DANTE ALIGHIERI. — The greatest poet of Catholicism.
SUMMARY:
I. The Man
II. Minor Works
III. The Comedy.I. THE MAN
Born in Florence between May and June 1265 to Alighiero di Bellincione and Madonna Bella. At the time of his birth, his family was not enjoying the prosperity of earlier days; yet it was of ancient nobility and allowed him to boast of his descent from the Roman founders of the city and to place among the glories of Mars the three-tailed comet, in which he took particular pride, namely Cacciaguida degli Elisei, knighted (it is uncertain whether by Conrad III of Swabia or Conrad the Salic) and who died as a crusader, for his devotion to the Church and the Empire.
Still a child (the exact year is unknown), he was orphaned of his mother. His father, after remarrying monna Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, soon gave him a brother, Francesco, who always showed him kindness and aided him as much as he could before and after his exile, and, it seems, two sisters. The tenderness of one of them is fondly recalled in the Vita Nuova. Where and when he received his first education, whether and which schools of rhetoric he attended, is easier to conjecture than to know for certain. The most probable hypothesis is that he was instructed by the Franciscans of the convent of Santa Croce. The note by the da Buti that “Dante was a Franciscan friar, but did not make profession during his childhood” (Inf., XVI; Par., XXI) finds indirect confirmation in the mysticism of the Vita Nuova and direct confirmation in the scene of the cord in Inf., XVI, which seems to admit of no other explanation.
He was nearly nine years old when he first met a young Florentine girl named Beatrice, who, with her very appearance, captivated him forever, becoming the “glorious lady of his mind.” Very subtle critics consider this to be a mere idea. Yet an unbiassed reading of the Vita Nuova provides no reason to doubt the ancient accounts, which tell us that Beatrice was Bice, daughter of Folco Portinari, who later married Simone de’ Bardi and died very young on 8 June 1290. The poet’s grief was great, and he still mourned her three years later, when in August 1293 (Conv., II, 11) “a gentle, young, and very beautiful lady” appeared before him, whose pity and the charm of her eyes gradually made him forget the “most gentle.” He wished to resist her, but could not and ended by falling in love with her, believing her to possess virtues she did not have. The deception lasted rather a long time; but in the end the poet realized it and, though with pain, freed himself from II.
Something similar must have happened to him in his study of philosophy. To console himself in some way for the loss of Beatrice, in that same August when the “gentle” lady seemed to wish to comfort him with her pity, he began to read Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae and Cicero’s De amicitia. At first, he found their meaning hard to grasp, but as he overcame the difficulties arising from the depth of their philosophical concepts, he found relief and delight in them. Philosophy seemed to satisfy all his desires, and he threw himself into it eagerly. Yet with time he had to convince himself that science did not fulfill all its promises and was itself an illusion; thus he returned to his former love.
Later, whether this truly happened or whether Dante, in reconstructing the main phases of his thought, wished to make them coincide and merge with his two greatest loves, it is certain that the cult of Beatrice, in its first period all dreams, visions, and raptures, transports us into a purely mystical atmosphere and lasts as long as adolescence, until the age of 25; that of the “gentle lady,” when Aristotle became the master and lord of his mind, begins shortly after he crossed the threshold of youth and lasts, according to the Vita Nuova, only “a few days,” according to the Convivio (II, II), almost until 1307. In him, love and studies mean almost the same thing (Conv., II, XV, 10).
It would nonetheless be an error to imagine a Dante inwardly lost, at the time of the Vita Nuova, in vague fantasies, and at the time of the Convivio exclusively devoted to philosophy. He is a mystic who always keeps one foot on firm ground, and a thinker who passionately strives for action; thus, through his studies, he can cultivate both the virtues of valor and courtesy, which he would later lament had fled from Florence and Italy. Nor would his somewhat reserved and aloof nature have kept him from taking an interest in the events of a restless and faction-ridden republic like Florence. Even if his writings did not testify to it, his having fought on 11 June 1289 at Campaldino in the ranks of the Florentine cavalry, who were to begin the assault, and his having been present a few months later at the surrender of the castle of Caprona (Purg., V; Inf., XXI and XXII) would prove II. Moreover, he himself confesses to being “mutable in all ways” (Par., V, 99), that is, to have a mind ready for every call and of such a nature that it does not rest until it reaches the solution of its problems (Purg.,
He was driven by a sincere desire for the good of the city to take advantage of the faculty, granted to the nobles on 6 July 1295, of holding public office provided they were enrolled in one of the guilds, even if they did not practice them; and, as a student of natural philosophy, he enrolled in that of the physicians and apothecaries. In the various councils to which he was elected—about six in number—the records of the republic soon show him occupied with matters very different from those that had been uppermost in his thoughts. Nevertheless, despite the brevity of the notaries’ notes, aggravated by the lack of minutes from July 1298 to February 1301, several things become clear: his constant rectitude, the trust placed in him by the priors, and his love for the freedom and independence of the Commune, then threatened by the ambitious designs of Pope Boniface VIII. Yet his fidelity to his principles, though it brought him some satisfaction, did not bring him fortune. In the two months from 15 June to 15 August 1300, at one of the most difficult and stormy moments in Florentine history, he was one of the priors. But too many and too powerful were the internal and external enemies against which the government of the Whites was struggling.
