Latin Eclogues.—Dante also wrote two Eclogues, in Latin hexameters, addressed to Giovanni del Virgilio, professor of poetry at the University of Bologna, who had urged Dante to write poetical compositions in Latin, and had invited him to come to Bologna to receive the poet’s laurel crown. These Eclogues were written during the last two years of Dante’s life, between 1319 and 1321.64 “Two eclogues of great beauty” are mentioned by Boccaccio among Dante’s works,65 and, though some critics reject them as spurious, there seems no sufficient reason for questioning their authenticity. They exist in five independent manuscripts, in one of which (the Laurentian MS. xxix. 8, which also contains three of Dante’s letters), written in the hand of Boccaccio, they are accompanied by a Latin commentary by an anonymous contemporary writer,66 supposed by some to be Boccaccio himself.67 The Eclogues were first printed at Florence, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in a collection of Latin poems (in eleven volumes), Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum (1719-1726); they were reprinted at Verona in 1788 by Dionisi in the fourth series of his Aneddoti, together with the Latin commentary, and have been many times reprinted since. Critical editions have been published by Wicksteed and Gardner (London, 1902),68and G. Albini (Florence, 1903).69
In the Latin Carmen 70 which opens his correspondence with Dante, Giovanni del Virgilio, after a complimentary reference to the Commedia, expresses his regret that Dante should confine himself to the composition of poems in the vernacular, instead of in Latin; to submit such themes as his to the judgment of the vulgar herd is like casting pearls before swine (ll. 1-21). Giovanni then suggests to Dante several subjects from contemporary history worthy of being treated in a Latin poem, for instance, the exploits and death of the Emperor Henry VII (24 August, 1313); the defeat of the Guelfs at Monte Catini by Uguccione della Faggiuola (29 August, 1315); the operations of Can Grande della Scala against Padua (1314-1318); or, finally, the siege of King Robert of Naples in Genoa, and his ultimate defeat of the Ghibellines (July 1318-February 1319) (ll. 26-30); such a poem would extend Dante’s fame throughout the four quarters of the globe, and Giovanni himself, if thought worthy, would present him for the laurel crown (ll. 30-38). Giovanni concludes by begging Dante to send him a reply.
Ecloga i. Dante in reply sends to Giovanni a Latin eclogue,71 in which he says that when the latter’s poem reached him he (Tityrus) was in company with a friend, Meliboeus (Dino Perini of Florence),72 who was eager to know what Mopsus (Giovanni) had to say (ll. 1-6); to which Tityrus replied that Mopsus discoursed of matters too high for his (Meliboeus’) comprehension (ll. 7-23); at length, however, yielding to Meliboeus’ entreaties Tityrus informs him that Mopsus has invited him to receive the laurel crown at Bologna (ll. 24-33). Meliboeus assumes that Tityrus will accept the invitation, but Tityrus gives reasons why he should decline, suggesting that it would be better for him to await his recall to Florence and receive the crown there (ll. 34-44). Meliboeus reminds him that time flies, but Tityrus assures him that when his poem dealing with the heavens and their inhabitants (the Paradiso) shall be finished, he will then be prepared to receive the crown, if Mopsus approve (ll. 45-51). Meliboeus thereupon recalls Mopsus’ objections against vernacular poetry, and asks Tityrus how he proposes to win him over (ll. 51-7). Tityrus replies that he will send to Mopsus ten vessels of milk from his favourite ewe (i.e. ten cantos of the Paradiso); meanwhile let Meliboeus concern himself with his own duties (ll. 58-66).
Ecloga Responsiva.73 Giovanni del Virgilio, adopting the pastoral style in imitation of Dante, sends back an eclogue in which he relates how, while he was in solitude at Bologna, the song of Tityrus (Dante) was borne to him by Eurus from Ravenna (ll. 1-21); and was echoed in Arcady, where the long-unheard strain was welcomed with delight by the inhabitants and by the very beasts. (ll. 22-5). Mopsus (Giovanni) then, asking himself why he too should not sing a pastoral strain instead of, as before, a city lay (his carmen), forthwith begins (ll. 26-32). Hailing Tityrus as a second Virgil, he bewails his hard fate as an exile, and expresses the hope that he may be granted his heart’s desire to return to his own city and there be crowned (ll. 33-46); meanwhile will he consent to visit Mopsus in his cave (Bologna), where he should receive every welcome from the friends of Mopsus and from all the dwellers in Arcady, and where he need fear no danger (ll. 47-76). But perhaps Tityrus would despise the abode of Mopsus; and, besides, lolas (Guido da Polenta) would hardly permit him to exchange his lordly roof for such humble entertainment as Mopsus could offer (ll. 77-83). Yet the invitation is dictated by admiration and love; and if Tityrus despise Mopsus, why then he will content himself with a draught of his Phrygian Muso (i.e. with the company of Albertino Mussato of Padua) (ll. 83-9)—but he must conclude, milking time is at hand, and his companions are returning with the setting sun (90-7).
