Dante

DANTE (or DURANTE), ALIGHIERI the greatest of Italian poets, was born at Florence about the middle of May 1265. He was descended from an ancient family, but from one which at any rate for several generations had belonged to the burgher and not to the knightly class. Dante himself does not, with the exception of a few obscure and scattered allusions, carry his ancestry beyond the warrior Cac ciaguida, whom he met in the sphere of Mars (Par. xv. 87 seq.). Of Cacciaguida's family nothing is known. The name, as he told Dante (Par. xv. 13o, 135), was given him at his baptism. He further tells his descendant that he was born in the year io9i, and that he married a lady from the valley of the Po, from whom the name Aldighieri or Alighieri passed to his descendants. He also mentions two brothers, Moronte and Eliseo, and that he accompanied the emperor Conrad III. upon his crusade into the Holy Land, where he died (1147) among the infidels. From Aldighiero, son of Cacciaguida, were descended the Alighieri. Bellincione, son of Aldighiero, was the grandfather of Dante. His father was a second Alighiero of whom little is known. Dante appears to have been the son of Alighiero's first wife, Bella, whose family name is doubtful. By his second wife, Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, Alighiero had a son Francesco and a daughter Tana (Gaetana) ; another daughter, who married Leone Poggi and whose name is not known, was perhaps the poet's sister. Thus the family of Dante held a most respectable position among the citizens of his beloved city; but had it been reckoned in the very first rank they could not have remained in Florence after the defeat of the Guelphs at Montaperti in i 26o. It is clear, however, that Dante's mother at least did so remain, for Dante was born in Florence in 1265. The heads of the Guelph party did not return till 1267.

Apart from his love for Beatrice, we know very little of Dante's boyhood and early life. His early biographers, Boccaccio and Leonardo Bruni, represent him as an assiduous student. From the age of 18 he, like most cul tivated young men of that age, wrote poetry assiduously, in the philosophical amatory style of which his friend, older by some years than himself, Guido Caval canti, was a great exponent, and of which Dante regarded Guido Guinicelli of Bologna as the mas ter (Purg. xxvi. 97, 8). He doubt less owed much to the paternal influence of Brunetto Latini (d. 1294), the philosopher and rhetorician, who figured largely in the councils of the Florentine commune. Of Brunetto Latini Dante himself speaks with the most loving gratitude and affec tion, though he does not hesitate to brand his vice with infamy. He had some knowledge of drawing; at any rate he tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice he drew an angel on a tablet ; he is said to have been an intimate friend of Giotto, who has immortalized his youthful lineaments in the chapel of the Bargello. Nor was he less sensible to the delights of music. Milton had not a keener ear for the loud uplifted angel trumpets and the immortal harps of golden wires of the cherubim and seraphim; and the English poet was proud to compare his own friendship with Henry Lawes with that between Dante and Casella, "met in the milder shades of purgatory." There is some evidence that Dante was at Bologna not later than 1287, but it is doubtful whether, as Boccaccio states, he studied at the univer sity. It is clear that, from his youth onwards, he began to make himself master of all the sciences of his time, while playing his part in society and in touch with every aspect of Florentine life.

Political Life.

We must now consider the political circum stances in which lay the activity of Dante's manhood. From iris, the year of the death of Matilda, countess of Tuscany, Florence developed as a self-governing commune attached to the cause of the Church. According to tradition, the Guelph and Ghibelline factions were introduced into the city in 1215. Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti, a noble youth of Florence, being engaged to marry a lady of the house of Amidei, allied himself instead to a Donati, and was attacked and killed by the Arnidei and Uberti at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, close by the pilaster which bore the image of Mars (Par. xvi. 136-147). Although a number of noble families, headed by the Uberti, now ranged themselves with the Ghibellines, the commune remained Guelph ; but, in 1248, with the aid of German horsemen sent by Frederick II., the Uberti and the Ghibellines gained the upper hand and expelled the Guelph nobles. In 12 50, when the emperor was dying, there was a revolution by which the Primo Popolo, the first democratic constitution of the republic, was established, with a captain of the people to counterbalance the podesta, and the Guelphs were recalled. The Uberti and other Ghibellines—in understanding with Manfred who had succeeded his father Frederick as king of Sicily—attempted to rebel in 1258, were expelled from the city and their houses and towers destroyed. The reception of the exiles in Siena brought on the war which resulted in the great battle of Montaperti, Sept. 4, 126o, "which dyed the Arbia red," in which the Florentine Guelphs and their allies were completely defeated by the Sienese and the German troops of Manfred. At a congress at Empoli, in which the Ghibelline cities of Tuscany were represented, it was proposed to destroy Florence —a proposal defeated by the bold patriotism of Farinata degli Uberti (Inf. x. 91-93).

