s and Benvenuto’s treatments of Caesar. Both commentators generally favorable assessments of Caesar are inextricably tied to their relations with their patron rulers. As Benvenuto compares Nic- C0I6 IFs clemency to that of Caesar in his proemio, Barzizza praises Filippo Maria Visconti as clementissimo signor nostro. The compari¬ son of Filippo Maria to Caesar is explicitly made in one of Barzizza s letters to the duke.^® In both instances, Benvenuto’s and Barzizza’s interpretive procedures are influenced by their dependence on their rulers. Barzizza’s imperialism is clearly more blatant than Benve¬ nuto’s: his situation at the despotic Milanese court necessitated an unequivocal endorsement of Filippo Maria. Benvenuto arrived at the Este court fairly late in life; hence his political views were more in¬ formed than completely defined by the court. Furthermore, Benve¬ nuto’s attitude toward imperialism is not easily detected.^® One would have expected Barzizza, on the other hand, to have been born and bred in the long-standing Milanese tradition of Caesarism.®’ Not surprisingly, one detects a similar disposition toward im¬ perialism in Martino Paolo Nibia’s commentary of 1477. Nibia, more commonly known as Nidobeato, revised Jacopo della Lana s com¬ mentary (1324-28) for publication. Although the commentary is largely derived from Lana, Nidobeato, a nobleman working at the Sforza court in Milan, made a number of changes, many of which reflect his humanist culture. For example, there are more allusions to classical sources and more detailed discussions of historical figures.^ Nidobeato’s commentary to Inferno 34 is brief. Whereas Lana had dwelled on Brutus’s and Cassius’s ingratitude toward their benefac¬ tor, Nidobeato confines himself to noting that Brutus was the bastard The Brutus and Cassius Debate 75 son of Caesar.^^ The portrait of Brutus as a parricide has some ante¬ cedent in Boccaccio and the Anonimo Fiorentino, both of whom had reported that Caesar was lustful and that he had had an affair with Brutus’s mother. The suggestion of parricide is notable for its de- pohticalization of Caesar’s murder. As such, Nidobeato’s reading is closer to medieval valuations than to Benvenuto’s more ambivalent portrait. For Nidobeato, Brutus’s killing of Caesar is less a political act than a personal one. The effect, however, is unequivocal: Brutus is presented as committing an unnatural vendetta. Both Barzizza and Nidobeato, the former explicitly and the latter implicitly, express sympathy for Caesar. Significantly, there is no trace of Bruni’s republican reading of the Brutus and Cassius episode in the two Milanese commentaries. Yet Barzizza’s repetition of Loschi’s observation concerning “quelli che in comunita tirannizzano sotto falso nome de liberta” shows that Milanese humanists were acutely aware of Florence’s appropriation and exploitation of a republican ideology. Loschi’s and Barzizza’s assertion constitutes a blunt demys¬ tification of Florentine political propaganda. Moreover, the absence of any reference to Bruni constitutes a response in itself In eliding Bruni s glorification of Brutus, Barzizza and Nidobeato betray their commitments to and promulgation of Milanese imperialism. Shifting the Burden of History : Landino, Neoplatonism, and Allegory We have been tracing the eruption of the local and particular in the commentary tradition. We have seen how specific sociohistorical cir¬ cumstances are reflected in commentators’ treatments of Brutus and Caesar. The introduction of strong readings, such as those offered by Benvenuto and Bruni, are absorbed by later commentators like Serra- valle and the Anonimo Fiorentino. Buti’s commentary, on the other hand, displays a strong continuity with an earlier Trecento exegeti- cal tradition. As new readings are introduced, commentators refine, incorporate, reject, and build on this growing repository of inter¬ pretations. This river of commentary provides a record of the inter¬ pretive strategies employed by commentators, but more importantly. It allows us to trace the history of how these interpretive strategies are related to various ideological commitments. In addition, we are 76 Dante in the Renaissance tracing the history of the content of certain interpretive forms: more precisely, how this content was constructed by activity both within and without the commentary tradition. With Cristoforo Landino we are confronted once again with a forceful intervention, one reminiscent of Benvenuto’s strong reading. Landino’s exposition constitutes the most influential and important Dante commentary of the Renaissance. Some measure of its impor¬ tance can be found in its impressive editorial fortune and the un¬ usually pointed responses of subsequent commentators to his treat¬ ment of the Brutus and Cassius episode: Trifone Gabriele endorses the Florentine humanist’s reading and Alessandro Vellutello seeks to overturn it.^'' In terms of the history of reception, Landino’s commen¬ tary affords an excellent view of how different values generate differ¬ ent interpretive strategies. As Landino comes to it, the tradition of commentary has developed and included techniques for making the Comedy amenable to monarchical or republican sentiments. Just as Barzizza and Nidobeato before him, Landino modifies and develops interpretive strategies suited to his particular ideological investments. Landino’s commentary was published in 1481 with a great deal of fanfare. The work is a monument to Florentine nationalism and Neoplatonism. Critics have often commented on the effects of Lan¬ dino’s Neoplatonism on his reading of the Comedy. Michele Barbi comments that the poem’s literal sense is trascurato as a result of Landino’s preoccupation with allegorical meaning. In the same vein Emilio Bigi accuses Landino of “deformare in senso umanistico 1 arte dantesca.” Aldo Vallone, comparing Benvenuto’s and Landino’s treat¬ ment of il mondo esteriore, notes that with Landino literal reference all but disappears. Similarly, Arthur Field describes the commentary as “the most distorted and ahistorical to date.” Critical assessments of Landino’s reading of the Brutus and Cassius episode elicit similar charges. Hans Baron, Emilio Bigi, and Craig Kallendorf all remark on the extent to which Landino’s commitment to the concerns of Florentine civic humanism color his reading. Baron compares Lan¬ dino’s treatment of Inferno 34 to that of Brum. Although finding in Landino “a greater openness of mind towards the Christian-medieval aspect of the Empire” than Bruni, Baron concedes that “the citizen’s faith in freedom” makes it impossible for Landino to “accept literally Dante’s monarchical creed.” Craig Kallendorf, although modifying Baron’s assessment of Landino’s republicanism, acknowledges that The Brutus and Cassius Debate 77 the humanist ‘is not about to defend Dante’s imperial bias” in his commentary.*^ The loaded nature of these charges bears closer inspection. The use of words like trascurato, deformare, and “distorted” is possible only in the context of an interpretive project that seeks an originary meaning for the Comedy. The comments of these critics, on the one hand astute and discriminating, tend to deemphasize the historicity of Dante’s poem—that is, they seem to reject, or at least are un¬ interested in, the idea that the Comedy's, meaning can change over time. There is an undeniable truth to these critical observations, but it is important to scrutinize, not simply judge, the apparent differ¬ ences between Landino and earlier commentators. This apparent gap is what enables us to evaluate not only Landino but also the social function of the Comedy, at least according to the Florentine human¬ ist. In tracing the historicity of the Comedy, such moments, when the strain and awkwardness of new readings become visible, are im¬ portant critical opportunities. When the productivity of the text, its capacity to generate new significance for readers, seems less than compelling, we are given a privileged view of the dynamic nature of the interaction between the poem and society. Landino’s Neoplatonism enforces a view of poetic truth as static, unchanging, and transcendent, yet he is also a writer working within the ever-unfolding commentary tradition. We have seen how each new reading is in part a rearrangement, permutation, or reevalua- tion of earlier work within the tradition. Commentary is essentially a kind of bricolage: the commentator, steeped in earlier readings of the poem, picks from among them. This makes commentary an ac¬ tivity that, although not in fact displaying a historical consciousness, virtually functions as if it did. It is not so much that commentators thought of themselves as historicists but that their procedures tended to make them so. To be a commentator required that one deal in the isolated, decontextualized remnants of past interpretations, in the shards of earlier critical treatments of the poem. Commentaries tend to be more like archeological sites than seamless arguments produced by a set of critical givens. What is striking about Landino’s approach, therefore, is his effort to occlude traces of earlier readings. Landino, more forcefully than any of his predecessors, strives to sever his com¬ mentary from the tradition. This attempt to separate his gloss from earlier readings amounts to a strategic move. Landino wants to har- 78 Dante in the Renaissance ness the cultural authority of the Comedy, but unfortunately some aspects of this powerful text seem to run counter to his ideological investments. Because Landino does not want to suggest in any way that Dante is irrelevant as a cultural authority, he must develop a set of interpretive strategies that produce readings compatible with his ideological commitments. The appropriation of Dante’s poem into a Neoplatonic scheme requires a certain amount of reorganiza¬ tion, revision, and reemphasis with respect to both the poem and the tradition of commentary. The deliberateness with which Landino seeks to distance him¬ self from earlier commentaries is clear from a statement he makes in his oration to the Florentine signoria. After listing the commen¬ taries with which he is familiar, Landino declares: “Ne seguitai in tutto il corso degl’antichi comentatori—uomini sanza fallo dotti, ma e’ quali in pochi luoghi seguitano I’allegorico senso—; ma ripetendo la mente e el proposito suo da piu alto principio, con perpetuo e con- tinuato ordine ho per ogni parte investigate sue allegorie (Nor did I follow the old commentators entirely, men without doubt learned, but who in few places pursue the poem’s allegorical meaning. But I investigated in every part with perpetual and continued order Dante’s allegories by repeating the poet’s thought and his intention from a higher principle).” “ Landino’s allegorizing is strategic; he adopts a philosophical-allegorical approach in order to explicate the Comedy da piu alto principio. As Roberto Cardini points out Landino does not allegorize poets “per difenderne la poesia, bensi attraverso 1 allegoria filosofica li scioghera dalla storia per collocarh su un piano metasto- rico come interpreti insuperati della condizione e dell’ ‘eterno’ destino dell’uomo (to defend poetry, rather through a philosophical allegory, Landino divests poetry from history in order to place poets on a metahistorical plain as unsurpassed interpreters of the condition and ‘eternal’ destiny of man).”*^^ In emphasizing the poem’s philosophi¬ cal dimension, Landino is able to present Dante as an exemplary exponent of Neoplatonic ideals; the poet’s thoughts are seen to be in perfect consonance with contemporary cultural and philosophical notions. This Neoplatonic refiguration of Dante cannot be success¬ fully achieved without divesting the Comedy of its perceived out¬ moded qualities, its didactic, moral, and eschatological intent the very features that Dante’s Trecento commentators sought to clarify.^* As many critics have noted, Landino’s interpretation of Dante’s The Brutus and Cassius Debate 79 poem follows the philosophical-allegorical method he adopts in ex¬ plicating WngxW Aeneid'. just as Aeneas’s journey is figured allegori¬ cally as a passage from the active life of civic virtue (Troy) to the contemplative life (Italy), so does the Comedy depict a pilgrimage through the torments of the world toward the summum bonum!'^ According to Landino’s Platonic view, Dante’s poem, like xTxeAeneid, shows man how to reach the good and happy life. The philosophi¬ cal and universal truths that Landino finds contained in poetry are often relayed through allegory, which allows him to extract universal truths. In addition to the transcendent vision enforced by Neoplaton¬ ism, Landino’s commentary is also marked by his commitments to the ideal of liberty. A definition of liberty in the gloss to Eclogue 1.27 in the Virgil commentary (1487) outlines his conception of the term: “Dicitur praeterea libertas excellentia & magnitudo animi cum nullo metu coherci possumus: quin freti optima conscientia apertis verbis honestati aequitatique & publicae utilitati favemus (Liberty, further¬ more, is a term for excellence and greatness of spirit, when we cannot be coerced by any fear. Nay rather, relying on a good conscience, with free speech, we promote that which is honest and lawful and in the public interest).”™ Although the term libertas undergoes various permutations in Florence, here, as Annabel Patterson has pointed out, Landino seems to evoke the language and preoccupations of a specifically Florentine civic humanism—magnanimity, freedom of speech, and equality of access to public office. Landino’s proemio to the Dante commentary provides a more concrete delineation of liberty. Here Landino celebrates Florence’s military victories over Walter of Brienne, Venice, and Naples: they show that an indomitable commitment to the ideal of liberty informs Florence’s response to all political situations.^' As Manfred Lentzen argues, Landino evokes the concept of liberty “come un termine, con il quale il Fiorentino si identifica.”^^ To Landino’s philosophical commitment to Neoplatonism and to his generally political commitment to liberty, we need to add one consideration—his personal links to the Medici. Lentzen discerns in Landino s allusions to liberty in the proemio “un’esortazione indi- retta a Lorenzo a non mettere troppo duramente alia prova il senso di liberta del popolo fiorentino (an indirect exhortation to Lorenzo not to test too severely the Florentine people’s sense of liberty).”™ Given Landino’s evocation of contemporary political circumstances 8o Dante in the Renaissance elsewhere in his works, this is highly plausible. Annabel Patterson has noted how Landino in his Virgil commentary tends to work by “indirection,” allowing himself a “certain latitude of political inference.” Patterson detects subtle differences between Landino’s stance in the preface, where “the constraints of political clientage” oblige him to take the Medici line, and his remarks elsewhere in the commentary.^^ Critics have often maintained that humanists’ dedica¬ tions to patrons offer a means of proposing specific behaviors. Craig Kallendorf, for example, observes that Landino’s dedication of the Virgil commentary to Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici is intended to teach the Medici heir apparent “how to govern more effectively.”^^ Such considerations apply, in a less direct but no less powerful way, to statements made within a commentary. As for the agency of these intellectual interventions, it is hard not to employ Arthur Field s “dialectical” model. Field rejects the notion that humanist intellec¬ tuals were mere puppets of the Medici party. Rather, Field argues, humanists and philosophers created a “new ideology” by transform¬ ing familiar texts and forms of thinking. Their ideas, shaped by the process of courtly circulation, came to form the basis of Medicean ideology.^^ We can glean some sense of how Landino works by indirection in his commentary to Inferno 12.52-57. lo vidi un’ampia fossa in arco torta, come quella che tutto ’1 piano abbraccia, secondo ch’avea detto la mia scorta; e tra ’1 pie de la ripa ed essa, in traccia corrien centauri, armati di saette, come solien nel mondo andare a caccia. I saw a broad ditch bent into an arc so that it could embrace all of that plain, precisely as my guide had said before; between it and the base of the embankment raced files of Centaurs who were armed with arrows, as, in the world above, they used to hunt. {Inferno 12.52-57) Dante and Virgil, having reached the banks of the Phlegethon, spot the centaurs who patrol the area. The sight of the centaurs spawns The Brutus and Cassius Debate 8i a digression in which Landino compares just rulers and tyrants. After explaining the allegorical significance of the centaurs’ birth and appearance, Landino condemns Alexander the Great as a ruthless tyrant, one who had enslaved “quegli che de natura eran liberi come lui.” This observation is followed by a more personal observation: “E certo nessuna cosa si truova piu efferata, e piu contraria all’umana natura, che la vita e costumi di quegli e quali o nelle loro republiche o nelle loro principati vogliono potere piu che le leggi e soperchiare quegli che Dio e la natura gli ha fatti pari e eguali (And surely one finds nothing more cruel and contrary to nature than the life and habits of those who in republics or their pnncipates want more than what is legal, those who want more than God and nature have made the same and equal).” That Landino is allowing himself “a cer¬ tain latitude of political inference” is clear from the specificity of his allusion to those individuals in republiche and principati who violate the laws of the state.^^ Another notable feature of this discussion is Landino’s definition of tyranny or, more precisely, his expansion of Dante’s conception of it. Dante, in condemning such tyrants as Dio¬ nysius of Syracuse, Ezzolino III, Obizzo II, Guy de Monfort, and Attila the Hun, measures their cruelty in terms of their murderous and bloody actions. Landino, however, extends the crimes of a tyrant to encompass economic tyranny and the use of office for personal advantage. Kings and governors of republics, argues the Florentine humanist, should not “convertire in se ogni commodo e utilita.”**® Such comments, although not addressing the idea of liberty directly, nevertheless testify to Landino’s disapproval of tyrannical practices in rulers. It is difficult to determine whether such statements on tyranny and liberty refer to an existing state of affairs or simply register a brokered utopian desire. Nevertheless, at the very least Landino is de¬ lineating acceptable and unacceptable patterns of behavior for rulers. In this context, condemning various forms of economic tyranny is tantamount to arguing for a specific concept of liberty. Landino’s position is far more complicated than that of previous commentators I have discussed. On the one hand, Landino’s nation¬ alism makes him want to harness Dante as an authoritative cultural figure; on the other, this agenda is hampered by Dante’s imperial¬ ism. This makes his reading of the Brutus and Cassius episode a more intricate act of negotiation. For Landino, Dante’s damnation 82 Dante in the Renaissance of the two Romans is highly problematic. His dilemma is similar to Bruni’s: how to justify the condemnation of two historical figures whom he greatly admires. Landino begins his exposition by noting that, because Judas, trai¬ tor to the divine emperor, is placed here, it is fitting that the men who had betrayed the secular emperor are also placed in this circle.®' He asserts that Dante does not intend to damn the historical Brutus and Cassius but what they symbolize—criminals who wrongfully murder their prince. Turning to a discussion of Caesar, Landino acknowledges that he possessed many virtues, but these were sup¬ planted by a tyrannical impulse the moment Caesar crossed the Rubi¬ con. This exposition is followed by a list of the virtues of the Caesar not killed by Brutus and Cassius, that is, the Caesar who had con¬ quered many nations and who was a clement, eloquent, and learned man. Rather, Brutus and Cassius killed the Caesar who had ungrate¬ fully turned his own forces against the patria —the Caesar who had ruthlessly taken away liberty. Landino then assures his readers that he is not reproving Dante; he merely seeks to illustrate the poet’s judgment.®^ Landino concludes with a fantastic speculation: it would not be difficult for him to believe that someone whose prayers might be acceptable to God could remove Brutus and Cassius from Hell, just as Pope Gregory had successfully interceded on behalf of the Emperor Trajan. This is an extraordinarily programmatic reading. In his efforts to illustrate that Dante is not condemning the historical Brutus and Cassius, Landino adopts two interpretive techniques: he allegorizes heavily, and he essentially splits Caesar into two different men. These two strategies help Landino evade the manifest content of the epi¬ sode—Dante’s blatant imperialism. “Certamente sarebbe stato in- audita crudelta e al tutto alieno dalla dottrina e equita di tanto poeta,” writes Landino, “porre in eterno e si grave supplicio quegli e quali per ardentissima carita si missono alia morte per liberare la patria dal giogo della servitu (And surely, it would have been un¬ precedented cruelty, and entirely foreign to the wisdom and sense of equity of Dante, the great poet, to inflict eternal punishment of such severity on those who, out of a most ardent love, had gone to meet death in order to liberate their homeland from the yoke of servitude).”®® Landino’s allegorization of the figures of Caesar, Brutus, and Cas- The Brutus and Cassius Debate 83 sius is indebted to Bruni’s reading of Inferno 34. Both writers em¬ phasize that Caesar symbolizes the universal monarch and Brutus and Cassius represent the assassins of the true universal emperor. It should be noted, however, that Landino departs from Bruni in one particular; he does not include the Florentine chancellor’s remark that Caesar represents the “just” worldly monarch. Indeed, Lan¬ dino patently denies Caesar’s justness: “pone Cesare primo non per Cesare el quale non essendo giusto non potea essere giusto impera- dore.’’*'' Allegory, in addition to being an effective way of evading Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius, offers other opportunities for reshaping the significance of the episode. The splitting of Caesar into acceptable and unacceptable entities is another device that allows Landino to evade the manifest content of the Comedy. Landino declares: Non uccisono Bruto e Cassio quel Cesare el quale con laborio- sissime fatiche . . . e con orrende difficulta e gravissimi periculi acquisto al popolo romano tutta la Gallia, tutta la Germania e la Britannia. . . . Non uccisono quel Cesare el quale in dieci anni e in varie battaglie uccise con suoi victoriosi esserciti . . . migliai d’uomini. . . . Non uccisono .quel Cesare nel quale fu somma liberalita inaudita clemenzia. . . . Ma quello che contro alia sua patria ingratissimamente volse le forze che da quella avea rice- vuto. Quello che sceleratissimamente tolse la liberta a quella che ’1 dovea difendere e certamente qual puo essere maggior virtu che vendicare le ingiurie della patria . . . Leginsi tutte le leggi di qualunque republica bene instituta e troverremo che a nessuno si propone maggior premio che a chi uccide el tiranno. Brutus and Cassius did not kill that Caesar who, with utmost toil and industry, and amidst horrendous difficulties and the gravest dangers, acquired for the Roman people all of France, Germany, and England. They did not kill that Caesar who in ten years and in various battles killed, with his victorious armies, thousands of men. . . . They did not kill that Caesar in whom reigned the utmost sense of generosity and an unprecedented sense of clem¬ ency, but that Caesar who most ungratefully turned his forces, the very ones which he received from it—against his own coun¬ try. [They killed] that Caesar who villainously seized liberty from those whom he should have defended. And surely, what could be considered a greater act of virtue than to vindicate an affront to one’s country. . . . Read all the laws of a well-constituted repub- 84 Dante in the Renaissance lie—we shall find them to decree no greater reward than to the man who kills a tyrant.*^ Landino’s presentation of Caesar as a Janus-faced character differs notably from earlier discussions of the emperor. Other commenta¬ tors—Boccaccio, Benvenuto, and the Anonimo Fiorentino—tend to refer to a variety of classical and medieval accounts of Caesar’s char¬ acter; they relay, in varying degrees, Caesar’s good and bad traits. Although Landino reports some of Caesar’s exploits, he does not present the information in terms of previous assessments by specific commentators or classical sources. Landino simply splits Caesar into two different men and redistributes the content of other assessments. One Caesar is the widely acclaimed military victor and clement ruler; the other is a tyrant who put his patria through a bloody civil war. What is notable is not Landino’s failure to report other opinions, but the effect produced by his form of presentation. The splitting of Caesar allows Landino to avoid the “on the one hand X says this; on the other Y says that” construction, a tired form typical of earlier commentators. In eschewing the practice of reporting other opinions, Landino ultimately manages to sever his commentary from the rest of the tradition.*® Landino is operating under a difficult and complex combination of constraints: he has commitments to Neoplatonism, to the ideal of liberty, to the Medici, and of course to Dante himself. He can¬ not openly express his disapproval of Dante without impugning the poet’s judgment and authority—an act that would run counter to Landino’s purposes in writing the commentary. Often in the com¬ mentary Landino’s beliefs are held in a kind of abeyance—percep¬ tible but not prominent. The Brutus and Cassius episode serves to precipitate these commitments, to clarify their relation, to fit them into a structure. Landino’s commitment to liberty is the end here, and his philosophical-allegorical approach provides the means. (In the following chapter, I discuss other passages that elicit a similar sense of defensiveness.) We can also recognize in Landino’s treatment of Brutus and Cas¬ sius the preference for working through indirection. In the passage cited above, Landino justifies tyrannicide in the case of a ruthless seizure of liberty from the populace (“Leginsi tutte le leggi di qua- lunque republica bene instituta e troverremo che a nessuno si propone The Brutus and Cassius Debate 85 maggior premio che a chi uccide el tiranno”). Landino unequivocably praises the actions of two of the most renowned defenders of republi¬ can liberty. It is easy to imagine that such a statement could function as a reminder—even a warning—to the Medici. But we cannot be certain about the existence of such innuendo here. Although we can detect such insinuation in other passages, the force of the Brutus and Cassius episode tends to be more elusive. Nevertheless the possi¬ bility of such reference—however ambiguous—testifies to the subtle political work possible under the aegis of commentary. Such textual productivity, so specific and local, so intricately inflected with re¬ spect to contemporary conditions, stands as a reminder of the intimate work that can be done by a masterpiece over time. From Trifone Gabriele to Bernardino Daniello Treatments of the Brutus and Cassius episode after Landino tend to underscore in one way or another the force of his reading: Trifone Gabriele endorses Landino’s reading, Alessandro Vellutello attempts to reverse the Florentine humanist’s interpretation, and Bernardino Daniello evades the Brutus and Cassius controversy entirely. I discuss these last three commentators as a group, because their expositions were all produced in Venice within a few decades of one another. Gabriele’s commentary was completed around 1526-27, Vellutello’s was published in 1544 by Francesco Marcolini, and Daniello’s was printed posthumously in 1568 by Pietro da Fino. Moreover, Gabriele and Daniello share a similar approach to the Comedy. Gabriele offers a benchmark by which we can measure the ex¬ plicitly political and philosophical commitments of Landino. This is not to say that Gabriele is apolitical or objective. In the next chapter I discuss Landino and Gabriele in terms of their institutional com¬ mitments—or, in the case of the latter, the lack of them. What is important here is how Gabriele allows us to assess Landino. Both commentators object to Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius. They differ notably, however, in the extent to which each openly condemns Dante. As we have seen, Landino denies that he is taking exception to the poet’s presentation. Gabriele, on the other hand, dispenses with any such qualifications. The Venetian commentator is brief and blunt: Dante has greatly erred in damning Brutus and 86 Dante in the Renaissance Cassius. Dante, declares Gabriele, “fu troppo imperiale e troppo vuol adular quella parte.” Landino is correct, declares Gabriele, to argue that Brutus and Cassius rightly belong in the highest reaches of heaven. But beneath the surface this seemingly objective stance is ideological as well. What is interesting as a textual strategy is Gabriele’s bluntness. He does not stint to attribute Dante’s judgment to the poet’s imperi¬ alism. This apparent objectivity and neutrality is born of a unique set of social and personal circumstances. Gabriele has a remarkable degree of autonomy and political power. Since he was a wealthy and independent Venetian nobleman, he had the complete freedom to accept and reject civic responsibilities. He can be blunt and open because he can afford to be. Furthermore, unlike Landino, Gabriele’s remarks are not tied to a specific political agenda. Daniello’s and Vellutello’s remarks, however, are less easily char¬ acterized. Little biographical information exists on Daniello and Vellutello. As a result, it is more difficult to characterize their re¬ sponses. Daniello’s commentary in particular contains relatively few references to contemporary social and cultural concerns. Although Daniello follows Vellutello, I discuss Daniello first because his re¬ sponse to the subject is complete silence. Daniello, alone among Dante’s Renaissance commentators, expresses no opinion on the Bru¬ tus and Cassius episode. His remarks are confined to noting that Satan’s three faces are stained with tears and blood from the pec- catori che egli dirompea co’ denti.”®* Brutus and Cassius are never even identified. Although Vellutello does address the Brutus and Cassius contro¬ versy, ultimately, his response can only be characterized in a limited way. Vellutello seeks to defend Dante’s judgment. Unlike altri (i.e., Landino and Gabriele), Vellutello does not judge it inconveniente that Dante placed Brutus and Cassius in Hell. One must consider, observes Vellutello, whether killing Caesar actually resulted in an improved state of affairs. He argues that this is not the case; one need only recall Brutus’s and Cassius s violent end and that, after Caesar’s death, the patria fell into the hands of three orrendi mostri. Here Vellutello extends the appeal to subsequent history made by Benvenuto and other commentators. Whereas Benvenuto graphically recalls the violent deaths of the conspirators and maintains that divine retribution is at work, Vellutello seeks to focus on Caesar s good The Brutus and Cassius Debate 87 qualities and on what the Comedy indirectly suggests: had the poet considered Caesar a tyrant, he would have placed him in Inferno 12 among the violent.*’ The paucity of information on Vellutello’s and Daniello’s lives renders their treatment of the Brutus and Cassius episode less read¬ able. This probably accounts for the small number of studies on Vellutello and Daniello, not to mention the Anonimo Fiorentino and Nidobeato. Because critics can fall back only on a series of com¬ parative and descriptive remarks concerning Vellutello’s knowledge of Aristotle and Plato, his local disagreements with Landino, his apparently impoverished style, or his attitude toward Bembo, their appraisals have tended to be constrained and sterile. Without more information on Vellutello’s life, his institutional commitments, and his relationships with other intellectuals, one is hamstrung in any effort to clarify the motives underlying a particular reading or the commentator’s use of certain interpretive strategies.” Vellutello and Daniello define the limits of the utility of the method I have employed. Any approach to commentary has limits and characteristic blind spots; some commentators are less read¬ able than others. For commentators such as Daniello and Vellu¬ tello, methods other than the one pursued in this chapter must be adopted. I explore some alternative procedures in two of the follow¬ ing chapters, in which I explore Daniello’s debt to Trifone Gabriele and examine the ways in which printed editions codify ideological commitments. Each culture tends to redefine the action of an authoritative text on itself. Instead of seeing the Comedy as a bearer or a container of culture, a document that, like modern time capsules, renders up a culture whole to later cultures, we should see such do cumen ts as being in a productive rel^ion to culture, constantly re defining it and being redefinedjjy it. Commentary, however, because of its cumula¬ tive nature, which allows us to chart the nature of the investment that has been made in Dante’s poem over time, and by virtue of the flexi¬ bility of the genre, which easily accommodates shifts in the political landscape, can provide much of the information that such a reposi¬ tory of culture might deliver. Commentary, which brokers between the poem and society, provides a means of recording the mediation between the Comedy and successive cultures: through it, we can map 88 Dante in the Renaissance disruptions and changes in ideology. In their efforts to produce a reading persuasive to their contemporaries, Dante’s Renaissance com¬ mentators show remarkable innovation in redefining the agency of the poem according to new needs, and they remind us how subtle the historicity of the text can be. Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele's Critique of Landino In his prefatory letter to Cristoforo Landino’s commentary to the Comedy, Marsilio Ficino presents a dramatic encounter between Dante and Florence. The city’s lament over Dante’s long absence moves Apollo to command Mercury to possess the “pious” mind of the “divine poet” Cristoforo Landino.' Mercury then assumes Lan¬ dino’s countenance, arouses Dante from his sleep with a life-giving wand, and transports him to Florence. There, Dante is gloriously crowned as he prophesied {Paradiso 25.1-12). The significance of this elaborate mythological sequence is obvious: through the merits of Landino’s commentary, Dante is honorably restored to Florence after an exile of almost two centuries. Ficino’s high expectations of the commentary’s favorable recep¬ tion were not unfounded. Presented to the Florentine signoria on August 30,1481, in a sumptuous edition with engravings now attrib¬ uted to Botticelli, Landino’s commentary rapidly won the esteem and admiration of his contemporaries. Its immense success was due to a number of factors: it was the first illustrated edition of the poem; it synthesized the contributions of the poem’s earliest commentators; it presented Dante as an exemplary exponent of Neoplatonic ideals; and it offered the most thorough examination of Dante’s language to date. “Gia quasi ogni uomo par che si riposi sopra di quello che da Cristoforo Landino n’e stato detto,” extols Alessandro Vellutello in xheproemio to his Dante commentary of 1544.^ Such an assessment, however, does not capture the sentiments of all Landino’s readers. Students of the commentary tradition have recognized in Trifone Gabriele’s unpublished annotations to the Comedy (c. 1526-27) one of the most sustained critiques of Lan¬ dino’s commentary.^ Well known and widely esteemed while alive, Gabriele’s reputation soon faded after his death. His contemporaries commonly referred to Gabriele as il Socrate veneziano, largely because of his preference for direct, informal teaching. There is no evidence 90 Dante in the Renaissance that he ever published, prepared for publication, or even wrote down any of his ideas. His relative obscurity is largely due to this reluc¬ tance. Unlike other men of his time, who sought recognition and fame through the circulation and printing of their works, Gabriele preferred to devote his time to studying and discussing classical and contemporary poets with a small circle of friends.'' Nevertheless, although reluctant to publish his own works, Gabriele inspired and contributed to the shaping of some of the most important works of the period. Gabriele’s annotations represent a significant departure from the commentary tradition. Unlike many of the earlier fourteenth- and fifteenth-century expositions, his work does not seek to provide a full line-by-line commentary. As its title suggests, the commentary con¬ sists of annotations to certain passages and words from each canto. Like most commentators, Gabriele covers a wide range of topics, in¬ cluding scientific, literary, philosophical, and geographical matters. The commentary’s most distinctive feature, however, is Gabriele’s analysis of Dante’s language and style. Essentially aesthetic and lit¬ erary, Gabriele’s appreciation of the Comedy lends the annotations a unity seldom discernible in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento com¬ mentaries. Landino’s commentary is a constant point of reference through¬ out Gabriele’s annotations. Characterizations of Gabriele’s disagree¬ ments range from a perception that they are confined to certain de¬ tails, to finding them centered on stylistic and linguistic matters, to noting diverging opinions over textual, allegorical, philosophical, and scientific issues.^ Although closer examination of the two commen¬ taries has registered their differences more precisely, little attention has been paid to the historical and social circumstances underlying the production of the two commentaries.* Much can be learned in the move from a comparison of texts to a consideration of these two commentaries as social acts. The radically different conditions under which both men wrote, their perception of their roles within their re¬ spective city-states of Florence and Venice, their intended audiences, and the textual tradition of the Comedy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries all represent determining points of reference in the two commentaries. A closer examination of these factors allows us to better understand how Gabriele’s relative freedom from insti- Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 91 tutional and civic commitments enabled him to offer such a frank critique of Landino. Landino held the chair of rhetoric and poetry in the Florentine Studio from 1458 to 1497. An eloquent proponent of the classics and the vernacular, he taught courses on Dante, Juvenal, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Petrarch.^ He was in a position to influence some of the most distinguished writers and statesmen of the period — among them Marsilio Ficino, Agnolo Poliziano, and Lorenzo de’ Medici — and by their own accounts, he did. Similarly, he profited by contact with Carlo Marsuppini and Leon Battista Alberti. Landino’s views of the relation between education and the state are essential to understanding the conception of literature that in¬ forms his remarks on the Comedy. Landino believes that poetry is central to man’s ethical and moral being. He considers poetry su¬ perior to all disciplines — more effective than politics, history, or phi¬ losophy — in promoting virtues proper to a civic and social life. Lan¬ dino finds poetry’s beauty and eloquence an ideal pedagogical tool. For him, the mark of great poetry lies not so much in its ingenuity and unconscious inspiration, as Ficino contends, as in its learning and the refinement that results from contact with it.* In Landino’s mind, one can find no better work for the promotion of these values than the Comedy. He considers the poem, with its incontestable wealth of learning and doctrine, equal to, if not superior to classical texts: Dante is “vero imitatore di Virgilio,” writes Landino, “ma di piu alta dottrina,” and the poet is unequaled in his “divinita dello ingegno.”^ Landino lavishes particular attention on Dante’s choice of the ver¬ nacular. Dante, he notes in his oration, is “primo splendore del nome fiorentino e d’eloquenzia.”’® This fact allows him to emphasize two important points: the recognition the republic owes one of its most illustrious citizens and the superiority of the Florentine dialect. This patriotic attitude dovetails perfectly with Lorenzo de’ Medici’s own views on the vernacular. The introduction to his Comento., a collec¬ tion of lyric poetry, clearly indicates why Lorenzo was so quick to endorse the value of literature written in the vernacular: E forse saranno ancora in questa lingua [fiorentina] cose sottile ed importanti e degne d’essere lette. . . . E potrebbe facilmente nella gioventu ed adulta eta sua venire ancora in maggiore perfezione; e tanto piu aggiugnendosi qualche prospero successo ed augumento 92 Dante in the Renaissance al fiorentino imperio, come si debbe non solamente sperare, ma con tutto I’ingegno e forze per li buoni cittadini aiutare. Maybe there will be still in the Florentine language subtle and important things worth reading. And as the Florentine language reaches manhood and maturity, it could easily acquire still greater perfection, all the more if the Florentine empire continues to pros¬ per and grow, which all good citizens should not only hope for, but aid in with all their intelligence and effort." Although Lorenzo praises the vernacular for its own sake, his inter¬ est is largely determined by its potential to serve the augumento, the political expansion of the Florentine republic. To Lorenzo’s mind, Florentine political ambitions should be matched with an equally expansive and hegemonic notion of the Florentine language. His comments on the progressive refinement of the vernacular are largely indebted to Landino’s discussion of the evolution of languages in the proemio to his Dante. Ma tornando alia lingua, affermo che ... la nostra e gia da ora per la virtu degli scrittori da me nominati e divenuta abondante ed elegante, e ogni giorno, se non mancberanno gli studi, piu diven- tera. .. . Ognuno intende come la latina lingua divento abondante dirivando molti vocaboli greci in quella, cosi e necessario che la nostra di ricca venga ricchissima,... se ogni di piu trasferiremo in quella nuovi vocaboli tolti da’ Romani e faremoli triti appresso de’ nostri. Per la qual cosa essercitisi la fiorentina gioventu . . . nella sua patria lingua, e quella d’eloquente faccia eloquentissima. But turning to the language, I affirm that ours, and already now because of the ability of the writers named by me, has become abundant and elegant, and every day, if study is not wanting, it will become more so. Everyone understands how Latin became abundant through the addition of many Greek words; in the same way it is necessary that our language, already rich, become ex¬ ceedingly rich if everyday we will transfer into it new words taken from the Romans and make them commonplace among our own. Therefore let the Florentine youth practice its native language and make an eloquent tongue very eloquent." Lorenzo appropriates Landino’s remarks on the growing improve¬ ments of the language in order to advance his own ambitions for the Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 93 state. Whereas Landino had stressed the vernacular’s social function, Lorenzo emphasizes its political use. Landino’s own vigorous praise of the superiority of the Florentine dialect is evident in his criticism of Dante commentaries written in other dialects. Questo solo affermo: avere liberato el nostro cittadino dalla bar- barie di molti esterni idiomi ne’ quali da’ comentatori era stato corrotto ed al presente cosi puro e semplice e paruto mio officio apresentarlo . . . accib che .. . sia dopo lungo essilio restituito nella sua patria e riconosciuto ne romagnuolo essere ne lombardo ne degli idiomi di quegli che I’hanno comentato, ma mero fiorentino. La quale lingua quanto tutte I’altre italiche avanzi manifesto testi- monio ne sia che nessuno nel quale apparisca o ingegno o dottrina ne versi scrisse mai ne prosa che non si sforzassi usare el fiorentino idioma. This only I affirm. It has seemed my duty to liberate our citi¬ zen from the barbarism of many foreign idioms through which he had been corrupted by many commentators, and to present him in this pure and simple state so that Dante may be restored to bis homeland after long exile, and his poem be recognized as not in Romagnole, nor Lombard, nor in any of the dialects of his commentators, but in pure Florentine. The extent to which this Florentine language surpasses all other Italian dialects is clearly attested by the fact that no one of any genius or learning ever wrote in verse or prose who did not strive to use the Florentine idiom. Landino’s wish to purge Dante of the barbarie of other Italian dia¬ lects, notably Romagnole and Lombard ones, is a veiled reference to Jacopo della Lana’s commentary, which was republished in 1478 by Martino Paolo Nidobeato of Novaro. Landino singles out this commentary for criticism largely because of Nidobeato’s preface, in which he praises the merits of the Bolognese dialect: materna eadem et Bononiensi lingua superare est visus, cum sit ilia urbs ita in umbilico Italiae posita ut assiduo commertio non tersa solum vocabula, sed provintiis omnibus etiam communia habeat, nec minore gratia dignitateque sit in Italia Bononiensis sermo quam Laconicus olim in Graecia fuit. this same mother tongue of the Bolognesi is seen to have the ad¬ vantage, since that city is placed in the middle of Italy so that it 94 Dante in the Renaissance has words not only made precise through constant traffic but also common to all provinces, with the result that the Bolognese dia¬ lect possesses no less grace and dignity in Italy than the Spartan dialect did in Greece.''' Landino’s subsequent declaration of the superiority of the Florentine dialect is his response to what Carlo Dionisotti has termed a pro- vocazione linguistica by Nidobeato.'