Chapter I
PART III
DANTE IN EXILE
CHAPTER I
1302–1321
Wanderings—Dante’s fellow-exiles—Henry VII in Italy—His death—Fresh sentence against Dante—His retirement to Ravenna—Alleged visits to Mantua, Verona, and Piacenza—Reputed a Sorcerer—Death and burial—His tomb and epitaphs—Elegies.
NEVER again after the sentence of banishment pronounced against him by Cante de’ Gabrielli did Dante set foot within the walls of his native city. The rest of his life, nearly twenty years, was spent in exile, and for the most part in poverty, such as is foretold to him by his ancestor Cacciaguida in the Heaven of Mars: “Thou shalt leave every thing beloved most dearly; and this is the shaft which the bow of exile first lets fly. Thou shalt prove how salt the taste is of another’s bread, and how hard a path it is to go up and down another’s stairs.”1
In a passage at the beginning of the Convivio Dante gives a pathetic account of the miseries and mortifications he endured during his wanderings as an exile. “Alas,” he says, “would it had pleased the Dispenser of the Universe that I should never have had to make excuses for myself; that neither others had sinned against me, nor I had suffered this punishment unjustly, the punishment I say of exile and of poverty! Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me out from her most sweet bosom (wherein I was born and brought up to the climax of my life, and wherein I long with all my heart, with their good leave, to repose my wearied spirit, and to end the days allotted to me), wandering as a stranger through almost every region to which our language reaches, I have gone about as a beggar, showing against my will the wound of fortune, which is often wont to be imputed unjustly to the fault of him who is stricken. Verily I have been as a ship without sails and without rudder, driven to various harbours and shores by the parching wind which blows from pinching poverty. And I have appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps from some report of me, had imagined me in a different guise.”2
CAST OF DANTE’S FACE TAKEN AFTER DEATH
Elsewhere, in another of his works, he expresses his pity for those who, like himself, languish in exile, and revisit their home only in their dreams.3
Of Dante’s movements from the time of his banishment very little is known for certain. Leonardo Bruni says that when the tidings of his ruin reached him at Rome, he hastened back to Tuscany and went to Siena, where he learned further particulars of his sentence, and consequently determined to make common cause with the other exiles. He certainly appears at first to have thrown in his lot with the rest, and to have looked, like them, to a return to Florence by forcible means. To this end they assembled at Gargonza, a castle of the Ubertini between Arezzo and Siena, and decided to enter into an alliance with the Ghibellines of Tuscany and Romagna, fixing their headquarters at Arezzo, where they remained until 1304. Dante, at any rate, was present at a meeting of the exiles, held on 8 June, 1302, in the church of San Godenzo, in the Tuscan Apennines, about twenty miles from Florence, when a convention was entered into with the Ubaldini, the ancient enemies of Florence.
In the prophecy of Cacciaguida, already referred to, Dante is warned that what should gall him most would be the folly and wickedness of the company into which he should be thrown; and it is foretold to him that he should after a while dissociate himself from the rest of the exiles, and make a party for himself.4 At what particular juncture Dante did dissociate himself from his fellow-exiles we cannot tell. It was probably before the summer of 1304, for in July of that year the exiles, disappointed in their expectations of a peaceable return to Florence through the mediation of Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, the legate of Benedict XI (who had recently succeeded Boniface VIII), made an abortive attempt from Lastra, in concert with the Pistojans, to effect an entry into the city—an attempt from which Dante appears to have held aloof.
There is evidence of his having been at Forlì in 1303,5 and it was doubtless about this time that he separated himself from “the worthless and vile company” of his fellow-exiles; not long after which he took refuge with one of the Scaliger family, most probably Bartolommeo della Scala, at Verona, which Cacciaguida foretells to him as his “first refuge”.6 “Here,” writes Leonardo Bruni, “he was very courteously received, and remained some time, being now become very humble and seeking by good deeds and good behaviour to win back the favour of being allowed to return to Florence by a spontaneous recall from the Government of the city. To this end he laboured much, and wrote many times, not only to individual members of the Government, but also to the people; and amongst the rest was a long letter beginning, ‘My people, what have I done to you ?’” 7
How long Dante remained at Verona is not known. It is impossible, for lack of information, to follow him with any certainty in his wanderings, which, as he records in the above-quoted passage of the Convivio, took him into nearly every part of Italy. It is presumed, from a legal document8 still in existence, that he was at Padua on 27 August, 1306; and from others9 it is known that he was shortly after (on 6 October in the same year) at Sarzana in Lunigiana as agent for the Malaspini, where he was the guest of Franceschino Malaspina. This visit to the Malaspini, “the honoured race which ceases not to be adorned with the glory of the purse and of the sword,” is foretold to Dante by Currado Malaspina, Franceschino’s first cousin, whom he meets in Purgatory.10 Dante on this occasion acted as procurator for the Malaspini family in their negotiations for peace with their neighbour, the Bishop of Luni, which by Dante’s means was successfully concluded. The duration of his stay in Lunigiana is uncertain, but it probably did not last beyond the summer of 1307.