The Ghibellines now held sway in Florence as elsewhere in Tuscany, until Charles of Anjou—to whom the pope had offered the crown of Apulia and Sicily—came to Italy, and on Feb. 26, 1266, defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento. In 1 267 the Guelphs were recalled, and the Ghibellines were driven out. Florence was for a while under the suzerainty of Charles of Anjou; but in 1282, after the "Sicilian Vespers," the Secondo Popolo—the second democratic constitution of Florence—was established. By this the government was placed in the hands of the Priors of the Arts, who, associated with the Captain of the People, became the chief magistrates of the republic. The Arts or Gilds—seven maggiori and 14 minori—were organized, to be the backbone of the State. The Priors, elected from the Arts, were six in number and held office for two months. Siena had become Guelph, but Pisa and Arezzo remained Ghibelline, and Florence led a Guelph Tuscan league against them in a war which culminated on June i 1, 1289, at Campaldino near Poppi, in the Casentino, where the Ghibellines were utterly defeated. They never again recovered any hold in Tuscany but the violence of faction survived under other forms. Several allusions in the Commedia (Inf. xxii. r, xxi. 95; Purg. v. 92) indicate that Dante saw military service in this war, and a passage in a letter of his, no longer extant but quoted by Leonardo Bruni, states that he fought in the front rank at Campaldino.

Meeting with Beatrice.

As he tells us in the Vita Nuova, Dante had first met the girl whom he calls Beatrice, the love for whom was to be the guiding-star and inspiration of his life, in 1274, when she was at about the beginning of her ninth year, and he at about the end of his ninth year. If she has been rightly identified with Bice Portinari, she married Simone de' Bardi. Beatrice died on June 8, 1290 (the date June 9 is due to a mystification in the Vita Nuova). The last chapter of the Vita Nuova relates how, after the lapse of some undefined time, "it was given me to behold a wonderful vision, wherein I saw things which determined me to say nothing further of this blessed one until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can, as she in truth knoweth. Therefore if it be His pleasure through Whom is the life of all things that my life continue with me a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman. After the which may it seem good unto Him who is the lord of courtesy that my spirit should go hence to behold the glory of its lady, to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who now gloriously gazes on the countenance of Him qui est per omnia saecula benedictus." In the Convivio he resumes the story of his life. "When I had lost the first delight of my soul (that is, Beatrice) I remained so pierced with sadness that no comforts availed me anything, yet after some time my mind, desirous of health, sought to return to the method by which other disconsolate ones had found consolation, and I set myself to read that little known book of Boetius in which he consoled himself when a prisoner and an exile. And hearing that Tully had written an other work, in which, treating of friendship, he had given words of consolation to Laelius, I set myself to read that also." At some unascertained date, perhaps about 1292, he married Gemma, daughter of Manetto Donati, a connection of the cele brated Corso Donati, afterwards the leader of the party opposed to Dante's own. By this wife he had two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, and either one or two daughters (Antonia being perhaps the same as the daughter who became a nun, Suora Beatrice, at Ravenna) . Although he never mentions his wife in the Divina Commedia, and although she did not accompany him into exile, there is no clear evidence for the belief that the union was otherwise than happy. Certain it is that he spares the memory of Corso in his great poem, and speaks with affection of his kinsmen Piccarda and Forese, the latter of whom was one of his own intimate friends.

In 1293 Giano della Bella, a man of old family who had thrown in his lot with the people, induced the commonwealth to adopt the so-called "Ordinances of Justice," a severely democratic addition to the constitution, by which among other things it was enacted that no man of noble family, even though engaged in trade, could hold office as prior, or be a member of the popular councils of the State, and a new magistrate, the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, was added to the Signoria. Two years later Giano was banished, but the ordinances remained in force, though their severity was modified.

Banishment.