The Roman Curia had indeed sent Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta, ostensibly to arrange offices, but in reality to favor the party of Corso Donati; and the Signoria, having failed to act with the necessary resolve, was soon after overwhelmed by the Neri. When, in the hope of thwarting the machinations of his adversaries, in October 1301, Dante, along with two other ambassadors, arrived in Rome to plead Florence’s cause for liberty, he soon realized it was too late. The Pope, in agreement with the Neri, had already summoned Charles of Valois to Italy to restore peace—meaning, in effect, to place Florence under his governance. Charles entered the city on 10 November, and immediately proscription and vendetta began, directed first and foremost against those most prominent. It is almost certain that when, on 27 January 1302, Dante’s sentence of exile was issued, he was already on his way back. Along with the others, he was accused of barratry, illicit gain, and opposition to the Pope and Valois. Naturally, he neither appeared to defend himself nor paid the 5,000 small florins to which he was condemned. To do so would have been to place himself in the hands of his enemies and acknowledge the truth of the charges. Thus, on 10 March, together with fifteen others, he was condemned, should he fall into the power of the Commune, to be burned alive: *Igne comburatur sic quod moriatur*. By fortune for him and for us, he did not.
At first, the exiles deluded themselves into believing they could return by force of arms. Dante was with them. What his intentions were is argued from the epistle to Cardinal da Prato, undoubtedly his, where, among other things, writing in the name of the *Università dei Bianchi*, he says: “We—he declares—have wanted nothing else, do not want, and will never want, except the peace and liberty of the Florentine people.” But negotiations with the papal envoy failed, and the exiles, since someone must always bear the blame, turned unanimously against him. To what excesses they resorted and how he defended himself, the poet does not say. It is certain, however, that after a further attempt at arms—the so-called *impresa della Lastra*—on 20 July 1304 they were defeated, and having separated from that “wicked and foolish company” (*Par.*, XVII, 46–69), Dante remained more alone than ever, contemplating with sorrow the painful paths before him; but by which route he traveled, we do not know. We learn from him that his first refuge was the court of the Scaligers in Verona; but when he arrived there, “like a ship without sail or rudder… driven by the dry wind that stokes the fire of wretched poverty,” there is no way to pinpoint II. Nor is it easy to determine whether he stayed long. Living a life among hosts not overly dignified nor suited to his studies, it is reasonable to believe he left relatively soon.
With the news of an epistle beginning *Popule meus, quid feci tibi?*, dictated by the hope of being recalled spontaneously, we find the sigh arrested in the *Convivio* (I, iii) of resting at last in the bosom “of the most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome… to rest the weary soul and end the time” allotted to him, to which echoes a far more painful cry in the *De Vulgari Eloquentia* that now “the world is his homeland, as the sea is to fish” (I, vi).
In 1306 we find him welcomed hospitably for a time at the court of the Malaspina in Lunigiana. Then his traces vanish. He may even have gone to Paris and, “in the street of the straws,” listened to some of the masters of that famous Studium.