^ The publication of Landino’s commentary, his statements on the vernacular, and his discussions of Dante’s language result from a series of interlocking conditions, the majority of which are political. His remarks betray the same dominating impulse as his ruler: Landino seeks a cultural hegemony, Lorenzo a political one. The social and cultural impact of publications such as Nidobeato’s was considerable. Soon after the introduction of the printing press into Italy in 1469, many cities were quick to participate in the dif¬ fusion of works it allowed. Although cities like Mantua, Milan, and Naples could not claim Dante as a native, they garnered recognition in promoting the new vernacular literature. The Comedy was pub¬ lished by distinguished men of letters such as Colombino Veronese, Francesco del Tuppo, and Nidobeato, who dedicated their editions to aspiring humanist courtiers. Nidobeato’s republication of Lana’s commentary was dedicated to Guglielmo, marquis of Monferrato, and Colombino Veronese’s 1472 Mantuan edition was dedicated to the poet and courtier Filippo Nuvolone.'^ Appropriated by such princely courts, Dante’s poem became an important part of the new Italian humanistic culture, and Nidobeato’s edition of Lana, which Dionisotti terms an usurpazione straniera of Florence’s most illustri¬ ous poet, became the threat that spurred the Florentines to publish their own edition of the ComedyP Lorenzo had a clear interest in presenting as cohesive an image as possible of political and cultural solidarity to powerful city-states like Milan and Venice, which had already published their own editions of the poem. The resulting text, the first illustrated edition of the poem, coupled with a commentary written by one of Florence’s most distin¬ guished intellectuals, was an event calculated to supersede all other editions. Landino’s commentary was one of the first books to be printed in Florence. Unlike Milan, Naples, and Venice, Florence re¬ sponded comparatively late to the advent of print culture. The first Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 95 presses in Italy were established in Venice in 1469; it was not until 1471 that one was set up in Florence. Even then, the industry did not develop with the same alacrity as it did elsewhere in Italy. In these first years, Venice, whose legendary precocity in printing has been amply documented, could boast a dozen or so typographers to Florence’s two.'* Florence’s tardiness is all the more noteworthy given the city’s cultural and political prominence. Critics have at¬ tributed Florence’s resistance to the printing revolution to the culto del hello nourished under the Medici.'^ Generations of Medici con¬ noisseurs and bibliophiles had long supported the city’s most skilled copyists and miniaturists. Medici cultivation of exquisitely crafted manuscripts created within Florence a predilection for rich materials, neat writing, large margins, beautiful marginalia, and ample pro¬ portions. Accustomed to such elegant productions, the first printed texts must have struck Florentines as rough and mechanical. The attention accorded Dante elsewhere in Italy and the easy circula¬ tion afforded printed texts, however, put an end to this resistance. Although they were unable to claim precedence in printing Dante, the Florentines consciously sought to insure their distinction by pro¬ ducing a text unsurpassed in pomp and grandeur. Landino’s Dante boasted a sumptuousness that recalled the beauty of manuscripts. The effect of the publication of Landino’s commentary cannot be overestimated. In addition to having a majestic format, the commen¬ tary includes a proemio that praises at considerable length Florentine learning, eloquence, music, art, and trade. The message to other cities is obvious: Florence will take the lead in honoring its own. Landino’s desire to present the Comedy as a celebration of Florentine culture, however, is occasionally made difficult by what some readers per¬ ceived as the coarseness of Dante’s language and his denunciations of the city. Of the two, indecorous expressions were the lesser impedi¬ ment. Landino’s strategy here is often a recourse to the expression’s allegorical meaning, which serves to blunt the apparent crudity. For example, in discussing the “tristo sacco / che merda fa di quel che si trangugia” {Inferno 28.26-27), comments: “Benche spurca sia questa narrazione, nientedimeno non I’uso el poeta solamente per mostrar la cosa naturale. Ma allegoricamente significa che cio che entra in bocca a lo scismatico diventa stereo (Although this incident is filthy, nonetheless the poet uses it to show the thing in a natu¬ ral way; therefore, allegorically it signifies that that which enters the 96 Dante in the Renaissance mouth of the schismatic becomes excrement).” Similarly, the unghie merdose {Infemo 18.131) of Thais have “sua allegoria; ma meglio a lasciare inviluppato nella sua oscurita quello che onestamente non si puo explicate.”^' In his “Oration” Landino announces that his ob¬ jective is to explicate Dante da piu alto principioP To this end he seeks to investigate more thoroughly than any of his predecessors the poem’s allegorical meaning. The practical advantages of illustrat¬ ing the Comedy's hidden meanings cannot be overlooked. Allegory, at times, serves to mitigate some of the poet’s more controversial expressions and sentiments. Although recourse to allegory occasionally serves to blunt the force of crude expressions, convincing readers of Dante’s good will toward Florence despite his vituperative invectives requires more direct measures. In discussing Brunetto Latini’s reference to the Flor¬ entines as quello ingrato popolo {Infemo 15.61), Landino admits; E d’avere per excusato el poeta nostro, se in vituperare la sua patria . . . dimentiga la reverenzia pieta la quale debba avere ogni cittadino alia sua repubblica perche essendo stato a grandissimo torto poco avanti private de gli onori, delle dignita, del patrimo- nio, e della patria e finalmente relegate in dure esilie, nen puete per frene a si fresca iniuria. Ma invere era piu efficie della sua sapienzia parlare piu medestamente. Our peet must be excused if in vilifying his hemeland he fergets the reverence and piety that every citizen ewes his republic. Dante, recently having been unjustly deprived ef his heners, ef his dig¬ nity, ef his patrimeny, and ef his hemeland, and finally relegated te a harsh exile, cannet restrain himself in the face ef se fresh an injury. But truly his wisdem sheuld have cempelled him te speak mere mederately.^^ Here Landino can only assume a more overtly defensive posture and remind his readers of the unfortunate circumstances accompanying these “immoderate” statements. Landino is similarly unwilling to corroborate another negative portrayal of the Florentines as envious, proud, and avaricious {Infemo 6.74-75): “Superbia, invidia e avarizia sono / le tre faville c’hanno i cuori accessi (Three sparks that set on fire every heart / are envy, pride, and avariciousness).” “Non parea verisimile,” observes Landino, “che sanza grandissime cagione uno stato florentissimo come era quello della nostra repubblica in quegli Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 97 tempi corroborato di grandissime ricchezze . . . avesse a cadere in tanta calamita (It does not seem possible that so flourishing a state as our republic was in those days, one fortified by the greatest riches, would fall into so great a calamity without a very great reason.”^'' In such instances, Landino is more anxious to secure a favorable re¬ ception of the Comedy than to provide an accurate presentation of Dante’s sentiments. But Landino’s downplaying of Dante’s inflam¬ matory anti-Florentine rhetoric accounts only for some of his re¬ visions of the poem’s meaning. Other errors are due to his zealous pursuit of the poem’s allegorical sense, his ignorance of the meanings of certain Dantesque expressions, and his mistakes in scientific cal¬ culations.^^ It is primarily these errors that Gabriele seeks to correct in his annotations. Typically, Gabriele’s corrections seek to account for the cause of the error and to provide a more accurate rendition of the poem’s literal meaning. The fact that Gabriele has the most to say about these kinds of misinterpretations, however, should not blind us to the importance of social and cultural position in commentary. There is more to Gabriele’s critique of Landino than can be resolved by the comparison of texts and the consequent recognition of the clarity of Gabriele’s modifications. Such an idealistic textual tradition over¬ looks the effects of the radically different situations underlying the writing of the two commentaries. Although we have far less information on Gabriele than on Lan¬ dino, what we do know about him suggests a very different cultural and political context for his annotations. In fact the circumstances under which Gabriele’s corrections were made could not have been more different than those under which Landino produced his com¬ mentary. In a recent study, Arthur Field employs Gramsci’s dis¬ tinction between traditional and organic intellectuals as a means of clarifying the scholarly activities of various Florentine humanists. Landino exemplifies the traditional intellectual, one who is “profes¬ sionally bound to his intellectual activities.”Landino, as an intel¬ lectual, is fully integrated into Florentine political life. Although not simply a spokesperson for Lorenzo, he nevertheless articulates his concerns. The relation is one of mutual convenience: the Medici sup¬ ported Landino’s candidacy for the chair of rhetoric and poetry, and Landino’s critical views help form the basis of Medicean ideology.^^ Gabriele’s life suggests a more detached position, that of an intel- 98 Dante in the Renaissance lectual who operates largely outside the political and institutional realms. Gabriele retired to the private world of his villas and gardens, pointedly refusing all ecclesiastical, literary, and political distinctions; “siano degli altri le mitre e le corone,” he writes in a letter in which he expresses his lack of interest in being considered for an impor¬ tant bishopric in the Veneto.^* Landino was commissioned to write a commentary on Dante; Gabriele was reluctant not only to publish any of his works, but even to write them. Such orientations, of course, affect the historical record that comes to us. Landino’s commitments to and benefits from public institutions provide us with a wealth of documentation. Because of Gabriele’s disinterested position, the image of his life that we have comes from a few letters and a slim trickle of tributes by other writers. Landino’s and Gabriele’s histories are shaped, at least in part, by their degree of civic integration. We can see Landino more clearly because his integration makes him part of official historical accounts attached to the powerful in life. In contrast, details of Gabriele’s life must be in¬ ferred through more indirect means—through his contemporaries’ portrait of him and through a comparison of his situation to that of other Venetian humanists. Gabriele’s declining of ecclesiastical and civic honors made him somewhat a unique figure among Venetian humanists. Service to the republic in the way of performing diplomatic missions, holding ecclesiastical offices, or serving in the Great Council was expected of Venetian nobles.^® Such responsibilities frequently left Venetian humanists little time to devote to scholarly activities—much less to savor the serenity of the contemplative life. In contrast, Florentine intellectuals were relatively unencumbered by such duties. This dif¬ ference was not lost on Girolamo Donato, whose civic obligations led him to compare his situation to that of his Florentine friend Poli- ziano: “Public and private business so tie me down that I do not study so much as steal a few moments. I congratulate you on the time you can devote to the finest arts and letters.’’^® A similar sentiment is expressed by Pietro Bembo. In a 1498 letter to Gabriele he wistfully describes the allure evoked by the image of his friend’s quiet life: Parrammi per lo innanzi essere io stesso mezzo contento, e ritratto dagl’impacci negoziosi, poi che io vedero te in riposo et in ozio, quale sempre e tu et io abbiamo disiderato. Dio mi conceda o Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 99 altrettanta quiete libera quanta a te ha conceduta, o almeno poter goder te, e della tua. It will seem to me from now on that I myself am only half content and free from business impediments now that I see you enjoy the rest and leisure you and I have always desired. May God grant me either as much tranquillity as He has granted you, or at least let Him allow me to take pleasure in your leisure.^' Bembo was not the only one to be impressed with Gabriele’s devo¬ tion to the contemplative life. In his 1574 “Memoriale a Luigi Con- tarini,” Agostino Valiero praises Gabriele for his detachment from worldly concerns. That Gabriele is singled out for praise is all the more remarkable given the importance Valiero placed on serving the republic. Gabriele’s immense learning and devout life made him a symbol to others. Unattached to any schools, he was free to expound his own opinions. A sense of Gabriele’s own awareness of his unique posi¬ tion can be gleaned in a letter of April 4, 1529, written to Vincenzo Rimondo: “il mio propio non sono attioni . . . ma studi non piazze, et Rialti, ma valli chiuse, alti colli e piagge apriche.” Similar senti¬ ments are expressed in an anonymous Vita-, “a me non si conviene la frequenza, ma la solitudine, non Rialto, San Marco, et Piazze, ma valli chiuse, alti colli.”^^ The allusions to San Marco and Rialto, the locations of Venice’s two principal schools, and to his preference for the country, are cogent reminders of Gabriele’s detachment from the two main official centers of learning and public congregation.^'* The letter to Rimondo also shows Gabriele’s admiration for Petrarch as he consciously echoes a line from poem 303 of the Canzoniere — “Valli chiusi, alti colli, et piagge apriche.” Such remarks as Gabriele’s admission to Vincenzo Rimondo helped condition contemporary accounts of him. Correspondence be¬ tween intellectuals was often widely circulated, and the manner in which humanists presented themselves in these letters was frequently taken literally and incorporated into poetic tributes. Although Gabri¬ ele did not publish his ideas, others nevertheless circulated them. In the works and letters of men like Pietro Bembo, Pietro Aretino, Bernardino Daniello, Lodovico Dolce, and Sperone Speroni there emerges a portrait of a highly devout man of otium living a pastoral idyll. Their tributes helped construct a kind of myth surrounding 100 Dante in the Renaissance il Soa-ate veneziano. As a wealthy, independent, and noble Vene¬ tian Gabriele could afford to be direct—and he was. The freedom that Gabriele’s avoidance of intellectual and civic centers of power allowed him cannot be overestimated in assessing the frankness of his critique of Landino. Nor should the added power lent his critique by his symbolic status be overlooked. Such circumstances remind us of the variety of ways in which the social impinges on the textual and of the necessity of reading beyond the boundaries of the printed page. Gabriele quotes or refers to Landino about one hundred times throughout the annotations but registers agreement only fifteen times. The severity of his disagreements varies: his comments range from moderate dissent to vigorous objection. Not all of Gabriele’s corrections are felicitous. At times, he repeats Landino verbatim, probably inadvertently.^^ Gabriele questions Landino’s interpretation on a wide range of matters, including allegorical, textual, linguistic, and scientific points. But there are instances in which the commen¬ tary’s fundamentally ideological nature are more obvious, places that are more apparently inflected and that suggest that a more critical eye should be turned on the social aspects of the text. Such moments, which call into question the apparent objectivity of Gabriele’s critical stance, allow us to gauge the political undertones to his commentary as well as to the commentary tradition. For example, critics are unanimous in their recognition of Gabri¬ ele’s superiority over Landino in addressing matters of language and style. His views on the vernacular are partly owing to his friend¬ ship with Bembo. Both men were dedicated to defining a model for the new literature written in the vernacular. Gabriele, however, was far more tolerant of Dante’s plurilingualism than his friend. Although not condoning what he considered the poet’s offenses to decorum, Gabriele is not nearly so dismissive as Bembo. He admires, for example, Dante’s reticence concerning the details of human gen¬ eration in the expression “ov’e piu bello tacer che dire” (Purgato- rio 25.43-44), citing it as a Bella prudentia that he wished the poet had exercised elsewhere.^^ Landino, on the other hand, tends not to question Dante’s lexicon on aesthetic grounds. Landino rarely criticizes Dante’s language directly—such admissions would have been counterproductive to his efforts to secure the poet’s restora¬ tion to Florence. His linguistic analyses are for the most part con¬ fined to distinguishing Florentine from non-Florentine expressions Gabriele’s Critique of Landino lOI and to pointing out the poet’s use of various stylistic devices.^^ Un¬ like Gabriele, who can simply register disapproval, Landino feels compelled to defend Dante. Each passage presents different criti¬ cal contexts. Gabriele’s method, weighted toward Bembo’s doctrine of linguistic purity, makes him sensitive to the indecorous trespass of such moments. Landino, too, recognizes the crudity of certain expressions, but his method makes the diction a problem to be ex¬ plained. He goes to great lengths to maintain that the literal sense is to be disregarded by the prescient reader, who should see through the apparent crudities to the beautiful allegory beneath. Ultimately, to suggest, as have some critics, that Gabriele is more sensitive on such points than Landino is to forget the purposes Landino carried with him into the art of commentary. In addition to this reluctance to criticize Dante’s language, Lan¬ dino shows discomfort at some of his judgments on the dead. For ex¬ ample, in his discussion of “colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto” [Inferno 3.60-61), Landino takes care to distance himself from other commentators identification of Celestine V as the pusillanimous soul, noting that Dante leaves this individual unnamed. Given the wide acceptance of Celestine as Dante’s intended referent, Landino’s insistence on this point is likely an index to the strain of defend¬ ing such a position. According to Landino, Celestine renounces the papacy non per vilta, ma per eccellenzia d’animo . . . perche e maggiore animo sprezare le gran dignita che cercarle. E di piu eccellenzia e Maria che Marta. . . . lo stimo che 1 poeta . . . ponessi I’essemplo sanza nome . . . per non notare d’infamia si santo huomo, im- peroche benche lui lo stimassi di santa vita, nientedimeno fu sua opinione che nel governo invilissi. not out of cowardice, but out of greatness of character, because it takes more courage to disdain great honors than to seek them. Mary is more outstanding than Martha. I believe that the poet gave this example without naming him in order not to mark with infamy so holy a man, since although Dante considered him to have led a holy life, nonetheless it was his opinion that his courage failed him in government.^* In this attempt to temper Dante’s judgment, Landino allows that Celestine s solitary life made him unfit for government (“E perche 102 Dante in the Renaissance lui a forza avea lasciato la vita solitaria. E sentivasi piu atto a quella che al governo”). For Dante, so important an office cannot be turned down; once summoned, one must rise to the occasion. Given his reputation for sanctity, Celestine could have contributed greatly to the reform of the church. In the poet’s eyes, Celestine’s abdication of the papacy was not an act of self-renunciation but of pusillanimity. Yet Clement V’s canonization of Celestine in 1313 shows a differ¬ ent judgment. Landino has an obvious conflict here: accept either a papal judgment or Dante. Anxious to absolve Dante of charges of irreverence, he emphasizes the anonymity of this soul and argues that the poet does not condemn Celestine’s character but his reluc¬ tance to govern. Similarly, Landino’s reference to Mary and Martha focuses attention on universal values. By praising the merits of the contemplative life—embodied in his praise of Mary—Landino en¬ courages the reader to evaluate Celestine in terms of his dedication to a high philosophical ideal. As an eloquent and devoted champion of Ficino’s Neoplatonism, Landino seldom fails to seize an oppor¬ tunity to espouse its ideals or to illustrate the Comedy's exemplifica¬ tion of them. Hence two purposes are served by shifting the reader’s gaze from character to doctrine: a deflection of readerly concern over Dante’s judgment and an exposition of Neoplatonic ideals. Landino is a man whose institutional ties not only had a deep commitment to Platonism but also required a pragmatic emphasis on dissemination. Where Gabriele merely evaluates, Landino, intent on putting texts to use, must apologize for, rationalize, or explain away discrepancies. In contrast, Gabriele’s discussion of Dante’s treatment of Celes¬ tine V displays none of the circumspection of Landino’s commentary. Although not agreeing with Dante’s damnation of the pope, he does not view this as a threat to one’s aesthetic experience of the text. Gabriele, in fact, refers to Landino’s defense of the poet: “ancor che il Landino, per difender Dante voglia intendere d’altrui, il Poeta intese pur di Papa Celestino, e se egli il fece per viltate o per grandezza d’animo, leggi il Petrarca nel suo libro de vita solitaria. (Although Landino, in order to defend Dante, wants to suggest someone else, the poet, however, intended Pope Celestine. And on the question of whether Celestine did this out of cowardice or magnanimity read Petrarch in his book De vita solitaria)'.' Gabriele’s invitation to the reader to consult Petrarch’s De vita solitaria reveals his own reserva- Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 103 tions concerning the poet’s condemnation of Celestine; yet it is clear that Gabriele is not blind to Dante’s intentions, which he presents unblinkingly. Again, we can trace Gabriele’s directness, at least in part, to his independence from schools and other institutions. The unwillingness of both commentators to corroborate Dante’s likely condemnation of Celestine V can be attributed to an antipathy for an imperial ideology. In distancing himself from Dante’s imperial sympathies, Gabriele seldom stints to attribute many of the poet’s judgments to his “Ghibellinism.” Landino, who served as chancellor of the Guelf party in Florence, openly expresses reservations about Dante s imperialism. In discussing Dante’s delineation of the excesses of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines {Paradtso 6.103), Landino adds, Benche Dante fusse guelfo nientedimeno dopo il suo esilio inchino I’animo alle parti imperiali e per questo in tutta I’opera sua onora quanto puo quel seggio (Although Dante was a Guelf, nonetheless after his exile he turned toward the imperial party, and because of this throughout his entire work he honors as much as he can that party). In both instances Landino reminds readers that such state¬ ments are to be attributed to Dante’s bitterness over his exile. The poet s imperial sympathies are presented as personal tribulations, consequently downplaying Dante’s political views. Reference to Gabriele’s and Landino’s treatment of the Brutus and Cassius episode is useful here, as it was in the previous chapter. Dante’s imperialist sentiments also figure in Landino’s and Gabriele’s discussions of the poet’s condemnation of Brutus and Cassius— an episode often censured during the Renaissance. As in the two commentators’ discussion of Celestine, Landino’s and Gabriele’s re¬ marks are distinguished by the degree of severity and openness with which each attempts to distance himself from the poet’s judgment. Gabriele’s gloss is brief and direct: just as Dante ebbe gran torto in putting Celestine V in Hell, so has the poet erred in his damnation of Brutus and Cassius. In Gabriele’s eyes, the poet *Tu troppo im¬ perial e troppo vuol adular quella parte.”-" Landino’s difficulties here are severe, and he allays his anxieties by a recourse to allegory. Unable to express his rejection of the poet’s presentation in such open terms as Gabriele, he explains that the poet, in order to have a secu¬ lar equivalent of Judas, traitor of the imperadore ditnno, also places here chi avessi tradito lo imperadore e monarca umano.” Accord- 104 Dante in the Renaissance ingly, Cato and Julius Caesar do not represent the historical Caesar and Cato, but the empire and liberty, respectively. Brutus and Cas¬ sius are not the two historical Roman personages, but “chi uccide el vero monarca”—the assassins of the true emperor. Landino further qualifies the nature of the particular Caesar killed by Brutus and Cassius by explaining that he is not the victorious Caesar who con¬ quered France, Germany, and England and vanquished so many of the empire’s enemies, but Caesar the tyrant, the man who turned his own armies against Rome. Brutus and Cassius, he concludes, rightly belong in Paradise—a sentiment seconded by Gabriele. The strain of Landino’s position is evident in a revealing com¬ ment he makes near the end of his discussion: “Ma potrebbe dire alcuno ch’io facessi contro al mio institute riprendendo in questo luogo el poeta. lo in nessun modo lo riprendo. Ma ho volute dimos- trare la sua sentenzia accioche nessuno per falsa opinione stimi che lui vogli dannare Brute (But someone could say that I acted against my office in finding fault with the poet in this place. In no way do I reprove him, but I wanted to explain his judgments so that no one should falsely think that Dante wants to damn Brutus).”Despite these proclamations, Landino does find fault with Dante. He seeks to convince his readers that a deeper meaning underlies Brutus’s dam¬ nation, lest anyone take the judgment at face value and “per falsa opinione stimi che lui [Dante] vogha dannare Brute. Landino reiter¬ ates this position in his commentary to Paradtso 6.74, where Dante again refers to Brutus and Cassius s damnation; Si come altra volta dicemmo il poeta ponesse Brute e Cassio per traditori, nessuna scusa sarebbe al poeta perche non furono tra- ditori, ma liberatori della patria, uomini egregi, ed e quali furon content! porre vita loro per estinguere il tiranno. Ma dichiamo che lui non ponga Brute per Brute ma per coloro che tradiscono il signor suo e massime lo ’mperadore il cui nome il poeta voile troppo onorare. Since elsewhere we said that the poet considered Brutus and Cas¬ sius traitors, there would not seem to be any excuse for the poet, because they were not traitors but liberators of their country—dis¬ tinguished men—who were content to lay down their lives to ex¬ tinguish the tyrant. But we say that Dante does not intend Brutus for Brutus, but for those who betray their lord, and especially the emperor whose name the poet insisted on honoring too much. ^ Gabriele’s Critique of iMndino 105 Landino’s glosses to both these passages clearly seek to qualify and contextualize politics no longer in step with a Florence that prided itself on its affinities to republican Rome. Landino’s recognition that some readers might take exception to his refutation of Dante’s views raises questions about the motives underlying his allegorizing. He claims in the proemio to explicate Dante from a loftier principle in order to reveal the poem’s arcane senses. Although Landino often draws out high, Platonic principles from Dante’s text, at times his revelations are not motivated by strictly philosophical concerns. Passages he finds problematic tend to elicit a more defensive and practical kind of allegorizing. His acknowledgment of the questionable propriety of some of Dante’s expressions, his subsequent allegorization of these passages, and his later apologetics for what he sees as Dante’s excessive severity in con¬ demning Florence {Inferno 15) testify to examples of critical defen¬ siveness elsewhere in his commentary. Although it is generally true that Landino s allegorizing is informed by Neoplatonism, at times, expedience plays a part in the move to allegory.'*'' At such points, Landino is engaging in a time-honored tradition—employing alle¬ gory as a means of evading an absurdum. Such a practice enables a commentator to salvage problematic passages. In the face of Dante’s perceived questionable judgments and linguistic infelicities, allegory helps Landino subordinate and ultimately displace the poem’s literal sense. Troublesome passages are encased in an ahistorical, classiciz¬ ing vision.''^ The obstacles presented by the Comedy can also be seen in Lan¬ dino’s and Gabriele’s discussion of Dante’s choice of Cato as the guardian of Purgatory. Like Celestine’s and Brutus’s presence in Hell, Cato, as a pagan and a suicide, presents obstacles to interpreta¬ tion. Landino handles potential objections to Cato in much the same way as he allays anxieties concerning the condemnation of Celestine and Brutus: he absolves Dante of any suspicion of irreverence, em¬ phasizes Cato’s allegorical significance, and ends with a moral exhor¬ tation. Cato does not represent anima di Catone, but liberty “perche tal uomo piu che ogni altro fu amatore della liberta.”''* Landino is not singular in seeing in Cato a symbol of liberty; the majority of earlier commentators associate the pagan with this quality. What distinguishes Landino’s comments from those of his predecessors IS the pragmatic use he makes of the text. Landino finds Dante’s io6 Dante in the Renaissance placement of Cato in the first canto of Purgatorio singularly pro¬ pitious. At no point is man more responsive to liberty than after emerging from Hell, where men are slaves to vice. Landino presents Purgatory as the realm in which man lives in somma tranquillita, a place free from the tyranny of vice. He expatiates on the hazards of being a slave to vice through reference to Hercules and to Alexander the Great, whom Landino describes as being so enslaved by wrath that this vice overshadowed all the glory he had garnered as a con¬ queror of many nations. Landino then turns to a discussion of “uno libero da tutte le cupidita,” a man in whom reigns “la ragione libera da ogni umana passione.” The recognition of “tanta gravita, tanta modestia,” and “tanta prudenzia” in one individual merits nothing less than absolute devotion from all; to such a man, writes Landino, “non solamente gli renderemo somma riverenzia, ma se licito fussi, come dio I’adoreremo.” The trajectory of this moral lecture is re¬ markable; Landino has slowly moved from praise of liberty to the praise of one free of vice. In shifting slowly the focus of the dis¬ cussion, his considerations are not so much theoretical as practical; Landino gradually directs his lecture to specific readers. Landino’s discourse on liberty ends with a conditional proposal extended to the virtuous individual who upholds liberty. To this man Landino prom¬ ises the undying devotion of all. This impassioned tribute to liberty is neither unique nor coincidental. In the part of the proemio titled “Apologia nella quale si difende Dante e Florenzia da’ falsi calun- niatori” Landino repeatedly identifies the Florentines with love of liberty (“che non prima la liberta che la vita si perdessi”).'*^ Manfred Lentzen detects in this statement “un’esortazione indiretta a Lorenzo a non mettere troppo alia prova il senso di liberta del popolo fioren- tino.”'’® Lentzen’s observation might easily be extended to Landino s treatment of Cato; the commentator has again seized the occasion to remind the Medici and his readers of the values that the Florentine republic holds most dear. History gives further relevance to such an exhortation, Landino s commentary was composed during a time of great upheaval and un¬ certainty in the republic. The Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 was a cogent reminder of the political threats to the Medici’s rule. The resulting internal disorder made Florence particularly vulnerable to the threat of foreign invasion. After the Pazzi conspiracy the Medici rule be¬ came increasingly more authoritarian in an effort to maintain greater Gabriele’s Critique of Landino 107 control over the populace. The Medici were anxious to create an image of cultural and political solidarity. A more elitist form of gov¬ ernment began to take shape as Florence was gradually transformed from a republic to a princely state. The notion, to quote Burckhardt, of “the state as a work of art” rooted in Ficino’s Neoplatonism be¬ came the ideology of the state.'*® In contrast, Gabriele’s treatment of Cato has no pragmatic politi¬ cal subtext. For Gabriele, Landino’s extended discussion is an un¬ necessary digression: “molto s’affatica il Landino in mostrare perche pone Catone al governo del purgatorio, e massime non essendo cris- tiano: certo nol fece per altro che per imitar Vergilio ch’ el pose anch’egli giudice ne’ luoghi pii (Landino makes a great effort to show why Dante places Cato as the guardian of Purgatory — especially since he is not a Christian: certainly he did it for no other reason than to imitate Virgil, who also placed him as a judge in sacred places).”’® Gabriele does not see Cato as something to be explained. He con¬ ceives of Dante’s placement of the pagan here in literary terms; the poem is a rhetorical performance whose variety is owing to other literary works and stylistic forms. Gabriele’s reading, unaffected by a patriotic agenda, provides a different critical focus. He casts a relatively indifferent eye on passages that, for Landino, are deeply problematic. To the modern reader, Gabriele’s sensitivity to language and to literal meaning may appear admirably concise and direct, but It is important to remember that such passages, which seem more lucid than those of Landino, are not necessarily the result of greater critical facility and judgment, but of an aesthetic deeply tied to his social and political situation. At issue is not which commentator’s readings are preferable or better, but how differing degrees of civic ties and independence — essentially different critical paradigms — af¬ fected Landino s and Gabriele’s treatment of problematic passages in Dante’s poem. The fact that Gabwelexannoialions were never published makes them a particularly la mentable silent ch apter in the commentary tra¬ dition. Gabriele’s aesthetic and lite rary ap preciation of the Comedy constitutes one of the most elp ^quent applicat ions of Bembo’s empha¬ sis on purity of diction and the rhetorical dimension of the poem. Although Gabriele shared and contributed to the definition of a poetic standard based on language and style, he did not echo Bembo’s harsh judgment of Dante. His more tolerant attitude toward Dante’s io8 Dante in the Renaissance language situates him between Landino’s patriotic elevation of the vernacular and Bembo’s rejection of a poetics that violated the Vir- gilian and Petrarchan models of unity and coherence. Gabriele’s annotations, had they been available, could have provided a powerful moderating influence between these two positions.^' As one historicist critic reminds us, a writer’s intentions are codi¬ fied in the author’s choice of time, place, and form of publication— or none of the above ... his decision not to publish at all, or to circu¬ late in manuscript or to print privately.” The differences underlying the production of Landino’s and Gabriele’s commentaries could not be more revealingly codified—the former beautifully printed and illustrated, addressed to the Florentine republic, and informed by Neoplatonic principles; the latter, orally transmitted to a small group of followers and more oriented toward a literary and rhetorical model of reading. The different fortunes of Landino’s and Gabriele’s com¬ mentaries reveal some of the ways in which literary history is both affected and effected by position, circulation, and civic integration. Landino’s commentary dominated Dante studies for over a cen¬ tury after its publication because, at least in part, of his institutional ties to the state.^^ Given the ceremony and pomp of its launch, it is no wonder that Landino’s commentary had sufficient steam for initial success, and it took its place in the critical tradition with an ease not afforded to commentaries less well supported. One would be fool¬ ish to attribute Landino’s success solely to institutional factors, but this aspect of the commentary’s critical fortune should not be over¬ looked. Such considerations remind us of the advantages axiomatic to the integrated stance, as well as the ways in which the work of the disinterested intellectual can be erased by literary history. Our subsequent amazement at the discovery of disregarded texts is often a function of our inattention to the role of institutions in shaping critical tradition and critical evaluation. 5 - Imitation, Plagiarism, and Textual Productivity: Bernardino Daniello's Debt to Trifone Gabriele The previous two chapters have traced the role of institutions in the study of commentary. But in many cases, the documentation nec¬ essary for this kind of analysis is simply unavailable, and we are hindered in uncovering the ideological concerns or entanglements of the author. In such cases, a kind of critical bricolage is required— one that may well ask as many questions as it answers. We would do well to register the blanks in our histories and turn, mindful of these gaps, to other methods of analysis. In the preface to his Petrarch commentary of 1541 Bernardino Daniello acknowledges his indebtedness to his teacher, Trifone Gabriele: “Queste sue fatiche sono in gran parte di Trifon Gabriele, uomo non meno di somma bonta che di profonda dottrina, e d’ottimo e raro giudizio dotato.”' Critics have often referred to this state¬ ment when discussing Daniello’s Petrarch as well as his later Dante commentary of 1568. At issue is the extent of Daniello’s debt to his highly esteemed teacher. Many critics have concluded that Daniello added nothing to Gabriele’s work. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that there are no extant copies of Gabriele’s notes to Petrarch. Although there are four manuscripts of his Dante commentary, it has never been published. A quick look at the critical discussion of Daniello’s commen¬ tary shows how central the issue of plagiarism has been. Daniello’s detractors far outnumber his supporters: suspicions concerning the commentary s originality began in 1582 with Diomede Borghesi, who suspected that the Daniello commentary published by Pietro da Fino was, in fact, written by Gabriele. Borghesi’s claims were sec¬ onded in 1866 by Carlo Bologna, the first critic to accuse Daniello of having directly plagiarized Gabriele’s work. Only two critics, Gio¬ vanni Mario Crescimbeni and Luigi Maria Rezzi, have argued in favor of the commentary s originality. Subsequent examinations of the two commentaries have resulted in mounting evidence pointing to the enormity of Daniello’s debt to Gabriele. Michele Barbi, Aldo no Dante in the Renaissance Vallone, and Lino Fertile have all concluded that both in its form and in its substance Daniello’s commentary is largely a reworking of Gabriele’s work. Fertile has recently detected traces of Gabriele’s annotations in Daniello’s Della Poetica of 1536’ which suggests that Daniello’s debt to Gabriele is even more extensive than previously believed.^ It is an undeniable fact that many of the ideas that Daniello took from Gabriele stem from personal contact. He studied with Gabriele in the 1520s and i530s.