—Dante now began to take an active part in politics. He was inscribed in the arte of the Medici and Spezia/i, which made him eligible for the priorate. Documents still exist ing in the archives of Florence show that he took part in the deliberations of the several councils of the city from the latter part of 1295 onwards, and there is record of an important speech of his in the Council of the Hundred on June 5, 1296. In May i3oo he served on a special embassy, to the commune of San Geimignano. From June 5 to Aug. 14, 13oo, he sat in the Signoria as one of the six Priors, which, he says, was the cause and origin of all his misfortunes. The spirit of faction had again broken out in Florence. The two rival families were the Cerchi and the Donati—the first of great wealth but recent origin, the last of ancient ancestry but poor. A quarrel had arisen in Pistoia between the two branches of the Cancellieri—the Bianchi and Neri, the Whites and the Blacks. The quarrel spread to Florence, the Donati took the side of the Blacks, the Cerchi of the Whites. Pope Boniface was asked to mediate, and sent Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta to maintain peace. He arrived just as Dante entered upon his office as prior. The cardinal effected nothing, but Dante and his colleagues banished the heads of the rival parties in different directions to a distance from the capital. The Blacks, including Corso Donati, were sent to Citta della Pieve in the Tuscan mountains; the Whites, among whom was Dante's dearest friend Guido Cavalcanti, to Sarzana in the unhealthy Maremma. After the expiration of Dante's office the banished Whites were allowed to return, Guido Cavalcanti so ill with fever that he shortly afterwards died. In the following year, 13o1, in consequence of a treasonable meeting in the church of S. Trinita, a number of the Blacks were banished, and a fresh sentence passed against Corso Donati. The 'Whites now con trolled the politics of Florence, and expelled the Blacks from Pistoia.

In this same year, 13oi, we have several records of Dante's political activity. One of these is noteworthy. The pope had demanded the service of oo Florentine horsemen, and on June 19, in the council of the Hundred, Dante urged "Quod de servitio faciendo domino Papae nihil fiat," thus showing himself a firm opponent to papal interferences in Florentine politics. Pope Boniface had already sent for Charles of Valois, brother of the French king, Philip the Fair, to act as "peacemaker." The priors sent at the beginning of October, three ambassadors to the pope, one of whom, according to the chronicler Dino Compagni, was Dante. Charles entered Florence on All Saints' day, 1301, and was followed by Corso Donati and his allies. The Blacks, restored to power, appointed Cante de' Gabrielli of Gubbio as podesta, a man devoted to their interest. More than 600 Whites were condemned to exile and cast as beggars upon the world. On Jan. 27, i3o2, Dante, with four others of the White party, was charged before the podesta with baratteria, or corrupt practices in and out of office and with offences against the Guelph party, and, not appearing, was condemned to pay a fine of s,000 lire of small florins. If the money was not paid within three days their property was to be destroyed; if they did pay the fine they were to be exiled for two years from Tuscany and never again to hold office in the republic. Dante's innocence of "barratry" is unquestionable; his real offence was his opposition to the policy of Boniface and his Florentine supporters. On March o, Dante and 14 others were condemned to be burned alive if they should come into the power of the republic.

Dante's Wanderings in Exile.

It is probable that Dante had not returned from his embassy to the pope. Leonardo Bruni states that he received the news of his banishment at Siena. He probably joined his fellow-exiles who met at Gargonza, a castle between Siena and Arezzo, and made Arezzo their headquarters preparing to make their way back to Florence by arms. On June 8,13o2, a meeting was held at San Godenzo, a place in the Florentine territory, Dante's presence at which is proved by documentary evidence, and an alliance was there made with the powerful Ghibelline clan of the Ubaldini. In Sept. i3o3 the fleur-de-lis had entered Anagni, and Christ had a second time been made prisoner in the person of his vicar (Purg. xx. 86-9o). Boniface did not survive the insult long, but died in the following month. He was succeeded by Benedict XI., and in March, 1304, the cardinal Niccolo da Prato came to Florence, sent by the new pope to make peace. The people received him with enthu siasm; ambassadors came to him from the Whites; and he did his best to reconcile the two parties. But the Blacks resisted all his efforts. He shook the dust from off his feet, and departed, leaving the city under an interdict. In July, with aid from the Ghibellines of Tuscany and other regions, the exiles made an unsuccessful attempt to enter Florence from Lastra, the failure of which further disorganized the party.

Dante had, however, already separated from the "ill-condi tioned and foolish company" (Par. xvii. 61--69) of his fellow exiles who rejected his counsels of wisdom, and had learnt that he must henceforth form a party by himself. He appears to have been for a while at For11 in Romagna, of which city Scarpetta degli Ordelaffi was lord, and, probably towards the end of i3o3, he went to Bartolommeo della Scala, lord of Verona, where the courtesy of the great Lombard gave him his first refuge and his first hospitable reception. Cangrande, to whom he afterwards dedicated the Paradiso, was then a boy. Bartolommeo died in 1304, and it is possible that Dante may have remained in Verona till his death. It is very difficult to determine with exactness the order and the place of Dante's wanderings. He was probably at Bologna in 1304 and i3o5. A rather questionable document attests his presence at Padua in Aug. 1306, the time when Giotto was working upon the frescoes of the Madonna dell'Arena. In Oct. 13o6 he was unquestionably the guest of the Marquesses of the house of Malaspina in Lunigiana, where he acted as their ambas sador in making peace with the bishop of Luni. From this time till the arrival of the emperor Henry VII. in Italy, Oct. 131o, all is uncertain. His old enemy Corso Donati had at last allied himself with Uguccione della Faggiuola, the leader of the Ghibel lines, and in i3o8 was declared a traitor, attacked in his house, put to flight and killed.

