Dante in Love

by A. N. Wilson

  When Pope Nicholas IV had died in April 1292, eight years before, the College of Cardinals had been locked in a seemingly unbreakable feud. Half the college supported the Roman family of the Colonna, and the other, another great Roman dynasty, the Orsini (to whom Caetano was related). For over two years they were unable to reach agreement. At one point, when the anti-Colonna faction had left Rome, the Colonnas appeared to be on the verge of making their own election without the others. By the summer of 1294, Rome was drifting into anarchy; there was fighting in the district of Orvieto. Major questions, such as the future of the kingship of Sicily, could not be settled without a Pope, as Charles II, King of Naples, tried to remind the cardinals in their assembly at Perugia. He tried to make them choose from a list of four names, but this only produced deadlock.

  Then had come what appeared to be an inspiration. Rather than electing one of their own kind, a canon lawyer, an administrator, an intriguer, a partisan for one or another of the great Roman families, or for the King of France versus the German Emperor, they would call upon the Holy Spirit to revivify the Church in a quite new way. Cardinal Latino Malabranca revealed to the others that there existed a devout hermit, one Pietro del Morrone, who had prophesied that if they left the Church for much longer without a leader, divine retribution would follow.

  They hurriedly went in search of this octogenarian bumpkin, in his mountain retreat above Sulmona in the Abruzzi. There he had founded a monastery of great austerity, and lived so purely in the world of the miraculous and the spiritual that he had been able to hang his cowl upon a sunbeam.24

  Charles II himself and his son Charles Martel clambered up to Pietro’s rocky hermitage of Sant’Onofrio with a donkey, placed the saint25 astride this animal, and took him to L’Aquila, where, safe from the in-fighting of Roman factions, he could safely be made Pope Celestine V.

  It was not to be a long pontificate. Ensconced in the royal palace in Naples, the old man was soon begging to have a cell constructed which would remind him of his mountain hermitage. He appeared to have only the haziest knowledge of Latin, but in his plebeian Italian he implored them to let him abdicate. Dante, who attributed, in his Comedy, many or most of the ills of the contemporary Church to Benedetto Caetani, believed that it was he who, for reasons of personal ambition, forced the saintly Pope Celestine V to resign. It was even said that Caetani hid in the old man’s room and addressed him in ‘supernatural’ tones, through a speaking tube, a tromba, telling him to go. This story was first told in a Florentine chronicle of 1303, and achieved wide circulation. It was used as evidence in Boniface’s posthumous ‘trial’ and it is mentioned in an Icelandic saga of the fifteenth century.26 In the autumn, the hermit-Pope suggested handing over the administration of the Church to three cardinals, while he devoted himself to prayer and fasting, but this suggestion was hotly refused. When the Pope asked for his advice, Cardinal Caetani stated what he must have known to be a falsehood: namely, that there were historical precedents for papal abdication. Celestine V abdicated on 13 December 1294, was stripped of his papal insignia and renamed simply Brother Pietro. He pleaded to be allowed to return to Monte Morrone, but Caetani, who had now emerged as the most powerful figure among the twelve in the College of Cardinals, forbade this.

  After the fiasco of Celestine’s Papacy, and the divisive Papacies which went before it, Caetani was determined not to allow another period in which the Holy See was empty, or worse, in which its rightful occupant was disputed. No more long interregna would be permitted. The cardinals were assembled at the royal court in Naples and on Christmas Eve elected Caetani as Boniface VIII. Was there significance in the name? St Boniface in the ninth century had converted the Germans to Christianity. Boniface was to spend his pontificate playing off the German claimants to the Imperial throne against the French. The monk-hermit was locked up in a tower at Castello di Fumone, lest factions hostile to the new Pope should use the old one for their own purposes. Indifferent to this possibility, and yet determined to evade the nightmare in which he had been trapped, the spirited old man escaped; but he was recaptured and he eventually died in prison on 19 May 1296.27 Though Dante places him on the borders of Hell, ditheringly anonymous, among the angels who had not even been able to decide to support God or Satan during the War in Heaven, the Catholic Church decided to canonize Celestine – in 1313, he became one of the many people known as St Peter. In 1988, an X-ray was conducted on the skull of Pope Celestine V. Signore de Matteis and Father Quirino Salomone of the Celestine Study Centre at L’Aquila, where he was buried, said that a five-centimetre hole was found in the Pope’s cranium. ‘We think the hole was made by a nail driven through the Pope’s head by an unknown assassin,’ Father Salomone said.28

