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DANTE & HIS TIME 
 
DANTE 
 
 PORTRAIT BY GIOTTO 
 FROM THE FRESCO IN THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE. 
 
 REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF G. GROTES VERLAG. BERLIN. 
 
DANTE ftp HIS TIME 
 
 BY 
 
 KARL FEDERN 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 A. J. BUTLER 
 
 AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 190 
 
RFFSE 
 
 This Edition enjoys Copyright in all 
 Countries signatory to the Berne 
 Treaty^ and is not to be imported 
 into the United States oj America 
 

 TO MY DEAR FRIEND 
 
 EDWARD FALCK 
 
 THIS VERSION OF MY BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The vogue which the study of Dante enjoys at the present 
 time is a phenomenon somewhat difficult to explain. It 
 is not part of any general interest in the Italian language 
 and literature; which, in England at all events, still suffer 
 under " the deplorable and barbarous neglect " perceived 
 and lamented by Mr. Gladstone a quarter of a century ago. 
 The immense interval, unparalleled in other literatures, by 
 which Dante surpasses all other craftsmen in his mother 
 tongue may perhaps to some extent explain this concen- 
 tration of interest upon him ; but it is no doubt mainly 
 due to the way in which, as I have elsewhere said, he fills 
 the stream of history from side to side. Follow almost 
 what line you will of historical investigation, you will not 
 carry it back into the Middle Ages without finding him 
 upon it. I take down from my shelves books as various 
 in subject as Humboldt's " Cosmos," Whewell's "History 
 of the Inductive Sciences," Bryce's "Holy Roman 
 Empire," Ueberweg's "History of Philosophy"; in the 
 index of each I find the name of Dante Alighieri. Thus 
 he is, of all the great poets of the world, the one who 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 takes most explaining; the one, it may almost be said, 
 who most appeals to that love of solving problems and 
 diving into mysteries which is with many people a motive 
 nearly as strong as the passive enjoyment of poetical 
 beauty. You never feel sure that you have got to the 
 bottom of what a French writer has called " les replis de 
 son genie" This again sets him in a different class from 
 all the most eminent of his successors. Allegory in 
 Petrarch does not go beyond an occasional play on a 
 proper name ; nor does one look for mysticism in Ariosto. 
 Whether or not this consideration may be held to 
 account at least in part for the popularity enjoyed by 
 Dante, alone among Italian writers, in the taste of the 
 present generation, it undoubtedly explains the immense 
 mass of literature which has grown up around him, and 
 to which recent years have contributed not less than their 
 fair proportion. Dante affords exercise alike to the minute 
 student who delights in tracing literary and personal 
 allusions to their source, in verifying details of chronology, 
 in philological and linguistic inquiries ; to the student of 
 theology and politics; to the philosopher, the man of 
 science, the historian; even to writers with fluent pens 
 and a turn for pious sentimentalism, or exposition of the 
 obvious. So much indeed is written about Dante that is 
 clearly superfluous, that one is in some danger of forget- 
 ting how much work yet remains to be done. No adequate 
 edition, for example, existed till quite recently of any of 
 the minor works; and though Messrs. Wicksteed and 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 Gardiner have just supplied this deficiency in the case of 
 the Latin Eclogues, these, however interesting in them- 
 selves, represent the smallest fraction of Dante's sub- 
 ordinate writings. Professor Pio Rajna has dealt effectively 
 with the text of the " de Vulgari Eloquentia," and it may 
 be hoped that his explanatory comment will before long 
 see the light and prove a worthy companion to his textual 
 labours. But the " Convito," the " de Monarchia," the 
 lyrical poems, all urgently demand for both text and 
 matter the thorough and scholarly treatment which, if 
 they had chanced to have been composed a thousand years 
 earlier, they would in all probability have long ago en- 
 joyed. 
 
 Another lack which has certainly been apparent in 
 England is that of some biographical account of Dante 
 which should present him not merely in relation to the 
 actual time in which he lived, or even to the history 
 of his own city, but to the course of general European 
 history, of which the political, social, and religious position 
 of affairs in his time was the outcome. A good deal of 
 light has been thrown on all these points by recent 
 research ; of which, again, the results have been made 
 accessible by such books as Signor Villari's H I Primi 
 due Secoli della Storia di Firenze " and Dr. Davidsohn's 
 " Geschichte von Florenz." A handy popular summary 
 of what would be to Dante the past history of Christen- 
 dom, giving in brief outline the sequence of political events 
 in Church and State, the progress of speculative thought 
 
x INTRODUCTION 
 
 and learning, the development of social conditions, with 
 special reference to the transformation wrought in all 
 these departments by the substitution of German for 
 . Latin hegemony — no better aid than this could be offered 
 to the student who desired to look out on Dante's world 
 so far as possible with Dante's eyes. Yet if he wanted 
 anything of this sort, it was hard to say where, in English 
 at all events, he was to find it ; and he has all the more 
 reason to be grateful to Dr. Federn for thus attending to 
 his needs, after supplying those of his own countrymen. 
 . For it must be observed that the present volume is no 
 / mere translation, but a revised issue by the author himself 
 in a foreign tongue of a work originally composed in his 
 own. Every one must congratulate him in his easy 
 command of an unwonted medium, and on the excellent 
 results he has succeeded in producing in it. 
 
 It would be too much to say that all Dr. Federn's state- 
 ments and inferences will command the unqualified assent 
 of every " Dante-Forscher." The present writer would 
 be prepared, if this were the place, to pick several crows 
 with him. His views on the Beatrice question are 
 perhaps not thoroughly convincing. But he is always 
 reasonable; as far removed from the extravagant in- 
 credulity of some recent writers as from the unsupported 
 imaginings that were indulged by an earlier school. He 
 realises the essential grandeur of the Middle Ages with 
 their daring speculation, their revival of interest in beauty 
 of form and in the literary expression of reflection and 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 emotion, their robustness of thought and action. He 
 indicates clearly, if briefly, the true questions at issue 
 between the political parties in Italy, which had such 
 important consequences for Dante; and points out the 
 inadequacy of the old notion, still to some extent current, 
 that Guelfs were in any sense either representatives of 
 Italian patriotism or defenders of the rights of the Church. 
 When he comes to the division of his book which deals 
 more immediately with Dante's personal record, we find 
 the same sobriety of judgment, the same reluctance to 
 overturn long-accepted opinions, so long as they do not 
 involve a physical impossibility or conflict with well- 
 attested facts, the same effort to put himself at Dante's 
 point of view — a very different one, it may be remarked, 
 from that of the average respectable person, the Monna 
 Berta and Ser Martino, of contemporary society. He 
 goes, perhaps, a little further than is necessary in distrust 
 of Boccaccio; forgetting, it would seem, that any state- 
 ments made by Boccaccio must have quickly come to the 
 knowledge of scores of people who were well acquainted 
 with the facts, and that neither his disciple Benvenuto nor 
 any one else gives the least hint of any contradiction 
 having been given to them. On the other hand, Dr. 
 Federn lets us continue to believe in the authenticity of 
 the traditional portraits, which attempts have been made 
 to discredit. He accepts what may be called the Canon 
 of Dante's writings, without any of that shallow scep- 
 ticism, usually based on imperfect knowledge, by which 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 sciolists seek notoriety. His book will be all the more 
 acceptable to English and American students, among 
 whom such vagaries have seldom found much favour. 
 
 Another point with which Dr. Federn seems to me to 
 deal more satisfactorily than most biographers of Dante 
 is that of the phases through which his intellectual and 
 still more his spiritual nature had to pass, " before the 
 author of the ' New Life ' could become the poet of the 
 4 Divine Comedy.' w He dismisses Witte's famous theory 
 (which, indeed, few would now be found to support) that 
 these two works with the " Convito " form a u trilogy " in 
 which Dante's passage from the simple faith of childhood 
 through a period of doubt to the reasoned belief of 
 maturer years, is set forth ; on the ground that we have 
 no evidence that Dante was ever anything but a devout 
 Christian. But he realises that a great revulsion did at 
 some time take place in him ; without which, indeed, the 
 great scene of confession and contrition at the end of the 
 " Purgatory " is unintelligible. And, though he does not 
 use the term, he is clearly aware that this was of the 
 nature of what, in the language of one religious school, is 
 called conversion or conviction of sin. There is no reason 
 that a person in order to undergo this experience should 
 be conscious of any unusual depravity ; and there is no 
 need to suppose that the words put by Dante into the 
 mouth of Beatrice on the occasion in question are meant 
 to imply anything of the kind. Chapter V. of the second 
 part of this book makes it plain that Dr. Federn is on the 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 right track in regard to this subject, a due understanding 
 of which will prevent many misconceptions. For instance, 
 no one who has grasped its full significance will ever be 
 misled by the theories, so dishonouring to Dante, which 
 would involve him in discreditable love-affairs at Lucca, 
 in the Casentino, or elsewhere, after the supposed date of 
 his vision. 
 
 No two readers come to Dante with just the same eyes ; 
 and when the readers are of different nations the chance 
 that one will see what the other might miss is at least 
 doubled. For this reason alone an attempt like this of 
 Dr. Federn's would deserve a welcome ; but I hope that I 
 have said enough to show that its claims to our considera- 
 tion are based on something more than the mere ad- 
 vantage to be derived from the comparison of various 
 points of view. It has substantive merits of its own ; and 
 no English student of Dante will regret having given it 
 his hospitality. 
 
 ARTHUR JOHN BUTLER. 
 April IQ02. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In the "Deutsche Rundschau" Hermann Grimm has 
 elaborated the thought that only four poets belong truly 
 to the literature of the world : Homer, Dante, Shake- 
 speare, and Goethe. Of these Dante, though standing 
 nearer to us than Homer by twenty centuries, is the 
 least known. Nor is this to be wondered at. He him- 
 self, in the second canto of the Paradise, warned the 
 readers of his own time, who were not fully equipped up 
 to his level, with the words : 
 
 O ye who follow me in little boat 
 
 On this my voyage, eager still to hear, 
 Behind my ship that sings as she doth float, 
 
 Turn now and look where yet your shores appear ; 
 Into the wide sea put not out, lest ye, 
 
 Losing me, should have nought whereby to steer. 
 Where my course lies, none yet has roamed the sea! 
 
 To us his work is the most mysterious of a time that 
 loved mystery. It is founded on ideas and conceptions 
 of the world which for the most part have vanished 
 completely from the life of modern men. All the many 
 allusions to contemporary events, all the innumerable 
 names, which made the book appear richer and livelier 
 to the mediaeval reader, are for us, who do not know the 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 names nor understand the allusions, so many obstacles and 
 dead passages, which weigh upon and disturb the reader ; 
 while a commentary is deterrent. 
 
 " In Dante's poem," said Carlyle, "ten silent Christian 
 centuries have found a voice." One must know these 
 centuries in order to understand the poem. Dante is the 
 Poet of the Middle Ages. But the latest flowers and the 
 ripest fruits betoken the rise of a new generation ; Dante 
 is also the poet of the early Renaissance. We must 
 know the remarkable men of this remarkable time, one 
 must know what occupied them, how they looked upon 
 the world and lived in it, what were their aims and what 
 ways they took to carry them out, what they thought and 
 believed, learned and taught, what seemed of importance 
 to them in their lives ; what happened in their world ; 
 its movements, its great struggles, its petty interests. 
 
 We should know their towns, their houses and streets, 
 the garments they wore, should know how they slept and 
 what they ate, how they solemnised wedding and funerals. 
 We must follow them to their halls and assemblies, to 
 the churches, where they worshipped with their fellows, 
 to the cells, whither they fled from the world. 
 
 In the following book I have tried to give briefly a few 
 lifelike pictures of all this ; pictures which I drew from 
 my studies of Dante, especially from the documents of his 
 own time, its chronicles, poems, and images — pictures 
 which 1 saw as I read Dante. 
 
 These I have tried to give as concisely as possible. 
 To the reader who knows them, the things which occu- 
 pied Dante will appear matters of course, and even if he 
 should miss a name or not know an event alluded to in 
 his works, he will conceive the meaning as well as we 
 understand allusions in our daily papers and books to 
 
PREFACE x™ 
 
 events and matters foreign to us, from their connection 
 with the world that we know. 
 
 The second part of my book follows Dante's path 
 through that dim and distant world which to us is but 
 half-illuminated — the path of his life, which is the road to 
 his works. In this manner the second part will be a 
 subjective reflection of the first. 
 
 My object has not been to give the fruits of original 
 research or critical discussions of doubtful matters. 
 Especially in the first part I have mostly worked out the 
 results of other people's investigation. Yet I hope to 
 have given some new points of view. I wish to express 
 my debt to Dr. Robert Davidsohn of Florence, who had 
 the kindness to revise a portion of my book and to 
 give me some valuable data out of his new investi- 
 gations of Florentine history ; I am likewise indebted 
 to Lieut.-Col. Paul Pochhammer of Berlin for kindly 
 revising other parts of the book, and I wish to express 
 my thanks to the English friends who have assisted 
 me in the translation of this edition. 
 
 My work will not lead into the last depths of the poet 
 and will but indicate his riches. Though whole libraries 
 could be filled with the books written on him, they have 
 not exhausted his abundance. All the treasures of beauty 
 and the most wonderful of his mysteries the reader must 
 look for in Dante's own work. Inadequate translations 
 have been a greater obstacle to this than the enigmas of 
 the poem. Much more than ponderous commentaries, 
 the stiff structure of our translations has kept Dante a 
 stranger to us. Beauty of sound and the power of feeling 
 conquer the reader, and mysteries and scholasticism are 
 borne forward on the music of the verse. But no trans- 
 lation will ever do justice to Dante's works. Dante himself 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 says in the " Banquet " : " Therefore let everybody know, 
 that nothing that is brought (or made) to harmonise irt 
 the musical bonds of verse can be translated out of one 
 language into another without all its harmony and sweet- 
 ness being broken." And Shelley wrote five hundred 
 years later in his " Defence of Poetry " : " It were as 
 wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might 
 discover the formal principle of its colour and odour as 
 seek to transfuse from one language into another the ora- 
 tions of a poet. The plant must spring again from its 
 seed, or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen 
 of the curse of Babel." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 THE TIME 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Destruction of the Antique!; ... 3 
 
 ^11. The New Moral Ideal 10 
 
 fSllt, The Political Ideal . . . . . .22 
 
 IV. The Combat between Church and State . . 30 
 
 V. The Hohenstaufen 41 
 
 ^ VI. Social Conditions 58 
 
 VII. Mediaeval Knowledge 74 
 
 VIII. Scholasticism 92 
 
 IX. The Universities 108 
 
 X. The Provencals . . . . . . .114 
 
 XI. Italian Poetry 126 
 
 XII. The Franciscans 136 
 
 XIII. Florence 153 
 
xx CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 DANTE 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Work of Dante 179 
 
 II. Dante's Youth 195 
 
 III. Beatrice 204 
 
 IV. Dante and Florence 232 
 
 V. Dante in Exile . . 250 
 
 VI. The "Divine Comedy" 265 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Portrait by Giotto— from the fresco in the Bargello, Florence. 
 Drawing by Seymour Kirkup, made before the Restoration 
 in 1848, reproduced by permission of G. Grote's Verlag, 
 
 Berlin Frontispiece 
 
 Portrait by Andrea Orcagna—from "The Last Judgment" 
 fresco in the Capella Strozzi in the Church of Sta. Maria 
 Novella, Florence, executed about the year 1350 ; this por- 
 trait was discovered by Mr. Jaques Mesnil in 1901, and 
 is reproduced from a photograph by Brogi . . To face page 70 
 
 Portrait by Andrea del Castagno—from the fresco in the Convent 
 of Sta. Apollonia, Florence, executed about 1450, reproduced 
 from a photograph by Alinari . . . .To face page 142 
 
 Bronze by unknown artist, probably of the Sixteenth Century — 
 Original in the Museum at Naples, reproduced from a 
 photograph by Brogi To face page 212 
 
 Mask, in the Uffizi, Florence, reproduced from a photograph by 
 
 Brogi To face page 280 
 
PART I 
 THE TIME 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE 
 
 The period of history which is called the Middle Ages 
 opens with the spread of Christendom, the decay of the 
 Roman Empire, and the entrance of the German race on 
 the scene of history. • 
 
 These three elements, different in their origin, but inter- 
 woven in their course and connected in their effects, filled 
 the time from the fourth to the ninth century. The 
 German tribes conquered one province of the empire after 
 the other and Germanised them to a certain extent ; they 
 formed the stock of their aristocracy — in almost all lands 
 of Europe the oldest families have German names — they 
 brought with them a new political system, the feudal 
 system, and on the remnants of the old empire of the 
 Romans arose the feudal states of Europe. Secondly, the 
 old empire as well as the new kingdoms was permeated 
 and deeply influenced by the Christian religion, which 
 changed the inward, life of men and things as thoroughly 
 as the German conquest changed their outward state. At 
 the same time the new religion, born on oriental soil and 
 founded on oriental ideas, underwent in its turn a 
 thorough transformation when planted in the soil of a new 
 race. 
 
 And in the midst of all these tremendous revolutions, 
 
4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 which changed the face of the earth, the remnants of the 
 old empire, the remnants of antique civilisation and of 
 the Latin race continued to exist, and never ceased to 
 have a powerful influence on the minds and customs of 
 men. 
 
 But weightier almost in its consequences than the fact 
 itself was the form in which the diffusion of the Germans 
 took place. From the middle of the fourth until the eighth 
 century the empire was exposed to an unceasing stream 
 of German invasions, and each of them brought fire and 
 devastation and horrible cruelty into the invaded country. 
 These wild warriors, to whom ° death on the straw " 
 seemed the most shameful end for a man, who, if they 
 could not fall in battle, cut " runes " into their own neck 
 and breast, and expired singing songs of joy and triumph, 
 while their blood streamed down their bodies, were, of 
 course, wholly insensible to the pains of others. The 
 Franks especially were cruel and brutal to a degree which 
 is impossible to describe. More terrible yet were the 
 Huns, whom the Germans themselves believed to be 
 children of evil spirits and unclean women. These cen- 
 turies, which for the middle and the north of Europe were 
 the fermentation and first dawn of a new era, were for the 
 populations of the civilised old countries a prolonged 
 death-torment. There had been misery enough in the 
 social state of the empire, everywhere the people were 
 impoverished, the extortion of taxes had to be performed 
 by ever more cunning methods, want and famine were 
 such, that in most provinces it was a common thing to 
 expose a great number of the new-born children. Now 
 the misery was enhanced by direct physical torture at the 
 hands of savages, acute suffering aggravating the chronic 
 pain ; and the continual devastation, the murderous wars, 
 
r 
 
 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE 5 
 
 the custom of torturing prisoners, which, in spite of the 
 opposition of Christian teachers, continued until the latest , 
 times of the Middle Ages— in the east of Europe even 
 until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — all this had 
 the effect that never and nowhere was suicide so frequent 
 as in the decaying Roman Empire. All the letters of the 
 Fathers of the Church, all the histories of the time are 
 full of misery. Woefully characteristic is the expression 
 of a bishop in Gaul, who tells how the citizens of the 
 towns still continued to amuse themselves and laugh and 
 applaud in the circus and in the theatres, and who writes : 
 M It is as if the Roman people had eaten the herbs of 
 Sardinia, and were forced to break out into a disease of 
 laughter — * moritur et ridet ! ' It laughs and dies." 
 
 We need only consider how much culture was destroyed 
 and lost ; we need but recall to our mind the magnificence 
 of Imperial Rome, the city which contained more public 
 works of art than all great capitals of the world together 
 contain to-day, and in which there stood two thousand 
 palaces and four thousand monuments of great Romans 
 alone, and compare it with the heap of ruins which was 
 left of it in the Middle Ages, At the time of Trajan, 
 Rome had a million and a half of inhabitants, in the fifth 
 century half a million, after the Gothic wars five thousand 
 — and as if history wanted to point at the dreary chasm 
 which separated the new time of Italy from the old — in. 
 the year 546, when Totila, the King of the Goths, left it, 
 Rome stood for forty days perfectly deserted and void ! 
 
 The Germans had hardly begun to settle when Mohamme- 
 danism began to spread, and the inroads of the Saracens 
 destroyed what had scarce begun to recover. Italy was 
 more exposed to them than any other country. In the 
 year 846, at the time of Pope Sergius II., they sacked the 
 
6 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 treasures of St. Peter and Paul. To this day may be seen 
 in Italy, especially in the south, the remnants of the 
 castles and watch-towers which were erected against them 
 everywhere along the coast. 
 
 From the north the Norman pirates rushed in, on the 
 Seine they went up as far as Paris, their Viking-ships 
 sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and plundered the 
 Italian shore. From the east the Magyars rode far into 
 France and Upper Italy. At first the peoples had nothing 
 to oppose to them but despair ; even the Germans seemed 
 to have lost their warlike spirit ; " coupled together like 
 beasts," the chronicler tells, M those who were not killed 
 were driven away." Thus the devastation went on 
 unceasingly from the end of the third to the middle of the 
 tenth century. Who may count the number of burned 
 cities, of destroyed convents and libraries ? Only this 
 destruction of seven hundred years can explain the utter 
 savageness of the Middle Ages on the very soil of antique 
 glory. 
 
 We need but think of what had existed before and 
 what remained. Of all the rich Greek literature almost 
 nothing was left. Of the hundred dramas of Sophocles, 
 but seven have come down to our time ; of the seventy 
 tragedies of Aeschylos we have also but seven ; of the 
 lyric poets we have but poor fragments, single verses, 
 almost no whole poem. Of the numberless great phi- 
 losophers, the works of two only have been preserved in 
 a more or less complete state ; of the immense scientific 
 literature, almost nothing has reached us ; of the many 
 historians, perhaps half a dozen ; of Greek painting, almost 
 nothing ; of architecture and sculpture, the poor shattered 
 remnants which still are the chief glory of our galleries. 
 And yet these remnants, these hints of what had been. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE 7 
 
 regenerated Europe in the fourteenth century, give us half 
 of our culture to-day; thousands of people in every 
 country not only owe to them the best part of their educa- 
 tion, but earn their living by studying them and impart- 
 ing their knowledge to others. We may gather from the 
 vital force of these remnants how abundant and glorious 
 must have been the full treasures of antiquity. One may 
 well shudder at the thought of such an immense destruc- 
 tion, and understand that there are people who tremble 
 for our own civilisation, and who say : u Nothing is so 
 swift as decay." 
 
 Let us once more glance backwards at Imperial Rome. 
 Statistical tables of the fourth and fifth centuries tell us 
 that in Rome were 423 temples, 154 images of the gods, 
 made of gold and ivory, 2 colossal statues, 22 great 
 equestrian statues, 3785 monuments of emperors and 
 great Romans, 1352 fountains and basins, all works of 
 art; of theatres, the largest had 22,888 seats, while the 
 Circus Maximus had 385,000 seats. It may give some 
 idea of these dimensions to the reader when I say, that 
 in this circus the whole population of Bristol could sit to 
 the last infant, and then there would be still room for 
 free entry for all the inhabitants of Great Yarmouth ! We 
 can but dimly conceive what an immense quantity of 
 works of art the 2000 palaces of Rome contained. But 
 one point is essential ; in ancient Rome there were 867 
 public bath-houses — Modern Vienna, the capital of 
 Austria, has but 57. If the use of soap and water is a 
 sign of civilisation, how far beneath the old Romans are 
 we Europeans of to-day ! 
 
 In the time when those tables were drawn up, all this 
 was but the fossilised and dilapidated integument of the 
 antique life of yore ; but one or two centuries earlier the 
 
8 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 pulse of life which had created all this was still beating, 
 and all the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, Spain, 
 Greece, Gaul, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria, all the 
 empire from Portugal to the Black Sea, were covered with 
 gleaming white cities, which, if not equal to Rome, still 
 were all resplendent of antique art, cities some of which 
 had half a million of inhabitants, trade and manufacture 
 flourishing in all, art and science cultivated everywhere, 
 with numerous universities, and houses full of comfort 
 and adorned by an art which ours, in spite of all our 
 improvement in appliances, has not surpassed. 
 
 Of course much could be said against/ that culture, much 
 could be said of its inward rottenness and decay — of its 
 being founded on slavery and cruel exploitation — but here 
 I speak of what was performed. 
 
 And now let us turn our eyes to a mediaeval city. We 
 must not think of its picturesque aspect. . Disorder often 
 looks more picturesque than order, and, compared with 
 the bad taste of our present architecture, mediaeval build- 
 ings may be regarded as a romantic ideal. But if we 
 speak of the state of life and civilisation in those cities, 
 we can but consider the contrast to the antique time when 
 they knew how to unite beauty with perfect usefulness. 
 The first thing which would strike us would be the in- 
 credible dirt. u Le moyen age," Taine says, " a vecu sur 
 un fumier."* No pavement, deepest mire, no sewage, 
 all filth thrown into the streets — the consequence was an 
 incessant stench pervading all things. The windows were 
 small and few as possible, the rooms dark, the floors 
 covered mostly with straw, the furniture scanty and badly 
 
 * That is a peculiarity on which the tales of chivalry do not like to 
 dwell. Nobody can get a true notion of those times out of novels like 
 those of Walter Scott — they are all painted theatre costumes. The 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTIQUE 9 
 
 shaped. Add to this the ugly attire which resembled 
 sacks, the dirtiness of the inhabitants themselves, and 
 more than this, their brutality and ignorance, and the 
 perfect inability to imitate any natural form. The existing 
 remnants of art of the first centuries of our era are 
 clumsier and more unnatural than the stiff forms of 
 Egyptian or Assyrian art. The limitless deterioration is 
 plainly visible. 
 
 Slaughter and devastation had swept away the ancient 
 civilisation, and men began with toil and pain to render 
 our planet again habitable. 
 
 dirtiness of those proud knights would be unbearable to us. Ivanhoe, 
 Marmion, Douglas, and Graeme all objected to washing. There is a 
 Spanish love-song, in which the knight sings : 
 
 You are more white, my mistress, 
 
 Than the purest ray of sun, 
 
 But seven years have passed, yea seven, 
 
 Since I last put down my arms, 
 
 My body's become blacker 
 
 Than the blackest coal. 
 