His movements during the next few years are largely a matter of conjecture. Some of his biographers state that he went from Lunigiana to the Casentino (the upper valley of the Arno above Florence) and to Forlì11 again, and returned once more to Lunigiana12 on his way to Paris. That Dante visited Paris during his exile is stated both by Boccaccio and by Villani in his chronicle,13 but at what precise period this visit took place it is impossible to say. Some are inclined to believe, from a phrase in a Latin poem addressed to Petrarch by Boccaccio, that Dante came to England;14 and it is even stated by Giovanni da Serravalle, a fifteenth-century writer, that he studied in the University of Oxford,15 but this is extremely doubtful.
There seems little doubt that Dante was in Italy between September, 1310, and January, 1311, when he addressed a letter to the Princes and Peoples of Italy on the advent of the Emperor Henry VII into Italy,—the Emperor through whose means Dante hoped to be restored to Florence. “Lo! now is the acceptable time,” he writes, “wherein arise the signs of consolation and peace. For a new day is beginning to break, showing forth the dawn, which even now is dispersing the darkness of our long night of tribulation ; already the breezes from the East are springing up, the face of the heavens grows rosy, and confirms the hopes of the peoples with a peaceful calm. And we too, who have long kept vigil through the night in the desert, we too shall behold the looked-for joy.”16
He was certainly in Tuscany (probably as the guest of Guido Novello of Battifolle at the castle of Poppi in the Casentino) when he wrote his terrible letter to the Florentines, dated “from the springs of the Arno,” 31 March, 1311, after he learned that they were preparing to resist the Emperor by force. In this letter,17 which is headed “Dante Alighieri, a Florentine and undeservedly an exile, to the most iniquitous Florentines within the city,” he uses no measured terms, and does not hesitate to threaten the Florentines with the direct vengeance of the Emperor. “You,” he thunders, “you, who transgress every law of God and man, and whom the insatiable maw of avarice urges headlong into every crime, does not the dread of the second death haunt you, seeing that you first and you alone, refusing the yoke of liberty, have set yourselves against the glory of the Roman Emperor, the king of the earth, and the servant of God? The hope which you vainly cherish in your madness will not be furthered by this rebellion of yours, but by your resistance the just wrath of the king at his coming will be but the more inflamed against you. If my prophetic spirit be not deceived, your city, worn out with long sufferings, shall be delivered at the last into the hands of the stranger, after the greatest part of you has been destroyed in death or in captivity, and the few that shall be left to endure exile shall witness her downfall with weeping and lamentation.”18
From the same place a few weeks later (on 16 April), Dante addressed a letter to the Emperor himself, who was at that time besieging Cremona, urging him to lay everything else aside, and to come and crush without further delay the viper Florence, as the most obstinate and dangerous rebel against the Imperial authority. From this letter it appears that Dante had been present at the coronation of Henry with the iron crown at Milan, on the day of Epiphany (6 January, 1311), when ambassadors were sent from nearly every city of Italy, except Florence and her allies. “I too, who write for myself as well as for others, have beheld thee most gracious, as beseems Imperial Majesty, and have heard thee most clement, when my hands touched thy feet, and my lips paid their tribute.”19
On 2 September of this same year (1311) was issued at Florence a proclamation20 (known as the “Riforma di Messer Baldo d’ Aguglione,” from the name of the Prior who was responsible for it), offering pardon to a portion of the Florentine exiles, but expressly excepting certain others by name. Among these names was that of Dante Alighieri, whose exclusion was no doubt largely due to the letters mentioned above, and to his active sympathy with the Imperial cause. To this proclamation the Emperor issued a counterblast in the following December from Genoa, in the shape of an edict declaring Florence to be outside the pale of the Empire, which was followed by another from Poggibonsi in February, 1313, containing the names of more than 600 Florentine citizens and subjects, who were branded as rebels.
Nothing is known of Dante’s whereabouts during these years of deferred hopes and disappointments. Leonardo Bruni states,21 apparently on the authority of a letter of Dante’s which has not been preserved, that when the Emperor advanced against Florence and laid siege to the city (in the autumn of 1312), Dante out of reverence for his native place would not accompany him, although he had urged him to the attack. Dante had scoffed at the idea that the Florentines could stand up against the Imperial host. “Do you trust,” he had written in the letter already quoted,22 “do you trust in your defence, because you are girt by a contemptible rampart? What shall it avail you to have girt you with a rampart, and to have fortified yourselves with bulwarks and with battlements,23 when, terrible in gold, the eagle shall swoop down upon you, which, soaring now over the Pyrenees, now over Caucasus, now over Atlas, borne up by the breath of the soldiery of heaven, gazed down of old upon the vast expanse of ocean in its flight?”
