5.First Period of Exile

L’essilio che m’è dato, on or mi tegno,

he says in his canzone of theTre donne. Had Dante completed theConvivio, he would probably have furnished us with a complete apologia in the fourteenth treatise, where he intended to commentupon this canzone and discuss Justice. “Justice,” he says inConv.i. 12, “is so lovable that, as the philosopher says in the fifth of the Ethics, even her enemies love her, such as thieves and robbers; and therefore we see that her contrary, which is injustice, is especially hated (as is treachery, ingratitude, falseness, theft, rapine, deceit, and their like). The which are such inhuman sins that, to defend himself from the infamy of these, it is conceded by long usance that a man may speak of himself, and may declare himself to be faithful and loyal. Of this virtue I shall speak more fully in the fourteenth treatise.”

“Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth from her sweet bosom (in which I was born and nourished up to the summit of my life, and in which, with her goodwill, I desire with all my heart to rest my wearied mind and to end the time given me), I have gone through almost all the parts to which this language extends, a pilgrim, almost a beggar, showing against my will the wound of fortune, which is wont unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to the wounded.”

In these words (Conv.i. 3), Dante sums up the earlier portion of his exile. There are few lines of poetry more noble in pathos, more dignified in reticence, than those which he has put into themouth of Cacciaguida (Par.xvii. 55-60): “Thou shalt leave everything beloved most dearly, and this is that arrow which the bow of exile first shoots. Thou shalt test how savours of salt another’s bread, and how hard the ascending and descending by another’s stairs.”

Early Days of Exile.—The terms of the first sentence against Dante seem to imply that, if he had returned to Florence, he fled from the city before January 27th, 1302. We do not know where he went. Boccaccio, apparently from a misunderstanding ofPar.xvii. 70, says Verona; if we suppose it to have been Siena, this would explain Leonardo Bruni’s account of Dante’s first hearing particulars of his ruin at the latter city. The sentence against Messer Vieri de’ Cerchi, with the other leaders, is dated April 5th in the terribleLibro del Chiodo, the black book of the Guelf Party. Arezzo, Forlì, Siena, Bologna, were the chief resorts of the exiled Bianchi; in Bologna they seem for some time to have been especially welcome. Dante first joined them in a meeting held at Gargonza, where they are said by Bruni to have made the poet one of their twelve councillors, and to have fixed their headquarters at Arezzo. For a short time Dante made common cause with them, but found their society extremely uncongenial (Par.xvii. 61-66). On June 8th, 1302, there is documentary evidence of his presence with some others in the choir of San Godenzo at the foot of the Apennines, where the Bianchi alliedwith the Ghibelline Ubaldini to make war upon Florence. The fact of this meeting having been held in Florentine territory and followed by several cavalry raids induced a fresh sentence in July from the new Podestà, Gherardino da Gambara of Brescia, in which, however, Dante is not mentioned.

Failure of the Bianchi.—A heavy blow was inflicted upon the exiles by the treachery of Carlino di Pazzi (Inf.xxxii. 69), who surrendered the castle of Piantravigne in Valdarno to the Neri, when many Bianchi were slain or taken. The cruelty of the Romagnole, Count Fulcieri da Calboli, the next Podestà of Florence from January to September 1303, towards such of the unfortunate Bianchi as fell into his hands has received its meed of infamy inPurg.xiv. 58-66. It is perhaps noteworthy (as bearing upon the date of Dante’s separation from his fellow-exiles) that the poet’s name does not appear among the Bianchi who, under the leadership of the Ghibelline captain, Scarpetta degli Ordelaffi of Forlì, signed an agreement with their allies in Bologna on June 18th in this year; but this may merely imply that he did not go to Bologna. He was possibly associated with Scarpetta at Forlì about this time. These renewed attempts to recover the state by force of arms resulted only in the disastrous defeat of Pulicciano in Mugello.

Death of Boniface VIII.—In this same year Sciarra Colonna and William of Nogaret, in thename of Philip the Fair, seized Boniface VIII. at Anagni, and treated the old Pontiff with such barbarity that he died in a few days, October 11th, 1303. The seizure had been arranged by the infamous Musciatto Franzesi, who had been instrumental in the bringing of Charles of Valois to Florence. “I see the golden lilies enter Alagna,” cries Hugh Capet in thePurgatorio; “and in His vicar Christ made captive. I see Him mocked a second time. I see renewed the vinegar and gall, and Him slain between thieves that live” (Purg.xx. 86-90).