It is not impossible that Dante about this time visited Paris, but that he ever crossed the Channel or went to Oxford may safely be disbelieved. The election in 13°8 of Henry of Luxem burg as emperor stirred again his hopes of a deliverer. At the end of 131o, in a letter to the princes and people of Italy, he proclaimed the coming of the saviour; at Milan he did personal homage to his sovereign. The Florentines, in alliance with King Robert of Naples, made every preparation to resist the emperor. Dante wrote from the Casentino a letter dated March 31, T311, in which he rebuked them for their stubbornness and obstinacy, and another on April 17, to the emperor himself, upbraiding his delay and urging him on against Florence. A new sentence against the poet was pronounced on Sept. 2. Henry passed from Genoa to Pisa, and on June 29,1312, was crowned by the pope's legates in the church of St. John Lateran at Rome; the Vatican being in the hands of his adversary King Robert of Naples. Then at length he moved towards Tuscany and reached Florence on Sept. 19. He did not dare to attack it, but returned in November to Pisa. In the summer of the following year he prepared to invade the kingdom of Naples; but in the neighbourhood of Siena he caught a fever and died at the monastery of Buonconvento, on Aug. 24,1313. He lies in the Campo Santo of Pisa; and the hopes of Dante and his party were buried in his grave.

After the death of the emperor Henry (Bruni tells us) Dante passed the rest of his life as an exile, sojourning in various places throughout Lombardy, Tuscany and the Romagna, under the protection of various lords, until at length he retired to Ravenna, where he ended his life. After the death of the French pope, Clement V., he addressed a letter, in the spring or summer of 1314, to the cardinals in conclave, urging them to restore the papacy to Rome. About this time he probably came to Lucca, then lately conquered by Uguccione della Faggiuola. In May 1315 a general recall of exiles offered Dante an opportunity of returning to Florence. The conditions given to the exiles were that they should pay a fine and be subjected to the ceremony of "oblation" as penitents in the Baptistery. Dante refused to tolerate this shame ; and the letter is still extant in which he declines to enter Florence except with honour, secure that the means of life will not fail him, and that in any corner of the world he will be able to gaze at the sun and the stars, and meditate on the sweetest truths of philosophy. In Aug. Uguccione won the great battle of Montecatini over the united armies of Florence and Naples, but lost Pisa and Lucca at the beginning of the following year. A fresh sentence of death had been pronounced by Florence upon Dante in Nov. 1315, and he seems now to have taken refuge with his most illustrious protector Cangrande della Scala of Verona, then a young man of 25, rich, liberal and the favoured head of the Ghibelline party, whose name has been immortalized by an eloquent panegyric in the 17th canto of the Paradiso.

The last few years of the poet's life were spent at Ravenna, under the protection of Guido da Polenta. In his service Dante undertook an embassy to the Venetians, on his return from which he caught a fever and died in Ravenna on Sept. 14, 13 a 1. His bones still repose there. His doom of exile has been reversed by the union of Italy, which has made the city of his birth and the various cities of his wanderings component members of a common country. His son Piero, who wrote a commentary on the Divina Commedia, settled as a lawyer in Verona, and died in 1364. His daughter Beatrice lived as a nun in Ravenna, dying at some time between 13 50 (when Boccaccio was commissioned to bring her a present of ten gold crowns from a Florentine gild) and 1371. His direct line became extinct in 15o9.

The Divina Commedia.

