Chapter I
PART II
DANTE IN FLORENCE
CHAPTER I
1265–1290
Dante’s birth and ancestry—His father and mother—Cacciaguida—Geri del Bello—Beatrice Portinari—Episodes in the Vita Nuova—Folco Portinari—Death of Beatrice—Poetical correspondence with Cino da Pistoja, Guido Cavalcanti, and Forese Donati.
DANTE ALIGHIERI1 was born in Florence in May,2 1265, a few months before, and, according to the Florentine reckoning,3 in the same year as, the great victory of Charles of Anjou over King Manfred at Benevento, which ruined the Ghibelline cause, and once more restored the Guelf supremacy in Florence and throughout Tuscany. Dante’s family were Guelfs.4 This he himself tells us in the Divina Commedia, in his account of his conversation with the Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti in Hell. Dante having answered Farinata’s question as to who were his forefathers, Farinata says: “They were fierce foes of me and of my fathers and of my party, so that twice we scattered them” (i.e. in 1248 and 1260). To which Dante retorts: “If my side were driven out twice from Florence both times they returned (i.e. in 1251 and 1266), which your side have not been able to do”.5
DANTE’S HOUSE IN FLORENCE
Dante’s father, whose name was Alighiero, lived in the quarter of San Martino del Vescovo;6 he was the son of Bellincione degli Alighieri, and was descended, as is supposed, from the ancient and noble family of the Elisei, who lived in the Sesto di Porta San Piero in Florence. Boccaccio goes so far as to trace Dante’s descent from the noble Frangipani family of Rome, but of this connection we have no evidence. His connection with the Elisei, on the other hand, seems hardly doubtful. Several names occur among Dante’s ancestry which are common among the Elisei, and one of his ancestors, who is mentioned in the Divina Commedia, actually bore the name of Eliseo.7
The name of Dante’s mother was Bella, but it is not known for certain to what family she belonged. There are grounds for believing that she was the daughter of Durante, son of Scolaio degli Abati (a Ghibelline family) ; in which case there can be little doubt that Dante’s Christian name (a contraction of Durante) was derived from his maternal grandfather. Dante’s father was a notary.8 He was twice married, and died when his son was about eighteen.9 Bella, who died in or before 1278, was Alighiero’s first wife, and Dante was their only child. By his second wife, Lapa, daughter of Chiarissimo Cialuffi,10 Alighiero had three children, a son Francesco,11 who survived his half-brother Dante more than twenty years, a daughter Tana (i.e. Gaetana),12 and another daughter,13 name unknown, who married one Leon Poggi. A son of this Leon Poggi, called Andrea, was an intimate friend of Boccaccio, who says that he bore a remarkable resemblance to his uncle Dante both in face and figure. From Andrea Poggi Boccaccio learned many details about Dante’s habits and manner of life.
Dante’s father can hardly have been a person of much consequence in Florence; otherwise, as a Guelf, he would have shared the exile of his party after the disastrous defeat of the Florentine Guelfs at Montaperti (4 September, 1260), which, from the fact that Dante was born in Florence in 1265, it would appear that he did not do. At any rate if he did leave Florence on that occasion he must have returned before the rest of his party, since the restoration of the Guelfs did not take place, as has been related in a former chapter, until January, 1267.14 The only contemporary references to Alighiero occur in a poetical (and not very edifying) correspondence (or tenzone)15 between Dante and his friend Forese Donati, from whose expressions it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dante’s father was either a personal coward or of little moral worth.
Judging from the position of their house in the heart of the city, and from Dante’s own allusions in the Divina Commedia,16 the Alighieri would seem to have been a noble family, as nobility went in those days. The fact that they are not mentioned by Giovanni Villani in his several lists of the important Guelf families of Florence17 may be accounted for on the ground that though of “ancient and honourable lineage,”18 they were neither wealthy nor numerous.