^ What has frequently been overlooked in pre¬ vious discussions of Daniello’s dependence on Gabriele, however, is the precise manner in which he defends his use of his teacher in the preface to the Fetrarch commentary. The statement that “queste sue fatiche sono in gran parte di Trifon Gabriele is followed by an allu¬ sion to the unkind remarks of alcuni maligm, certain of Daniello s contemporaries who accused him of having added nothing to what Gabriele had said. He defends himself by pointing out that he, at least, acknowledges Gabriele’s influence, unlike those ingrati who do not stint to present as their own another’s ideas. He then, in a frequently quoted passage, perhaps by way of further justification, compares himself to Flato: “il quale del suo Socrate fece quello ch io ora di quest’altro mio novello Socrate ho fatto e di fare intendo per I’avvenire in tutte le cose; giovandomi in questo esso Flatone imitare (who made of his Socrates what I now with my other new Socra¬ tes have done and intend to do in the future in every respect: taking my pleasure in imitating this Flato).” This statement is often viewed by those making the argument for Daniello’s extensive repetition of Gabriele as an admission of guilt. However, viewed from the per¬ spective of sixteenth-century conceptions of authorship and imita¬ tion, the statement takes on another meaning; Daniello’s claim to be a kind of Flato to Gabriele’s Socrates reflects a highly conventional and highly coded attitude toward authorship. The statement should not only be seen as a deauthorization of Daniello’s own commentary but be read as a gesture in its own right. In casting himself as Flato to Gabriele’s Socrates, Daniello envisioned himself as transcriber and circulator of his teacher’s ideas. Identifying oneself with a classical writer, assuming a classical persona, or addressing someone else with the name of an author from antiquity were not uncommon practices among Renaissance writers. Examples include Fernan Ferez de Guzman s addressing Alonso Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 111 de Cartagena as Seneca in Coplas a la muerte del obispo de Burgos, don Alonso de Cartagena, Aldus Manutius’s references to Giovanni Pontano as another Virgil and Gabriele Braccio as another Quin¬ tilian, Francesco Sansovino’s designation of Pietro Vettori as a new Cicero, and Burton’s assumption of the name Democritus Junior in the Anatomy of Melancholy. The gesture has many ramifications; it allows one writer to position himself with respect to another; it confers authority by association; it establishes the later writer as be¬ longing to a literary tradition; and it allows the author to speak in his own voice under the sanction of another name.^ If we consider the ramifications of this highly coded act of positioning with respect to an authority, we can judge Daniello’s commentary in a way that it has never been judged—on its own terms rather than on the more modern terms critics have brought to it. This is not to say that the two commentaries are not extremely similar—that is an indisputable fact. But an understanding of Daniello’s relation to Gabriele makes his massive incorporation of his teacher’s ideas an act of conserva¬ tion, not theft, and it allows us to focus our attention on other issues in this text: on the commentary as a reflection of Daniello’s liter¬ ary culture and on the admittedly small but nonetheless noteworthy modifications and contributions Daniello does make.’ Daniello’s reference to Gabriele as mio novello Socrate is not sin¬ gular; Gabriele was commonly known by his contemporaries as il Socrate veneziano. In addition to expressing admiration for his learn¬ ing and his familiarity with the classics, the name also refers to Gabriele’s preference for informal dictation rather than writing. Un¬ like other men of his time who sought recognition and fame through the circulation and printing of their works, Gabriele preferred to de¬ vote his time to studying or teaching the Latin poets, Dante, and Petrarch to his students and friends. Gabriele’s informal lectures on literature and language attracted an impressive number of followers, among them Benedetto Ramberti, Jacopo Zane, Giason and Cal- cerando de Nores, Francesco Sansovino, Vettor Soranzo, Antonio Broccardo, and Alvise Priuli. He inspired and contributed to the shaping of some of the most important literary work of the period.^ Bembo, for example, asked Gabriele to examine the first two books of his Prose della volgar lingua before its publication. Although all his life Gabriele eschewed public honors, literary as well as ecclesiasti¬ cal and political, this avoidance did not prevent others from praising 112 Dante in the Renaissance him in their works: he is among those hailed in Ariosto’s illustri¬ ous catalog at the end of the Orlando Furioso ; Bembo refers to him as “dottissimo e soprattutto intendissimo delle volgar cose” in the Prose J Sperone Speroni, Francesco Sansovino, Giovanni Della Casa, Benedetto Varchi, and Pietro Aretino all express admiration for his learning and moral virtue in their writings. Well known and widely esteemed while alive, Gabriele passed into oblivion soon after his death, largely because he never consented to having his name appear on any of the works that he authored or inspired. If Gabriele had a kind of notoriety as il Socrate veneziano, Daniello, in positioning himself with relation to his teacher, takes up this com¬ mon tribute and extends it. He cannily carves out a place for himself within the analogy he draws; he wishes to follow Gabriele in tutte le cose by being the Plato to his Socrates—“giovandomi in questo esso Platone imitate.” His desire to imitate Gabriele seems hyperbolic to our post-Romantic sensibilities, but such a proclamation has more significant ramifications than simply one’s identification with a clas¬ sical author. Daniello’s declaration of his desire to imitate Gabriele in every respect belies participation in an issue that occupied many European intellectuals in the first half of the sixteenth century— namely, the object, manner, and means of imitation. Two aspects of these numerous and highly animated debates on the principles of imitation can shed light on the spirit and intention underlying Daniello’s desire to imitate Gabriele; the dynamics of pedagogic imi¬ tation and the degree of fidelity to one’s model. The majority of these discussions concern the manner and the means by which mod¬ erns might imitate the ancients, but imitation could also be based on the observation of models immediately present. Discussions of the proper modes of imitation often begin by stressing the univer¬ sality of the imitative impulse. In the Poetics, for example, Aristotle states that “imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. * Classical discussions of imitation tend to be rather heterogeneous, encompassing audiences ranging from children to orators, as well as a widely varying range of disciplines. Often educational precepts were blended with literary counsel. Isocrates, one of Aristotle’s older contemporaries, discusses pedagogic imitation in \\\s Antidosis: Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 113 This . . . will be agreed to by all men, namely, that in all the arts and crafts we regard those as the most skilled who turn out pupils who all work as far as possible in the same manner. Now it will be seen that this is the case with philosophy. For all who have been under a true and intelligent guide will be found to have a power of speech so similar that it is evident to everyone that they have shared the same training. And yet, had not a common habit and a common technique of training been instilled into them, it is inconceivable that they should have taken on this likeness.’ Pedagogic imitative doctrine emphasized the emulation of a single immediate model—the teacher. “The teacher is ideally not only a source of information and explanation,” notes Thomas Greene, “but a dominant, formative single model whose example shapes perma¬ nently the thought and praxis of his pupils.”'® This classical em¬ phasis on the formative power of the teacher is mirrored by the relationship between Daniello and Gabriele. Daniello’s incorpora¬ tion of Gabriele’s work should be seen as a gesture of intellectual and exegetical solidarity with a strong model. Had Daniello lived to supervise the publication of his Dante commentary, I have no doubt that he would have expressed his indebtedness to Gabriele in terms similar to those relayed in the preface to his Petrarch. Evidence of Daniello’s and Gabriele’s assimilation of imitative principles survives in the literary criticism of the former and the letters of the latter. Indeed, Piero Floriani characterizes Gabriele’s theory of language as being based on “una tecnica dell’imitazione.”" In his Della Poetica of 1536 Daniello discusses at length mimetic imitation, and in the preface to his commentary on the Georgies he praises Virgil for his extraordinary imitative abilities: Non nego pero che Virgilio non fusse in tutti e tre i suoi Poemi piu tosto artifficioso imitatore, che semplice translatore. Veramente io stupisco qualor ben considero, e sono in dubbio quale si fusse mag- giore, o la diligenzia ch’egli uso in raccor I’altrui cose, o I’ingegno e giudizio ch’egli ebbe in mescolar e inserir le raccolte da altrui, con le sue proprie, o I’arteficio in disporle, o I’altezza de lo stile e eloquenzia nel trattarle e descriverle.'^ I do not deny, however, that Virgil in all three of his poems was more an artful imitator than a mere translator. Truly 1 am amazed whenever I think about this, for I find myself in a quandary over Dante in the Renaissance 114 Virgil’s achievements—does his excellence lie in the diligence with which he inserts material gathered from other writers into his own work, in the art with which he arranges them, or in the loftiness of his style and the eloquence with which he treats and describes this material? Daniello’s admiration for the facility with which Virgil mixes and inserts “le raccolte da altrui con le sue proprie” could just as easily describe his critical methodology as well as Gabriele’s highly convention-bound practice of echoing Latin and Italian poets in his letters. In a letter of 1530 to Daniello, for example, Gabriele’s pater¬ nal affection for Daniello consciously evokes Cacciaguida’s speech to Dante; E segui; “Grato e lontano digiuno, tratto leggendo del magno volume du’ non si muta mai bianco ne bruno, solvuto hai, figlio, dentro a questo lume in ch’io ti parlo,. . “The long and happy hungering I drew from reading that great volume where both black and white are never changed, you—son—have now appeased within this light in which I speak to you.” (Paradiso 15.49-53) Gabriele writes; Lungo e immenso digiuno ch’io avea di vostre lettere bramate gia dieci e piu mesi, avete oggi soluto, Daniello carissimo, cosa a me tanto grata quanto altra che mi potesse occorrere; che il paterno affetto che io vi porto, ne per lunghezza di tempo, ne per lon- tananza di loco e scemato, ne scemera giamai insin che lo spirito reggera queste membre.'^ The long fast which I have endured for your eagerly awaited let¬ ters for more than ten months, you have today appeased, dearest Daniello, and this is more pleasant to me than anything could be because the paternal affection which I hold for you neither length of time nor distance of place can diminish, nor will ever diminish as long as there is spirit in these limbs. Gabriele models his words on Dante’s in another letter in which he declines a bishopric in the Veneto; “siano degli altri le mitre e le Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 115 corone,” he writes, echoing Virgil’s last speech to the pilgrim (“per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio,” Purgatorio 27.142).'^ One could go so far as to view Gabriele’s dedication to his studies in order to, in his biographer’s words, ritrovare se stesso as a desire to emulate Petrarch’s predilection for solitude and self-meditation.'^ Gabriele’s tendency to identity with Petrarch is also clear in a letter to Vincenzo Rimondo, in which he admits his preference for “valli chiusi, alti colli e piagge apriche’’ over cities. Gabriele’s words echo exactly a line from poem 303 of the Canzoniere. Daniello’s reverence for Gabriele, his desire to imitate him, his frequenting ot literary circles that celebrated literary imitation and put such classically based relationships at a premium, his praise of Virgil for his imitative abilities, and his focus in his commentary on how often Dante consciously imitates Virgil, explain, at least in part, why his commentary resembles Gabriele’s so closely. Overshadowed by the larger figures of Bembo and Gabriele, Daniello’s ideas were bound to be obscured, writes Ezio Raimondi, “in una clima di scuola in una sensibilita di gruppo.”'^ Daniello was not the only commentator to borrow or copy from others: his is simply a more blatant example of the practice. Continu¬ ous reworkings of very similar explanations account for the difficulty of determining dependencies and precedence among the poem’s Tre¬ cento and Quattrocento commentators. Notable examples include the commentary of the Anonimo Fiorentino, which repeats Jacopo della Lana on the Purgatorio and Paradiso, and that of Giovanni Serravalle, which follows Benvenuto closely. Critics have also noted Landino’s dependency on Pietro Alighieri, Francesco da Buti, and Benvenuto da Imola. It is obvious that Daniello’s work needs to be seen in terms of Gabriele’s, but not only in terms of this relation. It is perhaps more productive to view commentaries like these as rock formations containing various strata, all clearly discernible, but w'ith vexingly indistinct boundaries. Reading Daniello is like reading a kind of fossil record: we see traces of his preceptor Trifone Gabriele, traces of Landino, traces of Vellutello, as well as those of others. But it often seems that this fossil record has undergone a seismic shift: the generic reemphasis of the rhetorically based impulses that sweep through Cinquecento commentary often seize the reader’s attention. Nevertheless, mutatis mutandis, the cumulative traces of the commentary tradition remain. Each new exposition invariably 116 Dante in the Renaissance contains significant portions of earlier commentaries. The exten¬ sive borrowings between commentaries heightens this effect. Each commentator absorbs from his predecessors a wide range of styles and approaches. For example, in his proemio, Landino refers to an astonishing range of critical perspectives in alluding to Jacopo della Lana, Pietro Alighieri, Boccaccio, Benvenuto, and Francesco da Buti. Daniello’s commentary contains not only remnants from these commentators but also elements from those of Landino, Gabriele, and Vellutello. Each of these commentators, in turn, has particular interests that he brings to his reading of Dante: Landino’s contact with Ficino influences the Neoplatonic tenor of his commentary, Gabriele’s friendship with Bembo informs his treatment of the rhe¬ torical dimension of the poem, and Vellutello’s polemic with Bembo leads him to focus on history rather than language. From his prede¬ cessors, Daniello inherits not so much a tradition as a medley of rich and varied voices that is invariably reflected in his commentary. Determining the nature of Daniello’s contribution to the com¬ mentary tradition requires careful separation of his observations from those of Gabriele and other commentators. Given Daniello’s depen¬ dence on Gabriele, care must be taken to compare the two commen¬ taries before crediting Daniello for any observations. In their preface to a recent reissue of the commentary, the editors claim that Daniello was the first to see in Dante’s repetition of Virgil’s name {Purgato- rio 30.49-51) an echo of Orpheus’s triple calling of Eurydice’s name in Georgies 4.525-27. In fact this echo was first noted by Gabriele. Such incorporation of Gabriele’s ideas is common. Daniello’s repe¬ tition of his teacher is extensive: he often cites the same literary authorities when illustrating how Dante’s verse formally and the¬ matically reflects the influence of other poets or finds echoes in the work of later poets; he singles out for admiration the same passages praised by Gabriele; his departures from previous interpretations are usually indistinguishable from those of Gabriele; he copies Gabriele’s definitions of words, and their rhetorical observations are virtually identical.'^ The fact that Gabriele’s annotations have remained un¬ published has hampered efforts to distinguish Daniello’s contribu¬ tion to the commentary tradition. Lino Pertile’s forthcoming edition greatly facilitates future evaluations of arguably the most interesting Dante commentary of the Cinquecento. The edition, which includes a rigorous comparison of Gabriele’s and Daniello’s commentaries. Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 117 should settle once and for all the question of the extent and quality of Daniello’s indebtedness to his teacher, as well as clarify questions of attribution.'* Generally, Daniello’s modifications of Gabriele’s work tend either to dilute or to expand it. Discussion of Dante’s use of stylistic de¬ vices and syntactic changes from Latin to Italian are generally cut short. Very little trace also remains of Gabriele’s polemic with Lan- dino. Although Landino remains a constant point of reference in Gabriele’s work, Daniello tends to express his disagreement with other commentators in fairly general terms. Perhaps the most lamen¬ table alteration is the loss of what Aldo Vallone has termed Gabriele’s “tono aperto che illumina.”'^ At times the personal tone of Gabriele’s work is somewhat reminiscent of private musings. He is puzzled, for example, by Dante’s designation of the Romans as sementa santa {Inferno 15.76) because he considers Sylla’s soldiers, the Romans who settled in Fiesole, “uomini banditi e di male affare.”^" Similarly, in his discussion of Carnaro {Inferno 9.113) he notes that it is the site of a little church also named Carnaro in which one can see the bones of travelers who died in the region. Such observations—admittedly of an anecdotal nature—are nevertheless refreshing to read because they provide us with a more immediate impression of the commen¬ tator’s response to the poem than the repetition of earlier glosses. Comparative studies of the two commentaries do acknowledge Daniello’s superior treatment of certain subjects and his discussion of particulars never alluded to by Gabriele. He analyzes in greater detail the scientific, theological, and philosophical aspects of the poem. Although not indebted to Gabriele in these sections, he does rely heavily on Landino and Vellutello. Daniello adduces consider¬ ably more authorities than Gabriele: there are more references to the Latin poets (especially Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, and Horace), to Dante’s minor works, to Aristotle, to histories (Giovanni Villani’s, Valerio Massimo’s, and some French chronicles), and to the Bible and biblical exegetes. Daniello also adduces more examples of Petrarch’s echoing of Dantesque expressions. Although many of the references to Virgil and Horace were already noted by Gabriele, Daniello’s additions are significant and constitute one of his most important contributions to Gabriele’s work.^' In the preface to his Petrarch, Daniello states that his chief inten¬ tion is “ricercare il significato de’ vocaboli e delle frasi e di mostrare 118 Dante in the Renaissance I’arte del poeta.”^^ Not surprisingly, critics’ highest praise has been reserved for Daniello’s illustration of Dante’s art. In practice, this analysis generally consists of pointing out how Dante’s use of stylis¬ tic devices enhances his presentation. Daniello admires, for example, Dante’s use of contrarietati e corrispondenze at the beginning of In¬ ferno 13.^^ For Daniello, Dante’s abundant use of stylistic devices here greatly enhances his description of the wood of the suicides. Daniello is also attentive to Dante’s deployment of metaphors.^'' Particular praise is lavished on the effectiveness with which the poet succeeds in extending a comparison. In discussing the infernal bufera that torments the lustful he notes: “disse buffera, per continuar la presa metafora del mugghiare, che e proprio del Bue. & anche se noi adirati gonfiaremo le gote, & la bocca, & poco dopo aprendola, ver- remo quasi a pronontiar la prima sillaba di essa voce ch’e buf. che mai non REST A (he says “storm” in order to continue the adopted metaphor of mooing, which is proper to the ox. Similarly, when we are angry and inflate our cheeks and mouth, and open them a little later, we would almost end up pronouncing the first syllable of that sound, which is buf, which never rests).”Daniello often accompa¬ nies these discussions with a list of the classical or patristic sources underlying Dante’s imagery. As a quick glance at the index of the recent republication of the commentary shows, Daniello is particu¬ larly sensitive to instances of poetic echoes of Virgil and Petrarch— a keenness no doubt owing to his translations of the former and commentary to the latter. At times, his approach is more that of a connoisseur, comparing the efficacy of Dante’s use of a given trope or image to that of other poets. In discussing Dante’s and Virgil’s comparison of the multitude of the damned, falling to their perdi¬ tion, to autumn leaves, Daniello judges Dante’s deployment of the simile more striking; the poet writes: Come d’autunno si levan le foglie I’una appresso de I’altra, fin che '1 ramo vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie. As, in the autumn, leaves detach themselves, first one and then the other, till the bough sees all its fallen garments on the ground. {Inferno 3.112—14) In his gloss Daniello notes: Daniello's Debt to Gabriele 119 Bellissima comparatione fatta ad imitation di Virg . . . Ma questa e molto piu Bella; conciosia che Virg. fa comparation delle foglie, a quella delle anime, e Dante del modo che elle tenevano a salir di quel lito in barca, attribuendo il senso alia cosa insensata; cio tu il veder al ramo. A most beautiful comparison done in imitation of Virgil. . . . But Dante’s comparison is even more felicitous. Insomuch as Virgil compares the souls to leaves and Dante the way in which the souls got into the boat from the shore, thereby personifying it, that is, attributing the ability to see to the branch.^^ For Daniello, the exactness of Dante’s comparison is more arresting than Virgil’s more general description. Criticism of both commentaries needs to move beyond the issue of Daniello’s dependence on Gabriele. The majority of critical as¬ sessments have been based on a comparison of the two commen¬ taries and their formal features. Less attention has been paid to the variety of sociohistorical features surrounding the production of Daniello’s commentary. A consideration of these conditions, how¬ ever, can shed light on the reasons for the commentary’s lukewarm critical reception. Two factors in particular may be significant in ex¬ plaining the differing successes of Daniello’s commentary and those of Landino and Vellutello: the circumstances underlying each com¬ mentary’s publication and the extent to which each reflects the social and cultural concerns of his moment. Daniello’s commentary w'as published by a rather obscure Venetian editor, Pietro da Fino, who dedicated the book to one of his relations, Giovanni da Fino. In contrast, Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries boasted more im¬ portant dedications, to the Florentine signoria and Pope Paolo III, respectively. Dedications to well-known personages often indicated support and patronage of one’s literary undertakings, an endorse¬ ment that cannot be underestimated in garnering attention and pro¬ moting circulation. The 1481 publication of Landino s commentary, in particular, was nothing short of a civic event. Landino’s commen¬ tary presents Dante as an exemplary exponent of Neoplatonic ideals, and the proemio extols the excellence of Florentine culture and gov¬ ernment. Landino’s reading of Dante in a Neoplatonic key gives the commentary a singular distinction, one that expresses the culture of its author’s historical moment. Certain cultural and social conditions are also refracted in Vellu- 120 Dante in the Renaissance tello’s commentary, albeit to a much lesser extent. Students of the commentary tradition have long noted Vellutello’s disagreements with Bembo on literary matters. Bembo’s emphasis on purity of dic¬ tion was not shared by Vellutello, nor was his elevation of Petrarch and the classics as models for imitation accepted. Although Vellu¬ tello never singles out Bembo and his school by name, the object of the commentator’s disdain is unmistakable in his allusion to “nos- tri moderni poeti, i quali sotto nome di imitazione e d’andar per vie d’esso Petrarca I’hanno gia tanto denudato che non gli e rimasto pur una camicia rotta da potersi coprire (our modern poets, who in the name of imitation and in following the footsteps of Petrarch have already stripped him to the point that he no longer possesses even a tattered shirt to cover himself)” in his gloss to Guido Guiniz- zelli’s allusion to earlier love poets {Purgatorio 26.119-20).^^ Such a blunt declaration lends Vellutello’s commentary an undeniable liveli¬ ness and polemicism. Despite critical condemnation of the apparent roughness of his style, Vellutello’s commentary enjoyed a respectable success. After its initial printing in 1544, the commentary was re¬ printed in 1554 and then republished by Francesco Sansovino in 1564 along with Landino; the two commentaries were printed together again in 1578 and 1596. Their joint printing likely reflects the com¬ plementary nature of the two commentaries: Vellutello’s attention to history supplements Landino’s somewhat scanty documentation of the poem’s references to actual events. Generally, less of the local and particular is reflected in Daniello’s commentary. In contrast to Landino and Gabriele, Daniello’s com¬ mentary contains few references to contemporary social and cultural issues, and it has a far less personal tone. This seeming detachment has led Aldo Vallone to lament the absence of “un atto di confidenza verso chi ascolta: un segno di abbandono e di fiducia nella buona conversazione.”^* Daniello offers little personal testimony and rarely refers to his contemporaries. Moreover, his few observations tend to be somewhat mundane, lacking the spontaneity and polemical quality that occasionally enliven the remarks of Landino, Gabriele, and Vellutello.^’ Underlying Daniello’s detached tone is a fundamental unwilling¬ ness to engage in controversy and polemic. When he disagrees with interpretations, he does so rather generally, seldom identifying his Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 121 predecessors by name. In disagreeing with commentators who had argued that the slothful are punished along with the wrathful in the swamp of Styx, he limits himself to noting; “Tutti gli Espositori di questo Poeta, in questo luogo (e sia cio detto con pace di ciascuno) non intendendo la distintione, che egli fa de’ peccati, grandemente s’ingannano (All the poet s commentators on this passage (and let this be said with the peace of each one), not understanding how Dante distinguishes the sins, misread the passage.)”^® This kind of correc¬ tion is firm but impersonal, especially when compared to some of Gabriele’s rather blunt disagreements with Landino. Not only does Gabriele offer a sustained critique of Landino, he also displays a range of attitudes; at times merely differing, and at others dismiss¬ ing Landino’s reading as assurda or as una pazzia. Daniello follows many of Gabriele’s modifications of Landino but rarely refers to the Florentine commentator by name.^^ Daniello is also conspicuously silent on what many of Dante’s Renaissance commentators consid¬ ered some of the poet’s more controversial judgments—the likely damnation of Celestine V, the placement of Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell, and the selection of Cato, a suicide, as the custodian of Purgatory. Whereas Landino, Gabriele, and Vellutello comment on Dante’s judgments, Daniello forgoes commentary on these episodes, a remarkable silence given that they tended to elicit rather strong opinions from his predecessors. His silence on these subjects imbues his commentary with an almost ahistorical quality. Daniello’s tendency to avoid controversy ought to be kept in mind when considering one of the more debatable criticisms of his com¬ mentary. In his 1935 article, polemically titled “Dante e i protes- tanti nel secolo XVI,’’ A. De Biase classifies Daniello’s commentary as “un importante documento della subdola attivita protestantica dantesca.’’^^ Although De Biase does not go so far as to argue that Daniello is a supporter of Luther, he takes great pains to suggest Daniello’s sympathies with the sect by pointing out passages in which the commentator fails to either modify or distance himself from Dante’s denunciation of ecclesiastical corruption. De Biase criticizes Daniello severely for his failure to castigate Pope Boniface VIII’s at¬ tackers in his gloss to Purgatorio 19.85-96 and for his association of the seven heads emerging from the chariot (Purgatorio 32.142—47) with the headwear worn by different prelates. In describing the gro- 122 Dante in the Renaissance tesque transformation of the chariot which takes place in the Earthly Paradise, Dante notes: Trasformato cosi ’1 dificio santo mise fuor teste per le parti sue, tre sovra ’1 temo e una in ciascun canto. Le prime eran cornute come hue, ma le quattro un sol corno avea per fronte: simile mostro visto ancor non fue. Transfigured so, the saintly instrument grew heads, which sprouted from its parts; three grew upon the pole-shaft, and one at each corner. The three were horned like oxen, but the four had just a single horn upon their foreheads: such monsters never have been seen before. According to Daniello’s gloss to these lines, the three heads with two horns recall the miters worn by Cardinali Vescovi\ the four heads with only one horn are reminiscent of those worn by Cardinali preti?'^ This last reading, however, was taken from Gabriele, whom De Biase does not exempt from his charge of Protestantism.^’ It is worth noting that De Biase makes no references to the passages in the commentary in which Daniello shows a distinct disinterest in draw¬ ing attention to corrupt ecclesiastics. An example of his discretion can be found in his refusal to identify the heretical cardinal alluded to in Inferno 10.120: “qual si fosse costui,” he writes, “lasciero dichiararlo a i pill curiosi: basta a dire, che egli era Cardinale, e Heretico.”’^ De Biase’s charge of Protestant sympathizer needs to be examined not only in the context of Daniello’s attitude toward perceived contro¬ versial passages in the Comedy, but also in his response—or general lack thereof—to the more controversial issues of his time. Daniello’s interpretive legacy lies in the clarification of Dante’s lexicon, in his analysis of the poet’s use of stylistic devices, and in his illustration of how Dante’s verse formally and thematically recalls the classics or finds echoes in the work of later poets like Petrarch. The attention accorded poetic art is not surprising in a commentator whose intellectual circle placed a high premium on literary imitation. There is, however, an evasiveness in the predominantly rhetorical focus of his commentary. By the second half of the Cinquecento, the idyllic world in which Gabriele lectured to a small elite in his coun- Daniello’s Debt to Gabriele 123 try villas had given way to a fractious Italy beset with the turmoil aroused by the Reformation. Daniello’s disinterest in “le lunghissime narrazioni dell’istorie,” although making for a much more satisfac¬ tory commentary to the formal aspects of the poem, might best be seen as a displacement, a soothing refuge from the confusing and sometimes bruising changes in society. 6. Material Production and Interpretations of the Comedy “Books are a world in themselves it is true; but they are not the only world.”—William Hazlitt, On the Conversation of Authors The last three chapters have traced the way in which particular commentaries mediate between Dante’s poem and different social formations in the Renaissance. But a more general overview of com¬ mentaries can be provided by looking at their printing. In doing so we align ourselves with parallel undertakings by fpux-critics— Christian Bee, Amedeo Quondam, Donald McKenzie, and Jerome McGann—whose recent work articulates new lines..of mqniry con¬ cerning publishing history, literary theory, and literary sociology. The work of Bee and Quondam provides instructive models for Italian printing. McKenzie and McGann explore the theoretical ramifica¬ tions of material production and its relation to literary and textual criticism. Although these four critics differ greatly in their fields of focus—Bee’s work centers on patterns of book ownership in Renaissance Florence; Quondam has written on the production of Venetian printers, notably Gabriele Giolito and Francesco Marco- lini; McGann’s chief area of interest is English Romantic poetry, especially Byron; and McKenzie’s more recent essays encompass an eclectic variety of subjects ranging from the printing of Congreve’s works to comparing New Zealand Maori’s and colonialists’ reading of a territorial treaty—their work overlaps in many ways. Taken together these four critics mark out an area of research for the study of Dante. In explaining the approach adopted in Les Livres des florentins (141^-1608) (1984), Christian Bee, “tout chauvinisme mis a part,” situates himself among French scholars like L. Febvre, H.}. Martin, and Robert Escarpit, all of whom have written extensively on the “civilisation du livre.”' Bee, pointing to the dearth of Italian models for his study, attributes the resistance on the part of Italian bibli¬ ographers and scholars to more historically oriented studies of the Material Production 125 book trade to two tendencies; the first deriving from a respect tra- ditionnel eprouve pour le livre considere comme une oeuvre dart mysterieusement issue de I’inspiration geniale (traditional and time- honored respect for the book viewed as a work of art mysteriously sprung from the individual author’s genius) ; the second from a tra- dizione di studi troppo chiusa al suo interno, quasi compiaciuta e gelosa della sua separazione istituzionale, tecnicamente risolta come bibliologia se non piu come bibliofilia (tradition of studies too closed on itself, almost revelling in and jealous of its institutional separation, technically resulting in bibliology if not bibliophilia). ^ In opposi¬ tion to such idealized views of literary works and their production. Bee employs a quantitative approach. Les Livres des florentins exam¬ ines notarial documents from the Magistrate de’ pupilli that list the holdings of minors whose fathers died intestate. Bee examined 582 inventories documenting 10,574 books owned by Florentines, whose libraries ranged in size from one book to more than five hundred. The scope of Bee’s analysis provides insight into both the literary culture of Florentine merchants and the fluctuations in their tastes. Bee’s observations here are partly derived from Amedeo Quon¬ dam’s long article, “‘Mercanzia d’onore.’ ‘Mercanzia d utile. Pro- duzione hbraria e lavoro intellettuale a Venezia nel Cinquecento (1989) (unpublished at the completion of Bee’s book). Quondam’s study analyzes the marketing strategies of the firm of Giovanni and Gabriele Giolito, one of the largest Venetian printing estab¬ lishments in the Renaissance. Like Bee, Quondam begins his essay by criticizing traditional bibliographic procedures. In Quondam’s eyes bibliographic study in Italy is hamstrung by a territorial and elitist mentality, one that all too often leads to separate, indepen¬ dent undertakings—histories of the printed book, histones of the sixteenth-century book, histories of the book in Venice, publishers’ annals—all of which contribute to producing “una mappa frammen- taria e discontinua, i cui tratti costitutivi sembrano dominati in modo pressoche esclusivo dalla curiosita bibliografica e dalla passione anti- quaria (a fragmentary and discontinuous map whose constitutive fea¬ tures seem almost exclusively dominated by bibliographic curiosity or by antiquarian passion).”^ Moreover, Quondam adds, the failure of many studies to consider adequately historical and political forces further limits their utility: 126 Dante in the Renaissance Non e forse riconoscibile, in questo terreno comune, il segno pur camuffato ed anche degradato di una ideologia del lavoro culturale praticata (teorizzata) nel primato dello “spirito” e quindi dellautonomia dei suoi “atti” e dei suoi attributi rispetto alle componenti materiali del lavoro intellettuale? E tutto cio non significa pur sempre la persistenza d’una ideologia organicamente idealistico-storicistica, secondo cui il libro e Vopera dell’autore, au¬ tonoma in ogni caso dai meccanismi produttivi (I’editore) e dal mercato, e quindi non ha certo bisogno di interventi pubblici, di programmazione ed organizzazione della sua storia anche futura: la sua lettura pubblica, se non la sua ricezione e diffusione? Does one perhaps not recognize in this common attitude the traces, however disguised and degraded, of an ideology of cultural activity founded on (theorized) the primacy of the “spirit” and thus the autonomy of its own “actions” and of its own attributes with respect to the material components of intellectual work? And does this not also signal the persistence of a fundamentally idealistic-historicist ideology, according to which the book is the wor\ of the author, autonomous in every respect from the mecha¬ nisms of production (the publisher) and from the market, and therefore has no need of public interventions, of the scheduling and organization of its past and future history; of its public read¬ ing, that is its reception and diffusion ?“' As a corrective to this situation Quondam invokes what is essentially a Marxist model, one that stresses the commodity aspect of literature. Like Bee, Quondam calls for a more historically informed approach toward the book trade and the material facts of production. Quon¬ dam places particular emphasis on the need to interpret the mediat¬ ing functions of publishers, printers, and editors: publishers “speak” in the corpo fisico of the works they print—in their choice of for¬ mat, types, pagination, and illustrative material. These features must be analysed from within—“del sistema complessivo della comunica- zione, dei suoi modi materiali di produzione (by its overall system of communication, by its material modes of production).”^ Both Donald McKenzie and Jerome McGann put into practice many of Quondam’s recommendations. It should be pointed out that among the four critics considered here McKenzie is the only bibli¬ ographer. Hence the adversarial role McKenzie has recently adopted toward the traditional bibliographic establishment reflects a critique Material Production 127 from within the profession. McKenzie begins his essay The Book as Expressive Form” with a critique of Walter Greg’s position on bibliographic method—that the study has nothing to do with the meaning of the words on the page. He finds this definition reductive, or more to the point, a formulation that simply does not accord with the current practice of many bibliographers. Fredson Bowers receives similar criticism. McKenzie recommends that Bowers’s position, that “historical bibliography is not, properly speaking, bibliography at all” ought to be reversed, that “all bibliography, properly speaking, is historical bibliography.”^ McKenzie considers traditional formula¬ tions especially inadequate when dealing with recent changes in the forms of information and in the modes of interpretation. Although McKenzie stops just short of announcing a paradigm shift, he never¬ theless proposes a considerably more expanded definition of bibliog¬ raphy. The principle I wish to suggest as basic is simply this; bibliog¬ raphy is the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception. So stated, it will not seem very surprising. ... It also frankly accepts that bibliographers should be concerned to show that forms effect meaning. Beyond that, it allows us to describe not only the technical but the social processes of meaning. . . . For any history of the book which excluded study of the social, economic and political motivations of publishing, the reasons why texts were written and read as they were, why they were rewritten and redesigned, or allowed to die, would degenerate into a feebly degressive book list and never rise to a readable history. But such a phrase also accommodates what in recent critical history is often called text production, and it therefore opens up the application of the discipline to the service of that field too.^ Hence what we are called to is bibliography as the study of the sociology of texts. McKenzie then moves to the centerpiece of his argument: “whether or not the material forms of books, the non-verbal ele¬ ments of the typographic notations within them, the very disposi¬ tion of space itself, have an expressive function in conveying mean¬ ing.”** The formulation parallels closely Quondam’s remarks about how publishers speak in the material forms of books. McKenzie 128 Dante in the Renaissance eloquently argues his point by examining Wimsatt and Beardsley’s reading of Congreve’s prologue to The Way of the World, an interpre¬ tation that made up a crucial part of their famous argument against what they termed the “intentional fallacy.”’ The form of the au¬ thorized version of the prologue, according to McKenzie, enforces a meaning for the lines quite counter to that offered by Wimsatt and Beardsley. Their misreading was a result of an idealist bibliographic practice that, by putting in their hands a text oriented toward verbal signs, occluded other codes that accompanied the words. Ironically, the very lines used by Wimsatt and Beardsley to support their theory of an autonomous text were originally presented in a form laden with signs of authorial intent. The point is that in some instances “sig¬ nificantly informative readings may be recovered from typographic signs as well as verbal ones.” McKenzie concludes: “The history of material objects as symbolic forms functions, therefore in two ways. It can falsify certain readings; and it can demonstrate new ones.”” Attention to material production can help distinguish possible read¬ ings from implausible ones. Looking at the publishing history of a text allows us to chart meanings that subsequent readers make under different social and historical imperatives. Although McKenzie is reluctant to designate his call for a soci¬ ology of texts a “paradigm shift,” McGann shows no such misgiv¬ ings. McGann has taken up concerns shared by Bee, Quondam, and McKenzie, applied them to a wide variety of texts, and thereby drawn out the implications of this practice. One way of distinguish¬ ing McGann’s work from that of Quondam or McKenzie is in his programmatic zeal. McGann’s concern with the nature of the literary text has ramified into a trenchant critique of the American biblio¬ graphical establishment and led to an ever more refined theorization of the relation of material production to the interpretation of liter¬ ary works. A core of assertions undergird McGann’s work of the last twelve years; the material circumstances of a work’s emergence in both initial and subsequent editions has a profound effect on the meaning of the work; the instructions for reading are codified by the mechanical processes of a work’s printing; works are irreduceably linked to the social order in which they emerge and in which they are subsequently read. As McGann argues: “Literary works are by nature social products and social structures. . . . their social dimensions are reflected in their physical constitutions. . . . the semiotic character of Material Production 129 literary works is not to be located at the linguistic or verbal level.”" One way of clarifying a work’s relation to different social formations is to study its publishing history. Scholars “must labour to elucidate the histories of a work’s production, reproduction, and reception, and all aspects of these labours bear intimately and directly on ‘the critical interpretation’ of a work.”" Students must be fluent in the languages of both the “bibliographic” and the “hermeneutic code.” " At present criticism is seldom informed by proficiency in both areas. Rather, as John Sutherland puts it in his assessment of McCann’s critique of contemporary theoretical practices, “criticism proceeds in a state of ‘anamnesis,’ professorial absentmindedness, in which the material circumstances are quite deliberately forgotten. And this is abetted by a textual theory which programmatically ‘desocializfes] our historical view of the literary work.’ ” " The importance of attending to the influence of the material con¬ ditions of a work’s publication is forcefully argued in the essay “Keats and the Historical Method.” A person may . . . give a reading of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” in total ignorance of the poem’s bibliographic history. Students do it all the time, and so, alas do some scholars. None the less, that history is always present to a person’s critical activity despite his ignorance of that history, and even despite his ignorance of his ignorance. It is simply that the history is not present to his individual consciousness." McGann provides persuasive examples of the way in which the mean¬ ing of a literary work is codified by its form of emergence through an examination of the publication of Don Juan, cantos i and 2. By comparing the responses of different classes of readers to the poem’s first edition (an expensive quarto that omitted both the author’s and publisher’s names) and its republication in cheap pirated versions, McGann effectively demonstrates how “different texts, in the biblio¬ graphical sense, embody different poems (in the aesthetic sense).” " The positions of Bee, Quondam, McKenzie, and McGann derive from a similar set of interlocking practical and theoretical concerns. All four operate under the broad banner of the sociology of litera¬ ture—Bee and Quondam acknowledge an explicit debt to Robert Escarpit’s pioneering Sociologie de la litterature (1958). Although not as directly influenced by Escarpit’s work, both McKenzie and 130 Dante in the Renaissance McGann work share Escarpit’s interest in clarifying the way in which a work is codified and commodified by the material processes of its transmission.'^ All four assume an oppositional stance toward tra¬ ditional bibliographic procedures and emphasize the importance of examining a work’s production, reproduction, and reception. Quon¬ dam, McKenzie, and McGann emphasize the need to clarify the nature of the mediating role played by editors, printers, and pub¬ lishers as well as interventions made by successive generations of influential readers. All four call into question idealist views of lit¬ erature that conceive of works as “verbal icons”—that is, in purely formalist and linguistic terms. Given the recent call by one critic for a “new formalism” in Dante studies, the bibliographic interventions of McGann seem particularly instructive.'* They show us how material production can be put to work within a given field as an argument against exclusive reliance on formalist theories of interpretation. The histories of production, reproduction, and reception have much to offer us in the interpreta¬ tion of the Comedy. And although the first of these histories is rather attenuated, the third and certainly the second are particularly rich. By examining the reproduction of the Comedy in the Renaissance, we can get a sense of how the consideration of the poem as a social act can reorient critical discussion. The Printing of the Comedy, 14^2-1 Among the Dante apocrypha. Franco Sacchetti’s biographical anec¬ dotes are well known. In one account (novella 114), Dante, walking about, overhears a blacksmith hammering and at the same time re¬ citing some of the poet’s verses, omitting some lines, and putting in others of his own. Outraged by this desecration of his work, Dante enters the smithy, seizes the blacksmith’s tools, and hurls them onto the road. 'When asked to explain the meaning of his actions, the poet responds that, if the blacksmith does not want his tools destroyed, he should refrain from ruining those of others: “Tu canti il libro e non lo di com’io lo feci; io non ho altr’arte, e tu me la guasti (You sing out my book, and do not give the words as I wrote them. That is my business, and you are spoiling it for me).” In another anecdote (novella 115) Dante, following a donkey driver, hears the man recit- Material Production 131 ing his poem, crying out every few lines, “Arri!” (roughly equivalent to “gee up”). Incensed, the poet strikes the donkey driver, shouting, “Cotesto ‘arri’ non vi miss’io (That ‘Arri!’ was not put in by me). ” The homely qualities of these anecdotes belie the profundity of the questions they raise and the complexity of the solutions they offer. Prominent in each story is the danger that attends the circu¬ lation of the poem — the inevitable transformation that accompanies every transmission. Moreover, the violence that accompanies the cli¬ max of each anecdote testifies to the level of interpretive anxiety that attends the dissemination of the Comedy. The anecdotes seek to alle¬ viate this anxiety by offering up Dante himself as the guarantor of meaning. On one level, the resolution is obvious; behind every reader stands a watchful Dante who violently insists that his property his intentions as author — be respected in any act of circulation. To use more recent critical language, the anecdotes oppose meaning (what the author intended) to various significances (what meanings readers find in the poem).^“ Yet the resolution is at the same time a dis¬ placement of the problem of interpretive authority: because Dante is present as a guide only in such apocryphal stories, the resolution is symbolic. Hence, as they seek to construct a hermeneutic that insists on discerning authorial meaning from spurious interpretations, the two anecdotes stigmatize a behavior that is regularly, and perhaps inevitably, practiced by commentators and readers of the poem. In fact, authorial intentions have had little to do with the subsequent diffusion and appropriation of Dante’s poem (and perhaps least of all when accompanied by such rallying cries as “il genuino pensiero di Dante”).^' Moreover, the difference between the punishments (de¬ struction of property vs. beating) hints that the greater transgression lies in unintentional additions to the poem, not the willful emen¬ dations of the blacksmith. The “arri” of the donkey driver is cer¬ tainly not intended as an emendation; it is extraneous, something like typographic conventions or the form of transmission more generally. When the Dante character, here the authority of the tale, takes the medium as part of the message, he reminds us of McKenzie’s bib¬ liographic principle — that forms effect meaning, that the book is an expressive form and that such features as typography and printing history make up a readable code. The Comedy, as Sacchetti’s anecdotes demonstrate, was transmit¬ ted over a wide variety of cultural sectors. Manuscripts of the poem 132 Dante in the Renaissance range from sumptuously illuminated codices to copies featuring “un testo al massimo corrotto e dialettalizzato.”^^ Whether in the form of illustrations or in the form of dialectal translations, these interven¬ tions all contribute to the shaping of the poem’s meaning. The ways in which different manuscript formats tended to mediate the poem’s meaning—in terms of script, format, use of decoration, translation into dialect, placement of headings, and addition of commentary— are mirrored in the earliest printed editions of the poem, whose physical constitutions were based on medieval codices. The editions of the poem published between 1472 and 1596 dis¬ play a bewildering number of formats. (These dates encompass the first printed edition and the last version of the poem printed at the end of the sixteenth century.) Printers’ or publishers’ interventions can be detected in a number of features: whether the Comedy is pub¬ lished with commentary, without commentary, with an excerpted commentary, or with more than one commentary; the selection of dedicatees; the size of format; the choice of editors; the use of illus¬ trations and decorations; and the selection of types.^^ As Quondam has argued, such editorial decisions are seldom “neutral” or “indif¬ ferent”; they mediate the text in subtle and deliberate ways.^'' Much is being implied about the social and cultural agency of the poem in such material conditions; the technical process is informed and to some extent influenced by a work’s relation to different social for¬ mations and market conditions. As certain patterns of history are literalized in completed forms of texts, each edition of the Comedy constitutes a rudimentary interpretation. During the Quattrocento and Cinquecento Dante shared with his Florentine compatriots, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the status of a contemporary “classic.” As is well known, Dante s position was not that of primus inter pares. During the Renaissance, there appeared roughly 167 editions of Petrarch’s work and even more of Boccac¬ cio’s. In contrast, by the end of the Cinquecento only fifty editions of the Comedy had been printed. Because I will be referring to these editions throughout this chapter, I have provided a list in table Material Production 133 Table i YEAR CITY AND PUBLISHER 1472 1472 1472 1477 1477 C.I478 1478 1481 1484 1487 1491 1491 1493 1497 1502 post-1 502 1506 1507 1512 1515 post-1515 C.I5I5 C.I5I6-I8 1516 post-1518 1520 1529 Foligno: Johann Numeister and Evangelista (Angelini?) Mantua: Georg and Paul Butzbach, with the aid of Columbino Veronese Venice (or Jesi?): Federico de’ Conti Naples: printer of Alighieri Venice: Vindelin da Spira (with Jacopo della Lana’s commentary, though attributed to Benvenuto da Imola) Naples: Francesco del Tuppo Milan: Ludovico and Alberto Piemontesi (with Jacopo della Lana’s commentary edited by Nidobeato) Florence: Nicolo della Magna (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Ottaviano Scoto (with Landino’s commentary) Brescia: Bonino de’ Bonini (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Bernardino Benali and Matteo Capcasa (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Pietro di Piasi, commonly known as Cremonese (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Matteo Capcasa (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Pietro di Quarengi (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Aldus Manutius Lyon: Barthelmy Troth; Aldine counterfeit Florence: Filippo Giunti Venice: Bartolomeo Zani (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Bernardino Stagnino (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresani Venice: Gregorio de’ Gregori; Aldine counterfeit Venice: Alessandro Paganino Venice: Alessandro Paganino Venice: Bernardino Stagnino (with Landino’s commentary) Toscolano: Paganino de’ Paganini and Alessandro Paganino Venice: Bernardino Stagnino (with Landino’s commentary) Venice: Jacob del Burgofranco (Giacomo Pocatela), underwritten by Luc’Antonio Giunti (with Landino’s commentary) 134 Dante in the Renaissance 1536 1544 1545 1547 1550 1551 1552 1552 1554 1554 1555 1564 1568 1569 1571 1572 1572 1575 1575 1578 1578 1595 1596 Venice; Bernardino Stagnino, underwritten by Giovanni Giolito (with Landino’s commentary) Venice; Francesco Marcolini, underwritten by Alessandro Vellutello Venice; A1 segno della Speranza Lyon; Jean de Tournes Venice; Al segno della Speranza Lyon; Guillaume Rouille Lyon; Guillaume Rouille Venice; Al segno della Speranza Venice; Giovan Antonio Morando Venice; Francesco Marcolini (with Vellutello’s commentary) Venice; Gabriele Giolito (edited by Lodovico Dolce) Venice; Giovanni Battista e Melchiorre Sessa e fratelli (edited by Francesco Sansovino with Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries) Venice; Pietro da Fino (with Daniello’s commentary) Venice; Domenico Farri Lyon; Guillaume Rouille Venice; Domenico Farri Florence; B. Sermartelli (with Buonanni’s commentary to the Inferno) Lyon; Guillaume Rouille Venice; Domenico Farri Venice; Giovanni Battista e Melchiorre Sessa e fratelli appresso gli eredi di Francesco Rampazzetto (with Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries) Venice; Domenico Farri Florence; Domenico Manzani Venice; Giovanni Battista e Giovanni Bernardo Sessa appresso Domenico Nicolini (with Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries) In the last quarter of the Quattrocento, fifteen editions were printed, nine with commentary. The editions printed by Vindelin and the Piemontese brothers incorporate Jacopo della Lana’s commen¬ tary; the other seven, Landino’s. Thirty-six editions of the poem were printed in the Cinquecento; eight editions present the Comedy with¬ out any form of commentary; six contain Landinos commentary in Material Production 135 its entirety; three include marginal annotations taken from Landino (1547 de Tournes, 1572 Farri, and 1575 Farri); two editions feature Vellutello’s commentary and one Daniello’s. The four Rouille edi¬ tions provide marginal annotations extracted from Vellutello. Three editions combine both Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries. The first four editions of the Comedy display a number of simi¬ larities; published by some of the first German printers to intro¬ duce the new ars artificialiter scribendi into Italy, these editions are in folio, without commentary, and printed primarily in roman type with the text neatly spaced. Generally, humanistic, legal, and theo¬ logical incunabula were printed in folio. As their size suggests, these were reference volumes, not easily carried about. Hence the use of this format for the printing of the Comedy underscores its authori¬ tative status. The poem did not resemble other vernacular works such as popular manuals and devotional works, which were gener¬ ally printed in quarto or smaller formats. The poem’s presentation suggested a cultivated and wealthy audience, one accustomed to the ample proportions of costly manuscripts. Although some printers employed Gothic type in their editions of the Comedy, this is more the exception than the rule.^^ In Italy, legal and devotional works were often copied in Gothic type, humanistic and classical texts in roman.^^ Gothic, as Rudolph Hirsch has noted, was “contrary to the spirit of humanists.’’^* Until Aldus Manutius’s introduction of an italic font, roman was the dominant type used to print the Comedy. Again we can infer something about the audience from such a typo¬ graphic decision. Like the larger format, the choice of roman type suggests a well-educated and upper-class reading public—human¬ ists and courtiers. Hence, although the audience for manuscripts of the poem was quite varied, the readership of the first printed ver¬ sions would have been more restricted.^^ This is further born out by printers’ choice of dedicatees: both Colombino Veronese and Fran¬ cesco del Tuppo dedicate their publications to courtiers, to Filippo Nuvolone and Honofrio Carazolo, respectively. Similarly, Nidobeato dedicated his edition to Guglielmo, marquis of Monferrato. Dante’s poem becomes even more conspicuously mediated with Vindelin’s and Nidobeato’s inclusion of Jacopo della Lana’s com¬ mentary. The inclusion of a commentary suggests educational usage because commentaries were used primarily in universities. The choice of Lana’s scholastic and encyclopedic exposition codifies a particu- 136 Dante in the Renaissance larly medieval view of the poem. The publication of Landino’s com¬ mentary in 1481 diminishes considerably this medieval link. In presenting Dante as an exemplary exponent of Neoplatonic ideals, Landino’s commentary recasts the Comedy's, meaning dramatically. In many respects, the commentary’s remarkable fortune stands as a monument to Florentine Neoplatonism. As Carlo Dionisotti has observed, one can chart the gradual decline of Florence’s cultural dominance by tracing the fortune of Landino’s commentary over the next century.^® Notwithstanding the vicissitudes of its printing, Lan¬ dino’s work dominated expositions of the Comedy for roughly 120 years. By the end of the Cinquecento Landino’s commentary had been reprinted fifteen times. The 1481 edition is remarkable for both its cultural and technical triumphs. One of the most notable innovations—or more precisely at¬ tempted innovations—of the 1481 Dante was the addition of illustra¬ tions. The designs, attributed to Botticelli, were engraved by Baccio Baldini. The artist executed two sets of drawings for the Comedy, the first set was intended for Landino’s commentary, the second group was commissioned by Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Botticelli completed only nineteen illustrations for the Inferno for the first set. The addition of illustrations required two printing processes: relief printing for the text and intaglio for the engravings.^’ Unfortunately, the printer, Nicolo della Magna (an Italianized form of Nicholas of Breslau) had difficulties in combining these two forms: some copies of the text contain no illustrations; others have illustrations for only the first two cantos; still others have illustrations for three or more cantos. Notwithstanding the partial success of this first venture, the in¬ clusion of illustrations appealed to consumers. One presumes that the twelve hundred copies Nicolo printed sold well, because within three years Ottaviano Scoto brought out another edition.^^ In 1487 Bonino de’ Bonino succeeded where Nicolo had not: this celebrated production, the first nineteen illustrations of which were based on Botticelli’s designs, constitutes the first fully illustrated edition of the Comedy?^ Bonino had assessed the market for Dante shrewdly; one need look no further for proof of his success than to the next five Venetian editions that follow Bonino’s edition closely.^'’ The folio edi¬ tions printed between 1487 and 1497 contain vignettes or full-page illustrations derived from Bonino’s Dante. The text of the poem is Material Production 137 cast in roman type, surrounded by as much as sixty-eight lines of smaller commentary type. The other notable addition during this period was editorial. Beginning with Bernardino Benali’s and Matteo Capcasa’s 1491 edition, Pietro da Figino, a Franciscan friar, appears in the colophon as an editor.^’ Just as the introduction of Landino’s commentary dislodged ear¬ lier expositions of the Comedy, so did Aldus Manutius’s introduction of a series of octavo texts in 1501 unsettle previous editions of the poem. Aldus’s production of ancient and contemporary “classics” introduced changes in three areas—format, type, and presentation of text. Aldus sought to provide the most accurate texts of the ancients unencumbered by commentary. Much of the scholarship on these editions has been devoted to Francesco Griffo’s, Aldus’s punch cut¬ ter’s, creation of an italic type and to the source of the octavo format.^^ I wish to focus instead on Aldus’s decision to eliminate commentary, because this is a case in which attention to material production can help account for the demise of this apparatus in the Cinquecento. The increasingly dominant role that commentary had come to play in editions of the poem can be seen in the 1481 Dante. The work’s very title underlines the centrality of the commentator: Co- mento di Christophoro Landino Fiorentino sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentino. Significantly Landino’s name precedes the author’s. A quick glance at any page of the poem printed between 1481 and 1497 confirms the prominence of commentary, even a ten¬ dency to dwarf the text itself. This kind of presentation — large folios of text accompanied by commentaries — had come to characterize Venetian printing of the late Quattrocento (fig. i). “The reader is faced,” observes Martin Lowry, “by a page jumbled with commen¬ tary which is often packed on fifty or sixty lines at a time, with dis¬ located half-lines and syllables jostling one another for any available space.” Anthony Grafton characterizes the effect in similar terms: “waves of notes printed in minute type break on all sides of a small island of text set in large Roman.”It is difficult to overestimate the effect produced by Aldus’s presentation of established authors in an unfiltered state, free of others’ interpretations. The removal of com¬ mentary left one apparently free to communicate directly with the ancients. The effects of this new presentation were particularly dra¬ matic in the case of the Comedy, which in the Aldine edition bore a new title, Le terze rime di Dante (fig. 2). As Dionisotti has ob- CANTO Q.VINTO CANTO QuINTO della pRIMA CANTICA DI DANTHE. C Holiditcefidel cerchiopritnaio giu nel £ecudo che men luogho cighia & tantopiu dolor che punge aguaio. Sta iui Minos hombilmente Si cinghia/ cxamina le colpe nellentrata giudicha & manda (ecundo chauinghia Dico che quando lanima mal nata gli uien dinanzi tutta fi confella: fii quel conofator dele peccata Vede'qual locodmfemoe/ da elTa/ dgnelli con la coda tante uolte/ quantunq? gradi uuol che giu (ia melTa: SempredinLizialuineftannomolte: uanno a m'cenda oafchuna al giudicio/ drcon SC odono Sc poi fon giu uolte. d IcemodifoprachcluuedoclpoctadiHincto lonfcrnoincer chi E. nccciTario fccodo la dinicnfione del corpo ‘fpcncho: perchc li parcc dalU arcuterentiaidC appocho appocho faccol^ al protondo chc c/cl cetro:che fempre el ccrchio inferiorc fia nu/ norcchccirupcnoreattifla,MarchioSefa,(^fratelli. Figure 3. Title page of Dante con I’espositione di Christoforo Landino et di Alessandro Vellutello, sopra la sua Comedia (Venice: Giovambattista, Marchio Sessa, e fratelli, 1564). By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. Material Production 157 have what might be termed thematic or generic titles (Commedia), descriptive titles (L.o ’nfemo e 7 Purgatorio . . . ), and metonymic titles in which the author becomes synonymous with the work (II Dante. Con argomenti . . Dante con I'espositione . . . As Fran¬ cesco Barberi’s study of Italian Renaissance frontispieces illustrates, there is often a significant disparity between a work s actual title and its “editorial” title (fig. 3). As we can see, at times, the word com¬ media is not even included on the title page. Titles in manuscripts display a similar attenuation because of their long incipits. Increas¬ ing competition between printers to capture the eye of prospective readers often resulted in extravagant advertisements concerning edi¬ torial work, illustrations, commentaries, and technical innovations. Whether consisting of one word or filling the entire page, the title, writes Barberi, “di rado coincide col titolo puro dell opera essendo spesso inserto in una formula piu o meno ampia, elaborata con sot- totitolo, sommano, indicazioni varie (rarely coincides with the actual title of the work, as it is often inserted in a more or less ample for¬ mula, elaborated with subtitles, summaries, various indications).”®^ In successive editions—Bernardino Stagnino’s 153^ edition of the poem exemplifies this point—publishers inform readers of recent additions and emendations. Ultimately, such information serves to document a work’s process of industrialization.’^ The issue of the title surfaces in the latter half of the Cinque- cento, but only in the rarefied atmosphere of scholarly debates on genre. These are the facts of the case as publishing history records them. But what do they mean to us.^ We might see the Renaissance situation as an exemplary moment that lays bare the universalizing rhetoric often taken up in contemporary criticism. Statements along the line of “ever since the fourteenth century,” should be applied cautiously, because there are few perennial concerns. That might be tonic enough, but we can go further. It is clear that when Renaissance scholars such as Carlo Lenzoni, Giovan Battista Gelli, Benedetto Var- chi, and Ridolfo Castravilla took up the issue of poetic genre they did so while pursuing investigations of the Comedy along Aristotelian lines. The Poetics had recently reentered the European tradition and the philosopher’s theories were applied accordingly. What such mo¬ ments tell us is that “pressing” questions do not simply exist—they are contingent. Sixteenth-century debates over the Comedy's genre occasionally, but not always, included a discussion of the poem’s 158 Dante in the Renaissance titleThese contemporary discussions do not, however, detract from the constructed nature of these assessments of poetic genre. They are demonstrably extrinsic—that is, they are a function of the commit¬ ment in certain intellectual circles to Aristotle’s text. The question of the title does not proceed ineluctably from a reading of the work; it is generated through a reading of the poem by means of the grid pro¬ vided by Aristotle’s treatise on genre. So we see that the question of the title is as contingent and as circumstantial as many other critical questions taken up by readers of the Comedy. There is no apparent reading—there are only readings mediated by a set of interlocking social, political, and intellectual commitments. The particular case of the poem’s title shows how a general atten¬ tion to material production might be applied to specific and current problems in Dante criticism. To dismiss the Renaissance treatment of the issue as aberrant, as critics have done, unconsciously or not in their treatments of the title, is to assume an idea of progress in the scholarly world that is ingenuous, if not arrogant. Clarifying the poem’s originary impact is crucial, but the poem’s secondary re¬ ception is also important because it informs successive receptions. And given that there are considerable difficulties in ascertaining the dynamic of the Comedy'^ originary reception, the insistence on the original moment in critical discourse is all the more perplexing. To read the poem in the relative isolation of most current editions, thereby shearing it from its successive interpretations and reinterpre¬ tations, is to read in practical ignorance. This practice is all the more tenuous given Dante’s own fast and loose manner of treating the originary moments of his own work. Very few writers have been so willing to subsume old poems into new conceptual systems—essen¬ tially into new paradigms. To perform the kind of reading that is possible—a self-conscious historicism—is a difficult venture, espe¬ cially because the ways in which our own critical practices have been informed by the commentary tradition, the critical tradition, and publishing history are often occluded. Conclusion This book is an attempt to reclaim an interpretive legacy. My pro¬ posal is ultimately a modest one: twentieth-century Dante study has produced many excellent “intrinsic” studies, approaches that take as their object of study the text itself.' Recent Dante criticism has focused largely on what the poem, considered as a literary artifact, that is, a system of signs or linguistic units serving an aesthetic pur¬ pose, means. Students of the Comedy have benefited greatly from the work of such critics as Benedetto Croce, T. S. Eliot, Erich Auerbach, Charles Singleton, and John Freccero. Through them we have come to be remarkably fluent in the languages of the text: close readings, source studies, intertextual investigations, and stylistic and rhetori¬ cal analyses. But “extrinsic” approaches, of which historicism is one, have remained largely undeveloped. We need to turn to the book, to approaches that account for the extraordinary productivity of the Comedy, to the material aspects of its reproduction, to its circulation, to its use as a culture-bearing book. Future analyses must take into account if not “all contextual factors that impinge on the critical act” then at least more of them.^ It is not so much that new formal readings of the poem are im¬ possible or might be superfluous; it is that there is currently an im¬ balance between hermeneutic and historicist studies. I believe that we might profitably turn to the issues of reception and literary pro¬ duction. If, as Janusz Stawinski proposes, the most salient feature of a masterpiece is its productivity, a text’s ability to “take on a new life in changing social and literary circumstances,” then one would be hard pressed to find a work that offers a more complex histo¬ ricity than the Comedy? The nature of the investment that has been made in this remarkable poem over time has produced a rich field for analyses of the dynamics of reception or of cultural history more generally. To put it another way, if we consider a work in terms of its three facets—the aesthetic, the social, and the material—it is evident that i6o Conclusion the history of Dante criticism, although at times attentive to all three, has recently tended to emphasize the aesthetic at the expense of the other two aspects/^ renewed attention to commentary, I believe, is the most efficacious counter to the predominance of formal studies. The study of commentary is quietly but powerfully subversive to this bias. As it u ndermi nes the easy (but enabling) separation of intrinsic and extrinsic, of primary and secondary, of reading and misreading, and of text and criticism through a supplemental logic, it enforces attention to the contingencies of historical process and to the variety of functions that the Comedy has played in, and even within, given social formations^ The scope of this reorientation to the social and the material is daunting. The strength of the formal method lay in its ability to radi¬ cally re 5 .tr.ict the range of inquiry; a project that seeks to investigate a text’s demonstrable social functions requires what might be termed, for want of a better word, an interdisciplinary attitude. Although this act of recovery is arduous, we have never been so well prepared for it. We have never had better critical editio ns of the commentaries, we have the remarkable Dartmouth Dante Project, comprehensive and reliable overviews of a particular commentator or period of commen¬ tary, and we have begun to develop a better understanding of how commentary functions as a genre. We may need to read more, work collaboratively, publish less, and offer more tenuous conclusions. May we prove equal to the task! Notes Abbreviations, Editions, and Translations BMC Catalogue of Booths Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum, lo vols. (London: British Museum, 1908-71) D BI Dizionario biografico deglt italiani (Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia, i960-) ED Enciclopedia dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco (Rome: Istituto dell’enci- clopedia italiana, 1970-78) G s LI Giomale storico della letteratura italiana IM u Italia medioevale e umanistica Preface I. Umberto Eco, Postille a II nome della rosa, 13th ed. (Milan: Bompiani, 1986), 533. /. Dante’s Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth - and Twentieth-Century Constructions 1. In tracing the history of the criticism written on the commentaries to the Comedy, it is important to keep in mind the difference between the commentary tradition and the critical tradition. By the commentary tradi¬ tion I refer to commentaries on the Comedy, criticism of an interpretative nature whose object is the poetic text. In this chapter, I use the expression “the critical tradition” to refer to studies of a metacritical nature, scholarly work that has as its object the commentaries themselves. 2. For recent discussions of the sources employed by Dante’s medieval and Renaissance commentators, see Emilio Bigi’s two chapters, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina del Quattrocento,” and “La tradizione esegetica della Commedia nel Cinquecento,” in Forme e significati nella "Divina Commedia" (Bologna: Capelli, 1981), 159-209; Anna Maria Caglio, “Materiali enciclo- pedici neWe Expositiones di Guido da Pisa,” imu 24 (1981): 213-56; Giuliana 162 Notes to Chapter i De Medici, “Le fonti deU’Ottimo commento alia Divina CommediaP imu 26 (1983): 71-122; and Luigi Caricato, “II Commentarium aWInferno di Pietro Alighieri,” imu 24 (1983): 124-50. For recent attempts to date medi¬ eval and Renaissance commentaries, see Saverio Bellomo, “Primi appunti suirO«/wo commento dantesco: II—II codice palatino 313, primo abbozzo deWOttimo commento^ gsli 157 (1980); 533-40; and Lino Pertile, “Le edi- zioni dantesche del Bembo e la data delle Annotation! di Trifone Gabriele,” GSLI 60 (1983): 393-402. For the dating of Landino’s lectures on Dante for the Florentine Studio, see Arthur Field, “Cristoforo Landino’s First Lectures on Dante,” Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986): 16-48. Recent book- length studies include Antonio Canal, 11 mondo morale di Guido da Pisa mterprete di Dante (Bologna; Patron, 1981); Domenico Pietropaolo, Dante Studies in the Age of Vico (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989); and Carlo Paolazzi, Dante e la “Comedia” nel Trecento (Milan: Pubblicazioni della Universita Cattolica, 1989). 3. See Alessandro D’Ancona, La Beatrice di Dante (Pisa, 1865), for D’Ancona’s view of Beatrice. For a discussion of Bartoli’s response to Rocca’s discovery, see Rodolfo Renier, “Adolfo Bartoli,” in Dante e la Luni- giana (Milan; Hoepli, 1909), 465-66. For discussions of the figure of Beatrice in the eighteenth century, see Pietropaolo, Dante Studies, 263, 357-71. For a discussion of Bartoli’s critical legacy, see Ferdinando Neri, “La scuola del Bartoli,” Rivista dTtalia 2 (1913): 673-92. 4. Renier, “Adolfo Bartoli,” 465. 5. For an account of eighteenth-century scholars’ interest in the commen¬ taries, see Pietropaolo, Dante Studies, 217, 247, 343. 6. Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Liter¬ ary Theory,” Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 21. 7. For critical assessments of Karl Witte’s contributions to Dante studies, see Gianfranco Folena, “La filologia dantesca di Karl Witte,” in Dante e la cultura tedesca, ed. Lino Lazzarini (Padua: Universita degli studi di Padova, 1967), 109-40; Hans Haupt, “Zum 100. Todestag Karl Witte am 6.3.1983,” Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch 59 (1984): 107-32. 8. Karl Witte, Essays on Dante, trans. and ed. by C. Mabel Lawrence and Philip H. Wickstead (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 311-12. Witte discusses his disdain for the commentaries popular in his day (34). 9. Generally, Germany’s interest in the commentary tradition has been sporadic. In addition to Witte’s work, there appeared Karl von Hegel’s, Uber den historischen werth derdlteren Dante-Commentate (Leipzig; Hirzel, 1878); and F. Schmidt-Knatz, “Jacopo della Lana und sein Commedia commen- tar,” Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch 12 (1930): 1-40. More recent studies include Notes to Chapter i 163 Bruno Sandkiihler, Die Friihen Dantekpmmentare und ihr Verhdltms zur mittelalterlichen Kommentartradition (Munich: Hueber Verlag, 1967); Man¬ fred Lentzen, Studien zur Dante-Exegese Cristoforo Landino (Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau, 1971); Manfred Lentzen, “Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino,” Romanische Forschungen 97 (1985): 36-46. 10. For a discussion of Dante’s immense popularity in the nineteenth century, see Carlo Dionisotti, “Varia fortuna di Dante,” in Geografia e storm della letteratura italiana (Torino: Einaudi, 1967), 222-42. 11. D’Ancona quoted in Luigi Russo, Alessandro D Ancona e la scuola storica Italiana (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1936), 18. 12. Francesco De Sanctis, ‘‘II Farinata di Dante,” Lezioni e saggi su Dante (Torino: Einaudi, 1967), 653, 657. 13. These essays are reprinted in Giosue Carducci, ‘‘Della varia lortuna di Dante,” in Edtzione nazionale delle opere di Giosue Carducci, vol. 10 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1941), 255-420. For an example of the anecdotes re¬ counted by Carducci, see his rather idealized description of Dante’s death¬ bed scene (312-13). During this period a more bibliographically oriented study was also published. See D. C. F. Carpellini, Della letteratura dantesca degli ultimi venti anni / 184^-186^] (Siena: Ignazio Gati Editore, 1866). The most thorough bibliography on Dante to emerge in the nineteenth century was Paul Colomb de Batines’s Bibliografia dantesca, 2 vols. (Prato: Aldina, 1845-46). 14. Carducci, ‘‘Della varia Fortuna di Dante,” 311. 15. For an account of George Vernon’s life, see the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 58 (New York: MacMillan, 1899), 275-76. Editions of the commentaries and of the Comedy made possible by George Vernon include Le prime quattro edizioni della “Divina Commedia" letteralmente ristampate, ed. G. G. Warren, Lord Vernon (London: Boone, 1858); L' “Inferno di Dante Alighieri disposto in ordine grammaticale e corredato di brevi dichiara- zioni di G. G. Warren, Lord Vernon (London, 1858-65); L’ “Inferno" secondo il testo di B. Lombardi con ordine e schiarimento per uso di stranieri di Lord Vernon (Florence, 1841); Pietro Alighieri, Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, ed. Vincenzo Nannucci (Florence: Piatti, 1846); Chiose sopra Dante, testo inedito, ora per la prima volta pub- blicato (Florence, 1846), commonly known as the falso Boccaccio; Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose alia Cantica dell' “Inferno" di Dante Alighieri attribuite a Jacopo suo figlio and Comento alia cantica di Dante Alighieri di autore ano- nimo (Florence, 1848). These last two commentaries were printed in one volume; the second has long been recognized as an Italian translation of Graziolo Bambaglioli’s commentary. William Vernon provided the funds for the printing of Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam . . ., ed. J. P. Lacaita, 5 vols. (Florence: Barbera, 1887). 164 Notes to Chapter i 16. In addition to the editions made possible by patronage, there ap¬ peared a number of other critical editions; L’Ottimo commento della "Divina Commedia” Testo inedito di un contemporaneo di Dante, ed. Alessandro Torri, 3 vols. (Pisa: Capurro, 1827-29); Lo Inferno della “Commedia" di Dante Alighieri col comento di Guiniforto delli Bargigi . . ed. G. Zac[c]heroni (Marseille: Mossy; Florence: Molini, 1838); Francesco da Buti, Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la "Divina Commedia" di Dante Alighieri, edited by Crescentino Giannini, 3 vols. (Pisa: Nistri, 1858-62); Chiose anonime alia prima Cantica della “Divina Commedia" di un contemporaneo del Poeta, ed. Francesco Selmi (Turin: Stamperia Reale, 1865); 11 codice cassinese della “Divina Commedia” .. . per cura dei monad benedettini della badia di Monte Cassino (Monte Cassino; Tipografia di Monte Cassino, 1865); “Commedia” di Dante Allaghieri col Commento di Jacopo della Lana bolognese, ed. Luciano Scarabelli, 3 vols. (Bologna; Tipografia Regia, 1866-67); Commento alia “Divina Commedia" d'Anonimo Fiorentino del secolo XIV, ed. Pietro Fan- fani, 3 vols. (Bologna; Romagnoli, 1866-74); Filippo Villani, 11 commento al primo canto dell’ “Inferno", ed. Giuseppe Cugnoni (Citta di Gastello: Lapi, 1896); Giovanni Serravalle, Translatio et Comentum totius libri Dantis Aldi- gherii . . ., ed. Marcellino da Civezza and Teofilo Domenichelli (Prato: Giachetti, 1891); La “Commedia" di Dante Alighieri, col commento inedito di Stefano Talice da Ricaldone, ed. Vincenzo Promis and Carlo Negroni (Turin: Bona, 1886). The effect of these editions can be seen in the com¬ mentaries of G. A. Scartazzini (1929) and Tommaso Casini (1921), both of whom refer extensively to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century commentators. Unfortunately, most of the nineteenth-century editions are seriously flawed; they are frequently based on only one or two codices; editors do not identify the patristic and classical sources cited by the commentators; and they occasionally omit glosses they consider irrelevant. Notwithstand¬ ing such editorial shortcomings, the availability of these editions facili¬ tated evaluation of the medieval commentaries by specialists considerably. A notorious example of loose editorial procedures is Scarabelli’s justifiably maligned edition of Jacopo della Lana. The edition’s deficiencies, amply documented by Karl Witte and Luigi Rocca, include the failure to consult all the existing manuscripts, the absence of any consistent criteria in the determination of readings, arbitrary emendations and reordering of glosses, and the careless transcription of material throughout. 17. “Cronaca,” gsli 19 (1892): 214. 18. Further evidence of William Vernon’s interest in the early commen¬ taries can be found in his own studies on Dante. See William Warren Ver¬ non, Readings on the “Inferno” of Dante Chiefly Based on the Commentary of Benvenuto da Imola (London and New York: Macmillan, 1894). 19. “Correspondence between Charles Eliot Norton and the Honorable Notes to Chapter i 165 William Warren Vernon: 1869-1908,” prepared for printing by William Coolidge Lane, Studies 47-48 (1930): 25. Benvenuto, in particular, is frequently mentioned in the two men’s correspondence. Norton had once proposed that an institution, the Dante Society of America, print an edition of Benvenuto. 20. See E. R. Vincent, “Charles Eliot Norton,” ed 4:74-75. 21. See Tommaso Pisanti, “Willard Fiske,” ed 2:935. Before coming into an immense inheritance, Fiske had been a professor of Scandinavian literature at Cornell. For the contents of the Fiske Dante collection, see Theodore W. Koch, Catalogue of the Dante Collection Presented by Willard Fis/(e to Cornell University, 2 vols. and supps. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer¬ sity Press, 1898-1921. 22. Luigi Rocca, Di alcuni commenti della “Divina Commedia” composti neiprimi vent’anni dopo la morte di Dante (Florence: Sansoni, 1891). Michele Barbi, Dante nel Cinquecento (Pisa, 1890; reprint, Rome: Polla, 1975). For a largely negative review of Rocca’s study, see F. Roediger, review of Di alcuni commenti, by Luigi Rocca, Rivista critica della letteratura italiana 7 (1891): 99-114. 23. Among the more notable studies on commentary that appeared after Rocca’s book are F. P. Luiso’s two articles, “Per la varia fortuna di Dante nel secolo XIV,” Giornale Dantesco 10 (1902): 83-97, and “Tra chiose e com¬ menti antichi alia Divina Commedia," Archivio storico italiano 31 (1904): 1-52; Paget Toynbee, “Benvenuto da Imola and His Commentary on the Divina Commedia f Dante Studies and Researches (London: Methuen, 1902), 215-37; J. Bracci Cambini, Da Buti ed i suoi tempi (Prato, 1915). In addition the following new editions appeared: Chiose alia Cantica dell' “Inferno" di Dante Alighieri scritte da Jacopo Alighieri, ed. (arro (Guilio Piccini] (Florence: Bemporad, 1915); 11 Commento dantesco di Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, dal "Colombino" di Siviglia con altri codici raffrontato, Antonio Fiammazzo (Savona: Bertolloto, 1915). 24. For a more detailed account of Dante studies at the turn of the cen¬ tury, see Aldo Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca dal XIV al XX secolo (Padua: Vallardi, 1981), 2:840-59. 25. Bartoli cited in Renier, “Adolfo Bartoli,” 471. 26. One modern equivalent to Cionacci’s project can be found in the Lectura Dantis Americana, which is being published by the University of Pennsylvania Press; the general editor of the project is Robert Hollander. The first two volumes are now available: Anthony K. Cassell, Inferno I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), and Rachel Jacoff and William A. Stephany, Inferno II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl¬ vania Press, 1989). 27. Michele Barbi, “Un cinquantennio di studi danteschi (1866-1936),” 166 Notes to Chapter i in Problemi fondamentali per un nuovo commento della "Divina Commedia” (Florence: Sansoni, 1955), 141- 28. La "Divina Commedia” nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare com¬ mento, ed. Guido Biagi, G. L. Passerini, and E. Rostagno, 3 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1924-39). Biagi, Passerini, and Rostagno edited the first two vol¬ umes; volume 3 was edited by the aforementioned and U. Bosco. Biagi refers to Cionacci’s and Bartoli’s earlier conceptions in his preface (ix). See also Colomb de Batines, Bibliografia dantesca, 1:3-4, for a description of Cionacci’s project. The twenty-three commentators excerpted in \.\\e Secolare commento include Jacopo Alighieri, Graziolo Bambaglioh, the Chiose ano- nime (ed. Selmi), Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo commento [Andrea Lancia], Pietro Alighieri, Guido da Pisa, Boccaccio, the falso Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco da Buti, the Anonimo Fiorentino, Giovanni Serravalle, Cristoforo Landino, Alessandro Vellutello, Bernardino Daniello, Lodovico Castelvetro, Lorenzo Megalotti, Pompeo Venturi, Baldassare Lombardi, Antonio Cesari, Niccolo Tommaseo, and Raffaello Andreoli. 