But the Imperial eagle was obliged to retire baffled, leaving the viper uncrushed; and in the following year, while the Emperor was marching southward against Naples, he was suddenly seized with sickness at Buonconvento near Siena, where he died on 24 August, 1313. The news of his death was received with savage exultation by the Florentines.24 To Dante it meant the final abandonment of any hope of a return to Florence. “On the Emperor Henry’s death,” writes Bruni, “every hope of Dante’s was utterly destroyed; for he had himself closed up the way to forgiveness by his abusive writings against the government of the commonwealth; and there was no longer any hope of return by force.”
Where Dante was when the fatal news reached him, and what his movements were at this time, is not known. After the death of Clement V, on 20 April, 1314, Dante addressed a letter25 to the Italian cardinals in conclave at Carpentras, rebuking them for their backslidings and corruption, and calling upon them to make amends by electing an Italian Pope, who should restore the Papal See to Rome. At some date subsequent to 14 June of that year, when Lucca fell into the hands of the Ghibelline captain, Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante appears to have been in that city; and it has been conjectured that it may have been during this stay that he formed the attachment for a Lucchese lady named Gentucca, which is supposed to be alluded to by Bonagiunta in Purgatory.26 What was the real nature of his relations with this lady, who has been identified with a certain Gentucca Morla,27 wife of Cosciorino Fondora of Lucca, we have no means of ascertaining.
In August, 1315, the Ghibellines under the leadership of Uguccione della Faggiuola, completely defeated the Florentines and Tuscan Guelfs at Monte Catini, between Lucca and Pistoja. This event was followed by a fresh sentence from Florence against the exiled Whites. In this sentence,28 which is dated 6 November, 1315, Dante and those named with him, including Dante’s sons this time, were branded as Ghibellines and rebels, and condemned, if captured, “to be taken to the place of justice (i.e. the place of public execution), and there to have their heads struck from their shoulders, so that they die outright.” On 2 June in the next year, however, an amnesty was proclaimed by the Florentine chief magistrate, Lando of Gubbio,29 and permission was granted to the majority of the exiles to return to Florence, under certain degrading conditions, including the payment of a fine and the performance of penance in the Baptistery. From this amnesty all the exiles who had been originally condemned by the Podestà, Cante de’ Gabrielli, among whom of course was Dante, were expressly excluded. Many of the exiles appear to have accepted the terms; but Dante, who seems at first to have been unaware of his exclusion, scornfully rejected them.
“Is this, then,” he writes to a friend in Florence, “is this the generous recall of Dante Alighieri to his native city, after the miseries of nearly fifteen years of exile? Is this the reward of innocence manifest to all the world, of unceasing sweat and toil in study? Far be it from the friend of philosophy, so senseless a degradation, befitting only a soul of clay, as to submit himself to be paraded like a prisoner, as some infamous wretches have done! Far be it from the advocate of justice, after being wronged, to pay tribute to them that wronged him, as though they had deserved well of him! No! this is not the way for me to return to my country. If another can be found which does not derogate from the fame and honour of Dante, that will I take with no lagging steps. But if by no such way Florence may be entered, then will I re-enter Florence never. What! can I not everywhere gaze upon the sun and the stars? can I not under any sky meditate on the most precious truths, without first rendering myself inglorious, nay ignominious, in the eyes of the people and city of Florence? Nay, bread will not fail me!”30
After again seeking shelter with the Scaligers at Verona, this time as the guest of Can Grande della Scala, Dante, on the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta, went to Ravenna (probably in 1317 or 1318), “where,” says Boccaccio, “he was honourably received by the lord of that city, who revived his fallen hopes with kindly encouragement, and, giving him abundantly such things as he needed, kept him there at his court for many years, nay, even to the end of his days”.31 At Ravenna, his last refuge, where his sons Pietro and Jacopo and his daughter Beatrice resided with him, Dante appears to have lived in congenial company;32 and here he put the finishing touches to his “sacred poem,” the Divina Commedia, his work upon which he tells us “had made him lean for many years”.33
Boccaccio states that at Ravenna many scholars came to Dante for instruction in the poetic art, especially in vernacular poetry, which he first brought into repute among Italians.34 While he was here, after the Inferno and Purgatorio had been completed and made public, Dante was invited by a poet and professor of Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, in a Latin poem,35 to come and receive the laurel crown at Bologna. To this suggestion Dante sent a reply in the form of a Latin eclogue36 declining the invitation, the laurel having no attraction for him unless conferred by his own fellow-citizens in the same Baptistery where as a child he had received the name which he was to make so famous.