His person reappears and lives again with the news of the descent into Italy of Henry VII of Luxembourg, elected King of the Romans on 29 November 1308. The announcement that he was coming to free the peninsula from internal strife and restore it to the garden of the Empire stirred the soul of our poet and made him forget every injury. His confidence in the ideals for which he had fought and wept revived more strongly than ever; so that when Henry finally crossed the Alps in the summer of 1310, Dante ran to kiss his foot, perhaps at Asti or perhaps at Milan, and then instinctively made his way to Tuscany. He no longer considered in what state, through the greed for dominion, he had found nearly all the regions he had traversed as a pilgrim, bearing the wounds of fortune; and he wrote the epistle “to the kings, the senators of Rome, princes, dukes, marquises, and peoples” of Italy, he, *humilis italus Dantes Alagherii Florentinus et exul immeritus*, inviting them to peace. Instead of looking around, he looked within and wrote as his biblical hope dictated, that justice might return to earth; but he was deluded. It was the close of 1310.
The Florentine Neri, on the other hand, left nothing undone to ensure the foreigner’s enterprise would fail. Powerful in wealth and cunning, they turned against him many lords and cities. And Dante wrote a letter full of indignation, fierce and threatening, against those insensate men who, in their pride, dared to rebel against the divine designs. To no avail. His Henry wasted time in Lombardy subduing the resistance of Cremona and Brescia; and Dante once more, on 17 April 1311, turned directly to him to warn that the principal cause of opposition was Florence.
The reasons that brought Henry VII’s attempt to naught are well known. After long delays, he finally went to Rome and, not without grave conflicts, was crowned emperor. Then in September 1312 he marched against Florence. But Dante “did not wish to be there… though he had been an advocate for Henry’s coming” (*L. Bruni, Vita*). Henry, having raised the siege and returned, died suddenly at Buonconvento on 24 August 1313. Dreams and hopes, enthusiasms and fears—all collapsed in an instant. Dante was again alone beneath a starless sky. Nevertheless, when grief began to grant him some respite and he could gather himself to meditate on what had occurred, his faith in the idea most dear to him revived, intact. Events had proven it false; but for him, it remained certain and immortal. Henry had not fulfilled the magnanimous design. Another would come, the Greyhound, and would accomplish II. From this unshakable conviction was born the *Comedy*.
Where was he when he began: “In the middle of the journey of our life”? It is almost certain that, arriving in Ravenna—the city par excellence of empire and Church, where his spirit seems to find an altar—he had already composed the *Inferno* and part of the *Purgatorio*. The episode of Francesca would indeed authorize the supposition that it was written in gratitude for the courteous welcome of Guido Novello da Polenta, and thus that Ravenna is the homeland of the “sacred poem.” In any case, it was his final refuge. There, surrounded by the veneration and affection of devoted disciples, at the end of 1319 he received an invitation from a Latin master of the Studium in Bologna, Giovanni del Virgilio, to abandon the vernacular and sing of contemporary events in the language of Rome, so as to be crowned. He replied with a Latin eclogue, declaring that he preferred to receive that crown not in Bologna but in his “beautiful San Giovanni.” In January 1320 he was in Verona to deliver, in the little church of Sant’Elena, the discourse entitled *Questio de aqua et terra*. Returning from an embassy to Venice, he fell gravely ill, and from one of those Ravenna houses, steeped in silence, his soul departed, at the age of fifty-six, on the night of 13–14 September 1321, to “go to behold the glory of his lady,” gazing upon the face of *Qui est per omnia saecula benedictus*.
Honors were rendered to his remains; his death was mourned by many of the poets of the time, and his tomb is visited in devout pilgrimage by people of every land and tongue who hold sacred the eternal values of the spirit.
What Dante dreamed and desired, that is, his truest and most authentic life, is best revealed in his works, beginning with the one that, by its content, stands first among his minor works.
II. THE MINOR WORKS
1. *La Vita Nuova*. — This is a small book, a blend of prose and verse, which recounts the poet’s love for Beatrice—a real woman, not a symbol—sent to earth to signal the dawn of a new age. In delicate, nuanced strokes, it paints a portrait of his soul from the end of his ninth year until, through visions and raptures, joys and sorrows, errors and repentances, he is led to the conception of the *Comedy*, for which it serves as a prelude.
The solemn tone of the opening chapters already conveys that this is a most singular love. Then the narrative descends to petty, seemingly insignificant events, by which the poet attempts to justify his more or less innocent infidelities. An exception is Chapter 11, which describes in wonder the effects of Beatrice’s greeting. But this is only a digression; soon the tale returns to the misfortunes that befell him because of his reckless habit of courting one lady after another—so-called “screen ladies,” behind whom he tried to conceal the true object of his love. Beatrice, offended, withholds her greeting and never restores it, though he is deeply distressed, humbles himself, begs forgiveness, and weeps. All in vain; and though he continues to love her, he no longer knows what to do. Just when all seems lost, a chance encounter with some of her companions, curious to know his heart, unexpectedly reveals to him the goal his song must now pursue. It is one of the freshest and most delightful pages of the little book: he must make it his constant theme “to praise that most gentle lady.” His conscience tells him he was born to celebrate her.