Benedict XI.—In succession to Boniface, Nicholas of Treviso, the master-general of the Dominicans, a man of humble birth and of saintly life, was made Pope on October 22nd, 1303, as Benedict XI. He at once devoted himself to healing the wounds of Italy, and sent to Florence as peacemaker the Dominican Cardinal, Niccolò da Prato, who was of Ghibelline origin. The peacemaker arrived in March 1304, and was received with great honour. Representatives of the Bianchi and Ghibellines came to the city at his invitation; and, when May opened, there was an attempt to revive the traditional festivities which had ended on that fatal May Day of 1300. But a terrible disaster on the Ponte alla Carraia cast an ominous gloom over the city, and the Neri treacherously forced the Cardinal to leave. Hardly had he gone when, on June 10th, fighting broke out in the streets, and a fire, purposely started by the Neri, devastatedFlorence. On July 7th Pope Benedict died, perhaps poisoned, at Perugia; and, seeing this last hope taken from them, the irreconcilable portion of the Bianchi, led by Baschiera della Tosa, aided by the Ghibellines of Tuscany under Tolosato degli Uberti, with allies from Bologna and Arezzo, made a valiant attempt to surprise Florence on July 20th from Lastra. Baschiera, with about a thousand horsemen, captured a part of the suburbs, and drew up his force near San Marco, “with white standards displayed, and garlands of olives, with drawn swords, crying peace” (Compagni). Through his impetuosity and not awaiting the coming of Tolosato, this enterprise ended in utter disaster, and with its failure the last hopes of the Bianchi were dashed to the ground.

Separation from the Bianchi and Wanderings in Exile.—After the defeat of Lastra, Bruni represents Dante as going from Arezzo to Verona, utterly humbled. We learn from theParadiso(xvii. 61-69) that, estranged from his fellow-exiles who had turned violently against him, he had been compelled to form a party to himself. It is held by some scholars that he had broken away from them in the previous year, and that, towards the end of 1303, he had found his first refuge at Verona in “the courtesy of the great Lombard,” Bartolommeo della Scala, at whose court he now first saw his young brother, afterwards famous as Can Grande, and already in boyhood showing sparks of future greatness (ibid.70-78). Otherswould identifyil gran Lombardowith Bartolommeo’s brother and successor, Albuino della Scala, who ruled in Verona from March 1304 until October 1311, and associated Can Grande with him as the commander of his troops. There is no certain documentary evidence of Dante’s movements between June 1302 and October 1306. It is not improbable that, in 1304 or 1305, he stayed some time at Bologna. The first book of theDe Vulgari Eloquentiaseems in many respects to bear witness to this stay at Bologna, where the exiles were still welcome; a certain kindliness towards the Bolognese, very different from his treatment of them later in theDivina Commedia, is apparent, together with a peculiar acquaintance with their dialect. But on March 1st, 1306, the Bolognese made a pact with the Neri, after which they expelled the Florentine exiles, ordering that no Bianchi or Ghibellines should be found in Bolognese territory on pain of death. Dante perhaps went to Padua from Bologna, and, though the supposed documentary proof of his residence in Padua on August 27th, 1306, cannot be accepted without reserve, it is tempting to accept the statement of Benvenuto da Imola that the poet was entertained by Giotto when the painter was engaged upon the frescoes of the Madonna dell’ Arena. In October, Dante was in Lunigiana, a guest of the Malaspina, that honoured race adorned with the glory of purse and sword (Purg.viii. 121-139). Here, according to Boccaccio, herecovered from Florence some manuscript which he had left behind him in his flight; possibly what he afterwards rewrote as the first seven cantos of theInferno. On October 6th he acted as ambassador andnuncioof the Marquis Franceschino Malaspina in establishing peace between his house and the Bishop of Luni. This is the last certain trace of Dante’s feet in Italy for nearly five years. There is a strangely beautiful canzone of his which may have been written at this time. Love has seized upon the poet in the midst of the Alps (i.e.Apennines): “In the valley of the river by whose side thou hast ever power upon me”; “Thou goest, my mountain song; perchance shalt see Florence, my city, that bars me out of herself, void of love and nude of pity; if thou dost enter in, go saying: Now my maker can no more make war upon you; there, whence I come, such a chain binds him that, even if your cruelty relax, he has no liberty to return hither.”[6]

Dante had probably, as Bruni tells us, been abstaining from any hostile action towards Florence, and hoping to be recalled by the government spontaneously. There are traces of this state of mind in theConvivio(i. 3). It would be aboutthis time that he wrote in vain the letter mentioned by Bruni, but now lost,Popule mee quid feci tibi.

Clement V.—Death of Corso Donati.—In the meantime Clement V., a Gascon, and formerly Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been elected Pope. “From westward there shall come a lawless shepherd of uglier deeds” than even Boniface VIII., writes Dante inInfernoxix. He translated the Papal Court from Rome to Avignon, and thus in 1305 initiated the Babylonian captivity of the Popes, which lasted for more than seventy years, “to the great damage of all Christendom, but especially of Rome” (Platina). Scandalous as was his subservience to the French king, and utterly unworthy of the Papacy as he showed himself, it must be admitted that Clement made serious efforts to relieve the persecuted Bianchi and Ghibellines—efforts which were cut short by the surrender of Pistoia in 1306 and the incompetence of his legate, the Cardinal Napoleone Orsini. In October 1308, Corso Donati came to the violent end mentioned as a prophecy inPurg.xxiv.; suspected, with good reason, of aiming at the lordship of Florence with the aid of the Ghibelline captain, Uguccione della Faggiuola, whose daughter he had married, he was denounced as a traitor and killed in his flight from the city.

