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REESE LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

‘Received

Accession No. 2 yd a Class

 

 

 

 
 

 
 
 
 
DANTE

KARL WITTE
 
ESSAYS ON DANTE

BY

DR. KARL WITTE

(BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE TWO VOLUMES OF
¢DANTE-FORSCHUNGEN ’)

SELECTED, TRANSLATED AND EDITED WITH
INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND APPENDICES BY

C. MABEL LAWRENCE, B.A.

AND

PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, M.A.

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN and COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1898
25123

Edinburgh : T. and A. ConsTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
PQ 4390
W6S
1848

MALY

TOL L.TOA BR

AND

TO L. M..W.

C.M. 1. AND P. H.W.
NOTE

THE translation of the German portions of this work
was drafted by C. MABEL LAWRENCE, who has also
checked a great number of the references. For the
translation of the Italian portions and the revision and
editing of the whole, PrrLip H. WICKSTEED is respon-
sible.
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . © . 4 ; . .
LIST OF DR. WITTE'S WORKS ON DANTE . . ;
COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE TWO VOLUMES OF
THE ‘DANTE-FORSCHUNGEN ’ ; .
I. DANTE . . . . .
II. THE ART OF MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE
II. DANTE’S TRILOGY . cn X
IV. DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY . N
V. THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE INFERNO AND THE
PURGATORIO . + '. 2. : ; ;
VI. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE ABOUT THE YEAR I300
VII. DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI . .
VIII. RECENTLY DISCOVERED LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIERI
IX. GEMMA DONATI . : . : ; \ .
X. THE TWO VERSIONS OF BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE .
XI. DANTE'S REMAINS AT RAVENNA

. . °

XII. ON THE DATES OF DANTE’S THREE CANTICHE

. .

XIII. THE TWO EARLIEST COMMENTATORS ON THE DIVINE
COMEDY . : : N

XIV. ON THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE OTTIMO
COMENTO ON DANTE .

. . . .

XV. CONVIVIO OR CONVITO ?

XVI. DANTE AND UNITED ITALY

APPENDIX

PAGE
XIX
XX1

19
61

97

117
I53
170
208
222
262
294
303

310

350
368

374

420
 
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{UNIV 3
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INTRODUCTION

IF the history of the revival of interest in Dante which has
characterised this century should ever be written, KARL
Witte will be the chief hero of the tale. He was, as
we shall see, little more than a boy when, in 1823, he
entered the lists against existing Dante scholars, all and
sundry, demonstrated that there was not one of them that
knew his trade, and announced his readiness to teach it to
them.! The amazing thing is that he fully accomplished
his vaunt. His essay exercised a growing influence in
Germany, and then in Europe; and after five-and-forty
years of indefatigable and fruitful toil, he was able to look
back upon this youthful attempt as containing the germ of
all his subsequent work on Dante? But now, instead of
an audacious young heretic and revolutionist, he was the
acknowledged master of the most prominent Dante scholars
in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, and America.
And this is typical of the all but incredible story of
Witte’s life. He was born on July 1, 1800, at Lochau
bei Halle an der Saale. Before he had attained his majority
he had had the misfortune (one would have thought irre-
parable) of having had a work in two volumes written by
his father upon the development of his intellect.® It must
be said in excuse of the elder Witte that he yielded to an
exceptionally strong temptation. He was an educationalist,
and had taught his son himself. He maintained that the
boy had no exceptional talents, but he made such rapid

1 See Essay 11. in this volume. 2 See below, p. 61.
3 Karl Witte, etc. ; Leipzig, 1819.
X ESSAYS ON DANTE

progress as to matriculate in the University of Leipzig
when he was nine and a half years old, and take his Doctor’s
degree, with a thesis on the ¢Conchoid of Nicomedes,” a
curve of the fourth degree, before he was fourteen. His
linguistic was at least as great as his mathematical precocity.

In 1818 he travelled in Italy, and was in Florence at the
close of the year. Ostensibly, and to some extent actually,
he was studying law; but among the distractions which
he allowed himself was a very miscellaneous purchase and
examination of works of Italian literature. Amongst these
purchases were two expensive editions of Dante, a poet of
whom he confessed he had not read a single canto, and
whom he had been forbidden to read by the Florentine
lady who had undertaken to guide his Italian studies. ‘We
Italians,’ she said, ‘sometimes persuade ourselves that we
understand this extraordinary poem—but we do not. If a
foreigner sets about it we can scarcely repress a smile.
Our Admirable Crichton declares that he was somewhat
daunted by this announcement, but not altogether dis-
mayed. A friend with whom he was travelling had the
kind of acquaintance with Dante characteristic of those
days—he could declaim ‘La bocca sollevs’ and the rest of
the ¢Ugolino’ episode; to be followed (naturally) by
¢ Francesca da Rimini.” This friend successfully encouraged
young Witte to neglect the warnings of his fair admoni-
tress, and his Dante studies began there and then. It is
interesting to compare the very similar experiences of John
Carlyle, and to note the changed attitude of mind, which
has now turned from the ¢beauties of Dante’ to Dante, so
largely through the efforts of Witte himself.

At the beginning of 1820 Witte was in Rome, ex-
pounding the Inferno to an artistic circle there. In the
same year he formed a project for refuting, in an Italian
essay, the latest attempt (by Marchetti) to give a pre-

1 See the Introduction to his translation of the Inferno.
INTRODUCTION xi

dominantly political and secular turn to the allegory or the
poem. For the moment nothing came of this project, and
in November 1821 Witte found himself settled in Breslau
with no prospect of continuing his Dante studies. But
Fortune threw him in the way of a young lady whose
Italian studies had been broken off] to her great distress, by
the loss of her Italian master. Naturally Witte undertook
to supply his place ; and others attended the lessons. The
dignity of the occasion seemed to justify some general
¢ Introduction.” The material for the abandoned Italian
article; spoken of just now, was re-examined, and in
October 1823 the essay on the “Art of Misunderstanding
Dante,” which appears as the second essay in this volume,
was written. The following year it was published in
Hermes, and Witte had made his decisive entry upon the
branch of study which he was destined to transform.

Soon afterwards Kannegiesser, favourably known by his
translation of the Comedy, came to live at Breslau, and he
and Witte struck an alliance, the elder scholar accepting,
‘with most exemplary patience,” the co-operation of the
younger one, says the latter. Henceforth the stream of
Witte’s works on Dante flowed steadily : Translations,
Commentaries, Editions, Introductions, and Essays—nullum
fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.

Meanwhile Witte had been appointed in 1823 extra-
ordinary Professor of Law at Breslau. In 1829 he succeeded
to the ordinary Professorship, and in 1834 was transferred
to Halle, still as Professor of Law, a branch of study on
which he wrote important works.

‘He lived in Halle for nearly fifty years, a loved and
honoured teacher, a helpful and valued member of the
professorial staff, a true patriot who had boldly stood at the
head of the Preussenverein in the times of the Revolution,
a loyal conservative, a devout Christian and elder of the
church, a scholar overwhelmed with orders and distinctions,
xii ESSAYS ON DANTE

a tender husband and father, till a gentle death closed
his rich and singularly happy life on March 6th, 1883.’

This singularly happy life, however, had at one time
felt a shattering blow that made a complete cessation of
work and renewed foreign travel a pressing necessity. In
1825 Dr. Witte married, and lost his wife after only six
weeks of wedlock. The unmistakable ring of deep personal
experience, which even the casual reader could hardly fail
to recognise in certain passages of the essay on Dante,
written six years later, receives a moving commentary
from this event. In 1834 Dr. Witte married a second
time.!

A list of Dr. Witte’s works on Dante will be found at
the close of this Introduction, together with the complete
table of contents of the two volumes of essays and special
memoirs, the composition of which extends over the years
from 1823 to 1879, collected by the author in his Dante-
Forschungen, and issued respectively in 1869 and 1879.

These essays strike almost every note from the popular
lecture to the elaborate treatment of such technical
questions as the establishment of the text and the classi-
fication of manuscripts, and it is a selection from them
that is presented to the public in the present volume. As
to the wisdom of the selection made, the opinions of those
acquainted with the original will, of course, differ. The
principle adopted has been to omit: (1) those essays which
are chiefly of local or temporary interest, such as a number
of reviews of German translations of the Comedy; and
indeed reviews in general ; (2) those essays which are of a
preponderatingly technical character, and especially those
referring to the establishment of the text; (3) those essays
which appear to the editor (and here there will be abundant

1 The material for the above notes is gathered from Dr. Witte’s
introductions, an article in Meyer's Conversazions-Lexicon, and an
obituary notice kindly sent to me by Dr. Leopold Witte,
INTRODUCTION xiii

room for dissent) to be of secondary merit or interest.
There still remains great variety of subject and treatment.
Some passages are so technical that they will doubtless be
skipped by all but a few experts, and some so popular that
all except beginners will desire fuller details and ampler
references ; but there is no essay which, taken as a whole,
has not such general interest as appears to justify its
inclusion in a volume intended for the general reader;
and in the more technical or erudite portions of the essays
I have endeavoured to give (in the notes and Appendices)
such information as will enable the unlearned reader to
follow the argument and understand the references. Indeed,
the information contained in some of these notes is of a
very elementary character ; but it is just what every one is
supposed to know that no one is ever told ; and the student
is often left to a long, uncertain, and painful course of
inference with respect to the very foundations of some
portions at least of his subject.

The order of the essays, which was not chronological in
Witte’s own collection, has been so re-cast as to secure
something like a systematic sequence. The alternation of
youthful and mature, of popular and technical work, which
is the result, is certainly not unpleasant, and it is hoped
that it will not be found perplexing. The date of the com-
position of each essay is carefully pointed out, and should
not be forgotten by the reader.

The first three essays lay down Dr. Witte’s general
position, and place the reader at the point of view from
which he would have him look at Dante’s work as a
whole. Essays 1v. to vir. deal with matter directly illus-
trative of Dante’s works, with a growing reference to the
circumstances of his life; the last two forming a natural
transition to the next group (Essays 1x. to x1.), which deals
directly with biographical matters, and with the strange
history of Dante’s remains. Essays x11. to xv. refer to
xiv ESSAYS ON DANTE

dates, commentaries, and titles; and, finally, a concluding
essay examines the relation of Dante’s opinions to the
movement which resulted in the establishment of United
Italy.

In the original the more popular essays give the extracts
from Dante in translation, and the more scholarly ones give
the original text, with or without translations. I have
determined, though not without hesitation and reluctance,
to give translations in every case, except where the point of
the argument turns directly on the use of Italian words.
For experience (contrary to what we might expect) seems
to indicate that the majority of people, who want trans-
lations at all, like to have all the languages translated.
The logic is all the other way. There is no sense in
assuming that students of Dante who do not read German
will like to have French and Italian translated for them.
Many will not ; but I believe most will. I have therefore
presented the book in an entirely English dress, not without
a sigh. I can only hope that most of my readers will
count it for righteousness, for some (with whom I am
myself in sympathy) are sure to hold it in abomination.

The translations are in every case my own. I have
aimed at making them as literal as is compatible with strict
fidelity ; for it is easy to be so literal as to be distinctly
unfaithful, not only to the spirit, but to the bare meaning
of the author. As I am inclined to think it a positive
advantage to force the reader of a translation to recognise
the fact that he has not the words of the author himself
before him, and must not base any inferences on forms of
expression, I have been at no pains always to give the
same translation of passages which recur in different con-
nections. I have only to add in this connection that I am
conscious of here and there having borrowed a word, which
I should not have been likely otherwise to hit upon, from
Mr. George Musgrave’s translation of the Inferno, as well
INTRODUCTION x

as from some of Dr. Garnett’s translations, and probably
from other sources also.

I have made no effort to bring Dr. Witte’s essays,
especially in the matter of bibliography, up to date; but I
have tried to give the reader such indications that (so far
as my own knowledge extends) he shall never be left with
an essentially false impression as to the present position of
any branch of Dante study, or without the means of
pursuing his researches beyond the point at which they
stood when Dr. Witte wrote.

But a more delicate question remains. Apart from
matters of fact there is a considerable amount of contro-
vertible matter in Dr. Witte’s writings. To be acquainted
with them is desirable on every ground, and is often
essential to the bare comprehension of later work (such
as Dr. Scartazzini’s), which is already known in English
translations. But it seemed scarcely desirable that the
uninformed reader (and I hope that many, at least re-
latively, uninformed readers will study this book) should
be left without any indication of the difficulties which
Dr. Witte’s opinions on some subjects of importance have
to encounter, and the alternative views which should
be compared with them before a judgment is arrived at.
Here is a dilemma, for one of the most detestable forms
of literature is that in which an editor or translator
undertakes a running corrective and refuting commentary
on his author, with nervous anxiety lest the reader should
believe too much or too little. The editor who never
dares to trust his author and his reader together for fear
they should hatch mischief against Aim, who nervously
directs where they are to join, and where they are to part
hands ; who is perpetually thrusting obtrusive suggestions
between them, and fluttering and clucking to his chicks at
every second line, is a person who ought to be suppressed
by an inviolable conspiracy of inattention. I fear some
xvi ESSAYS ON DANTE

readers may think that I have not ‘reformed this alto-
gether,’ but I trust that I shall be found, at any rate by
comparison, to have ¢reformed it indifferently.” The plan
I have adopted is as follows :—

I have printed the essays exactly as they stand, and have
only added editorial notes where a word of explanation
seemed desirable for the better comprehension of the
author’s meaning, or in a few cases where a pertinent fact
might be added, which would presumably have been in-
serted by Dr. Witte himself had he had access to it, or
where it seemed clear that there was an oversight or mis-
statement of fact in the text. In this latter instance I
have almost always been careful to avoid pointing out any
bearing that the correction may have upon questions in
which my own views differ from those of the author.
Thus I have striven to let the author tell his own tale,
without distracting the reader’s attention. But for those
who wish for help in estimating the intrinsic value
of Dr. Witte’s main contentions, I have added notes
on the several essays in an Appendix, pointing out the
main difficulties involved in his positions, and indicating
my own view as to the direction in which we may look
for a more satisfactory solution. If I have here and there
given references, in the body of the essay, to these notes in
the Appendix, it is not with a view of interrupting the
reader, but simply for convenience of subsequent reference
and comparison, should he wish to re-examine any point
in dispute. I trust that by this means the objections to
the inclusion of alien and partly hostile matter may be
minimised, while any advantage that there may be in it
will be fully secured.

In the notes and Appendix I have made few acknow-
ledgments, and have scarcely attempted to indicate the
literature on the subject. Much of the material is common
property; nor do I claim originality for any views, or
INTRODUCTION xvii

credit for any citations, which I am not conscious of having
met with elsewhere. It is quite possible that they may
all have been brought forward in works that I have not
seen or have forgotten. I therefore make no claim to
originality in any particular ; but I think I can say that
I have given no statement in the Appendix or notes which
does not rest upon a direct study of the ultimate source
from which it professes to be derived.

Very special pains have been taken (supported by the
inexhaustible patience and courtesy that have long been
the tradition of the ¢ Central Desk’ in the British Museum
Reading Room) to verify the references throughout the
work, and to control Dr. Witte’s citations of the opinions
of other scholars. To some few of the books referred to
(notably Paur’s works and the fourth of Dionisi’s Aneddoti)
I have not been able to obtain access, but, with these few
exceptions, the works cited or referred to by Dr. Witte
have been examined. When such an examination reveals
a mistake in the figures of a reference, it is generally an
easy matter to correct it; but when (as will sometimes, even
if rarely, be the case) the authority appealed to does not
seem fully to support the statement based upon it, or to
justify the account given of it, the conscientious editor is
something in the position of him whose diligent and nightly
search under his bed is rewarded at last by the discovery of
a burglar. What is he to do next? The present editor
has endeavoured to treat each case on its own merits. A
silent rectification is sometimes possible. In other cases,
where this would seem too great a liberty to take with the
author’s work, a note has been added, and yet other cases
have been indicated by a query inserted in square brackets,
as on pp. 42 and 242. Dr. Witte himself has adopted this
last method for indicating statements in his early work by
which he is not prepared to stand, but which, for some
reason, he does not care to expunge or recast, as on p. 31 ;

-
xviii ESSAYS ON DANTE

but, as a rule, the reader will have no difficulty in dis-
tinguishing the queries of the editor from those of the
author ; and either may serve indifferently to warn him
against accepting the statements to which they are attached
too implicitly. Queries enclosed in round brackets are
always the author’s.

I have only to add that Dr. Witte (at any rate in the
first volume of the Forschungen) was scrupulous in in-
dicating any departures in his essays as reproduced in his
collected volumes from the form in which they originally
appeared, and also in distinguishing additions made re-
spectively in 1869 and 1878. Piety towards my author
has led me to follow him in observing a more scrupulous
care in this matter than I might otherwise have thought
necessary.

I have generally added the date of notes or insertions
made at the time of re-issue by the author, and when this
cannot conveniently be done they are included in square
brackets. My own notes are indicated by the addition of
¢Ep. In a few cases, which are quite insignificant, the
reader may have no means of knowing whether explana-
tory insertions in square brackets are by the author or
the editor.

P. H.W.
LIST OF DR. WITTE'S WORKS ON DANTE
[See Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 510, §11 5 vol. ii. p. 606.]

Saggio di emendazioni al testo dell” Amoroso Convivio di Dante Allighieri.
—C. W. le raccolse ; le pubblico il Profess. Odoardo Gerhard.
Giornale Arcadico di Roma, 1825 Agosto.

Dante Allighieri’s lyrische Gedichte, in Italian and German, by K.
Ludwig Kannegiesser. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1827.

The recension of the Italian text, and the essay ‘uber Aechtheit,
Bedeutung und Anordnung der lyr. Ged., die Dante
beigelegt werden’ (pp. 356-390), and the ¢ Anmerkungen’
(pp- 391-489), are due to Dr. Witte. Nine of the sonnets,
three of the canzoni, and three of the ballads were translated
by him.

The Italian text, with extracts from the notes, was reproduced
by Giovanni Fornaro: Le poesie liriche di Dante Allighieri.
Roma, Menicanti, 1843.

Dantis Allighieri Epistolae quae exstant, cum notis. Patavii, sub signo
Minervae (Vratisl. ap. editorem), 1827.

This work, with insignificant supplements to the explanatory
notes, has been incorporated into all later editions of Dante’s
Letters.
Dante Allighieri’s lyrische Gedichte iibersetzt und erklart von K. Ludwig

Kannegiesser und Karl Witte. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, Brock-
haus, 1842.

The ‘zweite Theil’ (pp. Ixxxii and 239) is exclusively the
work of Dr. Witte, together with the translations of nineteen
sonnets, six canzoni, and five ballads.

Alcuni supplimenti alla Bibliografia Dantesca del Sign. Visconte Colomb
de Batines. Lipsia, J. A. Barth, 1847.

Praefatio ad Dantis Allighieri Divina Commedia hexametris latinis
redditam ab Abb. dalla Piazza Vicentino. Lips., J. A. Barth, 18438.

Cento, e pin correzioni al testo delle Opere minori di Dante Allighieri
proposte agli ill. Sign. Acc. della Crusca. Halle, Hendel, 1853.

XIX
XX ESSAYS ON DANTE

Nuowe correzioni al Convito di Dante Allighieri. Lipsia, Weigel, 1854.
Die ersten Gesänge von Dantes Göttliche Komödie, als Probe einer neuen
Uebersetzung. Halle, Heynemann, 1861.
La Divina Commedia di Dante Allighieri ricorretta sopra quattro dei piu
autorevoli testi a penna. Berlino, Decker, 1862.
La Divina Commedia di Dante Allighieri. Edizione minore, fatta
sul testo dell’ edizione critica. Berlino, Decker, 1862.
The text of this edition was very accurately reproduced by
Eugenio Camerini: La Divina Commedia di Dante
Alighieri secondo la lex. di C. W., Milano, Daelli, 1864,
and forms the basis of the same scholar’s edition of the
Comedy, with Doré’s illustrations, Milano, Sonzogno, 1868-9.
The whole apparatus criticus is incorporated in: II Cod.
Cassinese della Divina Commedia per cura dei Monaci
Benedettini della Badia di Monte Cassino, 1865.

Dantis Allighieri Monarchia manuscriptorum ope emendata (Lib. 1.).
Hal. Formis Hendeliis, 1863.

Dante Allighieri’s Gottliche Komodie. Uebersetzt von Karl Witte. Berlin,
R. v. Decker, 1865. Two editions, 8vo and 16mo.

Dantis Allighieri Monarchia manuscriptorum ope emendata (Lib. ii.).
Hal. Hendel, 1867.

Seven articles in the Jahrbuch der deutschen Dante-Gesellschaft, vol. i.
Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1867.

Dantis Allighieri Monarchia (Lib. iii.). Halis, Formis Hendeliis, 1871.

Dantis Allighieri De Monarchia libri tres, codicum manuscriptorum ope
emendati. Editio altera. Vindob., Guil. Braumiiller, 1874.

Dante Allighieri’s Gottliche Komidie. Uebersetzt von Karl Witte. Dritte
Ausgabe. Erster Band—Text. Zweite Band—Erliuterungen.
Berlin, Decker, 1876.

La Vita Nuova di Dante Allighieri, ricorretta coll’ ajuto di testi a penna,
ed illustrata da Carl Witte. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1876.
COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE TWO
VOLUMES OF THE <DANTE-FORSCHUNGEN.

Vol. I. 1869.
VERLAG VON EmiL BARTHEL, HALLE.

I. Ueber Dante (1831), pp. 1-20. II. Ueber das Missverstindniss
Dantes (1824), pp. 21-65. III. Ruth, Studien uber Dante (1854),
pp. 66-71. IV. Wegele, Dantes Leben und Werke (1853),
pp. 72-95. V. Rossettis Dante-Erklarung (1829), pp. 96-106.
Zusatz, pp. 106-133. VI. Sull’ epoca delle tre Cantiche di Dante
(1827), pp. 134-140. VII. Dantes Trilogie, pp. 141-182. VIII.
Vier Ausgaben der Divina Commedia (1854), pp. 183-202. Zusatz,
pp: 202-204. IX. Bahr, Dantes Gottliche Komdodie nach Raum
und Zeit (1853), pp- 205-212. X. Deutsche Dantestudien im
Jahre 1855 (1856), pp. 213-225. XI. Dante im Norden (1856),
pp- 226-230. XII. Colomb de Batines,' Dante-Bibliographie (1847),
pp. 231-239. XIII. Zweite Crusca-Ausgabe der Divina Com-
media (1838), pp. 240-264. XIV. Princigis Ausgabe der Divina
Commedia (1853), pp. 265-269. XV. Marsand, Handschriften
der Divina Commedia (1836), pp. 270-277. XVI. Probecollationen
und Handschriften-Familien, pp. 278-292. XVII. Kannegiesser
und Streckfuss, Uebersetzung der Divina Commedia (1825),
pp- 293-317. Nachwort, pp. 317-319. XVIII. Kopisch, Ueber-
setzung der Divina Commedia (1838), pp. 320-336. XIX. Phila-
lethes, Uebersetzung der Divina Commedia (1866), pp. 337-353.
XX. Die beiden iltesten Commentare der Divina Commedia
(1828), pp- 354-393. Zusatz, pp. 393-398. XXI. Quando e da
chi sia comp. I'Ottimo com. (1846), pp: 399-417. XXII. Canzone
di Dante in morte di Arrigo VII. (1826), pp. 418-433. XXIII, Un-
gedruckte Gedichte Dantes (1828), pp. 434-460. XXIV. De Bar-
tolo a Saxoferrato Dantis studioso (1861), pp. 461-472. XXV. Neu
aufgefundene Briefe des Dante (1838), pp. 473-487. XXVI. Torris
Ausgabe von Dantes Briefen (1843), pp. 488-499. XXVII. Obser-
vatt. ad Dantis epist. nuncupatoriam (1855), pp. 500-507

xxi
xx11

LP

ESSAYS ON DANTE

Vol. II. 1879.
VERLAG VON GEBR. HENNINGES, HEILBRONN.

Jan von Florenz (1877), pp. 1-21. II. Dante’s Familienname
(1867), pp- 21-27. III. Dante’s Geburtstag (1867), pp. 28-31.
IV. Dante’s Gebeine in Ravenna (1867), pp. 32-42. V. Wusste
Dante Hebraisch (1867), pp. 43-47. VI. La Gemma di Dante
(1877), pp- 48-86. VII. Doppio testo della Vita di Dante (1877),
pp- 87-120. VIII. Dante’s Siindensystem (1877, 1878), pp. 121-
160. IX. Dante's Weltgebaude (1867), pp. 161-182. X. Die
Thierwelt in der Göttlichen Komödie (1869), pp. 183-193.
XI. Dante und die Grafen Guidi (1878), pp. 194-236. XII. Dante
und die italienischen Fragen, Ein Vortrag (1861), pp. 237-273.
Nachtrag dazu (1878), pp. 581-595. XIII. Scartazzini, Dante
Alighieri (1870), pp. 274-284. XIV. Jahrbuch der deutschen
Dante-Gesellschaft, ii. (1869), pp. 285-295. XV. Jahrbuch der
deutschen Dante-Gesellschaft, iv. (1878), pp. 296-327. XVI. Neuere
Arbeiten zur Texteskritik der Divina Commedia (1867, 1878),
pp- 328-427. (Including—a. Die Berliner Ausgabe u. deren
Kritiker., pp. 329-355; 6. Ausgaben der Divina Commedia u.
Abdricke von HSten derselben, pp. 356-400; c. Commentare
zur Divina Commedia, pp. 401-427.) XVII. Cod. del Laneo
asserv. a Francoforte (1871), pp. 428-441. XVIII. Frammenti
del Laneo (1871), pp. 442-454. XIX. Scartazzini’s Ausgabe der
Divina Commedia (1875), pp. 455-466. XX. Lord Vernon's
Dante (1871), pp. 467-483. XXI. HSten der Divina Commedia
in Constantinopel und Cagliari (1869 und 1878), pp. 483-495.
XXII. Notter Uebersetzung (1872), pp. 496-500. XXIII. Bartsch,
Dante’s Göttliche Komödie in deutsch. Terzinen (1877), pp-
501-523. XXIV. Rime inedite attribuite a Dante (1871), PP-
524-573. XXV. Convivio o Convito ? pp. 547-580. Nachweisung
der besprochenen Stellen u.s.w., pp. 596-602.
ESSAYS ON DANTE
 
 

BRESLAU, 1831

Inscribed to Domprediger Blanc of Halle
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 1-20 (1869).]

Tue Gothic cathedral has been regarded as the symbol of
that mediaeval spirit of which it is itself the purest product.
And it is easy to carry the comparison down into detail.
Two summits rise triumphantly above the chapels, arches,
gables, and pinnacles, as if inspiring and directing the
whole lift of the pile, and standing for the common
types of all the other parts. But even they, boldly as
they rise into the air, and mightily as buttress and pillar
thrust them upward, for the most part fail in their ascent
long ere the crowning point of the pyramid shows the way
beyond the clouds and casts upon the ground the dial-
shadow to regulate the ways of men. There are weird
traditions of how the wondrous building rose to such heights
through no rightful aid, how the Evil One himself had a
hand in their construction, here smuggling his buildings
into the world as the houses of God, there hurling down
the eager master-builder from the towers of the half-
finished work. And so the people look with shuddering
awe upon the pile—unfinished, yet beginning to fall to
pieces already,—and ever remain in doubt which side is
built in honour of God and which in honour of the devil.
A
2 ESSAYS ON DANTE

In like fashion the Empire and the Papacy at first rose
parallel and harmonious above medizval society. But they
soon forgot that both alike were but called to complete and
crown the visible Church of God ; and while each sought to
outstrip the other’s growth, each taxed the other with
serving the powers of darkness under pretext that they
were the powers of light; while all the time each was
trembling on its own foundations. ‘Then, as in the
Cathedral of Cologne, the lowly built their tabernacles
between the two, and none could guess that the twin giants
were portions of a single temple.!

In the thirteenth century, the Church, which looked to
the successors of St. Peter as her head, though not seriously
undermined by reformed doctrines and heresies, found a
formidable rival to her prestige in the growing spirit of
secular learning which was penetrating everywhere. The
scholastic philosophy, which the Arabian sages had been
largely instrumental in spreading throughout Europe, could
never give the lie to her heathen origin. For though the
philosophers claimed no more than hypothetical validity for
any conclusions they might reach on the field of revealed
truth, yet the mere fact that it was considered desirable to
find a basis in philosophy as well as in revelation for such
doctrines as the existence of God and the Incarnation,
implied the independent value attributed to philosophy in
this connection ; and it was only a small step further to
accept her teachings even in cases when they embodied
a real or apparent contradiction of the doctrine of the
Church. Under such guidance, men must have felt
impelled not merely to test and purge the Church doctrine,
but to exalt themselves above Christianity itself. For
they saw ignorant and greedy monks, like the degenerate
Franciscans, preaching a narrow superstition to the masses
with whom they fraternised, or the harsh Dominicans,

.! So was it [in 1831]; thank Heaven, it is no longer so [in 1869].
I.—DANTE 3

proclaiming a doctrine of loveless severity ; and the head
of the Church himself turning aside to worldly interests.
On the other hand, the pursuit of philosophy, which then
summed up every branch of knowledge, and was not yet
lost in the barbarities of form which afterwards strangled
it, would be far more attractive to the thoughtful mind, as
it opened out on every side vistas of new conquests in the
field of knowledge, and the overthrow of ancient prejudice.
Moreover, this philosophy received the homage of all the
bolder thinkers and leading spirits of the civilised world;
and the culture of Arabia, hand in hand with its joyousness
and its more refined luxury, penetrated to the courts of the
princes from Spain and Sicily alike. Amongst courts, that
of Frederick 11., which was the centre of this school of
thought, may be taken as a typical example, while amongst
the peoples the Provencals had gone furthest in this
direction. Now it was this very Frederick 1m. whom
the Church denounced as her greatest enemy, and her
attitude would have been the same, even if the court had
not been a centre of riotous living, immorality, and scoffing
impiety. The numerous political pamphlets disseminated
by Frederick, his chancellor and his followers, were the
first which disturbed the edifice of the Church and shook
her position in the minds of the peoples; though as yet
they were far from attaining the audacity of the later
lampoons written for Ludwig of Bavaria. At the end of
the century, then, the Church, under Boniface’s guidance,
was still free from the later enormities of the Popes of
Avignon, and appeared more daring, victorious, and exalted
than ever before ; but it was the exaltation of the volcano’s
cone, shooting upward with its last remaining strength ere
it falls in upon itself.

The Empire, which to the medizval imagination seemed
greater and mightier than that of Rome had ever been,
in point of fact was never strong enough to maintain the
4 ESSAYS ON DANTE

boundaries of its immeasurable realms against any attacks
which might be made on it; and in Dante’s day it pre-
sented a singular spectacle enough. It is like a deserted
city whose dreaded ruler, now turned to some totally
different quarter, has left gate and turret unoccupied, but
can yet protect his walls against the pressure of his enemies
by the mere terror of his name, a terror only to be
gradually dulled by the lapse of time. And in this sense
the legends are right enough when they recount how
Frederick Barbarossa remained in this life many years longer
than historians admit, a colossal figure seated on the
mountains. And whenever an ambitious Emperor directed
his gaze southwards, Frederick’s shadow stalked before
him, the Church seized her old arms against him, and the
people greeted him with the old homage. In fact it is but
a few years since the people of Rome built a triumphal
arch to celebrate the entry of their Emperor into the
city, in 1819. But the shrewd spirits well knew that this
Empire was but an impalpable phantom, and that the
decrees of her ruler could easily be set aside by a little
obstinacy or a show of concession. It was only to the
childlike and superstitious that it appeared as a terrible
¢Knecht Ruprecht’ It was but a hundred years since
the Italian cities had opposed the Emperor in serious and
honourable strife, as the faithful and obedient ¢estates’ of a
kingdom might unflinchingly resist a ruler who strove to
overthrow their ancient privileges. While this struggle
with the Emperor lasted the Papacy had been the one bond
of union to which the cities never refused to subordinate
themselves. This union had long since passed away, but
clever and self-seeking tyrants and demagogues had not
been slow to avail themselves of the old names of the
ecclesiastical or imperial parties in order to secure adherents
and outside help in their private struggles.

There were Ghibellines fighting in Italy at a time when
1.—DANTEN /8

no Emperor would have seriously thought of calling
Rome his capital. The fear of the Empire was still
inscribed in letters of blood on the walls of Milan, but the
respect which might have been paid it was already de-
stroyed, not so much by the fulminations of Alexander and
Innocent as by the indifference which the Emperors
themselves had shown, ever since the middle of the
century, with respect to all occasions for action beyond
the limits of Germany. The Ezzelins, the Malatestas,
and the Visconti oppressed their lately liberated subjects
with a cruelty unknown in the most brutal ages, and
in return the people were filled with a fierce lust of freedom
and passion for revenge. But with the last of the
Hohenstaufens the gentle restraining power of the Emperor
had entirely disappeared, and the cold, covetous Anjous
of Naples, more selfish than the Popes themselves, never
offered their help, even to their friends, except to bring
them under their own power. Tuscany again, while freer
from external tyrants than Lombardy or Romagna, was
torn by a yet fiercer strife of factions, which again and
again, while still fighting under the old names of the
adherents of Pope or Emperor, pitted the old noble houses
against the new aristocracy of wealth, or both together
against the fierce democracies, and often kept a good
half of the citizens in banishment from their homes.

Thus, the pillars of the age rose up, not as supports
to bear a mighty pediment, but as the crags bordering a
chasm whose yawning abyss threatened to engulf the
harvest and flocks around. Then came Dante’s divine
poem. The long-forgotten image of the great world-
minister, the eternal temple of the Holy Grail, appeared
once more to his eyes, and in holy zeal he hurled the dis-
figuring additions of a degenerate age from the sacred
pinnacles. He was so penetrated by the conviction that
the immeasurable edifice was not merely the Church of
6 ESSAYS ON DANTE

God, but the Will of God, that the thousand impediments
which met him disappeared before his entranced vision,
till it stood before him in its heavenly glory. The stones
‘which seemed all in revolt unite again and subordinate
themselves to the eternal harmony, and the scene of strife
is—not swallowed in the peace of death, but—transformed
into the temple of the Lord. So Dante stands as an idealist
in the midst of his age, and preaches the gospel of the
kingdom of God, an offence to one party and foolishness
to the other. And the man who thus reaches out his hand
to grasp the wheel of history is not a mighty prince, but
a needy exiled poet, who at first, not so much by choice
as by the accident of birth, belonged to the more moderate
of the Guelfic factions, but afterwards united more intim-
ately with the friends of the Emperor, or rather strove to
set himself entirely free from any blind partisanship, and
thereby made his friends on one side as few as on the other.
He chides the Emperor for his dilatoriness, and summons
him to put an end to the feuds and tyranny of the small
principalities, and to restrain France’s shameless greed for
gold and land. He chides the Pope, not in order to over-
throw the power of the Papal See in the Church, and
thus to reform Catholicism, but to urge him to set his
face against priestly greed and underhand interference in
the affairs of the world, that the two pillars of Christen-
dom may stand together in harmony, the one turned to
the North, and the other to the South. He is a Ghibelline,
then, inasmuch as he sees that the equilibtium is disturbed
to the disadvantage of the Empire, but he puts a strict limit
to the power of the Emperor, he preserves the deepest rever-
ence for the Papacy, he attacks the Ghibelline Ezzelino
and praises the Guelf Malaspina, while the furious cham-
pions of Frederick’s cause and the lampoonists of Ludwig
of Bavaria would both have regarded him as a menial of the
Pope’s.
1—DANTE 7

The two world-pillars are based on Faith and Obedience.
Peter’s successor must arouse and maintain, in the breasts of
the people committed to his charge, a sincere and humble
piety, and an unconditional dependence on the teaching of
that Church with whom Christ had promised ever to abide
until the end of the world. He must lead his flock in good
works, and above all in a spirit of humility; and must
teach them to render unto Cesar the things that are
Cezsar’s. For the Emperor’s power, too, must be recog-
nised and respected, as given him by God for the ordering
and guidance of all the relations of civil life. Dante turns
a deaf ear to proud dreams of State reform and the plausible
demand for legal guarantees, such as crowd upon us in
this latter age, when the easiest of all the virtues, that of
obedience, is fleeing from the earth. The moral signi-
ficance of the commonwealth forms a part of his religion,
and he sees in the true monarchy the only possible realisa-
tion of this commonwealth. He finds the safeguards
against tyranny in the height at which the Emperor stands
above private passions, and in the divine spirit that guides
history. In State, therefore, as in Church, he can only
see salvation in joyous unwearying obedience.

But the inspired poet does not drop into a mere teacher
of bald political wisdom. He does not stand outside and
trace the plan of the temple on the barren sand, but takes
his consecrated place on the altar steps, and through the
clouds of incense he holds the symbol of redemption before
the people, well knowing that the tabernacle in his hands
is the true model of the finished edifice, reproducing at
the same time the archetype of the universe and the
invisible Church of God. The matter of his song is his
(or rather humanity’s) wanderings from the way of God,
and rescue through the Christian faith ; yet with one arm
he embraces the abyss of Hell, and with the other he
reaches the utmost Heaven with its countless stars. Even
8 ESSAYS ON DANTE

so! For the redemption of mankind is at the same time
the peace of humanity, and the well-ordered and pious city
is a distant reflex of the heavenly Jerusalem; and all through
nature we find the reflection of the fall and the redemption
of man.

Thus the most special and the most universal aspects of life
are intertwined throughout the whole poem. Insignificant
details of daily life, and struggles for the Empire of the
World prolonged through centuries, nay, the very conflict
between good and evil itself—all meet and find in each
other the symbols that interpret and complete them.
Hence the poem embraces the universe as no other does;
but it is not by vagueness of outline that it would make us
feel the conception of eternity. Sharp and clear the edifice
stands before us as a medieval Cathedral, and shoots its
tapering pinnacles into the ether. Dante’s Hell does not
float in the Kimmerian mists of Homer, his Paradise is not
volatilised, like Klopstock’s, into a ¢ veil woven of beams of
primal light,’ but he draws the eternal spaces with a firm,
clean sweep of hand, so that the imagination can traverse
them step by step. And for that very reason the place he
has drawn is no product of a feverish dream, like Breughel’s
wild Hell-scapes, but is based firm on the uncontested teach-
ings of the science of his age, and the time-honoured beliefs
of the people. And yet the depths of symbolic meaning
with which he has inspired it, and the artistic form into
which he has thrown it, make it a creation all his own.

Thus Dante belongs neither to the ancient nor to
modern thought, nor yet does he float like a feather
through the ages, striking no roots anywhere. In him are
focussed all the rays of the Middle Ages, and the inimical
and contradictory tendencies of the time unite, not to
neutralise each other like magnetic forces and produce in-
difference, but to combine like the colours, that are severally
the symbols of conflicting parties, at the focus of white and
I—DANTE 9

shining light. In the vault that spans the great nave he is
borne up by the counter-thrust of the blocks on either side,
and confines them as the keystone of the arch; just as
in the churches of the period the representation raised high
over the west entrance so often gives the key to all the
varied and changing frescoes that adorn the walls which
stretch on either side. Or we might compare the poet to
the lotus-bloom, the symbol of the eternal life, which floats
in peaceful beauty over the raging waves, while Brahma,
lost in self-contemplation, journeys in her and moves the
universe from stage to stage. So the personality of the poet
is lost in consummated objectivity ; and just as the priest
of the faith to which this song is dedicated sinks his own
failings and idiosyncrasies, to appear solely as the instru-
ment of God, so has Dante’s life passed away, wellnigh
without a trace, in that history of which his poem con-
stitutes a whole epoch ; whereas we can record the doings of
wellnigh every week of the life of his pleasant, friendly,
vain contemporary, Petrarch !

Unappreciative centuries have passed thoughtlessly by
the temples of Pastum and the erections of Medieval
Teutonism alike. And in the same way the short-sighted
vision of later ages, estranged from the spirit of Dante’s
immortal poem, though not exactly ignoring it, has been
incapable of recognising the splendour of the outward
form, much more of penetrating into the inner spirit, or
comprehending its deep symbolism and its wealth of
allegorical meaning. Dare we attempt to catch the funda-
mental thought of the Divine Comedy, and set it forth in
a few strokes, which will wake an echo in the inner
experience of every heart ?—or rather to lay open the
deeper significance of that poetic trilogy into which, maybe
unconsciously to himself, Dante’s life shaped itself?

In early childhood the poet’s soul had been kindled to a
10 ESSAYS ON DANTE

pure passion, such as might still arise in some great soul. To
the heart which, as yet undaunted by the blows of fortune,
is full of childlike joyousness, all heaven seems to rise in its
Beatrice, its “blessing one.” Her beauty, her goodness, all
her perfection, are but the sign of the infinite love of God,
so that even her physical charms arouse no lust for pos-
session, but are a source of a consecrated joy in the glory
which God has made manifest in his creature. There is
no room for unsatisfied longing, for jealousy, or for com-
plaint. The beloved herself is but the most wondrous and
precious of the flowers that bloom in the great garden of
God, before which we stand in silent rejoicing, inhaling the
perfume without desiring to pluck the rose. Her voice
is but that of the most melodious of the thousands of
nightingales to whom we hearken, without wishing to
seize and cage them.—The beauty of the flowers, the
solemnity of the forest, and the songs of praise raised by
the birds, tell of the glory of Nature and the goodness of
her Creator, and bring transports of purest joy to the
ravished heart. Yet this joyous piety is ineffably deeper
and more inspired when the praise of the Lord is taught
to our hearts, not by the unconscious voice of flower, bird,
and beast, but by the perfection of a beloved spirit which
is itself surrendered in pure devotion to God. No need
to call a love like this the allegory of piety, it is itself the
vision of God upon earth. And it is to this love that
the Vita Nuova is consecrated.

But we find on nearer view that the very Nature which
smiles on us so genially is poisoned at the source. The
joyous life which led us on to gratitude to the Creator of
all, sprang from awful cruelty, and can only be maintained
by the same. Scarce one sentient being can live without
compassing deaths for hundreds of others, and all these
sacrifices lead to naught but a useless and unending reitera-
tion of the same old cycle. Dante had arrived at man’s
1—-DANTE 11

estate when Beatrice was reft from him by the iron hand
of death,—she who had taught his eye to look in joyous
thanks to Heaven, because she was the object of a love
so consecrated by pure devoutness that he fancied he had
wrested it from the transience of earthly things.—There
may be privileged beings, who even in such a terrible
moment can hold fast to a joyful acquiescence in the will
of God. But our poet was as incapable as many another,
whether in his day or ours, of straightway raising to heaven
—alone and without a guide—those eyes which the beloved
had hitherto directed upwards. The feelings that inspired
him of old were no longer his in his abandoned loneliness.
The heaven to which he would look had hurled upon his
life a ruin greater than any bliss which it had ever yet
vouchsafed him. Questions as to the hidden reasons for
such apparent cruelty could not be silenced by a belief in
the love and goodness of God, which had been shaken to
its foundations.

Well can we pardon those whose trust and confidence,
which seemed so firm, fail them in such a moment. Well
may we pardon the souls who were foremost in their
exultant recognition of the joy that is now gone, if] in
their blindness, they are now loudest in their reproaches
against Him who has changed his blessings into chastise-
ments. But all the higher does our reverence mount
for those others who, like our poet, strive to beat down
despair by straining for the solution of the dark secret,
even though their research should turn them away from
the religion to which, in their wretchedness, they can
no longer look with any hope of consolation, and lead
them into the arms of a presumptuous and overweening
philosophy. :

This, the only form of activity of which the shattered
spirit is as yet capable, gradually leads to others; and
Speculation, in all her branches, presents herself as a friend
I? ESSAYS ON DANTE

and comforter to the broken heart. Dante, after the
allegorical fashion of his day, depicts her as a gracious
maiden in whose glance he seems to find a reflection of
Beatrice’s love and a look of heavenly pity. Many a
disconsolate soul has found that zealous effort for others,
or for the common good, has been capable of bringing long
seasons of calm, and he who has once acclimatised himself
to this atmosphere may well end by finding his home and
his mission there. So was it with the poet after Beatrice’s
death. At first his love was won by the study of abstract
philosophy. Then he turns to ethics, and inquires into
the nature of justice, courage, and magnanimity; he
develops his ideas of the right ordering of the State, of the
significance of the great events of his day, and dedicates
his life to the realisation of what he has come to recognise
as the true ideal. His share in the active politics of his
native city falls in this period of his life; and so does the
elaboration of his views on language and poetry.

But if there are dark moments in which the shattered
spirit can find nothing more than a comfortless tradition in
Christianity itself, it is vain indeed to look for lasting peace
in the wanderings and gropings of the unaided spirit of
man. After a brief period its march is arrested by the
impassable limits of our capacity which hedge it in on
every side, and at last its early comfort is replaced by the
weariness of a bootless struggle.

The Convivio Amoroso depicts this fruitless strife, this
unrewarded love, this vain hope, ever fed by the belief that
redoubled efforts will wring from philosophy the blessings
she withholds. Restless and joyless is this love, for the
peace of childlike abandonment, which asks nothing in
return, has fled from the poet’s breast. While vainly and
vehemently demanding fresh favours from the beloved one,
he imagines that she turns from him in hardness of heart,
until ultimately, though with bitter. complaints, he acknow-
DANTE 13

ledges that love itself, even when it meets with no response,
is its own highest reward.

The zeal for right and truth, kindled in the poet’s breast
by this love, could not wholly save him from falling under
the party names of the conflicts of his time, for no one
can completely escape from the conditions imposed by
his surroundings. Earthly cares and the rising tide of
passions threatened to draw him into their vortex, and,
when once his thoughts were turned to this transitory
life of earth, it may well be that his receptive spirit some-
times allowed access to new charms of mortal beauty. For
even while Philosophy unveiled to him that countenance of
her Janus head, that gazes far beyond the bounds of earth,
and points away from earthly temptations and the turmoil
of earthly conflicts to the steep path of speculation, yet the
beaming eyes of his leader shed no light on that path by
which divine revelation alone can lead us to the goal.

Dante, long led astray from the way of humble Christian
faith to the pride of free speculation, sees the way of truth
barred by those evil passions whose counterparts are to be
found in the three Christian virtues. Instead of hoping
for the kingdom of God which is to be, he lives in the
present and its pleasures, and his heart is filled with self-
seeking. Instead of having faith in the divine revelation,
and abandoning himself utterly to it, he is infatuated by
spiritual pride, which persuades him that his own intellect is
capable of fathoming the hidden things of Eternity. And
finally, instead of love, hatred fills his breast with party
passion, envy, and a spirit of persecution against his erring
brothers, or those who hold opinions differing from his own.
And so he finds himself driven, as by savage beasts, from
the slopes of that mountain whose summit gleams in the
rays of the Sun of truth, into a life of storm and darkness.

Then the grace of God kindles the light of religion in
his bosom once more. He sees the fruitlessness, nay, sin-

gr

ff
14 ESSAYS ON DANTE

fulness, of the presumptuous speculations of the intellect
concerning things which must ever remain unfathomable
to it. He repents of having fallen into all these errors, and
of his excessive devotion to the transitory interests of earth,
and the old faith and the old love of the glorified Beatrice
awake with fresh power. On the day on which the Saviour
redeemed mankind on the cross, in the year when by the
feast of the Jubilee the Church sought in fresh ways to lead
back the Christian to heaven, Dante’s spirit also is released.
But his newly awakened faith is no longer the almost uncon-
scious belief of a joyous, childlike spirit. It is the outcome
of long years of doubt and error, now securely armed against
all storms from without or wavering within by firmly
rooted philosophical proofs. Just as his love to the living
Beatrice was inseparably bound up with faith’s thankful
upward gaze to God, so now that she has risen to heaven
she becomes to him a symbol of Theology, the luminous
and illuminating science which stands as queen above all
the rest.

Yet the burden of his former errors still presses on his
soul, and the Church to which Dante belongs teaches that
he can only enter into the glory of God’s presence when
the open acknowledgment of his transgression in this
estrangement of his soul from God has been followed by
contrition and the corresponding penance, that the stains
which obscure its native purity may be washed from his
soul.

Here begins the Divine Comedy, completing the great
poem of which the Vita Nuova and the Convivio Amoroso are
the first two sections. This whole trilogy in its everlasting
truth forms the universal epos of our spiritual life. It is
the history of the childlike simplicity, the inward back-
sliding, and the gracious summons by which God leads us
back to himself, who alone is Light, Truth, and Life.
The form is that of the inward experiences of a poet who
I—DANTE 15

died half a millennium ago, yet the path he followed is that
which must be trodden by every Christian, save a few
chosen ones, if they are to attain salvation. And so the
poet stands as the type of the whole race of fallen man,
called to salvation ; man who is burdened by the weight of
a thousand different sins, but to whom the Christ reaches
out a thousand arms, to snatch him out of the gulf to his
breast.

It is no longer merely his own transgressions of which
Dante repents and for which he does penance ; he mourns
the sins of the whole world, and would seek to find
once more the way to the Saviour in the name of all the
erring. Therefore must he follow all the innumerable by-
paths by which the prince of darkness entices the human
race astray. But now he no longer rests on the pride of
human understanding, but has submitted himself to the
guidance of that Reason which Beatrice herself sends him
as a guide. For now he is led by Virgil, who even in
heathen times prophesied the truths of Christianity. His
eyes are opened, and the mere sight of the sins suffices to
reveal them to him in all their gruesome nakedness.
Their dazzling exterior disappears, the tawdry lights under
which the deluded ones took what they vainly called
their pleasure are extinguished, and ancient night, with
all her horrors, re-appears. What seemed the delights
and pleasures of love show themselves now as a devastating
storm ; the bloodthirsty tyrant who thought to crown his
crimes with enduring good fortune when he came to the
throne now finds the blood he has spilt pouring and boiling
round him, while the arrows of passion tear his heart un-
ceasingly ; the delusive halo fades from the head of the
hypocrite, and the eye recognises the oppressive weight of
the cloak of gilded lead which is hung about him; the
apparent success of the traitor sinks back into nothingness,
and frozen and rigid he stands there in the icy coldness of
16 ESSAYS ON DANTE

his loveless heart. Thus Hell itself is neither more nor
less than the protraction of unrepented sin; the symbolic
interpretation of the sinful life. The punishment is the
act itself, not its counterpart.

Pierced by pity and horror for sin, Dante now climbs the
weary path which shall free him from all guilt, and lead him
back to the first purity. But penance consists in the
laborious task of breaking free from the sins to which the
soul has grown inured. In love and hope it brings both
pain and healing, while the longer it endures the more
strength it imparts to the soul, whereby it may gain courage
to rise to the summit of the mountain. The proud are
bowed down to earth under grievous burdens; the eyes or
the envious are closed by the torturing thread, that the
good of their neighbour may no longer stir them to evil
thoughts ; the keenness wherewith the slothful are now
impelled to straining haste is proportioned to their former
negligence of good ; and finally the gluttonous learn self-
control by being ever in sight of fairest fruits, while sternly
refraining from all food and drink. Purgatory then is
but the continuation of penitence. The punishments are
not the outpouring of the righteous wrath of God, but
only the healing means by which He saves many a precious
soul for heaven.

When these healing sufferings have been gladly received,
and have completed their purifying influence, religion sinks
with heavenly clearness into the purified heart, and lifts it
above earthly weaknesses and limitations to the bourn of
infinite grace and divine radiance. Diverse are the steps,
manifold the paths, to the knowledge of God. The fer-
vent glowing simpleness of heart of St. Francis, the God-
devoted learning of Thomas Aquinas, the pious wealth of
action of a Godfrey de Bouillon, and the silent contempla-
tion of a Bernard of Clairvaux, all spring from God, and all
lead to him. Led through all these grades of knowledge
I—DANTE 17

by his symbolic guide, this soul, so fiercely tried so
graciously preserved, may at last see face to face, and ¢ hear
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to
utter’ (2 Cor. xii. 4).

It is no indifferent matter that the form of a poem which
unites the Antique and the Modern, the Ghibelline and the
Guelf, in one mighty edifice, should fully correspond to
its subject. Dante wrote not in Latin, the language of
learning and to a large extent of the cultured classes
generally, but in the newly formed Italian tongue. Those
who maintain that the lowly and popular style in which
he resolved to clothe his poem determined his choice of the
vernacular show a woeful narrowness. For the grounds
lie far deeper. When one civilisation decays and a second
springs up from its ruins, the early growth of the second
is not a mere reproduction of the youth of the first, a
Pheenix rising from its ashes, as epoch follows epoch
in the secular year. The new age does not bear
the paternal remains swathed in myrrh to the temple of
the Sun. Rather does the new form, as a new phase
of history, outgrow the old culture and throw aside the
husk of the old incarnation as the growing fruit casts off
the petals of the flower, and the butterfly leaves the empty
chrysalis. At first naught but destruction and decay are to
be discerned. The ancient palaces sink in ruins. Marbles
and pillars are grubbed up from among their ruins, and
are built, mutilated and meaningless, into the walls of some
new chapel. But soon they begin to rise again and tower
upward, utterly transformed from their former significance ;
and, over the ruins of the graceful Roman temple, up-
lifts itself the dauntless strength of the solemn Gothic
church. And so it was with the speech of Italy. At
first a mere popular garbling of the Latin tongue, it

B
18 ESSAYS ON DANTE

gradually took to itself Teutonic and Christian elements,
and awakened to a life of its own ; though as yet in its
unthinking fluctuations it knew not what was falling petal
and what was ripening fruit, and only tested and developed
itself in songs of love and spring-time.

Then Dante arose, and with his magic wand awakened
a new life throughout the whole wide field of the language,
so that it could build not merely a window here and a door
there, but the whole mighty cathedral, when once it had
leave to carry out and complete the task.

TWO SONNETS ON DANTE BY MICHAEL ANGELO
(Literally translated from Guasti’s text.)

I

True speech may not be spoken of the man. Too bright for our
blindness was the enkindled flash. Easier to condemn the folk that
wronged him, than for the greatest to rise level with his meanest worth.

Down to the recompence of sin he went for our behoof, and then rose
Godward. But gates which Heaven threw back, his country barred
against his righteous longing.

Ungrateful, nursing her own woe to her destruction! Whereof the
sign is that her worthiest sons are made by her to weep the most.

Among a thousand other proofs this one: On him whose like nor
better ne’er was born, fell the unworthy ban unparalleled.

1I

He came from heaven. In mortal frame he scanned the torture-house
of justice, and the one of pity, and went back alive to gaze upon the
face of God, that he might bring true light to us concerning all.

A shining star that brightened with its rays the nest, all undeserving,
wherein I was born! Not the whole guilty world could make his
recompence, for Thou alone who didst create him art his due reward.

I speak of Dante, whose deeds won hate of that ungrateful folk from
whom all find a welcome, save the just.

But would that I were he! Might I be born to such a fate, I would
barter earth’s most envied lot for his drear exile and his virtue.
II.~THE ART OF MISUNDERSTANDING
DANTE!

HERMES XXII. 1824
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 21-65 (1869).]

DanTE’s immortal poem has been reproduced in some
five-and-twenty editions during the last twenty years ; and
it is indisputable that no previous period of the same
length has ever produced much more than half the number.
Surely, it will be said, this means that a new love of the
divine work has awakened, and the way is at least being
prepared for a comprehension of its true significance ; and
in further support of this belief may be alleged the fact
that whereas but one new commentary had been produced
for two hundred and twenty years before, the last thirty
years have increased their number by no less than five
or six.?

1 The present article was written in October 1823, before I had seen
the writings of Mehus, Dionisi, and others. Special circumstances
delayed the publication, and I had the opportunity of looking over my
work once more in August 1824. But I found that unless I was to
rewrite the article I must confine myself to a few additions, and must
refrain from following up Dionisi’s view, so nearly related to my own,
and giving it the prominence which I could now wish. [These pages
were originally written in connection with two editions of the Divina
Commedia, then new (namely, Biagioli’s, Paris, 1818-19, and De
Romanis’, 1820-22, which latter is a recast of Lombardi’s); and also
with reference to Count Giov. Marchetti’s treatise on the Allegory of
the Divina Commedia (Bologna, 1819), Scip. Colelli’s Illustrazion: Della
Divina Commedia (Rieti, 1822), and Giov. Gasparo Orelli’s Biography
of the poet (in the Clronichette d Italie, Coira, 1822, vol. ii.).—1869.]

2 Since the appearance of this article the number of commentaries has

19
20 I._THE ART OF

Greatly should I rejoice were this favourable impression
founded on fact; and indeed I gladly acknowledge how
much ground has been won for the poet since the close of
the unhappy seventeenth century. I rejoice in this increas-
ing number of readers and admirers, and I hope that Dante
himself will educate his disciples, as I know he is sedulously
and quietly doing. But in spite of the admiration of
editors and scholiasts, I cannot but feel that there is a
misapprehension of his meaning, a misconception similar
to that of the Alexandrine exponents of Homer, or say the
English Shakespeare commentators. In the following
pages I shall endeavour to indicate the lines of what might
be called the modern Dante Criticism ; I shall point out
how wide of the mark this school has shot; and finally I
shall endeavour, though it be only with a few weak strokes,

grown considerably, and the charges urged later on in the text are
wholly, or in great part, inapplicable to some of these later com-
mentators. Paolo Costa’s notes had already appeared in their earliest
and very meagre form (1819-21); see below, pp. 38, 52. They
have passed through numerous editions, having been frequently added
to by their author, and since 1844 have had valuable additions from
Brunone Bianchi. From 1854 onwards the latter has combined his
own work and that of his predecessor, thereby forming one of the most
useful and widely read of all the commentaries.—The edition with
Pietro Fraticelli’s notes deservedly enjoys an almost equal popularity.
It has steadily expanded since its first appearance in 1837. Francesco
Gregoretti (1856) combines the utmost attainable brevity with as much
material as the beginner wants. Emiliano Guidici (1847) and Giuseppe
Bozzo, of Palermo (1837), are still more sparing of their notes, which
indeed are scarcely adequate. Of the latter I only know annotations on
the Inferno. [Completed by 1855.—ED.] On the other hand, Niccolo
Tommaseo’s notes (in the two editions published in 1837 and 1856) are
the outcome of very extensive knowledge and original research.

But the German reader will scarcely need reminding that in many
ways the explanations given by Philalethes in his translation are far
better than any of these Italian commentaries. Translators into other
languages also have often made valuable contributions towards the
better comprehension of the poem. The Frenchman Artaud, for ex-
ample (1811 and several times subsequently), the Russian Min (1855),
the Dutch Hacke van Mijnden (1867), the Englishmen Cary and
Cayley, and above all the American Longfellow (1867).—1869.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 21

to place over against all this Dante’s own purpose, as I
understand it, in writing the poem.

True love loses itself entirely in its object, takes it
where it finds it, pierces the intervening centuries and
emerges at its side, to receive it on its own terms, without
being so much as conscious of any requirements of its own.
But there is a false love which is only directed to the
counterpart of itself in all its environment. Kindled
by the joy of finding its own sensations meeting it from
outside, it treats the object it has found as a mere lay-figure
to be generously robed in itself, in order thereby to acquire
a larger bulk of material on which to lavish its affection.
Dante has had his full share of admirers of this type.
He has been extolled beyond measure because in many
directions he almost reached the standard of our own en-
lightened days. He has been called a great poet because
he shadows forth the modern theory as to the origin of
storms (nf. xxxiii. 105), because he distinguishes between
veins and arteries (If. i. 90), because he describes a kind of
telegraphy (Inf. viii. 4), and tells of a constellation which
resembles the Southern Cross (Purg. i. 23). I have even
heard him praised because he managed to keep clear of the
eccentricities of his age, and of its prevalent religious
superstition. Every age has admired Dante where it
could find its own ideals in him, and let him severely
alone where it could not. Lo Nferigno and his associates
devoted years to the study of the Divine Comedy because
there were such lovely old words in it; but when better
writers, such as Chiabrera and Marini, appeared on the
scene, even this source of interest disappeared, and for
eighty-seven years (162-1716) not a single publisher
thought it worth while so much as to reprint the Sacred
Poem. In the last century the interest in philology
revived, and with it a growing interest in those amazing
Middle Ages, and ultimately a fastidious delight in elegant
22 I.—THE ART OF

phraseology and a love of epigram. Dante again became a
~ linguistic monument, a fine old fellow who really made his
powers and the means at his command go a wonderfully
long way, and must be treated with forbearing considera-
tion. As Muratori put it, he was a mine of barbarous
erudition. And, moreover, he was the author of a work
full of beautiful passages and elegant phrases. Francesca
da Rimini and Count Ugolino were models of pathetic ex-
pression. According to Biagioli (vol. i. p. x) Dante
possessed the further talent of putting ordinary things in
a special way. If we add that he was universally admitted
to have been a tender and passionate lover and a skilful
and diligent man of affairs, we have about exhausted the
catalogue of merits usually accorded him. And, for that
matter, I cannot deny that even when the poet is thus
torn from his true element, and his work utterly bereft of
its special and organic vitality, many beauties remain to
excite our admiration and offer scope for the activity of
the interpreters.

The resonant, exalted speech, the zeal for every lofty
sentiment, the sure grip and the fervour of the poetry, all
these are integral portions of the beauteous whole, and
much can be done towards helping us to appreciate them
in the way of correction of the text, explanation of the
meaning of difficult words, and amassing of historical
matter bearing on the poem. How far this has already
been done, I shall point out as I treat of the different heads
separately, but first I must mention one more circumstance
which prevents the newer commentators as a body from
attaining perfection even in this their own particular field.
I allude to the unhistorical nature of their treatment.
They want to make Dante a modern. One of them,
Biagioli, naively informs us (vol. i. p. xxiii) that he only
looks into himself and his surroundings to find the key
to the comprehension of the Divine Comedy; and from this
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 23

point of view there is of course nothing easier than for
the commentator to go into himself, and then put forth
any languid inanities which he may chance to find there.
But this will not do. Dante does not fly loose in the air,
like thistle-down, so that the first projecting bramble may
catch and hold him. We cannot beckon to his spirit over
half a millennium, and at once see it standing before
us. He is firmly rooted in his own place in history, and
the seed has grown till its branches spread down ever wider
and wider through the centuries. No man, single-handed,
can actually regain the position of Dante himself, but each
may lay hold of some one of the branches that spring from
his grave and climb back upon it.

Numerous commentaries sprang up round the Divine
Comedy from the earliest times, deriving therefrom what-
ever life they had; and each of them in consequence
embodies some portion of Dante’s spirit. Those who have
surrendered themselves unreservedly to the poet will soon
be taught by their sympathetic affection to recognise the
scarlet thread ; and the quiet patience which follows faint
clues through the darkness of the night will learn with
ever growing security to reconstruct the wondrous edifice
in all the radiance of its original plan.! The recent com-
mentators will have nothing to do with the works of their
early predecessors. They are barbarous, tedious, super-
stitious, and, worst of all, they insist with intolerable
emphasis on matters of which the moderns are determined
to know nothing! Hence they are discredited, and some
even go so far as to pride themselves, like Biagioli, on not
having read them, since, as he assures us, they all say the

I Dante intended to expound the Comedy himself (see The Zatta col-
lected edition, iv. 1, p. 408; small edition, iv. 479). His idea of the
requirements of such a commentary will be found on p. 402 [471].
The loss of this projected work is probably due to Can Grande’s defeat

at Padua. [The reference is to the letter to Can Grande della Scala,
§ 32 and § 6 s¢., in the modern editions.—1869.]
24 II.—THE ART OF

same thing. But now comes the inevitable paradox. Our
commentator resolves to put nothing but fresh work of his
own into his commentary, but his own early studies will
have acquainted him, though only at second or third hand,
with the old interpretations, and he will now be unable to
set the influence thus brought to bear on his conclusions
at naught. So he will unconsciously and involuntarily
propagate the old tradition, through the windings of an ever
intensifying course of misrepresentation and misunderstand-
ing, until the original truth has been perverted into a string
of ridiculous and distorted fabrications. The common curse
brought upon us by all superficial compilations is the with-
drawal of attention from the existing treasures which they
supplant without replacing. Thus each commentator on
Dante is influenced by his immediate predecessor, but after
Landino the work of the earliest commentators was for-
gotten ; after Venturi the sixteenth-century commentators
went the same way; and the latest school, basing their
work almost entirely upon Venturi, have in their turn
wellnigh crowded him out, and now bear the whole
weight of the tradition on their own feeble shoulders, while
burying the wisdom of former days in oblivion. Thus it
comes that Biagioli has unconsciously adopted Landino’s
erroneous interpretation of the meaning of the three beasts
(Inf. i. 32), and of Medusa (Inf. ix. 61), although he is
innocent of any knowledge of his opinions on hundreds
of occasions when they are right; and thus it comes, too,
that our commentators often raise a cry of jubilation over
a supposed new discovery which had been better and more
modestly set forth by the Ancients; and when they in
their turn have sunk into the oblivion that surely awaits
them, I suppose the same stew will appear and reappear in
progressively uninviting réchauffés. For instance, Biagioli’s
idea that the reference in Inf. vi. 73 is to Dante himself
and to Guido Cavalcanti appears exactly in the commen-
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 25

taries of Boccaccio (vol. ii. p. 14) and Guido del Carmine
(in Landino). The account of who it was that Frate
Alberigo slew (Inf. xxxiii. 118), which De Romanis (vol.
i. p. 460) extracts as a brand-new piece of information
from the Cassinese Ms., is given much better and more
completely by Benvenuto da Imola! (Muratori, Anti-
quitatesy vol. 1. p. 1145 s¢.).2 It is unfortunately true,

! It has been shown in the Jahrbuch der deutschen Dantegesellsch.,
i. 275, that the chiose posteriori of the editors of the Cassinese Ms.
are merely extracts from Benvenuto. The note here referred to, how-
ever, is a ckiosa sincrona, not borrowed from the work of the Imolese.
But the truth is that an account of Alberigo’s victims is to be found in
pretty well all the earlier commentators.—1869.

2 I will give two more examples of the confused and blind gropings
of the more recent commentators. At the end of the third canto of
the Inferno, Dante represents Charon as refusing to ferry him across
Acheron, while Virgil himself says that none but sinful souls are borne
in that wherry. At the beginning of the fourth canto, however, Dante
recovers from a swoon to find himself on the opposite bank. The
oldest commentators, amongst them Jacopo della Lana and Francesco
da Buti, hold that Dante was not conveyed across by Charon, but
give no hint what other means may have been employed. Boccaccio,
i. 291, understands the whole episode as merely spiritual, so that it
could of necessity have no corporeal expression. Landino introduces an
angel who miraculously transports Dante during his sleep, and supports
his theory by a reference to the lightning and earthquake which Boc-
caccio takes for infernal manifestations. He is followed essentially by
Vellutello and Daniello. Lo Smarrito remarked that it must be through
modesty that the poet does not expressly refer to the angel and
Magalotti (Com. sui primi 5 canti dell’ inf., Mil. 1819) further elaborates
this idea. Venturi, however, does not preserve the memory of the
angel, and Lombardi (on Izf. iii. 129) seems disposed to take Dante over
in Charon’s boat. Then Biagioli resuscitates the angel, adding with un-
surpassable naiveté: ‘No one, till now, has ever given his mind to the
solution of this mystery.’ —The second example is from Purg. ix. 1. In
the preceding canto (line 49) Dante has mentioned the evening twilight ;
now, he says, the concubine of old Tithonus was gleaming white on the
balcony of the orient, forth from the arms of her sweet friend’; then,
after sleeping a while, he is borne up to the gate of Purgatory in the
morning dawn (ix. 52).—The old commentators understand by the
concubina di Titone the bright gleam which precedes the moonrise, and
Jacopo della Lana records a fable completely justifying the name, which,
though not handed down from the Ancients, is quite in the spirit of the
expansions which the myths of antiquity received at the hands of the
26 ~~ II.-THE ART OF

that the greater part of these old treasures still lies buried
in Mss. and rare editions,! but an editor or commentator
ought not to consider them inaccessible, and at any rate

Middle Ages. Landino, Daniello, and Venturi follow him. The later
commentators stumble over the lunar aurora. Velutello explains  fronte’
as ‘end’ [?]. It is three in the morning [?], and the glow of the dawn
has extended into the Scorpion. He is followed, with slight modifications,
by Volpi, Lombardi, and Poggiali. Rosa Morando also has a hankering
for the glow of dawn, and so interprets the ¢ freddo animale,’ int which the
aurora is said to be visible, as the Fishes, not the Scorpion. Perazzini, in
a pamphlet on the subject (Verona ap. M. Moroni, 1775) takes the whole
description [as the Ottimo Comments had done long before him] as
referring not to the Mount of Purgatory, but to Italy (45° distant from
Jerusalem), which would make it 9 P.M. in the spot where Dante is.
Dionisi, 4nedd. iv. p. 57, holds the same view. Ang. Costanzo (Lettera,
pp. 60-66) defends the lunar aurora with good, but not exhaustive,
arguments. For the moderns, however, anything like a calculation is
too laborious, and they call it dawn’ without more ado. A star-table,
which is not hard to prepare, shows that on that evening the moon
would rise at about ¢ P.M. in Purgatory, and that her glow would
appear in the tail of the Scorpion at 8.30 P.M.

1 Originally a note was appended to this passage enumerating thirteen
early commentators, and giving Mss. in which their works were to be
found. A group of anonymous commentators, most of them simply
gloss-writers, was added as No. 14. In addition to these was a list of
ten early commentators, known at second-hand by references made to
them. In 1824 such a list might have a certain value, now [1869] it
would be mere waste-paper. Of these thirteen, one (Jacopo della Lana)
had been printed long ago (in 1477 and 1478), and has been re-issued
lately (1865 and 1866). Three of the remaining twelve (that of the
Archbishop Giov. Visconti’s ‘six scholars,” that of Domenico Aretino,
and that attributed to Petrarch) have been shown not to be independent
commentaries. The same may be said of Giov. Ser Cambi, one of
those known by citation only. Six have appeared in print since 1824,
when the article was written, for three of which six—those attributed
to Jacopo di Dante (1848) and Petrus Dantis (1845) and the pseudo-
Boccaccio (1846)—we are indebted to the untiring liberality of Lord
Vernon.

The Ottimo has been edited by Torri (1827-29), Francesco da Buti’s
commentary by Crescentino Giannini (1858-62), and finally Giov.
Tamburini has issued Benvenuto da Imola (1855-56), though only in
Italian extracts. Fanfani has at any rate begun the publication of the
excellent anonymous commentary in the Riccardian Library. In 1848
Lord Vernon issued another, bearing the date 1328, and Selmi a third
in 1865. Of the glossators, during the same period, the Cassinese was
printed in 1865, and in 1838 Zacheroni produced the work of com-
mentator, mentioned in my list as known only at second-hand,
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 27

Landino, Boccaccio, and Benvenuto da Imola have been
printed in recent times, or are easily obtainable. Cristoforo
Landino (1481)! drew chiefly upon Boccaccio (he is

Guiniforte Bargigi. Of the other nine whom I mentioned as known
only by the references made to them, one, Vincenzo Buonanni, who
belongs to the second half of the sixteenth century, and whose
commentary on the Inferno had long been printed (1572), was counted
amongst early commentators by mistake. Then the mythical Fra
Ilario di Monte Corvo certainly never wrote a commentary at all.
Michino da Mezzano would seem only to have written introductory
headings to the Divine Comedy, and not a continuous commentary.
Finally, Martino Paolo Novarese has no business in the list, for he is
no other than Nidobeato, the celebrated publisher of the poem. Of the
commentaries enumerated in my note, therefore, there remain, not
counting the more or less dubious anonymi, those of Ser Graziolo de’
Bambagioli, Chancellor of Bologna, Fra Guido del Carmine Pisano, Fra
Giovanni da Serravalle, Fra Ricardo Carmelitano, Andrea Napolitano,
and Fra Accorso Bonfantini Francescano. Of the last we only know
through a doubtful quotation of Mehus; and of the two that precede
only through references to them in Nidobeato’s preface, and through
their mention by Landino. As far as known there are no extant mss.
of them. But the two first, who were Dante’s contemporaries, are of
much higher importance. I thought I had identified the commentary of
Ser Graziolo in a Florentine ms. (Laurentian, Pl. xl. 7). See the 4ntologia,
No. xxviii. p. 151 (1831), but I cannot deny the weight of the argu-
ments urged against me, especially by Piccioli (4#¢. No. exxx. p. 139).
De Batines (Bibl. Dant., ii. 2, p. 298) thought he had discovered a large
part of this commentary and of Fra Guido’s (which according to Buti,
Inf. vi. 73, only dealt with twenty-seven cantos of the Inferno) in a Ms.
of Lord Vernon’s. In any case they exist in two Mss. in the Colombine
Library in Seville (Nos. 22 and 24). Ever since I received authentic
information of this many years ago, I have spared no pains to obtain
more detailed information, and if possible transcripts; but unfor-
tunately without success. A German man of letters who had under-
taken the task reported that his notes had been lost on the return
journey, by the fault, I think, of a Custom-house official. May others
have better luck! It is certain that a transcript of Ser Graziolo’s
work would be far more valuable than much which has been published in
this branch of literature. —Of the other commentators the Anonymus
of the Ambrosiana (198 C. pars inf.) of 1355, which was unknown to
me at the time of writing the article, would be particularly valuable if
printed.—1869.

Since 1869 we have had editions of Benvenuto da Imola (complete
Latin text in five volumes ; edited by Philippo Lacaita, at the expense of
Mr. Vernon, 1887), of Johannes de Serravalle (1891), and of Graziolo
de’ Bambagioli (edited by Antonio Fiammazzo, 1892).—EDb.

1 For further particulars of this commentator and his work see
28 I.-.THE ART OF

quoted six times in sixteen cantos), and where this source
fails, from Benvenuto da Imola (quoted five times in the
thirty-four cantos of the Inferno), and, with regard to the alle-
gory, from Francesco da Buti (quoted three times in the In-
ferno). He seems, in spite of his assurances to the contrary,
to have added very little original matter, except a number
of scholastic definitions and distinctions, a few notes on
mythological points, the remark, repeated ad nauseam (com-
pare his own note on Inf. xxv. 44), that Virgil signifies the
higher, Dante the lower reason, and a few declamatory
passages. The main value of his commentary lies, beyond
doubt, in his assiduous study of the profound work of
Francesco da Buti. The latter was born only eight years
after the poet’s death, and his explanations may be looked on
as particularly trustworthy. Landino’s work will remain
indispensable, mainly on this account, as long as Buti’s
commentary remains unprinted.—Of the three works
mentioned above as easily accessible, Landino’s has retained
the firmest hold. But even he is dipped into at random
and disconnectedly, so that no critical sense has been
acquired for the different value of the various aspects
of his work, and he is cited as an authority where his lead
has no significance (e.g. in the establishment of the text,!
and grammatical exegesis), with just as much confidence as
where it is sufficient alone to drive all the later com-
mentators off the field.

Boccaccio’s commentary, as every one knows, only deals
with the first sixteen cantos. It is in substance the Ms. of

Bandini, Specimen. liter. Flor. saec. xv. (Flor. 1747), pp. 126-143.
The Florentine Signoria presented him with an estate near Borgo alla
Collina in the Cassentino, in consideration of his services. He died there
at the age of eighty in 1504 and his body, in wonderful preservation, is
still shown in the church there.—1869.

1 The Prolegomeni Critici to my Berlin edition of the Divine Comedy
contain (p. xii) a more favourable and better founded judgment on
Landino’s services in establishing the text.—1869.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 29

the lectures on the Comedy which he delivered in his sixtieth
year. And we must always bear this in mind when study-
ing the work, where the novelist, now in his old age,
expatiates in the ample fields of his mythological know-
ledge, and takes occasion to lament the customs of his
golden youth and the deterioration of the present day. At
the same time the evidence of the book is conclusive in
questions of idiom, and when he does not fall into poetic
embellishments (as he always does in matters affecting
Dante’s person), his descriptions of customs and events,
given from the standpoint of an approximate contemporary,
are very vivid. The grammatical and allegorical explana-
tions seem to be derived from tradition in a great measure,
and the writer’s profound love of Dante seems now and
again to open the way to a deeper understanding of the
meaning of the text, however alien the real bent of his genius
may be from its spirit. This commentary has only been
printed once,! but it is easy to get. Baldelli and others
bestow great and even exaggerated praise on Boccaccio, but
Venturi, Lombardi, and Poggiali have made as good as no
use of him. In Biagioli I find him referred to eight times
in all thrice to explain single words (rabbuffa, spelta, and
voce), once, in a similar case, to contradict him (wrongly),
Inf. xiv. 4. Once he is unconsciously cited (Inf. xiii. 151).
Twice he is made to rehearse well-known information
(Inf. x. 52, and xv. 67), and once (Inf. iii. 60) he is
appealed to as affording conclusive proof on a point con-
cerning which he himself says ¢the which thing I neither
deny nor affirm.’ And yet his commentary furnishes
matter to the purpose at every point, as I shall have

1 Florence (more properly Naples), 1724, 2 vols.— Since 1824 have
appeared an edition by Ign. Moutier, 1831-32, and a more compendious
one by Fraticelli) 1844, both in 3 vols. A still more recent and much
superior edition (Florence, 1863) has been prepared by Milanesi.—
1869.
30 I._THE ART OF

occasion to show by a few conspicuous examples in the
course of this essay.

Only extracts of Benvenuto da Imola’s work, containing
the passages of historical interest,)! have been printed
(Muratori, op. cit. pp. 1028-1298), and hence it comes that
some of the passages quoted by Landino (e.g. Inf. vii. 61
and ix. 66) and others are not to be found in Muratori’s
transcript.2 It has been established, however, that the
chief value of Benvenuto’s commentary lies in its historical
notes, and he is distinguished from his friend and con-
temporary Boccaccio, in that he does not base them
on a fluctuating tradition, but on thorough researches
of his own, thereby approximating in this, as in his other
works, to the position of a regular historian. These
characteristics have long given him a high place in the
estimation of historians ; and Italian scholars, in especial,
delight to refer to him as an author of singular trustworthi-
ness. But, strangely enough, the Dante commentators
have not yet seen fit to accord him a like honour, and up
to the present day I have but seldom found a reference to
him in the works of modern commentators.

Having pointed out this general defect, I must now
proceed to a few remarks on the treatment of special

1 Mehus, Vita Ambrosii Camaldulensis, pp. cli, clxxxii, calls this
selection ¢ careless’ and ¢ bad.’

2 Tamburini’s Italian extracts have already been referred to; see
p- 26. In my Proleg. Critic, p. lviii, I was compelled to indorse the
severe judgment of the American scholar Charles Eliot Norton on this
work ; and I am quite of the same mind stilL.—1869.

The full Latin text is now published. See p. 27, zote.—ED.

3 He is cited by Lombardi on Purg. xxx. 36 [?], Par. xii. 83, xvii. 61,
and by his new editor on Purg. xiv. 100, XXiv. 30, Par. xvi. 109. [On
Purg. xxiv. 135, Lombardi, who lived and wrote at Rome, quotes
Benvenuto merely on the authority of the Lucchese Venturi, although
in the Vatican and the Barberini libraries between them he might have
found three Mss. of Benvenuto himself. One of the special merits of
Streckfuss’s translation is that the profound Dante student Uhden com-

municated many passages from Muratori’s excerpts from Benvenuto to
the notes on the Purgatorio and the Paradiso.—1869.]
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 31

points, and shall begin with the question of the establish-
ment of the text.!

The whole period during which the Divine Comedy was
transmitted by ms. alone does not extend to more than
about a century and a half, and consequently it presents
no such serious corruptions and disfigurements as we find
in the Classics, which had to subsist through long periods
during which no one was capable of understanding them.
Dante wrote in the language of the people, and we may
safely suppose that no scribe could be entirely without
intelligent interest in his work, and this is why most [?]
of the mss. are wellnigh as legible as a printed book.
But the same agencies tended to bring down the text
of the Comedy nearer to the level of the copyists. The
poet’s pregnant, sometimes far-fetched, phrases passed
their comprehension, and struck them as mistakes; for
it never occurred to them that what was outside their
comprehension might yet be within the meaning of the
text. So we get a succession of unconscious conjectural
emendations, smoothing down and flattening out the dic-
tion of the poem.? These ‘dampers,’ as it were, under
which the strings of Dante’s orchestra had to vibrate, as
best they might, began to be applied early in the fourteenth
century, for the causes that led to their application
were already at work, and [ fama for infamia, mondo for
modo, arme for arnie], altre for alte, conlui for colui, etc. etc.,
soon become quite common substitutions. The discovery of
printing served to extend the knowledge of the poem

1 This subject has been treated at length in the Prolegomen. Critici
already referred to.—1869.

% Coluccio Salutati, in the fourteenth century, wrote ¢ quae, quum com-
munis calamitas sit, in hoc libro latius obrepsit et copiosius, quoniam
vulgares et imperiti perite non possunt, quae periti fecerunt, exemplare ’
(in Mehus, op. cit. p. clxxix)—and this common plague has worked
deeper and wider devastation in this book than in others, for the common
unskilled folk cannot skilfully copy what the skilled have done.
32 IL.—THE ART OF

(1472), but most of the early editions are printed from the
first text that came to hand, with very little regard to its
value.

The business of the critic, then, is to examine the oldest
Mss., and, with the aid of the early commentaries, to expunge
the facile readings, and endeavour to cultivate a sense for
the Dantesque diction which shall aid him in recognising
the poet’s original phraseology. To allow universal suf-
frage to the mss. and then fix the text by a majority of
votes is obviously futile. In principle the authors of
the Manzani edition (1595) followed a sound method.
They made an elaborate comparison of upwards of ninety
Mss., and evolved therefrom a text (known as the Cruscan),
which differs very considerably from the printed text of
former editions. But they are accused, not without reason,
of a certain bias towards the Aldine edition! (1502), and
with an obstinate adherence to certain rules of their own,
such as hard apostrophes; and, worst of all, the requisite
sense for Dante’s special characteristics is only too clearly
absent.? Consequently, although they have succeeded in
great measure in banishing the facile readings of the middle
period, they have also displaced many true readings, or at
any rate failed to recognise, among many variants, the one
which bears the stamp of truth, and have consequently
retained some clerical error in its place.?

After their labours the easier readings which they rightly
rejected can obviously have no further interest for us.
What remains for the critics is to test the selection of the
Crusca, and by help of the most trustworthy mss. to improve
on their choice in special passages, and substitute some still
better reading. And this has been in the main the spirit

1 On which Vellutello had pronounced a severe judgment on the

second page of his Preface.
2 e.g. Inf. xviil. 12, Xxil. 1171, xxxiv. 113; Par. ii. 8.
3 Dionisi, Aneddoto, iv. p. 169, passes a severe, but just, sentence on

this work.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 33

of Lombardi’s and Dionisi’s work. Lombardi (1791)
observed that the Nidobeatine of 1477 excelled all the
other fifteenth-century editions in the care and thorough-
ness with which the text had been treated ; and he frequently
defended its readings against those of the Crusca very suc-
cessfully, but often also with a certain narrowness and bias.
Dionisi, the acutest of Dante critics, made special use of
a Ms. in the Library of Sante Croce, but compared many
others with it. This careful examination of mss. was
happily combined with marvellously skilful and cautious
conjectural emendation, and has probably brought his text
into closest proximity to the original.!

But instead of making use of this excellent work, Biagioli,
with ludicrous obstinacy, followed the Crusca in almost
every instance, while De Romanis has adhered almost
literally to the Nidobeatine. Meanwhile the learned
Poggiali, who had more than thirty Dante mss. in his
possession, had published selected variants from one of
them—a very excellent one—in his magnificent edition
(Livorno, 1807-13, 4 vols.). The later editors have seen
fit to follow this precedent. Thus, a Stuart ms. has been
collated in behoof of Biagioli’s edition, and De Romanis gives
the variants of the Cassinese, Caetani, Vatican, Angelica,
Antaldi, and Chigi mss. Unfortunately, however, neither
the manuscripts themselves nor the variants selected from

1 The results of these researches were first published in the second
and fourth numbers of the Aneddoti (1786, go), and were then collected
in the Bodoni édition de luxe of the Comedy (1795, fol.), elegantly repro-
duced by Bettoni in Brescia (1810, 32mo). Dionisi often changed his
judgments, and addenda appear as late as in his Preparazione storica
(1807).—Biagioli pronounces a silly and narrow judgment on his work
in a note to Inf. xxxiv. 87 [cf. De Romanis, Purg. xxii. 106]; and
indeed Italian and German students alike deserve emphatic reproof for
having practically made no use of Dionisi’s long and successful labours.
Lombardi knows his work, and is often dishonourable enough to adopt
his readings without any kind of reference to their source. To the later
editors he is as good as unknown. Cf. for example De Romanis on
Lar. xxvl. 33.

C
34 II..THE ART OF

them are well chosen, and the notes are crowded with
readings which for the most part are the very ones which
previous and more skilful critics have taken consummate
pains to expunge from the text, and which may be found,
more or less as they stand, in any one of the earlier
editions. I think I am fully justified in saying that this
unwieldy mass of variants is not only exceedingly cumbrous,
but also absolutely useless. But the best of it is that the
editors themselves do not seem to have expected any valu-
able results from their labours, else they would not have
neglected, on due occasion,! to appeal to Poggiali’s variants,
which are beyond question the most valuable of them all [?],
in support of the readings which they themselves adopt.
A comparison of Poggiali and De Romanis on Inf. x. I,
xiv. 126, xvii. 124, xxxi. 19, will afford glaring examples
of this neglect. Still worse, De Romanis is so full of the
blind animus of his predecessor that he entirely neglects
Dionisi’s readings, and even Lombardi’s recension cannot
save him from the sin of tiros in criticism, viz., the bold
insertion in his text of wretched variants which occur in
mss. he has himself examined (cf., for example, Inf. ii. 4,
Xv. 20, xvii. 76).

But perhaps I have already dwelt too long on textual
criticism. I now turn to exegesis. This is pre-eminently
the happy hunting-ground of caprice and ignorance. Here
you may bandy arguments up and down to the heart’s
content, and go round and round the dreary circle of
possible and impossible interpretations without forwarding
the true comprehension of the poet by one hair’s-breadth.
For this purpose, at any rate, every passage is considered
in complete isolation, and there seems no reason why one
should not have one’s opinion on it without so much as
having seen the work in which it occurs. Indeed there has

1 See, however, De Romanis, Izf. ix. 54, xv. 86 [xix. 12, XXiX. 36;
Purg. viii. 86, xvii. 93, XiX. 22, §5, 110, XXii. 79].
3

MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 35

never been a period so prolific as the present in articles
on the signification of isolated passages or verses from
Dante (cf the literature on Inf. vii, 1, xxxi. 6%; Par.
xxvi. 134) 3! and the notes of the Commentators stand in
much the same detachment from each other, and from the
poem as a whole. This very incoherency makes it difficult
to characterise the Commentaries; for I cannot discover and
follow any definite direction at all in this ocean of talk.
I will however endeavour to give one or two indications
of the lines recently taken. Lombardi has the merit
of great love for the poet, coupled with untiring diligence.
He is glad to avail himself of Venturi’s predecessors in
explaining the meaning of the text; he supports his exposi-
tion more fully than do any of the rest by references to
standard linguistic works; and we may fairly say that in
this respect he has made a pretty full use of Landino,
Vellutello, and Daniello, even—to his credit be it spoken
—when they lead him to conclusions differing from those
of Venturi. The number of his original interpretations is
not really great, and they mostly concern matters of minor
importance ; and unhappily there is no denying that they
are generally hopelessly wrong, and give a strange impres-
sion of a man of contracted ideas, bent on having an
opinion of his own. The snarling polemic against the
Crusca, Venturi, and Dionisi (where the latter is not
entirely ignored, as in Purg. xxiv. 37, 43), often strike
a level quite below the dignity of the subject; and more-
over the unprovoked attacks on Dionisi are almost always
unhappy.? Nevertheless Lombardi’s commentary deserves
the universal approval that has greeted it both at home and

1 Since I wrote the above, matters have gone from bad to worse.
Only think, by way of warning, of <i pie fermo sempre era’l pin basso’
(Inf. i. 30), or that unfortunate ‘sugger dette’ (Inf. v. 59) or ¢ Poscia
pia che *l dolor pote °l digiuno’ (Inf. xxxiii. 75).—1869.

2 The best examples will be found in the Esame delle correzioni, etc.
on pp. Ixx-Ixxxiv of the edition by De Romanis.
36 IL._THE ART OF

abroad as the most painstaking and diligent of the works on
the subject, and the one most serviceable for immediate
purposes.

Lombardi’s Commentary was followed in 1807 by
Poggiali’s, to which I have repeatedly referred already.
It contains still fewer original opinions, is still more suited
to the wants of the beginner, but is totally lacking in real
research, has a repelling and prosaic trick of paraphrasing,
and is published in an inconvenient form, in two volumes
separate from the text, with the verses unnumbered.

Biagioli teaches Italian in Paris, and makes no secret
of having written in the first instance for Frenchmen who
are beginning their studies of Italian literature. So he
has prejudices to combat. Voltaire made fun of Dante,
and Biagioli has to prove that he did the poet injustice.
This motive pervades the whole work. It seldom contains
anything too stiff for the hour’s lesson, and is, in fact,
one wordy panegyric from end to end. To bring out
the beauties (in the narrow sense in which alone they
can come into consideration here) he begins by taking
Alfieri’s private copy and pointing out all the lines that
the tragedian scored; and although verse after verse is
thus noted, he adopts no conventional sign, but writes out
¢ Alfieri nota’ at full length every time. Then, in the next
place, he adds innumerable, elaborate, and oft-repeated
exclamations, which certainly do every credit to his own
susceptibility, but would hardly serve the purpose of com-
municating the inspiration to one who has no perception
of Dante’s beauties on his own account. For example,
Purg. xxviii. 1: ¢Prepare, O reader, to look upon the
divine beauties which the poet is about to display before
you. Alfieri, whose glance naught beautiful could escape,
has scored the whole of this canto except twenty-eight
verses, which we shall point out as they occur. So I will
waste no time in calling attention to the special beauties,
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 37

all of which appear to me meet for the Paradise which he
is describing. But whosoever is wont to feed on tares let
him not hope to gather in the harvest with which this
ample champaign waves.’ —The author prides himself on
the entire originality of his interpretations. I have already
criticised him for at any rate bestowing very little atten-
tion on the earlier interpreters; but nevertheless we
generally find him repeating just those remarks of his
predecessors which lie most upon the surface; and, what
is worse, attacking others, which are often quite insigni-
ficant, at a length and with an arrogance altogether dis-
proportionate to the subject, and in a way quite unsuitable
to the wants of students. The unseemly and sometimes
vulgar style which characterises his attacks—in themselves
often quite unjustified—on so meritorious a writer as Lom-
bardi, for instance, must greatly injure his book ; and in
fact it makes it almost unreadable. Monti has already
criticised it severely, and the author himself now seems
(vol. ii. p. iii) to regret it.! Examples are found on every
page, e.2. Inf. x. 1, xv. 20, XXxili. 80; Purg. xx. 37,
xxx. 15. His own opinions, on the other hand, he puts
forward with a supreme complacency which would ill
become him even if he had hit on a really new and
illuminating conception. Biagioli seldom produces a novel
interpretation without a contemptuous glance at his pre-
decessors, or at least a passing nota bene addressed to the

I I cannot flatter myself that Sig. Biagioli will pay equal attention to
my strictures, or even deem these pages worthy of a passing glance ;
such is the opinion which he very candidly expresses on the merits of
us poor ultramontanes in his preface to the Paradiso, p. x: ‘Since
the author’s meaning has not hitherto been revealed to any Italian
savant, we may safely conclude that no foreigner has been able to see
it even “like a mole through skin.” This is kindly said ; but meanwhile
we foreigners have at least got so far as not to follow a certain Italian
savant in ascribing to the elder Michael Angelo Buonarotti a lecture
signed by the Cruscan nom-de-plume of his younger namesake (I'Im-

pastato). Cf. Biagioli, Rime di M. Ang. Buon. il vecchio (Paris, 1821),
p- xxx and p. 293.
38 11. THE ART OF

reader. And as a matter of fact these novelties are generally
concerned with matters of the very smallest significance,
and have as good as no bearing on the comprehension of
the poem as a whole. I may instance the explanations
of three passages from the first half of the Inferno upon
which Biagioli lays special weight. In Inf. iv. 68 he
opines that the sages of the Limbo had no actual fire in
their midst, but that a light glow hovered around the
walls (1); in xii. 113 he declares that the real reason why -
Dante turned to Virgil was not because he was bewildered,
but because he doubted the truth of what Nessus had
told him (?); in xiv. 83 he remarks that the dykes of
the blood-red streamlet were not built up of tufa, but
had been constructed by the infernal architect from the
beginning.—If we look for something to praise in this
Commentator our nearest resource will be his fairly
accurate knowledge of Dante’s other writings, especially
the Convivio and Vita Nuova.

De Romanis has almost completely refrained from
explanations of his own, but has followed Costanzo in
citing the Scholia of the Cassinese manuscript, defending
and explaining them (as well as a few variants), often with
much knowledge. In the Inferno and Purgatorio he gives
a fairly accurate account of all that can be regarded as
significant in Biagioli’s Commentary [in the Paradiso he
only does so in exceptional cases, for instance in xxi. 122,
xxiv. 18], and in spite of its want of courtesy towards him-
self, he shows a praiseworthy, though perhaps exaggerated,
impartiality in dealing with it, sometimes degenerating into
weakness, and a want of spirit in defence of Lombardi.

Next comes the Bolognese edition (1819-1821) in
quarto, with scandalously bad copper-plates and a meagre
and insignificant Commentary by Paolo Costa, one pecu-
liarity of which may be referred to again below.

Finally, Colelli’s I//ustrazioni, chiefly designed to correct
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 39

and complete the Bolognese edition just named, and written
in a one-sided and perverse vein, will be dealt with more
fully hereafter. This work goes further than any of the
rest I have mentioned in the direction of ignorant and
flabby chatter, which very often has not the remotest
connection with the matter in hand. See, for example,
pages 28-33. Moreover, the author takes a very lofty
tone. If the lines I am writing should ever reach Rieti,
I would ask Colelli’s leave to apply his own words (page
42), and cry, When a man undertakes to supplant a good
note by a bad and erroneous one, the fault seems unpardon-
able” After the Inferno no more of this work appeared,
which leads to the conclusion that in Italy itself it found
no support.

I must now redeem my pledge of showing what has
been done in the way of interpretation of historical allusions.
I shall have something to say as to the form and some-
thing as to the matter.

I have already remarked—and the progress of this essay
will soon justify me—that Dante’s poem is rooted in his-
tory. Isolated threads connect it loosely with the affairs of
antiquity. It takes a stronger hold of Charles and his
Paladins; and draws a full life out of the vivid energy
and chivalry of the thirteenth century, and more im-
mediately from the freethinking Tuscany and the flour-
ishing and turbulent Florence. With its strongly marked
individuality it takes its stand in the present, chooses its
part decisively ; defies, implores, exhorts; and gazes wist-
fully, in fear and hope, and often with prophetic glance,
out into the future—If we are to grasp this life and
keep our hold of it, surely we must “take it in its
own element.” A definite conception of history, corre-
spondent to that which gave the poem birth, must prepare
the way for the first line of the Divine Comedy, and
40 IL.—THE ART OF

must provide the background on which it can display
its majestic form. A few firm strokes must set forth
the genesis of the medieval spirit, the cleavage of the
several peoples and states, and their relations to each other,
and then in more detail the rise and development of
the freedom of the Lombard and Tuscan cities. Thus
we must be introduced into the deepening drama of the
decisive conflict of political opinions, the sweep of the
universal struggle, the detail of private feuds, the per-
petual succession of revolutions, the changing constitu-
tions, and the special events and features of Dante’s own
day, until ‘in the middle of the path of life’ the reader
might actually be living in the year 1300.—Such a pro-
padeutic! would enable us to dispense with hundreds of
notes below the text in which the same history is often
given three times over in disconnected fragments (for
example the account of Buondelmonti, Ixf. vi. 80, xxviii.
106, and Par. xvi. 140). Surely a connected intro-
duction of this kind would help the reader more than
the system that leaves him in ignorance who Manfred’s
daughter was and whom she married until he reads the
notes on the third canto of the Purgatory. Unfortunately

1 Unhappily such a propadeutic, which would unquestionably form
the best means of preparation for understanding Dante, is still wanting.
Ferrazzi’s Enciclopedia Dantesca (1865) merely collects material (with
a mass of alien matter), and does not attempt to work it up. Arriva-
bene’s Secolo di Dante (first published in 1823, and repeatedly since)
may be admitted to cover the historical portion of the field pretty
fully. But it is a dull compilation, and quite uncritical. Carlo Troya
was far better equipped for the performance of the task (Veltro Alle-
gorico, 1826, and Veltro Alleg. de’ Glubellini, 1856) 5 but it is much to
be regretted that he clings obstinately to an untenable hypothesis, and
his defective references make it difficult or impossible to check his
assertions. On the whole, Wegele’s biography of the poet (1852 and
1865) is the best guide; but it only deals with Dante’s own fortunes.
—1869.

Villars First Tawo Centuries of Florentine History, and Selfe and
Wicksteed’s extracts from Villani’s Florentine Chronicles, are amongst
the more recent attempts to supply this want.—ED.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 41

there is as yet no book that meets this demand. Giovanni
Gasparo Orelli’s excellent Cronichette, though not propos-
ing to do anything of the sort, comes nearest doing it, in
virtue of its happily graduated fulness of treatment, its con-
centration upon Dante’s period, and especially its successful
and dramatic interweaving of touches fresh from the life
supplied by contemporary writers. Unfortunately I have
not the necessary historical knowledge for passing an
unbiassed judgment upon this book, and in any case this
would not be the place for doing so; but the respected
author promises us a complete German introduction to the
Divine Comedy, and I am sure many others join with me in
the eager hope that we may find in it just the historical
prelude we desire. But, in any case, if such an introduc-
tion as I have indicated is to fulfil its purpose, it must take
special count of one marked characteristic of the age in
general and of Dante’s genius in particular ; I mean its
religious pre-occupation. The rise and activity of St.
Francis and St. Dominic, the Thomist reconstruction of
theology and the contemporary consolidation of the hier-
archy, and the attitude of the period towards the Albigenses
and other heretics, must be brought into special prominence.
Yet though we should desire such an introduction to be
written in the Ghibelline spirit, as the Cronichette is,
inasmuch as Dante himself was a Ghibelline, yet I should
doubt (Inf. x. 119 and xiii. 72) whether the latter’s party
spirit would have inspired such uniformly favourable judg-
ments as Orelli’s on Frederick 11.

Such a treatment as is here indicated is, however, incom-
patible with the form of a Commentary which must of
necessity give its narrative in a disconnected and occasional
form as the passages to which it has to attach itself present
themselves. Yet we may at least require the Commentator
to have gained some connected historical knowledge him-
self, and to put his reader in a position to connect each
42 11.-THE ART OF

separate event with the general march of events. Un-
fortunately, the Commentators in too many cases never
heard a word of medieval history until they came to study
Dante; and their progress in this branch of knowledge is
often almost entirely limited (as Biagioli himself admits to
be his own case, vol. i. p. xxxvii) to the range of material
provided by their predecessors in the same occasional style.
The dictionary form now so dominant in Italy encourages
even those who desire some further information to content
themselves with turning over the pages of some such book
as Moreri’s historical dictionary, so that their historical
information still flutters about in their brains as disconnected
as ever. For example, neither Lombardi nor Biagioli gives
his reader any idea [?] that the battle referred to in Inf.
xxxii. 81 is the same that is mentioned in Inf. x. 86 and
Xvi. 41, so that if the student has no independent knowledge
of history he will make pathetic efforts to remember that
the Florentine Guelfs suffered a defeat in the Val d’Arbia
and another at Monte Aperto. The notes on Inf. xii.
119 are quite a study. ‘The passage refers to the mur-
der at Viterbo (1271) of Prince Henry, son of Richard
of Cornwall, on his return from the Crusade, by Guy of
Montfort, son of Simon Duke of Leicester, and Vicar of
Charles 1. of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies. Lombardi
makes out that the murdered man was the old king,
Henry 11. Biagioli makes him a Prince Henry, son of
Henry 111., who never existed. Vellutello makes him the
brother of Prince Edward and son of King Richard of
England!! And all the while Benvenuto da Imola had long
ago related the history quite correctly, though not without
some confusion ; and even Boccaccio [?] (vol. ii. pp. 301 sg.)
and Landino are guilty of none of these frightful blunders.!
—1I know of very few examples in which the modern Com-

1 All the more recent Commentators have the true account here.—
1869.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 43

mentators have drawn on the stores of their own historical
information to explain any difficult passages of the poem.
One such instance is to be found in Lombardi’s note on
Inf. xxii. 88, and another in Biagioli’s on /nf. xxviii. 135,
although in the latter case Benvenuto’s contrary opinion
ought to have been considered.

If the limits are drawn so closely, surely we may reason-
ably expect the data of the early Commentators to be made
full use of ; but not even this is done. Landino has been
drawn upon more freely than the rest, but some of the
examples already given will suffice to show how many
corrections even he might have supplied. I have already
mentioned that Boccaccio is almost entirely neglected in
this respect, and yet he is the only one who gives with any
completeness the beautiful story of Francesca da Rimini
(vol. i. pp. 476 s4.) and the account of Pietro delle Vigne’s
death (vol. ii. pp. 333 s¢.), and much besides. I need not
repeat that Benvenuto has been left untouched, and will
merely mention as specimens some of the passages of the
Inferno on which he would have thrown fresh light (viii. 46,
x. 87; xxii. 108, xxiv. 125, 145, xxvii. 27, 88 sv. xxviii. 16,
55) 73) XXIX. 123, XXX. 0, XXXil. 60, 1271).

Specially important to the historical comprehension of
Dante is an acquaintance with the circumstances of his own
life, and it is surely a bad sign that the new Commentators
content themselves with reprinting the existing lives of
him. It is all the pleasanter to hail the appearance of a
book like the Life of Dante which forms a part of Orelli’s
Cronichette already mentioned. It speaks throughout of love
and true comprehension of the subject, a clear view and
a vivid realisation of the whole period, great diligence and
clear insight supporting well-grounded individual opinions;
and it must also be regarded as no small merit in the author
that he has drawn a great number of his data from the
works of Dionisi; for in this, as in other respects, this
IL THE ART OF

writer’s wealth of research has hitherto been allowed to lie
almost unused and unnoticed. I hope the author will find
in the following brief notes sufficient evidence of the care-
ful consideration I have given his book.

One of the reasons why so thick a veil hangs over
Dante’s life is that every groundless report has been copied
from one writer to another without the least attempt being
made to test its truth. This is too often the way in
Italy. Moreover, Boccaccio, our poet’s earliest biographer,
sets to work in a truly Alexandrine fashion, and, like his
models, frequently invents facts with a view to clothing
them in sounding rhetoric and appending declamatory
reflections to them ; as in the case of his accusing Dante of
wantonness, an accusation of which Orelli very properly
takes no heed.