29. Michele Barbi, “Notizie sulla "Divina Commedia” nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento^ Studi danteschi 5 (1922): 135. For fur¬ ther testimony of the nationalistic sentiments underlying Biagi’s project, see V. Gian, review of La "Divina Commedia nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento, gsli 84 (1924): 112-13. 30. Lana, Commento, 444. Significantly, in his edition of Lana, Scara- belli sets the two anecdotes apart from the more didactic portion of Lana s commentary. Francesco Mazzoni posits that this digression shows Lana s sensitivity to his audience of students. The anecdotes serve to alleviate the dryness of his doctrinal exposition. See Francesco Mazzoni, “Jacopo della Lana e la crisi nell’intepretazione dtWzDivina Commedia',' '\n Dante e Bolo¬ gna nei tempi di Dante (Bologna: Commissione per 1 testi di lingua, 1967), 301-2. 31. See Zygmunt G. Barahski, “A Note on the Trecento: Boccaccio, Ben¬ venuto, and the Dream of Dante’s Pregnant Mother,” forthcoming. I am grateful to Professor Barahski for providing me with a copy of this study before its publication. Saverio Bellomo makes a similar statement in the preface to his edition of Jacopo Alighieri’s Chiose to the Inferno: si e in grado di valutarle [the commentaries] anche in se stesse, e non esclusiva- mente in funzione del poema, in quanto opere appartenenti a un genere letterario ben definito.” See the “Premessa, to Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose airinfemo, ed. Saverio Bellomo (Padua: Antenore, 1990). All references to Jacopo’s Chiose in this book are to this edition. 32. Carlo Dionisotti, “Lettura del commento di Benvenuto da Imola, in Atti del convegno internazionale di studi danteschi (Ravenna: Longo, 1971), 204. Notes to Chapter i 167 33. Among the more significant studies published between 1918-30 are Flaminio Pellegrini, “Per la cronologia deU’Ottimo commento,” Bulletino della societd dantesca italiana 25 (1918): 85-89; Elisabetta Cavallari, La for- tuna di Dante nel Trecento (Florence: Perella, 1921); Giovanni Livi, Dante e Bologna: Nuovistudi edocumenti (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1921); Michele Barbi, “Di un commento al poema mal attribuito a Jacopo Alighieri,” and “Ben¬ venuto da Imola e non Stefano Talice da Ricaldone,” in Broblemi di critica dantesca: prima serie i8g^-igi8 (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 359-94, 429-54; Michele Barbi, “Per gli antichi commenti alia lettura di Benvenuto da Imola e i suoi rapporti con altri commenti,” in Problemt di critica dantesca: seconda sene /920-/937 (Florence: Sansoni, 1965); Domenico Guerri, // commento del Boccaccio a Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1926); Guiseppe Vandelli, “Una nuova redazione dell’Ottimo,” Studi danteschi 14 (1930): 93-174. Vandelli’s article is one of the most illuminating studies of this commentary. 34. Benedetto Croce, La poesia di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1966), i. 35. Ibid., 3. 36. Francesco Mazzoni, “La critica dantesca del secolo XIV,” Cultura e scuola 4 (1965): 286. For a discussion of Barbi’s contribution to Dante studies, see Domenico Pietropaolo, “Michele Barbi,” Belfagor 38 (1983): 281-96. Among the more notable studies that appeared in 1930-50 are P. Ginori-Conti, Vita ed opere di Pietro di Dante Alighieri con documenti inediti (Florence: Fondazione Ginori Conti, 1939); Vincenzo Cioffari, “For¬ tune in Dante’s Fourteenth Century Commentators,” Dante Studies (1945): 3-22; and John Paul Bowden, An Analysis of Pietro Alighieri's Commentary on the “Divine Comedy” (New York, 1951). 37. For Mazzoni’s acknowledgment of his debts to Momigliano and Casella, see his “Secolo XIV,” 287. For Mazzoni’s studies of the Trecento commentators, see his “Per la storia della critica dantesca I: Jacopo Alighieri e Graziolo Bambaglioli (1322-1324),” Studi danteschi 30 (1951): 157-202, “Guido da Pisa interprete di Dante e la sua fortuna presso il Boccaccio,” Studi danteschi 35 (1958): 70-128, “Pietro Alighieri interprete di Dante,” Studi danteschi 40 (1963): 279-360, and “Jacopo della Lana,” 265-306. 38. Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,” 159. 39. Mazzoni, “Jacopo della Lana,” 274. 40. Francesco Mazzoni, “Graziolo Bambaglioli,” ed 1:506. 41. Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,” 162,159-160. For more detailed discussions of Mazzoni’s views on the Epistle to Cangrande, see his two articles: “L’Epistola a Can Grande,” Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 10 (1955): 157-98, and “Per I’Epistola a Cangrande,” Studi in onore di Angelo Monteverdi (Modena: Societa tipografica editrice modenese, 1959), 498-516. For a refutal of Mazzoni’s views on the Epistle, see Bruno Nardi’s two studies: 11 punto sull’Epistola a Cangrande (Florence: Le Monnier, i960). 168 Notes to Chapter i and “Osservazioni sul medievale accessus ad auctores in rapporto all’Epistola a Cangrande,” in Saggi e note dt critica dantesca (Milan: Ricciardi, 1966). Nardi’s study convincingly overturns many of Mazzoni s assumptions. For more recent discussions of the Trecento commentaries and the Epistle to Cangrande, see Luis Jenaro-MacLennan, The Trecento Commentaries on the "Divina Commedia" and the Tpistle to Cangrande (Oxford; Clarendon, 1974)- Jenaro-MacLennan, too, is highly skeptical of some of Mazzoni’s claims (see especially 3-4; 68-74). For good accounts of the principal points in debates on the authenticity of the Epistle, see, in addition to the articles already cited: Umberto Eco, “L’Epistola XIII, I’allegorismo medievale, il simbo- lismo moderno,” in Sugli speccht e altri saggi (Milan: Bompiani, 1984), 216— 41; Dennis Costa, “One Good Reception Deserves Another: The Epistle to Can Grande,” Stanford Italian Review 5 (1985): 5-17; G. Brugnoli, “Epis- tole: Introduzione,” in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979-88), 2:512-21, as well as his notes to the letter, 598-643; V. Placella, “Dante e I’esegesi medievale,” Sapienza: Rivista di Filosofia e Teologia 42 (1988): 171-93; Paolazzi, Dante e la "Comedia" nel Trecento-, and Zygmunt G. Baranski, "Comedia: Notes on Dante, the Epistle to Can¬ grande, and Medieval Comedy,” Lectura Dantis 8 (1991): 26-55. 42. For Mazzoni’s comments on Lana, see “Guido da Pisa, 41; Pietro Alighieri,” 292. Aldo Vallone offers a somewhat different valuation of Lana; he argues that the encyclopedic cast of Lana’s commentary can also be viewed as an “un espediente di assettare ordinare e comunicare I’enorme materia” of Dante’s universe. See Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:82. For Vallone’s assessment of the fourteenth-century commentators, see 69- 129. 43. Lana, Commento, 104. 44. For studies of the sources employed by the Trecento commentators, see n.i. 45. Other recent critical editions of Dante commentaries include Espo- sitio seu Comentum super Comedia Dantis Allegherii: Filippo Villani, ed. Saverio Bellomo (Florence; Casa Editrice le Lettere, 1989); Anonymous Eatin Commentary on Dantes Commedia Reconstructed Text, ed. Vin¬ cenzo Cioffari (Spoleto; Centro itahano di studi sull alto Medioevo, 1989), Ee Chiose ambrosiane alia "Commedia , ed. Luca Carlo Rossi (Pisa. Scuola Normale Superiore, 1990); and Bernardino Daniello, Lespositione di Bei- nardino Daniello da Lucca sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Robert Hollan¬ der, Jeffrey Schnapp, Kevin Brownlee, and Nancy Vickers (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989). Bellomo s two editions and Rossi s edition of the Chiose ambrosiane are exemplary; the others are less so. For Vallone’s and Dionisotti’s critical overviews, see Vallone, Storia della cri¬ tica dantesca'. Carlo Dionisotti, “Varia fortuna di Dante, in Geogiafia e Notes to Chapter i 169 storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), 255-303. For other re¬ cent overviews, see Pietropaolo, Dante Studies\ Luciana Martinelli, Dante (Palermo: Palumbo, 1973); Michael Caesar, Dante: the Critical Heritage (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). For recent general studies of commentaries, see Craig Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas: Virgil and Epideic- tic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989); Lino Pertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary on Dante and Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua" Italian Studies 40 (1985): 17- 30; Henry Ansgar Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante (Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press, 1989). See also the works listed under n. i. 46. See Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1989). 47. See, e.g., the following two articles by Robert Hollander: “ ‘Ad ira parea mosso,’: God’s Voice in the Garden {Inf XXIV, 69),” Dante Studies loi (1983): 27-49, and “Dante on Horseback.^ {Inferno XII, 93-126),’’ Italica 61 (1984): 287-96. 48. Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2d ed. (Aldershot, England: Wildwood House, 1988); Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.i loo-c.i^jy. The Commentary Tradition, ed. A. J. Minnis, A. B. Scott, with the assistance of David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 49. For Bakhtin’s views on language, see the chapter, “Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Hol- quist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259-422. 50. I list below only some of the more notable studies published from the late 1950s to the 1970s: One of the most illuminating studies is Carlo Dionisotti’s “Dante nel Quattrocento,” in Atti del congresso intemazionale di studi danteschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 333-78. Other studies on medi¬ eval and Renaissance commentaries published in 1959-80 include Giorgio Padoan, L'ultima opera di Giovanni Boccaccio: Le esposizioni sopra il Dante (Padova: Cedam, 1959); F. Tateo, Retorica e poetica fra Medioevo e Rinasci- mento (Bari: Adriatico editrice, i960); A. Ciotti, “II concetto della ‘figura’ e la poetica della ‘visione’ nei commentatori trecenteschi della Comme- diaf Convivium 30 (1962): 405-16; Giovanni Fallani, Pietro Alighieri e il suo commento al Paradiso (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965); Robert Hollan¬ der, Allegory in Dante's “Commedia" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer¬ sity Press, 1969); Giorgio Ronconi, Le origini delle dispute umamstiche sulla poesia (Rome, 1976); Louis La PziAd,, Benvenuto da Imola: Dantista (Madrid: Jose Porrua Turanzas, 1977); Francesco Caliri, “Guido da Montefeltro nel commento di Benvenuto,” in Dante nel pensiero, 319-41; Andrea Ciotti, “Fra Dolcino, Dante e i commentatori trecenteschi della Commediaf in Psicanalisi e strutturalismo di fronte a Dante (Florence: Olschki, 1972), 429- 170 Notes to Chapter i 42; Messori Gigliola, “II Commentarium di Pietro Alighieri,” and Daniele Bertocchi, “Le oscillazioni dtW'Ottimo commento” in Lectura Dantis Mys- tica (Florence; Olschki, 1969), 169-87, 227-44; Paola Rigo, “II Dante di Guido da Pisa,” Lettere kaltane 29 (1977): 196-207; Saverio Bellomo, “Tra- dizione manoscritta e tradizione culturale delle Expositiones di Guido da Pisa (prime note e appunti),” Lettere italiane 2 (1979): 153 ^ 75 i Vincenzo Cioffari, “Problems Concerning the Earliest Dante Commentaries,” Forum italicum 13 (1979): 496-500; Giovanni Boccaccio editore e interprete dt Dante (Florence; Olschki, 1979). See also the following volumes for some gen¬ eral studies; Dante e Bologna nei tempi di Dante\ and Dante nel pensiero e nella esegesi dei secoli XIVe XV (Florence; Olschki, 1975). A new edition of Pietro Alighieri’s commentary to the Inferno also appeared; II Commenta¬ rium air "Inferno", ed. Roberto della Vedova and M.T. Silvotti (Florence; Olschki, 1978). 51. Robert Hollander, “The Dartmouth Dante Project,” Quaderni d’italianistica to (1989); 287. 52. I have adapted here the words of Jerome J. McGann in his “Some Forms of Critical Discourse,” in Social Values and Poetic Acts (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 1988), 137-38. 2. The Medieval Roots of Commentary in the Renaissance 1. St. ]erome. Dogmatic and Polemical Worlds, trans. J. N. Hritzu (Wash¬ ington, D.C.; Catholic University of America Press, 1965), 79-80. Anthony Grafton and Annabel Patterson have recently discussed the significance of this passage. See Anthony Grafton, “On the Scholarship of Politian and Its Context” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977); 187— 88; and Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valery (Berkeley and Los Angeles; University of California Press, 1987), 79. Grafton observes that the definition helps “account for why commentators so often gave more than one answer for each question” (187). Grafton also notes that Filippo Beroaldo refers to St. Jerome’s definition of commentary in his commen¬ tary to Propertius (1491). Patterson writes that in St. Jerome’s account we have in effect a contemporary definition of fourth-century commentary as a genre” (41). 2. See St. Jerome, Dogmatic and Polemical Woifs, 55 “ 5 ^> ^ fuller ac¬ count of these events. 3. Conrad of Hirsau quoted in Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. I loo-c. The Commentary Tradition, ed. A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1988), 43. More recently Karlheinz Stierle has attempted to articulate a theory of commentary. See his “Studium; Per- Notes to Chapter 2 171 spectives on Institutionalized Modes ol Reading,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 115-27. There are a number ol problems with this essay. Stierle’s view ol commentary is largely informed by Derrida’s distinctions between speech and writing. Underlying Stierle’s treatment of the genre are many ol the ideas brilliantly expounded in Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse ot the Human Sciences,” in The Structuralist Controversy, ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, 2d ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hop¬ kins University Press, 1972), 247-65. Stierle opposes the writing of the text to the speech ot the commentator: “Commentary springs from the voice of someone who is in charge of the text and who represents it to a group ot listeners, disciples, students, members of a community, or nonprofessionals. In any case it means going beyond the text, exceeding it. The same voice that represents the text and bestows on it the immediacy of the spoken word crosses the boundaries ot the text in order to restore an ideal situa¬ tion ot understanding and communication” (117). Stripped of the speech¬ writing opposition, which simply is not true, or of the idea of “restoring an ideal situation” of understanding, which is questionable as well, or ot the eftacement-transgression axis (which is contradictory), Stierle is not say¬ ing much. Stierle follows up his incorporation of Derridian ideas; he states that “commentary is decentered discourse” (120). Again, little is gained by such a characterization. Commentary clearly has a center—the text. One could observe that there is a decentering action within commentary, but I believe it is more useful to characterize this tendency, as I argue in this chapter, in Bakhtinian terms, as centrifugal. Lastly, Stierle’s article is full of imprecisions with respect to the commen¬ tary tradition to the Comedy, the institution of commentary to the poem in its first phase ol reception is not confined to Florence, but a phenomenon that affects many cities in Italy (Bologna, Pisa, Verona, Pistoia, Siena, and Naples). The claim that the “great commentaries of the Divma Commedia were written in the pre-Gutenberg era” (123) is also misleading. Landino’s commentary, at its publication, superseded all previous expositions. Stierle’s claim that commentary seeks to “efface itself in relation to the text” (120) is simply not true with respect to Dante commentary. Commentators from Benvenuto to Castelvetro often display a remarkably open attitude toward Dante’s authority. I support Stierle’s claim that we need a “theory of commentary,” but one that is applicable. As such, his rather automatic application of Derrida, lamentably, is bound to harden the views of critics who decry the tendency of modern critics to employ contemporary terms and notions to the dis¬ cussion of medieval literature. See, e.g., Minnis’s introduction to Medieval Theory of Authorship, i. For a discussion of Minnis’s “theoretical pronounce- 172 Notes to Chapter 2 merits,” see Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 43 n. 5. 4. St. Bonaventure, quoted in Minnis, Medieval Literary Theory, 229. 5. For a discussion of Dante’s commentary to his own works, see Luis Jenaro-MacLennan, “Autocomentario en Dante y comentarismo latino,” Vox Romanica 19 (i960): 82-123; Sandkuhler,Z)/> Friihen Dantekpmmentare, 50-57, 93-95; E- R- Curtius, “Dante’s Self-Exegesis,” in European Litera¬ ture and the Latin Middle Ages, 3d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer¬ sity Press, 1973), 221-25; Paola Rigo, “Commend danteschi,” in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana (Turin: utet, 1986), 2:6-8; and Zygmunt G. Baranski’s three articles, “ ‘Significar per verba’: Notes on Dante and Pluri- lingualism,” The Italianist 6 (1986): 5-18; “Dante’s (Anti-) Rhetoric: Notes on the Poetics of the Commedia,” in Moving in Measure: Essays in Honour of Brian Moloney, ed. J. Bryce and D. Thompson (Hull: Hull University Press, 1989), 1-14; “La lezione esegetica di Inferno I: Allegoria, Storia e lettera¬ tura nella Commedia" Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi, 81-97; and Medieval Literary Theory, 374-78. 6. Divisio textus is a feature of xhc forma tractatus. Many of Dante’s Tre¬ cento and Quattrocento commentators used this device both in their general prologues and in their proemi to each canto to order and structure their discussions of the poem’s content. It entails the meticulous division and subdivision of the text; the feature facilitates the location of references and is intended to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. For a more detailed discussion of divisio textus, see J. B. Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 126; and Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 144-58. 7. Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, in Opere minori, ed. Domenico De Rober- tis (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979), i, pt. 1:132. Toward the end of his analysis of the famous canzone, “Donne ch’avete intelletto d amore, Dante observes, “Dico bene che, a piu aprire lo intendimento di questa canzone, si converrebbe usare di piu minute divisioni. Alastair Minnis alludes to the significance of this passage with respect to Dante’s use of earlier exegetical techniques in Medieval Literary Theory, 377. 8. “The ‘Aristotelian prologue,’ which introduced commentaries on authors both sacred and profane,” writes Alastair Minnis, was based on the four ma)or causes which, according to the Philosopher, governed all activity and change in the universe.” The four causes include efficient cause, material cause, formal cause, and final cause. See Medieval Liteiaiy Theory, 3. 9. For a thorough overview of Trecento conceptions of comedy, see Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy. Notes to Chapter 2 173 10. Baranski, “Comedia: Notes on Dante,” 32. 11. Jauss, “Literary History,” 23. 12. I have followed the dates listed by Paola Rigo, “Commenti danteschi,” 6-22. For discussions of the dating of Guido da Pisa’s and the first version of the Ottimo commentator’s commentaries, see chap, i, n. 2. 13. Vittorio Rossi discusses this range of appropriation in his “Dante nel Trecento e nel Quattrocento,” in Saggt e discorsi su Dante (Florence: San- soni, 1930), 324-25. Boccaccio was the first to give public readings on the Comedy. A number of similar ventures quickly followed; Benvenuto held lectures on the Comedy in Bologna in 1375; Scuaro de’ Broaspini in Verona in 1380; Francesco da Buti in the Pisan Studio in 1385; Nofri di Giovanni in Pistoia in i 394 ’> Giovanni di Ser Duccio of Spoleto in Siena in 1396. 14. Among the few medieval works to receive this treatment are Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis and Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus. In addition, Guizzardo da Bologna wrote a commentary on Albertino Mussato’s Ecermis and tbe physician, Dino del Garbo, wrote a gloss to Guido Cavalcanti’s notoriously elusive canzone “Donna me prega.” Authors like Francesco da Barberino and Niccolo de’ Rossi also provided Latin glosses on their own vernacular poetry. 15. See Lm correspondenza poetica dt Dante e Giovanni del Virgilio, ed. E. Bolisani and M. Valgimigli (Florence: Olschki, 1963), 6. 16. For a discussion of Cecco’s attitude toward Dante, see Anna Maria Partini, Cecco d’Ascoli: Un poeta occultista medievale (Rome: Edizioni medi- terranee, 1979), 127-40. 17. Jauss’s phrase, “the horizon of expectations,” refers to the expecta¬ tions of a work’s first readers. 18. Graziolo, Commento, 38. For Graziolo’s defense of Dante’s treatment of Fortune, see 19-25. Francesco Mazzoni discusses Graziolo’s efforts to refute Cecco d’Ascoli’s criticisms of Dante. See Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,” 200. For a discussion of the early commentators’ dis¬ cussion of Dante’s treatment of fortune, see Cioffari, “Fortune in Dante’s Fourteenth Century Commentators,” 3-22. 19. In refuting the necessity of defending Dante’s presentation of the suicides, the Ottimo commentator further observes, favella I’Autore a spaventare, e a munimento delli uomini, accio che elli si guardino di questa morte eterna, la quale e senza rimedio. . . . Credo impertanto che il predetto Autore, siccome fedele Cristiano, con senno e coscienza tenesse in suo giudicio quello che tiene la Chiesa. Infino a qui e chiosa del Cancelliere di Bologna [referring to Graziolo’s gloss]; ma io Scrittore non avviso, che la detta scusa bisogni all’Autore, pero che per se stesso nelli ultimi capitoli del Paradise, massimamente dove 174 Notes to Chapter 2 lasciato ogni poesia elli parla, s’appruova diritto e perfetto adoratore del nome di Cristo figliuolo di Dio. E parmi, che piu utile era a mostrare, che cio che dice I’Autore seguita poesia; ed e una naturale ragione, la quale e figurata in persona della sua scorta. Graziolo’s reading, explains Lancia, is valid only if one attends to la cor- teccia delle parole and not to Dante’s profondo intendimento. See L’Ottimo commento della “Divina Commedia" di un contemporaneo di Dante, ed. Ales¬ sandro Torn (Pisa; Capurro, 1827-29), 1:248-50. The Ottimo commenta¬ tor’s rejection of Graziolo’s reading reveals the Florentine’s greater sensi¬ tivity to Dante’s fictive mode of presentation. Dante’s treatment of fortune remained controversial for a long time. More than fifty years later, Coluccio Salutati addresses the subject again in hisDe fato et fortuna (1396). 20. Benvenuto, Comentum, 3:231. 21. Ibid., 3:232. 22. Given the extensive bibliography on the medieval accessus, I list below only some of the more notable recent studies: see Edwin A. Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,” Traditio 3 (1945): 215-64; J. B. Allen, “Commentary as Criticism: Formal Cause, Discursive Form, and the Late Medieval Accessus,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latim Lovaniensi,cd. ]. Ijsewijn and E. Kessler (Louvain: Louvain Lfniversity Press, 1973), 29-48; R. W. Hunt, “The Introduction to xhcArtes in the Twelfth Century,” in The His¬ tory of Grammar in the Middle Ages, ed. G. L. Bursill-Hall (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1980), 117-44. 23. For a discussion of variations on the accessus scheme in Dante’s Tre¬ cento commentators, see Jenaro-MacLennan, The Trecento Commentatois. Generally, the greatest variation lies in Trecento treatments of the Comedy's title and formal cause. Pietro Alighieri, e.g., begins his analysis of the title by distinguishing between comic and tragic styles. This distinction forces the admission that the Comedy's style cannot be considered lofty in all its parts; it must also be deemed humble because the poem is written in the vernacular. However, having acknowledged this, Pietro, leaning on the au¬ thority of Horace, adds that comedy often adopts the lofty style of tragedies, pointing to the Paradiso as evidence of Dante s use ot an elevated style. The reference to Horace is deftly deployed here because it defends Dante s use of the vernacular in terms of classical statements on poetic style. In fram¬ ing his remarks this way, Pietro—whether consciously or unconsciously helps mitigate criticism of Dante’s style. See Pietro Alighieri, Commenta- rium (1978), 8-14. Like Pietro, Boccaccio dedicates a significant portion of his accessus to an investigation of the poem’s title. The two commentators differ, however, in the degree to which each dwells on the language of the Comedy. Boccaccio exhibits more anxieties over Dante’s choice ot Italian Notes to Chapter 2 175 over Latin. His reference to Italian as the language “nel quale pare che comunichino le feminette” testifies to his discomfort. See Giovanni Boccac¬ cio, Esposizioni sopra la ‘‘Comedia di Dante", in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Giorgio Padoan (Verona: Mondadori, 1965), 6:5. 24. Cristoforo Landino, “Proemio al commento dantesco,” in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Roberto Cardini (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), 1:100-64. citations from Landino’s proemio are to Cardini’s edition. 25. Alessandro V'ellutello, La Comedia di Dante Alighieri con la nova espo- sitione di Alessandro Vellutello (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1544), AAiiir. 26. Ibid., AAiiiir. Vellutello states, “E pero e da riprendere Terror di molti ignoranti, i quali credono nessuno essere studiante, se non quelli che s’ascondono in solitudine e otio.” 27. For a discussion of the tensions between Landino’s proemio and the rest of his commentary, see Paolo Procaccioli, Filologia ed esegesi dantesca nel Quattrocento: L’ "Inferno” nel "Comento sopra la Comedia" di Cristoforo Landino (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 31-38. 28. Grafton, “Politian,” 153. 29. On October 23, 1373, Boccaccio gave the first public lectures on the Comedy in the church of Santo Stefano di Badia in Florence. These read¬ ings, the first lecturae Dantis, had arisen out of public demand. The readings were abruptly terminated in January 1374, when Boccaccio fell ill. Hence the commentary is incomplete, ending with Boccaccio’s introduction to In¬ ferno 17. 30. See the ninth story of the ninth day in Giovanni Boccaccio, De¬ cameron, ed. V’ittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1985), 784-88. It is worth noting that later commentators like Benvenuto da Imola and the Anonimo Fiorentino repeat substantial portions of Boccaccio’s stories m their glosses to the Ciacco and Filippo Argenti episodes in the Comedy. 31. Boccaccio, £'i'/>os 72 /o«/, 332-37. 32. Witte, Essays on Dante, 325, lists a number of Lana’s more notable transformations of classical myths. Rocca, Di alcuni commenti, 179, also alludes to the irregularities in Lana’s versions of myths. These unconven¬ tional retellings may reflect Lana’s use of medieval compilations. Rocca observes that Lana, at times, alters the myth to accord with Dante’s manipu¬ lation of it. In this respect, Lana’s fanciful versions may represent more than story telling for its own sake; his alterations belie an attempt to interpret the myths according to Dante’s presentation of them in the Comedy. 33. For a discussion of the preponderance of narration in medieval com¬ mentary, see Julian Weiss, “Las ‘fermosas e peregrinas ystorias’: Sobre la glosa ornamental cuatrocentista,’’ Revista de literatUra medieval 2 (1990): 103-12. 176 Notes to Chapter 2 34. Because of the length of these two anecdotes, I reproduce here only the first: Uno dice che li Bergamaschi volcano considerare perche Dio avea facto alii uomini cosi fatta e distinta e organata la testa; e vedeano bene a che utile eran fatti li occhi, cioe per vedere, imperquello che molto e neces- saria la veduta aH’uomo, similemente la bocca per mangiare, e li denti per li cibi duri, lo forame delli orecchi per lo udire, ma pure le orec- chie di fuora non vedeano a che utile fossono fane. Stata molto tempo tra loro tale dubitazione, fermossi pure tra loro di volerne sapere la veri- tade, e fenno ambasciadori e mandonnoli a Cremona dove in quel tempo era studio universale, alii quali ambasciadori commiscno: andate a Cre¬ mona e inquirete in tal modo quelli savi di la, che voi sappiate la cagione finale perche le orecchie sono fatte di fuore. Andando questi ambascia¬ dori a Cremona quando funno sulla riva di Po, li non era ponte ne altro navilio perche elli ne potesseno passare, ne eziandio aveano cavalli, si che si discalzonno per passare lo fiume; quando I’uno fue discalzo ed elli aggruppo li calzari I’uno con I’altro ad intenzione di buttarseli in su la spalla per potersi tenere li panni alzati per non bagnarsi passando, quando volse buttare li detti calzari suso la spalla, la correggiuola li ando suso I’orrecchia, si che li calzari istetteno appiccati allorecchia. Allora disse costui al compagno: O compagnone mio, torniamo a Bergamo, ch’io so perche Dio hae fatto I’orecchia cosi fatta. Lo compagno che v’era di fede disse: dimmi ’1 perche? Rispuose colui: vedilo, ch’elle sono utile a portare appiccati i calzari quando si passa alcuno fiume. See Lana, Commento, 3:444-45. The appearance of this anecdote in the midst of a scholastic disquisition provides a striking example of heteroglos- sia, of the different stylistic registers often present in medieval commen¬ taries. We have on the one hand, in Lana’s preceding discussion of angelic intelligences, an example of the “official” discourse of institutional scholas¬ ticism; on the other, an instance of the comic, informal language of the marketplace. In Bakhtin’s terms, the two styles embody the coexistence of the centripetal forces of language that tend toward one centralizing, uni¬ fying language (medieval scholasticism) alongside the centrifugal, irrever¬ ent, informal speech of street songs, the piazza, and the market (the two anecdotes). See Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 271-75. The manner in which Scarabelli edits this passage provides a reveal- ing glimpse of nineteenth-century views of digression in the commentaries. Scarabelli does not include Lana’s two stories along with his commentary on angelic intelligences; they are placed in a footnote because in the edi¬ tor’s opinion the two narratives “non hanno a far lega col ragionamento. Francesco Mazzoni provides a more favorable assessment of such stories in his discussion of this passage. Mazzoni considers such spunti novellistici Notes to Chapter 2 177 one of the commentary’s most distinctive features. Mazzoni speculates that Lana inserts these two stories here out of concern for his audience; the com¬ mentator seeks to punctuate a dry discourse with an amusing anecdote. See Mazzoni, “Jacopo della Lana,” 300. 35. The Ottimo commentator recalls, “lo scrittore udii dire a Dante, che mai rima nol trasse a dire altro che quello ch’avea in suo proponimento; ma ch’elli molte e spesse volte facea li vocaboli dire nelle sue rime altro che quello, ch’erano appo gli altri dicitori usati di sprimere.” See Ottimo com- mento, 1:183. f’®*’ other discussions of Ottimo’s commentary, see Rocca, Di alcuni commenti, 229-342; Vandelli, “Una nuova redazione,” 93-174; Val- lone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:87-92; Rigo, “Commenti danteschi,” to; Bertocchi, “Le oscillazioni,” 227-44; Bellomo, “11 codice palatino,” 533-40; and Saverio Bellomo, “Primi appunti sull’Ottimo commento dantesco: I— Andrea Lancia ‘Ottimo’ commentatore trecentesco della Commedia” gsli 157 (1980): 369-82. 36. Witte, Essays on Dante, 322; Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,” 196; Vallone, 5 /ona della critica dantesca, 1:176. 37. See Caglio, “Materiali enciclopedici,” 225, for a similar assessment. Caglio goes on to illustrate that the similarities between Guido’s commen¬ tary and diSumma of vices is by no means coincidental; his remarks are taken from Guillaume Peyraut’s Summa virtutum ac vitiorum. 38. The Ottimo commentator’s sources include Dante’s own works (Dto Nuova and Convivio), the Bible, the Church fathers, especially St. Augus¬ tine, Cicero, Sallust, Virgil, Ovid, Valerius Maximus, Seneca, Macrobius, and Boethius. Among his later sources are Ptolemy of Lucca’s Gesta Flo- rentinorum, Bono Giamboni’s Delle storie contra i pagani di Paolo Orosio, Guillaume Peyraut’s Summa virtutum ac victiorum, and Uguccione of Pisa’s Magne derivationes. 39. It is important to recall the extent to which the early commentators availed themselves of compilations in any assessment of their familiarity with classical and patristic texts. Commentators tend not to mention the compilations from which they derive their information. As a result, it is easy to presume a firsthand knowledge of classical authors and, by extension, an impressive precocity. E.g., critics have often praised Guido da Pisa’s appar¬ ent familiarity with Latin authors. This has led some scholars to ascribe to Guido a “prehumanist” sensibility. See, e.g., Mazzoni, “Guido da Pisa,” 400. Yet, as recent source studies have shown, commentators’ knowledge of these texts is often secondhand. 40. Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose, 87. For critical discussions of Jacopo’s and Graziolo’s commentaries, see Rocca, Di alcuni commenti, 1-77; Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,” 157-202; Vallone, Storia della critica lyS Notes to Chapter 2 dantesca, 1:69-72; and Rigo, “Commenti danteschi,” 9. The most compre¬ hensive analysis of Jacopo’s commentary is provided by Saverio Bellomo in the introduction to his edition of the Chiose, 3-83. 41. As with many of the earliest commentators, little is known of Guido’s life. He was born in Pisa in the second half of the thirteenth century and later became a Carmelite Friar. Among the early commentators, Guido’s conception of the Comedy is the most singular. He alone suggests that the journey recounted by Dante is the poet’s transcription of a divinely inspired experience. See Guido da Pisa, Expositiones et Close super Comediam Dantis, ed. Vincenzo Cioffari (Albany; suny Press, 1974), 1-7. 42. Cavallari, Lafortuna di Dante, 178, 218; Mazzoni, “Per la storia della critica dantesca,’’ 177; Rocca, Di alcuni commenti, 172, 342; La Favia, Ben¬ venuto Rambaldi da Imola, 96. See also Mazzoni, “La critica dantesca del secolo XIV,’’ 296. 43. See Grafton, “Politian,” 153, for an account of the tradition of digres¬ sion in commentaries. 44. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 259. The dialogic nature of medi¬ eval texts has been illustrated in a number of recent studies. See Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover, N.H.; University Press of New England, 1989); Lars Engle, “Chaucer, Bakhtin, and Griselda,” Exemplaria i (1989): 429- 57; William McClennan, “Bakhtin’s Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medi¬ eval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk’s TdXef Exemplaria i (1989): 461-88; and William McClennan, “Lars Engle— ‘Chaucer, Bakhtin, and Griselda’: a Response,” Exemplaria 1 (1989); 499- 506. 45. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 19731,316. 46. Marsilio Ficino quoted in Christian Bee, “I mercanti scrittori, lettori e giudici di Dante,” Letture classensi 12 (1983); 111. 47. Carlo Dionisotti has long argued the importance of taking into con¬ sideration the social context of a work’s composition. Dionisotti’s position is outlined in his Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana. For Dioni¬ sotti’s attention to social conditions with respect to Dante’s reception in the Renaissance, see Carlo Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento, 333 “ 7 ^- More generally, see Letteratura italiana: II letterato e le istituzioni, vol. 1 (Torino: Einaudi, 1982). Notes to Chapter j 179 Interpretive Strategy and Ideological Commitment: The Brutus and Cassius Debate Statuti della universita e studio fiorentino, ed. Alessandro Gherardi (Florence: Cellini, 1881), 245. For a discussion of these incidents, see Eugenio Garin, “Dante nel Rinascimento,” Rinascimento 7 (1967): 13. A shorter version of Garin’s article can be found in The Three Crowns of Florence: Humanist Assessments of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, ed. and trans. David Thompson and Alan F. Nagel (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), ix-xxxiv. 1 have modified slightly Thompson and Nagel’s translation (xx). All subsequent translations ol Garin’s article are taken from Thompson and Nagel. 2. Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri del secolo XV, ed. P. D’Ancona and E. Aeschlimann (Milan: Hoepli, 1951), 349. 3. These collisions are noted in the resolution. See the December 31, 1431, entry in the Statuti, 245, which states, “aliquos esse qui contra man- data et deliberationes . . . et honestatem et bono mores, se iactaverunt et iactant dictas scolas et seu cameram et cathedram invadere et occupare, seu ipsum dominum Franciscum impedire quominus legat.” 4. G. Benadducci, “Prose e poesie volgari di F. Filelto,” Atti e memorie della r. Deputaz. di stor. patr. per le prov. delle Marche 5 (1901): 23. Garin refers to the violence erupting from Filelfo’s lectures in his discussion ol the ordinance that permitted the humanist to lecture on Dante. See his “Dante nel Rinascimento,” 13-14. 5. Benadducci, “Prose e poesie,” 27-28. Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fioren- tina,” 152-54, refers to this speech as an example of the political use to which Dante was put by Filelfo and his student. For a recent examination ot Filelfo’s activities in Milan, see Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings, /45/-/477 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991). 6. Hence the Medici party had succeeded in ousting the very scholar whom Marsuppini and Niccoli had first sought to lure to Florence. Filelfo’s siding with the Albizzi faction quickly turned Niccoli’s and Marsuppini’s initial enthusiasm to resentment. When Filelfo later, in the 1450s, sought to return to Florence tor the highly coveted humanities chair in the Floren¬ tine Studio, he made numerous efforts to repair his relations with Cosimo. For an account of the controversy surrounding a successor for Carlo Mar¬ suppini, see Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 77-106; Robin, Filelfo in Milan, 11-55. 7. For a succinct discussion of the meanings accorded libertas in Florence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see Nicolai Rubinstein, “Florentina libertas f Rinascimento 26 (1986): 3-26. For accounts of the idea of liberty 18o Notes to Chapter 5 in the Renaissance, see Humanism and Liberty, ed. and trans. Rene Neu Watkins (Columbia: South Carolina University Press, 1978) and Ronald Witt, “The Concept of Republican Liberty in Italy,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (Dekalb; Northern Illinois University Press, 1970). 8. Garin rightly argues that the Filelfo affair testifies to the dangers sur¬ rounding any assessment of Dante’s reception in the Renaissance in solely literary terms: “La vicenda del Filelfo, consegnata a document! precis!, col nome di Dante al centro, e nello sfondo non solo il Niccoli, il Bruni e il Marsuppini, ma Rinaldo degli Albizi, Palla Strozzi, Cosimo e tutta la parte medicea, sta li a testimoniare quanto sia rischioso il giudicare di polemiche aspre e di conflitti universitari solo in termini letterari, a prescindere da urti politic! profondi.” See Garin, “Dante nel Rinascimento, 13—14. 9. Some critics have speculated that this remark is directed at Poggio Bracciolini. Guglielmo Bottari maintains that Filelfo was attacking Niccoli. See his “Francesco Filelfo e Dante,” in Dante nel pensiero, 387. Carlo Mar¬ suppini could also have been the target of Filelfo’s attacks. 10. Leonardo Bruni, Ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. Eugenio Garin (Milan: Ricciardi, 1952), 70. The Dia- logi are translated in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, trans. by Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson (Binghamton, N.Y.; Medi¬ eval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 74. 11. Garin, “Dante nel Rinascimento,” 14. For other discussions of the political component to Dante’s reception in the Renaissance, see Gianvito Resta, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” in Dante nel pensiero, 87; Cecil Grayson, “Dante and the Renaissance,” in Italian Studies Presented to E. R. Vincent, ed. C. P. Brand, K. Foster, and U. Limentani (Cambridge: Heffer, 1962), 57; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento,” 146; 173-209; and Bottari, Fran¬ cesco Filelfo e Dante,” 385. For other studies of Dante’s fortune in the Renaissance, see Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento, 333 ~ 7 ^’ Craig Kal- lendorf, “The Rhetorical Criticism of Literature in Early Italian Human¬ ism from Boccaccio to Landino,” Rhetorica 2 (1983): 33 ~ 59 j Giuliano Tanturli, “Il disprezzo per Dante dal Petrarca al Bruni,” Rinascimento 25 (1985): 199-219. For a discussion of humanist biographies of Dante, see Carlo Alberto Madrignani, “Di alcune biografie umanistiche di Dante e Petrarca,” Belfagor 18 (1963): 29-48. 12. For examinations of views of Rome in the Middle Ages, see Arturo Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del medio evo, 2 vols. (Turin: Loescher, 1882). For discussions of Dante’s idea of Rome, see C. T. Davis, Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957)) David Thomp¬ son, “Dante’s Virtuous Romans,” Dante Studies 96 (1978): 145-62; J. H. Whitfield, “Dante and the Roman World,” Italian Studies 33 (1978); 1-19. Notes to Chapter 5 181 Charles T. Davis has examined the sympathies of one of Dante’s contempo¬ raries, Ptolemy of Lucca, for republican Rome. See his “Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Soci¬ ety 113 (1974): 30-50, and “Roman Patriotism and Republican Propaganda: Ptolemy of Lucca and Pope Nicholas III, Speculum 50 (1975): 411-33. Both essays are now reprinted in Charles T. Davis, Dante's Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). For an analy¬ sis of Coluccio Salutati’s as well as other Trecento views, see Francesco Ercole, “Coluccio Salutati e il supplizio dantesco di Bruto e Cassio,” in 11 pensiero politico di Dante (Milan: Alpes, 1927), 1:355-67; and Ronald G. Witt, “The De Tyranno and Coluccio Salutati’s View of Politics and Roman History,” Nuova rivista storica 53 (1969): 434-74. Witt notes that medieval authors tend to paint an ambivalent portrait of Julius Caesar: they praise his intelligence, his expansion of the Roman Empire, his military prowess, and his clemency toward his enemies. At the same time, many writers also con¬ demned Caesar as the instigator of the civil wars. E.g., John of Salisbury, and St. Thomas and his student, Ptolemy of Lucca, all criticized Julius Caesar as a tyrant who had seized power by dubious means. See Robert Hollander and Albert L. Rossi, “Dante’s Republican Treasury,” Dante Studies 104 (1986): 59-82, for a recent examination of Dante’s attitude toward the Roman Re¬ public. Hollander and Rossi argue that, although Dante’s idea of Rome is based on imperial Rome, the poet places great value on the virtuous Romans of the republic. 13. See Dante Alighieri, Monarchia, in Opere minori, ed. Bruno Nardi (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979), 2:401-33. 