Dante Possibly at Paris.—Villani tells us that Dante, after exile, went to the Studio at Bologna, and then to Paris and to many parts of the world. The visit to Paris is also affirmed by Boccaccio,and it is not impossible that Dante went thither, between 1307 and 1309, by way of the Riviera and Provence. A highly improbable legend of his presence at Oxford is based upon an ambiguous line in a poetical epistle from Boccaccio to Petrarch and the later testimony of Giovanni da Serravalle at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Dante’s stay in Paris has been seriously questioned, and still remains uncertain. The University of Paris was then the first in the world in theology and scholastic philosophy. Boccaccio tells us that the disputations which Dante sustained there were regarded as most marvellous triumphs of scholastic subtlety. According to Giovanni da Serravalle (who has, however, placed his Parisian experiences too early), Dante was forced to return before taking the doctorate of theology, for which he had already fulfilled the preliminaries. He may have stayed in Paris until 1310, when tremendous events put an end to his studies and imperatively summoned him back to Italy.

“Lo, now is the acceptable time wherein arise the signs of consolation and peace. For a new day is breaking from the east, showing forth the dawn which already is dispersing the darkness of our long calamity; and already the eastern breezes begin to blow, the face of heaven glows red, and confirms the hopes of the nations with acaressing calm. And we too shall see the looked-for joy, we who have kept vigil through the long night in the desert” (Epist.v. 1).

Election of Henry VII.—On May 1st, 1308, Albert of Austria, who, by his neglect of Italy, had suffered the garden of the Empire to be desert, was assassinated by his nephew (Purg.vi. 97-105). In November, with the concurrence of the Pope and in opposition to the royal house of France, Henry of Luxemburg was elected Emperor. In January 1309 he was crowned at Aix as Henry VII.; in May 1310 he announced to the Italian cities his intention of coming to Rome for the imperial crown. Here was a true King of the Romans and successor of Caesar, such as the Italians had not recognised since the death of Frederick II. (Conv.iv. 3). The saddle was no longer empty; Italy had once more a king and Rome a spouse. It is in the glory of this imperial sunrise that Dante appears again, and, in the letter just quoted to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, his voice is heard, hailing the advent of this new Moses, this most clement Henry,divus Augustus Caesar, who is hastening to the nuptials, illuminated in the rays of the Apostolic benediction. The letter seems to have been written after the beginning of September, when the Pope issued an encyclical on Henry’s behalf, and before the latter part of October 1310, when the Emperor arrived in Italy. According to the fifteenth-century historian, Flavio Biondo, Dante was atthis time at Forlì with Scarpetta degli Ordelaffi. In January 1311 Henry took the iron crown (or its substitute) at Milan. Dante, sometime before the end of March, paid his homage to the Emperor (Epist.vii. 2): “I saw thee, as beseems Imperial Majesty, most benignant, and heard thee most clement, when that my hands handled thy feet and my lips paid their debt. Then did my spirit exult in thee, and I spoke silently with myself: ‘Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who hath taken away the sins of the world.’”

National Policy of Florence.—The Emperor himself shared the golden dream of the Italian idealists, and, believing in the possibility of the union of Church and Empire in a peaceful Italy healed of her wounds, addressed himself ardently to his impossible task, forcing cities to take back their exiles, patching up old quarrels. Opposed to him arises the less sympathetic figure of King Robert of Naples, who, having succeeded his father, Charles II., in May 1309, was preparing—though still for a while negotiating on his own account with Henry—to head the Guelf opposition. While others temporised, Florence openly defied the Emperor, insulted his envoys, and refused to send ambassadors to his coronation. While the Emperor put his imperial vicars into Italian cities, as though he were another Frederick Barbarossa, the Florentines drew closer their alliance with Robert, formed a confederation of Guelf cities, and aided with money and men all whomade head against the German King. In spite of the bitter language used by Dante in his letters, modern historians have naturally recognised in this one of the most glorious chapters in the history of the Republic. “Florence,” writes Pasquale Villari, “called on the Guelf cities, and all seeking to preserve freedom and escape foreign tyranny, to join in an Italian confederation, with herself at its head. This is, indeed, the moment in which the small merchant republic initiates a truly national policy, and becomes a great Italian power. So, in the medieval shape of a feudal and universal Empire, on the one hand, and in that of a municipal confederation on the other, a gleam of the national idea first began to appear, though still in the far distance and veiled in clouds.”