Happy to answer this call, Dante, in this newfound love, produces his “new rhymes,” beginning with *Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore*, dissatisfied that he cannot worthily celebrate the virtues of his lady, nor recount the love that shines in her eyes—“by which all that she beholds grows gentle”—nor what happens “when she smiles a little.” But Beatrice’s father dies, and the ecstatic verses of admiration give way to those of grief—not, to be sure, the most beautiful. The vein of song flows again in the canzone *Donna pietosa e di novella età*, in which
a vision of death is followed by another of glory, where Beatrice’s soul is seen ascending to heaven, surrounded, like the Assumed, by a host of angels singing hosannas.
A sense of mystery hovers about the “most gentle lady,” lending hidden meaning to the simplest events. Even her precursor appears in the woman loved by Guido Cavalcanti, who one memorable day passes by to announce Beatrice’s return. At the baptismal font she had received the name Giovanna, from that John who “preceded the true light, saying: *Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini*,” though her fellow citizens called her Primavera for her great beauty, believing it so. In truth, the poet notes, it was “because she will come first” the day Beatrice appears to him again. Perhaps this is the happiest moment of his love. The homage paid to the “most gentle lady” as she passes by “clothed in humility,” the admiration she arouses, the words that follow her departure fill the poet with joy and wonder, from which arise the famous sonnets *Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare* and *Vede perfettamente onesta*. The people also sang the canzone *Si lungamente m’ha tenuto Amore*, until, after composing one stanza, the “Lord of Justice” did not deign to summon this most gentle lady to glory under the banner of that blessed Queen, the Virgin Mary.
One might expect the poet to express the bitterness of his sorrow in some of those phrases whose secret he possessed. Instead, he turns to subtle reasoning to discover why the number nine had played so prominent a role in her life and death, so much so that it became the principal motif: “To make clear,” he concludes, “that she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose root... is solely the marvelous Trinity.” This was what he most wished his readers to understand, so that they might grasp the mystery of that heavenly creature, sent to signal that salvation was near.
Once this is established—that a new life was beginning—Dante resumes his narrative and writes the canzone *Li occhi dolenti*, from which the cry of his soul emerges here and there in fragments. The prose makes clearer the depth of his affliction, which was so great that three years did not suffice to mitigate II.
At the beginning of the fourth chapter, a “gentle lady” appears, endowed with a peculiar allure. As often happens to one in suffering, her pity draws him to tears; and to hide his wretched life, he withdraws. But her compassion, displayed at every meeting, ends by winning him over. The poet senses a new feeling arising within him (*Gentil pensero che parla di voi*), and he would surely have devoted himself entirely to it had not, one day at the ninth hour, Beatrice suddenly reappeared to him, of the same age and in the same crimson garments as when he first saw her. Dante merely cries out at the vision he has had; he does not describe Beatrice’s demeanor, nor does he tell us whether she spoke words of reproach. He says only that at the sight of her he bitterly repents of ever having placed his trust in the “gentle lady,” weeps, curses the vanity of his eyes, and with all his soul returns to the “most gentle lady,” now become a “great spiritual beauty.” According to the *libellus*, the period of his second love is thus closed forever, and the sighs that once tore at his breast now rise to seek his angel beyond the sphere that widens most, in the Empyrean, to contemplate her glory. He has reached the point where, from now on, his gaze must be fixed.
*La Vita Nuova* is a love story without parallel in any literature, both for the way that feeling is born, lives, purifies itself, rises, and attains its end, and for the sense of mystery that accompanies II. Yet it is
unanimous in revealing with sufficient clarity the note that dominates Dante’s life and work. Seen from without, his passion for Beatrice seems a fantasy, dreamed in an atmosphere unlike our own; yet in itself, there is none of equal power. It seizes the poet’s soul before he has left boyhood behind, and never lets go—not even when he seems lost in the petty infidelities of early youth or in the far more perilous one of the “gentle lady.” For Dante’s love is one with the spirit that wrote in the ledger of his memory the rubric: *Incipit vita nova*—its law and its beatitude is ever to ascend higher, “toward the final salvation.” The motto that defines him he has Virgil pronounce on the slope of the Ante-Purgatory: “Let no step of yours falter” (Purg. IV, 37). Instead of seeking hidden meanings, one should take it literally, and it will be seen that its purpose is to prepare for the *Comedy*, declaring that Beatrice was a miraculous woman, whose love dominated him from childhood and, despite his infidelities, through revelations, visions, and extraordinary events, led him to awareness of the new age dawning and of the mission entrusted to him of announcing II.
