Dante in Love

by A. N. Wilson

  It begins with a vision of a deserted Rome. ‘The mistress of the nations has become as a widow’ (the image of Rome as a widow resurfaces in the Purgatorio, VI.112). There is no doubt where the blame lies. It is not with the faithful, who continue to believe in the Virgin Mother, and in the God Made Man who told Peter to feed His sheep. The blame lies with the senior clergy themselves, who neglected to ride the chariot in the path of the Crucified and were like Phaeton, who seized the reins of the chariot of the sun. It is a singular image, since Phaeton was too weak to control the sun’s horses, and would, if he had been allowed to continue in his mismanagement of the chariot, have burnt Creation to a cinder. Jove was obliged to kill him with a thunderbolt. It is typical of Dante to juxtapose this violent pagan myth in the same sentence as an injunction to follow the Way of the Crucified. Piling Scriptural allusions together, Dante likens the cardinals to the false sun-worshippers in the Book of Ezekiel [Ezekiel 8.16] who prostrated themselves towards the East rather than towards the altar of Solomon’s Temple; and to those in the Herodian Temple who used the courts of the sacred edifice to trade doves and had their money-changing tables overturned by Our Lord. And who is he, the cardinals might ask? With a rhetorical flourish, Dante makes his very unworthiness a reason for his speaking out. He has no authority, nor riches. It is solely by the grace of God that he is what he is (like St Paul). Like the man born blind in the fourth Gospel whom the Pharisees tried to silence when he testified for Jesus, he must speak out. And in perhaps the most powerful image in the whole letter, he wails ‘a private voice to be heard at the funeral, as it were, of Mother Church’ [Ep. VIII.190, Wicksteed].

  He adds, what must have been true, that the subject of his letter was on everyone’s lips. How could the papal election, which had such momentous consequences for the whole of Europe, not have been a subject of universal debate? Upon its outcome depended the political future of every Italian, Frenchman, Spaniard and German. He appeals in the letter especially to the native Romans among the cardinals and in particular to Matteo Rosso degli Orsini and Francesco Gaetano, heads of the Orsini faction, and Napoleone degli Orsini del Monte, who, in spite of his name and family connection with the Orsini, had been the ally of the Colonna, against Dante’s old enemy Boniface VIII. You might have thought this would dispose them in Dante’s favour. But in this letter, Dante is appealing to a wider sense of the Church, and of the Roman destiny.

  Wherefore, albeit the note and scar of infamy must burn the apostolic seat like fire, and befoul her for whose keeping Heaven and earth are reserved, yet amends may come if all ye who were the authors of this going astray fight manfully and with one mind for the bride of Christ, for the seat of the bride which is Rome, for our Italy, and to speak more fully, for the whole estate of those on pilgrimage on earth; that from the wrestling ground of the contest already entered upon (while even from the edge of the ocean all eyes are fixed thereon) ye, making glorious proffer of yourselves, may hear the cry, ‘Glory in the highest’ and the shame of the Gascons, who burn with so dire lust as to seek to usurp to themselves the glory of the Latins, may be a warning to posterity for all ages to come.

  [Ep. VIII.173–90, Wicksteed]

  In whatever year you believe Dante wrote De Monarchia, there is a sense in which this epistle to the Italian cardinals is its companion piece. The letters written in the lifetime of Henry VII have the energy of vindictive journalism, or murderous political propaganda. The letter to the cardinals, however, pleads for a purer theory of the Holy Catholic Church, just as the treatise on monarchy calls for a Europe at peace. He knows that the Empire he depicts in De Monarchia does not exist, just as he knows that the Church for which he pleads in the letter does not exist. ‘I believe in Christ’s One Holy Catholic Church and sincerely regret that it does not exist.’ Since the Great Schism with the East and the departure of the Popes to Avignon, the dream of a united Christendom under the Supremacy of the Holy See had become precisely that: a dream. Likewise, a united Europe under an Emperor. They were not any the less ignoble for being ideals, rather than reflections of what was actually happening.