Nothing is known for certain of any of Dante’s ancestors further back than his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, whose existence is attested by a document dated 9 December, 1189, in which his two sons, Preitenitto and Alighiero,19 bind themselves to remove a fig tree growing against the wall of the Church of San Martino. In another document recently discovered, and dated 28 April, 1131, appears the name of a Cacciaguida, son of Adamo,20 who on plausible grounds has been identified with Dante’s ancestor; in which case our knowledge of Dante’s ancestry goes back one generation further. Cacciaguida’s history, in so far as we are acquainted with it, is related in the Divina Commedia,21 where we are told that he was born in Florence in the Sesto di Porta San Piero about the year 1090; that he belonged (as is supposed) to the Elisei, one of the old Florentine families which boasted Roman descent; that he was baptized in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence; that he had two brothers, Moronto and Eliseo; that his wife came from the valley of the Po (probably from Ferrara), and that from her, through his son, Dante got his surname of Alighieri; that he followed the Emperor Conrad III on the Second Crusade, and was knighted by him; and finally that he fell fighting against the infidel about the year 1147. Cacciaguida indicates 22 the situation of the house in which he and his ancestors lived in Florence as being “in the place where the last sextary is first attained by him who runs in the yearly horse-race,” i.e. on the boundary of the district known later as the Sesto di Porta San Piero.23
By his wife, Alighiera degli Alighieri, Cacciaguida had two sons, already mentioned, namely, Preitenitto and Alighiero. The latter (who it seems, according to Pietro di Dante,24 Dante’s eldest son, married a sister of “la buona Gualdrada” of Inferno, xvi. 37, and daughter of Bellincion Berti of Paradiso, xv. 112; xvi. 99) in his turn had two sons, one of whom, Bellincione, was Dante’s grandfather; while the other, Bello (i.e. Gabriello), was the father of the Geri del Bello, in connection with whom Dante alludes in the Divina Commedia25 to a piece of family history, which shows that the Vendetta was a recognized institution in Florence in those days, and moreover that it was approved by Dante. It appears that Geri was a turbulent and quarrelsome person, and had stirred up bad blood among certain members of the Sacchetti family of Florence, one of whom retaliated by killing him. His murder had not been avenged at the time Dante wrote, and consequently Dante represents him as regarding himself, when they met in Hell, with a threatening and indignant mien because of this neglect on the part of his kindred. Subsequently, more than thirty years after the event, and quite possibly as a result of Dante’s allusion to the incident, Geri’s death was avenged by his nephews, who murdered one of the Sacchetti in his own house. This blood-feud between the Alighieri and the Sacchetti lasted till 1342, when an act of reconciliation26 was entered into between the two families at the instance of the Duke of Athens, the guarantor on the part of the Alighieri being Dante’s half-brother, Francesco, who appeared on behalf of himself, and his two nephews, Dante’s two sons, Pietro and Jacopo.
Bellincione, the son of Alighiero, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Alighiero, was Dante’s father; the youngest, Brunetto, took part in the battle of Montaperti, where he was in charge of the Florentine Carroccio.
That Dante was born in Florence we know from his own statements several times repeated in his works, the most explicit of which occurs in the Divina Commedia27 where he says: “I was born and bred up in the great city on the fair river Arno”. We know from himself too that, like his ancestor Cacciaguida, he was baptized in the ancient Baptistery of San Giovanni.28 Years afterwards, he tells us,29 he was instrumental in breaking the font for the purpose of rescuing from suffocation a small boy30 who had fallen into one of the circular spaces at the side, where the officiating priest stood during baptisms in order to escape the pressure of the crowd.31
BAPTISTERY OF SAN GIOVANNI AT FLORENCE
Of the history of Dante’s early years we know little beyond the episode of his love for Beatrice, which is narrated in the Vita Nuova. Dante says that he first saw Beatrice when she was at the beginning of her ninth year, and he had nearly completed his ninth year, that is to say in the spring of 1274. “Her dress on that day,” he narrates,32 “was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited her very tender age.” At the moment when he saw her Dante’s heart was possessed by a passionate love for her, which from that time forward, he declares, completely mastered his soul. Boccaccio, who probably had the information from one of the Portinari family,33 and (quite independently) Dante’s own son, Pietro, tell us that this Beatrice was the daughter of Folco Portinari, a highly respected and influential citizen of Florence. Boccaccio gives the following description of the scene of their first meeting, as he, with his intimate knowledge of Florence and of Florentine ways, imagines it to have taken place:—