 As late as the sixteenth century Queen Marguerite of Navarre, the 
 celebrated story-teller, showed her hands in the Tuileries, to prove how 
 beautiful they were, and added proudly, " Bien que je ne les aie 
 decrassees depuis huit jours. " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW MORAL IDEAL 
 
 These are the results of the great and terrible movement 
 in outward life. The inner life of mediaeval men was 
 dominated and impregnated by the Christian religion, 
 whose effects on the culture of the epoch were more 
 important than that of any other influence. In religious 
 times and books the rise of Christendom, its appearance 
 in the world, is defined as the central event in the history 
 of civilisation. But while it is clear that an orthodox 
 person must see the culminating-point of history, as 
 regards religion, in the appearance and the spreading of 
 the true faith, the historian's task is to investigate impar- 
 tially the effects which this great event had on the life 
 and customs of men. Religious people will see simply an 
 immense advance from antiquity. This opinion, of course, 
 was the ruling one in the Middle Ages. Virgil, the repre- 
 sentative of antique wisdom, can lead Dante only through 
 two realms; the third and highest, that of Heaven, is 
 closed to him. The men of antiquity were all lost and 
 doomed to Hell, the men of the new era were Christians, 
 that is to say, redeemed. The opinion of Abelard, who 
 asserted that virtuous heathens, and especially a great 
 number of philosophers, were admitted to eternal bliss, 
 found no followers. There was but one man of antique 
 
THE NEW MORAL IDEAL n 
 
 times who was saved — the Emperor Trajan, who, so the 
 legend tells, was freed from the fire of Hell not through 
 his own merit, but by the prayer of Pope Gregory the 
 Great.* In the times of enlightenment, in times of 
 
 * Dante, therefore, finds him in the sixth heaven among the virtuous 
 rulers, and the celestial Eagle explains this fact as follows : 
 
 The first life and the fifth, that have their home 
 
 Within my brow, amaze thee, in that they 
 Adorn the regions where the angels roam ; 
 
 Not as thou deemst they left their mortal clay, 
 
 Heathens, but Christians, strong in faith to see, 
 
 Or the pierc'd feet, or else the pierc'd feet's day 
 
 p 
 Beheld far off ; for one from Hell, where free 
 
 Path to good- will is none, with flesh was clad, 
 
 That so of lively hope reward might be ; 
 
 Of lively hope, which put forth prayer that had 
 
 Power to obtain that God his soul would raise, 
 So that his will might turn to good from bad. 
 
 The glorious soul of whom I tell the praise, 
 
 Returning to his flesh for briefest hour, 
 Believed in him who could direct his ways, 
 
 And so believing, glowed with fiery power 
 
 Of love so true, that when he died once more 
 He was thought worthy of this blissful bower. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas says : "As to the case of Trajan, one may accept 
 the supposition that he was recalled to life by the prayers of St. Gre- 
 gory and thus attained grace, through which he gained the remission of 
 his sins and in consequence the freedom from punishment . . . yet 
 others would rather say that the soul of Trajan was not simply absolved 
 from the guilt which must be followed by eternal punishment, but that 
 his punishment was only temporarily suspended, that is, until the 
 Judgment Day." 
 
 The other person of whom Dante speaks in those verses is the Trajan 
 Rhipeus; but he was one of the " pre-Christians." Thomas Aquinas 
 explains this as follows : " To many heathens a revelation of Christ 
 was given, and if some were saved to whom the revelation had not been 
 given, yet those were not saved without belief in the Divine Mediator, 
 for if they had not an explicit belief they had an indefinite implicit 
 
12 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 materialism, the civilising effects of Christendom have 
 been as unjustly underrated. The same may be said of 
 some enthusiastic admirers of the Ideals of the Renais- 
 sance from Beccadelli to Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
 The expansion of Christendom continued from the first 
 century of its existence throughout the whole Middle 
 Ages. But, if we limit ourselves to the territory of 
 antique Paganism, we may roughly assign a.d. 529 as 
 the turning-point. In that year the last temple of Apollo 
 in Italy was destroyed by St. Benedict, and the last seven 
 masters of antique philosophy in Athens were expelled 
 by the Emperor Justinian and fled to the Persian king 
 Chosru. These two signal events may induce us to 
 choose that year as the point at which the conquest of 
 the ancient empire was completed and Paganism finally 
 abolished. 
 
 With the Christian religion new moral opinions began 
 to prevail, which were wholly different from the ancient, 
 as much from those of the civilised Greeks and Romans, 
 as from those of the wild German and Celtic tribes, and 
 which would alone have been sufficient to effect a thorough 
 change in the state of European civilisation. Life and 
 the world were considered in a new light. Life, for the 
 confessors of the new creed, had a new purpose and a 
 new meaning. Their morals, their virtues, their crimes, 
 their duties, their relations to God and man, their ideals 
 as well as their customs, were different. 
 
 Now it is clear that men, who condemn deeds which 
 are considered heroic and praiseworthy by others, who 
 
 belief in Divine providence ; by believing that God was the Saviour of 
 men, and would save them by ways which would best please Him, and 
 according to what the Spirit had revealed to some who could see the 
 truth." 
 
THE NEW MORAL IDEAL 13 
 
 sanction a conduct as heavenly which by others is con- 
 sidered weak and abject, who hold things forbidden 
 which by others are believed to be just and lawful, who 
 follow aims which to others appear ridiculous, must 
 needs lead essentially different lives. Nobody, therefore, 
 exercises such powerful influence on men as he who is 
 able to change their opinion as to their task and aim in 
 life and the worth of their established institutions. 
 
 The two social principles of Christendom, the doctrine" 
 of love, of unconditional universal love, and the doctrine 
 of equality, did more, perhaps, for the moral development 
 of mankind, and produced more noble and gentle deeds, 
 than any other element in human history. We generally 
 forget the hard and frightful cruelty of the ancient races 
 when we admire the splendour of their feats and accom- 
 plishments. The Christian doctrine of equality was not 
 based on political democratic reasons, but on the dogma 
 that there exists an immortal soul in every man, be he 
 nobleman or slave, and that this soul was to be saved, 
 and could be well-pleasing to a Lord before whose 
 eternal glory every earthly difference of rank and birth 
 must vanish, before whose throne the slave could be 
 welcomed and the Senator and Consul hurled into dark- 
 ness. The soul made the Roman patrician equal to the 
 negro slave, a notion which would have seemed absurd to 
 a true Roman. While it must be conceded that these 
 two doctrines may exist and prevail independently of 
 Christian religion, it remains true, nevertheless, that 
 Christianity did most to propagate them and give them 
 the power which they obtained in modern democracy. 
 
 It is true that these principles, that of love as well as 
 that of equality, were continually disregarded and violated 
 in the Middle Ages, and not the least by the Church 
 
i 4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 herself ; but then the explanation of this lies in the fact 
 that the wild and brutal men of those times were wholly 
 incapable of fully understanding these doctrines, and 
 much less of practising them in earnest. A second 
 reason is obvious. As long as Christians were a little 
 persecuted sect, only the purest and holiest belief could 
 move men to accept baptism and to fulfil all the difficult 
 duties, to run all the dangers, which they well knew to be 
 the consequence. But when the doctrine of Christ became 
 the accepted religion of the Empire and of the Court, when 
 it no longer brought dangers but preferments and digni- 
 ties, when it became the first s^ep the ambitious had to 
 take, when the whole crowd of indifferent and low-minded 
 people became Christians — how could the purity of the 
 early times be preserved ? How could it be attained 
 when the wild German warriors, in whose souls the 
 ferocious warlike spirit of the race fought fiercely with the 
 new doctrine, accepted it ? Their whole life became a 
 continual convulsion, a constant wavering now to this 
 side, now to the other, and of the same men the most 
 frightful cruelties are reported, as well as moments of 
 devoted ardour and meekest humility. 
 
 There is no more expressive episode in mediaeval 
 history, none that could be more characteristic of those 
 wild Christian warriors than that, after the capture of 
 Jerusalem, they killed every living person there, men, 
 women, and children, and then, literally covered with 
 blood, prostrated themselves at the Saviour's Tomb and 
 kissed it with glowing religious ardour and devout humility ! 
 But this savagery lay in the character of the race, not in 
 their religion. As late as the sixteenth century it was 
 the baptismal custom in Ireland to immerse new-born 
 children entirely in water, leaving only the right arm out, 
 
THE NEW MORAL IDEAL 15 
 
 that it might remain pagan and able to deal blows un- 
 fettered by Christianity. 
 
 On the other hand, the most uncompromising of the 
 Christians, Tertullian, the Montanists and other sects, 
 carried their principles to the logical conclusion, and 
 utterly condemned warfare and fighting, which was but 
 consistent. 
 
 And, finally, as the rich young man in the Gospel found 
 the words of Christ too hard to follow, so men always 
 found them : Church and State contented themselves, 
 then as well as now, with the forms, which are so much 
 easier to adopt and to shqw than the spirit. 
 
 This was one side of the new religion. Another was 
 the total change in moral ideals. The moral ideals of the 
 ancients were : personal greatness, dignity, self-confidence, 
 magnanimity, invincible firmness in every act. The 
 Christians praised the very contrary : humility, obedience, 
 self-sacrifice. Of course there were but few persons who 
 really practised these virtues, distasteful as they were to 
 the character of the race, but there were others who 
 Exaggerated and distorted them to an unnatural degree. 
 
 Antiquity saw everything in this present life, found all 
 its ideals in beauty and sublimity on earth; it praised 
 pleasure, as long as it was not immoderate, all its culture 
 was joyful and sensual, therefore it was artistic in an 
 eminent degree. I do not speak now of all the frightful 
 degeneration. There can be no doubt about the corrup- 
 tion of the latter times of antiquity and about the neces- 
 sity of a moral reorganisation. Here I only speak of its 
 performance and of its ideal. Ancient teachers praised a 
 joyful and creative life — active life was their field — the 
 shadowy life which was to come after it was an eternity 
 of regret and sorrow. The new doctrine, on the contrary, 
 
: 
 
 16 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 saw in the life on earth only a short and passing state of 
 preparation for the future life, which was to be the 
 essential part of existence, and it exhorted all men to 
 resign themselves and to turn from life. The world was 
 a vale of tears, life a dreary waste of misery and heavy 
 trials. The frightful state of the world did much to 
 develop such views; the earth in those centuries was 
 indeed a vale of tears, and as soon as the condition of 
 men grew more pleasant, as soon as men could again 
 begin to enjoy their existence, those ideas lost their 
 power. 
 
 Such views were corroborated by the doctrine of 
 original sin. This gloomy conception of humanity, foreign 
 to the European genius and bearing the mark of its 
 riental birth, was developed chiefly by Augustine and 
 weighed heavily on the souls of men. It caused men to 
 regard nature and the human body as things unclean in 
 themselves and sinful by their very existence ; it gave a 
 new tendency to morals, new restraints to human life, 
 and, exaggerated and distorted by fanatic monks, it pro- 
 duced a series of strange moral phenomena, and led, 
 particularly in the field of sexual life, to consequences 
 which were hardly less pernicious and immoral than the 
 licence of decaying antiquity. 
 
 Men in those times led lives of trembling anxiety, now 
 carried away by powerful passions into horrible crime, 
 and again tortured by fearful pangs of remorse. Earthly 
 life being so thoroughly sinful and the continual danger 
 of losing the eternal so imminent, it necessarily seemed 
 best to dedicate it wholly to penitence ; for even those 
 who should attain the impossible and be perfectly virtuous, 
 even they had gained but little, for they had enough to 
 bear in their inheritance of original sin. This led to the 
 
THE NEW MORAL IDEAL , 7 
 
 institution of monasteries and of hermit life. ' Men broke 
 and abjured all human ties, castigated themselves in the 
 most unnatural way, now seeing in feverish dreams a 
 wonderful paradise, now persecuted by horrible tempta- 
 tions, the outbursts of a tortured fancy. We know of 
 saints and hermits who forbade their parents to see them 
 and remained deaf to all prayers, who caused their own 
 children to be tortured before their very eyes in order to 
 render themselves insensible to earthly sentiments, who 
 neither washed nor combed themselves, nor changed their 
 clothes, but remained motionless all their lives in a 
 rapturous trance. Though not all the world participated 
 in such madness, yet all the world recognised in it the 
 ideal life. Procreation and the continuance of mankind, 
 nay, its very existence, was in itself a sin. , 
 
 To make life appear as odious as possible, the greatest 
 stress was laid on the dark, the sordid, the painful and 
 unclean sides of life. Innumerable works of the earliest 
 and of the latest parts of the Middle Ages were conceived 
 to enforce the miseries and impurities of human life ; the 
 poor remnants of art were dedicated to the same object.* 
 
 * A characteristic and much read work of the twelfth century was 
 the treatise of Cardinal Lothar (afterwards Pope Innocent VII. of the 
 family which later on was called de' Conti), De contemptu mundi sive de 
 miseria humancB conditionis ("Of the Contempt of the World and the 
 Miseries of the Human State "), which was soon translated into Italian 
 by Bono Giamboni. It contains sentences like the following : " Man is 
 composed of dirt and the most vulgar nutriments, while other things 
 are made out of much nobler nutriments, for the Sage says that the 
 stars and the planets are made of fire, spirits and winds of air, fishes 
 nd birds of water. . . . The trees produce leaves, blossoms and fruits 
 out of themselves, men vermin and lice ; the former produce wine and 
 oil and balms, the latter excrements. The former produce sweetest 
 odours, the latter abominable stench. ... If thou wilt well think on it, 
 woman conceives her son in the heat of lust, gives him birth in pain 
 and sorrow, nourishes him with fear and toil, and watches him with 
 
 B 
 
1 8 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 To make sin more horrible the fancy of men tormented 
 itself with the invention and contemplation of ever more 
 minute descriptions of Hell and Purgatory ; every second 
 of man's life was of anxious importance, for the smallest 
 sin, if it was not repented and remitted during this life, 
 was sure to draw after it, at the very least, long pro- 
 tracted pain in the life beyond ; and as in Egypt of old, 
 human life became dark and joyless. And as often as 
 Nature, like a dammed-up stream, rose and overflowed its 
 limits, lust and passion became the more savage and 
 furious. 
 
 Another new and unhappy feature, which had been 
 unknown in European history before the Middle Ages and 
 I the expansion of Christendom, were the religious wars. 
 Paganism was tolerant, every man was allowed to worship 
 the gods he chose. The persecution of Christians in the 
 Roman Empire was not founded on religious motives but 
 on purely political reasons, Christians being thought a 
 subversive sect and hostile to the State. Among the 
 common people especially it was generally believed that 
 in their secret religious assemblies the Christians killed 
 little pagan children, a belief which seems to recur in 
 every time and in every place, wherever strange and 
 mysterious little sects live separated and yet intermixed 
 with the people ; the same superstition is found to this 
 day in China, where the people believe that the Christians 
 kill Chinese children, their eyes being needed for some 
 religious ceremony ; and in Europe, where Christians in 
 their turn believe in similar horrors concerning Jewish 
 rites. But, apart from political reasons, or when not 
 
 care and anxiety, and all this is just from natural impulse. . . . The 
 new-born boy says ' A,' the woman ' E,' which are both the sounds of 
 woe and pain, as many as there are born of Eve's race." 
 
THE NEW MORAL IDEAL 19 
 
 stimulated by such odious and exciting rumours, all 
 occidental religions were rather tolerant, while all religions 
 of oriental origin, the Jewish, the Christian, the Moslem 
 faith, are intolerant. Persecution, however, had not its 
 origin in the spirit of Christianity, but in the fanatic 
 zeal and orthodox rage of those who confessed it ; and mad 
 quarrels about the most insignificant shades of dogmatic 
 differences cost the lives of millions of men. 
 
 This rage manifested itself from the very beginning. 
 The Arians once killed 3000 Catholics in a riot in Con- 
 stantinople ; one Arian bishop in Alexandria ordered all 
 Catholics there to be scourged or roasted alive ; wherever 
 the Catholics came into power they did the same with the 
 Arians. 
 
 By oppressed Christian sects the Vandals were called 
 into Africa and the Mohammedans into Egypt. And this 
 madness never ceased until recent times. In the sixteenth 
 century more people were killed from religious motives in 
 the Netherlands alone, and in the space of but twelve 
 years — Christians by Christians — than in all the persecu- 
 tions of Christians in the whole immense Roman Empire 
 during four hundred years. The dissenter was a demon, 
 doomed to Hell, an abomination to God ; and men blas- 
 phemously fancied that their murderous cruelty was 
 shared by God ! One of the most influential ecclesiastic 
 authors, Peter Lombard, wrote the monstrous sentence 
 that the joys of the blessed would be enhanced after the 
 Judgment by the aspect of the damned in their pain. 
 
 Thus the salvation of the soul, first by true faith, and 
 secondly by pious deeds— both were soon separated in 
 theory as well as in practice — became the first object and 
 aim of every mediaeval man. Every believer— they 
 formed the immense majority-— did in his own way what 
 
20 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 he could. Some devoted their whole lives to contempla- 
 tion and preparation for the life beyond ; those who did 
 not go so far did their best by prayers and works of re- 
 pentance. The penitent monk and penitent pilgrim were 
 characteristic phenomena of the Middle Ages : they were 
 to be seen wandering on all public roads, kneeling in 
 every church, often dragging heavy chains or iron rings 
 after them or wound around their bodies. 
 
 Religious vows of all kind played an important part in 
 every man's life. The prince promised a crusade for a 
 victory over his enemies, the nobleman a chapel for a 
 vengeance or for a recovery from illness, the serf a candle 
 or a hundred prayers for finding a missing sheep, or for 
 keeping his damaged plough serviceable until night. 
 A vast number of persons, men as well as women, took 
 the vows, sometimes near the end of their lives, sometimes 
 on their very death-beds, so that they might die monks 
 or nuns. 
 
 This whole life, devoted on principle to supersensual 
 things, was organised in the visible Church. A vast and 
 powerful hierarchy controlled the community of believers. 
 The Oriental Christian Church became organised accord- 
 ing to the imperial system of the Romans ; and its 
 organisation was so splendidly framed, spiritual and 
 temporal links were so admirably interwoven in powerful 
 chains, the whole system was founded on so cunning an 
 application of all psychologic means, that it has survived 
 every attack from without and all decay within, and has 
 held its position, if not victoriously, yet unconquered, to 
 the present day. 
 
 Oriental ecstasy found, while keeping unimpaired its 
 mystic symbols, a perfect expression in the beautiful 
 Catholic ritual, always so impressive to the senses and 
 
5 
 
 THE NEW MORAL IDEAL 21 
 
 minds of the people ; and as the oyster secretes its beau- 
 tiful pearl and surrounds itself with the protective shells, 
 so the whole religious movement surrounded itself with a 
 very rational hierarchical system for the preservation and 
 protection of faith as well as of the many material interests 
 of the Church. The whole organisation found its central 
 unity in the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 This development and this concentration form a great 
 and interesting phenomenon in history. It was made 
 possible by a great number of co-operating causes, by the 
 splendour of power which hovered over old Imperial 
 Rome, to which long after its decay the sonorous verse 
 bore witness : 
 
 Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi ; 
 
 then by the necessity of a uniform organisation for the 
 double purpose of expanding the domain of belief and of 
 retaining the newly converted, a necessity which was pro- 
 vided for with subtlest intelligence, and last not least by 
 the personal efforts of great Popes, by the deeds of those 
 who were noble and great as well as by the energetic, clear 
 and foreseeing policy of others. 
 
 Thus the Catholic religion ruled Christian Europe from 
 Rome as its centre. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE POLITICAL IDEAL 
 
 Thus a complete change in the social and political state 
 in the ruling races, in religion, in morals, in culture, 
 separates mediaeval men from those of antiquity. But 
 however great the contrast may be in reality, reality 
 itself is but one half of our life ; the other half consists in 
 our conceptions. Our conceptions of reality, the more or 
 less distorted reflections, which all events leave in men's 
 brains, always influence the actions of men, and therewith 
 the events themselves. What a man believes himself to 
 be, even if perfectly false, has as much influence on his 
 doings as what he is in fact, for his belief is but a part of 
 himself, contradictory as it may appear. This is the 
 reason why ideas, even the merest illusion, nay, unmiti- 
 gated stupidity itself, are facts and powers in history. 
 i The illusion of mediaeval men was, that they believed 
 I themselves living in antiquity — that they had but a slight 
 * idea of the gulf that yawned between them and the 
 previous era, but believed their own times to be in every 
 respect the continuation and even the perfection, the 
 crowning fulfilment of antiquity. The crowning fulfilment 
 — for had they not the true faith, which the old Greeks 
 and Romans had never known ? 
 
 The German tribes which destroyed the Roman Empire 
 
THE POLITICAL IDEAL 23 
 
 did this, as it were, unintentionally. They invaded it 
 because they wanted to conquer territory, and desired 
 booty, glory and power. But the empire itself, with its 
 organisation, its vast extension, the dazzling splendour of 
 its magnificent culture and its immense riches, was 
 regarded by them with reverential awe, they wanted but 
 to participate in it. The weakest emperors were sur- 
 rounded by a halo of gold and purple, of pomp and power, 
 and when the barbarians accepted Christianity, an impor- 
 tant reason of this conversion was its being the emperor's 
 religion. Even after the division of the empire, after the 
 downfall of the Western throne when first the Goths and 
 then the Lombards ruled in Italy, the new masters were 
 regarded as usurpers, not only by the old Italian popula- 
 tion, but the German princes themselves, who had con- 
 quered and in fact governed Italy, were at heart of the 
 same opinion. None of them dared to call himself Emperor, 
 not even King of Italy — they styled themselves Kings of 
 the Goths, Kings of the Lombards. A shadow of imperial 
 sovereignty seemed to hover above their thrones. Parts 
 of Italy, Ravenna, the so-called dukedom of Rome, and 
 large territories in the south, were for a long time directly 
 subject to the Greek emperor, and governed by him 
 through the Exarch of Ravenna. Numerous traces of the 
 Greek language may be found in modern Italian. As late 
 as in the year 663, the Emperor Constans II. visited Rome 
 on a survey of his empire ; he was the last Greek emperor 
 who personally entered Rome, but for a long time the 
 Popes continued to be confirmed by the Exarchs. In 772, 
 a Bull of Hadrian I., he who called Charlemagne to Italy, 
 begins with the words : Imperanie domino nostro, piissimo 
 Augusto Constantino a Deo coronato magno imperatore . . . 
 (" During the reign of our Sovereign, the most pious and 
 
24 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 august Constantinus, our great Emperor, crowned by 
 God . . ."). Had those emperors, their rightful sovereigns, 
 the direct successors of the Roman Caesars, been able to 
 assist them against the Lombards, the Popes would never 
 have called the Franks into Italy. 
 
 But Charlemagne had other views and intentions in 
 coming to Italy than the former German kings. He put 
 an end to the uncertain conditions on Italian ground, 
 entirely disregarding the problematic claims of Eastern 
 emperors on the Western throne. But when, in the year 
 800, he ordered Pope Leo to crown him as Roman 
 emperor, even he was fully persuaded that he had but 
 put an end to an interregnum, that he had seized the 
 same crown which Romulus Augustulus in the year 475 
 had laid down at the feet of Odovakar. and that he there- 
 with had become the direct successor of Caesar Qctavianus 
 Augustus, the first of the emperors. 
 
 This legitimistic dream existed 'throughout the Middle 
 Ages and had incalculable consequences. It gave birth to 
 the notion that the imperial dignity meant primarily the 
 sovereignty ever the Roman people, and that only in 
 Rome could it be bestowed and received. 
 
 Rome, however, became more and more identified, 
 especially in the eyes of foreigners, with the papal throne. 
 Such a state of things had never been intended by Charle- 
 magne. Devout as he was, he always considered himself 
 as the Pope's and the Roman people's sovereign just as 
 the Byzantine emperor before him; as all Christian 
 emperors had been, who would have laughed at the idea 
 of deriving their imperial power from the Pope. Charles 
 had acted as judge in the Pope's cause, and received his 
 expurgatory oath, even before the ceremony of coronation 
 had been performed. 
 
THE POLITICAL IDEAL 25 
 
 He acknowledged his father Pipin's donations of certain 
 territories and their revenues, but he never intended con- 
 ceding the power of independent government to the Pope. 
 He had allowed the Pope to crown him in order to add 
 solemnity to the act ; but, in order to bar any prescriptive 
 right, he would not permit his son and successor, Louis 
 the Pious, to take the crown at Rome, nor from the Pope, 
 but crowned him with his own hands in the year 8i_8, at 
 the Diet of Aachen, as Emperor of the Romans. He, the 
 emperor himself, nominated the emperor — a great and 
 far-seeing man in whatever he undertook. 
 
 Charlemagne's successors, however, were weaklings, 
 while the Popes, especially Leo IV., the son of Radoald, 
 and Nicholas I., the son of Theodore, were powerful 
 personalities and bold politicians. They won precedence 
 over the weak -and discordant Carolingian princes, the 
 spiritual halo which surrounded their ever-growing power 
 making victory easier for them. 
 
 A 
 
 The most important effect was, that the empire was 
 named and thought to be that of the Romans, and not a 
 new empire of Germans, as it was in reality. Words and 
 traditions had a much greater power on mediaeval men 
 than on us, and the word " empire " seemed intrinsically^ 
 connected with Imperial Rome; hence it was universally' 
 believed that the elected German king could not lawfully 
 become emperor except in Rome, an illusion which cost \ 
 the German people oceans of blood. 
 
 A second and later consequence of this imagined con- 
 tinuity was the acceptance of Roman law. In the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, when Roman law again began to 
 be universally studied, and the emperors learned that it 
 had been the law of the old empire, they naturally thought 
 themselves bound to accept it as the law of their pre- 
 
 ^ 
 
 a> 
 
26 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 decessors, fully persuaded as they were that their new 
 empire was identical with the old. Nobody even thought 
 of questioning whether it was suited to the new state of 
 things. 
 