Our author attempts, after the example of Pelli and
Dionisi to base his statements as far as possible on Dante’s
own intimations, and on contemporaneous history and
documents; and so, one after another, the absurdities
attributed to Dante disappear. On page 18, for instance,
we are at last informed of the sufficiently obvious fact
that Dante did nor change his politics out of disgust at
his exile. On page 10 the numerous amours which have
been attributed to the poet are thrown aside, as they had
already been by Dionisi. Boccaccio’s silly gossip about
Dante’s unhappiness with his wife (which Landino spins
out still further in his Vita e costumi), and about his un-
bounded political importance and his numerous embassies,
is refuted (pp. 13 and 17), and in place of the latter the
authenticated embassies to Naples and S. Geminiano

1 Todeschini, Imbriani, Bartoli, Scartazzini, and Kraus represent a
strong reaction against this uncritical credulity in Italy, Switzerland, and
Germany. The danger now seems to be an uncritical incredulity. Dr.
Witte’s own matured and deliberate views on the degree of confidence

we may repose in Boccaccio’s narrative will be found on pp. 222 sq. of
this volume.—ED.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 45

appear, although note 152 still reposes too much faith in
the old biographer. On p. 3 Dante’s acquaintance with
Greek is rightly denied, although better grounds for the
denial might have been alleged, the most conclusive being
that Dante (Amoroso Convivio, ii. 15) was wholly at a loss
to judge between two divergent translations of Aristotle.
A veritable monument of futility may be found in Bia-
gioli’s defence of the opposite opinion (note on Inf. xiv.
134). In opposition to Pelli (Zatta, iv. 2, p. 82 [v. 96])
it is shown on page 24 that Dante probably had no
share in the attack on Florence in 1304 [!]; and from
p. 37 onwards the obscure history of the later years of
Dante’s exile are unfolded very clearly on the foundation
of Dionisi’s work. Where there is so much accuracy I
could have wished that nothing resting on a questionable
basis had been admitted, such as the statement on p. 25
that the Canzone ¢ Amor, dacché convien’ was composed on
the Carrarese coast, whereas Vanetti, without much better
grounds, assigns it to the Valle Lagarina (Zatta, iv. 2,
pp. 141-168). It would be much better to have left the
question alone. On p. 34, on the authority of a single
manuscript, which Pelli had already followed (see De
Romanis, Div. Com., vol. i. p. xli), Dante is said,! without
any qualification, once to have stayed in Toscanella.? On
page 49 it is asserted, I know not on what authority, that
Dante himself collected his Rime. I cannot believe it;
for (as I shall have to point out presently) even the
Canzoni which were to have formed part of the Amoroso
Convivio are nowhere to be found in the original order,

1 T have this moment read in the Morgenbladt (1823, p. 1000) that
Viviani’s latest researches have established [?] that Dante made a long stay
with the patriarch Torriano in Friuli. See Pelli in Zatta, iv. 2, p. 98
[v. 112].

2 The discovery of the Latin text of the letter to the Emperor Henry
has made it certain that both it and the letter of denunciation and ex-
hortation addressed to the Florentines were dated, not from Toscanella,
but from the upper valley of the Arno.—1869.
46 IL.—THE ART OF

and the mss. differ too widely in their ascriptions of the
several poems to Dante to admit of the supposition that
an authentic collection by the poet himself was in exist-
ence. This is why it is so difficult to sever the genuine
from the spurious poems, and why it can only be done
at all by a close study of Dante and the fine sense for
his form which it cultivates. For instance I suspect the
Psalms and the Credo [. . . .], which Boccaccio does not
include in his carefully compiled list of Dante’s works,
and which assume such varied forms in the manuscripts
as to lose all resemblance.! Finally I must utter a modest
doubt as to the letter of Fra Ilario given on p. 70, after
Mehus (Vita Ambrosii Camald. ccexxi.), although I can form
no judgment of the Laurentian manuscript (xix. 8, p. 131),
from which it is taken.? The Dedication to Uguccione,
Dante’s sudden appearance, his unexplained confidence
in the monk, all have a legendary and fictitious air. Then
follow reports, or even arguments, just as they appear in
Boccaccio’s untrustworthy biography. There is not a
single touch added. Even the two and a half lines of
the Latin version reappear exactly as he gives them. It

1 Further remarks on this question, which must still be regarded as
under discussion, will be found in my Dante's lyrische Gedichte, ii.
pp- Ixxxi and 208-211.—1869.

2 It is however the same Ms. from which I published (in 1826)
Dante’s letter to the Cardinals in conclave at Carpentras, the authenticity
of which will hardly be disputed. Audin and others maintain that it
is written by Boccaccio’s own hand. Notwithstanding this, the
genuineness of Frate Ilario’s letter, which I still deny, is hotly con-
tested. When I wrote the words in the text I was unaware that so
competent an authority as Em. Repetti had already pronounced himself
in the same sense (Cenni sopra I’ Alpe Apuana ed i marmi di Carrara,
1820, p. 208). He maintained the same views once again in the
Antologia for Feb. 1827, pp. 17-19. He is supported in Italy by Pietro
Venturi (Giorn. Arcadico, No. c., Luglio, 1844, pp. 75 sq., also separately
issued), Centofanti (Antologia, No. cxxxvi., 1832, pp. § sq., and Studi
inediti su Dante 1846, pp. 3-19), and Tommaséo (see the notes on Purg.
viii. and xxxiit. in his edition of 1856, pp. 342, 531, 532. The majority
of the others declare for the authenticity of the letter. Amongst them is
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 47

is perhaps worthy of note that Tiraboschi does not take
the least notice of this letter.

I have shown in my introductory remarks that the
branches of Dante study I have now dealt with practically
exhaust all that the modern authorities have to say. Yet
the poem itself rises up before us as a work of such strange
yet definite significance, and the poet refers so frequently
and directly to a deeper meaning which binds all the parts
into a whole (e.g. in Inf. ix. 61; Purg. viii. 19, ix. 70),
that the recent Commentators themselves have begun to
feel uncomfortable at the dull mechanical progression of
their brief notes, and most of them have at least given, by
way of introduction, some opinion as to the tendency and
significance of the first Canto of the poem. But is it
possible for the deep, devout meaning of the consecrated
poet, who lends his utterance to all the full inspired tones of
the Middle Ages, to be made intelligible to our day? Or
is it as impossible as a literal translation of the Memphitic
hieroglyphics 1 Dante’s words are mere shadow-pictures

Troya (Veltro alleg., pp. 103 sq. ; cf. Baldacchini in Veltro all. de’ Gfibellini,
PP- 422 sq.), who specially combats my doubts expressed in the text.
The fullest utterance in this sense is Fraticelli’s, in his Storia della vita
di Dante, pp. 346-368. Luigi Muzzi Tre epistole lat. di D. All., 1845,
PP. 48-52, considers the objections at any rate weighty, and Cesare Balbo
attaches almost equal importance to them (Vita di D., ii. cap. 6, p. 174,
1st ed.). Scolari expresses still greater hesitation (Intorno alle epist.
lat. di D. All, 1844, p- 44). In Germany the letter is considered
spurious by Blanc (¢ Dante’ in Ersch and Gruber’s Ezcyclopedie, xxiii.
p. 69, note [two hundred and] 81 sq.), Wegele (D.’s Leben un. Werke,
ard ed., p. 400), and Paur (Ueber d. Quellen zur Lebensgesch. Dantes,
PP- 14, 15, 49). Vericour is therefore far from giving a correct
impression of the state of the controversy when he says that this ¢ very
interesting episode’ of Dante’s life ‘has been doubted without any
plausible reasons by one or two German critics,—but consecrated after-
wards, and after conscientious investigations, by the authority of Couut
Balbo’ (T#e Life and Times of Dante, 1858).—1869.

1 At a time when Champollion’s discoveries were still to come, or at
48 N. THE ART OF

to these moderns. "They are a mere tinkling and inarticulate
sound. And when they have to interpret them they seem
fairly to take leave of their senses, and force upon Dante the
most shrieking modernisms, that thenceforth thrust their
grinning heads out of the venerable old vestments! If
only they would take the poet’s warning :

‘O ye who in a little bark, longing to hear, have followed
my keel that sings upon its way, turn back to look on your
own shores. Commit you not to the ocean; for perchance,
losing me, ye will be left astray.’

But we, who in sincere love for our divine poet, wait in
silence until we see how much of his meaning he himself
will reveal unto us, may hope perhaps that one day it will
be permitted us to take to ourselves those other words :

‘Ye other few, who have timely lift up your necks for the
bread of Angels, on which we feed here but are never satiated,
ye may in truth put out your craft on the open brine, keeping
my furrow upon the water which is sinking back to the level.’

In the middle of life’s journey (the poem begins) I had
lost my way in a thick forest ; after long struggle I reached
its limit, and hastened, in order to gain the open ground, to
ascend a hill whose summit was crowned by the rays of the
morning sun. Then the poet’s path is obstructed first by
a panther, then by a lion, and finally by a she-wolf ; and
he flees before them down the slope of the mountain.
Then Virgil appears, and promises to rescue him from the
perils surrounding him. The transfigured Beatrice,
Dante’s early love, had been commanded by Lucia, who
in her turn received the command from another gracious
lady, to aid the wanderer ; and she had come down from
Heaven to send Virgil to his rescue. Virgil tells him in
Beatrice’s name that the only path by which he can return
any rate were as yet unknown to the general public, it was natural to

assume that the hieroglyphics contained the record of deep mysterious
doctrines.—1869.
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 49

in safety will lead him, under his guidance, through
Hell and Purgatory to Paradise. Then begins the sub-
terranean journey through the ranks of the unrepentant
sinners, ranged according to the degree of their guilt.
His passage is opposed by mythical creatures on guard at
the entrance to the various sections of Hell, but Virgil’s
leadership and Beatrice’s command reduce them all to
silence. Some of the damned reveal their crimes, inquire
into the condition of affairs in the upper earth, and lift the
veil of futurity for him. Dante descends to the centre of
the earth, the abode of Satan, and then ascends by a steep
and toilsome path to the antipodes, where he re-issues into
the light of day at the foot of the mount of Purgatory.
Here the repentant souls do penance in dire suffering,
while examples from history show them how to free
themselves from the burden of their sins. As Dante
ascends the mountain he sees how with every advance the
holy joy and courage of the spirits rise, until he comes to
the abode of the first innocence, where Beatrice herself
comes to meet him, and Virgil vanishes in silence, taking no
farewell of him. Beatrice rises with him to the stars, and in
each fresh planet he enters the domain of a different virtue.
He sees the heroes of the Christian Church ; Peter, James,
and John find him firm in Faith, Hope, and Love; he is
permitted to look upon God himself, and the poem closes.
A tradition, now half a millennium old, recognises in
this poem the portrayal of man given over to sin and pre-
vented by his lusts from recovering the path of virtue, till
the Christian religion teaches him, by the light of under-
standing, to recognise sin and free himself from it, and then,
in her own person, offers to his transported vision the divine
revelation of the secret and the bliss of heaven.— This in-
terpretation, which I shall go on to expand, was undisputed
until the end of the last century, when Dionisi observed
that the poem had also a political significance. In particular,
D
50 I.-THE ART OF

the lusts represented by the beasts were especially
characteristic of individual States, which should therefore
be held in mind in reading the poem (Preparaz. stor. ii.
195 3 Anedd., ii. 82; Brescia ed. of the Comedy, p. v).
—Thereby the dykes were pierced! Every reader inter-
preted the poem after his own whim, and it is a melancholy
spectacle to see them rushing off with the several shreds
of the truth, rightly feeling that they have grasped a part
of it, and yet, with all their pains, unable to make the
detached member live, because it belongs to the organism
of a deity, not to a polyp that can fasten and grow upon
anything that offers. If we read the critics, one after
another, and see how much of the truth each one has
grasped, we are at a loss to conceive how they could all
contrive to stray into such perverse bypaths.

Biagioli has stuck in great part to the old explanation,
only translating it into modern form. According to
him Dante’s first love is #isdom ; he strives to reach her,
but soon error is heaped upon error in his breast, earthly
passions and lusts gain the ascendency, and he can resist
them no longer. Lust, pride, and covetousness ever drive
him back into the night of ignorance. But his soul (donna
gentile) refuses to submit, and when he has come to years
of riper experience, she prays Truth (Lucia) to put an end
to so shameful a servitude. She again sends Speculation on
the things of earth (Virgil) and of heaven (Beatrice) to aid
and enlighten the wanderer. Philosophy has no difficulty
in leading Dante back from his errors by showing him the
awful consequences of sin in Hell and Purgatory. The
higher speculation lifts him by discourses on the nature of
God to the life of contemplation, and so raps him to the
stars. These are the main outlines of Biagioli’s inter-
pretation, specially developed in the notes to Inf. il. 94
and xvi. 61, and with special penetration in the preface
to the Paradiso. He himself exclaims of it, ¢ It is impossible
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 51

that the contemplation of such a beautiful truth should
fail to enamour the mind that investigates and loves it.’?

A very different meaning is found in the Divina Com-
media by Count Marchetti.2 Dante, he says, was am-
bassador in the court of Rome when the storm which had
long been brewing suddenly broke upon him, and the
sentence of banishment was pronounced. Then he found
himself an exile from his country, wandering in the friend-
less and joyless wood of exile. He sought indeed to
return by the straight road to the peace and rest of his
fatherland, and the sun of Imperial power (Henry vir)
seemed already to be rising on him and on his troubled
country, bringing order into all things ; but three monsters
obstinately barred his way—the faithless Guelfs of Flor-
ence, the ambitious Charles of Valois, and the avaricious
Pope. Future generations, so Virgil prophesied, would
indeed be liberated from the oppressions of these usurpers
by the prowess of the Ghibelline hero, Cangrande della
Scala, but as yet there is no comfort and no help for
Dante save in poetry and study. The love of his youth,
yet unforgotten, gives him his first poetic inspiration,
the example of Virgil leads him as he develops it, and the
beloved herself lends the loftiest images in which the poem
rises to a climax. And thus the great work gradually

comes into being. The vast sweep and the exaltation of /

its contents, the purity of the sentiments it breathes, and

the beauty of its language, must win its author immortal |

fame. All hearts must open to it ; Dante’s fame must pour |

1 Almost the same line is taken by Brait Delamathe, but with a
closer approximation to the early explanations (Traduction de Ienfer
du Dante, Paris, 1823, p. 28).

2 P.S.—A great deal of what Marchetti urges may be found, either
in germ or in full development, in Dionisi’s various works, though, the
latter is always more cautious than the former. Dionisi’s works came
belated into my hands, and the first note to this essay (p. 19) explains
how it is that I cannot now set forth in the text the true relations
between him and Marchetti. See below.
52 II._THE ART OF

its stream over the whole of Italy, until at last his abashed
fatherland must reopen her gates with penitent entreaty.
And so by his wonderful and toilsome journey he will
find a path of return to his home which none of the
monsters can obstruct.

Marchetti himself says of this interpretation that it
¢brings to the Divine Poem a more reasonable view,
and, if I may say so, a far nobler interpretation.” And as a
matter of fact it gained credence with incredible rapidity
from the Alps to the Ionian sea, receiving such ready
acceptance everywhere that I do not know of a single
voice raised against it in defence of the old interpretation.!
In Bologna Paolo Costa undertook the new edition to
which we have already referred almost entirely for the
purpose of following up Marchetti’s discovery in detail
and extracting new light on every point therefrom ; and
it was simply in order to abet and supplement him that
Colelli began his Commentary. Nor do I suppose for a
moment that all the work that has been published on these
lines has come under my notice. Yet even this brilliant
success did not secure unbroken peace. Colelli himself in-
troduced some modifications into the theory as first put

1 There were really several isolated voices raised to contradict the
theory. Among them was that of the eminent Parenti (Memorie di reli-
gione, di morale e di letteratura, 1822, vol. i. pp. 159-180 (in No. 2)), and
of that veteran amongst still living Dantophilists, Fil. Scolari (Della piena
e giusta intelligenza della Div. Comm., 1823, p. 26). Ferd. Wolf had
indeed directed attention to the protest against the new interpretation in
the Wiener Fahrbiicher of 1824 (p. 43 note), just at the very time of
the appearance of my essay. Since then a decided reaction has set in,
started in the beginning of the forties by Giovanni Ponta and Giov. Bat.
Giuliani, and (in special connection with my essay) Luigi Picchioni
(1846). Berardinelli (1859), Barelli (1864), and several others, repre-
sent the same school. On the other hand Marchetti’s politico-polemical
misinterpretation of the Divine Comedy has been carried to far greater
lengths by Gab. Rossetti and his school. More of this in Essay v.—
1869. [The essay on Rossetti’s interpretation of Dante that Dr. Witte
here refers to is not amongst those selected for translation in the present
volume.—ED.]
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 53

forward, and now that the doors have been flung open, I
should not be surprised to see that the real purpose of the
Divina Commedia is to show how Rome attained to lordship
over the world. The mighty State, we might be told,
grew great in the wilderness. Then its further progress
was opposed by the hungry Gauls, the proud Pyrrhus, the
licentious Carthaginians. But a stern punitive discipline
and a wise distribution of rewards raised it, under the type
of its heroic founder, to the splendour of imperishable glory
of the palmy days of Augustus! As for Colelli’s emenda-
tion, it consists in taking the dark forest (dark to the com-
mentators as well as to the pilgrim) to signify not exile
but the party conflicts into which Dante had thrown him-
self ; so that his return from the poetic journey will be not
only to Florence, but to the peace of the contemplative life.

And now I would fain place the real root-conception of
the Divine Comedy side by side with this tangle of error.
I would endeavour to speak the word towards which every
line of the great enigma points; the word that combines
the lovely play of the images of a dream, the uncompre-
hended cadences that fall upon the ear, with the radiance of
truth ; the word which gives a new and wondrous meaning
to every feature, and—but I am tempted to throw down
my pen, for I realise my task and my impotence. I feel
indeed that I am gazing on the sun, but its glory appears
tempered as by a morning cloud, and I have not the might
to rise above it to the eternal blue. My eye can follow
the lofty path of the heavenly body, but its own dimness
prevents its perceiving clearly the distances and the depths
which are all lighted by that same sun. Moreover I have
to make an unwonted train of thought luminous, and I
feel that my own speech is inadequate to convey even that
which I have myself received and experienced.

¢ Each tongue assuredly must fail, because of our language, and
our mind, whose wit is scant to comprehend so much.’
54 II.—THE ART OF

And again, to understand the whole significance of the
marvellous edifice, the consistency of every detail must be
examined, and here a few lines of suggestion are all that
I can command.

While he was still a child, Dante’s innocent heart was
inflamed with love, and was turned so utterly to heaven and
penetrated with a devoutness so pure that we can understand
how some have doubted whether the sacred flame was in-
deed kindled by a daughter of earth, or whether Dante but
gave bodily form, in ¢the blessing one—Beatrice,” to the
joyous and believing love that went out from his young
heart to the Heavenly Father. The /ita Nuova records
this childlike devoutness, unclouded by a suspicion of doubt
and knowing no wish but to gaze for ever on the miracle
in which the glory of God’s grace was mirrored, guarding
the tender secret of its plenitude deep in the breast that no
stranger glance might desecrate it.! A few detached poems
belong to the same cycle.?

But when Dante attained to man’s estate, Beatrice was
snatched from him. Long did he mourn for her as for his
lost innocence,® but finally fresh charms ensnared him. In
the glance of a gracious lady he thought he found Beatrice’s
love and pity once again. She promises to share and

1 Vita Nuova: ¢ This most gentle one, who was the destroyer of all the
vices and queen of the virtues.’

¢ And whoso should endure to stand and gaze upon her would become
a noble thing, or else would die. And whenso she finds one worthy to
look on her, he hath experience of her power ; for that which giveth him
salvation comes to pass on him.’

¢ When they asked me: By whom hath this Love thus undone thee ?
I looked at them and smiled, but answered naught.’

2 ¢.g. the Ballad Fresca rosa novella, and the Sonnets 19, 20, 21, 23
in recent editions. The ballad however can hardly be regarded as a
work of Dante’s.—1869.

8 Morte poick’ io non trove a cui mi doglia, and also the last chapter
of the Vita Nuova. Who does not know his moving lamentations over
his vanished piety, Dez, pellegrini, che pensosi andate 2

4 Vita Nuova: ¢ Wheresoever this lady saw me she grew full of pity in
her semblance, and of a pale hue, as it were of love, wherefore many a
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 55

comfort his grief, but soon the lightnings of her eyes drive
out the memory of the dead, and she absorbs his whole
heart. She is Philosophy.! The Amoroso Convivio is dedi-
cated to this tormenting love? It is restless and full of
anguish,® for the peace of childlike self-surrender has left

time she called my most noble lady to my mind.’—¢I came to such a
pass by the vision of this lady that my eyes began to delight overmuch
in looking upon her’—¢My heart began grievously to repent of the
longing by which it had so basely suffered itself to be possessed.” [In a
like vein the poet explains the cause of this and other errors of faith, in
Par. v. 10: “And if aught else seduce your love, it is no other than
some ill recognised impress of this [true good] that shines through it.’
—1869.]

1 Amoroso Convivio ii. 13. ‘When I had lost the first delight of my
soul . . . I was left transfixed by so great sorrow that not any comfort
aught availed me. Howbeit after a certain space my mind, which was
striving to heal itself, took counsel (since neither my consolations nor
those of any other availed) to betake itself to the way which a
certain disconsolate one had pursued to console himself; and I set me
to read that book of Boethius, not known to many, etc. . . . Albeit at
the first it was hard for me to penetrate their meaning. . . . I could already
perceive many things, as though in a dream, even as may be seen in the
Vita Nuova. And as it chances that a man goes in search of silver
and without purposing it findeth gold, which some hidden cause pre-
senteth to him, perchance not without divine command; so I, who was
seeking to console me, found not only the assuagement of my tears, but
words of authors and of sciences and of books, considering the which
I deemed that Philosophy, who was the lady of these authors, of these
sciences, and of these books, must needs be a thing supreme ; and I con-
ceived her fashioned as a gentle lady, and I might not conceive her with
any expression save that of pity. . . . I began to feel so much of her sweet-
ness, that the love of her drove out and destroyed every other thought.
Wherefore feeling me uplifted from the thought of the first love to the
virtue of this one, as though in amaze I opened my mouth,’ etc. [. . ..]

2 Presumably Dante intended to collect and explain all the Canzoni
that referred to this his second love in the Amoroso Convivio. It was to
contain fourteen poems ; but the poet only brought it up to the third.
Elsewhere I hope to show that the remaining Canzoni are for the most
part still extant. [.... The promise was redeemed in the second
volume of Dante's lyrische Gedichte, pp. xxxii-xlii.—1869.]

3 It is just this want of peace that makes the contrast between this
second love and the love of Beatrice. The latter can ask the poet, in
Purg. xxxi. 22, Within the longings for me which led thee to love
that good beyond which is naught whereto to aspire, what cross-
ditches or what chains didst thou discover which should thus strip thee
of the hope of passing further forth ?°
56 I.—THE ART OF

his breast. His impetuosity ever demands new favours from
his beloved ; and she often turns away from him in disdain,
whereon he breaks forth into loud laments, and feels at times
that this love can never bring enduring life to his heart.
She leads him to speculate on everything that presents
itself to his gaze. He searches into the nature of
Justice, of Courage, of Magnanimity ; he works out
his theories on the ordering of the State, and the signi-
ficance of the great events of his day, and he dedicates his
life to the realisation of the truth as he conceives it. To
this period of his life belongs the share he took in the
government of his native city, and probably also his writ-
ings on language and poetry. But soon the party strife
threatens entirely to absorb? him in the vortex of mundane
cares and rising passions. Then Philosophy points him to
the steep path of speculation, and he turns aside from the
temptations of earth and the din of her struggles to climb
upward, that he may learn in the sunlight to gaze into the
eternal truth, and apprehend the nature of God. But he is
soon to find how indequate is human reason, and how
devious the path he has chosen, since revelation alone can
lead him to his goal.? He has estranged himself from Chris-

1 1 assign to the Amoroso Convivio the Canzone, ¢ Em’ incresce di
me si malamente,” which contains the passage, We will give peace to
the heart, and delight to you, said to my eyes a certain time those of the
beauteous lady. But when they knew by their wit that my very mind
was now clean reft away by force of her, with love's ensigns they
wheeled them round.” And again, from ‘Io sento si d’Amor la gran
possanza’ : “I say not that love is working more mightily than I would ;
for did he do all that my will demands, that power which nature gave
me would not endure, seeing it is exhausted. And this it is whereat I
suffer woe, that power holds not faith with will.’

2 Purg. xxxi. 34, he says to Beatrice: ¢Present things, with their
false delight, turned my steps aside so soon as your countenance was
hid.” [A similar vein of self-accusation appears in the poet’s words to
the shade of his friend Forese Donati, Purg. xxiii. 115: ‘If thou call
to mind what thou wast with me and I with thee, the present memory
will still be grievous.’—1869.]

8 How deceitful is the light of Philosophy, and why it is so we learn
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 57

tendom, the three virtues which are so entirely proper to
our religion fail him, and the evil passions which usurp their
place hurl him back into the dark turmoil of his life. [....]

Then the grace of God? once more awakens the light

from Beatrice in Par. xxix. 85: ‘Ye on earth walk not on one path
in your philosophy, so do the love of appearance and the thought that
springs from it transport you.’ The teaching which the poet has
enjoyed in the school of earthly wisdom, so far from conferring upon
him the power to comprehend the divine truths which Beatrice reveals,
actually robs him of it. And so, when he asks her why her discourse
is so obscure to him, she answers (Purg. xxxiii. 85), ¢ That thou mayst
recognise . . . that school which thou hast followed, and mayst see
how far its teaching can follow my discourse; and mayst see that thy
way is as distant from the divine way as is the stretch from earth to
the heaven that speeds most high.’—1869.

1 The Commentaries have from the beginning varied as to the
meaning of the three beasts which denote these passions. [The Ottimo
gives envy as an alternative to the usual interpretation of the wolf
(cf. Inf. vi. 74)]. Jacopo della Lana explains the lonza as vana gloria ;
Bosone d’Agubbio as creazion bona (?). I may therefore be excused
for taking yet another view, or rather for giving a more general inter-
pretation of these, and taking the panther to be self-secking, the lion
pride, and the she-wolf dissension (cf. above, p. 49). There is no real dis-
agreement between the other views and mine therefore, and I must depre-
cate an appeal to Purg. xx. 10 against me.—The only point in which
Dionisi and Marchetti are entirely right is when they charge the old
interpretation with failing to establish any connection between the /upa
and Cangrande della Scala. This is so true that none of the old Com-
mentaries, so far as I know, think of explaining the welfro as Cangrande
at all. This most striking identification is first advanced, as far as I
am aware, by an anonymous Commentator of the year 1447, quoted
by Dionisi (Preparaz. stor.,ii. 160) from a Magliabecchian Ms. Dante,
as we learn from the De Monarchia, believed that the one only and
divinely appointed way to unite the whole of humanity in peace and
quietness was to be found in submission to the consecrated power of the
Emperor. The Guelfs, unmindful of their duty, resist it, and as long
as they raise their factious standard the she-wolf of idissension will
stalk abroad, spreading devastation as she goes. It is only the victory
of the Ghibellines that can bring any hope of this monster’s destruction.
This explains the prophecy put into Virgil's mouth by Dante con-
cerning the noble youth who was the pride of the Italian Ghibellines.
This remark may also be taken to heart by those who maintain that
the Divina Commedia deals too much with mundane matters for a
religious poem. [Cf. on the whole subject the introduction to my
German translation of the Divine Comedy, pp. 28-35.—1869.]

2 Boccaccio’s exposition of the passages bearing on this point in the
second canto of the Inferno is good (Com., i. pp. 241-244).
58 II.~.THE ART OF

of religion in his breast ; he repents of having admitted an
overweening philosophy into his heart ;! the old faith, the

1 Since Dionisi’s view has not had its proper position assigned to it
in the text, I will here attempt to indicate it in outline. It certainly
ought to be noticed, for it far excels the other modern interpretations
both in depth and in the way in which it is worked out. Dionisi (Pre-
par. stor., i. p. 137), in contrast to his imitators, rightly follows the Com-
mentator known as Petrus Dantis in noting that Dante, in the perfect
objectivity of his poem, lays upon himself the failings of the whole
human race, so that two meanings, one moral or allegorical, and the
other historical, run through the whole work. From the allegorical
point of view then, says Dionisi, Dante, as the old Commentators saw,
depicts in his own person the human soul in general, at first ignorant
and estranged from God, and then, in the process of the poem itself,
ascending to knowledge and faith by the path there indicated. But
in the historical sense we find the banished Ghibelline poet, in spite of
the difficulties thrown in his way by his own foes and the foes of the
good cause, struggling to lead his fatherland into the better way by his
poem, and so win his return to Florence and the glory of the poets
crown. Dionisi looks upon this historical signification as showing us
what Dante was really at, while the allegory is designed as a picturesque
background. In the Prepar. stor., ii. p. 206, he says: ¢ The trouble
is that in this moral sense we cannot say what the welfro may be’; and
p- 208, ¢ These inconsistencies clearly show that the moral sense is inter-
mittent, and is only there to sustain the rude and simple readers who
cannot appreciate the history. Nevertheless the exposition of the said
moral meaning is by no means to be despised; for like the odorous
bark of quince or cedar it has been found capable of giving delight to
men of learning as well as others, until I had the good fortune of setting
before them the far more delicious and sustaining pith and marrow.’
And accordingly he is driven (Prepar. stor., ii. 105-110) to take refuge
in the moral sense to explain the reproach of infidelity which Beatrice
urges against the poet (Purg. xxx. 124) when she meets him again in
Purgatory: ¢So soon as I was on the threshold of my second age, and
changed my life, this man removed himself from me and gave him to
another. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and beauty and power
had grown upon me, to him I was less dear and pleasing, and he
turned his steps upon an untrue path, following false images of good
that keep no promise whole.’

Dionisi indeed rightly feels that Dante’s second love (of Philosophy)
sprang up after the death of Beatrice Portinari; but to him Dante’s
love of the transfigured Beatrice of the Divine Comedy is but a won-
drous fusion of the two, a symbolisation of the loftiest philosophy under
the name of his dead love. In the Comedy he returned to the adorning
of his first lady, that is to say Beatrice, with the supernatural and
scholastic light of faith’ (47. ii. 44). ¢That Beatrice represents Philo-
sophy in the Comedy no one doubts” (ii. 55). There sprang up in him
MISUNDERSTANDING DANTE 59

old love of Beatrice, awakes in fresh intensity, and on the
day on which the Saviour set the human race free, he too is

again, like a new olive shoot out of the stock, or there was born again,
like the Phoenix from its ashes, his ancient love for his first lady, as
pure and hallowed as ever; and at the same time the flame of Wisdom
which had erst burnt within him flashed up again ; whence was formed
this wonderful new love, which I call the third. Its object was the
ancient Beatrice, but gloriously clad and adorned in the garments and
the beauty of Philosophy’ (Prepar. stor., ii. 67). Thus to him Dante’s
second love is in no sort of contradiction to his first, and he denies
(4n. ii. p. 45) that the gentil donna of the Vita Nuova (§ 37) is
¢ substantially and truly’ the same as the lady of the Convivio (ii. 2).
On the one hand he does not think the pictorial method of expression
can be pushed so far as to make love of abstract Philosophy pass for
unfaithfulness to Beatrice, who had actually lived on earth ; and, on
the other hand, quite in the modern spirit, he looks upon no kind of
philosophical inquiry as contrary to the teaching of Theology. This
teaching is supreme over all such inquiries, and they are indeed no more
than a part of it. “It is not true that Dante ever abandoned his lady
after once he had known her. After Beatrice’s death she was Philo-
sophy in the full extension of the term, and therefore Theology, which
is the noblest branch of Philosophy’ (47. ii. p. go). Dionisi sets aside on
the ground of anachronism (Prepar. ii. 105-8) the not entirely erroneous
idea of ¢ Petrus Dantis’ and the Canonico Biscioni that the pargolletta
—with love for whom (as manifested in the Conzvivio) Beatrice reproaches
Dante—is the study of poetry and other profane branches of learning. He
has to take refuge (on manifest compulsion) in the theory that these
accusations, which are devoid of all historical foundation, are to be
understood in a moral sense only, in that Dante represents the human
race, so many of whom, in despite of wisdom, throw themselves into
the arms of debasing passions. It is especially surprising to find this
erroneous view in Dionisi, since he says himself a few pages before:
‘Even the love or study of Wisdom, may in a certain sense be called
a false, that is an evil, love, when it makes us love God the less. And
this it does when followed with such fervour and affection as to dry
up the will.” Well! and this is exactly how it was, both. in form and
substance. Ever since the days of Abelard in the twelfth century the
rationalistic pride of scholasticism and the humble faith of mysticism
had been as sharply opposed as they are to-day; the only difference
being that in the Middle Ages the rationalists did not actually profess
to set themselves above revelation, though they explained and distorted
divine things after their own will and pleasure. All this will further serve
to refute the conclusions drawn by Biagioli (Intr. to Par. p. vii) from
the Convivio, regardless of the fact that the book is actually written under
the dominion of the second love. (Cf. ii. 9: ¢ The blessed Beatrice, of
whom I do not purpose to speak further in this book.”) [See next essay. ]

! Tt must be noted that the second love of Beatrice differs from the
60 ESSAYS ON DANTE

released in his inmost soul. But the sins of the past still
weigh upon him, and the Church teaches that he can
only enter into the glory of God when his contrite heart
has acknowledged in deepest anguish the sin of his estrange-
ment from God, that he may then by fitting penance wash
from his soul the stains that obscure her divine purity
(contritio, satisfacti0).!

[I have thought it best to omit the conclusion of this
article, since it coincides in content, and sometimes word
for word, with the preceding essay (pp. 14 sgq.).—1869.]

first, as a theology founded on knowledge and research differs from
childlike faith. Thus in the whole poem, and more especially in the
Paradiso, Dante is in possession of doctrine, properly so called. Biagioli
deserves thanks for having traced the sciences in the several planets ([ntr.
to Par. p. vi), although the observation only leads him into fresh errors
himself.

1 The Confessio will be found in Purg. xxxi. 1-67. I was first put
on the track of the true interpretation by Boccaccio’s Commentary,
and afterward found it fairly elaborated in that of Jacopo della Lana
(Purg. i.).
H1.—-DANTE'S TRILOGY

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 141-182 (1869).]

IN reissuing my essays on the poet of the Divine Comedy 1
have realised afresh that the real kernel of them all, as well
as of my other Dante studies, lies in the very earliest of
them (No. 11. in this issue). My other labours in this field
strike me as subsidiary to the root-idea there developed,
calculated to strengthen its foundations rather than to lead
to anything fresh.

In an article opposing my views, and written with much
insight, the French scholar, Julian Klaczko, declares :?
¢M. Witte’s hypothesis reappeared in a thousand forms in
countless works on the Divine Comedy published in Ger-
many. So that his conception, as already said, holds
sovereign sway over Dante criticism beyond the Rhine.
It is the point of departure for every fresh essay or discus-
sion, and the timid objections that it has met have entirely
failed to shake its credit. At the very most they have only
occasioned some modification of details in the general
system, which seems to be established all the more firmly
by the partial concessions which its zealous and acute
champions have seen good to make.’—Had the German
Dante-students, or even the majority of them, really been
as favourably disposed towards my hypothesis concerning
the connection of Dante’s three chief Italian works as M.
Klaczko describes, it would scarcely be necessary to revert

1 Revue Contemporaine, 1854, No. xvi. 385-440; see especially 400-

424.
61
62 ESSAYS ON DANTE

to the question once more. But I know only too well that
this is not the case. And now, since my opinion, despite
all contradiction, remains unaltered, I cannot but regard
it as a singularly happy dispensation that at the expiration
of five and a half decades I am allowed to return once
more to the defence of the position of which I sketched
the outline in my early youth. The reader must pardon
the inevitable repetition into which I shall occasionally

fall.

I. The Vita Nuova and the Convivio concur in testifying
that after Beatrice’s death Dante allowed himself to be

fascinated by other charms.

1. (Vita N. cap. 42, Son.
25.) Beyond the sphere that
has the largest sweep, passes
the sigh that issues from my
heart...

When he has reached the
place of his desire, he sees a
lady who receiveth honour . . .

I know he speaketh of that
gentle one, for often he re-
peateth © Beatrice.’

2. (Vita N. cap. 36.) Then
after a certain space, being in
a place wherein I recalled to
myself the past time, I was in
right mournful plight, and with
such dolorous thoughts as gave
me in outward guise the sem-
blance of a terrible dismay.
Wherefore 1 being aware of
my travail uplifted my eyes to
see if any beheld me; and I

6. (Conw.1i. 8 : 36.) Thelife
of my heart was wont to be
a sweet thought. This thought
many a time took its way to
the feet of God, which is to
say that in thought I contem-
plated the kingdom of the
blest. And I say ‘Where it saw
a lady in glory’ to give to
understand that I was and am
assured by her gracious revela-
tion that she was in Heaven ;
wherefore, pondering thereon
many times as I might, I went
thither as though rapt.

7. (Coro. ii. 2.) Twice had
the star of Venus returned in
thatcircle of hers which maketh
her appear at even or at morn,
after the passing away of that
blessed Beatrice who liveth in
Heaven with the angels and on
earth with my soul, when that
gentle lady of whom I made
mention at the end of the Vita
Nuova first appeared to my eyes
III.-DANTE’S TRILOGY

saw a gentle lady, young and
very beauteous, who from a
window was looking on me,
right pitifully to judge from
her semblance, so that all pity
seemed gathered in her. Where-
fore . . . I said within myself:
It may not be but that a most
noble love is with this piteous
lady.

3. (Vita. N. cap. 37.)

63

in company with Love and took
a certain place in my mind,

Thenceforth it came to pass that

whensoever this lady beheld me she became piteous in semblance
and of a pallid hue, as though of love ; wherefore often did she
mind me of my most noble lady, who was ever in semblance of

like colour.

4. (Vita N.cap. 38.) Icame
to such a pass by looking upon
this lady that my eyes began to
take too much delight in be-
holding her, wherefore many
times I reviled myself and held
myself most base therefor; and
many a time I spoke evil of the
vanity of my eyes, and said to
them in my thoughts: But now
ye were wont to make all who
saw your condition weep ; and
now meseems ye would fain for-
get it, for the sake of this lady
who looks upon you . . . and lest
all this battle which I sustained
against myself should be known
to none save to the wretch
who endured it, I purposed to
compose a sonnet.

5. (Via N. cap. 39.) The
sight of this lady brought me
into so strange a plight that many
times I thought of her as of one
who pleased me too well ; and
I thought of her thus: This is
a lady gentle, beauteous, young,

8. (Copp. 11, 2:27.) It be-
hoved, ere this new love were
made perfect, that there should
be great battle between the
thought that nurtured it and
that which was counter to it,
and which still held the citadel
of my mind on the part of that
glorious Beatrice.

v

9. (Conv. 11. 2212.) As Is
set forth by me in the aforesaid
book, more of her gentleness
than of my choice it came to
pass that I consented to be
hers, for she showed herself
possessed of so great a passion
64

and sage, and hath appeared
perchance by the will of Love
that my life may have repose.
And many times I thought yet
more amorously, so that my
heart consented thereto, that is
to this my discourse. And
when it had consented thereto

ESSAYS ON DANTE

of pity for my widowed life
that the spirits of my eyes
became her friends in highest
measure, and having become so
they made her image within
me such that my will was con-
tent to be put at the disposal
of that image.

I bethought me again, as moved
by reason. . . . Wherefore when
I had many a time thus fought
within myself, it was my will
further to utter certain words
concerning it; and inasmuch as
in the battle of my thoughts
those which spoke for her over-
came, methought it meet to
address myself to her.

(Son. 22.) A gentle thought
that speaks of thee comes oft
to sojourn with me, and dis-
courses so sweetly of Love that
he makes my heart consent to
him.

II. The Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy regard this
new attachment as infidelity to Beatrice. (Compare
No. 4 above.)

10. (Vita N. cap. 40.) Then my heart began dolorously to
repent of its desire, whereby it had thus basely suffered itself to
be possessed for certain days, counter to the constancy of reason;
and when this so ill desire was banished all my thoughts came
back to their most gentle Beatrice.

11. (Vita N. cap. 34, Canz. 4.) To her (ie. death) all my
desires turned when my lady had been struck by her cruelty;
because the joy of her beauty departing from our sight, became
a spiritual great beauteousness. (Compare No. 4 above.)

12. (Purg. xxx. 124.) As soon as I was on the threshold of
my second age and changed my life, this man took himself away
from me and gave him to another. When I had risen from
flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue had increased upon me, I
was less dear and pleasing to him; and he turned his footsteps
II.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 65

on a path untrue chasing false images of good, which keep no
promise whole.

13. (Purg. xxxi, 34.) Weeping I said: The present things,
with their false pleasure, turned my steps aside, soon as your
face was hid.

14. (Purg. xxxi. 52.) If, by the death of me, supreme
delight thus played thee false, what mortal thing thereafter
should entangle thee in its desire ? At the first stroke of things
deceitful thou shouldst have lifted thyself up after me, who was
no longer such.

III. To bring him back, Beatrice herself appears to the

poet in visions.

15. (Vita N. cap. 40.) To meet this adversary of the reason
there arose one day a strong imagination in me about the hour of
noon; for methought I saw that glorious Beatrice with those blood-
coloured vestments wherewith she first appeared unto my eyes.

16. (Purg. xxx. 133.) Nor did it avail me to gain inspira-
tions for him, wherewith in dreams and otherwise I called him
back ; so little did he care.

17. (Purg. xxx. 31.) Circled with olive over a white veil
appeared a lady to me clad, under a green mantle, with colour of
living flame.

IV. Finally the memory of Beatrice triumphs, and the
monument of this triumph is found in the Divine Comedy.

18. (Vita. N. cap. 43.) After this sonnet there appeared to
me a wondrous vision wherein I saw things that made me
purpose to write no more of this blessed one until such season
as I might treat more worthily of her. And to come at this I
study all I may, as she knows verily. So that if it be His
pleasure by whom all things live that my life be preserved some
years, I hope to write of her what ne’er was writ of woman.

19. (Par. xvii. 127.) Casting every lie aside make manifest
thy vision whole.

20. (Par. xxxiii. 61.) Such am I; for my vision hath
passed almost utterly away, yet doth the sweetness that was born
of it still drop within my heart.

V. The duration of this period of unfaithfulness is either
given vaguely (certain days, see above, No. 10), or in such
E
66 ESSAYS ON DANTE

a manner as to lead us to suppose that it lasted several
years. The Vita Nuova speaks of it as not beginning till
more than a year after Beatrice’s death, while the Convivio
mentions thirty months as a part of the period. (Cf. below,
No. vir.) Both the Vita Nuova and the Commedia appear
to place the end of it in, or shortly before, the year 1300.
21. (Vita N. cap. 41.) After this tribulation it chanced (at
that season when many folk were going to look upon that blessed
Image which Jesus Christ left to us for an example of his
most beauteous features, upon which my lady now looketh in
glory), that certain pilgrims were passing along a way the which
is as it were the midst of the city where was born, lived, and
died this most gentle lady. . . . The folk who go on service
to the Most High are called ¢ Romei,” in so far as they go to
Rome, whither those whom I here call pilgrims were going.

The earliest editor, Sermartelli, notes on this passage :
¢ Giubileo,” ¢Sudario,’ and Giov. Villani (Cronica, viii. 36)
expressly tells us that Veronica’s napkin was the special
attraction for the pilgrims to Rome in the year of Jubilee
1300 : ‘For the consolation of the Christian pilgrims, every
Friday, or solemn day of festival, the Veronica on the
napkin of Christ was displayed in San Piero. Wherefore
a great part of the Christians who were then alive made
the said pilgrimage, both women and men, from diverse and
distant countries both far and near.’

Compare with this Par. xxxi. 103: ‘As is he who,
perchance from Croatia, cometh to look on our Veronica,
who because of ancient fame is never sated, but saith in
his thoughts, so long as it be displayed: My Lord Jesus
Christ, very God, then was thy semblance such as this.’

1 Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, ii. 649, Wegele, D. AL
Leben u. Werke, 3rd edition, p. 114, and Eliot Norton, 7/4e New Life
of Dante, p. 114, all recognise the connection between the passage in
the Vita Nuova and the year of Jubilee. Professor Boehmer, however,
takes the reference as being to the annual exhibition of the Napkin in
January, and fixes the year as 1294.

[Recent editions of the Vita Nuova read ‘va,’ not ¢ andava,’ in this
II.~DANTE’S TRILOGY 67

In reference to the second Jubilee (Clement vI. having
fixed its recurrence at fifty years) Petrarch says (Epistol.
var., 34, ed. 1601, p. 584), a propos of the Cardinal of
Boulogne’s journey to Rome, ‘he will see, whether on the
woman’s napkin, or on the walls of all his mother’s churches,
the effigy of the Lord’s countenance still extant.’?

A weakness of the eyes which the /7ta Nuova mentions
immediately before this pilgrimage, is spoken of in the Con-
vivio as taking place during the period of this second love.

22. (Vita N.cap.40.) By this
rekindling of sighs my accus-
tomed weeping was rekindled
in such guise that my eyes
appeared two things that only
longed to weep, and it often
chanced that by continued
weeping there gathered round
them a purple colour such as
is wont to appear by reason of
some anguish that folk endure.
Wherefore it appeared that they
were rightly rewarded for their
vanity, so that thenceforth they
might not see any who should
look upon them.

23. (Comp. iii. 9: 147.) The
star might also seem beclouded ;
and I had experience of this
that same year in which this
canzone was born, for by
toiling my sight much in study
of reading I so enfeebled my
visual spirits that the stars
appeared to me all blurred with
a kind of halo. And by long
repose in dark and cold places,
and by cooling the body of the
eye with clear water, I bound
together again the scattered
powers and recovered the
former good condition of my
sight.

The Convivio never says anything of Dante’s return from

this second love to the first love for Beatrice, but explains
that the author does not purpose to discourse expressly of
Beatrice.

24. (Conv. ii. 9: 49.) And here, as I am discoursing of the
immortality of the soul, it will be fitting to close my words con-

cerning that living Beatrice, who is in bliss, and of whom I
purpose not further to speak in this book.

 

passage : ¢ At that season when many folk go to look, etc.’ This of
course tells in favour of interpreting the passage as an indication of
the season (January or Easter), not of the year.—ED.]

1 Cf. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mitt. Alt., vi. (1867)
P: 319:
68 ESSAYS ON DANTE

The Comedy, however, appears to place the return to
Beatrice in the period immediately preceding the vision
therein recorded.

25. (Purg. xxiii. 115.) Wherefore I to him: If thou recall
to mind what thou wast with me and what I was with thee, the
present memory will still be grievous. From this life he who
is walking there in front, turned me te other day, when His
sister (and I pointed to the sun) was round.’

VI. Love for Beatrice brought blessing to the poet,
drawing him heavenwards, and giving him peace.

26. (Vita N. cap. 24.) Meseemed that (Love) joyfully said
to me in my heart: “Think henceforth to bless the day that I
captured thee, for thou hast cause to do it’—and verily methought
my heart was so joyous that methought it was not in truth my
heart, so new was its state.

27. (Vita N. cap. 26.) She appeared so gentle and so full of
all delights that they who gazed on her conceived in themselves
a sweetness more noble and tender than they might tell. Nor
was there any who might look on her but at the first he must
needs sigh.

28. (Purg. xxx. 115.) ‘This man was virtually such in his
new life that each propitious habit would have made in him a
marvellous essay. . . . A certain space did I sustain him with
my countenance; revealing my youthful eyes to him, I led
him with me, turned to the right quarter.

29. (Purg. xxxi. 22.) Whereat she to me: Within the
longings for me which led thee to love that good beyond which
is naught whereto to aspire, what cross-ditches or what chains
didst thou find because of which thou shouldst strip thee of the
hope of passing further forth ? and what easements or advance-
ments were displayed upon the brow of others that thou shouldst
prank thyself before them?

At first, indeed, the second love promised comfort and
peace, but in their place it only brought doubt and dis-
illusioning.

30. (Canz. vi., ‘ E’ m'incresce di me si malamente.’) We will

give peace to the heart, delight to you,’ once said the eyes of
this fair lady to my eyes ; but when they knew by their intelligence
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 69

my mind was now clean reft away from me, by force of her,
then, with love’s colours flying, wheeled they round so that I
might not even once again have sight of their victorious sem-
blance; whereat remains my mind in sadness that looked for
comfort from them.

31. (Canz. vii., ¢ Cosi nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro.’) As
harsh I fain would be in my discourse as in her gestures is that
beauteous stone which every moment wins to greater hardness
and more cruel nature.

32. (Canz. x., © Amor, dacché convien pur ch’ io mi doglia’) If
she careth not, from no other have I hope of succour ; and she, an
outlaw from thy court, who art my Lord, heedeth not stroke of
any shaft of thine. Such breastplate hath she made her of her
pride that every arrow there breaks off its course ; wherefore
her armoured heart is cleft by none.

33. (Ballad, Voi che sapete ragionar & Amore’) So doth she
scorn whoever looketh on her, she maketh him bow down his
eyes in terror ; for round her own there ever whirls an image of
all cruelty.

34. (Canz. iv., ‘Le dolci rime damor chio solia’) Sweet
rhymes of love which I was wont to seek within my thoughts,
needs must I quit ; not that I have no hope to come to them
again ; but that the scornful and proud gestures which my lady
shows have closed the path of my accustomed speech.

VII. The mortal maiden, Beatrice Portinari, who even
here below appeared to her lover as the symbol of a pure
devotion untroubled by doubt, is transfigured to a brighter
spiritual beauty when the poet turns again to the thought
of the departed, after a space of temporary unfaithfulness.
She becomes a symbol of the deeper knowledge of God,
steeled by study against the attacks of doubt and error.
(Cf. No. 11 above.)

35. (Inf ii. 76.) O Lady of Virtue, by whom alone the human
race transcendeth all that is contained within that heaven that
hath the smallest circle.

(Purg. vi. 43.) But fix not thy thoughts on such deep ques-
tioning, unless She bid thee who shall be the light ’twixt truth
and thine intelligence. I know not if thou understand : I speak
of Beatrice.
70 ESSAYS ON DANTE

(Purg. xxxiii. 115.) O Light, O Glory of the human race.

(Par. iv. 118.) ‘O love of the primal lover, O goddess,
said I, ¢ whose speech doth so o’erflood and warm that more and
more it quickeneth me.’

VIII. The poet indicates Philosophy as the second
object of his love to which he turned after Beatrice’s death.

36. (Conv. ii. 16: 98.) So at the close of this second tract I say
and declare that the lady of whom I was enamoured after my first
love was the most beauteous and pure daughter of the Emperor
of the Universe to whom Pythagoras gave the name Philosophy.

It was the eloquence of Cicero, of a heathen writer
therefore, and of Boethius which led him to her, and she
appeared to him as a sympathetic comforter.

37. (Conv. ii. 13 : 5.) When I had lost the first delight of my
soul I was left pierced with so great sorrow that no consolation
availed me. Yet my mind, which was striving to heal itself, had
wisdom to turn to the fashion which some other disconsolate one
had taken to console himself. And I set me to reading that book
of Boethius, wherein, a captive and an exile, he consoled him-
self; and another book which Tullius had written, wherein
treating of friendship he had touched upon words of the con-
solation of Lelius for the death of his friend Scipio. . . . I, who
was seeking to console me, found not only a remedy for my tears,
but words of authors and of sciences and of books, considering
the which I judged that, in truth, Philosophy, who was the lady
of these authors and these sciences and these books, was a thing
supreme. And I pictured her after the fashion of a gentle lady,
and I could not picture her in any attitude save of compassion.
And, moved by this image, I began to go where she was herself
to be seen in verity, to wit, to the schools of the religious orders,
and to the disputations of such as philosophise; so that in short
season—perhaps of thirty months—I began to feel so much of
her sweetness that the love of her banished and destroyed all
other thought. . . . This lady was the daughter of God, the
queen of all, most noble and most fair Philosophy.

38. (Cong. ii. 15: 186.) By the third heaven I understand
Rhetoric.

(Conv. ii. 16.) The movers whereof are . . . such as Boethius
and Tully, who, by the sweetness of their discourse, drew me
II.-DANTE’S TRILOGY 71

into the way of love (that is of study) of that most gentle
lady Philosophy, by the rays of their star (which is the writing
concerning her).

Her eyes, whose beauty he lauds, are her demonstra-
tions ; by the smile of her mouth she persuades.

39. (Con. iii. 15: 14.) The eyes of Wisdom are her demon-
strations, whereby the truth is perceived most certainly ; and
her persuasions are her smile, for therein she showeth forth the
inner light of Wisdom under a certain veil.

Love of her expresses itself in eager study.

40. (Conv. ii. 16: 79.) And we are to know that in this
allegory love doth ever purport that study which is the applica-
tion of the mind enamoured of aught, to that same thing whereof
it is enamoured.

IX. It may seem obvious enough here also to detect a
subsequent spiritualising of an attachment to an earthly
woman. But Dante expressly guards himself against such
an interpretation, assuring us that his second love was in
no sense concerned with anything but Philosophy.

41. (Conv. i. 2 : 117.) I fear the infamy of having pursued so
great a passion as he who reads the above named odes will con-
ceive to have ruled in me; the which infamy is wholly done
away by this present speaking of myself, which shows that not
passion but virtue was the provoking cause.

X. By Philosophy Dante understands knowledge gener-
ally ; but in particular the metaphysical rather than the
ethical portion of the philosophical field.

42. (Conv. iii. 11: 133.) Philosophy, considered in herself,
hath for subject understanding, and for form an almost divine love
of that which is understood. The good of philosophy is that most
excellent delight which suffereth not intermission nor defect, to
wit that true felicity which is acquired by contemplation of the
truth. . . . By long custom those sciences on which philosophy
most fervently doth terminate her gaze are called by her name,
to wit natural science, moral science, and metaphysic, which
last—Dbecause thereon she doth of most necessity and with most
fervour terminate her gaze—is called First Philosophy.
72 ESSAYS ON DANTE

43. (Conv. ii. 14: 59.) To the eighth sphere, which is that of
the stars, answereth natural science, which is called Physic ; and
first science, which is called Metaphysic. (ii. 15: go.) Meta-
physic treateth of the first substances, the which we cannot under-
stand save only by their effects. . . . It treateth of the things
which have not matter, and which are not sensible. . . . And
it treateth of things incorruptible, the which had the beginning
of their creation from God.

It is to metaphysical questions that the poet tells us he
directed his loving studies; and he found difficulties in
their solution which proved, at any rate provisionally,
insoluble.

44. (Conv. iv. 1: 60.) Inasmuch as this my lady alienated
her sweet looks some little from me, especially in those parts
wherein I looked and sought whether the First Matter of the
elements was created by God,! therefore I withdrew a little
from frequenting her aspect, and as though dwelling apart from
her I began to consider with my thought, etc.

XI. The knowledge of divine things which theology
offers brings blessing and assured peace, like the devout
acceptance of the means of redemption unperplexed by
doubt. It is the sure haven from all wanderings and
errors of the human spirit.

45. (Coro. ii. 14: 62.) To the ninth sphere answereth moral
science, and to the quiet heaven answereth the divine science
which is called Theology.

46. (Conv. ii. 15: 122.) The crystalline heaven, which is
reckoned as the primum mobile, hath comparison right manifest
with moral philosophy ; for moral philosophy doth duly order
us towards the other sciences.

And again the empyrean heaven, because of its peace, is like
to the divine science, which is full of all peace, which suffereth
not any contention of opinions or of sophistical arguments,

 

1 The phrase is “se la prima materia degli elementi era da Dio intesa.’
I have translated the words in italics as I suppose Dr. Witte to understand
them ; cf. below, p. 85. But I doubt whether ¢infesa’ can really bear
the meaning of ‘created.’ It might mean ‘intended’ or ‘understood,’
but neither would give as easy a sense as ¢ created.’—ED.
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 73

because of the most excellent certainty of its subject, which is
God. And of her He himself saith to his disciples, ‘ My peace
I give unto you, my peace I leave with you,’ giving and leaving
to them his doctrine, which is this science whereof I speak.
Of her Solomon saith, ©Sixty are the queens and eighty the
beloved concubines, and of the young handmaids there is no
number ; but one is my dove and my perfect one.’ All the
sciences he calleth queens and paramours and handmaidens, and
her he calleth the dove because she is without spot of strife, and
her he calleth perfect because she maketh us to see the truth in
its perfection.

47. (Par. xxvi. 55.) All those tooth-grips which have the
power to turn the heart to God combine to wake my love ;
for the being of the world, and my own being, the death which
He endured that I might live, and that which each believer
hopeth even as do I, together with the aforesaid living conscious-
ness, have drawn me from the sea of the perverse and set me on
the shore of the true love.

XII. Philosophical inquiry also promises light, but soon,
when the eye of the searcher seems to have found it, it
hides itself in mists which the understanding vainly seeks to
pierce. At first Dante comforts himself with the confident
hope that his restless study, if not scared by temporary failure,
will at last be victorious. In his wrestle for knowledge
he calls himself, at thirty, still too young for success,
which would surely be a hard saying if it were a mortal
woman he was striving to win.

48. (Como. iii. 15: 203.) In the beginning Philosophy herself
appeared to me proud on the part of her body, which is
wisdom, because she did not smile on me, inasmuch as I under-
stood not yet her persuasions ; and scornful because she did not
turn her eyes on me, that is to say I was not able to perceive her
demonstrations. And in all this the defect was on my side.

49. (Conv. ii. 16: 27.) The eyes of this lady are her demon-
strations, the which, when turned upon the eyes of the intellect,
enamour the soul. . . . Where it saith, © If be fear not anguish of
sighs, we are to understand, ‘if he do not shrink from the
toil of study and the strife of difficulties,’ which at the beginning
of the glances of this lady rise up manifold: But then, when
74 ESSAYS ON DANTE

her light continues they fall away even as the morning clouds
before the face of the sun, and the intellect of her familiar
remaineth free and full of certainty.

50. (Canz. v., “ lo sento si &’ Amor la gran possanza’) I am
in service, and when I think to whom, yea what she is, then
utterly am I content; for man may do good service though against
the will.l And if my youth rob me of grace, I await the time that
shall have stronger claim ; if but my life defend itself so long.

But the greater his efforts to look upon her unveiled face,
the deeper her reserve, and the more obstinately she en-
velops herself in ever thicker folds.

51. (Canz. viil., © Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna’) Love,
thou dost well perceive that this lady doth at no season heed thy
power, which is wont to lord it over other fair ones. And when
she was aware she was my mistress, by thy ray which shineth on
my face, she made herself the mistress of all cruelty.

XIII. Afterwards, in the Divine Comedy, Dante comes
to see that the human spirit can never attain to knowledge
of eternal truths by following its own independent path.

52. (Purg. iil. 34.) “Mad is he whoso doth hope our reason
may traverse the infinite path which one substance in three
persons holds. Be satisfied, O human race, with giz; for had
ye had the power to see the whole, no need had been for Mary to
bring forth. And thou hast seen such ones in fruitless longing,
whose desire—eternally given them to wrestle with—had then
been stilled. I speak of Aristotle, and of Plato, and of many
mo’— And here he stooped his brow, and said no more, and
abode troubled.

53. (Par. xix. 64.) There is no light save such as cometh
from that serene which is ne’er troubled. All else is darkness ;
shadow, or venom of the flesh.

The teachings of the wise men of this world are at feud
one with the other, and bring confusion instead of giving
light.

54. (Par. xxix. 85.) Ye on earth walk not upon one path

in your philosophy ; so doth love of appearance and the thought
that it begets transport you.

 

1 i.e. against the will of the person served.—ED.
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 75

The sight becomes dimmed, not intensified, by the study
of human wisdom, and the apprehension of divine truth
becomes yet harder than before.

55. (Purg. xxxiii. 82.) ‘Wherefore doth thy longed-for speech
soar so far above my sight, that the more it striveth after it the
more it loseth it?’ “It is,’ she said, that thou mayst recognise
that school which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far it
teacheth thee to follow my discourse, and mayst see that your
way is as far distant from the divine, as earth is severed from that
heaven that speedeth most exalted.’

Hence Beatrice praises King Solomon, because instead of
demanding solutions of philosophical problems, of the nature
of those discussed by the poet in the Convivio (cf. above,
No. 17, and Conv. ii. 15, 16) he prayed for divine wisdom.

56. (Par. xiii. 94.) Ihave not so spoken but that thou mayst
see that he (Solomon) was king, and asked for wit that he might
be sufficient as a king. Not to know the number wherein the
moving powers up here exist, nor whether from a necessary and
a contingent a necessary may ever be inferred ; not whether we

must grant that a first-moved exists, nor whether in a semicircle
may be inscribed a triangle with no right angle.

On the bypath he had felt himself a slave. Beatrice had
set him free, leading him back to revealed truth; and at
the close of the great poem his only wish is to remain
free from like errors for the remainder of his life.

57. (Par. xxxi. 85.) Thou hast drawn me from a slave to
liberty, by all those paths, by all those methods by which thou
hadst the power of doing this. So guard then thy munificence
in me, that my soul which thou hast now made sound may,
pleasing in thy sight, untie it from the body.

58. (Par. xxxiil. 34.) And further do I pray thee, Queen,
who canst that which thou wilt, that thou keep his affections
sound after so great a vision.

Unless I deceive myself to a degree which seems almost
incredible, the passages given above, taken word for word
76 ESSAYS ON DANTE

from the poet’s three great works, fully bear out the proposi-
tions to which they are attached. That is to say—to sum-
marise once more—that after Beatrice’s death Dante was
drawn aside from her memory, which stood for him as
the symbol of a pure devoutness, by another love. This
second love the poet expressly asserts (whether truly or
falsely) to have been the love of philosophical speculation.
But his long service brings no peace, and at last he turns
again to Beatrice, who has now revealed herself to him as
the enlightened knowledge of God and of Divine things
which is fully equipped for its own defence.

M. Klaczko, while emphatically opposing this inter-
pretation, declares (p. 429): ¢ What constitutes the chief
attraction of M., Witte’s system is its perfect symmetry, the
beautiful order it brings into Dante’s works, the ingenious
idea of assigning to each of Dante’s three works a different
epoch and regarding each as a distinct motive in the spiritual
development of that memorable genius, making the /ita
Nuova the monument of a naive and childlike faith, the Con-
vito that of doubt and revolt, and finally the Divine Comedy
the imposing and symbolic edifice erected to repentance
and conversion by the hands of heaven and earth.”’

What then are the reasons for combating it ?

In the first place, it is objected that the account in the
Vita Nuova of Dante’s nascent attachment to the gracious
lady who promises him comfort is far too vivid and life-like
to be volatilised into a mere frigid abstraction. Besides, the
study of Philosophy, which, according to the definite testi-
mony of the Convivio, occupied several years, cannot be com-
pressed within the ¢ certain days’ to which the Vita Nuova
limits this period of unfaithfulness. Wegele, who has com-
pletely changed his view in the interval between his first
edition (see p. 104) and his second (see p. 107), says, with
reference to the Vita Nuova : ¢ We hold that the later con-
tradictory and allegorising accounts of the Convito are not
II.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 77

strong and clear enough to overthrow the simpler and more
transparent record of the Vita Nuova’ He adds: ¢ Witte
develops a different view, trying to reconcile the contradic-
tory accounts of the poet’s defection from Beatrice given in
the Vita Nuova and the Convito, whereby the clear and
definite words of the Vita Nuova get scant allowance.’
Wegele, from his point of view, should have said are
stretched too far,’ for the only considerable discrepancy lies
in the fact that the certain days’ of unfaithfulness in the
Vita Nuova are stretched to years in the Convivio and the
Comedy. The parallel passages given above under No. I.amply
prove that in other respects the two works, far from con-
tradicting each other, record the series of events step for step
in the same fashion. It is true that the Convivio alone
gives us the allegorical key which is wanting in the Vita
Nuova, and on the other hand only the latter tells of the
poet’s return to the thought of Beatrice alone. This
however, I venture to hold, simply means that Dante did
not write the same book twice with different titles, but
wrote two different books, from different points of view,
connected with the same events. But I can by no means
admit that there is any real contradiction between the
testimony of the Vita Nuova and the inferences deducible
from the Convivio and Divina Commedia even in the
matter of these ‘certain days.” The expression is entirely
vague, much like the ¢ modicum’ of Purg. xxxiii. 10, 12,
or as we Germans might speak of an event ‘der jiing-
sten Tage,’ though years had elapsed since it occurred.
But even if the account of the poet’s second love given
in the Vita Nuova did contradict that in the Convivio,
the predominance which Wegele and the others would
assign to the former would be somewhat hard to justify.
In the Vita Nuova the second love is but an episode,
lightly touched on in four short chapters, in connection
with the real purpose of the book, which is the glorifica-
78 ESSAYS ON DANTE

tion of Beatrice. On the other hand it is the specific subject
of the Convivio, and therefore the far fuller account con-
tained therein should be taken as the more trustworthy.
My opponents find the account in the New Life stamped
so clearly with the marks of direct human reality that even
Dante himself cannot disembody it into an allegory for
them. I might answer that a morbid and brooding Tasso
might indeed transform a once living sensation into a
feeble allegory, but not so a man of such perfect sanity as
Dante. But why should we not fall in with our opponents’
contention, and plead guilty to the charge of credulity in
allowing the poet to convince us that the gentil donna
who awakened his second love was not a woman of flesh
and blood, but Philosophy herself We smile at the old
wife of Ravenna who saw, in the poet’s dark complexion
and frizzled beard, the effects of the fires of Hell through
which he had just passed. It would have argued little
wisdom to point out to her the physical and other reasons
which made it impossible for a living man to abide in Hell,
to say nothing of reaching the middle of the earth in four-
and-twenty hours! Yet had she still persisted in her
superstition it had been easy to direct her attention to
the passages in the /ita Nuova in which Dante himself
refers to his journey as a vision only. Conclusive! But
for all that the good woman was in the right. For the
poet of the Divine Comedy demands once for all that while
the reader is studying his work he shall surrender himself
to the fiction that he, Dante, with his mortal body,
descended into Hell and ascended the Mountain of
Purgation, and shall quietly set aside all the irresistible
proofs that this cannot be the actual fact.—Let us leave
our opponents, then, in the undisturbed conviction that the
gentil donna who turned Dante’s love aside from Beatrice
was originally some fair Florentine maiden, and not the
embodiment of an abstract Science, just in the same sense
III.-DANTE’S TRILOGY 79

that the poet was really seated at his study table all the
time of his supposed journey through the nether regions.
But even so we must in both cases alike adopt the fiction’
which Dante makes so strong and life-like, in order rightly
to follow the concatenation of Dante’s ideas. The Con-
vivio, even in the unfinished state in which its author left
it, is a work of vast compass, and characterises a distinct
phase of the poet’s mental development. We can only
weave it into its place amongst his other writings by taking
it in the sense authorised by himself.!

Far more trenchant, however, is a further objection
which has been specially insisted on by M. Klaczko. He
expresses the main idea as follows (pp. 404, 408): “In
Dr. Witte’s hands the great poet of the fourteenth cen-
tury is suddenly transformed into the Faust and the
Manfred of the nineteenth,—a reconciled Faust and a
repentant Manfred we admit,—but for all that one of
those fiends of doubt, as Goethe called them. . . . The
resemblance is far too close. We must be on our guard
against all anachronisms. . . . Quite unintentionally no
doubt Dr. Witte attributes philosophical ideas and senti-
ments to the fourteenth century Florentine which are

1 Dr. Witte seems to need an interpreter in this passage, as the
counter analogies that will present themselves to the reader may well
overpower those analogies on which the author is dwelling. His argu-
ment is: ‘Let us grant (for the sake of argument) that the ‘Donna
Gentile ” was originally and literally a Florentine maiden. The case
will then stand :—Dante really loved a fair lady, and he really sat at
his desk when he wrote the Comedy. But he tells us that it was Philo-
sophy he loved, and he #ells us that he actually went to Hell and
Purgatory. Now it is in these fictions that he gives us his real history
and experience. They are therefore the only important things, and
we must accept them in order to understand his work. We are there-
fore to regard him as having loved (not an earthly maiden but) Philo-
sophy, and as having been (not at his desk but) in the Unseen World.
It is beside the mark to prove to us that we are accepting fiction and
neglecting fact. The fiction is the only fact we are concerned with.’
The reader who has already read the text with sufficient care to disen-
tangle its meaning will, I hope, pardon the impertinence of a note.—ED.
80 ESSAYS ON DANTE

really due to his interpreter, and indeed are proper to
our own period of history. We, of course, have long been
accustomed to think of reason as opposed to faith, and to
regard philosophy as the avowed enemy, or at best the
doubtful friend, of religion. . . . But was it so in the
Middle Ages, in Dante’s century, in the period of St.
Thomas and St. Bonaventura ?’

The most obvious answer is, that in the face of such
distinct evidence as we have collected above as to Dante’s
own conception of the relation between Philosophy and
Theology, we do not need, for our purpose, so much as to
inquire what the attitude of the fourteenth century in
general was. If we found that Dante’s mind had out-
stripped his contemporaries in this as in so many other
directions, and that he was alone in his own age in develop-
ing the contrast between faith and the spirit of inquiry, we
should have to accept the fact.

But we may add that this contrast is as old as positive
religion itself,! that it has never been smothered, and well-
nigh least of all in the second half of the Middle Ages.
From the time of the Crusades, and still more after the
rise of the Hohenstaufens, rank unbelief, railing against
the Most Holy, and unvarnished materialism were wide-
spread both in East and West.2

The Guelfs regarded the Ghibellines as unbelievers
of this type, who had gone to complete perdition in the
footsteps of their vaunted Emperor Frederick 11. I have
already shown in the supplement to the fifth essay? that
this sceptical spirit had taken a more refined form, and

1 «The struggle between Christianity and human wisdom is the
secret of universal history.’ —GOETHE.

2 Ernest Renan, dverroés et I’ Averroisme, p. 223: ‘Frankly unbeliev-
ing thought, not the rejection of this or that dogma, but the belief
that all religions are on a par, and are all impostures, does not take a
pronounced form till the thirteenth century.’

3 Not translated in this volume. It contains a refutation of the idea
that Dante belonged to some heretical or masonic fraternity. —ED,
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 81

had put on a philosophic garb, in this very city of Florence,
in the widespread sect of the Epicureans to which many
prominent men personally near to our poet belonged.! But
of course I could not for a moment allow (as is obvious
from what I have said in the pages referred to) that Dante
ever belonged to either of these types of unbelievers, or
was even attracted towards them.

But side by side with this open negation and hostility
towards religion, the Middle Ages knew another philo-
sophy, which claimed express connection with the Church
and announced itself as her true champion, but with which
the Church herself could not make common cause. Now,
it was just with this philosophy that the great spiritual
movements from the ninth to the middle of the thirteenth
century were concerned. The task of this long period
was, as Scotus Erigena had put it, to show that the true
Religion was the true Philosophy, and vice versa It is
true that Anselm of Canterbury,® modifying Isaiah’s saying,
¢If ye believe not ye shall not abide,” declares that ‘if ye
believe not ye shall not understand,” but Abelard already
speaks of knowledge as a protection against blind belief
and later schoolmen, especially those known as € puri philo-
sophi,’ while aiming at agreement with scriptural doctrine,
yet constructed their theories on completely a prior: prin-
ciples without appeal to Biblical tradition.” Moreover,
from the time when that part of Aristotle’s Organon which

1 Ozanam, Dante et la Philos. Cathol., 2 edit. p. 48: ‘From the
year 1115 onwards the Epicureans were sufficiently numerous in Florence
to constitute a formidable faction and to provoke sanguinary struggles.
. . . These irreligious doctrines were eager to reduce themselves to
practice in philosophic voluptuousness. They were not without their
poets either.’

2 Erdmann, Grund. d. Gesch. d. Philosophie (1866), i. 249.

8 De fide trimtatis, cap. ii.

* Cf., however, his fine utterances in the TAeologia Christiana.
Neander, Gesch. d. christl. Religion, v. 746 sq. [ Trans. viii. (1852) 125].

5 Even Anselm had pursued this course in the actual development
of his treatises.

F
82 ESSAYS ON DANTE

had long been known, was supplemented by his Analytics
and other writings, he became to these philosophers an
authority of equal or even superior weight to that of Scrip-
ture or the Fathers. And this branch of scholasticism be-
came still more independent of the doctrine of the Church
when David of Dinant, Alexander of Hales, and others, had
found room by Aristotle’s side for his Arabic and Jewish
editors. ¢ They looked upon it as their task to incorporate
in the scholastic philosophy the whole substance of purely
Greek wisdom which Aristotle, the arch-heathen, had con-
centrated in himself. Nor did they fail (as Philo and
the Fathers did) to perceive that this wisdom sprang from
quite a different source to that of the Church’s teaching.
On the contrary, they emphasised this fact. As if Aristotle
himself were not unchristian enough, they had recourse
to Moslem and Jewish commentators to unlock the real
meaning of his doctrines.”! Against such a philosophy the
Victorine Walter of Mauretania might well appeal to
the apostolic word,? * Where is the wise? where is the
scribe ? where is the disputer of this world? hath not
God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing
that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom
knew not God—’ (cf. also Cols. ii. 8). An ecclesiastical
reaction against this tendency could not be long delayed.
In the first decades of the thirteenth century the Church
turned not only against the non-Christian commentators of
Aristotle and the propagators of their teaching, especially
Almarich of Bena and David of Dinant, but also against
the text of the Aristotelian writings themselves. And so
came the sentence of condemnation pronounced by the
Council of Paris in 1209, followed by that of the fourth
Lateran Council in 1215.

But though the matter had inevitably come to open

1 Erdmann, gp. cit, 256, 272, 280, 306, 307, 320, 327.
2 1 Cor. i. 20.
III.—DANTES TRILOGY 83

war, the Church by no means looked upon her victory
as assured. It was only the unparalleled efforts of the
two newly constituted orders, fighting the enemy with his
own weapons, and carrying the seat of war into his own
territory, the lecture-halls of the Universities, that suc-
ceeded in repelling the attack, and even turning the
enemy’s artillery upon himself. This truly colossal labour
was performed by the Franciscan Bonaventura and, in still
greater measure, by the Dominicans Albert of Cologne
(the Great) and Thomas Aquinas. They appropriated the
whole philosophical apparatus of the Peripatetics, of the
Jewish and Mohammedan commentators of Aristotle and of
their nominally Christian disciples, and forged it into such
compact and closely-jointed armour for the Catholic Church
that for centuries afterwards it seemed that every weapon
must glance off it and fall harmlessly to the ground.! As
Albert had brought Avicenna within the range of Latin
literature, so Thomas imported Averroés, partly to confute
and partly to utilise him. So complete was the victory of
this orthodox scholasticism that it became possible to use
in the schools, without suspicion, books which had once
been reputed heretical, such as Gilbertus Porretanus’ Liber
de sex Principiis; and the booklet De Causis, which was
perhaps of Jewish origin. It is true that even this victory
could not prevent the rise of a Nominalism unfriendly to
the Church, as seen in Duns Scotus, William of Occam,
and other ultra-Franciscans, but these phenomena do not
belong to the circle that at present claims our attention.

Nothing could be more natural than for the phases
through which the mental development of a period of
history passed to be reflected in the greatest mind of the
century. And however inadmissible the idea that Dante
ever gave even temporary adhesion to a heresy inimical to

1 Por. %1./23, xi.197, 97-
84 ESSAYS ON DANTE

the Church, or to religion generally, it would appear by
no means strange if he too had trodden the path along
which Anselm had already set out to unfold the eternal
truths by the light of pure reason as if there were no
Holy Scripture ; the path along which the Philosophi Puri
had pressed ever farther, till they reached the extreme
position we have already described.

Philosophy appeared to Dante as a pitying comforter,
even as she had appeared to his teacher Boethius, when he
lay in prison accused of a capital offence. But it is not
the ancient dame in whom ¢ the last of the Romans’ thinks
to recognise his foster-mother who appears to Dante. It
is the Philosophy of the schoolmen, rejuvenated by the
fostering rays of Christendom, who promises with her
shield to protect faith against the attacks of doubt. And
so closely is Speculation in this form allied to Faith that,
even as she uses her language so does she seem to resemble
her in outward form.! Far, then, from refusing to accept
the truths of religion unless they can stand before the
tests of philosophy, Dante and his guide recognise in
~ principle that those truths rest on a higher and indepen-
dent basis. When Dante (in the Convivio) connects
the different sciences with the different spheres as their
symbols (cf. Nos. 38, 43, 45 above) he makes Theology
correspond to the highest heaven, while the philosophical
disciplines correspond to lower spheres. But pre-Thomistic
philosophy was so penetrated by non-Christian elements,
that despite this consciousness of dependence which she
acknowledged in principle, she carried the germ of rebellion
within her and by an inner necessity must needs develop it.
Well might he who had so strayed from the true path

1 Vita N. cap. 37 (above, No. 3):  Whensoever this lady saw me she
became of compassionate semblance, of pale hue, as though of love;
wherefore many times she minded me of my most noble lady, who ever
presented herself to me with the like hue.’
II.-.DANTE’S TRILOGY 85

declare (Inf. i. 10): ‘I know not rightly to retell how I
entered there, so full of slumber was I at the point wherein
I abandoned the true way.’

There are many special indications, I conceive, beyond
the general proofs which I have put together above, that
Dante did, as a matter of fact, tread some such path as
this. Only secondary importance need be attached to the
almost incessant recurrence in the Convivio of quotations
from Aristotle, not to mention the frequent references to
Arabian authorities, specifically Avicenna, Algazel, Alfra-
ganus, and Albumassar, while in the Monarchia we find
Averroés also appealed to.—But far greater significance
belongs to the passage already cited under No. 44, wherein
Dante tells us that in his philosophical researches he was

confronted by the doubt of whether First Matter emanated |

from the divine intellect (se la prima materia degli element: |
era da Dio intesa’), or whether it was already in being!
before the creation, and at the creation merely received its
form.’ This latter doctrine (zternitas materie) was one
of the most notorious heresies of Averroés and his school
(fieri est mutari), as against the orthodox teaching of the
creation out of naught (creatio ex nihils).! One of the main
tasks undertaken by Thomas Aquinas in his contest with
the Arabians was to combat this very error with all his
might.? Thus in the conflict between two opinions, one
of which was indubitably orthodox (and secured the poet’s
adhesion as such in the Divine Comedy3), and the other
heterodox, Dante was unable to make up his mind. Surely
this must force us to admit that at this stage of his develop-
ment the doctrine of the Church and the teaching of
Averroés had equal authority in his eyes, and he might, like
the scholastic pur: philosophi, have declared that the same pro-
position might be theological truth and philosophical error.

1 Renan, dverroés, pp. 81 sq. % Renan, Lc., pp. 189 sq.
3 Par. xxix. 22 ; Erdmann, op. cit., 401.

/
Cosma
86 ESSAYS ON DANTE

The second main heresy of Averroé€s was that the
individual and personal Intellect had only a transient
existence as opposed to the universal Intellect (intellectus
activus), which endured for ever.! Now it is perfectly true
that the Convivio, at any rate, does not reveal the remotest
trace of Dante’s ever having harboured this frankly anti-
Christian doctrine, or even having wavered between it and
the orthodox view ; but the manner in which he treats it
in the Divina Commedia (Purg. xxv. 62 sq.) indicates clearly
enough that there had been a time in which the authority
of Scripture had not of itself been adequate to allay his
doubts on this matter.

I have given above (No. 56) a passage from the Paradiso
which refers slightingly to several scholastic problems
which to the ordinary philosopher appeared to be of great
importance. Now the Convivio concerns itself largely
with this very type of problem ; and Solomon is lauded in
the Paradiso because he did not desire light on one of the
very points which, when the Banquet was written, Dante
thought worthy of an exhaustive discussion (ii. 5 : 11).

It is indeed noteworthy how frequently Dante re-
pudiates in the Comedy views which he had defended in the
Convivie. 1 have elsewhere referred to the different con-
ceptions of the significance of noble birth in the two works.?
—His change of opinion on the subject of the moon’s
spots is especially striking. In the Convivio (ii. 14 : 72)
he says, without qualification, ¢ The shadow upon her [the
moon] is no other than the rarity of her substance, by
which the rays of the sun may not be arrested and smitten
back as in her other parts.’® In Par. ii. 59 he repeats

1 Cf. the note on my translation of Purg. xxv. 63. .

2 Dante-Forschungen, i. 82, 83 [not translated]. See Coz. iv. 3 and
Par. xvi—ED.

3 Dr. Witte would certainly have been pleased had he noted that
this opinion seems to be based on two passages of Averroés, viz., De
Calo ii. com. 49 and De Substantia Orbis, cap. 2. In the latter passage
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 87

this view in his own person, but is entirely refuted (lines
61-90) by Beatrice, and later on (xxii. 140) he smiles once
more at his former error.—As touching the Milky Way,
Dante does indeed allude to the Phaethon myth in the
Comedy (Inf. xvii. 108), but it is only as a myth (come
par’); and in the decisive passage (Par. xiv. 97) he
unhesitatingly ascribes the phenomenon to a congregation
of larger and smaller stars. In the Convivio, on the other
hand (ii. 15: 59), he can arrive at no definite conclusion, for
his authorities differ, and his two translations of Aristotle’s
Meteorics are at variance on the point. But he inclines
to the view that the white shimmer is due to stars too
small for us to see severally.—Again, it is worthy of
special note that while in the Comedy and in the Banguet
alike the poet assigns each one of the nine hosts of heaven
to one of the nine lower heavens, he follows Gregory
the Great's system in the former work (ii. 6), and in
the latter that of the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite
(xxviii. 130), with a reference (line 133) to the earlier
opinion he has now rejected! Hence the peculiar result
that whereas the first canzone of the Convivio was really
addressed to the ¢ Thrones,’ in the Paradiso (where he had
relegated them to Saturn) he is compelled to treat it as
having been addressed to the ¢ Principi.’ ?

Finally, we must note that even after his conversion we

occur the words: ¢ And perhaps the celestial bodies [in general] are
mottled with rare and dense, which are the causes of brightness and
dulness, although they are not manifest except in the moon.” It would
seem however that Dante inverts the effects of rarity and density as
understood by Averroés. The correcting passage in the Paradiso con-
tains a formal refutation of the Averroistic doctrine of the uniformity
of the nature of the heavenly bodies.—ED.

1 There is a slight error here. Gregory's classification differs only in
one detail from that of Dionysius. The source of Dante’s far more
widely divergent scheme in the Cozwiwvio has not, so far as I know,
been traced. See Scartazzini on Par. xxviii—ED.

2 For another instance of inconsistency as regards the ¢ Thrones,” see
my note to the translation of Par. ix. 61.
88 ESSAYS ON DANTE

find a certain affection for the most prominent of these philo-
sophers still betraying itself in the Comedy.  Averroés, who
was in great measure the source of the movement which the
Church regarded as hostile, was a favourite prototype of
heresy to the painters of the fourteenth century,! yet he
and Avicenna, the two against whom above all others
Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas set their faces, are
not placed among the heretics, like Epicurus, nor among
the schismatics, like Mohammed and Ali, but with the philo-
sophers of antiquity among the virtuous heathen (Inf. iv.
143, 144).— The abbot Joachim of Flora, whose doctrines
were the main prop of those of Almarich of Bena and
his disciples, and of the symbolic lore of the Evangelium
@ternum propagated amongst the Church’s enemies, the
Fraticelli, is found nevertheless in the heaven of the Sun
beside Francis and Dominic, Thomas and Bonaventura
(Par. xii. 140). And in the same heaven we find Sigier
of Brabant (Par. x. 136), whose very hazardous Impossibilia
raised such a storm in the Church.>—And finally we must
note that even in the Comedy Dante seems to be by no
means entirely estranged from those demonstrations of the
divine truths which depend on reason, for when questioned
by St. Peter he gives in the first rank ¢proofs physical
and metaphysical’ (Par. xxiv. 133), as the foundation of
his faith in a personal God above the Universe.

A further point raised by M. Klaczko I must admit to
have great importance, and to call for careful considera-
tion. If, he says, Dante had felt that the overweening
spirit of inquiry had had a disastrous influence on himself,
why does he not consign those who have trodden such

1 Renan, Zc., pp. 232-249.

2 There is nothing to indicate that Francis and Dominic are in the
heaven of the Sun, though it is there that their praises are sung.—ED.

3 Ozanam, Lc., pp. 59, 320-323; Vict. le Clerc, Hist. litt. de la France,
XXl, 121, 122.
II.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 89

paths, and more especially those who have tempted others
to stray, to some conspicuous place in hell? Or why does
he not show us a single spirit in Purgatory doing penance
for the rash attempt to storm heaven, which he himself had
made, and repented, on earth? He records (Inf. xvii. 109,
Par. viii. 126) the physical attempt to fly that brought
Icarus to destruction, and tells how Ulysses’ audacious
resolve (il folle wold) to seek the land beyond the Pillars
of Hercules led him to his death; but he gives no
hint that he who seeks to fly beyond the intellectual
Pillars of Hercules has thereby been guilty of sin. ¢All
this,” says M. Klaczko, ‘can only be explained by the
fact that this great problem of Reason in opposition to
Faith was as yet unrealised in all its extent and bearing by
the poet and by his age’ (p. 421). Now I think the
references I have given above afford adequate proof that
the supposed ¢ fact’ does not exist. Nevertheless I cannot
but admit that Dante’s silence remains most noteworthy.
—At the same time I would begin by pointing out that
the pride which seeks to attain light for itself instead of
humbly waiting for enlightenment is severely reprehended
in the types of Lucifer and Eve. Of the former Dante
says (Par. xix. 46): ¢Of this we are assured in that the
first proud Being, who was the summit of all creation,
because he would not wait for light, fell immature.” (Cf.
also Par. xxix. 55.) Of Eve again he says (Purg. xxix.
23): ‘Righteous indignation seized me against the hardi-
hood of Eve, for there where earth and heaven were
obedient, a woman only, and she but now formed, would
not endure to abide under any veil.’

Further, we must not forget that the philosophy of that
time, whatever the bypaths into which she ultimately strayed,
did not by any means present herself as an enemy of Faith.
Assuredly the more important of the schoolmen before
Thomas Aquinas, an Abelard, a Gilbertus Porretanus,
90 ESSAYS ON DANTE

and others, were perfectly sincere in their attempt to show
that true Religion was the same as true Philosophy, that
is, to reconcile Faith and Knowledge. And therefore even
when and in so far as the Church had set aside their con-
clusions as erroneous, the evil will which alone is worthy
of punishment was absent ; and not only so, but the judg-
ment of the Church herself had undergone a transforming
process. Not only did individual philosophers become
orthodox in the school of Albertus and Thomas, but the
whole philosophy of the period, together with the writings
of their immediate predecessors, received a sort of second
baptism from the new Scholasticism which led them back
to the fold of orthodoxy. The Sentences of Petrus Lom-
bardus and the de sex Principiis of Porretanus, which had
been attacked as heretical by the Victorine Walter, could
be allowed as schoolbooks without protest from the Church
when the later scholasticism had drenched them in Tho-
mistic doctrines.

Now while this notable transformation was still going
on the individual thinker might well observe in himself,
and bear witness against, the dangers and errors into which
this philosophy, walking upon her own paths (pura philo-
sophia), had led him, and he might with perfect conviction
declare that a return from these errors was absolutely
essential to salvation,’ and yet he could not but shrink from
charging others, in whose school he had himself studied,
with heresy and seduction. ‘The boundaries were too
indefinite to warrant such a verdict. He would prefer to
take on his own shoulders the guilt of having followed
spiritual bypaths, even as in the Convivio he regarded his
faulty comprehension of philosophic lore as all his own fault.

The last objection raised by Klaczko, with whom Ruth

1 Purg. xxx. 136: ‘So low he fell that all appeals were now too scant
for his salvation.”
III.—DANTE’S TRILOGY 91

is here at any rate in partial accord, appears to me of lesser
moment. It runs: We can only admit the alleged connec-
tion between the Vita Nuova, the Convivio, and the
Commedia if the three works were actually written within
the period of the poet’s spiritual development which they
are said to reflect. But this assumption is contradicted by

chronology (p. 405) :

‘We take it that the Conwito was composed in the year 1308
or 1309, that is to say long after Dante had conceived the idea
of his Comedy and executed the greater part of it. We must
therefore suppose that long after the poet had not only re-
cognised but traced in characters of flame all the deadly perils
of Philosophy, and all the vices and sins of human Knowledge,
he set about composing a work wherein that same philosophy
1s represented as “the true felicity of our soul, the spouse of the
Emperor of heaven, his sister and his cherished daughter.”. . . It
may be answered that the poet, for aught we know, might take
up for a subsidiary work a phase that the thinker had long passed
through and left behind him. . . . But such an argument would
utterly fail to do justice to the austere sincerity of Alighieri’s
genius; it would attribute to the impassioned but true and
upright spirit of the great Florentine the slackness and want of
stamina of our age. . . . Once convinced that the fruit of science
had poisonous juices, Dante could never have written a book in
her honour full of ecstatic praise of her sweetness and her savour,
and declaring all who have not tasted to be “ worse than dead.”’

Now I accept this view of the poet’s character without
reservation, but I cannot for a moment admit that the
chronology which M. Klaczko assumes as established, is
true. As to the date of the Convivio indeed I am in hearty
agreement with M. Klaczko.! Foscolo held 2 that Dante
did not publish the work (though it may have been
partially written earlier) till after the death of Henry vir.
(1313) 5 while Fraticelli maintained to the last 3 that while
the first and third 7rattati were written at the time

1 Cf. Dante-Forsc/ungen, ii. p. 89 [not translated. The essay contains
an incidental inquiry into the date of the Convivio.—ED.]

2 Discorso sul testo ecc, Sec. 98.

3 Dissertazione sul Convito, in vol. iii. of Dante’s Op. Min.
92 ESSAYS ON DANTE

indicated by Foscolo, the second and fourth were written
before the end of the thirteenth century, somewhere about
the year 1298. Against both of these M. Klaczko holds
with me. It is true that there are two passages the juxta-
position of which may well lead to a false conclusion. In
the first chapter of the Convivio the writer says of himself
that he is writing ‘when his youth (gioventute) is already
passed’; and elsewhere (iv. 24) he speaks of ¢ youth’ as lasting
to the close of the forty-fifth year, that is to say, in his case
till the year 1310. I admit that Centofanti’s attempt to
escape the difficulty! involves a somewhat forced interpre-
tation of the first passage. He would construe ¢ lentrata di
mia gioventute gia trapassata’ and understand not that
‘youth,’ but that the ¢threshold’ of youth, had already
been passed. But while unable to avail myself of this
exit I still abide by the view already put forward by me,?
that when a period of twenty years is in question (and this
is the space of time Dante assigns to youth’) a man
standing at the close of the nineteenth year may well con-
sider the period (as good as) past, if he is not making a
mathematical or juridical statement.

We are agreed, then, that the Convivio, in the frag-
mentary condition in which Dante has left it, was finished
not later than the early months of the year 1309. But the
Comedy? It is shown in another essay3 that the first
canto of the Divine Comedy points to a date not earlier
than Aug. 24th, 1313, and another passage in the Inferno
(xix. 79) cannot have been written till after April 20th,
1314. Certain stories indeed are current which point to
some portions at any rate of the Comedy having been com-
pleted at an earlier date. Such are the story of the
Florentine donkey-driver who interpolated his ¢ Arr’ into
the lines he was chanting from the poem,* or the account

1 Antologia, No. cxxxv. 2 Note to Dante's lyr. Gedichte, pp. 59, 60.
3 Essay XIL in this volume. ¢ Sacchetti, Now. 1135.
IIL—DANTES TRILOGY A;

of Dino Frescobaldi’s sending the seven first cantos to
Maroello Malaspina in the Lunigiana, Dante having left
them behind him at the time of his banishment.! But
these are no more than the anecdotes which the story-
writers loved to cap one against another. If we hold fast
to established dates, there is a space of four or five years
between Dante’s inditing of the last words of the Convivio
and the beginning of the Comedy. And what years!
The most eventful and the most fateful in the life even of
this sorely tried man ; the years of his loftiest hopes and his
bitterest disillusionment. And so we are brought back to
the verdict already pronounced by Padre Lombardi, and
further substantiated by Trivulzio and his co-editors of the
Convivio? that the poet had abandoned the further elabora-
tion of the Convivio before he turned to the Divina
Commedia. We may go further, and say that between the
writing of the two books a deep gulf is fixed, well calcu-
lated essentially to change the poet’s whole conception of
life, even though he had already passed beyond the limits
of youth.

But we are concerned not merely with the prose com-
mentary, but with the poems of the Convivio; both
those actually explained in the four books we possess,
and the eleven others which the unwritten trattati were
to expound. The poet intimates that they are all con-
nected, as pertaining to the same love, viz. of Philosophy.
Now in one of the Canzoni which is clearly shown by Conv.
i. 12: 86, iv. 27 : 100, {i. 1 : 34% to belong to the cycle,
Dante speaks of himself as an exile, so that it cannot have
been written before the year 1302. It is the one begin-
ning ¢ Tre donne intorno il cuor mi som wvenute, and is the
fourteenth according to my enumeration. The same in-

1 Boccaccio, Com., Lez. 33. 2 Note to Par. ii. 58.
3 Pp. xxvi-xxviii of their original edition ; Milan, 1826.
* Bibliog. Krit. Einleitg. zu Dante's lyr. Ged., pp. xxxvi, xxxvil.
94 ESSAYS ON DANTE

timation recurs in another (No. x., © Amor, dacche convien
pur ch’io mi doglia’), which it seems safe to identify as the
one which the poet sent from the valley of the Upper Arno
to Maroello Malaspina (though whether the celebrated lord
of Giovagallo or him of Villafrancal is uncertain) together
with a letter which is still extant. The letter unfortu-
nately bears no date, but the places and persons mentioned
scarcely allow us to place it earlier than 1307.2 And lastly,
a third Canzone, which must be taken as belonging to this
cycle (xi., La dispietata mente che pur mira’), speaks of
the banished poet’s yearning for home, although there is
nothing to enable us to fix the date more definitely.

Now all this increases the difficulty of the problem.
Dante gives 1300 as the date of his journey through the
Three Realms, and the Vita Nuova, which is very generally
supposed to have been completed either in that very year
(which it appears itself to indicate 3) or a few years earlier,*
describes the actual Vision as the subject of the great
poem which Dante then first began to contemplate.® Now,
if both the poetical text and the Commentary belong, at
least in part, to a date later than 1300, it does indeed seem
as if Klaczko’s charge were true, and my hypothesis landed
me in the monstrous assumption that Dante wrote a cycle
of poems filled with enthusiastic praise of Philosophy, and

1 See Essay VIII. in this volume.—ED.

2 At one time (Dante's lyr. Ged., p. 117 and elsewhere) I adopted
the date of 1309, but I gladly acknowledge that Fraticelli’s arguments
against my view (Epistole di D., 1862, pp. 426-29, cf. also Canzoniere
di D., p. 133) have convinced me.

3 See pp. 66, 67, note.—ED.

4 Note to Dante's lyr. Ged., pp. 8, 9.

5 In my note in the Lyr. Ged., pp. 63, 64, the dates given by the
New Life and the Banquet are compared together, and are pronounced
not to be contradictory; much as on p. 77 of this volume. But in
calculating one of the data of the Cozvivio I fell into what I now see to
be a mistake. Dante says (ii. 2 ; see No. 7 above): ¢ Twice had the
star of Venus returned on that her circle which makes her appear now
at eve and now at morn, according to the two diverse seasons, since the
passing of . . . Beatrice ... when that gentle lady . . . first appeared to my
III.-DANTE’S TRILOGY 95

accompanied them with a commentary in yet more high-
strung key, at a time when he had already perceived
and proclaimed that the paths along which the love of
Philosophy had led him were paths of error, and that he
who would attain salvation must turn his back upon them.

But it is universally acknowledged that the date of the
Divine Comedy is a fictitious one. Was the choice deter-
mined by the centennial year ? The turn of a century had
always made a deep impression on the human mind, and on
this occasion the great Jubilee intensified it. Or was it
that Priorate, big with fate, that emphasised the year to
him? Be this as it may, Dante deliberately chose the year
1300 as the supposed date of his Vision ; and we are by no
means compelled to assume that the conversion, which
finds its symbolic expression in the Comedy, did actually
take place at the turn of the poet’s life, in his thirty-fifth
year. It may actually have occurred either earlier or later.

The dates we have arrived at compel us to accept the
latter alternative. Whether his conversion took place
independently of any external impulse, or whether it was
connected with the disaster and disillusionising arising from
Henry vir.’s expedition to Rome, it appears that we cannot
in any case place his definitive return to the memory of the
transfigured Beatrice earlier than towards the end of the

eyes accompanied by Love.” When first my notes appeared (1826) I gave
the period, I cannot now say on what authority, at 348 days (p. 397).
And in 1842 I repeated the statement (pp. 63 sg.). But Professor Boeh-
mer has very justly pointed out to me that the passage refers to the period
of the epicycle, which Alfraganus (ed. Golius, p. 65) gives at nearly 584
days, Ptolemy in the Almegist more precisely at 583-9 days. Two revolu-
tions of the epicycle of Venus then, reckoning from June gth, 1290, will
bring us past the middle of August 1293. [See Appendix.—EDn.] If we
add the further period of thirty months, which the poet tells us in ii. 13
(see above, No. 37) elapsed before he bid farewell to his love for Beatrice,
the first Canzone of the Cozvivio will fall in February 1296 (not, as I
supposed, in 1295), which would leave a period of four years only for all
those spiritual conflicts with which the remaining thirteen Canzoni are
concerned, before the year 1300, in which the poet places his conversion.
96 ESSAYS ON DANTE

first decennium of the fourteenth century. I say his
definitive return, for the oftener he repeated the discovery
that Philosophy had not led him to true peace, and the
more painfully he must forego, time after time, the solution
of some weighty problem, the more frequently and vividly
would the longing for the old peace-bringing love that
brought no false hopes return. The memory of that
blessed time would rise before him in dream and vision, and
awaken in him the wish, nay, the determination, to turn
from the paths that never led to peace along which his
new passion had led him. But ever again the yearning for
knowledge, the restless life of party politics, and the stream
of circumstance, drew him back into the old way, until at
last the moment came when the wavering intention became
a fixed determination, and his conversion was completed.

And now that he resolved to make this conversion
articulate, and build up his great poem upon it, he must of
necessity fix it to a definite date. And so (for whatever
reason) he antedated it by several years, perhaps choosing
the period when he had been nearest to the great resolve to
which he now held fast. For the Comedy, which now first
came into being, the choice of date was merely arbitrary.
But when once it was determined on, the /7ita Nuova too
must be squared with the fiction. We may suppose that it
had originally ended with the dream-vision of the fortieth
chapter and the yearning raised in the poet’s breast by the
sight of the passing pilgrims and the message of the two
damsels. But now he added the concluding chapter, and
now the words became true which I find written in my
Ms. copy of the Vita Nuova: ‘Some think that this little
book ought to be written in front of the beginning of the
book that treats of Hell.’
IV..DANTES COSMOGRAPHY

A POPULAR LECTURE, 186%
[Dante- Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 161-182 (1879).]

I supPoSE you may hardly ever have listened to a lecture in
this place without feeling that you had enriched the stores
of your positive knowledge in some direction or other by
new truth. I fear then that you will think it strange,
to say the least of it, if I begin by asking you to forget, for
an hour, your most laboriously acquired knowledge and take
up for the nonce a standpoint long since abandoned.

I assume your knowledge of the heavenly bodies to have
been laboriously acquired, and I hardly think you will
challenge my assumption. ‘Though many years have
elapsed since I was first required to believe that the Sun,
whom I daily saw rise, travel over the firmament, and sink to
rest, stood still; while the earth which I felt so firm beneath
my feet was whirling round with incredible speed, I can
still feel the echo of the inward indignation with which I
protested against such a monstrous fabrication.

But what if this rebellion had some higher justification
than the narrow vision of a child who believes nothing but
what he thinks his senses tell him? In the Universe of
space and matter, the question has indeed received its
answer, and I am far from countenancing the revolts that
crop up from time to time against the system of the great
Copernicus. But because a thing is true of the world of
matter it does not follow that it is equally so of the world
of mind.

In the world of matter it is all a question of masses,

G
98 ESSAYS ON DANTE

The greater sweeps the lesser with it, and compels it to
revolve round it at its centre. But the world of mind
obeys no such physical law. All the Continents of the
earth, with all the islands belonging to them, gravitate
towards our little Europe. Athens, which can scarcely
have had a hundred thousand inhabitants at the time
of greatest prosperity, has been for thousands of years the
intellectual centre for thinkers of every nation.

Well, then, although our earth is an insignificant dot in
the Universe, a satellite revolving round a sun three
hundred and fifty thousand times its own size, yet itself,
with countless other stars, hanging upon a central sun
which perhaps no mortal eye has ever seen, yet this tiny
point may, for all that, be the centre of the world of mind.
And as far as our powers permit us to see, it actually is so ;
for though our dreams may people the moon, the planets,
or the fixed stars, with beings like ourselves, yet they
remain mere dreams devoid of rational support.

The sacred documents of our religion are clear enough
in expressing the dependent relation of the whole firma-
ment to the earth. When the story of creation makes the
Almighty say, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of
heaven, to divide the day from the night, and let them be
for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years, and
let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to
give light upon the earth’—or when Joshua commands,
¢Sun, stand thou still in Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the
valley of Ajalon)—we may talk, if we choose, of an
¢accommodation’ to the human conceptions of those
ancient days.

Not so, however, when we find the relation of all
created things to the Creator determined by events which
have taken place upon our earth, by the fall; the redemp-
tion, and the second coming of the Christ. The Saviour
himself declares, ¢ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
IV.—DANTES COSMOGRAPHY 99

words shall not pass away.” The Apostle Peter says yet
more distinctly that the heavens that now are, and the
earth . . . have been stored up for fire, being reserved
against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly
men’; and further on he adds, ¢ The heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved
with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are
therein shall be burned up.” ‘But,’ he continues, ¢accord-
ing to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.’

In the Middle Ages all this was united with the special
conceptions of ancient astronomy, which had taken its
rise amongst the great Greek astronomers of the third
century before Christ, and was systematised mainly by the
Alexandrian Ptolemy in the second century of the Chris-
tian era, further details being added by Arabian scholars,
especially under the Sassanid dynasty in Spain. The
doubts which the Samian Aristarchus had already thrown
on the central position of the earth were passed over by
antiquity, just as they were by the Middle Ages when
propounded by the celebrated Ibn Roschd, or Averroés as
we are accustomed to call him, and a little later on by
Alphonso the Wise, king of Castile.

Right down into the sixteenth century the conviction
remained unshaken that the earth was fixed at the middle
point of the Universe. All the heavenly spheres circled
round it as their centre. It was the lowest point of
the Universe, towards which all bodies possessing material
weight were drawn. The two heavy elements formed the
body of the earth and the two light ones encompassed it ; for
beyond the sphere of air lay that of fire, the true home of
that element towards which all upleaping flames aspire, only
being kept back by the matter on which they feed. From
that high region of fire the thunderstorms tore off fragments
of the element, and hurled them to earth as lightning.

IN
100 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Far beyond the sphere of fire came the seven planets,
each of which had a heaven to itself, the Moon counting
as the undermost of the planets. The Sun was in the
middle, between the three inner and the three outer
planets, and although only reckoned as one of the planets,
he was the source of light to the whole Universe, for
not only our earth, and the planets (as we also believe),
but the fixed stars too received their light from him,
Hence the poet calls him! ¢ the greatest of all ministers of
nature, who stamps the world with the virtue of the heaven,
and gives the measure of time unto us.’

Beyond Saturn (the most distant planet known till the
year 1781) lay the heaven of the fixed stars. Attempts
had been made to number them in early times. Eratos-
thenes counted 675, and for more than a thousand years
science rested in Ptolemy’s 1022—only about a fifth of the
number now given as visible to the naked eye, and less than
a hundredth of the number marked on our modern astrono-
mical maps. According to Aristotle there was nothing
beyond this eighth heaven. Each heaven had a ¢ proper’
or special motion of its own, from West to East; and as
the distance from the earth, the centre of the Universe,
increased, this movement became slower and slower, till
the heaven of the fixed stars only revolved once in 36,000
years.