“In that season of the year when the tender heavens clothe the earth once more with its adornments, and make it everywhere smile with many-coloured flowers mingled with green leaves, it was the custom in our city for the men and women of the several districts to hold festival together in companies, each in his own.34 Wherefore it came to pass that, among the rest, Folco Portinari, a man much in honour at that time among his fellow-citizens, had on the first of May assembled his neighbours for a festival at his own house. Among the company was the Alighiero of whom we have spoken, attended (as children are wont to attend their parents, especially on festal occasions) by Dante, who had not yet completed his ninth year. And it befell that mingling here with the others of his own age, both boys and girls, of whom there were many in the house of the giver of the feast, after the first course had been served, in childish fashion he began to play with the others in such wise as befitted his tender years. Among the crowd of children was a daughter of the aforesaid Folco, whose name was Bice (although Dante always called her by her full name Beatrice), and who was then about eight years old. She was very graceful and pretty in her girlish way, and very gentle and pleasing in her manners, and more grave and modest in her demeanour and speech than might have been expected of her years. Besides this the features of her face were very delicate and regular, and full not only of beauty but of such comeliness and charm that by many she was held to be little short of an angel. She then, such as I describe her, or, it may be, far more beautiful, appeared at this feast, not as I suppose for the first time, but for the first time with the power to kindle love, before the eyes of our Dante, who, though still a boy, received into his heart the beauteous image of her with so great affection that from that day forward, so long as he lived, it never departed from him.”35
Nine years later, when they were both in their eighteenth year, that is to say in 1283, Dante saw Beatrice dressed all in pure white, walking in the street between two ladies older than herself. On this occasion she turned her eyes upon Dante, and saluted him. After this greeting, which, he says, seemed to reveal to him the utmost limits of happiness, Dante retired to the solitude of his own chamber and sat himself down to think of Beatrice. And as he sat thinking he fell asleep, and had a marvellous vision, whereon he composed a sonnet beginning
“To every captive soul, and gentle heart,”36
which is his earliest known composition. This sonnet he sent to various famous poets of the day, and among those from whom he received replies was Guido Cavalcanti, who from this time became Dante’s most intimate friend.37
Later on, Dante meanwhile, in order to conceal his love for Beatrice, having paid attentions to another lady, Beatrice denied him her salutation, which plunged him into the deepest grief.38 The next time he saw her was at a wedding-feast, whither he had been taken by a friend, and on this occasion his emotion so overcame him that his confusion was remarked, and the ladies, including Beatrice herself, whispered and mocked at him, whereupon his friend, perceiving his distress, led him from the house.39 This episode may perhaps be connected with the marriage of Beatrice Portinari, to which Dante never directly refers in the Vita Nuova, but which is known to have taken place before the year 1288, her husband being Simone de’ Bardi,40 a member of one of the great banking-houses of Florence.41
Not long after this Dante learned of the death of Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, whom he describes as a man “of exceeding goodness,”42 and who was a personage of no little importance in Florence, for he had held high office in the city, and had several times served as Prior.43 He was also a great public benefactor, for in June, 1288, the same year in which he made his will, he had founded the well-known hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.44 Folco’s death, and the grief of Beatrice for him, brought into Dante’s mind the thought that one day Beatrice herself too must die; and in a very short time his forebodings were realised. Beatrice died, within six months of her father, in June, 1290, just on the completion of her twenty-fourth year.45 Dante was for a time over-whelmed with grief,46 but after a while he devoted himself to the study of philosophy, and having thereby regained his peace of mind, he made the resolve, which is recorded at the conclusion of the Vita Nuova, that, should his life be spared, he would write of Beatrice what had never yet been written of any woman, a resolve which was carried into execution in the Divina Commedia.
A beautiful canzone on the death of Beatrice was addressed to Dante by his friend Cino da Pistoja,47 one of the “famosi trovatori,” to whom Dante had sent his earliest sonnet.48 In this canzone, from which it appears that Dante in his despair had been tempted to seek death, Cino strives to console him with the thought that Beatrice is glorified in heaven, where she watches over him and recalls his devotion to her on earth:—
How ever shouldst thou see the lovely face
If any desperate death should once be thine?
From justice so condign
Withdraw thyself even now: that in the end
Thy heart may not offend
Against thy soul, which in the holy place,
In Heaven, still hopes to see her and to be
Within her arms. Let this hope comfort thee.
Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells
Thy lovely lady who is in Heaven crown’d,
Who is herself thy hope in Heaven, the while
To make thy memory hallowed she avails;
Being a soul within the deep Heaven bound,
A face on thy heart painted, to beguile
Thy heart of grief, which else should turn it vile.
Even as she seemed a wonder here below,
On high she seemeth so,—
Yea, better known, is there more wondrous yet.