 It was the law of an autocratic empire, while the new 
 empire was a feudal state ; it had been made for a country 
 with highly developed civilisation, industry, commerce and 
 finance; ill suited for countries whose economy was 
 founded on primitive agricultural institutions. Besides, 
 it expressed the views and sentiments of a different race, 
 its precepts were strange and incomprehensible to the 
 people. But in the Middle Ages no one ever inquired into 
 the nature of a thing ; words and forms alone were con- 
 sidered, and always were decisive. 
 
 A third consequence was that Latin became the official 
 language of the empire, and thus gained that immense 
 influence which it preserved throughout the whole period, 
 and which makes itself felt even by us. Thus men received 
 a language which was universal, and by means of which 
 scholars and statesmen of all lands could communicate 
 with each other ; the barbarians found a highly developed 
 idiom capable of expressing thoughts, for which their 
 mother-tongue was not mature. Moreover, they received 
 the key to the treasures of ancient literature. On the 
 other hand, the supremacy of the Latin speech consider- 
 ably retarded the development of the national languages 
 and of popular instruction, it widened the gulf between 
 the cultured and the illiterate classes. Culture was 
 confined to an unfamiliar medium ; the very language of 
 civilisation and science, being other than that of daily life, 
 estranged them from life and nature. 
 
 Thus antiquity, or let us rather say what people knew 
 of antiquity, or what they deemed it to be, became the 
 
THE POLITICAL IDEAL 27 
 
 universal basis on which they believed everything must 
 needs be founded — the remnants of antique literature 
 were clad with an authority which forbade doubt and 
 criticism. 
 
 The same authority made itself felt in many other 
 fields, and even in the affairs of everyday life. It was 
 from antiquity that men wanted to derive their descent 
 and the rights they valued most There was no noble 
 Italian family but traced its descent from some old Roman, 
 no town which did not claim to have been founded by 
 fugitive Trojans. This ambition was not confined to Italy. 
 The monk Otfried, of Weissenburg, in his " Harmony of 
 the Gospels," says that the Franks are descended from the 
 Macedonians. The Roman nobles called themselves 
 Consuls, and later on Senators or Proconsuls. In the 
 same measure as knowledge increased and the movement 
 which is now called the Renaissance advanced, the an- 
 tique ideal grew stronger, until in Cola Rienzi, u the Last 
 of the Tribunes," who summoned all princes and cities 
 of the world to the tribunal of the sovereign Roman 
 people, the political delusion reached its culmination and 
 exploded like a bubble. The astonishment and the 
 mockery of the summoned made the change manifest to 
 all the world, and made men conscious of the real state 
 of things, to which they had been blind for so many cen- 
 turies. But not until true antiquity was again discovered 
 and understood did men fully perceive how remote they 
 already were from it. 
 
 Mediaeval society thought that it was the unbroken con- 
 tinuance of the antique. Historical knowledge being defi- 
 cient, people fancied that the social state and civilisation 
 of the ancients had been just the same state of feudalism 
 and chivalry as their own was. In the numerous mediaeval 
 
n. 
 
 28 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 tales of Troy and of Alexander the Great we always find 
 the same feudal surroundings and chivalrous manners and 
 customs. Antiquity had been the preparation of the great 
 Christian empire which was ruled by the Emperor and 
 by the Pope, and there was no historical event in ancient 
 times that was not regarded as a preparatory step of 
 Divine providence for those institutions. 
 
 In the second canto of the " Divine Comedy," Dante 
 thinks himself unworthy of visiting the realms of the 
 dead, which nobody had visited before him except St. Paul 
 and iEneas, whose descent had been told by Virgil. That 
 the Apostle, " the vessel of election," was worthy of such 
 a vision is obvious, that iEneas could be admitted is ex- 
 plained by Dante in his mission : 
 
 For he of our dear Rome and its great might 
 
 Was chosen sire in heaven empyreal, 
 But this and that, to speak truth definite, 
 
 Were fixed and 'stablished for the Holy See 
 Where the great Peter's Vicar sits of right ; 
 
 He, in that journey, where he won from thee 
 His glory, heard of things from whence did flow 
 
 The Papal mantle and his victory. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 In the same way, Dante, in his political treatise " On 
 Monarchy," derives the imperial power from the Romans, 
 who in their turn had been predestined and empowered by 
 Divine providence to conquer and rule the world. Hence 
 it follows — such is Dante's argument in this Ghibelline 
 pamphlet — that the emperor's rights are derived directly 
 from God and not from the Pope. 
 
 It was the highest political ideal of the Middle Ages 
 that Pope and Emperor — the two swords, or the two 
 lights of the world, as they were called — should govern it 
 
THE POLITICAL IDEAL 29 
 
 in peace with each other, one caring for its spiritual the 
 other for its temporal welfare. Absolute theocracy in all 
 spiritual, absolute monarchy in all temporal questions j 
 this was the political ideal, especially that of Dante. The 
 real state of things and their development of course never 
 corresponded to this ideal. Essays were made towards 
 its realisation by a few powerful persons, both from the 
 papal and from the imperial throne. But the very insti- 
 tutions of feudalism, the troubled state of the empire, the 
 division of the land into innumerable greater or smaller 
 estates, rendered the absolute power of the Emperor inef- • 
 fective. Then the bearers of the two supreme powers .. 
 were but men, exposed to human weakness and blinded ■ ■ 
 by ambition ; they quarrelled, and instead of being allies, , ' 
 became rivals. 
 
 The impossibility of delineating a sure limit between. 
 their mutual competences, the undying question as to'^ 
 what belonged to the purely spiritual sphere and what. ' 
 was purely temporal, the necessary mingling of both in 
 real life, the innumerable conflicts of interest, occasioned " 
 unceasing complaints of both parties against encroach- .' 
 ments from the other side, and originated that great strife -, 
 between the two powers which, drawing almost every 
 question of political and intellectual life into its vortex, 
 went on for centuries and has not quite subsided in our 
 days. We should be thankful for it. Had it been pos- 
 sible for the two pov/ers to unite, or had one succeeded in 
 making the other completely subservient to its aims, the 
 consequence would certainly not have been the realisation 
 of Dante's ideal— an empire flourishing in eternal peace— 
 but a uniform Chinese despotism, by which all freedom 
 and all development had been made impossible. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COMBAT BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 The ambition of the spiritual lords, who desired to 
 extend their control over temporal matters also, pretend- 
 ing that their power as the spiritual was the higher, gave 
 the first impulse to discord. As was said above, during 
 the reign of the last Carolingian princes, the rights of the 
 Emperor diminished while the authority of the Pope 
 increased. By the ninth century the papal throne had 
 become a ruling power in Europe, and has remained so 
 ever since, at least in principle, even during the period of 
 its deepest decay in the tenth century; for as soon as 
 the state of the Church was bettered and purified through 
 the great reforming movement, the Popes instantly re- 
 newed their former claims, and as the nations grew more 
 and more religious, succeeded in enforcing them. In the 
 eighth and ninth centuries the great forgeries of the 
 so-called Donation of Constantine (a pure invention and 
 a falsification throughout), on which the temporal dominion 
 of the Popes is essentially based, were first perpetrated. 
 L In the ninth the Donations of the Kings Pipin and Lewis 
 1 were forged. Although founded on fact, they were com- 
 pletely false so far as the pretended documents showed 
 larger territories and far more comprehensive rights than 
 had ever been conferred by the originals. But still more 
 
THE CHURCH AND STATE COMBAT 31 
 
 important were the false decretals of the so-called pseudo- 1 
 Isidorus. In the place of the collection of genuine) 
 decretals — that is, papal decrees — which had been made 
 by Bishop Isidorus of Seville, Churchmen began, in the 
 latter half of the ninth century, to use a forged collection 
 ascribed to the same Isidorus, but which probably origin- 
 ated in the north-east of France. It contained a large,, 
 number of letters of former Popes, almost all forgeries, inj 
 which the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over all! 
 bishops and archbishops of the world, and his spiritual 1 
 control of all laymen, was asserted in much stronger terms 
 than hitherto. At the same time, all clergymen were 
 rendered almost totally exempt from civil justice and the 
 authority of civil magistrates. The tendency of the falsi- 
 fication was to elevate and to centralise the power of the 
 Church and to transform it into a monarchic institution. 
 Parchments and writs had a far higher authority in those 
 times than they have now ; critic^l^ijnquiry being un- 
 known — for, indeed, hardly any one except the clergy*had 
 learning enough to read these documents — the possibility 
 of falsification never was so much as suspected, and those 
 decretals soon became established law. 
 
 If, however, we look at the whole transaction from a 
 purely historical, and not from a moral point of view, we^ 
 may say that those letters, though forged and attributed • 
 to Popes, who could never have thought of such a power 
 being given to them, were nevertheless the adequate 
 expression of public opinion, and of the claims of the 
 Roman Church, as justified by the spirit of the times. In 
 those letters the Church gave itself a legal basis on which 
 it could found its dominion. It does not seem to make a 
 great difference whether they were " decreed " in Rome 
 or forged in Rheims, because the fact remains that in 
 

 32 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 them the real state of Church power found a c#difica» 
 tion. 
 
 The mutual position of the Pope and Emperor under- 
 went a complete change. In the year *]JJ the Romans 
 had sworn the oath of fealty to Charlemagne and the 
 Pope had acknowledged him as his sovereign. Less than 
 a century later Pope Nicolas I. was Sovereign Lord of 
 Rome and the Emperor Lewis II. led his horse on foot„ 
 Another change followed, by which the Emperors re- 
 covered their original power of enthroning and deposing 
 the Popes, but after many uncertainties and continual 
 shifting of power now to this side and now to the other, 
 the Popes, assisted by the ever-increasing religious move- 
 ment among the peoples, were decidedly victorious ; 
 Gregory VII. was in a position to claim the papal 
 dominion over the world. 
 
 In the tenth century the Emperors had nominated the 
 Popes ; in the course of the next the Emperor's crown, 
 though always due to the German king, became a gift of the 
 Pope, until Emperor Lothar seemed to settle the strife by 
 acknowledging in a written document that he owed his 
 imperial power to the Pope, from whom he had received 
 it. With the rise of the Hohenstaufens the combat began 
 anew, and lasted until both powers — that of the Pope as 
 well as that of the empire — had bled themselves to 
 death. 
 
 Even before the Carolingian house had become extinct 
 jthey had lost their power in Italy, which fell into an 
 ^anarchic state. After the deposition of Charles the Bald, 
 princes of Lombard, Frank and Burgundian *ri$in suc- 
 cessively became kings of Italy, but none %{ them 
 obtained a real and lasting power* In R#me there w*s 
 an open and constant opposition on the part of the 
 
THE CHURCH AND STATE COMBAT 33 
 
 Roman people to the Popes; the fierce Roman aris- 
 tocracy dominated the papal see. In the course of 
 thirty years, five out of eight Popes died violent deaths, 
 either strangled in prison or killed by rebellious nobles ; 
 two renounced their dignities, and only one of them died 
 a natural death. This was the time of most profound J 
 decay in the Roman Churchy In the year 1046 three* 
 Popes fought for the Tiara, until Emperor Henry III. put* 
 an end to this state in the Synod of Sutciby deposing all 
 three and enthroning a German bishopr Five German 
 Popes now succeeded one another, all strong men and 
 favouring reform. In the tenth century the barbarism of 
 the people and the worldliness of the clergy had reached 
 its height. Then began a religious reaction, originating 
 in the monastic orders, and particularly in French cloisters, 
 the centre of which was the newly founded monastery of| 
 Cluny. The original tendency of this movement was 
 ascetic ; an agitation against the life of worldly pleasure 
 and fighting which most priests led, and particularly 
 against the marriages of priests, which had become 
 general ; at the same time they enforced Church govern- 
 ment by carrying into the hierarchy the same severe and 
 centralistic spirit in which their convents were organised. 
 It was not only victorious within the Church itself, but 
 propagated by the agitation of monks and hermits; it 
 conquered the minds of men, everywhere deepening the 
 religious spirit and reinforcing the ideals of the Church. 
 It led to that mysticism which played so important a part 
 in the intellectual life of the later centuries of the Middle 
 Ages, it decided the great combat between the Emperor 
 and the Pope, and it had a decisive influence on the 
 development of the Catholic Church. From France it 
 spread over Germany and Italy, where it found a new 
 
3+ DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 centre in Florence in the monastery of Vallombrosa. 
 Monks from Cluny and their partisans soon attained the 
 first places at the Papal Court. The earnest and erudite 
 Germans, who, following on the dissolute Romans, now 
 occupied the papal seat, called to their council pure and 
 austere men whose spirit was kindred to their own. An 
 interesting fact may be observed in the final result : the 
 German emperors, wishing to purify the sullied Church, 
 had nominated German Popes ; these, led by the same 
 tendency of purification and reform, selected men who 
 L soon turned the policy of the Church against the German 
 1 emperors. The Popes, who had been delivered by the 
 Emperor from the tyranny of the Roman nobles, now 
 reclaimed their independence from the Emperor himself. 
 Nicolas II., formerly Bishop Gerard of Florence, a Bur- 
 gundian, confined the right of electing the Pope to the 
 Cardinals alone. His second successor was Hildebrand, 
 the son of Bonizo, a Tuscan carjtenter^ Bonizo and 
 Hildebrand being both frequent Longobard names, we may 
 assume that he, too, was of Longobard origin. He was 
 small, of poor figure, but one of the most remarkable and 
 strong-willed men who ever lived, not vehement, not 
 irascible, but quiet, gentle, and of an iron firmness of 
 purpose ; " blandus ille tyrannus," " the gentle tyrant," or 
 " the holy Satan " as he is called in the letters of his 
 friend Pier Damiani, who often felt the irresistible power 
 of Gregory's personality. 
 
 He was not satisfied with freedom of election, but 
 i claimed supremacy over the Emperor and the temporal 
 sovereignty of the Church over Hungary, Bohemia, 
 Russia, Spain, Dalmatia, Croatia, Poland, England, 
 Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the newly founded Nor- 
 man state in the South of Italy — the latter being the only 
 
THE CHURCH AN* STATE C#M*AT 35 
 
 •ne which the PWjies afterwards succeeded in making 
 really a fief of the Church. He proclaimed the programme 
 of the universal dominion of the Roman Church. 
 
 In his reign the so-called War of Investitures com- 
 menced. The Pope demanded that the prelates should 
 henceforth be elected by the clergy of their diocese alone, 
 and confirmed by the Pope. Just as this demand seemed, 
 and though good reasons could be alleged for it, civil 
 authority had no choice but to oppose it. 
 
 It had been the policy of the Emperor Henry III. to 
 employ the episcopal power against the unruly feudal 
 princes of the empire. Bishops were selected for his 
 counsellors and ministers, even for his generals ; the 
 bishops of the empire were given large feudal dominions; 
 the men who were nominated to bishoprics were able 
 politicians or staunch warriors of undoubted loyalty to 
 the Emperor ; and when the Emperor's treasury was 
 empty, those were appointed who could pay for their 
 offices. Such a system could not be approved by a Pope 
 who, while he earnestly tried to raise the ecclesiastical 
 spirit, wanted the bishops to be his political instruments 
 against the Emperor. He demanded that only true 
 clergymen elected by clergymen should be called to 
 clerical offices. The Emperor alleged that he could not 
 submit to a system by which the third part or more of the 
 feudal estates of the empire would be bestowed and 
 occupied by a power which was riot his. He was willing 
 to grant the freedom of election, but on the one condition 
 that the fiefs should be returned to the empire. The 
 bishops would not hear of this. Both parties insisting 
 on their demands, a war of fifty years duration ensued, 
 which caused great ruin both in Italy and in Germany, 
 and embittered the reign of two Emperors and of six 
 
36 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Popes. The last but one of the Popes, Paschal II., a 
 mild-tempered old man, thought it but just for the clergy, 
 resolved as they were to be merely clerical henceforth, to 
 give up the estates ; but the whole clergy immediately 
 rose against him in uproar, and a General Council refused 
 to ratify the treatise. 
 
 The strife was an unequal one, and its conduct was 
 terrible and confusing to the minds of men. The Pope 
 released laymen from their duty of obedience to simoniacal 
 bishops and vassals from allegiance to their lords. All 
 human relations between men and all moral sentiments 
 were thus confused and disturbed. The son rose against 
 his father, the Church became divided within itself, for 
 in Germany and in Lombardy the bishops of the old 
 school fought on the Emperor's side. But the final 
 victory of the Church could not be doubted. " The re- 
 sources of the German monarch," says Lamprecht, " were 
 of an external and merely political nature, unable to cope 
 with the power which the ideas of reform had over the 
 souls of men." 
 
 The persons who played prominent parts in this strife 
 are well known. The dissolute and unhappy old Emperor 
 Henry IV., the hero of a hundred battles, who for three 
 days stood a penitent in the snow before the castle of 
 Canossa — he, too, was a man of high gifts and stubborn 
 force, but dissipated and unsteady, no match for a man like 
 Pope Gregory VII. At Canossa the Pope took -the Host 
 with the imprecation that, if he was conscious of the 
 slightest guilt on his part, God might strike him dead ; he 
 then offered the other half to the Emperor that he might 
 do the same, but the Emperor did not dare. This event 
 is highly characteristic of both adversaries and of their 
 unequal personal force. 
 
THE CHURCH AND STATE COMBAT 37 
 
 Another striking person was the Marchioness Matilda 
 of Tuscany, the new Deborah, as she was called by her 
 admirers, a proud fanatically pious woman, always ready 
 to fight for the Church. Disappointed and unhappy in 
 her marriage with the hunchbacked Duke Godfrey of 
 Upper Lorraine, she devoted all the energy of her high- 
 strung nature to the Church, and, in spite of her pride, 
 suffered herself to be overruled by two masterful priests, 
 Bishop Anselm of Lucca, her particular friend and spiritual 
 director^and Gregory himself, who cleverly contrived to 
 direct and control her, through the bishop's influence. 
 She lived in constant emotional dependence on theSe two 
 men, who exercised an almost hypnotic power over her. 
 When suffering from illness she was cured by the bishop 
 laying his hands on her forehead, and even after his death 
 she would lean her head on the wooden board on which 
 his corpse had lain, to recover from indisposition ; when 
 her eyes became inflamed, she put a ring on them which 
 the bishop once had worn, or a piece of paper on which 
 he had written prayers. Her case is typical, and instances 
 of the like may be found a]so in modern times.* 
 
 There is a reverse side to the victory of the Pope. It 
 was in the year 1075 that a Pope dared for the first time 
 to command the Roman Emperor to obey him and dismiss 
 his counsellors under penalty of excommunication ; two 
 years later the Emperor stood a penitent before the walls 
 of Canossa. In that same year, about Christmas, the 
 
 * Some historians, hostile to the Church, have put a gross interpre- 
 tation upon her relations to the bishop as well as to the Pope ; see, in 
 refutation of these, the excellent statement in Davidsohn's " Geschichte 
 von Florenz," p. 253. The stern, warlike marchioness has been trans- 
 formed by Dante into the graceful Matilda, whom he sees singjng and 
 gathering flowers in the terrestrial Paradise, preceding the procession 
 of the triumphant Church. 
 
38 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 same Pope Gregory VII. was attacked and beaten in the 
 Church of St. Peter by a Roman nobleman called Cencio, 
 and finally imprisoned in the assailant's palace. These 
 are genuine scenes of the Middle Ages. The domestic 
 strife between the Popes and the city of Rome runs like 
 a caricature parallel to the world — upheaving combat 
 between the Popes and the Emperors. 
 
 While Frederic Barbarossa humbled himself before 
 Alexander III., and King Henry II. of England suffered 
 the Pope to inflict penalties on him " such as to-day n (I 
 quote from Machiavelli, and " to-day" means 1520), ll a 
 private person would be ashamed to submit to," that 
 same Pope, " who wielded such an authority over distant 
 princes," in spite of the humblest prayers, was unable to 
 move the Romans to permit him to enter his town and his 
 church. Gregory IX., the great enemy of Frederic II., 
 was five times forced to fly from Rome, and returned 
 thither five times, yielding to the> trrgent prayers of the 
 Roman people. " But as soon as one demon was expelled 
 from that people, seven devils possessed it again," says a 
 biographer of this Pope. Their continual requests were 
 money-gifts, and no Pope was able to satisfy their thirst 
 for gold. Hardly any Pope during the whole Middle 
 Ages could reside undisturbed in the city of Rome. 
 
 One must strive to realise mediaeval Rome with its nine 
 hundred towers, the gloomy palaces of the noblemen, the 
 most important of which were constructed in the remnants 
 of the mighty edifice of the past, the Colosseum, the 
 Arches of Triumph, the castle of St. Angelo, then the 
 narrow streets, and the narrowed but furious life which 
 raged in them. The reader must picture to himself the 
 unceasing family feuds between the Conti, the Frangipani, 
 and the many other noble houses of Rome.* Every 
 
THE CHURCH AND STATE COMBAT 39 
 
 moment the feud is revived by some act of vengeance, 
 some contested election, some piece of mockery ; the streets 
 are instantly barred by chains drawn across them, 
 towers are constructed rapidly everywhere, in every 
 street from all the windows and roofs the vassals shoot, 
 the houses of the hostile family are besieged, set on fire or 
 torn down ; and constantly some quarter of the city or all 
 its quarters are changed into the fortified camps of parties 
 at war with one another. And as in Rome, so it was in 
 many other towns of Italy. 
 
 Another striking feature of the times is furnished by the 
 election of antipopes. Few Popes, indeed, in the Middle 
 Ages had their elections left uncontested. Passionate 
 and unruly men did not content themselves with platonic 
 opposition, their candidate was crowned notwithstanding 
 the majority being against him, and pope and antipope ex- 
 communicated each other and made armed war against each 
 other, thereby perplexing still more the souls of believers. 
 
 Fulcher of Chartres, who, while taking part in the first 
 crusade, marched through Rome with a party of the 
 pilgrims, gives the following account in the second chapter 
 of the first book of his history of the Kingdom of Jeru- 
 salem : "-Entering the Basilica of St. Peter we found 
 men of the foolish Pope Wibert before the altar, who, 
 sword in hand, unlawfully possessed themselves of the 
 pious gifts which lay on the altar. Others were seen 
 running on the beams of the ceiling, who threw stones 
 down upon us, while we lay prostrate praying on the 
 floor. One tower, however, was kept by the men of 
 Pope Urban, who loyally held it for Urban, and resisted 
 his enemies as well as they could. Much pain did we 
 feel, seeing such outrage, but we could do nothing except 
 implore God to avenge it." 
 
40 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 The War of the Investitures was ended in the year 1 122 
 by the Concordat of Worms. It was ordained that, while 
 the election should pertain to the clergy alone, the bestow- 
 ing of fiefs should be reserved to the civil authorities ; so 
 both had to unite in advance on the candidate for every 
 election. Though this result was most natural and 
 simple, it would not have been possible at any earlier 
 time, before both parties were tired of the fifty years of 
 struggle and the interest of men in the whole question 
 had faded. But the combat beiween the Emperors and 
 the Popes, between Church and State, continued never- 
 theless, and raged with unbroken vehemence under the 
 Emperors of the House of Swabia. Nor could it be 
 otherwise. The Church claimed the temporal dominion 
 over at least large parts of Italy, while the Emperors 
 defended the rights of the empire. The Church fighting 
 with spiritual weapons in the very souls of her anta- 
 gonists had a double advantage, because, when victorious, 
 her victory was certainly real ; when defeated, she became 
 a martyr in men's eyes and instantly found new enthu- 
 siastic champions. She repeatedly had her friends elected 
 emperors, as, for example, the Guelf, Otto IV., against 
 whom she in turn sent out Frederic II. But as soon as 
 they had become emperors their most essential interests 
 constrained them to oppose the Church. And the same 
 was the case on the other side. When the Cardinal 
 Count Sinibald Fiesco, who had always been a staunch 
 partisan of the Emperor, was elected Pope as Innocent IV., 
 Frederic II. said, " Now I have lost a true friend among 
 the cardinals ; no Pope can be a Ghibelljne." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE HOHENSTAUFEN 
 
 During the reign of the Swabian princes, the war which 
 divided the world and brought interminable civil discord 
 and ruin to Italy becomes attractive with a new and 
 heightened interest, for the men who now begin to play 
 prominent parts in it seem more akin to us in culture and 
 versatility of mind, their portraits have more life and 
 colour, they are not mere shadows and enigmas to us, as 
 are the dim and stiff figures of former generations. 
 
 In the foreground of that historic scene the struggle 
 and the fall of the House o f Hohens taufen appears like 
 a grand and tremendous tragedy. The Hohenstaufens 
 may be considered a human phenomenon. Another 
 reigning family showing such an uninterrupted line of 
 brilliant and gifted personalities will not easily be found 
 in history. They did not exactly possess political talents, 
 but they were all handsome, chivalrous, and broad-minded, 
 possessing all the culture and freedom of thought of the 
 period. A resplendent light of art and beauty is shed 
 around them, almost every one 6f them was a renowned 
 warrior and a minstrel too, and their glory was heightened 
 by the tragic fate that fell to the lot of each. They were 
 mediaeval l^iighthood and monarchism personified. For 
 them fought the Spirit of Chivalry and Minstrelsy, of 
 
r 
 
 42 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 new-born Joy and Art, against the ascetic clerical power, 
 and with them it was defeated. Theirs was the spirit of 
 reawakening terrestrial life and culture. 
 