14. Dante refers several times to Caesar in the Comedy. The most impor¬ tant allusion appears in Inferno 4.121-23, where Dante mentions that Caesar resides in Limbo. Other references include Inferno 28.96-99, which notes Curio’s urging of Caesar to cross the Rubicon; Purgatorio 6.88-114, in which Sordello laments the absence of an emperor in Italy; Purgatorio 9.135-36, in which the poet alludes to Metellus’s attempts to prevent Caesar from seizing the Roman treasury; Purgatorio 18.100-102, in which Dante com¬ pares Caesar’s diligence to the Virgin Mary’s; Purgatorio 26.67-81, where Dante alludes to Caesar’s homosexuality; Paradiso 6.55-72, in which Jus¬ tinian provides a brief account of Roman history that includes references to some of Caesar’s campaigns; and Paradiso 11.67-69, which recalls Caesar’s encounter with the poor fisherman Amyclas. For a discussion of Caesar in the Comedy, see M. Gerard Maillat, “Dante et Cesar,” in Presence de Cesar, ed. R. Chevallier (Paris: Societe d’edition “Les belles lettres,” 1985), 25-34. 15. See, e.g., Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:163 and Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 1710. 43. 16. This study does not include an examination of Lodovico Dolce’s 182 Notes to Chapter 5 (1555) and Lodovico Castelvetro’s (1570) commentaries. Dolce’s commen¬ tary contains only brief marginal annotations taken from Landino and Vellutello, and Castelvetro’s commentary is incomplete. Castelvetro’s com¬ mentary is known for its pugnacious attitude toward the poet as he criti¬ cizes Dante’s use of language severely. See Spositione di Lodovico Castelve- tro a XXIX canti dell’ "Inferno” dantesco, ed. Giovanni Franciosi (Verona: Munster, 1886). For critical discussions of Castelvetro’s Dante commentary, see Robert C. Melzi, Castelvetro’s Annotations to the "Inferno”: A New Per¬ spective in Sixteenth Century Criticism (Paris: Mouton, 1966); Carlo Dioni- sotti, “Lodovico Castelvetro,’’ ed 1:867-68; V. Marchetti and G. Patrizi, “Lodovico Castelvetro,’’ dbi 22:9-21; and Vallone, Storia della critica dan- tesca, 1:423-28. 17. I reproduce below three examples of commentators’ treatment of Caesar elsewhere in the Comedy. The first, taken from Benvenuto on Para- diso 1 1.67-69, is typical of the kind of historical documentation provided by Benvenuto, Buti, the Anonimo Fiorentino, Serravalle, and Vellutello. Gen¬ erally, Landino’s, Gabriele’s, and Daniello’s historical notices are scant. In these lines, Dante refers to the meeting of Caesar with the fisherman Amy- clas. Benvenuto notes, “quern [Amyclas] non tremebant magni reges, fortes principes, legiones armatae, urbes vallatae, classes numerosae, non timuit Amiclas privatus sub debili tugurio cum eius parvula navicula piscatoria; et dicit: ‘al suon della sua voce,’ quia Amiclas ad vocem Caesaris non est territus: unde Lucanus in secundo, ubi descnbit factum istius Amiclatis ex- clamat in commendationem paupertatis, ‘o vitae tuta facultas pauperis etc. Ad quod Juvenalis: ‘Cantabit vaccus coram latrone viator’ etc. Est ergo pau- pertas odibile bonum et tuta possessio.” See Benvenuto, Comentum, 5:59- 60. One feature, which this excerpt does not reflect, is the length of many of the historical notices given by commentators. Nevertheless, it does exem¬ plify other common characteristics: the paraphrasing of Dante’s verse, the addition of more historical particulars, and the allusion to classical accounts of the episode. It should be noted that other allusions to Caesar or Rome occasionally elicit strong opinions from Benvenuto. These remarks, how¬ ever, are unrelated to Dante s treatment of Brutus and Cassius, they tend instead to reflect contemporary concerns. E.g., in his glosses to Inferno 1.106 (“Di quella umile Italia fia salute’’), and Purg. 6.88-96, in which Dante laments the lack of an emperor, Benvenuto decries foreign intervention in Italian affairs. See the Comentum, 1:45, and 3:181, respectively. Daniello’s commentary to Purg. 6.94-99, in which Dante compares Italy s lack of an emperor to a horse without a rider, illustrates the kind of rhe¬ torical observations often made by commentators after Landino: Guarda come esta fera e fatta FRL.LA, come e divenuta restia, per non esser stata Notes to Chapter j 183 CAVALCATA, dominata; e corretta da gli SPRONI, continuando pur mirabilmente la presa metafora del cavallo. PREDELLA, la redine. I’ordine e, 6 Alberto Tedesco, che abbandoni costei ch’e fatta indomita & selvaggia, e deveresti inforcar gli suoi ARCIONI, cioe devresti cavalcarla. Guarda, come poi che ponesti mano a la PREDELLA, poi che tu fosti eletto Im- peradore, come esta FIERA, Italia intendendo, e fatta FELLA, e divenuta restia, per non esser corretta da gli sproni.” See Daniello, Espositione, 183. In this passage we see Daniello’s efforts to clarify the poem’s literal sense by illustrating the poet’s use of metaphor. Lastly, a passage from Landino’s commentary to Inferno 4.121-23, which Dante notes Caesar’s presence in Limbo, shows how commentators often state in briefer form comments made in their discussion of Inferno 34. In such instances politics informs commentators’ response but does not dominate it. Landino begins his commentary to this passage by noting that Dante “non immeritamente pone Cesare tra Troiani.” Of Aeneas’ succes¬ sor, Landino adds, “da tal successore fu fondato il romano imperio, il quale il poeta in molti luoghi esalta.” Having pointed out Dante’s imperial bias, Landino then proceeds to list some of Caesar’s military and intellectual ac¬ complishments as well as praise the Emperor’s clemency “per le quali tutte cose e opinione di molti che se non fusse stato morto si presto avrebbe ren- duto la liberta alia repubblica. Finalmente congiurano eccellenti uomini e amatori della repubblica contro a Cesare, come contro a Tiranno, e in senato fu ucciso. E prencipi della congiurazione furono Bruto e Cassio.” See Come¬ dia del divino poeta Danthe Alighieri, con la dotta & leggiadra spositione di Christophoro Landino . . . (Venice: Bernardino Stagnino, 1536), qoqr-qoqv. All references to Landino’s commentary in this book are to this edition. Landino’s republican bias is clearly evident in his gloss to this passage. Strik¬ ingly, Landino’s intention, unlike those of Benvenuto and Daniello reported above, is not so much to clarify but to qualify Dante’s presentation. As in his discussion of Inferno 34, Landino praises Brutus’s and Cassius’s devotion to the Roman Republic. 18. There are three versions of Benvenuto’s commentary: The first, dated 1375, comprises Benvenuto’s Bolognese lectures. For a text of these lec¬ tures, see La "Commedia" di Dante Alighieri col commento inedito di Stefano Talice da Ricaldone. This edition comprises the recollectae or student notes of Stefano Talice da Ricaldone. Carlo Paolazzi identifies the first redaction as having been made while Benvenuto was lecturing at Ferrara in win¬ ter 1375-76. The final version (1386 or 1387) was published shortly after Benvenuto’s death. See Paolazzi, “Le letture dantesche,” 223. Benvenuto was born in Imola some time in the 1330s. Little documen¬ tation exists on Benvenuto’s life before his move to Bologna. He resided 184 Notes to Chapter j in the city in 1361-62 while serving Gomez Albornoz, the nephew of the renowned militant cardinal Egidio Albornoz. During these two years Ben¬ venuto also lectured on a number of classical and early medieval authors. In 1365, Benvenuto traveled to the papal court in Avignon, as a member of a special delegation from Imola whose purpose was to elicit Urban V’s aid in opposing Azzo and Bertrando Alidosi’s presence in Imola. His mission failed; he never returned to Imola. However, one positive element emerged from Benvenuto’s sojourn in Avignon—he met his future patron, Niccolo II d’Este. After his unsuccessful mission at Avignon, Benvenuto returned to Bolo¬ gna, where he resided until fall 1375. There, he resumed his lectures in an unofficial capacity, teaching with other rhetoricians and grammarians in the house of Giovanni da Soncino. Toward the end of 1373 or the be¬ ginning of 1374 he traveled to Florence, where he heard Boccaccio’s public lectures on Dante. Benvenuto’s admiration for Boccaccio is evident through¬ out his Dante commentary; his exposition abounds in allusions to his highly esteemed praeceptor. His own lectures on Dante in Bologna may have begun as early as 1373. These classes came to an abrupt end, however, in 1375, when Benvenuto informed the papal legate, Pietro di Bourges, that teach¬ ers at the Bolognese Studio were engaged in sexual relations with their students. The persecutions and harassment that followed these allegations forced Benvenuto to leave Bologna. For Benvenuto s own account of this incident, see the Comentum, 1:523. By fall 1375 he had taken refuge at the court of Niccolo II d’Este in Ferrara. There Benvenuto continued his intel¬ lectual activities, lecturing on Dante and Valerius Maximus and revising his Dante comanentary. He died in Ferrara between 1387 and August 1388. I have adapted here L. Paoletti’s account of Benvenuto’s life in “Benvenuto da Imola,” dbi 8:691-94. An earlier biography written by L. Rossi-Case, Di Maestro Benvenuto da Imola (Pergola: Gasperini, 1889) has been severely criticized for its many unsubstantiated claims. For a discussion of its im- precisions, see Francesco Novati, review of Luigi Rossi-Case, Di maestro Benvenuto da Imola, gsli 17 (1891): 88-98. 19. See Benvenuto, Comentum, 1:509—11. For Hans Barons remarks on this passage, see The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 2d. ed. (Prince¬ ton, N.}.: Princeton University Press, 1966), 63. Guiniforte Barzizza is also reluctant to endorse this account of Florence s origins. Barzizza, lx> In¬ ferno” della "Commedia” di Dante Alighieri, ed. G. Zac[c]heroni (Marseille: Mossy; Florence: Molini, 1838), 363, declares that it is not his intenzione ... di rompersi il capo in istorie fatte a beneplacito. 20. Indeed, as Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, i: 163, remarks, Benve¬ nuto’s reading signals his distance from earlier Trecento treatments of this Notes to Chapter 5 185 episode: “Ma che i tempi di Benvenuto siano poi diversi da quelli di Dante, pur nel pieno rispetto e nell’attiva compartecipazione di quegli ideali, e dato stabilirlo dalle considerazioni che si fanno a proposito di Cesare e di Bruto e Cassio.” 21. Benvenuto, Comentum, 2:558. 22. Erich Auerhach, e.g., has praised Benvenuto for his “vivid” analy¬ sis of the Comedy's structure and style. See his “Farinata and Cavalcanti,” in Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 187-88. 23. Despite his respect for and dependence on his praeceptor, however, Benvenuto does not simply repeat Boccaccio’s ideas. Benvenuto frequently develops and refines techniques used by Boccaccio. For a discussion of Ben¬ venuto’s transformations of Boccaccio, see La Favia, Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, 99-104; and Zygmunt Barahski’s two articles: “A Note on the Tre¬ cento,” and “Benvenuto da Imola e la tradizione dantesca della Comedia: Appunti per una descrizione del Comentum',' in Benvenuto da Imola: Let- tore degli antichi e det modemi, ed. Pantaleo Palmieri and Carlo Paolazzi (Ravenna: Longo, 1991), 215-30. 24. Although modern critics are rather charmed by Benvenuto’s Latin, his style did not garner the praise of his contemporaries. Around 1383 Ben¬ venuto sent Salutati the commentary to the first cantos of the Inferno. Salu- tati praised the exposition but not its form. In his reply, Salutati gently but firmly criticizes the author’s pedestrian, “monkish” style. See Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, ed. Francesco Novati (Rome: Forzani e C. Tipografi del Senato, 1891-1911), 2:76-77. See La Favia, Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, 88-103, for a different view. La Favia argues that Benvenuto took great pains to imbue his style with a certain flourish. 25. Lao Paoletti, e.g., points out that Benvenuto calls Dante christianissi- mus poeta. Nevertheless, although Benvenuto’s prologue shares similarities with earlier Trecento commentaries, his conception of the Comedy's style and title is considerably more sophisticated and insightful than earlier treat¬ ments of these matters. For a discussion of medieval and humanist elements in Benvenuto’s commentary, see Lao Paoletti, “L’esegesi umanistica di Ben¬ venuto da Imola,” in Psicanalisi e strutturalismo di fronte a Dante (Florence: Olschki, 1972), 458. For a discussion of Benvenuto’s innovative discussion of Dante’s language and choice of title, see Barahski, “Benvenuto da Imola e la tradizione dantesca della Commedia',' 215-30. Benvenuto’s distance from the earlier Trecento commentary tradition is also evident in his relative dis¬ interest in the Comedy's theological and philosophical underpinnings. Gen¬ erally, he does not engage in lengthy examinations of the poem’s allegorical significance. 186 Notes to Chapter j 26. For an account of Este ambitions in Bologna, see Trevor Dean, Land and Power in Later Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, i^^o-i^^o (Cam¬ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 82. 27. Ermanno Lanzoni, Ferrara: Una cittd nella storia (Ferrara: Belri- guardo, 1984), 98. For a similar assessment of Niccolo II d’Este’s court, see Werner L. Gundersbeimer, Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 62-63. 28. Gundersbeimer, Ferrara, 62. 29. To my knowledge, there is only one exception among the earli¬ est commentators: Guido da Pisa, who dedicated his commentary to the Genovese nobleman, Lucano Spinola. Little mention is made, however, of either Spinola or his family. 30. Azzo VIII was rumored to have smothered his father. Commentators have speculated that Dante here refers to him as figliastro either because he had an affair with Obizzo IPs wife or, as Benvenuto suggests, because of the unnaturalness of his crime. 31. According to most commentators, Venedico agreed to this sordid ven¬ ture after having accepted a bribe from either Obizzo II or Azzo VIII. Most of the early commentators, including Benvenuto, identify Azzo VIII as the marquis to whom Dante alludes. See the Comentum, 2:12. 32. Alfonso Lazzari adduces a number of convincing reasons for Dante’s hostility toward the Este. See his “II marchese Obizzo II d’Este signore di Ferrara nel poema di Dante e nella storia,” Giomale dantesco 39 (1938): 127- 50. Lazzari notes that Dante was an imperialist, hence a supporter of the Swabians. The Este, on the other hand, were staunch supporters of papal policy. Lazzari also mentions that there may have been more personal rea¬ sons for Dante’s hatred of the Este. The poet was remotely related to the da Fontana or Fontanesi, a noble Ferrarese family, who were themselves de¬ scended from an old Ferrarese family, the Aldighieri. Initially, the Fontanesi were avid Este supporters. Aldighiero da Fontano, e.g., helped insure the smooth ascendency of Azzo VII after the death of his father. Later, how¬ ever, the Fontanesi became enemies of the Este after suffering various out¬ rages. Ghisolabella was the wife of Niccolo da Fontana. Another member of the family, Antoniolo da Fontana, was involved in a plot to take over Fer¬ rara. The conspiracy failed, and those involved took refuge in Feltre where they were harbored by the bishop Alessandro Novello. At the request of the papal vicar, Pino della Tosa, then governor of Ferrara, the conspirators were handed over and executed. Cunizza alludes to this incident (Paradiso 9.52—60). For a discussion of some minor changes in the discussion of these episodes in an earlier version of Benvenuto s commentary, see Paolazzi, Le letture dantesche,” 245. 33. Benvenuto, Comentum, 1:3. Notes to Chapter j 187 34. Benvenuto seems to be tempering the exposure of Este crimes in his commentary to these episodes as well. Generally, passages in which the Este are condemned are addressed in one of two ways: by a brief paraphrase or by praise of the person’s virtues. Given the fact that Benvenuto’s com¬ mentary is noted for his thorough documentation of historical events, the paucity of information furnished on passages in which Dante condemns the Este is significant. His efforts to whitewash Dante’s treatment of the Este is evident in his discussion of the poet’s placement of Obizzo II in the river of blood in Inferno 12.110-11. Benvenuto praises the family’s noble lineage and their pulcritudine corporis at length. See the Comentum, 1:411- 13. Benvenuto also paints a relatively attractive portrait of the Marquis of Este in his discussion of the Venedico episode. Benvenuto, Comentum, 2:12 writes: “Et vide, quod dicit s\mpY\c\x.eY del Marchese, quia per excellentiam, quando dicitur Marchio, et non exprimitur nomen, debet intellegi de mar- chione Estensi, ratione generositatis et principatus antiqui. Et iste Azo fuit summe magnificus et pulcerrimus corpore; ideo bene debuit convenire cum pulcerrima ad extinguendum flammam ardentis amoris sui.” The descrip¬ tion of the marquis as “summe magnificus et pulcerrimus corpore” serves to palliate the baseness of his actions by suggesting that the marquis’s youth and beauty made him naturally attractive. Other examples of Benvenuto’s efforts to salvage the Este include his efforts to justify the second marriage of Beatrice, Obizzo’s daughter, to Galeazzo Visconti and the short notice given to Charles II’s selling of his daughter to Azzo VIII. See the Comen¬ tum, 2:232 and 2:532, respectively. Benvenuto’s cursory treatment of these episodes, along with his encomium to the Este, clearly show the effect of patronage on the writing of his commentary. 35. Benvenuto, Comentum, 1:5. 36. Few studies of Benvenuto’s commentary have taken into consider¬ ation his situation at the Este court. Hans Baron has attributed Benve¬ nuto’s generally positive treatment of Caesar to the influence of medieval imperialism. This is undoubtedly true. But, as 1 have argued, Benvenuto’s pro-Caesar statements also reflect his relation to the Estensi. For a study of Benvenuto’s Ferrarese and Bolognese lectures, see Carlo Paolazzi’s “Le letture dantesche di Benvenuto a Bologna e a Ferrara.” Because the bibli¬ ography on Benvenuto is quite extensive, I list here only some of the more recent studies. In addition to the articles already mentioned, see Toynbee, “Benvenuto da Imola,” 216-37; Barbi, “Per gli antichi commenti alia lettura di Benvenuto da Imola e i suoi rapporti con altri commenti,” in Problemi di critica dantesca, 2:435-70; Giuseppe Vecchi, “Motivi di poetica nel Comen¬ tum di Benvenuto da Imola,” in Dante e Bologna net tempi di Dante, 309-19; Mariano Welber, “ ‘Visio’ e ‘fictio’ nel Comentum super Dantis Comoediam di Benvenuto da Imola f in Lectura Dantis Mystica, 188-225; Dionisotti, “Let- 188 Notes to Chapter ^ tura del commento di Benvenuto da Imola,” 303-15; Caliri, “Guido da Montefeltro nel commento di Benvenuto,” 319-41; Vallone, 5 fonfl della cri- tica dantesca, 1:155-70; Pamela Williams, “Benvenuto da Imola on Fact and Fiction in the Comedy P in Moving in Measure, 49—62. 37. For two other instances of Benvenuto’s praise of Caesar’s clemency, see the Comentum, 3:33, and 5:440. 38. See Baron, Crisis, 475; and Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Wor^s, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983), 372. 39. I reproduce below the relevant passages from Trecento commen¬ tators’ discussions of Brutus and Cassius. The majority of commentators stress the two Romans’ ingratitude toward Caesar or the special favor Caesar showed them. Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose, 221, writes, “delle cui [Satan] boc- che figurativamente so[n] morsi i tre traditori che le due maggior potenzie tradiro, si come Giuda Scariotto ispiritualmente in Cristo, e Bruto e Cassio di Roma in Cesare, primo ‘temporale romano segnore,’ temporalmente: i qual, secondo le storie di Lucano, in tanta grazia di lui permanieno, che ctd che volieno erafattoT Graziolo, Commento, 78-79, notes, “isti duo scilicet Brutus et Cassius fuerunt de magno et nobili sanguine romanorum dequibus lulius Cesar primus Romanorum imperatur ut plurimum confidebat quern impera- torem dicti Brutus et Cassius proditorie occiserunt ex cuius proditionis facinore sic vorantur per angelum principem trenebrarum" Lana, Commento, 1:508, observes, “li altri due sono Bruto e Cassio, li quali al tempo di Cesaro imperadore ricevenno molte grazie e giurisdizione da lui, e perch’erano cosi grandi nella sua corte, quando Pompeio e li altri Romani serronno I’uscio a Cesaro e rebellonsi.” The Ottimo commentator does not mention the bene¬ fits that Brutus and Cassius received from Caesar. The bulk of Ottimo’s gloss is dedicated to a description of Caesar’s intelligence, his murder, and the miracles that occurred after the emperor’s death. See the Ottimo com¬ mento, 1:583-84. Guido da Pisa, Expositiones, 723, notes: “In hac parte agit auctor de tribus summis proditoribus, qui suos reverendos dominos prodi- derunt. . . . lulius enim Cesar dolo istorum duorum, quos intime diligebat, fuit occisus.” Pietro Alighieri only identifies Brutus and Cassius as Caesar’s killers. See Pietro Alighieri, Commentarium (1845), 279. Although Boccac¬ cio’s commentary is incomplete, one can nevertheless derive some idea of his attitude toward Caesar in his discussion of Inferno 4.123. Benvenuto was likely influenced by some of Boccaccio’s criticisms of Caesar. Boccaccio mentions Caesar’s lustfulness and his tyrannical tendencies. With respect to the latter, he writes, “Costui adunque, tomato in Roma ed avendo trium- fato, occupo la republica e fecesi fare contro alle leggi romane dettatore perpetuo.” See Boccaccio, Esposizioni, 6:220; see also 219-21 and 251-53, passim, for a discussion of Caesar. Notes to Chapter j 189 40. Benvenuto, Comentum, Benvenuto’s proposal of Decimus Bru¬ tus as Dante’s intended referent may have been suggested by Suetonius’s account of the conspiracy. Boccaccio also mentions Decimus Brutus in his commentary to Inferno 4.123. Boccaccio observes that Caesar was killed by “Gaio Cassio e da Marco Bruto e da Decio Bruto, prencipi della congiu- razione.” See Boccaccio, Esposizioni, 6:220. Boccaccio’s influence cannot be taken for granted, however, because Benvenuto did not know the written version of Boccaccio’s commentary. 41. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). 42. It is interesting to compare Benvenuto’s treatment of Brutus and Cassius to his discussion of Cato {Comentum, 3:20-38). Benvenuto objects strenuously to Dante’s choice of Cato of Utica as the guardian of Purgatory. He considers Cato the Censor a better example of moral rectitude. Ben¬ venuto also shows sympathy for Marcus Brutus in his discussion of Cato’s suicide: “Sed quare Cato non potius procurabat interficere primo ipsum tyrannum, sicut fecit Brutus gener eius, qui multo magnanimior Catone primo interfecit Caesarem, deinde viriliter pugnavit, et demum se inter- fecit, ne veniret in manus crudelium hostium, ita quod habuit justiorem causam occidendi se quam Cato.” See the Comentum, 3:33-34. Benvenuto is implicitly placing liberty above tyranny by suggesting that people who are in relations with tyrants should kill the tyrant. Carlo Dionisotti inter¬ prets Benvenuto’s statement as proof that the Imolese believed that Dante should have made Brutus the guardian of Purgatory. See his “Lettura di Benvenuto,” 215. This is somewhat of an overstatement; Benvenuto stops just short of arguing this. 43. I am adopting here the title of Lee Patterson’s hook. Negotiating the Past. 44. Buti, Commento, 1:856. Buti, Commento, 2:627, does object, how¬ ever, to Dante’s allusion to Caesar’s homosexuality in his gloss to Purgatorio 26.76-79. “Vorrei volontieri,” states Buti, “che ’1 nostro autore e li altri autori avesseno taciute si fatte materie, almeno di non aver posto in esemplo li notabili omini: impero che e grande periculo, parlando alii omini non per- fetti in virtu.” Elsewhere in his discussions of Caesar Buti confines himself to providing historical particulars. 45. Mazzoni, “La critica dantesca del secolo XIV,” 296. Francesco da Buti (1324-1405) was a teacher of grammar and rhetoric at the Pisan Studio. In 1385 he gave public lectures on the Comedy, these were revised and writ¬ ten at the request of his students and friends. For critical discussions of Buti’s commentary, see Cavallari, “La fortuna di Dante,” 219-23; Francesco Mazzoni, “Francesco da Buti,” ed 1:24-27; and Vallone, 5 rona della critica dantesca ,1:170-76. 190 Notes to Chapter 5 46. Critics have speculated that the Anonimo Fiorentino’s commentary was written either toward the end of the 1300s or the beginning of the 1400s. The Anonimo’s commentary is largely a compilation of earlier glosses; his exposition from Purgatorio 9 is little more than a transcription of Lana. For discussions of the commentary, see Francesco Mazzoni, “Anonimo Fio- rentino,” ed 1:291-92; Ileana Mortari, “Da Jacopo della Lana all’Anonimo Fiorentino,” in Psicanalisi e strutturalismo, 471-501; and Vallone, Storm della critica dantesca, 1:176-79. 47. It has not been established whether Serravalle heard Benvenuto’s lec¬ tures in Bologna or Ferrara. 48. Serravalle, Comentum, 415. Serravalle’s remarks concerning the just¬ ness of Caesar’s death here clearly follow Benvenuto. For discussions of Ser¬ ravalle’s commentary, see Luigi Nicolini, “Un vescovo dantista al concilio di Costanza,’’ Studi raccolti in occasione del centenario dell’lstituto Tecnico statale per Geometri "G.B. Belzoni” di Padova (Padua: Liviana, 1969), 27- 35; M. Maccarrone, “Dante e i teologi del XIV-XV secolo,” Studi romani 5 (1957); 20-28; Tarcisio A. Strappati, “II poeta teologo nel commento del dantista fra Giovanni Bertoldi da Serravalle O.F.M. Conv. (1355-1445),’’ Italia francescana 31 (1956): 100-108, 185-92, 249-56; Renata Molinari, “II commento dantesco di Giovanni da Serravalle,” in Psicanalisi e struttura¬ lismo, 503-28. 49. Anonimo Fiorentino, Commento, 1:711-13. 50. The Dialogues have been the subject of much critical attention in recent Renaissance scholarship. My focus is much narrower. The controver¬ sies surrounding the dating of xkve Dialogues and their unity (or lack thereof) are largely irrelevant here. My discussion of the Dialogues centers on the manner in which Niccoli’s discussion of Dante’s condemnation of Brutus and Cassius is absorbed into the commentary tradition. The precise date of composition of the two parts of the Dialogues has not been definitively established. From its dedication, the first dialogue ap¬ pears to have been written by 1401. Hans Baron has argued that Niccoli’s change of position in the second dialogue shows that the work was not con¬ ceived as a unified whole. Concluding that the two dialogues were com¬ posed at different times, he argues that the first is separated from the second by the crisis year of 1402, the year of Gian Galeazzo Visconti s death. With this event, the fear of a Milanese defeat of Florence subsided. Baron, Crisis, 225-69, interprets Niccoli’s praise of the three “crowns of Florence” on the second day as an expression of Bruni’s patriotic sentiments for Florence. For other recent critical examinations of the Dialogues, see Rossi, “Dante, 293- 307; Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 344-55; Jerrold Seigel, “‘Civic Humanism’ or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni, Past and Present 34 (1966): 3-48; Garin, “Dante nel Rinascimento,” 18- Notes to Chapter ^ 191 19; E. H. Gombrich, “From the Revival of Letters to the Reform ot the Arts: Niccolo Niccoli and Filippo Brunelleschi,” in The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976), 93-110; David Marsh, The Quattrocento Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 24-37; David Quint, “Humanism and Modernity: A Reconsideration of ^r\xm s Dialoguesf Renaissance Quarterly 38(1985): 423-45. 51. Bruni, Petrum Paulum Histrum, 90 .1 have altered slightly Thomp¬ son’s translation in The Humanism of Leonardo Brunt, 81. 52. Quint, “Humanism and Modernity,” 437-38. 53. Ibid., 430, 437. As Quint points out, this stands in dramatic contrast to Niccoli’s practice elsewhere in the Dialogues. Niccoli was one of the most eloquent proponents of what Garin has designated as one of the most dis¬ tinctive features of humanist scholarship—a philological-historical method of reading. Niccoli’s discussion of the qualities of the historical Caesar and Brutus exemplifies this procedure. This chapter does not include an analysis of Salutati’s treatment of Brutus and Cassius in the De tyranno. The focus of this study is not Renaissance views of Rome. Salutati’s treatment of the Brutus and Cassius episode is quite similar to pro-Caesar stances in late medieval writings. In the De tyranno Salutati provides a vigorous defense of Dante’s judgment of Brutus and Cassius. The treatise, written on August 31, 1400, is dedicated to one Antonio da Aquila, a student in the Paduan Studio. Antonio had asked Salutati two questions, the second being. Were Antenor and Aeneas trai¬ tors to TroyP The precise nature of Antonio’s first question is never stated, but from the nature of Salutati’s reply it probably was. Were Brutus and Cassius traitors to Rome.? Both questions address the issue of treason. For a patriot and admirer of Dante like Salutati, the question was bound to elicit a strong reaction—Was Dante right or wrong to place Caesar’s as¬ sassins in the lowest part of Hell.? The bulk ot the treatise is dedicated to answering the first query. Salutati first seeks to ascertain whether Caesar had been pater patriae or a tyrant. II the father ol his country, then Caesar was unjustly murdered. Having established this, Salutati proceeds to sup¬ port Dante’s condemnation of the two conspirators. I have summarized here Ronald Witt’s observations on the De tyranno. Recent critics ot the De tyranno have sought to reconcile the imperialist bias expressed in this later work with Salutati’s earlier republican sympathies. For discussions of this shift in political ideology, see Baron, Crisis, 100-102; Ephraim Emer- ton. Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (Gloucester, Mass.: Smith, 1964), 93-94; Witt, “The De Tyranno and Coluccio Salutati’s View of Politics,” 437^42. For a discussion ot Florentine vs. Ferrarese treat¬ ments of Caesar, see John W. Oppel, “Peace vs. liberty in the Quattrocento: 192 Notes to Chapter ^ Poggio, Guarino, and the Scipio-Caesar Controversy,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 221-65. 54. I follow here Giacomo Ferraii’s dating of the commentary, which is based on evidence from a letter written by Guiniforte to Giovanni Olzina, secretary to Alfonso of Aragon. See his “II commento dWInfemo di Guini¬ forte Barzizza,” in Dante nel pensiero, 357-73. There are only two extant manuscripts of Barzizza’s commentary to the Inferno: Ital. 2017 and Ital. 1496, both of which are in the National Library of Paris. Ital. 2017, copied for Filippo Maria Visconti with beautiful illuminations, is sadly mutilated. Twelve pages of this manuscript are in the Biblioteca Comunale of Imola; they have been published by E. Lamma, in “Del Commento dW'Infemo di Guiniforte Barzizza e di un ignoto manoscritto di esso,” Giomale dantesco 30 (1896): 112-24, 148-62, 287-314. There is one nineteenth-century edi¬ tion of Barzizza’s commentary, and it should be consulted with caution. Zaccheroni, the editor, has indiscriminately eliminated roughly one-third of the commentary. For a transcription of Barzizza’s proemio, which does not appear in Zaccheroni’s edition, see Lucien Auvray, Les Manuscripts de Dante des bibliotheques de France (Paris: Thorin, 1892). Ferraii points out that Zac¬ cheroni tends to omit from his edition all references to courtly figures as well as discussions of the poem’s theological background and its moral signifi¬ cance. My analysis of Barzizza is confined to passages that are not affected by Zaccheroni’s omissions. The majority of the passages that I discuss can be verified in either Ferrau’s or Lemma’s articles. For other discussions of Barzizza, see G. Martellotti, “Guiniforte Barzizza,” dbi 7:39-41; and Pier Giorgio Ricci, “Guiniforte Barzizza,” ed 1:529. 55. I follow here Ferrau’s transcription of this passage (369). This passage is cited in Barzizza, Lo "Inferno", 34. 56. For a discussion of Loschi’s activity at the Visconti court, see Eugenio Garin, “La cultura milanese nella prima meta del XV secolo,” in Storia di Milano (Milan: Treccani, 1955), 6:555-56. For a fuller discussion of Filippo Maria’s treaty with Florence, see Francesco Cognasso, “II ducato visconteo da Gian Galeazzo a Filippo Maria,” in Storia di Milano, 6:325-28. 57. Barzizza, Lo "Inferno", 92-93. 58. I follow here Ferrau’s transcription (359). See also Barzizza, Lo "In¬ ferno", 139-40. 59. The letter was written on February 18,1431. Guiniforte seeks to con¬ tinue his father’s teaching duties in Milan, Pavia, and Novara. Gasparino died around the middle of February of that same year. Part of the letter is cited in the Storia di Milano, 6:579. Guiniforte writes, “ego a divo Cesare nostro Philippo Maria non solum ad paternum olim munus nunc assump- tus ac proventibus annuls ex publico aerario copiose donatus, verum suo insegnamento pavese.” Notes to Chapter 5 193 60. As Baron, Crisis, 155, has noted, one of Benvenuto’s least ambigu¬ ous statements on the Roman Empire comes in his commentary to Paradiso 6.55-57, where he argues for the necessity of unum caput and unum monar- cham. See the Comentum, 6:423. 61. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, e.g., had been frequently compared to Caesar during his campaign to bring all of Northern Italy under his rule. 62. Nidobeato published his commentary after the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (December 26,1476). For discussions of Nidobeato’s commen¬ tary, see Gianvita Resta, “Martino Paolo Nibia,” ed 4;44; and P. Carmine Gioia, L'edizione Nidobeatina della "Divina Commedia" (Prato: Giachetti, 1893); Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 369-74; and Roberto Cardini, Lm critica del iMndino (Florence: Sansoni, 1973), 206-8. 63. It should be noted that Nidobeato does not depart from Lana in his discussion of Cassius; he copies Lana’s gloss verbatim. Lana writes: “Cassio . . . fu bell’uomo della persona. E nota che la belta e opposita alia continenzia che il ditto Cassio fu lascivo e incontinente; per la quale impo- tentia si lasso vincere al peccato, e cadde a tal difetto.” See Lana, Commento, 1:512. 64. One interesting measure of the influence of Landino’s commentary on subsequent discussions of Caesar can be found in Francesco Alunno’s Della fabrica del mondo.. .ne quali si contengono le voci dt Dante, del Petrarca, del Boccaccio, e d'altri buoni auttori... (Venice: Francesco Sansovino, 1560), 443. Under the entry “Cesare,” Alunno repeats much of Landino’s gloss to Inferno 34; the source is not mentioned. Alunno follows Landino’s splitting of Caesar into two entities. Alunno’s unequivocal acceptance of Landino’s gloss suggests that by 1560 Landino’s reading has become the obvious way of reading Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius. By the time that Alunno writes his Della fabrica a striking change has come about. Alunno seems to tbink that the obvious sense of the passage is that the figure of Caesar is a tyrant. There is no trace of Landino’s anxiety over this episode. (Lan- dino had sought to assure his readers that he was not “reproving” Dante in denying the poet’s intentions.) The construction of Landino’s meaning— the splitting of Caesar—has been elided: Alunno presents Landino’s read¬ ing as Dante’s. The “obvious” sense of the passage has been changed. This appropriation of Landino’s commentary shows how the Florentine human¬ ist comes to inform the later reception of the Comedy. His legacy to future readers is a lack of anxiety over what was once a troubling passage. 65. Field, Platonic Academy, 46; Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, i: 246; Barbi,Dfl«/e nel Cinquecento, 160; Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 177. Baron, Crisis, 51; Craig Kallendorf, “Virgil, Dante, and Empire in Ital¬ ian Thought, 1300-1500,” Vergilius 34 (1988): 62. Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 171, also detects “qualche . . . eco delle idee dell’umanesimo 194 Notes to Chapter ^ civile” in Landino’s discussion of Dante’s damnation of Brutus and Cassius. Dionisotti, too, notes Landino’s cursury treatment of history in “Cristoforo Landino,” £03:567-68. 66. Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1:171-72. For Cardini’s remarks on Landino’s use of allegory, see his La critica del Landino, 31-32. 67. Cardini, La critica del Landino, 31-32. 68. Despite his efforts to distance himself from earlier commentators, Landino displays nevertheless a considerable dependence on Benvenuto and Pietro Alighieri. For an examination of Landino’s dependencies on other commentators, see Barbi, Dante nel Cinquecento, 161-79; and Procaccioli, Filologia, 143-254. 69. For a discussion of the Neoplatonic elements in Landino’s Dante commentary, see Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento,” 176; and Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:234-35; 316-19. For a discussion of the Neo¬ platonic elements in Landino’s Virgil commentary, see Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas, 129-65. Recent investigations by Arthur Field show that Landino had begun to apply a philosophical-allegorical approach to Dante as early as the 1460s; Field’s arguments convincingly revise Cardini’s earlier proposal of 1473 as the date ot the Dante prolusion. Field notes that many of Lan¬ dino’s Platonic sources derive from Ficino’s De divino furore of December 1457. Furthermore, Field adds, Landino’s remarks are largely an Italian ver¬ sion of his prolusion to a course on Virgil, dated 1462. Subsequently, many of these same observations reappear in Latin, in book 3 of the Disputatio- nes Camaldulenses of 1472. They appear again in Italian in the 1481 printed commentary to the Comedy. Finally, similar remarks resurface in Landino’s printed commentary on Horace. Hence Landino’s allegorization of Dante reflects a gradual and long-standing process refined over two decades. See Field, “Cristoforo Landino’s First Lectures on Dante,” 26. Landino’s reading of Dante in a Neoplatonic key reflects his high esti¬ mation of the poet: Landino recommends an allegorico-moral approach for only the greatest poets—Homer, Virgil, and Dante—and a rhetorical read¬ ing for poets like Horace and Petrarch. As Cardini, La critica del Landino, 193, notes, this represents a departure from the rhetorico-formal analyses practiced earlier by Landino: “Donde, a partire da questi dialoghi {Camal¬ dulenses], il superamento della critica retorico-formale mediante I’elabora- zione di un metodo allegorico-morale (il solo che potesse dar ragione del messaggio ideologico di grandi poemi dottrinali imperniati su un perso- naggio simbolico in isviluppo intelletuale e morale), e I’approdo coerente al piu illustre fra essi, quello Dantesco.” In practice Landino tends to combine allegorical exposition with rhetorical analysis. As Field points out, Lan¬ dino, like many humanists, considered himself “not only a rhetorician, but Notes to Chapter 5 195 a speculative philosopher as well” (16). His Dante commentary, although greatly informed by philosophic principles, displays a variety of interpre¬ tive strategies typical of Quattrocento commentaries: paraphrase, rhetorical analysis, exposition of the poet’s language, and clarification of historical notices. For a discussion of the rhetorical elements in Landino s critical analyses, see William J. Kennedy,/acopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1983), 174-75. 70. Landino cited in Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology, 77. 1 have modified Patterson’s translation slightly. For a discussion of the idea of liberty in the Renaissance, see the references listed in n. 6 of this chapter. 71. Cardini points out that Landino here repeats a section of Bruni’s Htstoriae florentini populi. See Landino, cnfiW, 2:115-16. 72. Lentzen, “Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino,” 43. 73. Ibid. 74. Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology, 78, 79. See also Patterson’s discussion, 74-81. Craig Kallendorf has recently commented on the way Landino situates himself with respect to the Medici political order in the preface to his Virgil commentary of 1487, which is dedicated to Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s son. Kallendorf sees in the dedication to Piero a kind of “education of princes” handbook in the vein of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia : Landino seeks to show his patron that t\\tAeneid “can teach a ruler to gov¬ ern more effectively.” “This is not to say,” observes Kallendorf, “that either Landino or his Medici patron forgot the republican traditions of Florence, but that it is an acknowledgment that political life in Florence had changed since Petrarch’s time and that those who read and studied Virgil had accom¬ modated themselves and the poem to changing political circumstances.” See Kallendorf, “Virgil, Dante, and Empire,” 63. 75. Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology, 79. 76. Kallendorf, “Virgil, Dante, and Empire,” 63. See also Arthur Field’s discussion of patronage in the Platonic Academy, 23. 77. See Field, Platonic Academy, 35-51. 78. Landino, Spositione, 9ir. 79. In his discussion ot Lorenzo de’ Medici’s rule, Nicolai Rubinstein points out that Pope Sixtus IV condemned Lorenzo as “Florentinum tyran- num” in 1478. Alamanno Rinuccini’s dialogue, De Ubertate, paints a similar portrait of Lorenzo. Rubinstein notes that Rinuccini denounced Lorenzo as “perniziossimo e crudelissimo tiranno” in his private diary. See Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (7^34-/4941 (Ox¬ ford: Clarendon, 1966), 218-19. Rubinstein has also shown how the Medici attempted to control access to public office in Florence (“convertire in se ogni commodo e utilita”.T—by creating plenipotentiary commissions and 196 Notes to Chapter ^ by limiting those eligible for public office through electoral officers called Accoppiatori (1-67). Through the Accoppiatori, the Medici sought to rele¬ gate government offices to their supporters. 80. Landino, Spositione, 91V. See also Landino’s discussion of Purgatorio 6.116-17 (221v) for similar remarks on tyrants and rulers. 81. Ibid., 192V. 82. A remark shows Landino’s own awareness of the revisionary force of his arguments; “Ma potrebbe dire alcuno ch’io facesse contro al mio insti¬ tute riprendendo in questo luogo el poeta. lo in nessun modo lo riprendo, ma ho volute dimostrare la sua sentenzia, accioche nessuno per falsa opi- nione stimi che lui voglia dannare Brute.” See Landino, Spositione, 192V. 83. Landino, Spositione, 192V. For the English translation, see Baron, Crisis, 50-51. 84. Cdindino, Spositione, 85. Ibid., 192V. 86. This is, of course, to be understood in relative not absolute terms. Generally, there are very few allusions to other commentators in Landino’s commentary. For a discussion of Landino’s references to various predeces¬ sors, see Landino, Scritti critici, 2:105-6. 87. Trifone Gabriele, Annotationi, Barb. Lat. 3938, 77V. For more in¬ formation on manuscripts of Gabriele’s annotations, see n. 3 of the next chapter. 88. YyameWo, Espositione, 151. 89. Vellutello, Espositione, SVv. For discussions of Vellutello’s commen¬ tary, see Barbi, Dante nel Cinquecento, 247-61; Carlo Dionisotti, “Ales¬ sandro Vellutello,” ED 5:905-6; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento,” 184-88; and Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:249-61. 