But the path of the planets as actually observed was not
adequately expressed by their supposed revolution in com-
pany with the heavens called after their names. The astro-
nomers were driven to assume for each planet a second revolu-
tion whereby it revolved round a fixed invisible point in its
own (already revolving) heaven, somewhat as, according to
modern astronomy, the Moon, besides accompanying the
Earth in her course round the Sun, herself revolves round
the Earth. This second movement of the planets was called

! Par. x. 28.
IV.—DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 101

the epicyclic revolution. This theory, however fanciful and
involved it may sound to us, corresponds so closely with
the actual phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies,
that it enabled the observer to predict every eclipse or
conjunction of planets to the minute. Such accuracy was
reached that in 1560, long before the new doctrine of
Copernicus had gained acceptance, the punctual occurrence
of an eclipse of the Sun at the moment predicted moved
Tycho Brahe, then fourteen years old, with such reverence
for Astronomy that he resolved from that hour to dedicate
all the powers of his mind to her alone.

But the motions of these eight heavens, with their epi-
cycles, leave unexplained just the one phenomenon which
the least observant must perforce notice,—the daily rising
and setting of the sun, moon, and stars. = Ptolemy explained
this! by the theory of a ninth heaven, embracing all the
others, sweeping them all round (though without inter-
fering with their own special motions) in its inconceivably
swift revolution completed every twenty-four hours. It is
both the source and the limit of all motion and of all
change. Beyond it lies the eternal unchanging peace of |
God to which the Christian astronomers assigned a tenth
heaven, the Empyrean, ‘the heaven that is pure light;
light intellectual full of love, love of the good full of joy,
joy that transcends all sweetness,” as the poet describes it.?
The ninth heaven, which the eye cannot perceive, and
which is therefore called the crystalline or transparent
heaven, the poet names? ‘the royal mantle of all the

1 Not, of course, that it had not been observed or accounted for
before. But till his time it had been identified with the movement of
the fixed stars. Ptolemy observed that it did not quite coincide there-
with, and so separated out the ‘proper’ motion of the starry sphere
(see above, p. 100, end of second paragraph) which corresponds to what
is now known as the ¢Precession of the Equinoxes.” Then he took away
from the eighth sphere the function of originating the daily motion

common to all, and gave it to a now first recognised ninth heaven.—ED.
2 Par. xxx. 39. 8 Par. xxiii 112.
102 ESSAYS ON DANTE

swathings of the Universe, which most burns and quickens
in the breath and ways of God.’

Every one knows that this assumption of a number of
heavens is not without support in Holy Scripture. In the
Old Testament (as in the original Greek of the Lord’s
Prayer) the ‘heavens’ are often spoken of in the plural,
and the Apostle Paul not only says that he was caught up
to the third heaven, but evidently places the Paradise to
which he was further transported, in order to hear unutter-
able words, beyond it.

And now that we have taken a general survey of the
cosmography of the Middle Ages, let us return again to
Earth, and examine its place in the Universe, by preference
under Dante's guidance. We are told in the Apocalyptic
vision of St. John that after the war which Michael and his
angels waged against the Dragon, the ¢ Old Serpent, called
the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, he
was cast out into the Earth, and his angels were cast out
with him’ (Rev. xii. 7-10). This passage was regarded not
as prophecy, but as a record of what had already taken
place. Under Satan’s leadership certain of the angels fell.
They uplifted themselves, almost as soon as they were made,
against their Creator, and being overcome in the strife were
thereupon hurled down to the newly-formed earth. At
that time there were great continents rising above the sea in
the opposite hemisphere to ours ; but as Virgil tells Dante
when they have arrived at the other side (the south side)
of the centre of the Earth* ¢ From this direction he fell
down from heaven ; and the land which erst spread itself
out on this side the world, in terror of him, now made a
veil of the ocean, and came up in our hemisphere ; and (to
flee him, I take it) the land which appears on this side
[i.e. the Mount of Purgatory] left the space empty here
and rushed up backwards.’

L Inf. zxxiv. 127,
IV.—.DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 103

Ever since then, Earth’s surface, stretching from the
Pillars of Hercules round to the East Indies, has been a
waste of waters as yet unsailed by any who has returned to
tell the tale.

One mountain alone rises out of this sea, the highest of
all on earth; so lofty indeed that it towers above all
changes of our atmosphere, so that there is neither rain nor
snow, storm nor lightning, on its summit: and since the
first pair left it it has ne’er been trodden by the foot of
man. One man, indeed, set out to explore the unknown
world which lay beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. It was
Ulysses, who had returned from his long wanderings, but
could not be at peace in his tiny fatherland. Further and
further West he sailed with his companions.}

¢ Five times was rekindled, and as often quenched the light that
comes down from the Moon, since we had entered on the high
emprise, when there appeared to us a mountain, brown by
distance, and methought it loftier than I had e’er seen one
before. We were rejoiced, but soon it turned to wailing ; for
from that new land arose a squall and smote the foremost quarter
of our vessel. Three times it made her swirl with all the waters ;
then at the fourth it lifted up her poop; down plunged her
prow, as was the will of One, until the sea again closed over
us.’

On the summit of this mountain, which is heaped like a
funeral barrow above Satan, lies the Garden of Eden, planted
by God. It is watched by the angel with the fiery sword,
and is guarded from men by the wide stretch of the ocean
and the precipitous sides of the mountain. Here Adam
was placed and Eve was shaped by God; and from hence,
within a few hours of their creation, tempted to disobedience
by that same serpent, they exiled themselves.

At the exact antipodes of the Garden of Eden, and in the
centre, as the Middle Ages supposed, of the inhabited
world, lies Jerusalem, and the hill on which the Christ

1 Inf. xxvi. 130.
104 ESSAYS ON DANTE

bruised the head of the Old Serpent, and by his sacrificial
death lifted off the curse which had spread over that
hemisphere also at the fall of man.

Jerusalem lies in the middle of the inhabited earth, but
at the Eastern limit of Christendom. The quadrant from
Jerusalem to the Ganges is in the hands of the Heathen
and Moslem. Only the Western quadrant is Christian,
extending to the shores of the Atlantic, where the Apostle
James, like another Hercules, erected as it were a pillar in
Compostella that marks the confines alike of the Church
and of the inhabited world. In the middle, again, of these
Christian lands lies Rome, the burial-place of the two chief
Apostles, destined from the beginning of time to be the seat
of St. Peter’s successors and the centre of the Church of
Christ.

Jerusalem, with the crust of earth, miles in thickness, on
which its walls are reared, covers and seals up a huge cavity
which stretches down below it, in darkness and horror,
right to the centre of the earth. Satan was hurled not
merely down to the earth but deep into its bowels, even to
the dead centre, the pivot of the Universe, the deepest
point of all, and the furthest removed from the presence
and light of God. Sin and weight answer to one another.
As flame, which is not subject to the law of gravitation,
tends upward to its home in the heaven of fire, so the soul,
when freed from sin, rises to God, its source. But as a
stone is drawn downwards by its weight, so sin drags the
soul weighted by it down to the Father of sin in his dark
kingdom of torment and estrangement from God. This
huge cavity between the crust of the earth and its centre,
where Satan abides in gruesome majesty, is Hell. It is
divided into numerous circles, corresponding with the
sins which meet with their reward in it ; but the deeper we
go the deeper is the negation of light and warmth, until
finally the souls of traitors, nearest of all to Satan, are
IV.—.DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 105

frozen, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, into the ice
whereto the waters of Hell are congealed. And these
waters themselves are a product of sin. The tears extorted
from the sinners, the blood shed by tyrants and murderers,
all the filth of the sinful world, low down below by secret
conduits and are then transformed into instruments of
torment.

This nether world of unrepentant sinners is closed upon
them for ever. Since Christ descended into Hell to preach
to the spirits in prison (1 Peter iii. 19) and to release the
patriarchs, the number of spirits in Hell has indeed in-
creased, from day to day, but not one has ever been able to
free himself again from its fetters.

On the other hand, the ban which closed the gate of
Eden is done away by the death of Christ; not indeed for
the living, who may be pious but are not sinless, but for the
Christian souls that have expired in faith and penitence.
The Roman Catholic doctrine teaches, it is true, that even
these still bear the stain of earthly sin; but they are per-
mitted to wash it away by prayer and penance till at last
they become worthy, like the first pair before the fall,
of the Earthly Paradise. So this mount of purification,
Purgatory, forms the counterpart to the funnel of Hell.
The circles of Hell begin with mere defect of the true
faith, and descend through the lighter sins which are still
worthy of pity, to heavier and still heavier ones, ending
in rebellious hatred of God. In Purgatory we pass from
repentance, as yet inadequate, first through the heavier
sins and then through the errors which mislead the nobler
instincts, from which indeed they rise.

In the Southern hemisphere a beautiful constellation,
invisible in ours, lights the souls who come thither for
purification. The poet, on his arrival there, says : !

‘I turned me to the right hand, and heedfully I gazed upon

1 Purg.i. 22.
106 ESSAYS ON DANTE

the other pole, and saw four stars ne’er looked upon save by
the primal folk. The heaven seemed to gladden in their flames.
O widowed region of the North, since thou art shorn of
looking upon them!’

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Amerigo
Vespucci, and subsequently Andrea Corsali, enjoyed the
magnificent spectacle of the Southern Cross, and ever
since it has been frequently assumed (as it was by Vespucci
himself) that the four stars of the Divine Comedy signify
this jewel of the Southern skies. Some have imagined that
Dante anticipated the knowledge of them by the spirit of
prophecy, and others have supposed that Pisan or other
navigators brought home from their wanderings the report
of this constellation. In recent times Alexander von
Humboldt, and subsequently Oscar Peschel, have thought
the question worthy of special discussion. As a matter of
fact there was no need to assume that Dante heard the
report from otherwise unknown voyagers who had been
driven as far as Cape Verde or beyond ; for soon after 1290
Marco Polo had visited Java and Sumatra, whence such
an observant student of the heavens could not fail to note
the imposing spectacle of the Southern Cross. Now when
Dante wrote the second part of his poem, Polo, who was
never weary of recounting his adventures, had been back
in Venice, his native city, for twenty years. It is there-
fore highly probable, at any rate, that in describing the
four stars the poet had in mind the wonderful constellation
of which he had heard. It remains unquestionable, how-
ever, that here as elsewhere he has given an allegorical
meaning to actual phenomena, and in this case the sym-
bolic meaning is the most prominent.

For the four stars are taken by him to mean what we
call the four moral or cardinal virtues, Wisdom, Justice,
Temperance, and Fortitude. In the progress of the ascent
these four morning stars find their counterpart in three
IV.—DANTES COSMOGRAPHY 107

evening stars, which represent the three Christian or
theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.!

The spirits on the Mount of Purgatory likewise suffer
torment ; but it is now penance, not punishment. And
the higher we ascend the more endurable the sufferings
grow. The very climbing itself, which at first is toil-
some and breathless, becomes painless, nay, pleasant, as
when a ship is carried down stream by a favourable breeze.
The guilt washed away by penance drips down from this
mountain and gnaws its way into the bowels of the earth,
there to swell the volume of the waters of Hell.

At the summit of the mountain we find the Garden of
Eden, depicted in glowing colours, after the scriptural
account, with all manner of trees beautiful to look on, and
good for food, with the breath of morning whispering
among their branches and birds plying their art in varying
melody. But it is not rain nor dew that fosters the growth
of the trees and flowers of this garden. The moist ex-
halations of earth and the dews which they deposit,
the fury of storm and thunder, all these bear the character
of change, for which there is no room in Paradise.
Streams of living water springing up in Eden irrigate the
garden. And as the breeze, following the motion of
heaven, passes from East to West through the tree-tops
and strikes the shrubs and grasses, it bears away their seeds,
and strews them here and there over the face of the earth.”

‘The smitten plant hath power to impregnate the breeze
with its virtue, and the breeze as it circles scatters it around. And
the rest of Earth, according as itself and its heaven makes it
worthy, conceives and bears diverse growths of diverse virtues.
Henceforth it should not seem a wonder, this being heard, should
any plant take root there without visible seed.’

My respected hearers will perceive how the poet seems
in these lines to have a premonition of the microscopic

1 Purg. viii. 89. 2 Purg. xxviii. 109.
108 ESSAYS ON DANTE

fungus spore, pollen, and infusorial germs, which play so
prominent a part in the natural science of our day.

Where then in this garden, with its beautiful trees full
of pleasant fruits, is man, for whom God planted it all?
We have seen how Christ has reopened it to the spirits of
the redeemed purified by penance; but their dwelling-
place is no longer on earth, no, not even in the Earthly
Paradise. They have lost their sins, and with them their
material weight; and were they now to cling to earth,
it would be as strange as if a living flame, instead of rising
upwards, were to creep along the ground.! The sinless
souls are not retained even by the joys of the Earthly
Paradise, but rise upwards to Heaven.

But heaven, too, is an organised whole, with degrees
and distinctions, according to the particular qualities for
which each spirit was conspicuous. The seven grades of
the punishment of Hell,2and the seven terraces of the mount
of Purgatory, find their counterpart here in the spheres of
the seven planets. A separate company of the blessed is
assigned to each ; those who vowed themselves to God are
in the chaste Moon ; in Mercury are those who strove after
intellectual perfection ; in Venus, those who were inflamed
with heavenly love ; in the Sun, the source of all light, the
theologians who sank deep into the light of God ; in Mars,
those who fought for Christ; in Jupiter, the source of all
justice according to the Ancients, the righteous rulers; and
finally, the holy hermits in Saturn, who pursues his slow
course far removed from the other planets.

The Greek astronomers had handed down the belief that
since the Sun was far larger than the Earth, the shadow
cast in space by the latter would taper to a point, and they

1 Par. i. 139.
2 Not reckoning the Virtuous Heathen and the Heretics, who stand

in a sense outside the sevenfold ethical division of Hell and raise the
total number of circles to nine.—ED.
3 See Appendix.—ED.
IV.—.DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 109

calculated that it would just reach to the sphere of Venus.
Beyond Venus there is nothing but the pure light of heaven,
but the memories and lighter blemishes of earth extend up
to her orb. We spoke just now of errors, which, sinful
though they are, yet bear witness to nobility of soul. In
the same way virtues, even while pleasing to God, may
have some earthly alloy. The Moon is the symbol of
chastity, but she is not spotless, and her inconstancy reveals
itself in ceaseless change. So, too, the bride of Christ,
instead of staking all on the preservation of her vow,
may yield to external pressure. Yet if her will has but
remained faithful, her weakness will not be imputed to
her, and she will yet attain to bliss. The scholars, orators,
and poets to whom Mercury is assigned are not free from
the thirst for personal renown ; and, again, spiritual love
may be twin sister to her earthly counterpart. Thus these
three planets represent lower degrees of blessedness, but all
Heaven is Paradise, and the spirits in these spheres do not
feel themselves less blessed because of their lower place.
One of them answers the poet’s question on this very
point : 1

¢ Brother, the virtue of love quiets our will, for it makes us
wish only for that we have, and feel no other thirst. Did we
desire to be more aloft, our longings were at discord with His
will who decrees we should be here. . . . So that the way we
rank from threshold to threshold through the realm, pleases all
the realm even as its king, who draws our wills in his. And
his will is our peace; it is that sea to which all moves that it
creates or that nature makes.’

The harmonies which strike the poet’s ear as soon as he
has passed the sphere of fire do not arise, then, as Cicero
once made his Scipio dream, from the rush of the planets
through the ringing ether, but from the songs of praise
raised by the blessed spirits, differing in the different
heavens according to their gifts.

1 Pay. iii. 70.
110 ESSAYS ON DANTE

But while the planets are peopled now with blessed
spirits, this could not have been so, according to the
Church, either in heathen times or under the Old
Covenant. Were they then nothing before the redemp-
tion but soulless balls of fire? For the Christian poet
could not offer his tribute of praise to the silent majesty
with which Helios guided his golden chariot; and neither
have I, let me confess it, ever been able to feel the lofty
poetry which our own Schiller finds in the thought of a
driver following the same road day in, day out, for one
millennium after another, even though he had a golden
chariot !

In the conception of the Middle Ages, however, the stars
were anything but soulless balls of fire. Aristotle himself
had said that where motion was there must life be also,
for only death is motionless. The most perfect form of
movement, in that it is capable of endless continuance,
is the circular motion exemplified in the movement of
the heavens. Now the starry or highest heaven, by
whose movement that of all the others is conditioned, is
moved by a supernal Being proceeding from God, an
Intelligence. Elsewhere Aristotle adopts the popular idea
which named the planets after the Gods and assumed other
beings, besides this supreme Intelligence, who ruled the
special motions of the planets. The Neoplatonists, followed
by the Arabians, expanded these suggestions, until finally
the schoolmen of the thirteenth century worked them up
into such a form as fitted them to become an organic part
of the Christian conception of Heaven.

The ‘Intelligences’ became ‘ Angels,’ whose various
hierarchies ruled the nine revolving heavens. The motions
of these heavens are, as already indicated, manifold, but
each movement is guided by one or more angels. The
presiding spirits of the planets, however, perform their
functions in a fashion widely differing from that attri-
IV..DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY III

buted in heathen times to the deities from whom the
planets took their names. Helios, in his golden chariot,
turned his gaze earthwards, now on Clymene, on Daphne,
or some other nymph, now on the wide-browed cattle of

his friend Admetus. The moon-goddess Diana let her -

eye rest on the fair sleeper Endymion, while the warm-
blooded Venus now looked in the Firmament on Mars
or Mercury, and now smiled on Adonis, or descended to
the groves of Ida, where the longing Anchises awaited
her.

But in the system of the medizval Church the eyes of |

those who rule the stars are ever directed upwards. The |

whole being of the legions of angels consists in losing them- |
selves in God. The task of each one is to apprehend God’s |

essence in his own special way, under the special aspect

and in the special direction indicated individually to him.
It is because of this apprehension that they bear the name
of Intelligences. Here, as usual, the Schoolmen over-refine,
and are over-confident in exhaustively apportioning the
different aspects under which God is contemplated by the
hierarchies and choirs of angels, as elaborated by the inven-
tive faculty of the ancient Church from the faint sugges-
tions of Scripture.

Next to the Empyrean, which embraces the whole of
creation and is itself the very fulness of God, comes, as
we saw above, the transparent crystalline heaven invisible
to the eye. It is the heaven of the Seraphim, who see
deepest of all the angels into the secrets of the Creator.
And each of the constituent parts of this heaven, each
indwelling seraph, has such yearning toward each point of
the Empyrean—in other words, such longing to compre-
hend the whole being of God,—that this heaven revolves
ceaselessly under the canopy of the highest with a speed
unapproached by any other, completing its revolution in
four-and-twenty hours, and sweeping all the lower heavens

an
112 ESSAYS ON DANTE

with it. And it is this same thirst to apprehend which
causes the motion of all the spheres. Wherefore it is said
in the schools: By apprehending the Intelligences move
the Heavens and the Planets.’

But while the eyes of the guiding spirits of the Heavens
are directed upward, the power of their knowledge radiates
all around them, and into the lower spheres. Hence the
often-recurring image by which they are spoken of as
Mirrors of God. The poet says in one place : *

‘He whose wisdom transcendeth all, made the heavens, and
so gave them guides that every part glows upon every part with
even distribution of its light.’

And elsewhere : 2

“The primal light which over-rays it all (ie. the angelic
nature) is received thereby in as many ways as are in number
the splendours to which it is revealed. Wherefore, since affec-
tion conforms to the act of apprehension, the sweetness of love
boils or is tepid in them diversely. Behold now the height and
breadth of the Eternal Worth, since it hath made itself so
many mirrors wherein it breaks itself, remaining in itself one
as before.’

This conception of the heavenly bodies, each receiving
from above and radiating and attracting below, is no other
than a spiritual version of Newton’s law of gravitation, on
which the equilibrium and movement of the heavenly
bodies depends.? ¢ These orders all gaze upwards, and so
work victoriously downwards that all are drawn and all do
draw towards God.’

But this conception and reflection of theirs is not confined
to spiritually apprehending and illuminating. Inseparably
united with it, and with the revolution of the heavens
which it causes, is the radiation of divine powers and in-
fluences even down to our Earth. Birth, growth, and

1 Inf. vil. 73. 2 Par. xxix. 136. 8 Par, xxviii. 127.
IV.—DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 13

decay follow one another on earth in accordance with
eternal laws. The elements combine into all the manifold
forms of the three realms of Nature. But the degree of
perfection with which each individual creature comes into
existence and develops itself depends upon the heavenly
influences. While even the most favourable constellations
are powerless to give a higher form to bad material and
unfit seed, yet even noble seed comes to naught under
adverse stars. The manifold combinations brought about
by the endless motions of the heavenly spheres and the
bodies they support are the essential condition of an
organised and organic life ; for uniformity in the individuals
would preclude it. Like these changing influences of the
stars, which defy all human interference, are the workings
of Fortune, whose wheel may be likened to the circles in
which the planets roll.2

‘In like manner hath he ordained to earthly splendours a
general administrix and guide, in due time to interchange falla-
cious blessings from folk to folk, from one class to another,
beyond resistance of the wit of man. Wherefore one folk hath
sway, another languisheth, after Her judgment who doth lie con-
cealed like to a serpent in the grass. . . . This is she who is so
crucified just by the ones who ought to give her praise, but give
her wrongfully their blame and ill report. But she is blessed

and heareth not this, exultant with the other primal creatures
doth she roll her sphere, and, blessed, doth rejoice.’

Now all these combinations of the elements under the in-
fluences of the stars, these ‘contingencies,’ as the Schoolmen
called them, were intended and foreseen by God; but it is
only indirectly that they proceed from him. The only thing
that, in the progress of creation, daily and hourly proceeds
immediately from God, is the Soul which he breathes into
every single child before its birth. This is why all ¢ con-
tingencies’ are destined to be resolved and to fall to pieces.
They are given over to change, decay, and destruction.

V Inf. vii. 77.
H
114 ESSAYS ON DANTE

But the human soul, which emanates from God himself; is
immortal and eternal. On the journey through the
planets the poet’s guide says to him : *

¢ The Good which moves and satisfies all the realm thou art
climbing, frames its providence into a virtuous power in these
great bodies ; and not only are created things provided for in the
mind that in itself is perfect, but they together with their means
of safety. Wherefore whatsoe’er this bow doth shoot, lights as
disposed to a provided end, even as a thing directed to its mark.
Were this not so, the heaven thou art traversing would produce
such effects as make not works of art but ruins. . . . The
circling nature which is seal to the mortal wax, plies its art well,
but maketh no distinction betwixt one abode and other. Where-
fore it comes that Esau parts from Jacob in the seed ; and from
so base a father is Quirinus born he is assigned to Mars. The
begotten nature would ever make its path like to its generators,
did not divine provision overrule.’

And in like manner he says elsewhere : 2

¢ Seldom does human goodness mount up through the branches;
and this He wills who gives it, that from Him it may be asked
for.

Are we then to believe in astrological fatalism? Are
the nature, the virtues, and the vices of each individual
and his lot in life unconditionally fixed by the stars, under
whose influence he came into the world? Do the con-
sequences of our decisions and our actions depend on the
positions of the planets ?

This belief was widely held during the Middle Ages,
and my hearers will remember how long it maintained
itself ; so long indeed that it has many echoes even in our
modern forms of speech. Dante most emphatically con-
tradicts it :3 :

¢Ye mortals refer all causes to the Heaven, as though it swept

all with it of necessity. If it were so, free choice in you would
not exist, and there would be no justice in your reaping joy for

 

1 Par. viii. 97-108, and 127-135.
2 Purg. vii. 121. 3 Purg. xvi. 67.
IV..DANTE’S COSMOGRAPHY 115

good and misery for evil. The heaven does give rise to impulses
within you—I say not all of them, but if I did say all, yet light
is given you for goodness and for wickedness, and free will, which
if it endure the toil in its first conflicts with the heaven then if it
be well nurtured conquers all. To Greater Power and to Better
Nature ye lie in free subjection, and that it is which doth create
in you the mind o’er which the heaven hath not charge. Where-
fore if the present world goes off the track, in you lieth the cause;
in you it must be sought.’

We have seen the Intelligences moving the nine heavens
and thereby bringing their influence to bear on the destinies
of earth. Are they then confined each to his special
heaven as an actual dwelling-place ?—We must answer
this question in the negative. Each angel enjoys, in the
Empyrean, the immediate presence and sight of God, and
it is only the forces radiating from him and from his
apprehension of God which are reflected in the stars. Nor
is it otherwise with the souls of the blessed. The Heaven
of highest light is the true home of all, all are permitted to
gaze on the face of God, only the measure of sight is
determined by their capacity and deserts, and the heaven
to which they are, so to speak, outwardly assigned! is a
symbol of this measure.

And thus, spiritually and ultimately, the whole of this
cosmography comes to be, as it were, reversed. We have
been depicting the whole God-filled heaven, wherein is his
city and his lofty throne, as the outermost, embracing all
the others. But again; God is the sole kernel of the
Universe, round which the whole creation must revolve in
a widening series of circles. God, says one of the School-
men, is indeed a circle ; but a circle whose centre is every-
where and its bounding circumference nowhere. Thus, if
we picture the heaven of God as stretching beyond all
conceivable extension, yet may God equally be conceived

1 And apparently assigned only on the special occasion when they
come to meet Dante and his guide, Par. iv. 28 sq.—ED.
116 ESSAYS ON DANTE

as the absolutely indivisible unit, the mathematical point
which occupies no space at all. The poet depicts this in-
verted conception, if we may so call it, thus :?

‘A point I saw that rayed out light so keen that the sight on
which it blazed must needs close itself against its piercing power.
And whichever star seems smallest seen from here, had seemed
a moon compared with it, as star compares with star. Perchance
so close as Halo seems to gird the light that paints her when the
sustaining moisture is most dense, e’en at such distance round
the point a fire-circle whirled so rapidly it had surpassed that
motion which most swiftest girds the Universe; and this was by
another girt around, that by a third, the third too by a fourth,
by a fifth the fourth, then by a sixth the fifth. Above followed
the seventh, already spread so wide that Juno’s messenger, com-
plete, had been too strait to hold it. And so the eighth and
ninth ; and each one moved more slow according as in number
twas more distant from the unit: and that one had its flame
most clear from which the pure spark was least distant ; I believe
because it plunged the deepest in the truth thereof.’

Thus we have followed the poet in his ascent, and have,
I hope, returned unharmed to the point whence we started,
I mean to your own well-grounded conception of the con-
struction of the Universe. For our last vision has been not
alien from the teaching of Copernicus—a vision, not indeed
of the planets themselves, but of the Spirits that move them,
circling around the Sun, only in the place of the physical
Sun the poet has placed ‘the Sun of the angels,” God.

1 Par. xxviii. 16.
V..-.THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO

[Dante Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 121-160 (1879).]

I. ANALOGIES IN THE CONFORMATION OF HELL
AND PURGATORY

WE have only to compare the diagrammatic representations
of Dante’s Hell and Purgatory which have accompanied
so many of the editions of the Comedy since the time of
Daniello of Lucca (1568), in order to recognise a certain
similarity in the conformation of the two realms. The
cone of Purgatory corresponds to the funnel of Hell, so
that if we inverted the former we could, as it were, drop
it into the latter as into a roughly fitting sheath.

The funnel is of course widest at the top, and contracts
downwards towards the centre of the Earth, that is, accord-
to Dante’s Cosmography, the centre of the Universe;
while the cone diminishes upwards in contracting circles
from its broad basis. Thus the extreme, both of evil and
of good, is reached at the narrowest point, at the conduit of
the funnel below, and the summit of the mountain above.
As the burden of sin draws down the guilty towards the
Author of Evil, fixed at the very bottom of Hell, as to its
natural goal,2 so the repentant souls all seek the lofty
heights of the Earthly Paradise, where, their expiation
completed, they regain the sinlessness forfeited by the first
parents. The forest of Error, in which Dante unwittingly
loses himself when he wanders from the true path, is the
entrance to Hell. The “divine forest, dense and living’

1 Cf. Inf. xxxiv. 121-126. 2 Inf. xxxiv. 110; Par. xxix. 56.
117
118 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

(xxviii. 2), at the summit of Mount Purgatory, in which
the soul is finally cleared from all the stains of sin, may be
looked on as the vestibule to the Heavenly Paradise, to
which the soul rises with the full consciousness of returning
salvation. As in the Purgatorio, so in the first canto of
the Inferno, the poet strives to ascend a mountain to attain
to the knowledge of God, but in the one case his own
powers are insufficient to enable him to climb the fair hill,
smiling in the rays of the morning sun, ‘which is the
beginning and the cause of every joy’; and in the other
case the divine aid and the completion of his penitential
pilgrimage bring him, without effort at last (and again at
break of dayl), to the summit of the mountain where as
Beatrice tells humanity is blessed.

The ferryman of Hell, Charon, bears the lost souls in
his boat across the Acheron, while in a bark guided by
an angel the souls destined for the bliss of Heaven cross
the wide seas from the Tiber’s mouth to the strand of
Mount Purgatory. Outside the proper circles of either
realm are spirits standing in a peculiar relation to the true
denizens. Before we reach the damned inmates of Hell
we come upon the Trimmers, Celestine v. and his host of
associates, who are never to be admitted into Hell ; and
before we reach the souls in their purgation on the mount,
we encounter the Procrastinators, Belacqua ® and the rest,
who may not yet join them. The verdant lea of Limbo,
with its Poets, Heroes, and Sages, whose earthly fire illu-
minates ‘a hemisphere of darkness,’* corresponds to the
fragrant vale, covered with grasses and fairest flowers, in
which the great ones of the earth ® who allowed themselves
to be drawn away by earthly cares from the thought of their
soul’s welfare, now sojourn in the starry light shed by the
three Christian virtues. In Hell the Demons guard the

1 Purg. xxviii. 16. 2 Inf. iii. 59 3 Purg. iv. 110.
4 Inf. iv. 69. $ Purg. vil. 73. 6 Purg. viii. 89.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 119

gate of the city of Dis, and in Purgatory we have the
corresponding picture of the Gate of Heaven, St. Peter’s
Gate,’? through which the angelic doorkeeper invites the
souls ready for purification to enter.

Again, the order in which the sins follow each other in
the economy of Hell and Purgatory is identical, at any rate
as far as the first steps are concerned. The uppermost
circle of Hell, i.e. the one next to the Limbo, holds the
spirits who have sinned against the seventh commandment.
In the same way the redeemed purify themselves from the
like sin in the uppermost circle, that nearest to the recovered
sinlessness of the Earthly Paradise. Sexual aberration is
that sin into which noble souls are the most easily be-
trayed, for it is next-door neighbour to love, the source of
all the noblest emotions. The second circle embraces the
gluttonous, those who have used the indispensable means of
life in excess, or have elevated them, through degenerate
refinements, into an end in themselves. Next follow, in
both realms, those who have failed to hold the true mean
in their use of the riches falling to their share, the
Avaricious and Prodigal in one and the same circle. In
Hell the circle of the wrathful is the next below, and with
them are those ¢ who bore the sluggish fumes within.” In
Purgatory, on the other hand, the slothful are interpolated
in the fourth circle from above, before we find the wrath-
ful in the fifth.

MN. DIVERGENCIES

From this point; however, the correspondence in the
systems of Hell and Purgatory ceases.

In Hell, the City of Dis in which the sins arising from
Malice of every sort are punished, lies below the circle of

1 Inf. viii. 82. 20 i 134. 8 Purg. ix. 76.

4 Purg. xvii. 103. 5 Cf. the last section of this essay, p. 140.
6 A tabular presentment of the two systems compared with each
120 V.—.THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

the Wrathful. First we find the Heretics, then follow
the Violent, falling into three divisions according to
whether this violence was exercised against others, against
themselves, or against God and Nature. The eighth circle
of Hell contains the Fraudulent in ten ¢pits,” and then
comes the final circle of the Treacherous, subdivided into
four sections.

In Purgatory, on the other hand, we have only the
Envious and the Proud below the circle of the Wrathful.

This comparison further shows us that the seven circles
of Purgatory correspond exactly to the seven deadly sins of
the Catholic Church, whereas there are no circles in Hell
set apart for the punishment of Pride and Envy ; and Sloth,
whether really omitted or not, at any rate appears to be so.

On the other hand there is no place assigned in Purga-
tory for all the elaborately classified sins of the four lowest
circles of Hell.

Dr. Paur may well express his amazement! ¢ that almost
all exponents of the Divine Comedy, ancient and modern,
seem to have entered upon a conspiracy of unbroken silence

other may facilitate the study of this and the following section.—
Ep.

SPECIAL TO HELL. COMMON TO BOTH. SPECIAL TO PURGATORY.

  
 

Neutrals
cf. Purg. 4

Heathen
Unchaste 7

/ Gluttonous 1 5 \

/Avaricious and Prodigal 5
/ 4 Sluggish, cf. Hell o
Wrathful 3
: / 2 | Envious

I Proud

   

Heretics
Violent

 

  

1 In Herrig’s Archiv für die Stud. d. new. Sprachen, xxxviii. p. 113
(1865), ¢ Dante's Sindensystem.’
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 121

with regard to the entirely different systems by which the
sins are classified in the eleventh canto of the Inferno and
the seventeenth of the Purgatorio,’ and Abegg adds: ¢It
may be questioned whether there is any real contradiction.
If there were, it would provide a fine field for the exercise
of the ingenuity of Dante scholars. For of course they
would declare it was only apparent, all the same, and
would proceed to explain it away. They would never
be content to accept and acquiesce in it as an oversight of
the poet’s.’

III. ATTEMPTED EXPLANATIONS

1. Is any special place in Hell assigned to Pride and Envy 22

Several attempts have been made to overcome the:
difficulty of there being no division of Hell set apart for
the proud or the envious, by proving that there is, after all,
a place indirectly assigned to them. By some, Virgil’s
words to Capaneus, who is suffering for blasphemy, ¢O
Capaneus, e’en that thy pride remains uncrushed is thy most
penalty,’ are taken to show that Pride, as well as Blasphemy,
is punished in the third belt of the seventh circle of Hell.
Some again deduce from Virgil's denunciation of the
passionate Filippo Argenti and others his likes,* that in
the fifth circle not only the wrathful and sluggish but
the proud too are punished ; and having got so far they gra-
tuitously add the envious. Daniello mentions this theory,
but rejects it. Among modern writers, Tommaseo
adopted it in 1837, and both Fortunato Lanci® and Isid.

L See Jahrbuch der deutschen Dante-Gesellschaft, i. 204, 205 (1867).

2 Cf. Postscript, pp. 146, 147. 3 Inf. xiv. 63.

Inf. viii. 46, In the world he was a man of pride,” and 49, ¢ How
many now on earth bear them as mighty kings who shall be here like
hogs in mire, leaving a hideous infamy behind them.” Compare also the
instances collected by Selmi from the older Commentators, and given in
the notes to the Chiose Anonime, published by him, pp. 50, 51.

5 De’ spiritali tre regni cantati da D. Al., Roma, 1855, p. 16.
122 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

del Lungo! have declared in favour of it. The envious,
according to Lanci’s particular theory, are those who lie
smothered in the slime of the Styx ¢bearing the sullen
fumes within them,’2 while Del Lungo identifies them
with the ¢miry folk’ who fall upon Filippo Argenti to
¢ trounce’ him.?

Against both these scholars it may be urged that accord-
ing to them the two sins which appear in Purgatory as the
most grievous of all, being expiated at the bottom of the
mountain, would in Hell only be mentioned in passing, and
without so much as a reference to a single sinner suffer-
ing punishment expressly for them. The whole circle
(in which pride and envy could only claim a quarter share
each) is despatched in eighty-five lines, while in Purgatory
not less than five whole cantos are devoted to the Proud
and the Envious. And this too though Ciacco* and
Brunetto Latini® name pride and envy in conjunction
with greed as the chief sins of Florence, and though Satan’s
fall is attributed to envy® as well as pride.”

2. What Circles of Purgatory correspond to the four
last Circles of Hell 2

Still less have the exponents of Dante troubled them-
selves with the question how it comes that we hear nothing
in Purgatory of all the host of sins dealt with in the last
twenty-five cantos of the Inferno. We find in these cantos
eighteen (nay, on a more careful inspection considerably more
than twenty) separate classes of sin, with separate punish-
ments attached to them ; and only in the case of one of all
these classes does there appear to be any reason (and that

1 In the Nuova Antologia, Apr. 1873, No. vi. p. 766.

2 Inf. vii. 123; cf. the last section of this essay, p. 140.

3 Inf. viii. 58. t If. vi. 74.

5 Inf. xv. 63 ; cf. xvi. 74. 8 Inf. i. 111, and Par. ix. 129.

T Inf. vii. 12 and Par. xxix. 535.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 123

only by a somewhat strained refinement) why there should
be no one on the Mountain purging himself of the sin in
question. The exception is this. In the thirty-third canto
of the Inferno! Alberigo de’ Manfredi, who is punished in the
last division of Hell but one, Ptolemza, as a traitor to friends
receiving his hospitality, tells the poet that the souls of those
guilty of this form of treachery fall to the deepest chasm of
Hell at the very moment in which the deed is committed,
while a devil takes possession of their bodies, and conducts
them as though living until the time of their appointed
end. This daring fiction then excludes the possibility of
such souls complying with the essential condition of access
to the Mount of Purgatory by repenting of their sins while
still living on earth. It seems but logical then that there
should be no place for such in Purgatory.

It might appear that the same argument would hold in
the case of suicides, but experience shows that there is
often time enough for repentance between the act itself
and the end that supervenes.

As for the rest, it is impossible to see why a usurer,
a false coiner, a seducer, or a thief should not be ad-
mitted to purgation if he had repented of his sin while
still alive. In fact there is no lack of direct testimony
that he would have been so admitted, though it is a
marked characteristic of the souls in Hell that when once
there they have no feeling of penitence. Virgil speaks of
the soothsaying shoemaker Asdente,? ¢ who would now wish
he had kept close to his awl and leather, but rues too late.’
If then he had recognised the sinfulness of his fraudulent
prophesyings during his lifetime, he would not have fallen
to the fourth pit of the eighth circle of Hell, but would
have been admitted to purgation. Guido of Montefeltro
admits that his deeds were those of the fox, not of the lion,
and that he was skilled in every guile and every hidden way

1 Lines 124-133. ¥ Inf. x=. 114.
124 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

so that his fame had reached the end of earth. Therefore if
he died impenitent he must inevitably find a place in one of
the pits of the eighth circle. But he goes on to tell how,
when growing old, he repented of that which had hitherto
been his pride, and did penance humbly for his sins. And
he continues,! ¢ Ah, wretched me! and it would have
availed me.” His former frauds then would not have
excluded him from reaching Purgatory, and ultimately

Paradise. It is only because of a later, unrepented, sin that
Dante finds him in Hell.

3- Paur’s and Abegg’s explanation of the apparent
Contradiction.

Paur’s solution of this problem, although not perfectly
clear in all points, at any rate goes much deeper and
approaches the truth much more nearly than the attempted
solutions of the other problem which we recorded a few
pages back:

‘We might take the non-appearance of the Violent, the
Fraudulent, and the Treacherous in Purgatory as intended to
sharpen the contrast between crimes springing from malice”
and crimes springing from inclination to what is in itself good (2) ;
but it seems better to suppose that “malicious” crimes are
already included under “Pride” and “Envy.” To the Christian
consciousness the seven deadly sins are the prolific parents of
all other possible faults and sins, and, specifically, each of the two
deadly sins in question is alternately regarded by the teaching
of the Church as the original incentive to all evil.’

As the outcome of his investigation, Paur declares: Thus
the analogies between the contents of the Inferno and the
Purgatorio develop all along the line. The apparent
discrepancies melt away and every difficulty yields to an
attentive examination.” But almost immediately after he
himself adds : ¢ The profoundest of all poetic thinkers has a

1 Inf. xxvii. 84.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 125

right to demand that we should judge his creation not by
the gauge of the ordinary rule and square of mechanical
thinking, but by granting it the freedom of a living organ-
ism and learning to incorporate our own thought with
it.” And elsewhere: “Once for all; the abandonment of
the high-roads of logic is an essential part of Dante’s
method. He loves to break his own way by side-paths,
over the rocks and through the underwood.’

Abegg,! who adopts Paur’s general view, makes the
following true and suggestive remark :

‘When we think of purification, our minds adopt a different
standpoint in judging of the nature, drift, and motive of the sin
to be repented and expiated. Thus very different sins may
come under one and the same rubric, and again those externally
resembling each other may fall under different ones. Here we
can and must take into consideration gradations, and so forth,
which would not affect our estimate of the unrepented sin, in
the mass, when it falls into the hands of implacable justice.’

At the same time Abegg allows himself to be led into
uncalled-for concessions as to supposed inconsistencies in
the articulation of the ethical systems of Hell and Purga-
tory. Wegele,2 with whom he agrees in this instance,
says :

¢ A careful study of the Purgatory will soon reveal a marked
divergency between the principles and representations which
dominate it, and those which preside over the formation of
Hell and the distribution of its denizens. External resemblances
indeed there are, lovely (2) and ingenious analogies ; but still the
poet is far more closely circumscribed here than there. His
independent personality is compelled to work with much more
regard to doctrines and laws sanctioned by the Church and the
scholastic philosophy than when he was dealing with Hell ;
amongst other reasons, because here he plays an active part,
while there it was merely passive. Dante’s Purgatory is a bodily
presentation of the repentance and purification of fallen man;

 

1 Abegg, op. cit., p. 239.
% Dante Alighiery’s Leben und Werke, 3rd ed. (1879), p. 501.
126 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

and thereanent the Church had laid down definite doctrines,
whereas she laid down little else, with respect to Hell, than
that the punishments were eternal.’

Abegg adds in this connection : 1

¢ When tradition or the doctrine of the Church affords Dante
definite material, he uses it. The categories of sin, especially as
regards the mortal sins, are determined after Aristotle and the
Schoolmen ; but the grouping of the various special sins under
one or the other head is frequently peculiar to the poet when-
‘ever he has a free hand. And it is here that the influence of his
political views may be traced, as when he places treachery below
violence, as the worser sin, specifically including treachery
against the Empire.’

Iv. THE TWO SCHEMES

Virgil and Dante rest directly after they have left the
circle of the wrathful in Purgatory; and it is almost the
same in Hell; only here the conflict at the gate of the city
of Dis, and the passage through the circle of Heretics, in-
tervene between the circle of the wrathful and the pause
in the journey of the poets. In Purgatory they rest
because the fall of night hinders their progress, in Hell
they pause, that Dante may accustom himself to the
horrible stench that rises from the deeper pit. In either
case he prays his guide to fill the time of rest with edifying
discourse. In Hell he says, ‘Find thee some compensa-
tion, that the time pass not, lost, away,’ and on the Mount
of Purgatory,® ¢ Though our feet are stayed, let thy dis-
course not stay.’ In either case Virgil expounds the
divisions under which sins are punished or expunged. The
first point that strikes us is that in Purgatory Dante quotes
no authority to show the greater culpability of Anger,
Envy, and Pride, but rests it entirely on the sinful per-

1 Op. cit. p. 240. 2 Inf. xi. 13 sg.
3 Purg. xvii. 84.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 127

version of love into love of our neighbour’s ill; while in
Hell he refers twice to Aristotle and once to Genesis. It
is not correct to explain this as marking the difference
between a Christian and a Heathen analysis, but if such
a distinction did exist it would find its justification in the
fact that only the baptized can enter the realm of Pur-
gatory, while the whole of heathendom is included in
Hell.

V. ARISTOTLE’S THREEFOLD DIVISION OF
IMMORAL ACTIONS:

The idea that the ethical system of Hell as expounded
by Virgil rests upon Aristotle’s teaching, though wide-
spread, is erroneous. ‘The well-known passage of the
Nicomachean Ethics to which Dante refers,? describes
morally wrong actions, Ta mepi Ta 70n ¢evkrd, as of
three kinds, whereas only two main divisions are recognised
in Dante’s Hell, and the second is subdivided into two,
after the precedent of Cicero, as Abegg justly remarks?
not of Aristotle.

It is not until after Virgil has developed the whole
scheme of punishment inside the city of Dis, without any
reference to the Stagirite, that he alludes to the ¢ Ethics’
in reply to Dante’s question why the sins of incontinence’
(punished as a matter of fact in the four upper circles) do
not find a place in the nether hell. Then he explains that
faults due to drpagia [incontinence] are less severely
punished than those of malice (kaka). But to complete
the quotation, Virgil has to include Aristotle’s third class
of evil-doing, due to ‘mad brutishness’ (OnpiéTns), which
is however foreign to Dante’s system.

The Dante Commentators go searching for this unhappy

1 Cf. Postscript, p. 147. 2 vii. 1,
3 De Officiisy 1. 13 (41). 4 Abegg, op. cit., p. 195.
128 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

“matta bestialitade’ in almost every corner of Hell, as
diligently as for envy and pride, but all in vain. It is
true that there are souls who have so fallen under the
dominion of their bosom sins, whatever their nature, that
they have lost their power of resisting them and lie
beneath them like brute beasts with no free will left to
them. If we take the Minotaur as the symbol of the
murderers and plunderers that immediately follow in the
seventh circle, we may regard Inf. xii. 33 as ranking
them among such bestial souls ; also the malicious thieves,
according to xxiv. 125, and the sodomites, according to
Purg. xxvi. 84, would come under the same description.
But nowhere is there a separate division of Hell assigned
to them, and we could hardly go further astray from
Dante’s thought than by supposing, with Wegele, that the
whole circle of the ‘Violent’ had ‘by their brutishness
entirely forfeited those gifts which distinguish men from
animals.” This of Pier delle Vigne, and of those ¢worthy
ones, Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio and Rusticucci, after
whom the poet had so eagerly inquired (/zf. vi. 79) !

The only point of referring to Aristotle’s Ethics, then,
is to unfold the contrast between sins of incontinence and
sins of malice, which Cicero does not expound in the
passage of the De Opficiis. The quotations from the
Physics and from Genesis have no bearing on the classi-
fication of sins in general; and only serve for a somewhat
sophistical proof that usury is a form of violence against

God.

VI. DANTE'S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF
PUNISHMENT?

Abegg has rightly pointed out that the universal
principle guiding both retribution and expiation in the

1 Cf. p. 203, note 1. 2 Cf. Postscript, p. 145.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 129

next world is, as we are told in the Paradis, for ¢ the void
made by sin to be filled up, just sufferings making good
evil delight.” In Hell this is done to satisfy the demands
of justice, in Purgatory as the one means of cleansing the
soul from sin. In juridical language, the punishment of
the damned is exclusively penal, the penance of the souls
seeking purification remedial. But even in the case of penal
sentence, when passed on a_mortal sinner, the desire to raise
his moral condition must always influence the manner in
which the sentence is carried out ;2 whereas no such con-
siderations apply to the sinner who goes unrepentant to
Hell ; and his punishment can only be retributive.” The
penal codes of earth and hell are however analogous in taking
note of deeds only, and not of guilty thoughts which have
resulted in no overt acts. On the other hand, when there
has been an overt act, the essential significance of the deed
itself receives a terrible emphasis from the fact that, in
principle at least, the punishments of Dante’s Hell consist
in the unceasing continuance of the sinful activity itself,
now transformed to torment. It is the act then which is
punished, not the sinful motives that prompted it. Cain
was impelled to fratricide by envy, but it is for fratricide,
not for envy, that he is banished to the deepest chasm of
Hell.* Capaneus sinned from presumption and pride, but
his punishment is for blasphemy.® It was envy and pride
alike that impelled Satan to revolt against his Creator,® but
the heaviest of all the punishments of Hell is laid on him
for treachery against his highest benefactor. Minos, the
judge of the damned, looks at the motives prompting the
action only as an earthly judge would do, in order to satisfy
himself as to the personal responsibility of the sinner for his

1 vii. 83.

2 Abegg, p. 208, note 34, and p. 226.

3 Introduction to my translation of the Diwine Comedy, p. 12.

4 Purg. xiv. 133. 5 Inf. xiv. 63, 69.

6 See above, p. 122, notes 6 and 7.

I
130 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

crime, or to discover under which category the crime
comes.

When the poet, in his general classification of sin, says : !
‘Injury is the aim of all malice, that earns hatred in
heaven, and every such aim works folk affliction either by
force or fraud,” he implies that the sinful desire to break
one of the commandments, so long as through lack of
courage or opportunity it remains unaccomplished, is not
punished iz Hell ;2 and it is only when by force or fraud
the sinner has attained his unlawful goal, or at least done
all in his power to attain it, that he receives the punish-
ment.

Now Pride, Envy, and we may add Sluggishness, are
sinful propensities. They carry with them the seed of the
most varied sinful deeds, but we cannot say that to be proud
or envious is in itself an action aiming at an unrighteous
object, and attaining it by fraud or violence. However
unreasonably a man may secretly over-estimate his own
powers, however enviously he may look on his neighbour’s
good fortune, this will not in itself qualify him for a place
in Dante’s Hell. But if; in order to gain a position held
by one worthier than himself, he has slandered him before
the authorities, he belongs to the ninth pit of the eighth
circle; or if through envy he has devastated the coveted
possession of his neighbour, the first belt of the seventh
circle claims him.

In Dante’s scheme there would be no inhabitants for a
circle specially set apart for the proud or the envious.

VII. DANTE’'S FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF
EXPIATION

The case is very different when we come to the souls on
the slopes of the Mount of Purgatory. For the damned,

1 Inf. x. 22, 2 Abegg, op. cit., p. 199.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 131

Hell has nothing to offer (beyond their own obduracy?)
except the punishment of physical torment. But in Pur-
gatory, physical pain is only one of many influences
brought to bear on the penitent. Some of the penances,
as that of the sixth circle, can hardly be regarded as physical
pain at all; and everywhere the souls are conscious of being
chastened for their own good, so that pain itself is felt as a
blessing.? And supplementing this there are other aids to
holiness in each circle of the mount: here the bas-reliefs
carved on the upright wall; there the forms graven on the
ground; or the summons sounding through the air, or
the involuntary pictures rising in the phantasy, all showing
the misery arising from the sin which is to be expiated in
that circle, that the souls may turn from it? or pointing to
the blessing arising from the virtue neglected, and winning
the souls to a love of it.‘ And finally, as the purified soul
leaves each circle, it hears a voice reciting the beatitude of
which it had before rendered itself unworthy.

The influences brought to bear on the souls in Purgatory
then are prevailingly moral and spiritual; the aim is not to
inflict on the obdurate sinner the suffering demanded by
Justice, but, as the poet himself puts it, to dissipate the
last film of scum which dims the conscience, to remove the
last shadow left by sinful thoughts or inclinations, so that
the soul may once more stand in crystalline transparency,
penetrated by the light of God. The penances of Pur-
gatory are designed not merely, or even at all, to expiate
evil deeds by suffering, but to overcome the sinful disposi-
tion, and restore to the souls the brightness of the purity
they had tarnished.

But since it is the disposition which is to be purified, the

1 Inf. xiv. 64. 2 Purg. xix. 77, xxiii. 72, 86.

3 The Bridle,” Purg. xiii. 40, or the ¢ Curb,’ xiv. 143.

4 The ¢ Lash,’ Purg. xiii. 39.

5 Purg. xii. 110, xv. 38, xvii. 68, XiX. 50, Xxii. 4, XXiv. 154, xxvii, 8,
6 Purg. xiii. 88; cf. xvi. 31 and xix. 91.
132 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

penances of Purgatory are directed not so much against the
overt act as against the impulse whence it arose; and the
soul which though never giving way to sinful deeds has
admitted sinful desires also needs its purgation.!

Pride and Envy lie at the root of many and various sinful
deeds.?2 If a man’s pride has prevented his acknowledging
the equal rights of others, and has led him to overthrow,
perhaps murder, his neighbour, then for the purposes of
the Mount of Purification it is not enough that he should
pay the penalty of violence or of murder, he must purge the
sin of pride, root and branch, from his heart. And this can
only be done in some circle of the mount specially set apart
for the purgation of each separate sinful disposition. The
same outward offence then would be punished in Hell as a
sinful act, or expiated in Purgatory as a sinful disposition.
The solution of our problem thus becomes self-evident ;
there is no place in Hell for the punishment of the sinful
impulses of Pride and Envy, but the evil deeds to which
they give rise are punished according to their nature in
various circles, while in Purgatory the two lowest (and
consequently widest) circles of the mountain are entirely
peopled by the shades of those who in penitential anguish
are overcoming the sins of Pride and Envy of heart. And on
the other hand, in the last three-and-twenty cantos of the
Inferno we find specific places assigned to the various sinful
acts rising from these dispositions ; but not in the Purga-
torio, where the dispositions themselves, independently of
resultant action, are repented and purged.

VIII. EXAMPLES

The Counts of Santa Fiore are known to have been at
feud for a long period with Siena. According to Berling-
hieri and Repetti3 Count Omberto, a member of this

1 Matt. v. 28. 2 Cf. Paur, op. cit., pp. 124 59.
3 Cf. Aquarone, Dante in Siena, pp. 109-111.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 133
family, had waylaid and plundered travellers, especially
Sienese, on their way through the valleys of Monte
Amiata, and had even seized Sienese ambassadors and
kept them captive for years. At last the city, to rid herself
of the scourge, despatched assassins, who smothered him
with pillows in his castle of Campagnatico. If then he
had died unrepentant, he would unquestionably have been
placed in Phlegethon, the river of boiling blood. But since
he repented, the poet places him in the lowest circle of the
mount ;! for the source of his violence was pride, which
prevented him from acknowledging the right of the neigh-
bouring free city to her independence.

The Sienese Sapia uttered blasphemy in the passion of
her gratified hate, and her place in Hell would therefore
have been side by side with Capaneus ; but as she acknow-
ledged her sin on her deathbed she does penance in the
second circle, among the envious, since it sprang from envy.

Dante says of himself, in the circle of Purgatory in
which the envious expiate their sin with their eyelids
stitched together with wire,® ¢ Here shall my eyes be one
day closed; but not for long, for small is the offence
wrought by their envious rolling. My soul hangs in
far greater dread of the torment down below [that of the
proud], for the burden that must there be borne already
presses on me.” He is conscious then, that to purge himself
from pride, of which he has been guilty, he will long
have to bear the heavy burden of stone upon his shoulders,
and will then have to purify himself from the sin of envy,
though for a shorter space. Does it follow that he knew
he had been guilty of oppression, or calumny through his
pride, or of robbery or other crimes springing out of his
envy? If he knew that he had committed such crimes,
he would surely be guilty of gross hypocrisy in saying of

1 Purg. xi. 58-72. 2 Purg. xiii. 122.
3 Purp. xiii. 133-
 

134 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

himself}! ¢If but my conscience chide not, I am ready for
fortune, come how she may.’ And again,? ‘Save that by
conscience I am fortified, the good companion who bids
man go free under the breastplate of her feeling clean.
And again compare the passage® where he indignantly
repudiates the accusation of having broken a vessel of the
Church in wanton presumption.

In the same way there is nothing to show that Oderisi
of Gubbio or Provinzan Salvani fell into any actual deed
of sin through the pride they expiate in the first circle,
or Guido del Duca and Rinier da Calboli through their
envy. In these two circles, then, at any rate, it is the sinful
disposition which must be overmastered, in order that the
soul may be purified, whether or no it led to sinful acts,
and whatever the nature of any such acts may have been.

IX. IN WHAT REGION OF PURGATORY DO THE VIO-
LENT, THE FRAUDULENT, AND THE TRAITORS,
PURGE THEMSELVES IF THEY DIE PENITENT?

This view of Dante’s teaching receives further confir-
mation from another side. Itis the unquestionable teaching
of the Christian Church, that the worst sinners,—robbers,
murderers, the violent, and the fraudulent,—are not cut off
from blessedness by their evil deeds if they do but repent
and embrace the means of grace held out to them by the
mercy of God. But if they have not fully expiated their
sin while on earth, Catholic dogma pronounces definitely
against their immediate admission to the bliss of heaven.
Thus Statius, whom Dante ranks amongst Christians, is con-
demned to a sojourn of hundreds of years in the fifth circle
simply on account of his prodigality. It would therefore
be impossible that the gates of Paradise should lie open

1 Inf. xv. 92. 2 Inf: xxvill. 115.
3 Inf xix. 21. 4 Purg. xxi. 67 and xxii. 34.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 135

without further expiation to the souls of bloodthirsty
tyrants, of common panderers or forgers, who only acknow-
ledged the sinfulness of their life shortly before their end.
But this further purification can only take place, according
to the Catholic doctrine, in Purgatory ; nor is there any
lack of direct evidence in the poem that the souls of such
sinners are actually admitted there.

Take for instance King Manfred, who did not turn to
God until after he had received two mortal wounds.
¢ Horrible were my crimes,’! he says; and assuredly they
were no mere sins of incontinence. ° Yet,’ he continues,
¢ the infinite goodness hath so wide-open arms, it embraces
all that cometh back to it.” Manfred, indeed, having died
under the ban of the Church, must long wait before he
can be admitted to the purification of Purgatory, but the
entrance thereto at last, and thence to the bliss of heaven,
is none the less secure.— The case of Jacopo del Cassero is
closely analogous.?

The later Middle Ages submitted the history of Hugh
Capet to strange mythical transformations, but the
Chroniclers, whom Dante follows here, are all agreed in
charging him with violence against the last of the Karlo-
vingians (whether the imaginary Rudolf, Archbishop of
Rheims, or Duke Charles of the Lower Lorraine 2), whom
he excluded from the succession. If he had died in his sins
he would therefore have been consigned to the first belt of
the seventh circle of Hell, but because he repented Dante
places him in Purgatory.

What circle of Purgatory then will serve for the expiation
of this and similar crimes? Hugh Capet we find in
the circle of the Avaricious,* obviously because it was
covetousness which tempted the supposed ¢butcher’s son’

1 Pars. iii. 127. 2 Pyrg. v. 72.
3 Consult Scartazzini’s Commentary on Purg. xx.—ED.
4 Puig. Xx. 43.
136 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

to take possession of the throne of France. Had Manfred
already been admitted to purgation we should surely have
found him among the proud. In a word, all the acts of
sin for which the guilty endure punishment in the manifold
subdivisions of Hell are expiated in Purgatory on the terrace
determined, not by the manifest deed, but by its motive.

X. SINS OF INCONTINENCE IN PURGATORY

It appears then that Dante did not, as has been sug-
gested, follow the Aristotelian teaching exclusively in the
first division of his poem, and make concessions to the
Catholic dogma in the second, but that the difference in
the classification of sins in the one and the other cantica
follows with logical necessity from the difference between
punishment and penance. But then the further question
forces itself upon us why sins of the flesh, gluttony, greed,
and wrathfulness, have not been differently classified in
the two cases, instead of following, as they do, the same
order in Hell and Purgatory.

Well, we feel at once that sins of incontinence proceed,
not from a direct desire of evil, but from an inability to
resist the allurements of pleasure or passion. Thus they
do not present a sharp contrast between the sinful pro-
pensity, and the sin (differing widely from it, and taking
outward and independent shape) which it prompts ; whereas
such a contrast does exist when ill-treatment of ¢inferiors’
is prompted by pride, or robbery by envy. The sinful pro-
pensities of the lustful or the gluttonous lead them direct
to the gratification of their passion, those of the avaricious
to the retention or increase of their treasures, those of the
wrathful to unrestrained manifestation of their rage. Con-
sequently the difference here is only that between desires
and their accomplishment, not between the culpable dis-
position and its essentially different outward manifestations.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 137

The classification will; in these cases, be the same, whether
it is the accomplished deed which is to be punished in Hell,
or the sinful desire which in itself demands the purification
of Purgatory.

XI. PUNISHMENT AND EXPIATION OF
COMPLEX SINS

Meanwhile we must not lose sight of the fact that sins
of incontinence also may possibly lead to sins essentially
unlike themselves, namely the sins of malice; as when
carnal desire prompts acts of violence against its object or
some third person who stands between the sinner and the
accomplishment of his will. In Purgatory it would be
inherently possible to expiate successively the primary sin
and the secondary one arising out of it, for we have more
than one unequivocal example of expiation made in
different circles successively.! In the particular instance
we have selected, however, this affords no solution, for a
murder committed in pursuit of carnal desire could not
fitly be expiated in any of the circles, from the third to the
sixth, destined for sins of incontinence ; neither could it find
a place in either of the two lower circles, for it could not be
attributed either to pride or envy. Consequently it could
only be purged in the highest circle, together with the sin
lying at the root of it.

In Hell there is not even the abstract possibility of
suffering punishment successively for two sins, for the
Church teaches that all the punishments of Hell are eternal.
Suppose Dante’s Minos had consigned to the circle of the
carnal, whose punishment is the lightest of all those of Hell,
a sinner whose passion had led him to murder, say, the
husband of his mistress. There would then be no possibility
* of his descending to the severer punishment for murder in

1 Pars. xxl. 92.
138 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

the circle of the violent, when he had been sufficiently
punished for the original sin. The only method open to
the poet is to place him at once in the circle assigned to
whichever may be the heaviest of all his sins.

A striking confirmation of this view of the punishments
of Hell is found in the words that introduce the punish-
ment of the Violent. They run (according to the text
adopted in my Berlin edition):1 ¢O blind covetousness, alike
in guilt and folly, who dost so spur us in this short life, and
then in that eternal one so hideously dost boil us.”

It was primarily covetousness or greed, then, which
impelled the tyrants, castellans, and robbers, to devastate
life and land; but although greed receives its special
punishment in the fourth circle of Hell, we do not find
these ‘violent’ sinners till we reach the circle in which
they have to suffer the severer punishment of their specific
sins.

This point is yet further strengthened if a slightly
different reading of the first line be adopted. The Ms.
generally known as the Santa Croce Ms., after the library
to which it used once to belong, is regarded in my Berlin
edition of the Comedy (after Dionisi’s precedent) as of very
special value. This Ms. now reads the line as I have given
it (“O cieca cupidigia, e ria e foll’). But the words ‘e ria’
are written above an erasure, and the original text is now
illegible. In the margin stands ‘ed ira e folle) which,
however, has also been crossed out. In the Ms. attributed,
though erroneously, to Boccaccio (Cod. B of the Berlin
edition), the passage reads ‘0 ira folley and with minor
variations the same reading appears in the ms. of Monte
Cassino, the old Florentine commentary published by
Fanfani, and the lectures delivered by Boccaccio on the

1 Inf. xii. 49.

2 Owing to a misprint, the reading in question is given in the Berlin
edition as found in Cod. D (the Ms. belonging to Duke Caetani in
Rome), instead of to Cod. B.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 139

Inferno. If in this one instance we might venture to trust
Scarabell’s collations (which, however, are very unreliable),
then two Trivulzian mss. (including the extremely good
one, which was recovered from the Belgioioso estate), have
the same reading ; and so has one Ambrosian codex and
one in the library of the University of Bologna. Finally
Francesco da Buti’s Commentary gives it as a variant.
—Now if this reading is, as I am inclined to think, the
true one, we have a still further conglomeration of sins,
for in the line,

“Oh blind covetousness, oh mad anger !’

the poet ascribes the sins punished in the first belt of the
seventh circle to wrath as well as greed, though wrath is
punished on its own account in the fifth circle.

XII. HERESY

Two sins still call for special examination in consequence
of their peculiar character. First, Heresy. It is remark-
able that although the Church has at almost all periods
been zealous against this sin, it was never made one of the
seven deadly sins of the dogmatic canon, and Dante entirely
passes it by in Purgatory. In Hell he punishes it in the
traditional manner by fire, but assigns it a place that does
not fit into the regular system. It follows the four sins of
incontinence, but is sharply divided from them by the walls
of the city of Dis. The scheme of malicious sins which
Virgil expounds to Dante in the eleventh canto only
applies to the circles below the sixth (line 16, ‘within
these crags’), and does not include the heresies which the
pilgrims have already left behind ; and even Dante’s own
backward glance towards the sins of the upper circles
(lines 70-72) passes over Heresy in silence.—May we not
look for the reason of this peculiar attitude in the fact that
the poet (who was himself, we have every reason to believe,
igo V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE
once drawn towards Averroistic heresy),! knew it was
generally the search for truth, however perverted, and not
wickedness of will, which led men astray from the accepted
doctrine of the Church? But by separating the heretics
from the incontinent, and placing them within the walls of
the city of Dis, he would give us to understand that the
very attempt to seek truth independently of the established
doctrine of the Church is in itself a certain undue exalta-
tion of the human intellect.2

It may seem yet more surprising that there is no place in
Purgatory for the heretics who have returned during their life
to the bosom of the Church. Those, indeed, who exalted
themselves against her teaching, and despised revelation,
must be sought among the proud. But how about those
who were led astray while honestly searching for the truth?
It would seem that, in marked contrast to the course
pursued by the Inquisition, Dante, enlightened perhaps by
his own experience, did not demand any special expiation
from them if they had repented and submitted once more
to the Church ; he places them at once completely in line
with those who had never swerved in their faith.?

XIII. SLUGGISHNESS?

The second sin calling for special discussion is ¢ Sluggish-
ness,’ or, as it is called in the usual ecclesiastical terminology,
Accidia (@x18eta). It is the sin expiated in the fourth circle
of Purgatory, and whether or no there is a special place for
its punishment in Hell has become a matter of controversy.

We must first ask what is to be understood by the
expression? Ecclesiastical writers describe it as indiffer-
ence to the divine benefits, and especially the means of

1 See pp. 85 sq. of this volume,
2 Purg. xxxiil. 85; Par. xxix. 85.

3 Cf. Notes to my translation of the Comedy, Purg. xxxi. 58.
4 Cf. Postscript, pp. 147 $9.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 141

grace, and contrast it with consecrated love, Caritas.
Dante takes it in a somewhat wider sense. In the seven-
teenth canto of the Purgatorio Virgil says:! ¢ Love is the seed
of every virtue in you, and of all doings that earn punish-
ment’; and goes on to explain the desire for ill to our
neighbour (Pride, Envy, and Wrath) as love of evil; then
he adds that men’s love of what is good may also be blame-
worthy either because of excessive zeal or because of
sluggishness, which latter, expiated in the fourth circle,
is more particularly characterised in the following lines :
¢ Every man has some confused conception of good wherein
his soul may rest. And this he desires. Wherefore each
one strives to gain it. If the love that draws you to its con-
templation or acquisition be sluggish, then this terrace,
after due repentance, tortures you for it.’—There can be
little doubt that where the poet speaks of sluggishness
in ¢ contemplating’ he has only mental, if not exclusively
spiritual; ;blessings in mind. But the examples of the
counter virtue and the warnings against the vice itself]
given two and two in the eighteenth canto, seem to
show that when he speaks of sluggishness in © acquisition’
he includes such material blessings as are really to be
desired. Both warnings and examples consist of one
instance from Scriptural and one from Ethnic history ; and
the Ethnic example and warning are found in Casar’s
zeal to overcome the Pompeians who were continuing
the fight in Spain, and in the inglorious end which awaited
those of Aneas’ companions who shrank from further toils,
and remained behind with Acestes in Sicily. Sluggish-
ness in the acquisition of true honour or in the mainten-
ance of right would therefore be regarded by Dante as
¢accidia.’

Now the question is whether the wrathful and the slug-
gish are punished together in the fifth circle of Hell, as the

1 Line 103.
142 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

avaricious and prodigal are in the fourth. When the poet
has described the wrathful tearing one another to pieces in
the river Styx,! he continues (line 117 57.) : And likewise I
would have thee hold for certain, that underneath the water
are folk sighing, and making bubbles on this water’s surface,
as thine eye tells thee, wheresoe’er it turneth. Fixed in the
slime they say,? “ Gloomy we were in the sweet air that
gladdens in the sun, bearing within us sluggish fumes.
And now we sadden in the miry blackness.”’

Now the last line but one of this passage runs in the
Italian, ¢ Portando dentro accidioso fummo,’ and this epithet
Caccidioso’ (sluggish) led all the older Commentators to infer
that those buried in the slime were the sluggish, representing
the opposite extreme to wrath, as the avaricious do to the
spendthrift. Both issues of my Berlin edition of the Italian
text adopt this view in the headings, and it is reproduced in
the text and notes of my translation. Finally Scartazzini, by
simply quoting Boccaccio’s comment on the passage, gives
his adherence to this interpretation.

As far as I know, Bernardino Daniello was the first to
put a different interpretation on the words © accidioso fummo,
which he takes to mean smothered, sullen, wrath. He is
followed by Father Pompeo Venturi, Poggiali, and, among
the more modern Commentators, by Philalethes, Paur, and
Gregorio da Siena.

1 Inf. vii. 110 $4.

2 Dante calls the following four and a half lines a hymn’ (‘this
hymn they gurgle in their throats, for they cannot speak it in full utter-
ance’). The old commentator Benvenuto da Imola, as yet unpublished
[cf. p. 27, note.—ED.], takes the word inno’ literally and makes the fol-
lowing delicious note : ¢ Observe that a hymn is praise due to God, and
is sung in churches. And therefore the author does well to give these
creatures a hymn, because’the priests, whose business it is to sing, are
above measure addicted to the vice of asinine sluggishness, whence the
sluggish rogues are often scarcely able to move their lips as they
chant the Divine Office, and as they are lazily repeating in an inaudible

mutter, “O Lord, open Thou my lips,” they settle themselves into a
seat.’
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 143

Now in the Convivio, in the third Canzone, the poet says
(verse 5, lines 5-7), ¢ Virtue . . . is a selecting habit which
abides only in the mean,’ which is an almost literal transcript
from the passage in the Nicomachean Ethics to which
Dante is appealing (ii. 2 and ii. 6. 15), and subsequently in
the seventeenth chapter of the Commentary he develops the
doctrine that each virtue has two inimical neighbours, vices
caused the one by excess the other by defect of the quality in
question. Thus the two hostile neighbours of the virtue of
due liberality are avarice and prodigality ; and @ propos of the
expiation of these two sins,! Dante lays down the general
principle, ¢ And know that the fault which thrusts its beak
in direct opposition to any sin, here dries its sap in company
therewith.” It therefore seems obvious enough, and is sug-
gested by the chapter in the Convivio above referred to,? to
place irritability and inertness as the two evil neighbours of
gentleness in one and the same circle of Hell for punishment.

Nevertheless I now hold the other view to be the true
one. If wrath and sloth were the two contrary vices
arising from too great or too little calmness, the intermediary
virtue would be the same from whichever side it were
approached, and the examples held up to the wrathful
should be equally fitted to incite the slothful to improve-
ment. This, however, is not the case. The vision by
which the wrathful are admonished shows us the gentleness
of the Holy Virgin, when, after long search, she finds the
child Jesus in the temple, and that of Pisistratus, when a
young man had kissed his daughter in the public street.’
But the sluggish are reminded of the zeal with which
Caesar marched against Pompey’s soldiers, and the haste
with which Mary ran to the mountain to seek Elizabeth.4
It is equally difficult to see how the last named examples

1 Purg. xxii. 49.

2 ¢The seventh is gentleness, which moderates our anger and our

excessive patience in the face of our external misfortunes.’
8 Purg. xv. 85 sq. * Purg. xviii. 100 sq.
144 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

could have an educative influence on the wrathful, or the
former on the sluggish. In the same way the beatitudes
recited to the souls on their leaving the two circles are
different : for the wrathful it is the seventh,! for the sloth-
ful the second.?

Finally there is one more point to be urged against the
punishment of the slothful in Hell, properly so called. As
we have attempted to show above, it is not sinful pro-
pensities but sinful deeds that are punished in Hell. Now
it can hardly be called a deed not to rise to active patriotism
or to be careless of the acquirement of honour, or even to
tire early in the struggle for spiritual knowledge. Spirits
who have failed thus do not take their place in Hell, but
will be found among ‘the craven souls of those who
lived without infamy and without praise,’® where ‘mercy
and justice scorn them. And it is here that Daniello,
followed by Philalethes and Paur, places them.

POSTSCRIPT

The preceding essay was completed and ready for the
press in April 1877; and at the end of that year my
attention was first directed to the collected Scrittz su
Dante of Giuseppe Todeschini of Vicenza, formerly Pro-
fessor at Padua, published in 1872, three years after the
author’s death. I got the work originally because I heard
that it dealt with the question of Dante’s relations with
Alessandro of Romena, a subject at that time occupying my
own attention, but no sooner did it come into my hands
than I found that, besides much else of interest, it opened
with an essay entitled Dell’ ordinamento morale dell Inferno
di Dante, containing many passages that bear on the subject
of the preceding paper.

1 Purg. xvii. 68. 2 Purg. xix. 50. 3 Inf. iii. 35.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 143

The biographical preface by Bartolommeo Bressan gives
no account of the dates at which the several works here
collected were first written ; but it would appear from the
dedication to King John of Saxony that this first one was
not only written, but printed, by 1859.

My first impulse was to re-write at any rate those parts
of the preceding article as to which I had found any-
thing essentially new in Todeschini. But on reflection I
feared that were I to do this adequately, my main point,
the antithesis of punishment and purgation in the scheme
of Providence, might become obscured in the mass of
subsidiary material. To such a shifting of the centre
of gravity of the essay I could not reconcile myself.
Todeschini, however, was well on the way to the appre-
hension of this distinction, for he entirely grasps the nature
of the punishments of Hell, but although he deals with the
difference between the systems of Hell and Purgatory he
does not enter into the reason of it (Part 11. ch. 6).

[Supplementary mote to § vi] ‘Todeschini is quite
definite in his insistence (see pp. 29, 44, 45, 53, 76, etc.)
on the first member of my main thesis, that only sinful
deeds are punished in Hell, not the sinful desires which
lead to them.! Moreover he recognises that pride and
envy, being not so much crimes in themselves as the sinful
motives which lead to crimes, have not a separate place
assigned to them in Hell. But he does not explain the
reason why each of these sinful dispositions has a special
circle in Purgatory.

I have given an account, in § 111. 1, of the old and new
attempts to identify this or that locality in Hell as the
place of punishment for Pride and Envy as such, and in

1 P. 44: “The poet, having undertaken to range the sinners in his
Hell, not according to the culpability of their passions, but with express
reference to the nature of their actual sins, did not assign any special
place either to envy or to pride, since he considered these vices to be
roots of sin rather than actual sins.”

K
146 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

rejecting all these Todeschini (pp. 38-43) again takes the
same view as I do, and largely on identical grounds.

A word, however, may be devoted to Count Francesco
Maria Torricelli’s® peculiar theory, which is not without
a certain delusive gleam of attraction at first sight. He
too discovers in the Stygian swamp the sinners who are
suffering for their pride, but he does not agree with the
other supporters of this view in mingling them with the
wrathful. He relegates them to a second division of the
swamp, the place of the wrathful only extending as far as
to the tower on the summit of which the poets perceive the
signal (Inf. viii. 5). It is beyond this tower that they
meet the haughty Filippo Argenti,?and here are the places
destined, as Virgil tells, for those who in their pride deem
themselves great kings while on earth. And contiguous
to those who sinned from earthly pride, albeit shut off from
them by a wall) are the heretics, whose spiritual pride had
led them to attempt, with their contracted human reason,
to solve problems which it was reserved for the revelation
of the Church to answer.

The idea of thus connecting the two kinds of pride is
indeed tempting, but in the first place the premise that the
Proud are to be found in the fifth circle is more than
questionable, and in the second, the theory, ingenious as it is,
is conclusively disproved, as Todeschini rightly points out,
by the presence of the wall guarded by the demons which

1 Todeschini rightly says of him, p. 60: ‘The Count Torricelli’s
studies of Dante’s sacred poem reveal a powerful intellect and abundant
learning, and contain good sensible ideas here and there ; and yet for
the most part they are a weariness and a weight rather than an assistance
to students of the Divine Comedy. . . . When the reader has convinced
himself that Torricelli’s elaborate lucubrations entirely fail to give us
any fresh approach to Allighieri’s mind on the subject under discussion,
he will recognise far more clearly the soundness of the view I have
maintained above.’

2 viii. 46: “He was a man of pride on earth.’

8 Line 49: ‘How many bear them now, up there, as mighty kings,
who shall have their abode here, like hogs in mire.’
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 147

divides the fifth circle from the City of Dis in general,
and immediately from the sepulchres of the Heretics.

[708 v.] Todeschini’s view is again identical with my
own, inasmuch as we both reject the idea that Dante has
assigned a special section of Hell to the punishment of
¢ Brutishness.’! But I must confess that in defence of our
common view, which Tommaseo had also defended, my
colleague of Vicenza has gone more deeply into the
matter, and, especially with reference to Aristotle, has
given a more convincing proof than I have done in § v. of
the preceding essay. The Stagirite? says: ¢Brutishness’
(as regards the punishment incurred) ‘is a less evil than
vice, but more terrible, for in it the best part of man (his
free will) is not perverted, but non-existent.” He then
names, as various kinds of Brutishness, those which arise
from bodily injury, from disease, or finally from morbid
habits which have grown to be a second nature, and so
impede the freedom of the will. But the two first could not,
by their nature, be regarded as calling for punishment, and
even the third would do so less because of the actual deeds
than because of the guilt involved in contracting the habit.?

Torricelli’s view, that the proud and the heretics are
to be taken together as the ‘brutish’ in Dante’s Hell, is
entirely unsupported, and cannot be saved or excused by
its unquestionable ingenuity. According to this theory,
such as Farinata degli Uberti and Frederick 11. of Hohen-
staufen * would be classed by the poet as brutish.

1 P. 59: “If we run through the list of sins that are actually punished
in these circles (vii.—ix.), we find that they include those misdeeds which
according to Aristotle’s teaching . . . are ascribed to brutishness.’

2 Ethics, vi. 6. 7.

3 The parenthetical explanations of Aristotle’s words (for which Witte,
not Todeschini, is responsible) are not justified. There is no reference
to punishment in the passage, and reason, rather than free will, is intended
by the “highest in man.” Also see Appendix.—ED.

* Inf. xiii. 75: “Who was so worthy of honour’; Corvivio iv. 10: 58.
¢ By the report which proclaims him, he was a great logician and clerk.’
148 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

[To § x1m1.] Owing to considerations which I have
urged more than once already, I have arrived at the con-
clusion that the spirits in the seventh circle of Hell, below
the surface of the Stygian swamp, are not to be regarded
as the sluggish, at the opposite extreme to the wrathful,
but as the sullen, a subdivision of the wrathful themselves.
And now, in his article Ueber die Congruenz der Strafen
und Sinden)! Scartazzini, who took the opposite view in
his notes on the Inferno, upholds the true interpretation,
first propounded by Daniello. Todeschini also concurs in
this view? and mentions Pier Alessandro Paravia, whose
short essay on this subject was also unknown to me, as
supporting the same opinion. We agree further in main-
taining that the true place for the sluggish is in the ante-
hell.

Todeschini?® interprets this ante-hell, which, according
to our view, would correspond to the fourth circle of
Purgatory, in a special way of his own. The souls here
are not punished for any sinful deeds, but for a negative
attitude which amounts to a denial of Charity, of that Love
which ranks among the theological virtues. Love of our
neighbour is expressed in good works, and he who has
neglected them during life is consigned to ante-hell after
death.

In the same way those who fail in love of God belong
here. And among these are not merely the souls of men,
but those angels who, although they did not join in Satan’s
revolt, held aloof from the struggle, and in that they were
¢ not faithful, but neutral,’ are now herded with the sluggish
human souls in this ante-hell.

But while acknowledging the ingenuity of this suggestion
I cannot bring myself to accept it as tenable. On the one
hand all sins arise from insufficient or misdirected love,

1 Dante Jahrbuch, iv. 288-290.
2 Pp. 30-33. 8 Pp. 80-88.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 149

and this principle is not only enunciated in the Epistle to
the Romans, xiii. 9, but is elaborated by Dante himself in
the ethical scheme of the seventeenth canto of the Purgatorio.
In this extended sense of the word ‘love’ its negation
includes far more than mere sluggishness. But if we
follow what appears to be Todeschini’s lead, and under-
stand charity (at any rate apart from the case of the neutral
angels) as confined to that love which busies itself in good
works, it then covers too narrow a field. For it was
cowardice (vi/ta), not a lack of this charity, which threw
Celestine v. into the ante-hell,! for not daring to fll
the position intrusted to him, the highest office in the
Church, during the time of storm and stress. Nor was it
a deed of charity when Caesar hastened to Spain to reduce
Ilerda,® nor a breach of charity when some of the com-
panions of Aneas, weary of their long wanderings, chose
to remain behind in Sicily when the rest took ship to Italy.
It is feebleness of heart, lack of endurance, which the poet
understands by sluggishness (accidia) in the verses quoted
above (p. 141); somewhat extending, as we said, the
ecclesiastical conception.

But Todeschini’s interpretation of the sin punished in
the ante-hell does not stand alone. It is an integral part
of the whole economy of Hell and of its sinful inhabitants
as conceived by him, and has a special bearing on his
idea of the Limbo and of the sixth circle of Hell. As
Todeschini? lays special stress on this supposed discovery,
it seems proper to give a short account of it.

The sins punished in Hell, he says, are of three, not
two, kinds. Circles 2 to 5 contain those who have
sinned from Incontinence, circles 7 to 9 those who have
sinned from Malice, leaving the ante-hell, and the first and
the sixth circles, for those who have sinned against the

1 Inf. iii. 6o. 2 Purg. xviil. 101.
8 Purg. xviii. 136. ¢ P. 73.
150 V.—THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS OF THE

theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity. We have
already seen how Todeschini regards sluggishness as the
negation of love, and consigns it for punishment to the
ante-hell. He does not however admit of the possibility of
sinning against hope as such. He who believes may lack
love, and he who loves may lack faith, but he who has love
and faith cannot but have hope.

To this it may be answered that as Faith without works
of Love can indeed be conceived, but only as a body with-
out a soul,! only as a dead faith (barren orthodoxy), so
Faith and Love may be conceived of without Hope—
witness the suicides—though only on the supposition that
these two virtues have not penetrated to the vital centre
of him who lacks Hope. So if there were reason for
assigning a special place to those who have Faith but lack
Love, there would be as good a reason for assigning one
to those who wax desperate through lack of Hope. At
any rate, therefore, Todeschini’s division of Hell is itself
open to the charge of inconsequence.

[To § x11.] On the other hand, Todeschini’s remarks
on lack of Faith 2 have a certain consistency to recommend
them. Before coming to those who sinned from in-
continence, we have those who, through no fault of their
own, lacked faith only because they lacked knowledge,
and are on that account cut off from bliss ; the innocent
infants who died before baptism, and the virtuous Heathens
or Mohammedans, occupying the first circle, or Limbs. In
the same way, continues Todeschini, the sixth circle, the
first region of ¢ malicious’ sinners, contains those to whom
the true faith was proclaimed but who rejected or per-
verted it. But, he concludes, the fiery graves of this
circle only contain those heretics whose error remained, so
to speak, theoretical. Those heretical teachers who caused

1 Epistle of James ii. 20, 26 5 1 Corinthians xiii. 2.
2 Pp. 88-92, 95-97.
INFERNO AND THE PURGATORIO 151

actual schism are banished to the ninth pit of the eighth
circle.

As regards the last named sectaries, the poet consigns
them to this pit, not because they held and propagated
false beliefs, but because, in some form or other, they have
sown discord where harmony should reign; and we find
Mohammed and Ali side by side with those who have
stirred up father and son, allies or fellow-citizens, the one
against the other. We must not therefore range the
sinners punished in this ninth pit of the eighth circle
amongst the sects of heretics, as such.

As regards those in the fiery sepulchres of the sixth
circle, I imagine that Todeschini is more Catholic than
Dante himself. According to the doctrine of the Church,
unbelief and misbelief were indeed in a certain sense the
field-marshals of malicious sins, but only in so far as they
could be regarded as heretica pravitas, not in so far as they
were the mere wanderings of the intellect honestly seeking
for light. Now we know from more than one passage in
the poem that Dante passed no mild judgment on heresy,
but sternly rebuked those who promulgated error through
pride or the love of innovation.! But it cannot be without
reason that he interposes the great precipice between the
sixth circle and the properly ¢ malicious’ sinners, and passes
the heretics in complete silence in the enumeration of the
sins of Malice put into Virgil’s mouth. In the same spirit,
the punishment of the heretics is graduated according to
the degree of their guilt, and it seems that religious doubt
in itself, nay, even positively erroneous opinions, may in
some cases not merit punishment at all.?

Finally, as regards the souls in Limbo. It is through no

1 Par. xii. 100, iil. 124-129.

2 Inf. ix. 131: ‘The tombs are more and less heated.’

8 Par. iv. 67: ‘For our justice to appear unjust in the eyes of mortals
is argument of Faith, not of heretical depravity.’
152 ESSAYS ON DANTE

fault of their own that they were unbaptized and without
faith, and that they long in vain for the bliss of the Christian
heaven, although they suffer no punishment ; and therefore
I cannot bring myself to include them in any shape or form
in the classification of the sinners who have, by their own
guilt, subjected themselves to infernal punishment.
VI_THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 1-21 (1879).]

I. PRELIMINARY

THE student of the Divine Comedy soon feels the need of
some mental presentation of the regions in which the lofty
drama is enacted, and primarily of the three spiritual realms,
the cosmic stage, if we may use such an expression of the
drama. Accordingly attempts displaying considerable skill
have been made, from the first half of the sixteenth century
onwards, to give pictorial representations of Dante’s Hell,
and subsequently, though less successfully, of his Purgatory
and Paradise.

But although the poet’s journey took him through the
kingdoms of the departed, yet he looks back continually to
the world of the living, and it is indispensable, for the com-
prehension of numerous passages of the poem, to know our
way about this Earth, as it was or was supposed to be in
Dante’s time. And here we must express our regret that
so little has as yet been done to give a clear idea of the
whole surface of the Earth as Dante conceived it. For the
geography of Italy in particular more has been accomplished.
In 1843 I contributed a first imperfect attempt at a Dante
map of Italy, to the fourth edition of Kannegiesser’s
translation of the Comedy. In a less imperfect form it
accompanied the last (5th) edition, while in the interval
two Italian scholars, Carbone (in Lord Vernon’s Inferno,
vol. ii. pp. 155 sg., 1862) and Covino (in 1865), had

followed my example.
163
154 VI.THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

11. THE PLAN IN PHILALETHES TRANSLATION
OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA

After the realms of the departed, the general conforma-
tion of the Earth’s surface, and the special geography of
Italy, we come to the Topography of Florence, the most
highly specialised branch of all. The poet not unfre-
quently refers to localities in Florence, both in the Comedy
and elsewhere; but so far as I am aware, no attempt
was made to meet the want thus created till 1849, when
Philalethes inserted a map of Florence in the third volume
of his translation. It is simply a portion of a large-scale
plan of modern Florence (larger even than Fantozzi’s
Pianta Geometrica). It extends in every direction con-
siderably beyond Arnolfo di Lapo’s walls (marked in red),
which were built during Dante’s lifetime. But even
within them it by no means gives a true picture of the
town as it stood in the year 1300. A reference to a few
of the best-known localities will suffice. The Duomo
appears just in its present form, although the foundation-
stone of the building, which was to replace not only the
ancient Church of Santa Reparata, but also the Hospital of
St. John, was not laid till 1298, and it was reserved for
Filippo Brunelleschi, towards the middle of the fifteenth
century, to complete, or nearly complete, the work accord-
ing to a plan fundamentally differing from Arn. di Lapo’s
original design. The omission of Giotto’s renowned
Campanile, which, it is generally supposed, was begun in
1334, would be unimpeachable if consistency had been ob-
served in such matters throughout.—But even the Church of
Or San Michele is given exactly in its present form, although
in Dante’s time, to wit in 1284, the old church ceased to
exist ; a corn exchange was erected on the same site, and it
was not till 1336 that Orcagna, as we call him, transformed
it into the present church, the work being finished about
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 155

1355.—Again, we find the Palazzo Vecchio covering the
same area as at present, whereas the site was not purchased
till 1298, and the building, as it now stands, was only
completed under Walter of Brienne in 1342.—Close beside
it we see the Reali Ufizi (only that it is misspelt Uffzzz) in
the full dimensions now familiar to all lovers of the art
treasures of Florence, though the building was not raised
till the seventh decade of the sixteenth century.—But
perhaps the most startling phenomenon is the appearance,
in a plan of Florence designed to illustrate the Divine
Comedy, of the Bazaar of the Corso degli Adimari, which
was built in 1834.1

Special care has been given to the indication of the
houses of illustrious Florentine families, of which no fewer
than eighty-two are marked. But by far the greater
number of these are neither mentioned nor even referred
to in the Divine Comedy, and therefore have no special
interest for the readers of the poem. It is all the more
surprising to find that several of the names expressly
mentioned in the fifteenth and sixteenth cantos of the
Paradiso, as the Barucci, the Calfucci, the Giudi, the
Nerli, and the Del Vecchio are omitted ; and the house in
which Beatrice was born should surely have been marked,
though the name of the Portinari, it is true, does not
appear in the Divine Comedy. ‘There is documentary
evidence that the initial of the Fifanti is F; not S, and
the family of Gangalandi was not spelt Gagalandi.

111. HOUSE OF THE ALLIGHIERI

Whether the localities of all these houses are correctly
assigned is a delicate question, and on this point I hesitate

1 The map therefore only merits the name of “Map of Mediaeval
Florence,’ given to it by Hartwig (Quellen und Forschungen der dltesten
Geschichte der Stadt Florenz, Marburg, 1875, p. 78), in so far as it marks the
three traditional circumvallations and the site of a number of dwellings,
156 VI.—THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

to pronounce a judgment, especially as the results seldom
coincide with Giunio Carbone’s map. I cannot however
repress a comment on one point—the point, in fact, of
paramount interest for the Dante student. The map
gives the houses of the Allighieri as situated at the left-hand
corner just after you pass the Mercato Vecchio as you go
along the Corso (which, however, is called the Via de’
Speziali till past this point) from West to East. Now it
is certain, from Par. xvi. 40-42, that Dante’s ancestors,
the Elisei, lived either in this house or (as given in my
plan) in the opposite corner house on the right. But
Leonardo Bruni Aretino, who is a perfectly trustworthy
witness, says most distinctly that the Allighieri branch
dwelt on the Piazza San Martino, adding that he pointed
out the house to a great-grandson of the poet who came
to see him when on a visit to Florence from Verona.
This statement is completely borne out by the mention
of the ¢Alaghieris’ in documents going back to the end
of the twelfth century, as belonging to the parish of
San Martino.? Assuming that our maps give the houses
of the Donati, Giuochi, and Sacchetti correctly, Aretino’s
detailed data lead to the further conclusion that the house
of the Allighieri must have stood next to the Donati’s

1 ¢ Messer Cacciaguida and his brothers and their forebears lived just
in the district of Porta San Piero, where it is first entered from the
Mercato Vecchio, in the houses still called of the Elisei, for the family
possession remained with them. The descendants of Messer Cacciaguida
called the Aldighieri dwelt at the piazza behind San Martino del
Vescovo, against the street that runs to the house of the Sacchetti, and
in the other direction stretches to the houses of the Donati and Giuochi.
. . . He had a very good house in Florence, next to that of Geri di
Messer Bello, his consort. . . . And it is not long since this Lionardo
[Allighieri] came to Florence with other young men of Verona, well
appointed and in good style ; and he paid me a visit as a friend of the
memory of his great-grandfather, Dante. And I showed him Dante’s
house, and that of his forebears, and I pointed out to him many particu-
lars with which he was not acquainted, because he and his family had

been estranged from their fatherland.’
2 Gargani, Della casa di Dante (Firenze, 1865), pp. 29-38.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 157

garden in the Via Santa Margherita, the narrow alley lead-
ing northwards from the Piazza San Martino to the Corso.
Just opposite stands the little Church of Santa Margherita.*
Tradition, however, places the house elsewhere, though in
the immediate neighbourhood, in the Via Ricciarda just
opposite the Piazza San Martino; and this latter house,
adorned with two antique doors, has lately been officially
designated as the house in which the poet first saw the light.?

The range and thoroughness of the late revered Prince’s
scholarship leave no room to doubt that the deficiencies
noticed, in what is after all only a matter of subsidiary
importance, are due to some other hand than his, from
which he must have received the plan appended to his
admirable translation. I conjecture that some work, pre-
sumably Italian, on this unquestionably interesting subject,
lay to hand, and was reproduced as a useful appendix with-
out further investigation.

IV. GIUNIO CARBONE’S PLAN

The task which Giunio Carbone has executed at the
cost of such immense labour for the second volume of
Lord Vernon’s great work on Dante merits the warmest
recognition. He has made his plan on the scale of
Fantozzi’s excellent map of modern Florence, and has
taken the system of the streets from it; but has been
at the greatest pains to mark those buildings only which
were standing in Dante’s time, and in the form in which
they then stood. Though the erection of the wall usually
known as the fourth was taken in hand under Arnolfo di
Lapo’s direction about the year 1300, it was not finished
till a full generation later. Carbone’s chart, therefore, is
confined to the city as embraced by the walls built under

1 Cf. the very clear fragmentary plan given in the work above referred
to, p. 42. (Gargani.)

2 In this uncertainty we have marked both buildings with the letter
(a) in our plan.
158 VIL—-THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

Henry 1v. in the year 1078, according to Villani. When
we add that, with the exception of the four bridges over the
Arno, there is not a single name printed on the chart, it will
be realised that, however well the student may be acquainted
with modern Florence, he will not be able to find his way
on the map without difficulty. But the absence of names
in the plan itself is amply compensated for by an enormous
number of references. To begin with, the buildings given
are divided into 170 local sections to facilitate the finding
of the separate buildings. Then, under the head of gates,
streets, piazzas, churches and other ecclesiastical buildings,
houses, towers, and halls, the material is given in full, with
a regular system of differentiated signs and references.
Then follow notes and explanations occupying eighty-two
of the great folio pages of the work. If] for example, we
look up the mansion of the Sanella in the list of houses, we
find the reference ¢S. 63, c. 55.” This means that to find
it on the map we must begin by searching out section 63,
which we find bordering the Mercato Vecchio on the north.
It happens to be one of the smallest sections, and contains
only three numbers, two of which have a c. (casa) attached
to show that they indicate the sites of houses, and the one
marked c. 535, facing the Mercato, is the Sanella’s. Of such
references there are 18 to gates, 289 to streets, 80 to
piazzas, 82 to ecclesiastical buildings, 221 to houses, 121
to towers, and 34 to halls. But the actual number of
houses registered is considerably greater, inasmuch as the
same number serves to indicate several houses if they
belong to the same family. Thus the total number of
sites indicated amounts to considerably above a thousand.

It was only possible to find room for so many references
in the very limited space by the use of extremely small,
almost microscopic, type, and the difficulty of deciphering
them is further increased by the double-hatched ground
on which many of the numbers are printed.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 159

Although fully realising the value of this wealth of
detail to the student of early Florentine history in general,
the reader of Dante will not unnaturally ask himself what
the use of this bewildering and superfluous number of
scarcely decipherable figures is to him, since hardly more
than a tenth of the localities indicated are mentioned in
the Comedy, or required in studying it. ‘The oftener he
encounters the labour of finding the house of some par-
ticular family on the plan, the more he will feel that for
his purposes a much scantier supply of information would
have been considerably more valuable.

It also seems a defect, that only the limits of the city as
defined by the walls of the eleventh century are given.
Surely the celebrated passage in the Paradiso, xv. 97, would
alone be enough to suggest the desirability of pointing out
the older, and considerably narrower limits. In the same
connection we note that the ancient city gates are not
indicated either, though this leaves unexplained the circum-
stance that streets which, in the map, lie within the city
(such as the Borgo S. Piero, or the Borgo de’ Greci), are
indicated by their names as belonging to suburbs (Borghi).

I do not feel qualified to judge of the correctness of
the identifications in detail. There is, however, one point
to which I must take exception. I cannot accept
Carbone’s localisation of the Porta San Piero at the eastern
end of the Via delle Badesse, near the Church of S. Niccolo
del Ceppo, but place it, as early writers do, at the end of
the extension of the Corso beginning at the ancient Porta
S. Piero; that is to say at the end of the Borgo degli
Albizi, near the Church of San Piero Maggiore.

V. THE ACCOMPANYING PLAN

The plan that is herewith presented to the reader is
based in all important particulars on that of Carbone,
with which it conforms in extent and in scale, except that
160 VIL—THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

the newer portion of the city, on the left bank of the
Arno, has been entirely omitted. Although Perrens, in his
Histoire de Florence (1877), has reproduced (in a very
meagre form) the work of the Italian scholar, I felt that
I had no right, without the author’s permission, to adopt it
myself. Signor Carbone has however with extreme readi-
ness allowed me this privilege.

VI. THE ‘EARLIEST WALLS OF TRADITION, AND
THEIR OVERTHROW BY TOTILA

It will be clear however from what has been said above,
that a few minor alterations have been found necessary.
The most important arise from my desire clearly to portray
the earlier Florence of which Cacciaguida speaks. With
this object I have lined the whole mass of buildings of the
inner city, instead of marking the course of the earlier walls
in colour, as is done in many maps of the city, including
that which accompanies Philalethes’ translation. I have also
marked the sites of the four principal gates of the earlier
city. Note that two inner wall-circles are usually given
in the maps, the first being the Roman wall, the second
that built by Charlemagne after the destruction of the city
by Attila or Totila. But our only authority for the area
of this earliest city is the twenty-seventh chapter of the
Istorie of the supposed Ricordano Malespini,! with which
even Carbone? begins his topography. Since Scheffer
Boichorst,® however, has shown the Istorie to be a later
forgery, we have no grounds left for accepting the existence
of any such inner wall ; nor have we any reliable evidence
that Charlemagne enlarged the boundaries of the city
beyond its ancient limits.

1 For want of a newer edition, I quote from that of Tommaso
Buonaventuri, which appeared in quarto in Florence (1718); Tartini

and Franchi.
2 Pp. 271,372.» 3 Florentiner Studien (Leipzig, 1874), 1.
EXPLANATION OF THE

13@.

14a.
13,
16,
17.

18.
19.
20.
21.
22,
23.
24.

1. CHURCHES AND PIAZZAS.

. Church and Piazza of Sant’ Andrea.

. Church and Piazza of Sant’ Apollinare.
. Church and Piazza of Santi Apostoli.
The Badia of Florence.

. Canonry.

. Church of San Firenze.

Church and Hospital of S. John Baptist.
Corn Market.

. Church and Piazza of San Lorenzo.

Church of Santa Maria in Campidoglio.

Church and Piazza of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Church of Santa Maria sopra Porta.

Church and Piazza of Santa Maria degli Ughi.

Church and Piazza of San Martino.

Mercato Nuovo.

Mercato Vecchio.

Church of San Michele Berteldi."

Church of San Michele in Orto.

Church and Piazza of San Pancrazio.

Church and Piazza of San Pier Maggiore.

Church of San Piero Scheraggio.

Church of Santa Reparata, with the Cathedral
Close contiguous.

Church of San Romolo.

Piazza della Signioria.

Church of San Stefano.

Piazza Tornaquinci (now degli Strezzi).

Church of San Tommaso.

Church and Piazza of Santa Trinita.

Present Piazza degli Ufizi, formerly Piazza
San Piero Scheraggio.

11. STREETS.

Corso degli Adimari.

Borgo degli Albizi, or San Piero.
Calimara.

Via de’ Cerchi (with Piazza).

SORT

REFERENCES ON THE PLAN.

E. Via de’ Cocchi.

F. Corso, or Via San Piero. The continuation
Westward, Via de’ Speziali and Via
degli Strozzi.

. Borgo de’ Greci.

. Via Lambertesca.

Via della Ninna.
. Via Por Santa Maria. '
Via Porta Rossa.

. Via del Proconsolo.

. Via de’ Portinari, or Via Ricciarda.

. Via dello Studio.

. Vacchereccia.

HOZEZ2HRR=IO

III. SECULAR BUILDINGS, PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE.

Houses of the Allighieri.

Castle of Altafonte.

Houses of the Amidei.

Bargello.

Houses of the Buondelmonti.

Houses of the Caponsacchi.

Houses of the Cerchi.

Houses of the Donati.

Houses of the Elisei.

Houses of the Giuochi.

Houses of the Greci.

. Houses of the Importuni.

Statue of Mars.

Houses of the Ormanni and Foraboschi.

Houses of the Peruzzi.

Houses of the Portinari.

Houses of the Uberti.

Approximate outline of the Palazzo del
Comune (or Vecchio), begun in Dante’s
time.

#. Houses of the Sacchetti.

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ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 Mi 1161

Contemporary historians know absolutely nothing?! of
the story of the destruction of the city by Totila or one of
his generals (sometimes confused with Attila, and the latter’s
title of ¢ Scourge of God’ erroneously appropriated to him),
though all the Florentine chroniclers repeat the fable.
One and all connect it with the supposed rebuilding of the
city ; their accounts however differ considerably.

The Chronica de Origine civitatis which Hartwig 2 dates
in the first decades of the thirteenth century, after telling
of Totila’s hostility towards the Romans, and their favoured
Florence, records the death of the king ‘in Maritima’
(not far from Rimini), and then continues:3 ‘But the
Romans began to ponder how Florence might be rebuilt,
that she might continue to withstand the men of Fiesole,’
on which follows the account of the rebuilding of the city.

- Giovanni Villani,* on the other hand, places the event
some centuries later, and attributes the rebuilding of the
city to Charlemagne. Otherwise his description of the con-
formation of the restored city and of the part played by the
Romans is essentially the same as that of the Chronica.
But neither Villani nor the ancient chronicler gives us any
reason to imagine, as the supposed Malespini® would have
us believe, that the walls of the restored city embraced a
larger area than the original ones. The words of the
Chronica are: ‘they surrounded it with walls of modest
compass (modico circuitu),” and in the Libro Fiesolano® that
was founded upon it, and composed at the end of the
thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, we read
that the walls were built up stronger than before, but
nothing is said of increasing their circuit. Villani,” whose

1 Hartwig, op. cit., om 81, 82. Cf. Vine. Borghini, Discorsi., Fir.
2535, 4,11. 251. Op: Cit., p. xix. 3 P.

4 Cronica, ii. 2... In the edition of 1823 (Florence, Magheri), of which
Ign. Moutier was the principal editor. See pp. 62 sg. of the translation
by R. Selfe. London, 1896.

5 Cap. 39. 6 Hartwig, gp. cit., p. xliii. 7 Op. cit, ill. 1.

L
162 VIL—-THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

principal source for the early times is the Chronica, gives
it as his view that the area was contracted. ¢Thus,’ he
says, ¢did they begin to rebuild Florence, not however of
the size that it had been at the first, but of lesser extent
(di minore sito), to the end it might more speedily be walled
and fortified, and might be a defence like a rampart (batti-
folle), against the city of Fiesole.’?

After describing, in the next chapter, how the new
Florence was built on a small space of ground, and of
narrow compass, after the model of Rome on a smaller
scale, he gives the following description.

VII. GIOV. VILLANI'S DESCRIPTION OF THE
ANCIENT WALLS OF FLORENCE

“The rebuilding of the new city of Florence . . . began
on the side of the sunrise at the [ancient] gate of S. Piero,
which was where were after the houses of M. Bellincione
Berti of the Rovignani, a noble and powerful citizen,
albeit to-day they have disappeared, the which houses by
inheritance of the Countess Gualdrada, his daughter, and
wife to the first Count Guido, passed to the Counts Guidi,
her descendants, when they became citizens of Florence,
and afterwards they sold them to the black Cerchi? a
Florentine family ; and from the said gate ran a borgo as
far as S. Piero Maggiore after the fashion of Rome, and
from that gate the walls proceeded as far as the Duomo, on
the site where now runs the great road [de’ Balestrieri?]
to San Giovanni (the Baptistery) as far as the Bishop’s
Palace. And here was another gate which was called the
gate of the Duomo, but there were who called it the
Bishop’s Gate ; and without this gate was built the Church
of S. Lorenzo, just as in Rome there is San Lorenzo with-

1 Cf. also Boccaccio’s Life of Dante, Milanesi’s edition, p. 6.

2 Cf. here Scheffer Boichorst, gp. cit., pp. 26 sq.
3 Not Palestrieri as given in the plan in Philalethes.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 163

out the walls; and within that gate is S. Giovanni, like as
in Rome S. Giovanni Laterano.