Of Dante's works, that by which he is known to all the educated world, and in virtue of which he holds his place as one of the half-dozen greatest writers of all time, is of course the Commedia. (The epithet diving, it may be noted, was not given to the poem by its author, nor does it appear on a title-page until the i6th century.) The poem is absolutely unique in literature; it may safely be said that at no other epoch of the world's history could such a work have been produced. Dante was steeped in all the learning, which in its way was considerable, of his time ; he had read the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, the Tresor of his master Brunetto, and other encyclo paedic works available in that age; he was familiar with most of what was then known of the Latin classical and post-classical authors. Further, he was a deep and original political thinker, who had himself borne a prominent part in practical politics. The age was essentially one of great men ; of free thought and free speech, of brilliant and daring action, whether for good or evil. It is easy to understand how Dante's bitterest scorn is reserved for those "sorry souls who lived without infamy and without renown, displeasing to God and to His enemies." The time was thus propitious for the production of a great imaginative work, and the man was ready who should produce it. It called for a prophet, and the prophet said, "Here am I." "Dante," says an acute writer, "is not, as Homer is, the father of poetry springing in the freshness and simplicity of childhood out of the arms of mother earth; he is rather, like Noah, the father of a second poetical world, to whom he pours forth his prophetic song fraught with the wisdom and the experience of the old world." Thus the Commedia, though often classed for want of a better description among epic poems, is totally different in method and construction from all other poems of that kind. Its "hero" is the narrator himself ; the incidents do not modify the course of the story; the place of episodes is taken by theological or metaphysical disquisitions; the world through which the poet takes his readers is peopled, not with characters of heroic story, but with men and women known personally or by repute to him and those for whom he wrote. Its aim is not to delight, but to reprove, to rebuke, to exhort; to form men's characters by teaching them what courses of life will meet with reward, what with penalty, hereafter; "to put into verse," as the poet says, "things difficult to think." For such new matter a new vehicle was needed. We have Bembo's authority for believing that the terza rims, surpassed, if at all, only by the ancient hexameter, as a measure equally adaptable to sustained narrative, to debate, to fierce invective, to clear-cut picture and to trenchant epigram, was first employed by Dante.

The action of the Commedia opens in the early morning of the Friday before Easter, in the year i 300. The poet finds himself lost in a forest, escaping from which to ascend the mountain of felicity, he has his way barred by a wolf, a lion and a leopard. This seems to indicate that at this period of his life, about the age of 35, Dante went through some experience akin to what is now called "conversion." The strong vein of mysticism, found in so many of the deepest thinkers of that age, and conspicuous in Dante's mind, no doubt played its part. His efforts to free himself from the "forest" of worldly cares were impeded by the temptations of the world—cupidity (including ambition), the pride of life and the lusts of the flesh, symbolized by the three beasts. But a helper is at hand. Virgil appears and explains that he has a commission from three ladies on high to guide him. The ladies are the Blessed Virgin (representing the Divine Mercy), St. Lucy (symbol of illuminating grace) and Beatrice. In Virgil we are apparently intended to see the symbol of what Dante calls philosophy, what we should rather call natural religion; Beatrice standing for theology, or rather revealed religion. Under Virgil's escort Dante is led through the two lower realms of the next world, Hell and Purgatory, meeting on the way with many persons illustrious or notorious in recent or remoter times, as well as many well enough known then, but who, without the immortality, often unenviable, that the poet has conferred on them, would long ago have been forgotten. Popes, kings, emperors, poets and warriors, Florentine citizens of all degrees, are there found ; some doomed to hopeless punishment, others expiating their offences in milder torments, and looking forward to deliverance in due time. It is remarkable to notice how rarely, if ever, Dante allows political sympathy or antagonism to influ ence him in his distribution of judgment. Hell is conceived as a vast conical hollow, reaching to the centre of the earth. It has three great divisions, corresponding to Aristotle's three classes of vices, incontinence, brutishness (which Dante identifies with violence) and malice. The first is outside the walls of the city of Dis; the second is within. The sinners by malice, which includes all forms of fraud or treachery, lie at the bottom of a gigantic pit, called Malebolge, with vertical sides, and accessible only by supernatural means; a monster named Geryon bearing the poets down on his back. The torments here are of a more terrible, often of a loathsome character. Ignominy is added to pain, and the nature of Dante's demeanour towards the sinners changes from pity to hatred.