II. THE “CONVIVIO.” — But if one passes from the *Vita Nuova* to read the *Convivio*, written as a continuation and clarification of that work, one is surprised. In the last chapter of the “little book” he had narrated how he had studied as much as he could in order to prepare himself to sing the praises of the “most gentle”; and he did study, yes, a great deal, to the point of overtaxing his eyes, but to celebrate that “gentle” lady whom he believed to be now far removed from his heart. The contradictions between the *Vita Nuova* and the *Convivio*, numerous and grave, have seemed until today insurmountable; yet a careful analysis of the two works makes it evident that we know the first only in the form that Dante gave it when, having overcome his philosophical crisis, he took it up again and adapted it so that it might serve, as it does, as an introduction to the *Comedy*. It is a bold hypothesis; but whoever reflects without prejudice on chapter 2 of the second convivial book cannot fail to note that it speaks of a *Vita Nuova* in which the love for the “gentle” lady unfolds in a manner altogether different from that transmitted to us in chapters 35–38 of the version we possess. In no place in the “amorous little book” is it affirmed, as in the philosophical treatise, that the “gentle” lady was of greater virtue and thus a better friend than Beatrice; nor that he, no longer hesitating, had consented to her love, much less that this love was perfect, as the *Convivio* on the contrary assures us even as it refers us back to the testimony of the *Vita Nuova*. Thus Dante himself bears witness to the reworking of the *Vita Nuova*; and it is entirely vain to invoke the manuscript tradition that does not exist, against that of the *Convivio* which does exist, and which removes every doubt. Given this, it is easy to understand that when Dante sets out to write his philosophical treatise, the transformation of Beatrice into a symbol of revealed truth is complete and accomplished, since in it he repeatedly declares that the love for the “gentle” lady symbolizes philosophy; and the battle between the two loves is converted into a battle between two philosophical schools: between the mysticism that informs the *Vita Nuova* and the Aristotelianism that dominates the *Convivio*.
To the memory of his first love he had dedicated a small book of 42 chapters; to the glory of the second he consecrated a vast treatise in 15 long books, likewise composed of prose and 44 canzoni “both of love and of material truth.” The differing scale of the monument is an index of the differing esteem in which he then held the one and the other.
Like the *Vita Nuova*, which begins with the words in which its ultimate meaning is concealed (“Nove fiate già,” etc.), the treatise opens with a maxim of Aristotle, the philosopher par excellence, to whose doctrine and authority he never tires of deferring: “All men by nature desire to know.” But since many, for various reasons, remain “in human hunger,” it is an act of mercy to seek to satisfy II. Yet another motive drives him. “Shame moves me,” he repeats, “and desire to impart knowledge” (I, ii). He fears that the canzoni he is about to comment upon may have made him appear excessively inclined toward love, and he wishes to declare their true meaning, demonstrating that he was not pining for a beautiful and proud young girl, but rather for wisdom, which is the supreme guide of moral and civil life. He will speak of himself at times, but only when necessity compels him; and he will use the vernacular, according to the common opinion that once was his own—that it was fit only to speak of love. He will show, by example, how much “the ease of its syllables, the propriety of its constructions, and the sweet eloquence that is made of it” (I, x) prove instead that it is “a new light, a new sun, which will rise where the usual one (Latin) sets” (I, xiii). He speaks of the mother tongue with the same affection as of a greatly beloved person.
Having selected 14 canzoni, which will provide the matter for the remaining 14 books, he sets to work with alacrity. The topics for the digressions of the second book are suggested to him by the canzone “Voi che ’ntendendo,” in which the struggle between the memory of Beatrice and the love for the “gentle” lady is represented. In the closing lines he had said that perhaps few would understand its meaning well; but the commentary clarifies everything. The “gentle” lady is philosophy; the “most gentle” is she in whose grace he often ascended to the feet of the Lord of angels and “beheld the kingdom of the blessed” (II, vii). One satisfied him with visions, the other with demonstrations and persuasions. The outcome could be foreseen. In a mind like his, so eager for knowledge, the “gentle” lady prevailed.
