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 pi
cture of the subject.
65 Son. xxxii.; translated by Rossetti, op. cit. p. 143.
CHAPTER II
1289–1290
Military service—War with Arezzo—Battle of Campaldino—Victory of Florentine Guelfs—Buonconte da Montefeltro—Siege of Caprona—“Quomodo sedet sola civitas !”
OF Dante’s life outside the limits of the Vita Nuova, during his first twenty-five years, we get occasional glimpses, which show that, however deeply absorbed he may have been in his devotion to Beatrice, he was yet no “love-sick idler”. We find him taking his share in the active duties of family life, and as a patriotic citizen bearing the burden of military service in the field on behalf of the State. In a document dated 1283 (the same year in which he records his first public salutation from Beatrice) his name appears, as the representative of the Alighieri family, in a matter of business which had been left unsettled at the death of his father.1 Dante at this time was eighteen, and, both his father and mother being dead, according to Florentine usage was of age. Six years later, we are told, he took part in the war which had broken out in 1287 between Florence and Arezzo, and was present, fighting on the side of the Florentine Guelfs, at their great victory over the Aretines at Campaldino on 11 June, 1289. If we are to accept as authentic the fragment of a letter preserved by one of his biographers,2 this was not Dante’s first experience in the field ; he confesses, nevertheless, that he was at first greatly afraid, but at the end felt the greatest elation, according to the shifting fortunes of the day.
This battle of Campaldino was an event of no little importance in the history of Florence. If the Aretines had been victorious the position of the Florentine Guelfs would have been seriously endangered. As it was, the result was a crushing blow to the Ghibellines of Tuscany, who had made Arezzo their headquarters, whence during the past few years they had repeatedly raided the Florentine territory. In June, 1287, the Aretines, with the help of the exiled Ghibellines from Florence, expelled the Guelfs from their city, whereupon the Florentines, in alliance with the other Guelfs of Tuscany, declared war against Arezzo, and in June of the following year sent a strong expedition into their territory, which ravaged the country right up to the city walls. The Sienese contingent of this expedition, however, rashly allowed themselves to be intercepted by the Aretines, who surprised them and cut them to pieces, the Sienese losing more than 300 killed and wounded. This success greatly elated the Aretines, and proportionately discouraged the Florentine Guelfs and their allies, who were still further discomfited by the news of the expulsion of the Guelfs from Pisa, and of the imprisonment of the Guelf leader, Ugolino della Gherardesca, who in the following March was put to death in the Tower of Famine.3 Not long after this (at the beginning of May) Charles II of Anjou passed through Florence on his way to Rome to be crowned King of Naples in succession to his father. After spending three days in Florence, amid great rejoicings, he set out to continue his journey towards Siena. “And when he was departed news came to Florence that the Aretine forces were making ready to enter the Sienese territory in order either to intercept or to bring shame upon Prince Charles, who had only a small escort of men-at-arms. Immediately the Florentines sent out their cavalry, consisting of the flower of the citizens of Florence and of the mercenaries who were in the city, to the number of eight hundred horsemen, together with three thousand foot, to escort the said Prince; and when the Aretines heard of it they did not dare to go against them. And the Florentines asked the Prince to appoint them a captain of war, and to allow them to carry the royal standard to battle, and the Prince granted it, and he knighted Aimeri of Narbonne, a man very noble and brave, and cunning in war, and gave him to them for their captain. And Aimeri, with his troop of about one hundred horsemen, returned to Florence together with the Florentine force.”4
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