Letters and Fresh Sentence.—On March 31st, 1311, from “the boundaries of Tuscany under the source of the Arno,” and on April 17th, from “Tuscany under the source of the Arno,” Dante addressed two terrible letters to “the most wicked Florentines within,” and to “the most sacred triumphant and only lord, Henry by divine providence King of the Romans, ever Augustus.” In the former he reasserts the rights and sanctity of the Empire, and, whilst hurling the fiercest invective upon the Florentine government, foretells their utter destruction and warns them of their inability to withstand the might of the Emperor. In the latter he rebukes the “minister of God and son of the Church and promoter of Roman glory”for his delay in Lombardy, and urges him on against Florence, “the sick sheep that infects all the flock of the Lord with her contagion.” Let him lay her low and Israel will be delivered. “Then shall our heritage, the taking away of which we weep without ceasing, be restored to us again; and even as we now groan, remembering the holy Jerusalem, exiles in Babylon, so then, citizens breathing again in peace, we shall look back in our joy upon the miseries of confusion.” These letters were evidently written from the Casentino, where Dante had gone probably on an imperial mission to one or other of the Conti Guidi. He was perhaps staying at the castle of Poppi, and there is a tradition that the Florentine government sent agents to arrest him there. Probably in consequence of these letters, a new condemnation was pronounced against him; on September 2nd, 1311, Dante is included in the long list of exiles who, in the “reform” of Baldo d’Aguglione, are to be excepted from amnesty and for ever excluded from Florence.

Failure of the Emperor.—But in the meantime Brescia, “the lioness of Italy,” who had offered as heroic a resistance to Henry VII. as she was to do five centuries later to the Austrians of Haynau, had been forced to surrender; and the Emperor had at last moved southwards to Genoa and thence to Pisa, from which parties of imperialists ravaged the Florentine territory. From Genoa, on December 24th, 1311, he issued a decreeplacing Florence under the ban of the Empire, and declaring the Florentine exiles under his special protection. Dante (with Palmieri Altoviti and other exiles) was probably at Pisa in the early spring of 1312, and it may well have been there that Petrarch—then a little boy in his eighth year—saw his great predecessor. Rome itself was partly held by the troops of King Robert and the Florentines; with difficulty was Henry crowned by the Pope’s legates in the Church of St. John Lateran on June 29th, 1312. From September 19th to October 31st Henry besieged Florence, himself ill with fever. “Do ye trust in any defence girt by your contemptible rampart?” Dante had written to the Florentines: “What shall it avail to have girt you with a rampart and to have fortified yourselves with outworks and battlements, when, terrible in gold, that eagle shall swoop down on you which, soaring now over the Pyrenees, now over Caucasus, now over Atlas, ever strengthened by the support of the soldiery of heaven, looked down of old upon vast oceans in its flight?” But the golden eagle did not venture upon an assault. Wasting the country as it went, the imperial army retreated. Early in 1313 the Florentines gave the signory of their city to King Robert for five years, while the Emperor from Pisa placed the king under the ban of the Empire, and declared him a public enemy. The Pope himself had deserted the imperial cause, and was fulminating excommunication if Henryinvaded Robert’s kingdom (cf.Par.xvii. 82; xxx. 144), when the Emperor, moving from Pisa with reinforcements from Germany and Sicily, died on the march towards Naples at Buonconvento, near Siena, on August 24th, 1313. Dante had not accompanied the imperialists against Florence; he yet retained so much reverence for his fatherland, as Bruni writes, apparently from some lost letter of the poet’s. We do not know where he was when the fatal news reached him. Cino da Pistoia and Sennuccio del Bene broke out into elegiac canzoni on the dead hero; Dante was silent, and waited till he could more worthily write the apotheosis of hisalto Arrigoin the Empyrean (Par.xxx. 133-138).

Dante’s Wanderings—Death of Clement V.—Dante was again a proscribed fugitive. His movements are hardly known, excepting by more or less happy conjecture, from the spring of 1311 in the Casentino to the close of his days at Ravenna. Boccaccio and Bruni agree that he had now given up all hope of return to Florence. According to the latter, he wandered about in great poverty, under the protection of various lords, in different parts of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Romagna. There is a tradition, perhaps mainly based upon a passage in theParadiso(Par.xxi. 106-120), that Dante retired to the convent of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana in the Apennines, from which he gazed forth upon the perishingworld of the Middle Ages, which was finding imperishable monument in his work. To this epoch might possibly be assigned—for what it may be worth—the story of his visit to the other convent of Santa Croce del Corvo in Lunigiana in quest of peace; but the only authority for this episode is the letter of Frate Ilario to Uguccione della Faggiuola, now almost universally regarded as a fabrication. But, if his steps are hidden, his voice is heard, and with no uncertain sound. On April 20th, 1314, Clement V. died in Provence (Par.xxx. 145); and, early in the interregnum that followed, Dante addressed a famous letter to the Italian cardinals, rebuking them for their backsliding and corruption, urging them to make amends by striving manfully for the restoration of the papacy to Rome. It is a noble production, full of zeal and dignity, impregnated with the sublimest spirit of mediaeval Catholicity. It had no immediate effect; after a long interval the Cahorsine, John XXII., was elected in August 1316; and the disgrace of Avignon continued. The ideal Emperor had failed; no ideal Pope was forthcoming; conscious at last of his own greatness, withluci chiare ed acute(Par.xxii. 126), eyes clear from passion and acute with discernment, the divine poet turned to the completion of hisCommedia.