As regards the questions raised about the allegories of the *Comedy*, a special note must be made of the poet’s declaration that among the different senses of Scripture “the literal goes before, as that in whose meaning the others are included, and without which it would be impossible and irrational to understand the others, and especially the allegorical” (II, i).
The third book comments on the canzone “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,” certainly written when the study of philosophy had become a veritable passion, depicting it to him as “a daughter of God, queen of all, most noble and most beautiful” (II, xii). Whoever possesses her has nothing further to desire, for she is the highest good and grants the soul the ultimate perfection to which one may aspire; she is “full of sweetness, adorned with honesty, wonderful in wisdom, glorious in freedom” (II, xv). Gazing into the eyes of the “gentle” lady—that is, into the demonstrations of philosophy, and in her smile, in her persuasions—“one feels that highest pleasure of beatitude, which is the greatest good in Paradise” (III, xv). “In this gaze alone is human perfection acquired, that is, the perfection of reason, on which, as on its principal part, our entire essence depends; and all our other operations (feeling, nourishing, and everything else) exist for the sake of reason alone, and reason exists for itself and not for others; so that, when this is perfected, that is perfected, to the extent that man, inasmuch as he is man, sees every desire fulfilled and is thus blessed” (III, xv). What has become of the praises of Beatrice’s eyes and smile? They will return in the *Comedy*, but in the meantime the beauty of her in comparison with that of the “gentle” lady has vanished. It was in the nature of things that the new love should be the adversary of the old, should drive it from its throne and destroy II. To the mystical raptures the poet has preferred the demonstrations of reasoning reason, “a mirror without stain of the majesty of God” (III, xv).
Yet in the fourth book admiration begins to wane. There are problems, he recognizes, that philosophy does not resolve; the beatitude it bestows is no longer so perfect; and the active life is also a most direct path “to the highest beatitude, which cannot be attained here” (IV, xxii). The limits of reason, always admitted though they were, now make themselves felt more clearly, and his enthusiasm begins to cool. The poet’s thought thus shows unmistakable signs of change. It will not be long before he sets aside his philosophical encyclopedia, never to return to it again. But we are fortunate to have II. Besides explaining so many details of the *Comedy*, it helps us to follow at close hand the development of his thought, lets us witness the anxious and subtle workings of a mind never sated with knowledge, and offers us vivid and moving pages, such as those in which he speaks of exile, of his love for the Italian language, and of his studies. In the *Vita Nuova* he delights in ascending to the inspirations sent by his “most youthful angel”; in the *Convivio*, by means of the teachings of philosophy—“whose rays make the flowers bloom and bear fruit in true nobility”—he arms himself with “virtue and knowledge” (a pairing that recurs solemnly in the episode of Ulysses), so that he may “cry out to the people who walk the wrong path, that they may turn to the right one.”
They stood firm. Chapters 4 and 5 of the final book must be accorded paramount importance. They speak of Rome’s mission in the world and alone suffice to disclose the inner meaning of the “sacred poem.” The Convivio was most probably written between the end of 1304 and 1307.
III. Lyrics — In his lyrics D. also speaks of his loves, as gathered by scholars from the manuscripts; yet they do not form a proper and true songbook, for having been entirely absorbed by the poem, D. did not trouble to reorder them into a single volume. Were all and only the genuine lyrics admitted? One may well fear that some that truly belong to him have been left out or relegated among the doubtful, to say nothing of others that he himself mentions but which have been lost. As they stand, however, they may be distinguished into love lyrics, doctrinal, occasional, and miscellaneous; few of notable artistic value.
To reconstruct the story of D.’s loves through the first group would be hazardous; yet one may attempt to grasp the various motifs of inspiration. Now, whoever does not wish to maintain that our poet happened to fall in love with several women, each endowed with the same physical and moral gifts as her rival, must concede that in nearly all the love lyrics we have to do with one who “has tender years,” is “youthful and fair,” with golden, curling hair, who allures with her pity and ensnares with the spell of her eyes; but then she changes style, grows insensible and cruel, hardens like stone, and, being perhaps still a “little maid,” does not realize that she is leading him to death.