Ecloga ii.74 In response to the eclogue of Giovanni del Virgilio, Dante writes a second poem in the same style,75 relating how, while he (Tityrus) and Alphesiboeus (Fiduccio de’ Milotti)76 were conversing together in the shade one spring day at noontide, suddenly Meliboeus (Dino Perini) appeared, hot and out of breath (ll. 1-30). Greeting him with laughter, Tityrus asks him why he comes in such hot haste (ll. 31-5). Meliboeus makes no reply, but blows on his flute, which gives forth the words of the poem sent by Mopsus (“Forte sub irriguos colles,” etc.) (ll. 36-43). When they have gathered its import, Alphesiboeus inquires of Tityrus if he intends to accept the invitation of Mopsus; to which Tityrus replies, “why not ? ” (ll. 44-8). Alphesiboeus then beseeches him not to leave his friends, and warns him of the danger he would incur if he went (ll. 49-62). Tityrus answers that for Mopsus’ sake he would willingly for a time exchange their pleasant pastures for the rugged abode of his friend, were it not for his dread of the violence of Polyphemus77 (ll. 63-75). Thereupon Alphesiboeus dilates on the cruelty of Polyphemus, and prays that Tityrus will never place himself in his power (ll. 76-87). Tityrus listens in silence, and smiles assent—and now evening has begun to fall (ll. 88-94). Meanwhile Iolas (Guido da Polenta) had been in hiding close by and had overheard the whole conversation (ll. 95-8).
Quaestio de Aqua et Terra.—The authenticity of the short physical treatise attributed to Dante, known as the Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, has been long disputed. Until quite recently it was held by the majority of professed Dantists to be an undoubted forgery. This work, which consists of twenty-four short sections, purports to be a scientific inquiry as to the relative levels of land and water on the surface of the globe; it claims, in fact, to be a report, written by Dante’s own hand, of a public disputation held by him at Verona on Sunday, 20 January, 1320, wherein he determined the question, which had previously been propounded in his presence at Mantua, in favour of the theory that the surface of the earth is everywhere higher than that of the water.
The treatise was first published at Venice in 1508, by one Moncetti, who professed to have printed it from a manuscript copy, with corrections of his own.78 Unfortunately he never produced the manuscript, of which nothing more has ever been heard. In spite, however, of the suspicious circumstances attending its publication, and of the fact that no such work is mentioned by any of Dante’s biographers or commentators, it is difficult to believe that it could have been written by any one but Dante. The internal evidence in favour of its authenticity is overwhelmingly strong; while there seems no adequate motive for a falsification of this kind at the beginning of of the sixteenth century, when the literary forger found a more promising field in the imitation of classical works. One of the latest writers on the subject, Dr. E. Moore, who has gone very carefully into the whole matter, unhesitatingly believes it to be a genuine work of Dante, “corrupted possibly in some of its details, but still in all essential points the production of the same mind and pen to which we owe the Divina Coinmedia, the De Monarchia, and the Convivio.” 79 A critical text of the Quaestio, edited by Dr. C. L. Shadwell, to whom the rehabilitation of the treatise is largely due, is printed in the third edition (1904) of the Oxford Dante. This text
was reissued in a revised form, together with an English translation, in 1909.80
Analysis of the Quaestio de Aqua et Terra;—
The treatise opens with the author’s statement that while he was at Mantua a debate arose as to whether water “within its own natural circumference” is in any part higher than the land; he then states his reasons for attempting a solution of the question, and his resolve to commit his conclusions to writing (§§ 1-2). Five of the chief arguments of those who upheld the affirmative view are first set out (§§ 3-7); but the author holds this opinion to be contrary both to observation and to reason, and states his intention of proving first, that water cannot in any part of its circumference be higher than the land; and secondly, that the land is everywhere higher than the surface of the sea; he will then deal with the objections to these conclusions, after which he will show what is the final cause of this elevation of the land, and lastly he will refute the five arguments in favour of the contrary opinion already stated (§§ 8-9). Water in its own circumference can only be higher than the land either by being excentric, or by being concentric, but in some part irregularly elevated or gibbous (§ 10); in proof of his first proposition the author demonstrates that water can neither be excentric nor gibbous (§§ 11-14); proof of the author’s second proposition (§ 15); opponent’s arguments against these conclusions (§ 16), and author’s reply (§ 17); opponent’s answer to author’s objections and author’s fresh arguments (§§ 18-19). Having now established his position that earth is everywhere higher than water, the author proceeds to examine into the cause of this elevation, which he finally refers to the influence of the stars (§§ 20-21); as to further inquiry, let men cease to search into matters that are too high for them (§ 22). The author next refutes the arguments in favour of the contrary view stated at the outset (§ 23), and concludes with the record of his own name and of the place and date of the dissertation (§ 24).