Rejection of the Amnesty.—After the death of the Emperor, the Ghibelline leader, Uguccione della Faggiuola, had been chosen lord of Pisa; hecaptured Lucca in June, 1314, and began a brief career of conquest in Tuscany which seriously alarmed Florence. In this crisis the Florentine government on May 19th, 1315, decreed a generalribandimento, or recall of exiles, under condition of a small fine, a merely formal imprisonment, and the ceremony of “oblation” in the Baptistery. Dante was probably at Lucca when he received letters to the effect that he was included.[7]The famous letter to a Florentine friend contains his rejection of this amnesty. While deeply and affectionately grateful to the friends who have striven for his return, the conditions of this “revocatio gratiosa” seem to Dante derogatory to his fame and honour, and with calm dignity he refuses to avail himself of it: “This is not the way of return to our native land, my father; but if another may be found, first by you and then by others, which does not derogate from Dante’s fame and honour, that will I accept with no lagging feet. But, if by no such way Florence may be entered, I will never enter Florence. What then? May I not anywhere gaze upon the mirror of the sun and stars? Can I not ponder on the sweetest truths anywhere beneath the heaven, unless first I return to the city, inglorious, nay dishonoured, in the sight of the Florentine people?Nor, assuredly, will bread fail me” (Epist. ix 4).[8]

New Condemnation.—On August 29th, 1315, Uguccione utterly defeated the united armies of Florence and Naples at the great battle of Montecatini; the Pisan ploughman had crushed the flowers and the lilies, as Giovanni del Virgilio afterwards wrote to Dante. Dante’s two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, had perhaps joined him in Lucca. The original death sentence had apparently been commuted (probably because of his having refrained from joining in the imperialist attack upon Florence in 1312) to being placed under bounds in some defined locality; and in October 1315 the poet, with his two sons, and others were cited to appear before Ranieri di Zaccaria of Orvieto, royal vicar in the city of Florence and its district (King Robert’s vicars having replaced the podestàs), to give surety as to going and staying in the places appointed. On their neglecting to appear, “Dante Alighieri and his sons,” in Ranieri’s sentence of November 6th, are condemned as contumacious and rebels, and sentenced to be beheaded if they ever come into the power of the royal vicar or of the Commune of Florence. “And, lest they should glory in their contumacy, we put all and each of them under ban of the city of Florence and district, giving licence to anyone to offend all and any one of them in goods and inperson, according to the form of the statutes of Florence.” All the Portinari are included in this decree, with the exception of Manetto and fourteen others who have given security.

Dante at Verona.—In the following year, 1316, Uguccione lost Pisa and Lucca, and fled to Verona, where Can Grande della Scala, since the death of his brother Albuino in 1311, held sovereign sway as imperial vicar, and had become the champion of Ghibellinism in northern Italy; in 1318 Cane was elected captain of the Ghibelline League, and in his service Uguccione died during the siege of Padua in 1319 or 1320. It is probable that, somewhere about this time, Dante’s wandering feet had led him back to Verona to renew his friendship with Can Grande (Par.xvii. 85-90;Epist.x. 1). The old legend of Dante having met with discourtesy at his hands is to be absolutely rejected, as indeed every reference to Can Grande in his works demands. That, on his earlier visit, there may have been some unpleasantness with Albuino (Conv.iv. 16) is more credible. But Dante needed a more peaceful refuge than Verona to complete his life’s work; the city of the imperial vicar resounded with the clash of warlike preparations:

But at this court, peace still must wrenchHer chaplet from the teeth of war:By day they held high watch afar,At night they cried across the trench;And still, in Dante’s path, the fierceGaunt soldiers wrangled o’er their spears.

But at this court, peace still must wrench

Her chaplet from the teeth of war:

By day they held high watch afar,

At night they cried across the trench;

And still, in Dante’s path, the fierce

Gaunt soldiers wrangled o’er their spears.