At the end of 1319 or beginning of 1320 Dante appears to have paid a visit to Mantua, on which occasion a discussion was started as to the relative levels of land and water on the surface of the globe. Dante subsequently wrote a treatise on the subject (if we may trust the evidence of the treatise De Aqua et Terra37 traditionally ascribed to him), which was delivered as a public dissertation at Verona, on 20 January, 1320.
From the mention of Dante’s name in a document lately discovered in the Vatican38 it has been inferred that Dante was at Piacenza some time in 1319 or 1320. The document in question, which is incomplete, contains the account of a process instituted at the Papal Court at Avignon against Matteo Visconti of Milan, and his son Galeazzo,39 for an attempt upon the life of Pope John XXII by means of sorcery. The story of the episode, which is an exceedingly curious one, as showing that in his own life-time Dante had the reputation of a sorcerer, is briefly as follows. In October, 1319, Matteo Visconti sent for a certain Bartolommeo Canolati who was reputed to be an adept in the black art, and showed him a small silver figure of a man, on the forehead of which was written “Jacobus 40 papa Johannes”. He then explained to Bartolommeo that he wanted him to apply to this image41 the requisite “fumigations” and incantations to ensure the death of the Pope, who was his bitter enemy.42 Bartolommeo declared that he did not know how to do anything of the sort, but being taxed with having in his possession a powerful drug adapted for the purpose, he admitted that he had once had it, but protested that at the bidding of a friar he had thrown it all away. Matteo thereupon dismissed him with an injunction to hold his tongue, on pain of death. Bartolommeo, however, divulged what he had seen, and the matter came to the ears of the Pope, who summoned him to Avignon, where he was examined before three cardinals, one of whom was Bertrand du Pouget, the same who subsequently condemned Dante’s De Monarchia to the flames.43 As the result of this inquisition, in the following February proceedings were initiated against the Visconti for conspiring against the life of the Pope. Meanwhile another sorcerer whom Matteo had employed having failed to produce any effect by his incantations, Galeazzo sent for Bartolommeo to Piacenza, and repeated the proposal that he should practise on the image. By way of putting him on his mettle Galeazzo told him that he had sent for Maestro Dante Alighieri of Florence to perform the task, but that he had far rather that Bartolommeo should undertake it, as he had no wish to let Dante have any hand in the matter.44 The record states that Bartolommeo said he would think the matter over—but the sequel to the story is lost. If Galeazzo’s statement about Dante is to be taken literally it would appear that Dante was in Piacenza somewhere about the date of this transaction, towards the end of 1319 or the beginning of 1320.
In the summer of 1321, a difference having arisen between Ravenna and Venice, on account of an affray in which several Venetian sailors were killed, Guido da Polenta sent an embassy to the Doge of Venice, of which Dante was a member. The ambassadors were ill received by the Venetians, who, it is said, refused them permission to return by sea, and obliged them to make the journey overland along the malarious seaboard. The consequences to Dante were fatal, for he contracted a fever (as is supposed) on the way, and, growing worse after his return to Ravenna, died in that city on 14 September, 1321, aged fifty-six years and four months.45 At Ravenna Dante was buried, and there, “by the upbraiding shore,” his remains still rest, in spite of repeated efforts on the part of Florence to secure possession of “the metaphorical ashes of the man of whom they had threatened to make literal cinders if they could catch him alive”.46
“The noble knight, Guido da Polenta,” writes Boccaccio, “placed the dead body of Dante, adorned with the insignia of a poet,47 upon a funeral bier, and caused it to be borne upon the shoulders of his most reverend citizens to the place of the Minor Friars in Ravenna, with such honour as he deemed worthy of the illustrious dead. And having followed him to this place, in the midst of a public lamentation, Guido had the body laid in a sarcophagus of stone, wherein it reposes to this day. Afterwards returning to the house where Dante had formerly lived, according to the custom of Ravenna, Guido himself pronounced a long and ornate discourse, as well in commendation of the great learning and virtue of the dead man, as for the consolation of his friends whom he had left to mourn him in bitter sorrow. And Guido purposed, had his estate and life endured, to honour Dante with so splendid a tomb, that if no other merit of his had kept his name alive among future generations, this memorial alone would have preserved it. This laudable purpose was in a brief space made known to certain who at that time were the most renowned poets in Romagna; so that each, not only to exhibit his own powers, but also to testify to the love he bore toward the dead poet, and to win the grace and favour of the lord Guido, who they were aware had this at his heart—each, I say, composed an epitaph in verse for inscription on the tomb that was to be, which with fitting praise should make known to posterity what manner of man he was who lay within. And these verses they sent to the illustrious lord, who through the evil stroke of Fortune not long after lost his estate and died at Bologna; on which account the making of the tomb and the inscription of the verses thereon was left undone.”48