The lyrics confirm what is read in the Vita Nuova and the Convivio. After Beatrice the poet loved long and with true passion, and here lies their importance: the “gentle lady, young and very fair,” who regarded him with much pity, yet, as D. notes, “so far as the sight went,” so that “all her pity seemed gathered in her” — though it seemed only so (Vita Nuova, XXXV). This is a conclusion implicitly shared by those who, reading the Convivio, are led to think that the canzoni, for which he feared the infamy of having followed so violent a passion, must necessarily concern the woman of his second love. Naturally, those commented upon in the second and third books were not composed after the “pitying one” had been elevated to signify philosophy, but the others, such as “Io sento sì d’amor,” “Al poco giorno,” “E’ m’increce di me,” “Amor, da che convien” — not excluding the so-called “pietrose” and the best known of these, “Così nel mio parlar,” whose sensual ardor is undeniable. A different love is spoken of in the canzone “Tre donne intorno al cor,” where perhaps for the first time resounds the very accent of the Comedy.
Among the occasional lyrics are the sonnets of the tenzone with Forese Donati. The impression they leave is not pleasant, despite attempts to soften II. Even if they were jesting, whoever descends in jest to certain insults shows himself somewhat embittered. Sincere as he is, D. openly confesses this in the meeting with his former friend in the circle of the gluttonous. After fifteen years or more, the memory of that kind of life, led in the period of error and straying, still weighed heavily upon him.
The doctrinal lyrics show that the poet had long since overcome the prejudice that in the vernacular one should speak only of love; yet they are verse reasonings on nobility, grace, liberality, rarely enlivened by some fine image.
Perhaps more attention is due the miscellaneous lyrics, in that they reveal certain aspects of the love for Beatrice that would have been out of place in the Vita Nuova (“La dispiacita mente,” “Lo doloroso amor”), or disclose feelings that brush his fancy yet never resurface.
IV. De vulgari eloquentia — From the outset D. felt the need to clarify for himself the laws governing the art of speech. A foretaste is found in chapter 25 of the Vita Nuova; and already in chapter 5 of the first convivial book we read his intention to compose a treatise on the art of speaking in the vernacular. Yet this does not mean he set to work at once. The work seems written in a frame of mind quite different from that of the Convivio. The hope of being invited back to his homeland has nearly vanished, so that he does not refrain from phrases capable of rekindling, to his detriment, the hatreds of his fellow citizens; philosophy no longer kindles any particular enthusiasm in him; religious feeling is more present. Yet the allusion to a living and active Marquis Giovanni, commonly identified by scholars with the lord of Montferrat, who died in January 1305, leaves us uncertain about the date of composition.
On the notion that in Italian every thought can be expressed, there is no doubt; indeed, he recognizes that the vernacular is our true and natural tongue. He explains linguistic diversity by the confusion following the building of the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of peoples. He divides those who came into Europe into three main groups: peoples speaking the langue d’oc, d’oïl, and sì, derived from the same stock but gradually differentiating in space and time into various languages and dialects. Drawing ever closer to his goal — to establish which among the many Italian vernaculars should be used by one intending to produce a work of art — he begins by excluding the dialects of Rome, the Marca Anconitana, Spoleto, Milan, Aquileia, of Italy and Sardinia. He then examines those spoken on either side of the Apennines and finds none worthy to be declared illustrious, cardinal, courtly, or curial, and concludes that it “in qualibet redolent civitate nec cubat in ulla” (I, xvi); hence it is not peculiar to this or that region, but belongs to all Italy.
In the second book, having noted that the illustrious vernacular befits singers of arms, love, or virtue, and that among the various metrical forms the canzone is the highest, he goes on to discuss three styles: the tragic, which is the most noble and requires the courtly vernacular; the comic, which employs now the middle and now the humble vernacular; and the elegiac, which uses only the humble. He treats of the verses to be used in the various components and then turns to the canzone, its stanzas, rhyme, and syllable count. Here, however, the work, which seemed destined for four books, remains unfinished. D. completed only those writings most directly connected with the Comedy, with which he knew he was giving expression to what his genius had inspired in him of greatest.
Yet it is no small glory to have attempted to penetrate the nature of languages and their variation; to have seen the relation between geographical diversity and that of dialects; through the study of the vernacular to have intuited the moral unity of Italy, with Rome at its head. The De vulgari eloquentia also lets us see the care, thorough and scrupulous, with which the poet attended to the art of writing, which for him was a true priesthood, and shows with what zeal he sought the instrument best suited to the expression of his thought. The passion for heights is felt in all its forms.