At Ravenna.—It was most likely towards the end of 1316, or early in 1317, that Dante finally settled at Ravenna; probably, as Boccaccio tells us, on the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta, who had succeeded to the lordship of Ravenna in June 1316. This Guido was the nephew of Francesca da Rimini, the hapless heroine of one of the most familiar episodes of theInferno. These few remaining years of Dante’s life are the pleasantest to contemplate. His two sons were with him, though their mother apparently remained in Florence. Dino Perini, a younger Florentine, seems to have been to some extent the friend of Dante’s later days, as Guido Cavalcanti had been of his youth. And there were other congenial companions round him, including perhaps Giotto, who was probably working at Ravenna about this time. It is possible that Dante held some kind of professorship in the local university. Scholars and disciples came to be instructed in the poetic art, among them, it would seem, Guido da Polenta himself. His relations were still cordial with Can Grande, to whom, probably in 1318 or 1319, he addressed the epistle which contains the dedication of theParadiso. From theQuaestio de Aqua et Terra(which is now generally accepted as authentic) we gather that, at the end of 1319 or beginning of 1320, Dante paid a visit to Mantua, and that at Verona, on January 20th, 1320, he delivered a discourse concerning the relative position of the two elements, earth and water, onthe globe’s surface. A curious document of 1320—the report of a process at Avignon in which Dante’s name is incidentally mentioned—seems to show that the poet was regarded as an authority upon sorcery, but as one whom persons intending to put this power to guilty use should abstain from consulting. There is also some vague evidence that accusations of heresy may have been brought against him.

Last Days and Death.—At Ravenna, amidst the monuments of ancient Caesars and the records in mosaic of primitive Christianity, where the church walls testified the glory of Justinian and the music of the Pine Forest sounded in his ears, Dante finished hisDivina Commedia. His poetical correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio, a shining light of the University of Bologna, reveals the kindliness and affability of the austere “preacher of Justice.” But he was not to end his days in peace. A storm cloud of war seemed about to burst over Ravenna. According to Venetian accounts—and we have no version of the matter from the other side—the Ravennese had taken Venetian ships and killed Venetian sailors in time of peace without just cause. In consequence the Doge entered into an alliance with the lords of Forlì and Rimini, and prepared to make war upon Ravenna with forces far beyond Guido’s power to meet. In August 1321 an embassy was sent by Guido to Venice, to avert the war by diplomatic means. Of this embassy Dante formedpart. According to Filippo Villani, the Venetians refused the poet a hearing, and forced him, sick with fever, to return by land. It is more probable that Dante returned with offered terms by the quickest way, which would bring him back through the Pineta to Ravenna. There he died in the night between September 13th and 14th, 1321, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The poet of a renovated Empire and a purified Church had passed away on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross—the Cross which he represents as the mystical bond with which Christ had bound the chariot of the Church to the tree of the Empire. He left his Church sinking, though but for a time, still deeper into the scandal and corruption of Avignon; his Empire preparing new degradation for itself, now that the Eagle had passed into the greedy and unworthy hands of Bavarian Louis; his Italy torn and rent by factions and dissensions; his own Florence still ranking him as a proscribed rebel and criminal. But the divine work of his life had been completed, and remains an everlasting proof of the doctrine formulated by another poet, five hundred years later: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”[9]

Four Periods in Human Life.—In theConvivio(iv. 23, 24) Dante represents human life under the image of an arch, ascending and descending. For the perfectly-natured the summit of this arch is in the thirty-fifth year. Life is divided into four ages, like the four seasons of the year. Adolescence,Adolescenza, the increase of life, ascends from birth to the twenty-fifth year; Youth or Manhood,Gioventute, the perfection and culmination of life, lasts from the twenty-fifth to the forty-fifth year; Age,Senettute, descends from the forty-fifth to the seventieth year; after which remains Old Age,Senio, the winter of life.

Three Periods in Dante’s Work.—Dante’s work falls into three periods, representing to some extentAdolescenza,Gioventute,Senettute. The first is that of his “New Life,” the epoch of the romantic worship of Beatrice in her life and after her death, in which the youthful poet beheld many things by his intellect, as it were dreaming,quasi come sognado(Conv.ii. 13). This period comprises theVita Nuova, with the lyrics contemporaneous with it, and closes in the promise “yet to utter concerning her what hath never been said of any woman.” The second period correspondsto Dante’s second age, orGioventute; it is the period in which the image of Beatrice in the citadel of his mind is somewhat obscured by the tempests of passion and political turmoil, and for a while had become less paramount when her poet directed his thoughts to the service of philosophical research. Joined to the first period by the canzone addressed to the angelic movers of the sphere of Venus, it includes the greater part of the collection of lyrics (Canzoni, Bellate, Sonnets) included in theRimeorCanzoniere; the two unfinished prose treatises which expound the mystical meaning and technical construction of these canzoni, theConvivioand theDe Vulgari Eloquentia. The three political letters connected with the Italian expedition of Henry VII. and, most probably, the special treatise in Latin prose on the Empire, theMonarchia, connect the second with the third period. This last period is the period of theDivina Commedia; the return to Beatrice, but now the allegorical Beatrice; the fulfilment of the supreme promise of theVita Nuova; the result of the labours in art and philosophy which the second period had witnessed, of political experience, and of the spiritual and moral revulsion of Dante’s later years, after the bitter disillusion of the Emperor Henry’s enterprise and failure: “A fruit of sufferings excess.” To this period, subsidiary to theDivina Commedia, belong the letters to the Italian Cardinals, to the Florentine friend and to Can Grande, theQuaestio de Aqua et Terra(if authentic), and the twoEclogues.