And even as she was met
First by the angels with sweet song and smile,
Thy spirit bears her back upon the wing,
Which often in those ways is journeying.
Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,
And says to them : “While yet my body thrave
On earth, I gat much honour which he gave,
Commending me in his commended songs”.
Also she asks alway of God our Lord
To give thee peace according to His word.49
Cino, who subsequently wrote a canzone on the death of Dante himself,50 was one of several friends of his youth with whom Dante held a poetical correspondence. As in the case of Guido Cavalcanti,51 this friendship doubtless owed its origin to the fact of Dante’s having sent to him the sonnet referred to above, the first in the Vita Nuova, to which Cino returned a sonnet in reply.52 At least five other sonnets addressed by Cino to Dante have been preserved,53 and two of Dante’s to him,54 besides a Latin letter on a subject connected with love.55
Guido Cavalcanti,56 one of the most distinguished poets of the day, and Dante’s earliest friend, addressed five sonnets to Dante57 (including his reply to Dante’s first sonnet), mostly on the subject of love; but one of them contains a severe reproof to Dante for falling away from his former high standard of life:—
I come to thee by daytime constantly,
But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find:
Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind,
And for thy many virtues gone from thee.
It was thy wont to shun much company,
Unto all sorry concourse ill inclin’d:
And still thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind,
Had made me treasure up thy poetry.
But now I dare not, for thine abject life,
Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes;
Nor come I in such sort that thou mayst know.
Ah! prythee read this sonnet many times:
So shall that evil one who bred this strife
Be thrust from thy dishonoured soul and go.58
It is supposed that Guido is here referring to some moral lapse on Dante’s part, consequent on his alleged faithlessness to the memory of Beatrice;59 but it is possible that what Guido had in mind was Dante’s degrading intercourse with such company as Forese Donati,60 his poetical correspondence with whom (written probably within a year or two of the death of Beatrice) has been already mentioned.61 The tone of this correspondence, the authenticity of which has been questioned, but which in the face of the evidence it is difficult not to accept,62 gives an unpleasing impression both of Forese and of Dante, teeming as it does with personalities and abusive recriminations. In after years, we gather, Dante recalled this episode of his early career with bitter shame. “If thou bring back to mind,” he says to Forese when they meet in Purgatory,
“If thou bring back to mind
What thou wast once with me, and I with thee,
The recollection will be grievous yet.” 63
It was to Guido Cavalcanti, while Beatrice was yet alive, that Dante addressed that charming sonnet (known to English readers as “The Boat of Love”)64 in which he imagines Guido, Lapo Gianni, and himself wafted overseas in a boat with their respective ladies:—
Guido, I wish that Lapo, thou, and I,
Could be by spells conveyed, as it were now,
Upon a barque, with all the winds that blow
Across all seas at our good will to hie.
So no mischance nor temper of the sky
Should mar our course with spite or cruel slip;
But we, observing old companionship,
To be companions still should long thereby.
And Lady Joan, and Lady Beatrice,
And her the thirtieth on my roll with us
Should our good wizard set, o’er seas to move
And not to talk of anything but love:
And they three ever to be well at ease
As we should be, I think, if it were thus.65
1 See Genealogical Table at end of volume (Appendix A).
2 From the reference in Paradiso, xxii. 110 ff. it follows that Dante must have been born towards the end of the month, at any rate later than the 21st (see Casini, in loc.).
3 The battle of Benevento, according to our reckoning, was fought on 26 February, 1266; but as the Florentine year began on 25 March, according to their reckoning it was fought on 26 February, 1265. The date according to both styles is indicated by writing 26 February, 
, where the lower figure represents the modem, and the upper figure the old, method of reckoning.
4 It may be noted that Dante’s intimacies were for the most part among the Guelfs: his mentor, Brunetto Latino, was a Guelf; his friend, Guido Cavalcanti, was a Guelf; his wife, Gemma Donati, was a Guelf; and his uncle Burnetto fought on the Guelf side at the battle of Montaperti. Further, according to Filippo Villani (in the preface to his Latin commentary on the first canto of the Inferno, cap. xxii.), Dante was intimate with Filippo’s uncle, Giovanni Villani, the chronicler, who was a staunch Guelf: “Patruus meus Johannes Villani hystoricus . . . Danti fuit amicus et sotius.” On the other hand, his mother is conjectured to have belonged to the Ghibelline family of the Abati; while his stepmother was one of the Guelf Cialuffi.