Boccaccio goes on to say that many years afterwards he was shown some of the verses which had been composed for Dante’s epitaph, but that he did not consider any of them worthy of preservation, saving only fourteen lines by Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, which he transscribes.49 The sarcophagus (no doubt an ancient one) in which Dante’s remains were deposited by Guido da Polenta was apparently left without any inscription until late in the fourteenth century. It is known, from the record of an eye-witness, that in the year 1378 there were two epitaphs inscribed upon the tomb.50 One of these, consisting of six hexameters,51 was by Menghino Mezzano of Ravenna, a contemporary and friend of Dante;52 the other, consisting of three rhyming hexameter couplets, was by a certain Bernardo Canaccio, who is conjectured also to have been personally acquainted with Dante. This second epitaph, which runs as follows:—
Jura Monarchiae superos Phlegetonta lacusque
Lustrando cecini voluerunt fata quousque;
Sed quia pars cessit melioribus hospita castris
Actoremque suum petiit felicior astris,
Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris
Quem genuit parvi Florentia mater amoris.53—
was till comparatively recently supposed to have been written by Dante himself. The real author, however, was established to be Bernardo Canaccio by the discovery about fifty years ago of a passage in a fourteenth century manuscript of the Commedia, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in which the lines are ascribed to him by name.54
Dante’s burial-place, left incomplete, as Boccaccio records, owing to the misfortunes which overtook Guido da Polenta, appears to have been neglected and to have gradually fallen into decay. The tomb was restored in 1483 by Bernardo Bembo (father of the celebrated cardinal, Pietro Bembo), who was at that time Prætor of the Venetian Republic in Ravenna. He entrusted the work to the Venetian sculptor and architect, Pietro Lombardi, who, among other things, recarved the face of the sarcophagus, and inscribed upon it the epitaph of Canaccio mentioned above, to which the letters S. V. F.55 were prefixed, evidently under the impression that the author of the lines was Dante himself; while the epitaph of Menghino Mezzano was omitted.
DANTE’S TOMB AT RAVENNA
Much of the work executed by Lombardi under Bembo’s directions, including the inscribed epitaph, and the marble relief of Dante reading at a desk, remains to this day.56
The tomb was a second time restored, more than two hundred years later (in 1692) by Cardinal Domenico Maria Corsi, the Papal Legate57; and a third time, in 1780, by Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, who erected the mausoleum, surmounted by a dome, as it now stands.
Not only was the death of Dante recorded as an event of importance by his fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, in his Florentine chronicle,58 but numerous elegies were written on the occasion by friends and contemporaries of the poet in various parts of Italy. Among these were poems by Cino da Pistoja, and Giovanni Quirini of Venice, with both of whom Dante had exchanged sonnets in his lifetime.59 Cino, who thirty years before had addressed a canzone to Dante on the death of Beatrice,60 now wrote a canzone on Dante’s own death, addressed to Love, whose ardent and faithful votary Dante had ever been; after bewailing the bitter loss sustained by all lovers of the Italian tongue, of which Dante had been, as it were, the fount and source, he turns to Florence and points to the fulfilment of Dante’s own prophecy in the Inferno (xv. 72) that however much his native city might desire to have him back her wish would be unavailing; he concludes with congratulations to Ravenna on being deservedly in possession of the great treasure which Florence had cast out.61 Quirini, besides a lament on Dante’s death, wrote a sonnet in defence of his friend’s memory against the imputations of Cecco d’ Ascoli, and he addressed another to Can Grande della Scala, urging him to give to the world without delay the cantos of the Paradiso which had not yet been made public.62 Quirini’s lament, which is an eloquent testimony to the estimation in which Dante was held by his contemporaries, is as follows :—
If it hath happed for any mortal man
That sun or moon was darkened, or on high
Comet appeared, portending sudden change,
Reverse of fortune, and disaster dire;
A greater portent should we look for now,
And signs more strange than e’er were seen before,
Since death relentless, black and bitter death,
Hath quenched the brilliant and resplendent rays
That beamed from out the noble breast of him,
Our sacred bard, the father of our tongue,
Who glowed with radiance as of one divine.
Alas! the Muses now are sunken low,
The poet’s art hath fallen on evil days,
Which erst was held in worship and renown.