Apocryphal Works.—Besides the spurious letters mentioned above, and sundry apocryphal sonnets and canzoni, Dante has been credited with the authorship of certain religious poems in terza rima, namely a translation of the seven Penitential Psalms, and a poem of eighty-three terzine, known as his Professione di Fede, which consists of a paraphrase of the Apostle’s Creed, the ten Commandments, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria, together with reflections on the seven Sacraments, and seven Deadly Sins. The Professione di Fede, sometimes spoken of as Dante’s Credo,81 is contained in more than forty manuscripts, in the majority of which it is attributed to Dante, though in a few it is assigned to Antonio da Ferrara. It was first printed at Rome in the fifteenth century (circ. 1476),82 and was reprinted as an appendix to the edition of the Divina Commedia published at Venice by Vendelin da Spira in 1477. It has been many times reprinted since.83 The Sette Salmi Penitenziali, which are contained in numerous manuscripts, were first printed in the fifteenth century (c. 1475) at Venice.84 They were reprinted with the Latin originals and annotations, together with the Professione di Fede, by Quadrio at Milan in 1752, who published a second edition, with additional matter, at Bologna in 1753, which has frequently been reprinted. An Ave Maria, in twenty-four terzine, quite distinct from that contained in the Professione di Fede, was printed in a limited edition at Bologna, in 1853, from a fourteenth century manuscript85; and another Credo was printed at Mantua in 1871.86
Whatever may be said as to the genuineness or otherwise of the Professione di Fede, the proemio of which, at any rate, can hardly have been written by Dante, it seems at least possible that the Sette Salmi Penitenziali may have been his composition, perhaps as an early exercise in the use of terza rima, a metre which he was the first to introduce. It is not to be supposed that Dante acquired the complete mastery of this metre, which he displays from the outset in the Divina Commedia, without considerable previous practice. In the Commedia itself the increase of skill in the handling of the terza rima, and in the avoidance of repetition in the rimes, is easily perceptible to a close observer as the poem advances. Quadrio, who pointed out the many Dantesque phrases which occur in the Sette Salmi, and who had no hesitation in accepting them as genuine works of Dante, regarded them as examples of the “elegiac” style,87 as distinguished from the tragic and comic, of which Dante speaks in the De Vulgari Eloquentia.88
* * *
1 The division of the books into chapters was made by Dante himself, as is evident from the passages in which he refers to previous or subsequent chapters (e.g. i. 8, l. 33; ii . 6, l. 10; ii. 8, ll. 106-7; iii. 16, l. 1). The numeration of the chapters is due to modern editors, who unfortunately have not all adopted a uniform system. Witte, for instance, divides Book i. into sixteen chapters, Book ii. into thirteen, and Book iii. into sixteen; whereas Fraticelli and Torri divide Book i. into eighteen, Book ii. into eleven, and Book iii. into fifteen; while Giuliani adopts yet another system. (For a comparative table of the various arrangements, see Table xxxiii. in the Dante Dictionary.)
2 Bk. ix. ch. 136.
3 Bertrand du Pouget, created Cardinal by his uncle, Pope John XXII, in 1316.
4 Vita di Dante, ed. Macrì-Leone, § 16, pp. 72-3. The whole of Boccaccio’s account of the De Monarchia is omitted from the edition of the Vita di Dante published, together with the editio princeps of the Vita Nuova, at Florence in 1576 with the imprimatur of the Florentine Inquisitor General. This suppression was noticed by Milton, who remarks on the fact in his Commonplace Book (see Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, vol. i. p. 122).