5 Inferno, x .42-51.
6 See p. 38, note 3. The house in which Dante is supposed to have been born is still preserved. It is situated in what is now known as the Via Dante Alighieri, a continuation of the Via Tavolini, which starts from the Via Calzaioli, a little above Or San Michele, and leads at right angles into the Via de’ Cerchi, on the opposite side of which begins the Via Dante. Doubts have been raised of late as to whether this could be the house in which Dante was born. M. Barbi, however, shows that the “case degli Alighieri.” were certainly situated on the spot indicated, and he holds that the traditional site of the actual house of Dante may be accepted as practically correct (see Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, N.S. (1904), xi. 258-60; and (1905), xii. 314-20).
7 Paradiso, xv. 136. Eliseo was the brother of Dante’s great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who had another brother called Moronto, one of the Elisei names.
8 His name occurs at the foot of three documents, one dated 1239, the other two 1256, as “Alagerius ymperiali auctoritate iudex atque notarius” (see Scherillo, Alcuni Capitoli della Biografia di Dante, p. 11).
9 Dante is mentioned in a document dated 1283 as “the heir of his father, the late Alighieri” (“Dante del già Alighieri del popolo di S. Martino del Vescovo, come herede del padre, vende,” etc.) (see Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, No. 5-6 (1891), p. 40).
10 Both Lapa and Bella are mentioned in a document relating to the Alighieri family, dated 16 May, 1332, at which date Lapa was still alive (see Scherillo, Alcuni Capitoli della Biografia di Dante, p. 29).
11 See p. 39, note 2.
12 See p. 39, note 2.
13 This half-sister of Dante’s is supposed to be the “donna giovane e gentile, la quale era meco di propinquissima sanguinità congiunta” of Vita Nuova, § 23, 11. 86, 95-6.
14 Villani, bk. vii. ch. 15. See above, p. 33.
15 Dante’s half-brother and sister, Francesco and Tana, are also mentioned by Forese in this tenzone, which is printed in the third edition of the Oxford Dante (1904), pp. 179-80.
16 Paradiso, xv. 40-5; Inferno, xv. 74-8.
17 Villani, bk. v. ch. 39; bk. vi. ch. 33, 79.
18 Villani, bk. ix. ch. 136.
19 “Preitenittus et Alaghieri fratres, filii olim Cacciaguide “(see E. Frullani e G. Gargani, Della Casa di Dante, p. 29).
20 “Cacciaguide filii Adami” (see Davidsohn, Geschichte von Florenz, i. 440 n.).
21 Paradiso, xv. 19-xvi. 45.
22 Paradiso, xvi. 40-2
23 The house of the Elisei stood not far from the junction of the Mercato Vecchio and the Corso, apparently just at the angle formed on the north side of the present Via de’ Speziali by its intersection with the Via Calzaioli. The Sesto di Porta San Piero appears to have been the last of the city divisions to be traversed by the competitors in the yearly horserace, who entered the city probably at the Porta San Pancrazio, close to where the Palazzo Strozzi now stands, crossed the Mercato Vecchio, and finished in the Corso, which was thence so called.
24 In the later recension of his commentary on the Commedia in a note on Paradiso, xvi. 97-9, he writes: “de quibus Ravegnanis descenderunt, scilicet de dicto domino Bellincione de dicta domo, comites Guidones, . . . ex domina Gualdrada ejus filia; cujus tres alie filie nupte sunt una in domo illorum de Donatis, alia in domo illorum de Adimaribus, alia in domo hujus auctoris, scilicet illorum de Alagheriis. Que tres domus jam multos habuerunt a dicto domino Bellincione nominatos Bellintiones “(see L. Rocca: Del commento di Pietro di Dante alla D. C. contenuto nel codice Ashburnham 841, in Giomale Storico della letter atura italiana, vii. 366-85). Pietro’s statement is confirmed by the fact that one of Alighiero’s sons, Dante’s grandfather, was named Bellincione (see Table in Appendix A).
25 Inferno, xxix. 3-36.
26 The record of this act is still preserved (see Dante Dictionary, s.v. Bello, Geri del).
27 Inferno, xxiii. 94-5. In the Convivio (i. 3, 11. 21-5), he speaks of “that most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, where I was born and bred up until the climax of my life”.