  After this episode, it was hardly surprising that Pope Boniface VIII should have regarded it as imperative to strengthen the position of the Roman Pontiff. There was no need for this august, suave lawyer to emphasize the difference between himself and his flea-ridden holy predecessor. Nevertheless, he emphasized his sovereign status by riding to his coronation on a white charger, gorgeously accoutred, the King of Naples holding the bridle on one side and the King of Hungary on the other.29 ‘Vulpes intravit, tanquam leo pontificavit, exit ut canis – He came in like a fox, he played the pontiff like a lion, and he went out like a dog.’30 In Rome itself, he set out to banish the Colonna family from their Mafia-like grip on the Curia. In Italy, he wished to ally himself to Charles II of Naples in order to build up a power-base against what was plainly the greatest political threat to the independence of the Papacy at this time – not the German Emperor, but the French King, Philip the Fair. Against what was said by all this Pope’s enemies, most eloquent of whom was to become Dante, must be stated that within two years of Boniface’s death, the Papacy itself would become a French dependency, the Popes would begin their ‘Babylonian captivity’ (a phrase coined by Petrarch), the seventy years during which they resided not in Rome but in Avignon. For Dante, Rome was so much more than a symbol. It was the very centre of that historical narrative in which the human race found its redemption. For Dante, the Babylonian exile was even worse than the corruption of the Pontiffs when in Rome. But against Boniface he could never be forgiving, since it was precisely in the Pope’s political calculations, his struggles against the King of France, that Dante’s life was to be tragically caught up and, as he would have seen it, ruined.

  If Dante came as a pilgrim to look up at the Pope on the balcony at Easter 1300, his encounters with Boniface later in the year were of a purely political complexion.

  Boniface spent very little of 1300 in Rome. For most of the year, he was in his birthplace, Anagni, the magnificent fortified hill town, cool above the broad valley of the Saco. Beyond stretches the great plain at the end of which ascend the seven hills of Rome itself. Here indeed it feels as if one surveys the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof, Satan’s last and greatest temptation to Christ as he was taken to a high mountain in the Judean wilderness, and offered political power by the Devil.

  It was to the papal palace in Anagni in September 1300 that there arrived the noisy and ostentatious entourage of Charles, Count of Valois, and brother of the French King, Philip the Fair. The Pope needed this man. There was hope that he might become a pro-papal Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile, the Pope hoped that he would be able to regain the throne of Sicily for the French. The French presence on Italian soil was deeply hated by most Italians, nowhere more than in Sicily. In 1282, the Sicilians had risen up and massacred the French in Palermo (the incident known as the Sicilian Vespers) and got rid of the French King. Since then, the King of Aragon, not an ally of the Pope’s, had occupied the Sicilian throne. All the Papacy’s expansionist dreams, including control of, if not actual conquest of, the Eastern Empire and Constantinople, depended upon their control of Sicily – or so they supposed. So, the Pope backed Charles of Valois (1270–1325) as his man in Italy – his man to conquer Sicily, and where necessary to subdue the anti-papal or Ghi
belline city states. By 1302, Charles had earned the nickname Lack-land (‘Carlo Senzaterra’), so unsuccessful were his campaigns. The Pope had quarrelled so badly with Charles’s brother that his own health and political strength were destroyed. And the party in Florence which had opposed the ambitions of Charles of Valois had also been vanquished. Almost everyone, in fact, in this particular power struggle, turned out to be a loser.