V. De monarchia — The political treatise prepares us for the Comedy no less directly than the Vita Nuova, with its clear and precise exposition of what is usually called his utopia — utopia, that is, if one considers men as they are; yet in its ultimate meaning it is no longer so if one considers men as they should be. His unceasing meditations on the religious, moral, and civil conditions of his age had shown him that the evil afflicting all derived from cupidity, that is, from immoderate desire for worldly goods sought with ever greater eagerness — wealth, pleasure, power, fame, grandeur. For this, men turned against one another and no longer perceived the great happiness there is in forming a single family, in recognizing ourselves as children of one Father who is God. From such evil it was necessary to free oneself.
Il first and most notable fruit of his reflections is gathered in chaps. 4 and 5 of the last book of the Convivio, where the leading lines of his political thought are already clearly drawn. The idea of the Empire and of its function is fully mature. He enjoys a radical foundation: the imperial majesty and the needs to which family, neighbourhoods, cities and kingdoms respond; yet he knows how the human soul «in finite possession of land does not rest, but ever desires to acquire glory»; and from this he deduces that to remove the causes of discord and ever-renewed wars, «it is necessary to unite all the earth and all that pertains to human generation in possession, to be a Monarchy, that is, to have one sole principality and one prince; who, possessing all and desiring nothing more, may keep kings content within the bounds of their kingdoms, so that peace may be among them, in which citizens may repose, and in this repose neighbourhoods may flourish, in this love things may obtain every need, which obtained, man may live happily, which is that for which he was born». The idea of the Empire already holds a high place in his thought and exalts II.
The occasion to develop it he may almost certainly have had at the time of Henry’s expedition. In those who, clad in the feathers of the raven, boast themselves to be the white sheep of God’s flock and are in truth the sons of iniquity who, to accomplish their misdeeds, prostitute the mother, the Church, drive out their brethren and will not open the door to the judge, the emperor (III, 111), one may easily recognise the Florentine Blacks, of whom Benedict XI in the letter of 21 June 1304 expressed the same concept: «Who would believe», he wrote, «that these, even while they go against the Church, wish to be counted as her sons?».
The ardour that emanates from every page, the effort to assail the adversary in every one of his strongholds and leave him no escape, the quality of the proofs—often unpersuasive to us but answering to the modes of reasoning of that age—all clearly show that the Monarchia was written when he was waging his fiercest battle.
If man, this is the principle from which he starts, is man insofar as he is rational, it follows that his ultimate perfection will consist in the full realization of the possible intellect, to which one does not attain unless the world lives in peace; and peace is had only under a single monarch. For the human race to attain the end for which it was created, it must therefore form a single family, resembling the heavens, which are moved by a single motion, and God who is one. The need for justice can be satisfied only by the monarch, as he who, possessing all and having nothing further to desire, is free from the taint of cupidity that infects human civil society. Only under the monarch is liberty granted, because only then is the will upright and sound.
In the second book he declares how and why the right to govern the world was conferred by God upon Rome. The arguments naturally bear the stamp of the syllogistic form of that age, subtle, dialectical, combative. Many derive from the *Evvide*, which, not surprisingly, becomes one of the richest sources of Dante’s thought. But perhaps the most original proof he draws from the consideration that if in Christ all the human race was to suffer, the sentence had to come from him who had legitimate jurisdiction over all the earth.
The most significant book of D.’s system is the third, in the service of which the other two may be said to be made. The question of the independence of civil authority from the papal in the dispute between Philip IV the Fair and Boniface VIII had arisen to divide the minds of one and the same people and one and the same city. D. begins by declaring that he will speak the truth, come what may; and having clearly set forth the terms of the problem, he proceeds forthwith to refute the proofs adduced alike by the supporters of papal authority *supra reges et regna* and by those who are sons of the devil (the thrust is at the Florentines) and by the decretalists. And he demolishes them all with relentless, at times sophistical, logic. The authority of the Empire derives directly from God, who, having made man in such a way that by his nature he tends to two felicities, the temporal and the eternal, has set over him the emperor to guide him to the former by philosophical instruction, and the pope to the latter by revealed truths. It is just, however, since the happiness of this life is ordered to that of the next, that the former should show to the latter the reverence of the elder son to the father. With this concession, since reverence is
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