90. Vellutello’s disagreements with earlier commentators are not con¬ fined to his occasional qualifications of Landino. As Gino Belloni has ob¬ served, Vellutello was something of an outcast in Bembo’s Venice. Although there is little biographical information on Vellutello, we can glean some sense of his intellectual activities from a consideration of the circumstances accompanying the publication of his Petrarch commentary. Belloni’s recent study, “Un eretico nella Venezia del Bembo; Alessandro Vellutello,” gsli 157 (1980): 43-74, provides a revealing account of the commentator’s rela¬ tions, or, more precisely, lack of relations with Bembo’s circle. Vellutello’s Petrarch commentary (1525) is well known for its author’s reordering of the Canzoniere. Vellutello rearranged the order of the poems according to his reconstruction of Petrarch’s life based on internal allusions and geo¬ graphical and historical particulars. Vellutello’s ordering of the Canzoniere cast doubts on all previous versions of the work including the recently pub¬ lished 1501 Aldine edition of Petrarch. Although Aldus noted in his preface Notes to Chapter 4 197 that the edition was based on an autograph manuscript in Bembo s pos¬ session, It was in fact based on a manuscript (Vat. Lat. 3197) written in Bembo’s hand, which was based on Vat. Lat. 3195 and another manuscript. Vellutello likely conveyed his doubts concerning the Canzoniere's ordering in the Aldine edition to Bembo. As Vellutello’s misgivings about the order¬ ing of the Aldine-Bembo production grew, so did the animosity of those in Bembo’s circle who found Vellutello’s rearrangement less authoritative. One can trace Vellutello’s disaffection with Bembo and Aldus in the pref¬ aces to the second and third editions of his Petrarch commentary. Whereas Vellutello had acknowledged Bembo’s authority in the first edition of his Petrarch commentary, by the third edition (1532) Bembo has been edited from the preface altogether. Although Vellutello’s reordering of the Can- zoniere is largely seen as a misguided enterprise today, it represented a significant intervention in the Renaissance. By 1568 Vellutello’s Petrarch commentary had been republished twenty-two times. For a discussion of the influence of Vellutello’s Petrarch commentary on English writers, see William J. Kennedy, “Commentary into Narrative: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Vellutello’s Commentary on Petrarch,” to (1989): 119-33. The alienation from Bembo’s circle that accompanied his success can also be traced in the polemical preface to Vellutello’s Dante commentary of 1544. As Belloni notes, Vellutello’s criticisms of the Aldine edition of the Comedy {1502) shows that the commentator “s’era acquistato un pro- prio spazio ed un pubblico” (62). Not only does Vellutello severely impugn the accuracy of the Aldine text, but he casts Bembo in the inelegant role of the manuscript’s datore. Moreover, an aside in Vellutello s Vita of Dante seems directed at Trifone Gabriele. Vellutello questions the perception of the “molti ignoranti, i quali credono nessuno essere studiente, se non quelli che s’ascondono in sohtudine e otio” (Esposittone, AAiiir). The polemical preface accompanying Vellutello’s Dante commentary is best seen against the background of the remarkable fortune of his Petrarch commentary. 4. Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele’s Critique of Landtno 1. Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia (Basel, 1576; reprint, Turin, d’Erasmo, 1962), 1:840. 2. Vellutello, Espositione, AAiiiv. Vellutello’s praise of Landino is all the more notable given his rejections of some of Landino’s readings. 3. For previous discussions of Gabriele’s annotations, see Luigi Maria Rezzi, Lettera a Giovanni Rosini sopra i commenti ms. barberiniani alia “Divina Commedia” (Rome: Poggioli, 1826), 34; Barbi, Dante nel Cinque- 198 Notes to Chapter ^ cento, 239-47; Vallone, Storm della critica dantesca, 1:359-79; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento,” 173-209; and Lino Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 17-30. For the most edifying discussion of the dating of the annotations, see Fertile, “Le edizioni dantesche,” 393-402. There exist four manuscripts of Gabriele’s annotations. The earliest of these. Barb. Lat. 3938, is written in three different hands and is the text on which critics have based their evaluations, cross-referencing it with Vat. Lat. 3193, which was copied later. All page references in this study are to Barb. Lat. 3938 unless otherwise indicated. Quotations follow the text of Lino Fertile’s forthcom¬ ing edition of Gabriele’s commentary. I am grateful to Frofessor Fertile for allowing me to cite from his edition before its publication. 4. An idea of what Gabriele’s lectures were like can be gleaned from one of his students’ notes. See Giancarlo Mazzacurati, “Fietro Bembo,” in Storia della cultura veneta (Vicenza: Fozza, 1980), 3, pt. 2:47 n. 36. 5. Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:27; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento,” 180; Fertile “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 20-21. 6. Although it is true that studies have tended to overlook the cultural and political circumstances underlying Gabriele’s polemic with Landino, these concerns have been taken into consideration in analyses of Landino’s commentary. What has not been analyzed is the relevance of these issues to Gabriele’s critique of Landino. 7. For an examination of Landino’s tenure at the Florentine Studio and of his teaching of Dante, see Field, “Cristoforo Landino’s First Lectures on Dante,” 16-48. See also Field’s chapter, “Cristoforo Landino and Flatonic Foetry,” in The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Frinceton, N.J.: Frinceton University Fress, 1988), 231-68. 8. For a more detailed examination of how Landino distinguishes him¬ self from Ficino, see Cardini, La a itica del Landino, 104-6. 9. Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1:171, 173. All references to Landino’s proemio and his oration to the Florentine signoria are to this edition. 10. Ibid., 1:73. 11. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Scritti scelti di Lorenzo de’ Medici, ed. Emilio Bigi (Torino: utet, 1962), 310. 12. Landino, Scritti critici, 1:139-40. Landino’s arguments here are very similar to his comments on the vernacular in his Fetrarch commentary of 1465-67. For a discussion of Landino’s remarks on the vernacular, see Mario Santoro, “Cristoforo Landino e il volgare,” gsli 131 (1954): 501-47. 13. Landino, Scritti critici, 1:102. 14. For Nidobeato’s preface, see Landino, Scritti critici, 2:104-5. Among tbe earlier Dante commentaries known to us, Landino acknowledges famil¬ iarity with the commentaries of “Francesco” ( Jacopo.^) and Fietro Ali¬ ghieri, Benvenuto da Imola, Boccaccio, Jacopo della Lana, Francesco da Notes to Chapter 4 199 Buti and Guiniforte Barzizza. Of these only Benvenuto and Lana were romagnoli; furthermore, Benvenuto’s commentary is written in Latin. For a more detailed examination of Landino’s disagreements with Nidobeato, see Cardini, La critica del Landino, 211-14 n. 84. 15. Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 374. For a discussion of Lor¬ enzo’s appropriation of Landino’s views on the Florentine language, see Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 159-62. 16. A discussion of Filippo Nuvolone’s literary activities can be found in Dennis E. Rhodes, Studies in Early Italian Printing (London: Pindar, 1982), 144-48; and Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:237-38. 17. Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 374. 18. For a comparison of the beginnings of the printing industry in Flor¬ ence and Venice, see Pier Giorgio Ricci, “Umanesimo filologico in Toscana e nel Veneto,” in Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano, ed. Vittore Branca (Venice: Sansoni, 1963), 167; and Renzo Frattarolo, La stampa in Italia fra Quattro e Cinquecento ed altri saggi (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateno, 1972), 21. 19. Ricci, “Umanesimo Filologico,” 168. The Medici were not the only ones to prefer manuscripts to printed books. Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino (1444-82) also eschewed printed books when founding his mag¬ nificent library. For a discussion of certain book collectors’ preference for manuscripts, see John D’Amico, “Manuscripts,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 16. 20. Landino, Spositione, 167V. 21. Ibid., i23r. 22. Landino, Scritti critici, i: 172. 23. Landino, Spositione, i09r. In his proemio, Landino takes care to draw attention to the parts in the Comedy in which Dante praises Florence. The poet’s praise of great Florentine noble families in Paradiso 15 receives par¬ ticular notice. 24. Landino, Spositione, 53r. 25. Examples of misreadings owing to Landino’s allegorizing are his dis¬ cussion of the ruina in Inferno 5.34, of suppe in Purgatorio 33.36, and his discussion of the terrace of pride in Purgatorio 10.8. 26. In contrast Field uses Gramsci’s term “organic intellectual” to refer to aristocrats who did not depend on humanist activity for their livelihood. See his Platonic Academy, 35-47. 27. For a discussion of Landino’s relation to the Medici, see Lentzen, “Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino,” 36-46; Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 159-62; and Field, Platonic Academy, 17. 28. Gabriele, quoted in E. A. Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (Venice, 200 Notes to Chapter 4 1824-53; reprint, Bologna; Fonni, 1969), 3:209. It is worth noting that Gabriele here models his words of affection to Daniello on Virgil’s parting words to Dante in Purgatorio 17.142. This letter is quoted in full in Lino Fertile, “Apollonio Merenda, segretario del Bembo, e ventidue lettere di Trifone Gabriele,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 34 (1987): 37-38. 29. For examinations of the responsibilities and duties expected of the Venetian nobility during the Renaissance, see Oliver Logan, Culture and Society in Venice, /470-/790 (London: Batsford, 1972); Franco Gaeta, “Dal comune alia corte rinascimentale,” in 11 letterato e le istituzioni, i: 169; Dioni- sotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, 64-65; Ricci, “Umanesimo filologico,” 162; and Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). 30. Girolamo Donato, quoted in Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manu- tius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), 187. Donato’s comparison of himself to Poliziano is also discussed by Eugenio Garin, “Cultura filosofica toscana e veneta nel Quattrocento,” in Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano, 27. 31. See Pietro Bembo, Opere in volgare, ed. Mario Marti (Florence: San- soni, 1961), 711. For a comparison of Bembo’s service to the Venetian re¬ public to that of his considerably more active father, Bernardo, see Logan, Culture and Society in Venice, 51. 32. For a discussion of Valiero’s praise of Gabriele, see Logan, Culture and Society in Venice, 62. Testimonies of Gabriele’s widely admired devout life are noted in Cicogna, DeZ/e inscrizioni veneziane, 3:213. Fertile describes the effect of Gabriele’s life on young Venetians such as Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani in “Appollonio,” 36. 33. Quoted in Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane, 3:217. 34. Gabriele’s preference for solitude is further seen in his choice of resi¬ dence, in the villas he owned on the mainland. For a discussion of the special perspective afforded Gabriele as a resident of the mainland, see William }. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 157. Bouwsma also provides a brief summary of Gabriele’s role in a dialogue written by Donato Giannotti. For a discussion of problems encountered by mainland residents, see Brian Pullen, “Occupations and Investments of the Venetian Nobility,” in Renais¬ sance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 380-81. Fertile describes the locations of Gabriele’s various villas in “Appollonio,” 36. 35. Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 21. Examples of Gabriele repeating Landino inadvertently include his commentary to Dante’s com¬ parison of Sapia’s arrogance to the blackbird in Purgatorio 13.123 and the encounter with Piccarda Donati in Paradiso 3.63. Examples of Gabriele’s failure to effectively correct Landino include his discussions of Landino’s Notes to Chapter 4 201 glosses to Charles II of Anjou’s marriage of his daughter, Beatrice, to an aging Azzo VIII d’Este in Purgatorio 20.80, Bonagiunta’s remarks about the dolce stil novo in Purgatorio 24.59, the transformation of the chariot in the Earthly Paradise in Purgatorio 32.144, and St. Thomas s allusion to heretical readings of Scripture in Paradiso 13.129. 36. Gabneie, Annotationi, ii3r. 37. For examples of Landino’s stylistic observations, see Dionisotti, “Lan- dino,” ED 3:567; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinquecento, 181-84. 38. Landino, Spositione, 29v-3or. Landino was by no means the first com¬ mentator to express reservations about Celestine V as Dante s intended ref¬ erent. What is notable in Landino’s reading of these lines is his account of the merits of the active and contemplative life. For general discussions of Landino’s Dante commentary, see Manfred Lentzen, Studien zur Dante- Exegese Cristoforo Landino ] Silvio Gennai, “Cristoforo Landino commenta- tore di Dante,” in Atti del convegno di studi su aspetti e problemi della critica dantesca (Rome: De Luca, 1967). 39. GzbneXe, Annotationi, i4r-i4V. 40. Landino, Spositione, 348r. For other examples of Landino’s distanc¬ ing of himself from Dante’s imperialism, see his commentary to Caesar’s presence in Limbo in Inferno 4.121—23, Dantes lament over the ab¬ sence of an emperor in Purgatorio 6.88—96 (4or, 221 r, respectively). For ex¬ amples of Gabriele’s distancing himself from Dante’s imperialist views, see his commentary on Brunetto Latini’s prophecy {Inferno 15.76), the origins of the Capetian dynasty (Purgatorio 20.52), the significance of the figures of the harlot and the giant in the Earthly Paradise (Purgatorio 32.155), and the flight of the eagle in Paradiso 6. 41. GdhneXc, Annotationi, 77V. 42. Lzindmo, Spositione, I92r-i92v. 43. Ibid., 347r. 44. For discussions of the Neoplatonic tenor to Landino’s allegorizing, see Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts: Comments on Some Commentunes,” Renaissance Quarterly 38(1988): 618; Barbi,Dan/e nel Cinquecento, 151; Cardini, La critica del Landino, 31; and Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas, 129-217. My own view is that a practical and defensive form of allegorizing occasionally exists alongside Landino’s presentation of Dante as an exponent of Neoplatonic truth. 45. For a discussion of earlier defenses of an absurdum, see Jean Pepin, La Tradition de I’allegorie de Philon d'Alexandre a Dante (Paris: Etudes augusti- niennes, 1987), 167-86. 46. Landino, Spositione, Landino himself explains the diffi¬ culty faced in justifying Dante’s choice of Cato as the guardian of Purga¬ tory in his discussion of the condemnation of Brutus. “Catone,” he writes. 202 Notes to Chapter 4 “secondo la nostra fede in nessun patto pud essere salvo,” thus Cato does not represent the historic Cato but “la liberta della quale lui fu accerrimo difensore (i92r-v).” 47. Landino, Scritti critici, 1:108. For a discussion of Landino’s remarks on liberty in his commentary to Virgil’s Eclogues, see Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology, 74-79. 48. Lentzen, “Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino,” 44. 49. For other discussions of the Medici’s political appropriation of Neo¬ platonic concepts, see Lentzen, “Le lodi di Firenze,” 44; Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 373, .Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:231-35; and Riccardo Fubini, “Ficino e i Medici all’avvento di Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Rinascimento 24 (1984): 3-52. Fubini argues that Ficino broke with Lorenzo in the 1470s. 50. GabneXe, Annotationi, 8iv. 51. The printing and a wider diffusion of the annotations might have mitigated the heated debates over Dante’s language and text that followed Bembo’s 1502 Aldine edition of the Comedy and the publication of the Prose in 1525. The Aldine edition of the Comedy, unaccompanied by any com¬ mentary, dramatically altered perceptions of the text. Not only had Bembo changed the title toLe terze rime di Dante, but he had amended significantly the punctuation, eliminated all abbreviations, divided the words accord¬ ing to grammatical rules, and added the accent grave to e. See Dionisotti, “Cristoforo Landino,” ED 3:567, for an account of these changes. Vallone is not mistaken in referring to the Aldine edition as Bembo’s “inespressa polemica verso il Landino.” See Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:322. In a letter to Machiavello of June 18, 1532, Bembo refers to a change made to Landino’s text as one not “del sentimento, ma solo della parola.” See Bembo, Opere in volgare, 813-14. Landino’s interpretation is praised as vera e buona, but doubts are raised about his philological soundness. 52. Jerome J. McCann, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 23-24. 53. From 1484-97 Landino’s commentary was reprinted five times in Venice and once in Brescia. During this time no other edition was printed. This uninterrupted chain was only broken in 1502 by Bembo’s Aldine edi¬ tion and Benivieni’s 1506 Giuntine edition in Florence. Five more editions of Landino’s commentary were reprinted in Venice from 1507 to 1536. In 1564 Francesco Sansovino edited the commentary along with Vellutello’s; the two commentaries were reprinted together again in 1578 and 1596. For a more detailed discussion ot Renaissance editions of Dante commentaries, see chap. 6. Notes to Chapter 5 203 5. Imitation, Plagiarism, and Textual Productivity: Bernardino Daniello’s Debt to Trifone Gabriele 1. Bernardino Daniello, dedication to Andrea Cornelio, Sonetti e Trionfi de messer Francesco Petrarca con la spositione di Bernardino Daniello (Venice, 1541), *iir. 2. For discussions of Daniello’s dependence on Gabriele, see Rezzi, Let- tera a Giovanni Rosim, 34; Barbi, Dante nel Cinquecento, 239-47; Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:359-84; Bigi, “La Commedia nel Cinque¬ cento,” 173-209; and Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 17-30. 3. Bernardino Daniello was born around the turn of the sixteenth cen¬ tury in Lucca. There is no surviving information ot his life in Lucca. Like his compatriot, Alessandro Vellutello, Daniello left Lucca for Venice. Much of what is known of Daniello’s life derives from his works and letters. In addition to his Dante commentary, Daniello wrote various poems, the Della poetica, a commentary to Petrarch (1541), and he translated Virgil’s Georgies (1545). His Dante commentary, although well underway by 1547, was pub¬ lished posthumously. Daniello died in Padua in 1565. For a brief discussion of Daniello’s life, see Carlo Dionisotti, “Bernardino Daniello,” ed 2:303-4; and M. R. De Grammatica, “Bernardino Daniello,” dbi 32:32-33. 4. For a more detailed discussion of the significance of adopting a literary persona, see Jacqueline T. Miller, Poetic License: Authority and Authorship in Medieval and Renaissance Contexts (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univer¬ sity Press, 1986), 17-20. 5. Cited in their entirety below are Gabriele’s and Daniello’s glosses to In¬ ferno 7.123. I have chosen an example that allows readers an opportunity to assess how Daniello tends to make additions to Gabriele’s text. For examples of nontransformative incorporations, I refer the reader to the comparative samples provided by Barbi and Vallone in their studies. Noteworthy aspects of Daniello’s text include more paraphrase, the omission of any reference to Landino, more cross-references to other passages in the Comedy, and the addition of more authorities. Significantly, Petrarch and Dante, two mod¬ ern poets, are cited along with a classical authority, Horace, and a biblical one. The gesture implies a parity between Dante and Petrarch and the earlier, more established authorities. Gabriele, Awwo/afiow, Barb. Lat. 3938, 3or, notes: portando dentro acctdioso fummo —come nel primo canto, ove d’i acci- diosi secondo noi parlamo, mostrai il Landino ingannarsi in questo luoco, che per questa parola accidioso vole che in questo luoco istesso del’ira si punisca I’accidia, e vole fare i sette peccati, e dice che forse sono, qua sotto e non s’accorge, come dicemo, che alia gentile nel’Inferno Dante mette i peccati da incontinenza che fuor di Dite si puniscono, e quelli di fraude 204 Notes to Chapter 5 in Dite, e nel Purgatorio alia cristiana fara la division de’ sette peccati moriaW.. Accidioso, adunque, lento e tardo, perche I’ira presta, come volno tutti, non e peccato, onde il Petrarca “ira e breve furor.” Daniello: Portando dentro accidioso FUMMO. Tutti gli Espositori di questo Poeta, in questo luogo (e sia cio detto con pace di ciascuno) non intendendo la distintione, che egli fa de’ peccati; grandemente s’ingannano; concio- sia, che per dire il Poeta, Accidioso fummo, credono fermamente, che egli habbia voluto intendere il peccato dell’Accidia essere nella mede- sima palude punito, ove I’lra si punisse, e la Superbia, e I’Invidia mede- simamente; non si accorgendo, che il Poeta in questi quattro cerchi della Citta di Dite parla solamente de’ peccati della incontinenza, che sono (come habbiamo veduto fino ad hora) Lussuria, Gola, Avaritia, e Ira: i quali vuole, che siano come men gravi puniti fuori della Citta di Dite; a differenza de i Violenti, et Fraudolenti, che in essa Citta, (come quelli, che piu hanno offeso Iddio) si puniscono. Nel purgatorio poscia seguendo la Cristiana dottrina, fara la divisione de i sette mortal! peccati, proce¬ dendo ordinatamente dall’uno all’altro (come vedremo): percioche se egli ha posto in questo suo Inferno gli Accidiosi, gli pone ove sono gli sciau- rati, che mai non fur vivi. Ma se essi forse per questi versi si muovono, Et anco v6, che tu per certo credi, Che sotto I’acqua ha gente che sospira, E fanno pullular quest’acqua al summo. Come I’occhio ti dice, u che s’aggira; non s’accorgono, che il Poeta dice cio, per mostrar, che quelli ch’erano piu sotto, havevano ancora in questo vitio dell’lracondia piu gravemente peccato, che quelli, che venivano ad esser piu al sommo della palude: come fece anche nel XII. Canto, ove parlando de’ violenti puniti nel Bullicame, dice: lo vidi gente sotto infino al ciglio (Inf. 12.103): & non molto dopo; Poco piu oltre il Centauro s’affisse, Sovr’una gente, che infin’a la gola Parea, che di quel Bullicame uscisse (Inf. 12.115-117). ma questo errore procede da non haver essi Espositori inteso la forza di quello adiettivo, cioe Accidioso, che altro che lento & tardo non significa. Onde Horatio nel primo libro nella 13 ode: “Quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus” (Hor. Car. 1.13.8). e Dante medesimo altrove; Sovra tutto ’1 sabbion, d’un cader lento, Piovean di foco dilatate falde,” (Inf. 14.28): e il Petrarca nella Canzone L’aer gravato. Quando cade dal ciel piu lenta pioggia” (Petr. Rime 66.12). Diremo adunque, che accidioso FUMMO, non vuol dire altro, che lenta Ira, perche I’ira presta e subita (conciosia che i primi moti non sono in potesta di noi medesimi) non e peccato: onde I’Apostolo; Sol non occidat super iracundiam vestram (Ephes. 4.26). See Daniello, Espositione, 46-47. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Daniello are to the second edition of 1989. I have compared all passages cited with the 1568 edition. For a discussion of textual differences between the two editions, see Lino Fertile, “Il Daniello di Dartmouth,” Italian Studies 46 (1991): 102-9. The editors of the second edition have identified the ma- Notes to Chapter 5 205 jority of sources cited by Daniello and provided a useful index separating biblical from nonbiblical sources. 6. Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 20. 7. Bembo, Opere volgare, 705. 8. The Basic Wor^s of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, trans. Ingram By water (New York; Random House, 1941), 1457. Thomas M. Greene discusses the significance of this passage for literary imitation in The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, Conn.; Yale University Press, 1982), 54. 9. Isocrates, trans. G. Norlin (London; Heinemann, 1928), 2; 175, 301-3. Greene, The Light in Troy, 55, discusses the significance of this passage. 10. Greene, The Light in Troy, 55. 11. Piero Floriani, “Grammatici e teorici della letteratura volgare,” in Storia della cultura veneta (Vicenza; Pozza, 1980), 3, pt. 2; 146. 12. Bernardino Daniello, La Georgica di Virgilio, nuovamente di latina in toscana favella, per Bernardino Daniello tradotta, e commentata (Venice; Giovanni Grifi, 1549), biir. 13. Della nuova scelta di lettere di diversi noblissimi uomini, ed. Bernardino Pino (Venice, 1573), 2; 344. 14. Gabriele cited in Fertile, “Apollonio Merenda,” 28. 15. Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane, 3:209, 213. 16. Ezio Raimondi, “Bernardino Daniello e le variant! petrarchesche,” Rinascimento inqmeto (Palermo: Manfredi, 1965), 30. 17. Curiously, Daniello only refers directly to Gabriele once in his com¬ mentary. The reference appears in his discussion of contingency in Paradiso 17.37-40: “I’essempio che da qui il Poeta, par che non corrisponda molto a quello ch’egli ha voluto dire, percioche non di cosa andasse (laquale im- porta tempo) ma che stesse ferma in un luogo, bisognava che lo desse; si come lo dava M. Trifone di colui che siede, il quale mentre che e veduto sedere, e necessitato che segga.” See Daniello, Espositione, 401. 18. Gabriele will finally be credited for what he first noted. We cannot say, as Natalino Sapegno and Umberto Bosco note—to cite only two recent examples—that the now widely accepted reading of accidioso fummo as ira lenta is indebted to Daniello. Other misattributions include the commonly accepted interpretation of passeggiare anzi as vagheggiare {Purgatorio 31.28) and the recognition of the line “Pero se ’1 caldo amor la chiara vista” (Para¬ diso 13.79) ^ reference to the triune action of the godhead. Sapegno also cites Daniello as the first commentator to provide widely accepted readings of the following passages: Inferno 7.123, Purgatorio 29.75, Purgatorio 31.28, and Paradiso 13.79. Daniello’s commentary to these lines is copied directly from Gabriele. 19. Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:57. 2o6 Notes to Chapter 5 20. Gabriele, Annotationi, 46r. 21. When Gabriele alludes to Petrarchan echoes of Dante’s poetry, the purpose is to illustrate either Dante’s art or influence on the later poet— clear proof that Gabriele did not share Bembo’s assessment of the two poets. For a discussion of the differences between Bembo and Gabriele on Dante, see Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 25. 22. It is in the light of this particular claim that Daniello’s reliance on Gabriele needs to be scrutinized most carefully, given that a rigorous rhetorical and linguistic analysis constitutes the most important aspect of Gabriele’s annotations. In addition to being the first of the Cinquecento commentaries, Gabriele’s work is, as Fertile argues, “the very first to present a systematic approach to the language and style of the Comedy!’ See Fertile, “Trifone Gabriele’s Commentary,” 20. Daniello, however, as Fertile notes, “had the knack of taking the edge off anything that was intellectually sharp and vigorous, as Trifone’s work clearly was” (28). 23. Daniello, Espositione, 67. 24. Daniello, Espositione, 155, defines the difference between metaphor and allegory in his gloss to Purgatorio 1.1-3. 25. Daniello, Espositione, 35. 26. Ibid., 27. 27. Vellutello, Espositione, Alviir. 28. Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:379. 29. Among Daniello’s more personal testimonies are his confirmation of the marvelous sight of the Venetian arsenal {Inferno 21.709), his agree¬ ing with Dante’s observations on the imitative nature of sheep {Purgatorio 3.79-84), observation that the reference to mancia {Paradiso 5.64- 66) has contemporary equivalents in the form of Christmas and New Year s greetings. 30. Daniello, Espositione, 46. 31. Gabriele, quoted in Fertile, “Trifone Gabrieles Commentary, 21. Gabriele is referring to Landino’s readings of the transformation of the chariot in the Earthly Paradise in Purgatorio 32.144, and the meaning of the word suppe in Purgatorio 33.36. 32. Other examples of Daniello’s disagreements with other commenta¬ tors can be found in his glosses to the source of Francescas lament that there is nothing worse than to recall a happier time in one of misery {Inferno 5.121-23) and to the time of day in the northern hemisphere alluded to by Virgil {Purgatorio 3.22). He follows Gabriele in all these modifications. 33. A. De Biase, “Dante e i protestanti nel secolo XVI,” Civiltd cattolica 86 (1935): 41. Given De Biase’s obvious bias, his remarks cannot be taken without qualification. 34. Daniello, Espositione, 311. Notes to Chapter 6 207 35. For a discussion of Gabriele’s skepticism over Luther’s revolution, see Lino Fertile, “Apollonio Merenda,” 35. 36. Daniello, Espositione, 58. 6. Material Production and Interpretations of the Comedy 1. Christian ^ec,Les Livres desflorentins (141^-1608) (Florence: Olschki, 1984), 7. See also the following other works by Bee: Cultura e societa a Firenze nell’eta della rinascenza (Rome: Salerno, 1981); “I mercanti scrittori,” 99-111. 2. Amedeo Quondam, quoted in Bee, Les Livres, 8. 3. Amedeo Quondam, “ ‘Mercanzia d’onore.’ ‘Mercanzia d’utile.’ Produ- zione libraria e lavoro intelletuale a Venezia nel Cinquecento,” in Libri, editori epubblico nell’Europa moderna, ed. Armando Petrucci (Bari: Laterza, 1989), 53. 4. Ibid., 55-56. 5. Amedeo Quondam, “Nel giardino del Marcolini, un editore veneziano tra Aretino e Doni,” gsli 157 (1980): 75. 6. D. F. McKenzie, “The Book as Expressive Form,” in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London: British Library, 1986), 3. For a discussion of the implications of McKenzie’s view of bibliography, see Jerome J. McGann, review of Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, by D. F. McKenzie, London Review of Booths, 18 February 1988, 1-4. 7. McKenzie, “The Book as Expressive Form,” 4-5. 8. Ibid., 8. 9. W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” in The Verbal Icon (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 1954). 10. McKenzie, “The Book as Expressive Form,” 10, 13. 11. McGann, “Some Forms of Critical Discourse,” 137. 12. McGann, “The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographi¬ cal Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works,” in The Beauty of Inflections, 78. 13. McGann, “Some Forms of Critical Discourse,” 135. 14. John Sutherland, “Publishing History: A Hole at the Center of Lit¬ erary Sociology,” Critical Inquiry 14 (1988): 582. Sutherland here quotes from Jerome J. McGann’s, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 121. 15. McGann, “Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism,” in The Beauty of Inflections, 25. 16. McGann, “The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method,” in The Beauty of Inflections, 117. 2o8 Notes to Chapter 6 17. For a brief discussion of Escarpit’s influence on recent studies of literary sociology, see Sutherland, “Publishing History, 574. 18. See, e.g., Teodolinda Barolini, “Detheologizing Dante: For a ‘New Formalism’ in Dante Studies,” Quademi d’italianistica 10 (1989): 35-53- 19. Franco Sacchetti, 11 Trecentonovelle, ed. Emilio Faccioli (Torino: Einaudi, 1970), 298-302. The translations are taken from Paget Toynhee, Dante Alighieri: His Life and Worlds (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 148,150. 20. See, e.g., E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967). 21. This expression is frequently employed by Francesco Mazzoni in dis¬ cussions of the extent to which Dante’s Trecento commentators captured the poet’s “genuine” spirit. In Mazzoni’s eyes the earliest commentators can help us to better understand “un poeta medievalmente impegnato quale I’Alighieri, anche laddove essi servano unicamente come un ‘falso scopo’, come un mezzo di contrasto: chiosa, insomma, magari da respingere nei risultati e nelle conclusion!, ma da sfruttare per meglio cogliere, come in fih- grana, il genuino pensiero e il genuino valore del dettato dantesco. See Maz¬ zoni, “La critica dantesca del secolo XIV,” 288. Similar statements are made in the following articles by Mazzoni: “Ottimo commento,” ed 4:221 (“Non Sara poi neppure da trascurare, ma anzi da mettere fortemente in rilievo, la capacita deirO[ttimo] di cogliere nei suoi esatti termini la genuina poetica dantesca ...”); “Pietro Alighieri,” ed 1:148 (“il Comentarium ... rappresenta certo uno dei moment! piu alti dell’esegesi trecentesca del poema,... sicche non puo in alcun modo essere ignorato da chi voglia storicizzare concreta- mente la genuina poetica dantesca, e mettere nei contempo a fuoco il signi- ficato profondo e altissimo di quella poesia”); “Guido da Pisa, ed 3:328 (“tocchera a Pietro, con le sue successive redazioni del suo Comentarium, il compito di tentare una nuova, equilibrata sintesi, nello sforzo di riportare I’esegesi del tempo suo verso parametri piu vicini all orrizzonte culturale, alia dimensione di pensiero, alia genuina poetica dell’Alighieri ); and Per il centenario della ‘Dante Society, Dante Studies 99 (1981): 6 ( Alludo in particolare alia tendenza ... a storicizzare I’arte dantesca attraverso indagini tese al recupero . . . della genuina poetica dell’autore”). 22. Gianfranco Folena, “La tradizione delle opere di Dante Alighieri, in Atti delcongresso intemazionale distudi danteschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1965)) 3 - 23. During the Renaissance the terms “printer” and “publisher” desig¬ nated two separate functions: the publisher was the person who paid for the expenses incurred in the printing of a work; the printer was the person who did the actual presswork. Given the enormous bibliography on early Italian printing, I list below works that contain useful information on the Notes to Chapter 6 209 printers discussed in this chap. See Giuseppe Fumagalli,Lejrtco« typographi- cum italiae (Florence: Olschki, 1905); bmc, vols. 4-7; William Dana Orcutt, The Bool{ in Italy during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928); Short-Title Catalogue of Boof{s Printed in Italy and of Italian Bool^s Printed in Other Countries from 146^-1600 Now in the British Museum, ed. A. F. Johnson, V. Scholderer, and D. A. Clarke (London: British Museum, 1958); F. J. Norton, Italian Printers, 1^01—1^02 (London: Bowes & Bowes, I95^)i Gedeon Borsa, Clavis typographorum librariorumque Italiae 146^—1600, 2 vols. (Baden Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1980); Emeren- ziana Vaccaro, Marche dei tipografi ed editori italiam del secolo XVI nella Biblioteca Angelina di Roma (Florence: Olschki, 1983); Fernanda Ascarelli and Marco Menato, La tipografia del fooin Italia (Florence: Olschki, 1989). Ascarelli’s study is one of the most complete and up-to-date. On the Vene¬ tian printing press, see Horatio Brown, The Venetian Printing Press (New York: Putnam, 1890); Ester Pastorello, Tipografi, editori, librai a Venezia nel secolo XVI (Florence: Olschki, 1924); Leonardas Vytautas Gerulaitis, Print¬ ing and Publishing in Fifteenth Century Venice (Chicago: American Library Association, 1976). For printing in Milan, see Teresa Rogledi Manni, La tipografia a Milano nel XV secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1980). For studies of Florentine printing, see D. E. Rhodes, Gli annali tipograficifiorentini del XV secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1988); Roberto Ridolfi, La stampa in Firenze nel secolo XV (Florence: Olschki, 1958). For overviews of Quattrocento editions of the Comedy, see Angelo Marinelli, “La stampa della Divina Commedia nel XV secolo, L’arte della stampa 41 (1911): 425-27; Francesco di Pretoro, La "Divina Commedia” nelle sue vicende attraverso i secoli (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965). 24. Amedeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato: Per una critica della forma antologia (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), 7. 25. My list follows the format used by Paolo Procaccioli in his Filolo- gia ed esegesi, 11-14. Procaccioli omits mention of four editions: one of the Paganino texts, the 1516 Stagnino, the 1572 Farri and the 1572 edition of Vincenzo Buonanni’s commentary to the Inferno. Other compilations of Renaissance editions of the Comedy also have gaps. For bibliographical compilations of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions of the Comedy, see Koch Catalogue of the Dante Collection, 3-10; Giuliano Mambelli, Gli annali delle edizioni dantesche (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1931-39); Le edizioni italiane del XVI secolo: Censimento nazionale (Rome: Istituto centrale per il catalogo unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche, 1985), 1:85-89; ED, 6:503-7. Mambelli lists one instead of three Paganino edi¬ tions. He also omits any reference to the 1516 Stagnino. This edition is also omitted m the list compiled by the editors of the Edizioni italiane. For infor- 210 Notes to Chapter 6 mation on the 1516 Stagnino, see Colomb de Batines, Bibhografia dantesca, 78; Stefano Pillinini, Bernardino Stagnino: Un editore a Venezia tra Quattro e Cinquecento (Rome: Jouvence, 1989), 93. 26. Vindelin printed his 1477 edition of the poem in Gothic type. But, as Neri Pozza observes, Vindelin’s type was very close to a humanist script. See Neri Pozza, “L’editoria veneziana da Giovanni da Spira ad Aldo Manuzio, in Storia della cultura veneta (Vicenza: Pozza, 1980), 3, pt. 2:219. 27. For a discussion of the different types used in early Italian printing, see Rudolf Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading /450-/550 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1967), 114-16. 28. R. Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading, 114. 29. Unfortunately, information on costs and the print runs of the earliest editions of the Comedy is scarce. Mambelli, Annali, 4, estimates that two hundred copies of the 1472 Foligno edition were printed. Victor Scholderer posits that three hundred editions were printed ( Printers and Readers in Italy in the Fifteenth Century,” in Fifty Essays in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Cen¬ tury Bibliography, ed. Dennis E. Rhodes [Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1966], 300). For a description of Dante manuscripts owned by the Florentine mer¬ chant class, see Bee, Fes livres, 103. For book prices in the Renaissance, see Brown, Venetian Printing Press, 36; Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisi¬ tion and the Venetian Press, /540-/605 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 12-16. For the prices of the Aldine octavos, see Harry George Fletcher, New Aldine Studies: Documentary Essays on the Life and Woif of Aldus Manutius (San Francisco: Rosenthal, 1988), 88-91. 30. Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 378. 31. Peter Dreyer, “Botticelli’s Series of Engravings ‘of 1481,’ Print Quar¬ terly I (1984): 112. For analyses of Botticelli’s illustrations of the Comedy for Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, see La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieti coi disegni di Sandro Botticelli (Berlin: Tieffenbach, 1925), Adolfo Venturi, 11 Botticelli interprete di Dante (Florence: Le Monnier, 1922). Y. Batard, Les Dessins de Sandro Botticelli pour la ‘Divine Comedie (Pans: Perrin, 1952), K. Clark, The Drawings of Sandro Botticelli for Dante’s “Divine Comedy’’ (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976). For general discussions of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrations to the Comedy, see Ludwig Volkmann, Iconografia Dantesca (London: Grevel, 1899); La Divina Commedia nelle xilografie quattrocentesche (Terni: Istituto d arte, 1920); La Commedia con le xilografie dell’edizione bresciana del iqSj (Torino: Fdgola, 1977)- The lim¬ ited scope of this examination does not permit a detailed examination ol illustrations to the Comedy. This is a large topic that deserves separate treat¬ ment. 32. For information on the Scoto firm, see C. Volpati, Gli Scotti di Notes to Chapter 6 211 Monza tipografi-editori in V^enezia,” Archivio storico lombardo 59 (1932): 365-82; Ascarelli, and Menato,La tipografia, 330-32; and bmc 5:xxiii. 33. After working as a printer in Brescia, Bonino moved to Lyon where he became a bookseller. While in Lyon, he hired Barthelmy Troth as an agent. During his years in France, Bonino worked as a spy for the Vene¬ tian government. For more information on his life, see A. Cioni, “Bonino Bonini,” db i 12:215-19. For a detailed account of the printing of vernacular works in Brescia in the Quattrocento, see Amedeo Quondam, “La parte del volgare,” in / primordi della stampa a Brescia 14^2-1^11, ed. Ennio Sandal (Padua: Antenore, 1986), 139-205. Quondam notes that Bonino’s Dante is all the more extraordinary given the rare number of folio editions of ver¬ nacular works printed in Brescia. For a discussion of the illustrations to the 1487 Bonino Dante, see Giulia Bologna, “II libro come oggetto di visione: L’attivita grafico-illustrativa a Brescia nel Rinascimento,” in Primordi della stampa a Brescia, 107-15. 34. The similarities among editions of the Comedy are partly owing to the remarkable degree of interaction among printers of the Comedy. Ottaviano Scoto, one ot the largest publishers of his day, had works printed by Matteo Capcasa, Bartolomeo Zani, and Jacob Burgofranco. Luc’Antonio Giunti, another renowned publisher, had dealings with Matteo Capcasa, Pietro di Quarengi, Pietro Cremonese, Jacob Burgofranco, Vindelin’s brother Gio¬ vanni, and Domenico Manzani. Although his name is not mentioned in the colophon, Capcasa printed two sheets of Quarengi’s 1497 edition of the poem. Bernardino Benali, in addition to collaborating with Capcasa on their 1491 Dante, also worked with Paganino de’ Paganini, father of Alessandro Paganino. Other intriguing interrelations include Bonino’s association with Barthelmy Troth. Hired as an agent by Bonino after his move to Lyon, Barthelmy is famous in print history as one of the first counterfeiters of Aldus’s octavo classics. Bernardino Stagnino was from the same family as Giovanni and Gabriele Giolito. Francesco Sansovino’s relations with other printers were also extensive: he worked as an editor for Gabriele Giolito and had works printed by the Sessa firm. Guillaume Rouille apprenticed with Giovanni and Gabriele Giolito. One should not underestimate the exchange of ideas and methods that arose from such contacts. Such inter¬ relations likely account for the similar use of formats, decorative features, and types in many Quattrocento and Cinquecento editions of the Comedy. For more information on these printers’ production, see the entries devoted to them in the bmc ; Norton, Italian Printers-, and Ascarelli and Menato, La tipografia. For information on the production of Matteo Capcasa and Ber¬ nardino Benali, see A. Cioni, “Bernardino Benali,” dbi 8:165-67; A. Cioni, “Matteo Capcasa,” dbi 18:401-3. For a discussion of Capcasa’s collabora- 212 Notes to Chapter 6 tion on this edition, see bmc 5:xlviii. For information on the Sessa firm, see Nereo Vianello, “Per gli ‘annali’ dei Sessa tipografi ed editori in Venezia nei secoli XV-XVII,” Accademie e Biblioteche d’ltalia 38 (1970): 262-85; Silvia Curi Nicolardi, Una societd tipografico-editoriale a Venezia nel secolo XVI: Melchiorre Sessa e Pietro di Ravani (75/6-/525^ (Florence: Olschki, 1984). 