  The cardinals meeting at Carpentras were unable to reach a conclusion. The conclave broke up in violence. Two years later, they assembled in Lyons at the behest of Philip, Count of Poitiers, soon to become King Philip V of France. Eventually, a compromise candidate was elected on 7 August 1316, two years and four months after the death of Clement V. He was the wispy, tiny Jacques D’Euse, yet another lawyer, and currently Archbishop of Avignon, so that he did not have to move from home after he became Pope. The Avignon Papacy continued, though it was not until the pontificate of Benedict XII (1334–42) that the building of the vast papal palace at Avignon was begun and the ‘Babylonian captivity’ was actually institutionalized in stone. The election of Archbishop Jacques d’Euse as Pope John XXII was, however, yet another defeat for what Dante believed in. This was, for him, politically unfortunate, but it was helpful for the Comedy. From now onwards, though he could dream that Can Grande might become the Emperor, he was concentrating upon the ‘inward vision’.

  Praestet fides supplementum

  Sensuum defectui.4

  Whether Dante left the court of Can Grande because it was too ribald or for some other reason, it seems clear that the two men recognized one another’s gigantic stature. The year before his death, Dante returned to Verona and delivered a lecture in the Chapel of ‘the glorious Helena’ under the auspices of ‘the glorious lord, Lord Can Grande della Scala, Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire’.

  XIX

  RAVENNA AND VENICE

  VERONA, THE VERONA OF CAN GRANDE, WAS A PLACE WHERE DANTE could not fail to be aware, for every day he was at the Dog’s court, of the realities of current European politics, the day-to-day possibilities of ‘who’s in, who’s out’. Ravenna, with its mosaic reminders of a 700-year tradition, returned Dante to the fundamentals of his political and religious beliefs. He probably went to Ravenna in 1318.

  Ravenna was a great port, of pivotal importance to the Roman Empire, when Venice was little more than a collection of huts in a swamped archipelago. It was the Emperor Augustus’s great naval port. He united three populous towns, Ravenna, Caesarea and Classe, and constructed a grand canal which, as Gibbon tells us, ‘poured a copious stream of the waters of the Po through the midst of the city, to the entrance of the harbour’.1 Little by little, however, the sea retreated. ‘The gradual retreat of the sea has left the modern city at the distance of four miles from the Adriatic; and as early as the fifth or sixth century of the Christian era, the port of Augustus was converted into pleasant orchards; and a lonely grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor.’2 For the Romans it was the equivalent of modern Venice. By the sixth century – in Rome’s decline – Ravenna had become the chief city of Italy. Under its King Theodoric the Ostrogoth (died 526) many churches were built, of which two great ones remain – Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo and Santo Spirito. These churches were Arian – that is, they adhered to that version of Christianity (the commonest numerically at that date) which denied the Trinity and believed that Christ was not coequal with God the Father. There were also magnificent Catholic churches of which San Vitale and Sant’ Apollinare in Classe were also begun before the death of Theodoric. It was Theodoric who put to death Dante’s Catholic philosopher-hero Boethius. It was during this period that the churches were adorned with mosaics from the Eastern Capital of the Empire, Byzantium or Constantinople. It was in Ravenna that the eunuch Narses ruled (554–68) on behalf of that reformer of the Roman law and convert to Christian orthodoxy, the Emperor Justinian – who built the church of Hagia Sophia in Byzantium. And it was in Ravenna that Dante was to complete the Comedy and die.

  Walking around Ravenna, the visitor is presented, in the form of architecture and mosaics, with all the central preoccupations of Dante’s last works. In the extraordinary riot of mosaics and engraved stone in the church of San Vitale, you see the Bible story depict
ed in some of the finest mosaics in Christendom, you see the angels presenting a theophany, a vision of God Himself, and you see, in their midst the figure of the faithful Emperor, the convert to orthodox Christian belief and the great framer of Roman law for medieval prosperity, the Emperor Justinian, standing beside Bishop Maximianus, who wears the grand simplicity of Episcopal vestments. The Emperor carries a giant paten for holding up the loaves of the Mass. You cannot have any doubt, standing in front of this exceptional mosaic, that Dante, who resided for the last years of his life in Ravenna while he was writing the Paradiso, did not think of it as he composed the central passages in which, in the Heaven of Mercury, the Lawgiver expounds the story and significance of Rome. ‘Cesare fui e son Giustini ano’ – he almost seems to be saying it to us as we look at his features in San Vitale. The procession of Apostles in the mosaics in the cathedral; the great procession of saints in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo; the mosaics of Constantine the Emperor in the no less imposing Sant’Apollinare in Classe – all these are images which we find put into words in Dante’s Paradise. In Ravenna are lasting, and timelessly beautiful, reminders of the greatest theological dispute ever to divide the Christian Church – the Arian controversy. In Ravenna, the mosaics of Justinian remind us of the eternal significance of the Roman Eagle and the Roman Lex.