 But in the same race was embodied for the last time 
 the ideal of the old empire; the visionof the "Roman 
 Empjre-of - the -German Nation," as its official title was, 
 the creation of Charlemagne ; in them it strove for the 
 last time to realise itself in all its fancied and traditionary 
 power. Thus they became at the same time the repre- 
 sentatives of a dying and of an arising period, uniting the 
 aspirations of both. The empire had been founded 
 (renewed, as people fancied) in the year 800, and after 
 1250 it fell. After the interregnum it was but a shadow, 
 though it existed until 1806. • 
 
 The new Dynasty of Habsburg inaugurates a new era, 
 a new policy begins to prevail, the dawn of modern 
 Europe seems to appear in a distance — the Middle Ages, 
 the times of Chivalry and Romance, begin to decline. 
 Dante, who in sorrowful verses, which form one of the 
 most famous episodes of the " Divine Comedy " reproaches 
 the Habsburg Emperor Albrecht that he never went to 
 Rome, struck the keynote ; though later on some of the 
 emperors again returned to it, the march to Rome, the 
 central and crowning enterprise of the earlier emperors, 
 the romantic symbol of a romantic imperialism, for which 
 the Hohenstaufens had arrayed and exhausted all the 
 might and splendour of their knightly hosts, had lost all 
 its importance with them. Romantic symbols began to 
 lose their power over the fancy of men, the princes ceased 
 to care so much for the mere form of coronation, but 
 turned their attention to more real power. 
 
 This strong adherence to a dying institution was the 
 ruin of the Hohenstaufens. In all intellectual matters 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 43 
 
 they were abreast of their time, nevertheless they were 
 unable to comprehend the current of its political and 
 social movements. They failed to see that the day of the' 
 cities and citizens was dawning and that feudalism was 
 beginning to decline. Nowhere was this great change 
 farther advanced than in Italy, the country which was at 
 that time foremost in European civilisation ; and it was in 
 combating the resistance of the Italian cities that the 
 Hohenstaufens exhausted their power. Vain were all 
 their victories, vain the re-erection of German feudal 
 administration, in vain Barbarossa raised the Tuscan 
 counts to the dignity of Princes of the Empire ; the towns 
 were the stronger, for theirs was the higher civilisation, 
 theirs the greater economical might, and the greater 
 concentration of money as well as of military force. 
 
 The Church, though in reality far from approving these 
 movements, made good use of them. In all other lands} _ 
 the Papacy remained hostile to all democratic changes, i 
 England was laid under interdict by the Pope as soon as 
 Magna Charta was won ; but in Italy the Church wisely 
 took the part of the cities, and with their help vanquished 
 the Emperor. Yet it was but a losing victory ; the Church 
 had scarcely time to exult, so quickly did its fall follow 
 upon that of its great opponents. 
 
 It is not my object to relate here the history of this 
 struggle ; I shall but try to throw, as it were, flying lights 
 on it, and, as much as possible, I shall make the people 
 who then lived and were made to feel its consequences 
 speak for themselves. 
 
 Like all the great conflicts of history, this, too, though 
 founded on the deep antagonism of irreconcilable prin- 
 ciples, was constantly called forth and renewed by num- 
 berless greater or smaller causes of discord. Frederic 
 
44 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Barbarossa created a new one by marrying his son Henry 
 to Constance, the heiress of Sicily. Sicily was considered 
 s to be a fief of the Papal throne. It was not so by any 
 lawful right ; but a hundred and fifty years before Norman 
 counts, having won the isle by conquest, requested the 
 Pope to bestow it upon them as feudatories of the Church, 
 and the Pope had willingly complied to their wish, one 
 usurper thus guaranteeing another's right. The Nor- 
 mans said, " The kingdom is ours, for the Pope bestowed 
 it upon us " ; the Popes said, " It must needs be our fief, 
 for how could the Normans ask it from us had it beep 
 otherwise ! " Nobody being at hand to object, this became 
 the established state of things. Thus, by Henry's mar- 
 riage, the German king and Roman emperor would have 
 become the Pope's vassal as king of Sicily. To the many 
 already existing difficulties and entanglements in the rela- 
 tions of the two powers was thus added a quite impossible 
 complication, which led on to the final catastrophe. 
 
 The danger of the situation was not instantly felt ; 
 
 • under the gloomy and terrible Henry VI. the House of the 
 Hohenstaufen had reached the summit of its success. He 
 ruled from the North Sea to the southern end of Italy, and, 
 had his power been lasting, that of the Papacy would have 
 been stifled by it. The Popes would have been as entirely 
 dependent on the German emperors in Rome as later they 
 were subject at Avignon to the will of the king of France. 
 The history of those times looks very different accord- 
 ing as it is regarded from an Italian point of view, or, as 
 
 . is more usual, from that of a German partisan. Henry VI. 
 was cruel and false to a degree unheard of even in a 
 mediaeval monarch. Rebellious Sicilian barons he ordered 
 to be blinded, to be tarred and burned ; others were buried 
 alive ; one had a red-hot crown nailed to his head. Henry 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 45 
 
 forced his own wife, the empress, to witness this spectacle, 
 to punish her for sympathising with her countrymen. His 
 early death, a most unexpected chance for the Church, 
 was a relief to Italy. People dared to breathe again. 
 
 His widow found herself so helpless that she had no 
 other resource than to put her son Frederick, who at the 
 time of his father's death was a child of two years, under 
 the wardship of the Pope. In this way she hoped she 
 would at least save for him the throne of Sicily. In 
 Germany Otto IV. became king and emperor. 
 
 Pope Innocent IV. saw all the power in his hands which 
 Gregory VII. had claimed. The empire and Italy, France, 
 England, Norway, Aragon, Leon, Hungary, and Armenia, 
 yielded to his orders. He uttered the proud words, "As 
 in the Lord's Ark of the Covenant the rod lay beside the 
 manna of His grace, thus in the Pope's breast, with the 
 science of the Divine law, lies the severity that destroys 
 as well as the mildness that grants mercy." Fifteen hun- 
 dred archbishops, bishops, and prelates attended the 
 council which assembled in the Lateran in the year 121 5, 
 and which was meant as a demonstration of the power of 
 the Church. 
 
 The unavoidable conflict between Pope and Emperor 
 broke out again, the election of a Guelf and a partisan of 
 the Church proving of no avail. The quarrel was about 
 the imperial dominions in Central Italy, especially about 
 the estates which belonged to the so-called Matildan 
 Inheritance. The great countess had bequeathed imperial 
 soil to the Church, and thus created another source of 
 endless trouble, both powers claiming the estates as their 
 own. The Hohenstaufen prince now appeared on the 
 scene, as the instrument of the Pope, who sent his ward 
 against the Guelf emperor. But first, in the year 1220, 
 
46 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Frederic II. was forced to swear an oath to Honorius III., 
 by which he pledged himself never to unite Sicily with 
 Germany, and to respect the rights of the Pope in Italy, 
 an oath he could not keep without breaking that which he 
 swore as Emperor to protect, and to augment the rights of 
 the empire. 
 
 A doubtful peace was maintained during the reign of 
 the gentle old Pope Honorius. After his death, Ugolino 
 de' Conti was elected Pope as Gregory IX. He appeared 
 like a " thunderbolt from the south," as his biographer 
 puts it. He was an old man when he was elected, and he 
 held the see fourteen years, yet he made war on the 
 Emperor with burning rage and inexorable will. 
 
 The Emperor had vowed to go on a crusade, but could 
 not undertake it, owing to a pestilence which broke out in 
 his army. The Pope excommunicated him ; a great 
 assembly of clergy filled the church of St. Peter, each 
 holding a lighted candle in his hand. The Pope enume- 
 rated all the transgressions of the Emperor, then he pro- 
 nounced the sentence of the curse, all the priests repeated 
 it and hurled their candles to the ground. Circular letters 
 were sent by both parties to all the princes of the Chris- 
 tian world. " Tua res agitur," Frederic cried to all the 
 kings ; " There is no one among you whose power would 
 not be menaced by the ambition of the Church." 
 
 The Emperor went on the crusade, notwithstanding the 
 Pope's interdict ; he recovered Jerusalem by a treaty, and 
 when the Patriarch refused to crown an excommunicated 
 monarch, he put the crown upon his head with his own 
 hands. From Arab chroniclers we are able to gather most 
 valuable information about this remarkable man. Out of 
 courtesy to the Christian emperor, the kadi of Jerusalem 
 had forbidden the muezzins to call the hours of prayer for 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 47 
 
 believers from the minarets ; but Frederic summoned him 
 to an audience, and forbade him to interrupt the customary 
 rites for his sake, and is said to have added : " You Mus- 
 sulmans are happy, not being continually bothered and 
 hindered by the ambition of a priest like him of Rome." 
 The Arab writer who saw him describes him as bald and 
 shortsighted, and says that as a slave he would not have 
 been of much value ; then he adds : " The Emperor was a 
 worshipper of nature, who made light of the Catholic 
 creed, which was but a show and a plaything for him." 
 
 Meanwhile, the Pope had preached a crusade against 
 him, and on his return Christians were thrown into con- ' 
 sternation by seeing two armies of the Cross fighting 
 against each other, one for the Pope, under the banner of 
 St. Peter's Keys, the other imperial, under the sign of the 
 Holy Cross. The Emperor's army was victorious, the 
 Pope gave in, and once more they made peace, and in 
 1230 dined in Anagni at the same table. But, as the 
 Florentine chronicler, Villani, says, " with all those trea- 
 ties of peace there remained an evil disposition in the 
 hearts of both," and as a Guelf he adds, " especially on 
 the Emperor's side there was too much pride." 
 
 The peace lasted two years, until a new discord arose 
 between the Emperor and the Italian towns. Mantua 
 closed its gates to him. "What," the Emperor cried, 
 " pilgrims may walk freely around the earth, and I am to 
 be unable to move within the borders of my empire ! " The 
 towns implored the protection of the Pope, and in 1236 
 Gregory wrote the following letter : u The necks of kings 
 and princes are bowed at the feet of priests, and the 
 Christian emperors are bound to submit their actions not 
 only to the Roman Pope but to all the clergy. The Lord, 
 in subjecting the whole earth and all things visible and 
 
48 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 invisible to the tribunal of the Holy See, has reserved the 
 latter to His own judgment alone. It is known to all the 
 world that the world's monarch, Constantine, with the 
 approbation of the Senate and the people of the city and 
 of the whole Roman Empire, decreed it to be right that 
 the Vicar of the Prince of the Apostles, being the ruler of 
 the priesthood and of all the souls in the empire, should 
 wield the majesty over all terrestrial things and the 
 bodies of men also. Thus thinking, that he, unto whom 
 God has conferred celestial power on earth, must needs 
 be Lord and Judge in all temporal matters too, Constantine 
 bestowed on the Roman Pope the insignia, and the sceptre 
 of the empire, the city with its dukedom — which thou art 
 trying to seduce with thy gold — and the empire itself to 
 eternity. Believing it to be impious that the Emperor of 
 the Earth should wield any power in the place where the 
 Head of the whole Christian religion is enthroned by the 
 Emperor of Heaven, he left Italy to the government of 
 the Pope, and for himself he chose an abode in Greece. 
 From thence the Holy See transferred the empire to the 
 Germans in the person of Charles, who humbly took upon 
 himself a burden too heavy for the Roman Church : but 
 by conceding to thy predecessors the Tribunal of the 
 Empire and the Power of the Sword by coronation and 
 unction, the Pope withal never renounced anything of his 
 sovereign rights ; but thou wrongest those rights of the 
 Popes and thine own honour and fealty no less if thou 
 dost not acknowledge him, who is the owner and creator 
 of thy power." 
 
 It is obvious how the true relation between Pope and 
 Emperor had been exactly reversed in the imagination of 
 an age which had but a very dim notion of the real history 
 of the past. 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 49 
 
 Constantine had never regarded the Bishop of Rome 
 but as an insignificant priest, and such pretensions would 
 have seemed to him, and even to Charles sheer madness. 
 As late as the tenth century the Emperor Otto III. had 
 smiled when 1 he heard of the fable of Constantine and his 
 forged Donation. In the thirteenth there was no man to 
 doubt it ; even the most earnest Ghibellines only regretted 
 that things were so, and not otherwise. Dante wrote : 
 
 Ah ! Constantine, what evil came as child 
 Not of thy change of creed, but of the dower 
 Of which the first rich Father thee beguiled. 
 
 and Walther von der Vogelweide, the German minstrel, 
 sang : 
 
 King Constantine, he gave so much, 
 
 As unto you I will make known, 
 For to the See of Rome he gave 
 
 The Spear, the Cross, the Crown. 
 That hour an angel cried in pain : 
 
 " O woe ! O triple woe is me ! " 
 Once Christendom did well behave, 
 
 But then upon its field did fall 
 A golden poison's rain ; 
 
 Its honey now is changed to gall, 
 To Thee, sweet Lord, I will complain : 
 
 The priests will wrong the laymen's right, 
 
 Too true has been the angel's sight. 
 
 Again the war broke out, and again the Emperor was 
 victorious. " Lift up your eyes round about and see . . ." 
 so he wrote to the princes. And the Pope answered in 
 the same style : " From the sea is arisen a beast full of 
 names of blasphemy, that rages with the paws of a bear 
 and with the mouth of a lion, and whose body is shaped 
 like that of a pard. It opens its mouth to hurl blasphemies 
 at the name of God, and rests not but will throw similar 
 
50 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 darts against His Holy of Holies and the Saints of 
 Heaven." 
 
 This Encyclical — so an English chronicler writes — 
 would have aroused all the world against the Emperor 
 but that the Romish Court exacted so much money from 
 all parts of the world. Five times as many taxes were 
 paid from England to the Pope as to the English king 
 himself. The nobility of France assembled in a Diet of 
 Nobles to consult on measures to be taken against the 
 unbearable financial claims of the clergy ; a great many 
 pamphlets of the time breathe a fanatic hatred against 
 them. Dante, passing through the fourth circle of Hell, 
 where covetousness and avarice are punished, notices that 
 the heads of many of the sinners are shaven. 
 
 On the death of Gregory IX., Innocent IV. succeeded 
 to the papal throne ; the lion was followed by a fox, who 
 was still more dangerous as an antagonist. He induced 
 the Emperor's son to rebel against his father ; murderers 
 who conspired against Frederic's life received the Pope's 
 blessing. In a rescript which is still extant they are 
 called "the brilliant sons of the Church, on whom God 
 has shed the light of His countenance." 
 
 Still the Emperor was victorious. His generals, 
 Ezzelino Romano, the Lord of Padua, the Marquises of 
 Lancia and Pallavicini, his natural sons, Frederic of 
 Antioch, Enzio of Sardinia, and Manfred Lancia, were 
 everywhere triumphant. The Pope fled to France, but 
 all the princes refused to receive him in their territories. 
 He then summoned a council at Lyons, which at that time 
 belonged to the empire, and there pronounced the deposi- 
 tion of the Emperor. This was in the year 1245. "No 
 peace with the viper's brood ! " was the Pope's answer to 
 those who wanted to persuade him to a milder course. 
 
s 
 
 THE HOHENSTAUFEN 51 
 
 It is interesting to read what the chroniclers relate of 
 the consequences of the struggle. " My soul is filled with 
 horror," writes the so-called monk of Padua, u in relating 
 the sufferings of my time and the destruction, for it is 
 now full twenty years that for the sake of the Apostolic 
 See and the imperial throne the blood of Italy has been 
 shed like water." 
 
 Fra Salimbene of Parma writes : " In the days of 
 Emperor Frederic, particularly after he was deposed from 
 the empire, there were cruel wars, and the people could 
 neither till their fields nor sow, nor reap, nor plant vine- 
 yards, nor gather the grapes, nor dwell in villages ; men 
 were unable to work except quite near the towns, where 
 they were protected by the knights who dwelt in them ; 
 armed warriors guarded the workmen the whole day long, 
 and the peasant cultivated the fields meanwhile. And 
 this was necessary because of the robbers, marauders and 
 vagabonds, whose number had increased beyond all 
 measure. And they captured men and threw them into 
 dungeons, that they should ransom themselves with 
 money. And they drove the cattle away and ate them or 
 sold them. And if they failed to ransom themselves " 
 [Brother Salimbene always writes in great haste and 
 excitement] "they hung them up by their feet or by their 
 hands, or drew their teeth, or put thorns and gags into 
 their mouths, that they should ransom themselves the 
 faster, and that was more horrible to them than death. 
 And they were more cruel than demons are, and a man in 
 these times liked as well to see a man coming along his 
 path as he would the Devil. And the country fell to waste 
 and was deserted, because there were no peasants in the 
 fields and nobody walked on the country roads. And the 
 birds and the beasts of the forests multiplied beyond all 
 
52 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 bounds, pheasants and partridges and quails, hares and 
 roes, stags, buffaloes, boars and rapacious wolves. For 
 they no longer found food near the villages, lambs and 
 sheep as before, because the villages were all burnt, and 
 therefore the wolves gathered in great packs around the 
 ditches of the towns, and howled unceasingly because 
 their hunger was too great. And by night they entered 
 the towns and devoured men, who slept in the colonnades 
 or on carriages, and the women and little children too. 
 Sometimes they even dug through the walls of the houses 
 and they tore the little children to pieces in the cradles. 
 
 " Nobody would believe it who did not see it with his 
 own eyes, all the horrors which I saw perpetrated in 
 those times by men as well as by beasts of all kinds. 
 Yes, I have seen with my own eyes two foxes climbing 
 the roof of the convent of St. Francis, near Faenza, to 
 catch two fowls sitting on the cornice. And one of them 
 we caught, and I was present." 
 
 Italy was rent by the hatred of parties — provinces and 
 countries stood against each other, the nobility was 
 divided, each town made war on the neighbouring town, 
 and within, two exasperated parties fought one against 
 the other. 
 
 " I had rather eat chalk than make peace with the 
 Church," said the Lord of Sesso. " But," continues 
 Brother Salimbene, who relates this saying in his 
 chronicle, " he fed on good capons while the poor people 
 famished. Need I say more ? The luck of the bad is 
 not of long duration in this world, and those of the 
 Church's side had the best of the war, and that miserable 
 man was constrained to fly and was secretly carried away 
 from the town of Reggio, and stinking, excommunicated, 
 without confession, deprived of the Lord's Supper, bereft 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 53 
 
 of peace he left the world, and was dug into the ground of 
 a village near Campagnola." 
 
 Among the atheists: and heretics in the sixth circle of 
 Hell the great Florentine citizen Farinata degli Uberti 
 lies in his fiery coffin, and to Dante's boast that the 
 Guelfs were again victorious in Florence the shadow 
 answers : 
 
 " That hurts me more than does this bed of fire ! " 
 
 At his side lies buried the Cardinal Ottaviano degli 
 Ubaldini, who once said, " If the soul exists, I have lost 
 mine for the sake of the Ghibellines." 
 
 The fierce dissension of the parties became such a 
 terrible and murderous plague to the land that people 
 forgot the origin of the words, and fabled that two devils 
 called Gibel and Guelef had been let loose from Hell to 
 divide the world, and that from them the two parties had 
 derived their names.* 
 
 Barefoot, clad in black robes with red crosses, the pro- 
 cessions of Flagellants marched through the country, 
 carrying branches and flaming candles in their hands, a 
 great number of little children among them ; they went 
 from town to town continually crying, " Pax ! pax ! " 
 The spectacle of those processions occasioned an 
 enormous emotion, and filled the minds of the people 
 with terror and confusion. The Emperor's generals, 
 Manfred and the Marquis of Pallavicini, prevented them 
 from entering the regions under their command, and the 
 Lords Delia Torre, who ruled in Milan, ordered six 
 
 * The names, in truth, originated from the castle of Waiblingen in 
 Swabia, which was a fief of the Hohenstaufens, and which in Italian 
 was corrupted into •• Ghibellino," and " Welf," a frequent name among 
 the Saxon Dukes of Bavaria, the leaders of the opposite party in 
 Germany. 
 
54 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 hundred gallows to be raised, on which Flagellants should 
 be hanged ; to warn them from entering the territory of 
 their town. 
 
 The tables were turned indeed, and the Emperor's had 
 become the losing party. The victory of the Parmese, 
 and the destruction of his camp at Victoria, the rebellion 
 and death of his son Henry, the capture of Enzio by the 
 Bolognese ; so many disasters following in quick succes- 
 sion upon each other broke his spirit. None in his bril- 
 liant House equalled him. By many of his adversaries he 
 was believed to be Antichrist in person, and that the old 
 prophecy, according to which Antichrist was to be born 
 of an old nun, should seem fulfilled, they spread the fable 
 that Constance had been a nun before she married King 
 Henry. He was fair-haired, of graceful bearing, not very 
 tall — none of the Hohenstaufens were — shortsighted and 
 prematurely bald. He had been brought up in Italy, and 
 in character was half German, half Southerner. " He 
 was a man," the Guelf Villain says, " of great ability and 
 bravery, erudite and of graceful deportment, universal in 
 everything ; he understood Latin and the language of our 
 people, German, French, Greek and Saracenic ; he was 
 endowed with all manly virtues, generous, a courteous 
 giver, gallant and wise in war, and very much feared by 
 his enemies. He was voluptuous in every way and led a 
 luxurious life, and he was a heretic and an epicurean, 
 and he did not believe in a life beyond the grave, and 
 therefore, above all, he was an enemy of the clergy and of 
 the Holy Church." 
 
 Even Brother Salimbene, who begins thus, " Of the 
 true faith he had not a whit; he was sly, astute, covetous, 
 and voluptuous, malicious, and irascible ..." and follows 
 it up with many lines yet fuller of reproaches and a whole 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 55 
 
 catalogue of various sins, concludes by saying, u Cour- 
 teous he was, and gay, frolicsome, charming, and much 
 gifted." 
 
 He seems a most remarkable man to us also; the 
 founder of the first state in Europe which had a modern 
 and centralised government and administration ; for 
 Frederic's kingdom of Sicily was the first absolute state. 
 He was fond of pleasure and of a joyful spirit, as all 
 Hohenstaufens were ; he liked banquets and feasts ; he 
 was the author of several songs, passionate and endowed 
 with talents of all kinds. There was no science in which 
 he did not take an interest ; he was the author of books on 
 hunting and the treatment of horses. Many renowned 
 scholars formed part of his Court, and the library was his 
 particular care. He sent letters to Moorish philosophers 
 in Spain, to learn what they thought on deep spiritual 
 questions. Jews and Saracens filled important positions 
 at his Court, his bodyguard was composed of Saracens, 
 and an oriental harem followed him on all his travels and 
 expeditions of war. He was said to have talked of " the 
 three Impostors who founded the three chief religions of 
 the world " ; yet the same man persecuted heretics in his 
 empire and crowned the corpse of St. Elizabeth. He 
 may have done so from political motives, perhaps inwardly 
 deriding himself and the spectators of the pious cere- 
 mony. 
 
 He appears to us full of contradictions, and we are 
 unable to get at his true character because we see his 
 reflected portrait only, the great impression which he 
 made on the minds of men, but not his true self. It is 
 difficult for us, almost impossible, to understand any men 
 of those far-distant times, to analyse their character, 
 because all that formed and influenced it is strange and 
 
56 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 unknown to us ; how much more difficult to understand 
 so complicated a character as that of this monarch, who 
 stood on the verge of two periods ! Many of his letters 
 are extant, but written as they are in stiff Latin, and in 
 the ceremonious style of his chancellor, they do not betray 
 the soul of the man. His true being remains hidden. 
 We can only note the immense impression which he made 
 on Guelfs and Ghibellines, Saracens and Christians alike, 
 and that the world trembled at his steps. We may note 
 the impression he made and the deep marks he left in 
 the memories of men, in the numberless tales and fables, 
 in which he plays a part no less than in the works of 
 chroniclers and poets, and in the charm which surrounds 
 him to this day, who, as the chronicler expressed it, 
 " lived glorious and a wonder to all the earth until the last 
 day of his fate, who was invincible to all, and subject only 
 to the law of Death ! " 
 
 He died in the arms of his son Manfred on Decem- 
 ber 13, 1250, at Fiorentino, in Southern Italy. German 
 and Saracen knights escorted the corpse, covered by a 
 scarlet cloth, to Palermo. But the Pope wrote a letter : 
 " Let the Heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad." 
 
 In the tenth canto of Hell the great Frederic lies 
 in the sixth circle, with a large number of his followers in 
 fiery coffins among those who had no faith. 
 
 But in Germany the people would not believe in his 
 death, they fabled that he had hidden himself in the 
 mount of Kyffhauser, and would once return with the 
 glory of the old empire. Much later, when the remem- 
 brance grew dim, people confounded him with Frederic 
 the Redbeard, his grandfather, who became the hero of 
 this legend. In Italy, too, Salimbene tells, people long dis- 
 trusted the news of his death, according to the prophecy : 
 
THE HOHENSTAUFEN 57 
 
 Sonabit et in populis : 
 
 Vivit et non vivit. 
 
 (Among the peoples will be said 
 
 He is alive and not alive !) 
 
 But the Emperor was dead indeed ; and when his sons 
 Conrad IV. and Manfred had fallen after short reigns, 
 and then Conradin too — each a brilliant meteor-like ap- 
 parition — the house of Anjou came into Italy ; new wars, 
 new times, a new era "of the world's history declared itself, 
 the true Middle Ages were over. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOCIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 The time of Dante was a time of fermentation and change 
 in the political as well as in the economical and intellectual 
 life of Europe. 
 
 The theme of history is the development of mankind. 
 It is the record of all the changes in the state of men 
 which have occurred since the first evidences of our race 
 on our globe ; all the many changes in their ways of 
 living, of procuring food and shelter, of preserving and 
 adorning their lives ; the changes of government, and of 
 the relations between rulers and subjects, rich and poor* 
 powerful and oppressed ; the changes of customs, opinions, 
 aims, ideals, and fancies. These changes take place some- 
 times very gradually, at others rapidly, but the most 
 important are generally imperceptible and even if we try to 
 trace the development either over a large territory or over 
 a small one, we shall invariably find that it progresses at 
 a very unequal rate, that new ideas always affect a few 
 men first, that a few institutions are the first to be altered 
 or to become extinct, while the mass of men grows but 
 slowly conscious of the change. Then it spreads rapidly 
 and its results often manifest themselves in sudden revolu- 
 tions. The development always is more rapid in some 
 countries than it is in others, and there again it may be 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS • 59 
 
 accelerated in some particular provinces or even places. 
 It is for that reason that at all times and everywhere 
 institutions and forms of the past — religions, laws, customs, 
 systems of economy — are to be found, obsolete and fos- 
 silised amidst the vital and prosperous growths of the 
 day, while the first germs and buds of those to come 
 already begin to sprout in the midst of the old. It is for 
 that reason that in almost every century there are men 
 whose thoughts become the general opinion of future 
 generations, who are ahead of their contemporaries by 
 decades and even by whole centuries, and others who by 
 their views and ways of living belong to the past. Men 
 capable of discerning which ideas and which institutions 
 are decaying and doomed to perish, and which are still 
 vital or destined to be victorious in the future, are very 
 rare, and this question is at the bottom of all social and 
 political disputes. 
 