  But it was worth one last throw of the dice for the Pope. And this was where Dante’s destiny came to be entwined with that of Boniface. Dante, as well as being the most famous young poet in Italy, had entered politics, and during 1300, as luck would have it, he was rising in power in his city. In May, the Priors of Florence (the leaders of the city who served a two-month period in office) entrusted Dante with a diplomatic role. He was to go to San Gimignano to conduct negotiations with other like-minded factions in Tuscany. Florence was of vital importance to the Pope, to Charles of Valois, and indeed to anyone who wanted control of Italy. Not only was it, as we shall see in the next chapter, more or less the biggest city in Italy. It was also the source of currency. Its great asset, apart from a huge manufacturing and mercantile base, was the production of florins – the city gave its name to the coin which was fast becoming the chief currency of Europe.

  The Pope, whose idea of celebrating Easter in Holy Year was to station priests beside the altar of St Paul to rake cash into their bins, was not slow to recognize the importance of cash-rich Florence in the scheme of things. But as well as being the richest city in Italy, it was also the most faction-ridden, the most sectarian, the most dangerously at war with itself and with its neighbours. For decades there had been rivalry between those families and factions which supported the interests of the German Emperors in Italy – these were called Ghibellines – and those which, broadly speaking, supported the Popes. These were called Guelfs. Dante’s family were Guelfs, and he had married into one of the biggest Guelf family dynasties – the Donati.

  Now in the last couple of years before the Holy Year a deadly feud had broken out among the Guelfs of Florence. Leader of one side in the feud was Corso Donati, known as the Big Baron. This faction was known as the Blacks. Leader of the other side in the feud was a very rich banker, Vieri de’ Cerchi. The Cerchi side in the feud was known as the Whites. Although (or perhaps because?) he was married into the Donati clan, Dante found himself lining up with the Whites. While Dante was at San Gimignano that year, the Pope, without the knowledge of Dante and his friends, was in secret negotiation with Corso Donati and the Florentine Blacks. Corso was at this time banished from Florence for a financial scandal, and the Pope was further exasperated by the fact that the Whites in charge of Florentine affairs had fined three Florentine businessmen, and members of Boniface’s papal court, for conspiring against their city. They were sentenced, in their absence, to having their tongues cut out.

  In May, Boniface sent Cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta to Florence, ostensibly to quieten down the feud between Blacks and Whites, but actually to promote Black interests. He wanted Corso’s banishment revoked. Corso had secretly promised to let Charles of Valois into Florence and to hand over the city to French control.

  On 13 June, new Priors were elected and this time Dante became one of the rulers of Florence. Almost at once they had a crisis on their hands. On the Eve of St John the Baptist (patron of the Florentines), the annual celebrations were disrupted by a riot. The grandi, or aristocrats, jeered at the merchants in the procession, asking who had been responsible for winning the great military victory some years before against Arezzo. The riot, as so often, got out of hand. The Priors decided that the only fair solution was to exile seven White grandi and eight Blacks. One of the Whites exiled was Dante’s former best friend and poetic mentor Guido Cavalcanti.

  So Dante’s time as Prior was shot through with personal tragedy. Whatever his feelings about Guido by this time, the man had been his best friend and he could scarcely have wanted to send him – which he in effect did – to his death. (Guido died of malaria contracted among the swamps of Sarzana.)

  Dante had made two speeches in the parliament of Florence, the Consiglio delle Capitudini. In the first – during a debate about how the Priors should be elected – he had supported a more democratic method of election. In the second speech, he was fatefully to mark himself down as a man whom Pope Boniface would have been glad to do without.

  The Pope had asked the Florentines for military assistance in a small campaign he was conducting in the Maremma district, a campaign against the formidable Margherita Aldobrandeschi (‘The Red Countess’). He already had one hundred Florentine knights in his army and he had asked for a renewal of the favour. Four opinions were expressed in the debate. Two were in favour of letting the Pope have his knights. One was in favour of delay. But the fourth speaker was in favour of refusing the Pope: ‘Dante Alaghieri consulit quod de servitio faciendo d[omino] pape nichil fiat’ – ‘Dante Alighieri advised that, as to assisting the Pope, nothing should be done.’31

  When it came to a vote, the Pope got his cavalry by forty-nine votes to thirty-two, but it is inconceivable that he did not hear of Dante’s vote in the debate; from now onwards, the famous poet and anti-papal troublemaker was a marked man. What he had seen during Easter in the Holy City had plainly not impressed him favourably. Though the piety of the faithful had touched his heart, he had been nauseated by the displays of clerical avarice. Those priests raking the money off the altars are an unforgettable image in the chronicle. And Dante’s Comedy inveighs over and over again against Popes, bishops, abbots and other clerics who use the Church as a way of making money.