  Dante’s very late-medieval idea of Rome as the centre of ecclesiastical and temporal authority was severely challenged by the ghosts of Ravenna. He must often have thought here of Boethius – it was in Pavia that he was brutally killed in 524 for falling foul of Theodoric – Boethius, ‘the last of the Roman philosophers and the first of the scholastic theologians’.3 It is not fanciful to think of Dante turning back to Boethius during his Ravenna retreat.

  Dante was fifty-three when he accepted the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta to come and reside in Ravenna. ‘Trained in liberal studies, he paid high honours to men of worth, and especially to those who surpassed others in knowledge… With a generous mind, reflecting how men of worth must feel shame in asking favours, he approached Dante with offers, asking of Dante as a special favour that which he knew Dante must ask of him – that he would be pleased if he would reside with him.’4 Whether or not Dante was at first accommodated at court, it would seem from the traditions that he soon was accommodated in a house of his own, where he could pursue his studies and write his poem.

  The Polenta family had been the lords of Ravenna since 1275, when Guido I or ‘il Vecchio’ was elected Capitano del Popolo. They were originally aristocrats from the spurs of the Apennines: their castle was a few miles south of Forlí. The family arms contained an eagle, and Dante alludes to them when he says that the Eagle of Polenta broods over the city of Ravenna [Inf. XXVII.41]. Dante loved the language of heraldry. He often defines families by their heraldic devices. The Polenta who brooded over Ravenna at the time of the vision, 1300, was Guido il Vecchio who lived until 1317. (He was the father of Francesca da Rimini, whose sad love for Paolo forms one of the most famous scenes in the Inferno.) Then came old Guido’s nephew Lamberto, who was himself succeeded by our Guido, the man who invited Dante to stay. Perhaps he had already read the Inferno and been moved by the star-role given in that book to his cousin Francesca (see Chapter vii).

  Ravenna was to be Dante’s last refuge, and it was a particularly peaceful time. We do not know what had been happening to Dante’s family during the years of exile, but at Ravenna he was reunited with his two sons, Pietro and Iacopo, who had been condemned together with their father, and his daughter who went into voluntary exile in order to be with her father. We can assume that they had, in fact, been with Dante in Verona also. After Dante’s death, Pietro pursued a successful legal career in Verona and Iacopo had a canonry there. Dante’s daughter Antonia lived out her days in Verona at the convent of Santo Stefano. He appears to have had at least one fellow Florentine exile as a companion. Ser Dino Perini, much younger than Dante, would appear to have acted as a secretary. Other names – and they are little more than names to us – of Tuscans who shared Dante’s Ravenna exile, and were evidently part of a ‘circle’, included medics Fiduccio de’ Milotti and Guido Vacchetta, Piero Giardino, a lawyer, and Bernardino Canacchio, a Bolognese lawyer whom Dante perhaps befriended in Verona at the court of Can Grande. One name which does not appear in anyone’s recollection of these Ravenna days is that of Gemma. This does not mean she was not there.

  Giosuè Carducci, the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1906), imagined Dante in these years leading a life of studious retirement. The mornings were given over to helping his host with affairs of state, or dictating the final cantos of the unfinished Paradiso to his son Iacopo. Then, after Antonia had prepared a simple meal, it would be time for Pietro to bring in the grandchildren to romp with the poet. Then, discourses with visiting poets would conclude, as the heat of the day subsided, with walks in the cool of the evening, that witching hour of sunset which softens the heart [Purg. VIII.2]. The pealing of church bells would remind him of the bells of Florence echoing across the Arno, as the poet murmured to his companion, ‘We are growing old!’5

  The life-expectancy of well-fed men in the fourteenth century was not conspicuously lower than it is today, so there is no particular reason to suppose that Dante would have felt the imminence of death when only in his mid-fifties. But some such bookish routine as Carducci imagined is probably how he spent his days. Boccaccio envisages him as a kind of don or writer-in-residence – ‘in Ravenna… by his teaching he trained many scholars in poetry’.6

  To this period belong the Eclogues. A young professor at Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, started the correspondence. He wrote to Dante in Latin hexameters respectfully remonstrating with him for writing in the vernacular. He begs Dante to come to Bologna to receive the ‘laurel crown’ but also to write something in the manner of the great Virgil himself.