¢ And then proceeding [following the walls westward], as
at Rome, in that part they made Santa Maria Maggiore ;
and then from S. Michele Berteldi [Piazza degli Antinori]
as far as the third gate of S. Pancrazio,! where are now
the houses of the Tornaquinci, and S. Pancrazio was with-
out the city and near S. Paolo, just as in Rome, on the
other side of the city, over against S. Piero, as at Rome.
And then from the said gate of S. Pancrazio, they followed
on where now is the Church of Santa T'rinita, which was
without the walls ; and hard by was a postern gate called
the Porta Rossa, and down to our own times the road has
retained the name. And afterward the walls turned where
are now the houses of the Scali along the Via di Terma as
far as the gate of Santa Maria, some way past the Mercato
Nuovo, and that was the fourth principal gate, which was
flanked on one side by the houses now of the Infangati
[on the southern portion of the eastern side of the
Mercato Nuovo] ; and above the said gate was the Church
of Santa Maria, called Sopra Porta; and afterwards when
the said gate was pulled down, the city having increased,
the said church was transported to where it now is. And
the Borgo di Santo Apostolo was without the city, and
also S. Stefano after the fashion of Rome (?), and beyond
S. Stefano, at the end of the master street of Porta Santa
Maria, they made and built a bridge founded on piles of
stone in the Arno, which afterwards was called the Ponte
Vecchio, and it exists to this day; and was much more
narrow than it now is, and was the first bridge which was
made in Florence. And from S. Mary’s Gate the walls
went on as far as the Turret of Altafonte,? which was at

! Villani always writes ¢ Brancazio,” and traces the origin of the arms
borne by the quarter called after this gate, 7.e. a lion’s claws, to the ¢ branca.’

2 ¢ Malespini ’ writes it, chap. 44, Altrafonte, perhaps for Altafronte (?).
[So printed (Altafronte) in the Bologna edition of 1867, p. 66.—ED.]
164 VIL.—THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

the extremity of a projection of the city, running out to
the river Arno, then running on behind the Church of
S. Piero Scheraggio, which was so called from a ditch or
conduit called the Scheraggio, which received almost all
the rain-water of the city that flowed into the Arno. And
behind the Church of S. Piero Scheraggio was a postern
gate, which was called the Peruzza Gate, and from there
the walls went on by the great street [the present Piazza
S. Firenze] as far as the Via del Garbo [now Via Condotta,
a continuation of Via del Garbo], where was another postern,
and then behind the Badia of Florence [through the present
Via del Proconsolo] the walls returned to Porta S. Piero.

¢ And within so small a space the new Florence was re-
built with good walls and frequent towers with four master
gates, to wit, the Porta San Piero, the Porta del Duomo,
the Porta San Pancrazio, and the Porta Santa Maria, the
which were in the form of a cross; and in the midst of
the city were S. Andrea, after the fashion of Rome [S.
Andrea della Valle is more modern ?], and Santa Maria in
Campidoglio, and what now is the Mercato Vecchio
was the Mercato di Campidoglio [the Forum at the
foot of the Capitol] after the fashion of Rome. And
the city was divided into quarters, according to the said
four gates,! but afterwards, when the city increased, it was
divided into six sestos, as being a perfect number, for the
sesto of Oltrarno was added thereto, as soon as it was in-
habited, and when the Porta di Santa Maria was pulled down,
the name was dropped, and it was divided by the course of
the main street [Por Santa Maria] and on one side was made
the sesto of San Piero Scheraggio, and on the other side that
of the Borgo [Santi Apostoli] ; and the three first gates [and
the quarters named after them] continued to give their
name to sestos, as they have done even to our own times.’

1 First quarter, San Piero, and so on in the order in which the gates
are here given.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 165

VIII. FLORENTIA QUADRATA

As regards the limits of the city to the East, North, and
West, the accompanying plan follows Villani’s description
with all possible exactitude. A glance at it will suffice to
show not only that the walls, with slight divergences, form
a rectangle looking to the four points of the compass, but
that the main streets of the inner city ran, with considerable
exactitude, from East to West, and from North to South.

Dr. Hartwig, to whose kindly assistance I am indebted
for much valuable help in constructing my map, has done
a great service in pointing out that in the conformation of
the inner city we can trace the model of a Roman colonia.
Now, apart from the legendary accounts current in the
Middle Ages of Casar’s besieging Catiline in Fiesole, there
can be no doubt that Florence had been a Roman military
colony since the time of Augustus, if not of Cesar. Thus
we can trace the Cardo, running North and South, under
the name of the Calimara, connecting the gate by the
Cathedral with the Por Santa Maria, and passing along the
east side of the Mercato Nuovo. Then from East to West
is the Decumanus Major, called successively the Corso, the
Via de’ Speziali, and the Via degli Strozzi. Parallel with
the Cardo, and following the direction of the old walls, run
the Via del Proconsolo and Via de’ Balestrieri on the East,
and the Via Tornabuoni and the Piazza Antinori on the
West. Parallel to the Corso we find the Piazza del Duomo
and its western continuation, the Via de’ Cerretani. The
two main streets themselves intersect in the centre of the
city, at the South-east corner of the Mercato Vecchio, also
called the Forum Regis, which must have been the forum.
of the Colonia. Here the colonists erected their little
Capitol, in imitation of that in Rome, as in Cologne and
other colonies ; and the name is preserved by the Church

1 Op. cit., pp. 77-79
166 VIL-—THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

of Santa Maria del Campidoglio. Here too we may suppose
the Duumvirs held their tribunal, and the Longobard Counts
pronounced judgment.

It is not so easy to trace the wall on the fourth or
southern side of the city. The present Via de’ Gondi,
and its continuation after the Piazza de’ Signori in the
Vacchereccia, running from opposite the Church of San
Firenze at the south-east corner of the rectangle, does indeed
take the direction we want towards the south-west corner,
but just below the Por Santa Maria it is broken off by a
perfect labyrinth of houses. Villani says the walls followed
the line of the present Via della Terma, the middle road
of the three running East from the Piazza Santa Trinita ;
but this street is both narrow and winding, besides which
it does not run due East and West, but diverges consider-
ably to the South. Villani’s statements regarding the
portion of the walls lying between the Porta Santa Maria
and the present Piazza S. Firenze seem still more suspicious.
First, he says, they ran to the Castle of Altafonte on the
Arno, which, though the site is not exactly known, must
have lain to the South-east. Thence they came behind
San Pier Scheraggio to S. Firenze, i.e. in a north-easterly
direction. Following this account the southern boundary
of the city, unlike those of the three other sides, is an
extraordinary confusion of crooked lines and obtuse and
acute angles. The plan in Philalethes would make this
even clearer than it does if the line of wall were drawn, as
it should be, through the Via della Terma, instead of the
Borgo Santi Apostoli. It is also noteworthy that except
Villani and the supposed Malespini, no writer mentions
this Castle of Altafonte, nor, so far as I am aware, are
there any remains to testify to its existence. And if, as
Villani himself tells us, Florence was rebuilt to serve as a
rampart against Fiesole, it appears strange that the fortress
should be built on the side of the city away from Fiesole.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 167

The statement of the Latin chronicler that there was ‘an
ancient tower near the “Episcopatus,”’ that is on the
Fiesole side, sounds far more probable. These considera-
tions, coupled with the possibility that the southern side of
the city may have been considerably altered by the frequent
and disastrous inundations of former centuries, have led me
to fill in the line of wall conjecturally between S. Trinita
and Porta Santa Maria so as to complete the rectangle. It
must be admitted that a glance at the plan suggests the
alternative of taking the Via di Porta Rossa, with its con-
tinuations the Baccano and the Via Condotta, for the
southern boundary lines of the old city. This would give
complete regularity ; but then the Mercato Nuovo would
be left outside the walls, which does not appear probable,
unless indeed we are to regard it as the market in which
the fishermen of the Borgo Santi Apostoli sold the fruits
of their toil to the inhabitants of the city.!

IX. THE ELEVENTH-CENTURY WALLS

As regards that further portion of the city which was
walled in in the eleventh century, my plan follows Carbone
in all essentials; but, as already mentioned, I locate the
outer Porta San Piero otherwise. I have also marked (but
only in dotted lines) three important localities which lie
close outside this second wall, as we must call it (not third as
is customary), namely, the Piazza of Santa Maria Novella,
the Church and Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, and the
Piazza of Santa Croce, with a view to helping readers who
are acquainted with modern Florence to orient them-
selves. Inside the walls, the oval of the Roman amphi-
theatre (the Parlagio), in which the houses of the Peruzzi
nestled, is indicated in the same way, and I have further
marked the site of the column of Mars, to which Dante

1 See Appendix.—ED.
168 VI...THE TOPOGRAPHY OF FLORENCE

repeatedly refers. Finally, it seemed desirable to note the
place where the problematic Castle of Altafonte must have
stood if it ever existed.!

In indicating localities I have felt it incumbent upon me
to keep a single eye to the needs of the Dante student,
foremost among which is the inclusion of the places ex-
pressly mentioned in the Comedy. Yet it did not seem
advisable to insert the names of all the Florentine families
which Dante mentions ; for how does it help the reader to
understand the 104th line of the sixteenth canto of the
Paradiso to know that the Sacchetti lived on the Mercato
Nuovo, the Giuochi in the Via S. Margherita, the Fifanti
on the Via del Garbo, and the Calfucci next to the deserted
Church of Sant’ Apollinare ?

The case is different where the poet, in mentioning the
name of a family, makes a direct reference to the place of
their abode, as with the Caponsacchi, the Elisei, the Impor-
tuni, and the Peruzzi, or where the site of the family
mansions has a bearing on historical events referred to in
the poem, as in the case of the Donati, or of the Amidei,
whose houses are near the statue of Mars, at the foot of
which they murdered Buondelmonte for rejecting his bride,
who was one of their family. But on the whole I have
endeavoured not to be pedantically exclusive, and have put
in the houses of a few families which, though not mentioned
in the poem, are closely connected with Dante and the
history of his times. Of these I have already mentioned
the Allighieri, and in the same category come the Portinari,
the Cerchi, and the Uberti.?

Of the public buildings, the Palazzo Vecchio is too
important a landmark to be entirely omitted, and moreover
it was already begun in Dante’s lifetime, though far from

1 See Appendix.—ED.
2 The Cerchi are named in Par. xvi. 65 and referred to in lines g4-
96. The Uberti are referred to in lines 109, 110.—ED.
ABOUT THE YEAR 1300 169

its completion. We learn from Giov. Villani! that the
houses of the Foraboschi and of other citizens were bought
up in 1298, with a view to pulling them down and erecting
the Government buildings on the site. The houses of the
banished Uberti, which the enraged populace had destroyed
in 1258, had been situated close by, but the hatred against
the family, as traitors to their country, was so bitter as to
prevent this site from being used for the building, and it
was included in the Piazza (della Signoria).—I have there-
fore given the outline of the Palazzo Vecchio more or less
as it stands at present, but have also indicated the approxi-
mate sites previously occupied by the houses of the Uberti
and Foraboschi.

Several streets have been marked which are not directly
referred to in the Comedy, but which will be of assistance in
fixing the localities of other streets or buildings.

The same may be said of several churches, as for instance
S. Apollinare and S. Firenze. Many churches give their
names to the Piazzas that belong to them, and I have there-
fore adopted a continuous numbering for churches and
piazzas. Both churches and piazzas have often changed
considerably in form since Dante’s time, as for instance the
Piazza del Duomo, which has been greatly altered by the
pulling down of the Hospital of St. John and the conversion
of the Church of S. Reparata into the present Cathedral
S. Maria del Fiore; and in the same way the Piazza della
Signoria has been changed by the removal of the Church
of S. Romolo and the group of houses abutting on it.

1 viii. 26.
VII.-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUID]

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 194-236.]

INTRODUCTORY

THERE is no Italian family, noble or royal, mentioned so
often in Dante’s writings as that of the Conti Guidi; nor
is there any by which his own life was touched at so many
different points. Their possessions lay on either slope of
that part of the Apennines which divides the eastern
portion of the plains of the Po (the Romagna) from the
valley of the Arno. But although the history and genea-
logy of the family has been the subject of numerous treatises
ever since Scipione Ammirato published his book in 1640,
their family tree is still confused and disputed, so that we
are often at a loss to determine to which member of the
family a reference applies.

The whole clan is referred to in Par. xvi. 64 and 98.
In Inf. xvi. 38 we meet Count Guidoguerra of the
house of Dovidola ; and he himself refers to the common
ancestress of the five branches into which the clan divided
at the beginning of the thirteenth century.—In Inf. xxx.
77 the false coiner Adam refers to three brothers of the
house of Romena, two of whom he mentions by name, as
the causes of his crime.—In Purg. xiv. 43 Guido del Duca
makes a contemptuous thrust at the branch named after the
fortress of Porciano.—Dante has been supposed, probably
with justice, to be the author of a letter addressed to the
Cardinal of Ostia, Niccolo Albertini, by the Count Ales-

sandro di Romena and the banished Bianchi.—In another
170
VIL.—_DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 171

letter Dante writes to two nephews of this very Alessandro
to condole with them on the death of their uncle.—On the
last day of March 1311 the poet addressed a threatening
missive to the Florentines, and in the middle of April a
letter of admonishment to Henry vi1., who was letting the
favourable moment for his expedition to Rome slip by,
while he lingered over the siege of Brescia.! Both letters
are dated from the confines of Tuscany, near the source
of the Arno. Doubtless Dante was at the time in one of
the fortresses belonging to the Guidi, Porciano or Romena,
or lower down stream, in Poppi.—The only manuscript by
which we know the first of these letters also gives two
short Latin epistles, which bear the name of the Countess
Palatine G. of Battifolle, and are addressed to the Empress
Margaret of Brabant. The first of these is dated from
Poppi, in the middle of May 1311. The Countess Palatine,
as Passerini has shown, was Gherardesca, wife of Count
Guidonovello of Battifolle and daughter of that Count
Ugolino of Donoratico who was starved to death in the
Tower of Famine. It seems more than probable that
Dante, who may have been making a long sojourn with
the Count, wrote these letters at Gherardesca’s behest.—
Pratovecchio, which lies in the Upper Arno valley, some-
what further up the river than Poppi, was in the possession
of the house of Dovadola at the beginning of the four-
teenth century, and specifically of Guido Salvatico, who (as
Boccaccio tells us) offered the poet a refuge for a long
period.—Finally, we may mention a tradition which still
survives in Porciano, that the Count, who for some un-
known reason was wroth with Dante, at one time kept
him prisoner in the tower there.

1 Rome was the ultimate goal of Henry's expedition, but it was, of
course, Florence against which Dante urged him to direct his arms at
once. The siege of Brescia began on May 19th, 1311 (Milman, v.
388), and is contemplated as possible amongst other contingencies in
Dante’s letter of April 18th (xiv. Kal. Mai.). Ep. vii.: 128.—ED.
172 ESSAYS ON DANTE

The first century of the history of the clan is in great
part lost in legends which as early as Dante’s time had
come to pass for history, and have only lately been rejected
as mythical. The difficulty of drawing up the family tree,
even in historical times, is aggravated by the frequent
recurrence of the same personal name, often borne by
contemporaries, and almost always passed from grandfather
to grandson, so that in the olden time the names Guido
and Teudegrim (or Tegrimo) alternate from generation
to generation, while later on the second name is usually
replaced by Alessandro or Aghinulf.

¢ Dante researches’! inevitably lead to the history of the
Conti Guidi, and more than a generation ago I attempted to
make out a tree, though the means at my command were
of the scantiest. The impulse was given by a projected
edition of the poet’s letters on which I was then engaged,
but which was never completed. The inadequacy of my
results was brought home to me during several interviews
which I enjoyed in the autumn of 1844 with Count Carlo
Troya in Naples, when, with the generosity so often met
with among the Italian nobility and men of letters, he
prepared me a complete family tree of the Counts of the
house of Romena, with references to the most important
sources of information.

Yet I could not feel satisfied with regard to certain
details of the table; and in course of time Repetti, Frati-
celli, and others published results which departed in some
repects from it. I waited impatiently, therefore, for
Litta’s account of the Guidi family in his Famiglie Celebri.
But Count Pompeo’s admirable labours were brought to a
close by death before he had reached the Guidi. Now,
however, the work has been finished by his successor, Count
Luigi Passerini, who, alas, has also been taken from us.

1 ¢< Dante researches’ = Dante-Forschungen, the title of Dr. Witte’s
collected essays, of which this volume is a selection.—ED.
VIL.—DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 173

The three parts, containing in all twenty “T'avole,’ are dated
1865-1867, but it was not till full ten years later that (thanks
to the watchful zeal of our present librarian, Dr. Hartwig)
Passerini’s continuation, in its completeness, was added
to our library. I saw at a glance how much it corrected
and enlarged any knowledge of the Guidi. But the huge
folios of the Famiglie Celebri are not accessible to all lovers of
Dante, and I lie under special obligations to give an epitome
of what I have gleaned from them in relation to the poet and
his immortal work, because the notes to the third edition
of my German translation of the Comedy, published two
years ago, contain, I am sorry to say, much that is
erroneous or at least highly questionable, concerning the
Conti Guidi. Since I have had no opportunity whatever
of examining archives, and have made but a limited use of
the printed documents available (Mittarelli, Ildefonso,
Fantuzzi, Repetti, etc.), I cannot pretend to contribute
anything new on the question, but I may be permitted to
express my difficulties as regards one or two of Passerini’s
conclusions.!

The archives have not even yet been sufficiently ran-
sacked to clear up all the difficult points, but the prolonged
and comprehensive labours of Dr. Theodor Wiistenfeld, to
whom I owe the warmest thanks for his friendly and
instructive counsels, will certainly be of essential service in
this as in other directions.

Giovanni Villani? and other chroniclers derive the race
of the Guidi from a certain Count Guido, who came into
Italy with the Emperor Otto the Great, in the second half,
that is, of the tenth century, and was created Count
Palatine of Tuscany, besides holding in feoff the county of
Modigliana.—So far as documentary evidence goes, how-
ever, the founder of the family seems to have been one

1 One of the profoundest of students of Italian family history wrote to
me a short time ago, ‘Nobody will ever get the genealogy of the Guidi
straight.” 2 Cromica, iv. 1 and v. 37.
174 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Tegrimo. He was probably of Longobard, and certainly of
Teutonic, extraction, and appears in the documents as
early as 927. Modigliana however he acquired by his
marriage with Engelrada of the house of the Onesti of
Ravenna. (Cf. my Gittliche Komidie, notes to Hille xvi. 37
and to Paradies xvi. 94.)

Early Times down to the Separation of the Four Branches.

Tegrimo, 7 before 940.

 

| |
Ranieri. Guido, d. after 943.

Tegrimo, Bevisangue, d. before ggz.

Guido, 4. (in Porciano) about 1034.

 

| ;
Tegrimo, 4. (in Pistoja) 1058. Guido, Lord of Pistoja, d. 1043.
Guidoguerra, 4. in Pistoja 1103.

Guidoguerra, the Marquis, founder
of Empoli, d. 1124.

Guidoguerra, 4. (in Modigliana) 1157.

Guidoguerra (also called Guido Vecchio),
. 1213 (married Gualdrada).

 

| | | | |
Ruggero, 4. Tegrimo Aghinolfo, Guido (Bagno), Marcovaldo

1225. (Porciano), (Romena), d. about 1239. (Dovédola),
d. before 1247. d. before 1247. d. 1229.

Of Tegrimo’s three children, the two who are of in-
terest to us are Guido and the deacon Ranieri. According
to the Faenzan chronicler Tolsano, they were murdered
with all their belongings for their deeds of violence against
the bishop of Ravenna and others. The only one that
escaped was a little son of Guido’s, called (like his grand-
father) Tegrimo, who was with his foster-mother outside
Ravenna. He was surnamed Bevisangue (blood-drinker),
in memory of the massacre by the Ravennese. Villani also
relates the story, but names the rescued infant Guido.

This Tegrimo was followed again by a Guido, who left
VII..DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 175

two sons, Tegrimo and Guido, the latter of whom won the
practical sovereignty over Pistoja. Of his four sons we
need only mention the one who first added ¢ Guerra’ to
the family name of Guido. In spite of his warlike
surname, however, he appears in the documents almost
exclusively as making presents to churches and convents.

Of his five sons, only the second, Guidoguerra, calls for
mention here. He was brought up by the Grand-Countess
Matilda of Canossa as her adopted son, and was often with
her. He joined the first crusade, and apparently was taken
captive, but he lived for more than a quarter of a century
after his return, during which time he too was a liberal
donor to churches and convents. He had four daughters
and one son, the third Guidoguerra, who, like Dante’s
ancestor Cacciaguida, took part in the second crusade
under the first Conrad of Hohenstaufen. From this time
till his death in 1157 we find him a faithful vassal in
constant attendance on the Emperor Barbarossa.

The fourth Guidoguerra, called Guido Vecchio by the
chroniclers, was a son of the third, and with him we come
to the last of the legends which are interwoven with the
early history of the clan. Villani tells us that when Kaiser
Otto 1v. came to Florence in the summer of 1209, and
saw the Florentine beauties assembled in his honour in the
Church of St. Reparata, Gualdrada, the daughter of Messer
Bellincione Berti of the house of the Ravignani, pleased
him most of all. Then Bellincione told the Emperor
that he, as her father, would tell her to allow him to kiss
her. But the maiden replied that no living man should
kiss her unless he were her husband, whereat the Emperor
praised her greatly. But Count Guido fell in love with
her by reason of her graciousness, and since the Emperor
too encouraged him he took her to wife (although she was
of lowlier family than he) and without raising any question
as to her dower.—The supposed Malespini tells this tale of
176 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Guido (or Tegrimo) Bevisangue, and says that the Emperor
gave the whole of the Casentino to the bridegroom as a
wedding-gift.— Unfortunately for the truth of this story,
there are documents showing that whole decades before
Henry the Lion’s son was elected Emperor (let alone his
visit to Florence), Gualdrada had given gifts to churches
and convents and made other dispositions as Guidoguerra’s
wife.

We have historical warrant, however, for saying that
Guidoguerra, who remained true to Frederick Barbarossa
until his death, entertained him in his Castle of Modigliana
in the beginning of 1166. But Henry v1.’s policy was not
calculated to retain the goodwill of the Italian Ghibellines,
and during the struggles of Philip of Swabia and Otto of
Brunswick for the crown the Pope’s authority was pre-
dominant in Italy. Thus we find Guidoguerra allied
with the Guelfic Florence at the turn of the century,
and it does not surprise us to find (as the story about
Gualdrada itself indicates) that he subsequently became
attached to the Guelfic Emperor Otto, whom the Pope
recognised. He died in 1213.

During this first period of almost three hundred years
the Guidi were ever extending their influence, where not
their actual rule, from the starting-point of their ances-
tral possessions in the Upper Apennine valleys. From
Modigliana on the Marzeno, which joins the Lamone
at the neighbouring Faenza, they won Tredozio, higher up
the valley, and Marradi in the upper valley of the Lamone.
High up on the Montone they held S. Benedetto, and
further down stream Dovidola. Near the springs of the
Savio (the stream that flows by Cesena) they held Bagno,
which subsequently gave its name to one of the branches of
the family. From Falterona, the hub of the Apennines, the
VIL.—DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 177

dominion stretched over the mountains eastwards in the
uppermost portions of the Casentino to Romena, Porciano,
Pratovecchio, and so on, and westwards to plant firm foot
in the Mugello, through which the Sieve flows, and in the
valley of the tributary Dicomano, where they held the almost
inaccessible fortress of San Godenzo. From the Upper Sieve
valley they crossed, north of Monte Morello, into the valley
of the Bisenzio ; and, till well into the thirteenth century,
they held the fiercely contested Montemurlo.! It need
hardly be said that hundreds of smaller castles and places
not enumerated in this list were subject to them.

From this mountain centre their influence rayed out in
various directions into the neighbouring plains. We find
them sometimes as Podestas, sometimes as Capitani, or as
Imperial or Papal Vicars, and sometimes even as Church
dignitaries filling numerous and important positions in the
cities of Romagna, such as Forli, Faenza, and Cesena,
or in the Tuscan Pistoja, Siena, or Arezzo. Throughout
this early period the family sided with the Emperors. A
diploma of Henry v1.’s dated May 25th, 1 191, acknowledges
in the most flattering terms the great services rendered by
the Conti Guidi to the three succeeding Hohenstaufen
Emperors, and grants them in return ample privileges and
extensive feoffs.

DIVISION INTO FOUR HOUSES

Guido Vecchio left two daughters and five sons. Of
these, Ruggero, a faithful vassal of Frederick 11., died in
Sicily in 1225 and his brothers became his heirs. He may
therefore be dismissed. But the four surviving brothers

1 See my note to Par. xvi. 64. It was not until 1254 that the
negotiations for the transfer of Montemurlo to the Florentine common-
wealth were completed, since the fortress belonged to the whole family,

and the sale could not be regularly effected without the consent of every
member of it.

M
178 ESSAYS ON DANTE

founded four distinct lines, usually known by the names of
their most important possessions. From Tegrimo sprang
the Counts of Modigliana and Porciano, from Aghinolfo
those of Romena, from Guidoguerra the Counts of Bagno,
and from Marcovaldo those of Dovadola.

THE LINE OF PORCIANO

The most important of these lines, in connection with
Dante, are those of Porciano and Romena, with which two
we will therefore begin.

Tegrimo.

|
Guido, d. 1293.
|

 

Tancredi, Bandino, Gualtieri, Tegrimo, Fazio, Ruggero,
d. before d,. before d. before ~~ d. 1315. d.before 4. 1318.

 

1319. 1313. 1310. 1316.
| | 4 i; |
Alberto, Tegrimo, Bandino, Guidalberto, Guglielmo,
d. before 1350. 4d. 1323. 4.1323. d. 1318. d. after 1353.

Tegrimo, like his brother Ruggero, was unwaveringly
faithful to Frederick 11. The Emperor rewarded him
with the hand of King Tancred’s daughter Albiera, whose
third husband he became. The Ghibelline cities of Pisa
and Arezzo chose him as Podesta. In a battle with the
Guelfic Faenza on which he had entered in conjunction with
Forli, he was taken prisoner for a time by the Bolognese allies
of Faenza. In 1270 he is mentioned as already deceased.
He lay under the ban of excommunication till after the
Emperor’s death, when Innocent 1v. removed it.

Tegrimo’s son Guido, who had fought under the flag
of the second Frederick in his youth, at first held fast to
the Ghibellines. But after the death of the great Hohen-
staufen, and still more after that of his son Manfred, the old
names of the Imperial and Papal parties came to be used in
VII.-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 179

Italy simply to distinguish friends from foes in petty struggles
between city and city, or between potentate and potentate,
and accordingly we find this Guido involved for many
years in the struggles of the cities of Romagnola and their
generals, such as Guido of Montefeltro and Maghinardo
Pagani. The contests are interspersed with frequent re-
conciliations with the Church, removal of bans and restitu-
tion of the castles and property taken from him. He died
at a very advanced age in May 1293.

He had eight sons and two daughters, but one of the
sons, Guido, entered a monastery, and one, Conrad, of
Guelfic sympathies, died before his father, and with these
we have no further concern.

Of the other six sons, only one, Tancred, was consis-
tently true to the Ghibelline flag. At first, indeed, all the
other five appear as Ghibellines, in the struggles in
Romagnola around Faenza and Forli; but after the com-
plete overthrow of the Hohenstaufens, and when Pope
Martin 1v. had established a temporary peace between the
combatants in 1281, they attached themselves to the papal
commissioner, Count Jean de Pas, and fought against many
of their old companions in arms, amongst them Guido of
Montefeltro.! Bandino even expelled his brothers Ruggero
and Tancredi, after an obstinate street fight, from Faenza,
he himself being Podesta and Tancredi Capitano del Popolo
of the city. In fact they changed sides from time to time
according as the prospects of the one or the other party
seemed best suited to further their own advantage.
Tegrimo seems to have gone out plundering, sans phrase,
from his Castle of Porciano.

One of the brothers, Gualtieri, died in 1310. The"
others behaved discreditably enough on the occasion of
Henry vir’s expedition to Rome in 1311. In the summer
of that year Bishop Nicholas of Butrinto set out in advance

1 Cf. note to Inf. xxvii. 43.
180 ESSAYS ON DANTE

of the Emperor to prepare the way for him, and Tegrimo
went as far as the Tuscan border to meet him, conducting
him and his followers to the Castle of San Godenzo with
the greatest honour. Here they found the other surviving
brothers, Tancredi, Fazio, Ruggero,! and Bandino, as well
as numerous kinsmen belonging to other branches of the
family. They all swore fealty to the Emperor, promising
to support him loyally with their troops, and, with the sole
exception of Tancred, every member of the house of the
Guidi of Porciano broke his oath. Tegrimo himself, and
also Bandino, entered into alliance with the Florentines
against the Luxemburger. Nor was Ruggero more faith-
ful than his brothers. ‘These three were consequently
deprived of all their feudal possessions, which the Emperor
(in March 1313) handed over to Tancred, the only one
who had remained faithful, thereby giving rise to a family
feud which lasted into the next generation.

Dante was far from being the intolerant political partizan
he has so often been painted, and he values the Guelf who is
true to his convictions above the unprincipled adventurer
who only calls himself a Ghibelline because he looks for
some advantage from it. He does honour to the Guelf Mala-
spinas in his poem,? and he laid his wearied head to rest
under the protection of the Guelf Polentas. But the want
of principle of such as change sides with every shifting of
the wind of fortune, and take and break their oaths accord-
ing as the prospects of the one or the other side look
brightest, rouses his fiercest indignation.?

It is such an outburst of indignation which leads him to
put into the mouth of Guido del Duca, when describing
the course of the Arno, those lines in which we can

1 Fraticelli only mentions three sons of Tegrimo, the founder of the
family (Vita di Dante, p. 211). Nor does he mention Ruggero, giving
the third son as Guidalberto, who however was a son of Tancred’s, a
grandson therefore of Tegrimo’s.

2 Purg. viii. 124 Sg. 3 If. xxvii. 57.
VIIL—DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 181

scarcely help seeing a reference to the Guidi of Porciano:!
¢ Amongst foul swine (pore), more fit for gall-nuts than
for other food prepared for human use, it [the valley of the
Arno] guides its scanty bed at first.’

I formerly challenged this interpretation of the passage 2
(which is given at any rate as an alternative by Fanfani’s
¢ Anonimo Fiorentino,” and expressly by Benvenuto da
Imola), on the strength of the uncertain assumption that
Dante had enjoyed the hospitality of the Counts of Porciano
and could hardly have requited it by such invective. But
the sole ground, as far as I know, for this assumption is the
superscription of the two letters of March and April 1311,
¢On the confines of Tuscany, under the source of Arno,’
which would be just as appropriate to Romena, and perhaps
even more so to Poppi.

It may seem strange that Dante should launch his
reproaches against the whole house, regardless of the un-
swerving loyalty with which Tancred, one of the brothers,
accompanied Henry vir. to Rome, and thence to the siege
of Florence—a loyalty which, as we have already seen, was
splendidly acknowledged by the Emperor in the diploma of
March 3oth, 1313. But we may be sure that when his
brothers had broken faith, Tancred so completely separated
himself from them as no longer to be included in any refer-
ence to the Lords of Porciano; and moreover it would
appear that at the time when the lines were written (about
1318) he was no longer living.

And for that matter, if the hospitality of the Lords of
Porciano towards Dante were what tradition would have

us believe, he certainly owed them no gratitude for his
sojourn with them !

It is harder to unravel the relationships of Aghinolfo’s
descendants, the Romena branch of the Guidi.

1 Purg. xiv. 43. 2 See my note to line 43. 3 See above, p. 171.
182 ESSAYS ON DANTE

THE LINE OF ROMENA ACCORDING TO PASSERINI
Aghinolfo.
Guido (Pace), % before 1281.

 

| | | | |
A. Alessandro, B. Aghinolfo, Guido, 4. C. Ildebrandino Daughter,

d. 1305(?), d. after 1338. before (Bandino), 4. 1312, d. before 1324,
= Catalina, 1300. Bishop of Arezzo. = Bettino
daughter of Grosso degli
Ugolino de’ Ubertini.
Fantoli.

 

| | | | | |
Alessandro, Uberto, Guido, 4. after Francesco, Bandino, Ruggero, Aghinolfo

Bishop of d. after 1305 and Monk, Ecclesi- 4. after  Ubertini.
Urbino, 1305 and before 1338. d. 1348. astic, 1343.
d. 1342. before 1338. d. 1348.

Bandino, 4. 1370.

THE LINE OF ROMENA ACCORDING TO TROYA

 

 

Aghinolfo.
Guido.
|
| | |
A. ı. Alessandro, d. after 1316, Gnido (Pace), d, after 1300, B. 1. Aghinolfo,
=Catalina de’ Fantoli. =1?—27 degli Ubertini. d. before
| 1300.
| | | | i

B. 2. Aghinolfo, C. Ildebrandino, A. 2. Alessandro, Daughter, A bastard.

d. after 1338, Bishop of Arezzo. d. 1305. = Bettino Grosso

=Idana of degli Ubertini.
Bagnocavallo.

 

| | | | | | |
Guido. Uberto. Francesco. Ildebrandino. Ruggero. Alessandro, Bandino.
Bishop of
Urbino.

Aghinolfo himself, faithful to the tradition of his house,
held by Frederick 1r., and the Emperor rewarded his
services by creating him Count of the Romagna in 1239.
The following year, however, at the siege of Faenza, he
was taken prisoner by the Bolognese, who were hastening
to the relief of the Guelf city, and his subsequent fate is
unknown.

Aghinolfo’s son, called Guidopace in contrast to his
grandfather, Guidoguerra, also remained true to the
Ghibelline cause, and in recognition of his own and his
father’s services, the Emperor bestowed on him numerous
VIL—-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 183

privileges and feoffs in April 1247, as Henry vi. had done
on Guidoguerra. In the year 1281 he is referred to as
deceased.

AGHINOLFO'S GRANDSONS IN THE RIVAL
GENEALOGIES

When we come to Guidopace’s descendants opinions
diverge.

The older view, which in spite of recent attacks is still
generally held, is as follows :—Guidopace, besides three or
four daughters, had four sons, Alessandro, Aghinolfo, Guido,
-and Ildebrandino (shortened to Bandino). Aghinolfo was
the only one who left any children. Two of his sons,
Uberto and Guido, will demand our attention presently.
The others were called Alessandro, Francesco, Bandino,
and Ruggero. One only of Guidopace’s daughters has a
certain interest for us.

Carlo Troya’s genealogical tree, on the other hand,! in-
serts another generation between Guidopace’s children and
the above-mentioned Uberto and Guido and their brothers.
He only recognises Alessandro, Aghinolfo, and Guido as
sons of our Guidopace, and it is the son, and not the father,
to whom he gives the surname Pace. Assons of his Guido-
pace (our Guido) he names a second Aghinolfo, Ildebrandino
(usually considered the son of our ‘Guidopace’), and a second
Alessandro. This second Aghinolfo he makes the father of
Uberto, Guido, and five other sons, besides two daughters.

The divergences in these genealogical trees are of great
importance in relation to Dante’s life and character ; but
before entering upon their discussion we must sum up
what is known of the four sons (as we provisionally regard

! The persons as to whom there is a difference of opinion are marked
in the two trees (p. 182) with the same capital letter. When Troya

splits up into two individuals a single personage in the other scheme
we have indicated it by the addition of 1, 2 to the capital,
184 ESSAYS ON DANTE

them, with Passerini and others) of our Guidopace. On
February 27th, 1281, Alessandro, Aghinolfo and Guido,
signed the treaty of peace between the Florentine Guelfs
and Ghibellines brought about by Cardinal Latino.—
During the years 1285-1288 Alessandro and Aghinolfo are
mentioned as Florentine, and therefore Guelf, commanders
against Pisa and Arezzo. Whatever else we hear of Aghin-
olfo is taken by Troya to relate to the second Aghinolfo,
whose very existence is contested on the other side.

Ildebrandino, a brother according to us, a nephew accord-
ing to Troya, of the preceding, became Bishop of Arezzo in
1290. A year later, Pope Nicholas 1v. made him Count
of Romagna, and a little later his Ecclesiastical Vicar of
the same province. Thither Alessandro and Aghinolfo
followed him, but they all three made themselves hated by
their insolence and violence. Aghinolfo (whom Troya
again makes his second Aghinolfo, nephew, not brother,
of the first Alessandro) and his son Uberto’ were made
prisoners in a battle with Maghinardo Pagani, and were
only released after a long confinement, on condition that
two other sons, Guido and Ruggero, were given up as
hostages. After the settlement of affairs in Romagnola,
Bandino went back to his diocese and Alessandro and
Aghinolfo to the Casentino.

SUBSEQUENT LOT. OF THE BROTHERS
1. Alessandro of Romena.

Leonardo Aretino says in his Life of Dante that when
the Bianchi were expelled from Florence after the entry of
Charles of Valois, in 1302, they met in Gargonza in the
valley of the Ambra, Dante being of their number, and
chose as leaders a council of twelve, with Count Alessandro
of Romena at its head. According to Troya, this Ales-
sandro is not the grandson of the original Aghinolfo of
VII..DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 185

Romena, but his great-grandson, and consequently a nephew
of the Alessandro whom we have hitherto been speaking
of. Shortly after this (March 1304) Niccolo Albertini,
Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, was sent as peacemaker to
Florence by Pope Benedict x1. At first it seemed as if
he would be successful, but the Florentines within grew
more and more dissatisfied with him when it became
known that he had secretly written letters of encourage-
ment to the banished Bianchi. We still have the answer
sent in the name of A[lexander of Romena] Ca[pitaneus],
the Council, and the whole body of the Florentine Bianchi,
and drawn up in all probability by Dante, who was,
Leonardo assures us, one of the council of twelve. The
date of this letter obviously lies somewhere between March
and June 5th, 1304, at which date the Cardinal left the city
in indignation.! It is uncertain whether it was written in
the Casentino, maybe in the ancestral castle of the house of
Romena, or in Arezzo, the episcopal seat of Bandino, who
at that time had taken the side of the Populari (Ghibellini
Verdi) against Uguccione della Faggiuola, who as Podesta
had taken that of the nobles (Secchi). Leonardo says that
after the meeting in Gargonza the Bianchi took Arezzo
as their headquarters (la sedia loro).

Of Alessandro’s doings in his capacity of leader of the
Bianchi we know absolutely nothing. In connection with
the unsuccessful attempt to surprise Florence from Lastra
(July 20th, 1304) we find Baschiera della Tosa, Tolosato
degli Uberti, and Aghinolfo di Romena mentioned, but not
a word is said of Alessandro. In the preceding month,
probably of the same year, we find a notarial document?

1 See Appendix.—ED. ;

2 Pelli, Mem. p. la storia di D., p. 117, gives 1307 as the year of this
document. But Troya in the Veltro allegorico de Ghibell., 1856, p. 122,
assures us that the date is entirely illegible, and appeals to Em. Repetti
(cf. Antologia Ixxiv., Florence, February 1827, p. 14), in support of the
statement. [It has since been conclusively established that the date
was 1302. See Appendix.—ED.]
186 ESSAYS ON DANTE

drawn up at S. Godenzo, in which Dante and sixteen others
of the Bianchi promise to indemnify Ugolino Ubaldini da
Feliccione (brother of Ruggero, Archbishop of Pisa) and
the other Ubaldini for any loss of territory or retainers
they may incur in the projected struggle with Florence ;
particularly as regards the Castle of Monte Accianico.
This document was drawn up in one of the fortresses
of the Guidi, but neither does it contain any mention
of Alessandro. Troya reasonably enough conjectures! that
he (i.e. the second Alessandro, according to him) did not
long survive the unsuccessful attempt to surprise Florence
from Lastra, but died about 1305.

An undated letter addressed by Dante to Counts Uberto
and Guido of Romena, nephews of Alessandro, refers to his
decease, and is of great importance in connection with the
problem now before us. He says:

“The illustrious Count, Alexander, your uncle, who within
these few days has returned to the celestial fatherland, whence,
after the spirit, he had come, was my liege, and to his memory,
so long as I shall live in time, I shall bear allegiance; for his
munificence, which is now abundantly recompensed with fit
rewards beyond the stars, spontaneously made me his client long
years ago. . . . Let then the greatest of the Tuscan families, of
which he was so great an ornament, mourn; let all his friends and
clients, whose hopes death hath so cruelly chastised, mourn ; and,
amongst these last, wretched I must mourn indeed, for when,
banished from my fatherland in unjust exile, I fell a-pondering
on my misfortunes, I was wont straightway to console myself
with dear hope in him. . . . Wherefore, my most dear lieges,
I implore you with suppliant exhortation that ye strive to mourn
only in due measure, and to put the things of the sense behind,
save in so far as they may be examples to you; and even as he
most justly made you, as nearest unto himself, the heirs of his
possessions, so do ye clothe yourselves with his noble character
also. And on my own part I have, beside all this, to excuse
myself to your discretion for my absence from the tearful
obsequies ; for neither negligence nor ingratitude, but the

 

1 Pelt. alleg. de’ Ghib., p. 125.
VIIL..—.DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 187

unlooked-for poverty which my exile hath brought upon me, is
the cause of this. For she, like a fierce and persecuting foe,
came upon me, horseless and unarmed, and thrust me into the
dungeon of her captivity, wherein, though I struggle with all
my might to escape, she doth pitilessly scheme to hold me, and
hath till now prevailed.’

2. Aghinolfo.

Troya holds that Aghinolfo, the grandson of the first
Count of Romena, died before 1300, and that all later
notices of Aghinolfo di Romena refer to his supposed
second Aghinolfo (B. 2). What they amount to is that
in the struggles which arose between the Ghibelline
Arezzo and the Guelf Florence Aghinolfo had already
taken the Ghibelline side, and afterwards united with
Henry vin in his expedition to Rome, and followed him
as a brave and faithful vassal until his death. For these
services he received large rewards from the Luxemburger
on June 7th, 1312, as his ancestors had done from the
Hohenstaufens ; while the Florentines outlawed him on
March 29th, 1313. He was taken prisoner by the Count
of Mangona in the further conflicts with Florence, and
in October 1318 made peace with the Florentines, who re-
moved their ban on receiving his promise of faithful alliance.
Thenceforth the republic stood by him more than once
in time of need, while he, on his side, hastened to her aid
(though in vain) against Castruccio Castracani. As his
will is dated November 15th, 1338, he must have attained
a very great age, whereby the weakness therein referred to
(corpore languens) would be naturally enough explained. His
sons, Oberto and Guido, the recipients of Dante’s letter of
condolence, are referred to in the testament as already dead.

3. Ildebrandino and Guido,

Bishop Ildebrandino (C.), according to our genealogy,
was a brother of the first Alessandro and Aghinolfo (A. and
188 ESSAYS ON DANTE

B.). Troya, however, considers him their nephew, and a
brother of the second bearers of these names, whom he
postulates (A. 2 and B. 2). We have already described his
earlier life. "The Ghibelline traditions of his house had not
prevented him from entering into friendly relations with
the Guelfs, but now stood him in good stead with Henry vir.,
who did not wish to confine his favours exclusively to
one party, but endeavoured to bring the two together.
The Emperor made him lifelong Vicar of Arezzo in 1309,
but he died in the train of his feudal overlord at Pisa, in
July 1312.

The fourth brother, Guido, to whom Troya gives the
surname Pace, which is generally assigned to his father, is
supposed by this historian to have had three sons (Ildebran-
dino, C., and the supposed Aghinolfo and Alessandro of the
second generation, B. 2 and A. 2) and a daughter. We
know little more of him than that in the years 1283 and
1288 he was successively Podesta of Siena and of Todi.
Troya believes that he was still living in 1300, but we find
no mention of him after 1283, so that Passerini thinks
he may have fallen in the battle of Campaldino in 1289.

MAESTRO ADAMO AND THE FALSE COINING

The importance of these relationships rests on a fact we
have not yet mentioned. In the year 1281, as we are told
by Paolino Pieri, a considerable number of Florentine
golden thalers were found in the house of the Anchioni in
Florence,! which, instead of consisting of pure gold, accord-
ing to the regulation standard, were composed of seven
parts gold and one part some base metal. It was discovered
that they came from Romena, and had been made by
one Maestro Adamo of Brescia. This Adam perished,

1 Or rather in the Borgo San Lorenzo in Mugello.—Troya, Veltro
alleg. di Dante, p. 25.
VII.—-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 189

being burnt to death ; and when Dante met him, swelled
as by dropsy till incapable of motion, in the last pit of the
eighth circle (the pit of forgers), he said to the poet:

¢But could I see the dismal soul of Guido or of Alessandro or
their brother in this place, I would not sell the sight for Fonte
Branda. One of them is in here already, if the raging souls that
go around speak truth. But what good is that to me, since my
limbs are bound ? If I were still so agile only that in a hundred
years I could make one inch, I should have set out e’er now upon
the path searching for him amongst this loathly folk, although the
circuit be eleven miles, and it be not less than half a mile across.
It is along of them that I am of this household. It was they
that led me to strike the florins with three carats of alloy.’

All are agreed as to the individuality of the two brothers
whom Maestro Adamo mentions by name. Even Troya
counts them as belonging to the earlier generation, sons of
the grandson of Guidoguerra and Gualdrada, not to the
later generation imagined by him. Nor, for those who,
with Troya, assign the Bishop Bandino to this later
generation, can there be any question as to who the third
brother was either, since there is only one, Aghinolfo, left.
But for us there is at least the possibility that the third
brother is Bandino, not Aghinolfo; and indeed what we
know of his doings in Romagna and as Papal Vicar is not
such as to prove him incapable of the crime in question.
At the same time, it hardly seems credible that the ecclesi-
astic Bandino, if he were really guilty of so deep an
offence against the laws of the Church, should have been
made a Bishop, and intrusted with other important missions,
while his brother Guido, for the same crime, was again put
under the ban of Florence, from which, according to
Passerini, he had only just been relieved. We are therefore
led to the conclusion that Aghinolfc ot Bandino, was the
third false coiner; and this is the view of Fanfani’s Anonimo
and other Commentators. Passerini, strangely enough, does
not touch on the question at all.
190 ESSAYS ON DANTE

DANTE'S APPARENT INGRATITUDE

Most critics consider that ‘the one already in Hell’? at
the time of the poet’s journey was Guido. Troya thinks
it was Aghinolfo (B. 1), taking all later references to
Aghinolfo da Romena as applying to his second Aghinolfo
(B. 2) belonging to the next generation. He appeals to a
document of March 13th, 1300, in which an illegitimate
son of the deceased Aghinolfo (4. Aghinolfi,—the 4. being
understood as quondam="‘late’) applies for licence to sell
a certain piece of land.? According to Borghini, however,
this document is addressed to Aghinolfo himself, who is
still alive.® It can only be by an oversight that Philalethes
says it is hard to decide whether the brother already dead
in 1300 is Guido or Alexander, since we have full proof,
from several distinct sources, that the latter lived at least
till 1304.4

But these questions sink into insignificance in compari-
son with the contrast between the infamy heaped on all

1 Inf. xxx. 79.

2 Ildefonso di S. Luigi, Delizie degli erud. Tosc., viii. 181.

3 Gius. Todeschini, Scritti su Dante (1872), 1. 216. [Le. Ildefonso
(eighteenth century) gives a summary only of the document ; and himself
notes that Borghini (sixteenth century) read it as presented in the person
of (in faccia di) Alexander, not his son. Todeschini points out that
Ildefonso himself gives a reference, on p. 147, that supports Borghini’s
reading.—ED.]

4 Benvenuto da Imola, to whom this documentary evidence was
unknown, in commenting on the words ¢ One of them is in here already,’
says, ‘That is: the soul of Alexander is in Hell, for he is amongst the
traitors against kindred, as will be seen hereafter, Canto xxxii., where he
names Alexander.” The worthy Rambaldi might have seen however,
from line 835, that the man to whom Adam referred was not only in the
same eighth circle of Hell, but in the same tenth pit as himself; not in
the first division of the ninth circle. The poet, as a fact, does not name
any Alessandro in Canto xxxii., but the two brothers depicted in line
42 undoubtedly are the Counts Alessandro and Napoleone di Mangona.
The Commentator continues: ‘But truly I do not rightly see of whom
he is speaking. For that Alexander, whom the author now places in the
ice, was not of the Counts Guidi of Romena, but of the Counts Alberti.’
—Fanfani’s Anonimo also says, on line 79, ¢ To wit, Count Alexander.’

Lr
VIL.—DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 19:1

three brothers in the Inferno, and the unmeasured praise of
one of them in the letter written to his nephews perhaps
ten years previously.

If a man had been openly convicted of fraud, would
Dante, who calls himself the bard of justice (rectitudo)*
hold him up to his nephews (if even the crime had been
committed wellnigh a quarter of a century before) as a
model for their conduct, in whose blameless character they
were to robe themselves? Still less can we admit that
if he had spoken of his munificence, experienced for many
years, as binding him in lifelong gratitude, he would a few
years afterwards relegate him, by the mouth of Master
Adam,? to one of the lowest abysses of Hell. Nor could
the poet’s wrath be here accounted for, as in the case of
the Guidi of Porciano, by acts of treachery towards the
Luxemburger. For while the Counts of Romena never,
so far as we know, went to meet the Emperor, or invited
him to visit one of their fortresses, or did homage to him,
or made any collective promise of faithfulness, yet the only
two still living, Aghinolfo and Ildebrandino, with the
former’s son Ruggero, had, as a fact, stood by him till
the end.

TODESCHINI'S ATTEMPTED SOLUTION

Gius. Todeschini’s solution is simplicity itself? He
considers the letter to the Counts Guido and Uberto to be
a mere literary exercise of some unknown writer, and
declares it to be an arbitrary assumption that ‘A. CA.’ in
the letter to the Cardinal of Ostia stands for ¢ Alexander
Capitaneus’; nor does he place any faith in the statements
made by Leonardo Aretino in his Life of Dante (‘a slight.
and carelessly written thing’) ; and therefore he denies that

L Vulgaris Eloquentia, ii. 2 : 833.

2 Cf. Troya, V. alleg. d. Ghib., pp. 125-127.
3 Scritti su Dante, i. 211-259.
192 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Dante and Alessandro da Romena ever came into close
relations with each other at all. It is true that he does
not dispute the authenticity of the notarial instrument
drawn up by Giovanni di Buto of Ampinana at S. Godenzo,
but he disagrees both with Pelli, who would date it 1307,
and with Troya, who makes it 1304, and himself assigns it
to 1302. Appealing for support to Par. xvii. 61-69, he
concludes (p. 254 s¢.) that from quite an early period of his
exile Dante broke off all relations with the rest of the exiled
Bianchi, and found a refuge with Bartolomeo della Scala in
Verona, as early as 1303.

The genuineness of the letter of condolence however,
and the obviousness of the interpretation of the initials in
the letter sent in the name of the banished Bianchi to the
Cardinal Albertini, are so patent, while the reliability of
Leonardo Bruni’s Life, as contrasted with that of Boccaccio,
has been so often insisted on, that, as far as I know,
Todeschini’s heroic method of removing the charge of
ingratitude brought against Dante has nowhere met with
assent.!

CARLO TROYA’S SOLUTION

Troya’s more seductive way out of the difficulty is closely
connected with his reconstruction of the family tree,
differing considerably, as will be remembered, from the
usually accepted genealogy. According to him, Alessandro,
who was a party, together with his two brothers, to Master
Adam’s false coining in 1281, was still living in 1316; for
there is a document in the Azzurrinian archives, dated
Sept. 6th of that year, which in referring to Catalina of
Faenza, daughter of Ugolino de’ Fantolini da Cerfugnano,
calls her ¢wife of the illustrious Lord Alexander of
Romena, by grace of God Count Palatine of Tuscany.’

1 Scartazzini, Kraus, and others have since adopted Todeschini’s
opinion as to both letters. Cf. Appendix.—ED.
VIL—-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 193

On the other hand, the Alexander da Romena who was
leader of the Florentine Bianchi, and the subject of Dante’s
letter of condolence, was a nephew of the above-named
Alessandro, and died, as already said, in 1304 or 1305.
Gratitude to him need not prevent Dante’s laying a crime
to the charge of his uncle, of which all the world knew
he was guilty.

I have called this solution seductive, and Pietro Fraticelli
has shown his acceptance of it, both in his note in his
edition of the Divine Comedy and in his Life of Dante,! by
reproducing without comment the data of Troya’s genea-
logical tree. And in the few sheets of the second edition of
my collection of Dante’s letters, printed in 1845 but never
published, I too expressed my general agreement with this
view, after a full exposition of the grounds on which it was
based, making reservations however as regards some of the
details, while Scartazzini,? perhaps the only Dante Commen-
tator who has gone into this important point, follows suit.

Passerini and Todeschini have declared against it, and
Dr. Theod. Wiistenfeld, after comprehensive researches,
has reached the same conclusion. I have to thank him
for his generous permission to make use of the copious
material he has collected on the subject.

GROUNDS OF TODESCHINI'S REJECTION OF
THE THEORY?

Todeschini, who leaves the document of 1316 unassailed,
shatters the arch of Troya’s assumptions by withdrawing a
keystone from it, namely the twofold personality of
Aghinolfo. The Memorie abbreviate de Conti Guidi,
published by the Padre Ildefonso,” preserve a deed dated

1 Florence, 1861, pp. 210, 211.
2 Ed. of Divine Comedy, note on Inf. xxx. 77.

3 Reversed in his edition of 1893.—ED.
4 See Postscript, pp. 206 sq. 5 Delizie, t. viii. p. 188.

N
194 ESSAYS ON DANTE

1355, in which the Emperor Charles 1v. bestows castles,
cities, and lands on the Count Bandino of Romena, at the
same time giving the descent of the said Bandino right up
to Aghinolfo, the founder of the house of Romena. Now,
according to Troya’s theory, Bandino’s genealogy would
have run thus :—Bandino, son of Uberto, son of Aghinolfo,
son of Guido, son of Guido, son of Aghinolfo; but in fact
the deed says, ‘To Count Bandino of Romena, son of the
late Uberto, son of the late Aghinolfo, son of [the late]
Guido, son of the late Aghinolfo, Count of Romena.” In
other words, we have only one Guido, viz. Guidoguerra’s
grandson (not his great-grandson), instead of two in suc-
cession. This makes the grandfather of the recipient of
the deed of gift, Aghinolfo by name, the son, and not the
grandson, of the first Guido of the house of Romena,
our Guidopace. And Troya himself admits that the first
Guido was the father of the forgers Guido and Alessandro.
Thus the deed leaves no room for a second Aghinolfo,
also grandfather of Bandino but son of 77sya’s Guidopace.
—The idea that the scribe might easily have omitted the
repetition of ¢¢. Guidonis’ by an oversight in drawing up
the deed, may readily occur, but it is barred by the fact
that a little further on in the same document there is a
reference to a deed of gift by Frederick 11. to Aghinolfo’s
son Guido(pace), made in April 1247, and this Guido is
called Bandino’s ¢proavus,’ i.e. father of his grandfather,
whereas according to Troya he ought to be called ¢abavus,’
grandfather of his grandfather.

It would appear then that Troya’s two Aghinolfos are
one and the same man. Now he supposed each of them
to have a brother Alessandro, and these two Alessandros
must therefore likewise run into one. The only escape
would be the extremely unnatural one (not suggested

1 This ¢quondam, or rather its usual abbreviation ¢g.,’ is wanting
in the Ms,
VIL.—_DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 195

by Troya or any one else) of supposing that two brothers
received one and the same baptismal name.

PASSERINI’S AND WUSTENFELD’S OBJECTIONS

But Troya’s evidence for the existence of two Ales-
sandros, nephew and uncle, living at the same time, rests
mainly on the document dated, according to Mittarelli,l
September 6th, 1316. Now Passerini? and Wiistenfeld
give good grounds for doubting the correctness of the date.
To begin with, Passerini urges that Tonduzzi,* who lived
a century earlier than Mittarelli, expressly says that even
in his time the year and day of the document were un-
decipherable, owing to the state of the parchment. Mitta-
relli’s date, he adds, cannot possibly be the correct one,
since the text speaks of Taddeo of Montefeltro as still
living, and he died in 1282. Passerini (following the
practice of Litta’s tables) does not give the documentary
evidence on which this last date rests.

According to Wiistenfeld, Taddeo did not die till 129g.
But he adds that the document refers to the landed posses-
sions left by Ugolino Fantolini as not yet divided between
his two daughters, Catalina, wife of Alessandro da Romena,
and Agnesina, wife of Taddeo da Montefeltro. Now in
1291 the estates had been partitioned, and Agnesina sold
her portion to Maghinardo Pagano of Susinana and the
Counts of Conio.® But if we have to date the document
before 1299, and indeed before 1291, the only year that

1 Accessiones Faventine, col. 541 (1771).

2 Continuation of Litta’s Famiglie celebri, Dispensa 150, Tav. xii,
and Curiosita letter. ii. 27.

3 Storie di Faenza, 1675.

* According to del Lungo (Dino Compagni, ii. 593) Passerini has con-
founded two Taddeos, and the one here referred to was certainly living
in 1297.—ED.

5 Cf. Troya, Veltro alleg. d. Ghib., pp. 355-357.
196 ESSAYS ON DANTE

takes the place assigned in the indiction, is 1286. And the
number MccLxxxVI. could easily have been misread mcccx vr.
if the L had been mistaken for a c, and the xx following it
had become illegible owing to the damaged state of the
parchment,

AGHINOLFO DEGLI UBERTINI, A NEPHEW OF
ALESSANDRO

Finally, we must touch on the elaborate interpretation
put by Troya on a passage in Giov. Villani’s Chronicle,
although it has no kind of decisive bearing on the present
problem. The Chronicler tells® how in 1324 the Floren-
tines acquired Lanciolina in the Arno valley, which had
hitherto belonged to Aghinolfo, son of Bettino Grosso, of
the Ubertini, who had received it from his uncle Ales-
sandro in his mother’s right. From this we gather that
Aghinolfo Ubertini’s mother was a sister of Count
Alessandro, that Lanciolina was a part of her inheritance,
or perhaps marriage portion, but was left in Alessandro’s
occupation and control, so that when her son inherited it,
it was from Alessandro’s hands that he actually received it.

Troya, however, reads the passage otherwise, and thinks
himself justified in drawing the following conclusions from
it. The mother of Grosso Ubertini’s wife (herself an
Ubertini) was sister-in-law of the elder Alessandro, having
married his brother Guido (Troya’s Guidopace). She was
his second wife, and the mother of Alessandro (A. 2) the

1 Cronica, iX. 272.

2 This is also Passerini’s interpretation of the document.

3 The words are ‘il quale [castello] avea avuto per retaggio della
madre, dal conte Alessandro da Romena, suo zio.” Aghinolfo Ubertini
is the subject of ¢avea,’ and the natural way to understand the sentence
is to take “dal conte etc.” as dependent on ‘avuto,” and ‘suo’ as referring
to Aghinolfo. I gather that Troya understands ¢ his mother’s inheritance,
which came to 4er from Jer uncle Alessandro.’ I have ventured to recast

this whole paragraph on Troya’s interpretation of the document; as it
stands in Witte’s text it appears to me barely intelligible.—ED.
VII.-DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 197

captain of the Bianchi, and of the daughter that married
Bettino Ubertini. Her husband Guido gave her Lancio-
lina as her dowry (or rather settled it upon her), or left it
to her in some form. She survived her son Alessandro,
and her heritage then went to her daughter, which shows
that the two other sons of her husband (Master Adam’s
“anima trista’) must have been the offspring of a previous
marriage.

Troya was driven to hazarding these elaborate supposi-
tions in order to reconcile his own theory with Villani’s
data, but they are far indeed from affording independent
support to the theories themselves.

THE RESULT

As far as I know, we have no positive evidence that
Dante was ever the guest of the Counts of Romena,
although Passerini and Fraticelli assume it as unquestion-
able, and the exact description of the locality in Inf. xxx.
64-73 obviously betrays personal familiarity with it.
But in any case we should have supposed that such a
relationship to one of the brothers as is depicted in the
letter of condolence would have prevented the poet’s attack
on any of the three, let alone his grouping them all together.
And the case is made worse by another consideration.
Even if Dante felt constrained to denounce a deed which
had been done a generation before the time at which the
poem was written, he was not compelled actually to give
the name of the man to whom he had declared himself
under such a lifelong debt of gratitude. The sense would
have been just the same, and the line would have been in
no way injured if he had written |

“Di Guido, o d’ Aghinolfo o di lor frate.”

We must regretfully confess that we are unable to ex-
culpate the poet; for all the theories advanced for this
198 ESSAYS ON DANTE

purpose appear untenable. But we can at least urge
¢ extenuating circumstances,” of which there are several.

In the first place, it must be remembered that Dante
does not take the words in the thirtieth canto of the
Inferno upon his own lips. They are spoken by Master
Adam. There is no lack of instances in which Dante
puts one verdict into the mouth of some shade he meets,
and in some other place takes occasion to give a widely
divergent judgment of hisown.! And certainly Master Adam
had reason enough to feel embittered in Hell against the
brothers who had brought him to a fiery death while they
themselves went free, or at least suffered no such punish-
ment as his. For we find Alexander in the train of the
Imperial Vicar in S. Miniato in the very next year, 1282;
after which he became Podesta of Faenza in 1287, and a
leader of the Guelfs of Tuscany against Arezzo in 1288.
Guido too was chosen by Siena for her Podesta in 1283,
and Aghinolfo succeeded him in the following year.

Again, the sudden shattering of the poet’s hopes at the
death of Alessandro might account for the exaggerated
praise in the letter to his nephews. In such a moment,
and when addressing the nearest relations of the deceased,
one would gladly forget an offence committed ten years
before, and would feel that one could scarcely say enough in
praise and gratitude.

Subsequent experience, however, may have taught Dante
the indifference of the Guidi to the affairs of the banished
Bianchi. It is easily conceivable, as Todeschini suggests,
that the poet’s suspicions gained strength as time went on,
and he came to question whether, despite his position
as leader, Alessandro had not dealt unfaithfully with the
banished Bianchi—perhaps shown himself open to the
persuasions, maybe even to the gold, of his hereditary
friends the Florentines. If this were so it is quite con-

1 Cf. my note to Purg. iii. 115.
VII.—_DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 199

ceivable that the brief letter of condolence, written in an
overwrought moment, and preserved to us by a mere chance,
might have completely escaped the memory of the writer
himself in the course of a decade.

Nevetheless I cannot pretend to think that these cir-
cumstances alone would account for the passionate
denunciation which, even though it is put into the mouth
of another, yet forms an integral part of the poem. I
believe then that here, as in other cases where the poet
breaks out into expressions of anger inexplicable to us,
there must be some cause, of which we know and can
discover nothing, that would explain, if not excuse it.

DATE OF UBERTO DA ROMENA’S DEATH

We cannot leave the Romena branch of the Guidi with-
out pointing out a slight mistake in Passerini’s Table x111.
In Table xm. he repeatedly refers to Dante’s letter to
Uberto and Guido da Romena (which he too dates in 1305)
in such a manner as to leave no doubt that he regards it as
authentic ; yet in the following Table he says of this same
Uberto that Maghinardo Pagani did not release him from
the Castle of Calamello till the year 1294, and adds, ‘he
must have died not long afterwards, as he was certainly
(certamente) dead quite at the beginning of the fourteenth
century.” We really do know, from his father’s will of
1338, that in that year he was already dead.

We now turn to the first-born son of Guidaguerra and
Gualdrada, namely Guido, the founder of the house of
Bagno and Battifolle. Guido himself, like his brothers, did
faithful service to the second Frederick, and he seems to
have died about 1239.

His sons were Guidonovello and Simone, the former of
whom was one of the most prominent Ghibellines of the

1 E.g. Inf. viii. 37-60.
200 ESSAYS ON DANTE

thirteenth century. We find him taking part in the
battle of the Arbia (Inf. x. 86), and it is he who is said to
have made the barbarous proposal which Farinata takes
credit for having thwarted in the lines that follow. Then
he governed Florence with a stern hand for six years as
King Manfred’s vicar, until Charles of Anjou’s victory

THE LINE OF BAGNO AND BATTIFOLLE

Guido.
|

| |
Guidonovello, d. 1293. Simone of Battifolle, d. after 1277.

|
Guido, d. before 1323,
= Gherardesca of Donoratico.

once more allowed the Guelfs to raise their heads in
Tuscany as elsewhere. It was with disastrous precipi-
tancy that he left Florence on November 11th, 1269,
but he fought for the Ghibellines afterwards as opportunity
offered, although with varying success. In 1275 he led the
armies of Faenza and Forli against the Guelfs of Bologna.
At Colle di Val d’Elsa,? however, in 1269 he was defeated
with the Sienese; and the battle of Campaldino? was still
more disastrous to him, for he was accused of having with-
drawn to Poppi, to protect his castle there from the attacks
of the Florentines, instead of joining fairly in the fight.
His brother Simone was for many years one of the
fiercest of the Ghibellines, and as Podesta of Arezzo in
1263 made ruthless work against the Guelfs of that city.
We hear of his horrible cruelty in other connections also.
In 1273 he had a fierce quarrel with his brother Guido-
novello over some disputed family possessions, after which
he was reconciled with Pope Gregory x., and, through his
intervention, with the Florentine Republic. His descendants

1 Note on Izf. xxiii. 103. ? Note on Purg. xi. 121.
8 Purg.v. 92
VII._DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 201

called themselves Counts of Battifolle in distinction to
Guidonovello’s descendants.

Simone’s son Guido followed the flag to which his father
had turned in later times. In the eighties he fought under
Charles of Anjou in Sicily against Peter of Aragon. At
Campaldino he stood on the side of the Florentines against
his uncle Guidonovello. Then we hear scarcely a word of
him for more than twenty years.—It was probably from
Cremona, before the unfortunate siege of Brescia, that Queen
Margaret (always eager to win support for her husband, and
often with better success than in this instance) wrote a
letter to Gherardesca, Guido’s wife. We possess Gherar-
desca’s answer of May 16th, 1311, which itis conjectured was
composed by Dante ; and also the answer to a second letter
of the Queen’s. Both of them conceal, under the language
of extravagant devotion, a certain surprise at this step of
Margaret. As regards Guido, after whom Margaret had
inquired in her first letter, we merely hear that he is well.

The second letter closes with the comprehensive wish
¢that the Eternal Ruler of the world may extend the hand
of his assisting grace to the auspicious undertakings of
Cesar and Augusta; that he who subdued barbarous
nations and citizens to the command of the Roman Empire
for the protection of mortal things, may re-order for the
better the household of this frenzied age, under the triumph
and glory of his Henry.’—So there is nothing in the shape
of definite promises in this letter either.

What Guido actually did was to send armed assistance
to the besieged Florentines, while at home in the Casentino
he fought against the Ghibellines in conjunction with
Bernardino da Polenta. After the Emperor’s death, Guido,
ruled first Florence and afterwards Genoa as vicar of King
Robert of Naples.

If, as Passerini® seems also to believe, the two letters of

1 Table x1v.
202 ESSAYS ON DANTE

the Countess Gherardesca were drawn up by Dante, they
would furnish adequate ground for supposing that the poet
spent some considerable time in Poppi or the neighbouring
Battifolle ; and there is at least a probability that the two
letters dated © from the sources of the Arno’ were written
from the same place. But this particular refuge of the
poet’s is not mentioned by any one of the biographers.

LINE OF DOVADOLA

Marcovaldo.

 

| |
Guidoguerra, d. 1272. Ruggero, d. 1268.

Guidosalvatico= Manentessa of
Montefeltro, 4. after 1299.

Ruggero, 4. 1332.

In his youth, Marcovaldo, founder of the line of
Dovidola, fought under the banner of the second Frederick
of Hohenstaufen. But his wife, Beatrice, one of the
Alberti of Capraja, who were pronounced Guelfs, drew
him over to the other camp, and family quarrels over his
inheritance adding their influence, he became a passionate
partizan of the Guelfs.

Dante meets the more celebrated of Marcovaldo’s two
sons, Guidoguerra, together with two other noble Floren-
tines, in the third belt of the seventh circle of the Inferno,*
among the sodomites. Passerini? says that it was the
Count’s prominent position among the Guelfs of Tuscany
which so kindled the poet’s ire as to determine him to
cover Guidoguerra with eternal infamy by placing him
amongst the carnal sinners against nature.

But I must emphatically deny that there is any justifica-
tion for such a charge. The poet selects for his censure,

1 Inf. xvi. 37. 2 Table xv
VII.—_DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 203

sins (notorious sins by preference) with perfect indifference
as to whether Ghibellines or Guelfs committed them. But
he holds that earthly nobleness may well subsist side by
side with sins, especially of incontinence. He attributes
the very same sin to Brunetto Latini, but he meets him, in
the immediately preceding canto, with moving veneration
and gratitude; and with what heartfelt reverence does he
greet Guido Guinizelli and the other two poets who are
expiating the same sin,! in canto xxvi. of Purgatory!

The nature of Guidoguerra’s sin is only indicated by his
place of punishment, but his merits are proclaimed aloud
in the directest manner. When the poet meets the three
noble Guelfs, he says (in his own person), ‘and ever more
with love have I rehearsed and hearkened to your deeds and
honoured names’; while into Jacopo Rusticucci’s mouth
(xvi. 38) he puts the panegyric of Guidoguerra in particular
(afterwards imitated in Tasso’s well-known line) : ¢And in
his life much wrought he with his brain, much with his
sword.” It were scarcely possible to accord a larger measure
of recognition to the merits of one of the condemned.

Guidoguerra joined the Guelfs in his early youth, and
his first important feat of arms was the relief of Ostina,
which was besieged by the Ghibellines in 1250. The
result of his success was the triumph of the Guelfic
reaction in Florence also. Ten years later he is mentioned
as vainly dissuading the march on Siena which ended so
disastrously for the Guelfs.2 In 1265 he joined Charles of
Anjou as soon as he entered Italy, with his mounted troop
of expatriated Florentines, and played an important part in
the victory of Benevento.? Manfred’s fall led to a fresh
revolution in Florence, and Guidoguerra assumed the

1 Not so, though it is often said or implied. Guido and Arnaldo
(there are only two, not three, poets named) are circling counter-clock-
wise, with Dante. The unnatural offenders are circling clockwise
against them.—ED.

2 Cf. my note on Izf x. 85. 3 Cf. my note on Purg. iii. 112, 118
204 ESSAYS ON DANTE

guidance of the Republic as King Charles’s vicar, replacing
his cousin Guidonovello. Here, and wherever his influence
extended, he showed his enmity towards the Ghibellines,
regardless even of written pledges to the contrary ; his arbit-
rary conduct at last led to a breach with Florence herself.
He died in 1272, at his home in Montevarchi, in the
Arno valley.

Marcovaldo’s second son, Ruggero, gave proof of his
staunch Guelf principles in his youth, by rejecting Fre-
derick 11.’s invitation to come to his court; but we hear
more of his numerous gifts to churches, convents, and
religious foundations, than of his feats of arms.

We find Ruggero’s son, Guidosalvatico, chiefly in the
Romagna in the sixties and seventies, involved in its con-
stant petty struggles, one of which, in 1276, brought him
into opposition to his cousin Guidonovello. He was chosen
Captain-general of the Taglia (allied troops) of the Guelfs
in Tuscany in 1282, but had no opportunity of doing any
conspicuous deed of arms. In the battle of Campaldino
he led a considerable Sienese force as Podesta of the city.
When, in the last year of the century, the Florentine
Guelfs divided into the parties of the Bianchi and Neri, he
joined the Neri, the party opposed to Dante's. During
Henry vir’s siege of Florence, Guidosalvatico, like his
cousin Guido of Battifolle, sent armed assistance to Ber-
nardino of Polenta, who was waging a petty war with the
Ghibellines of the upper valley of the Arno.

Salvatico is the only one of the Conti Guidi whom
Boccaccio distinctly states to have entertained Dante. The
biographer places this stay after the poet’s first visit to
Verona? and before that to Maroello Malaspina ; that is to
say, in the period between the failure of the attempted
return of the Bianchi and the revival of Dante’s hopes

1 He says to ¢ Alberto,” but means presumably to ¢ Albuino’ della
Scala.
VII._DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 205

with the accession of Henry vir. Itis possible therefore
that it was here that Dante found leisure to write the
Convivio and De Vulgari Elquentia, which belong to this
period. Party feeling had lost something of its bitterness,
and it may well be that it was just at this time that Dante,
having lost all hope of a return by force of arms, and now
relying on the influence of distinguished Guelf friends,
approached his native city, as a petitioner indeed, but one
conscious of entire innocence. This is his attitude in the
third chapter of the Convivio and in the lost letter begin-
ning © Popule mee, quid feci tibi 2°1 :

Boccaccio says expressly that Dante visited Guidosalvatico
in the Casentino. The chief possessions of Salvatico, ac-
cording to the documentary evidence known to me, were
Bagno and Montegranelli ; but Pelli? expressly mentions
Prato Vecchio, which lies high up in the Casentino.

An essential share in the hospitality extended to the poet
is attributed to Guido’s wife, Manentessa, daughter of
Buonconte of Montefeltro. It is said that it was at her
instigation that the poet wrote a four-lined epigram against
a monk who had spoken slightingly of the letter 7(??).
The story calls the Countess Caterina.’

1 See Leonardo Bruni.—ED. 2 P. 134, Mem. Stor. Dante.

3 The epigram runs somewhat thus: ‘Thou who dost scoff at the
ninth letter [2], and art of less account than that before it [4], go now
and double the one after it, for for naught else has nature fitted thee.’
Crescimbeni (Istoria della volgar poesia, 1. 355), who quotes the verse as
universally known, but does not give his source, tells the following
tale: A certain man had once scoffed at Dante because of his small
bodily stature (?), and had compared him to the least conspicuous letter
of the alphabet, namely z. But the poet put him to shame and silence
by this witty epigram.—Passerini, on the other hand (Table xvı1.), gives
the story as it stands in the text, but without crediting it. He adds, ‘I
think it probable that Dante wrote the four lines at the instance of the
wife of Alessandro da Romena, who was, as a matter of fact, called
Catherine, and who was much attached (?) to the poet.” [It is difficult
to understand how any serious student of Dante can concern himself
with the dull buffoonery of this play on the Latin cacare, or the still
duller stroke of attributing it to Dante.—ED.]
206 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Salvatico’s son, Ruggero (three other sons are doubtful)
was made Podesta of Florence, then entirely in the hands
of the Neri, very soon after the affair of Lastra, and he
fought subsequently for the Guelfs, partly under King
Robert, partly in the service of the Florentine common-
wealth, though with small success, against Uguccione della
Faggiola, Castruccio Castracani, and Guido Tarlati. Robert
had taken some of the ancient family feoffs of the Guidi
from the Ghibelline members of the family, and handed
them over to Robert, whence arose a sanguinary feud
during the twenties.

Early in the year 1300 Ruggero had a considerable
portion of the family possessions, especially in Romagna,
conveyed to him, and was released from the parental con-
trol; nor has Salvatico’s name been found in any document
later than 1299. We need not assume that Boccaccio con-
fused father and son, but it is not improbable, under the
circumstances, that the poet may have paid passing visits to
Ruggero also, though there is, as far as I know, no evidence
for the ‘friendship’ which Passerini! assumes. The de-
scription of S. Benedetto all’Alpe,2 which was then in
Ruggero’s possession, certainly gives the impression of
coming from one personally acquainted with the spot.?

Postscript to pp. 193-196.—Dr. Wiistenfeld has been
kind enough to point out to me that in Bonaini’s Acta

1 Table x1x. 2 Inf. xvi. 100.

3 Troya, who always supposes, when Dante describes, or even men-
tions, a place, that he had been staying in it a short time before he wrote
the words, bases the chronology of the poem on this idea, and concludes,
from the description of S. Benedetto, that canto xvi. of the Inferno
was written about 1304 (Veltro alleg. di D., pp. 73, 74).—It is more
than fifty years since I first pronounced against this theory (4ntologia,
1826, Settembre, p. 56 ; Dante-Forschungen, i. 433 [not translated in
this volume.—ED.]), and I have not yet reconciled myself with it. For
the reasons given in the first volume of these Studies (pp. 134-138)
[Essay x11. of the present volume], I consider that in this case it antedates
the composition of the middle portion of the Izferno by about ten years.
VII.—.DANTE AND THE CONTI GUIDI 207

Henrici VII. Romanorum Imperatoris, i. 226-230, published
last year by Berti, the diploma referred to above, p. 194, is
given in full, and entirely settles the question of the
descendants of Guido, son of the first Aghinolfo.

The deed of June 7th, 1312, states that it is a renewal
of the enfeoffment of Guido by the Emperor Frederick 11.
in April 1247 (cf. above, p. 183), the contents of which it
recites, and which refers back again to an older document
granting certain privileges to Aghinolfo 1, the father of
Guido, and to his brothers, who are named in the following
order : Guido, Tegrimus, Rogerius, and Merchoaldus (cf.
above, p. 174).

Now Henry vir’s diploma describes the receiver as
¢ Aghinolfo da Romena, Count Palatine in Tuscany,’ and
his father Guido, to whom Frederick’s enfeoffment was
addressed, as “son of the late Aghinolfo da Romena,’ and
this relationship between Frederick’s vassal Guido (father
of the Aghinolfo to whom Henry’s diploma is issued) and
the elder Aghinolfo (son of Guidoguerra and Gualdrada) is
repeatedly attested by Frederick’s diploma also.

Now this documentary evidence is quite irreconcilable
with Troya’s genealogy, while it agrees exactly with
the data quoted above, p. 194, from a Privilegium of Charles
1v. dated 1355. It is true that Troya gives us an
Aghinolfo da Romena (B. 1) whose father is named Guido,
and his grandfather Aghinolfo. But since Troya kills him
off before 1300 he cannot have received feoffs in 1312.
Troya’s other Aghinolfo (B. 2) has a father, Guido, indeed,
but his grandfather is a Guido too, not an Aghinolfo, as the
documents attest.
VI1i1.- RECENTLY DISCOVERED
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIERI

Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, Nos. 149-151. 1838.
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 473-487 (1869).]

THE great scarcity of information as to the circumstances
of Dante’s life is keenly felt by the Commentator as de-
priving him of one of the most important aids to the
comprehension of the poet’s works. This want is chiefly
attributable to the remarkable fact that Dante’s corre-
spondence, which, according to his early biographers,
was extensive and important, is for the most part lost.
Fifty years ago the dedication of the Paradiso to Can
Grande della Scala was the one solitary letter we pos-
sessed from his hand ; and even that, to say nothing of its
authenticity having recently been called in question more
than once, deserves to be called a preface rather than
a letter. Then Dionisi published the short but highly
characteristic letter, in which, with a noble dignity, Dante
rejects the offered permission to return from banishment
under the dishonourable conditions proposed to him. Beyond
this we had only later translations—presumably emanating
from Marsilio Ficino—of two letters; in one of which
Dante invites the Princes and Free States of Italy to show
themselves docile, united, and peace-loving to Henry vir
on his expedition to Rome ; while in the other he exhorts
the Emperor himself to leave Lombardy, whose intrigues
and struggles are losing him a precious year, and to descend
on Tuscany and attack the rebellious Guelf faction at the

fountain-head, in Florence.
208
ESSAYS ON DANTE 209

Some ten years ago I edited a collection of Dante’s
letters (limited to sixty presentation copies), and was
fortunate enough to be able to include in it the following
letters that had not previously been printed. First, the
original of the letter to Henry vil ; second, a missive to
the Italian Cardinals in conclave at Carpentras, dwelling on
the corruption of the clergy, and urging the restoration of the
Papal See to Rome ; and third, a letter to Cino of Pistoja,
in answer to a love-problem which he had propounded to
Dante. Since then I have constantly been on the watch for
every trace of similar salvage, and at last the zealous assist-
ance of friends at a distance! has enabled me to follow up
one of the tracks to a treasure above all expectation. A
short preliminary account of it will) I think, be of some
interest to a wider circle than that of specialists.

Among the mss. which Maximilian of Bavaria presented
in 1622 to Gregory xv., as a part of the Heidelberg booty,
is one marked No. 1729, a parchment, in 4to, which it
seems was written in Perugia, in the summer of 1394, by
one Francesco da Monte Pulciano. It contains the twelve
Eclogues of Petrarch, Dante’s well-known De Monarchia
(mss. of which are rare), and a collection of nine letters,
only one of which (the letter to Henry vir. which I had
already published) has hitherto been printed. Even for
this the ms. gives a considerable number of improved
readings. A second letter (that to the Princes of Italy) was
only known through the translation mentioned above, and
here it is at last in the original. The remaining seven
were previously entirely unknown. Three are definitely
ascribed to the poet by the old ms., the other four seem, both
from their position and contents, to be written by him also,
though not in his own name. We may say then that this
one discovery has about doubled our previous store.

1 Dr. Th. Heyse is the friend referred to. See Dante-Forsch., i. 508.
—Ebp.

oO
210 VIII..RECENTLY DISCOVERED

The eighth letter of the ms. collection, but the first if
we take them in chronological order, is addressed to
Cardinal Nicolaus of Ostia (of the Albertini of Prato) in
the name of the leader (Alessandro da Romena), the council,
and the whole body (capitancus, consilium et universitas)
of the banished Bianchi of Florence; Dante himself] as is
known, being one of the body of twelve which formed the
comitium. This was the Cardinal sent at the beginning of
1304 by Pope Benedict 1x. (who had only been raised to
the Papal See on October 22nd, 1303) to establish peace
between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Bianchi and Neri,
and the other political parties which under one name or
another divided almost every one of the cities in Tuscany,
the Maremma, and Romagna. He entered Florence on
March 10th, and rapidly succeeded in winning almost
unlimited confidence. Soon, however, a report was circu-
lated, strengthened presumably by forged letters, that he
favoured the banished Bianchi to the detriment of the Neri
who had remained in possession ; and having allowed him-
self to be induced to make a journey to Pistoja on May 8th,
he was unable to regain admission into Florence. The
present letter, written presumably in the course of March
‚1304, and from the Upper Arno valley, whither the majority
of the exiles had withdrawn, would certainly lead us to
imagine that the charge brought against the Pacificator by
the Neri was not altogether without foundation. It appears
from our letter that the Cardinal opened proceedings by
sending a certain Friar L. to the banished Bianchi, promising
them by letter complete restitution of their former rights
and the re-organisation of the city in a sense acceptable to
them. In return they are unable to find words adequate
to express their gratitude, and they declare that they only
desire such measure of humiliation for their adversaries as
may be needed for the true welfare of their city (‘to bring
back our adversaries to the furrows of sound citizenship’).
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIER] 211

They also promise, as the Cardinal demands, to refrain
from all acts of enmity against the Neri, and to leave the
final conditions of peace entirely in his hands. The letter
concludes :

¢ Wherefore with filial voice we right lovingly implore your
most clement tenderness to strive to bedew with the repose of
tranquillity and sleep that long-troubled Florence ; and as a tender
father to regard us, who have ever watched over her people,
and all who are allied with us, as commended to you ; and like
as we have never departed from the love of our Fatherland, so it
is our intent never to transgress the limits of your precepts, but
ever to obey all soever your commands, both duly and devoutly.’

The second letter is written to condole with Oberto and
Guido, Counts of Romena, on the death of their father’s
brother, Alessandro, the captain of the Bianchi just men-
tioned. Troya (Veltro alleg., p. 96) believes Alessandro to
have been still living at the close of 1308.1 But on the occa-
sion of Henry viL’s journey to Rome in 1311 the other
Conti Guidi, his kinsmen, are named, but not he. This
letter then dates from the period between 1308 and 1311,
the time when Dante’s fortunes were at the lowest, during
which presumably the Convivio and the work De Vulgari
Elguentia were written. With reference to the poet’s rela-
tions with the deceased, of which we have hitherto known
as good as nothing, we note the following passages :

¢The illustrious Count, Alexander, your uncle, who within
these few days has returned to the celestial fatherland, whence,
after the spirit, we had come, was my liege ; and to his memory,
so long as I shall live in time, I shall bear allegiance ; for his
munificence, which is now abundantly recompensed with fit
rewards beyond the stars, spontaneously made me his client long
years ago. . . . Let then the greatest of the Tuscan families, of
which he was so great an ornament, mourn ; let all his friends
and clients, whose hopes death hath so cruelly chastised, mourn ;

and, amongst these last, wretched I must mourn indeed, for when,
banished from my fatherland in unjust exile, I fell a-pondering on

1 Cf. above, p. 186, for Troya’s later opinion.—Ed.
212 VII.-RECENTLY DISCOVERED

my misfortunes, I was wont straightway to console myself with
dear hope in him. . . . Wherefore, my most dear lieges, I implore
you with suppliant exhortation that ye strive to mourn only in
due measure, and to put the things of the sense behind, save in
so far as they may be examples to you; and even as he most
justly made you, as nearest unto himself, the heirs of his posses-
sions, so do ye clothe yourselves with his most noble character
also. And on my own part [ have, beside all this, to excuse my-
self to your discretion for my absence from the tearful obsequies;
for neither negligence nor ingratitude, but the unlooked-for
poverty which my exile hath brought upon me, is the cause of
this. For she, like a fierce and persecuting foe, came upon me,
horseless and unarmed, and thrust me into the dungeon of her
captivity, wherein, though I struggle with all my might to escape,
she doth pitilessly scheme to hold me, and hath till now prevailed.’

Now in addition to the lively interest that this letter
awakens on its own account, it throws considerable light
on the question of the date of the Divine Comedy. The
date of the publication of the Inferno has been generally
assumed as about 1308, and the alternative view, that Dante
did not make the first part of his poem known till about
the year 1314, has found very few adherents. Dionisi first
defended it, and I attempted to establish it in the Parnasso
Italians [see Essay x11. of this volume] ; but to the best of
my knowledge the only other supporter it has met with is
Blanc, whose name however is a weighty one! But now,
surely, we must feel the absolute impossibility of Dante’s
writing to the Conti Guidi, in this manner, of their uncle,
at the very time when he was assigning their place in Hell
to him and two of his brothers (xxx. 77) as false coiners;
whereas when we reflect how ill these Counts realised
Dante’s hopes, what double-dealing they showed, in spite
of all their hypocritical professions towards Dante’s hero,
Henry vir, in 1311 and 1312, and how they were some-
times openly at enmity with him, we can understand
how the poet, writing about the year 1314, might wield

1 It is now very widely accepted.—ED.
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIERI 213

his lash against the man whom he had so lately belauded.
And to these grounds for assigning the completion of the
Inferno to as late a date as 1314, yet another may be added
which I had formerly failed to note. How could Dante
speak with such hatred of Clement v. (xix. 82), at the
time when there was still a good understanding between
this Pope, who was in fact regarded as a Ghibelline, and
the poet’s party, especially the Emperor himself? It would
have been impossible for Dante to write of the visible head
of the Church in such terms if the relations were still
existing which underlie the letter to the Princes of Italy,
now before us in the original. Therein he says, speaking
of the Emperor, at the close of 1310, On whom Clement,
now the successor of Peter, throws the light of the
Apostolic blessing.’

The third letter, to the Marquis Maroello Malaspina,
cannot have been written much later than the second.
The poet speaks of Malaspina as his master, and himself
as the latter’s bondman. Quite independently of the rest
of the contents, it is of the greatest interest to find Dante
writing in such a fashion to Maroello Malaspina. At the
beginning of the fourteenth century there were several
like-named members of the Malaspina family ; but from
all we know of the circumstances of their lives, it seems
hardly questionable that the one here addressed was the
most renowned of them all, namely, the Marchese di
Giovagallo, son of Manfredi Lancia, grandson of Currado
Antico (Purg. viii. 119), and husband of Alagia de’
Fieschi (Purg. xix. 142). Now, according to Boccaccio
(Life of Dante and Commentary to the Inferno), Benvenuto
da Imola, and Filippo Villani; Dante took refuge with this -
Maroello at a comparatively early stage of his exile, and it
was there that he received from friends who had remained
behind in Florence the first few cantos of the Divine
Comedy, which he had begun in that city but had himself
214 VIII..RECENTLY DISCOVERED

almost forgotten since. This would be about 1307. It was
Maroello, according to this account, who prevailed upon
his guest to continue the work he had begun ; and the poet
in gratitude dedicated the Purgatorio to him. Now we
have a treaty of peace between the Bishop of Luna and
several of the Malaspini, dated October 6th, 1306, in
which Dante is the representative of Franceschino of
Mulazzo, son of one of our Maroello’s uncles, and Maro-
ello and Corradino of Villafranca, grandsons of his other
uncle. This shows that Dante was even then living in
the valley of the Magra, and a friend of the family of
Malaspina. A passage of the Purgatorio (viii. 133) bears
further witness to the existence of intimate relations
between Dante and the family at about that time. But
it has been justly observed that we cannot possibly think
of Count Maroello of Giovagallo as Dante’s host in 1307,
for he had been for years at the head of the party opposed
to the poet, and had dealt a crushing blow to the Bianchi at
Serravalle in 1302 (Inf. xxiv. 148). It was he too who
won Pistoja, the last Ghibelline city in Tuscany, after
a memorable siege in which the inhabitants were reduced
to the direst straits from starvation. He conquered it
for Florence and Lucca, and subsequently governed it as
Capitano del Popolo in the name of the latter republic until
the spring of 1307. Under these circumstances it could
hardly have been Maroello to whose protection Dante
commended himself at this season. But things changed
during the next year or two. For one thing, Celestine v.’s
apparent attitude of mediator had brought the parties
nearer together; for another, Dante had lost all hope of
the triumph of the Ghibellines ; and finally there had been
serious misunderstandings between Maroello and the Guelfs
of Florence in 1308. All this would make it less surpris-
ing to find the poet, who was already on terms of friend-
ship with the family, in a more intimate connection with
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIERI 215

their head in the year 1309 or 1310, in spite of previous
hostility, especially as about a year later we find the same
Maroello highly honoured by Henry himself and sent to
Brescia as Imperial Vicar. In similar fashion Dante’s last
resort was the house of another Guelf, Guido Novello of
Polenta.

Now the newly-discovered letter almost startles us by
its revelation that this possibility of Dante’s having found
a refuge with Maroello Malaspina shortly before Henry’s
expedition to Rome turns out to be a fact. So the reports of
the early biographers are not pure inventions, and the modern
writers who have held that Dante was only entertained by
Franceschino Malaspina of Mulazzo are shown to have been
mistaken. Even the story of the cantos of the Commedia
discovered and sent after the poet may be true in sub-
stance, although distorted. Perhaps the papers contained
the canzoni subsequently expounded in the Convivio.
Maybe Dino Frescobaldi, whom Boccaccio mentions, sent
them to Franceschino, who was at that time Dante’s host,
and whom the saga afterwards confused with the more
celebrated Maroello. It is even possible that this event
really gave the impulse to the elaboration of the Convivia.
Scolari and Fraticelli (Opere minori di Dante, Florence, 1862,
iii. pp. 24 sg.) have indeed lately maintained that the second
and fourth parts of this work were written in 1297, the
first and third in 1314; but the untrustworthy nature of
their conclusions may be judged by the circumstance that
their main argument assumes that Gherardo da Camino
(who is mentioned in the fourth book as now dead) did
not survive the end of the thirteenth century, whereas as
a matter of fact he died on March 26th, 1307 [compare
above, p. 92].

But let not this confirmation of the tradition of Dante’s
relations to Maroellolead any one to accept the story of
the dedication of the Purgatorio, or the string of inventions
216 VII..RECENTLY DISCOVERED

contained in the forged letter of the monk Hilarius, which
no competent judge should allow himself to regard as
genuine. Maroello’s wife, Alagia, appears as a widow as
early as 1315, and the Purgatorio cannot have been com-
pleted before 1318 or 1319.1

The letter is comparatively short, but its contents are
almost more startling than its superscription. The writer
tells of his return to the sources of the Arno—perhaps
to Count Guido Salvatico, second cousin of Alessandro
mentioned above—and how he often turns longing eyes
back on Maroello’s court, which he has just left, and
where his insusceptibility to female charms had not in-
frequently been a subject of wonder. But now, he con-
tinues, he has seen a lady, the love of whom has so
irresistibly overcome him that it has thrust all other
thoughts from his breast, and completely transformed him.
A canzone further expressing his emotion seems to have
accompanied the letter, and we can have no hesitation in
identifying it with the one beginning ¢ Amor dacché convien
pur ch’io mi doglia’ (the tenth in Kannegiesser’s and my
edition), for the matter of the poem is in striking harmony
with this prose picture. Dionisi, therefore, had almost
exactly hit the mark with respect to this canzone in dating
it about 1311.2

But the most remarkable, as well as the longest of the
letters (not counting the address to the Princes of Italy,
of which we already had a translation), is the fourth. It is
dated from the confines of Tuscany, at the sources of the
Arno, March 31st, 1311, about the date therefore of
Henry vir’s march upon Cremona and Brescia. It bears

1 See above, p. 46, note 2.—1869. [The credit of Frate Ilario’s
letter does not seem likely to be re-established. But since Hauvette
has shown (Mél. &’ Arch. et d’Hist., 1894, xiv. 87 sq.) that the Ms. in
which it appears is an autograph of Boccaccio’s, the whole case requires

at least restatement.—ED.]
2 Cf. above, p. 94 and Dante's lyr. Gedichte, ii. 234-239.—1869.
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIER] 217

the superscription ¢ D. 4I., the Florentine, exiled counter to
his deserts, to the most wicked Florentines within,” and is
by no means to be confused with the lost letter written a
few years before in the tone of a suppliant, of which
Leonardo Bruni has preserved the beginning. This letter
of ours, however, must also have been known to Bruni, for
it can only be in reference to it that he says :

‘Now while he was thus hoping for a return by way of
pardon, the election of Henry of Luxemburg as Emperor took
place ; and first his election and then his expedition threw all
Italy into a fever of expectation. Whereon Dante could not
hold his purpose of awaiting grace, but, exalting himself with
disdainful mind, began to revile them who were in possession of
the city, calling them infamous and evil, and threatening them
with the punishment they deserved at the hands of the Emperor,
from which, he said, it was evident that they could have no
escape.’

After a short introduction, in which the poet seeks to
demonstrate by history and by revelation the necessity of
the universal dominion of Rome, now inherited by the
German Empire, and speaks of the Pope and the Princes of
the Church with less respect than he had shown only a
year previously, he continues :

‘But you, who transgress law divine and human, whom the
dire greed of cupidity hath found ready to be drawn into every
crime, doth not the dread of the second death pursue you?
Since ye first and alone, rejecting the yoke of liberty, have
murmured against the glory of the Roman Prince, the king of
the world and the minister of God, and on the plea of prescrip-
tive right have refused the duty of submission which ye owed,
and have rather risen up in the insanity of rebellion!’

Further on his reproach of his opponents for an inference
that might be drawn from their principles proves at any
rate, whatever else we may think of it, how far he was from
desiring in any way to injure the unity of the Church.

¢ Wherefore, then, stirring up so vain a thought as this, do
ye, a second race of Babylonians, desert the pious Empire, and
218 VIIL.-.RECENTLY DISCOVERED

seck to establish new kingdoms, making the civic life ot
Florence one and that of Rome another? Wherefore should
not the like envy attack the Apostolic monarchy, that if Delia
[the Empire] be reduplicated in heaven, Delius [the Papacy]
should be reduplicated in like fashion ?’

The poet’s charge that the Florentines have not shrunk
from giving voice to their disobedience in a resolution of
their own council would seem to refer to the defiant
answer to the royal intercession in the Arezzo incident,
July 1310 (Villani, viii. 120; Barthold, Der Rimerzug
Konig Heinrichs, 1830, i. 380). He then continues:

‘But if your insolent arrogance hath so bereft you of the dew
of the Most High (even as the mountains of Gilboa) that it be
no terror to have resisted the counsels of the Eternal senate, nor
a terror that ye are not terrified, surely that base terror, human to
wit and mundane, cannot be lacking when the inevitable ship-
wreck of your proudly exalted blood and your right lamentable
rapine hastens on! Or do ye trust in any defence, girt by your
contemptible vallum? Oh harmonious in ill, oh blinded by
wondrous greed, what shall it avail to have girt you with a
vallum, and to have fortified you with outworks and battlements
when, terrible in gold, that eagle shall swoop down on you who,
soaring now over the Pyrenees, now over Caucasus, now over
Atlas, ever strengthened by the breathing of the soldiery of
heaven, looked down of old upon vast oceans in his flight? Oh
most wretched of men! How shall it be with you, when ye
stand dumb in the presence of him who shall tame the insane
Hesperia? The hope which ye cherish in vain, and against all
virtuous use, shall not be furthered by this your resistance ; but
rather shall such an obstacle make the advent of the just king
flame up the more ; and mercy, who ever accompanieth his army,
shall fly away indignant ; and where ye think to see the corridor
of false liberty, there shall ye fall into the dungeons of slavery
indeed. For we are to believe that by a wondrous judgment of
God it doth sometimes come to pass that where the impious
man thinketh to escape the punishment he doth deserve, he is
hurled therein the more grievously ; and he who hath fought,
knowing and willing it, against the divine will, must needs
wrestle therewith when he knoweth and willeth it not.

¢The fortifications which ye reared not in prudence against
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIERI 219

necessity, but changed at random and for wantonness, which gird
no Pergama risen once again—these ye shall mournfully gaze upon
as they fall in ruins before the battering-ram, and are burnt with
fire. Ye shall see that populace which now doth rage hither
and thither, for and against, then of one mind clamouring dire
threats against you, for they may not be hungry and timid at
one time. Ye shall look upon the grievous sight of your
temples, thronged with the daily concourse of matrons, given up
to the spoiler; and of your wondering and unknowing little
ones, destined to expiate the sins of their sires. And—if my
presaging mind be not deceived, as it announceth that which it
hath learned from truth-telling signs, and arguments that may
not be gainsaid—your city, worn out with long-drawn sufferings,
shall be given at last into the hands of the aliens, the greatest
part of you scattered in death and captivity, while the few that
are left to endure their exile shall look on and weep. And,
briefly to sum up all, what sufferings that glorious city of
Saguntum bore in faithfulness, for liberty, those same must ye
of force endure shamefully, in perfidy, for slavery.’

The Florentines, continues the poet, are not to look for
the unexpected good fortune of the men of Parma when
they surprised Vittoria, the military headquarters of
Frederick 1r., but rather let them remember the judg-

ment which fell upon the unhappy Milan at the hands of
Barbarossa.

¢ Nor in your blindness do ye perceive the lust that hath sway
over you, lulling you with poisonous whisper, holding you back
with scourging threats, making you captive to the law of sin, and
forbidding you to obey the sacred laws that copy the image of
natural justice ; the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be
free, not only is proved to be no slavery, but to him who looketh
in clearness is seen itself to be supreme liberty. For what else is
liberty save the free course of the will to act, which the laws
make easy for those who submit to them? Since then they
alone are free who of their own will obey the law, what are ye
to think of yourselves who, whilst ye make parade of the love of
liberty, conspire against the universal laws, and against the
Prince of the laws? :

¢ Oh most wretched offspring of Fiesole! Oh Punic barbarism
once again! Do the things that I have touched on strike too

 
220 VIIL.—_RECENTLY DISCOVERED

little terror into you? Nay, I believe that, for all the hope ye
simulate in countenance and lying word, ye tremble in your
waking hours and ever start from your slumbers shuddering at
the omens that have crept into your dreams, or remembering the
counsels of the day-time.’

In conclusion Dante warns his hostile fellow-citizens
that the time for repentance is past, and the Emperor,
once so gracious, has now naught but punishment in store
for them.

It was only twenty-nine months later that the bier at
Buonconvento gave the mournful answer to the poet’s
threats !

The three last and shortest letters are not written in
Dante’s name, but in that of the Countess G. (the ms.
only gives the initial) of Battifolle to the Empress
Margaretha of Brabant, wife of Henry vii. The last, and
evidently latest, is dated from Poppi, in the upper valley
of the Arno, May 18th, 1311. The first may have been
written in the summer of 1310, when Henry was sending
his agents to various parts of Italy to win over the estranged
and to encourage the well-disposed. The substance of
the letter is confined to ardent expressions of gratitude
for the extreme graciousness with which the Empress has
imparted news of her own and her royal husband’s doings.
The second speaks enthusiastically of the sympathetic
rejoicing of the writer over the happy course of affairs of
which the Empress has informed her (perhaps the events in
Asti, November, 1310), and finally the third contains
further assurances of the writer’s rejoicing in the progress
of events, and of her continued attachment, ending with
short accounts of the health and circumstances of the writer,
her husband, and her children, in reply to the Empress’s
express inquiries.

Thus we see Margaretha, the loyal companion of the
Emperor in the dangers and toils of his expedition, already
LETTERS OF DANTE ALLIGHIER] 221

beginning to exert herself in her husband’s cause from
afar, and by a gracious word in season striving to win him
support even among the Guelf nobility. The writer of the
letter subscribes herself Countess Palatine of Tuscany, a
title assumed by all the Conti Guidi of the different
lines. Most likely she is the wife of Guido, and
mother therefore of the Federigo Novello mentioned in
Purg. vi. 17. But it seems probable that Dante actually
composed the letters, from several words and turns which
frequently recur in his Latin works, and from the circum-
stance that it was just at this time, as we have already
pointed out, that he was with the Conti Guidi in the upper
valley of the Arno. This however is no reason whatever
for assuming, with Troya, that Dante was once held
prisoner in the Castle of Porciano.
IX..GEMMA DONATI

[Dante- Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 48-86 (1879).]

I. THE ORIGIN OF THIS ESSAY

IN the first issue of the Rivista internazionale, Britannica,
etc., 1 published a short article entitled ‘A Question
as to Gemma Donati’ My illustrious friend Dr.
Scartazzini, whose signal services to the study of Dante
need no testimonial from me, was moved to contribute
an answer characterised by a courtesy too often absent
in literary discussions. I replied, and my learned opponent
maintained his opinion in a second article. I gladly
recognise the force of many of the arguments he brought
to bear upon my doubts, but I cannot consider myself
vanquished, and I have thought well to gather together
in the following pages the arguments urged on either side,
sometimes repeating word for word what I wrote in the
articles in question, sometimes explaining and recasting
them, or omitting what I now feel to be of less im-
portance.

II. BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE

Every one knows that Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante,
speaks with but scant favour of the poet’s wife, and that
Giannozzo Manetti gives her a still worse character. The
supreme reverence which we all feel for our great hero, and
which we would so gladly extend to everything pertaining
to him, has induced the greater number of the biographers
of our poet, at any rate in modern times, to discredit

Boccaccio’s record. They stigmatise him as a mere gossip,
222
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 223

who, in Leonardo Bruni Aretino’s words, ¢ drops the weighty
and substantial parts of Dante’s life, passing them over in
silence,” while he taxes his invention to devise stories fit
for a “place in those ten amorous Days wherein enamoured
ladies and gallant youths recounted the hundred tales.’

This severe judgment, repeated by innumerable sub-
sequent writers, has been justly challenged by Baldelli,
Gamba, and not a few more, amongst whom I need only
mention that most accurate scholar Paur, and Boccaccio’s
latest biographer, Marco Landau.

III. TWO CLASSES OF STATEMENT IN BOCCACCIO

If I am not mistaken, we must distinguish between two
elements, of widely diverse character, in the biography in
question. On the one side there are the long ramblings,
or the passionate discourses, in which Messer Giovanni
delights to display his eloquence. And to these we may
add the miraculous inventions and prophetic dreams. On
the other side stand positive facts related on the faith of
persons in a position to know the truth. We may quite
well refuse to assign any importance whatever to the
mythical tales, and at the same time place perfect con-
fidence in the facts. As Gamba well observes: ¢ Readers
whose taste is repelled by the style of the early writings
cannot reconcile themselves to the constant apostrophes
and exclamations, or the perpetual digressions that draw
them away from the subject-matter. But books must be
read with a mind always conscious of the age in which
they were written.’ And it was quite in harmony with
the taste of Boccaccio’s time to clothe known historical
facts in miraculous garb. Even Livy, ‘who errs not,
tells us of many events which, since the day of Giambatista
Vico, have ceased to be believed as facts, and yet we have
perfect confidence in his account of the second Punic War.
224 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Giov. Villani tells of King Attalante, of Dardanus, and
the three Priams, as though he had been personally ac-
quainted with them ; but while we have no hesitation in
setting down these stories as medieval fables we accept as
perfectly authentic all that the same writer tells us of
Giano della Bella and the ordinances of Justice, of Charles
of Valois, or of Walter, Duke of Athens.