28 Paradiso, xxv. 8-9.
29 Inferno, xix. 17-21.
30 The name of the boy is given by one of the early commentators as Antonio di Baldinaccio de’ Cavicciuli, a member of a branch of the Adimari family which was especially hostile to Dante. The font which Dante broke is said to have been removed in 1576, by the Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici, on the occasion of the baptism of his son Philip. The present font was placed where it stands in 1658, but it is the work of an earlier period.
31 As baptisms used to take place only on two days in the year, on the eves of Easter and Pentecost, and in the Baptistery alone, the crowd on these occasions must have been very great. Villani, Dante’s contemporary, says (bk. xi. ch. 94) that in his time the yearly baptisms averaged between five and six thousand; the numbers were checked by means of beans—a black one for every male, a white one for every female.
32 Vita Nuova, § 2, 11. 15-18.
33 See Del Lungo, Beatrice nella Vita e nella Poesia del Secolo xiii. pp. 49-52.
34 Cf. Villani, bk. vii. ch. 132 (ad fin.).
35 Vita di Dante, ed. Macri-Leone, § 3, pp. 13-15. This work was probably written between 1357 and 1362 (see O. Hecker, Boccaccio-Funde, p. 154 n.).
36 “A ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core.”
37 Vita Nuova, § 3.
38 Vita Nuova, § 10.
39 Vita Nuova, § 14.
40 This marriage (which Del Lungo thinks took place as early as 1283), like many others of that period, was probably political, that is to say, it was a “matrimonial alliance,” not in any sense a marriage of affection (see Del Lungo, op. cit. pp. 13-14, 66-7).
41 The Bardi, who were Guelfs, were of European celebrity as bankers. They had extensive relations with Edward III, through whose default they failed, together with several other important Florentine houses, in 1345, twenty-four years after Dante’s death. Edward’s debt to the Bardi amounted to nearly a million gold florins.
42 Vita Nuova, § 22, 11. 1-18.
43 Folco Portinari had been one of the fourteen “Buonomini” instituted in 1281 by Cardinal Latino; and he subsequently three times (in 1282, 1285, and 1287) held the office of Prior. He died on 31 December, 1289, and was buried in the chapel of the hospital founded by himself, his funeral being honoured by the official attendance of the Signoria of Florence. The monument erected over his tomb is still preserved, though not in its original site. The inscription on it runs as follows:—
“Hic iacet Fulchus de Portinariis qui fuit fundator et edificator uius ecclesie et ospitalis S. Marie Nove et decessit anno MCCLXXXIX die XXXI decembris. Cuius anima pro Dei misericordia requiescat in pace” (Del Lungo, op. cit. pp. 8-9).
Folco married Cilia di Gherardo de’ Caponsacchi of Florence, and had by her ten children (five sons and five daughters) besides Beatrice, who are all mentioned by name in his will (dated 15 January, 
). To the four unmarried daughters, Vanna, Fia, Margarita, and Castoria, he left eighty Florentine pounds each for a dowry. To the son of his daughter Ravignana, wife of Bandino Falconieri, he left fifty Florentine pounds; and he left the like sum to “mistress Bice, his daughter, the wife of Simone de’ Bardi” (Item domine Bici etiam filie sue, et uxori domini Simonis de Bardis, legavit de bonis suis libras L ad florenos). His five sons, Manetto, Ricovero, Pigello, Gherardo, and Jacopo (of whom the last three were minors) were named as residuary legatees. Manetto (d. 1334), Beatrice’s eldest brother, was most probably the near relation of Beatrice who is mentioned by Dante in the Vita Nuova as being his dearest friend after Guido Cavalcanti (Vita Nuova, § 33, 11. 2-7 : “Si venne a me uno, il quali, secondo li gradi dell’ amistade, è amico a me immediatamente dopo il primo: e questi fu tanto distretto di sanguinità con questa gloriosa, che nullo più presso 1’ era”). Manetto, it appears, was also a friend of Guido’s, who addressed a sonnet to him, which has been preserved among Guido’s poems (see Ercole, Guido Cavalcanti e le sue Rime, pp. 145-6, 353, 355).
44 The endowment of this hospital is said to have been suggested to Folco by the then Bishop of Florence, Andrea de’ Mozzi (whose name appears in the deed of foundation)—the same Bishop who is branded by Dante in the Inferno (xv. 112-14) as an unclean liver. The deed of foundation is printed by L. Passerini in Storia degli Stabilimenti di Beneficenza . . . delta Città di Firenze (1853), pp. 835-9.