  By the time Charles of Valois was visiting the Pope at Anagni in September 1300, the Pope and the Florentine Blacks had already formed their alliance. Charles collected 200,000 florins from Boniface on his visit to Anagni. He had already been given 70,000 florins by Corso Donati, the Big Baron, who was still in exile.

  At the end of September, the Florentine Whites sent a small delegation to the Pope to prevent their interests being completely overridden by the Franco-Donati alliance. Two of the three ambassadors were men of whom history has little to say, while one was known as the greatest poet of the Middle Ages. But his poem would never have been written if he had not made this diplomatic mission and thus fallen foul of the Pope.

  Given the way that Corso Donati and Pope Boniface VIII liked to operate, it would seem almost certain that Dante’s fate was sealed even before he reached the papal palace. (Whether he was visiting Boniface in Rome or Anagni is not clear.)

  ‘Why are you so stubborn?’ asked Boniface of the three ambassadors. ‘Humble yourselves before me; and I tell you in truth that my only intention is for your city to be at peace. Two of you will go back to Florence; and may they have my blessing if they ensure that my will is obeyed.’32

  Dante was in effect left a hostage with the Pope. The two inordinately proud, strong characters here confronted one another – allegories, almost, of the visions of life and of history which they represented. Boniface was tall, silky, disdainful, with an oval face and a severe expression. He had a massive jaw and very good teeth – only two of them were rotten when they opened his tomb in 1605. He was probably gay. (There were complaints at his posthumous ‘trial’ of large numbers of male concubines.33)

  Dante was a much shorter man – no more than five feet five inches (between 1.64 and 1.65 metres), it was estimated when his body was exhumed.34 We all know his face – the long shape, the aquiline nose, the large eyes. His jaw was very pronounced, and the lower lip jutted beyond the upper. His complexion was very dark and his beard was thick and curling. But the hair colour, surprisingly for so swarthy a man, was fair.35 While Boniface was all smoothness and diplomacy, Dante was passion and rage. Both accepted the Roman Church as the means of salvation. But whereas for Boniface, the brilliant canon lawyer, it was the institution of the Church which was self-justifying, for Dante it was the Church as a vehicle for leading the inner life whic
h gave it its credentials. The newly formulated doctrine of Purgatory had given Boniface the chance to make some much-needed cash. It had begun in Dante Alighieri’s brain a sequence of inspirations which would create a literary masterpiece, the beginnings of modern literature with human singularity and self-consciousness at the centre of it.

  Over the comparatively minor question of which unscrupulous gang enjoyed the patronage of Pope or French prince, these two polar opposites were to fall out. The Pope kept Dante as his ‘guest’. By now it would seem that the Florentine delegation and the Pope himself had moved down the hills and valleys and back to the city of Rome itself.

  As he left Rome, Dante heard the news which would change his life, and alter the fate of European literature. The Pope had stitched him up. During his absence from Florence, there had been a coup. It was orchestrated by that ruthless man, Corso Donati. He was back from exile, and he was determined to give his enemies, the Whites, a taste of their own medicine. But he was to pay them back more ruthlessly than they had paid him. Cante de’Gabrielli, one of Dante’s enemies, also came back from exile and was made the civil chief of the city, the podestà. A trumped-up charge was levelled against Dante and his political allies that they had been guilty of barratry – the sale of political office. They were also condemned for having exiled the Blacks, who were described as ‘loyal devotees of the Holy Roman Church’ – which in a way they were.

  For five consecutive days in Florence, White Guelf properties, including Dante’s house, were pillaged and burned. Charles of Valois, the Peacemaker, looked calmly on and lifted not a finger to prevent the murder and arson which continued for a month. When enough of his enemies had been ruined or killed, the Pope once more sent Cardinal Matthew Acquasparta on a ‘peacemaking’ mission. This did nothing to stop the reciprocal killings on both sides, and nor did it help Dante.