IV. BOCCACCIO’'S CHRONOLOGICAL MISTAKES

Very similar considerations apply to the dates which we
find in Boccaccio’s work. If the day of the Elevation of
the Holy Cross, A.p. 1321, is specified as the date of the
poet’s death at Ravenna, we do not hesitate to accept it
without reservation, for we know that thirty years later the
author passed some time at Ravenna, and was in communi-
cation with several persons who had been closely united to
Dante by ties of blood or friendship. Moreover, he had
the opportunity of verifying the date by inspecting the
sepulchral stone. But if Boccaccio declares that the
Monarchia was composed by Dante ‘on the coming of the
Emperor Henry vir,’ and that the composition of the little
book De Vulgari Eloquentia was begun by the author hard
upon his death, and was thereby interrupted, we shall at
once ask how the biographer can have obtained this infor-
mation. Precise dates, giving the year and day of com-
position, are not customary in manuscripts; and though
we cannot actually say that it is impossible that Dante may
have told his daughter Beatrice or Pier Giardino when and
why he set himself to write these works, yet such con-
fidences seem far from characteristic of Allighieri. It will
therefore be natural to conclude that when Boccaccio
assigned these dates, he was reduced, just as we are, to
conjectures founded on internal evidence. It is true that
he positively affirms ‘nella venuta di Arrigo vir . . . fece
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 225

uno libro . . . il cui titolo € Monarchia, © gia vicino alla
sua morte compose uno libretto . . . il quale egli intitolo
De Vulgari Eloquentia, and not ¢ Henry viL’s expedition
is supposed to have given Dante the impulse to compose
his three books de Monarchiay etc. But do not we, in
this hypercritical age, still say, ¢ Virgil composed his second
Eclogue in 45 B.c. or alittle earlier,’ although this date, which
we give as a positive fact, is merely founded upon certain
combinations based on the events alluded to in the poem ?
Now suppose fresh critical researches should induce the
learned world to change the date, would it not be quite
unfair to refuse all credence to our statement of facts
within our knowledge, because, following the general
belief, we had spoken of the date positively ? For instance,
it would be most unjust to denounce as unworthy of con-
fidence a historian who, some twenty years ago, should
have referred to an event vouched for by the supposed
Ricordano Malespini as indubitable history.

V. FICTIONS AS ADORNMENT OF FACTS

One more reservation must be made as to Boccaccio’s
veracity. A fact which he relates may be perfectly true
in substance, but those who told it him may have already
embellished it, or he himself] yielding to his story-telling
habit, may have consciously adorned it. Not unfrequently
we find this nucleus of fact swathed, as it were, in
wrappings which quite frankly proclaim themselves to be
fictitious.

Vi. THE RECOVERY OF THE FIRST SEVEN CANTOS
OF THE DIVINE COMEDY

For example we need not hesitate to accept as genuine

the fact related by Boccaccio twice over,! that either

1 In his Vita di Dante, Milanesi’s edition, 59 sg., and his Commentary
on Inf. viii. 1, in vol. ii. pp. 129 sg. of the same edition,

P
226 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Andrea di Leon Poggi, son of Dante’s sister, or Dino Perini,
while searching in the exiled poet’s desks to discover certain
documents in support of Gemma’s claims with regard to
her dowry, discovered some poems which Dante had
written before he was exiled. Nor have we any reason to
doubt that Dino Frescobaldi, to whom Andrea showed the
papers, marvelling “both at the beautiful and polished and
ornate style of speech, and at the depth of meaning which he
seemed to see hidden under the fair crust,” despatched them
to the Marchese Maruello Malaspina, in whose house the
author was staying at the time. And it is not at all unlikely
that the latter, rejoicing in the rediscovery of the works
which he had supposed to be lost, occupied himself with them
afresh in one way or another. But we have good reason
for not believing that the poems contained in these papers
were really the first seven cantos in the Inferno, and for re-
jecting the hypothesis that the record of this fact is to be
found in the poet’s note at the beginning of the eighth
canto, ‘I say, continuing,’ etc.

If, as we may suppose, the poems discovered in the desk
were some, or all, of the Canzoni which Dante had de-
termined to annotate, then we can perfectly well under-
stand that, after the Comedy was published and had
secured such an enormous reputation, any person who had
had a hand in discovering these papers might forget, after
the lapse of years, whether what he had read was Terza
Rima or Canzoni, and might endeavour to get some credit
for the completion of the Divine Poem. And in truth
Andrea Poggi and Dino Perini claimed the same identical
share in the discovery ; and Messer Giovanni, not knowing
which to believe, concludes by saying, ¢ Now how this thing
happened or may have happened I leave to the judgment
of my readers. Let each one believe what he thinks true
or most likely.’

For the rest it must be admitted that in this matter
IX.—-.GEMMA DONATI 227

Boccaccio is far from showing the want of critical acumen so
often attributed to him; for after telling us in the Com-
mentary all that Andrea Poggi on the one side and Dino
Perini on the other had related to him, he produces an
excellent argument for believing that the first cantos of
the Inferno can not have been composed before the exile of
the poet, and discovered again in 1307 or thereabouts.

Vii. THE LAST THIRTEEN CANTOS

Another example is furnished by the story of the con-
cluding cantos of the Paradiso. If the Purgatorio cannot
have been published earlier than the end of 1318 or the
beginning of 1319! we may well believe that the two
years, or little more, of the poet’s life which still remained,
must have been devoted almost entirely to the accomplish-
ment of the last and most arduous part of his work. Nor
do I see any reason for refusing credence to the story of
the thirteen cantos sought in vain for eight months, and at
last discovered beneath a mat nailed to the wall of the
poet’s chamber. As Boccaccio assures us? the story was
told him by a worthy man of Ravenna, whose name was
Piero Giardino, ‘long time a disciple of Dante’s.’ But he
adds miraculous circumstances which we do not hesitate to
pronounce fabulous. One night, hard upon morning, his
father’s shade appeared to Jacopo, Dante’s son, and showed
him in a dream where the concluding cantos of the work
were concealed. Pier Giardino, to whom Jacopo came to
tell his dream, went with him that very night before break
of day to the house in which Dante had lived till the time
of his death, and found the mat as indicated in the dream,
though no one had noticed it before, and there at once
they discovered the papers behind it, already moulded by
the damp, and all but rotting.

1 See Essay x11. in this volume. 2 Vita, pp. 62 sq.
228 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Here, too, it is more than doubtful whether Boccaccio
invented this dream. He tells: it indeed ; but it is on the
authority of Giardino and of the poet’s own son. I know
not whether Pier Giardino was still living when Boccaccio
composed this biography (that is to say, according to the
Conte Baldelli)! in 1351, but perhaps more probably in
13542), but we know that Jacopo did not die much before
1360, and therefore he would have had plenty of time to
disclaim a story wrongly foisted upon him. Let us note,
moreover, that dreams and visions were quite after the
fashion of the age. As many as seven visions are recorded
in our poet’s Vita Nuova. There are three in the Purga-
torio. ‘The Paradiso relates the dream of St. Dominic’s
mother as a historical fact, and the author himself calls the
sacred poem a vision.?

VIII. DID BOCCACCIO INTEND THE ‘VITA FOR
HISTORY OR ROMANCE?

After indicating the many portions of the Vita di Dante
which can make no pretension to historical truth, let us ask
whether Boccaccio took the röle of historian in the re-
mainder of his work ; and if he did whether he was in a
position to give us authentic details.

Scartazzini 4 does not hesitate to answer the question in
the negative. It was not Boccaccio’s purpose, he says,
to ascertain historical truth, or, in other words, to write
Allighieri’s history. He then continues: ‘I have said, and
I repeat, that Boccaccio wrote a poem or romance, which-
ever you like, and not a history.” In proof of this he
adduces a blunder as to the date of Pope Urban 1v.’s death,

1 Vita di Giov. Boccacci, pp. 378, 379.
2 Marc. Landau, Gio. Boccaccio, sein Leben und seine Werke (Stuttg.

1877), p. 180. La 2
3 Par. xvii. 128. 4 Rivista internazionale, p. 170.
/

IX.—GEMMA DONATI 229

and certain inaccuracies or mistakes relating to the events
of Dante’s life or relative to his works.

IX. THE GHIBELLINE FANATICISM ATTRIBUTED
TO DANTE

As the most marked examples of these mistakes the
learned author quotes the following passage :! ‘In Romagna
it is matter of greatest notoriety that any feeble woman or
little child who had but spoken in condemnation of the
Ghibelline faction would have stirred him to such madness
as to move him to hurl stones at such had they not held
their peace ; and with such passion he lived even until his
death.

Let us note, however, that in this passage Boccaccio
does not profess to report a fact that had actually occurred,
but simply repeats a popular opinion concerning Dante, to
wit that he was so hot a Ghibelline that he would have
been capable of hurling stones, etc. Now we can easily
understand that in a thoroughly Guelf city, such as
Ravenna at that time was, Dante might have been con-
sidered a fanatical Ghibelline. He was considered so when
he lived, and the reputation has lasted to our own day. If
an examination of his works now convinces us that, in spite of
all the Guelf hatred which he had to endure, Dante was far
removed from any Ghibelline fanaticism, this is no ground
for denouncing as a romancer the author who repeats the
current judgment of the people of Romagna, which for
that matter was quite in accord with the belief concerning
Dante current in Florence itself. The like confusions and
errors are not unknown even in our own time, in spite of
all the printed books which make the verification of facts,
in the majority of instances, so easy a matter. Any one
who made such mistakes in our day would incur the charge

Vita di Dante, p. 56.
230 ESSAYS ON DANTE

of inaccuracy, but no one would suppose that it was his
deliberate intention to compose a romance and not an
historical work.

X. SOURCES OF THE ACCOUNTS GIVEN BY BOCCACCIO

Let us now ask whether Boccaccio was in a position to
ascertain the truth as to the events of Dante’s life.

No one would assert that laborious researches in the
archives or the deciphering of half-obliterated letters was
at all in Boccaccio’s line. But thirty years after the poet’s
death tradition must still have preserved a number of
anecdotes and facts concerning him. In the middle of the
century the number of persons who had known him during
his life, or had been in relations with his nearest relatives,
must have been considerable.

And in fact Boccaccio himself assures us! that he was
acquainted with Andrea Poggi, ¢ who was wonderfully like
Dante in his features, and also in his stature and person ;
and stooped a little, as they say Dante did. He was a man
of no learning, but of good natural capacity, and was orderly
and pleasing in his discourse and character.” He adds, that
having formed Andrea’s acquaintance he often heard him
discourse of the character and ways of Dante, and it was
a satisfaction to him to have preserved, in his memory, at
least the greater part of what he said.

Another acquaintance of Boccaccio’s who was in a posi-
tion to have full knowledge of the events of Dante’s life
was Dino Perini, a Florentine citizen and ‘a man of
intelligence, and, according to his own account, as intimate
and friendly with Dante as could be.’ 2

The third acquaintance of Dante’s known to our bio-
grapher was ¢ that worthy Ravennese whose name was Piero
Giardino, long time a disciple of Dante’s.” 2

1 Commentary on Izf. viii., vol. ii., p. 129. 2 Ibid, p- 132.
8 Vita, p. 62.
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 231

Besides these three, Boccaccio had access to a fourth
source of information, which was perhaps the most important
of them all. I mean Sister Beatrice, a nun of the Monastery
of S. Stephano at Ravenna, to whom, in the name of the
Company of Or’ San Michele, Messer Giovanni conveyed
a present of ten gold florins in 1350.) This second
daughter of the poet, to whom he had given the name of
the only woman he had ever really loved, had been with
him during the last period of his life ; and we may suppose
that with her, the last member of his family who was
near to him, he may have conversed without reserve as to
the vicissitudes of his life. It is not a bad idea of Baldelli’s 2
that this journey to Ravenna may have given Boccaccio
the impulse to compile his Life of Dante; and to my
thinking the tears and the reminiscences of the exile’s
daughter would be more conducive to this result than the
inspection of his tomb.

We therefore know the names of four persons, relatives
or friends of Dante’s, known and consulted by his bio-
grapher ; and it is likely enough that there were many
more not specially named by him, who supplied him with
materials that deserve the utmost confidence.

For all these reasons I am far from sharing the severe
judgment of Scartazzini and not a few others, and am
completely at one with Baldelli when he says : ¢ The work
which preserves so many important details concerning
Allighieri, in which he is depicted with the hand of a
master, in which he is so eloquently extolled by so great
a contemporary, is a precious jewel of Italian literature,
which ‘confers no less glory on its author than on its
subject.’ *

1 Fraticelli, Storia della vita di Dante, pp. 301, 302.

2 Ub. sup.

3 P. 105: Dr. Marco Landau, the latest biographer of Boccaccio,
whose judgment deserves the highest respect, is in complete agreement
with Baldelli. He says, on p. 180: ¢ This earliest biography of Dante
232 ESSAYS ON DANTE

XI. THE FIRST PASSAGE. DANTE'S MARRIAGE
WITH GEMMA DONATI

Let us now examine the passages in which Boccaccio
speaks of Gemma. When we look closely we find that
there are only two that are unquestionable, and one that
may be fairly challenged.

In the first passage, after speaking of Beatrice’s death
and of the despairing grief of the poet, his tears, and sighs,
which nevertheless in progress of time ‘began in great part
to go their way without return,’ the author continues :?!

«When his relatives saw that his tears were somewhat eased,
and were aware that his hot sighs were giving some little respite
to his travailed bosom, they began once again to ply the forlorn
one with the consolations2 that had so long been lost on him,
and he, though up to that hour he had obstinately closed his ears
against them, now began not only to open them somewhat, but
to listen gladly to what might be said with respect to his com-
forting; which thing his relatives perceiving, in hope not only to
draw him altogether out of his sorrows, but also to bring him into

 

is the fairest monument that Boccaccio could have raised, whether to
himself or to the poet he reverenced so highly, though many modern his-
torians of literature would deny the work all merit. It is true enough that
Boccaccio entered upon no laborious investigations . . . as to the place
in which Dante spent each day of his life. He did not write page after
page, as many a modern pedant of a biographer might, on the question
of whether such and such an event of his hero’s life took place on the
eleventh or twelfth of a given month. But he has painted Dante for
us as he really was. With a firm hand he has so drawn him that we
seem to see and to hear him. Not a touch is wanting that would help
us to a knowledge of his character. He has compiled his biography
from his recollections and from oral tradition, and has not cunningly
extracted it from Dante’s works; but if we compare Dante as he reveals
himself to us in his works with Dante as he meets us almost as a living
man in Boccaccio’s biography, we see that not a touch is wanting. We
see before us the haughty statesman, conscious of his worth, and equally
severe in his demands on himself and on others, the devout theologian,
the ardent worshipper of Beatrice,—in a word, the poet of the Divine
Comedy.’

1 Vita, pp. 14, 15.

2 Others, Mss., read (with the editio princeps [?] of 1477), ¢to recon-
sole the disconsolate one.’
IX.— GEMMA DONATI 233

gladness, took counsel together to purpose giving him a wife, in
order that like as his lost lady had been the cause of his sadness
so might the newly gained one be of gladness. And having
found a damsel who was meet for his condition, with such dis-
course as they deemed most suasive they opened their intent to
him. And, not to touch on each point in particular, after long
conflict, and not without the lapse of a long space of time be-
tween, their discourses brought the effect to pass and he was
married.’

And a page further on:

‘His relatives and friends gave Dante a wife that his tears for
Beatrice might have an end; but I know not whether for this
(though the tears passed away, or rather, perhaps, had already
passed), the amorous flame, departed; yet I do not think it.
But, even granted that it were quenched, many fresh burdens,
yet more grievous, might take its place.’

X11. SECOND PASSAGE. SEPARATION BETWEEN
HUSBAND AND WIFE

After having dealt with great prolixity on all the un-
pleasant experiences which marriage might bring upon
Dante, he ends the discourse with the following passage,
which we have spoken of as the second :

¢ Assuredly I do not affirm that these things chanced to Dante ;

for I do not know it; though true it is, that whether such
like things or others were the cause, when once he had parted

 

1 The passage occurs in a much contracted form in the other biography,
also attributed to Boccaccio, which is found in a considerable number of
Mss., and was printed by Mussi in his splendid edition of the Divine Comedy
(Milan, 1809, fol.). [Cf. p. 280 of this volume.] ¢To this thorn [his
amours with Pargoletta and the Alpine lady] was added another, per-
haps as sharp ; for when the assuaging of his tears for Beatrice’s death
gave his friends some hopes for his life, it at once came into the heads
of his friends that if they gave him a maiden to wife, she, who though
departed from this world, had left her image in his breast in perpetual
supremacy, might be wholly cast out therefrom. And he being disposed
thereto, they gave instant effect to their design. There may be some
who will approve of this plan ; and this because they do not reflect upon
the danger that lies in quenching a temporal fire by an eternal one.’
234 ESSAYS ON DANTE

from her (who was given him as a consolation in his sufferings!)
never would he go where she was, nor would he suffer her to
come to where he was, albeit he was the father of certain
children by her.

There is less reserve in the expressions of the abbreviated
life :

¢. .. What shall I say if jealousy intervenes? What if
anger deepens at last into hatred? I hasten over this matter,
for it will suffice for the wise if I only touch upon it. But,
whatever others may be (to return at last to the matter in
hand), such at least was the one who had been given to Dante,
that when once he was parted from her he never would return
to where she was, nor would have her come where he was.’

The authority we are to assign to this compendium will
be considered in a short article which may be regarded as
supplementary to the present essay ; for the rest, even these
words do not accuse Gemma of the disagreeable qualities
before enumerated as customary in wives, but only say that
whatever the cause may have been, she was such that
when Dante was separated from her by exile or some other
circumstance he never wished to meet her again.

XIII. DEDUCTIONS FROM THESE TWO PASSAGES
1. Dante's marriage not a love-match.

For two things, then, we may say the biographer vouches.
First, that it was not love but the counsels of his relatives
that led Allighieri to marry Gemma ; and, secondly, that
when once they were separated they never met again.

I grant that a mariage de convenance may turn out
happily, or at any rate may be free from domestic alterca-
tions ; but there is certainly less prospect of this than in
the case of a union between two persons already bound
together by true love. And Dante’s marriage was a more
risky matter than a similar union would have been in many
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 235

other cases. His love for Beatrice, who ‘held the citadel
of his mind till his last breath,” was unexhausted, and this
was an ill augury for his marriage ; for such a love could
scarcely fail in course of time to cause increasing jealousy
on the part of his wife. A still further danger to the
harmony of the pair was the relation of his wife to the
Donati, who stood at the head of the party opposed to
Dante from the opening of the new century onwards. Let
us listen to the words of Cesare Balbo, who for that matter
is one of Gemma’s champions. After speaking of the
haughty manners of Corso Donati and of his enmity to
Messer Vieri de’ Cerchi and Guido Cavalcanti, he goes
on:!

‘Add the indignation which rises of itself in a noble heart at
the sight of outrages, even if it is not personally affected by them,
and we shall understand that Dante’s marriage with Gemma
Donati would draw him into a hornets’ nest of irritation and
hostility, in which Gemma may have had no part, but which

would not tend to endear her to him. All this as a general pro-
position appears to me practically certain.’

Let us add to Balbo’s very just remarks, that as their
family increased, Gemma would naturally expect her hus-
band to turn all his thoughts to the wise administration of
the common stock (rather scanty than otherwise), to turn
it to the best account, and, unless of an exceptionally
exalted disposition, would surely be vexed with him for
neglecting all this and giving himself up to frequenting
¢ the schools of the religious orders and the disputations of
philosophers,’ composing ¢moral odes,” and sitting up all
night long studying the works of Aquinas and Albertus
Magnus.

That our poet’s resources were in truth restricted we
may see from authentic documents which, as far as I have
noted, have not been taken into consideration by Dante’s

1 Vita di Dante, i. cap. 8, near the end.
236 ESSAYS ON DANTE

most recent biographers. One of these documents shows
us that as early as April 11th, 1293, the brothers Dante
and Francesco d’ Alaghiero Alaghieri borrowed from Andrea
di Guido de’ Ricci 277% florins, full Florentine weight, equal
to about 11,100 French francs.! On the 23rd December of
the same year the same brothers Allighieri contracted another
debt of 480 golden florins (that is to say, more than
19,000 francs), from Giacomo Lotti de’ Corbizi, and from
Pannochia Riccomanni. Another go florins (3600 francs)
Dante borrowed from his brother Francesco, on the 14th
of March 1299 (Florentine style, equivalent to 1300 in the
usual style). If we add the small debts of 50, 20, and 13
florins, of which there is documentary evidence, contracted
between 1297 and 1300, we reach a total of more than
37,000 francs ; an immense sum for those times.”

To release himself from debts of such an amount would
surely have been a matter of the greatest difficulty if not
impossibility to Dante, even had he not been exiled. We
see from the will of Maria Donati, Gemma’s mother,® that
in February 1314 (=1315) the 480 and the go florins had
not yet been paid. Finally, the poet’s sons cleared off the
debt, or at least the greater part of it, in 1332 by the sale
of their father’s villa of Camerlata under Fiesole.

These debts would be all the more annoying to Gemma,
because her own father, Manetto Donati, had gone bail for
the heaviest of them.

In all this we have not a word to say against Gemma,
but it must be confessed that the alliance was not a very
propitious one.

Scartazzini urges that even if there had really been any

1 The florins are reduced to francs after the scale given by the

Tuscan economists.— Peruzzi, Storia del commercio e de’ banchieri di Fir.,
1868, 1. 121.

2 Gargani, della casa di Dante, pp. 38-40.

8 Ibid., pp. 41, 42.

4 Passerini, Curiosita storico-artistiche Fiorentine, ii. 15, 16.
IX..GEMMA DONATI 237

want of affection between husband and wife, Gemma
would not have spoken of it to Beatrice or to Andrea
Poggi, nor the poet himself to Pier Giardino, for both of
them would have been anxious to throw a veil over the
fact, and therefore none of these persons would have been
able to give the biographer authentic information about it.
I answer that there was no need of any such information,
All Florence knew that the marriage had been made by
Dante’s relatives, and the Donati, when they saw that it
turned out far from happily, would be sure to air their
grievances against Dante, for whom they had little tender-
ness, and throw all possible blame upon him.

XIV. 2. PERMANENT SEPARATION OF HUSBAND
AND WIFE

Let us now turn to the other fact, viz. that when once
Dante had parted from Gemma he never wished again to
go where she was, nor would suffer her to come where he
was.— These words might imply that even before his exile
he had separated from his wife, or, in other words, had sent
her back to her relations, and this is how Manetti (follow-
ing in the footsteps of Boccaccio, as usual, but exaggerating
his statements) seems actually to have understood the
passage. He says :!

‘He had a wife of the illustrious family of the Donati whose
name was Gemma. She was a great shrew, even as we read of
Xantippe, the wife of the philosopher Socrates. And then .
there was the added misery of his shrewish wife, who was so
far from providing any comfort for his anguish that his greatest
torment of all was that which she caused. He tried to bear
with his wife’s intolerable ways at home for fear of being
subject to the random insolence of women abroad, and for a,
long time he is said to have put up with her folly and perversity.
But when at last he could no longer endure her intolerable

 

1 In Galletti, Phil. Villani . . . et de Florentinorum literatura . .
synchroni scriptores (Flor. 1847), 4to, p. 73.
238 ESSAYS ON DANTE

shamelessness, though he had had several children by her, he
departed from her on such terms that henceforth he could
hardly endure her presence, as though there had been an actual
divorce between them.’

Rightly understood, however, Boccaccio’s words simply
imply that after being exiled (during his embassy to Boniface
vir.) Dante never came back to Florence to visit his wife,
nor consented to meet her elsewhere. Scartazzini answers
that this is no wonder, since when exiled he could not
have returned to his fatherland however much he had
wished it. We might reply that the first condemnation of
January 27th, 1302, at any rate, did not threaten the
poet’s life or liberty, but merely imposed a fine upon him
with the confiscation of his goods.! Even when exiled
we may suppose that many a Florentine found means of
secretly introducing himself into Florence for a few days.
We may add that Villani assures us? that the Donati had
possessions in the country near to those of the Cerchi, and
no doubt the exile might have found his way to some of
these more easily than to the city itself. But we will not
insist upon this possibility, and will admit, with our friendly
opponent, that Boccaccio’s assertion that when once Dante
had parted from his wife he never desired to come where
she was, amounts to very little so far as the time of his
exile is concerned.

But the second half of the passage we have quoted is
more significant, namely, that the poet would not have
Gemma come where he was. These words, if I rightly
judge, imply not only that the wife on her side would
have desired to see her husband, but also that whenever
there was a possibility of her doing so Dante’s irrevocable
determination hindered it.

1 The second decree, however, condemning him to be burned to
death if he fell into the power of the Republic, followed in the March
of the same year.—ED.

2 viii. 39.
IX. GEMMA DONATI 239

Are we to say then, with Cesare Balbo! and many others,
that the fault was not on Gemma’s side, but on the poet’s ?
In matrimonial quarrels it is seldom indeed that the fault all
lies at the door of either one or the other. Both are almost
always more or less to blame. If, then, we find Dante’s
affection for his wife so completely eliminated, we are
justified in supposing that his heart had been alienated by
no trifling faults; and the more so when we reflect on
our poet’s constancy to his friends, and the warmth of his
admiration for those whom he regarded as his superiors,
such as Virgil, Guido Guinicelli, and others.

Weighing everything, then, we conclude that though
Boccaccio does not allege a single discreditable act against
Gemma, his statement permits us to suspect that she was
not free from faults of which he had no special knowledge,
or which he did not choose to enumerate.

XV. IS BOCCACCIO’S STATEMENT TRUSTWORTHY ?

If the poet was determined not to meet his wife again,
the fact cannot have been concealed. Andrea Poggi,
Boccaccio’s friend, would have heard it spoken of at home.
Nor indeed would Beatrice have come to support her
father with her presence had she not known that her mother,
with whom the first duty lay, could not or would not
undertake it. Either of these two therefore, to say nothing
of the popular tradition, would be in a position to inform
Boccaccio of the fact. No doubt the cause of it would
also have been discussed in their presence, though, of
course, with the reserve demanded by their youth, and by
the delicate nature of the subject. But the fact itself must
necessarily have been mentioned, and this not only in the
early years of Dante’s exile but throughout its whole
duration.

1 Op. cit., i. cap. 8, near the beginning.
240 ESSAYS ON DANTE

It seems to me therefore beside the mark to insist, with
Scartazzini,! that when Dante was exiled Andrea Poggi
could hardly have been born. And for the rest we have
every reason to doubt the truth of the assertion itself.
We note from Boccaccio’s account, repeated almost word
for word in the Life and in the Commentary,? that ‘some
five years or more’ after Dante’s condemnation ¢ Madame
Gemma caused a search to be made in certain desks which
she had concealed on the occasion of the disasters in 1302,
with a view of finding certain instruments and writings
which she required to establish her rights” Now the
person to whom she intrusted the keys of the desks and
the charge of the search was Andrea Poggi, who must
therefore have been a suitable person for such an office in
1307 or 1308, and so must have seen the light considerably
before 1302.

This same fact as to her dowry further disproves Scar-
tizzini’s® conjecture that Gemma may have died soon
after Dante’s exile, ‘in grief at the heavy misfortunes
which had fallen upon her husband and her children.” If,
as Boccaccio tell us, she laboriously recovered some portion
of her husband’s possessions, by title of her dowry, and on
the proceeds provided, meagrely enough, for herself and
for her children,” we must admit that she was still living at
any rate several years after 1308. But this is not all.
Other notices prove that at least as late as 1314 she was
still living. In the above-mentioned will of Madonna Maria,
widow of Manetto Donati, which was drawn up on the
17th February 1314 (presumably in Florentine style, which
would make it our 1315) we find the following legacy :°

“<Item voluit, quod de bonis suis dent et solventur Dominae
Gemmae, filiae suae, uxori Dantis Aligherii de Florentia, post

 

1 Revista internaz., p. 67. 2 See above, pp. 225 Sg.
3 0p. cit., p. 68. 4 Vita, p. 24.
5 Gargani, 0p. cit., p. 41.
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 241

mortem sui (?) test. (?) ccc florenorum parvorum, dummodo per
dictum Dantem vel suos heredes praefati heredes Dominae
Mariae extracti et absoluti fuerint ab omni obligatione in qua
reperirent (reperirentur ?) obligati vel legati quacumque de causa
pro ipso Dante cujuscumque (cuicumque ?) personae seu persons.
Et maxime de obligatione, qua (?) D. Manectus fecit tamquam
fidejussor dicti Dantis, vel cum eo in solidum Pannocchiae et
Jacobo de Corbizis de florenis ccccLxxx auri, sive plus, sive
minus. Et de obligatione xc flor. auri sive plus sive minus in
quibus sunt obligati pro (?) Ubaldino pro dicto Dante, sive in
solidum, sive fidejussorio nomine pro eo, et de obligatione xLvr.
(floren.) auri sive plus sive minus, pro quibus sunt obligati dictus
Dom. Manettus (vel heredes ejus) pro dicto Dante, sive cum eo
in solidum, sive fidejussorio nomine cum eo.’ 1

Instead of saying with Scartazzini, therefore, that Gemma
may have died between 1302 and 1314, we may hold it for

certain that in the early months of 1314 (or rather of 1315)
she was still living.2

XVI. THE THIRD PASSAGE. JUDGMENT ON
GEMMA’S CHARACTER

There is yet another passage in the Vita di Dante which
we have not considered, and which, at any rate at first sight,
seems to bring most serious accusations against Madonna
Gemma. After saying that when his friends had induced
Dante to marry, ‘many fresh burdens yet more grievous
might take the place of his amorous woes,” Boccaccio goes
on:?

‘He who had been wont to keep vigil at his sacred studies,
etc., must now, whensoever it pleased his new lady, . . . needs

 

1 The purport of this document is that the legacy to Gemma of ccc
florins is not to be paid if Maria's estate (or rather her husband
Manetto’s) is still liable to claims on account of Dante’s debts. See
Appendix.—ED.

2 Since the date of this essay Professor Bartoli has published a portion
of a document of the date November 3, 1332, in which Gemma ¢his
[Jacopo Alighieri’s] mother and the late Dante’s widow’ gives her
consent to a sale.—Storia della Lit. It., v. 107, 108 (1884).—ED.

3 Vita, p. 16.

Q
242 ESSAYS ON DANTE

listen to female chatter . . . he who was wont, when weary of
the vulgar herd, to withdraw into some solitary place and there
consider in his speculations . . . must now not only leave these
sweet contemplations as often as the whim seizes his new lady, but
must submit to company that ill assorts with such like things.
He that was wont to laugh . . . and sigh at his will as sweet or
bitter emotions pierced him, now dares it not; for he must
needs render an account to his lady, not only of greater affairs
but of every little sigh, explaining what started it, whence it
came, and whither it tended ; for she takes gladness as evidence
of love for another, and sadness of hatred for herself.’!

Let us observe in the first place that in all this list of
sufferings which a bachelor is sure to encounter if he
determines to marry in somewhat advanced life, there is no
mention [?] of dissoluteness or other vice in his wife, but only
the claims which love itself may prompt in an affectionate
wife, and of considerations which the domestic life will
necessarily impose upon the husband if he has any decency.
Let us add that the ways which struck Boccaccio as so
intolerable are not attributed personally to Gemma, but are
supposed to be common to all the sex. Let us note in
conclusion that throughout this passage the biographer
does not use the imperfect or perfect tense, as he would
have done if he had been referring to an actual occurrence,
but the present tense, as indicating what was likely to
happen. And finally, he expressly protests that he does
not assert that they actually occurred in Dante’s case, for
he does not know it.

In the opening part of this long discourse against
poets or scholars marrying, Boccaccio speaks in general
terms ; and if, after mentioning Dante, he goes on with
¢ he,’ it is easy to perceive that in his own mind this ¢ he’
cannot possibly refer to Dante personally, though gram-
matically it might be taken so. It is most certain that in

1 Only a few scraps of all this are preserved by the epitomiser, who
runs them together with a paraphrase, however, and adds details of
which there is not a trace in the original.
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 243

1292 or thereabouts Dante could not ¢whensoever he
chose discourse with Emperors, with Kings, and with other
most exalted princes.” The only Emperor with whom he
ever conversed was Henry vir, and that could only have
been on the occasion of his expedition to Rome, that is to
say, in the earlier days of 1310. The only King, as far as
we know, with whom Dante was acquainted was Carlo
Martello (a titular king at any rate); and this friendship
did not begin before 1295. We are forced therefore to
suppose that this he’ must be meant impersonally of any
one who has dedicated himself to the Muses and to study.!
We must therefore admit that the inverted eulogy of
Madonna Gemma which the calumnious Boccaccio is
supposed to have forged, is nowhere extant except in the
fertile imagination of the misconceiving reader. Scar-
tazzini? contends: ‘The current reports that Gemma
Donati was more intractable than Xantippe herself, and
led Dante a miserable and grievous life, have no other
foundation than Boccaccio’s testimony.” But we must set
over against this assertion the fact that in the whole of
Boccaccio’s Life there is not a single word which can be
fairly cited as direct testimony of the intractable charac-
ter of Madonna Gemma. [Cf. Scartaz. Riv. Int. p. 167].

XVII. DANTE’S SILENCE CONCERNING GEMMA

But it is very different when we come to ask whether the
suspicions aroused by the two facts recorded by Boccaccio
(not decisive in themselves, but calculated to raise a doubt)
find support in other indications unfavourable to Gemma.

1 Dr. Witte’s contention as to the impersonal and general character
of Boccaccio’s statement is unassailable. But it is odd that he should
have taken the converse with emperors and kings (that is open, by
hypothesis, to philosophers in general) in this literal sense. Of course
Boccaccio only means that the student can choose his own company in
his books.—ED.

2 Rivista interna. , pp. 70, 71.
244 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Every one knows the verse wherein Allighieri mentions
his mother Bella with filial piety (/zf. viii. 45). In another
passage (Par. xiv. 64) the poet mentions amongst the
persons whom the blessed spirits desire to see again, their
mothers, their fathers, and the rest who were dear to them
on earth, but neither here nor elsewhere in the Comedy
is there the smallest hint of their desire to meet their
wives again.!

Cacciaguida announces to his descendant (Par. xvii. 55)
that the first arrow shot from the bow of exile will be that
he must ‘leave all things most dear’; and amongst these
we are told his wife would take the first place.— ould
take. Yes, if Gemma and Dante had been united in true
love, but this is the very point that we have to prove.

Scartazzini? tries to weaken this [?] argument, based on
the passages from the Paradiso quoted above, by showing that
it proves too much, because neither father, brothers, sisters,
nor even children, are enumerated. Now as to fathers this
seems to be an oversight on Scartazzini’s part, for they are
expressly mentioned in verse 65. For the rest it would
hardly occur to the poet to draw up a table of relationships.

Cesare Balbo3 admits that from Dante’s persistent silence
concerning Gemma we might argue that his feeling
towards her was rather one of respect (?) than of affection,
but he infers that the fault was in Dante alone, and not in
his wife. This would be sound enough if we knew that
Gemma had always remained worthy of affection in the
eyes of her husband himself. But certain passages of the
Comedy give grounds for doubting this.

1 Note that the spirits referred to in this particular passage are the
denizens of the Sun, that is to say, the great doctors and teachers. Had
Dante given even the ‘smallest hint’ that they wanted to ‘meet their
wives again’ it would have been equally startling (though for opposite
reasons) whether he referred to Thomas Aquinas and Buonaventura
on the one hand or Solomon on the other.—ED.

2 0p. cit., p. 69.

3 Ubi supra, and ii. cap. 16, p. 399, first edition.
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 245

XVIII. NINO VISCONTI'S DENUNCIATION
OF WOMEN

In the eighth canto of the. Purgatorio, Nino Visconti,
judge of Gallura, who was bound by affectionate intimacy
to our poet, conjures him on his return from his pilgrimage
to tell his daughter Giovanna to pray that his time of
punishment may be shortened. He turned to his daughter,
and not to his widow, Beatrice da Este, Giovanna’s mother,
because scarcely four years after her husband’s death she
had married the Milanese Galeazzo Visconti, some years
her junior :

‘I think not that her mother loves me any more, since she
has changed her widow’s weeds, which, poor wretch, she shall
yet have cause to long for. . . . Not so fair a funeral monu-
ment shall the viper that leads the Milanese afield make for her
as would have done Gallura’s cock.’

But such inconstancy, he adds, is not so much an in-
dividual defect of Beatrice’s as a vice common to the sex :

By her it is easy to understand how long the flame of love
endures in woman if eye and touch frequently rekindle it not.’

These verses, though a poetical fiction assigns them to
the date of 1300, were actually written between 1313 and
1319, when Dante and Gemma, therefore, had not seen
each other for more than a dozen years, a long period,
during which neither eye nor touch could have rekindled
conjugal love in her. Itis impossible therefore that the
application to his own wife can have been absent from
the poet’s mind.

Tommaseo, the only Commentator as far as I have
observed who has noted the venom which these verses
hide for Gemma, observes at the end of the canto, © The
tender words, “the white weeds which the poor wretch is
destined yet to long for,” justify Dantes praise of his friend’s
“righteous and measured wrath” (wrath over which the
246 ESSAYS ON DANTE

poet’s own mind did not always keep the mastery); and
prove to me that when he wrote his too bitter words against
the woman in whom love endures not, he was not thinking
of Gemma. Perhaps he was thinking of her when he wrote
the last word that Pia utters to him’ [Ed. 1865]. This
¢last word’ is found in the concluding verse of the fifth
canto of the Purgatorio: ¢ Maremma unmade me, as he
knows who espoused me, who had previously been wedded,
with his gem (gemma)’; but I confess that I cannot divine
in what sense Dante could be thinking of Gemma when
he wrote these verses telling of a husband who murdered
his own wife.

XIX. SCARTAZZINI'S INTERPRETATION

Scartazzini® will not admit that Dante’s words are
directed to Gemma, and says that they are not in any sense
applicable to her. And this is why: ‘It is true that
Dante wrote the words about 1314, but he represented
them as uttered in 1300 when he was living with his wife.
Therefore in interpreting and applying them we must
understand them as said in 1300, not 1314, or we shall go
astray. But in 1300 eye and touch were there to rekindle
the flame of love in Madonna Gemma, therefore these
words are not applicable to her in any degree what-
soever.’

It is true enough that the conditions of the fiction would
have prevented Dante from answering Visconti: ¢ Yes, my
dear friend, you are perfectly justified in your invective
against woman, for the very thing you mention has
occurred to me.” But that is not the point. Visconti
uttered a general sentiment on the mutability of woman,
or rather Dante, enlightened by his own experience of
many a year, puts it into his mouth. There is certainly

1 Riv. internaz., p. 69.
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 247

no lack of judgments on persons and things in the Comedy
that bear evident marks of the influence of events later
than 1300.

Nor does any greater weight appear to me to belong to
another argument urged by my opponent. ¢The idea
that when Dante uttered general sentiments he had some
special person, presumably one of his relatives, in view,
leads to absurdities. For in that case Visconti’s words
would apply rather to Bella, his mother, than to Gemma,
and would strike the former far more heavily than the
latter”—If, as is now supposed, Bella! was Allighiero
Allighieri’s first wife, she must already have been triumph-
antly rejoicing in her crown in the high Olympus, exempt
from all human suspicions, for some decades by 1300. But
even supposing that, after her husband’s death, Dante’s
mother was still living as a widow in 1314, or somewhat
later, her venerable age would have sufficed to shield her

from the reproach of having broken faith with the cinders
of Allighieri.?

XX. FORESE DONATI SPEAKS OF DANTE AS A FEL-
LOW-CULPRIT IN HIS OWN TRANSGRESSIONS

Let us pass on to another point. Forese Donati, another
friend of the poets, and also a relative of Gemma’s, is being
purged on the sixth cornice from the vice of gluttony.
The old Commentators declare that he was scabby in his

1 Passerini, in Dante ¢ il suo secolo, p. 63.—Alfr. di Reumont, in the
Jahrbuch der Deutschen Dante-Gesellchaft, ii. 337.

2 The reader will hardly take this portion of the argument very
seriously on either side; but it may be interesting to note that
Francesco, the son of Lapa, Allighiero’s second wife, was legally capable
of contracting a debt (i.e. was at least eighteen years old) by December
231d, 1297. (Lapa herself was apparently still living on May 16th, 1332.)
Dante’s mother, Bella, must therefore have died before 1279. See
Scherillo, Alcuni Capitoli della Biographia di Dante, 1896, pp. 28-30,
and the authorities there cited.—ED.
248 ESSAYS ON DANTE

face and covered with boils,” and ‘much corrupted by the
vice of gluttony,” and another, ¢ As a self-indulgent man he
took delight in good living” In a sonnet attributed to
Dante! he is reproached with having swallowed all his
property, so that he is now forced to steal other people’s.
And in the fragment of another? with suffering from
excessive indulgence in starlings’ breasts, and from the
still worse effects of lambs’ tails.?

Here, on the sixth cornice, Forese, perceiving that
Dante’s body, unlike the shades of Purgatory, casts a
shadow, and arguing that he must still be living in the
first life, begs him to explain the wonder. The poet
answers : © If thou call back to mind what thou wast with
me, and what I was with thee, the present memory thereof
will still be grievous.” In my first article* I reproduced the
meaning of the passage thus: ¢Dante confesses that he
was guilty, during the first years of his married life, of

1 Beginning with the line: ¢Bicci novel. figliuol di non so cui’
(Fraticelli, Canzionere di Dante, Firenze, 1861, p. 28 5).—Before the
citation of this sonnet in the Commentary of the Anonimo was known,
I myself, in common with many others, regarded it as apocryphal. In
his Commentary on Purg. xxiii. 48, Scartazzini remarks with perfect
justice that the citation furnishes a weighty argument for the
authenticity of the sonnet.” He then adds: ¢ We need not flatter our-
selves that this will serve to bring the eminent critics to repentance, and
convince them that their critical principles are utterly erroneous. On
the contrary, they will cast about for subterfuges, and will defend their
opinion in the teeth of the evidence of our Trecentista. And their
art will still be styled criticism, nor will admirers of their acumen and
learning ever be wanting.’ In that case I am happy to think that these
lines may suffice to convince the illustrious Dantist, that he paid me too
great a compliment in mentioning me in the first rank of critics par
excellence, in connection with this very sonnet.

2 In the Commento & Anonimo Fiorentino, edited by Fanfani. Purg.
xxiii. p- 379-

3 Dr. Witte, citing the original, escapes the problem of translating
the jargon in which these sonnets are written. I have followed (to the
best of my power) the acute decipherment of Del Lungo, Dino Compagni
¢ la sua Cronica, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 615 sg. ¢Lonza,” which I have trans-
lated tail,” appears to include all the parts that are usually taken off
the animal with the hide.—ED. 4 Rivista internaz., p. 7 $q-
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 249

such gluttony that after five years the memory of it still
oppressed his conscience.’

I admit that most of the Commentators who do not pass
over the terzina altogether, speak in general terms of a
worldly and sinful life, of vanity and so forth, in which
the two interlocutors had been involved. Some however
understand the passage as I do. Let us take Biagioli
first :

¢The Commentators undertand “the vicious life we led
together,” but I am far from agreeing with them, since I cannot
find a shadow of evidence in the surviving records of Dante that
his life had ever been vicious ; and it is a diabolical invention
to say that it was. Perhaps the two friends had sometimes
indulged themselves in festive meetings, jovial supper-parties,
and such like, which, though surely venial matters, may well be
the subject of bitter memory beyond the grave.’

We may add the authority of Cesare Balbo :1!

‘In these verses (115-117) the Commentators find a hint of
the jovial and more or less vicious life which the youthful
Dante and Forese had lived together in those years. No doubt
this is the true meaning ; especially if we add Forese’s impeni-
tence till his death for the sin of gluttony, and all that we shall
gather as we go along concerning Dante.’

Kannegiesser and Philalethes understand the passage in
the same way. The latter notes:

“It seems that Dante and Forese had indulged in the pleasures
of the table together in their youth, and cannot now think of the
hours so spent without repenting.’

XXI. SCARTAZZI NI’S INTERPRETATION

In his note on Purgatory xxiii. 118 Scartazzini does not
differ very much from these authorities. He cites Balbo,

1 Vita di Dante, i. 8, p. 195.
250 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Berardinelli,! and Wegele 2 as supporting his own opinion,
and goes on to say :

‘Nor can we reduce all the disorders of Dante and Forese to
a few festive suppers, as Biagioli does. . . . It was no such small
matter as that that was in question. It was a sinful life, for
which Forese delayed his penitence till the hour of death, and
consequently it was a sinful life which Dante continued until
Virgil came to free him from it.’

In my learned opponent’s first article in answer to my
¢ question,” this ‘sinful life’ unexpectedly assumes a far
more distinct character.

“The life,’ he says, ‘of which Dante confesses himself guilty,
and from which Virgil rescued him, . . . is identical with the
darksome forest . . . which symbolises . . . the intellectual
darkness of him who has strayed from the faith, finds himself in-
volved in doubts, and wanders through the mazes of philosophical
speculation. . . . Since Forese was Dante’s most intimate friend,
it is natural enough that they should often have discoursed
together of graver and more serious matters than wine-shops and
luncheon-bars ; natural enough that Dante should have com-
municated to his relative and friend the doubts which his own
mind harboured.’

It seems obvious to reply that, supposing Dante really
had made Forese a confidant as to his inner struggles, the
bon vivant was hardly the sort of man to answer him in a
serious spirit. If Dante’s perplexities as to the eternity of
matter had been met by Forese’s allusions to starlings’
breasts and lambs’ tails, this would scarcely constitute a life

1 J concetto della Div. Comm., p. 227. “The life in which Dante was
associated for a time with Forese . . . must be taken to have been un-
disciplined and irregular. The poet’s answer . . . must refer to the
youthful errors of their festive life, to which they had mutually given
each other the opportunity or the temptation, and of which they cannot
now so much as think without repentance. . . . The dissipated and
loose life which they must have led together.’

2 D. Aligh. Leben und Werke, 2nd ed., p. 89: <The poets confession
can hardly be understood except as referring to a dissolute period of
his life.’

8 Rivista internaz., p. 70.
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 251

in common to which Dante would refer in such words as
¢ What thou wast with me, and what I was with thee.
But Scartazzini, in one of his most recent works,! attempts
to meet this argument thus :

‘The ‘voluptuous Forese may naturally be supposed to have
given in his adhesion to the Epicureanism then so prevalent in
Italy, which only concerned itself with the life of sense. And
since he conformed to it in practice he may surely have en-
deavoured to defend and support it theoretically also. There was
no lack of material, then, for discussions with his friend, who
was so devoted to philosophical studies. If, then, Dante was
really approximating to an unbelieving philosophy, if he had
really opened his bosom to doubts, he must certainly have spoken
to his friend of the things that filled his mind. The closer the
friendship the more fully must the friends have opened their
hearts to each other. And if in this world they had so conversed,
the meaning of Dante’s words in Purgatory seems to me perfectly
clear: “We must still find it grievous to think what we were,
how we talked, what a path of peril we trod, what opinions we
adopted, when we associated together in life.”’

That this is the real significance of the words (he goes
on) appears further from Dante’s assertion, that he had
continued the same life years after Forese’s death, and
had only been rescued from it by Virgil. ‘This clearly

points to a life of intellectual, not sensual error.

XXII. OBJECTIONS TO THIS INTERPRETATION
OF DANTE’S WORDS

I must say that the more Scartazzini develops his ex-
planation the greater do the difficulties appear. Let us
go a little further back. On the sixth cornice of the
Purgatory the poet finds his intimate friend Forese, who
tells him that he is there for having ‘given himself ex-
cessively to gluttony,” a confession for that matter which
he might have spared, for every one knew him as a bon

1 Zu Dante's Seclengeschichte, in vol. iv. of the Fahrbuch der
Deutschen Dante-Gesellschaft, p. 177.
252 ESSAYS ON DANTE

vivant. Then, when Forese had explained the form of
punishment for gluttony, Dante asks him how it comes to
pass that he, who only repented of his vice in extremis,
and who died not five years ago, is already admitted to
active purgation, in spite of the law referred to in Purg.
iv. 130. Thereupon the other answers that he owes it
entirely to the intercession of his widow.

Forese now propounds a question himself, not unlike
the one the poet had addressed to him. How comes it
that he (who should be dead, since he is in Purgatory)
casts a shadow as though he were alive? His answer is:
“Virgil is leading me through the eternal kingdoms to
remove me from my sins and errors, though I am still
living. But by way of introduction he says: If you
are enduring penance for your gluttony, then if you think
upon our style of life together you will understand that
we both of us have cause for repentance concerning it.’
But, if we are to believe Scartazzini, he means to say:
¢Call back to mind how we used to discourse upon
philosophy ; how you wanted to convert me to the
doctrines of Epicurus, and I expounded to you the system
of Aristotle, corrupted by the Averroists ; and how I told
you of my doubts concerning the truth of revelation and
the authority of the Church.’

Surely Dante intended to be read, and to be understood
by his readers. But if he had chosen to bury the confession
of his departure from the orthodox faith in this one verse
(Purg. xxiii. 116), we could hardly call the veil so thin that
the piercing of it is an easy matter! But there is more.
Dante tells us that Virgil had turned him away from the
life he alluded to a few verses back, which, if we are to
follow Scartazzini, would be a life of doubt, or at any rate
of a somewhat vacillating faith, and Virgil would have led
him back to a pure and firm faith. But the learned
Commentator himself tells us, in his notes on Purg. xviii.
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 253

46, that ¢ the teachings of Virgil cannot stretch beyond the
limits of human reason or philosophy’ (the philosophy, to
wit, of the “master of those who know’), ‘and that in all
matters of faith man must look for the solution of his doubts
to Beatrice, that is to say, to the spiritual and ecclesiastical
authority, whose office it is to direct the human race to
spiritual felicity in accordance with revelation.’

Nor is even this all. ¢The present memory of that life’
—that is to say, of philosophic presumption—has become
grievous to the poet, therefore he repents it. But in a
recent dissertation Scartazzini tells us, and I believe very
rightly, that eight cantos further on, in the terrestrial
Paradise, Dante was ¢ not only still involved in this sin, but
had not yet so much as recognised that it was sinful.’!

Now see in what extravagances we are landed. Towards
the end of the thirteenth century Dante gave himself up in
company with the bon vivant Forese to the boldest
philosophic speculations, disregarding the limits placed by
Christianity upon the human reason. In 1300 Virgil the
pagan, the prototypeof humanreason instructed by philosophy
(“the sea of all wisdom’), turns him away from his life of
human reason, and induces him to submit himself once
again to spiritual authority.—When thus brought back to
the right way, he repents, on the sixth cornice, of that life
of philosophic incredulity. The present memory thereof is
grievous to him. But twenty-four hours afterwards, in
the terrestrial Paradise, in face of his Beatrice, we find him
relapsed. Not only is he again involved in his ancient sin,
but he does not for a moment admit that it is a sin at all.

1 Jahrbuch der Deutschen Dante-Gesellschaft, iv. 221, note 140.
‘When Dante appeared before Beatrice he was, of course, still tainted ,
with that sin. For the scene in the earthly Paradise represents how
his repentance for it was first awakened and’ then worked out. With
the draught of Lethe all sins were done away and obliterated ; but at
the period in which Dante places his vision, ze. in the year 1300, war
Dante nicht allein mit jenen Sünden noch behaftet, sondern er hatte sie noch
gar nicht als solche erkannt.
254 ESSAYS ON DANTE

I may be mistaken, but for myself, after a genuine
attempt to get at Scartazzini’s interpretation, I can but say
of my own ¢dubbio’: ‘First it was simple, but now it has
become double.’ !

XXIII. INFERENCES FROM THE LIFE SHARED BY
DANTE AND FORESE

Confirmed then in the opinion that we are to understand
the terzina under discussion as Balbo and many others
take it, we return from this long digression to our subject.

I do not say, and I have never said (though I have been
represented as doing so), that Dante was at any period of
his life a drunkard or a tippler. I merely infer from Dante’s
own words that in the early years of his marriage with
Gemma he not unfrequently took his pleasure away from
home at festive suppers or other such gatherings ; or, speak-
ing generally, that the life he led with his friends at this
time smacked of the world. This is not inconsistent with
a diligent pursuit at the same time of philosophic studies or
other branches of learning. We are not unfamiliar in our
own day with learned men who pass the whole day in deep
scientific researches, and then feel the want of relaxation in
the evening in a circle of gay companions.

Boccaccio,! it is true, assures us that ‘in food and drink
he was most moderate, both in taking them at the appointed
hours, and in never going beyond the limit of necessity.
Nor did he ever show any nicety in one thing rather than
another. Delicate viands he praised, but for the most part
fed on plain ones, blaming beyond measure such as bestow
great part of their study in getting choice things and having
them prepared with extremest diligence; declaring that
the likes of these do not eat to live, but rather live to eat.’
But we must consider that the tradition as to this matter

1 Vita, p. 38.
IX.—.GEMMA DONATI 255

which Boccaccio followed would refer to a period of Dante’s
life long subsequent to his intimacy with Forese. If then
at this youthful season he perhaps indulged a little too much
in the pleasures of the table, it was very natural that after-
wards, when he had repented of it, he should become more
abstemious than others.

Considered in themselves, these pleasures, provided they
observe the limits of moderation, are innocent enough ;
but they must cease to be so as soon as they come into
conflict with other duties. Ways of living which a bachelor
can hardly avoid may be unsuitable to the father of a family.
Forese, married to Nella, whose memory was dear to him
even in Purgatory, was wrong to give the preference to
these festive parties over the domestic quiet of evenings at
his own fireside with his wife ; and if Dante, in spite of his
doubtless more austere character, joined in Forese’s dis-
tractions when only recently united to Gemma, we may
gather the degree of his conjugal felicity.

I'said in my first article, and I repeat it here : ¢ Attending
fine suppers and seeking out choice dishes is not generally
supposed, at any rate in the case of grave and deliberate
characters, to be any sign of perfect domestic happiness,
especially if it involves the preference, by a newly married
husband, of the company of his companions to that of
his wife.’

To avoid misunderstanding, however, I may add that
this argument alone, unsupported by others, would only
prove a want of sympathy between the pair, and would by
no means determine whose fault it was.

XXIV. LA BARBAGIA

; | 3 ;
Dante’s conversation with Forese offers yet another

passage that must be taken into consideration. After
praising his Nella, Forese continues :
256 ESSAYS ON DANTE

¢ My little widow, whom I greatly loved, is all the more dear
and cherished by God in proportion as she is the more lonely
in her good way ; for the Barbagia of Sardinia is far more chaste
in its women than the Barbagia in which I left her. O dear
brother, what wouldst thou have me say? A future time is
already within my vision, in the eyes of which this present
hour shall not be very ancient, wherein the abandoned Florentine
women shall be prohibited from the pulpit from displaying their
breasts and bosoms.’

Forese says, or rather Dante through his mouth declares,
that his widow is alone in her good way in the Barbagia
wherein he left her.

But what is this Barbagia? Seeing that Forese im-
mediately afterwards speaks of the Florentine women in
general; it would seem that the Barbagia includes all
Florence without distinction.

But, answers Scartazzini, how could Forese have seriously
asserted that after the death of Piccarda there was not a
single chaste and modest woman who pursued the good way
in all Florence excepting only Nella ?

We might reply that Forese is not speaking of the wives
of Lapo and Bindo, but of the ladies who by acquaintance
or by neighbourhood recurred familiarly to his memory.
But my opponent, accepting this reply, goes on :

¢ Forese’s words, then, would include Dante’s sister, married
to Leon Poggi, and Madonna Piera, the wife of Francesco
Allighieri, the poet’s brother ; so that at this rate the poet would
have accused not only his wife, but his sister and sister-in-law, of
dissolute conduct.’

To confute this argument it will be well to consult the early
Commentaries. This is what the Ottimo (on line 85) says :
¢And here he highly commends this lady, insomuch as she

conducted her life with such chaste modesty and cleanliness,
though in the company of such evil folk as were the Donati.’

And in like manner Fanfani’s #nonimo Fiorentino (p. 380) :
¢ The Barbagia of Sardinia is more seemly and chaste than
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 257

is the house of the Donati wherein I left my spouse.’
Following these ancient authorities, then, we should take
the Barbagia to describe, in the first instance, not Florence
at large but the house of the Donati.

And whom did this house contain? Neither the poet’s
sister, nor his sister-in-law, who sprang from the Ghibelline
family of the Caleffi ; but Gemma, who when the un-
grateful and riotous mob rushed upon Dante’s house?
would naturally return to the neighbouring house of her
father, whence she afterwards despatched Andrea Poggi
to search in the desks wherein she had secured the instru-
ments and the writings which she wanted.

In this Barbagia of the Donati, then, there would not
be so many women ; and if Dante placed such scathing
words against all of them, with the exception of Nella, upon
the lips of Forese, it would be impossible to escape their
application to his wife, Gemma Donati.

Scartazzini says : ¢ The truth is that the poet has indulged
in exaggerated language without the least thought of his own
belongings.” I doubt, however, if many readers will believe
Allighieri guilty of such extreme carelessness. But, adds
the author, ‘In 1314, or thereabouts, when Dante was
* writing these famous verses with respect to the Florentine
women, Beatrice his daughter was also living in Florence, a
girl of some fourteen years. Would not she too have her
share in the reproach if the poet, as he wrote, had had his
own belongings in view ?’

The answer is simple enough. It would have been too
ludicrous if Forese, at the date of 1300 (even granting it

1 Boccaccio, Vita di D., p. 60; Commento, ii. p. 130.

2 Cf. Vita, pp. 23, 24. ‘When Dante had thus departed from
the city . . . leaving behind him his wife, together with the rest
of his family, whose youthful age ill adapted them to share his exile,
without anxiety on her account, because he knew that she was related
to one of the chief of the hostile faction . . . he wandered in un-
certainty here and there through Tuscany.’

( R
258 ESSAYS ON DANTE

to be fictitious, had intended to throw a slur on the modesty
of a child of a few years old, because she displayed ¢i/ petto
colle poppe,” which the poor child did not so much as possess.

And moreover, how do we know that in 1314, or there-
abouts, Beatrice was living in Florence? If, after her
husband’s departure, Gemma ‘provided, meagrely enough,
for herself and her children from the revenues of her dowry,’
if she was forced in her poverty ‘to provide for her own
sustenance by unaccustomed toil,’! her elder daughter,
Imperia, would only have been fulfilling a natural duty if,
when established in Verona with her husband Tano di
Bencivenni Pantaleoni, another exile? she had taken charge
of her youngest sister, who subsequently stayed in the city
as a nun.

We confess our ignorance of the nature of those faults
which justified Dante in including his own wife in his
severe sentence upon the Barbagia, whether it be the
Florentine women generally or only those belonging to the
house of the Donati. Though at first sight it might
seem that he accused her of wantonness, or at least of lack
of modesty in her dress, yet he really does not say that
Forese’s Nella was alone amongst her associates in chastity,
but generally in good ways. Any kind of evil way there-
fore would relegate those guilty of it to the host contrasted
with Nella.

XXV. CONCLUSION

Now what can we give as the results, certain or probable,
of these somewhat protracted researches ?

1. That if Dante’s marriage with Gemma was not con-
tracted for love, neither did it result in love—at any rate
not in love of a true character.

2. That in the process of years the affectionate relations

1 Boccaccio, Vita, p. 24 [?]. 2 Passerini, in Dante e il suo secolo, p. 68.
IX.—GEMMA DONATI 259

of the pair were chilled, perhaps more on the husband’s
side than the wife’s.

3. That Gemma was not a woman capable of appre-
ciating Dante’s lofty intellect.

4. That Gemma’s reproaches were not without excuse
from the restricted point of view of the domestic cares,
with which, especially after her husband’s departure, she
had to struggle.

5. Possibly the poet believed his wife’s ways to be some-
what loose, but of this we have no certainty ; and still less
whether he attributed to her any other particular faults,
and if so, what.

6. That if, as we may suppose, Gemma, during the ten
years of their life together, showed little sympathy for
Dante, the reports of her doings after they were separated,
which may have been exaggerated, fostered the alienation
of their affections.

POSTSCRIPT

This little dissertation had been some time completed,
and was ready for the press, when I came upon an article
by Sign. Vittorio Imbriani in the first issue of the Rivista
Europea for this year, entitled ¢ Was Gemma Donati a Good
Wife?’ Although this review has Rivista Internazionale
for a second title, to indicate that it is a continuation of
the one formerly published by the same firm, yet it seems
that the four articles referring to this subject which saw
the light two years ago in the Internazionale are ab-
solutely unknown to the learned author of this new essay.

I am all the better pleased. For if the points I urged
have been discovered and recognised by one who knew
nothing of my ¢dubbio,’ it seems one must suppose them
conclusive indeed ; and in truth we are in perfect harmony
260 ESSAYS ON DANTE

with respect to the main contention, and I might confine
myself to pointing out the coincidence, were it not that the
picture of the poet’s conjugal life with Gemma which Sign.
Imbriani presents is far darker than I consider we have any
reason to suppose it really was. According to him, Sister
Beatrice, the nun of St. Stefano dell’ Uliva, was begotten
by Dante in adultery with some unknown person ; and on
the other side the prophetic threats of lines 106-111 in
Purg. xxiii. are to be referred to the vengeance which
Allighieri, as he wrote this passage, hoped he might soon
be able to take on Gemma when he re-entered Florence
in the suite of Ugguccione of Faggiuola.

¢ And dismal,” continues the article in question, ¢ would have
been the fate of the guilty one if the passionate and rancorous
Allagherio had been able to set his foot again in his desecrated
home.” . . . ¢ And when he speaks of children who have not the
down upon their cheeks feeling the chastisement, who knows
that he is not again alluding to the offspring foisted upon the
homes of the exiles by their shameless wives.’

As for Gemma, I can only repeat what I have said above.
Perhaps Dante ¢believed his wife’s ways to be somewhat
loose, but of this we have no certainty; and still less
whether he attributed to her any other particular faults,
and if so, what.’

That the members of a pious fraternity such as the Com-
pany of Or’ San Michele should have decided to make a
present of some value to a nun who, if she was really Dante’s
daughter, was the fruit of iniquity, whilst there was no lack
of legitimate descendants, strikes me as highly improbable.

For the rest I agree with Sign. Imbriani that numerous
children are no proof of mutual happiness between husband
and wife ; but I must confess that I too have often had
doubts as to the number of children which the biographers
attribute to Dante and Gemma. I see that Todeschini?

1 Scritti su Dante, 1. 333 $9.
IX.—_GEMMA DONATI 261

also shares them ; but I would not assert with Imbriani that
Pietro and Jacopo were the only two apart from Beatrice.
Lionardo Aretino, who was personally acquainted with a
grandson of Pietro’s; tells us in his ita that Dante © had,
amongst other children, a son called Pietro,” thereby in-
dicating that the number of his offspring must have been
at least three.!

1 Jacopo, Pietro, Antonia, and Beatrice, are the children whose
existence is now generally regarded as established. Ihe Imperia
mentioned in the body of this essay (p. 258) is questioned.—ED.
X.—THE TWO VERSIONS
OF BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 87-120 (1879).]

I. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION

THE manuscripts of Giovanni Boccaccio’s little work en-
titled The Life and Ways of Dante Allighieri the Florentine
Poet are very numerous. Mazzuchelli! has counted as many
as sixteen in Florence alone, and this does not include the
Riccardian manuscripts, of which, as a fact, there are ten.
But the contents of these manuscripts differ widely. In
some the booklet has only about two-thirds of the bulk
which it has in the others. We may speak of these latter
as containing the complete text, and the others as con-
taining the compendium.

The complete text has been printed more than a dozen
times since the year 1477, whereas the compendium was
first published in 1809, and, as far as I know, has only been
reprinted three times.

The first to note the difference between the two re-
dactions seems to have been Biscioni. Annotating a
passage in his edition of the ¢ Life of Dante, ? he gives the
corresponding “readings of three Florentine manuscripts
(one being Salvini’s, one a Laurentian (No. 1 in our list),
and one belonging to the Buonarotti) and adds:3 ‘Note
that this Life of Dante has been epitomised from another ;
for not only in this passage (which I have cited by way of

1 Scrittori d’ Italia, ii. p. 1357, note 243.
2 P. 57 in Milanesi’s edition.

3 Prose di Dante Aligh. e di M. Gio. Boccacci, p. 376.
262
ESSAYS ON DANTE 263

example) but throughout the Life we observe the same way
of going to work. It is nothing short of a rending and
destroying of Boccaccio’s exquisite composition, as any one
may plainly see.’—In like manner one of the early librarians
of the Riccardian, probably Lami, wrote on the first folio
of some of the manuscripts of the Life that they contain it
only in an abbreviated form.

II. MANUSCRIPTS

The manuscripts of the complete work which I have
examined are the following :

I. In Florence :

A. Laurentian :
1. Plut. xliii. cod. 26.1 Cited by Mazzuchelli as xliii. 25.
2, Plat. xc. sup. cod, 63.2
3+ Plat. zc. sap. cod. 135. 1.3
B. National :
4. Magliabecchian 260, formerly in possession of Senatore
Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi, cited by Mazzuchelli.
5. Panciatichi 1. 1. 56.
6. Palatino vii. 712.
C. Riccardian:
7. No. 1029, written in 1472.
8. No. 1050, fragmentary, used by Milanesi, and also for
the Vita Nuova by Biscioni, Giuliani, and Ancona.
9. No. 1054.
10. No. 1070, wanting the first folio and the last two-fifths.
11. No. 1079, written in 1456.
12. No. 1120, wanting in the first two folios.

In addition to the Riccardian mss. Nos. 7, 9, and 10 above,
Moutier mentions his use of a Riccard. 2278, which I have not
seen.

II. In Venice, Library of San Marco:

13. CL x. cod. 12,
14. CL xi. cod. 36, written in 1420 by Paolo di Duccio
Tosi di Pisa.
These two mss. served Bart. Gamba for his edition of 1823.

 

1 Bandini, Cat. Bibl. Laur., v. 223, No. xxiv.
2 Ibid., p. 369, No. vii. 8 Ibid., p. 405, No. v.
264 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

Of the Compendium I have come across the following
MSS. :

I. In Florence:
A. ET
. Plut. Ixi. cod. 41, completed on the 23rd July 1475,
cited by Mazzuchelli as li. 41, and by Biscioni.
B. National :

2. Magliabecchian ii. 1. 62, formerly belonging to the
Casa Gaddi, written in 1470.

3. Magliabecchian viii. 10, parchment, small quarto,
written in 1430, and very beautiful.

4. Palatine v. 280, parchment, large quarto, also a choice
Ms.

C. Riccardian :

5. Cod. 1080, former press-mark vi. 1. 1204.

6. Cod. 1083, former press-mark ii. 11. 340, written in
the year 1433.

7. Cod. 1085, ‘extremely incorrect,” says the note of
some former librarian.

8. Cod. 1090, formerly vi. 1175, of great beauty. This
Ms. and the one registered above as No. § are mis-
cellaneous collections ; neither is dated, but from
matters pertaining to the conspiracy of Stefano
Porcari which they contain, it is clear that they
cannot be earlier than 1453.

9. Cod. 2330, parchment, quarto. From the other
opuscula contained in the ms. it is clear that it can-
not have been written before 1461.

II. In Milan :

10. In the library of the Marchese Gian Giac. Trivulzio,
formerly possessed by the painter Gius. Bossi,
written in the year 1437. Served as the foundation
of the edition of Mussi, 1809.

11. Belonging to the March. Girolamo d’Adda, parchment,
written with extreme beauty.

111. EDITIONS OF THE COMPLETE TEXT

1. The first printed edition of the Vita di Dante precedes
the edition of the Divine Comedy with Jacopo della Lana’s
Commentary (wrongly attributed to Benvenuto da Imola)
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 265

issued at Venice by Vendelino da Spira in 1477 in folio),
but many copies of the principal work are without it.

The judgment passed on this edition by Bartolommeo
Gamba in the dedication of his own edition of the work is
rather hostile than otherwise. He says it was copied
haphazard from some manuscript . . . and in all respects is
an unfortunate work, worthy of the editor who had the bad
taste to print at the close of the work’ . . . (the well-
known barbarous sonnet).—It is true that errors of the
press abound, and that the orthography is villainous, but
these defects are common to the greater part of the publica-
tions of the fifteenth century, not excepting the vaunted
Nidobeatine. Apart from these blemishes the text is far
better than Sermartelli’s; which the old Vocabolaristi
honoured by taking their citations from it.—By way of
impressing upon his readers the frequent mistakes of the
editions previous to his own, Gamba enumerates eighteen of
the most monstrous, an enumeration by the way which is
not free from errors itself. But if the worthy librarian of
San Marco, to whom I would offer my sincerest gratitude
all these years after his death, had compared the Vendelino
edition, he would have found one-half (nine) of the correc-
tions, which his manuscript copies suggested to him, already
in print.

This editio princes is the only one which divides the
work into twenty-eight numbered chapters, each with its
subject written at the head.

2. The second edition, which appeared at Rome in 1544
in very small octavo, is due to Francesco Priscianese, a
Florentine. The dedication to Giovan Lodovico Pio speaks
of the booklet as a rare thing and a new,” and other
arguments combine to prove that the editor was not
acquainted with the edition of Vendelino. Not only does
he sometimes substitute readings which we can have no
hesitation in pronouncing erroneous for the certainly
266 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

correct ones of Vendelino,! but we find gaps in his edition
where that of 1477 is complete. The most noteworthy
example is that of the verses composed by Giovanni di
Virgilio for Dante’s sepulchre, all fourteen of which are
given, though incorrectly enough, in the old edition,
whereas Priscianese simply says, ‘The above-mentioned
verses are wanting.’

For the rest, the manuscript of which the new editor
made use must have been closely allied to that which had
served his predecessor. It is true that the catalogue of
‘the chief matters contained in the work’ numbers fifty-
one articles, but they are not incorporated in the body of
the work ; and the sections of the work itself, with the first
words in capitals, indicate twenty-eight chapters, generally,
but not always, coinciding with those of Vendelino’s edition.
The readings are very frequently identical. For instance,
in the Proem alone no less than twenty-three of the variants
from the received text which I have noted are common to
the two editions. In spite of this, we note that, generally
speaking, the manuscript used by Priscianese must have
been the better of the two. Of the eighteen corrections
which Gamba believed himself to have introduced into the
text, the Roman edition presents us with three more in
addition to the nine which are found in Vendelino’s.

3. The Vita di Dante was published for the third time
by Bartolommeo Sermartelli in Florence in 1576. Neither
on the title-page nor in the dedication of the volume, which
includes the Vita Nuova and all the Canzoni, does the editor
tell us whence he derived the text of the biography. It
seems certain, however, that he made no use of the previous
editions. The mistakes of this new edition which might

1 In the Proem (Milan, p. 3), in place of ¢alquanto ancora ne fanno
chiari,” Priscianese reads alquante ancor ne fanno chiare,” and further
on, ‘contro a ogni humano auuenimento’ instead of ‘avvedimento.’
Where Vendelino rightly has 1321 for the year of the poet’s death
(Milan., p. 28), Priscianese gives MCCCXXIL
BOCCACCIOS LIFE OF DANTE 267

have been corrected by a glance at Priscianese’s, are so
numerous, and often so childish, that even such a careless
editor as Sermartelli could not have failed to make use of so
obvious a means of correcting them had he come across it.

A few examples selected from passages to which Gamba
did not call attention will serve to prove the point :

Milanesi, p. 9 : ‘avvedendosi che . . . senza le istorie, e la
morale e naturale filosofia le poetiche intenzioni avere non si
poteano intere ; partendo i tempi debitamente le istorie da se,
e la filosofia sotto diversi dottori s'argomentd . . . d’intendere.
Sermartelli : ‘auuedendosi . . . senza le storie, da se, et dalla
filosofia, sotto diuersi dottori s’argomentd, . . . di intendere.’—
Milanesi, p. 10: ‘Gli studii generalmente sogliono solitudine e
rimozione di sollecitudine . . . desiderare.” Sermartelli: ‘Gli
studii, sogliono generalmente, solitudine, e rimozione di solitudine
. + . desiderare’—Milanesi, p. 11: ‘il cui nome era Bice
(comecche egli sempre dal suo primitivo nome, cioé Beatrice,
la nominasse).” Sermartelli: il cui nome era Bice (come che
egli sempre dal suo primitivo nome venne) cioé Beatrice nomi-
nasse.’—Milanesi, p. 12 : ‘Tanto solamente non voglio che non
detto trapassi, cio¢ che, secondo ch’ egli scrive e che per altrui
a cui fu noto il suo disio si ragiona, onestissimo fu questo suo
amore.” Sermartelli: ‘In tanto, non solamente, non voglio che n’ho
detto trapassi, accid che secondo egli scriue che per altrui a cui
fa noto desio, si ragiona, fu honestissimo il suo amore.’—M ilanesi,
p. 13: ‘incitatore di quello; argomento a cid prendendo dalle
cose leggiadramente nel fiorentino idioma e in rima e in laude
della donna amata, e acciocché li suoi ardori e amorosi concetti
esprimesse, gia fatte da lui ; ma certo io nol consento.” Sermar-
telli: ‘incitatore di quello argomento, accid prendendo leggia-
dramente, nel Fiorentino Idioma, et in rima, in lode della donna
amata. Et accio che li suoi ardori, et amorosi concetti esprimesse,
gia fatti da lui, ma certo io non lo sconsento.’—Milanesi, p. 14:
¢ comecche egli poco . . . altrui che ad amici veder si lasciasse.’
Sermartelli : ‘come che egli poco, . . . A altrui ben che a’ miei,
vedere si lasciasse.’—Milanesi, p. 15: “Chi sarebbe colui che
. . . menasse alcuno . . , dell’ isola di Cipri, per riscaldarsi
nelle eterne ombre de’ monti Rodopei?’ Sermartelli: ‘Chi
saré colui che . . . menasse alcuno . . . nell’ isola di Cipri,
nelle eterne ombre de monti Rodopei?’—Milanesi, p. 17: ¢Egli
usato liberamente di ridere, di piangere . . . secondoché le
268 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

passioni dolci o amare il pungevano.’ Sermartelli: ‘egli vsato
liberamente di ridere, di piagnere . . . secondo che le passioni,
dolcezze, 6 amore il pungeuano.’

Apart from such gross blunders, the text followed by
Sermartelli must have been very incorrect. Omissions of
one or more words are frequent, substitutions of one word
for another of like but not identical meaning, false punctua-
tion which destroys the sense, and so forth, are of constant
occurrence ; but there are also alterations which seem due
not to the more or less faulty nature of the manuscripts
Sermartelli used but rather to some arbitrary change intro-
duced by himself. Similar disfigurements also characterise
the text of the Vita Nuova, which is included in the same
volume, and in my catalogue of the editions of the latter!
I have expressed my opinion that the editor, living after
the Council of Trent, must have changed the text with
the idea of defending the work he was printing against the
censures of the Santo Ufficio. The most notable example
of such a proceeding is the omission of the whole passage
that refers to Dante’s Monarchia> a book repeatedly
denounced as heretical.

It is truly surprising that the Vocabolaristi of the first
three editions should have taken no less than thirty examples
from such a defective work ; but their having done so was
certainly the reason why this villainous text was reprinted
at least four times.

4. Mazzuchelli 3 mentions an edition of the Vita di Dante
printed at Florence in octavo in 1587. As I have never
seen it nor discovered any account of it I cannot tell
whether it was, as I suspect, merely a reprint of Sermartelli’s
or whether it made use of other texts. It is possible, how-
ever, that it is simply the edition of 1576, and that its
mention as a separate work is due to a mistake of date.

1 LaVita N. di D. All. (Leipzig, 1876), p. xxxii.
2 Milan., pp. 66, 67. 3 See above, p. 262, note 1.
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 269

5. Under the anagram ¢Cillenio Zacclori, Lorenzo
Ciccarelli republished the Vita di Dante in the fourth
volume of his Opere di M. Giov. Boccacci, Naples, 1723,
octavo, but falsely dated at Florence. The title-page
declares it to be ‘not mutilated in various passages, as
Bartolommeo Sermartelli presented it in the year 1576, but
complete as it was written by the author.” In spite of this,
however, it is perfectly clear that Ciccarelli substantially
reproduced Sermartell’s edition with all its blunders. In-
deed every one of the mistakes which Gamba pointed
out, and the others which we have noted above, reappear
under the new editor. Biscioni’s criticism, in his notes!
seems to me therefore thoroughly justified, and if Gamba,
who expressed himself in much the same sense in the intro-
duction to his Life of Dante,? seems at first sight to retract
his censure in his Serie dei Test: di lingua,® 1 believe we
must really refer his more favourable judgment to other
works of Boccaccio contained in the same collection of
Ciccarelli’s.

The only gap in the Florentine edition which Ciccarelli
supplies, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is the one
that refers to the Monarchia, and for this purpose it would
seem that the new editor turned neither to manuscripts nor
to the Roman edition, but to that of Vendelino da Spira.

6. Far superior to all the preceding editions is that of
Anton Maria Biscioni, included in the Prose di Dante Alli-
ghieri e di M. Giov. Boccacci, published at Florence by Tartini
and Franchi in 1723 in quarto. In his notes* Biscioni
tells us that the old Roman edition produced by Francesco
Priscianese, of Florence, in octavo, 1544, has served as
the basis of this edition’; and in truth all the mistakes
which a comparison with the Roman edition alone would

1 Pp. 370-374. 2 P. xxviil.
3 Fourth edition of 1839, No. 235 [cf. 207].
1 Pp. 370, 777.
270 X.—THE TWO. VERSIONS OF

enable him to correct are removed, and even where this
was insufficient to re-establish the text, Biscioni generally
perceived that it was corrupt and did his best to amend it.
Thus, for example, @ propos of the sepulchral inscription of
Giov. del Virgilio, which was to have been inscribed on
the poet’s tomb, but was not, the Roman edition says:
¢pensando le presenti cose per me scritte, come che in
sepoltura, non sieno corporali’ ma siano (si come quella
sarebbe stata) perpetue conseruatrici della cui? memoria.’
Biscioni simply strikes out the two words ¢che in,’ reduces?
the ¢perpetue conservatrici’ to the singular number, and
substitutes ¢ colui ’ for ¢cui’—Gamba, perhaps following one
of the manuscripts of San Marco, essentially changes the
sense, and writes ¢ pensando le presenti cose per me scritte,
comeche in sepoltura non sieno con parole, sieno (siccome
quella sarrebbe stata) perpetue conservatrici della colui
memoria.’— The two editions of Moutier and Milanesi
very properly return to Biscioni’s text, with the sole
difference that instead of the simple ‘come’ they restore
Priscianese’s ¢ comeche.’

In one passage of his notes Biscioni appeals to the
authority of ¢all the manuscripts,” and in another he
particularly cites the text of the Guicciardini ms. The
very small number of various readings which he registers
makes us suppose, however, that his collations did not
cover the whole text word by word, but were limited to
a small number of passages arbitrarily selected.

Biscioni’s edition was taken as the basis of those of
Gamba, of Moutier, and of Milanesi ; but it is particularly
surprising that these editors, while adopting the other
corrections given at the end of the book, passed over the
one which Biscioni himself rightly regarded as the most
important of all. Towards the end of his Proem, Messer

1 Vendelino: come chen sepultura corporale scripte non sienno.’
2 Jbid.: “dalla chui lui.’ 3 With Vendelino.
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 271

Giovanni, after having reproached the Florentine Republic
with not having reared some monument or the like in
honour of its poet, says he himself would fain do that which
ought to have been the concern of the Commonwealth. He
cannot do it by statue or choice sepulchre, to the which
his powers would not stretch, ¢ ma,’ continued Vendelino’s
edition, ¢ con lettere pouere a tanta inpresa. Di questo o
di queste daro.” Priscianese’s reading is far inferior : ‘con
lettere pouere a tanta impresa di queste, et di queste diro,’
and so is Sermartelli’s: ‘Ma con lettere ecc., di questa,
o di queste dare.” None of these readings give any sense.
Biscioni, having adopted Priscianese’s reading, subsequently
perceived the error, but too late to correct it in the text.
In his notes, however, he gives us a specimen of the edition
mentioned above under No. 5 side by side with his own,
to show the greater correctness of the latter, and he tells
us? that he has selected a passage at the end of the Proem
so as ‘to take the same opportunity of correcting an error
which has been overlooked’ in his own edition. Then in
the ¢ specimen’ we find in brackets after the words quoted
above [“leggi: di queste ho, e di queste daro,—cio¢ di
queste le quali io ho, daro ’].

We can see at a glance that this reading is not only
correct, but the only one that gives a proper sense. Two of
the five manuscripts® which I have examined give it exactly
so, and the three others* with the smallest variations. In
spite of all this neither Gamba nor Moutier gives the
smallest hint of the correction which Biscioni had already
made. Milanesi adopted it, but as an improvement intro-
duced by himself, ‘supported by the best manuscripts.’

7. A new edition of the Life of Dante in octavo was
issued in 1802 from the press of the brothers Amoretti of

1 So here too the edition cited by the ¢ Vocabularists’ is the worst
of all. 2.P. 372, 3 Nos. 1 and 2.

* Nos. 4 and 5, “di queste o e di queste daro’; No 3, “di queste o di
questi daro.’
272 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

Parma, though it bears no intimation either of date or
place. Though very neatly printed, it is really nothing
but an exact copy of Ciccarelli’s text, perpetuating all the
blunders. If, for instance, the Neapolitan editor, following
Vendelino’s edition, had called the Antipope Nicholas v.
¢ Pietro della Cornara,’ the Parma editor never thought of
substituting ¢P. d. Corvara,” although, without looking at
manuscripts or printed editions, this correction would have
suggested itself to any one who was not ignorant of the
first elements of the history of the fourteenth century.

8. The Milan edition of the Vita appended to the
fourth volume of the Decamerone in the collection of the
Italian Classics, 1803, I have never seen; and in face of
Gamba’s assertion that it too is merely a reprint of the
abominable Neapolitan edition I have not thought it worth
while to try to obtain it.

9. The edition of Bartolommeo Gamba (Venezia, Alvi-
sopoli, 1825, 16mo) far surpasses all its predecessors in the
correctness of its text. The editor tells us that he has
¢ consulted the Florentine edition of 1723 with great ad-
vantage, but not without comparing it in doubtful cases
with the editio princeps of 1477, the Roman edition of 1544,
the Florentine edition of 1576, and even the Milan edition of
1809, though the latter is no more than a compendium.’ —
¢But,” he adds, “all these would have been feeble resources
if I had not been able to make use of two ancient
codices in the library of San Marco.” These codices have
been registered above in the list of manuscripts of the
complete Life under numbers 13 and 14.

The text is not supplied with notes to indicate the
corrections, or the authority on which they rest. But
to show the reader how many blunders deform the un-
happy Vita di Dante, the editor, as noted above, pointed
out certain cases of contrast between his own edition
and its immediate predecessor, the Milan edition (in the
BOCCACCIOS LIFE OF DANTE 273

collection of Classics, copied from the ¢ pessima’ of Naples).
But the truth is that almost all these ¢pollutions’ are due
to Sermartelli and his blind followers. Gamba in noting
each of these passages exclaims, ‘ Messer Giovanni wrote’
so-and-so, ‘but what you find in your book is’ so-and-so.
This is doing less than justice to a well-informed reader,
who would have known in 1825 how superior the Floren-
tine edition of 1723 was to that of 1576 and its re-issues,
and would therefore have made use of the Prose di Dante ¢
Boccaccio, and would not be in the habit of reading the
distortions of Sermartelli. Only once does Gamba vary his
formula with, “in place of printing,’ and ¢ they have printed,’
and here he gives the preference to the first Florentine
edition over the second. It is where, after taxing the poet
with unbounded party virulence, Boccaccio pleads his
excuse for having spoken ill of his hero.! In the first
editions,> with which Biscioni agrees, his words are:
¢ Adunque a lui mi scuso, il quale per avventura me scrivente
con isdegnoso occhio da alta parte del cielo ragguarda.’
Sermartelli substitutes sovente’ for scrivente,” and in
Gamba’s preface we find? ‘Instead of printing “me
sovente” they have printed “me scrivente.”’——The two
next editors (Moutier and Milanesi) follow Biscioni, and
seeing that Gamba himself in the body of this work*
retains ‘me scrivente,’ I suppose that the two readings
have been interchanged by accident in the preface.—
Sometimes the Venetian editor departs without any reason
from Biscioni’s text. Thus, for example, in the Proem
(Milanesi’s ed. p. 3 last line) the construction is imperfect
without the ¢ comecchl) which is omitted, but perhaps only
through the compositor’s carelessness.

10. The edition published in Florence in 16mo, 1826,
by Pasquale Caselli, is simply a reprint of Gamba’s.

1 Milanesi, p. 56. 2 As also in the Compendium.
2 P. xxv, LP. 20,
274 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

11. The fifteenth volume of the Opere volgari di Giov.
Boccaccio, corrette su i testi a penna, by Ignazio Moutier,
Florence, 1833, octavo, contains the Life of Dante and the
Ameto. A very short preface tells us that © the best edition
is the one published in the prose works of Dante and
Boccaccio, Florence, 1723. The most recent, issued at
Venice in 1825, though carefully amended, has not absolved
me from the necessity of comparing the most authoritative
manuscripts.” These words give us to understand that
the new edition is based, not upon Gamba’s, but upon
Biscioni’s; and a comparison shows us that as a rule
this is actually so. Three of the manuscripts of which
Moutier tells us he made use of for the improvement
of the text we have registered as numbers 7, 9, and 10.
A fourth, with which I am not acquainted, is probably
the Riccardian 2278.—What corrections are due to them
it is difficult to determine in the absence of any indica-
tion from the editor himself, but I do not imagine they
are numerous.

12. Ant. Gualb. de Marzo prefixes the /ita to his
Commentary on the Divine Comedy (Florence, 1864), de-
scribing it as ‘or ripurgata’ He seems to have made a
casual selection between the readings of Biscioni and Gamba.
The notes are not of the slightest significance.

13. The latest edition known to me is the one prefixed
to Sign. Gaetano Milanesi’s edition of Giov. Boccacci’s
Commentary, issued in 1863 at Florence. The prefatory
note informs us that special use was made of the Riccardian
manuscript registered above under No. 8 for the correction
of the text, but that other manuscripts in the same library
were referred to whenever necessary. This necessity must
have arisen at any rate for one-third of the work, for the
Riccardian text in question is wanting in the first leaf, and
for the part covered by the last twenty-two pages of the
new edition. It need hardly be added that after the labours
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 275

of Biscioni, Gamba, and Moutier, the corrections in any
case could not have been numerous.

In spite of all this, however, I believe it would be a
mistake to suppose that the text of the Vita di Dante is
now free from blots. Take for example a passage of the
Proem already cited. After reproaching the Florentines
with the wrongs they did to the poet, which for some
secret cause God has not yet avenged, Messer Giovanni
goes on, according to the latest edition: ‘Ma perocche
comecche impunite ci paiano le mal fatte cose), quelle non
solamente dobbiamo fuggire, ma ancora, bene operando di
ammendarle ingegnarci’—and then, after a full stop, and
with a capital : ¢ Conoscendo io me essere di quella medesima
citta, avvegnache picciola parte, della quale (considerato li
meriti) la nobilita e la virtu di Dante fu grandissima,’ etc.
— Now I take it that in the first place we should not
leave the sentence broken across the middle, but should go
on after a semicolon and without a capital. In the next
place ‘la nobilita e la virtu’ should be included in the
parenthesis, and finally the last “di,” which does not stand
in Priscianese’s edition, should be cancelled.

IV. EDITIONS OF THE COMPENDIUM

There is only one edition of the Vita Compendiata, though
there are three reprints of it. This first edition, based on
the manuscript numbered 10 above, is prefixed to a splendid
edition of the Divine Comedy published in Milan, 1809, by
Luigi Muss, in large folio, limited to seventy-two copies.

A simple reproduction of it occupies the first forty-four
pages of the fifth volume of the Paduan edition of the
Divine Comedy by Gius. Campi, Fortun. Federici, and Gius.
Maffei, Tipogr. della Minerva, 1822.

1 This passage appears in the form suggested by Witte in the latest
and now standard edition, by Macri-Leoni, Florence, 1888. In the
elaborate introduction to this work the reader will find further biblio-
graphical details. See Appendix.—Ep.
276 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

The Ciardetti edition of the Divine Comedy with the Com-
mentary of P. Baldass. Lombardi, Florence, five volumes
in octavo (1830, etc.), reproduces the Paduan edition even
to the pagination.

Another reprint, disfigured by many errors, precedes the
edition of the Comedy published by Firmin Didot freres,
Paris, 1844. Copies of this edition occur dated 1847 and
1853, but it is only the title-page that is changed.

As I have given no attention to correcting the text of
this Compendium I cannot say whether Mussi’s edition
faithfully represents the Trivulzian manuscript which once
belonged to Bossi, nor whether any passages of the work
which need correction could be improved by a comparison
with the other manuscripts.

NN. THE DIFFERENCES BETWEFN THE TWO
VERSIONS OF THE VITA DI DANTE

Most of the writers who concern themselves with this
double form of the Life of Dante at all have only spoken of
it in the most general terms.—Sign. Teod. Paur! is the
author who has gone most deeply into the question.

The changes made by the Epitomiser are of three kinds.
For the most part he simply expresses the whole meaning
of the original more briefly, but sometimes he omits more
or less extensive passages, not simply for brevity’s sake, but
for some more special reason, and finally, though but seldom,
he adds something to the text, or so alters it as to change
itssmeaning.

VI. PARAPHRASE AND CONDENSATION

The passages which simply reproduce the ideas of the
original sometimes depart so far from it in language that

1 Ueber die Quellen der Lebensgeschichte Dante’s (Görlitz, 1862,
No. 77, p. 40).
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE

277

one might suppose they had been written down from

memory after an attentive reading of the passage.

Here

are some examples, taken at hazard rather than deliberately

selected :

Original.

Milan., p. 8. From the be-
ginning of his boyhood, when
he had already learned the first
elements of letters, he gave
himself, not after the fashion of
the nobles of to-day to childish
wantonness and ease, lounging
in his mother’s lap, but gave
up his whole boyhood, in his
own city, to unbroken study of
the liberal arts, and became
wondrous expert therein. And
as his mind and genius ripened
with his years, he disposed him-
self, not to those studies that
bring gain, whereto every one
in general now hastens, but
with laudable desire for per-
petual fame, scorning those
riches that are but for a season,
he freely gave himself to the
desire of having full knowledge
of the fictions of the poets, and
the exposition thereof by rules
of art.

Milan., p. 9. Thereupon
duly dividing out his time, he
strove to master History by
himself, and Philosophy under
divers teachers, not without
long study and toil. And en-
amoured by the sweetness of
knowing the truth of things
shut up in Heaven, and finding
no other sweetness in this life

Compendium.

In his boyhood he began to
give signs, manifest to whoso
had regard to them, of what
he was to become in his mature
age, for leaving all childish
pamperings he gave himself in
his own city to the unbroken
study of the liberal arts, and
when he had become expert
therein,

he gave himself up not to the
lucrative professions to the
which every one now prema-
turely applies himself in his
passion for gain, but, with
laudable longing for perpetual
fame, to speculative studies.

To History and Philosophy
he gave himself in times duly
partitioned ; and when already
expert in the one and in the
other, his longing to know
more increasing with the sweet-
ness of knowing the truth of
things, he gave himself up to
the desire to investigate what-
soever might be comprehended
278 X.—THE TWO
more dear, and wholly abandon-
ing all other temporal anxiety,
he gave himself up entirely to
this alone. And although no
part of philosophy was left un-
scrutinised by him, still it was
on the profoundest depths of
theology that, with keen intel-
lect, he fixed himself. Nor
was the result remote from the

VERSIONS OF

by the human intellect con-
cerning the celestial intelli-
gences and concerning the First
Cause, with the utmost dili-
gence. Nor were these studies
accomplished in any short space,
nor were they carried on with-
out extreme discomfort, nor
did he acquire the fruit of them
in his own city alone.

intention ; for thinking nought
of heat or cold, of vigils or
fasts, nor any other bodily vex-
ation, he reached by unbroken
study to such knowledge of the
Divine Essence and the other
Separate Intelligences as may
be compassed here by human
intellect.

There are many examples of passages omitted simply for
the sake of brevity. Thus, to quote a single example, the
long digression on the power of the carnal appetite even in
men wise and worthy in other respects (Milan., pp. 56, 57)
is omitted. But though the Epitomiser does not, as a rule,
appear to give much heed to the impassioned discourses of
his original, yet he reproduces some of the digressions in
spite of their length, as for example, the discourse on
poetry (Milan., pp. 42-51). The facts or anecdotes related
in the complete biography reappear almost without ex-
ception in the Compendium, but, for some reason which I
cannot divine, the story of the tournament at Siena which
failed to move the poet from the apothecary’s bench where
he was sitting, or to disturb him in his reading, is omitted
(Milan., p. 40).

VII. OMISSIONS FOR SOME SPECIAL REASON

We can recognise more particular reasons for the omis-
BOCCACCIO'S LIFE OF DANTE 279

sion of some passages. The most important are those
which embody the virulent invectives against the Floren-
tines. They are all omitted or markedly mollified in the
Compendium.

In place of the two pages (Milan., pp. 2-4) of reproaches
which make up the greater part of the Proem in the
original, the Compendium has only these few words:
¢The footprints [of the ancient peoples] have not only
been ill followed by . . . my Florentines, but have been so
far wandered from that ambition secures every reward of
virtue. And if all else concealed this thing, the unjust
exile inflicted upon that most illustrious man Dante Ali-
ghieri would not suffer it to be hid. . . . Concerning this
most infamous deed it is not my present intention to insist
with due rebuke, but rather . . . to amend it.’ —And the
second passage on occasion of Dante’s exile which in
Milanesi’s edition occupies more than a page (pp. 22, 23)
is reduced to these few words: ‘Such was the end of the
glorious supremacy of Dante and his fellow-citizens, and
such was the reward which his pious toils brought to him.’
Finally the six pages in which Florence is reproached for
not at any rate seeking to recover the poet’s bones (Milan.,
pp. 31-36) are represented by some ten frigid lines, at the
end of which we read: ‘But let them be left to their
pride, and let us, having pointed out Dante’s toils and his
end, turn to the other things which may be told in addition
to those already related concerning him.’

VIII. ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS

It remains to point out some of the few additions, and
changes which alter the sense of the original, that the
Epitomiser allows himself to make.

The most curious, perhaps; is the one in which he speaks
of the poet’s supposed amours. It is grafted clumsily
280 X.— THE TWO VERSIONS OF

enough on the conclusion of his discourse about Dante’s
despair at the death of Beatrice! It runs as follows :

Nor was this the only passion experienced by our poet,
who was indeed much inclined to this emotion. We find
that he often sighed for other objects in maturer age; and
especially after his exile, when he was living in Lucca, for
a certain damsel whom he calls Pargoletta. And besides
this, near the close of his life, for an Alpine lady, in the
Alps of Casentino, who, if I am not misinformed, though
beautiful in countenance had a goitre. And for one or
the other of these he composed many and distinguished
things in rhyme.’ Similar statements are also found in
some of the Commentaries on the Divine Comedy. Thus
in the Ottimo? we read : ¢ Beatrice tells him that neither
the damsel whom he calls Pargoletta in his rhymes, nor
Lisetta, nor that other mountain lady, nor any other what-
soever, ought to have turned the feathers of his wings in
downward flight.’3 Still closer to our Epitomiser is the
¢ Anonimo Fiorentino,’ published by Fanfani:* ° After
Beatrice’s death he loved a damsel of Lucca whom he calls
Pargoletta, whence one of his ballads which he made for her
begins : I’ mi son pargoletta bella et nova, Et son venuta, etc.
His second and last love was a damsel of Pratovecchio . . .

1 Milanesi, p. 14.

2 On Purg. xxxi. 55.

8 Bergmann, Les Prétendues maitresses de Dante, p. 39, says in this
connection : ¢ The work known as the Ottimo Commento, which is ex-
tracted from Boccaccio’s Commentary on the Comedy, speaks of Pargo-
Jetta as identical with Gentucca, the Lucchese lady.” In the first place,
the author of the Ottimo Commento (Andrea Lancia), writing in the years
1333 and 1334, was naturally not in a position to epitomise Boccaccio’s
Commentary, which was begun some forty years later (Oct. 18th, 1373);
and in the second place, so far from hinting that Pargoletta is identical,
in his opinion, with Gentucca, he merely says in his note on the passage,
“nom so che Gentucca® (Purg. xxiv. 37) “io non so che gente bassa’
[showing that he did not take Gezntucca as a woman's name at all.—Ep.].
—Gius. Pitre’s Italian translation (Bologna, 1871), p. 42, leaves these

blunders uncorrected.
4 On Inf ii. 104.
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 281

for whom he made a moral canzone: Amor da che convien
pur ch’ © mi dogliay Perche la gente m oda,’ etc.'—Concerning
the goitre of this Alpine lady loved by the poet, so far as
I have noted no one but our Epitomiser says a word,
except indeed the author of the very short Life of Dante
published from a manuscript of Corbinelli’s at the end of
his Latin text of the De Pulgari Eloguentia, pp. 81, 82.
The Compendium does full justice to Dante’s love of
Beatrice, perfectly understanding that his amorous flames
woke the poetic genius in him, whereas the original sees
nothing in them but an amorous distraction, entirely chaste

indeed, but otherwise like the rest.

tive passages side by side :

Original, p. 12.

+ « «+ The amorous flames
multiplied with his age, in such
measure that nought else would
give him pleasure nor repose
nor comfort save beholding her.
Wherefore, leaving all other
affairs, he would go with the
utmost solicitude wherever he
might expect to see her, as
though he must gain from her
face and from her eyes all his
weal and his entire consolation.
Oh senseless judgment of lovers!
Who else but they would think
to reduce the flames by piling
on the fuel? How many and
how bitter were the thoughts,
the sighs, the tears, and the
other most grievous passions
which afterwards, as life ad-
vanced, were endured by him
by reason of this love, he hath

Let us put the respec-

Compendium.

And this love not only con-
tinuing but increasing from day
to day, and he having no greater
desire nor consolation than that
of seeing her,

as his age increased it was often
enough the dolorous cause to
him of heaviest sighs and bitter
tears, as he showeth in part of
his Vita Nuova.

 

1 The same Commentator’s note
identical.

on Purg. xxiv. 43 is almost exactly
282

himself in part set forth in his
Vita Nuova ; wherefore I am
not careful to recount them
more at length,

(P. 13.) ; .. If such love
could for so long season trouble
his food, his sleep, and all other
manner of repose, what an ad-
versary must we not suppose it
to have been to his sacred
studies and his genius! Verily
no slight one! Yet are there
many who would make it to
have been the stimulator to this
very thing ; arguing from what
he wrote so beautifully in the
Florentine idiom and in rhyme,
in praise of the lady of his love,
to express his ardours and his
amorous conceits. But in truth
I allow not this, unless I would
affirm that ornate discourse is
the supreme part of every
science, which is not true.

X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

What more? By the face of
this damsel . . . was first waked
in his bosom the genius to com-
pose rhyming words whereof
. . . in sonnets, ballads, and
odes, and other compositions,
he made many in her praise,
right excellently, and became
such a master thereof at the
instigation of love, that, far sur-
passing the fame of other poets,
he made many think that there
should never be any in times to
come who should have power
to surpass him therein.

Consistently with this the Compendium omits the pas-
sage in the original (Milan., p. 58) which asserts that ‘in
his more mature life Dante was much ashamed of having
composed this little book (La Vita Nuova).

On the other hand the Epitomiser seems to havea still
more unfavourable idea of Dante’s domestic life with
Gemma than Messer Giovanni had.

Original, p. 19.

It is the general nature of
temporal things for one to
draw another after it. Cares
of the family drew Dante on to
cares of the state, wherein the
vain honours that are attached
to public office so entangled

Compendium.

The goad of his wife drew
after it for our poet another
almost inevitable burden, to wit,
the anxiety of bringing up his
children, for in a short space
of time he became the father
of a family, and under com-
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE

him, that without considering
whence he had departed nor
whither he was going, with
loosened reins he gave himself
almost wholly up to the man-
agement of these things.

283

pulsion of domestic cares he
must needs surrender the time
which he had been wont, when
free, to give to lofty medita-
tions, to thinking whence he
was to get the nurses’ wages and
his children’s clothes, and other
things that must be heeded by
one who liveth rather accord-
ing to the opinion of the vulgar
than according to philosophic
truth, And how much vexa-
tion this brought to his studies
may be easily seen by all. And
hence perchance a yet greater
thing came upon him, because
his lofty mind scorned small
things, and hoping that they
might be stilled by greater
things, he turned himself from
family to public cares, wherein
he was so much and so suddenly
engulfed by vain honours that
without observing whence he
had departed or whither he was
going, with loosened reins, for-
getting his philosophy, he gave
himself almost completely to
the management . . . of pub-
lic affairs.

In some passages one would say that the author of the
Compendium shows himself yet more of a Catholic than

the original biographer.

Thus, for example, in comparing

poetry with theology, Boccaccio contents himself with
saying (Milan., p. 49): ¢They are opposed to each other,
inasmuch as theology presupposes nothing that is not true,
whereas poesy presupposes some things as true which are
most false and erroneous and contrary to the Christian

religion.’

The Epitomiser adds: ¢Nor need we marvel

much thereat, because the one was uttered by the Spirit,
284 X—~THE TWO VERSIONS OF

the which is all truth, and the other was discovered by the
wits of men who had either no knowledge of that Spirit
or not so full a knowledge.’

And so too in the explanation of the dream of Dante’s
mother, the original biographer in comparing the Comedy
to the peacock’s flesh (Milan., p. 74), only says: ‘The
sense of the Comedy . . . whether you consider it morally
or theologically, according as the one or the other aspect of
the work pleases you, is the simple and immutable truth.’
In the Compendium we read : ¢ As we search in many a part
for the . . . sense of the Comedy . . . we shall find it to
be the simple and immutable truth, not reeking of Gentile
filth but redolent of Christian sweetness, and in nought
discordant to the religion thereof.’

Boccaccio here as elsewhere delights to adorn his page
with references to authors and heroes of antiquity. Some-
times the Epitomiser makes a still greater display of classical
learning. Thus in the long discourse on the dangers of
marriage, the original says (p. 16): ‘He . . . whensoever
he would . . . disputed with philosophers.” The Com-
pendium amplifies thus: ‘Sometimes in the splendid con-
sistory of the philosophers, uniting in thought with Aristotle,
with Socrates, and with Plato, he will dispute most keenly
as to the truth of some conclusion.’—In like manner in the
comparison of the Comedy to a peacock, already referred to,
the Epitomiser, not content with explaining the change of
the shepherd into a peacock as the poet’s ¢ posthumous fame
which, as in his other works, so supremely survives in his
Comedy’ (Milan., p. 73), goes on to say : Be it understood
that after any man’s death his works arise to preserve his
name amongst posterity, and therefore instead of Alexander
and Judas Maccabeus and Scipio Africanus, we have their
victories and other splendid deeds. In place of Aristotle, of
Solon, and of Virgil, we have their books and their compo-
sitions, eternal preservers of their names and of their
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 285

presence in the face of such as live. And thus in place of
Dante we have his Comedy, which may most excellently be
likened to a peacock.’