The whole world weeps the glorious Dante dead—
Him thou, Ravenna, heldest dear in life,
And holdest now, and hence are held more dear.63
1 Paradiso, xvii. 55-60. It is most natural to suppose that among the “things beloved most dearly” left behind in Florence Dante intended to include his wife. But this is not admitted by those who hold that Dante’s marriage was an unhappy one.
2 Convivio, i. 3, 11. 15-40.
3 De Vulgari Eloquentia, ii. 6, 11. 36-9.
4 Paradiso, xvii. 61-9.
5 This is supplied by Flavio Biondo in his Historiae ab inclinato Romano Imperio (see Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, No. 8 (1892), pp. 21-8, where the evidence is discussed by M. Barbi).
6 Paradiso, xvii. 70-2.
7 Vita di Dante, ed. cit. pp. xx.-xxxi. No other trace of this letter has been preserved.
8 See Imbriani, Studi Danteschi, pp. 385-8. There is, however, grave reason to doubt whether the “Dantinus quondam Alligerii de Florentia” mentioned in this document can be Dante, since a “Dantinu’s (presumably the same) is mentioned again several times in Paduan documents many years after Dante’s death, e.g. in 1339, 1345, 1348, and 1350 (see Zingarelli, Dante, p. 214).
9 See Annual Report of the Cambridge (U.S.A.) Dante Society for 1892 (pp. 15-24).
10 Purgatorio, viii. 118-34.
11 See Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, No. 8 (1892), p. 27.
12 To this period (about 1308) is usually assigned Dante’s supposed visit to the Camaldolese Monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo in Lunigiana, an account of which is given in a letter (of doubtful authenticity) from Frate Ilario, one of the monks, to the Ghibelline leader, Uguccione della Faggiuola. According to the writer, Dante presented himself at the monastery, and, being asked what he sought, answered “Peace”. The monk then entered into conversation with Dante, who presently produced a book (the Inferno) from his bosom, and gave it to him with a request that he would forward it to Uguccione, adding that if Uguccione desired to see the other two parts of the poem, he would find them in the hands of the Marquis Moroello Malaspina and King Frederick of Sicily (to whom respectively the Purgatorio and Paradiso are said to have been dedicated). This letter has long been regarded as a forgery, possibly from the hand of Boccaccio. But recent investigations have proved that at any rate Boccaccio cannot have forged it, and there is now a tendency to accept it as genuine (see Wicksteed and Gardner, Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio, 1902, pp. 326-34; and Rajna, La Lettera di Frate Ilario, Perugia, 1904). A translation of this letter, which was written in Latin, is given in Appendix B.
13 Bk. ix. ch. 136.
14 “Novisti forsan et ipse
Traxerit ut juvenem * Phoebus per celsa nivosi
Cyrrheos, mediosque sinus tacitosque recessus
Naturae, coelique vias terraeque marisque,
Aonios fontes, Parnasi culmen, et antra
Julia, Pariseos dudum serusque Britannos.”
15 “Dilexit theologiam sacram, in qua diu studuit tarn in Oxoniis in regno Angliae, quam Parisius in regno Franciae.”
16 Epistola v. § 1.
17 Epistola vi.
* I.e. Dantem.
18 Epistola vi. §§ 2, 3, 4.
19 Epistola vii. § 2.
20 The text is printed by Del Lungo in Dell’ Esilio di Dante, pp. 107 ff.
21 Vita di Dante, ed. cit. p. xxi: “Il tenne tanto la riverenza della patria, che, venendo l’ imperadore contro a Firenze e ponendosi a campo presso alla porta, non vi volle essere, secondo lui scrive, contuttochè confortatore fusse stato di sua venuta”.
22 Epistola vi. § 3.
23 “The Florentines,” says Villani, “fearing the coming of the Emperor, resolved to enclose the city with moats from the Porta San Gallo to the Porta Santo Ambrogio, and thence to the Arno; and then from the Porta San Gallo to the Porta dal Prato d’ Ognissanti, where the walls were already begun, they had them raised eight cubits. And this work was done at once and very quickly; and it was without doubt the salvation of the city, for it had been all open, the old walls having been in great part pulled down, and the materials sold” (bk. ix. ch. 10).
24 A few days after the event the following letter was addressed by the Signoria of Florence to their allies announcing the news: “To you our faithful brethren, with the greatest rejoicing in the world we announce by these presents the blessed news, which our Lord Jesus Christ, looking down from on high as well to the necessities of ourselves, and other true and faithful Christians, the devoted servants of Holy Mother Church, as to those of His own cause, has vouchsafed to us. To wit, that the most savage tyrant, Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the rebellious persecutors from old time of said Mother Church, namely the Ghibellines, the treacherous foes of you and of ourselves, called King of the Romans, and Emperor of Germany, and who under cover of the Empire had already consumed and laid waste no small part of the Provinces of Lombardy and Tuscany, ended his life on Friday last, the twenty-fourth day of this month of August, in the territory of Buonconvento. Know further, that the Aretines and the Ghibelline Conti Guidi have retired themselves towards Arezzo, and the Pisans and Germans towards Pisa taking his body, and all the Ghibellines who were with him have taken refuge in the strongholds of their allies in the neighbourhood. . . . We beseech you, therefore, dear brethren, to rejoice with ourselves over so great and fortunate accidents.”