In addition to these works, several Italian scholars of high repute have attributed to Dante theFiore—a rendering of theRoman de la Rosein 232 sonnets—the author of which twice calls himself “Durante.” The editors of the sexcentenarytesto criticohave wisely excluded it from their volume, and it has been edited as an “appendice dantiana” by Parodi. Also we know of several smaller things of Dante’s now lost: the letters mentioned by Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo; aserventesecontaining the names of the sixty most beautiful women in Florence, referred to in theVita Nuova(V. N.vi.), one of his earliest poems; and a canzone on love, of peculiar structure, quoted in theDe Vulgari Eloquentia(V. E.ii. 11).

Early Commentators.—No sooner had Dante passed away than his apotheosis began with the epitaph by Giovanni del Virgilio:

Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers

—“Dante, the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge,” and the canzone on his death by Cino da Pistoia:

Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte

—“Up the side, Love, of the lofty mountain.” Boccaccio tells us that it was Dante’s custom to send theDivina Commediaby instalments to CanGrande at Verona, and he adds a striking story of how, eight months after his death, the poet appeared in a vision, “clad in whitest garments and his face shining with an unwonted light,” to his son Jacopo, to reveal to the world where the manuscript of the last thirteen cantos of theParadisowas hidden. It is a fact that in April or May, 1322, Jacopo presented a complete copy of the sacred poem to Guido da Polenta, who was then Captain of the People at Bologna. Straightway the work of copyists and commentators began, above all at Florence and Bologna. The earliest dated MSS. are theCodice Landianoat Piacenza and theCodice Trivulzianoat Milan (the latter of Florentine origin), dated 1336 and 1337 respectively. Of commentaries, the first two are those on theInferno, written in the twenties of the century, by Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri, in Italian, and Ser Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, chancellor of the Commune of Bologna, in Latin. The earliest extant commentators on the complete poem are the Bolognese Jacopo della Lana and the Florentine author of theOttimo Commento, probably Andrea Lancia; the former wrote shortly before and the latter shortly after 1330. Both wrote in Italian. Pietro Alighieri composed a Latin commentary on his father’s work about 1340, and revised it, with additions, some years later. An important Latin commentary on theInferno, by the Carmelite Guido da Pisa, dates from the forties of the century. And, before thefourteenth century closed, a new epoch in Dante scholarship was inaugurated by the lectures and commentaries of Giovanni Boccaccio at Florence (1373), Benvenuto da Imola at Bologna (1375-80), and Francesco da Buti at Pisa (1380-90). Of all these earlier commentators, Benvenuto da Imola is by far the greatest; and he unites mediaeval Dantology with England’s cult of the divine poet in the first complete edition of his commentary which was given to the world by Lacaita and William Warren Vernon.

In his proem, Ser Graziolo, or his contemporary translator, strikes the keynote of all reverent criticism of theDivina Commedia, and defines the attitude in which the divine poet and his works should be approached:

“Although the unsearchable Providence of God hath made many men blessed with prudence and virtue, yet before all hath it put Dante Alighieri, a man of noble and profound wisdom, true fosterling of philosophy and lofty poet, the author of this marvellous, singular, and most sapient work. It hath made him a shining light of spiritual felicity and of knowledge to the people and cities of the world, in order that every science, whether of heavenly or of earthly things, should be amply gathered up in this public and famous champion of prudence, and through him be made manifest to the desires of men in witness of the Divine Wisdom; so that, by the new sweetness and universal matter of his song, he should draw thesouls of his hearers to self-knowledge, and that, raised above earthly desires, they should come to know not only the beauties of this great author, but should attain to still higher grades of knowledge. To him can be applied the text in Ecclesiasticus: ‘The great Lord will fill him with the spirit of understanding, and he will pour forth the words of his wisdom as showers.’”