My last note shall refer to the passage of the original in
which the writer asks how much greater Allighieri would
have been, if instead of his immeasurable obstacles he had had
equivalent assistance, or at any rate had had no opposition,
or but very little, as is the case with so many (Milan., p. 27).
‘I should say,” he replies, ‘that he would have become a
god upon earth,” which is in truth a little flat. The Com-
pendium substitutes the following more sage reflection :
‘And what will they say at this point who cannot even
pursue their studies at home but must seek out the solitude
of forests,—they whose unbroken repose and ample means
supply them with all they need without thought of their
own,—they who, released from wife and children, are freely
at leisure to pursue their will, many of whom, unless they
are sitting at ease, or if they hear the faintest murmur,
cannot so much as read, to say nothing of pondering, and
cannot write unless they can rest their elbow ? Why, they
can but say that our poet deserves to be honoured with
a double crown for the obstacles he overcame and for the
learning he acquired.’

Gamba thought (p. 111) that of all the changes intro-
duced into this Life of Dante attributed to Boccaccio, and
printed in Milan in the year 1809, the most important was
to be found in the passage where the dream of the poet’s
mother is expounded. So he added the nine pages of this
interpretation to his edition of the original. In this he was
followed by Moutier, but not by Milanesi. I confess that
for my part I cannot see any greater importance in the,
changes made by the Epitomiser here than in other parts
of his work. It is true that here, as elsewhere, he deals
very freely with his original, but I think it is clear enough
that in the greater part of the passages that I have brought
286 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

under the reader’s eye he has departed still further from it
than he does here.

IX. GUESSES AS TO THE IDENTITY OF THE
EPITOMISER

The preceding observations justify, if am not mistaken,
the following conclusions, if not as certainties at least as
probabilities :

1. The author of the abbreviated Life seems to have been
a Florentine. We cannot indeed safely infer this from the
passages in which the Compendium (following the original)
has, I am a citizen of this city.” ¢That which our city
ought . . . to have done . . . I intend to do myself,” and
so forth. For these passages not only may have been, but
certainly were, taken as they stand from the original.—
But I think a decisive argument is furnished by the per-
sistence with which the Epitomiser rejects, or at any rate
essentially softens, all the passages in reproach of the
Florentines.

11. From his frequent quotations, and from the way in
which he reproduced the thoughts of his original and ex-
pounds his own, it is clear that he was a man of letters and
not wanting in eloquence.!

The passage cited above on Dante’s pre-eminence over
other poets leads us to suppose that our poet’s precursors
were not unknown to him.

m1. Not unfrequently his judgments seem riper and better
weighed than Boccaccio’s.

1v. Though without a touch of the zealot, the Epitomiser
reveals himself as a good Christian and Catholic.

1 Gamba, Preface, pp. xxxi, xxxii: ¢ The compiler strikes me . . .
apart from the display of rhetorical ornaments, as having preserved
perfect lucidity in his arrangement and purity and elegance in his
style.’—Paduan edition, vol. v. p. 6 : ‘In some few (?) passages, it is true,

[the Compendium] differs from the received version both in words and
phrases, but is certainly not inferior to it in the choiceness of its language.’
BOCCACCIOS LIFE OF DANTE 287

X. BOCCACCIO?

We must confess that these characteristic qualities are
somewhat too general to give us much ground to hope
that we shall be able to identify the person of our author.
Nevertheless the attempt has been made to divine it by
supposing that Boccaccio himself recast his original Life
of Dante. ‘This is what the Paduan editors of 1822 say :1

¢We heartily concur with the scholars who affirm the Vita
we have reprinted to be an undoubted work of the illustrious
Certaldese scholar, perhaps drawn up by him with a view of
clearing his former composition from the blemishes with which
it was justly reproached.’

Other scholars do not seem to have shared this opinion.?
Paur does not so much as mention the conjecture. The
learned Venetian editor whom we have just cited tells us
that this is far from being the work in the form in which
it flowed from the pen of the Certaldese, and it will be
difficult to prove that it is a recast by the author himself, as
some have supposed.” Ugo Foscolo is also disinclined to
believe it. Speaking of Mussi and his edition he says : 3

‘He prefixed a manuscript of Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante,
whether epitomised or mutilated I will not determine, but
deriving its value from the supposition that the missing passages
were cut out by Boccaccio himself in his maturer age, when he
repented of having spoken too much of Dante’s amours—
though it were strange, in that case, that Leonardo Aretino,
writing not more than half a century after Boccaccio, in
Florence itself, had no knowledge of this recast; for otherwise
he would not have reproached Boccaccio with dwelling too
much on these enamourments.’

Here, as too often elsewhere, Foscolo pronounces sentence
without having examined the case. In Boccaccio’s original

1 Loc. cit.

2 Scartazzini however appears to favour it: Rivista internazionale,
No. 6. p. 167.

8 In his edition of the Commedia (Londra, 1843), iv. p. 128.
288 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

work neither much nor little is said ‘of Dante’s amours.’
He speaks as he could not but speak of his most chaste
love for Beatrice, and in another part of his work he adds
(Milan., p. 56), ‘Amid all this virtue . . . lechery found
abundant place, and not only in his youthful years but even
in his ripe ones.” These words, which impute to the poet
a vice most unworthy of the name ‘amore,’ enter upon no
details whatever, but such as they are, they are repeated
letter for letter in the Compendium. The Epitomiser
however does add something on his own account, namely
just the narrative of Dante’s supposed amours with Pargo-
letta of Lucca and the goitred lady of the Casentino.
Arguments in favour of the opinion that Boccaccio him-
self is the author of this recast of the Life are certainly
not wanting. The Florentine Republic had employed
Boccaccio in state affairs ever since 1354. The Signoria
had sent him as ambassador to three of the Popes at
Avignon. It had also intrusted him with the mission of
inducing Petrarch to return to his fatherland. In August
1373 a decree of the same Signoria appointed him to the
public readership of the Divine Comedy, assigning him a
yearly salary of 100 florins of gold, a considerable sum,
especially for a man who lived in such straitened circum-
stances as did Boccaccio during almost the whole of his
life. He had good reason therefore for wishing to propitiate
his fellow-citizens and make them forget anything he had
ever said or written which might have offended them ; and
indeed in his first ¢ Lecture,’ when explaining the title of
Dante’s book,! he does not give it in its full form, as we
find it in the letter to Cangrande: ‘The Comedy of Dante
Allighieri, a Florentine by birth, not by character,’ but con-
fines himself to saying ¢ The Comedy of Dante Allighieri
the Florentine,” omitting the ¢natione, non moribus,” which
would have sounded ill in the ears of his audience. In like
1 Milanesi, i. p. 83.
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 289

manner instead of affirming, as he had done in the Proem
of the Vita, that ambition had laid hold of every reward of
virtue amongst the Florentines, he seeks to win their favour
by modestly protesting that to explain a text of such high
art he will need the Divine assistance, especially since he
has to discourse! ‘to men of so high understanding and
marvellous acuteness as ye gentlemen of Florence do always
show yourselves to be.” If therefore he found occasion to
mention ‘the little treatise’ written by him in praise of
Dante, one can perfectly understand that he might think
it suitable to substitute a recast for the original book, and to
suppress the invective against the Florentines.

We may also urge that after Boccaccio’s conversion by
Gioachino Ciani, which took place in 1361, he may have
felt moved to give utterance, even in this biographical tract,
to his devout and Catholic sentiments.

But in spite of these plausible arguments I think we
must reject the opinion for which they seem to plead.
The considerations urged above would lead to the con-
clusion that the recast of the book dated from Boccaccio’s
last years, and perhaps was intended as an introduction to
the lectures on the Comedy which he held in the Church of
St. Stefano. Now in the thirty-third of these lectures?
after repeating the account of the re-discovery of the first
seven cantos as Andrea di Leon Poggi had related it to him,
and after telling us how he himself had spoken of it in the
Vita, he adds that the story was told him again by Dino
Perini, an intimate friend of Dante’s, in an entirely different
way. ‘Then in conclusion he says: ‘Now how this thing
chanced or may have chanced I shall leave to the judgment
of my readers. Let each one suppose what seems to him
most true or most probable.” Dino Perini, who boasts of
the closest intimacy of friendship with Dante, can hardly
have outlived the poet half a century or more. His story

1 Milan,, i. 81. 2 Jbid., i. 89. 3 Ibid. ii. 132.

T
290 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

to Boccaccio must therefore have been told many years
before 1373, although. after the publication of the Vita di
Dante, so that we are driven to the conclusion that if the
Compendium had been the work of Messer Giovanni he
must have been acquainted, when engaged upon it, with
Ser Dinos claim to the merit of having discovered the
seven cantos. But we see that the author of the recast
had no such knowledge, otherwise he could not have given
the credit to Andrea Poggi alone with the same assurance
as in the original Life.

We might add, as a further argument, that if Boccaccio
had believed in the truth of the tales about Dante’s amours
with Pargoletta or the lady with the goitre, which were
certainly current during the poet’s life, he would have
been sure to find a place for such scandals in his com-
plete Vita di Dante, since he expressly taxes him with
wantonness.

Finally, if my foreign extraction allowed me to express an
opinion on such a point, I should say that the language of
the passages peculiar to the Epitomiser strikes me as depart-
ing in no small degree from Boccaccio’s style.

XI. JOHN OF SERAVALLE?

If the conjecture that the Life of Dante was recast and
epitomised by the author himself will not hold, it remains
open to inquiry whether any other hypothesis can be
advanced and made good. In Paur’s work, to which refer-
ence has been made more than once, we are told that
Emmanuelle Rocco attempted to show that the Epitomiser
was probably identical with Giovanni Bertoldi of Serravalle,
who annotated the Divine Comedy. According to Paur’s
account, the only argument adduced in support of this
conjecture is that both the authors in question tell us
that Dante was hard pressed for money when he was in
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 291

Paris. But they do this in a very different manner. The
Compendium says quite generally : ¢ When he had crossed
the Alps he made his way as best he might to Paris, so that
by studying there to the utmost of his power he might
restore to philosophy the time which he had robbed from
her for other empty cares. He attended lectures therefore
on philosophy and theology for a certain space, not without
great lack of the things requisite for life.” The Commentator
on the other hand only speaks of Dante’s inability to meet
the very heavy expenses of graduating. He was a Bachelor
of the University of Paris, where he lectured on the “Sen-
tences” pro forma magisterii, lectured on the Bible, answered
all the doctors in due form, and did all the acts which need
to be done for taking the doctor’s degree in Sacred Theology.
Nothing remained but the inceptio or conventus, but for this
he lacked the cash. To get it he went back to Florence, a
supreme Artist and a finished Theologian.’ !

As for this matter, without knowing the details men-
tioned by the Bishop of Fermo, the Epitomiser might find
hints enough in the original Vita to justify him in saying
that Dante could not have attended the classes of the
Parisian professors in philosophy and theology ¢ without
great lack of things requisite for life,” for we read (p. 19)
that in his unbroken study of the said sciences, the poet
had ‘given no heed to heat nor cold nor vigils nor fasts
nor any other bodily discomfort’; and further on (p. 24),
that after leaving Italy and passing the mountains which
divide it from the provinces of Gaul he made his way to
Paris ‘as best he might.’

If a single coincidence were sufficient to enable us to
divine the author of a work we should have equal or
perhaps better right to identify our Epitomiser with the
author of the very short Life of Dante published by

1 P. 15 of the Prato edition of 1891. For an explanation of the
technical terms, cf. Rashdall’s Universities of Europe, etc., i. 284 s3.—ED.
202 X.—THE TWO VERSIONS OF

Corbinelli ; for these are the only two authorities who
endow the lady of the Casentino with a goitre.

If therefore this conjecture will not hold either, we
must be content, at any rate for the present, with a non
liquet.

XII. CONCLUSION

It only remains to add two remarks with respect to the
manuscripts of the abbreviated Life. It is well known,
partly from the dates assigned to them, partly from the
other works which appear with the Epitome in the mis-
cellaneous collections containing it, that all the manuscripts
are of the fifteenth century, and, we may add, well ad-
vanced in it. Four of them (registered above under Nos.
3, 5, 8, and g) give it in connection with writings con-
cerning Stefano Porcaro, a circumstance which might
possibly furnish some indication as to the origin of the
book.

The most important of the manuscripts I take to be the
one second on our list, some features of which might lead
us to suspect that the abbreviated Life was not carried
through at once, but is the result of successive labours,
perhaps by different hands. As a specimen I subjoin part
of the Proem, placing within brackets the words and the
passages which are found in the original but not in the
other copies of the Compendium. The asterisks indicate
some obvious errors of the amanuensis.

¢sono ancora testimonianza [chiara alli presenti uomini]’ . .
ogni Repubbricha * chome due*’ . . . “i quali chon
* maturitd * affermaua essere il destro* e* non lasciare . . .

manchaua [chonuzio !] sanza dubio * pitt * la Rip. zopp. [e pero
se sciura? si pecchasse inammendue quassi certissi auere quella

 

1 In the original Vita, ¢ per vizio.”
2 In the original, ‘se per isciagura.’
BOCCACCIO’S LIFE OF DANTE 293

non potere stare innalchun modo] * ma ssi *1 |adunque] chossi
egregi chome ant. popoli da quella laudeuole sentenza [e
apertissimamente uera| ¥ dubita * altra d’una * emorea * statua. . .
sichondo i meriti [precedenti] onorauano. . . [Le] pene per[llo]
opposito infigendo [date non churo di rachontare. Per* lui
quelli * onori e purghazioni] la anssiria la macedonicha [* da
grecia ¥] e ultimamente. . . . Le uestigie *1* quali [in chossi
alti esempli]. . . . possiede 'ambizione. [Per] che [si chome
io e ciaschuno altro che chon ochio ragoneuole ghuardare non
sanza grandissima chonfusione danimo possiamo vedere li maluagi
peruersi uomini * agliochi * eccelsi et a sommi vficj et ghiderdonj
eleuare et buonj schacciare, deprimere, abassare. Delle qualj
chose serbi il giudicio di dio choloro il negono che’ (illegible)
‘il temone di questa naue pero chennoi pili bassa turba siamo
dal fiotto della fortuna, ma non della cholpa parteficie. Et
chome che n.” (3) ‘infinite ingratitudine et disoneste perdonanze,
aparenti si potessino le predette chose verifichare, per ¥ none *
schoprire li nostri difetti et per uenire al mio principale intento
vna sola assaj auere rachontata, né questa fia pocha e picchola,
richordando] Vesilio [del] chiarissimo uomo, dante allighieri, [al
quale anticho cictadino, né di schuri parenti nato, quanto per
uirtl e] per iscienza, o per opere laudeuole, condegno di grolioso
onore. Intorno alla quale opera’ ecc.

 

1 Read, ‘ mossi.’
XI.—DANTE’S REMAINS AT RAVENNA
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 32-42 (1879).]

THE tradition is that after Dante’s death his body was
deposited by his patron, Guido Novello da Polenta, in a
stone sarcophagus in the Franciscan Church (then San
Pier Maggiore). Two chapels lie at the western corner of
the north side of this church, though not directly com-
municating with it. The greater of the two, situated
west of the other, almost touches the church. It received
the name of ¢Braccioforte’ at an early period. Some-
what further from the church itself, but abutting on the
present cloister, lies the smaller ¢ Capella della Madonna,’ east
of the Braccioforte and running parallel to it. "The space
lying between the two chapels and the church has been
used as a burial-ground, but the side entrance to the
church which at one time led out of it has long been
closed. The sarcophagus containing Dante’s body now“
rests in the Capella della Madonna. 7
But Dante’s resting-place has been repeatedly disturbed
since 1321. In the first place, the Venetian governor (Pretor)
of Ravenna, Bernardo Bembo, father of Cardinal Pietro
Bembo, commissioned the famous sculptor Pietro Lombardo
in 1483 to adorn the monument with the bas-relief still to
be seen. Subsequently the roof of the chapel threatened
to fall in, and the monument itself began to suffer; so in
the year 1692 the papal legate, Cardinal Domenico Corsi,

had the building completely repaired, and put an iron
204
XI.—DANTE’S REMAINS AT RAVENNA 295

railing round it. The Franciscan monks (Minorites)
looked on this undertaking as an infringement of their
rights, and tried to drive the workmen off, so that the
city authorities had to send thirty-two, or, according to
other accounts, forty, gendarmes to protect them.! Finally,
in 1780 the chapel was transformed by the Cardinal Legate
Valenti Gonzaga, after the designs of Count Cammillo
Morigia, into the pretty little temple which is still to be
seen.

Doubts were even then current as to whether the sarco-
phagus really held Dante’s bones. The Cardinal accord-
ingly ordered it to be opened, but we only learn, from the
historian Cammillo Spreti, that they ‘found what was
needful to establish the truth.” The apparently intentional
ambiguity of these words was rather calculated to strengthen
than to destroy the existing doubts, and the story that the
sarcophagus was empty continued to gain credence.?

In the Jubilee year of 1865 the Ravennese determined to
do honour to the little temple surmounting Dante’s monu-
ment, and also to rebuild the Braccioforte chapel in suitable
style. With this object a part of the southern wall of this
latter, nearest to the north-west corner of the church (where
the Chapel of S. Solimea stands), was pulled down. Just
opposite the place at which the men were at work, on the
morning of May 27th, they found a built-up doorway in
the continuation of the north side-wall of the church.
Some of the stones (simply mortared together) projected so

I The monks, however, did not let the matter rest here, and in 1693
published in Forli a Defensio immunitatis ecclesiasticae, nec non jurium
Ecclesiae S. Petri Majoris. [4 defence of ecclesiastical immunity, and of
the rights of the Church of S. Peter the Greater.)

2 1 take from Giuseppe Riminesi’s Dante Alighieri e Ravenna and
Barlow's (?) Sixth Centenary Festivals of Dante Alligh., p. 69, the notice
that a paper from the hand of one Fra Tommaso Marredi was found
in a mass-book belonging to the convent, according to which the
sarcophagus was opened on August 1st, 1780, on the occasion of the
-ebuilding of Morigia’s temple, and was found empty.
296 ESSAYS ON DANTE

as to hinder the men from handling their tools freely, and the
superintendent, Lorenzatti, told the mason Feletti and his
man Angelo Dradi to remove the stones. A few blows, and
the hammer fell on the wood of a chest, and when they
tried to pull the end board out of the wall some human
bones fell out with it. On the inner side of the deal lid was
written in ink ¢ Dantis Ossa. Denuper revisa die 3* Junii
1677.” Outside the chest was written, by the same hand,
on the side, ¢ Dantis Ossa a me Fre Antonio Santi hic posita.
Anno 1677. die 18 Octobris’ Perhaps the first date is that
on which the bones were collected and concealed, and the
second that on which the chest was walled up.

The bones which had fallen out were now carefully
collected, and, together with the chest, were guarded with
the utmost care until further steps should be taken ; for in
order to allay all possible doubt, the authorities at Ravenna
asked the Florentine municipality to appoint a commission
to take part in the next step, namely, the opening of the
stone sarcophagus. Amongst other venerators of Dante
who had gathered for the centenary celebrations in Florence
was the late Herr Heinrich Brockhaus of Leipzig, and he
too seized the opportunity of being present at so remark-
able an event. I am happy to be able, by his kindness, to
include the portion of his journal describing it :

¢The Sindaco of Ravenna sent me an invitation to be present
at the opening of the urn containing Dante’s remains.

¢ One would naturally assume that they lay in the monument
dedicated to them. In fact the Florentines had recently had the
naiveté to suggest that on occasion of the Dante festival, Dante’s
remains should be brought back to that Florence which had
banished Dante himself. Of course they had to be told that
their request could not be granted, for, apart from anything else,
there would certainly have been a riot in Ravenna if any attempt
had been made to deprive her of her chiefest treasure.

¢ There seems moreover to have been some sort of tradition in
Ravenna, to the effect that Dante’s remains were not really in
XI.—DANTE’S REMAINS AT RAVENNA 297

the urn designed for them, but had been removed thence at some
time or other, no one knew where. So that there might have
been considerable difficulties in the way, even if Ravenna had been
willing to hand them over to Florence.

‘Then it happened that, a fortnight before the festival, a
mason in pulling down a wall near “Dante’s tomb,” discovered
what really were his bones. He struck upon a hollow-sounding
wall, and found an inscription to the effect that Dante’s remains
were there, having been deposited there by a monk towards the
close of the seventeenth century. What could have been the
motive? Possibly it was feared that the fanaticism of party passions
would not have reverenced the remains of a heretic, and that
Dante’s very bones might be destroyed.

‘The discovery naturally caused prodigious excitement; but
although it now seemed pretty certain that the real urn could
contain nothing—for the newly discovered bones formed almost
a complete skeleton,—yet the fact had still to be explicitly
proved, in order to establish the genuineness of the discovery.

¢ Meantime access to the tomb was strictly forbidden. The
National Guard stood sentinel over it, and I had to get a special
permission from the Sindaco in order to be allowed to look
through the window and see the carefully sealed chest of bones
under guard there. Iwas also permitted to inspect the wall where
it had been found.

‘Ravenna, needless to say, was in a state of the intensest
excitement, and the authorities were anxious to carry the matter
through as quickly as possible. Besides, the Dante festival
proper was fixed for June 24th and June 25th. On Wednesday,
June 7th, 1865, then, a number of selected spectators gathered in
the very limited space available, to witness this spectacle of the
opening of the urn. I had donned a black coat and white tie,
but I found little enough of any air of restraint in the company.
There was plenty of smoking, and the refreshments provided were
freely bespoken.

‘There was considerable delay in opening the urn, and
although two representatives from Florence, Signors Giuliani
and Vanucci, were already in Ravenna, there was a third still
expected. I should have found it rather wearisome if my neigh-.
bour had not proved to be an exceptionally cultivated Italian
gentleman, with whom I had much interesting conversation,
learning a great deal about many of the concerns of Italy. At
last they had broken through the wall and were ready to open
the urn. Suppose they found human remains here too! But
298 ESSAYS ON DANTE

the urn was indeed empty. Only three small bones, missing ın
the skeleton, were found there, together with a few laurel leaves
and a little bone-dust. I myself saw enough to be convinced
that there was nothing else in the urn, and there can be no
further doubt that the lately discovered bones are really Dante’s.
Fra Santi had done his work well.

“The affair was rightly considered as of the highest import-
ance in Italy. A telegraphic account of the result was imme-
diately despatched to Florence, and a placard was at once
printed and posted. The sculptor Pazzi, a native of Ravenna,
who executed the new statue of Dante in the Piazza of Santa
Croce in Florence, gave me, with the kindness which invariably
distinguishes him, some relics from the urn,—only bone-dust and
fragments of laurel leaves, it is true, but I shall be able to make
some relic-collector or other extremely happy with them. Doubt-
less the present sepulchral monument will soon be replaced by
a more stately one, to which, let us hope, the whole civilised
world will enthusiastically contribute.’

Other spectators, like Herr Brockhaus, may have taken
away with them ‘some bone-dust and fragments of laurel
leaves,’ a little of the “dust which Dante had become,’ out
of Santi’s chest.! The President of the commission
appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, Count
Giov. Gozzadini of Bologna, may be supposed to have
secured so much, though certainly nothing more. But in
progress of the festival a report got about among the
populace that the Count had taken whole bones, and the
skull itself, out of the chest. The uproar grew from
minute to minute. The shouting crowds beset the Hotel
della Spada d’Oro, demanding that the President’s luggage
should be searched. He succeeded in reaching the railway
station by a back-door and side lane, but the guard was
still engaged in examining the tickets when the crowd,
who had discovered the escape of their victim, burst into
the station. The signal was at once given, and the long
row of carriages was steamed out, but, as the door of his
compartment was banged to, the Count, who told me the

1 Or rather the urn; see above.—ED.
XI.—DANTE’S REMAINS AT RAVENNA 299

tale three years afterwards, got his hand rather seriously
hurt.—The skeleton was exhibited soon after, in a glass
coffin, and the people could reassure themselves as to its
completeness.

With reference to Frate Antonio Santi, it has been
ascertained that he was born in 1644. After 1672 he
appears as the Chancellor, and after 1700 as Guardian of
the Convent, in which office he died in 1703.

Any doubt that might still exist as to the genuineness of
the discovery has been entirely set at rest by the researches
of Professor Welcker.! But the question when and why
the poet’s remains were taken from the stone urn, put
into a simple wooden box, and built in where no one could
think of seeking them, is still of interest.

Two theories on this subject have gained currency.
Some hold that it was the threat of Cardinal Bertrand (Del
Poggetto) to come from Bologna to Ravenna and tear
Dante’s body from its grave to be burnt as that of a heretic,
and strewn to the four winds (1327-1334), which impelled
the monks to take what they held so precious from the
place where the Cardinal would expect to find it, and to
hide it away. According to others the bones were removed
two hundred years later, at the time when, in 1519, the
leading Florentines (Michael Angelo amongst them)
attempted to gain the permission of the then overlord of
Ravenna, Pope Leo x., to bring back the poet’s bones to
Florence.—But, to say nothing of the Cardinal del Poggetto,
it seems difficult to believe that throughout the hundred
and fifty years which elapsed between the time of Leo x.
and that of Fra. Santi; Dante’s bones should have re-
mained so intact that the Chancellor of the Convent
could recognise them with such certainty, for we hear
nothing of any particular precautions being taken during
this period.

1 Dante Jahrbuch, i. 35-56.
300 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Perhaps we can find indications more to the purpose in a
notice dating from a period much closer to the year 1677.
We have already referred to the struggle which took place
in 1692 between the Minor Friars and the Cardinal Legate
(backed by the city authorities), when the latter restored
the memorial chapel. And not only was the ownership of
the chapel in dispute about this time, but its spiritual im-
munities were also called in question. On August 26th,
1694, a certain Giuseppe Morena of Faenza escaped from
the city prison. Trusting to the Church’s right of asylum,
he, and the two jailers who had helped him, sought refuge in
the Chapel of the Madonna, in which Dante’s tomb stands.
But the police pursued them, and tore them forcibly away
from the newly erected railing, to which they had clung.
Hence arose long and wearisome contests between the tem-
poral and spiritual authorities, which were finally carried to
Innocent x11. at Rome. The report sent on August 29th
by Archbishop Raimondo Ferretti to the <Congregazione dell’
immunita Ecclesiastica’ is still extant in the archiepiscopal
archives, and fragments of it! have lately been published by
the City Surveyor, Romolo Conti. The archbishop con-
fines himself to showing that the chapel, being an integral
part of the convent, and included in its outer wall, must
share in its immunity. But the city authorities reply that
the chapel has forfeited its spiritual privileges, in that the
poet there interred was declared, after his death, to be a
heretic, whereupon the monks meet them with the assertion
that Dante’s bones are neither in the mausoleum nor in
the chapel, and appeal for confirmation to an inscription in
the chapel, which expressly states that they are no longer
there. According to a later entry in the same archives?

1 T am indebted to the goodness of the Consigliere Dr. Sebast. F usconi
of Ravenna for further extracts from this document.

2 La Scoperta delle ossa di Dante ; Ravenna, 1865.

3 From information received from Dr. Fusconi.
XI.—DANTES REMAINS AT RAVENNA 3o1

dated November 27th, 1694, the above-mentioned ¢Con-
gregation’ of September 28th decided that Morena and his
two companions had really been torn from a place enjoying
the Church’s right of sanctuary, and must be taken back
there. In consideration of all the circumstances, however,
the officers of the law were not to be punished.

Now if, in 1694, the monks could appeal to an already
existing inscription, according to which Dante’s remains
were no longer to be found in the chapel, something must
previously have convinced them that such an inscription
would in some way serve their interests. We can scarcely
be far out in guessing that that something was a conflict
similar to those of 1692 and 1694. And indeed it might
well be that in the seventeenth century, when Chiabrera
and Marini had superseded the Divine Comedy, it would
appear to the worthy monks a matter of more importance
to maintain the right of sanctuary throughout all the
dependencies of their convent than to be able to boast that
they were guardians of the remains of an almost forgotten
poet. Besides, they had no intention of getting entirely rid
of them ; they were only going to remove them from the
consecrated place, where they created a scandal.

Possibly we can fix the time of the occurrence still
nearer by means of two other dates. According to an
entry which Martinetti Cardoni® gives from the convent’s
account-books, three lire was paid in 1648 for plastering 2
the Capella di Dante. At this time, then, the inscription to
the effect that the poet’s remains no longer lay in this
chapel cannot have been in existence.—Again, Cammillo
Spreti 3 tells us that along the northern wall of the church
there used to be a colonnade, running as far as the Capella .

1 Dante Alighieri in Ravenna (Rav., 1864), p. 70.

2 I am indebted to Dr. Herm. Lotze for the information that, accord-
ing to Morri’s Idiotikon of the dialect of Romagnola, salg/ké (obviously
from selciare) means © to plaster.’

3 Cardoni, pp. 64 sg.
302 ESSAYS ON DANTE

della Madonna, and between its thirty arches there stood a
number of sarcophagi (some Roman, and some of later
date), amongst them that of Flavia Salutaris ; much as the
stone sarcophagi of the Malatestas stand on the side-wall of
the beautiful Church of San Francesco in Rimini, built by
Leon Batista Alberti. But the worthy Franciscans looked
on even this much contact with a misbelieving paganism as
a desecration of their church, and about 1660 they destroyed
the whole portico, as we learn from Padre Giacomo Garzi,
who died in 1698. Some of the sarcophagi, presumably
those of Christian origin, were carried into the cemetery
adjoining the chapels della Madonna and Braccioforte, but
most of them simply perished. Now I think it probable
that in the course of this general clearance of the stone
sarcophagi of San Francesco, Dante’s urn may also have
been cleansed from its heretical contents, and the perpetra-
tion of such an act of faith by an inscription in the chapel
would be no more than consistent. At the same time, it
might be that some monk who was not an utter stranger to
literature preserved sufficient reverence for the poet’s name
to protect his bones from further desecration. He would
then have confided his treasure to Frate Santi, who con-
signed the bones to the deal chest and re-certified their
genuineness (denuper revisit), until he was at last able to
take it upon himself, thanks to his prominent position in
the convent, to build up the chest in the wall adjoining the
churchyard, that is to say, in semi-consecrated ground.
X11.—ON THE DATES OF DANTE’S
THREE CANTICHE

A LETTER TO DR. ADOLPH WAGNER,
JUNE 2ND, 1827

[Parnasso Italiano, p. xvi. Dante-Forschungen, vol. i.
Pp. 134-140 (1869).]

THE earliest Commentators, with few exceptions, believe
the whole of the Comedy to have been composed by Dante
in the very year, 1300, in which he professes to have had
his vision, or but little later. Recent Commentators all
admit a later date, but differ widely in fixing the special
epoch. Taeffe and Troja, with a good many others, carry
the composition of the first cantos of the Divine Comedy
back to a time prior to the Jubilee year (1300), declaring
that before Dante’s exile they were already on the lips of
the Florentine people. They suppose the first Cantica to
have been completed not later than 1308. Dionisi, on the
other hand, maintains that the last touches were not given
before 1314. The same authorities are equally at variance
as to the Purgatory, for Troja assigns the year 1314 for its
promulgation, and Dionisi thinks it was not finished till
after 1318. With respect to the completion of the Para-
dise, these particular writers happen to be more nearly
agreed, for Dionisi assigns it to the early months of 1320,
and Troja to the period immediately preceding the author’s
death ; but Pelli and Tiraboschi deviate widely from them,
and declare that the whole Comedy was completed before

the death of Henry vir. Finally, Foscolo struck an idea
303
304 XII.—-.ON THE DATES OF

quite peculiar to himself, and said that the Divine Poem
was a posthumous work, which the author during his life
kept profoundly secret, with the exception of a few frag-
ments, even from his closest friends.

When we set about examining how far these opinions
rest upon solid foundations, we are forced to confess that,
in the absence of information from the author himself] it is
impossible to establish the date of every passage in a work
which was revised and interpolated again and again before
it was published. The conclusion of the Vita Nuova being
the only passage in which Dante hints at the period at
which he conceived the colossal design of the Comedy, we
have no reason to suppose that he set his hand to the work
before 1300.! As to the diffusion of the early cantos in
Florence, while Dante was still living, our only authority
is Sacchetti in the 114th and 115th Novels; and the
contents of the cantos themselves contradict it, for their
fundamental ideas would surely have been very different
but for the author’s exile; and a further difficulty is found
in the extreme bitterness with which he attacks the reputa-
tion of the Florentines from the sixth canto onwards ; nor
can we accept such stories on the authority of a novelist
born long after Dante, who after all does not specify the
Comedy, but only says ¢ Dante’s book,” which might apply
to the Canzoni or other poems. A further contradiction
of the story might be found in Boccaccio’s statement that
the first seven cantos were left in outline when Dante fled
from Florence, not even the most brilliant scholars or
closest friends of Dante having apparently heard anything
of them till Leone Poggi discovered them. But we can-
not insist on this, since there is good reason to doubt the
accuracy of the story itself.

In support of the opinion that the Inferno cannot have
been published later than 1308, the only proof adduced is

1 Compare above, pp. 66, 67, note.—ED.
DANTE’S THREE CANTICHE 305

the alleged silence of the poem concerning all occurrences
later than that year. We should observe, however, that
Dino Compagni, a writer who delights in terse sayings,
and who wrote in 1312, makes no reference to the Divine
Comedy, which would have supplied him so well with re-
proaches against the Florentines wherewith to clothe his
wrath in beauty’! We should also observe, as Torelli has
excellently pointed out, that no landslip in the valley of
the Adige better conforms to the description given us by
Dante in the Inferno, xii. 6, than the fall which took place
in 1310.2 Again, in another passage of the same Cantica
(xxi. 41), there seems to be a reference to an event as late
as the end of 1313.82 But since these arguments may appear
more or less ambiguous, I will add another which I take to
be decisive. In Canto xix. 79 we read that Clement v. is
not destined to rule the Church as long as nineteen years.*
Now it will surely be admitted that when he made this
assertion Dante knew the date of Clement’s death, which
took place on the 20th April 1314. If not, we must
suppose that Dante had the spirit of prophecy—an alterna-

1 Another argument may be added. Ciacco says (Izf. vi. 68) that
¢ three suns’ after the expulsion of the Neri (Summer 1300) the ‘savage
party’ will fall. This can only refer to Fulcieri de’ Calboli’s period
of office as Podesta (Purg. xiv. 58) and to the attempt on Puliciano
(Summer 1303). Now, the five years up to 1308 do not seem enough
to justify the poet in saying that the Blacks will ‘hold their heads on
high long season, crushing down the others under heavy weights, how-
ever they wail and rage thereat.’—186g.

2 I believe I must withdraw this argument as unsound. The events
mentioned in the Diwize Comedy, when not put into the form of pro-
phecy, are anterior to the date of the vision. And besides, the Slavino
di Marco (another landslip) goes back to the ninth century.—1869.

3 Albertino Mussato, cited by the editors of the Ancora.—1869.

4 Nicolas mr. died 23rd August 1280, so that his feet had been
roasting for nineteen years and eight months at the time of Dante’s
vision. Bonifazio viii. died 7th October 1303. Taking this as the
moment at which Nicolas 11. ¢plunged lower down’ and Boniface .
came to take his place, the latter would have to ¢stay fixed with feet
red glowing’ until the death of Clement v., which took place, as
already said, on the zoth April 1314.—1869.

U
306 XI1.—ON THE DATES OF

tive which Repetti, in an article printed a few months ago
in contravention of my opinion,! seems willing to accept.
We are thus brought down to 1314, and this cannot be
far from the date at which Dante promulgated the Inferno;
for the author himself, in the first of his Latin eclogues,
supposed to have been written about 1319, speaks of the
Inferno as already finished ; and other authors, too, hence-
forth frequently refer to episodes of the Inferno. ‘The
notorious Cecco d’ Ascoli, who was burned alive at Florence
in 1327, and who wrote his Acerba during Dante’s life,”
discusses and condemns almost all the most striking passages
of the Inferno; and about the same time Passera della
Gherminella di Lucca, in a sonnet published by Crescim-
beni (Storia della volg. poesia, vol. iii. p. 116), says:

‘In valour thou art no old Alard (/zf xxviii. 18), nor
County Guy of Monte Feltro (Inf. xxvii.), nor Uguccion of
Faggiuola, nor Mainardo ([zf. xxvii. 50). By the Gospels!
thy life is not worth a pewter [pe/tro] penny (Inf. i. 103),
for you are a greater coward than a hare in face of a greyhound
[weltro]’ (Inf. i. 101).

Cino of Pistoja also alludes to the celebrated episode of
Francesca da Rimini in his Sonnet 111, written during
the life of Selvaggia (who died before 1321, according
to Ciampi? (See his Vita di M. Cino, third edition, p. 44.)

Tell her my sad heart knows this only comfort: it is of the
course that nature holds in man, that Love suffereth not any loved
one to escape from loving.

 

1 Indicated in the Antologia di Firenze, Ixix., September 1826, p. 57.
—1869.

2 We may infer this from several passages of the Acerba, but par-
ticularly the following: ¢Now, Dante, consider whether any other
proof can be produced to refute this’; and, ¢ Against this I declare
what my opinion is, and support it with philosophical arguments. Then
if Dante can solve them, I am satisfied.’

3 And after 1313. Ciampi can find no more precise indications as to
the period of her death.—1869.
DANTE’S THREE CANTICHE 307

Similar allusions to Dante are found in the History of
Giov. Villani, viii. 23, xi. 20, etc.

[The weightiest argument making for the date we have
proposed only appeals to those who believe that the Veltro of
the first canto is Cangrande della Scala. Now although at-
tempts have been made in our time with much ingenuity and
historical learning to substitute Uguccione della Faggiuola,
or Pope Benedict xI1., or some other personage (whether
historical or prophetically anticipated), for Cangrande, yet
the old opinion, which has prevailed for three centuries, is
still (and, if I am not mistaken, rightly) accepted by the
great majority of the students of Dante. Now by 1308
Cangrande, who had not yet grown his beard, could not
have done anything to merit a prophecy of such scope as
that concerning the Veltro. Again, as long as his brother
Albuino (who died October 28th, 1311) was still living,
though he was associated with him in the Lordship, he
could not have had any opportunity of drawing all the hopes
of the Ghibelline party to himself, and after Henry vir
had descended from Mount Cenis (October 24th, 1310)
or rather from the moment when he had determined to
cross the Alps (September 1309), the Italian Ghibellines,
made ‘humble’ by so many disasters, must have looked for
their ‘salvation’ to no other than the Emperor himself,
and not to any municipal potentate. So it was not until
after the death of the ‘lofty Henry’ (August 24th, 1313),
when they saw the hopes they had placed in him crushed,
that the poet could have substituted his Vicar for the de-
ceased hero himself, and declared him to be the Veltro
who shall be the salvation of that humbled Italy.’]?

The Purgatory contains a smaller number of prophecies,
and its date is therefore less certain; but in one of the
early cantos (vii. 96) it is said that Henry will come to the
succour of Italy too late, and this justifies us in supposing

I Author’s addition of 186g.
308 XII.—ON THE DATES OF

that this canto was not begun till after 1313. Still more
decisive is the passage which predicts that the Italian
Guelfs, and the French as well, will be crushed by a Leader
who is obscurely hinted at (xxxiii. 43). Such a title and
such a hope could only apply to one who was the head of
all the Ghibellines of Italy ; and such the Scaliger became
by his nomination at Soncino on the 16th December 1318.
No municipal potentate can be intended here, as the sup-
porters of della Faggiuola’s claims suppose. The only
argument that can be brought in opposition rests on the
assertion of Boccacci and others that the Purgatory was
dedicated to Maroello Malaspina (the third of that name),
who died in 1316. But since I am not alone in doubting
the truth of the fact, which Boccacci himself gives as
uncertain (Antologia di Firenze, 1827, No. lxxiv, pp. 17,
18), and since I am inclined to think that this very Cantica
contains a reference to the death of Maroello, I cannot
say that the objection gives me much uneasiness. Is it
not a fact that the praises given to Alagia (xix. 142),
without a word about her husband, seem to imply that
the latter was already dead when the poet composed the
verses in question? But here we must stop. Giovanni
di Virgilio in his Carmen (line 18) alludes to a passage
in the Purgatory (Purg. xxi.); and since his poem, as
already said, is assigned to 1319, we must hold that the
end of 1318 or the beginning of 1319 is the date of the
completion of the Purgatory.

Finally, as to the Paradise. Dionisi’s argument from the
fact of Dante’s never having returned to Verona, after his
short stay there at the beginning of 1320, appears to have
little relevance. I believe I have shown elsewhere?! that
the dedication to Cangrande is posthumous, and I do not
see why we are not to accept Boccacci’s statement that the

! In my edition of Dante’s Epistles, p. 72 (cf. Torri’s edition, p. 103).
—1869.
DANTE'S THREE CANTICHE 309

last thirteen cantos were not found till after the author’s
death. We must suppose, however, that some whiff of the
Paradise, though not the bulk of the poem itself, had
got abroad even during Dante’s life, for Cecco D’Ascoli,
mentioned above, says in the beginning of the Acerba :

¢ Of which [heaven] that Florentine whom Beatrice conducted
there, hath already treated.’

This is a further proof of the unsoundness of Foscolo’s
opinion above referred to. And to this we may add Cino’s
Canzone (No. 20), composed immediately on receiving the
news of Dante’s death, which contains obvious references
to the Inferno (xv. 72). Finally I see that Fra Guido da
Pisa, another contemporary of Dantes, cites the Divine
Comedy more frequently than any other book.
XIII..THE TWO EARLIEST COMMEN-
TATORS ON THE DIVINE COMEDY

[Jahrbücher der Literatur (1828, vol. iv.). Dante-Forschungen,
vol. i. pp. 354-398 (1869).]

THE conviction that the deeper significance of the Divine
Comedy is missed by the modern Commentators drove me
to inquire whether the early Annotators had comprehended
the poet’s meaning any better. And I soon found that the
religious basis of the whole poem, and the allegorical signi-
ficance of many of the details, had been recognised by them
up to the sixteenth century, and even to some extent still
later. It was only the materialistic philosophy of these
latter days which was incapable of recognising the religious
idea under its artificial veil, and therefore attempted to
replace it by considerations and aims of a worldly nature.
This naturally led to the thought that the true significance
of the poem might perhaps have been communicated by
the poet himself, and then handed down by tradition. This
roused a keen desire for a nearer acquaintance with the
earlier Commentators, and more especially those who might
possibly or probably have come into personal relations
with the poet. So during a hasty journey in which I
revisited Northern Italy last year (1826) I seized every
opportunity of tracking up these early Commentators, and
in the midst of multifarious other pursuits I examined some
150 Ms. volumes of Commentaries, in the course of less

than three months. These figures make it quite unneces-
310
ESSAYS ON DANTE 311

sary to add that it was out of the question to work through
the volumes and make excerpts. My object was limited to
lightening the future labours of others in bringing order
into this vast mass of material, this monument of the in-
credible industry devoted to the Divine Comedy, reducing
the number of ‘anonymi,’ and forming at least some con-
clusions concerning their several values. How far I have
been successful I shall hope shortly to enable the reader to
judge. At present I will only say that I found nothing to
support the theory of a traditional interpretation of details
traceable to data supplied by the poet himself. Now and
then he may have given utterance to ideas concerning the
significance of the poem as a whole, but with one exception,
which will be dealt with presently, there are no traces of
his having himself expounded the meaning of any of the
harder passages in conversation. And indeed such a course
would have ill accorded with the poet’s haughty and reserved
nature. At the same time, the age which had seen the
birth of the poem was, in greater or less degree, that of
the Commentators themselves. The religious sentiments
and imagery of which Dante had availed himself were
familiar to his exponents also; the events to which he
referred were still fresh in their memories; the forms of
the language and the significance of the words were still
fresh in their minds ; and their labour was inspired by the
first outburst of enthusiasm which the Comedy aroused
among those of like mind with the poet. When we add
to this the beauty and purity of the language in which the
Italian writers express themselves, we shall see why the
study of these old Commentators affords so much more
pleasure than that of the modern works in the same field,
so numerous in our day. It cannot be denied that the
historical insight of Benvenuto da Imola, the theological
profundity of Petrus Dantis, the beautiful diction and in-
structive fulness of the ¢ Anonimo’ of the Riccardian ms.
312 XIIL.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

1016,! and the comprehensive thoroughness of the invalu-
able Buti, far outweigh the bigoted zeal of Venturi, the
endless chatter of the worthy Lombardi, and the vulgarities
and grammatical subtleties of Biagioli, and, moreover, with
the exception of a few discoveries of later times (e.g. the
signification of the /Veltro), these excellent forefathers ut-
tered and defended wellnigh all the errors and all the
truths which our modern interpreters believe themselves
to have discovered, and often supported them with better
arguments.

These older Commentators have their special excellences
and defects, according to the time in which they lived.
The earliest, amongst whom I reckon all who wrote before
the year 1350, have the advantage of direct contact with
the poet’s age, and free unprejudiced views. On the
other hand, they are dealing with matter as yet new, and
are thrown upon their own limited resources, and exposed
to all kinds of individual errors. Their successors make
use of the knowledge and opinions of their predecessors, and
balance their contradictory opinions against each other, but
they soon lose all freedom of view under the mass of
material which overwhelms them. When we put them
thus side by side the early Commentaries will be seen to
have the best of it, and perhaps this is why admirers of our
poet so frequently inquire particularly after the earliest of
his Commentators.

Well, nearly three hundred years ago (1550) Giorgio
Vasari, the biographer of the Artists (Milan ed. 1807, ii.
161, Sienese ed., i. 243), mentions an expounder of the
Divine Comedy who wrote in the year 1334, twelve or thir-
teen years, that is, after the poet’s death. Twenty-two

1 Pietro Fanfani has lately (1866) published the Commentary on the
Inferno contained in this Ms.—1869. [The Purgatorio and Paradiso
followed in 1868 and 1874.—ED.]

2 Compare Baldinucci, in the Apologia, etc., appended to the Life of
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 313

years later he was more carefully examined by the ¢ Deputati’
directed by the Grand Duke Cosimo to correct the text of
the Decameron. They drew, if I have counted correctly, .
eighteen philological examples for their celebrated notes from
this source. In their preface they award him the greatest
praise, not merely as an expounder, but as a model of style,
and they also refer to his personal acquaintance with the poet,
and call him par excellence the early or the good Commentator.!
After another forty years, in 1612, the first edition of the
Vocabolario della Crusca appeared, containing a large number
of illustrative examples taken from this Commentary, which
is here designated /’ Ottimo. In the subsequent editions
the number of quotations increased so greatly that it now
contains upwards of 1600 examples taken from this Com-
mentary. [Pompeo Venturi also refers incidentally (e.g.
Purg. vi. 94) to the Ottimo in his Commentary of 1732.]
In 1790 the late Canonico, Count Jacopo Dionisi,? carefully
examined the Ottimo (as we shall continue to call it, though
Dionisi refers to it as the Anonimo), and having devoted
several months in the preceding year to studying the
Cimabue. Collected edition of Baldinucci’s works. Milan, 1808-12,
vol. iv. p. 31.

1 Of incomparably greater importance, both linguistically and for
the information it contains, and superior in the value of its notices of
many special features of the times, is a Commentary on Dante by one
whose name we have been unable to discover, in spite of all our
pains. We have called him sometimes the “ Good ”’ and sometimes the
“Early” Commentator. He is not Benvenuto da Imola, although the
latter has derived much from him and (to give it its right name) copied
much also. We are assured that they are not identical by the diversities
which distinguish them in many passages, as well as by Benvenuto’s
general inferiority in philosophical and theological matters. The
language is that of about 330 [ie. 1330], that is to say Dante’s last
period ; and in truth our Commentator was a contemporary, and per-
haps a friend of the poets, for in commenting on the passage Those
citizens who afterwards rebuilt it, etc., he tells us that he questioned
Dante about it, and he then gives us in detail the whole story of the
statue of Mars and the fables of the ancient Florentines which he had
drawn from him in reply.’—(P. 28, Fanfani’s ed., 1857.)

2 The profoundest student of Dante produced by the last century.
314 XIII.-EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

Florentine Mss. in conjunction with Perazzini,! reports on
it in the fifth number of his Aneddoti. Much of his
material has been incorporated by Renzi, Marini, and
Muzzi, in their excellent de/l> Ancora edition of Dante
(Florence, 1819),% which is only too little known. In 1826
Professor Torri of Pisa promised us a complete edition of
this Commentary? and he is to receive the support of
several eminent Italian scholars.

It is a remarkable fact, however, that several writers
have doubted the separate existence of this Commentary,
and have held it to be identical with that generally
associated with the name of Jacopo della Lana. Salviati,*

1 I am indebted for the very valuable present of the complete series of
Dionisi’s Aneddoti, together with Perazzini’s Correctiones et Explicationes,
to the kindly bard of rural life, the noble Marquis Ippolito Pindemonti.
Both works are rare, and as mines of Dante-information are very far
from being appreciated or used as they ought to be.

2 Pocket edition reprinted in Prato, 1822.

8 It appeared in full in 1827-29, Capurro, Pisa.—1869.

* Avvertimenti della lengua in the first edition, mentioned above
(Venezia, 1584), tom. i. p. 114: ‘Amongst the authors of this period
important from a linguistic point of view, we may include the Com-
mentator on Dante in the vernacular, which the men of ’73 [Ze. the
“Deputati,” see last page.—ED.] sometimes called the “Good” and
sometimes the “Early” in their work. He was a certain Messere
Jacopo della Lana, a citizen of Bologna, not Alberigo di Rosate of
Bergamo, a celebrated Doctor of Laws, as those excellent scholars seem
sometimes to believe (?). Into this error they were led by a very
respectable authority, namely the Abate Tritemio, who says, in his
catalogue of writers, that this Alberigo, amongst his other works, left
comments on the poem of Dante, but without telling us whether he had
written them or only translated them into Latin. The fact, however, is
beyond question, for the said Alberigo’s Latin Commentary, translated
from the vernacular, is still in existence, and Pinello has a Ms. copy of
it of considerable antiquity and very well corrected,’ etc.—P. 115:
¢ Afterwards, in the year 1478, there was printed'at Milan, in large folio,
another Commentary on Dante, also in the vernacular; it copies Jacopo
della Lana to a great extent, but is linguistically inferior, and often
inverts and changes the order of the words, while constantly introducing
scraps and patches of other Commentaries,” etc.—P. 116: ¢As to the
language of the said vernacular Commentary, we have a lower opinion of
it than it seems the men of ’73 had, since in our opinion it often smacks
more of the Latin (so to speak) than other books of the same period;
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 315

one of the most eminent contributors to the /ocabolario
della Crusca, and Pinelli,! regarded this identity as estab-
lished. The authors of the notes to the tawola delle
abbreviature to the Dictionary were doubtful ;2 Dionisi?®
and Rezzi? considered them to be different, although
admitting a remarkable agreement between the two. It
is the object of this essay to settle this question once for
all, and accurately determine the relation of the two works
one to another.

I shall reserve a more detailed literary treatment till
further on in this essay, and will only explain at present
that the quotations from Jacopo della Lana are taken from
a Rehdiger ms. in Breslau (which, by the courtesy of the
municipal authorities, I have been allowed to have in my

but considering the subject and the author, this is easy to excuse.
And, for all we have said, we think that, when read with the poem,
it may be of no small value to the usage of our language.’

1 In Fantuzzi, Scrittori Bolognesi, vol. v. p. 18.—[Portirelli, too, in
his edition of the Divina Commedia (1804), p. xix, has no doubt as to
the identity of the two.—1869.]

2 P. 262, note 73 of the last volume of the Venice (Pitter) edition
of 1763: The “Deputati ” in the proem to their Annotations on the
Decameron sometimes called him the “Good” and sometimes the
“Early” Commentator; and from two passages which indicate that he
began to write his Commentary in 1333, they conjecture that he was
a contemporary and perhaps a friend of Dante. Perhaps the text
before them was not the same that may now be seen in the Laurentian
Library, for they say that the Inferno and the Purgatorio are written in
one hand and the Paradiso in another ; whereas the Laurentian Ms. is all
written by the same hand, although sometimes carelessly. L’Infarinato
believes that the author of this Commentary was Jacopo della Lana, a
citizen of Bologna, and does not altogether agree with the “ Deputati
in the estimate they formed of its merits. But perhaps Jacopo della
Lana’s Commentary is different from that of the Laurentian Ms.,a point
which might be cleared up by an inspection of the texts of Pinelli and
of Contarini, which L’Infarinato had seen.—[In the fifth edition of the
Vocabolario, begun in 1843, but only carried as far as Affitto, this note is
corrected on p. 60 of the Tawola. The remodelled edition that has
been appearing since 1863 contains a brief but correct notice of the
Ottimo on p. Ixxiv.—1869.]

3 Op. cit., cap. 17.

4 Lettera a Giov. Rosimi sopra i MSS. Barberiniani comenti alla
Div, Com. di Dante (Roma, 1826), pp. 20 sg.
316 XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

own house for a considerable period) and from the rare
Venetian edition of Vindelino da Spira, a fine copy of
which I was fortunate enough to obtain from Signor
Dumolard of Milan, the bookseller.r The Ottimo is
quoted from the advance sheets of the new Pisa edition,
for twenty-seven of which (up to Inf. xxv. 66) I am
indebted to the great kindness of my honoured friend,
Professor Rosini.

I must further point out that in all these and similar cases
it is by no means sufficient for the determination and identi-
fication of a work simply to compare the beginning and
the end, as even the best books on the subject recommend.?
For one thing, mss. are particularly subject to the danger of
losing their beginning and end, so as to afford no material
for such a method. Besides this, the ill-omened zeal and
industry of the possessor of a Ms., either original or
copied, often led him, especially at the beginning, to
interpolate all kinds of extraneous matter, thereby con-
cealing the true character of the Commentary. The
Commentator himself] or his copyist, frequently takes over
annotations from quite another source. Sometimes we
find that the beginning has been worked up afresh, in
order to make the work appear like a fresh Commentary.
We cannot be sure of our results, then, unless we compare
whole sections, and this I confess I have not always been
able to do in the case of the other Commentaries mentioned
above.

The wide difference of opinion as to the connection
between the Ottimo and Jacopo della Lana would be most
simply explained by the discovery that here, as in many

1 Since this was written Professor Luciano Scarabelli has twice
edited Della Lana’s Commentary, publishing it at Milan, 1865, in folio,
and at Bologna, in octavo, 1866. Cf. Fakrb. d. Deutsch. Dante-
Gesellsch., 1. 279 sq.—1869.

2 Ebert, Zur Handschriftenkunde, i. pp. 148, 180. Cf., however,
Rezzi, 0p. cit., p. 13.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 317

similar cases, the disputants really had quite different works
before them to which the same name had been arbitrarily
given. Our first inquiry then must be whether it was the
same work, to which all the writers mentioned above
referred as the Ottimo.

To begin with the Deputati :—Several of the small
number of their citations are of so general a character as
not to be easily identified (see pp. 89, 173, and 197 of
Fanfani’s edition, 1857), and of the remaining fifteen, only
four come within the limits of that portion of the work to
which at present I have access! One of these (p. 67—
Inf. vi. 52) may be found in the printed Ottimo, though with
considerable variants. One (p. 64— Inf. xx. 116) is not to be
found at all in the Ottimo, but stands word for word [?] in
Jacopo della Lana ; and I have searched both Commentaries
in vain for two more (p. 67—Inf. xvi. 70; and p. 218—
Inf. ii.). Finally, two of the eleven passages that remain
(pp. 178 and 226) correspond so closely with della Lana
(see Purg. xxx. 43 and Inf. xix. 52), that they cannot have
been taken from any one but him.? It would seem then
that the Deputati were acquainted with the true Ottimo,
but by no means always distinguished him from Jacopo della
Lana, or (presumably) from other Commentators either.
This would explain simply enough how Pinelli came to
refer their quotations to Jacopo instead of to the Ottimo.

As to the compilers of the /ocabolario della Crusca, 1
should not be in a position to form a judgment if it had not

1 Since these twenty-seven sheets furnish adequate material, I have
not thought it necessary to extend this toilsome process over the whole
of the Commentary, which has now long been in print. This note
applies to all the rest of this essay.—1869. !

2 This is too strongly expressed. It is possible that the reference
may be to the Ottimo on Inf. xxxii. 94.—1864.

3 The other passages are rightly assigned to the Ottimo. They are
as follows: p. 46=Par. xv. 109; p. 48 = Par. iii. 25 and xvi. 115;
Pp. 67=Purg. xvi. 46; p. 114=Per. ix. 94; pP. 157 = If: XIX. 405
p- 236 = Par. ix. 55; p. 244. = Purg. xx. 68.—1869.
318 XIIL.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

been for the unparalleled kindness of the Nestor of Italian
writers, Professor Chevalier Daniel Francesconi of Padua.
He actually prepared with his own hand a list of words (dated
Nov. 25th, 1826) quoted from the Ot¢timo, amounting in
all to 1600. Since it is extracted from a larger unprinted
work, I here subjoin the full title of the ms. sent me:
‘Index of the Words for which the fourth and last original
edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca cites the Comment or
Commentator of Dante, extracted from the Index made in like
fashion for all the Testi di lingua [authorities for language],
by the present Patrician of Venice, Alvise Mocenigo, son
of the late Chevalier Alvise, son of the late Doge! I
have not had time to compare all the words given, but I
have carefully looked up the 369 which come under the
first three letters of the alphabet, that is to say, between a
fourth and a fifth of the whole. Of these again I could
only make use of such as came within the first five-and-
twenty cantos of the Inferno, which was as far as my sheets
extended. I have found 136 of them, though sometimes
with variants, in the printed Ottimo. Six more passages
(under applicare, assentire, avarizia first example, battexza-
tore, capo (Inf. xii. 11 [?]) and crescere) 1 have not as yet
succeeded in finding in the printed work, and the character
of some of them leads me to think that they must have
been taken from some other exposition of the Divine
Comedy, though I cannot identify it. Two passages
not found in the Ottimo (under Acciajuolo and Cancelliere)
appear word for word in Jacopo della Lana, while for some
inexplicable reason one (under Capiglia) actually comes
from Boccaccio’s unfinished Commentary.? Finally, some

1 At the end of each of his three volumes Torri gives a similar col-
lection of the references to the printed Otfimo prepared by Luigi Muzzi
and Paolo Zanotti, but it is far less complete.—1869.

2 On the other hand, under Ilustrissimo, a passage is given as from

Buti’s Commentary, which is really found not there but in the Ottimo on
Inf. iv. 130 (p. 52).—1869. [Rightly assigned in the 1729, etc. ed.—ED.]
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 319

passages are referred to in quite general terms that have
baffled my attempts at identification ; and indeed some of
those that I have succeeded in tracking are cited very
vaguely, or even incorrectly. All this makes it clear that
in the main the authors of the Vocabolario understood by
the Ottimo the Commentary which is now being printed ;
but they were not so consistent in the matter as to preclude
the occasional confusion of della Lana or some other Com-
mentary with the Ottimo.—I may remark in passing, that
after the fashion of other similar works, the Crusca lays
disproportionate stress on the beginning of the work. Two-
fifths of the examples, at any rate under the first three
letters of the alphabet, are taken from a portion of the
Commentary that only covers three-thirteenths of the
work.

It is obvious from what Salviati says that he mistook
Jacopo della Lana for the Ottimo, and did not know the
latter at all.

Dionisi, the dell’ Ancora editors, and Torri, all of them
used the same Ms., and it was also known at any rate to the
later editors of the Crusca. But as far as Dionisi is con-
cerned, we must note that his comparisons of the Ottimo
and della Lana lose much of their value from the fact that
he took Nidobeato’s edition (Milan, 1478) to be an uncon-
taminated reproduction of Jacopo della Lana’s Commentary,
whereas Terzago had as a fact altered and abbreviated the
original Commentary to a very large extent, and had now
and again made important additions to it.

And now at last we are in a position to ask and answer
the question how it comes that even those writers who
made proper use of the names determined above could still
be in doubt or confusion as to the relation of the two
Commentators, the one to the other. I will for the present
put aside all reference to the beginnings and endings
of the manuscripts—which however have been singularly
320 XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

fertile in confusion in this very instance,—and will keep to
the body of the Commentaries, in order to arrive at a
definite conclusion as soon as possible. To begin with,
then, we are immediately struck by the fact that we some-
times find the annotations on a particular passage corre-
sponding almost word for word in the two Commentaries,
as in the case of the two last notes to the fourth Canto,
the notes to vi. 7 and 13, and innumerable others, while
the introductions to the separate Cantos which both Com-
mentaries give us in addition to the notes on special
passages, almost always closely correspond. Not only is
the connection of ideas the same, and the language often
identical line after line, but the very same authorities are
cited in the same way. Almost any Canto would serve as
an example of this; and as it will be useful to our further
investigations to note it, I choose the first which comes to
hand, namely, the fourteenth.

Ottimo.

«+ + And here it must be
questioned whether a man can
hold God in hatred? And
first it is argued and said that
he cannot, and it is proved
thus : Dionysius in the book of
the Divine names saith : The
first and supreme good and the
supreme beauty is loveable by
all: God is the supreme good
and the primal and supreme
beauty ; therefore he may not
be hated of any.

Further it is written in Es-
dras: All things call upon the
truth and are blessed in her
works: God is this truth;

Fac. della Lanal

Concerning the which matter
it may be questioned whether
any man may have hatred to
God? And it is argued that he
cannot, first: since S. Dionysius
saith in the fourth book ¢De
divinis nominibus’: Omnibus
amabile et diligibile est primum
bonum et pulcrum : God is that
goodness and beauty, therefore
God may not be hated of any.

Further, as appeareth in the
Apocrypha of Esdras, which
saith: Omnia invocant veri-
tatem, et benignantur in operi-

 

1 Similar parallel passages will be found in Palermo’s I Manoscr.
della Palatina, vol. i. pp. §30-532.—1860.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY

Ottimo.

therefore God is loved of all,
and in consequence may not be
hated of any.

Concerning the which ques-
tion, it is to be known that
hatred is a movement of the
appetite which descendeth from
some apprehension or act of
knowing, the which, as directed
toward God, may be after two
fashions, The one fashion of
knowing and apprehending God
is by his essence, the which is the
goodness of God ; and after this
fashion God may not be hated
of any, inasmuch as he hath in
himself the norm of good, and
such goodness may not be hated.

The other fashion is through
his effects, by the which visible
effects the invisible attributes
of God may be known. And
these effects may be considered
after two fashions: the one
fashion is when the human will
is not repugnant to the effects
of God, as in the case of life in
a man, for the human will is
not repugnant to the divine will
in this.

The other fashion is when
the aforesaid effects are repug-
nant to the human will, the
which is averse and counter to
reason, as when a man receiveth
from God punishment for some
sin he hath committed, or is
constrained by the divine law
not to enter upon some delight ;

X

321

Fac. della Lana.

bus ejus: God is this truth,
therefore God is loved of every
man, and per comsequens may
not be hated of any.

Concerning the which ques-
tion, it is to be known that
hatred is a movement of the
appetite, which appetite de-
scendeth from some apprehen-
sion or act of knowing, the
which apprehension may be,
as to God, after two fashions.
The one fashion is to know and
apprehend God by his essence,
the which essence is the good-
ness of God, and may not be
hated of any, inasmuch as it is
of the norm of good and there-
fore may not be hated.

The other fashion of appre-
hending may be by his effects,
by which visible effects the in-
visible attributes of God may
be known. And these effects
may be considered after two
fashions : the one, in such cases
as life, understanding, love,
may not be counter to the will
of man; which, it is certain,
hath these characteristics from
God, so that after this fashion
it is impossible to hate God.

The other fashion is when
the effects of God are repug-
nant and contrary to the human
will, which is averse and coun-
ter to reason, as when, because
of some sin, he receiveth from
God punishment, or is con-
strained by divine law not
to enter upon some delight.
322

Ottimo.

and after this fashion man may
hold God in hatred even as
those of whom there is speech
in this passage.

And the answer to the coun-
ter argument, which is ex-
pressed generally, is that it is
they who see God by his
essence who may not hate him.

XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

Fac, della Lana,

And therefore whosoever is en-
wrapped in this last fashion, may
well have hatred to God, and
of such are they of whom the
present chapter maketh mention.

The first argument, which is
expressed in general, is thus
solved : that they who see God
by his essence, that is to say
the Saints, may not hate God.

But it doth not follow that they
who see not! God by his es-
sence may not hate him. The
second argument is understood

of those who have natural and

right will and appetite ; those
who have it perverted may have

God in hatred, because rational

effects are displeasing to them.
But in spite of this agreement the two Commentaries, as
the most cursory comparison will show, are essentially
different, not only in the matter of a note here and there,
but in their whole character. To begin with, the Ottimo
is distinguished by a number of passages which fix the date
of composition in 1333 or 1334. As yet I have not found
the date of February 28th, 1333, in any early ms. It is
inserted in the Venetian ms. (San Marco, 55) under the
preface (Poiché I’autore) of the Paradiso, by some later hand,
I imagine by the celebrated Pinelli. A note to Inf. xix.
115 gives the date of 17th March 1333[=1334]. In Par.
xii. 79 the same year is alluded to as already passed, and a
note to Inf. xiii. 144 gives the year 1334 as current (for the
clerical error 1323 is only found in the one Ms. on which the
printed O¢timo is based). Finally, a note to Par. xix. 124
(cited by the Ancora editors of the Comedy) shows that the

1 For coloro che non wvedono Scarabelli has coloro che wedono [1866.
Correct in the 1865 ed.—ED.], which is nonsense.—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 323

Commentator wrote before 1346.1 It is only by an error,
as Dionisi (4neddottiy v. p. 87) has already pointed out, that
the year 1351 appears as already passed in Purg. xxiil. 102.
I have not compared any other Mss. for this passage, but
it is obvious that we must correct the date by Villani
(ix. 245) to 1324.2 Now, so far as I have read him, there is
no such definite indication of the date of composition to be
found in della Lana. There are also two passages in which
the Ottimo refers to remarks which he himself heard from
Dante’s lips. The one (xiii. 144) contains the saga con-
cerning the destruction and rebuilding of Florence, the
other (x. 85) records Dante’s well-known saying that he
never said that which he had not set out to say for the sake
of rhyme. In Jacopo della Lana there is no trace of a
similar relation. The Ottimo is well acquainted with
Dante’s other works, and in the sheets lying before me are
two passages transcribed from the Convivio so faithfully as
to be valuable in correcting the text of the latter (on Inf.
vii. 77 and ix. 91), while there is a third passage given in
other Mss. to which I shall refer presently. Compare also
the Ottimo on Par. xxviii. 72 [Torri’s edition]. He also
refers correctly to the Vita Nuova in the note to Purg.
xxx. 115, and to a Canzone in the note to Par. viii. 31.3

Jacopo della Lana shows an incredible ignorance of
almost all matters connected with Dante’s circumstances
and with his other writings. Judging by the passage in

1 He speaks of King John of Bohemia, who fell at Crecy, as still
living.—1869.

2 See below, pp. 362 sq.—ED.

3 We may further note the quotation of the third Canzone of the
Vita Nuova, ¢ Gli occhi dolenti per pieta del cuore,” and the third Ballad,
¢ Io mi son pargoletta bella e nuova,’ in the Cliosa generale to Purg. xxx.,
the (fifth) Canzone, “Io sento si 4’ Amor la gran possanza,’ and the (fourth),
¢ Le dolci rime d’ Amor ch’io solia, in the notes to lines 37 and 13 of the
same canto, as well as the (eighth) sonnet, ¢ Per quella via che la bellezza
corre, on Purg. xxxi. 55. It is also worth noting that the Ottimo knows

the poems of Buonagiunta of Lucca (Purg. xxiv. 34), of Cino of Pistoja
(Purg. xxx. 121), and of Folquet of Marseilles (Par. ix. 94).—1869.
324 XIIL—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

which he comments on the line of the Paradiso just referred
to, he must have been entirely unacquainted with the
Convivio, so utterly does his explanation of the canzone
referred to in the passage differ from Dante’s own in the
Convivio.

¢Here you are to know that the author, besides this Comedy,
made many other things in rhyme, both suomi and sometts,
canzoni and canzoni distese, and amongst the rest, wishing to
touch on something of concupiscent love, poetically inventing
the opinion of which mention is made in the beginning of the
present chapter, he began and said : “Ye who by understanding
move the third heaven.”’

And again, he often speaks of Dante’s times as though
they were remote. For example, on Purg. xi. 95:

‘In the author’s time another whose name was Giotto was re-
nowned, and of this Cimabue nought more was said.’ ?

(Compare further the story of Henry vir. and Cangrande
on Par. xvii.)

I have only noted one passage which contains a special
and important detail concerning Dante, namely: ¢Dante
signed himself a Florentine by birth, not by character’ (on
Inf. xv. 69).2 On the other hand, apart from general
historical errors, the following note to Par. xxv. must be
regarded as incorrect in relation to Dante himself, at any
rate in the form of expression :

‘In times past there was a house in Florence, named the
Francesi, which received an outrage from the Abbati, and some
of them were slain. These Francesi, considering the greatness of
the said Abbati, withdrew from Florence with all their households,
and went to live in Paris. And there within a short space they
gained very great possessions by merchandise. When they saw
their wings were grown, having continual note of the affairs of
Florence, they wrote letters to the Guelf magnates, who were placed

 

1 A striking contrast is furnished by the corresponding passage in the
Ottimo, which expressly refers to Giotto as still living. Vasari (op. cit.)

transcribed it.
2 See note 3 on the Epist. ad Kanem, in my Dant. All. Epistolae, p. 73.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 325

under bounds or exiled from the city. . . . And having come to
an understanding with them, only with intent to return to
Florence and work their vengeance, they planned that Charles
Lackland should come into Tuscany, promising to bear his
expenses and give him the lordship of Florence. . . . When the
said Messer Charles had come to Florence the popolo minuto
cried out Viva, and those of the Guelf party cried Viva, Viva!
The exiles and those placed under bounds on the Guelf side
immediately came to the city and broke open the prisons in a
popular tumult, and rushed upon the house of the Cerchi (a
very rich house, that loved the honour of the city), and plundered
them. These Francesi went to the house of the Abbati and slew
one of them and set fire to their houses. And the city being in
such a tumult, all the greater part of them who had the govern-
ment of the city withdrew from Florence in divers directions,
amongst whom was the author, who was often of the council and
of the college of the priors.’

This contortion of the history of Charles of Valois by
della Lana leads up to a comparison of the historical know-
ledge of the two Commentators. The Ottimo is in general
correct, and the account of the Frat: godenti given in the
notes to Canto xxiii. is almost the only narrative that strikes
me as distinctly incorrect. Dionisi has devoted a whole
chapter (Anedd., v. 15, p. 90) to the credulity of the
Anonimo Comentatore, but this must be taken to mean not
really ignorance, but the readiness to accept unhistorical
and legendary matter, which characterised the whole
period? Dante himself gives the legendary versions, not

1 «The one had the name of Frate Loderigo de’ Carbonesi; he was
of the Ghibelline faction: the other Frate Catalano de’ Catalani, of
the Guelf faction. . . . Frate Loderigo strove to make the Ghibellines
the more powerful, whereat Frate Catalano, by his scheming, and the
measures he took, expelled him from the city with the Ghibelline party,
of which the Uberti were the chief: whence the houses of the Uberti,
more than of any other, were hurled to the ground. ... This is
what the text means: And it says “a solitary man,” that is solitary and
contemplative, such as these men were held to be; but they were in
truth such as the effect shows them.” Cf. Villani, vii. 13.

2 A delicious example is furnished by the note on Izf. v. 65: ¢ Thetis,

to save Achilles from joining the expedition to Troy, shut him up in a
convent of women. There he seduced the nun Deidamia, daughter of
326 XIII..-.EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

merely of the lives of Attila, Charlemagne, and Hugh Capet,
but of the pilgrim Romeo who lived only half a century
before his own day.! Moreover, the majority of these tales
are found, sometimes in other connections,? in Jacopo also,
and very nearly in the same words. For the rest, the stories
from classical antiquity are mostly taken direct from the
ancients, and we frequently find pages of literal translation
from classical authors.

With Jacopo della Lana, history and myth, old and new,
all drop their characteristic costumes, and meet on the same
plane of legendary or rather story-telling narrative. Even
Bible tales are told with an easy-going elaboration, and are
not seldom given incorrectly. Thus, for instance (Inf. xxx.),
Potiphara is called Pharaoh’s wife, and the only motive
given for Joseph’s chastity is his unwillingness to have
anything to do with a woman of a different religion. In
the note to Jnf. xviii. it is recorded that Thais was Samson’s
mistress and shore his locks.> This treatment of the stories
of antiquity gives them a comic charm of their own. For
instance we are told (on /nf. xxvi. 94) that when Ulysses
delayed so long on Circe’s island, T'elemachus ¢ wrote letters
to him every day. But neither the filial duty of succouring
the old age of his father, who in like manner begged him
in scriptis to return to him, nor the true love which he
ought to have had for the wife joined to him in wedlock,
namely his Penelope, who wrote to him,” etc. In the
eighteenth Canto we have the whole story of Jason with

Licomedes’ (compare the note on Izf. xxvi. 61). And accordingly in
the note on Purg. xxii. 109, we read, ¢ Virgil says to Statius: In that
circle may be seen . . . Deidamia with the other nuns of the convent.’
—1869.

1 Consult Raynouard’s most instructive essay in the Journal des
Savans, May 1825, p. 292.

2 The legend of the discovery of Trajan’s head is told by the O#timo
in connection with Par. xx. 43, by della Lana in connection with Purg. x.

3 The Ottimo is guilty of a no less flagrant confusion between Biblical
and Pagan antiquity when he calls the wife of Amphiaraus Sapphira,
instead of Eriphyle.—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 327

many wondrous additions ; and then we hear that Medea,
‘like a sage damsel, would have Jason’s promise of matri-
monial union before she would suffer him to have his whole
will of her person. And Jason, good and generous in
vows, never lost the game; for he had read Ovid’s Art of
Loving, which says : Pollicitis dives quilibet esse potest [ Any
one may be rich in things to promise].” He frequently
quotes the popular books of the Middle Ages, the Libro
Trojans (on Par. xx. 68), the Vita d'Alessandro (on Inf.
xii. and xiv.), the Contes della tavola ritonda (on Inf. xxxii.
61), the Storie romane (Gesta Romanorum?) (on Par. iv.
84), the Reali di Francia, etc. And still oftener he tells
tales in the same vein, and not unfrequently outbids them.
Alexander had eighty thousand families murdered in
Jerusalem at once (Inf. xii. 107). Aristotle burnt the
works of Plato and Socrates out of envy (Inf. iv. 134).
Athalam (Atlas), the husband of Electra, founded Fiesole,
to which he gave that name to indicate that it should
remain unique of its kind (fie sola, Inf. iv. 121).} Con-
stantine can only persuade his people to accompany him
to Byzantium by promising to bring them back to Roman
soil within the year. He keeps his promise by ordering a
quantity of Roman earth to be brought over in ships,
whence the land is still called Romania (Inf. xix. 115).
Attila wishes to take Rimini, and making his way into the
city in disguise sits down to play chess in a public hall.
One of the other players recognises him, and strikes him
dead with the chess-board (/nf. xii. 134). Mohammed was
a Roman Cardinal and was sent to Africa to convert the
land, on the understanding that if the Papal chair became
vacant during his absence he was to be elected Pope.
But the Cardinals broke faith with him, and in revenge he
founded a new religion ([nf. xxviii. 31).2 Saladin learns

1 Villani says the same, i. 7.
2 Obviously a dressed-up version of the story of Sergius.
328 XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

from an astrologer that Godfrey de Bouillon will be his death.
He comes disguised to Paris, and is recognised by a priest
who had been to the Holy Sepulchre. The king of France
learns this, and bids Godfrey ride through Saladin’s street
with a great show of arms. Saladin recognises that he can
do nothing against him, and wishes to return home. But the
king detains him, and he dies at the court (Inf. iv. 129).!

This kind of treatment cannot but entail ludicrous
blunders, of which I will only give a few examples. Gerion
was a king of Spain who by his cunning conquered
Hercules, and Icarus was the son of Daedalus, ‘an engineer
of Puglia’ (both on Inf. xvii.). ¢Harpies are a kind of
worms with big black-and-red wings. They have human
faces, but all the rest of their body is hairy like that of
rats’ (Inf. xiii.). To determine whether Alba or Rome
should have the supremacy a threefold duel was fought
between “three men of Asia and three of Croatia’ (Par.
vi.).2 The better to bring the flavour of these stories home
to the reader, I will add to the account of Charles of Valois
already given two others. One relates to antiquity, and one
to a period not remote from that of the Commentator him-
self. On Par. iv. he says:

¢ Caesar having been expelled from Rome by the Romans, and
the Senators and Consuls, such as were Pompey, Cato, etc.,

 

1 The legend of Saladin’s journey through the Western lands is wide-
spread. Most versions make him return home in safety, as for instance
the one followed by Benvenuto da Imola in his Commentary, which I quote
here from a Ms. which Signor Santi Fabri, Professor of Mathematics in
Ravenna, has had the rare generosity to present to me [vol. i. pp. 167 sq.
of the Vernon edition.—ED.] Consult further Now. 25 of the Nowvellino.

2 No less delightful is the etymology of the name of Vespasian
from the circumstance that some wasps made a nest in his nose.
(Purg. xxi. 82.); the explanation of the origin of the nickname Regina
given to Caesar because of his relations with Nikomedes (Pug. xxvi. 76) ;
and the elaborate description of the ancient Roman triumphal car, after
the model of the medizval Carroccio (‘and there went a |priest in full
sacerdotal garb, singing mass on the said chariot’), Purg. xxix. 115.—
1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 329

ruling the land, this Caesar made a great war upon Rome, so
that the Romans thought to slay Caesar, saying : “ Man dead,
war done!” They found amongst other Romans one of the
name of Mucius, who offered to go and slay Caesar for the peace
of his city. And he (not to make a long tale) went under disguise,
and when before the face of Caesar laid his hand upon his dagger
and framed to thrust it into his breast, but he was in such haste
that he missed his stroke and did not hit him.. The folk that
were on guard around their lord seized him and were for slaying
him forthwith. But Caesar commanded that he should not be
touched. He questioned him as to what it was that he would
do, and who had set him on. Who said to him: “I will tell
if thou wilt do me a grace.” Caesar promised it him. He
said : “It was my will to slay thee, and the Romans set me on,
and therefore did I come. The grace that I desire is this : that
thou wilt do for me, or let me do, vengeance upon my right
hand which missed the stroke, so that I did not smite thee with
my dagger.” Caesar said : “Do what thou wilt.” He ordered
them to bring him fire, and held his hand in it till he had burned
it off, and the arm up to the elbow.’

[Purg. xx. 69 :1 ‘The council was ordained by Messer the
Pope at Lyons, on the Rhone, in Provence ; and thither were
summoned and called all the worthy clerks, and amongst others
was summoned St. Thomas. When it came to the day of the
departure of St. Thomas from Naples, and he had come to the
said Charles to take his leave, and ask him whether he had
ought to intrust to him, the king said to him : * Fra Tommaso,
if the Pope should ask concerning me, what answer will you
make?” And Fra Tommaso said: “1 will tell him nought
save the truth.”—Then Fra Tommaso set out to go to Lyons.
The king, pondering on the word of Fra Tommaso, was afraid,
inasmuch’ as he knew that if the truth were known about his
deeds, he would be displeasing to all. Thereat his thoughts
became right dismal. The physicians who had charge of his
person, perceiving this, asked him the reason. He told it to
one of them. The said physician answered: “ Messere, if you
will, the remedy is at hand.” The king answered, “I will.”

 

1 When this essay appeared in the Vienna Fasrbiicker the account of
the origin of the enmity of the Colonna to Boniface vir. (Inf. xxvii.
106) appeared in this place as the second example. But since the same
narrative appears almost word for word in the Ottimo also, I have sub-
stituted for it another equally unhistorical story which is peculiar to
Jacopo della Lana.—1869.
330 XIIL.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

The said physician mounted horse with such company as he
chose, and day and night dismounted not?! till he had caught up
Fra Tommaso. Then he said: “Messer the king has grieved
much that he suffered you to depart without a physician to be
in charge of your person on this journey ; and therefore he has
sent me to come to watch over you.” The Frate thanked him
as was meet, and said : “Let the will of my Liege Lord be
accomplished.” . . . Two days afterwards the said Frate passed
to the other life.”]

Elsewhere we cannot even attribute what we find to a
romantic perversion of history, but must admit that it is
a case of pure ignorance. Dionisi (4nedd., v. p. 103) has
already remarked that in the Commentary to Inf. vi. Ciacco
and the parte selvaggia [savage party] are erroneously called
Guelfs ; and Rezzi (lettera sopra i comentiyp. 9) has pointed
out how erroneous della Lana’s notes on Penestrino (Inf.
xxvii. 102) and Taddeo (Par. xii. 83) are; and the list of
these blunders might be indefinitely extended. Thus he
calls Cornelia, not Julia, ¢ Pompey’s second wife’ (Inf. iv.
128), Geri del Bello becomes a false coiner (Inf. xxix. 27),
King John (Giovanni) or the young King (giovane) is
made a son (not brother) of Richard Coeur de Lion (Imf.
xxviii. 135); and in explanation of the Caorsini and Guaschi
in Par. xxvii. 58 we read: “They of Cahors and they of
Gascony held between them the greater part of the college
of Cardinals, so that no other family could succeed to the
office of the Papacy.’

Geographical blunders are nearly allied to historical. We
learn that Lydia is in Greece (Inf. xvii. 18 and Purg. xii.
43), that the sea on the coast of Holland is called ¢the
Lion’s sea, or, literally speaking, the Mediterranean’ (Inf.
xv. 4). Charybdis is called a ‘northern sea’ (Inf. vii. 22 ;
cf. Dionisi, Anedd., v. p. 103). And even localities quite

1 Non cald=“‘ he did not leave the saddle.’ Scarabelli has cavalo

instead of this far more expressive 7oz calo of Vendelino’s edition.—
1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 331

near at hand are confused in the most extraordinary fashion.
The Maremma passes for an island (Inf. xxv. 19) ; we are
told (Inf. xxix. 48) that the Chiana valley is a place in
Alto Pascio, which lies between Florence, Lucca, and
Pistoja; and the name of that district is Val di Chiana.’
And in the note to Inf. xvi. 97 it is stated that the Acqua-
cheta (i.e. the Montone) is called Livia below Forli.!
Only what lies immediately in or around Bologna, as the
towers Asinella and Carisenda (Inf. xxxi. 136) and the
streamlets Savena and Reno (Inf. xviii. 61), is described
precisely and correctly.

Even the poet’s language often seems to be pretty far
out of della Lana’s reach, to judge by his frequent mistakes
in the simple explanation of words. In Inf. xv. 63, macigno
is explained as follows :

x

‘In lingua Fiorentina ¢ a dire stancaruolo, cio¢ inganno,
sottilitade di cautele in danno d’altrui.’ Inf. vi. 31: ‘dgugnare,
cio& trangugare.’ Inf. ix. chiosa gen.: © Heresiarche, cio¢ quelli
ch’ enno arche d’eresia.” Inf. xvii. 85: ¢ Riprezo (ribrezzo), cio¢
cominciamento. Rezzo € Uora del di.” Inf. xxvi. 14:  lborni,
cio? freddi, e stanchi.’2 Inf. xxix. 41 : ¢ Conversi, cioé termini.’
(See, however, Salv. Betti in his Prose (Milan, 1827), p. 259.)
Purg. xx. 67: < Ammenda nasce da questo verbo amendo, as, at,
ch’¢ verbo che significa agere in altri ira, turbazione, e furiosi-
tade ; onde amens ch’¢ suo participio significa I’animo turbato, o
irato, o furioso, onde si segue amendus, da, dum, aggettivo dell’
animo.

 

1 Since Professor Scarabelli has taken these indications of historical
and geographical errors in his beloved della Lana so ill, and has tried to
explain them away in detail, I add a few supplementary instances here.
Purg. xii. 34: while Nimrod was building the tower of Babel, the flood
came and drowned all the workers.—Purg. xviii. 101: ¢Ilerda is in
England.’ —Purg. xxxiii. 62: Libeck, to which a passage quoted from
Albertus Magnus refers, is said to be a ‘city of Poland.’—Par. i. 19:
Apollo helped Phoebus in his contest with Marsyas: ¢ Phoebus had the
pipe at his lips, and Apollo blew, so that every one thought Phoebus
was playing when really it was Apollo.’ — Par. i. 31: ¢ Parnasso or
Mount Delfos, which are all one.’—1869.

2 The Ottimo’s explanation, ‘cioe li ladri,” is however really no
better.—1869.
332 XIIL—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

This many-sided ignorance easily explains his frequent
failure to understand the poet’s meaning. Under this head
we must place the exaggerated allegorising not only of the
Comedy, but of all the tales and poems of antiquity, although
this tendency is deeply rooted in the time, and not peculiar
to our author. See, for example, the beginning of Inf. xxx.
But the mistakes of this kind are doubly to be condemned
when they not only stray beyond the limits intended by the
poet, but actually contradict him, as in Inf. ii., where della
Lana tells us that the punishments of Dante’s Hell form
a contrast to the sins.! Amongst other mistakes we may
note the explanation of Francesca’s, ¢ that day we read no
further,” by ‘and there she put a stop to her reading.
And afterwards, both there and elsewhere, they conversed
in other fashion,” and the statement so much discussed last
year, that Ugolino (Inf. xxxiii. 75) consumed the bodies
of his children, if indeed the note is really due to Jacopo
himself.?

And finally I must add a word on the diction of the two
Commentators. That of the O#timo is throughout pure and
good. Jacopo’s, on the other hand, is very uneven. His
speech is as naive, unembarrassed, and pure as that of any
other of the #recentisti, whenever he lets himself go in tell-
ing a story, but, as Salviati rightly remarked, it becomes
clumsy and semi-latinised when he is explaining the mean-
ing of a word or attempting to deal with a scholastic
problem.

I have been compelled to set forth at all this length the
agreement and the difference between the two Commen-
taries, and to make it perfectly clear that we have two
entirely separate works before us, in order to be able to
propound the question—Which is to be regarded as the

1 Hermes, loc. cit., pp. 165, 166.
2 Scarabelli himself urges arguments well worthy of consideration
against its authenticity.—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 333

original, and which as a partial imitation ?—for that the
one has frequently drawn upon the other, and is in a sense
based upon it, is perfectly obvious.

I opine that scarcely a single reader will hesitate to
answer this question in favour of the Ortime. And indeed
not only does the unwavering opinion of many centuries
assert it to be early, and indeed the earliest of the great
Commentaries, but we have the most convincing proof of its
having been written little less that a decade after the death
of the poet. Della Lana can appeal to no such witnesses.
Writers on these subjects assign him to about 1400, or at
any rate to the second half of the fourteenth century,! and
their conclusions seem to be warranted by the work itself.
We have noted already how remote Dante’s time appears
to be as seen by the Commentator, and how erroneously he
often records its events ; but we seem also to have positive
proof in the note to Inf. xviii. 28, where it is said that the
Jubilee is celebrated every fifty years. Now the Jubilee of
the Church was originally ordained by Boniface viII. to be
celebrated every hundred years only, and it was not till
1349 that Clement vi. ordered it to be celebrated every
fifty years.

Nevertheless we have to admit that there are insuperable
difficulties in the way of accepting the apparent inference
that Jacopo wrote after the year 1349. We have a Latin
translation of his Commentary, to be described more fully
later on, made by the jurist Alberico da Rosate. Now
Alberico died in the year 1354, and it is scarcely likely

1 Risposta del prof. Rosini alla lettera del prof. Carmignani sul verso,
Inf. xxxiii. 72 ; 2nd edition (Pisa, 1826), p. 64.

2 When this essay appeared in the Vienna Jahrbücher I gave the‘
date of his death wrongly as 1345. This is confuted by the inscription
on his tomb, which still exists in the former church of the Celestines,
now a cadet school ; and also by his own assertion in his Vocabularius
juris that he attended the Jubilee at Rome as a pilgrim, with his wife

and child, in 1350. Agost. Salviani, Int. ad Alberico da Rosciate
Bergamo, 1842.—1869.
334 XIIL—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

that a man honoured with such weighty missions and offices
by his native city should have been able to spare time in
his last years, when laden with honours and business? for
what would doubtless be regarded as so extraneous an
occupation as the translation of a Commentary which was
scarcely completed, and had as yet received no general
recognition. This conclusion seems to be confirmed by
the fact that (at any rate according to the two Mss. at
present known) Alberigo signs himself at the end of the
work, not Doctor, but only juris peritus. Moreover Dionisi
(Anedd.,v. pp. 95,96) tells us of yet another Latin translation
by a certain Guillielmino Bernardi, which is dated 1349,
and I myself found among the Strozzi mss. in Florence
one (No. 166) which contains fragments of della Lana,
and in which the scribe writes at the beginning of a new
sheet (Quaternio) Co/ nome di Dio, anno 1349, apparently
on occasion of resuming his work in the new year.

So the argument drawn from the reckoning of the
Jubilee is certainly fallacious, and the Commentary is in
point of fact earlier than 1349. And indeed we may readily
understand how a later copyist, having regard to the
customs of his own time, might look upon the c simply
as a clerical error for L, and proceed to correct it. And
this must be the origin of the reading we now find in the
mss. Still less can we draw any inference from the way in
which Dante’s times are spoken of as long passed ; for this
is thoroughly characteristic of Jacopo’s story-telling treat-
ment of his matter, which brings the remote nearer and
puts the near further away. He speaks for instance of the
Vatican, which must have been known to every Italian, in
terms which could not be more remote if he were telling
of the palace of Prester John. Par. xxvii. 25, he says,
“There was a place in Rome called the Vatican, wherein
the Popes used to be buried in the olden time.” And

1 Tiraboschi, Storia, etc. (Milan, 1823), v. 468.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 335

although one of the passages, selected above as an instance
of the remoteness of Dante’s times, refers to Henry vir.
another passage (Par. vi.) shows that the Commentator was
really perfectly at home in the history of this Emperor.

It is time then to determine on independent grounds
what the true date of Jacopo’s Commentary is; for we
have disposed of the reasons urged in favour of the generally
accepted later date. The researches concerning the person
of the Commentator, which Rezzi! undertook, have led to
no results. Strange to say, the evidence as to the Com-
mentator’s very name is scarce. In most mss. the Com-
mentary is anonymous ; in some later copies it is attributed
to Boccaccio, Petrarch, Ser Cambi, or Benvenuto da Imola,
which last name it bears in Vendelino’s edition. But the
Riccardian Library in Florence contains a fine ancient
manuscript of the Inferno and Purgatorio (No. 1005), which
the character of the handwriting appears to indicate as
produced in Bologna. By one of those chances which
often befall mss. the Paradiso has strayed into the Brera
Library at Milan. In external form this ms. exactly
resembles the ordinary -copies of Justinian’s Corpus Juris
with the gloss by Accursius; and just as we frequently see
at the end of the several notes to the latter Dominus Doctor
Accursius, so in the former we repeatedly find ¢ Facomo de
Cione (this, or more exactly gone, and not Zane, is what I
read in the ms.) del fra Phylippo dalla Lana’? Further,
at the end of Alberico’s translation we find written in
Latin: This Commentary was composed by a certain
Dominus Jacobus de la lana, a Bolognese, a licentiate in
Arts and in Theology, who was the son of brother Philip.

1 0p. cit, p.113

2 The notes to Par. xii. and xv. have ¢ Facomo de gone del fra filipo
dalla lana, bononiensis,” to Par. xvi. ¢ Facomo de gone del fra filippo
dalla lana bolognese, to Par. xxiv. ¢ Facomo de gone del fra phylippo

lanarolo, and to Parad. xxi. ‘ Jacomo gloso e Dante tests’ [Jacomo’s
Commentary and Dante’s text].—186g.
336 XIIL.-EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

de la lana, of the Order of the Jovials, and he wrote it in
the Tuscan vernacular’ Finally, Nidobeato says in his
preface : ¢ Jacobus Laneus appears to have surpassed them in
this his maternal, to wit the Bolognese, speech,’ etc. Scanty
as these testimonies are, they strike me as clear and decided
enough to refute both Rezzi’s doubts as to whether Jacopo
is really to be regarded as the writer of the Commentary,
and Foscolo’s rash hypothesis that this Jacopo is to be iden-
tified with the poet’s son of the same name.!

Since we have no adequate information concerning the
person of the Commentator,2 we are compelled to turn,
for an answer to the question we have propounded, to the
contents of the Commentary. But this writer’s peculiar
style is totally devoid of individual touches, and makes it
far more difficult in his case than in most others to fix any
definite date with certainty. In going through the
numerous authors to whom he refers, or from whom he
makes quotations, I have met with none of a later date
than Maestro Buono (on Inf. xxiv.), whom Tiraboschi
(v. 332) gives as flourishing between 1320 and 1330.

The two following passages, however, are more signifi-
cant. In the note to Inf. xx. 96, Jacopo tells how Pina-
monte Buonaccorsi seized the lordship of Mantua, and
conferred it on his family. He then adds: ‘From that
time forth there have been many wiles, whereby one of
them has sought to decoy it from another. And the afore-
said Messer Pinamonte came to such a pass that his sons
and grandsons held him under courteous restraint; and in
such state he died. And one expelled another in such
fashion that at this present there is not in Mantua save
only Messer Passarino.” Here the writer is obviously

1 Discorso sul testo della Div. Com. (Londra, 1825), p. 390. See also
my note 35 to the Epistola ad Kanem in Dant. All. Epistolae.

2 Ang. Gualandi has now collected a great deal of instructive matter

concerning Jacopo, from documents, in his Giacomo della Lana, primo
commentatore della Div. Comm. ; Bologna, 1865.—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 337

speaking of his own time and from his own personal know-
ledge. Now Passarino’s rule (according to Aliprandus
Mantuanus, and according to Villani; x. 97) lasted from
1308 to July 15th (Aug. 14), 1328, so that Jacopo must
have written before the latter date, for we may assume that
a Bolognese would be well posted in the events occurring in
Mantua, hardly a day’s journey distant.

Further, the passage quoted above in full on the most
recent Florentine history is followed by these words: ¢ And
when they had returned they straightway made a new
election of Priors, and laid! hands on all the offices of the
city, placing under bounds,? banishing, plundering, casting
down,? and wasting, by all means that they might compass,
those who before held power; and in such manner have
they held the city even till this day.” Now this description
of the state of Florence which the Commentator describes
as still continuing is perfectly true ‘of the whole period
between the entry of Charles of Valois and the death of
Castruccio Castracane (3rd Sept. 1328, Villani, x. 86).
But from that time on till the year 1340 all was quiet in
Florence, and the arts of peace flourished (Macchiavelli,
Storie, Bk. i. p. 110 of the Piatti edition). So by this path
too we are led to the same conclusion, that Jacopo wrote
before 1328, that is to say at least six years before the
Ottimo.

I will not pretend to deny that this conclusion, which I
reached more than four years ago, was so unexpected that
I long doubted its correctness, and was not fully convinced
of its truth till it was decisively confirmed by evidence
from other directions. But when we come to compare

1 ¢ Recaronsi.”  Scarabelli has ¢reccattonsi® [Vendelino recattonsi.—
Ep.], a word unknown both to myself and the lexicographers.—1869.

2 ¢ Confinands.” Scarabelli here and elsewhere has  confidands” [1866.
Correctly given in the 1865 ed.—ED.], which gives no sense.—1869.

8 ¢ Predando o cadendo (? =facendo cadere).” Scarabelli has ¢ prendendo
e ancidendo,” which last word, at any rate, may be right.—186g.

Y
338 XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

the two with a view to ascertaining their relative antiquity,
and ask ourselves in general terms by what marks we are
to distinguish between the earlier and the later of two
Commentators, must we not admit that frequent references
to other works of a like nature, especially on subjects
relating to the period near about the date of the writer
himself, are a note of relatively late origin? Well now,
in della Lana’s work the references to different inter-
pretations of a passage given by other authors are so rare
that I have, so far, only noted two (Par. xvii. 80! and
xviii. 134). And in both instances the notes that contain
alternative views of other Commentators have so little
connection with the rest of the work that it would be easy
to suppose they were added by a later hand.

In the Ottimo, on the other hand, references to other
interpretations occur on almost every page. Ser Graziolo
de’ Bambagioli, Chancellor of Bologna, is quoted as an
earlier Commentator, Inf. vii. 89 and xiii. 91 (I have not
found any other instances in the portion of the work in
my hands, but Bandini says that Ser Graziolo is quoted
saepissime), and the views of ‘others’ (alcuni or alcuno) are
brought forward again and again, as the following hasty
list will show: Inf. ii. 94, iv. 121, v. 103, viii. 19, 28,
ix.'7 53 (twice), 54, 113, x. 118, xii. 111, 135, XIV. O4
(twice), xvi. 10, =vii. 58, xxii. 111, etc. The most
important fact, however, is that the Ottimo actually quotes
and copies Jacopo della Lana (though he never names him),
and that not once or twice (so as to leave room to suspect
mere later interpolations), but with quite remarkable fre-
quency. I subjoin a few of the most striking passages :

 

1 The note runs, in Vendelino’s edition: ¢ Because of his small age.
And note that, according to another interpretation, Messere Cane was but
nine years old in 1300, and this they believe to be the truer explanation.’
Scarabelli simply omits this reference to a second interpretation, without
so much as mentioning it.—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY

Oztimo.

Inf. xii. 4. Another says
[altri dice] that the Adige is a
river which, by its continual
course, has gnawed the moun-
tain of Trento at the foot, so
that in process of time all that
part of the mountain which
should have been sustained by
its basis, which has been gnawed
away, has rushed and tumbled
down.

xii. 134. One says [alcuno
dice] that when he [Attila] was
at the siege of Rimino in
Romagna, he entered unbe-
known into the city to hear
what they were saying of him ;
and, being recognised by some
one who was playing at chess,
he was struck on the head
with the chess-board and slain.

xxv. 25. Another says [a/-
tri dice] that Hercules, grieving
for this his herd, which had
been stolen from him, and he
knew not by whom, received
the advice to take of the kine
that were left and drive them
up and down the country and
make them low, and that if in
any place his beasts which
had been taken from him were
hidden, he would then learn

339

Fac. della Lana.

He brings for an example
the case of Trento! in the
mountains ; and in its valley
is the Adice, which is a river
which, by the continuing of
its course, has gnawed the
mountain at the foot; and
then in process of time all
that part of the mountain
which should have been sus-
tained by that basis has rushed
and tumbled down.

When he came to Arimino
secretly and in disguise, he
entered into the city and he
went to the portico where they
were playing at chess; one of
those playing perceived him
and struck him on the head
with a board and slew him.

Hercules, seeing that his herd
kept diminishing, and that sub-
tractions were made from it,
asked counsel as to what he
might do, and was thus advised:
Take of these thy kine and
drive them up and down the
country, and make them low.
If in any place those beasts
who have been taken from thee
are hidden thou shalt know
it, because cattle have? such a

 

1 Vendelino has ¢ sicome intrento nelle montagne che nella sua valle e la

dise che un fiume.

Out of which Scarabelli makes the completely

erroneous © sicome entrando nelle montagne, nella sua walle discende un

flume, lo quale.” —1869.

2 Scarabelli wrongly alters ¢ bovina Aa’ into “i bovi han.” A bull does

not answer a bull, but a cow.—1869.
340 XIIL—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

it; because the nature of
cattle is of such condition that
one answers to another, He
followed the advice, and found
near about the Aventine moun-
tain that there came an answer
to the lowing of his kine, so
that at last he discovered the
theft and the robber, and with
his mace smote Caco; and he
was not content to give him

nature that the one answers
to the other. When he had
taken this advice, he found
near about the Aventine moun-
tain, that there came an answer
to the lowing of his kine ; so
that, in the end, he discovered
the theft and the robber.
Having found him out by
cunning, Hercules fell upon
him and smote him on the

head with his iron mace; and
was not content to give him so
many blows as to kill him, but
eased his mind by giving him
many more after he was dead.

so many blows as to kill him,
but eased his mind with respect
to him by giving him many
more after he was dead.

No less striking than these three passages are the
following, some of which are of greater length: Inf. viii.
1, ix. 112 (towards the end of the note), xii. 107, xiii.
151, xiv. 94 (p. 275 in the Pisa edition), and xx. 40.1
[Ott ad. loc. Jac. at end of canto.] It is such passages
as these which make Dionisi’s idea (A4nedd., v. 107) that
later copyists have here and there introduced passages from
the Ottimo into Jacopo della Lana, and that this is the only
reason for their apparent agreement, absolutely untenable.

And now that della Lana’s priority has been clearly
established, we can at last proceed to the closer examination
of the mutual relations of the two. The common basis of
the erudition scattered through both is due exclusively to
Jacopo. He made scanty use of the classical authors, with the
exception of the very best known, and with these he appears

1 The Ottimo’s note on Inf. ii. 55 is particularly worthy of attention.
It first gives Jacopo’s note complete, almost as it stands in Scarabelli’s
edition (Inf. ii. 53), and then adds: ‘I have given this note, but I am not
satisfied with it; for the writer of this note only has two ladies, namely,
Lucia and Beatrice, whereas the text has three of them,’ etc. Torri,
who did not recognise the connection between the two Commentators,
has quite unwarrantably thrown this addition below the text, as a gloss,
whereas it is unquestionably genuine. It is quoted by the Crusca (under
¢ cooperante’).—1869.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 341

only to be acquainted at second hand ; and in this direction
the later O#timo supplies numerous and valuable additions
to the store. With Orosius, Isidore, the Christian Fathers,
and the whole scholastic literature of the Middle Ages,
Jacopo is far more familiar. I subjoin a list of authors,
some of whom struck me as rare, while others are entirely
unknown to me: Ptolemy’s Centiloguium and Almagestum
(which I take to be what ¢ Gichersi’ in the text stands for),
Damasenus, Simonides, Albumassar, Alcalizius, Papias and
Huguccio, Britone’s Composizione delle voci, Frater Aegidius
de regimine principum and della formazione del corpo umano,
Albertus Magnus’s Fra Moneta dé frati predicatori, Elgiebers
de Alchimia, Arrighetto, Campanus, etc. etc.

The Ottimo then! makes use of this store of erudition,
sometimes adopting his predecessor’s quotations word for
word, only stripping them of their barbarous semi-Latin
form, but often shortening them, or entirely omitting what
he thinks unessential. It is almost comic sometimes to see
how the unfortunate Ottimo suddenly loses patience in
copying these long discussions, and leaves out a few necessary
links of the long chain of which della Lana’s demonstrations
are generally composed. The passage already given from the
introduction to Inf. xiv. may serve as an example of this,
though it would be easy to find far more striking ones. The
careful examination of a single one of these passages will
suffice to make it obvious that Jacopo is the Ottimo’s source.

In matters of history, on the other hand, the Ottimo only
occasionally follows Jacopo; he usually takes his material
from other more trustworthy sources. If we were to regard
the Ottimo as the earlier of the two, it would be inconceiv-

1 The Ottimo’s additions are generally drawn from earlier writers
whom Jacopo della Lana has not consulted. I may mention as ex-
amples: Palladius de re rustica, on Purg. xxviii. 6.—Augustinus de
spiritu et amima—Cassiodorus de anima—Martianus Capella, on Purg.
xxii. 10.—Ausonius [?] Cento, on Purg. xxii. 64.—Paulus Diaconus—
Alanus de insulis Planctus naturae, on Purg. xx. 10, 82.—1869.
342 XIII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

able how Jacopo della Lana, instead of adopting the true
accounts contained in the O#timo, should have succeeded in
getting hold of so many false ones ; for after the passages
given above it would be idle to deny that the later writer
was acquainted with the work of his predecessor. On the
other hand, it is easy to see how Jacopo, thrown on his own
resources, only had very imperfect information to give on
many points, while the O#timo, in addition to these accounts,
had the command of his own stores of knowledge and the
remarks of other writers, and was therefore often able to
hit upon the truth.