(The original Latin text of this letter is printed by F. Bonaini, in Acta Henrici VII Romanorum Imperatoris et Monumenta quædam alia suorum temporum historiam illustrantia, 1877, vol. ii. p. ccclxv; an Italian translation is given by Del Lungo, in Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica, 1880, vol. i. pp. 637-8.
25 Epistola viii.
26 Purgatorio, xxiv. 37, 43-5.
27 This Gentucca was the daughter of Ciucchino di Guglielmo di Morla of Lucca. Her husband, Buonaccorso di Lazzaro di Fondora (familiarly known as Coscio or Cosciorino Fondora) several times mentions her in his will (dated 15 December, 1317). Dante’s Gentucca is identified with this lady on the strength of the statement of an early commentary on the Divina Commedia (as yet unpublished), confirmed by documentary evidence (see C. Minutoli, Gentucca e gli altri Lucchesi nominati nella D. C., in Dante e il suo Secolo, pp. 221-31).
28 The text is printed by Del Lungo in Dell’ Esilio di Dante, pp. 148 ff.
29 This man, who bore the title of “bargello” is described by Villani (bk. ix. ch. 76) as “uomo carnefice e crudele”. He was appointed chief magistrate in May, 1316, but was displaced in the following October by Count Guido of Battifolle, who was appointed Vicar in Florence by King Robert of Naples.
30 Epistola ix. §§ 3, 4. A critical text of this letter is printed in the Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, N.S. (1905), xii. 122-3, by A. della Torre, who points out that the correct reading at the beginning of § 3 is not, as hitherto usually printed, revocatio gloriosa, but revocatio generosa.
31 Vita di Dante, ed. Macrì-Leone, § 5, p. 30.
32 Among Dante’s friends and acquaintances at Ravenna the names have been preserved of Dino Perini, a young notary of Florence (see Ricci, L’ Ultimo Rifugio di Dante, pp. 99 ff.), and Fiduccio de’ Milotti, a physician of Certaldo (see Ricci, op. cit. pp. 100 ff.), who figure respectively as Meliboeus and Alphesiboeus in Dante’s Latin eclogues (see below, pp. 254-6). Another friend was Menghino Mezzano, a notary (and, apparently, later an ecclesiastic) of Ravenna, who wrote an epitaph on Dante, and whose intimacy with the poet is attested by Coluccio Salutati (see below, p. 105; and Ricci, op. cit. pp. 218 ff.). Yet another acquaintance is said to have been Bernardo Canaccio of Bologna, the author of the epitaph inscribed on Dante’s tomb (“Jura Monarchiae,” etc.) (see below, p. 105; and Ricci, op. cit. pp. 237 ff.). Besides these, Boccaccio mentions Piero di Giardino (see below, pp. 103, 119; and Ricci, op. cit. pp. 209 ff.).
33 Paradiso, xxv. 1-3.
34 Vita di Dante, ed. cit. § 6, p. 31.
35 Printed in the Oxford Dante, pp. 185-6.
36 Printed in the Oxford Dante, pp. 186-7. As to the genuineness of this poetical correspondence between Giovanni del Virgilio and Dante, see below p. 252.
37 See below, pp. 256 ff.
38 See Giornale Dantesco, iv. 126-30.
39 This is the Galeazzo who is referred to by Dante in Purgatorio, viii. 79-81, in connection with his marriage to Beatrice of Este, the widow of Nino Visconti of Pisa.
40 The Pope’s name was Jacques D’ Euse.
41 Dante refers in the Divina Commedia to the practice of witchcraft upon people by means of images made in their likeness. Speaking of the witches in Malebolge, he says “Fecer malìe con erbe e con imago” (Inf. xx. 123); upon which the Anonimo Fiorentino comments: “Puossi fare malíe per virtù di certe erbe medianti alcune parole, o per imagini di cera o d’ altro fatte in certi punti et per certo modo che, tenendo queste imagini al fuoco o ficcando loro spilletti nel capo, così pare che senta colui a cui imagine elle son fatte, come la imagine che si strugga al fuoco.”
42“Vide Bartholomee ecce istam ymaginem quam feci fieri ad de-structionem istius pape qui me persequitur, et est necessarium quod subfumigetur, et quia tu scis facere subfumigationem in talibus, volo quod tu facias subfumigationes isti ymagini cum solemnitatibus convenientibus.”