At the very bottom of the pit is Lucifer, immovably fixed in ice; climbing down his limbs they reach the centre of the earth, whence a cranny conducts them back to the surface, at the foot of the purgatorial mountain, which they reach as Easter Day is dawning. Before the actual Purgatory is attained they have to climb for the latter half of the day and rest at night. The occupants of this outer region are those who have delayed repentance till death was upon them. They include many of the most famous men of the last 3o years. In the morning the gate is opened, and Purgatory proper is entered. This is divided into seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins, which encircle the mountain and have to be reached by a series of steep climbs, compared by Dante in one instance to the path from Florence to Samminiato. The purifying penalties are not degrad ing, but rather tests of patience or endurance, and borne volun tarily by the souls; in several cases, Dante has to bear a share in them as he passes. On the summit is the Earthly Paradise. Here Beatrice appears in a mystical pageant ; Virgil departs, leaving Dante in her charge. By her he is led through the various spheres of which, according to both the astronomy and the theology of the time, Heaven is composed, to the supreme Heaven, or Empyrean, the seat of the Godhead. For one moment there is granted him the intuitive vision of the Deity, and the comprehension of all mysteries, which is the ultimate goal of mystical theology; his will is wholly blended with that of God, and the poem ends. The date of composition of the Commedia is still uncertain ; but the Paradiso was unquestionably written in the last years of Dante's life.

Other Works.

The Vita Nuova (Y oung Life or New Life, for both significations seem to be intended) contains the history of Dante's love for Beatrice. He describes how he met Beatrice as a child, himself a child, how he feigned a false love to hide his true love, how he fell ill and saw in a dream the death and trans figuration of his beloved, how she died, and how the tender compassion of another lady nearly won his heart from its first affection, how Beatrice appeared in his imagination and reclaimed his heart, and how at last he saw a vision which induced him to devote himself to study that he might be more fit to glorify her who gazes on the face of God for ever. It is in the form of lyrics—canzoni, one ballata, and sonnets—set in a prose narrative with scholastic divisions and explanations, and was probably completed about 1293, though the reference to the vision may be later.

The Convivio or Banquet (less accurately Convito) is the work of Dante's manhood, as the Vita Nuova is the work of his youth. It consists, in the form in which it has come down to us, of an introduction and three treatises, each forming an elaborate com mentary on a long canzone. It was intended, if completed, to have comprised commentaries on II more canzoni, making 14 in all, and in this shape would have formed a tesoro or handbook of universal knowledge, such as Brunetto Latini and others have left to us. It is perhaps the least well known of Dante's Italian works, but contains many passages of great beauty and elevation, the magnificent apotheosis of Rome and her empire in the fourth treatise being the first expression of his ideal imperialism. Indeed a knowledge of it is quite indispensable to the full understanding of the Divina Commedia and the Monarchia. It was probably written between 1304 and 1308.

Besides the poems contained in the Vita Nuova and Convivio, Dante composed a considerable number of canzoni, ballate and sonnets which are collected under the general title of Rime or Canzoniere, and which secure him a place among lyrical poets scarcely if at all inferior to that of Petrarch. Some scholars— very questionably—would attribute to Dante a rendering of the Roman de la Rose in 232 sonnets entitled 11 Fiore (The Flower). The treatise De vulgari eloquentia, in Latin, is mentioned in the Convivio. It was probably written between 1304 and 1306. Its object was first to establish the Italian language as a literary tongue, and to distinguish the noble or "courtly" speech which might become the property of the whole nation, at once a bond of internal unity and a line of demarcation against external nations, from the local dialects peculiar to different districts; and secondly, to lay down rules for poetical composition in the language so established. The work was intended to be in four books, but only two are extant. The first of these deals with the language, the second with the style and with the composition of the canzone. It contains much acute criticism of poetry and poetic diction, and its treatment of the Italian dialects is of singular interest.

The Latin treatise Monarchia, in three books, contains the mature statement of Dante's political ideas. In it he propounds the theory that the universal temporal monarchy or empire is necessary for the well-being of the world, that the Roman people acquired this dignity by right, and that the authority of the emperor depends immediately upon God though he must reverence the pope as the first-born of the Father. Pope and emperor are the guides divinely appointed to lead the human race to eternal life and temporal felicity. Dante's ideal of the empire is a power above national conflicts to preserve universal peace and liberty, in order that the goal of civilization, the realization of all man's potentialities may be achieved. The work was probably com posed at the time of the descent of Henry VII. into Italy, between 1310 and 1313. The book was first printed by Oporinus at Basle in 1559, and placed on the Index of forbidden books.

In the last years of his life Dante wrote two eclogues in Latin in answer to Giovanni dei Virgilio, who invited him to compose a Latin poem on some contemporary event and come from Ravenna to Bologna to receive the laurel crown. The most interesting pas sage is that in the first poem (131 9) where he expressed his hope that when he has finished the third part of the Commedia his grey hairs may be crowned with laurel on the banks of the Arno.

The Quaestio de aqua et terra purports to be a discourse which Dante delivered at Verona in Jan. 1320 as a solution of the ques tion which was being at that time much discussed—whether in any place on the earth's surface water is higher than the earth. It was first published at Venice in 1508, by an ecclesiastic named Moncetti. Since Dr. Moore, from internal evidence, made out a very strong case for it, its authenticity has been generally accepted.