Had not Jacopo della Lana had the advantage of priority
(which may have given his Commentary currency before
ever the Ottimo was composed), it would really be impossible
to understand how its fame could have transcended that of
all other Commentaries during the next century and a half,
in spite of all its blunders, its often clumsy style, and its
great bulk. I shall presently give some details as to a
great number of mss. with which I alone am acquainted ;
but even amongst subsequent Commentators there is hardly
one who has not borrowed from Jacopo, or made frequent
references to him. Even Benvenuto da Imola makes
excerpts from him in his historical notes more than once.l
The account of Vanni Fucci as there given (Inf. xxiv. 128,
col. 1095, of Muratori’s edition of 1783) is a particularly
noteworthy instance.

I suppose I may now assume that these arguments,
severally and collectively, have convinced my readers of
the high antiquity of Jacopo’s work ; but I must not fail
to rehearse one more argument already urged by my
honoured friend, Professor Viviani of Udine (Dante Barto-
lin.,vol. i. p. xlv), to prove that della Lana wrote before 1337.

1 J refer in the first instance to Muratori’s excerpts, but the 265
columns of large folio printed by him only embrace between a sixth and
a seventh of the whole Commentary as it stands in the mss.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 343

It is as follows: In a Ms. dating from this year (1337),
belonging to the Marquis Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, the
summary of contents of the several cantos is given in the
same wording as in the 1477 edition of Jacopo. Now if
the writer of the Trivulzian Ms. could extract his headings
from della Lana, it proves that the Commentary was
written before 1337.—We cannot, however, assert that the
originality of the connection between the Commentary and
these headings, on which the proof rests, has been strictly
proved.

Before passing to what I have to say on the mss., however,
I must note one remarkable phenomenon which appears
again and again in both Commentaries. It has indeed little
to do with our present task of distinguishing between the
two, but is of such great interest on other grounds that I
cannot pass it by in silence. Our critics are prone to
suppose that they have got a peculiarly trustworthy guide to
the correction of the text of the Divine Comedy, when they
become possessed of a Ms. dating from somewhere near the
poet’s own time. Some content themselves with fifteenth-
century Mss., others feel that at any rate they may assign
the highest authority to a fourteenth-century ms. ; and if
a Ms. here and there is dated within the first half of that
century (and we have dated mss. of 1336, 1337, and 1343)
it can hardly escape the reputation of something like in-
fallibility. But if we take counsel with the Commentators
of the declining fourteenth century (Boccaccio, Benvenuto
da Imola, and Francesco Buti) we shall soon realise how
much the Mss. of the time varied, and how incorrect they
were. Every one of these Commentators cites an extra-
ordinary number of alternative readings, and we often find
that the true one has already been lost.! As a matter
of fact, before the earliest dated ms. in 1334, and
even before 1328, the copies of the Divine Comedy were

1 See the Prolegomeni Critici to my Berlin edition, pp. Ixv sg.—1869.
344 XII.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

already marred in many places, and offered very various
readings. We can only partially discover their condition
from our old Commentators, it is true. For one thing, only
a small portion of the text is given with the Commentary,
and even when passages are copied straight into the notes
as they stand, there is always the possibility that the writer
of the Commentary may have had a sound text before him,
and that the transcriber is responsible for its corruption.
So we can only identify with certainty those readings which
form the basis of a special exposition.—Amongst these we
may instance the false reading /’arme instead of l’arnie
explained in the Ottimo in Inf. xvi. 3. And we can see
that the Ottimo not only had a bad text sometimes, but
was also aware of the existence of variants ; for he remarks
on Inf. xiii. 73, that some read nove instead of nuove radici.
[Cf. also Inf. xvi. 19, where he contrasts the readings ¢/ and
ehi.]* It is the same with della Lana. We find / url
instead of burl in Inf. vii. 30; in Inf. viii. 78 he seems to
have read fusser fosse instead of ferro fosse, for he explains
fosse as graves. Dionisi (Anedd., v. 106, Prep. i. 82) has
already pointed out his false reading, nuovo Fason si radi,’
instead of sara di (Inf. xix. 85). Nor are instances wanting
of the citation of variants. See for instance Purg. vil. 15
(ove’l minor §’ appiglia), where Jacopo says: © Another text
says “dove’l notrir s’ appiglia,” that is the navel, by which
children are nurtured in the mother’s womb. But which-
ever of these two we take the author means to show that
Sordello embraced him reverently.’ The same variant is
noted by Caetani’s Postillator, and stands in the text of
the Ms. claimed as a copy by Boccaccio’s own hand. It

1 In Torr, however, the note on the passage is so corrupt that it is
hard to recognise the sense given above.—1869.

2 ¢ 8; rads’ was a not unusual expression in the Middle Ages. Thus
Odofredus in the Digestum wetus (Lib. ii. De Edendo, end of first §
of Qua quisque) says, ‘ Taceat Placentinus et abradat de Summa sua,
causam esse actionem.’
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 345

is also given on the margin of Dolce’s edition. All this
goes to show that however valuable mss. supposed to be of
great antiquity may be, we could not repose unquestioning
confidence in them, even if they dated from before the
poet’s death.

 

[In the Vienna Jahrbücher an enumeration of the mss.
of the Ottimo and of Jacopo della Lana which were then
known to me was here appended. At that time, when
the first sheets of the Ottimo were already in print (1826),
the editors, Torri and Rosini of Pisa, were convinced
that only one ms. of the Ottimo existed, and at first
they ridiculed my assurances to the contrary. But I
was able in this catalogue to point with certainty to
about a dozen Codices of this valued Commentary. I also
enumerated thirty-four Codices of the Italian text of Jacopo
and eight of the Latin translation, the former containing
not only a number which were previously unassigned, but
also not a few which till then had been erroneously given
under the names of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giovanni Ser
Cambi, and the Milanese Sexvirs. Vicomte Colomb de
Batines, who has lived in Florence for years, and devoted
himself with unwearying industry to Dante Bibliography,
took up and carried forward these studies again in the year
1843 in a letter to Seymour Kirkup.! Three years later
he treated the same points still more elaborately in his
Bibliographia Dantesca.? Being unacquainted with German,
he had a translation of my article in the Vienna Jahrbücher
made for him, and to judge by the numerous quotations, it
must have given the sense of the original very accurately.
His bibliographic indications are naturally more complete

1 Del Comento su la Div. Comm., appellato I’Ottimo, e di quello attri-
buito a Jacopo della Lana, fatti e congetture, in his Studi inediti su Dante

Al. (Firenze, 1846), pp. 131-158.
2 Vol. i. pp. 582-633.
346 XIIL.—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

than mine, and they correct them in several details, gener-
ally on adequate grounds. This would seem to render a
reprint of my catalogue superfluous; but for those who
may still wish to make use of my work on account of one
or two special points not included by de Batines, I will
append a key for the comparison of the two lists. As con-
cerns the Ottimo my numbers 1 and 2 simply refer to mss.
used by Vasari, the Deputati, and Bastiano de’ Rossi. I
give the rest of my numbers in Arabic character, with the
corresponding numbers by which de Batines indicates the
same Mss. in Roman: 3=I—4=XVIL—5=XIX.—b=
XX.—7 = IL.—8 = VII.—9 = IL.—10 = VL.— 13 = XXIL.—I5,
16=xvir. It must be noted further that my Nos. 11
and 12, which I believed to be mss. of the Ottimo, are given
by de Batines to Jacopo as Nos. virt. and xx1., while I had
myself remarked of No. 14 that the ms. (Laur. xc. inf. 42)
did not contain the pure Ottimol The French biblio-
grapher has added no less than thirteen codices, his Nos.
1V.—VIL., VIIL—XVI., and XXL, one of which, however (for-
merly belonging to the Marquis Pucci), had already been
indicated by me? and six others (x1.-xv1.) only contain the
pure Ottimo on about the first twenty-two cantos of the Pur-
gatorio, together with a Commentary on the Paradiso based
on the Ottimo, but amplified and otherwise manipulated.
The correspondence between my numbers and those of
de Batines in designating the mss. of Jacopo della Lana
is as follows: 1=IL.—2=XIL—3=XII.—4=XIIL—5=
XXVIII —6 = XXVII.—7 =XIV.— 8 = XXXV.—Q = IL.—I0=
XV.— IT =XXIV.— [2 = XXXII. — 13 =XXXVIL.— 14 =XVL
—I1§=VL—I16=VIL.—17 =XXV.,—I19=XXIIL—20=1V.—
21 =XL. — 22 = XXVI. — 23 = IX. — 24 =XXXIVP. — 25=
XXXIV, —26 = X,—27 = XXXVI.—28 = LI.— 29 = LIL.— 30
=LIIL—31 = XXIL—32=IL—33=Xx.—34=V. My

1 De Batines, i. 633; ii. 31, no. 46; 286, VIL [cf. i. 600, 604].
2 Antologia, cxxviil. 151, 152.
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 347

No. 18 merely indicates two Mss. of della Lana referred
to by Salviati, as to which it was impossible to say whether
they were identical with any, and if so which, of those
known to us. De Batines’ Nos. viir. and xx1. I have
already mentioned as formerly assigned by me to the
Ottimo under Nos. 11 and 12. De Batines’ Jacopo Nos.
XXVIIL-XXXII are identical with his Ottimo Nos. X1.—xV.,
since the Mss. in question consist of fragments of the two
works combined. The Frenchman’s No. xL1. (as he does
not fail to state) was indicated by myself. He has how-
ever added five new wmss., his Nos. XVII, XVIIL, XIX.,
XXXIX., and XLII. Since then I have become acquainted
with the following additional mss.: (1) In the Royal
Library of Copenhagen ; (2) Bodleian No. 116 (Barlow,
Contributions, p. 60, gives it as No. 115); (3) Paris
Bibl. Nat., No. 7259 ; and (4) ibidem, No. 7766 ; (5) Vati-
cana-Urbinas, No. 374; (6) Vatic. Reg. Christinae, 1485 ;
(7) Vatic. Ottobon. 2358. This last ms. de Batines describes
in his second volume, pp. 172, 173 (No. 328), but men-
tions that he has neglected to include it among della
Lana’s codices.—Whether Scarabelli had seen any other
Mss. remains uncertain. According to p. 18 of his pre-
face, he made use of a Sienese ms., H. vir. 18, but he is
so careless that we may probably take him to mean H. vii.
18 (de Batines’ No. xix.). In the same place he gives
the correct reference to the Laurentian Ms., xr. 36 (de
Batines’ x1.), but on p. 46 a codex xL. 76 suddenly appears,
though apparently it is only an incorrect reference to the
same Ms. On p. 19 he speaks quite definitely of two
Palatine mss., 116 and 117, the first of which is unques-
tionably de Batines’s No. xvi. (No. 326 in Palermo’
Catalogue, i. p. 545), but then again on p. 28 he identifies
No. 117 with Palermo’s No. 326.—1I confess my inability
to find my way through all this confusion. The Palatine
mss. have suffered to a quite unusual extent from the
348 XIIL—EARLIEST COMMENTATORS

misfortune already referred to of re-numbering. I find a
No. 116 and a No. 117 amongst the Guadagni mss. which
are incorporated with them. They correspond to Palermo’s
Nos. 328 and 327, and the first of them to de Batines’
No. 172 (its library number being 228). But according
to the entirely reliable statement of the French biblio-
grapher this No. 116 is a copy of Franc. da Buti’s Com-
mentary, while No. 117 (de Batines, ii. p. 350, No.
111.) according to Fanfani, de Batines, and Palermo, is a
ms. of the anonymous Commentator lately published by
Fanfani from the Riccardian 1016. Palermo, in addition
to his No. 326 (de Batines’ 176), only gives one other ms.
of Jacopo della Lana, the well-known codex formerly
belonging to Poggiali, which was No. 104 of the Guadagni
Mss., reported to me by the former librarian, Sig. Molini,
as No. 108 in the library. It is No. 163 in de Batines,
and No. 313 in Palermo. Whether this is a della Lana,
however, seems very doubtful from the data supplied by
de Batines. See vol. ii. 88 sg., 347.

And now, in conclusion, I will give the corresponding
numbers in my list and that of de Batines that refer to
Latin translations of della Lana: 35=xL1L—36=XxLV.
— 37=XLVIL.—38 =XLVIL — 40=XLVIIL — 41 = XLIX.—
42=1.—De Batines adds a Paris ms. (No. xr1v.).—Barlow
(Contributions, pp. 62 sq.) gives the further information that
in the first-named codex (35=xv111.) only the translation of
the Commentary on the Inferno is by de Bernardis, and the
rest by Albericus a Rosate.—Finally, there is one more Ms.
of this last translation, belonging to Sir Thomas Phillipps,
formerly of Middlehill (No. 3620), which however was
not written till the year 1564.

The two modern editions of della Lana which Luciano
Scarabelli has prepared have already been referred to (see
ON THE DIVINE COMEDY 349

p. 316 above). I have more than once elsewhere acknow-
ledged the usefulness of his work. It need scarcely be
said that its value would have been far greater if the editor
had shown more critical tact and philological accuracy.
The above pages will add many more to the proofs con-
tained in my other writings of the quite exceptional degree
in which he is lacking in both. Now that I have all the
three volumes of the second edition lying before me, I
could multiply these proofs indefinitely. But there is no
need to do so. Scarabelli, on his side, has had to correct
a number of misstatements concerning myself in his errata.
See the Rivista printed as a postscript to his third volume,
pp. 568 sq.

Unfortunately de Batines’ publisher, Alberghetti, did
not print the translation of the above essay which the
French scholar had had prepared for him. Scarabelli was
therefore compelled to get another, and it would seem to
have been a singularly bad one. The chief monstrosity he
extracted from my essay was that I had ‘mauled’ poor
Jacopo © with perfect fury,’ and he hurls himself upon me,
full of zeal and indignation against the impertinent
attack,’ as he calls it. All that I think myself called upon
to say in reply has appeared in the Fahrbuch der Deutschen
Dante-Gesellschaft, i. 265-331, and I am quite content to
refer the reader to it without further remark.—186q.

1 An Italian version appeared in the Politecnico 1868, February and
April, and also as a separate pamphlet, Milan, 1868.
XIV. ON THE DATE AND AUTHOR-
SHIP. OF THE OTTIMO COMENTO
ON DANTE

A LETTER TO MR. SEYMOUR KIRKUP, THE ENGLISH
ARTIST AT FLORENCE, LEIPZIG, 1847

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 399-417 (1869).]

HALLE ON THE SAALE,
Now. 20th, 1846.

My VERY DEAR SIR,—I need not tell you with how much
pleasure I have read the remarkable work of Mons. le
Vicomte de Batines on two early Commentaries on the
Divine Comedy, which I only received on the 11th of this
month. The learned Dantist has added a special charm
to his work by placing on its brow your own name, so dear
to all students of the supreme bard who are happy enough
to know you.

Not so long ago, the study of these excellent old Com-
mentators, imbued in greater or smaller degree with that
same medizval learning in which Dante was more pro-
foundly versed than any other, lay neglected, forgotten, and
buried. Neither Lombardi, nor Biagioli; nor their con-
temporaries, ever consulted those expositors who might
have learnt the sense which the author himself intended to
attach to his mystic poem from the living voice of Dante
or from immediate tradition. When, twenty-three years

ago, I attempted to call back the attention of scholars to
350
ESSAYS ON DANTE 351

this study, and in my first essay on Dante ! gave a catalogue
of fourteen ancient Commentaries, adding the enumeration
of manuscripts in which they lay unedited, many readers
were astonished at their number. Now the researches of
scholars have extended our knowledge so much that this
list could only excite commiseration by its meagreness and
imperfection.

Alessandro Torri; who has rendered such signal services to
every branch of the study of Dante, was the first to edit
the Commentary hitherto regarded as the oldest of all.
His work indeed was less satisfactory than we might have
wished, but the new editor (Sign. Francesco Cerrotti ot
Rome) will certainly feel himself called on to correct its
many errors and fill in its many gaps.

Sign. Ignazio Moutier made us an acceptable present
when he reprinted the Commentary wherein Boccaccio,
already verging on infirmity, breathed out his passionate
love for Father Allighieri. This edition removed many of
the blots which deformed the first Florentine, or rather
Neapolitan edition.?

Nor can we deny a certain interest to the publication of
a Commentary on the first cantica, composed towards the
middle of the fifteenth century by Guiniforto delli Bargigi,
which we owe to the avvocato Zacheroni. It would
perhaps have been yet more cordially received, if the
fastidious editor had not thought proper to suppress those

parts of the work which, to his way of thinking, seemed
trifling or inane.

L Hermes, oder Kritisches Jahrbuch der Literatur, 1824, vol. xxii.
pp. 134-166. The list referred to in the text is on pp. 139, 140. [See
p- 26 of this vol.] :

2 1 wish I could say “all,” and that the illustrious editor had availed
himself of certain corrections suggested before his reprint appeared.
Compare, for example, Dionisi (iv. 30, 99) with Moutier’s text on
pp- 8, 49, 50. Itis still less satisfactory to see certain errors in the new

edition, from which the former one was free, as we shall observe in
cases cited further on.
352 XIV.—-THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

But of greater importance than all that these meritorious
scholars have published amongst them is the Commentary
attributed to Dante’s son Peter, which we owe to your
illustrious fellow-countryman, the Maecenas of Dante
studies, G. G. Warren, Lord Vernon. The work has
been executed, and enriched with learned notes, by that
deep student of early Italian letters, Nanucci.!

I pass in silence over more than one elegant essay on one
or another of the ancient Commentators, and turn at once
to the tone-giving letter of Mons. le Vicomte de Batines.?
Were they not too flattering, I would repeat the words with
which the illustrious bibliographer of Dante speaks (p. 141)
of a work of my own on the same subject, printed
nineteen years ago in the Vienna Fahrbiicher® Naturally
it gave me the greatest satisfaction to learn that the pro-
found studies of so distinguished a scholar, carried through
in the very midst of the treasures amassed in the libraries
of Florence, served to confirm nearly every point which I
had then ventured to urge from almost the remotest con-

1 Five codices have been carefully collated by Signor Nanucci, with
a view to securing a correct text. Two others are referred to by him.
A copy of the codex of S. Giustina, which seems to be lost, might
have been found amongst Dionisi’s books in the Biblioteca Capitolare
of Verona. Two other manuscripts of Pietro di Dante exist in the
Barberini Library at Rome (Pelli, Memorie per la wita di Dante, ed. 2,
p- 174, Note 53; Rezzi, Lettera sopra i comenti MSS. Barberiant, pp. 6,
27), and yet another is to be found amongst the Paris Mss. (Fords de re-
serve, No. 4). It is said in the learned preface, page 15, that Pietro’s
Commentary was composed in 1340, and this is very true of the greater
part of the work (consult also p. 656). The notes on the last Cantos
of the Paradiso, however, as may be inferred from p. 704, were not
written till 1341.

Any one who should follow Lord Vernon's example, and give publicity
to the Commentary attributed to Jacopo di Dante, or the Commentary
of Francesco da Buti, the most extensive of them all, and the one most
frequently used by the compilers of the Vocabolario, or finally the com-
plete Commentary of Benvenuto da Imola, would certainly confer the
most acceptable boon on all lovers of these studies. [All these are now
printed. See p. 27 of this vol.—Eb.]

2 In his Studi inediti su Dante, vol. i. (Fir. 1846), pp. 133-158.

3 Vol. xliv. 1828, pp. 1-43.
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 353

fines of Germany (viz. Breslau). The results of the
* Vicomte’s labours are set forth by him on pages 156 and
157. They are four in number: 1. The Commentary of
Jacopo della Lana printed at Vendelino’s and at Nido-
beato’s presses, is identical with the so-called Visconti
commentary. 2. This Commentary differs from the Ottimo
and from that of Dante’s son Jacopo. 3. It is probably of
earlier date than the Ottimo. 4. The Ottimo only partially
deserves the distinguishing title of the ¢ Antico’ which has
been conferred upon it. (It appears from pages 143 sq. that
M. de Batines considers the text published by Torri, at
least in part, subsequent to 1351.) It is not a primitive
Commentary, but an epitome of several others compiled by
two, if not three, different hands.

Now the first three of these points coincide exactly with
the opinions I had expressed in the work referred to. The
only difference that might be discovered is that whereas the
French scholar attempts to show that Jacopo della Lana
wrote before 1349, I believe myself to have fixed his date
with historical certainty as earlier than 1328. Further, I
agree that the Ottimo cannot be regarded as a primitive
Commentary. The only point therefore on which the
Vicomte’s studies have led him to embrace an opinion
differing from my own is the date of the Ottimo Comento,
which I believe, in agreement with previous authors, to be
1333 or 1334, and M. de Batines places some twenty years
later.

I should not hesitate for a single moment to withdraw
an opinion expressed so many years ago, or rather repeated
on the strength of the current belief rather than adopted on
any grounds of my own, did the arguments against it strike
me as valid.! But I am sorry to say that this is not the

1 Amongst the many mistakes in my former essay was one noted by
M. de Batines (p. 135), viz. the statement. that Alberico de Rosciate,
who really died in 1354, did not survive 1345. But M. le Vicomte is

Z
354 XIV.—THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

case, and I appeal to your clear judgment to put me right
or to confirm me in my opinion. But before setting out
my own arguments I would beg your sympathetic con-
sideration if any important contribution to the subject has
escaped me, bereft as I am of all literary resources beyond
what are supplied by my own poor library.

The arguments in support of the belief that the Ottimo
Comento was composed in 1333 and 1334 are the follow-
ing :

1. The author says that he was personally present at an
event which happened a little after 2nd June 1307 :1!

Inf. xxviii. §5. “This Fra Dolcino . . . was captured, and in
the above said place [Novara], with sister Margherita and many
of his followers, was burnt to death; and I, the writer, saw
some of his followers burnt to death at Padua, to the number of

twenty-two at a time, folk of low condition, unlearned, and
peasants.’

2. He refers to his personal acquaintance with the
poet :

Inf. x. 85. ‘I, the writer, have heard Dante say that never
did rhyme draw him to say other than he had purposed to say,

 

wrong in attributing the Latin translation of Jacopo della Lana, con-
tained in the Ambrosian Ms. D 539, to Alberigo, in spite of my definite
statement to the contrary (Vienna Jahrbücher, loc. cit., p. 39). No small
number of Mss. of the Ottimo were discovered by M. de Batines and
added to the list which I had drawn up in 1828, though some of them
contain no more than fragments of the Commentary; and others had
been indicated in my dissertation (p. 34, No. 8 ; p. 36, No. 28). Further,
if M. le Vicomte (p. 153) wants ‘a third opinion’ on the two codices of
San Daniele del Friuli and of Venice (Library of San Marco, No. 56), I
am happy to be able to assure him that they both contain the Oftzmo
Comento in the same form as that in which the Riccardian 1004 presents
it.

1 It would seem then that in 1334 he cannot have been very young.
Torri thinks otherwise (Preface, p. xiii), on the strength of the note
to verse 89 of Canto vii. of the Inferno; but he seems not to have
observed that it is not the anonymous Commentator himself, but Ser
Graziolo de Bambagioli, Chancellor of Bologna, whom he is quoting,
that speaks in this passage of his youth.’
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 355

but that many a time and oft he had made words say in his
rhymes other than they were wont to express in the works of
the other poets.’

Inf, xiii. 144. ‘He [Dante] was of Florence, wherefore he
here tells us of a false opinion which the ancient folk of that
city entertained ; concerning which I, the writer, having ques-
tioned him, heard him thus relate.’

3. The Commentator speaks of John of Bohemia, who
died at the battle of Crecy, 26th August 1346, as still
living :

Par. xix. 124. “The kingdom [Bohemia] passed to a new

succession of strangers, first to Albert, then to the Emperor
Henry, whose son John now wears the crown.’

4. He cites the painter Giotto, who died in 1336, as
still living:

Purg. xi. 94. Giotto was and is supreme above all painters
known to man; and he is of that same city of Florence, and his
works bear him witness in Rome, Naples, Venice, and Padua,
and many other parts of the world.’

5. In the last portion of his work he refers to the year
1333 as current, or only just past :

Par. xii. 79. “To whom (St. Dominic) there succeeded as
minister-general . , . sixteenth in order, brother Hugo Val-
samano, elected but now in 1333.

[4] quale nel ministerio gemerale succedette . . . decimosesto
Srate Ugo di Valsamano, al presente eletto nel 1333.7]

6. He speaks of this same year as ‘the year just past’
in a note on Inf. xiii. 144 :

“It (the Ponte Vecchio) fell on the night of the fourth day of
November in 1333, the year just passed’! (the Laurentian codex
xl. 19 says 23 [ventitré], but see Giov. Villani’s Chronicle, xi. 1,
and Dionisi, Anedd., v. 86, note 1, Aless. Torri in his preface to
the Ottimo, p. xiii, note 3).

 

1 We must of course remember that in the Florentine usage the year
1333 did not end till the close of March 1334.
356 XIV.—THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

7. And again, another note on a verse in the same
Cantica (xix. 115) refers to the year 1334:

¢ Niccola Orsini . . . induced the Emperor Rudolph to confer
on him the privilege of Romagna and Bologna, the effect of
which privilege Bertrand, bishop of Ostia and of Velletro,
Legate of the Apostolic Church, was made to feel, on March
17th, 1333,1 as I was engaged upon this Commentary, for he
was foully cast out from his lordship by the Bolognese.’ 2

8. A copy of the first preface to the Ottimo Comento on the
Paradiso, made, as I believe, by Pinelli, and preserved in a
Venetian codex in the Library of San Marco (No. 55),
appends the date of the last day of February 1333,
equivalent to 1334 in the ordinary reckoning. In close
conformity to this is a notice which the anonymous
author of a letter contained in a manuscript of the
Ambrosian Library at Milan (S. infra, 94) says he ex-
tracted from a manuscript from which Pier del Nero had
removed the Inferno and the Purgatorio (can this be Sign.
Libri’s codex ?), leaving him only the Paradiso. This is
the note as it stands in the Ms.: ‘In the name of God,
Amen, and of the Virgin Mother, my Lady Santa Maria,
and of all their blessed Saints. In the year of the Lord
m.ccc.xxx.111.” [though it appears the manuscript really has
viL.], ‘on the last day of the month of February. Here
begins the disposition [dispositione, but we must read or
understand sposizione =exposition] of the third book of
Dante Alighieri of Florence, the which treats of such as
be in Paradise.” (Then follows the preface to the Com-
mentary on the Paradiso.)

All these passages (most of which, for the matter of
that, had already been cited by other writers on the Ottimo
Comento, before me) concur in stamping it as the work of a
contemporary of the poet, begun, it would seem, with the

1 Florentine use =1334 in the ordinary use.
2 Cf. Villani, Chronicle, xi. 6.
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 357

two concluding cantiche, and ended with the Inferno, for
the passages cited under Nos. 6 and 7 refer to a time
posterior to the date of the preface of the Paradiso (No. 8).
Now we might admit that a single passage, or even two,
might have been adopted by a later compiler making
extracts from the works of others, and carelessly copying
down to the very words that gave the date of the original
writer ; but nine or ten proof passages all in perfect
agreement must convince us that the work from which
they are drawn is all from one hand, and that at most
some few subsequent additions have been grafted upon it.

And if, in spite of all this, I have expressed my agree-
ment with M. de Batines that the Ottimo is not a primitive
Commentary, it is because I believe (and have already
shown in my earlier essay) that its anonymous author took
as the foundation of his work the Commentary of Jacopo
della Lana, sometimes copying it word for word, some-
times abbreviating it, sometimes adding matter of his own,
or notes taken from other Commentators. But a work
composed with the aid of others need not be a mere mosaic
of fragments, gathered from this source and that by some
ignorant copyist. It is true enough, for the rest, that the
author of the Ottimo Comento did not always work on the
same method. For example, we find some sections in
the Purgatorio copied straight from Jacopo (for example, the
Commentary on the first six cantos) ; others that only have
a few extracts therefrom combined with the author’s own
work (as, for instance, the Commentary on Cantos vii., xi.-
xix.) ; and yet others in which no trace of the Bolognese
Commentary is to be found at all (Cantos viii.-x., XX.-
xxxiii.).! What can have been the cause of such diversity
of treatment I confess it is most difficult to divine.

To these passages, only a few of which he cites, M. de

1 I believe this account is more accurate than the one given by de
Batines on pp. 152-154.
358 XIV.—THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

Batines opposes certain others, which we must now proceed
to examine. The first occurs in the very note on a verse
of the Inferno (xiii. 144) to which I have myself twice
referred in support of my own opinion. M. de Batines
gives it thus:

‘When the bridge on which the statue was placed fell, as it
fell on the night of the 4th day of November 1333, the year
just passed, the said statue having fallen into the said river of
Arno, remained there for many years.’

[¢ Caduto il ponte, sopra ’l quale era la statua, siccome cadde la
notte del di 4 di Nov. 1333 anno prossimo passato, la detta statua
caduta nel detto fume d’ Arno vi stette dentro per molti anni.’)

If then, argues M. le Vicomte, the Commentator can
tell us that the statue of Mars had been left in the river
many years after 1333, it must have been many years after
this time that he lived and wrote. And indeed, at first
sight, this argument appears unanswerable.

Are we then to admit that M. de Batines is justified in
reproaching all who have ‘cited this passage to justify the
antiquity of the Ottimo’ with having failed to notice the
words which immediately follow? We will see. But
first let us re-read the whole passage, beginning a little
further back :

“The ancients were of opinion that the city of Florence was
founded when . . . Mars was Lord of the hour; wherefore Mars
was made its patron, and in his honour . . . a stone statue was
made . . . to which they rendered a certain idolatrous reverence
and honour. And they said that any perturbation which the
said statue encountered would be encountered also by the city.
Wherefore when the bridge on which the statue was fell

(as it fell on the night of the 4th day of November in 1333,
the year just passed),

the said statue having fallen into the said river of Arno, remained
there for many years. Within which time the aforesaid city had
many wars, and was the loser in them all, insomuch that counsel
was taken to change its site. . . . A young physician recounted
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 359

what he had heard . . . of this statue, and counselled . . .
that it should be searched out again and replaced in its position.
. .. And so it was done. Then things went prosperously,
whereby the opinion was confirmed . . . that when the statue
had perturbations that the city of Florence likewise had them.’

The ¢ many years,’ then, during which the statue of Mars
was left in the Arno did not immediately precede the period
at which the anonymous Commentator wrote, but passed
between the fall of the bridge and the happy counsel,
whereby the physician, like a second Camillus, succeeded
in holding back the inhabitants of Florence when they had
actually resolved to migrate. Then followed other times,
rich in prosperous success for the Florentines. And these
times, too, had long passed away when the Ottimo Comento
(with its constant references to the misfortunes encountered
by the Florentines) was written. Itappears further that each
of these three periods, so far from being limited to a few
years, stretched over centuries. What are we to say then ?
Did all these things come to pass after 1333? And are we
driven to suppose that the anonymous Commentator wrote
in (say) the seventeenth century ?—Or dare we hint that
the scholar who takes the ‘many years’ as posterior to
1333 “failed to notice the words that immediately follow’?

If I am not mistaken there is abundant evidence a mere
glance at which will suffice to decide the question. Let us
listen first to Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle :

i. 1. “The idol of the god Mars which the Florentines took
from the temple and set upon a tower [whence Dante’s “ the city
which changed her first patron for the Baptist ”], then fell into
the Arno and abode there as long as the city remained in ruins
[many years”|. And thus was destroyed the noble city of
Florence by the infamous Totila on the 28th day of June in the
year of Christ 450.

ur, I. “Certain gentlemen and nobles of the region round
about Florence . . . ordained to send to Rome ambassadors . . .
to Charles the Emperor and Pope Leo, and to the Romans . . .
praying them to call to remembrance . . . Florence . . . to the
360 XIV.—THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

end it might be built. . . . Their petition (was) accepted. . . .
And thus they began to rebuild the city of Florence . . . and
this was the year of Christ 801, in the beginning of the month
of April [compare Dante's “ those citizens who reared her once
again on the cinders left by Attila”]. And it is said [compare
the Ottimo’s “young physician] that the ancients were of
opinion that it would not be possible to rebuild it, if first there
were not found and drawn from the Arno the marble image
consecrated by the first Pagan builders by necromacy to Mars,
the which had been in the river of Arno from the destruc-
tion of Florence unto that time [“many years”]; and being
found, it was placed on a pillar upon the side of the said river,
where now is the head of the Ponte Vecchio [compare Dante’s
“at the passage of the Arno still remains some semblance of
him”), . . . but it was commonly said by the ancients, that,
if it was disturbed, the city needs must encounter great dis-
turbance.’

x1. 1. *In the year of Christ 1333 . . . on Thursday . . .
the 4th day of November the Arno was so swollen as it passed
the city of Florence that it covered the whole plain of S. Salvi.
. . . At the hour of vespers . . . it broke the dam of Ognis-
santi . . . and straightway the bridge at the Carraja collapsed
and fell . . . and straightway after fell the bridge of Santa
Trinitd . . . and then the Ponte Vecchio. . . . And there fell
into the Arno the statue of Mars, which was on the pedestal at
the foot of the said Vecchio, on this side. And note concerning
Mars that the ancients said and left in writing that whenever
the statue of Mars should fall or should be disturbed the city of
Florence should have great jeopardy and revolution.’

And should any one refuse belief to the best of the
Italian Chroniclers we may call Messer Giovanni da Certaldo
to his support :

Comento a Dante, xiii. 144, ed. Moutier, iii. 148, 149 [ed.
Milanesi, ii. 352, 353]. Now when the citizens had become
Christians and relinquished their Pagan errors this statue of
Mars was taken out of the said temple and . . . set upon a
pedestal erected by the side of the Ponte Vecchio. . . . And
on this tower it stood until the time when Attila destroyed the
city, and then . . . this statue fell into the Arno, and therein it
remained until they were at pains to rebuild the city. Then
when it was rebuilt in the time . . . of Charles the Great, the
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 361

statue was fished out again and re-discovered, but not complete,
because from the waist down the statue of Mars had been
broken [Dante’s “that stone torso which guards the bridge ”]

. and thus mutilated, they say that it was placed upon a
pedestal at the head of the Ponte Vecchio, from which afterwards
in the year of Christ 1333’ (so rightly the edition of 1724
[and Milanesi’s edition], whereas the modern reprint [of 1831]
reads 1343). ¢. .. The Arno being swollen (“being swollen ”
is omitted in Moutier’s edition), . . . swept away the Ponte
Vecchio and the pedestal and the statue, which was never
afterwards found nor sought.’

Closely resembling this is Benvenuto da Imola’s note given
in Muratori’s Antiquitates, i. 1056.

I am persuaded that even without these parallel passages,
which seem to close the controversy, you would have had
no hesitation as to the true meaning of the Ottimo’s words.
In speaking of the first fall of the Ponte Vecchio, which
took place in the time of Attila, this ancient author
parenthetically inserts a brief mention of the similar event
in very recent times. From your own house you will have
identified the very point on which the tower thrown down
by Attila rose, and the site of the column which served as
the pedestal three centuries and a half later when the
equestrian statue was dragged out of the river, to fall once
more five centuries odd later, never to be found again.
You will agree with me that the words which M. de
Batines cites in proof of the later date of the Ottimo
Comento, when rightly understood, serve as the strongest
argument in support of the opposite opinion, and clearly
show that this passage can only have been written in the
year directly following the inundation of 1333.

But I must not omit to mention that another passage in
the same Commentary might lead us to think that the first
fall mentioned by the anonymous writer must have taken
place much later than the commonly received tradition
supposed. In his note on another verse of the Divine
362 XIV.-.THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

Comedy, in whith Dante refers to the statue of Mars,
(Paradiso xvi. 145), we read these words :

‘And he says “the stump” because it was broken and
corroded by the long period during which it was plunged in the
waters of Arno, when the Ponte Vecchio fell in the year 1178,
on the 25th November; after which it was placed in position
again by them of Semifonte who were in the neighbourhood.’

And in fact we know from other sources that about this
time there was a great flood of the Arno, which swept down
the Ponte Vecchio:

Ricordano Malespini, [storia Fiorentina, cap. 80. *... This
was in June in the year of Christ 1177 . . . and this same year,
by reason of excessive abundance of water in the Arno, the Ponte
Vecchio was thrown down, and this was a sign of future dis-
asters to our city.’

The same words, letter for letter, also appear in the
Chronicle of Giov. Villani (v. 8).—To confess my own
opinion, I imagine that in his note on the Paradiso the
old Commentator reports the historical fact, and in illus-
trating the verses of the Inferno put into the mouth of the
man who ‘made a gibbet of his own house,” he draws upon
the popular tradition reported to him, as he says, by
Allighieri himself. But be this as it may, whether the
‘many years’ passed between the time of Attila and that
of Charles the Great, or between 1178 and the time at
which the neighbours from Semifonte fished up the “stone
stump’ again, it is at any rate perfectly certain that they
were not subsequent but anterior to 1333.

Let us now pass on to M. de Batines’ second argument,
based upon the following note on verse 100 of the 23rd
canto of the Purgatory:

‘It will be necessary for the friars and the members of the
religious orders to command (the Florentine women) to wear
such clothes as not wantonly to expose their breasts and bosoms.

And so it was; for it was in 1351, a certain Messer Agnolo
Acciaioli, being bishop.’
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 363

I might answer that M. le Vicomte asserts on page 154
that the notes on Canto xiii. of the Purgatory do not belong
to the “really original part of the Commentary,’ and there-
fore has no right to draw arguments from them as to the
date of the whole work; but I take it that even if we
regard these notes in a general way as a legitimate part of
the anonymous Commentary we may still retain our con-
viction that the Ottimo Comento was composed before 1351.
It is very certain that the Laurentian codex (xl. 19), from
which Professor Torri took the text he printed, is far from
faithfully representing the original work. Many gaps, not
only of a few words, but of whole notes, occur (for example
Purg. xxviii. 115, 127, 134), and at the same time not
a few subsequent additions from other works have been
inserted, as in Purg. viii. 61, 67, xi. 109 sq., xv. 87, xxii.
130 5g. Now it seems highly probable that the last words
of the note just quoted are an addition of this kind from a
later hand. For the very expression ‘and so it was, for it
was’ (e cosi fu, che fu), seems much too rude for the
Ottimo. Moreover the notices which he gives us are dis-
tinguished by their great precision as to the facts they
record, whereas in this case Angelo Acciajoli having ceased
to occupy the episcopal chair of Florence in the year 1345
(Vic. de Batines, lc. p. 149, note 37), there is in any case
an obvious mistake in the note which we suppose to be an
insertion. It would appear that the Florentine women
dressed very indecently in the fourteenth century, as we
gather, to say nothing of other evidence, from the passionate
expostulations of Boccaccio against the customs of the
people of his time, men as well as women (Comento a
Dante, Allegorie del canto v., ed. Moutier, ii. 72 sg. [ed.
Milanesi, i. 497 sg.]). Such a scandal might well provoke
repeated ecclesiastical censures; and there is every reason
to believe that the prophecy contained in the passage of
the Purgatorio just recited, like other prophecies in the
364 XIV..THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

Divine Comedy, refers to a fact which had already come to
pass when the poet wrote. Villani (ix. 245) tells us that
the umpires chosen in the month of April 1324 ‘made
many orders and severe regulations against the dissolute
adornments of the women of Florence.” Other laws and
other prohibitions of which the records are lost may well
have been issued. There is nothing more natural therefore
than that the possessor of a copy of Dante should have
added to the note on this prophetic verse the mention of a
similar decree of more recent date.

It would be natural now to proceed to ask whether the
arguments, on the strength of which the Ottimo Comento
has been generally regarded as dating from 1334, have or
have not been adequately refuted by M. de Batines. But I
really do not find that he has assailed any of them except
the one given above under No. 5; and even this he does
not seem to me to have refuted, but at most only to have
weakened it. He thinks (p. 149) that ¢this passage has not
been properly punctuated by the editor of the Oztimo, and
it would be better to put the comma after the words “al
presente,” so that the sense and reading would be : “ Ugo di
Valsamano, the present general of the order of S. Francis,
elected in 1333.” I note in passing the error by which
S. Francis is substituted for S. Dominic, and leave it to the
judgment of the learned countrymen of the Ottimo to decide
whether an elliptical expression such as M. de Batines sup-
poses is in accordance with the genius of the Italian lan-
guage. But in any case it is evident that even if the note
so interpreted no longer forces us to suppose that it was
written in 1333, or immediately after, it still remains incon-
testable that it cannot have been written after the death of
Valsamano. That is to say, it must be earlier not only
than 1351, but than 1341 (de Batines, op. ¢/z. note 38).

If you agree with me that, so far, we have found no
argument to prove that the Ottimo Comento must have been
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 365

later than 1334, it only remains to examine the question
whether the author of the Commentary on the Paradiso is a
different man from the author of the notes on the Inferno and
the Purgatorio. On this point M. de Batines (p. 149) says :

‘I shall show later on, by the colophons of two codices,
that the Commentary on the Paradiso is a compilation from
different Commentaries, and, moreover, was drawn up by a com-
pletely different author.’

And on p. 154:

¢As for the Commentary on the Paradiso, it is evidently by
another author, and the proof of it may be found not only in the
number . . . of manuscripts containing it alone, but also by
the following colophon with which the Commentary ends in
the Magliabecchian codex of the fourteenth century, written in
folio on paper (cod. of S. Marco, No. 121) :

Here end the notes collected and compiled by A. L. N. F.
on the Comedy of Dante Alleghieri of Florence, in praise of
Christ. Amen.

And an exactly similar superscription stands at the end of the
Vatican codex, No. 4776, of the close of the fourteenth century,
in folio on paper.’ 1

The assertion of M. de Batines that the Commentary on the
Paradiso is a compilation from different authors, seems then
to be based simply upon the words © collected and compiled’
which we read in the colophon to the two codices, but
I imagine that these expressions are nothing but a modest
way of saying ‘composed and written,” and the examples
given by the Crusca, under the word €compilare, confirm

1 This account of the Vatican Ms. corresponds to one which I received
some years ago from Rome. But it seems that the codex is parchment,

not paper. The subscription is essentially similar to that of the Maglia-
becchian codex, only differing from it in matters of no importance :

¢End of the notes corrected and compiled by A. L. N. F. on the

comedy of Dante Alleghieri, citizen of Florence. To the honour
and praise of Christ, Amen.’

Some interlinear notes in Spanish, apparently by the scribe who wrote

the codex, lead one to suppose that either the copyist, or the first owner
of the book, was a Spaniard.
366 XIV..THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF

me in this opinion. We have seen that the Commentary
on the Inferno, the authenticity of which is beyond doubt,
is not primitive in any such sense as to imply that every
note is actually the offspring of the mind of the writer of
the Ottimo Comento. Indeed, I have pointed out above how
freely the anonymous Commentator made use of Jacopo
della Lana’s Commentary, and we note from other passages
that he also availed himself of the notes of Graziolo de’
Bambagioli and of Accorso Bonfantini. -If we are to insist
on the words ‘collected and compiled,’ therefore, under-
standing them in the sense that M. de Batines gives them,
we should have a perfect right to say that the Commentary
on the Inferno is also a compilation from different Commen-
taries. Now, when we carefully examine the notes of the
Ottimo on the Paradiso, 1 think we shall recognise the
same hand and the same method as in the Commentary on
the two earlier cantiche. Here, too, della Lana’s work
serves as a basis. Here, too, the notes taken from him are
in part abbreviated and corrected by a writer who is better
versed in history and in the Latin classics. Here too we find,
both in the preface of the Venetian codex of San Marco,
and in the notes themselves, the date of 1334 recurring in
all the three divisions of the work. I cannot see, therefore,
why we should attribute the Commentary on the Paradiso
to another author.

Elaborating the conjecture of Mehus, M. le Vicomte
observes (p. 154) that if we are to suppose the letters which
occur in the two codices cited above to be the initials of the
auther’s name, we may with high probability expand them
as:

Andrea Lancia Notar Fiorentino.
This strikes me as a brilliant conjecture, and it reflects
high credit on the French scholar. But I do not see why,
if the author’s name has been discovered in the Commentary
on the Paradiso, the notes on the other two cantiche should
THE OTTIMO COMENTO ON DANTE 367

be left unfathered. Even before I knew of M. de Batines’
discovery, I considered the opinion that the anonymous
Commentator belonged to one of the religious orders mis-
taken. It was on the following note that Torri attempted
to base this idea :

Purg. xxvi. 97. “The word “father” is applied in virtue
of generation, as “ Abraham was the father of Isaac”; in virtue of
age, as when we say “the holy fathers” ; in virtue of profession,
as here the abbot is “father” of the monks.’

Torri believes that this '‘here’ (gu) refers to the
monastery in which the Commentator was living; but I
take the genesis of the phrase to be as follows: ¢ We call
“fathers” those who are not so by generation, as for instance
the “holy fathers” who have passed into the better life
so many centuries ago, and here too, in this life, we
call abbots “fathers.”” The many accurate references to
the Corpus juris Romani, which occur in all portions of
the work, have long convinced me that the author of the
Ottimo Comento was a lawyer (Purg. viii. 70, xiii. 106,
xix. 133; Par. vi. 10). And if the purity of his language
did not suffice to prove him a native of Tuscany, I think
we should have more positive evidence of it in the following
note :

Purg. xiii. 112. Oh, how many times in this province of
Tuscany have such prayers been made by evil citizens because
they have not such distinctions as they would.’

Everything, therefore, combines to show that Andrea
Lancia, living in the fourteenth century (ineunte saeculo’ xiv.,
says Mehus, Vita Ambr. Camald., p. clxxxiii.), the author
of many translations of the Latin poets and prose writers,
was the Tuscan lawyer, so well versed in classical literature,
who composed the Ottimo Comento, in 1334.

I hope you will kindly accept these few observations, and
believe me ever to be your most devoted and affectionate
servant and friend.
XV.—CONVIVIO OR CONVITO?

[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 574-580 (1879).]

ALL the recent editions of Allighieri’s chief work in prose,
from that of Biscioni (1723) downwards, entitle it ¢ I/ Con-
vito.” But this is not the case with the four earlier editions.
The Florentine edition of 1490, and the three Venetian
editions of 1521, 1529, and 1531, entitle it the Convivio.
So also does Boccaccio in his Life of the poet (Milanesi’s
edition, p. 67) : ¢ He also composed a comment, in prose, in
the Florentine vernacular, on three of his canzoni distese
. .. and this, which he entitled Convivio, is a full beauteous
work and worthy of praise.” Landino, in the Proem to his
Commentary (1481), follows the same usage: ‘He wrote in
the Florentine tongue the Convivio and the Vita Nuova’;
and Vellutello (1544) does the same. We find the same
title in Varchi’s Ercolano (1730, published by Tartini and
Franchi, pp. 433, 434), in Salviati’s Jvvertimenti (1584), in
Pergamini’s Memoriale (1602), and in the first four editions
of the Vocabolario (1612, 1623, 1691, and 1729). It is only
when we come to the ¢ Table’ of the fifth impression (1843)
that we read ¢ I/ Convito, 0 il Convivio.’ Convivio is also the
form adopted by Crescimbeni (1698), Monsign. Fontanini
(1736),! Pelli (1758), Tiraboschi, and many others.

1 In the Bibliotheca dell’ eloquenza Italiana Fantanini cites in favour
of his view the further authority of Tasso and of Anton Maria Salvini,
which I really am not in a position to verify.—With regard to the
edition of the Prose di Dante e Boccaccio, Apostolo Zeno adds in a note,
¢ This most valuable edition . . . seems to have been lightly thought of
by Monsignore, partly because it says Convito and not Convivio, and

partly because,” etc.—Perhaps after all he may prove right in this.
368
XV.—CONVIVIO OR CONVITO? 369

Which of the two forms then are we to consider genuine,
and given by the author himself to his work ?

In the first of his notes to the Divine Comedy, Foscolo
rightly indicates the method to be followed in solving this
question, although the answer he himself gives is erroneous.
With reference to the question whether the subdivisions
of the great work are to be called ¢canti’ or ¢capitoli,’ he
says, ‘We must take our stand with Dante, who expressly
divides his poem into cantiche and canti. . . . But it is
strange that the most rapt admirers of the poet trifle with
the titles of his works. “The present work is called
Convito, and so I would have it be.”—Convito, p. 67, Zatta
ed. . . . And yet, without any proof, or so much as a
conjecture (not an improbable one, maybe, if any one had
made it), that the amanuenses have made a blunder in the
text, some one prints Convivio, and almost every one else (?)
follows him.’

Well then, it may be said, if the author himself tells us
how he would have the important work in question named,
how can we possibly doubt what we are to call it ?—Surely
nothing is more reasonable. But I note that the passage
cited by Foscolo (i. 1 : 80 in Giuliani’s ed.) is not the only
one in which Allighieri tells us what the book is to be
called. There are four others in this very chapter, which
appear thus in Giuliani’s edition: (1) Line 60, ¢Intendo
fare un generale Convite.” (2) Line 62, ¢Senza lo quale
[pane] da loro [cosi fatta vivanda] non potrebbe esser
mangiata a questo Convits.” (3) Line 73, La vivanda di
questo Convito sara di quattordici maniere ordinata’; and
finally, line 99, ¢Li quali [a questa cena convitati] priego
tutti che se il Convito non fosse tanto splendido,’ etc. We
may add a fifth passage from i. 2: 1, ¢Nel principio di
ciascun bene ordinato Convito’; a sixth from chapter 10 : 2,
¢ Grande vuolo essere la scusa, quando a cosi nobile Convito
per le sue vivande, a cosi onorevole per li suoi convitati si

2A
370 ESSAYS ON DANTE

pone pane di biado’; and finally, a seventh in the fourth
Tractate, 22 : 5, *Ond io volendo a cotale imperio [delli
morali Filosofi] essere obbediente, intendo questo mio
Convito per ciascuna delle sue parti rendere utile.’

It cannot be denied that in all these passages, amounting
to eight, our editions agree with Giuliani in reading
¢ Convite’ and not ¢ Convivio.” But the editions are not the
decisive authority in a question of orthography. ‘The
best manuscripts alone can determine it. Now of the
twenty-nine manuscripts examined on this point by myself,
or by qualified persons at my request, there are only two—
the Riccardian No. 1043 and that of San Marco, Cl x.
No. 26 (107)—which write ¢ Convito’ in the passages where
the word occurs. The first of them bears the very late
date of 1461, and cannot be regarded as having any great
importance. The second has been successively in the
possession of Luca di Simone della Robbia, Anton Maria
Biscioni, and the commentator Farsetti. This copy likewise
is of the fifteenth century, and the Milanese editors of the Con-
wvivio (1827) consider it less important than the other manu-
script of the Library of San Marco, Cl xi. No. 34, which
once belonged to the Casa Nani.—A third codex, also of the
fifteenth century, in the Bodleian at Oxford, No. 114. 3,
has ¢ Chonuiuio’ both on the title-page and in the super-
scription of the whole work ; but apparently has conuito’ or
¢ chonuite,) like the old editions, in the text itself.2—And
further, here and there a manuscript which usually reads
Convivio? has © Convito’ in one or two of the eight passages,
obviously through inadvertence. For instance, the second

1 Mortara, I codici italiani della bibl. Canonici, p. 129.

2 T am indebted for an account of it to Dr. E. Moore, of whom I
have spoken elsewhere. He tells me the title reads ¢ Chomincia una
expositione di Dante Alighieri poeta fiorentino sopra tre sue Chanzone
chiamato conuiuio.” It is so written in the title-page of the whole Ms.
In Tratt. i. ch. 1 the word is written “c/onuito™ in the last of the four
passages; and in the other three, and also at the beginning of ch. 10,
“ conuito.”’
XV.—CONVIVIO OR CONVITO ? 371

of the Trivulzian manuscripts, marked No. 39, has this
reading in line 73 of the first chapter ; and the variants,
now in my hands, copied by Vincenzo Nannucci from
the fragmentary manuscript which belonged to Seymour
Kirkup, do not note any variant from ¢Convito’ in line 80
of the first chapter and line 2 of the tenth chapter; but
this may be an oversight! I also note as a curious cir-
cumstance that in chapter 2 the Magliabecchian 186, CL. vi.,
reads: ‘Nel cominciamento di ciascun bene ordinato prandio.’

All the other Mss., to the number of twenty-four, give
convivio’ or chonvivio) or ©conuiuio’ in all the above-
mentioned passages. They are as follows :

I. Florentine:
A. Laurentian :
1. Plut, xl. cod. 39.2. Fifteenth century.
. Plut, xl. cod. 40.8 Fifteenth century.
Plut. xl. cod. 41.4 Completed September 24th, 1463.
. Plut. xc. (Gaddiani) sup. cod. 134.°> Parchment.
Fourteenth century.
. Plut. xc. sup.'cod. 135. 1.3 Completed by a certain
Matteo Cierretani, December 28th, 1477.
. Plut. xc. sup. cod. 135. 2.7 Fifteenth century.
+ ‘Plut. xc. inf. cod. 3.2.5. Fifieenth century,
B. Nazionale:
8. Palch. iii. cod. 47. Fifteenth century.
9. Palch. iii. cod. zoo. Fifteenth century.
10. Palch. ix. cod. 95. Parchment. Fifteenth century.
11. Class vi. cod. 186 paper. Perhaps end of fourteenth
century.
12. Palatino, cod. 35 (copied from No. 4).
C. Riccardian :
13. Cod. 1041. Written in 1447.
14. Cod. 1042. Written in 1468.
15. Cod. 1044. End of fourteenth century.

~ ON un SYD

 

1 Tratt. iv. 22 is wanting in this codex.

2 Bandini, Catal. Bibl. Laurent., v. p. 42. 3 Ibid. 43.

4 Jbid., 43, No. i. 5 Ibid., 404. 6 Ibid., 405, No iii.
7 Ibid., 406. 8 Ibid., 412, No. ii.
372 ESSAYS ON DANTE

II. Roman :
A. Vatican:
16. Vatican, No. 4778. Fifteenth century.
17. Urbino, No. 686. Parchment. Fifteenth century.
B. Barberini:
18. xlvi. 28. Fourteenth century.

ITI. Venetian Ms. in San Marco:
19. CL xi. No. 34. Fourteenth century.

IV. Milanese. Trivulzian :
20. No. 38 (first Trivulzian). Fifteenth century.

V. Parisian. Bibliot. Nationale :
21. Ital. No. 536 (formerly 7764. 3). Parchment.!
22. Ital. No.1014 (formerly 7768). Fourteenth century.”

VI. British Museum :
23.4: 48

VII. Public Library of Strasburg in Alsace :
24. Paper. Fifteenth century.

The unanimous agreement of at least twenty-four, or
rather twenty-six, manuscripts, including the only six
which are assigned to the fourteenth century (Nos. 4, 11,
15, 18, 19, and 22), is decisive in favour of ¢ Convivio.” The
Bodleian manuscript can be reckoned on neither side, for
the one form is adopted on the title-page and superscrip-
tion, and the other in the text. There are therefore only
two late manuscripts left to support ¢ Convito.’

It may reasonably be asked how it is possible that against
such a number of authorities, and against the general usage
up to his own time, Biscioni not only adopted the wrong
form, but has succeeded in imposing it on all subsequent
editions down to our own times. But the enigma begins
to yield if we consider that when the Prose di Dante

1 Marsand, Catal. d. Codici Ital. della regia bibliot., ii. p. 125.

2 Ibid., p. 124. See also Giuliani's edition, p. XXXIV.

3 I owe the account of this Ms. also to Dr. Moore, who writes as
follows: I wrote to a friend at the British Museum, who informs me
that there is only one Ms. of the Convito there, and that the readings
are  c/wonuiuio™ twice in chap. i., and in the other places, as well as in
chap. x., “conuiuio.”’
XV.—CONVIVIO OR CONVITO? 373

¢ di Boccaccio saw the light one of the two manuscripts which
read ¢ Convits,” and which the editor reckoned amongst the
least miserable, was in his own possession. In his Preface
he says: ‘The Vita Nuova and the Convito are printed
after the manuscript of Dr. Ant. Maria Biscioni, since it
is the best that could be found. This codex, . . . as may
be seen from the handwriting, was written in the fifteenth
century. . . . Here in Florence I have been unable to find
any copy of the fourteenth century, which sufficiently
explains why certain passages in these works, and especially
in the Convito, remain, to my thinking, somewhat obscure.’

The edition of the Prose di Dante e di Boccaccio had been
out a few years when the Academicians of 1729 registered
the collection amongst the editions referred to; and con-
sequently for a whole century afterwards any one who
thought of republishing the Convivio simply copied Bis-
cioni’s edition as servilely as possible. From 1827 onwards
we may say that every fresh editor (except the Neapolitan
‘editors of 1839 and 1855) has done something to purify the
text of the work ; but all by common consent seem to have
neglected its title. Not one of them gives the least hint
of Convivio, even as a variant, in any one of the passages
enumerated above.

No doubt Allighieri might, if he had chosen, have
entitled the first great prose work of Italian literature
Convite, or he might, after the example of Plato, have
called it Simposio or Pranzo, or, like Lasca some centuries
later, Cena; but the fact remains that he expressly declared:
“The present work is called Convivio, AND so I wouLD
HAVE IT BE’ We can only add then with the author him-
self! ‘Hoc quidem retinemus et nos, nec posteri nostri
permutare valebunt. Racha, racha !’

L EL Vulg. i. 12 : 34: “By this we too abide, nor will posterity have
power to change it. Racha, racha!’
XVL.-.DANTE AND UNITED ITALY
A LECTURE DELIVERED AND PUBLISHED IN I86I
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 237-273 (1879).]

AUTHOR'S PREFATORY NOTE (1878)

THE seventeen years which have elapsed since I wrote
this lecture have brought changes with them which have
transformed Italy, and have forced us to take another view
of the problems she has to solve. Yet I should be sorry
not to include the following essay in this volume, for I
believe it contains much that is of significance to our
estimate of Dante. I can therefore only hope that the
indulgent reader will remember that at the time it was
written (during two autumn visits to Italy in the years
1859 and 1860) the outlook appeared melancholy in more
than one respect. The country was still in an unsettled
state. The prospect of a United Italy was uncertain.
Victor Emanuel had been forced to buy Lombardy from
Napoleon at the sacrifice of his ancestral possessions, and
with them, of the frontier which had bounded the Penin-
sula for two thousand years; for France’s watchword was
only ‘Italy free to the Adriatic’ Three independent states
had been annexed without either conquest or treaty, and
the attempt to win a twofold kingdom for his liege lord
was being made, off his own hand, by a—chivalrous and
honourable—Condottiere.

374
XVL—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 375

Though the cry for a United Italy, for an end to foreign
dominion and the temporal power of the Pope, which now
thrills the Peninsula from end to end, was scarcely audible
even at the beginning of this century, yet if any modern
Italian were asked whence his countrymen drew their
inspiration; he would scarcely hesitate to name the greatest
poet of his fatherland. It is Dante, he would say, who
taught us to look on the whole country whose rivers rise
from the watershed of the Apennines, as our common
fatherland ; it is he who planted the hatred of foreign
dominion in our hearts, and it is his eloquence which
branded the temporal possessions of the Church of Rome
as involving an apostasy from the command of Christ.
For centuries, he would add, Dante was a closed book to
the Italians, an effeminate sentimentality took the place of
manly words and manly deeds, while Cicisbeo breathed
Arcadian sonnets to his adored one. But now that
Dante’s mighty Terzine resound once more from the Alps
to the sea, from the Po to the Tiber, self-reliance and
self-renouncing enthusiasm have sprung up again in the
breasts of his countrymen. The fact that in the days of
foreign oppression patriots recognised each other by their
love of the immortal poet, and greeted one another as by
a secret password, with the inspiring lines of the Divine
Poem, is a symbol of the fact that the roots of this temper
of mind are to be sought in Dante.

There are of course plenty who will answer by declaring
that the causes of all the revolutionary movements in the
Western Peninsula are to be found, not in any inspiration
derived from a fourteenth-century poet, but simply in the
machinations of French agitators and native secret societies,
and in the fraudulent allurements of such as Count Cavour.

Putting aside for the moment the question of how far
the appeal to Dante is justified, we may at any rate dismiss
this latter account of the facts without more ado. It is
376 ESSAYS ON DANTE

contrary to all the teachings of history to suppose that the
real roots of so deep-seated a movement should be traced to
high-sounding phrases on the lips of foreign emissaries, or the
diplomatic arts of a minister, however highly gifted he may
be. At the bottom of a movement which has swayed the
hearts of millions must be some kind of spiritual force,
even were it an erroneous and perverse one. We need not
dispute that less pure elements, of every kind, may have
led the original impulse aside and taken advantage of it,
but it is none the less fallacious to regard these factors as
the cause of the whole movement.

It is only when we have made our position quite clear in
this respect that we can go on to ask whether we are
justified in seeking for the germ of this spiritual movement
in Dante.

There is nothing intrinsically strange in the idea. Our
own people has been roused by its poets, notably by
Schiller, to far-reaching action, which has deeply affected
the course of history. Why should we be surprised if the
same thing took place among a people whose poets have
penetrated, as in no other country, to the very deepest strata
of the people? And it is a fact that, during the last half-
century, a great number of those who aimed at trans-
forming Italy,—and not only men of such moderation as
Cesare Balbo, Gino Capponi, or Carlo Troya, but also the
democratic revolutionaries who would take the world by
storm,—have hung and still hang upon Dante’s Divine
Comedy, with passionate enthusiasm. Ugo Foscolo, who
preferred poverty and exile to place and honour under the
rule of Austria, devoted the last years of his life exclusively
to a great work on the poem; and after Foscolo’s death,
this new edition of the Prophecy of Italy’s Future, as he
called the Comedy, was published by no other than Giuseppe
Mazzini himself.—Gabriel Rossetti; a Carbonaro thrust out
of Naples in connection with the events of 1820, spent
XVI.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 377

thirty years of his exile in developing, through a long series
of volumes of extraordinary learning and ingenuity, his
theory that Dante was the secret advocate of a political
sect, with objects closely allied to those of the Carbonari
themselves. Niccolo Tommaséo, who is one of the fore-
most modern exponents of the Divine Comedy, was the very
man whose arrest on Jan. 18th, 1848, contributed so essen-
tially to the breaking out of the revolution of March 17th
in Venice; a year and a half from that date he and
Manin held the reins of the resuscitated Republic of
St. Mark. It would be easy to add many names, some of
them weighty ones, to these examples of men whose
earnest and loving study of the Divine Comedy has gone
hand in hand with the zeal of the reformer, and even of the
revolutionist.

But what are we to say if this very Dante, in the inscrip-
tion he wrote for his own tombstone, calls himself ¢the
poet of the Monarchy,” and stood forth as champion of
the divinely ordained rights (as they seemed to him), of the
Romano-German Empire, not only in a special treatise, but
in almost every one of his works? Again, and yet again, he
reverts to this one theme, and at the close of his great
poem, written it may be but a few months before his death,
he celebrates the apotheosis of the last German Emperor,
who dared the attempt, unsuccessful though it was, to make
his overlordship felt against the warring parties of distracted
Italy. And really it is only such convictions that we can
bring into harmony with the great task Dante set before
him, the task of setting forth the divine ordering of the
world for time and eternity, in the sense of the Catholic
Church; and it is only this that will explain how for
centuries so many great souls, inimical to all revolution in
Church or State, have sunk themselves in the Divine
Comedy with such an insatiable love.

How then is it possible that such widely divergent
378 ESSAYS ON DANTE

tempers of mind should meet in this common admiration ?
How could one of the noblest German princes of our day
love to draw his waters from the same spring with
Mazzini ?—Let us attempt to discover in how far such
a strange unanimity is justified, or where the misunder-
standing, or perhaps the intentional deluding, begins.

A glowing love for Italy, a hatred of the foreign, and
above all of the Teuton, yoke, and a hatred of the temporal
power of the Pope, are the three passions which are traced
back to Dante. Let us try to examine them separately.—

¢ Italy,’ Prince Metternich is reported to have said, ‘is
nothing but a geographical expression” And in truth
there have been whole centuries, during which it was only
that—and a very vague expression to boot.

In antiquity, up to the rise of the Empire, the widely
differing races of Italy, who did not so much as understand
one another’s language, only coalesced together under the
pressure of the Roman lordship. Worn out by centuries
of strife, and depopulated by the destructive system of
slave labour, the Peninsula was not rewarded till near the
end of the days of the Republic, by some modest measure
of privileges as against the Provinces. Even these privileges
must be paid for heavily in taxation to the sole profit of the
all-devouring Rome ; and one of them was that gift of the
Danai,” the self-government granted to the Italian towns,
which sowed the seeds of that lamentable €church-spire
patriotism > which still stirs up town against town in Italy
in jealousy and ill-will. But whether the boundaries of
Italy are fixed at the Rubicon and the Macra, or stretched
to the Alps and the Var, the Roman poet, in whatever part
of the Peninsula his cradle may have been rocked, devotes
his enthusiastic muse to the glory, not of the common
Fatherland, but of the Eternal City. The poets of
antiquity bestow well-merited panegyrics on the beauty
of the Italian climate, on the fertility of the soil, and the
XVI—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 379

manly strength of her populace, but we search their pages
in vain for a single word of inspiring, self-renouncing love
for their common Fatherland. Italy was, and remained, a
geographical expression.

The glory of Imperial Rome passed. Italy was first
degraded to a dependency of an Empire whose seat had been
transferred to the remote East, and then fell a prey to the
Northern conquerors. The flames kindled by barbarian
hands embraced each other over the temples and palaces of
a glorious past. Latium’s muse went slowly dumb in face
of the shattered images of her gods; and an unrivalled
culture, built up through long centuries by the two most
gifted peoples of antiquity, was buried in the débris of the
great migrations as deep as Herculaneum or Pompeii. The
captives by the streams of Babylon had scarce a fitter cause
for their songs of mourning than that afforded by this
tragic scene of decay. But no such patriotic lamentations
rose.! Among the latest fruits on the Latin Parnassus
we find songs in honour of a barbarian Condottiere in-
stead of laments over the decay of Italian splendour ; and
a century later yet, the last philosopher and the last states-
man give themselves to glorifying the court of the Ostro-
Gothic king.

The Roman rule had at least held Italy together, if
only in common servitude. Darker times came upon her
when she was divided between the Longobardi, the Greek
Emperors, and the rising dominion of the Popes. Yet it
is just upon these times of outward separation that the first
seeds of consciousness of an inner union fell. The Longo-
bardi were domineering strangers, and for near a hundred
years the majority of them adhered to the Arian heresy.
The native Catholics, feeling the bonds of their faith and
nationality stronger than their separation under different

1 The six-line elegy on Rome published by Muratori belongs to a
later period.
380 ESSAYS ON DANTE

overlords, drew nearer together, and learnt to look upon
the Bishop of Rome as their common representative. The
same phenomenon reappeared in the parts of Italy which
had remained Greek, when the iconoclastic Emperors of
the Isaurian dynasty attempted to rob their subjects there
too of their miracle-working images of the saints, while
the Western Church took the adoration of them under her
protection. So it was in these iron times that the Italian
national character began at least to form itself under the
oppression alike of Longobards and Greeks.

Liutprand, one of the last and greatest of the Longobard
kings, rewarded the duplicity of the Popes so magnificently
that his two grants formed the real nucleus of the later
Papal States.  Astolf, his second successor, reverted to the
old enmity with Papal Rome, wrested back his predecessor’s
grants, and finally besieged Stephen 11. in his terrified city.
Then the Pope turned in his dire need to the Frankish
king Pipin, with whom he had already entered into close
alliance, and not trusting to his own unsupported influ-
ence, he forwarded a letter from the Apostle Peter, who
had sent it under cover to him from the other world.
The Frankish conquest of Northern Italy was the result,
and the generous conqueror enlarged Liutprand’s grant
almost to the limits which the Papal States retained till
18509.

In Pipin’s steps followed his greater son, Karl, and it were
hard to say whether he who received the crown or he
who dared to offer it profited most from Leo 111.’s revival
of the Western Empire. Some of her ancient glory re-
turned to Italy too, since every Kaiser of the new Western
Empire had to receive at the grave of the Apostle that
crown on the possession of which alone he could base any
claim to be temporal head and judge of the whole of Catholic
Christendom. But the pilgrimage to Rome, which for
seven centuries no king of the Romans dared to omit,
XVI.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 381

ever renewed the connection between the transformations
of Italy and the wearers of Karl’s imperial crown.

Yet the glorious days of Leo and Karl were followed
by the darkest times that Italy has ever had to endure.
When the Karlovingian dynasty came to an end, almost
every semblance of authority vanished throughout Italy.
Hundreds of usurpers appeared in the country districts and
the cities; and the only right that could make itself re-
spected was that of brute force. Education, morality, and
devout belief had disappeared not only from amongst the
laity but from the very cloisters. Women whose ambition
was only equalled by their dissoluteness dominated Rome
generation after generation, and filled Peter’s chair with
one beardless and unworthy Pope after another. For
many decades it seemed as if the temporal power of the
Bishop of Rome were to be finally quenched by Alberic,
a Roman potentate of Teuton extraction. The Peninsula
was devastated by the incursions of the Magyars on the
North, while it was pillaged on every other side by the
Saracens, who held a wide chain of pirate towns and fast-
nesses upon the coasts.

It was in these cheerless times that for nearly a century
a race of native Princes, the Berengares, Guidos, Lamberts,
and Hugos, styled themselves kings of Italy.

It is generally assumed that this kingdom at any rate
was the object of a collective sense of patriotism. Yet its
princes, even if born in Italy, were of Teutonic, principally
Longobard, stock, and their lordship barely embraced the
northern half of the Peninsula. The Southern provinces,
Greek or Longobard, were independent of the Northern
kingdom, as were also the Papal States. And, to say no-
thing of the Saracens, several cities besides Venice had
already won republican independence. And even within its
own limits, the kingdom of the Berengars can in no wise be
regarded as embodying a sense of Italian nationality. For the

eC
et RE LIE

. # DT
382 ESSAYS ON DANTE

history of these times, though not devoid of chivalrous
touches, is for the most part the record of fierce struggles
for mastery, carried on with perjury, treachery, appeals for
foreign aid, and savage cruelty. At last happier days
dawned for Germany and Italy alike, with the accession
of the second founder of the Western Empire, our glorious
Saxon compatriot, Otto the Great.

In Germany he followed in his father’s footsteps in
founding cities, while in Italy he established the regular
administration of municipal affairs, which is the reason why
so many Italian chroniclers begin their record of history,
as distinguished from legend, with his reign.

But the brilliant age of the Ottos, which extended the
German boundaries far beyond the limits of the German
tongue, and aimed at embracing a whole quarter of the
globe, was scarcely calculated to bring undeveloped nations
into independent significance. The tendency of their rule
was to Germanise Italy, not to awaken her to the con-
sciousness that she was a separate, coherent member of the
great Empire.

The ties which had made Italy an organic part of the
Empire were relaxed during the seventy years under the two
last Franconian Emperors. The strength of the Ottos
lay in their genuine efforts to prevent the secularisation
of the Church, and to revive morals and culture, and
these aims the Salians abandoned, thereby alienating the sym-
pathies of the people on both sides of the Alps to such a
degree that even the disgraceful spectacle of Canossa only
increased the contempt for the Emperor, without firing
any one to wipe out the insult offered him.

During the prolonged struggles between Pope and
Emperor on the right of Investiture, the cities of Northern
Italy, led by their bishops, or acting as republican common-
wealths, had silently cast off the bonds which held them
in their place in the Imperial feudal system. Flourishing
XVL—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 383

manufactures and successful trade had taken up their
abode within the cities’ walls. A pride of citizenship arose.
Each city vied with its neighbours in raising cathedrals
and municipal buildings, and a new and powerful element
had entered into the political conditions of Italy.

Then the mighty Barbarossa, ¢the blast of Suabia,’ as
Dante calls him, full of visions of the ancient power of the
Empire, descended over the Alps into this transformed
Italy.

Theoretically that Empire of the Ottos, of Karl the
Great, and of Augustus himself, of which he dreamt, was
still a reality. During the Middle Ages it had clothed its
mighty limbs in the martial armour of the feudal system.
But in point of fact the new life of Italy had broken
through the old forms, and even before it had thrown off
the husk of the former conditions, the fresh young life was
pulsating beneath them.

And so it came to pass that, at the very time when the
greatest jurists of the Peninsula, and even the delegates
of the Lombard cities, were conceding to Frederick of
Hohenstaufen on the plains of Roncaglia all his wildest
fancies of Empire, the colossal struggle was beginning, in
the course of which those very cities, after twenty years of
fierce conflict, actually made good their superior rights.
The destruction of Milan (1162) was answered, a few years
later, by the formation of the Lombard League; and the
defeat of Legnano compelled the high-handed Emperor,
first to humble himself before Alexander 111., and after-
wards to concede the demands of the cities at the Peace of
Constance.

This Lombard League, and its tough endurance through
all the shifting fortunes of the fight, is regarded by the
historians as a first bright outburst of the flame of Italian
nationality. And in truth we still possess an oath by
which the confederates bind themselves to oppose any
384 ESSAYS ON DANTE

army from Germany or other land of the Empire beyond
the Alps attempting to penetrate into Italy; and should
such army nevertheless gain entrance, to persevere in war
till the said army be again expelled from Italy.’

We must however remember that the ‘Italy’ in
question still extends no further than the valley of the Po,
north of the Apennines. Only distant echoes of the
struggles of Northern Italy penetrated to Tuscany. And
even in Lombardy the struggle was not between two
nationalities, but between feudal centralisation and municipal
independence. The struggle would have been as -bitter if
a native prince, the Marquis of Monferrat, for instance, or
William the Good of Sicily, had set up similar pretensions
in Lombardy. Other cities, such as Pavia, Lodi, and, for
a long time, Cremona, or, on the other side of the
Apennines, Genoa, Pisa, and Pistoja, were no less Italian
than the cities of the Lombard League, and yet they stood
as persistently for the rights of the Emperor as the others
did against them. In fact, the movement is so far from
deserving the name of ‘national’ that the express condition
under which the cities in the League more than once
offered to make terms with the Emperor was the humilia-
tion of a neighbouring city with which they were at
enmity ; and during the thirteen years of Barbarossa’s
reign, after his reconciliation with the Pope, he kept on
good terms with the Lombard cities, whereas the old
hostility between Milan and Pavia, together with many
similar feuds, continued with unabated violence.

Right up to the end of the twelfth century we may let
the history of Italy pass before us without finding a trace
amongst its inhabitants of any idea that the whole Peninsula
is their common fatherland, for which they must be ready
to stake life and goods. The only way in which a sense of
unity could be given to a land embracing so many separate
kingdoms and free cities, so torn by contending parties,
XVI.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 385

that could not even look back to a vanished political union
of former times, was through a common language, civilisa-
tion, and poetry. And, strangely enough, it was the
heroic scion of ‘this very house of Hohenstaufen, the
second Frederick, who opened this way to Italy.

Born in the March of Ancona, and reared in the beautiful
island of Sicily, this prince was almost more of an Italian
than a German in his bringing up. The poetry of
Northern France and of Provence had been naturalised in
Sicily at the court of the Norman dynasty from which his
mother: sprang, while his father, Henry vı., had brought
German minnesingers in his train to the royal city of
Palermo, where there must still have lingered some poetical
traditions of Byzantine and Arabian days. The bud of
Sicilian poesy, the parent of the Italian, unfolded itself
under these manifold influences ; here, as elsewhere, shaping
the common language to the needs of verse long before
any one ventured to use it for prose writings.

On this subject Dante himself declares :

‘The Sicilian vernacular seems to assert its fame above all others
by the fact that whatever Italians write in verse is called Sicilian ;
and further, that we find many masters, natives of that region, to
have sung weightily. . . . And indeed the illustrious heroes,
Frederick the Caesar, and his well-begotten Manfred, manifesting
the nobility and integrity of their nature, so long as fortune
remained with them, followed the pursuits of men and scorned
those of brutes. So that all who were noble of heart and
adorned with the graces, strove to keep close upon the track of
the majesty of such great princes. Wherefore in their time,
whatsoever the most excellent of the Latins accomplished, was
first produced at the court of these so great monarchs. And
because the regal seat was in Sicily, it came to pass that what-
ever our predecessors produced in the vernacular was called
Sicilian,—a usage which we too retain, nor will posterity have
power to alter it.’

Our speech is the bond which unites us to our native
place, and even to our family, just as Dante says in praise
2B
386 ESSAYS ON DANTE

of the mothers of the good old days, when he is telling us
of the simple ways of ancient Florence : !

‘The one kept watch, minding the cradle, soothing her
infant with that language of its own, wherein it first delights
its father and its mother. Another, as she drew the hair from
off the distaff, would tell her household of the Trojans, of
Fiesole, and Rome.’

Love for our native tongue, then, is the expression of
our love of our native land. Dante says elsewhere : 2

«If flames of fire were issuing from the windows of a house,
plain for all to see, and one should ask whether that house was
on fire, and another should answer that it was, I could not say
which of the two were most to be held in scorn. And it were
no otherwise with the question put to me, and my reply, were
one to ask me if I loved my mother-tongue, and should I
answer yea.’

And when Dante, for the first time in history, wishes to
speak of Italy as the common Fatherland, he draws his
expression from the common language: 2 ¢ The beauteous
land where si is uttered.’

He hangs, with glowing love, on this ¢ beauteous land,’
called to be a queen and yet no better than a slave.

¢Oh Italy, thou slave, thou hostelry of woe, ship without
helmsman in the mighty storm, no queen of provinces, but
house of shame. . . . And now your living citizens are never
free from war; and those whom one wall and moat begird gnaw

one another. Search, wretched one, around thy shores, then turn
to thine own bosom, and see if any part of thee enjoyeth peace.’

At one time he looks for a deliverer, who shall curb dis-
sension and greed, and make Italy once more strong and
united. He even dares prophetically to announce him :

‘He shall redeem low-lying Italy, for which there died the

virgin Camilla, Euryalus and Nisus, and Turnus, of their
wounds.’

 

1 Par. xv. 121. 2 Convivio 1. 12. 3 Inf. xxxiii. 80.
4 Purg. vi. 76. 5 Inf. i. 106.
XVI—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 387

But again he despairs of the issue. The salvation which
was possible from Rudolf of Hapsburg’s hands was no
longer so a generation later. When he shows us the
Hapsburger’s shade it is with the words : 1

‘He who sits highest and shows semblance of having neglected
what behoved him do, who moveth not his lips to others’ song,
was Rudolf, Emperor, in whose power it stood to heal the
wounds which have slain Italy, so that another strives too late
to raise her.’

The prospect of deliverance on which for so many years
he fixed his eyes came from Henry viL of Luxemburg,
Dante assumes the year 1300 as the date of his journey
through the other world, though in reality the Divine
Comedy was not written till many years later. Now the
year 1300 falls long before Henry’s election as Emperor,
and therefore it is under the form of a prophetic vision that
Dante sees the place awaiting the Luxemburger in the
loftiest region of Paradise.?

‘In that great seat on which thine eyes e’en now are fixed, by
reason of the crown already resting there, e’er at this bridal
feast thyself shalt sup, the soul will sit—imperial on earth—of
that high Henry, who shall come to straighten Italy, &’er she
be ready for him.’

And so in hope, in sorrow, in reproof, we see Dante
filled with the same glowing love for the Fatherland of
Italy, a love which he is the first to put into words. He
is the first, and we can hardly find another that transcends
the warmth of his expression. Amongst the most beautiful
flights of Italian poetry in this direction is a canzone of
Petrarch’s, from which I give a few lines as a sample :

¢ My Italy, albeit my speech be powerless to heal the mortal
wounds I see so thick upon thy beauteous body, nathless it is
some solace to utter forth such sighs as Tiber and Arno look for
from me, and Po whereby I sit in dolorous and heavy mood.

 

1 Purg. vii. 91. 2 Par. 33%. 133.
388 ESSAYS ON DANTE

. . . Is not this the land which I first touched ? Is it not the
nest where sweetly I was nurtured ? Is it not the fatherland in
which I trust, my mother tender and benign, in which my one
and other parent rests? Oh, for God’s sake, let this at last touch
you [the lords of Italy] at heart, and look with pity on the tears
of this grieving folk!’

But we must never forget that the Union for which the
great poets of the fourteenth century had begun to cry,
uttering their love for their Italian Fatherland in words of
burning eloquence, was rather an ideal unity of spirit than
any outward and materially visible thing. Far indeed was it
from the Uniformity which is to be brought about in the
present day by overwhelming all the legitimate differences
of the component parts. Dante surely had no thought of
allowing the complex Italian organism, with its aristocratic
republics like Venice, and democracies like Florence, its
feudal principalities, such as Naples, and its rule of auto-
cratic dynasts in so many Northern states, to be plunged
into the all-reducing crucible of a Kingdom of Italy. He
yearned indeed for the day when there should be an end to
internecine feuds, and the states should bind themselves
together as members of one body, and give each other
mutual support ; and in order that this Union might not fall
to pieces at the first blow, the Emperor was to hold the
supreme power as judge over the whole, and avenger of
every breach of law.

We have said above that the geographical conception of
Italy is somewhat vague; and it is scarcely needful to add
that the Italianissimi stretch it to its furthest conceiv-
able limits. It is worthy of note that in one point at
least, they have the support of Dante’s authority. In de-
scribing the tombs in which the shades of the heretics lie,
he compares them with the Roman sepulchres, which in
his time were still to be seen round the ancient naval
station of Pola, on the southern point of Istria, while he
XVIL—-DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 389

describes the city as neighbour to the Quarnaro, the wide
bay at the northern end of which Fiume lies!—‘ Even as
at Pola, hard by the Quarnaro, which shuts in Italy and
bathes her boundaries.” Thereby including the whole of
the extensive Istrian Peninsula in Italy.

Less decisive as to the poet’s views is a second passage
where, speaking of Lago di Garda, he says:2 ‘Up in fair
Italy there lies a lake a-foot the Alp that bars out
Germany above Tyrol, that bears the name Benaco.
So that in strictness we might say that the poet dis-
tinguishes between the Southern declivity of the Alps,
which he counts as belonging to Italy, and the ridge itself,
which forms the boundary (che serra Lamagna). But we
can hardly suppose that Dante intended to press this very
literal meaning of his words ; and indeed we may suppose
that very few of those who now speak of Italy as ¢stretch-
ing from the Alps to the Straits of Messina’ mean to imply
any such idea.

The hatred of all foreign dominion, especially of the
Tedeschi, and indeed a kind of racial hatred between the
two nations, is also traced back by the modern patriots to
Dante, or at any rate supported by an appeal to him.

As a matter of fact, there is no adequate ground for any
such feeling in the history of the growth of Italy. The
purity of manners, the fidelity, the manly vigour, which
Tacitus attributed to the Germans, and held up to shame
the Romans in their own depravity, remained for centuries
a source of respect to the inhabitants of the Peninsula.
It is this, not mere flattery of the ruler of the moment,
which inspired Claudian’s poem in praise of Stilicho referred
to above, and attached Boethius and Cassiodorus to the

1 Inf. ix. 113. 2. Inf. xx. 61.
390 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Gothic Theodoric’s court. The Longobards indeed awoke
no such feelings of respect, for while they retained, for
the most part, their native savagery, they fell a prey to the
Roman corruption and effeminacy as well. But Pipin and
Karl, with their Franks, were greatly honoured. Pipin
shielded Stephen 11. against Astolf’s violence, and when
Pope Hadrian was in fresh straits, Karl abolished the whole
kingdom of the Longobard Desiderius; and Otto in like
manner appeared as a deliverer ‘in all kinds of ways. Queen
Adelheid hailed her deliverer as husband, the Lombards
invoked his aid against the violence of the second Berenger,
Pope John x11. against the Roman potentates, and the
Romans against their unworthy Pope. But all alike found
in him their master. He thrust John from Peter’s chair,
and led his successor, Benedict v., who was opposed to the
sway of the Emperor, into exile in Germany, together with
the dethroned Berenger. He scourged the undisciplined
Romans with rods of iron; and he established his German
Counts and Barons throughout Italy. His son and name-
sake pursued the same course during his short rule, and
that wondrous meteor, Otto IIL, was yet more decisive in
his action, assigning the Papal See first to his cousin, a
German by birth, and afterwards to his teacher, a German
by education, and thereby put an end for a time to the
terrible disorders of the Papacy.

Doubtless German and Italian were often opposed to
each other during these fifty years, and it is likely enough
that the fierce street-fights in Rome were embittered by
race distinctions ; but whatever modern Italian writers may
say, there was no general anti-Teutonism, no hatred of
Teuton rule as such. The Italians regarded the Saxon
Emperors as the legitimate successors of the Karlovingian
Franks, to whom both the Empire and the suzerainty
of the Italian Peninsula belonged of right.

Nor was it only in strictness of morals and stubbornness of
XVI.-.DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 391

valour that the Germans of this period were superior to the
Italians. They surpassed them, and especially the Romans,
in culture and in learning. In Rome the glorious memories
of her own past were choked by the rank growth of fable
and legend, and it was from the court of Otto 111. that
Sylvester 11. at last brought back a more serious learning
to the city of Augustus.

However often the restless Italians disregarded the rule of
the Ottos, they fully recognised their rights in principle, and
centuries later the haughtiest of the Lombard and Tuscan
nobility took pride in tracing their descent from one or
another of the barons who came into the land in the train
of the Saxon Emperors. Nor does any one question that
even to this very day many of the noblest family-names in
Italy are of German origin.

Highly characteristic of the feelings of the time is the
story which appears regularly in the works of all the
earlier Tuscan chroniclers, and is mentioned by Dante
himself. A certain Marquis Hugo (the tradition says of
Brandenburg!) came to Italy with Otto 111, and was
appointed imperial Vicar of Tuscany. He was warned by
a vision to sell all his goods in Germany, and to found
seven goodly abbeys round about Florence with the pro-
ceeds. So great was the love he won in the land that on
his death without an heir the six families that had received
knighthood from him took of his armorial bearings upon their
own shields in honour of his memory. Down to Dante’s
own time, three hundred years later, his fame was perpetu-
ated by a celebration on St. Thomas’s Day, the anniversary
of his death. Such a trait as this points to anything but
national hatred of the Germans.

The relations of the two races were certainly less friendly

! A patently unhistorical trait. Probably there is some confusion
with the Marquis Hugo of Tuscany, a son of Humbert, who appears
in connection with Otto 11.—The epitaph in the Florentine Badia calls
him Comes Andeburgensis.
392 : ESSAYS ON DANTE

in the days of Frederick Barbarossa, and the historians copy
one after another the stock examples of the embitterment
rising out of the struggles in Lombardy. We have already
said enough, however, to enable the student to reduce the
significance of these tales to its proper dimensions. But
we may just refer to the following story, recurring again
and again in the historians: In 1172 Archbishop Christian
of Mainz was besieging Ancona, and had already reduced
it to the utmost straits. The burghers were inclined to
surrender, but a blind old centagenarian warned them
against it. ‘Indulge in no delusive hopes,’ he said, ¢for I
know by long experience that an enduring union between
Italian and German is impossible.” This sounds emphatic
enough, but a suggestive side-light is thrown upon it by
the little circumstance that Ancona was being held not
for Italy, but for the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Com-
nenus.

Yet however many minds Barbarossa’s harshness or the
cruelty of his son may have estranged from the German
imperial rule, we have seen above, from Dante’s own words,
how the second Frederick drew all that was noblest and
most gifted in Italy round his throne. And the age in
which the German Emperor, with his sons Enzius and
Manfred, and his chancellor Petrus a Vineis, are amongst
the first to enrich with their eloquence the new-born art
of Italian poetry, was hardly one to raise up enmity between
the two races united in the heroic person of the Emperor.
After the days of Frederick 11., hatred of the Germans, had
it existed, must have died of inanition. But one German
prince led an army across the Alps, during the next sixty
years, and truly Conradino’s tragic fate was rather cal-
culated to appease than to kindle hatred.

Such was the temper of the times into which Dante
came, and we have already seen how he himself looked to
a Roman Empire wielded by a German dynasty as the

\
XVI.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 393

hope of peace and wellbeing for Italy. He himself hastened
to the borders of the Lake of Geneva to meet Henry vir.
on his march to Rome.

‘Long,’ he afterwards wrote, ¢ have we wept by the streams of
Confusion, and without ceasing have implored the protection
of our righteous king, that he should scatter the following of
the cruel tyrant and re-establish us in our just rights. And
when thou, successor of Caesar and Augustus, leaping over the
ridges of the Apennines, didst bring back the venerated Tarpeian
standards, forthwith our long sighing desisted and the floods of
our tears were dried. And even as the rising of the longed-for
Titan, the new hope of a better age flashed upon Latium.’

In the same spirit he writes to the princes, lords, and
independent cities of the whole Peninsula :

‘Oh Italy! once to be pitied by the very Saracens, rejoice
even now ; for thou shalt be envied throughout the world ;
because thy bridegroom, the solace of the world, and the glory
of thy people, the most clement Henry, Divus, and Augustus and
Caesar, is hastening to the bridal. Dry thy tears and take away
the marks of grief, O thou fairest one; for nigh at hand is he
who shall release thee from the prison of the impious.’

But Dante still measures the right of the Emperor by
that ideal which floated before the eyes of the Ottos, as
of Barbarossa before them, and found expression on the
plains of Roncaglia. Turning to those who would pre-
sume to resist Henry, he says in the same letter :

‘Ye who drink his streams and sail upon his seas ; who tread
upon the sands of the shores and the summits of the Alps which
are his ; who possess whatsoever public right ye enjoy, and all
things ye hold in private, by the chain of his law, not else,
deceive not yourselves in ignorance, nor dream in your hearts

and say: “We have no Lord”; for all that heaven circles is
his garden and his lake. :

These words of joy and confident hope stand in contrast
to the expressions of sorrow and dejection at the lapse
of imperial authority in Italy, before and after Henry’s
304 ESSAYS ON DANTE

time. We have already cited his indictment of the
Emperor Rudolf. Elsewhere the poet likens Italy to a
noble charger, that grows restive when he no longer feels
his rider in the saddle. To Rudolf’s son, King Albrecht
of Austria, he cries, with a foreboding reference to his
murder at Rheinfelden : !

¢See how the beast has turned vicious through lack of correc-
tion from the spur, since ye? placed your hand upon the rein.
O German Albert, who abandonest her, who hath grown wild
and savage,—thou who shouldst have bestridden her saddle—may
just judgment fall from the stars on thy race, and be it new and
open that thy successor may have fear thereat. For thou and thy
sire, kept away by greed, have suffered the garden of the Empire
to become a desert.’

But if the fiery charger will no longer obey his appointed
master, the fault does not lie in that master’s negligence
alone, but is due in equal measure to the usurpations of the
Popes, who instead of being satisfied with the direction of
the Church, and leaving to Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s, strove to wrest this authority likewise to them-
selves : 3

¢ Rome, which framed the good world, was wont to have two
suns, to make folk see the one path and the other, the world’s
and God's. One sun hath quenched the other, and the sword is
grafted on the crozier. The one united with the other must

perforce take an ill path, for now that they are joined one
feareth not the other.

And a little further on: ¢

¢ And now proclaim it that the Church of Rome, confounding
in herself two regimens, falls in the mire, and befouls herself and
what she bears.’

But while Dante is inexhaustible in his eulogies of the
Romano-German Empire, he scarcely ever mentions our

1 Purg. vi. 94. 2 The Pope and his adherents.
3 Purg. xvi. 106. 4 Jbid., line 127.
XVIL—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 395

nation ; and when he does, it is without partiality indeed,
but also without hatred. Only in one place does he accuse
us of a weakness which we would fain repudiate, but it has
been laid to the charge of Germany, down even to our own
day, on so many hands, that we cannot escape the fear that
our forefathers at least gave grounds for the accusation.
It is the passage in which he speaks of the guzzling
Germans.’ But it is significant of the public opinion
in those days, that one of the two earliest of the Italian
Commentators understands this opprobrious epithet as the
name of another nation, mentioned along with the Germans,
while the other says that if Dante really meant to disparage
the Germans, he for his part is not minded to follow him
in slandering a high-minded and friendly people.2

Like sentiments were prevalent until within a few
decades of the present time. It was only in the last
century that the Lombards blessed Maria Teresa for
healing, with wise hand, the wounds made by the heavy
yoke of Spain, and Leopold, who as German Emperor set
his face so steadily against revolution, was honoured in
Tuscany as a popular reformer. Nay, in my own youth, I
was present in Rome, during the visit of the Emperor
Francis to Pope Pius vir, and the Romans hailed him with
acclamations as their (the Roman) Emperor.

An unpleasing exception to the neighbourly feeling of
the one people to the other is found in Petrarch, who in the
celebrated Canzone from which I have already quoted a
fragment, heaps reproaches upon the Germans, which have
since been quoted only too often, and with too passionate
an emphasis :

1 Inf. xvii. 21.

2 The context seems to imply that the Oftimo is the second Com-
mentator referred to, but I have not been able to find the passage either
in him or any other of the early Commentators. Buti gives the other
interpretation mentioned in the text.—ED.
396 ESSAYS ON DANTE

“Nature did well for our prosperity when she flung the
bulwark of the Alps ’twixt us and German madness. But blind
desire, stubborn against all blessing to itself, toiled till it won a
tetter for its wholesome flesh. Now in a single cage do savage
beasts and gentle cattle dwell. . . . O, gentle Latin blood, hurl
thou those grievous burdens from thee! Make not an idol of
an empty name that holds not aught. Sure, if the madness of
this headstrong folk o’ercomes our intellect, ’tis due to our sin,
’tis not a thing of nature. . . . Ye princes of my country, in
whom alone she hopeth, after God, were ye to show some sign
of tenderness, virtue should seize her arms to vanquish madness,
—and short should be the contest, for the ancient valour is not
yet dead in hearts of Italy.’

But we must not attach too much weight to the words,
only too eloquent, of this excessively vain and excitable
poet. His unparalleled inconstancy is illustrated some
decades later, on the occasion of Charles 1v.’s advance
on Rome. He urged the Emperor, in one high-flown
letter after another, to undertake the expedition, and when
it was at last entered upon, this same Petrarch writes to
Andrea Dandolo, Doge of Venice :

¢ Suffer not that the flourishing republic that is intrusted to
your care should allow the fair portion of Italy that lies between
the Alps and the Apennines to become the prey of the ravening
wolves, whom nature has parted from us by the bulwark of the
Alps, which she herself has reared. It is we ourselves that
throw open our doors to these wild beasts who batten on our
blood.’

Then the king of these wild beasts actually came over
the Alps, and despite the bitter winter weather, Petrarch
very soon presented himself at his court in Mantua. In
Milan he did not move from the Emperor’s side, and some
months later obeyed his summons to Prague.

As for the charge of bad faith urged in this same Canzone
against Louis of Bavaria, who in truth had been shamefully
deceived by the Italian Ghibellines, we can only say that
such a gross slander is partially explained, though by no
XVI.—.DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 397

means excused, by the plague-laden atmosphere of Avignon,
in which at that very moment Petrarch was allowing him-
self to be held captive by the charms of the Provencal
beauty.

Dante alludes in the same incidental fashion to another
neighbouring people, viz., the French. By way of empha-
sising the levity of the Sienese he says that it exceeds that
of the French themselves.! But as to the ruling dynasty
of France, the house of Capet, one branch of which had
established itself in the South of Italy a generation before,
there is no end to the energy with which he wields the
lash—or rather the bludgeon—against them! Even his
fierce hatred of Boniface virr. falls back when he thinks of
the sacrilege done him by Philip the Fair at the hand of
William of Nogaret : 2

‘I see the lilies in Anagni, and Christ made captive in his
Vicars person. I see him mocked again, I see the vinegar and
gall renewed, I see him slain ’twixt robbers left alive.’

I must refrain from further quotations of the outbursts of
the poet’s scorn for this king, or his brother, Charles of
Valois, the author of Dante’s exile, or his uncle, Charles
of Anjou, the usurper of Naples, with his son and grand-
son, for they would lead us too far from our path.

My object was merely to show that more than half a
millennium ago Dante’s clear insight already recognised the
stranger that threatened Italy as lying not to the North-
east but to the North-west of the Peninsula. And
four hundred years after Dante’s day Filicaja’s often
quoted sonnet pointed in like manner to France, and not
to Germany :

¢ Italy, Italy, to whom Fortune gave the fatal gift of beauty,
whence thou hast drawn the dismal dowry of unnumbered
groans, and bear’st them written on thy brow in dire anguish,—

 

1 Inf. xxix. 123. 2 Pur. xx. 86.
398 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Oh that thou wert less beauteous, or more brave! And so
wert held in greater fear or in less love by them who melt
under thy beauty’s rays, and then defy thee to the very death.
Then should I no more see torrents of warriors pouring from the
Alps, nor should the steeds of France drink of thy blood mingled
with waves of Po ; nor should I see thee, girt with swords not
thine, smite with a foreign arm, ever a slave or conquering or
conquered.’

It remains to examine our third point : Dante’s attitude
towards the temporal power of the Pope. Now although
we shall see that Dante opposed the claim of the Popes,
or rather the rights they had already made good, yet we
may lay it down at once that it would be entirely erroneous
to suppose the poet’s attitude to be that of a Ghibelline
party leader, or, as many have recently attempted to show,
that ofa heretic. In this, as in all other respects throughout
his whole poem, Dante shows himself an orthodox Catholic.
His belief in the divine claim of the Bishop of Rome to the
government of the Church is so complete, that at the be-
ginning of the poem he traces in the Roman Empire—nay, in
the escape of Aeneas from the flames of Troy—the founda-
tions on which Peter’s chair should rest. He looks on the
transference of the Papal See to Avignon under Clement v.
as an apostasy from this divine order. And he considers the
Papal authority the highest on earth, not merely equal to
that of the Emperor but superior to it, in the degree
wherein the spiritual is always worthy of more honour
than the material. ¢Let Caesar, therefore,” writes Dante
in one of his earliest works,! ‘observe that reverence to
Peter which a first-born son ought to observe to a father,
so that, illuminated by the light of paternal grace, he may
with greater power irradiate the world.” And to this view
he remained true ; appealing even at the time of Henry vir’s

1 De Monarchia, iii. 16 : 134.
XVI—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 399

march on Rome, to the authority of the Pope,! who had
blessed the imperial expedition.

But again and again, in the course of the centuries, the
clergy had fallen a prey to avarice and all the lowest worldly
passions. I am jealous unto death for thine house,’ cried
Dante, as pious devoted men had cried out times without
number against such pollution of sacred things. Even if
better Popes raised the Church out of the mire, she sank
ever back again into the slough of worldliness. Such
aberrations merit the reproaches which Dante, like Arnold of
Brescia before him, or Savonarola after, poured upon them: 2

¢Cephas and the great vessel of the Holy Spirit went lean
and went unshod, accepting food from any hostelry. Now must
the modern shepherds be propped up on this side and on that,
with one to lead them, so heavy are they, while another shoves
behind. Their mantles spread over their very palfreys, so that
two beasts step on beneath one hide. Oh, patience, that so long
endurest!’

And what spiritual food, what comfort, can such de-
generate clergy offer to their flocks ? 3

‘They think not what the cost in blood of sowing it [the
divine Scripture] on earth; nor how he pleaseth who humbly
keepeth in its company. Each is intent on making a good
show, and schemeth his inventions, the which forthwith the
preachers ply, and quit the Gospel.’

And a little later (line 109) :

‘Christ said not to his first assembly : “Go and preach fool-
ing to the world”; but gave the true foundation; and just so
much sounded on his lips as made them take the Gospel for
their shield and lance in battling to kindle faith. Now they go
forth to preach equipped with jests and with grimaces; and if

 

1 At the close of his letter to the Princes of Italy.

2 Par. xxi. 127. Let the Catholic reader remember that not only
have many good Catholics written commentaries on the Comedy, but
Popes themselves have accepted the dedication of editions of the poem.

3 Par. xxix. o1.
400 ESSAYS ON DANTE

but they wake a laugh, their cowls inflate and they demand
no more. But such a bird is nested in the hood-tail, that if the
people saw, they would apprize at its due worth the pardon that
they trust in. But so much folly spreads throughout the earth,
that, without proof of any authorising, they flock to every pro-
mise.’

This secularised clergy had a fitting head, who, through
his dominant station, was plunged far deeper yet in traffic
with the world. But it is in their possession of a territory
of their own that Dante recognises the germ of this
devastating ambition of the Popes.

The fabling Middle Ages traced the origin of the States
of the Church to the Emperor Constantine. On his con-
version by Sylvester he transferred his abode from Rome
to the Eastern city which bore his name, in humble acknow-
ledgment of the higher authority of the Pope, while he
presented Rome and its territory to Peter’s chair. Dante
never for a moment questions the truth of this history, but
in it he sees the origin of endless evil : *

¢ Ah, Constantine, mother of how much evil was—not thy
conversion, but—the dowry received from thee by the first
wealthy Father.’

In the Paradiso the Imperial Eagle, which is represented
as itself speaking, points out Constantine’s spirit to the
poet with the words : 2

¢ With good intent that bore ill fruit he who next followeth
made himself, with the laws and me, a Greek, to give the
shepherd room. Now knows he that the ill result of his good
doing harmeth not himself, albeit the world is all laid waste
thereby.’

In the great closing vision of the Purgatorio we have just
been shown how the world fell to ruins through that gift.
The poet sees the Church in the likeness of a wain, on
which the Roman eagle descends, showering its feathers,

1 If xix, 113. 2 Parixx. 5s.
XVI.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 401

(the imperial offerings) upon it. Then a lament sounds from
heaven, ¢ Alas my bark, how evil is thy cargo!’ whereon
the wain itself is transformed to the apocalyptic beast with
seven heads and ten horns.

Greed and land-lust, once kindled by possession, no longer
permit of the exercise of spiritual government in a spiritual
sense. Excommunication, indulgence, and dispensation are
alike made subservient to earthly purposes : !

‘Time was when war was made with swords. But now ’tis
by withholding, here or there, that bread which the pitying
father bars to none. But thou who writest but to cancel, reflect
that Peter, and that Paul, who died for the vineyard thou art
laying waste, are yet alive.’

Elsewhere ? the poet, instead of naming Rome, describes
it as the place Where Christ is put to sale from day to
day.’ As Peter looked down from heaven to earth, how
could he fail to burn with holy wrath ! 2

‘He who on earth usurps my place, my place, my place,
vacant in the sight of the Son of God, hath made my burial-place

a sink of blood and filth, whereat the rebel who fell hence
rejoices there below.’

And six terzine further on:

¢ We did not mean that one part of the Christian folk should
sit at the right hand of our successors, and one part on the left;
nor that the keys granted to me should e’er become the ensign on
a standard for war on the baptized ; nor I the image on a seal to
bought and lying privileges, whereat full many a time I blush
and burn. In garb of shepherds ravening wolves are seen from
here above, roaming the pastures. O God’s defending justice,
wherefore lie’st thou prostrate !’

Similar outbreaks of wrathful zeal against conditions
which the poet regarded as a desecration of the Most Holy
occur throughout the Comedy. But I would rather cast a
backward glance over the outcome of the examination
already made, than pile up further examples of the same kind.

1 Par. xvin. 127. 2 Par. xvii. 51. 3 Par. xxvii. 22.
2 C
402 ESSAYS ON DANTE

We have pointed to Dante as the first who taught the
dwellers in the Peninsula to recognise the whole of Italy
as their Fatherland, and who consecrated to his love of this
Fatherland inspired words which still echo in every heart.
But we must remember that the United Italy he proclaimed
was not that which is being realised by the convulsions of
the present day. We have further seen how the poet, far
from being inimical to the German nation, or even to
German influences in Italy, finds the only true salvation
for his country in the articulated subordination of her
states to the Romano-German Empire ; while on the other
hand he is consistently hostile to France and her rulers,
and sees a grave source of danger in their influence on
the affairs of the Peninsula. Finally, we have witnessed
Dante’s wrath over the worldly degeneration of the clergy
and over the ambition and land-lust of the Papal See, and
have seen how the Ghibelline poet traces the source of all
this degeneration to the fact that the clergy, and the head of
Catholic Christendom, have allowed themselves to be drawn
by earthly possessions into the whirl of earthly interests and
disputes.