FOOTNOTES:[1]V. N.xxx.Cf.Moore,Studies in Dante, ii. pp. 123, 124. Del Lungo and others calculate the date as June 19th.[2]Two daughters are mentioned: Antonia and Beatrice. It is probable that they are one and the same person, Antonia being the name in the world of the daughter who became a nun at Ravenna as “Suora Beatrice.” A recent discovery has revealed the existence of a Giovanni di Dante Alighieri, “Johannes filius Dantis Alagherii de Florentia,” at Lucca in October 1308, who would then have been at least fourteen years old. But it seems more probable that the “Dante Alighieri” in question is not the poet. See M. Barbi,Un altro figlio di Dante?inStudi danteschi, v.(Florence, 1922).[3]It is to this conspiracy, as initiating the papal interference in Florentine politics which led ultimately to Dante’s own exile, that the poet alludes inPar.xvii. 49-51, where Cacciaguida speaks from the standpoint of April 1300.[4]See B. Barbadoro,La condanna di Dante, inStudi danteschi diretti daMichele Barbi, vol. ii.[5]Cf. Del Lungo’s notes toLa Cronica di Dino Compagniin the new Muratori (tom. ix. pt. ii.), and Luzzatto,La Cronica di Dino Compagni, p. 70, n. 1. It is clear that both Bologna and Siena sent ambassadors, but that Compagni (misled by the name) erroneously supposed Malavolti to have been a Sienese.[6]Rimecxvi.: O. canz. xi. Torraca takes this canzone as written when Dante was in the Casentino in 1311. Boccaccio speaks of an earlier stay of the poet in that region. It should be noted that Del Lungo has argued that Dante, after withdrawing from the active measures of the Bianchi, remained in Tuscany, or near at hand, until the dissolution of the party in 1307, when he may have gone to Verona.[7]We know from thePurgatoriothat Dante at some time visited Lucca, where a lady, said to have been Gentucca Morla, made the city pleasant to him. Dante’s words seem to imply no more than an agreeable friendship (Purg.xxiv. 43-45). This visit may have been at an earlier date.[8]Cf. A. Della Torre,L’epistola all’ Amico fiorentino, inBullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, n.s. xii.; M. Barbi,Per un passo dell’ epistola all’ Amico fiorentino, inStudi danteschi, ii.[9]In 1350 Boccaccio was commissioned by the captains of Or San Michele, a religious confraternity at Florence, to convey a sum of money to “Suora Beatrice, daughter of the late Dante Alighieri,” a Dominican nun in the monastery of Santo Stefano degli Ulivi at Ravenna. This Suora Beatrice is mentioned, as no longer living, in a document of 1371. In a document of 1332, the only children of the poet who appear, together with his widow Gemma, are Jacopo, Pietro, and Antonia (of whom we know nothing more). It seems, therefore, probable that Dante had one daughter, Antonia, who, after 1332 (perhaps after the death of her mother), entered religion at Ravenna as Suora Beatrice. See O. Bacci, “Beatrice di Dante,” inGiornale Dantesco, viii. pp. 465-471.

[1]V. N.xxx.Cf.Moore,Studies in Dante, ii. pp. 123, 124. Del Lungo and others calculate the date as June 19th.

[2]Two daughters are mentioned: Antonia and Beatrice. It is probable that they are one and the same person, Antonia being the name in the world of the daughter who became a nun at Ravenna as “Suora Beatrice.” A recent discovery has revealed the existence of a Giovanni di Dante Alighieri, “Johannes filius Dantis Alagherii de Florentia,” at Lucca in October 1308, who would then have been at least fourteen years old. But it seems more probable that the “Dante Alighieri” in question is not the poet. See M. Barbi,Un altro figlio di Dante?inStudi danteschi, v.(Florence, 1922).

[3]It is to this conspiracy, as initiating the papal interference in Florentine politics which led ultimately to Dante’s own exile, that the poet alludes inPar.xvii. 49-51, where Cacciaguida speaks from the standpoint of April 1300.

[4]See B. Barbadoro,La condanna di Dante, inStudi danteschi diretti daMichele Barbi, vol. ii.

[5]Cf. Del Lungo’s notes toLa Cronica di Dino Compagniin the new Muratori (tom. ix. pt. ii.), and Luzzatto,La Cronica di Dino Compagni, p. 70, n. 1. It is clear that both Bologna and Siena sent ambassadors, but that Compagni (misled by the name) erroneously supposed Malavolti to have been a Sienese.

[6]Rimecxvi.: O. canz. xi. Torraca takes this canzone as written when Dante was in the Casentino in 1311. Boccaccio speaks of an earlier stay of the poet in that region. It should be noted that Del Lungo has argued that Dante, after withdrawing from the active measures of the Bianchi, remained in Tuscany, or near at hand, until the dissolution of the party in 1307, when he may have gone to Verona.

[7]We know from thePurgatoriothat Dante at some time visited Lucca, where a lady, said to have been Gentucca Morla, made the city pleasant to him. Dante’s words seem to imply no more than an agreeable friendship (Purg.xxiv. 43-45). This visit may have been at an earlier date.

[8]Cf. A. Della Torre,L’epistola all’ Amico fiorentino, inBullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, n.s. xii.; M. Barbi,Per un passo dell’ epistola all’ Amico fiorentino, inStudi danteschi, ii.

[9]In 1350 Boccaccio was commissioned by the captains of Or San Michele, a religious confraternity at Florence, to convey a sum of money to “Suora Beatrice, daughter of the late Dante Alighieri,” a Dominican nun in the monastery of Santo Stefano degli Ulivi at Ravenna. This Suora Beatrice is mentioned, as no longer living, in a document of 1371. In a document of 1332, the only children of the poet who appear, together with his widow Gemma, are Jacopo, Pietro, and Antonia (of whom we know nothing more). It seems, therefore, probable that Dante had one daughter, Antonia, who, after 1332 (perhaps after the death of her mother), entered religion at Ravenna as Suora Beatrice. See O. Bacci, “Beatrice di Dante,” inGiornale Dantesco, viii. pp. 465-471.

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