 In our own time means of communication and com- 
 merce having reached a height hitherto undreamt of, the 
 nations being continually mixed up and brought into 
 touch with one another, while every event, every new dis- 
 covery and experiment is quickly known all over the 
 civilised world, the development is faster, as well as more 
 evenly distributed, than it was in the Middle Ages. 
 Mediaeval men and mediaeval institutions were more rigid | 
 and immovable than ours, but at the same time were less 
 uniform and monotonous. 
 
 To form a fairly just conception of the immense majority 
 of mediaeval men we must study those countries in which 
 . in our own time, though the elements be the same, modern 
 civilisation is least developed. In the alpine villages of 
 Europe, remote from the great lines of communication, 
 villages inaccessible except by footpaths and roads for 
 
60 * DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 ox-carts, where men live in narrowest catholic bigotry, 
 where the priest is the only person who possesses more 
 or less knowledge, there we shall find a state of life which 
 will most resemble that of the Middle Ages. Certain like- 
 nesses in the political system may be found in the feudal 
 states of the Indian Rajahs, and still more in the Albanese 
 parts of the Balkan, where the institutions of clans and 
 chieftains, the continual inroads and robberies, feuds and 
 vengeances, the general insecurity and the necessity of 
 self-help, may remind us of very prominent features of 
 mediaeval life. Wherever the observance of forms is 
 most rigid and formalities are most valued, where the 
 least amount of knowledge and the greatest superstition 
 prevail, slow and undeveloped habits of thought combined 
 with brutal and vehement passions, coarseness and in- 
 sipidity in the sense of humour, cruelty in punishment 
 and a certain unconscious respect of persons in high 
 offices, of ceremonies and titles of all kind, there the state 
 of men is most similar to the mediaeval state. These are 
 certainly the darker sides of mediaeval life, but in them 
 especially may be found the most marked difference 
 between the civilised world of our days and the world of 
 those times. 
 
 Nobody will ever understand life as it was in the Middle 
 Ages, to whose mind the scarcity and difficulty of com- 
 munication, the bad and dangerous roads, the small 
 number of highways, and as a consequence of this the 
 wide separation of places and the uncertainty of all news, 
 are not continually present. What to-day is an easy 
 trip of a few hours was then a long and dangerous journey, 
 which nobody could think of undertaking without an 
 armed escort. The only possibility of travelling to a 
 somewhat remoter place without running the greatest 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 61 
 
 risks was to join the train of some great lord or ambas- 
 sador who went the same way, or some great trade- 
 caravan, such as a number of merchants undertook or 
 equipped in common. Letters had to be sent in the same 
 way, or by wandering monks, pilgrims, or daring pcdlers. 
 It took months and years to send a letter and receive an 
 answer from a distant country, and the eventual receipt 
 of such was very uncertain. In a time like this, numerous 
 legends and fables were certain to spread and rule the 
 life of the day. Thus provinces and countries were more 
 remote and separated from one another than are continents 
 to-day, a centralised and uniform government of a ter- 
 ritory of any extent was quite impossible : the land had 
 to be divided and given up to the government of smaller 
 lords and the feudal system, the splitting of countries into 
 the countless little states of the Middle Ages was a 
 necessary result. 
 
 What are the much criticised and much derided little 
 kingdoms and duchies of the former German Confedera- 
 tion (which in itself was but a remnant of those times) 
 compared to the numberless little units, states, dukedoms, 
 city republics, dynasties, acknowledged or not by the 
 empire, their great suzerain power, which then were to be 
 found on the smallest area ? 
 
 Who can enumerate all the more or less independent 
 governments of Italy in the thirteenth century ? " Italy 
 is my inheritance and the whole world knows it ! " were 
 the proud words which Emperor Frederic wrote to the 
 Pope in the year 1236. But, in fact, the state of things 
 was not so clear. Only the South, the kingdom of 
 Naples and Sicily, might be called a unified country, but 
 its existence was not of long date. A hundred and fifty 
 years earlier it had been divided into the Saracen and 
 
62 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Greek provinces, into the Longobard dukedoms of Bene- 
 vento, Capua and Salerno, in the courts of which the old 
 German Longobard language still was spoken, the Norman 
 counties, the republics of Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, and 
 other smaller baronies, which all had now become fiefs of 
 the kingdom, but remained nowise in undisturbed peace 
 with one another. Frederic II., however, had ruled the 
 kingdom with iron energy, he established a centralised 
 and absolute government in it, and ever since his death 
 it has remained the most homogeneous State of Italy. 
 But in the Central parts and in the North we find a 
 motley confusion. There were the States of the Church 
 with all their contested provinces, the feudal estates of 
 their vassals, families who were always rebelling against 
 the Pope and always fighting with one another, then the 
 debatable fiefs of the empire, the marquisates of Tuscany, 
 Spoleto, Ancona, &c, the estates of the Marquises of 
 Montserrat, of Este, of Malaspina, of Pallavicini and of 
 the smaller Counts of the Empire, the territories of the 
 spiritual Lords, and particularly the innumerable city- 
 republics, many of which already began to change into 
 civic dynasties, and whose political position, doubtful in 
 law and of undoubted power in fact, was soon to become 
 the most important of all. And all these powers were 
 contested, and at war among themselves. Every territory 
 was continually splitting up and developing smaller 
 administrative units, every one of which instantly tried to 
 become as independent as possible and to enlarge its 
 estate at its neighbour's expense. There was no vassal- 
 count who would not rather have been a Count of the 
 Empire, no town but tried to free itself from the super- 
 intendence of the imperial marquis and to govern itself, 
 no bishop but wanted to be ruler and lord of his town 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 63 
 
 and diocese, no city that did not strive to make its bishop 
 a citizen and its subject. Nor was there any common 
 established law to smooth all this confusion. All was 
 founded on custom, prescription, old writs of princes dead 
 long ago, privileges, statutes, and treaties, which were 
 constantly violated and broken by the natural develop- 
 ment of things. The only common ruler and supreme 
 judge, the Emperor, was far away, his power fluctuating 
 and unsteady, now in dimmest distance or of such 
 impotence that people sneered at it, again threateningly 
 near and terrible to all; the execution of his orders 
 depending now on the goodwill of his subjects, again on 
 the force and position of his army. If he had long been 
 away in Germany he was half-forgotten ; at his Diets or 
 at the provincial assemblies of his Legates the nobles and 
 the consuls of the towns thronged to get the confirmation 
 and renewal of their old rights and privileges or the 
 granting of new ones, every demand being opposed to 
 that of some neighbour ; troops of jurists were occupied 
 with bringing order into the confusion, of course without 
 any effect, when by their very profession they had to 
 found their decisions, not on the living growth of men 
 and institutions, but on dead and antiquated words, forms 
 and rules which, yet more to confuse matters, were them- 
 selves contested. Whoever was not pleased with their 
 decision, whoever inclined to the Church, or felt himself 
 powerful enough to do as he liked, kept aloof, and refused 
 all obedience, taxes and military service. No emperor 
 ever marched through the country to his capital without 
 encountering resistance at every step, finding the door of 
 every second town closed to him and his way ; if at all 
 victorious, marked by the smoking ruins of burnt pities 
 and castles. 
 
64 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Every few miles the traveller found a new government 
 and new laws ; if he went a little farther, coinage, customs, 
 dress, and even the language of the people were different, 
 for the many dialects of Italy were practically so many 
 tongues — a common Italian language for the use of well- 
 bred people and literature had scarcely begun to develop. 
 There is no shade in Dante's Hell or Heaven who does 
 not at his first word recognise him as a Tuscan. Every 
 hour almost the traveller's way was barred, and a toll, 
 lawful or unlawful, was exacted. 
 
 He might chance to be in a place which was " imperial 
 land " and governed by an official count, that is, an officer 
 nominated by the Emperor ; but part of it might belong 
 to a convent or to the estate of a nobleman invested with 
 " immunity," that is, exempt from the count's justice, but 
 whose lords themselves dealt justice in their possessions. 
 A little farther on, the country perhaps was subject to the 
 republic of Florence, but the family of some feudal Count 
 of the Empire, whose castle might be seen on the neigh- 
 bouring hills, would claim it as his, or perhaps two towns 
 might be quarrelling about the ownership of both village 
 and castle, or some bishop's men might be found fighting 
 for the Episcopal See of the nearest cathedral. The 
 political system, under the rule of which such a state of 
 things was possible, the mediaeval system of both govern- 
 ment and administration, is known as the " feudal system," 
 the system of dividing the country and bestowing it on 
 smaller rulers. 
 
 Landed estate and political power were always con- 
 nected. The king was the greatest landlord, and there- 
 fore sovereign of the whole country ; he granted " in fee," 
 as it was called, large estates to the lords, his vassals, who 
 by this were bound to be true to him and to do military 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 65 
 
 service for him whenever he required it, but in all other 
 respects were sovereigns of the land they had received ; 
 they in turn naturally granted land under similar condi- 
 tions to smaller lords, who in their turn leased it to 
 peasants and serfs. The king and the greater lords also 
 bestowed estates on their officers, so-called "fiefs of 
 office," because they knew no other way of paying them. 
 All these fiefs, though at first " lent " to this or that 
 person for life, soon became hereditary, the government 
 or the office was inherited with the estate, and estate, 
 office and government soon became inseparably connected. 
 This was not always the case, nor everywhere, but it was 
 the general course things took. It was but a natural 
 consequence that the smaller vassals felt themselves more 
 bound to the greater vassals, their lords, than to the king, 
 and held rather to the first, whose fathers had been served 
 by their fathers, and who always had been nearer them, 
 than to the latter ; in this way the feudal lords were in a 
 position to fulfil their duties to the king only when they 
 were friendly to him, or saw their own advantage in it, 
 or could be forced to do so. Hence the relatively small 
 power of mediaeval kings and the continual rebellions of 
 their vassals ; hence, too, the powerlessness of so many 
 Roman emperors. 
 
 Infinite were the variety and the degrees of the rela- 
 tions in which men stood to the soil, the essential, and for 
 a long period even the only valuable, possession in the 
 Middle Ages. The freedom or the servitude of the person 
 always was in proportion to the amount of power wielded 
 over the soil ; and thus numerous degrees of feudal dig- 
 nity— (of " estates ")— may be traced and enumerated from 
 the sovereign lord, the vassal princes, and the feudatory 
 counts, barons, and citizens down to the " servant " or 
 
66 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 retainer, the peasant, the yeoman, and finally to serfs and 
 slaves. Numberless varieties and combinations of the 
 individual's position and personal rights were caused by 
 the nature of his tenure. A peasant might hold in abso- 
 lute ownership, while a knight held of some count or 
 baron. Again, in every profession, among officials, 
 warriors, citizens, and peasants, men in three different 
 positions of civil right, freemen, retainers, and serfs might 
 be found. The natural consequence of this was, that in 
 the course of time all these classes mingled and changed 
 very much, but considering only one and the same period 
 they were sharply and strictly divided, caste-like, by posi- 
 tion, honours, and, generally, by their dress as well. The 
 finer materials and ornaments, silk, velvet, gold, pearls, 
 and laces, the nicer colours of red and purple generally, 
 were reserved for the higher classes by law and ordinance. 
 The lower had to content themselves with coarse cloth. 
 Hence the motley aspect and the variety of colours in 
 every mediaeval group. 
 
 The Germans had by their conquest carried this system 
 into all countries of Europe. Clumsy as it was, it was 
 the one best suited alike to their state of culture and to 
 the condition into which by thorough devastation they 
 had put the ancient countries. The richly developed com- 
 merce of antiquity had all but ceased to exist ; the ruined 
 towns had lost all importance ; money existed but in 
 inconceivably small quantity. Money has become too slow 
 for the immense commercial life of to-day, and numberless 
 paper substitutes, bank-notes, bills of exchange, cheques, 
 and clearing-houses have been made necessary and in- 
 vented to supersede it, but the commercial views of the 
 Middle Ages worked with such a slow pulse that not even 
 money was wanted to carry them out. This was the time 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 67 
 
 of barter, the raw produce of the soil being the general 
 means of payment and measure of value instead of money. 
 Taxes and rent were paid in kind, the value of things was 
 reckoned in it. 
 
 The peasant paid to his lord a certain amount of work, 
 fixed by the number of working-days on which he had to 
 toil not for his own but for the landlord's profit ; then a 
 certain number of cattle, measures of corn or wine, and 
 the like ; the villager consulting an attorney or physician 
 took a few fowls to pay him. Movable property, which 
 requires sharper wit and better appliances, greater security 
 and division of labour to make its production possible, and 
 which to-day forms the chief part of the wealth of nations, 
 was as nothing compared to immovable possessions, and 
 even those were turned to account in a very primitive 
 way. 
 
 It may furnish a good picture of the time to read what 
 revenue a Florentine nobleman of the twelfth century 
 drew from one of his villages.* 
 
 From four acres f . twelve days of work a year. 
 
 „ twelve acres . Albergaria, that is, the right of the lord 
 and consequent duty of the villagers 
 to lodge and feed a certain number of 
 men for a certain amount of time. 
 
 „ „ „ . Six denari { and two hens. 
 
 „ one farm . A hog, a lamb, fifty-two days of work, 
 
 and Albergaria. 
 
 „ another farm . Four soldi,§ work in the vineyard accord- 
 ing to the landlord's need, four hens, 
 four loaves of bread, Albergaria, and 
 an " adiutorium," which is to be paid 
 every third year, &c. 
 
 * Reprinted from an old document by Davidsohn, " Geschichte von 
 Florence," i. p. 308. t Starior, an old Florentine measure. 
 
 % A silver coin. § A gold coin. 
 
68 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 From this budget it is evident how different were the 
 revenues from different farms ; they were obviously not 
 regulated according to the real value of the land, but 
 resulted from the different manner and time of acquisition, 
 and were founded on old treaties, prescriptions, and very 
 often on violence. 
 
 But public laws were as various in different districts and 
 towns as private rights in particular cases. Rights in 
 general were seldom fixed by law for the whole population 
 of a country, or at least for large classes of it, but were 
 mostly derived from privileges granted to individuals or to 
 corporations. Besides, there were eternal conflicts about 
 judicial competence ; nobody could exactly know, and 
 everybody contested, which cases the lord and proprietor 
 could decide by his own authority, which were reserved to 
 the tribunal of the town, or to that of the imperial officers, 
 to which office the parties had to appeal, and what, after 
 all, was worth decision, for it is obvious that against a 
 powerful opponent a sentence was quite unavailing, unless 
 the plaintiff could make himself sure of the assistance of 
 some still greater power. The Middle Ages, therefore, 
 were the time in which the most long-winded, undying law- 
 suits may be found combined with and interrupted by 
 bloody self-help. A lawsuit between the Episcopal Sees 
 of Siena and Arezzo — and afterwards between the towns 
 themselves too — about eighteen parishes which both 
 bishops claimed for their own, lasted from the beginning 
 of the eighth until the thirteenth century ; it survived all 
 changes of governments, falls of dynasties and growths 
 of new races ; innumerable were the acts, sentences, 
 appeals, commissions, and wild wars which it occasioned. 
 
 We must always think of mediaeval countries as of one 
 large scene of fighting. Besides the greater wars, all the 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 69 
 
 knights and villagers were constantly in 
 arms against each other, the cause being now a disputed 
 piece of ground and now a personal offence, an undying 
 feud between two families, a questioned right, the dan- 
 gerous growth of a rival town, or no cause at all but the 
 love of warfare and plunder. In such cases it became very 
 dangerous to leave the fortified places and walk or ride in 
 the open country ; to work in the fields or go to church 
 became impossible. Each of these small expeditions 
 began by burning and devastating the houses and fields, 
 by capturing the retainers and the cattle of the opponent; 
 this incessant state of war became such a nuisance and 
 ruin for the country, that in France it led to the institu- 
 tion of the " Treuga Dei " or " God's truce." The Church 
 commanded, under severe spiritual penalties, all men to 
 refrain from all quarrelling from Saturday until Tuesday, 
 and to be satisfied with the liberty of killing each other 
 on the three days from Wednesday to Friday. Of course 
 the prohibition was of no avail. In one of the songs of 
 the Provencal baron, Bertrand de Born, a stanza runs 
 
 thus: 
 
 I, sirs, am for war, 
 
 Peace giveth me pain, 
 No other creed 
 
 Will hold me again. 
 
 On Monday, on Tuesday, whatever you will, 
 
 Day, week, month, or year are the same to me still. 
 
 The pernicious famines of the Middle Ages were a 
 natural consequence of these incessant devastations and 
 reprisals, which ruined enormous portions of the produce. 
 
 Such was the state of things when, in their very midst, 
 the germs of a thorough revolution began to develop by 
 the rise and growth of cities. Men in those times had 
 
i 
 
 70 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 even less clear ideas of their own state and of its neces- 
 sary consequences, of what had been and what was to be, 
 than have we. To-day we have at least a certain know- 
 ledge of the past, of the origin and gradual development 
 of our own state ; we study besides all the details of the 
 present, and therefore are in a position to recognise the 
 direction which some of the great currents of our own 
 time will most probably take, though, of course, we, too, 
 are subject to the law of perspective, according to which 
 nobody can find a right point of view from which to survey 
 a landscape in which he himself stands, a law as true of 
 time as it is of space. 
 
 The most important social phenomenon of those times 
 was the growth of the cities. The men in power had not 
 the slightest presentiment of their importance, and as the 
 powers of the past will ever do against those of the 
 future, they instantly undertook a hopeless warfare 
 against them. 
 
 Our civilisation is founded on the institution of cities ; 
 as we have already seen was the case with ancient culture. 
 Only through the existence of towns and the consequent 
 concentration of forces, division of labour, the constant 
 friction and reciprocal influence of all forms of talent, which 
 were impossible without them, could sufficient forces be 
 developed and set free to produce what we call u culture." 
 Modern civilisation also is founded and even more dependent 
 on the existence of towns. Yet it may be said that our 
 civilisation is already undergoing a change. The immense 
 expansion and the rapidity of communication spreads it 
 over the open country too, while, on the other hand, it has 
 withdrawn in some degree from the smaller provincial 
 towns, and has concentrated its central workshops in a 
 few great cities with new advantages and new mischiefs. 
 

 
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SOCIAL CONDITIONS 71 
 
 The cosmopolitan character of those cities is in itself 
 sufficient to be considered a symptom of a new era. 
 Nevertheless, our civilisation is still founded on or made 
 possible by the existence of towns, and is a consequence 
 of town life, from which it derives its character, and not 
 of country life. And its origins may be traced back to 
 the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. 
 
 When the Germans invaded the empire, towns were 
 still unknown to them ; those which they found in the 
 conquered lands were ruined as much as possible, and the 
 new lords of the soil took no notice of their existence. 
 When the Longobards divided Italy into thirty-five duke- 
 doms, they did this without any regard to the towns, 
 and in the place of the municipal system of the Roman 
 administration they made the county the basis of theirs, 
 entirely disregarding the different conditions of town life 
 and country life, and not making any distinction in the 
 administration of either. Towns to them were places in 
 which foolish people lived and thronged together in a 
 curious way ; a life which necessarily appeared to them 
 as unnatural and unhealthy as to-day that of our towns 
 must appear to a Red Indian. 
 
 But the towns recovered nevertheless ; and in that 
 state of general confusion the greater concentration of 
 men inside their walls gave them a stronger power of 
 resistance ; as castles were used as places of refuge in 
 times of danger by the peasants dwelling in their neigh- 
 bourhood, the walls of the cities were a castle and a 
 refuge to the whole region. In Germany towns were first 
 founded to enable the border people to resist the inroads 
 of the Hungarians. Remnants and indications of the old 
 municipal constitution of the Romans seem to have been 
 preserved in Italy in some way or other. The Latinirace, 
 
72 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 too, formed the stock of the population, and the feudal 
 system never really took root in Italy. Its institutions 
 were but superficial, and never became so thoroughly the 
 political constitution of the country, as, for instance, in 
 France or in Germany. 
 
 Commerce and handicraft slowly revived, and both 
 produced a certain amount of capital. The expansion and 
 growing intensity of the first made greater quantities of 
 money necessary. It was coined on a large scale in the 
 Italian towns, and from them streamed into the treasuries 
 of princes and knights. Thus men gradually returned 
 from barter to a monetary system of economy. 
 
 In time the townsmen began to be conscious of their 
 force, then pride and love of liberty arose in their breasts, 
 and in the twelfth century the city communes first stood 
 as an equal factor by the side of princes and lords, too 
 powerful to be overlooked by Pope or Emperor. 
 
 In them and around them the mediaeval features no 
 doubt prevailed ; still, the first small beginnings of modern 
 life were not wanting. There democracy was born after 
 long and arduous struggles. In the mediaeval country there 
 were but masters and serfs, in towns the idea of free citizen- 
 ship for all had its origin. Gradually, on the devastated 
 ground a certain amount of property available for civilisa- 
 tion was created. As little as a man walking on a wintry 
 night, hungry, chilled, fighting against wind, rain and 
 snow, in constant fear of robbers and wild beasts, will 
 think of anything but of how to get on and reach home, 
 so little could men in the terrible struggle for life in the 
 early Middle Ages find time to devote any part of their 
 forces to intellectual occupations. Only the most pro- 
 tected class of all, the clergy, could attempt it, so far as it 
 was possible. Material goods had to be produced, better 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 73 
 
 lodging and furnishing, more favourable conditions ot 
 life, riches and greater security were necessary before 
 sufficient intellectual force could be set free to work for 
 itself and men enabled to enjoy life, knowledge and the 
 production of those admirable playthings which we call 
 works of art, and which at once are the most superfluous 
 and the most necessary things in life. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 The principal aim of every mediaeval man was his soul's 
 salvation. Adopting the same word in an altered sense, 
 we may say that to-day also a man's principal aim and 
 object, even if he be not religious in a dogmatic or 
 orthodox sense, is still the same. Instead of " salvation," 
 say " integrity of soul " and a life as noble and fruitful as 
 possible, and you will have expressed the aim of the 
 greatest and best men of our era, of men like Goeth e and 
 Emerson, or other teachers of the present time, knd 
 though the difference is marked by the very words, though 
 they prove how much more actual and earthly the ideal has 
 become, the deepest meaning has remained the same. 
 However little earthly may have been Dante's ideal, so 
 long as he lived in this world of ours, though his sole aim 
 may have been to prepare his soul for another world, he 
 had to do it on earth. He, too, teaches us to purify our 
 lives and to " lift our aims," with the sole difference that 
 he teaches in accordance with the dogmas of the Catholic 
 Church and uses its stern symbols in his language. But 
 neither is an unearthly element lacking in the belief of the 
 best and most aspiring of modern men, though their 
 mysticism may use more universal signs, flowing symbols 
 instead of the stiff and " frozen " forms of the Middle 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 75 
 
 Ages. Yet they are able to drink the pure water of the 
 spirit from any source, and Dante, with his severe catholic 
 imagery, teaches them no less than he taught the disciples 
 of his own time. 
 
 But if leaving the few, who are aspiring and great- 
 minded, we look at the multitude of men, there can be no 
 doubt whatever that religion, its precepts, questions and 
 forms, filled and ruled the inward and outward life of 
 mediaeval men in a much higher degree than in our own 
 time. Even those who led the most savage lives were 
 seized by the terrible idea of Hell, the ardent longing for 
 Paradise, at every moment in which they awoke from wild 
 combats and bloodshed for the goods and honours of this 
 earth, or from brutish and voluptuous pleasure. The 
 time when the Son of Man had walked on earth and 
 suffered for their redemption lay not yet so far behind 
 them, and the flames of Hell, the glories of Paradise, stood 
 before them in terrible reality to choose between, over- 
 powering all their thoughts and all their feeling. 
 
 Religion absorbed and embraced all other fields of life, 
 faith was the sovereign virtue, and it was but natural 
 that the occupation with religious questions called 
 " theology " became almost the only occupation of the 
 mind. 
 
 A period which demands a uniform orthodox belief 
 cannot be favourable to criticism and doubt. Without 
 doubt and criticism true science is impossible. A thinker 
 who is forced to arrive at certain conclusions and results 
 cannot think freely; a man who is not allowed to adopt 
 what he finds or thinks to be true, but must needs adopt 
 a truth fixed beforehand and by others, cannot be an 
 honest investigator. In fact the results of mediaeval 
 science amount to nothing, and the reawaking investiga- 
 
76 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 tion of the Renaissance had to begin afresh where antique 
 science had halted. 
 
 It is self-evident that there was neither knowledge nor 
 science in the times of utter savagery, the time from the 
 sixth to the eleventh century ; the so-called science, which 
 was cultivated in convents, does not deserve the name. 
 To be sure the convents did estimable service by pre- 
 serving the sparks, which one day could again break into 
 living flames. 
 