  Dante replied with that Virgilian type of conversation-poem known as an Eclogue. Dante and his friends take their names from Virgilian Pastoral. He is Tityrus. Perini becomes Meliboeus. Giovanni del Virgilio becomes Mopsus. His offer of a laurel crown is rejected, because, as ‘Tityrus’ explains to Meliboeus, he can never be happy until he receives that honour from his own people, in Florence, on the banks of the Arno, by the ancestral stream.

  In del Virgilio’s reply, some have believed themselves to catch a glimpse of that elusive figure, Dante’s wife. The young Bolognese enters into Dante’s indignation at his exile, and hopes that he will indeed return to Florence, there to have his locks bedecked by Phyllis herself – ‘et ab ipsa Phyllide pexos’.7 If this is an allusion to Gemma Alighieri, it is a shady one indeed. But it would suggest what we might have inferred, even if Boccaccio did not tell us so, that Dante and his wife were not together in his last days. Some scholars have doubted whether Dante is the author of the spirited Second Eclogue.8 Whether or not Dante was the author, the jokes about why he cannot come to Bologna (here, Mount Etna) for fear of meeting the one-eyed giant Polyphemus are impenetrable. (This has not stopped generations of scholars from speculating as to his identity – King Robert, or the Black Guelf Capitano del Popolo in Bologna, Fulcieri da Caboli, being two likely candidates.9) The message of both Eclogues taken together is clear. Dante will not abandon his retreat in Ravenna, however flattering the invitation from a clever young poet in a foremost university town. And if he is to send del Virgilio a poem, it will be (this seems the likeliest explanation for a reference in the First Eclogue) ten cantos of the Paradiso – perhaps the number of cantos of the Comedy which yet remained to be written at the time of the Eclogues’ composition.

  Ravenna was at peace for two years after Dante took up residence there. In 1321, however, a dispute arose with their much more powerful northern maritime neighbour, the Republic of Venice. It is possible that the Venetians, who would have liked a monopoly of the salt trade, resented the Polenta family having dominion over Cervia. The immediate cause of the dispute had been clashes between Ravennan shi
ps with Venetians in the Adriatic. Although Ravenna could score minor victories over individual Venetian ships, it could not hope to win an all-out war against the most powerful and piratical maritime state of pre-Elizabethan date. Treaty was the only option, and during that summer a delegation was sent to Doge Giovanni Soranzo, a powerful, skilful old diplomat, now past his eightieth year. It was he who had managed to annex Dalmatia for Venice, and to reconcile the excommunicate republic to the Holy See. Legend, however, has it that he did not trust his negotiating skills when confronted with Dante Alighieri. It is said that when the delegation, including Dante, arrived from Ravenna, Dante was commanded to keep silent, lest he swayed the company to concessions which the old Doge did not want. Though probably apocryphal, this story, relayed by Villani, is a tribute to Dante’s reputation as an eloquent and formidable negotiator.

  The Venice which they visited did not yet contain many of its, to us, familiar landmarks – even its medieval landmarks such as the present campanile of St Mark’s (reconstructed 1329), the Frari Church (1330) or San Giovanni e Paolo (1333). The Doge’s Palace, as we know it, to say nothing of the Ca’ d’Oro, the Salute and the Redentore were all, of course, un-built. The Piazza San Marco was only the width of the cathedral’s façade. But San Marco was there, with its four bronze horses pillaged from Constantinople, and the potency of its oriental interior, glimmering with mosaics in the shadowy aisles.

  Venetians had a tough reputation among their fellow Italians. Friar Salimbene saw them as ‘covetous, tenacious, superstitious, they would wish to subdue all the world to themselves if they could. They treat the merchants who visit them barbarously, selling to them at extravagant prices, and laying heavy duties on imported goods. Every vessel that puts into their port is forced to discharge its cargo there willy-nilly, even though the sailors have merely sought shelter in her harbour from stress of weather. If the merchants protest, the Venetians point out to them that their ship was guided there by Divine Providence – and to that there is no answer!’10