There are 13 Latin Letters ascribed to Dante. Those to the princes and peoples of Italy announcing the coming of Henry of Luxemburg, to the Florentines, to the emperor himself, to the Italian cardinals and to a Florentine friend refusing the base con ditions of return from exile, have been already mentioned. These are certainly authentic, as probably is also a long letter to Can Grande della Scala, containing directions for interpreting the Divine Commedia, with especial reference to the Paradiso. Of less importance are the letters to cardinal Niccolo da Prato, to the nephews of Count Alessandro da Romena, to the marquis Moroello Malaspina, to Cino da Pistoia, and three written in the name of the Countess of Battifolle.

Dante's reputation has passed through many vicissitudes, and much trouble has been spent by critics in comparing him with other poets of established fame. Read and commented upon with more admiration than intelligence in the Italian universities in the generation immediately succeeding his death, his name became obscured as the sun of the Renaissance rose higher towards its meridian. His fame is now fully vindicated as one of the world's universal poets and the national poet of Italy.

(A. J. Bu.; E. G. G.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-We have now two authoritative editions of the text Bibliography.-We have now two authoritative editions of the text of the complete Opere di Dante: the testo critico of the Societe Dan tesca Italiana, edited by M. Barbi and others on the occasion of the sixth centenary (Florence, 1921), reproducing the forms and orthog raphy of the poet's own time ; the Oxford Dante of Edward Moore revised and re-edited by Paget Toynbee (1923) . Dr. Toynbee's Con cise Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante (1914) is invaluable. Concordances—based upon editions previous to the testo critico, but still highly useful—to the Commedia by E. A. Fay (Boston, 1888), to the minor Italian works by E. S. Sheldon and A. C. White (19o5) and to the Latin works by E. K. Rand and E. H. Wilkins (1912) , are due to American scholars.

Editions of the Divina Commedia and Commentaries: The first three editions of the Commedia were printed in 1472 at Foligno, Man tua and Jesi. They were reprinted, together with the Neapolitan edi tion of 1477, by Lord Vernon and A. Panizzi in Le Prime Quattro Edizioni della D. C. letteralmente ristampate (1858). The first Venetian edition is of 1477, the first Milanese (Nidobeatina) of 1478, the first Florentine of 1481. In 1502 Aldus produced the first "pocket" edition in his new "italic" type. The Commedia began to be the sub ject of commentaries as soon as the author was in his grave ; beginning, before 133o, with those of Dante's son, Jacopo Alighieri, and Graziolo de' Bambaglioli of Bologna on the Inferno, and of another Bolognese, Jacopo della Lana, on the whole poem. Somewhat later, but still before 135o, come the Ottimo Commento attributed to the Florentine notary Andrea Lancia, and those of Dante's other son, Pietro, and the Car melite Guido da Pisa. Boccaccio's commentary, the substance of lec tures delivered at Florence in stops short at Inf. xvii.; it is acces sible, together with the two versions of his famous life of Dante ; edited by D. Guerri, in the Scrittori d'Italia series (Bari, 1918). The great Latin commentary of Boccaccio's disciple, Benvenuto da Imola 8o), who lectured at Bologna, was published by William Warren Vernon with the aid of James Lacaita in 1887. Another noteworthy early commentator is Francesco da Buti who lectured at Pisa towards the close of the same century. Extracts from the early commentators are given by G. Biagi in La D. C. nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare coWmento (Turin, 1921, etc.). The foundations for the estab lishment of an accurate text were laid by Carl Witte in his edition of 1862. The fullest 19th century commentary, that of G. A. Scartazzini, is now somewhat out of date. Among the best of more recent editions, with notes or commentaries, are those of F. Torraca, of T. Casini, revised and amplified by S. A. Barbi, and of Isidoro del Lungo. An excellent pocket edition of the text alone with a critical introduction, is that of Mario Casella (Bologna, 1923) . For English readers, the three small volumes in the Temple Classics, with text, translation and com mentaries by H. Oelsner, T. Okey and P. H. Wicksteed, are very useful, as also the Readings in the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso of William Warren Vernon.