43 See below, p. 232.
44 “Galeas dixit eidem Bartholomeo: Scias quod ego feci venire ad me magistrum Dante Alegriro (sic) de Florencia pro isto eodem negocio pro quo rogo te. Cui Bartholomeus dixit: Sciatis quod multum placet michi quod ille faciat ea que petitis. Cui Bartholomeo dictus Galeas dixit: Scias Bartholomee quod pro aliqua re de mundo ego non sustinerem quod dictus Dante Alegiro (sic) in predictas poneret manum suam vel aliquid faceret nec revelarem sibi istud negocium qui daret michi mille floreni (sic) auri, quia volo quod tu facias, quia de te multum confido.”
45 Boccaccio in his comment on the opening line of the Commedia, has an interesting note as to Dante’s age at the time of his death, which proves incidentally how carefully Boccaccio made his inquiries with regard to the details of Dante’s life. “That Dante was thirty-five,” he says, “at the time when he first awakened to the error of his ways is confirmed by what was told me by a worthy man, named Ser Piero, son of M. Giardino of Ravenna, who was one of Dante’s most intimate friends and servants at Ravenna. He affirmed that he had it from Dante, while he was lying sick of the illness of which he died, that he had passed his fifty-sixth year by as many months as from the previous May to that day. And it is well known that Dante died on the fourteenth day of September in the year 1321” (Comento, i 104-5). Inasmuch as Giovanni del Virgilio and Menghino Mezzano in their epitaphs on Dante speak of his death as having taken place “septembris idibus,” some suppose that he actually died on the evening of 13 September (see Corrado Ricci, L’ Ultimo Rifugio di Dante, pp. 157-8). It is probable, however, that the exigencies of metre had more weight with these writers than considerations of scrupulous accuracy.
46 J. R. Lowell.
47 The remains of laurel leaves, no doubt the relics of the poet’s wreath, were found in the tomb when it was opened at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and again in 1865 (see below, pp. 113, 117).
48 Vita di Dante, ed. Macrì-Leone, § 6, pp. 32-3.
49 It was long supposed that these lines (Latin elegiacs, beginning: “Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers”) were inscribed on Dante’s tomb, but Corrado Ricci has shown that this was not the case (see L’ Ultimo Rifugio di Dante, pp. 252 ff.).
50 See Ricci, op. cit. p. 259.
51 Beginning: “Inclita fama cuius universum penetrat orbem”.
52 Coluccio Salutati, in a letter written from Florence on 2 October, 1399, speaks of him as “notus quondam familiaris et socius Dantis nostri,” and says that he was a close student of the Divina Commedia, on which he believed him to have written a commentary (see F. Novati, Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, vol. iii. p. 374).
53 Englished as follows by the English traveller, Fynes Moryson, when he was at Ravenna in 1594:—
The Monarchies, Gods, Lakes, and Phlegeton,
I searcht and sung, while my Fates did permit;
But since my better part to heaven is gone,
And with his Maker mongst the starres doth sit,
I Dantes a poore banished man lie here,
Whom Florence Mother of scant Love did beare.
For “scant” in the last line Moryson (or his printers) substituted “sweet” (see Itinerary, ed. 1617, part i. p. 95).
54 See Ricci, op. cit. p. 264.
55 That is, “Sibi Vivens Fecit”.
56 See plate opposite. Bembo commemorated his restoration of the tomb in a Latin inscription (beginning: “Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas”), which was affixed to the wall at the left side of the tomb, and in which he states that before his restoration the tomb was almost unrecognisable. This inscription, which is still preserved, though in a different situation, was transcribed by Fynes Moryson in 1594.
57An interesting engraving of the tomb, as it appeared after this second restoration, is inserted in the first volume of the edition of Dante’s works published by Antonio Zatta at Venice in 1757.
58 “Nel anno 1321, del mese di Luglio,* morì Dante Alighieri di Firenze nella città di Ravenna in Romagna . . . e in Ravenna dinanzi alla porta della chiesa maggiore fu seppellito a grande onore, in abito di poeta e di grande filosafo” (bk. ix. ch. 136).
59 See above, p. 50; see also Zingarelli’s Dante, pp. 318-20. A sonnet of Dante to Quirini (Son. xxxvii.) is translated by Rossetti in Dante and his Circle, p. 240.
60 See above, p. 49.
* Villani’s mistake for September.
61 The original is printed in Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja, ordinate da G. Carducci, Firenze, 1862, pp. 136-7.
62 See Zingarelli, op. cit. pp. 326, 330-1.
63 The original is printed by Zingarelli, op. cit. p. 348.