45 The exact date on which Beatrice died was 8 June, as follows from what Dante says in § 30 of the Vita Nuova. His aim is to prove that the number nine was intimately connected with the day, the month, and the year of Beatrice’s death. As regards the year his statement (11. 7-13) presents no difficulty—she died in 1290. In order to bring in the number nine in the case of the month and the day Dante has recourse to the Syrian and Arabian calendars (“io dico che, secondo l’ usanza d’ Arabia, 1’ anima sua nobilissima si partì nella prima ora del nono giorno del mese; e secondo 1’ usanza di Siria, ella si partì nel nono mese dell’ anno; perchè il primo mese è ivi Tisrin primo, il quale a noi è Ottobre”). He says Beatrice died in the ninth month according to the Syrian reckoning, which (as he learned from Alfraganus, his astronomical authority) corresponds to our sixth month, namely June. The difficulty, therefore, as to her having died in June, the sixth month according to our reckoning, is got over by saying that she died in the ninth month according to the Syrian reckoning. As regards the day, Dante says that she died in the first hour of the ninth day of the month, according to Arabian usage. Now Alfraganus explains that according to the Arabian usage the day begins, not at sunrise, as with the Romans and others, but at sunset. If, then, Dante, in order to get the required connexion between the number nine and the day of the month on which Beatrice died, was obliged to have recourse to the Arabian usage, in the same way as he fell back upon the Syrian usage in the case of the month itself, we are forced to the conclusion that the actual date of Beatrice’s death was not, as has been too hastily assumed, the ninth of the month, but the evening of the eighth, which according to the Arabian reckoning would be the beginning of the ninth day (see Paget Toynbee, Dante Studies and Researches, pp. 61-4).
46 Perhaps it was at this period that Dante, if the tradition mentioned by Buti (in his comment on Inf. xvi. 106, and Purg. xxx. 42) is to be accepted, joined for a time the Franciscan Order. This tradition is held by some to be confirmed by Dante’s reference in the Inferno (xvi. 106-8) to the cord with which he was girt, the cord being one of the distinctive marks of the Franciscans, who were hence known as Cordeliers. Some see a further confirmation of the tradition in the facts that Dante speaks of the Sun as the “image of God” (Convivio, iii. 12, 1. 54) as did St. Francis; and that Statius, on meeting Dante and Virgil in Purgatory, gives them the Franciscan salutation, to which Virgil returns the recognized countersign (Purg. xxi. 12-15). It has also been suggested in the same connexion that Dante derived his explanation of the fall of the rocks in Hell (Inf. xii. 1-45; xxi. 112-14) from the Franciscan legend, that the chaotic rocks of La Vernia, where St. Francis received the stigmata, were upheaved by the earthquake at the Crucifixion.
47 Born in 1270 at Pistoja, where he died in 1336 or 1337.
48 See pp. 45, 159.
49 The whole canzone is translated by D. G. Rossetti in Dante and his Circle (pp. 184-6), whose version of the concluding portion is printed above. The original is printed by Carducci in Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja, Florence, 1862 (pp. 9-12).
50 See below, p. 107.
51 See above, p. 45.
52 Printed by Carducci, op. cit. pp. 4-5; translated by Rossetti, op. cit. p. 183.
53 See Carducci, op. cit. pp. 103, 106, 108, 116, 117.
54 Sonnets xxxiv, xlvi, in the Oxford Dante.
55 Epist. iv. (see below, p. 248).
56 C. 1255-1300.
57 See P. Ercole: Guido Cavalcanti e le sue Rime, Livorno, 1885 (pp. 313, 318, 319-20, 322, 324-5).
58 Translated by Rossetti, op. cit. p. 161. For the original, see Ercole, op. cit. pp. 324-5.
59 See below, p. 71.
60 Forese died in July, 1296.
61 See above, p. 39.
62 On this tenzone, which is printed in the third edition (1904) of the Oxford Dante (pp. 179-80), see Del Lungo, Dante ne’ tempi di Dante, pp. 437 ff. A translation of four sonnets of the tenzone is given by Rosetti, op. cit. pp. 243-5.
63 Purgatorio, xxiii, 115-17.
64 From the title of D. G. Rossetti’s picture of the subject.
65 Son. xxxii.; translated by Rossetti, op. cit. p. 143.