 

Our object, as we began by saying, was to discover how
far the appeal to Dante was justified in the mouths of
those who have led or have taken part in the latest revolu-
tions of Italy. But before closing, we may be permitted
to repudiate any idea of passing a judgment on the tangled
affairs of our own day, under the pretext of an answer to
this question. Even if our reverence for the author of
the Divine Comedy were so great as to brook no contradic-
tion of his views, we could scarcely carry our idolatry so
far as to accept opinions enunciated more than half a
millennium ago, as deciding, in the last instance, the proper
course to take under the conditions of the present day.
XVI.—_DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 403

Dante’s zeal against the temporal power of the Pope
was based on weightier reasons than any of the modern
apostles of Italian Unity can appeal to.

The Archimedean ¢ place whereon to stand’ furnished by
the diminutive States of the Church had sufficed the Pope
for the foundation of a far mightier ideal construction to set
over against that of the Roman Empire. It was an edifice
which should embrace not only the spiritual but the
temporal dominion of the world, in which the Bishop of
Rome should sit on his exalted throne, wearing the triple
crown and girt with the two swords, the symbols of tem-
poral and of spiritual power, bestowing kingly and imperial
crowns on his feudal vassals, as he had hitherto bestowed
abbeys and bishoprics, all the world over. With the plans
of this edifice Boniface viii. answered the pretensions
raised by the Hohenstaufens, but now already belonging to
the past, and it became the life-work of Dante, the bard of
the temporal monarchy, to lay bare the rottenness of its
foundations.

The two sublime dreams of the Middle Ages faded away
while Dante was yet living. The dishonour done to Boni-
face by William of Nogaret destroyed the one, and the
other vanished ten years after on that day of St. Bartholo-
mew which saw Henry vir. on his deathbed at Buon-
convento.

The last shadow of the one ideal was wiped out in the
first decade of the present century. The memory of the
other still survives in the Allocutions and Encyclicals of
the Vatican ; but now, instead of the magnificent exercise of
his feudal rights over the princes, the Pope’s epistles are an
anxious appeal to them for protection. This condition of
things must be examined on its own merits,! and is quite
remote from that on which Dante’s invective was hurled.

Even the papal entreaties are now silent, except for

1 Compare, for example, Dollinger’s Academic Osteraworlesung for 1861.
404 ESSAYS ON DANTE

impotent protests, unheeded by the European chancelleries.
All that remains of Constantine’s—or, to speak more cor-
rectly, of Pipin’s—donation, is the Vatican. The sword is
no longer grafted on the crozier (see above, p. 394), and the
evils the union necessarily entailed on the latter as well
as the former are no more. Nor can it be doubted that the
Catholic Church is more powerful and more honoured, from
a purely ecclesiastical point of view, than she was before
September 20th, 1870; for in the hearts of the liberals the
religious reverence for the head of their Church has no
longer to encounter the hatred of the reactionary ruler.
Well! Italy is one from Stilvio to Cape Spartivento, nay
to Cape Passero. We may not always have approved the
means by which she was welded together, and may see centri-
fugal forces working, at any rate in secret, against a cen-
tralisation that has been pushed too roughly. But let us
hope that time will cover earlier breaches of justice, will
establish an inner bond of union between elements as yet
strange to one another, and will find safe and prosperous
paths for her still wavering and uncertain policy. Let us
say then, as, if we mistake not, Dante himself would have
said : It is not the Italy of which I dreamed, but one way or
another Italy has become a whole, and may God send her
unity and prosperity —And we Germans ?—Since the days
of Napoleon, especially, almost our only stake in ‘the Holy
Roman Empire of the German nation’ in Italy, has been
proprietorship in a term of abuse. It came to such a pass,
that whatever one’s love for the common Fatherland, it was
almost impossible for one to call himself ¢ Tedesco’ in Italy.
¢ Alemanno,” or ¢Prussiano,’ had to be substituted. For
¢ Tedesco’ stood exclusively for Austrian. And the Italians
knew the Austrian, not as the brilliant and fascinating
gentleman of the Viennese Hofburg, or as the kindly and
pleasant fdneur, but only in the costume of a corporal, a
custom-house officer, a tax-gatherer, or a police magistrate ;
XVI—-DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 405

and unfortunately it is undeniable that though the Austrians
are perhaps the pleasantest of the German-speaking peoples,
they developed, at any rate in Italy, a less enviable
talent for alienating the popular sympathy in each and all of
the capacities above named. And the bitter feeling against
Austria was still further heightened by her compressive in-
fluence on all the several states of Italy. But antipathy was
by no means confined within the limits for which some justi-
fication existed. I once expressed to Alessandro Manzoni
my surprise at the very unfavourable contrast between the
Austrians in Italy, civil and military alike, and their fellow-
countrymen on the banks of the Danube. He replied,
‘Believe me, it is not that which is the cause of our
antipathy. At any period since Napoleon used the word
“Italy” as a political reality (though it was in truth no
more than a phrase), if God Almighty had despatched an
archangel to Lombardy as Governor, and a legion of angels
as his officials, their rule would have been detested as a
piece of foreign domination.’

But this state of things ended twelve years ago, and with
it died the cry of hatred, ¢ Away with the foreigners!” The
mutual liking of the two peoples, which is really no more
than natural, is growing more and more hearty ; and the
mutual advantage of political fellowship is recognised by an
ever-widening circle. There is unlimited confidence in the
lasting power of United Germany, and a really romantic
reverence for our grey-headed Emperor hero whom they
love to call Barbabianca ; and wherever the knightly figure
of this heir to Germany’s Empire has been seen on the
other side of the Alps, he has won all hearts. Bismarck and
Moltke are spoken of with admiration ; the names of. a
host of German scholars meet with the warmest recog-
nition; and in many a field of research, Germans and
Italians reach out to one another the hand of friendship and
mutual assistance across the Alps.
406 ESSAYS ON DANTE

The poet’s dream of a United Italy is realised, though
the form of the vision is changed ; and although the routes
which have led to this goal are not those he looked to, they
are yet related to them. Henry vir. did not, indeed, break
down the walls of Brescia and Florence and bring the
recalcitrant Guelfs to acknowledge the authority of the
Empire, but Kaiser Wilhelm, the heir of the Luxem-
burger’s crown and the representative of his blood, has won
Venice for Victor Emanuel at Sadowa, and opened the
doors of the Quirinal for him at Sedan.

POSTSCRIPT
[Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 581-595 (1878).]

I deeply regret that, in reprinting my lecture on ¢ Dante
and United Italy,” I failed to take account of a circum-
stance which certainly deserved some notice, if only a brief
one. Four years after the delivery of my lecture, Professor
Hermann Grimm published his Neue Essays über Kunst und
Literatur, the fifth of which was entitled Dante und die
letzten Kämpfe in Italien (pp. 119-163), and was in sub-
stance directed against my lecture. Immediately on its
appearance I bought the book, and my copy leaves no
doubt that I read the few sheets in question at once. How
it came to pass that the attack of the talented essayist
absolutely passed out of my memory remains a riddle to
me. It was the year of the Dante Centenary, and a
great mass of occasional writings poured in upon me. An
autumn journey to Northern Italy largely increased the
stock, and it may be that the thought of going fully into all
this material obliterated the memory of what I had just read.

In one of the last of his long and instructive series of
articles, entitled Dante in Germania, published in the
XV1.-DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 407

Rivista internazionale, Scartazzini dealt with the subject of
these Essays (No. 26, March 15th, 1877). On receiving
the number containing this article, which happened to con-
clude a volume of the periodical, I sent it at once to the
binder, and so for the time this discussion of the subject
also escaped my attention. It was not until my own lecture
had long been reprinted for the present volume, that I
chanced, as I turned over the pages of the Rivista, to come
upon Herr Grimm’s name in connection with my own.

I need hardly say that I looked up the new Essays at
once, and carefully read through the article in question.
But, however open I might strive to keep my mind, it was
impossible that Scartazzini’s judgment should be without
influence upon me; and I will therefore quote it at once.

Scartazzini is essentially at one with Grimm in his
political point of view, and after rehearsing the arguments
urged by the latter against me, he expresses his own
adhesion to the more favourable view of the events that
have transformed Italy in our day.! But he goes on to say :

¢ With respect to Dante, however, he is simply a dilettante,
and a very superficial one. The man who knows so little of
Dante as to declare openly that the whole of his great poem is
merely a condemnation of his political enemies, and a panegyric
of his friends (p. 128), who dares to put in print that Dante,
blinded with faction fury, could not believe in any good in his
adversaries, and shut his eyes to every injustice and wrong done
by his friends, or contrived to put a favourable complexion upon it
(p. 152), simply exposes himself by attempting to discuss Dante’s
opinions. . . . After an interval of two years Grimm has re-
printed his Essay, sentence for sentence and word for word.—
Well | he may reprint it as often as he likes. No one can stop
him.’

Such is the judgment of an eminent student of Dante
as to the measure of comprehension of Dante’s political
views which we must allow my opponent; and though

1 ¢I gladly allow that in his controversy with Witte he [Grimm] is
essentially right.”
408 ESSAYS ON DANTE

I should have expressed myself with more reserve, I must
admit that it would hardly be possible to misrepresent
Dante’s attitude towards party politics more absolutely
than Grimm has done in the utterances quoted by
Scartazzini, and in many similar ones.

But my lecture had nothing to do with legitimatism or
liberalism on my part. It was simply devoted to a study
of the attitude of the Divine Comedy to the party struggles
of its own time, and to the question how far we can justify
the frequent practice of applying his utterances in this
connection to the circumstances of to-day.

After a long abstract of Dante’s Monarchia (pp. 128-
142), which might almost as well have been omitted for
any bearing it has on the subject under discussion, the
essayist thus sums up the position (supposed to be mine)
which he assails :

‘In course of his lecture he formulates his general grievance
against the Italian Liberals in three sentences. They have no
right to appeal to Dante in support of (I) their glowing love for
Italy as their common Fatherland ; (2) their dislike of foreigners,
especially Germans; (3) their hatred of the secular power of the
Pope.’

Now, to begin with the first point, I can hardly under-
stand how my opponent can, even by the most heroic
misunderstanding, have extracted from my lecture any
reproach against Italians—whether liberal or servile, for
that matter—for believing in a fact, the existence of which
was demonstrated at full length, and with applauding assent
in that very lecture itself. About a third of the little work
in question was summed up, after due historical support had
been collected, in the words (p. 22; p. 387 above) :

¢And so in hope, in sorrow, in reproof, we see Dante filled
with the same glowing love for the Fatherland of Italy, a love
which he is the first to put into words. He is the first, and
we can hardly find another that transcends the warmth of his
expression.’
XVL.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 409

And then again almost on the concluding page (p. 43;
p. 402 above):

‘We have pointed to Dante as the first who taught the
dwellers in the Peninsula to recognise the whole of Italy as

their Fatherland, and who consecrated to his love of this Father-
land inspired words which still echo in every heart.’

Nothing is left then to explain Hermann Grimm’s
charges except the supposition of a singular confusion of
ideas. It is one thing to declare that the Italians have
a right to appeal to Dante in ‘their love for Italy as a
common Fatherland’; and this right I never contested, but
eagerly enforced. It is another and a very different thing
to attempt to show that the method by which United Italy
was brought into existence, and the form which has been
given to it, can be defended by Dante’s authority. And
it was this attempt alone which I declared to be wholly
unjustified. I declared, and I still declare it.

The poet was no friend of annexation. Even the exten-
sion of the territory of his Fatherland was not to his mind,
as the 15th and 16th cantos of the Paradiso show ; and
least of all, if annexation were the result not of open and
honourable war, but of secret intrigue (Purg. xx. 64, 73);
and if when he undertakes to exalt Cangrande, he says in
praise of his hero that he fed ¢not upon land nor pelf)’ the
contrast with the fact, which we are forced to admit, was
perhaps intended as an admonition to call him back from a
wrong path.

Such an Italy as Macchiavelli conceived in the Principe,
under the centralising autocracy of some dynast, whether
Cangrande, or Uguccione della Faggiuola, or Charles of
Anjou, or any other, was as remote as possible from Dante’s
desire. Even my opponent is forced to grant so much. On
page 149 he says:

¢ The Union, as it stands to-day, would have been inconceiv-
able in Dante’s times. Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, Rome,
410 ESSAYS ON DANTE

Naples, absolutely separate states from top to bottom, united in
a single kingdom, with a central government, would have seemed
little less impossible in those days than the whole earth as a
single kingdom, with a central government at London, Paris, or
New York would appear to us.’

Well, but if such a thought was absolutely inconceivable
in Dante’s times, and therefore in Dante’s mind, what can
be the justification of reproaching me with having declared
it a mistake to appeal to Dante’s authority in support of
the very idea in question ?

The unity of Italy that Dante proclaimed rested on
unity of speech, unity of literature (so far as such a
literature existed at all), and unity of manners. The only
sense in which a political unity could be thought of was
that ever since the Ottos there had been a Regnum Italicum
(just as there had been a Burgundy and an Arles) recognised
as a member of the Romano-German Empire. It is in this
sense that the lecture speaks of an articulated subordination
of Italy to the Romano-German (not, as quoted on pp. 122,
145, and 148, a German) Empire.—This phrase seems to
have struck the essayist as a very strange one, yet it is fully
supported by the conceptions of Medieval law and polity,
especially Dante’s ; and constantly occurs in the linguistic
usage of the publicists.

In his book on the Monarchy, which Grimm himself
quotes, the author, in expounding the nature of the
Empire, starts with the individual man in relation to
the members of his body and the powers of his mind ;
and goes on to the family and those that compose it, and
then to the country district, the city and the principality ;
and shows that in all of them there is an organism articu-
lated into unity. Now the Empire, the supreme common-
wealth, embracing all the subordinate members, is not an
oriental autocracy that swallows all right into itself; it
allows commonwealths of every kind, republics, territorial
XVI—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 411

dominions, principalities, and kingdoms to continue intact
beneath its suzerainty, so long as they keep the peace.
Only when a conflict threatens a breach of peace does the
Empire interfere, and then irresistibly and decisively. Such
was the Empire of the Ottos. So was it shaped on the
plains of Roncaglia (in theory, though no longer in fact)
by the Hohenstaufens; and so did Dante’s dreams still
shape the Empire of the Luxemburger. For him there
was no kind of conflict between the power of the Empire
and the freedom of the Republican cities, or the rights of
the Italian dukes, marquises, earls, and kings. For the
Emperor was the defence of all of them against unlawful
attacks of every kind, so long as they did but acknowledge
their articulated subordination to the Empire. It is exactly
in this sense that the poet calls upon the rulers and com-
munities of the Peninsula to greet their peace-bringer and
victorious defender, when Henry is advancing upon Rome.

The essayist admits (p. 156) that the Italian hatred of
the Tedeschi is a product of recent times; yet he will
not have it that the Italians are without justification in
dating back this racial hatred (which, thank God, is now
rapidly disappearing) to Dante. But if that hatred simply
did not exist in the year 1300, how can the Epigoni have
inherited it from the father of Italian poetry? My opponent
in any case does his best to find traces of this dislike of the
Germans in the Divine Comedy. In addition to the passage
which I quoted in my lecture, reproaching the Germans
with ¢ guzzling,” he conjectures’ (p. 146) that when the
poet calls Albrecht of Austria ¢ German,” he may mean to
say : ‘And true German art thou, a weak-willed dawdler,
to wit, leaving Italy in the lurch and not coming to
support us Ghibellines.”

I will leave this ¢conjecture’ for what it is worth, and
will turn to another charge. I am made to say that Dante
desired the subordination of Italy to German rule, and I
412 ESSAYS ON DANTE

am made to base the assertion on the argument that he
desired a German Emperor to rule the world, and con-
sequently to rule Italy. I am made guilty of a further
offence, in calling the Emperor German or Romano-German.
‘We cannot,’ says Grimm, ‘allow a scholar to build an
historic proof on a loose expression which happens to be cur-
rent in Germany ; and that without so much as mentioning
the different use of the words (?); and especially when he
has undertaken to defend a charge of conscious illusion.’

I have read through the forty-four small octavo pages of
my lecture once again, and cannot discover that I have
called any one a German Emperor except Leopold 11., and
this I hope my opponent will allow to pass. In another
passage I say that Frederic Barbarossa’s severity and
Henry vi.’s cruelty may have alienated many minds from
the German Imperial rule. Now these characteristics of
the two Hohenstaufens could hardly have been alleged as
grounds for the Italians, including Dante, desiring the
subordination of their Fatherland under a German rule.’
Finally, four times in my historical survey (pp. 7, 32, 43,
and 45 ; above, pp. 377, 394, 402) I have used the phrase
which may be regarded as established, the ¢ Romano-German
Empire’ (not Germano-Roman).—Of any attempt to build
an historical proof upon a loose way of speaking (which
it happens I never used), I have been unable to discover
a trace in my essay, nor can I find any passage in which
I have said, ¢ Because Dante wished for a German Emperor
to rule the world, and therefore Italy, he desired the sub-
ordination of Italy under German rule.”

All this is simply outside the subject of the lecture. I
denied that the Italians of our day have any right to appeal
to Dante’s authority in support of their hatred of
Germany ; and I supported my assertion by showing that
since the times of the Saxon Emperors the Germans have
stood in high repute with the dwellers in the Peninsula,
XVIL.—DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 413

—a repute which has left its traces in Dante’s writings
too. And I may here add the witness of a younger
contemporary of the poet, a Guelf too, the historian
Giovanni Villani; who says in the first and third chapters
of the fourth book of his Chronicle :

‘And when the Pope [Leo vim. ] and all the clergy saw that the
Church might not defend herself, nor have her liberties (because
of the wickedness of the evil Romans and of the tyrants of Italy,
in whose power she lay) save with the aid and might of the
Germans, knowing the goodness and worth and power of the
said King Otto, he was elected Emperor by the people of Rome
and by the Church as the most worthy. . . . When Otto mr.
was dead, inasmuch as the Empire had gone by descent through
three Ottos, from father to son, it seemed to Pope Sergius 1v. (?)
and to the cardinals and to the princes of Rome, that the
election to the Empire should lie with the Germans, inasmuch as
they were mighty folk, and were the strong arm of Christendom.’

Still more naively does the Libro Fiesolano, edited by
Hartwig, express itself with respect to the Germans,
and especially the Saxons. Catelline’s son Uberto, the
legend tells us, was chosen with seven of his sons, by
the command of Augustus Caesar, to crush the revolt of
the Saxons. He married the daughter of the Antigrado (?)
of Germany, and was the ancestor of the race of the good
King Ceto (Otto?) of Saxony. It is true that many
assert that the Florentine Ubertis were descended from the
German Emperor; but the truth is that the Emperor
was descended from them. The son of the first Ceto
(of Saxony) was the second Emperor Ceto, and his son the
third Emperor of that name. Many descendants of the
Uberti dwelt in Germany, but finally they removed their
chief seat to Florence. :

In proof of Dante’s own recognition of German learn-
ing and German piety, we may appeal to the lofty places
in Paradise which he gives to Rabanus Maurus, Hugo of
St. Victor, and Albert of Cologne.
414 ESSAYS ON DANTE

I have already said that the method by which Italy was
united under Victor Emanuel’s sceptre, and still more the
way in which that union was led up to, were not such as
we should suppose Dante would have approved had he
been living. Hermann Grimm admits (p. 144) that on
certain widely human concerns (and surely the moral law
is one of them) our opinions are constant ; and some pages
later he adds (p. 160): ¢ We feel how the general laws of
morality which find their clearest expression in the judg-
ment of the Germanic peoples, apply to political problems
as well as others. No power can stand against them.
They pass ruthless sentence on princes and on peoples.’
And yet he contradicts my assertion mentioned above.

Now to rake up old memories of the Piedmontese
doings in the fifth and two following decades of the
present century, would be all the less pardonable, inas-
much as subsequent treaties and other events have long
ago secured complete popular indemnities for all that then
took place. And my opponent, on his side, does not deny
the facts themselves; he only maintains that they were
justified by the misrule of the separate Italian States of the
day.

I have never denied that in most of these States the
condition of things before 1859 was miserable in the
extreme. More than twenty years ago I gave public ex-
pression to my opinion on the utterly rotten government of
the States of the Church, on the headstrong autocracy of
Francis 11. of Naples, the antediluvian despotism of Modena,
the lusts of Charles 11. of Parma, that desecrated the
domestic sanctuary, and the irreconcilable conflict between
rulers and ruled in Lombardo-Venetia. But it is another
question whether real misrule, or what a neighbouring
State regards as such, gives the latter a right to intervene,
or even to annex, the ill-governed land. At the beginning
of the twenties the Emperor Francis honestly believed that
XVIL—-DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 415

the constitutionalism of Naples and Piedmont was mis-
government, Louis xvIiL thought the same of Spain, and
they intervened. There was no question of annexation,
but yet I doubt whether their intervention would have
found favour in the eyes of Hermann Grimm.

With special reference to the temporal power of the
Pope, I find my utterances strangely misunderstood in the
Essay. In Dante’s time, I said, the maintenance or de-
struction of the dominium temporale was a question that
moved the world; and we can perfectly understand the
zeal with which the poet fought against any temporal
power on the part of the Roman bishop. But since this
power has had to depend upon Austrian or French bayonets
in order to maintain itself even in the possession of its own
shrunken territories, the question has become, at any rate
by comparison, an extremely subordinate one. It no
longer justifies such passion as it might well excite in the
Divine Comedy. And the lecture closes with the words :
‘This condition of things must be examined on its own
merits, and is quite remote from that on which Dante’s
invective was hurled’ (p. 403 above).

But, it is urged, the revolution turned out for the ad-
vantage of the inhabitants of Italy, and, in my opponent’s
words, was brought about by the ©co-authorship of every
individual in the bosom of the peoples, with its amazingly
sudden awakening’ Now quite apart from the question
of whether this fact, and the circumstance that the move-
ment ‘everywhere found rapid ways of practically accom-
plishing the stupendous transition,” themselves constitute
a right, it remains to be asked whether the result realised
really corresponded to the expectations that had been
entertained. The hope that this may be so in the future
I have already uttered (p. 404). But Hermann Grimm’s
views in this, as in other respects, are of a more optimistic
character than mine. He imagines that the errors of com-
416 ESSAYS ON DANTE

munism, the idea of getting rid of kings and princes, the
violent republicanising of the land, and other products of
political theorising, were simply provoked by the resistance
of the old governments, and that ‘now the growing en-
lightenment on every side has reduced these aspirations
to their natural dimensions, and has replaced secret dis-
content by an open love for the Fatherland and a confid-
ence in the future, in the light of which the present re-
veals itself as an epoch as fruitful and exalting as can well
be conceived,’ —U'topias, the illusory character of which the
events of this very year [1878] have most painfully illus-
trated.

Criticism of the conditions recently established in United
Italy seems to be equivalent in the eyes of Hermann
Grimm to a desire for the simple restoration of the former
state of things, somewhat after the fashion of what took
place in Hesse when Kurfürst Wilhelm returned to Cassel
from his exile in Prague. Polemics against such narrow
reactionaries are simple enough. Possibly the deposed
princes and their immediate surroundings may have enter-
tained such hopes for many a year; but as for me, I had
no share in them even in 1861, to say nothing of uttering
them, or even hinting at them, in my lecture.

What I missed, and still miss, in the present Kingdom
of Italy, is a reverent respect for the special character of
the inhabitants of the different parts of the country, based
on descent and tradition, and the protection and preserva-
tion of the organs and institutions which have been incor-
porated for generations in the different cities and districts.
My criticisms, in a word, are directed to the revolutionary
levelling so much beloved in our days. As for the ex-
pression which the essayist repeatedly refers to with
inverted commas, presumably intended to express his in-
dignation, the expression, namely, that it was certainly not
Dante’s intention that the republics and principalities of
XVI.-DANTE AND UNITED ITALY 417

his time should be swallowed up in the all-assimilating
abyss of a kingdom of Italy,’ I would note that it was used
hypothetically of such a kingdom of Italy as might have
arisen in Dante’s time, and not of the one which has
actually arisen in ours. Nevertheless it appeared to me
too harsh, and in reprinting my essay (p. 388 above) I sub-
stituted for it a milder, though perhaps less characteristic
one.

But have the experiences of half a generation shown my
fears to be unfounded ?

Since 1815 Prussia too has repeatedly extended her
territory ; but the Rhine Provinces have retained their
French law, Swedish Pomerania its common law, and the
annexed territories have been allowed to retain their in-
ternal institutions in all essentials. Hardly less considera-
tion was shown in the conquests of the years 1864 and
1866, and still greater tenderness was exhibited towards
the legal and other special institutions of the allied terri-
tories united with the kingdom.

It was otherwise in Italy. The excellence of all that
had been done in legislation and government in more than
one region of the Peninsula, even in the last century, went
for nothing ; and from 1859 onwards a rising flood of new
laws swept, with the Piedmontese code and the Piedmontese
organisation, over the whole Peninsula, tearing down all
ancient institutions, however well preserved. And in the
train of the new institutions came the Piedmontese officials
commissioned to work them ; to wit, the Buzzurri, whose
very dialect was enough to rouse the antipathy of many of
the inhabitants of Middle Italy. And yet the contrasts in
the character of the peoples across the Alps are at least as
great as those between the different German stocks. How
is it possible that laws suitable for the T'uscans, educated and
honest through every stratum, should suffice to restrain the
Sicilian Mafia, who are organised for murder and putting

2D
418 ESSAYS ON DANTE

to ransom?! Or can the Neapolitan untruthfulness and
dishonesty, further heightened by the Camorra, be dealt
with by the same measures which suffice to maintain order
amongst the thoroughly trustworthy Lombards? What
marked differences exist between even neighbouring peoples,
— for instance, the courteous and accommodating Venetians
and the people of Romagnola, who are always ready for
violence, and generally for deceit !

To tear down a building centuries old, and without any
consideration of its structure immediately to rear on the
same site another building after an improvised plan, is
expensive—very expensive. Italy has found it out. Myriads
upon myriads have been spent upon the undertaking. The
property of the spiritual institutions is almost consumed ;
taxes are driven to the verge of the endurable; and still
we see the enforced currency of paper money; still we
have to wait for the balance between income and expendi-
ture. The completion of the network of railways has been
often enough promised, but never performed. And as in
general, so in detail ; what were once the most flourishing
cities of the Peninsula shrink in population one after
another, while countless citizens are plunged into poverty
and misery. The populace, specially in the country dis-
tricts, is so crushed by the national taxes as to furnish only
too good a justification of their protests.

But even among those who have no such cause of
complaint, the number of malcontents with the present
organisation of the State increases. Loud and ever louder
rise the demands of some for the substitution of a Republic
embracing the whole Peninsula for the present Monarchy,
while others would plunge the country into a war of which
no one can see the end, to conquer a district of a few
square miles.

The condition of things, therefore, which Hermann
Grimm thought was near at hand in 1865, and which in
XV1.—DANTE AND UNITED ITAEY—7419

the prefatory note, and at the close of my reprinted lecture,
I too have sketched as the object of my hopes, is surely not
yet realised. But in spite of all we will cling fast to the
hope.—Quite recently an esteemed friend who, like myself,
has long cherished a warm love of Italy, wrote to me from
Rome:

¢ As Italy now stands there are dangerous pitfalls here and
there, but lightly covered over. Yet take it for all in all, the
foundation is sound. It is probable that the good leaven of
Northern Italy, and especially Piedmont, may be gradually some-
what Weapolitanised ; but no one can deny that the nation,
especially the middle and upper classes, have set their hands to the
work and will not lightly look back, and the opportunity and the
inclination for learning are likewise gradually spreading.’
APPENDIX

TO ESSAY 1.

THE beautiful summary of Dr. Witte’s view of the mutual relations
of Dante’s three great works, which appears in this essay, presents his
conception in its most general form, and the one least open to criticism.
That Dante’s life is divided into three periods, one of youthful innocence,
one of backsliding, and one of final triumph, seems to admit of no
doubt. The only questions are, whether the leading characteristic of the
period during which he fell from grace was an overweening confidence
in human philosophy, or simply some form of moral unfaithfulness ;
and (closely connected with this) whether the Amoroso Convivio is the
record of the period of alienation, or of the first stage of the recovery.
We shall find a more suitable opportunity for discussing these questions
in connection with the third essay, in which Dr. Witte elaborates his
hypothesis in further detail.

Dante’s relation to the political and ecclesiastical parties and ideals
of his time may be more closely studied in Professor Villari’s I Primi
Due Secoli della Storia di Firenze (2 vols. 8 lire; English translation
by Mme Villari, in 2 vols., Fisher Unwin, 32s.). I have endeavoured
to give a popular summary of Professor Villari’s conclusions in my
Introduction to the selections from Villani’s Clronicles of Florence,
translated by Miss Selfe (Constable, 6s.).

TO ESSAY II.

THIS essay contains much that is only of passing or secondary interest,
and many of the reproaches justly urged against the Dante scholarship
of the day have happily now ceased to be deserved.

Nevertheless it was impossible, for many reasons, to omit the essay
from this selection. It is the one referred to in the Introduction
(page ix), and has therefore a strong personal interest. The evident
and justifiable partiality with which the author himself regards it
(page 61) is a further reason for its inclusion. Moreover, it will give
the reader a vivid impression of the specific work which Witte set
himself to do, and did, viz. to vindicate what we may call the organic
treatment of Dante’s work as a whole. The scrappy and detached
treatment of special points or special passages, without reference to
Dante’s whole system of thought, upon which the author pours his
scorn, is unhappily not altogether a thing of the past; but Witte has
made it impossible for any serious and competent student of Dante to
be content with anything short of a complete survey of his life and

420
APPENDIX II 421

work, or to accept as final the interpretation of any detached passage
which does not relate it to the whole scheme.

We no longer study Dante as a collection of ‘beauties’ or a store-
house of curiosities,’ but treat him as a thinker and a poet, belonging
to every age, because so absolutely identified with the deepest life of
his own.

The reader should be warned, however, against the supposition that,
in detail, this essay represents the mature judgment of the author.
Dr. Witte has made no attempt to correct or qualify it in every point,
and we may therefore follow his example and be satisfied with this
general caution.

On one or two points, however, the reader may be glad of hints towards
the better understanding of the relations between various scholars, which
are assumed in the essay, but never set forth. Lombardi’s edition, in
three vols., bears the date of 1791. In 1794 Dionisi issued a quarto
pamphlet on ‘Funeral Panegyrics,” which contained a number of criticisms
on Lombardi’s text and notes. To these Lombardi immediately
answered in a tone to which Witte takes justifiable exception. This
answer was regarded by Lombardi as a supplement to his edition, and is
bound in at the beginning of the first volume in the British Museum
copy, and doubtless in other copies subsequent to 1794. In 1817 De
Romanis republished Lombardi’s edition in four volumes, with additions,
and introduced modifications into the text, which Witte regards as
crude. Then in 1818-19 came Biagioli’s first edition, which treated De
Romanis with the same discourtesy which Witte complains of as Biagioli’s
general characteristic. He declares, for instance, that De Romanis
had been so proud of one of his discoveries that he raised a shout that
could be heard from Rome to Paris. In his second edition, 1820-22,
De Romanis took note of Biagioli’s work with the kindly dignity and
equanimity which earns Witte’s praise. Without the knowledge of
these circumstances the passages on pages 35, 38, and elsewhere, are
hardly intelligible.

The curious reader may further be interested to know that L’Inferigno
(or as he preferred to write it, Lo’ Nferigno), referred to on page 21, is the
name borne as a member of the Academy della Crusca by Bastiano de’
Rossi, who was secretary of the Academy in 1595, when the first Cruscan
edition of the text of the Comedy appeared. He was virtually the editor.
The edition was avowedly undertaken in order to furnish a basis for the
citations of the Vocabolario issued in 1612, and the interest in it was
therefore purely philological, as implied in the text. But it is difficult
not to suspect that Witte meant to write L’Infarinato, not L’Inferigno.
The former is the Crusca name of Salviati, who was the chief editor of
the Vocabolario itself, and to whom therefore Witte’s words apply still
better than to his colleague. Margolotti, whose work on the first four

 

1 Compare for instance the statements on p. 33 as to the relation between
Nidobeato’s text and that of Lombardi and De Romanis, with pp. xxvi sg. of the
Prolegomeni Critici of the edition of the Divina Commedia, 1862.
422 ESSAYS ON DANTE

cantos of the Inferno is referred to on page 25, was a scholar of the
seventeenth century, though his notes were not published till 1819. He
informs us that the idea which he elaborates was started by Lo Smar-
rito, which is the Cruscan name of Carlo Dati, another seventeenth-cen-
tury scholar, who wrote a Difesa di Dante, etc. (see de Batines, Bibliog.
Dantesc., 1. 415 5q.), and left Ms. notes on the Comedy (see the Introduction
to Margolotti, page 49). Curiously enough Margolotti’s Ms. was itself
attributed by one of its possessors to this very Dati.

 

P. 23 note. The editions referred to are the Venice editions of 1757,
4 vols. in 5, 4to; and of 1760, 5 vols. 8vo; both of them published by
Zatta.

P. 26. Rosa-Morando wrote diverse essays and annotations on the
Comedy (see Index to Colomb de Batines), some of which are included
in the Zatta editions cited above; but I have not succeeded in tracing
the passage here referred to. Perazzini’s supposed monograph (iz einer
eignen Schrift are Witte’s words) does not exist. An elaborate note on
Purg. ix. 1, the substance of which is correctly given by Witte, is to
be found amongst his notes on Dante incorporated in a work on the
sermons of Saint Zeno. It is very amusing, and is worth looking up.
This and his other notes, together with the true account of his publica-
tion of 1775, and a warning against the error concerning it into which
Witte has fallen, will all be found in Filippo Scolari’s ¢ Intorno alle
Epistole Latine di Dante Alighieri. Venezia, 1844.

P. 27. The Colombine Library was founded in 1539 by the second
son of Christopher Columbus, and is now a part of the Cathedral
Library (Minerva). The Laurentian and Riccardian Libraries at
Florence and the Ambrosian Library at Milan are universally known.
The Barberini Library (p. 30) was founded about 1638. It is in the
Palazzo Barberini (Mizerva).

P. 32. A ‘hard apostrophe is a form such as lo’ztento.

P. 33. Poggiali’s Ms. (now in the Palatine Library in Florence)
is No. 163 in de Batines. The Stewart, Caetani, and Antaldi Mss.
(504, 375, and goo respectively in de Batines) are called after their
possessors. The Cassinese (de Batines 409) from the Convent of
Monte Cassino; the Angelica (de Batines 357) is in the Bibliotheca
Angelica in Rome, founded in 1614 by Angelo Rocca di Camerino, an
Augustinian monk ; and the Chigi ms. (de Batines 382) is in the
Bibliotheca Chigiana, founded by Fabio Chigi (Pope Alexander vir.)
in 1660, in Rome (Minerva). The Vatican ms. used by De Romanis is
a very celebrated one, formerly supposed to have been written by
Boccaccio. It is 319 in de Batines.

P. 46 note 2. Repetti’s work (1820) here cited is contained in
Inghirami’s Opuscoli, vol. i. pp. 373 sg. Probably Witte quotes from an
extra copy struck with its own pagination.

P. 52 note 1. The Memorie di religion, etc., was a Modena periodical,
in which Parenti’s remarks appeared. Ferd. Wolf’s note is on p. 43 of
the Anzeige-Blatt, at the end of Part 11. of the Vienna Fakrbiicher der
Litteratur for 1824.
APPENDIX III 423

P. 57. Bosone da Gubbio’s curious Canto, in which the extraordinary
opinion here mentioned is expressed, will be found on pp. 109 sq. of the
fourth vol. of the Roman edition (De Romanis) of 1817.

P. 57 note 1. Antonio Magliabecchi (died 1747) left his library of
30,000 volumes to Florence. It is the foundation of the Biblioteca
Nazionale (Minerva).

TO ESSAY III.

*_* Note that in this essay the quotations from the CoNvivio are not
always continuous, even when printed continuously.

As far as concerns Witte’s special conception of Dante’s life and
work, this must be regarded as the most important of his essays. Here
at last, after nearly fifty years, he works out in detail the hypothesis
which he had launched upon the world in his youthful challenge. Here
too he takes stock of the objections that have been urged against him,
and formulates his hypothesis in its ultimate shape. And this is there-
fore the appropriate place for pointing out the unsolved difficulties
which still remain, and for giving ourselves an account of our general
attitude towards Dr. Witte’s theory.

I shall attempt to set forth as briefly and clearly as possible the scope
of the controversy and the points in which Dr. Witte’s solution appears
to be unsatisfactory. In doing so I cannot profess to aim at impartiality
in the sense of suppressing my own strong opinion or refraining from
arraying the evidence in its support; but I hope I shall give no ground
for a charge of straining a controversial point. Indeed, I could wish that
in all polemics writers would make it a rule to be content with stating
their case and not pleading it. I believe that by so doing they would
both teach and learn far more than is possible otherwise, and would also
make polemics less wearisome and repellent.

It is admitted on all hands, then, that Dante was conscious of having
in some way fallen from a state of grace after Beatrice’s death, so that
repentance and reconciliation were necessary before she could again
become his guide and lead him through Paradise. The record of this
repentance and reconciliation is contained in the thirtieth and thirty-
first cantos of the Purgatory. The only matters on which there is
difference of opinion are, 1st, the nature of the lapse from the state of
grace with which Dante had to reproach himself, and, 2nd, the relation
which the Convivio bears to this phase of his life.

It will probably be admitted that a first reading of the passages in the
Purgatory will impress every reader with the feeling that Dante’s unfaith-
fulness to his ideal had consisted in some kind of moral aberration. But
this is not conclusive. First impressions are subject to correction from
deeper and more extended study. Dr. Witte maintains that such a cor-
rection is needed in the present case. He tells us that it can be proved
from Dante’s express statements that his lapse consisted, in the main,
in an alienation from religion and theology in favour of a presumptuous
human philosophy. But we must note that he expressly includes as a
424 ESSAYS ON DANTE

subordinate factor of Dante’s unfaithfulness a morally unworthy life.
In §§ xx.-xxii. of the essay on Gemma Donati (pp. 247-254) he main-
tains, against Scartazzini, that it was a life of moral, not intellectual,
aberration which Dante shared with Forese Donati, the present memory
of which * was ¢ still grievous’ when he met him in Purgatory (Purg. xxiii.
115 5¢.). And in the essay on ‘Dante’ (p. 13) he supposes that ‘when
once his thoughts were turned to this transitory life of earth, it may
well be that his receptive spirit sometimes allowed access to new
charms of mortal beauty.” But to Dr. Witte all this is secondary and
incidental. The main sin which Dante laments in the presence of
Beatrice is, he thinks, alienation from religion and theology. In the
face, however, of the objections raised by Klaczko and others, Dr. Witte
makes certain concessions or admissions. What do they amount to ?
and what does Dr. Witte still maintain? The admissions, though
inevitable, are startlingly extensive. Dante was not ‘even attracted’
to the coarse or refined forms of Epicurean unbelief prevalent in Florence
in his day (pp. 80, 81). He never gave ‘even temporary adhesion to
a heresy inimical to the Church or to religion generally’ (p. 84); he
was far from ‘refusing to accept the truths of religion unless they can
stand before the tests of philosophy’; he recognised in principle that
those truths ‘rest on a higher and independent basis’ (p. 84) ; and he
likens theology to the empyrean heaven, because it ¢suffereth not any
contention of opinions, or of sophistical arguments, because of the most
excellent certainty of its subject, which is God’ (pp. 72, 73)-

In what respect, then, is it still maintained that Dante had indulged
in intellectual speculation which constituted an alienation from religion
and called for such bitter repentance? The answer is, that he had
allowed to Philosophy a parallel and independent authority over against
Theology and the Church; so that, whereas religious truth was not to
be regarded as dependent on philosophical proof, yet neither was
philosophical truth dependent on religious sanction ; and indeed a propo-
sition might, at the same time, be theologically true and philosophically
erroneous. ‘It would appear by no means strange if he too had
trodden the path along which Anselm had already set out to unfold
the eternal truths by the light of pure reason as if there were no Holy
Scripture ; the path along which the Plilosop/i Puri had pressed ever
farther, till they reached the extreme position we have already described ’
(p. 84). ‘Surely this must force us to admit that at this stage of his
development the doctrine of the Church and the teaching of Averroés
had equal authority in his eyes, and he might, like the scholastic purz
philosophi, have declared that the same proposition might be theological
truth and philosophical error’ (p. 85). This, then, is the ultimate
form in which Dr. Witte thinks that he can establish Dante’s philo-
sophical apostasy. But it is strange that so candid and diligent a
scholar should have failed to notice that this charge of placing philo-
sophy oz the same level of authority as the Church, is expressly precluded
in so many words, by Dante himself, in the fifteenth chapter of the
fourth book of the Cozviwio. In this chapter Dante maintains as a
link in his argument that all men have one common origin, and declares
APPENDIX III 425

that his opponents must admit the same “if they are Christians,” He
now shows that the Philosophers (Aristotle) and the Gentiles (Z.e. the
poets, such as Ovid) hold the same opinion ; but, he adds (lines go s7.),
his poem “says Christians, and does not say Philosophers or Gentiles
(though their opinions, too, are opposed to my adversaries), because the
Christian opinion is of greater force, and shatters all cavil, thanks to the
supreme light of Heaven which illuminates it.’

Nor must it be thought that I am taking advantage of the phrase in
which Dr. Witte happens ultimately to formulate his statement of
Dante’s apostasy ; for whenever he puts his account of Dante’s state of
belief, or attitude of mind, into a form which can, by any stretch, be
regarded as culpable, he inevitably falls into direct contradiction with
Dante’s expressions in the Cozvivio. For example, on page 13 we
read (the italics are my own): ‘He (Dante) is infatuated by spiritual
pride, which persuades him that is own intellect is capable of fathoming
the hidden things of Eternity’; and on page 14 we hear of ‘the
presumptuous speculations of the intellect concerning things which must
ever remain unfathomable to it.” On page 74 it is implied that only
after his conversion Dante comes to see ¢ that the human spirit can never
attain a knowledge of eternal truths by following its own independent
path.” But in the Convivio (ii. 6:16) we read that Christ ¢ was the
light which illumines us in our darkness, as saith John the Evangelist,
and he told us the truth concerning these things [the angelic beings, as
to whom Aristotle and Plato speculated imperfectly], w/hick awe might
not know without kim, nor see as they are in truth.” In like manner,
when discussing the question of immortality, he cites, as usual, philo-
sophic authority, and then proceeds: ¢ And further, we are certified
thereof by the most true teaching of Christ, who is the way, the truth,
and the light: the way, because by it we go unimpeded to the belief
of this immortality ; the truth, because it suffereth no error ; the light,
because it enlightens us in the darkness of worldly ignorance. This
teaching, I say, assures us above all other reasons, because He gave it
us, who sees and measures our immortality, the which we cannot
perfectly see whilst our immortal is mingled with mortal; but wwe see
it perfectly by faith; and by reason we see it with a shade of obscurity,
the which cometh by the mingling of the mortal with the immortal.
And this should be the most potent argument’ (Convivio ii. 9 : 114 §g.).
And again: ‘It is no marvel if Divine Providence, which surpasses
all angelic and human perception, many a time proceeds by ways hidden
from us; for many times even human operations conceal their intent
from men themselves. But if is matter for great marvel when the
execution of the eternal counsel proceedeth so openly that our reason
discerns it’ (Convivio iv. §: 1 5q.).

Even on such a point as the question whether the diurnal movement
of the heaven of Venus is presided over by a special intelligence, or
whether it is due to the sweep of the primum mobile, he declares that it
would be ¢ presumptuous’ to pretend to determine (Cozvivio ii. 6 : 150).
Cf. No. 56 and p. 86.

The truth is that even if Dr. Witte’s thesis that Dante’s sin consisted
426 ESSAYS ON DANTE

mainly in presumptuous philosophical aberrations can be established,
we shall still be compelled, in the long-run, frankly to admit that there
is no trace whatever of such a state of mind in the Cozvivio. ‘Holy
Church which cannot lie’ (ii. 4:31) throughout secures unqualified
respect and loyalty. The miracles of Christ, “who created our reason,
and whose will it was that that reason should fall short of his power,’
are the ‘most chiefest foundation of our faith’ (iii. 7: 162 s¢.). Nay,
Religion itself is the true Philosophy; faith, hope, and charity are the
three virtues ¢ by which we rise to philosophise in that celestial Athens
where the Stoics, the Peripatetics, and the Epicureans, by the art of the
eternal Truth, harmoniously unite in one will’ (iii. 14 : 136).

The careful reader will not have failed to notice that Witte himself
declares that the philosophers whom Dante studied had ‘received a
sort of second baptism,” and that ‘even when, and in so far as the
Church had set aside their conclusions as erroneous, the evil will,
which alone is worthy of punishment, was absent’ (p. go). And in
another essay he declares that ¢ Dante, enlightened perhaps by his own
experience, did not demand any special expiation’ from those who
were led astray while honestly searching for the truth,” but “if they had
repented and submitted once more to the Church, he places them at
once completely in line with those who had never swerved from their
faith’ (p. 140). Where then would be the room for such bitter shame as
Dante experiences in the presence of Beatrice (since there was nothing
worthy i punishment, and no expiation was needed), even if he had
been obliged to withdraw from an erroneous position ? But, as a matter
of fact, Dante, while withdrawing special opinions that he had put forth
in the Convivio, never does withdraw from the general attitude towards
the philosophers which he there adopts. Dr. Witte points out his affec-
tionate reverence for Averroés and his high esteem for Abbot Joachim
after his supposed conversion, and calls attention to the fact that he still
appeals to Aristotle in the first rank when rehearsing his proofs of the
existence of God (p. 88). On Dr. Witte’s own showing it is difficult
to see in what essential respect Dante’s attitude differs before and after
his conversion.

Though unwilling to protract this discussion, I can hardly avoid
noticing the passage on which Dr. Witte lays such great stress,—the
one passage in which he thinks that he can find direct evidence that
Dante co-ordinated philosophy, as represented by Averroés, with the
authority of the Church (p. 85; cf. p. 72, No. 44). I cannot but
think that the force of Dr. Witte’s argument rests on a misapprehension.
The usual scholastic form under which a subject is treated is that of
a question. For instance, Thomas Aquinas sets out his proof of the
existence of God under ‘Part I. Question 2, Whether God exists.
The student who found the argument difficult, might say, I suppose,
that he was much perplexed by the Question, Whether God exists
(an Deus sit),” without for a moment implying that he had any kind of
doubt of the existence of the Divine Being. Now, in Dante’s allegorical
language, the student who is baffled in his studies is said to find his
lady’s sweet looks alienated from him. This, he says, was the case
APPENDIX III 427

with himself, “especially in those parts wherein I considered and
investigated whether the First Matter of the elements era da Dio intesa’
(Convivio iv. 1:63). Granting da Dio intesa to mean “created by
God’ (a matter on which I confess to grave doubts), the passage, I
take it, does not imply that Dante regarded the question between
Averroés and the Church as an open one, but merely that he was
studying the ¢Question, Utrum prima materia, etc.,” and was baffled
in his attempts to master it.

It is, of course, obvious that the Corwviwvio is spiritually and theolo-
gically less mature than the Paradiso. And specifically we find in the
latter portions of the fourth book of the Cozviwio a much less precise
and firmly held delimitation of the territories of reason and revelation,
the practical and the contemplative life, the Empire and the Church,
than can be found in the Comedy (or for the matter of that in the
Monarchia, which Witte puts many years before the Cozwiwvio), but
this is development, not conversion; a deepening and defining, not a
change, of mental and spiritual attitude.

As to the further attenuation of Witte’s hypothesis by which
Scartazzini (Prolegomeni, 228 sq.; Companion to Dante, 230, 237 $9.)
maintains that Dante’s sin was culpable lack of interest in Theology
during the Convivio period of his life, I need only say that I think
the student will find more numerous and emphatic references to the
Church and her doctrines in the Cozvivio than he will be able to detect
in the Aristotelian treatises of Thomas Aquinas. If Dante needed
repentance on this score so did St. Thomas. Indeed, the analogy is
very close—and very instructive. I can only regard Scartazzini’s inter-
pretation as an attempt to underprop the edifice raised by Witte, and so
save the trouble of rebuilding, though the foundation is allowed to have
given way.l

But the relation of the Convivio to Dante’s mental history, though
emphasised repeatedly by Dr. Witte, is not absolutely essential to his
general theory. It would be possible definitely to abandon the con-
tention that the Convivio reflects the mind of Dante during his apostasy,
and still maintain that that apostasy itself was primarily philosophical.
And here at first sight Dr. Witte appears to be on much firmer
ground, though here too there is at least one objection which appears
to me conclusive—I mean the failure of his system to give any adequate
account of the place of Virgil in the scheme of the Comedy. Reserving
our consideration of this point, let us sum up Dr. Witte’s main proofs
of his position. I notice, in passing, that the portion of the argument
which rests on the Canzoni, especially Nos. 30 to 34, is open to grave
objection ; for it assumes that a// the poems referred to are addressed to
philosophy, whereas one of them (Caznz. vi. in Dr. Witte’s numbering)
is with good reason taken by many students as referring to Beatrice
herself; and two more, Canz. vii. and x., must be regarded, by all but

 

Scartazzini, etc.
428 ESSAYS ON DANTE

the extremest school of allegorists, as addressed to actual women ;
leaving only two which can reasonably be read as allegorical references
to philosophy. But after all, these poems are only introduced by Dr.
Witte in a quite subsidiary manner. The main outlines of his
argument are firmly based on the Vita Nuova, the Convivio, and the
Comedy. We may summarise it thus:
1. Dante’s mind was alienated from Beatrice by the ¢ Lady of the
Window’ (Vita Nuova).
2. The ¢Lady of the Window’ is Philosophy (Convivio); there-
fore Dante’s mind was alienated from Beatrice by Philosophy
(also directly affirmed in the Convivio).
3. But Beatrice is Theology or Religion (Comedy); therefore
Dante’s mind was alienated from Religion by Philosophy.

The extreme difficulty of accepting this conclusion has, so far as I
am aware, never been met or even noticed by Dr. Witte or any of his
disciples. Virgil is admitted to represent human philosophy; and
Virgil is not the seducer who draws Dante away from Beatrice, but
the emissary that brings him back to her. He takes precisely the
position assigned to human philosophy by the schoolmen; and the
relation accurately represents the attitude of Dante’s mind with respect
to his philosophical studies in the Convivio. Indeed, as already hinted,
the Convivio might very well be described as an attempt to throw
into popular form the matter of the Aristotelian treatises of Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. But if human philosophy (including
Aristotelian philosophy) symbolised in the person of Virgil, is the
redeeming power that rescues Dante from the tangled forest and brings
him back to Beatrice, how can familiarity with that very philosophy be
the tangled forest itself?

The slight and incidental references to Virgil on pages 15 and 49
are wholly inadequate to meet this difficulty. On page 70 Dr.
Witte notes that the supposed seducing philosophy is represented,
in the first instance, by Cicero and Boethius, and he points out that
Cicero is a heathen writer, whereas he reminds us elsewhere that Virgil
(p- 15) enjoyed at least a fore-gleam of Christian truth. But in the
opinion of the Middle Ages, Boethius, whom Dante associates with
Cicero, was in the enjoyment, not of a fore-gleam, but of the full glory
of the Christian truth. Dante meets him in the Heaven of the Sun
(Par. x. 121), whereas Virgil is condemned to ‘eternal exile’ (Purg.
xxi. 18, and elsewhere). We must therefore regard the difficulty now
raised as retaining its full force.

The impossibility of the conclusion (that Philosophy, who is admitted
to be the first instrument of redemption, is also the seducer), amounting
to a reductio ad absurdum, throws us back on a re-examination of the
argument by which it is reached, and we find that its apparent cogency
is due to the assumption that Dante’s scheme of symbolism throughout
the three works is uniform and consistent. Now we have certainly
no right to assume the contrary of this, and it may be urged that the
antecedent probabilities are in its favour; but it cannot be taken as an
axiom, and it must yield to an examination of the facts, should they
APPENDIX III 429

prove to be hostile to it. And I think they do. Dr. Witte’s attempt
to maintain the consistency of the representations in the Vita Nuova
and the Convivio will hardly satisfy the careful reader of the two
works themselves. In the Vita Nuova Dante apparently comes under
the influence of the ‘donna gentile,” soon after the first anniversary of
Beatrice’s death; in the Cozvivio not till after two revolutions of
Venus (nearer three years than two); in the Vita Nuova the whole
period of estrangement covers ‘certain days,’ and is followed by a
repentant return to Beatrice; in the Cozwvivio its initial phase covers
thirty months, and its vigour an indefinite period, of the close of which
we have no indication.! The Vita Nuova contains a sonnet (No. 22)
recording the conflict between the core (heart) and the anima (soul) ; the
core pleading for the ‘donna gentile’ and the anima for Beatrice; and
Dante tells us that he wrote this in order that his state might be known
to others ; and also that the core means appetite or inclination, and the
anima reason. In the Comvivio he gives us a canzone avowedly
written with reference to the very same circumstances and persons
that inspired the sonnet of the Vita Nuova; and here again the con-
troversy is between the core and the anima, the core taking the side of
the ‘donna gentile,” and the amma that of Beatrice. But here the
poet warns us with emphasis, not to say with a certain asperity, and with
obvious reference to his assertions in the Vita Nuova, ¢ Be it known
that in all this canzone, according to one sense [literally] and the
other [allegorically] core is to be taken for the inward self (secreto
dentro) and not for any other special part, either of the soul or of the
body’; and he declares that he did not reveal his real state because no
one would have believed it (Corvivio ii. 7:20; 13:63). Without
entering now upon the question whether the events Dante allegorises
in the Cozvivio had originally an objective reality which is literally
recorded in the Vita Nuova,—a point on which Dr. Witte himself seems
to be in doubt (pp. 78, 79),—we must at least admit that these apparent
inconsistencies shake our confidence in any inferences that rest on the
supposition of a rigid consistency of the scheme of symbolism in the
Vita Nuova and the Convivio.

Nor is it possible to find a consistent scheme common to the Convivio
and the Comedy. In the Comedy Virgil represents human, and Beatrice,
divine philosophy. In the Conviwio undifferentiated philosophy, in-
cluding both its human and its divine aspects, is symbolised under the

 

1 The passage on Alfraganus in the original (p. 95) runs: ¢Prof. Boehmer
macht mich indess sehr richtig darauf aufmerksam, dass hier von dem Durch-
messen des Epicyklus die Rede ist, wofiir Alferganus (Ed. Golius, p. 17) 564, und
Ptolomaeus im Almagest noch etwas genauer 583 neun zehntel, Tage angibt.’
The passage occurs on p. 65 (not 17) of Golius’ edition of Alfraganus, and
the period is given as one Persian year, seven months, and nearly nine days.
Prof. Schiaparelli (in Lubin’s Dante e gli Astronomi Italiani, Trieste, 1895,
p. 44) works this out, on the data of Alfraganus himself, to nearly 584 days.
I suppose therefore that Witte’s 564 is simply a misprint for 584, and have
corrected it accordingly.
430 ESSAYS ON DANTE

“donna gentile.” In neither is there any conflict or rivalry between the
higher and the lower, the human and the divine, philosophy.

But, it may be urged, in the Convivio at least, philosophy is the
rival, and for a time the victorious rival, of Beatrice. This is perfectly
true; but there is nothing whatever to show that either in the Vita
Nuova or in the Convivio Beatrice, in any specific sense, represents
religion or theology. On the contrary, she is simply the blessed spirit
now in heaven, the last mention of whom in ¢ this book’ (the Corwivio)
is fitly linked with the assertion of the immortality of the Auman soul
(ii. 9: 49). Every unsophisticated reader will feel the force of Dr.
Witte’s beautiful words (p. 10) in speaking of Dante’s love for Beatrice:
¢No need to call a love like this the allegory of piety; it is itself a
vision of God upon earth.” In Dante’s conception of Beatrice, then,
the personal element was still so preponderating as to be all-absorbing.
Her symbolic significance was inherent and implicit, not erected into
explicit and conscious parallelism with her personal significance. At
such a time, had Dante felt a growing interest in the study of the
most orthodox theology stealing his thoughts away from the sweet
image and memory of Beatrice, Theology herself would have been
Beatrice’s rival. The Convivvio, then, does indeed tell us how Philosophy
(including Theology) was for a time the victorious rival of Beatrice.
But then in the Corvivio Beatrice is not Theology. In the Comedy
she is indeed Theology, but then Philosophy is not her rival but her
redeeming emissary.

The argument therefore appears to be as unsafe as the conclusion
is impossible.

There remains, however, one passage which seems at first sight to
bear strong witness to the truth of Dr. Witte’s hypothesis, and until
some unforced and adequate account of it (which I confess myself unable
to offer) is given, the general question must be subject to reconsidera-
tion, even though Dr. Witte’s hypothesis be felt to be in no case tenable.
It is the passage in the concluding canto of the Purgatory (lines 82 sq.;
cf. p. 75, No. 55), in which Beatrice purposely speaks in language
which Dante cannot understand, and declares that she does so in order
that he may recognise ‘that school’ which he has followed, and see
how far it falls short of the comprehension of divine things. When
Dante answers that he was not aware that he had ever strayed away
from her at all, she answers that the very fact of his having forgotten
that he had strayed from her shows that that straying was not guiltless ;
for it is only guilty memories which have been washed away by Lethe.
Now the most natural way to understand this passage certainly is to
take Beatrice as first condemning the school in which Dante has
studied as izadequate, and then (when he declares that he is not aware
of ever having studied in any other school than hers at all) to go on to
denounce his forgotten studies in the said school as guilty. It is natural
enough that this should be taken by Dr. Witte as an express confirmation
of his hypothesis; but in reality it proves too much. Dante comes to
FAR from the teaching of Virgil; his is “that school” in which
Dante has just studied, and which Beatrice shows to be so inadequate.
APPENDIX III 431

Now, it is impossible, on Dr. Witte’s hypothesis or any other, to suppose
that Beatrice regards it as a guilty thing on Dante's part to have given
himself over to the guidance of Virgil, whom she herself despatched to
his aid. The guilt of straying away from Beatrice cannot therefore
be identical with study under that inadequate school which at any rate
brings him back to her, though it does not in itself enable him to
understand her. This is not the place for a more elaborate examination
of this very difficult passage. We may, as far as the present matter is
concerned, leave it as a locus desperatus, but in no case does it seem,
when closely examined, really to support Dr. Witte’s hypothesis. If
the reader, however, thinks that this is pressing a controversial point
too far, I must leave him to reconcile, as best he may, this isolated
statement with the general structure of the Comedy and the character
of the Convivio.

It would be unsuitable here to attempt in any detail a rival treatment
of the relations between the Vita Nuova, the Convivio, and the Comedy;
but the reader may fairly ask whether I have anything to substitute
for Dr. Witte’s attempt to relate these three works. I will therefore
indicate in briefest outline the view which seems to me most in harmony
with the facts. Dante tells us that one of his objects in writing the
Convicvio was to remove the ‘infamy’ which would attach to him in
the minds of the readers of his Canzoni, and intimates, not obscurely,
that he refers to the earthly passion which some of those Canzoni
breathe (i. 2 : 114 s¢.). He is going to explain that in reality they are
allegorical, and therefore do not tell of any earthly passion at all. Now
there is not one of the three Canzoni actually commented on which
could be spoken of, however understood, as reflecting ‘infamy’ upon
its author. The one that stands at the head of the second book, even
if taken literally, tells us nothing which has not been told in the Vita
Nuova, and Dante is far from regarding that work as reflecting
‘infamy’ upon him, though he seems a little shamefaced about its
youthful lack of virility (i. 1 : 111 s¢.). But amongst the Canzoni which
Witte and others include, with excellent reason, amongst the poems
which were to have been commented upon in the unwritten books of
the Convivio, there are at least two which fully explain Dante’s
uneasiness. They are the poems beginning respectively ¢ Amor, dacche
convien pur cio mi dogha’® and “Cosi nel mio parlar voglio esser
aspro’ The first of these is very safely identified with the poem
referred to in Letter iii. (to Maroello Malaspina). See above, pp. 213
5g., and below, Appendix vir. The second, which is by far the more
important of the two for our present purpose, is practically certified as a
work of Dantes by the use Petrarch makes of its opening line in his
Canzone ‘ Lasso me, ch’ i non so in qual parte pieghi,’ and is identified ds
the intended text of Book vii. of the Convivio by a comparison of line 36
with Coz. iv. 26: 66. These two Canzoni are poems of great force and
splendour, but they unmistakably breathe an earthly passion in every line.
The attempt to allegorise them is bold indeed. Opinions may differ as
to the degree of moral deflection, whether of mind or of life, which
432 ESSAYS ON DANTE

they indicate, or whether so strong a word as ‘infamy’ is justified in
connection with them; but in any case they indicate a state of passion
alien alike from the spirit of the Vita Nuova and of the Paradiso, and
inconsistent with the lofty and prophetic tone assumed in the Corvivio.

‘We have seen that there is abundant reason (admitted by Dr. Witte
himself) to believe that after Beatrice’s death Dante failed to retain the
moral elevation into which he was lifted by her youthful eyes’ (Purg.
xxx. 122). During this period he may have written these Canzoni.
This period is symbolised in the Comedy by his wandering in the
tangled forest. He is rescued from this moral disorder, or unworthiness,
by his study of Philosophy. His ancient hope to write of Beatrice
‘what ne’er was writ of woman’ (Vita Nuova, § 43) revives; but he
is not ready for the task. In the first place his passion now is for the
study of Philosophy. Beatrice has a rival even in his higher life.
Indeed he has found in Philosophy a ¢ better’ guide (Cozvivio ii. 16: 55).
And in the second place there are elements in his recent past which
cannot be brought into immediate association with Beatrice. He must
proceed to get rid of them ; but he takes the false path of striving
to get rid of them by explaining them away.

So he begins the Conzvivio with the twofold purpose of glorifying his
present mistress (Philosophy), and of explaining away such part of his
own reputation as seems inconsistent with the high missionary purpose
he now entertains. He will allegorise all his Canzoni addressed to
mortal women, other than Beatrice. Even the innocent Canzone ‘ /oz
che intendendo il terzo ciel movete® offers difficulties. It cannot be
allegorised without a certain disingenuousness. But as Dante approaches
the other canzoni his conscience revolts from the task. His past stands
between him and ¢that blessed Beatrice * of whom he does not purpose
to speak further in this book.” Like Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, he is striving
to ‘get round’ the obstacles between himself and his ideal instead of
‘going through” them. And the very attempt to dissociate Beatrice
from his ethical and philosophical enthusiasm only concentrates his
attention upon her ; and his inmost consciousness feels that this higher
moral and intellectual life must seek alliance with her memory, not
estrangement from it. The experiences of 1310-1313 pass his whole
nature through the furnace, and teach him that he can build on naught
save the eternal truth. He sees his error. Such things in his past life
as part him from Beatrice are not to be explained away, but bitterly
repented. He deluded himself when he said that Philosophy was
Beatrice’s rival. Her only rivals are the world and the flesh. As for
Philosophy, in its lower aspect it is Beatrice’s emissary, in its higher
aspect Beatrice’s self. His study of Philosophy has led him back to her.
He re-reads his own mental history, he reconstructs his scheme of
symbolism. The Cozvivio is cast aside, superseded in its mechanism,
and damned by its taint of disingenuousness. His studies in Philosophy
(always guided by Theology, as the Convivio clearly enough shows)
have deepened and purified his life, till at last, in spite of himself, they
have brought him back, in an agony of shame, to Beatrice, now glorified
into the symbol of Theology herself,—and the Comedy is born.
APPENDIX IV 433

TO ESSAY IV.

IN reading this singularly beautiful and instructive essay, the reader
will probably be startled by the passage on p. 108, in which so unsatis-
factory an interpretation is given to the significance of the three lower
planets. The qualifications on the following page partly contradict
but do not at all justify it. Leaving the reader to make his own de-
tailed criticisms on the passage, we may attempt a more satisfactory
explanation of the general significance of the scheme of the Paradiso.

The reference to the four Cardinal Virtues in the higher planetary
heavens is sufficiently obvious. The Sun, which illumines all other
heavenly bodies, and contains the spirits of the sages and the doctors of
the Church, corresponds with Prudence, the virtue that guides all the
rest (cf. Purg. xxix. 132). Mars corresponds to Fortitude ; the equable
Jupiter, where are the spirits of just rulers, to Justice ; and Saturn, the
patron of the Golden Age (cf. Purg. xxii. 148), whose star is now the
seat of the anchorites, corresponds to Temperance. This vindication of
a place for the moral virtues in the structure of Paradise itself, where
their functions have been absorbed into rapturous contemplation, is very
noteworthy. The tone and colour, so to speak, of the heavenly fruition
of the blessed is affected by the nature of the moral warfare through
which they rose to spiritual victory.

But what of the three theological virtues, which we should expect to
find particularly prominent in the Paradiso? They appear to receive a
twofold treatment. First, a negative treatment in the lower spheres which
still bear traces of imperfection. Here we find,

1. In the Moon, want of sufficient fait/ in the nuns who have,
under pressure, broken their vows.

2. In Mercury, the earthly substitute, ambition, for the heavenly
/Kope, which is the second of the theological virtues. It must
be borne in mind that, in the terminology of the theologians,
hope means specifically the hope of heaven. The souls in
Mercury have been actuated, not by the hope of heaven, but
by the hope of earthy glory or credit.

3. In Venus we have the souls of those in whose lives earthly love
has taken the place of cAarity or heavenly love.

Thus while the variety of the higher spheres is partly determined by
the relative stress of the moral virtues through practice of which they
were attained, the gradations of the lower ones are caused by weakness
or perversion of the theological virtues.

The second and positive treatment of the theme is of course found in
the heaven of the fixed stars, where the three pillar apostles receive
Dante’s profession of Faith, Hope, and Love.

oA 2 E
434 ESSAYS ON DANTE

TO ESSAY V,

THERE are several points in this essay on which notes seem desir-
able.

I. Page 127, No. v. Aristotle's Threefold Division of
Immoral Actions. Cf. p. 147.

The relation of Aristotle’s threefold division of things to be morally
shunned (Circa mores fugienda of the Latin translation) to the system
of the Inferno can by no means be dismissed after the summary fashion
adopted by Dr. Witte in this section. Whether we are to take the
classifications of Inf. xi. 22 sq. and xi. 79 sq. as identical in substance
and differing only in phraseology, or whether, on the other hand, we are
to regard the latter passage as an incidental reference that has no organic
relation to the general scheme of Hell, depends chiefly upon whether
we can identify the bestialitade (brutishness) of 1. 82 with the forza
(violence) of 1. 24. Dr. Witte and others think we cannot, whereas
Wegele, Scartazzini, and others unhesitatingly declare that we must,
thus equate ‘brutishness’ and ‘violence.’ By the ‘Violent’ Virgil
understands, 1st, cruel tyrants, murderers, and highway robbers ; 2nd,
suicides and gambling squanderers of their substance ; 3rd, blasphemers
and sinners against nature. Let us begin by inquiring what Aristotle
understood by ¢brutishness * (bestialitas of the Latin translation). The
Commentators complain of a certain confusion in the opening portions
in the 7th Book of the Nicomachean Ethics ; but the points which bear
specifically upon the matter in hand seem to be sufficiently clear. Aristotle
(vii. 5.1.) distinguishes between things which are naturally pleasant on the
one hand, and things which are naturally repulsive, and become pleasant
only to morbid and depraved appetites on the other hand. Those who
are attracted by these latter are the brutish.” It will be seen at once that
this general description answers closely to the character of the denizens
of the circle of the Violent. They disinterestedly hate or violate God,
themselves, and their neighbours, all of which are the objects of natural
affection (cf. Purg. xvii. 106 sq. ; Convivioi.1: 55 sq.). If we go on to
examine Aristotle’s specific instances of ¢brutishness’ we find some
striking coincidences. The case of Phalaris is mentioned as an illustra-
tion, apparently because of some specific abomination of a cannibalistic
character that was attributed to him (vii. 5.2 and 7) ; but Thomas Aquinas,
in his Lecture v. on the 7th Book of the E#/ics, explains it simply as a
reference to his well-known cruelty. Phalaris found a disinterested

 

1 First a note on a special point. I cannot trace the assertion ascribed to
Scarabelli on p. 139. ‘Cf. his Esempl. della D. C., i. 181, and his 1866 ed. of
Jac. della Lana, i. 242, where he defends the reading in question. Christina,
Princess of Belgioioso (near Pavia), known as an author and a patriot (b. 1808,
d. 1871), was a daughter of the Marchese Trivulzio of Milan, who owned a
magnificent collection of Dante mss. I gather from Dr. Witte’s words that one
of these was given to the Princess, and that it passed back (by purchase or
bequest ?) into the Trivulzio Library at her (or her husband’s) death.
APPENDIX V 435

delight in the tortures of men (iz ipsis cruciatibus hominum delectabatur).
And in any case, a little lower down (5. 5) excessive cruelty 1s mentioned
as one of the brutish passions. Thus the denizens of the first belt of
the Violent (or at any rate the worst of them) are categorically included
amongst Aristotle’s ‘brutish.’ With respect to the second belt, we find
no mention in Aristotle of suicide amongst the acts of ¢brutishness,” but
according to the doctrine repeatedly expounded by Aquinas, and ex-
pressly adopted by Dante (Purg. xvii. 108), self-hatred is, humanly
speaking, impossible, and therefore suicide is one of those monstrous
and inhuman perversions by which death, supposed to be most repulsive
of all things to the natural man, becomes the object of a morbid desire.
The other denizens of the second belt may be brought under the ¢exces-
sive folly’ (insipientia of the Latin translation) regarded by Aristotle
as brutish (5. 5); and it is further to be noted that elsewhere (E#4.
Nic. iv. 1. 5) Aristotle declares prodigality to be ‘a kind of destruction
of oneself.” In excess therefore it would be a sort of suicide. In belt
three the case is too clear to need much elaboration. The leading sin
of this belt is specified by Aristotle as a case of ¢brutishness’ (5. 3),
and is again and again specifically denounced as bestialitas by Aquinas.
Dr. Witte implies, on page 128, that the presence of Guido Guerra
and the other ¢worthy ones’ in the circle of the Violent is sufficient
proof that ‘violence’ is not identical with ¢brutishness’; and it may
be true enough, as he says, that Dante would never have admitted that
these men had ¢by their brutishness entirely forfeited those gifts which
distinguish men from animals,” for a man may not be utterly brutish
and inhuman although he has been guilty of a brutish and inhuman
sin; but as far as the sin itself is concerned, it is simply a matter of
fact that Dante attributes to these men an offence which is specifically
scheduled by Aristotle as ¢brutish,” and as showing (see below) the
non-existence of the specifically human characteristics in the offender who
is guilty of it; and in like manner it is again and again declared by
the schoolmen to be outside the range of even sinful humanity, and
therefore to be pre-eminently brutish. An indefinite number of refer-
ences might be given in support of this, but let one suffice (Thomas
Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. iii. Dist. 37, expositio
textus).

It is true, as one would naturally expect it to be, that Aristotle does
not include blasphemy amongst the brutish sins; but its inclusion
under the general category of monstrous impulses counter to the primal
natural affections would be a matter of course with a Christian writer
(cf. Purg. xvii. 109 sg.)

Lastly, usury is not mentioned by Aristotle as a case of brutish-
ness. But it is quite in the spirit both of the Aristotelian and of the
Christian systems to regard usury as a sin against nature, though
it cannot, without some violence, be brought under the ruling idea
of ¢brutishness.’

We have seen then that a great portion of the sins found amongst the
‘Violent’ are directly specified by Aristotle as ¢ brutish,’ and that the rest
(with one possible exception) would naturally range themselves, in the
436 ESSAYS ON DANTE

mind of a Christian writer, under his general description of ¢brutishness’
as the love of things naturally repulsive.

The only enormities which Aristotle includes under ¢ brutishness,’ and
which are of represented amongst the denizens of the seventh circle,
are excessive cowardice and morbid forms of appetite, in the narrower
sense, such as gnawing earth or cinders, eating raw meat, and cannibal-
ism of various general and specific kinds. He does, indeed, add the
morbid habit of plucking out hairs and gnawing the nails; but though
these are not characteristic of the denizens of the seventh circle itself, it
will not escape the reader’s notice that the Minotaur—the guardian of
the whole circle—is specially said to gnaw himself in his rage (Inf.
xii. va).

And this leads to the remark that all the guardians and tormentors
of this circle are either beasts (the black bitches) or forms of mingled
man and animal (the Minotaur, the Centaurs, the Harpies). Surely
this is not accidental; and it is another reason for identifying the
inhabitants of this circle with the brutish.’

So far, then, as the positive characteristics of Aristotle’s ¢ brutish > and
of the ¢violent® denizens of the seventh circle are concerned, it is im-
possible to deny that there is an almost complete coincidence between
them both in the general principle and in the specific instances.

We are now In a position to take up the question in its more
general aspect. In Inf. xi. 22 sq. Virgil (following Cicero) divides
malice” (malitia) into that which injures others by violence and that
which injures them by fraud. This division takes no account of
the incontinent sinners through whose circles the poets have already
passed. When Dante, puzzled by this omission, asks for further
explanations, he is met with a somewhat sharp rebuke; he ought
to have solved the problem himself by reference to the threefold
division of the Ethics, the division, viz., into malice, incontinence, and
brutishness. Now, the question is, Does Virgil mean that Dante ought
to have recognised, under the Ciceronian terminology, the Aristotelian
division of sins with which he was extremely familiar,! and which
supplied the supplement omitted by Cicero; or does he mean that he
ought to have introduced a gloss upon his words, derived from a system
wholly alien to the one he was expounding ?

Let us look at the two systems. According to Virgil, following
Cicero, malice (which aims at injury) is divided into wiolence and
fraud. According to (the Latin) Aristotle, the graver forms of moral
aberration may be classed under brutishness and malice. The question

 

1 Dante was early familiar with this portion of the Et#ics ; he makes use of
the quotation from Homer which it contains in the Vita Nuova (ii. : 51). He
repeatedly quotes it in the Conviwio; and in the De Monarchia (ii. 3 : 56) he
cites it as € in iis quae de moribus fugiendis ad Nicomachum.' (See the tables in
Moore’s Studies in Dante, 1896.) This interesting form of citation seems to
imply the general recognition of Aristotle’s treatment of the subject as classical,
and to justify Virgil's assumption that it would be in Dante’s mind when he
was listening to his exposition.
APPENDIX V 437

is whether this is the same classification given in other words, or a fresh
classification. We have seen that in substance there is a practical
coincidence between the Aristotelian ¢brutishness’ and the Virgilio-
Ciceronian violence’; and we now note that Virgil, again following
Cicero, distinguishes ¢fraud’ from violence’ on the ground that the
former is an evil peculiar to man (Inf. xi. 25) ; that is to say, it is the
abuse of the specific human faculty, viz. reason; and therefore a lower
place is assigned to it than to violence; and Aristotle (vii. 6. 7),
in declaring that ¢brutishness’ is a lesser evil than ‘malice,’ though
more terrible, illustrates his meaning by explaining that the best thing in
man exists in a corrupt state in the malicious, but does not exist at all in
the brutish. And, further, we note that in order to bring all the
denizens of the Malebolge (eighth circle) under the designation of
¢ fraudulent,” we are driven to give the word so wide an extension as to
make it include all abuse of the intellectual gifts, and so make it
equivalent to Aristotle’s “malice.” Compare, for instance, the flatterers,
the simonists, the astrologers (for Dante was far from believing that
astrology was a simple imposture), and the schismatics (e.g. Bertram
de Born, Curio, Geri del Bello, etc.). There is no inconsistency then in
the two classifications as far as their substantive contents are concerned ;
but the. terminology doubtless presents considerable difficulties to the
reader who confines his investigations to the Greek text of Aristotle!
For if we combine or equate the two classifications,? we shall find
malice (malitia) used in two distinct senses, one of which is a subdivision
of the other; for, on the one hand, brutishness and malice are co-
ordinated with each other, and, on the other hand, wiolence and fraud
(the equivalents of brutishness and malice) are both of them subdivisions
of malice. This difficulty, however, entirely disappears if we examine
the old Latin Aristotle. In the first place this version uses malitia in at
least two different senses (as a translation of kakia, vii. 1. 1, and of
poxbnpla, vii. 5.8), and thus sanctions the phrase malitia bestialis, used
by Aquinas, as an alternative to bestialitas; and in the second place it
distinctly states that bestialitas (brutishness) is a kind of malitia.
Aristotle (vii. 1. 2) really declares that brutisiness ¢is a different kind
of thing to malitia (kaka), but this is mistranslated in the Latin
version into ‘is a certain kind of malice’ (quoddam genus malitiae).
Thus malitia, in the Latin version, is both the inclusive term and one

 

1 It cannot be too much regretted that students of Dante almost always
neglect the Latin translations used by Dante. Dr. Witte himself has set us an
admirable example in his edition of the De Monarchia, in which his citations
are invariably taken from the old Latin versions of Aristotle, which we know,
or may suppose, were in Dante’s hands. These translations, though not very
easily obtained, are far from being inaccessible, They will be found, for
instance, in the editions of Averroés and of the Aristotelian Commentaries of
Thomas Aquinas and others.

2 Cicero. ARISTOTLE.
Malice violence = brutishness,

fraud = malice,
438 ESSAYS ON DANTE

of the divisions it includes, exactly as it is when we combine the two
passages in the Inferno. Virgil therefore, from the point of view of the
thirteenth- or fourteenth-century scholar, was perfectly justified in
assuming that Cicero’s classification, as he had expounded it, was
identical with Aristotle’, and in rebuking the dulness of his disciple
in not recognising it.

With respect to Todeschini’s treatment of this subject, summarised
by Dr. Witte on p. 147, we have again to regret the want of familiarity
with the Latin Aristotle. Todeschini (vol. i. p. 52) supposes that
Dante derived his use of the word zalizia in the Aristotelian passage
from ‘some old translation of the Et/ics, but he does not enter upon
any investigations of the matter, and therefore, though he notes (p. 57)
the ‘rigorously philosophical * use of the word zalizia in Inf. xi. line 82,
and its looser use in line 22, he has not the key to explain this, which
has been supplied above. Further, he has used Segni’s Italian transla-
tion of the Ethics, which is open to criticism as a translation of the
Greek, but is naturally quite unsatisfactory as a representative of the
Latin, with which alone we are really concerned. Thus the threefold
root of ‘brutishness,” of which Dr. Witte makes an effective use on
p- 147, assumes a very different complexion if read, not in Segni’s trans-
lation, but in the old Latin version. It is given twice; first in
Ethics vii. 1. 3, where the Latin reads ¢ Fiunt autem quidam, et propter
aegritudines et orbitates : et propter malitiam autem hominum superexce-
dentes, sic superinfamamus.’ And Thomas (Lecture 1.) explains orbitates
as ‘loss of their dear ones, whereby they fall into frenzy and become
as it were brutish’ (in which connection it may be worth noting that
Ovid relates in the Metamorphoses how Orpheus, grieving for the final
loss of Eurydice, fell into brutish vice). And the confused phrase,
¢ propter malitiam, etc.,’ he interprets ¢ because of great access of malitia.’
It will be seen at once that this leaves no room for Witte’s contention
that, on the Aristotelian scheme (as understood in Dante’s time),
brutishness can scarcely be regarded as a fit subject for punishment at
all. The other passage is in Ethics vil. §. 1: ‘Sed haec quidem propter
passiones sive orbitates, haec autem propter consuetudines fiunt, haec
autem propier <vitiosas naturas.’ It may be noted that in this passage
Thomas (Lecture v.) interprets orbitates more nearly as Todeschini
and modern scholars understand the Greek. But here, too, it is
impossible to regard ¢brutishness’ as merely an affliction, not a moral
offence.

It is hardly worth while to point out the error into which some of
the Commentators have fallen, in identifying the brutisiness of Inf. xi.
83, not with wiolence, but with fraud; and the malice of line 82, not
with fraud, but with violence. This blunder has arisen, of course, from
the order in which Virgil enumerates ¢incontinence, malice, and mad
brutishness.) But the order is not essential. It is as legitimate to take
the two extremes before the middle term as to follow the direct
sequence; and it may be noted that Aristotle himself (vii. 1. 1)
observes yet another order in his enumeration, viz. ¢ malitia, incontinentia
et bestialitas.’
APPENDIX V 439

II. Page 139, No. x11. Heresy.

The passage in Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences
(Book iv. Distinction 13, Question 2, Article 2, ad primum) will be
of interest in connection with the treatment of heresy in the Purgatorio.
¢ Heresy is relegated by the saints outside the number of sins which
occur among the faithful, as exceeding such, and therefore it is not
reckoned amongst the capital sins, nor amongst their offspring. . . .
Yet if it must be reduced to some one of the seven capital sins, it may
be brought under Pride.’

III. Page 140, No. X11. Sluggishness; cf. pp. 148 sq.

The controversy as to the €accidiosi’ really resolves itself into the
question whether ~“sluggishness’ (accidia) can be taken to include
“sulkiness.” A glance at the comparative table of the systems of Hell
and Purgatory on p. 120 will show that if the old Commentators were
right in placing the ¢ accidiosi” as well as the wrathful in the fifth circle of
the Inferno, we should get a far more symmetrical relation between the
two systems than we can obtain otherwise. Nevertheless, the objections
urged by Scartazzini, Todeschini, Witte, and others seem to be con-
clusive, more especially as ¢ accidia’ is defect of love (Purg. xvii. 130 sq.).
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Secunda secundae, Question 35, Article
3, conclusio), so that the opposite extreme, if there were such a thing,
would be ‘excess of love, not ‘anger.’ But the truth is that the
Aristotelian conception of virtue as a mean fits ill with the Christian
teaching, and it is vain to look for any systematic elaboration of it in
Dante’s ethical systems.

The essential point, however, is that in any case the reader need not
“do violence to his own instinct and destroy one of the most convincing
and penetrating passages in the whole of the Inferno, by persuading
himself that the ‘gloomy’ ones who have nursed the ¢sluggish fumes’
in their hearts are any other than the sulky and sullen beings which
they ruefully proclaim themselves to be. If they are ¢accidiosi, it is
only because ¢ accidia’ includes and implies sullenness.

IV. Pages 149 sq.

It seems strange that neither Todeschini nor Witte should have
been struck by the idea so obviously suggested by the speculations of
the former, that the three circles (of the neutrals, the virtuous heathen,
and the heretics) which stand outside the ethical system of the Inferno,
are connected respectively with the lack of the three theological virtues.
Love, in its widest sense, is the source of ‘every good work and its
contrary > (Purg. xviii. 15); and the denizens of the ante-Hell have
‘lived without infamy and without praise’ (Izf. iii. 36); that is to
say, have done neither the good nor the evil to which love prompts.
Of the denizens in the Limbo Virgil expressly says: ¢ Without /gpe we
live in longing.” The connection between the circle of the heretics and
want of fait/ is too obvious to need development.
440 ESSAYS ON DANTE

TO ESSAY VI
I have inserted an indication of the site of the houses of the Sacchetti,
which seems very necessary to enable the reader to follow Witte’s argu-
ment on pp. 156 sq.

 

P. 160. I do not understand what M. Perrens has done to deserve
this implied reproach. I can only find that he makes use (with full
acknowledgments) of some of Carbone’s data. He does not reproduce
his map.

P. 162. The ¢Black * Cerchi are a branch of the family. They were
Whites, not Blacks, in politics.

Pp. 166 sg. The whole of this passage on the Fortress of Altafonte
and the supposed necessity of reconstructing Villani’s data with respect
to the southern boundary of Florentia Quadrata is extremely hazardous.
The existence of a fortress once held by the family of Altafronte
in the exact position assigned to it in the maps is guaranteed by
a deed of sale of the year 1180, which will be found in Santini’s
Documenti dell’ Antica Constituzione del Comune di Firenze (Florence,
1895), p- 522-

It seems obvious that the walls, after following the Via della Terma,
as Villani says, ran out into a horn expressly to include this fortress
commanding the river. I would direct the attention of pilgrims to
Florence to the curious little alley running for a short distance along
a line that would lead, roughly, from somewhere near the ancient
Porta San Maria to Altafonte. Can this be a remnant of the old line
of street and wall ?

TO ESSAYS VII. anp VIIL

THESE two essays are closely connected, and it might perhaps have
been simpler to reverse their order in the volume, since our seventh
essay repeatedly assumes and deals with material which is introduced in
our eighth. But the justification (such as it is) for the order adopted
can be gathered from p. xiii of the Introduction.

The seventh essay, as a whole, makes severer demands upon the
reader’s attention than any other contained in the volume, and probably
few will have the patience to work through all its details. Those few
will reap the reward of some insight into the methods and difficulties
of historical investigation, a deepened sense of the recklessness with
which statements are made, and the corresponding caution with which
they must be received, and above all, a profound distrust of the fantastic
conjectures started by Troya, which still haunt the current works on
Dante, and are a fruitful source of unwarranted assertion and of miscon-
ception,

I much regret that Dr. Witte’s references and indications are not
sufficiently precise to enable me to discover the essays in which Troya
works out the more elaborate portions of his theory as to the two
Alessandros and as to Guido’s two wives. Possibly they were privately
APPENDIX VI-VII am

communicated. Under these circumstances, aggravated by the elliptical
and allusive style of some of Dr. Witte’s arguments, I fear that the
reconstruction of Troya’s views implied in my translation is occasion-
ally a trifle conjectural. This applies specifically to pp. 196, 197.

With reference to the longest of the discussions of this essay
(pp. 190 sq.) the reader may consult the remarks below on Dante's
supposed letter of condolence ; but Mr. A. J. Butler’s note on Inf. xxx. 79
really hits the nail on the head. ¢We have, however, plenty of in-
stances in which private friendship does not hinder him [Dante] from
branding misdeeds.’

As to the date (which is of great importance with reference to
Dante’s biography) of the convention at S. Godenzo, the reader will
find it conclusively established as 1302 by Del Lungo, Dino Compagni,
ii. 562 sg.

P. 174. Tolosano’s Chronicle will be found in Mittarelli’s Accessiones
Fawventine. He attributes Tegrimo’s surname to the vengeance he
took on the Ravennese whenever he had a chance (cap. xi.).

P. 192. Bernardino Azzurini was a Faenzan notary who collected and
annotated documents illustrative of the history of Faenza with great
diligence. Mittarelli made ample use of his collections, which ultimately
came into the possession of the municipality.

Pp. 195, 196. Many readers may be glad to have an explanation of
the reference on these pages to the ¢Indiction,’ as a means of checking
dates. The Indiction is a period of fifteen years, and as soon as one
Indiction ends another begins. This system of reckoning starts from
313, which is the first year of the first Indiction, 314 being the
second, etc., and 327 the fifteenth. Then 328 is the first year of
the Indiction again, and so forth. The Indictions themselves are not
numbered, but the place of each year in the current Indiction is given.
Now the document under discussion contains (in addition to the date,
declared by Tonduzzi to be illegible) the statement that the year was
the fourteenth of the Indiction. The year 1316 was actually the
fourteenth of the Indiction, and travelling backward we find that the
next earlier year which is the fourteenth of the Indiction is 1301, which
is still too late according to Wiistenfeld’s deduction from the fact that
Ugolino Fantolini’s estate had not yet been partitioned. Travelling
back again, the next year that is the fourteenth of the Indiction is
1286.

Essay vir. has been included in this selection partly because of its
historical interest, as containing the announcement of Witte’s important
discovery, and partly because Dante’s letters are not very accessible to
the English reader, and he may be glad of any information about them.
Since Witte’s time, however, a good deal has been written on Dante’s
letters, and his opinions must not be taken as representing the present
state of scholarship. The scepticism which Todeschini confined to the
two first letters generally included in the collections of Dante’s corre-
spondence has spread until Scartazzini (Handbook, Part iv. chap. vi.) has
442 ESSAYS ON DANTE

denied the authenticity of every one of the letters, except that addressed
to Henry viI., which he provisionally allows to pass (p. 348); and Kraus
(Dante, etc., Berlin, 1897, pp. 287 s¢.) has included even this letter in his
wholesale rejection. A more moderate position is taken by Edmund
Gardner in chapter vii. of his Dante's Ten Heavens (London, 1898) ; but
even he follows Scartazzini in rejecting the letter ¢ to a Florentine friend.’
It is impossible not to regard many of Scartazzini’s and more of Krauss
arguments as reckless and self-contradictory ; and Gardner does not
attempt to give the grounds of his judgment; so that the whole
question of the authenticity of Dante’s letters must be regarded as
awaiting adequate treatment. Meanwhile it is necessary to lay stress
on an aspect of the question which is too often neglected. The writers
on the subject often speak as though every letter that appears in the
collections of Dante’s correspondence must either be written by him or
be a deliberate forgery; or at most they admit, as a third possibility,
that it may be a mere literary exercise’ or school theme. But these
alternatives by no means exhaust the possibilities. It may well be that
genuine letters, written under the circumstances which their language im-
plies, may have been falsely or carelessly attributed to Dante by some one
who was struck by their suitability to some moment of his life. It is
strange that scholars should not have recognised this process as possible,
since it is one which they themselves are engaged in conducting. Thus
Dr. Witte finds a letter addressed by the exiled Florentine Whites to
Nicholas of Ostia, and he concludes that it must have been drawn up by
Dante, the letter itself containing no statement or hint to that effect.
Henceforth the letter is included under Dante’s correspondence, and only
too many Dante students set about discussing, not whether Witte was
justified in his ascription of the letter to Dante, but whether the letter is
a genuine product of Dante’s pen, or a forgery palmed off on us as his.
Whereas Del Lungo (Dino Compagni, ii. 585 sq.) has given weighty
reasons for supposing that the letter is a genuine one, but written sub-
sequently to the ¢affair of Lastra,’ and after Dante had completely broken
with the exiled Bianchi.

So again, with respect to the second letter—the letter of condolence to
Alexander of Romena’s nephews. The letter itself does not indicate the
writer in any way, and its heading in the Ms. is a statement on the part
of the scribe, or some one from whom he copied, that the letter was
written by Dante to Uberto and Guido. This has every appearance of
being a conjectural ascription.

Here, then, we have a letter not itself professing to be written by Dante,
but ascribed to him by some unknown copyist. The letter has many
signs of genuineness, in the sense of really having been written to Alexan-
der’s nephews on the occasion of his death, but very little indication of
Dante’s authorship. There were plenty of other exiles who might have
spoken of Alexander in the terms of this letter. Without supposing it
to be a forgery, then, we may very well hold it to be falsely ascribed to
Dante ; and in that case the whole question of Dante’s ¢ supposed ingrati-
tude * falls to the ground.

The inscription of the third letter to Maroello Malaspina comes much
APPENDIX IX 443

nearer in form to being an integral part of the letter, though it might
perfectly well be the heading of a ¢literary exercise,” which did not pro-
fess to be anything else. But here the author, if not Dante himself, is
obviously closely and skilfully imitating Dante’s style, and is writing as
in his person. Here, therefore, we have to decide whether we are dealing
with Dante himself, or with an extremely skilful imitator who may not
have meant to deceive any one, but certainly took a very unwarrantable
liberty with Dante’s name.

The fourth letter unequivocally professes to be written to the exile of
Pistoja by him exiled from Florence counter to his desert, and must be
regarded either as really written by Dante or as announcing itself as his.
This however might be a perfectly innocent literary exercise,” though
not proclaiming itself as such.

Letter o, to the Florentine friend, distinctly professes to be written by
Dante, and was copied out by Boccaccio (who makes use of it in his
biography), evidently because he believed it to be genuine. Probably
few readers will be found to side with Scartazzini and Gardner in reject-
Ing it.

Letters 3, 6, 7, and 8 are either genuine, or deliberately forged for some
purpose other than literary. And in considering the question of their
authenticity, the adequacy or inadequacy of the supposed motives for
forgery, as well as the alleged difficulties (whatever they may be) of
accepting them as authentic should be duly considered.

Letter 10 stands on a different footing from the rest. This too must
be regarded as either authentic or a deliberate forgery, for, although the
author of the Comedy is spoken of throughout in the third person, it is
obvious that the writer of the epistle identifies himself with him.

The above remarks, while not intended to deal with the substantive
question of the authenticity of Dante’s letters, will suffice to show that the
problem is an essentially different one in the several cases, and must be
dealt with in full view of the alternatives which the form of the letter pre-
cludes or suggests in each instance.

TO ESSAY IX.

IT seemed impossible to omit this essay from our selection. In the
first place, the judicial estimate which it contains of the degree and
kind of reliance to be placed on Boccaccio’s Life is of the highest value,
since so many hasty and contradictory judgments on the subject are
current in Dante books. In the second place, it contains an exhaustive
array of the evidence (or rather the want of evidence) on the subject
of Dante’s relations with his wife Gemma. The reader may rest
assured that there is no further evidence of any kind against poor
Gemma to be had; and he will see that what is here given amounts
to nothing.

I confess, however, that it has been an uncongenial task to translate
and give to the English public this elaborate and, as I cannot but
think, unchivalrous attempt to gather material, where none exists, for
an unfavourable judgment on Gemma. ¢Boccaccio does not allege a
444 ESSAYS ON DANTE

single discreditable act against Gemma’ (p. 239); and no one else
alleges anything at all except on his authority. What little Boccaccio
does allege is entirely to Gemma’s credit. Let us rest in this, and be
thankful to know that there is nothing whatever to prevent our extend-
ing to this unhappy lady the respectful sympathy which she claims from
us as the mother of Dante’s children, whatever else she may or may not
have been to him.

Dr. Witte might have been warned by Imbriani’s article against
the frightful aberrations into which ingenuity may lead a man who is
determined to construct a domestic history (by preference disagreeable)
out of non-existent material.

As to Dante’s silence concerning his wife, one might be tempted to
think that in this extraordinary family there existed a conspiracy of
silence ; for Dante, the ardent friend and gracious companion, ignores
his children, who surrounded him in his declining years, as completely as
he does his wife. And on their side, his two sons Jacopo and Piero,
most ardent admirers of his genius, write their Commentaries in a spirit
so absolutely objective, and are so completely wanting in personal
touches, reminiscences, or references of any kind, that the well-vouched
authenticity of the Commentaries attributed to them has been questioned
on this account alone.

Is it worth noting that the words ¢ Oh, shouldst thou ever see thy
sacred locks . . . decked by Phyllis’ self’ of the second letter of
Johannes de Virgilio to Dante (line 45) are explained by many Com-
mentators as referring to Gemma ?—and indeed it is difhecult to see to
whom else they can refer. If this interpretation is correct, it shows, at
any rate, that an intimate friend of Dante’s in his closing years knew
nothing of any estrangement between the husband and wife, and took
it for granted that their reunion would be one of the crowning joys of the
poet’s return. Without attributing any very high value to this inference,
one may at least say that it outweighs, both in directness and explicit-
ness, the shadowy deductions contained in the essay.

P. 236. The Florentine year began at the end of March, so that
March 14th, for example, was before New Year's Day, and the year
was still running under its old number. Thus our March 14th, 1300,
would still fall under 1299. Florentine dates in January, February, and
March must therefore have an additional year added to them.

P. 240. By an evident oversight some essential words are dropped
out of this document in the Dante-Forschungen, ii. 67, 1. 3. I have
restored them from Gargani.

The following translation of the document, being the work of an
amateur, should be received by the reader with due caution, but may (it
is hoped) be trusted as correct enough to show its substantial bearing on
the matter in hand :—

¢ And further she wills that of her goods be given and paid to
Madame Gemma, her daughter, wife of Dante Aligheri of Florence,
after her death, a legacy of joo small florins, provided that the said
APPENDIX X-XI 445

Dante, or his heirs, shall have discharged and absolved the aforesaid
heirs of Madame Maria from every obligation by which they may be
obliged or bound from whatsoever cause, on behalf of the said Dante, to
any person or persons, and in particular from the obligation which the
said Manetto incurred as surety for the said Dante, or as joint borrower
with him, to Pannocchia and to Jacopo de’ Corbizi for 480 florins of
gold, or more or less, and from the obligation of go florins of gold, or
more or less, for which they are bound to Ubaldino for the said Dante,
whether as joint borrower or under title of surety for him. And from
the obligation of 46 of gold, or more or less, for which the said Dominus
Manettus [or his heirs] were bound for the said Dante, whether as joint
borrower with him or under the title of surety for him.’

TO ESSAY X.

IN 1888 Francesco Macri-Leone published in Florence a critical text
of Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante which has been accepted as the standard
edition. In his elaborate introduction (pp. clxxiv) he goes very fully
into the whole matter of the two versions of the Life. On p. xxxix he
says: ¢ Witte was the first to distinguish categorically between the mss.
of the complete Life and those of the Compendium, and he gave a very
valuable list of them, though it was not altogether free from error’;
and in a note he adds: ¢ Thus, for example, a Palatine Mms., vii. 712,
is cited, which does not contain the Zita, and the Riccardian 1050
is given as fragmentary, whereas it is really only put together with
the leaves in the wrong order. The codex 2278, which Witte says
Moutier cites (as he does), and which he could not find among the
Riccardian codices, does exist, but contains the Compendium, and I
cannot conceive how Moutier could cite it as one of those on which
his edition was based.’

Macri-Leone’s researches confirm Dr. Witte’s belief that the Com-
pendium is a gradual growth, and that it is not from the hand of
Boccaccio. His list of Mss. and his bibliographical data are much fuller
~ than Witte’s, but generally serve to confirm his judgments.

Macri-Leone dates the Vita 1364. See p. Ixxxii.

P. 265. The Colophon of Vendelino’s edition of 1477 took the form
of a sonnet.

P. 270. The Guicciardini collection is part of the Biblioteca
Nazionale in Florence.

TO ESSAY XI.

A very elaborate account of the discovery of Dante’s bones, with
numerous plans, will be found in Corrado Ricci’s L’ultimo rifugio di
Dante Alighieri (Milan, 1891), pp. 358 54.
446 ESSAYS ON DANTE

TO ESSAY XIII.

P. 313 mote 1. The Commentator referred to by the Deputati as
Benvenuto da Imola is of course Jacopo della Lana, whose Com-
mentary, printed by Vendelino in his edition of 1477, was ascribed by
him to Benvenuto. Even so, however, it will be noted that the
Deputati express a judgment widely differing from that of Dr. Witte.

P. 315. The Rehdiger or Elizabethan Library of Breslau, opened in
1661, and formerly kept in the Church of St. Elizabeth, is now part of
the Stadtbibliothek (Minerva).

Ibid. L Infarinato of note 2 (five lines from the end) is the Salviati of
note 4 on the preceding page.

P. 319. Terzago was Nidobeato’s partner.

P. 323 note 3. With Torri’s edition of O#timo in his hand, the reader
will have no difficulty in finding the references to the first three of the
poems mentioned. But the two others are not to be traced there.
There is probably no mistake on Wittes part, however. The refer-
ence to ¢ Le dolci rime d’ Amor ck io solia’ he found (cf. Fakrb. 1828,
iv. p. 30) in a Ms. of the Oztimo (de Batines, 11.), and probably the refer-
ence to the sonnet has a like justification, though I have not succeeded
in tracing it.

P. 326. The story is that some gravediggers found the head of one
long dead, but with a tongue almost as of a living man. On Gregory's
conjuration the head spoke and declared itself to be Trajan’s.

There is a curiously similar story in the Dutch version (only) of the
legend of St. Brandan. A deceased giants head is discovered, and
speaks. On being offered the option of a return to life, the head declines,
because the giant was a heathen and notes that his torments are not as
great as those of the condemned Christians, whose ranks he would
presumably join when next he died, if he had another life on earth. See
Dr. Carl Schroder’s edition (Erlangen, 1871), pp. 95 $¢-

P. 334. The Strozzi Mss. are in the Laurentian Library.

P. 341 note 1. There seems to be a mistake about Ausonius. The
words of the Ottimo (in Torri’s edition) are ¢ Virgil did not know this
light [of the true faith] . . . and where the Cento takes his verses and
applies them to the faith it does not say that Virgil understood or wrote
them with this intention.’

A Cento is a species of composition in which the writer shows his
ingenuity by saying whatever he desires to say by means of continuous
quotations from some one author (preferably Virgil), without a single
word of his own to connect them. Now Ausonius (fourth century)
did write a celebrated Virgilian Cento, but it was a nuptial poem, and
had nothing to do with Christianity ; nor does the Ottimo mention
his name.

There is a Cento ¢ De Ecclesia,” which has a certain celebrity, to be
found in Riese’s Anthologia Latina, Teubner, 1869 (No. 16). It is a
very poor thing. There is a much better one, without a title, in the
same collection (No. 719). This latter, which Riese believes to be
\

APPENDIX XIII-XVI 447

referred to in a decree of Pope Gelasius 1. (end of fifth century), may
well be the work intended by the Oztimo.

P. 342 last line. Dante Bartolin. i.e. ¢ La Divina Commedia giusta la
lezione del codice Bartoliniano.” The Ms. in question takes its name from
a former possessor. It is No. 306 in de Batines.

P. 344. The reader will not find Dr. Witte’s instances of various
readings in Jacopo della Lana’s text supported by Scarabelli’s editions.
But they may all be checked in Vendelino’s edition, except perhaps the
interpretation of ¢fosse’ as ¢ graves,” which I have not found. It may
be given by Witte on Ms. authority.

Ibid. Caetani’s Postillator, i.e. the writer of marginal notes (postilla)
on the ms. in the possession of the Duke of Sermoneta (Caetani) in Rome.
It is No. 375 in de Batines.

P. 345. The Milanese Sexvirs, i.e. the six scholars supposed to have
been moved by Archbishop Visconti of Milan to write a Comment on
Dante. Cf. above, p. 26 note 1.

P. 351. I do not find that the projected new edition by Cerrotti
was ever proceeded with.

P. 356. I cannot explain the reference to Sign. Libri’s Codex.

TO ESSAY XIV.

WHEN this essay was first published it was followed by Alcuni Suppli-
menti alla Bibliografia Dantesca del Sign. Visconte Colomb de Batines
(pp- 25-52), which is registered as an independent work in the list of
Dr. Witte’s writings on p. xix above.

This will explain how it is that a number of bibliographical notices
are quoted from Witte’s Quando e da chi sia composto I’Ottimo comento
in Koch's Catalogue of the Fiske Library of Cornell University, which
are not to be found in the essay with that title in the present volume.

TO ESSAY XV.

THE eight passages in question, in Moore’s edition, are i. 1: 1113
.'1280,83, 701,135 ovis. v0 25 Iv. 221 7.

TO ESSAY XVI.

_ I shall not attempt the superfluous task of explaining the references
in this lecture. Any reader who does not follow them will find most
of them explained in any handbook of Italian history, for instance the
concluding chapter of Hunt's Italy in the series edited by Freeman.
Special note should be made that the year of delivery of this lecture
was the year in which the central and ‘southern regions of Italy had
declared themselves a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom, as the result
of the ‘unauthorised’ campaigns of Garibaldi, towards which Victor
Emanuel and Cavour had adopted a somewhat equivocal attitude.
Venice and Rome alone were still occupied by the troops of Austria and
France respectively. The passage from ‘Even the Papal entreaties’
448 ESSAYS ON DANTE

(bottom of p. 403) to the end of the lecture was added, like the
introductory note, in 1878. I regret that my very imperfect knowledge
of modern Ttalian history does not enable me to elucidate the reference
on page 116, but it is a note of Dr. Witte’s in 1878, not of my own in
1898, sadly appropriate as the latter would have been.

The reader will, of course, have his own opinion as to the methods
by which the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany,
respectively, were brought about, and the shares taken respectively by
France and Germany in bringing Italian unity to pass. But even if he
dissents from Dr. Witte’s opinions, or objects to the tone of some
passages in the lecture, he will recognise the sagacity of many of the
author’s remarks ; and, what is more to our purpose, he will appreciate
the firmness of the treatment of Dante’s political views, and the fine
sweep of the historical survey which is contained in the early portion
of this essay.

 

 

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

 
 

 
 
 

 
  
 
    

  

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