35. For what little information exists on the possible identity of this Franciscan editor, see Eugenio Ragni, “Pietro da Figino,” ed 4:506. For a discussion of Pietro’s eighty-seven emendations to Landino’s text, see Procaccioli, Filologia ed esegesi dantesca, 16. For an overview of linguis¬ tic norms in Renaissance printing, see Paolo Trovato, “Primi appunti sulla norma linguistica e la stampa tra Quattro e Cinquecento,” Lingua Nostra 48 (1987): 1-7; Carlo Dionisoni, Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro e Cin¬ quecento (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968); Silvia Rizzo,// lessicofilologico degli umanisti (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1973); Amedeo Quondam, “La letteratura in tipografia,” in Letteratura italiana: Produzione e consumo (Torino; Einaudi, 1983), 2:555-686. For examinations of the mediating in¬ fluences of editors in printing, see Claudia Di Filippo Bareggi, // mestiere di scrivere: Lavoro intellettuale e mercato libraio a Venezia nel Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1988); and Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (iqjo-i^yo) (Bologna: II Mulino, 1991). 36. For a general discussion of the origins of Griffo’s italic type, see Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 130; Armando Petrucci, “Alle ori- gini del libro moderno: Libri da banco, libri da bisaccia, libretti da mano,” iMU 12 (1969): 303-11. For a more thorough analysis of the use of italic type in the sixteenth century, see Alberto Tinto, II corsivo nella tipografia del Cinquecento (Milan: II Polifilo, 1972). 37. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 38. For Anthony Grafton s ob¬ servation on the overwhelming presence of commentary, see his “Politian,” 155. Bonino’s 1487 edition, which packs sixty-eight lines of commentary per page, exemplifies this impression. Subsequent editions of the Comedy averaged sixty lines of commentary a page. 38. Carlo Dionisotti, “Introduzione,” in Aldo Manuzio editore: Dediche, prefazioni, note ai testi (Milan: II Polifilo, i 975 )> 2:xlii. 39. This distinction is made by Fletcher, New Aldine Studies, 88. 40. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 217. 41. Dionisotti, Aldo Manuzio, i:xli. For a discussion of the role played by the Aldine literary octavos in the emancipation of learning, see Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 142-48. For examinations of the network of communications set up by print, see L. Febvre and H. Martin, L Apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958); Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Notes to Chapter 6 213 Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ^ 979 )> Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975). 42. Aldus did not invent the octavo format; he merely adapted a for¬ mat that had previously been employed in the printing of religious and devotional works. 43. Cited in Fletcher, New Aldine Studies, 95. 44. Augustin A. Renouard, Annales de I'lmprimerie des Aides (Paris: Antoine-Augustin Renouard, 1803), 190-206. 45. Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 378. Dionisotti concludes, Questo bilancio editoriale rispecchia lucidamente il secolare travaglio della cultura fiorentina, troppo tardi insorta a difendere, nel nome di Dante, una primogenitura, che Dante stesso aveva profeticamente oppugnato e che aU’Italia cinquecentesca, all’Italia dell’Ariosto e del Tasso, non poteva im- porre piu i privilegi di un’eta in rivolta” (378). 46. I do not wish to give the impression that Dionisotti excludes from his analysis a consideration of the Comedy's publication history. The last part of his essay constitutes one of the first systematic attempts to analyze the poem’s publication in terms of different cultural forces. As such his essay provides a good point of departure for a more detailed examination of the Comedy's publishing history in the Renaissance. See Dionisotti, “Dante nel Quattrocento,” 366-78. 47. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 156-57. 48. As Bigi, “Dante e la cultura fiorentina,” 172, has argued, more needs to be done on Dante’s fortune among the Savonarolans. For an account of Benivieni’s intellectual activities, see Giancarlo Mazzacurati, “Girolamo Benivieni, ed 1:588—89; C. Vasoli, “Girolamo Benivieni,” dbi 8:550—55. For an analysis of the Giunti’s republican sympathies, see William A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence: Merchant Publishers of the Sixteenth Century (San Francisco: Rosenthal, 1980), 45-69. For a description of the Giunti’s pro¬ duction, see Paolo Camerini, Annali dei Giunti, 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1962). 49. The colophon lists Aldus and Andrea Torresani (Aldus’s father-in- law) as the publishers. The edition came out in August 1515, a few months after Aldus’s death. 50. The text of Bienivieni’s work has been reproduced in “Dialogo di Antonio Manetti cittadino fiorentino circa al sito, forma e misura dello inferno di Dante Alighieri poeta eccellentissimo,” in Studi sulla "Divtna Commedia” di Galileo Galilei, Vincenzo Borghini ed altri, ed. Ottavio Gigli (Florence: Le Monnier, 1855), 37-132. For critical discussions of Manetti’s 214 Notes to Chapter 6 designs, see Michele Barbi, nel Cinquecento, 131 89; L. A. Michelan- geli, Sul disegno dell’ "Inferno” dantesco (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1905), and Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca, 1:317-19. The most informative article on these designs is Lamberto Donati’s, “II Manetti e le figure della Dwina Commedia,” Bibliofilia 67 (1965): 273-96. For a recent discussion of maps of Dante’s Hell, see John Kleiner, “Mismapping the Underworld,” Dante Studies 107 (1989): 1-21. 51. See Donati, “II Manetti,” 280-84. It is important to recall that both Landino's^roifwzo and Benivieni s dialogue present secondhand accounts of Manetti’s calculations. Because Manetti had died before the publication of the 1506 Giunti Dante, it is difficult to determine the precise nature of the mathematician’s input. Benivieni addressed the Dtalogo to Manetti s brother, Benedetto. 52. To judge from the popularity of Alessandro Paganino s Dantini, it seems that the errors in the vertical section did not disturb readers greatly. Donati points out errors in spelling and in the measurements of Hell in the Paganino design. The novelty of the 24mo format and Paganino’s unusual italic seems to have outweighted incongruities in the design. In this respect the material format of the book contributes significantly to its desirability. For an account of the importance of an elegant format for eighteenth- century readers in France, see Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacie and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic, 1984), 222—23. 53. Alessandro, along with his father, Paganino de Paganini, printed an edition of the Koran between 1537-38 in Venice. All copies had been sup¬ posed lost or destroyed. Recently, however, Angela Nuovo unearthed a copy in the library of San Michele in Isola in Venice. For an account of the summary, see Ascarelli and Menato, Fa tipografia , 342. 54. Ugo Baroncelli describes the type as bizzarro in his La stampa nella riviera bresciana del Garda neisecoli XVe XVI (Brescia: Edizioni dell’Ateneo di Salo, 1964), 34. Angela Nuovo describes Alessandro’s type as ibrida in her “La parte veneziana della collezione in -24 di Alessandro Paganino (i^i^—16), in I primordt della stampa a Brescia, 95. Hubert Elie describes Alessandro’s italic as “caracteres bizarres, tres menus mais tres jobs. See Hubert Elie, “Alessandro dei Paganini, de Brescia, imprimeur a Venise puis a Toscolano de 1513 a i 533 ’” Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1967): 99. Lino Per- tile has recently argued that Pietro Bembo was involved in the editing of the Paganino editions of the Comedy. See Pertile, “Le edizioni dantesche del Bembo,” 393-402. Nuovo, however, disputes Pertile’s conclusions. For Nuovo’s disagreements, see “La parte veneziana,” 90-94. For a more de¬ tailed account of Alessandro Paganino’s production, see Angela Nuovo, Alessandro Paganino (i^0()—i^^8} (Padua: Antenore, 1990). Alessandro Paganino cited in Nuovo, La parte veneziana, 93 ”' 94 * Notes to Chapter 6 215 56. For a more detailed examination of Alessandro Paganmo’s production strategies, see Nuovo, “La parte veneziana,” 93. 57. Pillinini, Bernardino Stagnmo, 65, designates Stagnino’s decision to continue printing editions of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta with commentary long after Aldus’s introduction of a series of octavo classics un operazione di retroguardia.” In his summary of Stagnino’s editorial policies, Pillinini concludes, “Bernardino Stagnino e quindi un editore che non si pone su posizioni di avanguardia, che non apre strade nuove, ma che pubblica quasi unicamente quello che in qualche modo costituisce gia un’esigenza dei lettori, pronto a seguire i cambiamenti delle mode e i muta- menti ideologici” (72-73). 58. Adamo Rossi has speculated that Stagnino may have obtained his italic type from Aldus s type designer, Francesco Griffo. Documents show that Stagnino paid Griffo twenty ducats in 1512. Aldus’s ten-year privilege on the italic would have just expired. This transaction, as Rossi has argued, may have been related with the appearance in November 1512 of Stagnino’s Dante. See Adamo Rossi, “L’ultima parola sulla questione . . . di M. Fran¬ cesco da Bologna,’’ Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patna per le provincie di Romagna (1883) i, ser. 3: 412-17. 59. For a discussion of Francesco Marcolini’s production, see Amedeo Quondam, “Nel giardino del Marcolini,’’ 75-125; Luigi Servolini, “Fran¬ cesco Marcohni da Forh, Accademie e Biblioteche d'ltalia 15 (1940); 15—21; Scipione Casali, Gli annali della tipografia veneziana di Francesco Marcolini (Bologna: Gerace, 1953). 60. Bibliographers have identified only ten books published by Pietro da Fino. Paul Grendler reports that on August 25, 1571 Pietro was in¬ spected for the sale of prohibited books. After a series of evasions, Fino ad¬ mitted to selling titles by Aretino, Fra Battista da Crema, Anton Francesco Doni, Machiavelli, and Cordier. The Holy Office fined him two ducats. See Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 167. 61. In comparison, roughly sixty editions of Petrarch’s work and seventy of the Furioso were published between 1536-60. These statistics are taken from Dionisotti’s Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, 241. Dionisotti’s calculations are based on the holdings of the British Museum. 62. Many printers began altering their production to accord with the restrictions imposed by the index. For an analysis of Gabriele Giolito’s pub¬ lication strategies during the Reformation, see Quondam, “Mercanzia,” 51- 104. It IS significant that Gabrieles only edition of the Comedy appears in the midst of a change in his editorial program. By 1555 Gabriele had begun printing devotional works by writers like Guevara, Musso, and Granata. For other studies of the Giolito firm, see S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriele Gio- lito de’ Ferrari da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, 2 vols. (Rome: 216 Notes to Chapter 6 Presso i principali librai, 1890—97); Giuseppe Dondi, Giovanni Giolito edi- tore e mercante,” Bibliofilia 69 (1967); 147—89; and Ascarelli and Menalo, La tipografia, 242-43, 373-74- 63. My remarks on printing in Lyon in the Renaissance are largely de¬ rived from Natalie Zemon Davis, “Le Monde de I’imprimerie humaniste; Lyon,” in Histoire de Vedition frangaise, ed. Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier with the help of Jean-Pierre Vivet (Paris; Promodis, 1982), 256. For other studies of the printing of Italian works in Lyon, see E. Picot, Les Frangais Italianisants au XVI^siecle, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1907); Franco Simone, “La presenza di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio nel primo umanesimo lionese,” in Umanesimo, Rinascimento, Barocco in Francia (Milan: Mursia, 1968), 59-74. 64. Jean de Tournes quoted in Davis, “Le Monde de Timprimerie huma¬ niste,” 265. 65. For a discussion of the type used hy Jean de Tournes in the printing of his 1547 Dante, see Tinto, II corsivo nella tipografia, 75. 66. For a description of P. Vase’s engravings, see Bibliographie lyonnaise: Recherches sur les imprimeurs, libratres, rehears et fondeurs de lettres de Lyon au XV^ siecle, ed. J. Baudrier (Lyon; Brun, 1912), 186-87. For an analysis of Guillaume Rouille’s production, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Publisher Guillaume Rouille, Businessman and Humanist,” in Editing Sixteenth Cen¬ tury Texts, ed. R. J. Schoeck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), ^2—112. Anton Francesco Doni refers to Vellutellos difficulties in obtain¬ ing the illustrations for his Dante in his La Libraria, ed. Vanni Bramanti (Milan; Longanesi, 1972), 74. Doni writes that Vellutello molto s e affati- cato con I’lntelletto e con la spesa del tempo e de’ denari per fare intagliare tutti i disegni che vanno nella Comedia di Dante. 67. The best study of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century readers of the Comedy is Bee’s Les Livres des fiorentins. Bee’s examination shows that in the first half of the Quattrocento 43 percent of the books owned by Floren¬ tines were medieval or religious works. During this period, the Comedy was the most popular title. During the second half of the Quattrocento book ownership increased significantly. Petrarch now heads the list of medieval authors. Nevertheless, the Comedy is still popular, second only to Petrarch. The first half of the Cinquecento witnesses a distinct decline in the popu¬ larity of medieval authors and a rise in Latin, Greek, and technical books. But the Comedy still ranks as the second most popular title. Dante experi¬ ences a drop in popularity only during the second half of the Cinquecento, falling from second to fifth place—still a respectable position. Although conceding that Dante is no longer as popular in Medicean Florence as he was earlier in the century. Bee concludes, “Dante jouit done d’un large et Notes to Chapter 6 217 constant consensus aupres de ses concitoyens du XV' siecle; il n’est victime d’aucune exclusion, ni de la part des milieux moyennement cultives, ni des plus a jour” (102). Moreover, the poet’s decline is most notable among the intelligentsia. Among the merchant class Dante remains a popular author. Bee discusses the poet’s fortune among the merchant class in his “I mercanti scrittori,” 99-111. Both Bee and Susan Noakes have recently shown that people in the Renaissance read Dante for a number of reasons. For Bee’s remarks, see his “I mercanti scrittori,” 99-1 ii. Noakes points out that a reader like the merchant Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli “had broad goals in mind when he took up a book, goals exceeding the needs of devotion or practical life. He might read Dante’s Commedia, for example, to give him wisdom in the conduct of family affairs—insight into human behavior and motivation that would help him make decisions in both commercial and domestic rea¬ sons. Another reader might want to read the poem as a speculum, another for spiritual guidance, another as a source of anecdotes about the famous, another to learn to refine his spoken Tuscan, another to learn about the heavens.” See Susan Noakes, “The Development of the Book Market in Late Quattrocento Italy: Printers’ Failures and the Role of the Middle¬ men,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies ii (1981): 51-52. For Morelli’s remarks on Dante, see Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, Ricordi, ed. Vittore Branca (Florence: Le Monnier, 1969). Pietro Corner, procurator of St. Mark’s, seems to have been primarily interested in the Comedy's treat¬ ment of cosmology. Susan Connell notes among the books listed in Corner’s will, “.2. parte de Dante in volgar,” i.e., two parts of Dante in the ver¬ nacular—two of the three canticles. Because Corner was very interested in astrology, it is likely that the two canticles were Purgatorio and Paradiso. See Susan Connell, “Books and Their Owners in Venice, 1345-1480,”/o«r«a/ of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 163-86. The poem’s treat¬ ment of ethics also appealed to many readers. This aspect of the Comedy's attraction is underscored by the incipit of the 1472 Foligno edition, which notes that the poem “tracta delle pene et punitioni dei vitii et demeriti et premii delle virtu.” 68. Vellutello dedicates his commentary to Pope Paul III. Lodovico Dolce addresses his work to Coriolano Martirano, bishop of San Marco. Although Sansovino’s first edition of Landino’s and Vellutello’s commentaries was dedicated to Pope Pius IV, the last two editions were dedicated to Gugli- elmo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. Giovanni Antonio Rampazzetto, one of the printers, wrote the dedication to the 1578 edition. 69. Vellutello, jv-’jv. 70. Ibid., 8v. 218 Notes to Chapter 6 71. For an informative account of Francesco Sansovino’s popular histo¬ ries, see Paul F. Grendler, “Francesco Sansovino and Italian Popular History 1560—1600,” Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 139—80. 72. In addition to exposing Landino’s reliance on Boccaccio, Vellutello also severely criticized the Aldine text and Bembo’s editing of it: Un’altra cagione, che non meno importa, m’ha mosso ancora a questo, la qual e aver trouato gli antichi testi a penna, ma piu i moderni impressi a stampa, incorrettissimi, et sopra tutti quello impresso, e stampato da Aldo Manucci, che appresso di tutti e stato in tanta estimatione, perche auen- dolo, chi sotto nome di correttione I’ha quasi tutto guasto, doue non ha inteso concio a suo modo, e datolo col Petrarca insieme, sotto il medesimo nome, in tal modo concio, ad esso Aldo ad imprimere, Egli, confidandosi ne I’autorita del datore, impresse e I’uno [e] I’altro testo tale, qual da lui fu esporto, E di qua e nato, di questa comedia (che al Petrarca abbiamo gia rimediato) uno inconueniente grandissimo, perche quelli, che I’hanno da poi impresso co suoi comenti, pensando che Aldo abbia usato la dili- gentia in questa, che egli uso ne le cose Latine da lui impresse, hanno lasciato i testi, sopra de quali era stata comentata, et hannoui posto quello impresso da esso Aldo, il quale, per tal sua incorrettione, in molti luoghi dice una cosa, et il comento ne dice un’altra, che maggior inconueniente non poria essere. See Vellutello, Espositione, AAiiir. Ironically, Sansovino’s edition features Vellutello’s comments alongside the Aldine text of the poem. Vellutello s preface furnishes an important document of a commentator discussing the transmission of Dante. The preface addresses the interface between a work and society. It demonstrates dramatically how much more is at stake than simply explicating Dante. His remarks are shot through with the literary politics of the Cinquecento. For an insightful examination of Vellutello’s polemic with Bembo and his circle, see Belloni, “Un eretico,” 43-74. 73. Given the sumptuous format of this edition, it is interesting that this may have been the version familiar to the Friulian farmer, Menocchio. Carlo Ginzburg has speculated that Menocchio’s comments on cosmogony may have been influenced by Vellutello’s commentary to Purgatorio 10.124-25, in the 1578 version of the poem edited by Sansovino. See Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggto e i vermti II cosmo di un mugnaio del ^00 (Torino; Einaudi, 1976), 67. 74. For more detailed discussions of the 1595 Cruscan edition, see Barbi, Dante nel Cinquecento, 122—27; Severina Parodi, “Sugli autori della Divina Commedia di Crusca del 1595, ” Studi danteschi 44 (1967): 211—22. Earlier emendations to the Aldine edition had been introduced by Vellutello, Daniello, and Castelvetro, but these tend to modify the Aldine text rather than offer a substantially different version. Castelvetro’s observations, which Notes to Chapter 6 219 were added to his copy of the 1515 Aldine edition, found little resonance. His annotations constitute one of the most notable lacunae in the Comedy's publication history. Because Castelvetro’s commentary was incomplete— the exposition only covers the first twenty-nine cantos—and circulated in manuscript, his observations did not influence greatly subsequent commen¬ tators. 75. See Vittorio Russo, II romanzo teologico: Sondaggisulla "Commedia” di Dante (Naples: Liguori, 1984), 13; Pio Rajna, “II titolo del poema dantesco,” Studi danteschi 4 (1921): 36-37; Barahski, "Comedia-. Notes on Dante,” 30, respectively. For other discussions of the Comedy's title, see Erich Auerbach, Studi su Dante (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1966), 83-84; Franco Ferrucci, “Come¬ dia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies i (1971): 29-52; A. E. Quaglio, “Titolo,” in “Commedia f ed 2:79-118; R. S. Haller, Introduction to Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), ix-xlvii; O. Ciacci, Nuove mterpretazioni dantesche (Perugia: Volumnia, 1974), 5-26; Rossella D’Alfonso, “ ‘Comico’ e ‘Commedia’ appunti sul titolo del poema dantesco,” Filologia e critica 7 (1982): 3-41; and Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy. For a more complete bibliography on this subject, see the notes to Baranski’s article, “Comedia: Notes on Dante',' 52-53. 76. Quaglio, “Titolo,” ed 2:79. 77. Barahski, “Comedia : Notes on Dante,” 30. 78. I use “productivity” in the sense provided by Janusz Sfawihski in his article, “Reading and Reader in the Literary Historical Process,” New Lit¬ erary History 19 (1988): 528. Slawihski defines textual productivity in the following way: A text’s productivity is borne out by the extent and variety of reactions it has provoked in the course of the literary historical process. By reactions to a work I have in mind not only affirmative or polemical references found in other texts—allusions, parodic replications, uses of thematic material, adoptions of its compositional or stylistic solutions—but also the methods of comprehending and evaluating it, the languages of criti¬ cal interpretation it has inspired, the aspirations and desires of the public it has managed to satisfy or provoke. A text’s high productivity rating will depend on the breadth, intensity, and durability of the sphere of re¬ actions, as well as their variety (internally dramatized). If the criterion of originality is the breach made in the encountered literary system, then the measure of productivity is the “literary turnover” over the ensuing years. 79. Scholars would do well to keep in mind Folena’s remarks concerning the uncertainties surrounding the poem’s circulation: “pochissimi elementi sicuri possediamo sulla composizione e sulla pubblicazione della Divina Commedia" See Folena, “La tradizione,” 51. 80. For a discussion of the tendency of scholars to occlude lacunae in 220 Notes to Chapter 6 our knowledge of Dante’s life, see Dante Della Terza, “An Unbridgeable Gap? Medieval Poetics and the Contemporary Dante Reader,” Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976): 65-76. 81. McGann, “Keats and the Historical Method,” 23-24. 82. Dionisotti’s observation seems to have been made in passing. Maria Corti refers to Dionisotti’s statement at the beginning of her Dante a un nuovo crocevia (Florence: Sansoni, 1981), 9. 83. Amilcare lannucci alludes to the Comedy's “producerly” qualities in the foreword to “Dante Today,” Quademi d’italianistica 10 (1989): iv. 84. Barolini argues that “Dante’s title is not intended to work in a con¬ ventional context, but to point the way out of it; precisely because it eludes conventional understanding, it was altered in the Venice edition of 1555 by Lodovico Dolce, who added the adjective divina and thereby unwittingly rendered it redundant. But Dolce’s apparent oxymoron has at least the merit of preserving the paradoxical nature of the original, which serves as the key to a paradoxical hermeneutics: as a title that embodies the principle of conversion. Comedia contains in itself the dialectic of the poem’s totali¬ tarian instability, its volatile peace.” See Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the "Comedy” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 286. 85. Rajna, “II titolo,” 37. 86. Mambelli, Annali, 25, also makes this point. 87. Barolini, Dante’s Poets, 286. 88. I am indebted to Renzo Bragantini for this observation. 89. See Baranski, "Comedia : Notes on Dante,” 31; Barolini, Dante’s Poets, 285. I am not suggesting that there are dire consequences to such misstate¬ ments. It is perfectly possible, under a progressive critical bias, to believe that the function of criticism is to produce an interpretation so compelling that it renders earlier readings obsolete. This belief has been a productive ideology for modern criticism. My point is that it is not the only basis for a critical procedure, and perhaps not the best one. 90. As this range of titles suggests, there is a notable gap between the medieval preoccupation with the classification of the poem’s title and Re¬ naissance commentators’ disinterest in this kind of critical procedure. No medieval commentaries to the Comedy were printed after the publication of Landino’s commentary in 1481. The overwhelming preference for Lan- dino’s commentary dramatically underlines the abandonment of a particu¬ larly medieval mode of reading. 91. I am indebted to Renzo Bragantini for this observation. 92. Francesco Barberi, II frontespizio nel libro italiano del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento (Milan: II Polifilo, 1969), 1:89. For similar observations con¬ cerning tbe difference between the actual title of a work and “editorial” Notes to Conclusion 221 titles, see Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), 88-93; Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (New York: Criterion, 1974), 105-14; and Gerard Genette, “Les Titres,” in Seuils (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987), 54-97. 93. On this point, see Barberi, Frontespizio, 88; Quondam, “Mercanzia, 53-103- 94. For a summary of Renaissance discussions of the Comedy's genre, see Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 1:819-911. Conclusion 1. The terms “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” are Wellek’s and Warren’s. See Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3d. ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977). 2. McGann, The Beauty of Inflections, 25. 3. Stawihski, “Reading and Reader,” 528. 4. For a discussion of commentary’s supplemental relation to the text, see Stierle, “Studium,” 115-27. Selected Bibliography Aldo Manuzio editore: dediche, prefazioni, note at testi, edited by Giovanni Orlandi. Introduction by Carlo Dionisotti. 2 vols. Milan: II Polifilo, 1975. Alighieri, Dante. Convivio. In Opere minori, vol. i, pt. 2, edited by Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988. -. Monarchia. In Opere minori, vol. 2, edited by Bruno Nardi. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. -. Vita Nuova. In Opere minori, vol. i, pt. i, edited by Domenico De Robertis. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. Alighieri, Jacopo. Chiose alia cantica dell’ "Inferno” di Dante Alighieri scritte da Jacopo Alighieri, edited by Jarro [Giulio Piccini]. Florence: Bemporad, 1915. -. Chiose air "Inferno,” edited by Saverio Bellomo. Padua: Ante- nore, 1990. Alighieri, Pietro. Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, edited by Vincenzo Nannucci. Florence: Piatti, 1845. -. II Commentarium all’ "Inferno”, edited by Roberto della Vedova and Maria Teresa Silvotti. Florence: Olschki, 1978. Allen, J. B. “Commentary as Criticism: Formal Cause, Discursive Form, and the Late Medieval Accessus.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latim Lova- niensis, edited by J. Ijsewijn and E. Kessler. Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1973. -. The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Alunno, Francesco. Della fabrica del mondo di M. Francesco Alvnno da Fer¬ rara, libri X. Ne qvali si contengono le voci di Dante, del Petrarca, del Boccaccio, e d’altri buoni auttori .... Venice: Francesco Sansovino, 1560. Anonimo Fiorentino. Commento alia "Divina Commedia” d’Anonimo Fio- rentino del secolo XIV, edited by Pietro Fanfani. 3 vols. Bologna: Roma- gnoli, 1866-74. Anonimo Lombardo. Anonymous Latin Commentary on Dante’s "Comme¬ dia”: Reconstructed Text, edited by Vincenzo Ciolfari. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1989. Ascarelli, Fernanda, and Marco Menato. La tipografia del ’^00in Italia. Flor¬ ence: Olschki, 1989. 224 Selected Bibliography Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis, translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953. -. Studi su Dante. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1966. Auvray, Lucien. Les Manuscripts de Dante des bibliotheques de France. Paris: Thorin, 1892. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. 2d. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. Bambaglioli, Graziolo. II Commento dantesco di Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli dal "Colombino” di Siviglia con altri codici rajfrontato, edited by A. Fiam- mazzo. Savona: Bertollotto, 1915. Barahski, Zygmunt G. “Significar per verba : Notes on Dante and Plurilin- gualism.” The Italianist 6 (1986): 5-18. -. “Dante’s (Anti-) Rhetoric: Notes on the Poetics of the Comme- dia’.’ In Moving in Measure: Essays in Honour of Brian Moloney, edited by Judith Bryce and Doug Thompson. 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Witt, Ronald. “The De Tyranno and Coluccio Salutati’s View of Politics and Roman History.” Nuova rivista storica 53 (1969): 434-74. -. “The Concept of Republican Liberty in Italy.” In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1970. 242 Selected Bibliography -. Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Worlds, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati. Durham: Duke University Press, 1983. Witte, Karl. Essays on Dante, translated and edited by C. Mabel Law¬ rence and Philip H. Wicksteed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mif¬ flin, 1898. Index Accessus ad auctores, 36, 37, 38, 39, 62, 174 n.23. See also Prologues Alberti, Leon Battista, 91 Albizzi, Rinaldo degli, 53, 54, 180 n.8 Alighieri, Dante, 122; Comedy. 30-34, 58-59, 80, 114, 115, 118, 199 n.23, n-5L 216 n.67, 217 n.67; manuscripts of the Comedy, 131, 132; Renaissance editions of the Comedy, 132-151; title of the Comedy, 151-158, 220 n.90; Con- vivio, 28; and the Estensi, 63-64, 186 n.32; and Filelfo, 53-57; Ghibellinism, loy, Monarchia, 31, 58; the Reformation and, 145; the Risorgimento and, 6; in Sacchetti’s tales, 130-131; self¬ commentary, 27-28; Vita Nuova, 27, 172 n.7; De vulgari eloquentia, 6, 152 Alighieri, Jacopo, 18, 29, 31, 43-44, 166 n.31 Alighieri, Pietro, 4-5, 29, 44, 115, 116, 174 n.23 Allegory, 43-45, 78, 96, 105 Allen, J. B., 36 A 1 segno della Speranza (printer), 146 Alunno, Francesco, 193 n.64 Anonimo Fiorentino, 42, 67-69, 87, 115, 175 n.30, 190 n.46 Anonimo Lombardo, 18, 29 Aretino, Pietro, 112 Ariosto, Lodovico, 112 Aristotle, 112, 149, 157, 158, 172 n.8 Auerbach, Erich, 159 Azzo VII d’Este, 64, 186 n.32 Azzo VIII d’Este, 35, 63, 64, 186 n.30, 186 n.31, 187 n.34 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 21, 46, 176 n.34 Baldini, Baccio, 136 Balthazar de Gabiano, 140 Bambaglioli, Graziolo, 16, 29, 31-34,42, 44, 174 n.19 Baranski, Zygmunt, 28, 151, 154 Barberi, Francesco, 157 Barbi, Michele, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 76 Barolini, Teodolinda, 153, 154, 220 n.84 Baron, Hans, 65, 187 n.36 Bartoli, Adolfo, 3-5, 6, 9, 10, 23, 166 n.28 Barzizza, Gasparino, 47, 73 Barzizza, Guiniforte, 47, 72, 73-75, 184 n.19, ^9^ ^-54 Bee, Christian, 124-125, 129, 216 n.67, 217 n.67 Bellomo, Saverio, 19, 166 n.31 Belloni, Gino, 196 n.90, 197 n.90 Bembo, Carlo, 140 Bembo, Pietro, 141, 145; and edit¬ ing of Aldine Dante, 202 n.51; and Gabriele, 98-99, too, loi, 107, 108, III, 112, 116, 206 n.2i; Vellutello’s treatment of, 38,196 n.90, 197 n.90 Benali, Bernardino, 137, 153, 211 n.34 Benivieni, Girolamo, 141, 142, 143, 214 n.51 Benvenuto da Imola, 34-35, 47, 69, 115, 175 n.30, 183 n. 18, 184 Index 244 Benvenuto da Imola (continued) n.i8,184 n.20, 185 n.24,185 n.25, 186 n.30, 193 n.6o, 199 n.14; on Brutus and Cassius, 60-62, 65- 67, 86; on Cato, 189 n.42; and the Estensi, 37, 62-64, 74, 187 n.34 Bertrando del Poggetto, 31 Biagi, Guido, 9, ii, 13, 166 n.28 Bigi, Emilio, 76 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 12, 40-41, 44, 62,116, 132, 149, 152, 174 n.23, 175 n.29,175 n.30, 184 n.i8,185 n.23, Bologna, Carlo, 109 Bonaventure, Saint, 26, 28 Bonini, Bonino de’, 136, 211 n.33, 212 n.37 Borghesi, Diomede, 109 Botticelli, Sandro, 89, 136 Bowers, Fredson, 127 Braccio, Gabriele, 111 Bracciolini, Poggio, 62, 180 n.9 Broccardo, Antonio, 111 Bruni, Leonardo, 56, 62, 66, 70-72, 75, 83,180 n.8,190 n.50 Brutus, Decimus Junius, 66, 68, 189 n.40 Brutus, Marcus Tullius; in Alunno’s Della fabrica del mondo, 193 n.64; in the Anonimo Fiorentino’s commentary, 67-69; in Ben¬ venuto’s commentary, 60-62, 65-67, 189 n.42; in Bruni’s Ai/ Petrum Paulum Histrum, 70- 72; in Buti’s commentary, 67-68; in Daniello’s commentary, 86; in Dante’s Comedy, 58-59; in Gabriele’s commentary, 85-86, 103-104; in Landino’s com¬ mentary, 81-85; in Serravalle’s commentary, 68-69; Tre¬ cento commentaries, 188 n.39; in Vellutello’s commentary, 86-87 Buonanni, Vincenzo, 141 Burgofranco, Jacob, 142, 154 Burkhardt, Jacob, 107 Burton, Robert, 111 Buti, Francesco di Bartolo da, 18, 67-68, 115, 116, 189 n.44, 189 n.45 Caesar, Augustus, 61 Caesar, Julius, 181 n.12; in Bar- zizza’s commentary, 73-75, 192 n.59; in Benvenuto’s commen¬ tary, 60-61, 64-65,182 n.17; in Daniello’s commentary, 182 n.17, 183 n.17; Dante’s Comedy, 58-59, 181 n.14; Landino’s commentary, 82-84,183 n.17 Caglio, Anna Maria, 177 n.37 Capcasa, Matteo, 137, 153, 211 n.34 Cardini, Roberto, 37, 64, 78, 194 n.69 Carducci, Giosue, 6, 7, 9 Casella, Mario, 15 Cassius, Gaius Longinus. See Brutus, Marcus Tullius Castelvetro, Lodovico, 182 n.i6, 218 n.74, 219 n.74 Castravilla, Ridolfo, 157 Catiline, 60-61 Cavalcanti, Guido, 27, 173 n.14 Cavallari, Elisabetta, 13, 45 Cecco d’Ascoli, 31-32 Chiose Ambrosiane, 1 8 Chiose Selmiant, 29 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 60, 61, 64 Cino da Pistoia, 27 Cionacci, Francesco, 10, ii, 166 n.28 Colomb De Batines, Paul, 5, 9 Commentary: in Biagi’s edition of Dante, 11-14; as bricolage, 77; cumulative aspect of, 39-40, 57, 69, 87, 115-116; dialogism in, 46-48, 176 n.34; digression in, 40-43, 45~47’ elimination of, 137,140-143; nineteenth-century views of, 4-9; recent scholarship on, 18-20; and society, 46, 55- 57, 59, 87-88, 218 n.71; theory of, 170 n.3, 171 n.3 Index 245 Compagni, Dino, 30 Congreve, William, 128 Connell, Susan, 217 n.67 Conrad of Hirsau, 26 Corner, Pietro, 217 n.67 Crescimbeni, Giovanni Maria, 109 Croce, Benedetto, 14-15, 18, 159 D’Ancona, Alessandro, 3-4, 6-7, 9 Daniello, Bernardino, 18, 87, 203 n.3, 206 n.29, 218 n.74; on Brutus and Cassius, 86; Della poetica, 113; dependence on Gabriele, 109-123, 203 n.5, 204 n.5, 205 n.17, 206 n.22, 206 n.32; commentary on Petrarch, 109-110, 117 Dartmouth Dante Project, 18, 22-24, 1^0 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 146 De Biase, A., 121-122 Del Garbo, Dino, 173 n. 14 Della Casa, Giovanni, 112, 149 Della Magna, Nicolo, 136 Del Lungo, Isidoro, 10 Del Tuppo, Francesco, 94, 135 De Nores, Calcerando, 111 De Nores, Giason, 111 Derrida, Jacques, 171 n.3 De Sanctis, Francesco, 6-7 De Tournes, Jean, 146-147 Dionisotti, Carlo, 13, 19, 94, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 152, 178 n.47, 189 n.42, 213 n.45, 213 n.46, 220 n.82 Divtsio textus, 27, 172 n.6 Dolce, Lodovico, 147, 148, 153, 181 n.i6, 182 n.i6, 220 n.84 Donati, Lamberto, 142, 214 n.52 Donato, Girolamo, 98 Doni, Anton Francesco, 216 n.66 Elie, Hubert, 214 n.54 Eliot, T. S., 159 Epistle to Cangrande, 16, 17, 20, 152 Escarpit, Robert, 124, 129, 130 Eskreich, Pierre, 147 Este family: Azzo VII, 64, 186 n.32 Azzo VIII, 35, 63, 64, 186 n.30, 186 n.31,187 n.34; Niccolo II, 34 37, 62-64, 1^4 n.i8; Obizzo II, 63, 64, 186 n.30, 186 n.31, 187 n-34 Farri, Domenico, 146, 147 Federigo da Montefeltro, 199 n. 19 Ferraii, Giacomo, 73, 192 n.54 Ficino, Marsilio, 38, 89, 91, 107, 116 Field, Arthur, 76, 80, 97, 194 n.69 Filelfo, Francesco, 53-57, 179 n.6, 180 n.8 Fiske, Willard, 8, 165 n.21 Floriani, Piero, 113 Folena, Gianfranco, 219 n.79 Formalism, 130 Freccero, John, 159 Gabriele, Trifone, 38, 47, 89-90, I lo-i 12, 114-115, 197 n.90, 200 n.32, 200 n.34; 3rid Bembo, 107- 108, 206 n.2i; on Brutus and Cassius, 85-86, 103-104; on Cato, 107; commentary on Dante, 102- 103, 198 n.3, 203 n.5; critique of Landino, 97-108, 117, 121, 200 n.35, 206 n.31; on Dante’s Ghibellinism, 201 n.40; influence on Daniello, 109-23, 200 n.28, 206 n.22, 206 n.32 Garin, Eugenio, 57, 180 n.8, 191 n.53 Gelli, Giovan Battista, 157 Ginzburg, Carlo, 218 n.73 Giolito, Gabriele, 144, 147, 153, 211 n.34, 215 n.62 Giolito, Giovanni, 144, 146, 147 Giovanni del Virgilio, 30, 56 Giunti, Filippo, 141-143 Giunti, Luc’Antonio, 142, 211 n.34 Giustiniani, Tommaso, 200 n.32 Gralton, Anthony, 40, 137, 170 n.i Gramsci, Antonio, 97, 199 n.26 246 Index Greene, Thomas, 113 Greg, Walter, 127 Grendler, Paul, 215 n.6o Griffo, Francesco, 140, 215 n.58 Gryphe, Sebastian, 146 Guido da Pisa, 17, 29, 31, 42, 44-45, 177 n.37,177 n.39, 178 n.41,186 n.29 Guizzardo da Bologna, 173 n.14 Gundersheimer, Werner, 63 Hirsch, Rudolf, 135 Hollander, Robert, 19, 23,165 n.26 Horace, 174 n.23, 203 n.5 Imitation, i lo-i 14 Index of Prohibited Books (Pauline Index of 1559), 145 Isocrates, 112-113 Jauss, Hans Robert, 21 Jerome, Saint, 25-26, 40, 69,170 n.i John of Salisbury, 181 n.12 Kallendorf, Craig, 76, 77, 80,195 n.74 Keats, John, 129 La Favia, Louis, 45, 185 n.24 Lana, Jacopo della, 12, 29, 31, 41, 166 n.30,168 n.42, 175 n.32, 177 n.34,193 n.63; commentary on Dante, 16, 17, 176 n.34; edited by Nidobeato, 74, 134,135 Lancia, Andrea. See Ottimo com¬ mentator Landino, Cristoforo, 47, 115,117, 195 n.74, ri- 5 L on Brutus and Cassius, 12, 81-85, 103-104, 193 n.64,196 n.82; on Cato, 105-106, 201 n.46, 202 n.46; commentary on Dante, 37-38, 76-79, 89-90, 101-102, 108,116, 119, 135, 136, 144, 194 n.69, 196 n.82,198 n.14, 199 n.23, 201 ri.38, 206 n.31; commentary on Virgil, 79; on Dante’s Ghibellinism, 201 n.40; on Dante’s language, 95-97, 100- loi; edited by Sansovino, 120, 148-149; and the Medici, 79-81, 84-85, 106, 195 n.74; and Neo¬ platonism, 78, 102,119, 194 n.69, 195 n.69; printing of, 136, 202 n.53; use of allegory, 45, 66, 78, 96, 105, 199 n.25, 201 n.44; on the vernacular, 91-94 Lanzoni, Ermanno, 63 Lazzari, Alfonso, 186 n.32 Lentzen, Manfred, 79,106 Lenzoni, Carlo, 157 Loschi, Antonio, 73, 75 Lowry, Martin, 137,140,142 Luiso, F. P., 13 Luther, Martin, 121 McGann, Jerome, 124,128-130 McKenzie, Donald, 124, 126-128, 129,130, 131,150 Mambelli, Giuliano, 209 n.25 Manetti, Antonio, 141, 142,143, 149, 214 n.51 Manutius, Aldus, iii, 135, 137-140, 196 n.90, 197 n.90, 213 n.42, 213 n.49, 215 n.57, 215 n.58 Marcolini, Francesco, 85, 144 Marsuppini, Carlo, 91,179 n.6,180 n.8,180 n.9 Material production, 124-130; and Dante, 151-158 Mazzoni, Francesco, 14, 15-17, 42, 45, 68, 176 n.34,177 '^•34’ n.2i Medici, Cosimo de’, 53,179 n.6,180 n.8 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 91-93, 94, 97 ' 195 n.79 Medici, Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de’, 136 Michelangelo, 149 Minnis, Alastair, 20, 28, 39, 172 n.8 Momigliano, Attilio, 15 Moore, Edward, 8, 10, 13 Index 247 Morando, Giovan Antonio, 146 Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo, 217 n.67 Mussato, Albertino, 173 n.14 Nibia, Martino Paolo. See Nido- beato, Martino Paolo Niccoli, Niccolo, 56, 70-72, 179 n.6, 180 n.8, 193 n.63 Niccolo II d’Este, 34, 37, 62-64, ^^4 n.i8 Nidobeato, Martino Paolo, 47, 74-75,76, 87, 93-94, 135 Noakes, Susan, 217 n.67 Norton, Charles Eliot, 8 Nuovo, Angela, 214 n.53 Obizzo II d’Este, 63, 64, 186 n.30, 186 n.31, 187 n.34 Ottimo commentator, 19, 29, 33, 173 0.19,1740.19,1770.35,1770.38 Paganini, Paganino de’, 211 n.34, 214 n.53 Paganino, Alessandro, 142-144, 214 n.52, 214 n.53, 214 n.54 Paolazzi, Carlo, 183 n. 18 Paoletti, Lao, 184 n.i8, 185 n.25 Patterson, Annabel, 79, 80, 170 n.i Pazzi conspiracy, 106, 107 Perez de Guzman, Fernan, i to Fertile, Lino, i to, 116, 198 n.3, 206 n.22, 214 n.54 Petrarch, Francesco, 56, 62, 99, 115, 117, 118, 120, 122, 132, 144, 145, 147, 149, 152, 196 n.90, 197 n.90, 203 n.5, 206 n.2i, 215 n.57, 216 n.67 Picone, Michelangelo, 19 Pietro da Figino, 137 Pietro da Fino, 85, 119, 144, 145, 215 n.6o Pillinini, Stefano, 215 n.57 Plagiarism. See Imitation Plato, I to, 112 Poletto, Giacomo, 10 Poliziano, Agnolo, 91, 98 Pontano, Giovanni, 111 Printing of Dante’s Comedy, in Italy, 48, 94-95, 130-145, 147- 151, 202 n.51, 202 n.53, 211 n.34 in Lyon, 146-147 Priuli, Alvise, 111 Procaccioli, Paolo, 209 n.25 Prologues, 37-39. See also Accessus ad auctores Ptolemy of Lucca, 181 n.12 Querini, Vincenzo, 200 n.32 Quint, David, 72 Quondam, Amedeo, 124-126, 129-130, 132 Raimondi, Ezio, 115 Rajna, Pio, 151, 153 Ramberti, Benedetto, 111 Rampazzetto, Giovanni Antonio, 217 n.68 Renier, Rodolfo, 4 Renouard, Augustin, 140 Rezzi, Luigi Maria, 109 Rimondo, Vincenzo, 99, 115 Rinuccini, Alamanno, 195 n.79 Rocca, Luigi, 4, 5, 9-10, 45, 175 n.32 Rossi, Adamo, 215 n.58 Rossi, Vittorio, 29 Rouille, Guillaume, 146-147, 211 n.34 Rubinstein, Nicolai, 195 n.79 Russo, Luigi, 15 Russo, Vhttorio, 151 Sacchetti, Franco, 130-131 Salutati, Coluccio, 62, 72, 181 n.12, 185 n.24, 191 n.53 Sannazaro, Jacopo, 144 Sansovino, Francesco, in, 112, 120 148-150, 217 n.68, 218 n.72, 218 n73 Sansovino, Jacopo, 149 Sanvito, Bartolomeo, 140 248 Index Savonarola, Girolamo, 142 Scarabelli, Luciano, 164 n.17,166 n.30,176 n.34 Scartazzini, G. A., 10 Sceve, Maurice, 146 Scoto, Ottaviano, 136, 211 n.34 Serravalle, Giovanni, 47, 67-69,115, 190 n.47 Servius, 36, 45 Singleton, Charles, 159 Stawinski, Janusz, 159, 219 n.78 Smalley, Beryl, 36 Socrates, no, 112 Soranzo, Vettor, 111 Speroni, Sperone, 112 Stagnino Bernardino, 144,147, 157, 209 n.25, 211 n.34, 215 n-57 Stierle, Karlheinz, 171 n.3 Strozzi, Palla, 53, 54,180 n.8 Sutherland, John, 129 Talice da Ricaldone, Stefano, 183 n.i8 Thomas, Saint, 181 n.12 Torresani, Andrea, 213 n.49 Toynhee, Paget, 8, 13 Troth, Barthelmy, 140, 211 n.33 Valiero, Agostino, 99 Vallone, Aldo, 19, 42, 76,117, 120, 168 n.42, 184 n.20 Vandelli, Giuseppe, 13 Varchi, Benedetto, 112, 157 Vellutello, Alessandro, 89,116,117, 119-120,121, 135,149, 217 n.68, 218 n.72; on Aldine Dante, 175 n.26, 197 n.90, 218 n.72; and Bembo, 38, 116,120; on Brutus and Cassius, 86-87; commentary on Petrarch, 196 n.90, 197 n.90 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 62 Vernani, Guido, 31, 32 Vernon, George, 7-8, 22 Vernon, William, 8, 22 Veronese, Colombino, 94,135 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 53 Vettori, Pietro, 111 Villani, Filippo, 18 Villani, Giovanni, 31 Vindelin da Spira, 134,135, 210 n.26 Virgil, 28, 36, 107, 113, 114, 115, 116,117,118,119, 149, 200 n.28 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 47, 73-74 Wimsatt, W. K., 128 Witt, Ronald, 65,181 n.12,191 n.53 Witte, Karl, 5, 7, 9, 41, 42 Zane, Jacopo, 111 About the Author Deborah Parker is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. «> 'i- * 1 - r-" '<*• “ 5 • ' 4 ^ * ■vg, ,*:t ^ ■• . t; (%filiK«. iiSA •• ■ } Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parker, Deborah, 1954- Commentary and ideology : Dante in the Renaissance / Deborah Parker, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8223-1281-6 (cloth) I. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Divina commedia. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321—Criticism and interpretation—History. 3. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321—Influence. 4. Dante Alighieri, 1265—1321. Divina commedia—Bibliography. 5. Literature and society—Italy. I. Title. PQ4382.P37 1993 851'.!—dc20 92-12651 CIP DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 27706