 The ancient studies of the Latin part of the population 
 had decayed, not only in consequence of the endless 
 misery and the inroads of the barbarians, but still more 
 perhaps through the hostile spirit of the Church, which 
 regarded them only as tokens of pernicious paganism. 
 Sentences from the letters of St. Paul like the following : 
 " The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God " ; 
 " Knowledge puffeth up " ; " Who seemeth to be wise in 
 this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise," 
 had been valuable and much-used weapons against 
 haughty philosophers who had opposed the new lore with 
 superficial contempt. But the spirit of those sentences 
 necessarily led to consequences inimical to science at 
 large. As early as the fourth century, even before the 
 decay of ancient culture, Eusebius wrote : " It is not 
 ignorance which makes us think lightly of science in 
 general, but contempt of its useless labour, while we turn 
 our souls to better things." In the sixth century Pope 
 Gregory the Great warned the Gallic bishop Desiderius in 
 a letter to beware of the study of heathen literature, 
 " because the praise of Christ and the praise of Jove are 
 not compatible in one mouth." In the tenth century, the 
 time of utter barbarism, the Abbot Leo of San Bonifazio 
 wrote : " The successors of St. Peter wish for their 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 77 
 
 teachers neither Plato nor Virgil, nor Terence, nor any 
 other of the philosophic cattle." When in the year 999 
 that memorable and exceptional man, Gerbert of Rheims, 
 became Pope under the name of Sylvester II., a man who 
 knew the ancients, who occupied himself with astronomy 
 and owned geometric instruments, he soon was regarded 
 by those around him as a sinister and dangerous wizard, 
 who had pledged himself to the Evil One to become 
 Pope, and when he died there was no doubt in people's 
 minds but that the Devil had really come and fetched him. 
 Thus on every hand all powers had combined to lay waste 
 the fields of human thought. In vain had Charlemagne 
 and Otto III. striven to revive the schools ; neither time 
 nor people were sufficiently ripe for it, the schools decayed, 
 especially in the desolate Italian provinces ; a man who 
 was able to read was a marvel, and even among the clergy 
 boundless ignorance was often prevalent.* 
 
 A change came with the eleventh and twelfth centuries ; 
 schools and universities arose, erudite laymen were not 
 only possible, but even began to play an eminent part in 
 the intellectual life of the period. 
 
 The amount of knowledge possessed by a generation 
 will certainly influence the minds at least of its most pro- 
 minent men ; and Dante, though conservative in his aims 
 and objects, and far from being a freethinker, was cer- 
 tainly one of the most enlightened and erudite men of the 
 age. From the point of view of modern ideas, Dante and 
 his works will never be understood. In the brains of <m»T' 
 ancestors another world was reflected than in ours, every 
 
 * The German poet Hartmann v. d. Aue, who lived in the twelfth 
 century, begins his song of " Poor Henry " with the praise : 
 " There was a knight, who such a scholar was, 
 That he the letters in a booke could reade." 
 
78 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 step they took was made on another soil, and every action 
 they performed founded on other views than those of our 
 life. The very world into which they were born seemed 
 other to their eyes than to ours. 
 
 The men of antiquity, and the great majority of men in 
 the Middle Ages, lived on a solid disk, the limits of which 
 were the final limits of the universe. Over this disk rose 
 a solid blue crystal vault, on which sun, moon and stars 
 were fixed as lamps are on the ceiling ; behind this vault 
 dwelt the gods, just as below the ground was spread the 
 empire of the dead. In this concave space between the 
 surface of the earth and the vault of heaven lived and 
 died the races of " speaking men," and around the earth 
 flowed the stream Oceanus, separating it from the 
 mysterious foundations of heaven. One need but 
 change the mythological names, and one has the ideas 
 of the great masses in the Middle Ages, and even of many 
 of our time. 
 
 The cultivated classes of the later periods of antiquity 
 and of the Middle Ages held more enlightened views, 
 founded on the system of the Egyptian astronomer 
 Claudius Ptolemaeus, who taught that the earth was 
 shaped like a sphere and stood in the centre of the 
 universe, while the sun, the moon and the other planets 
 revolved around it. Long before Ptolemy, Plato and 
 Aristotle had taught the same doctrine, and it is not at 
 all impossible, nor even improbable, that they themselves 
 were but following the opinions of previous thinkers. 
 
 More than that ; full four hundred years before Ptolemy, 
 the Alexandrine astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos, had 
 asserted that the sun was the true centre of the universe, 
 and that the earth gyrates around it as well as turns on 
 its own axis, so that the apparent course of the sun 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 79 
 
 around the earth was but an illusion. But he had no 
 success with his doctrine— mathematics and instruments 
 had not reached a sufficient perfection to enable him to 
 prove it. Seventeen centuries had to pass before Nicholas 
 Copernicus carried the same doctrine to victory by his 
 irrefutable calculations, after a hard fight against the 
 Church. 
 
 That is one of the many proofs that modern science 
 had everywhere to begin anew at the point to which antique 
 science had just attained, and that the Middle Ages were 
 simply a gap, a dead standstill in the history of empiric 
 science. 
 
 What a chasm separates our perception of the world 
 from that of the ancients ! They lived in a small concave 
 hollow in the midst of a solid and limited universe — we, 
 disciples of Giordano Bruno, live on a tiny convex kernel 
 in the midst of boundless space. The mediaeval theory, 
 that of Ptolemy, is a middle point between the two 
 systems. 
 
 Our system is divided from both by a difference of 
 incalculable weight; the older systems were both geo- 
 centric — that is to say, the earth was the centre of the 
 universe ; while for us the sun has not even remained in the 
 central place ; the sun, too, with all the planets, is but one 
 of the innumerable fixed stars, the earth no more than an 
 unimportant little moon, a small satellite of the fixed star 
 we call our sun. Parallel with this change in our view of 
 the universe went another change, which makes us see all 
 life in another light. Not only the geocentric theory has 
 come to a timely end, but the anthropocentric theory also. 
 Man, too, is no longer the central being of the universe 
 and of nature ; we no longer believe that this whole world 
 was created for man's use — man, too, is but one of the 
 
80 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 innumerable passing phenomena of Nature — there is 
 nothing to justify him in the belief that the importance 
 which he has in his own eyes is allotted to him in the 
 plan of creation. The modern man has become more 
 modest than the man of former times, he no longer thinks 
 himself the principal being, the end and the consummation 
 of the world, nor his earth the central point of the 
 universe ; he knows that he is but the ephemeral inhabi- 
 tant of a small island in boundless space. 
 
 This was not so in the time of Dante; the whole 
 universe was narrower, smaller, more limited, and even 
 cosier, if I may use the word ; not immense, endless, dis- 
 solving, unimaginable, incomprehensible to the under- 
 standing as ours is. The earth was still its centre, and 
 human beings the race for which it had been made ; and 
 around the earth revolved the firmament with its stars. 
 The vault of heaven consisted of nine gigantic spheres 
 fitting into each other; on the first seven the seven 
 planets were fastened : the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the 
 Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 
 
 These heavenly spheres turn daily around the earth, 
 while the planets glide slowly along them in tjie opposite 
 direction, "as an ant creeps along a large revolving 
 wheel."* The eighth heaven is that of the fixed stars ; 
 the ninth bears no stars at all, but is composed merely of 
 clear transparent matter, and is called the "crystalline 
 heaven " or " Primum Mobile," because it gyrates with 
 incredible rapidity, and is the first of the movable 
 heavens, for " beyond all those heavens Catholics place 
 the Empyreum, which means fire-heaven," which is im- 
 movable and in eternal rest. " That is the seat of the most 
 high God, who alone sees Himself in His fulness ; it is also 
 * So Brunetto Latini in his " Tesoro," ii. 40. 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 81 
 
 the seat of the blessed spirits, as Holy Church teaches, 
 who cannot lie. And Aristotle, too, seems to any man, 
 who understands him rightly, to be of this same opinion 
 in the first book of 'Heaven and the World.' This is 
 the sovereign edifice of the world, in which the universe 
 is enclosed, and beyond it is nothing ; itself, too, is not 
 in space, but created only in the creative spirit, the 
 primary intellect, which the Greeks call ■ Protonous.' " It 
 is Dante who speaks thus in the fourth chapter of the second 
 book of the " Banquet," and he says also that the ardent 
 longing " of every particle of the crystalline heaven to be 
 united with every particle of the most divine tranquil 
 heaven " is the cause of the vertiginous movement of the 
 first. By it this movement is imparted to the lesser 
 spheres, and thus love, the longing for union with God, 
 becomes the motive force of the universe.^, 
 
 The farther down we go the slower becomes the rota- 
 tion, until, separated from the smallest heaven, that of the 
 moon, by a zone of flames, the earth lies heavy and im- 
 movable, enveloped by the cloudy air. Under it is the 
 funnel of hell, reaching down to its centre, where, farthest 
 from God, at the centre of gravity, Satan has his dwelling. 
 The southern hemisphere is covered by water, from which 
 arises one single island with the mount of Purgatory. In 
 the centre of the northern hemisphere lies Jerusalem, the 
 place where the Lord descended upon earth, where He 
 became man and lived and suffered. This hemisphere is 
 inhabited by fi erring man " ; below it are the evil spirits 
 and the souls of the damned, high above it the blessed 
 spirits have their mansion in the ten heavens.* 
 
 * Dante's doctrine is that the te nth spiritual hea venJ&--4be--T8ar" 
 mansion of the blessed, and that "only their phantoms appear in the 
 nine heavens which are in space. 
 
 F 
 
82 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 That is the world of Dante. How grand is his concep- 
 tion, how spiritual, the structure of the universe passing 
 gradually from earthly grossness into pure spirituality! 
 The whole system is a reflection in space of the evolution 
 of man's history, the central fact of the world as well as 
 of history being the passage from the Fall of Man to his 
 Salvation, the descent of God upon earth and the elevation 
 of man into heaven. 
 
 In Rome resided God's viceroy upon earth, the Vicar of 
 Christ, the spiritual regent of men during their terrestrial 
 life. The situation of the earth in the centre of creation 
 was very important to the Church ; the very system of the 
 universe seemed to enhance the Pope's importance. It is 
 easy to understand why the Catholic Church so strongly 
 opposed the doctrine of Copernicus : when the earth was 
 no longer the capital, but only a remote little province of 
 God's universe, the Church could never more attain to that 
 world-ruling, sky-reaching importance which it had held 
 before. 
 
 Not every erudite man of the Middle Ages had such a 
 deep symbolical view of the world as Dante, not every 
 one was able to see it interwoven and penetrated by such 
 deep spiritual connections. But the mechanical structure 
 which I have described was generally adopted by the 
 mediaeval scholar. It bears all the signs of mediaeval 
 thought,, which was never founded on experiment and 
 investigation, but on imagination and authority. There 
 never was a time when so little, and at the same time so 
 much, was known as in the Middle Ages, for people really 
 knew everything ; they had ready explanations for every 
 phenomenon ; very clever explanations they often were, 
 but always untested ; whatever was or seemed possible, 
 whatever could be made plausible in words was imme- 
 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 83 
 
 diately accepted ; people did not like to doubt, and even 
 the impossible could be dealt with and accepted as a 
 miracle. 
 
 The positive science of the Middle Ages was limited to 
 a small number of traditions from the ancients, corrected ac- 
 cording to the Bible, and later on augmented by a few facts 
 drawn from Arab scholars. In astronomy, mathematics, 
 in the whole region of natural science, men had not at the 
 end of the period got one step farther than at the begin- 
 ning. They had adopted ancient learning with all the 
 fables inherited from the ancients, who themselves had 
 scarcely found the method of empiric investigation, and 
 they eagerly added thereto any new fiction they met with. 
 The notions of nature, of history, of life in a scholar's 
 brain as well as in that of a peasant were a chaotic mass 
 bi^strange legends, fables, and fantastic errors. 
 
 In the 15th canto of the " Divine Comedy," Dante, wan- 
 dering through the third region of the seventh circle of 
 hell, sees the naked souls of those who have sinned 
 against nature running on glowing sands along the banks 
 of a river of blood, while a continual fiery snow falls 
 slowly and ceaselessly upon them. One of these, in pass- 
 ing, snatches at Dante's robe and cries out : 
 
 " O, marvellous ! " and though the sinner's face is quite 
 " baked " by the flames, Dante recognises him and cries : 
 " Is it you, Ser Brunetto ? " and later on he says : 
 
 " Well I remember— and it paineth me — 
 The dear paternal face of him who taught 
 How man may stride into eternity ! " 
 
 It is Ser Brunetto Latini, renowned in the thirteenth 
 century as a great Florentine scholar and statesman. 
 When the Guelf party was expelled he became an exile, 
 
84 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 and while living in France he wrote in French an encyclo- 
 paedia of the knowledge of his time, or, as he himself styled 
 it, "A condensation of all the many parts of philosophy 
 to a short summary." Such encyclopaedias had been 
 composed ever since the ninth century ; the farther back 
 we go the more fantastic they become. Dante himself 
 attempted a popular work of this kind in the " Banquet," 
 and he did it in a most original way, as he did everything, 
 but the work was never completed and remained frag- 
 mentary. Brunetto's book stands about on the level of 
 the period, and is doubly interesting to us, as Dante ex- 
 pressly styles him his master. He called it " Li tresors " 
 (" The Treasure"), and wrote it in French, but it was soon 
 translated into Italian. 
 
 In this book, after a short classification of the different 
 sciences, he first relates the most notable facts of history. 
 He conscientiously begins with the creation of the world, 
 of angels and devils, of whom he assures us that scarcely 
 an hour after their creation they fell ; then he proceeds to 
 the creation of man, tells of Original Sin, and gives a short 
 account of nature and the functions of the human soul. 
 Then follows patriarchal history according to the Bible, 
 and adorned by some corrupted fragments of Greek my- 
 thology. He tells of Nimrod and his son Cres, the first 
 king of Greece, whose son and successor, Jupiter, became 
 Lord of Athens. Jupiter had two sons, Darius and Dar- 
 danus, and with this we arrive at the Trojan war and the 
 flight of iEneas to Italy ; he enumerates the kings of Italy 
 up to the foundation of Rome, adding that Rome was 
 founded 4324 years after the destruction of Troy. In a 
 former chapter he told of the kings of England, who were 
 all descended from Brutus, a son of iEneas ; in the next 
 chapter he relates the conspiracy of Catilina, then the 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 85 
 
 story of Julius Caesar, then that of the kings of the Franks, 
 who were likewise descended from two fugitive Trojan 
 "barons," Antenor and the younger Priam. The next 
 forty-seven chapters are devoted to the history of the king- 
 dom of Israel and the foundation of Christendom, and 
 then four chapters to the story of the Roman Empire until 
 Frederick II. ; the first is told as the Bible tells it, the 
 latter, in spite of its brevity, is full of gross errors. 
 
 This work of Brunetto is a type of many similar his- 
 tories written in the Middle Ages with a fantastic variety 
 of contents. 
 
 Having thus exhausted history, the author turns to 
 cosmology and gives information about the four elements 
 of which all matter is composed ; he explains how they 
 are distributed throughout the world according to their 
 gravity, and how the mixture of the four elements in the 
 composition of corporeal beings causes them to live in 
 higher or lower regions and makes their nature either 
 more lively or more phlegmatic. So the birds live in the 
 air, because there is more of the elements of fire and air 
 in their composition. The four temperaments correspond 
 to the four elements. But there exists in addition a fifth 
 element called " Orbis," " which has nothing of nature in 
 it," but is noble and indestructible, and is the stuff of 
 which the heavens and spirits are made. He explains 
 why the world is round, and what is the origin of rain, 
 snow, wind and thunderstorms, inextricably mixing truth 
 and falsehood. We are informed that there are clouds in 
 which winds are enclosed ; these clouds are driven against 
 each other as balloons are, and by the noise of their colli- 
 sion produce the thunder, and by their friction the 
 lightning. 
 
 A description of the structure of the universe follows 
 
86 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 next, which on the whole resembles that adopted by Dante. 
 Here we learn the dimensions of the mediaeval world, for 
 Ser Brunetto knows that the circumference of the earth 
 measures exactly 20,427 Lombard leagues in length ; the 
 size of the sun is just 166^5- times as great, while the 
 distance of the firmament, that is of the heaven of the 
 fixed stars, from the earth, is 10,066 times as long as the 
 earth's diameter. Short but valuable information is given 
 about the influences of the stars on terrestrial events, 
 about Saturn, " who is cruel, false and of a cold nature " ; 
 Jupiter, on the contrary, is " soft, merciful and rich in all 
 good " ; Mars, " hot, warlike and of evil influence, and 
 therefore was called of old the god of battles." The sun 
 is a "good imperial star" ; Venus, a " beautiful star, soft 
 and full of good airs, full of goodness " ; but Mercury is 
 " changeful, according to the good or evil nature of the 
 planet in whose neighbourhood he chances to be." Many 
 true but inexact observations are given on the course of 
 the planets, for in the Middle Ages peasants generally 
 knew more of celestial movements than cultured people 
 of to-day. 
 
 The third book begins with geography; it is treated 
 rather concisely and is full of fables, like those told in the 
 tales of Sinbad the sailor in the "Arabian Nights," or in the 
 tale of Duke Ernest, a favourite hero of mediaeval story- 
 books. We hear of men who are born old, of men who 
 have but one eye in their forehead, and others who have 
 no head at all, but whose eyes are fixed in the shoulders ; 
 of the one-legged cyclopes and other marvellous tribes, all 
 dwelling in India. 
 
 In natural history, which is mostly drawn from Pliny — 
 the whole book is compiled from all possible earlier com- 
 pilations— the first part treats of fishes, and tells more or 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 87 
 
 less fabulous things of all of them. Among fishes we are 
 surprised to find the crocodile, which weeps as often as it 
 has swallowed a man, and another little animal called 
 " calcatine," which eats its way right through the croco- 
 dile and in this way kills it. In the chapter on the whale 
 the episode of the prophet Jonah is told ; two other 
 animals, which likewise belong to the fish family, are the 
 hippopotamus, which is remarkable for bleeding itself 
 when it feels ill, and the sirens. But the reality of the 
 latter seems doubtful even to Ser Brunetto Latini, and he 
 admits that they may be considered as mere symbols. 
 
 Very interesting details are given about the snakes, 
 which take out their poison and hide it under a stone 
 whenever they go to drink ; about the " Aspis," which 
 bears a sparkling jewel in its head, and which to evade 
 the snake-charmer presses one ear to the ground and 
 closes the other with its tail. A snake with two heads 
 may be found in the " Empire of Women." tl The basi- 
 lisk is a kind of snake, and is so full of poison " that it 
 glistens visibly through its skin, and that not only the 
 poison but its very stench poisons everything far and 
 near, pollutes the air and makes the trees wither; its 
 look kills the birds in their flight, its glance has a numbing 
 influence on man, but when the man is the first to see it 
 " it is said it loses the power to harm." We are further 
 informed about dragons and about the salamander which 
 lives in the fire. 
 
 Then come the birds ; and, finally, he treats of mam- 
 mals, to which class belong the ant and the chameleon. 
 Even here there is no lack of fables, such as that of the 
 wolf, which, when howling, holds his forepaws to its 
 mouth to delude people into the belief that a whole pack 
 js present; that of the unicorn, which lies down and falls 
 
88 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 asleep as often as it encounters a virgin, and of many 
 other beasts wholly unknown to us. 
 
 The second part of the work contains moral science and 
 a fragment of political science, which are irrelevant to our 
 present object. 
 
 Thus we are soon at the end of our survey of mediaeval 
 knowledge. As to mathematics, the few works which 
 remained from antiquity were known to few ; in philo- 
 logy Dante himself perhaps made the first step. 
 
 But, childish as this small sum of corrupted knowledge 
 may appear to us, we must beware of underrating the 
 intellectual power of the period. 
 
 In the first place, this science with all its fables had 
 been received from antiquity. The knowledge of the great 
 Greeks was no greater ; of course, what in antique times 
 had been first essays of investigation, essays in which 
 errors and fables were inevitable, were accepted in the 
 Middle Ages with the blindest credulity; it was and 
 remained a dead mass of traditions, and not the slightest 
 attempt was made to carry it farther or even to test it. 
 But then mere knowledge has very little to do with mental 
 ability. 
 
 Intuition, quick insight, broad views, the power to use 
 knowledge are the signs of genius — and knowledge is only 
 the material, the bricks with which genius must construct 
 buildings. Every schoolboy of to-day knows many things 
 which Plato and Dante never knew ; every schoolboy of 
 the next century will know facts of which Goethe would 
 never have dreamt ; but, for all that, he will be far from 
 being a Plato or a Goethe. And we who laugh at the 
 meagre knowledge of those times are far from being the 
 superiors of Dante, or possibly even of Ser Brunetto 
 Latini. A fool will be a fool in the twenty-second century, 
 
MEDIAEVAL KNOWLEDGE 89 
 
 and a genius was a genius in the Middle Ages, even when 
 he believed that there were serpents with two heads and 
 that the hippopotamus was a fish. 
 
 Thought makes the thinker, and depth and breadth 
 of thought make the great thinker. We may go still 
 farther back, into still more ignorant times, times in which 
 reading and the alphabet were unknown, times from 
 which no name has remained to us. In the uncultured 
 primeval times of the Germans, of the Greeks, of the 
 Jews, when not the slightest vestige of science could be 
 thought of, the deepest thoughts of men were clad in the 
 form of religion and myth. The men who invented the 
 legend of the fall of Adam and Eve, the myth of the rape 
 and the return of Proserpina or that of Prometheus, the 
 saga of Baldur's death and Baldur's lament, the saga of the 
 Twilight of the Gods — or the men who gave to those myths 
 the deep and significant forms in which they have been 
 delivered to us : those men, though we do not know their 
 names, nor when or where they lived, belong to the 
 deepest thinkers and poets of all times, and the thoughts 
 expressed in these myths are no less powerful conceptions 
 than " Faust " or " Hamlet," the Copernican system, or 
 Darwinian theory. 
 
 For all these contain primary thoughts, intuitions of 
 eternal laws and eternal phenomena, and wherever the 
 human mind caught and expressed them, there it showed 
 the surest signs of true genius. Nor was this lacking in 
 the Middle Ages. For all that, I am far from denying 
 that ignorance was a defect which had often the most 
 harmful and even horrible consequences ; and it certainly 
 must be admitted that our knowledge is a progress. 
 
 But who knows how much of which we feel surest will 
 be proved to be false by coming generations, what colossal 
 
9 o DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 errors may be brought about by those modern methods of 
 thought of which we are so proud, how people will laugh 
 some day at the blindness and the ridiculous notions 
 of our time ! Every generation has its own " blinkers " 
 and sees but the defects of its predecessors, while it 
 applauds itself for having reached such a high plane. 
 
 It is true that it took a long time for mediaeval men to 
 find intellectual and artistic expression for their own life, 
 but that life itself was full of all elements of poetry : of 
 powerful passions, an imagination which was but too 
 exuberant, and the greatest variety of forms. With a deep 
 intensity of feeling it combined a naive impulse to express 
 everything in a way which impressed the senses, not the 
 intellect, as with us, and, more than all, it possessed a 
 pathetic earnestness in life and expression which might 
 move us to envy, and which produced all the glory of late 
 mediaeval art. 
 
 Science and knowledge were regarded in another light 
 than they are to-day, but the notion they had of them 
 had its deep foundation in ancient ideas. The philosopher 
 who to us appears more essentially Greek than any other, 
 who in our eyes is the representative of Greek thought, 
 Plato, pointed out to mediaeval investigation the way which 
 it involuntarily followed, for it was he who opened the 
 way to the most subjective idealism, who created the 
 boldest ideologic system in which he gave an arbitrary 
 explanation of the universe. In the very words which 
 Socrates speaks to Theaetetus, " Come, let us learn what 
 truth is, but let no profane person approach ; the profane 
 are those who credit nothing but what they can touch 
 with their hands " — in these very words Plato points out 
 to the student a direction which leads him away from all 
 ways and aims of modern investigation and into the 
 
MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE 91 
 
 realm of bottomless speculation. This turning away from 
 the dominion of the senses, which he continually preached, 
 the doctrine that the philosopher is not to occupy himself 
 with that " which is only born to die," but has to explore 
 the realm of the Infinite, Primary Being, and the Essence of 
 Things, this doctrine was followed in the Middle Ages 
 much more strictly than in his own time. Antiquity 
 developed all tendencies in the overflowing abundance of 
 its manifold gifts, and together with the purest idealism 
 we owe to it the beginning of all empiric sciences. But 
 the Middle Ages with their ruling religious idea, " My 
 Kingdom is not of this world," found quite after their own 
 heart this flight of thought from all that belonged to the 
 senses, from all that formed part of nature, to abstract 
 speculation on thought itself and on the things " which 
 we cannot know." 
 
 And, considering the deep and eternal longing of man- 
 kind for the solution of the insoluble questions : what and 
 wherefore are we ? what is true ? how came the world 
 into existence ? is this life of ours the final one ? — who 
 shall say that the struggle of human thought to find its 
 way through this labyrinth was a " false " one, who dare 
 assert that we to-day have really found the true path ? 
 
 They explored to the best of their knowledge, and we 
 do the same; if their results were less palpable and 
 visible than ours, they were no less deep. We must 
 beware of believing that true progress lies only in scien- 
 tific discoveries ; in innumerable, impalpable, untraceable 
 influences may lie the immense value of a period of human 
 activity to the history of civilisation. One thing at least 
 is certain : the final outcome of the errors of scholasticism 
 was critical science. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SCHOLASTICISM 
 
 From the seventh to the eleventh century all intellectual 
 life in Europe was more or less limited to the Church. 
 Not only did religion itself occupy men's minds to a much 
 greater extent than to-day, but whatever intellectual life 
 there was independent of religious thought proceeded 
 from the Church, the little knowledge that existed at all 
 was to be found among the clergy, and the remnants of 
 ancient science in MSS. and parchments were kept in 
 convents. 
 
 ; ~*All teachers* of schools were clerical and all pupils too — 
 the word " clerk " (scribe) is derived from clericus, because 
 in the Middle Ages a man who could write and a clergy- 
 man were identical. Clergymen, therefore, were indis- 
 pensable in all offices. <$f the seven high offices of the 
 empire which were reserved to the seven electors, four 
 only, that of Arch-butler or Arch-steward, for instance, 
 would be filled by temporal lords, but the offices of the 
 Arch-Chancellors were reserved to the three spiritual 
 electors, the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Coin. 
 
 * The few exceptions to this rule, on which Ozanam puts such stress, 
 in his study on " Schools and Instruction in the Middle Ages," seems 
 to have been found in Italy only, and cannot alter the fact that teaching 
 as well as learning in those times is entirely of a spiritual character. 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 93 
 
 The painters, too, were clergymen, and in the earliest 
 times — at least in the newly cultivated countries — even 
 handicraft and agriculture had been taught by monks. 
 