Editions of the Minor Works: The Vita Nuova was first printed at Florence in 1576, the Convivio at Florence in 149o. The De Vulgari Eloquentia was first published in Trissino's Italian translation at Vicenza in 1529, and in the original Latin, from a ms. now preserved at Grenoble, at Paris in ; the Monarchia at Basle in 1599. There are critical editions of the Vita Nuova by M. Barbi (Florence, 1907), of the De Vulgari Eloquentia by Pio Rajna (1896), of the Eclogues by P. H. Wicksteed (Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio, 1902) , and G. Albini (Florence, 1903), of the Letters with translation and commen tary by Paget Toynbee (192o) . The Canzoniere, or Rime, were first adequately edited, the genuine pieces separated from the doubtful and spurious, by Michele Barbi in the testo critico of the Society Dantesca Italiana (1921) .

English Translations: The entire Divina Commedia appeared first in English in the version of Henry Boyd 0802), and was followed by the admirable blank verse rendering of H. F. Cary (1814, end ed., 1819), which has remained the standard translation. Of the numerous later translations may be mentioned those of Longfellow; of J. A. Carlyle (Inferno only), C. E. Norton and H. F. Tozer in prose; G. Musgrave of the Inferno in Spenserian stanzas; C. L. Shadwell, of the Purgatorio and Paradiso in the metre of Marvell's "Ode to Cromwell" ; Hasel foot and M. B. Anderson in terza rima. D. G. Rossetti's translation of the Vita Nuova will always hold its place as a thing of beauty. Trans lations of the Vita Nuova by T. Okey, of the Rime, Convivio, Mon archia, Letters, Eclogues, Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, by P. H. Wick steed, and of the De Vulgari Eloquentia by A. G. F. Howell, are pub lished in the Temple Classics, with full explanatory notes. See, in gen eral, P. Toynbee, Dante in English Literature from Chaucer to Cary (1909), and Britain's Tribute to Dante in Literature and Art 138o 192o (1921).

Aids and Studies: It is only possible here to mention a few works useful to English readers. As general introduction, P. Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, his Life and Works (4th ed., 191o) ; E. G. Gardner, Dante (1923) ; N. Zingarelli, Vita di Dante in compendio (Milan, 1905), and his larger Dante (1903) . Among critical studies, or elucidations of par ticular aspects of Dante's work, E. Moore, Studies in Dante (four series, 1896-1917) ; P. Toynbee, Dante Studies and Researches (1902), Dante Studies (1921) ; P. H. Wicksteed, Dante and Aquinas (1913), From Vita Nuova to Paradiso (1922) ; the volumes of Dante studies by F. D'Ovidio, now reprinting in the collected edition of his works; F. Torraca, Studi danteschi (1912) and Nuovi Studi danteschi (192I) ; E. G. Parodi, Poesia e stories nella Divina Commedia (1921) ; B. Croce, La Poesia di Dante (1921, Eng. trans. by D. Ainslie) ; C. Ricci, L'ultimo ri f ugio di Dante (new ed., 1921) ; F. Ercole, Il bensiero politico di Dante (Milan, 1928) . Copious bibliographical indications on disputed points are given in the latest edition of the D. C. with the commentary of Casini and S. A. Barbi (Florence, 1926) . The Giornale Dantesco and the Studi Danteschi directed by M. Barbi are important periodical publications dealing with every aspect of the subject.

Portraits of Dante: It is now generally agreed that the repainted figure of Dante in a fresco of the podesta's chapel in the Bargello in Florence is authentic and by Giotto, probably painted (c. 1334) from a sketch taken in the poet's early life. The Torrigiani mask, now in the same chapel, long supposed to have been made from a death-mask, is probably a work of the 15th or 16th century. It is possible that the later representations of Dante may have been influenced by the por trait by Taddeo Gaddi in Santa Croce (destroyed in 1566) . Notice able among these are the miniature in codex Ic4o of the Biblioteca Riccardiana (c. 1436) ; the fresco transferred to canvas of Andrea del Castagno in Sta. Apollonia (c. 145o) ; the symbolical picture by Domenico di Michelino (1465) in the duomo at Florence; the bronze bust at Naples (late 15th century) ; the, recently discovered panel attributed to "Amico di Sandro." In the 16th century, we have the figure of Dante in Luca Signorelli's fresco at Orvieto, and in Raphael's "Parnassus" and "Disputa" in the Vatican. A famous signed sketch of Dante by Raphael is in the Albertina at Vienna. See R. T. Holbrook, Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raphael (19i 1) . Attempts have fre quently been made to discover the portrait of Dante in various 14th century frescoes, and there have been recent "discoveries" of this kind at Assisi and elsewhere ; the only one that is in the least plausible is that in Orcagna's "Paradise" in Santa Maria Novella at Florence.

(E. G. G.)