5 The chief upholder of this theory was Karl Witte—see the Prolegomena to his edition (Vienna, 1874) of the De Monarchia, pp. xxxiii-xlix.
6 The passage in question, which occurs in the middle of the twelfth chapter of the first book runs as follows:—
“Libertas arbitrii . . . est maximum donum humanae naturae a Deo collatum, sicut in Paradiso Comedie jam dixi”.
This is an unmistakable reference to Paradiso, v. 19-24:—
“Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
Fesse creando, ed alla sua bontate
Più conformato, e quel ch’ ei più apprezza,
Fu della volontà la libertate,
Di che le creature intelligenti,
E tutte e sole furo e son dotate.”
7 There is a passage at the beginning of the second book, which, according to the reading of the most important MS., as well as of all the early printed editions, contains an undoubted reference to the Emperor Henry VII. In his rebuke to the opposition offered to the Emperor Dante speaks of “Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi” (ii. 1, ll. 25-7). This reference to the Emperor as “the Lord’s anointed” can only be to Henry VII. To no other of the successors of Frederick II, contemporary with himself, would Dante have dreamed of applying this term. In a passage of the Convivio, where he describes Frederick as “the last Emperor of the Romans,” he emphatically declines to recognize Rudolf and Adolf and Albert (the immediate predecessors of Henry VII) as Emperors at all: “Federigo di Soave, ultimo Imperador de’ Romani, ultimo dico per rispetto al tempo presente, non ostante che Ridolfo e Adolfo e Alberto poi eletti sieno appresso la sua morte e de’ suoi discendenti” (iv. 3, ll. 39-43). Now Henry VII was crowned at Aix on 6 January, 1309; consequently, if the above be the true reading, as there can be hardly a doubt that it is, the book must have been written later than that date (see Paget Toynbee, Dante Studies and Researches, pp. 302-3).
8 Reproduced (with references added) by kind permission of the author.
9 Aeneid, vi. 848-54.
10 Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which His Vicar can rightfully demand.
11 [Dante actually, by an error, says Hadrian crowned Charles the Great.]
12 Ed. 1904, pp. 276-80.
13 See Torri’s edition, pp. xli-ii, 118-21. Ficino’s translation accompanies the Latin text in the editions of Fraticelli, by whom it was first printed in 1839. T
here are three English translations of the De Monarchia, viz by F. J. Church, in Dante :an Essay, by R. W. Church, 1879 (pp. 177-308); by P. H. Wicksteed, in Translation of the Latin Works of Dante, 1904 (pp. 127-279); and by Aurelia Henry, 1904.
14 Andrea Alciati Jureconsulti clariss. De Formula Romani Imperii Libellus. Accesserunt non dissimilis argumenti Dantis Florentini De Monarchia libri tres. Radulphi Carnotensis De translatione Imperii libellus. Chronica M. Jordanis, Qualiter Romanum Imperium translatum sit ad Germanos. Omnia nunc primum in lucem edita.
15 See Paget Toynbee, John Foxe and the Editio Princeps of Dante’s De Monarchia, in Athenaum, 14 April, 1906.
16 In his Epistola Dedicatoria he says: “Sunt autem quos adjunximus, primùm Dantis Aligherii, non vetustioris illius Florentini poetae celeberrimi, sed philosophi acutissimi atque doctiss. viri, et Angeli Politiani familiaris quondam, de Monarchia libri tres” (p. 51).
17 See the Codicum Elenchus in Witte’s edition, pp. lvii-viii.
18 Bk. ix. ch. 136.
19 Vita di Dante, ed. cit. § 16, p. 74.
20 “In quarto hujus operas” (ii. 4, l. 13; 8, l. 83).
21 “In tertio hujus libri capitulo” (ii. 8, ll. 61-2).
22 “Nos autem cui mundus est patria, velut piscibus aequor, quamquam Sarnum biberimus ante dentes, et Florentiam adeo diligamus ut, quia dileximus, exilium patiamur injuste . . .” (i. 6, 11. 17-21; cf. i. 17, 11. 35-8; ii. 6, 11. 36-9).
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