 Europe owes much to the Roman Church. But the 
 science of the Church was very limited, and the moment 
 inevitably came when the lay world had received all 
 that the Church could give and wanted more. Un- 
 happily, the Church had made a skeleton system of her 
 treasures ; not only of religious dogmas, but of all her 
 scientific doctrines as well, and whosoever dared to doubt 
 or criticise it was a sinner and a heretic. As she had 
 decreed that the sun turned round the earth, even so the 
 smallest details were fixed and unchangeable. Even the 
 painter was bound to paint the beard or the robe of a 
 saint only in one way. A synod had decreed^it so. As 
 long as the Church was in a position to give, and laymen 
 to receive from her, all was well, the relations between them 
 were those of a mother to her child, of a tutor to the pupil. 
 But as soon as a sufficient number of laymen knew quite 
 as much as the clergy, and began to work on independently 
 for themselves, the Church said " Stop." In that moment 
 the great historical rupture was completed, and the Church 
 henceforth was the retrograde and obstructive power in 
 the development of mankind. She has been to the human 
 mind like a mother, who brings up her child with love and 
 care, but will not suffer it to become a man independent 
 of her maternal care and superintendence, who would 
 rather murder it than suffer it to become so. 
 
 But independence must be the aim and scope of all 
 education, and parents who will not suffer their children 
 to acquire it must invariably lose them. Therefore the 
 development of mankind in those times was above all and 
 on every field an emancipation from the ruling Church ; 
 
94 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 even with those who never thought of rising against her, 
 Dante, for instance, or St. Francis, and many others. 
 
 The greatest innovators in history generally tried but 
 to restore an old state. Jesus came but to renew the Old 
 Covenant ; Caesar, a revolutionary leader of the people, 
 founded the greatest of all monarchies. Very often the 
 reactionist is unconsciously working for progress, the 
 radical for reaction, and those who seemingly are the 
 most peaceful of all are preparing revolutions. There is 
 nothing of which people have less clear notions than of 
 the real tendency of their own work. This w T as also the 
 case with mediaeval philosophy. 
 
 To give here anything but a very superficial survey of 
 it would be impossible. The reader who wants to learn 
 more about it may work his way through the books of 
 Haureau and others. The writings of mediaeval phi- 
 losophers are innumerable ; a whole row of great names 
 adorns their history. Men of immense learning and 
 narrowest judgment were among them, men of venomous 
 orthodoxy, some who rank among the boldest and freest 
 investigators ; and others, again, whose conceptions were 
 grand and poetical. As the knowledge of the Middle 
 Ages was borrowed from the ancients, so, too, their 
 philosophy is based on the poor remnants of antique 
 philosophy, but its wings were clipped and the great 
 freedom of thought was wanting. Those remnants which 
 had been preserved and destined to become the basis of 
 new speculation were the fewest imaginable : a little 
 work of Plato, the " Timaeus," perhaps the " Phaedo " 
 too, small and corrupt fragments from Aristotle, and a 
 few works of commentators; especially the so-called 
 " Isagoge " of Porphyry (an introduction to the "Organon" 
 of Aristotle), and works of Boethius. 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 95 
 
 In the thirteenth century the works of Aristotle were 
 introduced by the Arabs, who had known and studied 
 them already for three hundred years ; and though they 
 were only to be had in most corrupt translations, they 
 furnished a mighty inspiration to European philosophy.* 
 
 But a few sentences are sufficient to the human mind : 
 every deep word is the key to a door leading into the 
 universe ; using a few sentences as their stepping-stones, 
 the philosophers of the Middle Ages pierced into all the 
 depths of the mind, all the immensities of space. There 
 is no more airy, no bolder ladder than words, every step 
 opens a new prospect, and, like sudden wings, the thoughts 
 which every new word calls forth will carry the thinker 
 into the infinite. There are no paths of early or of 
 modern philosophy through which the philosophers of the 
 Middle Ages had not walked, too, in their own ways. 
 They became sceptics, materialists, pantheists, very often 
 without being aware of it ; the boldest and deepest thinker 
 of the earlier time, Johannes Scotus Erigena, anticipated 
 the grand views of Spinoza. 
 
 A mere chance, if one is allowed to say so, fixed the 
 path of mediaeval philosophy; a mere chance made 
 Aristotle their lord and master ; by mere chance were he 
 and Plato put into that dominating position in philosophy 
 which they still occupy to-day, and in which they have 
 been represented in Raphael's " School of Athens " in the 
 Vatican. Had the works of Democritos, for instance, 
 
 * The civilisation of the Mussulmans in the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries was such higher than that of contemporary Europe, and if 
 in their chronicles they designated the Crusades M inroads of bar- 
 barians," they were at least as right in doing so as European writers 
 were in disparaging the previous Saracen invasions into Europe, which 
 had exactly the same scope : booty, renown, and the expansion of a 
 faith. 
 
 \ 
 
V 
 
 96 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 been preserved, the whole intellectual history of mankind 
 would have taken another way — to the same ends. 
 
 A few words of Porphyry furnished to the Middle Ages 
 their formulas, methods and problems. He turned the 
 attention of men to the question of " abstracts," particularly 
 of " universals." The existence of the individual man or 
 beast is proved by the senses ; but what is the real nature 
 of "man" or "beast" in general? Does "man" in 
 general exist, or is it only a conception of our brain, a 
 formula necessary for thinking? And if it is only j^ y 
 thought or notion, is it a necessary and true oneT^ Does 
 anything corresponding to it, perhaps an essential idea, 
 exist in a Divine Mind, in creation or beyond, to test it ? 
 And what is the nature of abstract notions like " wisdom " 
 or " beauty," which undoubtedly seem to be less real than 
 a wise man or a beautiful thing ? And what is the nature 
 of farther intellectual beings whose existence is warranted 
 by religion — Angels, Devils, Divinity itself? 
 
 Do universals really exist, or are they mere words ? 
 
 And if they exist, is their existence a corporeal one or 
 not ? And if they really exist, do they only exist in and 
 with individual things (as wisdom in a wise man), or may 
 a separate essential existence, as " wisdom," be ascribed 
 to them ? 
 
 It is known that Plato said : There are Ideas, that is, 
 primary conceptions of all beings and things in the 
 intellect of the first Creator, God. These exist " ante rem" 
 (before the thing exists) and they are essential. In the 
 individual things only the images of those primary ideas 
 are expressed " in re " (in the thing). " Post rem " (after 
 the thing) the notions of it exist in the human intellect as 
 necessary reflected images of the primary thoughts oi 
 God. That is the doctrine of the boldest Realism. We 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 97 
 
 to-day would call it " Idealism," but in the Middle Ages 
 it was called " Realism " because it attributed reality to 
 what was ideal. 
 
 Against it stood the opinion of severe Nominalism, 
 which ran thus : The abstracts are only words (nomina) 
 they exist but as formulas of our brain, no conclusion from 
 them on reality is permitted, nor is it possible that they 
 should in any way influence it. 
 
 Many variations and shades were possible in the answer 
 to the three chief questions as well as to all the countless 
 subordinate questions which arose in consequence. An 
 intermediate opinion was that of the " Conceptualists," 
 who said : " It must be conceded that the abstract is only 
 a thought, but then it certainly exists as a thought, and 
 has besides a certain objective existence in and with the 
 thing." It is obvious that this was but a lame and 
 undecided solution which was very near pure Nominalism. 
 Even within the limits of each school the uncertain and 
 manifold meaning of such words must necessarily lead to 
 very different conclusions. Their halls resounded with 
 debates, and their parchments were covered with medita- 
 tions, acutest wit vying with senseless and sophisticated 
 confusion, strongest thought and abstruse, bottomless 
 speculation inextricably mixed. On premises which had 
 not the smallest foundation in fact artificial worlds were 
 constructed, like brilliant castles on swimming and 
 melting icebergs. Two things had to remain uncontested 
 in the whirl of dispute : the words of the old masters and 
 the words of the Church; the dogmas. These were 
 sacred and unquestionably true. That meant, the ice- 
 bergs on which the castles were built were declared 
 unmeltable. Considered in themselves from the point of 
 view of exact science, the works of scholasticism are an 
 
 G 
 
98 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 immense Sisyphean labour of six hundred years on " that 
 which we cannot know." 
 
 /The first great name in scholastic philosophy is that of 
 Johannes Scotus Erigena, which means John the Scotch- 
 man, born in Ireland, head 1 of the school of Paris at the 
 time of Charles the Bald. I His was a broad and bold 
 mind. He despised logic and dialectics as mere words, 
 ascribing the highest authority to Reason alone. True 
 philosophy he declared identical with true religion, and 
 yet a mystic and poetical turn of his mind made him a 
 realist. In brilliant and pathetic style he announced the 
 doctrine of Spinoza, that Essence is but one and the same 
 in all, and all the rest but forms of Essence. He also 
 conceded that this highest problem of all was in reality 
 incomprehensible not only to the senses of man, but to 
 his intellect as well. This brilliant and modern thinker, 
 whose appearance in the Carolingian time will ever remain 
 an historical enigma, is said to have died as Abbot of 
 Malmesbury, murdered by his own monks. His writings 
 have been forgotten. His main work, " De Divisione 
 Naturae," was discovered towards the end of the twelfth 
 century ; a short time afterwards it was condemned by 
 the Church, and again fell into oblivion. 
 
 Speculation in those times never was quite without 
 danger, philosophy and its problems were so nearly re- 
 lated to theology. The wonderful problems of the Trinity, 
 of the Essence of Him who was God and Man in one 
 person, the nature of angels, creation out of nothing, 
 were themes which could not but allure minds bent on 
 investigations like the aforesaid, and which it was as im- 
 possible to avoid as dangerous to touch, in a time when 
 theology was the main science, when every philosopher 
 was a jnember of the clergy, and most certainly a Doctor 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 99 
 
 ,y of Divinity. A few words which seemed heretical to the 
 majority of any provincial synod could bring ruin on the 
 man who had uttered them. A few philosophic remarks 
 on the "intellectual Presence of Christ in the Lord's 
 Supper " destroyed Berengar of Tours. 
 
 The antagonism of the two main schools became 
 evident in the eleventh century by the contest between 
 Roscellinus and St. Anselm of Canterbury. The opinion of \ 
 the Conceptualists, which already in the ninth century had 
 been expounded by the German monk Rabanus Maurus, 
 was represented by one of the boldest and most interest- 
 ing of mediaeval philosophers, no less famous as a lover 
 than as a scholar and orator, around whom many thou- 
 sands of disciples thronged from all parts of the earth, so 
 that the halls of the university became too small for his 
 audience, and he had to teach in the open field : this was 
 Peter Abelard, born in the year 1079, near Nantes in 
 Brittany. He, too, had to defend himself against the 
 repeated and dangerous attacks of Churchmen. Scep- 
 ticism on one hand, rigid conservatism on the other, 
 were the results of the first period of scholastic philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 In the thirteenth century the works of Aristotle * were . 
 brought from the Orient, and with them came a marked 
 rise in philosophic endeavour. " La philosophic," says 
 Haureau with some exaggeration, "fut la passion du 
 treizieme siecle." The first who treated the Aristotelian 
 philosophy methodically was a Dominican friar, Albertus 
 Magnus. He was originally a count of Bolstedt, born in 
 
 * The Emperor Frederick II. had ordered the translation and pre- 
 sented them to the University of Bologna. The Church repeatedly 
 condemned them, but in vain. They became the basis of all science. 
 The schoolmen call Aristotle simply the " philosopher." 
 
ioo DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the year 1193, in the little town of Lauingen in Swabia, 
 and he died at Cologne, eighty-seven years of age, in a 
 cell of his Order, after having been Archbishop of Ratisbon 
 for many years. He was called "Doctor Universalis." 
 His writings fill twenty-one folio volumes- in philosophy 
 as in theology, in astronomy, chemistry and mathematics, 
 his works were " rien moins qu'une veritable revolution." 
 Notwithstanding, a disciple of his, St. Thomas of Aquino, 
 though a man of much less marked originality as a thinker, 
 attained a much higher position in mediaeval philosophy. 
 Descended from the Sicilian counts of Aquino, related to 
 the race of the old Norman kings of Sicily through his 
 mother Theodora, a broad-chested, heavy and clumsy 
 man, he was called by his fellow students " The great 
 dumb ox from Sicily." u His bellow will one day be 
 heard through all the world," his teacher Albert had said 
 on hearing this nickname. The writings of the " Doctor 
 Angelicus," as he was called, have occupied a ruling and 
 lasting position in ecclesiastical erudition. He more than 
 any other was the teacher of Dante, though the latter in 
 the main questions did not exactly follow his doctrine, 
 for Dante undoubtedly was a realist. Both Albert and 
 Thomas were the pride of the Dominican school. Not 
 without opposition and jealousy did the Order of St. 
 Francis wrestle with them for the palm of scholarship. 
 Many and different opinions were represented by the 
 brethren of this Order ; many among them were mystics ; 
 an abstruse and subtle realism was taught by the " pillar," 
 the " sun," the " torch " of the school, the " Doctor sub- 
 tilis " Duns Scotus. But two men of the Franciscan 
 Order attract our attention more than the rest, for they 
 prepared the way to modern science, Roger Bacon and 
 William of Ockham. The first, born in Somerset in 12 14, 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 101 
 
 was the first discoverer of the power of steam, and in 
 parts of his books, which to us seem almost incredible, he 
 predicted the invention of the railway, the great oceanic 
 steamers, gunpowder, and the use of electricity. He 
 wrote in a broadband free style, careless of scholastic 
 methods and dialectics. In his books may be found 
 sentences like the following, which might well have been 
 written by Emerson: "Always let us reject what is the 
 opinion of the majority, and every habit of thought let us 
 hold in suspicion." He was made to feel the conse- 
 quences of uttering such revolutionary ideas in the thir- 
 teenth century; he died in the year 1293, after nine years 
 of imprisonment. Such spirits belonged to the future, 
 they required a freer air, they found no breathing room in 
 the Middle Ages, and were doomed to suffocation from 
 the beginning. Their appearance, however, was a sign 
 of the times, it announced that the end of the Age was 
 near. The other great Franciscan monk, and he, too, 
 like Roger and so many others, an Englishman, was 
 William of Ockham, the redoubtable enemy of the Pope, 
 who, condemned to life-long imprisonment by the Church, 
 lived free and pleasantly in Germany under imperial pro- 
 tection. He said to the Emperor Lewis : " Do but 
 protect me with thy sword, I will protect thee with my 
 pen." By the victorious and final enthronement of Nomi- 
 nalism, by a number of clear and brilliant sentences, 
 destroying the inexact methods and fanciful results of his 
 predecessors, he prepared the victory of critical science. 
 
 Entirely dominated by theology, from which it was but 
 a branch, mediaeval philosophy had no other scope, and 
 was not allowed to have any other, but to establish the 
 harmony between the dogmas of the Church and human 
 reason, to prove that, whatever was taught by the Church, 
 
102 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 was the natural result of logical reasoning as well. 
 Dogma stood firm and rigid, and woe to Reason if Reason 
 dared to swerve one smallest step from its prescribed 
 path. Even in the works of St. Thomas of Aquino the 
 Archbishop of Paris, Tempier, found sentences which he 
 proved to be heretical. Reason was in the position of a 
 horseman who is allowed to ride " freely " within a place 
 surrounded by walls ; if he runs against them he is the 
 worse for it. But the moment must inevitably come 
 when the writer as well as his readers would say : " If 
 there were no walls the rider would not so continually 
 knock against them. What's the use of talking about 
 freedom as long as the walls are round the place ? " 
 And thus it happened that, when the scholastic philo- 
 sopher had fought with a thousand subtle arguments for 
 the truth of dogmatic docrine, and had announced its 
 infallibility with never so triumphant a flourish — the acute 
 reader in the end felt strongly that the result was far 
 from unexceptionable — and without anybody desiring it, 
 the authority of Reason was ever more clearly demon- 
 strated. Thus it came to pass that scholasticism, whose 
 end and aim had been to prove that all the doctrines of 
 the Church were fully confirmed by logic, had just the con- 
 trary effect, for it served but to reinforce criticism and to 
 discredit the dogmatic "walls " ; freedom of investigation 
 took root on its very basis, and the authority of the Church 
 in all philosophic matters was entirely undermined. 
 
 The Church, however, had terrible weapons. It found 
 a sword in the devout minds of the philosophers them- 
 selves. In their soul's anguish they grasped after 
 desperate means of rescue. Many of them — Abdlard 
 and Roger Bacon, for instance — in the first half of their 
 works rejected all authority, and allowed full play to the 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 103 
 
 exuberance of their own minds, only to conclude in the 
 second half by re-establishing the authority of the Church 
 by means of some bold sophism. Others had the happy 
 idea of " twofold truth." They said, " This sentence is 
 true from a theologian's point of view, false if considered 
 from a philosopher's standpoint," or the reverse. Under 
 this reservation were taught the Averroistic doctrines 
 
 ' that the world and matter were of eternity and not created 
 
 1 out of nothing, that God operated but in the first and 
 remotest of the heavens and left the earth to the laws 
 of nature, that Reason and the Soul were but one 
 
 .in all, and that therefore neither individual souls nor 
 immortality of the individual soul was possible. They 
 invariably added that all this was true only in philosophy, 
 that, according to the Catholic faith, the creation out of 
 nothing, the Lord's personal government of our world, 
 \the immortality of the soul were indubitably true. But 
 the Church was not to be fooled. This method was 
 forbidden and declared to be most damnable heresy, and 
 many a professor rued his subtlety at the stake. 
 
 The authorship of such doctrines was attributed to 
 Averroes, who of all Arabic philosophers became best 
 
 \ known and most famous in Europe. He did not enjoy 
 an equal fame among his countrymen, for he was but the 
 last of a long line of brilliant Writers, an eclectic on 
 whose head the glory of his predecessors was shed, 
 because it was he who transmitted their works to the 
 Occident. 
 
 " There I saw him, who wrote the great commentary ! " 
 says Dante, who meets him among the great thinkers and 
 poets in the Limbo. His true name and title were : 
 " Kadi Abul Valid Mohamed Ibn Achmed Abu Mohamed 
 Ibn Roschd"; Averroes is but a Latin corruption of the last 
 
io 4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 two words of his name. He was born in 1 126 of a noble 
 family in Cordova, and had been the favourite minister of 
 several Khalifs, yet he died in disgrace in the year 1 190, a 
 victim of the great clerical movement in the Mohammedan 
 world. Many of his writings were burnt in public places. 
 His main work is but " a Latin translation of a Hebraic 
 translation of a commentary on an Arabic translation of a 
 Syriac translation of a Greek text of Aristotle " (Renan). 
 " Averroism " was believed to be one of the worst and 
 most damnable heresies. 
 
 But riders had already begun to take the walls. In 
 the thirteenth century not only heresies of all kinds were 
 widely spread, but pure scepticism itself was no rare 
 phenomenon. The question whether Christ was an 
 historical person or not was discussed with amazing 
 coolness. Absolute unbelievers began to speak openly 
 their opinions about the " impostor " Jesus and his dis- 
 ciples. , 
 
 In the years, 1270 and 1276 the following opinions 
 among others were condemned at the University of 
 Paris " Nothing is known because of theology," " The 
 Christian religion is a hindrance to teaching," " Only 
 philosophers are wise," " The sayings of theologians are 
 founded on fables." 
 
 Thus philosophy was in opposition to the Church, and 
 was itself divided by perpetual discords. It brought 
 no solutions to the eternal questions which theology 
 answered so promptly and decisively ; to this day it stands 
 as helplessly and wistfully before the same clouded door 
 of the Unknown. The boldest ideas of thinkers are but 
 springboards built out a little way over the ocean — man 
 proceeds a step or two on them, looks down bewildered 
 on the infinite waste of waters before him ; a foreboding 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 105 
 
 of unknown immensities creeps over him, but at the next 
 step he falls and arduously swimming regains the shore. 
 The very words which he tries to explain and define, 
 "God," " Creator," "Fate," "First Cause," "Soul," 
 " Immortality," and a thousand others, are themselves 
 unanswerable, incomprehensible, enigmatic signs — re- 
 sembling tickets of entrance into a mystic garden, into 
 which, in spite of them, we are not admitted. Only our 
 presentiments and our longings lend them a meaning. 
 We cannot forbear trying ever anew to investigate those 
 alluring paths and longingly press our faces to the bars, 
 but in vain, the door remains closed. With all our 
 philosophy and our science we have not got one step 
 nearer to-day than we were before, the only difference is 
 that we have become more modest. Faith, which professes 
 to be so modest and humble, is in "reality the greatest of 
 all presumptions, the pretension of knowing what we 
 cannot and shall not know. But the huge certainty of 
 higher conceptions, which dawns upon men of a higher 
 stamp, has been left to us ; a knowledge which does not 
 need, which even scorns logic, and which we call intuition 
 or primary knowledge. The greatest of our time, like 
 Goethe or Emerson, are true believers, and smile just as 
 Scotus Erigena smiled at logical philosophy, which after 
 so terrible struggles has attained so little. One might 
 even say that they rather share the mystic views of 
 mediaeval Realists than those of modern Rationalism. 
 They will concede that Nominalism is reasonable, that it 
 was most necessary, that it led to critical science, which 
 within the limits allowed to mankind has had so brilliant 
 and incontestable results. But for all beyond them we must 
 needs rely on intuition, which gives no certainty beyond an 
 overpowering consciousness of a higher intellect surround- 
 
106 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 ing, all and about which we must cease to discuss. Con- 
 sciously or not, they all have much in common with a 
 mediaeval school which in those times already turned with 
 loathing from the debates of philosophy, the school of the 
 mystics, who saw the only source of all knowledge in 
 pure intuition, in the loving contemplation of God. In 
 ecstatic trances, in perfect self-forgetfulness, in a bold 
 imagery of allegoric figures, they expressed their meaning 
 as poets do. There were Christian, Jewish, and Moham- 
 medan mystics ; some even who kept aloof from all creeds 
 alike, some who chose to stick to certain symbols, and 
 others who abandoned themselves to the free flow of the 
 poetical current in their minds. Between the words of 
 the " Eagle of the Synagogue," Moses Maimonides, 
 M Intuition means so high a degree of imagination, that a 
 thing will appear to a man as vividly as if he saw it 
 present and perceptible to his senses . . . and in such 
 men we say dwells the spirit of the most-high God!" 
 — or the words of Abul Khain, " All that Ibn Sina knows 
 I see " ; the sentence of St. Bernard, " Books and trees 
 will teach thee what thou canst never hear from the 
 masters of the school"; that of Vauvenargues, "All 
 logical arguments have no other scope but to make the 
 mind understand things with the same certainty which in 
 the heart they have already " ; the words of Emerson, 
 " By being assimilated to the original soul by whom and 
 after whom all things subsist, the soul of man does then 
 easily flow into all things, and all things flow into it : 
 they mix ; and he is present and sympathetic with their 
 structure and law. This path is difficult, secret, and 
 beset with terror. The ancients called it 'ecstasy* or 
 absence " — between all these there is no real difference. 
 To this order Dante also belongs. He was influenced 
 
SCHOLASTICISM 107 
 
 in a high degree by the mystics of the Middle Ages, like 
 the monks Hugh and Richard of St. Victor. In the 
 Heaven of the Sun, where the lights of the school are 
 united in eternal bliss, he is instructed by John of Fidanza 
 — called St. Bonaventura — and Thomas of Aquino. But 
 in a much higher place still, in the seventh heaven, are 
 enthroned the purer spirits, who in life had already 
 devoted themselves to contemplation, and the most power- 
 ful of all, St. Bernard, guides him upwards before the 
 countenance and to the recognition of God. Thus Dante 
 has made the men who, by their writings or by word of 
 mouth, had been his masters on earth, his guides in his 
 transcendental pilgrimage, which, if we get a deeper in- 
 sight into it, is but a mystical reflection of his path 
 through real life. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 In the tenth canto of Paradise, Dante, arriving in the 
 fourth heaven, that of the Sun, is welcomed by sparkling 
 lights, which, " rising in life and triumph " and with sweet 
 melodies, wheel around him " three times in measure due." 
 These are the blessed spirits of the great " Masters of 
 the School," and one of these, Thomas of Aquino, makes 
 him acquainted with the name of each. There Dante sees 
 Gratian, the collector of the M Decretals " (" papal edicts"); 
 Peter Lombard, the author of the "Sentences," which 
 became the basis of all theological teaching in the Middle 
 Ages; Isjdore, Sfide, Richajcd_^L_§L„. -Victor, Albertus 
 Magnus, and many others ; at the circle's end one un- 
 known flame is still burning high, and St. Thomas pro- 
 ceeds : 
 
 He from whom now to me turns thy regard 
 
 Is of a soul the light so gravely wise, 
 It deemed the way to death too slow and hard, 
 
 There Sigier's light eternal meets thine eyes, 
 Who, lecturing in the street that's named of straw 
 
 Unpalatable truths did syllogise. 
 
 From the fact that Dante so specially mentions the Rue 
 
 ' du Fouarre in Paris, where Master Sigier of Brabant 
 
 used to lecture, it seems to follow that he himself had 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 109 
 
 heard him there. Balzac has founded his novel, " Les 
 Proscrits," on these verses. Probably in his exile, as a 
 man of maturer years, Dante visited the Universities of 
 Bologna and Paris, perhaps that of Padua and others too, 
 and it is likely that in some of them he was not only a 
 hearer but also a lecturer. Many of the great scholastic 
 writers used to lecture in the universities. The develop- 
 ment of these high schools gave a new stamp to the era ; 
 these institutions, which are still of such importance in 
 our intellectual life, also trace their origin to that memor- 
 able period. 
 
 Until the eleventh century no other schools had existed 
 but those of convents and chapter-houses. The oldest 
 university of all was that of Salerno, which at first had 
 only contained a school of medicine. Soon Bologna and 
 Paris surpassed it, the former becoming famous for its 
 school of law, the latter the centre of scholastic science. 
 Theology was taught above all, and the seven liberal arts, 
 grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, 
 music, and astronomy. The essential feature of the new 
 schools was not only the combination of somany different 
 branches of learning in one institute, but more especially 
 their secular character. For a long time still the majority 
 of the teachers might indeed belong to the clergy, but the 
 university itself was no longer a purely clerical institu- 
 tion. 
 
 The school of Salerno had received the " privilegium 
 approbandi," that is, of conferring degrees on the students, 
 from King Roger of Sicily ; and Frederick II. prescribed 
 a certain scheme of study for physicians, according to 
 which they had to study philosophy for three years and 
 then medicine for five. He founded the University of 
 Naples, which was the first to which professors with 
 
no DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 fixed salaries were appointed. But in general a school 
 was endowed with no other subventions than privi- 
 leges. The fees which the professors received from 
 their hearers were so considerable that those in Bologna 
 were in a position to purchase palaces and large estates. 
 The towns, which derived great profits from the uni- 
 versities — ten thousand hearers annually flocked to 
 Bologna — granted all kinds of privileges to them, and 
 favourite professors were offered high salaries. The 
 students or iheir " proctors " elected the rector, they 
 were immune from the ordinary judges of the town, 
 justice being dealt to them by their professors or by the 
 bishop of the cathedral ; they lived separated into 
 " nations," and when the citizens raised the rent of lodg- 
 ings to an enormous rate, special houses were founded 
 for them to live in, which were called " colleges." Dissen- 
 sions and riots among them, either between the different 
 nationalities or between priests and laymen, still more 
 often between students and citizens, were of frequent 
 occurrence. In Oxford it even happened in the year 
 1347 that the students on one side, the masters with the 
 bedells and servants on the other, stood in arms against 
 one another and fought a pitched battle. The masters 
 are said to have had the best of it. 
 
 The course of study necessary to obtain the degree of 
 Doctor was generally lengthy. The students often were 
 obliged to hear the so-called " trivium " (grammar, 
 rhetorics, and philosophy) for eight or even for twelve 
 years, and those who, after having gone through it, began 
 to study theology might already lecture on philosophy. 
 Besides the title of doctor, minor degrees, like that of a 
 " master of arts " or u ba chelor of let ters," were also con- 
 ferred. The lectures were given in the halls of convents 
 
OI 
 
 T. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES in 
 
 or in private houses, in the absence of benches the pupils 
 were seated on bundles of straw. These lectures were 
 scarcely ever extempore speeches, but always kept close 
 to some well-known author's work, on which the lecturer 
 commented, sentence for sentence, and word for word, 
 until in the course of time the author was supplanted by 
 the commentary, and the lecture became the commentary 
 on a commentary, and so forth — a heap of casuistic notes, 
 added to the notes which another man had uttered before, 
 he students took down the lectures with great zeal, for 
 books were costly, the owner of twenty volumes was 
 proud of his library, and of a bookseller we are told that 
 he had even full 114 works in his shop. 
 
 In every regard those schools and studies, though a 
 splendid advance upon those of former times, were kept 
 down and restrained by all the limits which a theological 
 system is able to erect. Not life and nature were the 
 basis of instruction and science, but books. Not the 
 thing was the object of inquiry but the word ; the method 
 never consisted in experiments, but in dialectics, and the 
 result was not established by any real proof or even by 
 arguments, but by authority ; and, finally, authority itself 
 was backed only by the master's name, not by his know- 
 ledge. Cases occurred in which newly created doctors 
 were made to swear that they would never teach anything 
 new but would deliver everything as they had learned it 
 themselves ; from the very beginning of their career they 
 had to renounce all intellectual independence and to re- 
 main for ever slaves to their master's authority. 
 
 The difference between modern and mediaeval science, 
 their study and methods, is nowhere expressed so clearly 
 as in the dialogue between Mephistopheles and the pupil 
 in Goethe's " Faust " ; the verses, 
 
ii2 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Am besten ist's wenn Ihr nur einen hort 
 Und auf des Meisters Worte schwort, 
 Im Ganzen : haltet Euch an Worte 
 Dann geht Ihr durch die sichre Pforte 
 Zum Tempel der Gewissheit ein, 
 
 contain the whole malady of mediaeval thinking, the over- 
 estimation of words. That words are after all but con- 
 ventional signs, like paper money, which never say all 
 and very often say too much, which never quite answer to 
 the thought which they are meant to express, or the thing 
 they are to designate, all that was never so much as 
 thought of in the Middle Ages. People even fancied an 
 essential connection between words and things, not only a 
 phonetic and psychological connection as it exists in 
 reality. In the " Vita Nuova," Dante says, " Love indeed 
 must be something of excellent nature, because the word 
 ' love ' is so sweet to hear, and this according to the written 
 sentence, Nomina sunt consequentia rerum (Names are 
 consequents of things)." Scholars wishing to explore the 
 origin of crystal found that the word KpvarTaXXog in Greek 
 meant ice. Now it never struck them, that because of 
 its resemblance to ice, the Greeks had called the crystal by 
 the same name, but quite the contrary ; from the resem- 
 blance of the words, people concluded that the nature of 
 the things must needs be the same, and the explanation 
 they gave was sure and short : " Crystal is no other but 
 ice turned into stone, for it is designated by the same 
 word." The following simile may serve to render this 
 general mistake of mediaeval science and thought still 
 clearer. Imagine that all things in the world were put 
 into a certain order, and their names written on little 
 scrolls, which were stuck into the things, as it were, on 
 pins. Now mediaeval men firmly believed that whenever 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 113 
 
 they had changed the names, that is, whenever they had 
 put the scroll on which the word was written into another 
 place, the thing had changed its place too. And million- 
 fold Nature, which never is to be exhausted by words — 
 all our speech being but a distant allusion to it — was thus 
 forced into a small number of forms. That is the reason why 
 the re turn of experimental science in the si xteen th century , 
 which was indeed a return to nature, brought with it such 
 a revol ution and blew all the philosophic card-castles of 
 the M^dle-AgesJuilaLpieces. 
 
 TJesultory as this survey is, we may picture to ourselves 
 the mediaeval masters and their hearers dictating and 
 copying for long years, brooding over commentaries, dis- 
 solving a minimum of scientific facts in an ocean of words, 
 revelling in words, and on sophisms and quotations 
 arranging glorious debates. And yet we are not to forget 
 that, under mountains of babble and scholastic jargon, a 
 few grand and bold currents of the human mind streamed 
 on in their hidden course. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PROVENCALS 
 
 In the tenth and eleventh centuries, before Italy took the 
 lead, France gave the "tone" in Europe. It was the 
 birthplace of chivalry.* Paris was the centre of mediaeval 
 philosophy ; the Romantic style in architecture, which we 
 call " Gothic," had its origin there, and it was the home ot 
 Romantic poetry. The French language was spread far 
 beyond the borders of France, and French novels of 
 chivalry were read and imitated all over Europe. Brunetto 
 Latini wrote his "Tresor" in French "porce que la par- 
 leure est plus delitable et plus comune a toutes gentes." 
 In England as well as in the Western parts of Germany, 
 in the South of Italy, and at the Court of the Latin Empire 
 in Constantinople, the French tongue — the language of 
 " oil " — was read and spoken, and the language of Southern 
 France — that of " oc " — was scarcely less diffused ; for 
 mediaeval France was divided into two separate countries, 
 of marked difference in language, culture and distinct 
 political existence. Only the North formed the kingdom 
 of France, the South Provencal States in part belonged 
 to the empire, as Burgundy and Aries, while the rest, 
 Poitou, Maine, Aquitaine, though vassal states of the 
 
 * The expressions of chivalrous life, of customs, arms, tournaments, 
 &c. , were almost all French^throughout Europe. 
 
THE PROVENCALS 115 
 
 French crown, were dominions of the kings of England. 
 Here, in Southern France, for the first time since the fall 
 of antiquity, the revival of civilisation took place. Here, 
 earlier than anywhere else, was seen a country happy in 
 peaceful development ; rich towns and a powerful feudal 
 nobility for a short time flourished side by side. It was 
 there that chivalry matured its finest flower, finding its 
 ideals not only in adventurous brawls and wild warfare, 
 but in fine manners and in art. Much of this was owing 
 to the influence of the civilised Moorish kings of Spain, 
 with which the Provencals lived in peaceful as well as in 
 warlike intercourse.* It was a fruitful, beautiful land, 
 with wealthy little town-republics situated along rivers 
 winding through rich cornfields and vineyards, and small 
 states of feudal princes, the lords of many a stately castle, 
 where their princely courts were the seats of gentle hospi- 
 tality, of chivalrous splendour, of poetry and joy. It was 
 there that women, who had been abased by the monkish 
 views of life, first recovered a position in society, and 
 with them instantly a more graceful tone began to reign in 
 social intercourse, in the pleasures of love and in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 This important change, which soon spread all over 
 chivalrous Europe, and led to that cult of women which in 
 
 * It cannot be said often enough that civilisation in the Saracen \. 
 countries was a much higher one in those times ; that architecture, 
 science, chivalry and minstrelsy had reached a high standard in those jf 
 countries, when in Christian Europe they were still rude and unde- ' 
 veloped. If the state of to-day has become the reverse, if Mussulmans 
 have degenerated and Europeans become the pioneers of progress and 
 culture, the reason of this is to be found in the fact that in the interior 
 of both mediaeval worlds the same struggle was fought, but with a very 
 different result. I n the Orient r philoso phy and scjenffi Wft ™ *** pr - 
 minated hy„the Mohammedan clergy, in Europe revolutionary criticism 
 was victor ious in spite of all the resistance of the Chu rch. 
 
1 / 
 
 u6 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the end became a characteristic and indispensable feature 
 of all chivalry, soon found its expression in the costumes 
 too. Once more mankind became conscious of the per- 
 fections with which creation has endowed it ; once more, 
 since the fall of the antique ideal, men began to feel pride 
 and joy in the beauty of their bodies ; their costume, which 
 in the previous centuries had resembled sacks, and had 
 but served to hide the forms of the human body as much 
 as possible, again began to be modelled on them ; women's 
 robes were made with a waist, they fell in beautiful folds 
 and ended in long trains. The hair was allowed to fall in 
 natural curls, its favourite ornament being a wreath of 
 natural or artificial flowers, or the " cappello," that is, a 
 small ribbon of gold or silk. Great ladies wore pearls. 
 
 The clergy, of course, soon turned against this " immoral 
 dress," and forbade it in several councils. Brother Salim- 
 bene writes : "Cardinal Latinus, the Pope's legate in Tus- 
 cany, put all women into a state of great distress by- 
 forbidding them to wear trains. Otherwise they should 
 have no absolution ; and a woman told me that she pre- 
 ferred the train to all other garments she wore upon her- 
 self. Besides, the Cardinal gave order that all women, 
 maidens, ladies, married women as well as widows and 
 matrons, should wear veils over their faces, and that was 
 horribly distasteful to them. But against that plague they 
 found means which they in no wise could find for trains, 
 for they wore veils of silk and byssus, interwoven with 
 golden threads, in which they looked ten times better, and 
 still more effectually seduced the eyes of those who saw 
 them." Against this utterance of the reactionary monk 
 we may well quote the words of a Provencal knight, 
 Guillem de Montagnagout, who said : " If a woman does 
 nothing worse, nor show pride or insolence, she will not 
 
THE PROVENCALS 117 
 
 violate the love of God by her finery. Nobody who 
 behaves in a godly way will sway from the Lord's path by 
 means of a fair dress, just as nobody will ever gain His 
 grace by a black robe and a white hood." The point in 
 the last sentence is not to be misunderstood. Indeed, the 
 hierarchy in Provence had lost all influence, nowhere did 
 its doctrines encounter so much scepticism and scorn. 
 Two tendencies had become the ruling ones in the country, 
 one leading away from asceticism to epicurean enjoyment 
 and gladsome pleasure; this was the tendency of the 
 cheerful, of the bold, and of the frivolous ; the other, that 
 of the religious, turned with loathing from the corruption 
 of the clergy, and aspired to a much severer asceticism 
 than that demanded by the Catholic Church, to an asce- 
 ticism which required perfect purity as well as absolute 
 poverty, and even led to a total abnegation of life and to 
 suicide by starvation — the severe doctrines of the Albi- 
 gensians and Waldensians. Thus the clergy had lost all 
 importance ; the nation had thrown off all respect for 
 FLome. Priests were despised and hated ; the songs of the 
 troubadours are full of abuse of the clergy. " I had rather 
 be a Jew than a clergyman," says Guillem de Puy-Laurent ; 
 and " viler than a priest " had become a proverbial expres- 
 sion. It came to pass that clergymen were obliged to 
 disguise their dress and hide their tonsure to avoid being 
 ill-treated. 
 
 But what is singularly interesting to us is the literature 
 of the country. The Provencal tongue was the oldest of 
 all Romance tongues and its poetry the " oldest romantic 
 poetry " (Diez). It was the first poetry of a civilised 
 European nation since the fall of the antique, and it de- 
 veloped unbiased by any antique influence; the themes 
 which the poets liked to treat, their forms and the way 
 
n8 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 in which they looked on life, were quite different and new. 
 A Their homage to women, their notion of love, the chi- 
 
 \ valrous ideal were all perfectly new features. The second 
 
 \ civilisation of Europe had begun. 
 
 ) In the early Middle Ages the only representative of 
 ^ poetry had been the jongleur or ballad-monger, who went 
 strolling through the villages, and often combined his pro- 
 fession with that of a rope-dancer, who passed his hat to 
 collect small coins after his performance, and was not 
 essentially different from his brethren of to-day. In his 
 place now appeared the troubadour, the cultured poet, con- 
 scious of his position and proud ot nis art. There were 
 troubadours of every class and origin — some born among 
 the lowest orders, who attained high positions, like Bernart 
 de Ventadour ; troubadours who by birth were citizens, like 
 Peire of Auvergne and Aimeric of Peguilhan ; others who 
 were knights, for instance, Bertrand de Born, Rambaut de 
 Vaqueiras, and many more ; poets of princely rank, the 
 Count of Orange, Prince Rudel of Blaya, the kings Richard 
 of England and Alfonso II. of Aragon. They all were 
 proud of belonging to one class of poets ; now it is a sign of 
 high mental development if talent has the power of level- 
 ling such enormous differences of rank and birth. Those 
 who were not princes themselves generally belonged to a 
 prince's suite. It was often their official duty to praise the 
 lady of their lord in their songs. Often, too, they tra- 
 velled alone and independent from one castle to another, 
 welcomed and hospitably received everywhere, at the 
 Courts of Auvergne, Beziers, Toulouse, Orange, Mont- 
 ferrat, and all the other little capitals of princes and castles 
 of noblemen. Some of them kept jongleurs to accompany 
 them on their way and recite their songs, others were both 
 poet and singer. Feasts and tournaments were the centres 
 
THE PROVENCALS 119 
 
 of this chivalrous and graceful life. We may read of a 
 famous feast celebrated in Treviso in the year 12 14, when 
 a wooden fortress, covered with carpets, was defended by 
 two hundred ladies against the attack of a great number 
 of knights, fruits, flowers, sweets and bottles of perfume 
 being the projectiles.* 
 
 The songs of the troubadours were always composed 
 for music ; their forms were complicated and various, known 
 as the " canzon," the " tenzon," the " sirventes," and 
 many others ; the versification of the stanzas had to be as 
 artful as possible, and the poets vied in what were called 
 " difficult rhymes." This was quite suited to the Provencal 
 language, and indeed a consequence of there being more 
 rhymes possible in it than in any other. On the whole, 
 this poetry wearies by endless repetitions of the same 
 thoughts, images and sentiments ; the poetry of the 
 German Minnesingers seems very much superior to that 
 of the Provencal knights. Every song of Walther von der 
 Vogelweide contains a new thought, paints a new situation 
 and expresses new shades of feeling. And everywhere 
 in his songs we are attracted by a depth of feeling, and a 
 most personal way of expressing it, which is wanting in, 
 the works of most of the Provencal poets. All these poets 
 sang of love, but their love generally was a formal and 
 official homage to a lady whom they were in duty bound 
 to praise, and their poems therefore were rather cool and 
 conventional. Of course there were men of living blood 
 and real passion among them, and love-affairs, the heroes 
 of which were very much in earnest, tragedies of separa- 
 tion, jealousy and death were not uncommon. One of the 
 most ingenious and tender was Bernard de Ventadour, 
 
 * The existence of the famous "courts of love" has never been 
 historically proved. 
 
120 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 who was born in the second half of the twelfth century, 
 the son of a poor serf, in the castle of Eblis II., Viscount 
 of Ventadour. He was forced to leave the castle in con- 
 sequence of his having been too much in earnest in 
 praising his lord's wife, the Lady Agnes de Montlucon, 
 and thereby having won her love. Later on he stayed at 
 the Court of the Count of Toulouse, and at last died a 
 monk in the convent of Dalon, in the Limousin. 
 
 Very different from all these was Bertrand de Born, 
 the most fiery singer of them all, whose songs, as Diez 
 said, betray the half-savage, warlike and bloodthirsty baron 
 of the twelfth century. 
 
 There is a particular charm and lustre shed on the 
 person of Bertrand de Born. Queens loved him and 
 modern poets have sung his praise. A wild energy per- 
 vades all his poetry. He resembles Lord Byron in the fact 
 of his powerful temper being the source of his originality. 
 
 It is he of whom Heine sang, that " he could conquer 
 every heart, that his sweet melodies allured the lioness of 
 the Plantagenets, then her daughter, then her sons, and 
 finally King Henry himself, whose anger melted into tears 
 when he heard the lovely accents of Bertrand de Born, 
 the troubadour ! " 
 
 It is he of whom Uhland said : 
 
 *■ For his love's sake royal children 
 Did their father's anger bear." 
 
 Therefore Dante sees him in the pits of hell, holding his 
 own severed head like a lanthorn, to light his way through 
 the dark den. In his book " Of Eloquence in the Ver- 
 nacular Language " Dante calls him the singer of arms, and 
 praises him as the third after Guiraut de Borneil and Arnaut 
 Daniel. It is to the latter that he attributes the highest place 
 
V* OF THi 
 
 UNIV 
 THE PRO\teia£AI*S^ 121 
 
 in Provencal poetry. He calls him the man who left none 
 unconquered in love-song and romance, and those who do 
 not praise him he calls fools. Here we may once more 
 see how separated from critical discernment the productive 
 talent may be. To us Arnaut seems to be a most insipid 
 author, whose songs are purposely obscure and compli- 
 cated, and as full of artificiality as devoid of melody. He 
 is deficient in all in which Dante himself excels. It 
 has been alleged that he wrote a romance, "Lancelot," 
 which is said to have been the book by which Paolo and 
 Francesca were seduced. If this be true, it might explain 
 the great honour in which he was held by his contem- 
 poraries. Dante in his book calls him " the first among 
 the singers of love," and Petrarca likewise celebrates him 
 as the " great master of love." 
 
 There are still many more poets deserving to be quoted 
 here ; the deepest and boldest of all perhaps was Peire 
 Cardinal, who addressed a powerful " poem of blame " to 
 the Creator himself ; then the gay and adventurous Count 
 of Poitiers, Richard Lionheart, whose song in captivity is 
 well known; but Dante seems to have been influenced 
 rather by the average Provencal poetry than by the more 
 original and striking specimens. There are places in his 
 works which incline one to believe that they are simply 
 imitations of Provencal verses. He probably wrote 
 Provencal poems himself; some Provencal verses of his 
 are slill extant.* For the language of Oc was not confined 
 to the South of France, but spread all over the Courts of 
 Northern Spain and Italy. At Montferrat, Ferrara, 
 Florence, Malta and in Sicily, Provencal poets composed 
 v* 
 
 * In the last circle of Purgatory, where the sin of carnal lust is 
 repented, Dante, among many other poets, meets Arnaut, who answers 
 him in Provencal verses. 
 
122 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 their lays, and many troubadours were born Italians, who 
 yet sung and wrote in Provencal only ; Zorgi of Venice, 
 the Genoese Bonifacio Calvo, Frederick II.'s son Manfred, 
 and, above all, Sordello of Mantua, on whose head Dante's 
 famous verses have shed a lustre which has remained as 
 brilliant as unexplained, and which inspired the greatest 
 of modern English poets in the most mysterious of his 
 works. 
 
 Another troubadour who lived in Italy at the Court 
 of the Marquis Boniface of Montferrat was Rambaut of 
 Vacqueiras, of whom some very characteristic letters have 
 been preserved. One of them runs thus : 
 
 " Glorious Marquis, I will not relate all the beautiful 
 deeds we performed together from the very begin- 
 ning, for I fear people would misrepresent it. The first 
 endeavour of a youth must be to excel, if he would gain 
 fame and honour, as you have done, my lord, who 
 excelled from the very beginning, so that you and I were 
 praised, you as a lord and I as your knight. Now, 
 oh my lord, because it is hard to lose or to forget a 
 friend whom one should keep in honour, I will refresh 
 our love and recall to your mind how we carried off the 
 lady Seldina of Mar from the Marquis of Malaspina out 
 of the very midst of his entrenchments and how you 
 gave her to Posson of Anguilar, who lay dying of- love 
 for her. 
 
 11 Remember, my lord, how at Montalto the minstrel 
 Aimonet brought news to you of Jacobina, whom they 
 wanted to carry to Sardinia by force to marry against her 
 will; how you heard that with sighing, and how she 
 kissed you in parting and implored you so pitifully to 
 protect her from her rapacious uncle. You instantly 
 ordered five of your best knaves to mount, and after 
 
THE PROVENCALS 123 
 
 supper at the fall of night we set out and rode away, you, 
 Guiet, Hugonet d'Alfar, and Bertaldon, who was our 
 guide, and I myself, for I will not pass myself in silence. 
 I took her in the port in the very moment they tried to 
 embark her; a great clamour arose on the shore and 
 from the sea, behind us they rushed afoot and on 
 horseback, we rode on and were sure of escaping, 
 when suddenly the Pisans fell on us. On seeing so many 
 horsemen, so many beautiful harnesses, so many glitter- 
 ing helmets and floating banners barring our way, there 
 was no need, to ask whether we were afraid. You selected 
 a hiding-place between Bene (Albenga) and Final. We 
 could hear the bugles and clarions sounding from many 
 sides and the cries of war. Full two days we staid with- 
 out food or drink, finally on the third we went on, and in 
 the pass of Belestar were met by twelve robbers going 
 out on plunder. Then we did not know what to do, for 
 we could not use our horses. I, however, rushed in 
 among them on foot. It is true I was wounded by a 
 lance piercing my collaret, but I wounded three or four 
 of them, so that they were forced to retire. Bertaldon 
 and Hugonet seeing that I was wounded came to my 
 rescue, and when we were three of us we swept the pass 
 clear of robbers, so that you could ride through it in 
 security. What a gay supper we had after this, though 
 we had but a loaf of bread, and could not drink, not even 
 wash ! In the evening we arrived at Nice in Puiclair's 
 castle ; he received us most courteously, oh, he would 
 have made his fair daughter your bed-fellow if you had 
 accepted it. On the next morning you, as a lord and 
 baron, rewarded your host in a regal manner ; you gave 
 Aigleta to Guido of Montelimar and had Jacobina wedded 
 to Anselmet, she had the county of Ventimiglia restored 
 
124 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 to her, which by her brother's death was hers by right in 
 spite of her uncle's claims. 
 
 " To recall all the glorious deeds I saw you perform 
 would mean to tire us both, myself with relating and you 
 with listening. More than a hundred girls I saw you 
 marry to counts, marquises, and powerful barons, and 
 never did the fire of youth seduce you to sin with one of 
 them, though they were quite bereft and unprotected. A 
 hundred knights I saw equipped by you and a hundred 
 others expelled and banished, you always exalted the 
 good and humbled the bad, no flatterer could ever make 
 you proud ; I saw you console many widows, assist so 
 many unhappy persons, that you certainly must have 
 earned the glories of Paradise if it is to be won by 
 largess, for you always did act generously and never 
 refused any one who was worthy of your generosity. 
 Alexander bequeathed you his great heart, Roland and 
 the twelve Peers their bravery, the noble Berart his 
 graceful behaviour. In your courts everything graceful 
 is to be found : liberality and courtesy to women, beau- 
 tiful dresses and fine armour, trumpets, games, violins, 
 and songs ; you kept no porters when you sat down to eat. 
 1 too, my lord, may boast of having lived at your court, 
 and having well known how to behave, to give and to 
 suffer, to serve and to be silent ; never did I cause dis- 
 pleasure to anybody. Nobody can reproach me with ever 
 having swerved from your side in war nor fearing death 
 where your honour was at stake, nor did I ever hinder 
 you in any noble deed. To me, therefore, who know so 
 much about your affairs, you should be doubly kind ; 
 that would be but just, for in me you find a witness, a 
 knight and a court poet, my most glorious marquis. " 
 
 This knightly begging-letter was written about the year 
 
THE PROVENCALS 125 
 
 1200 — two generations before Dante was born. It was 
 the time of the fourth Crusade, the time of chivalrous 
 adventures, of chivalrous civilisation, which was so neatly 
 defined by Lamprecht in the words : " It was a culture""^ 
 not founded on knowing things, but on the art of doing / 
 things." By Dante's time all this had passed away. The 
 joyful spirit which breathed in the institution of chivalry, I 
 and which in its inmost nature made it hostile to the / 
 Church, was the cause of its ruin. Europe had already 
 threatened to emancipate itself from the ChurcH. The 
 human- intellect as well" as the spirit of life everywhere 
 had risen against her yoke. But still her power was 
 formidable. Innocent III. preached a crusade against the J 
 Provencals, and the incipient fire was extinguished with / 
 merciless atrocity. In the Albigensian wars the civilisa- 
 tion of Provence was destroyed. In a similar though ""J 
 less bloody way chivalry in Germany succumbed to the / 
 monkish movement. With it fell minstrelsy and its 
 literature ; though for a long time Provencal poems con- 
 tinued to be written and composed, its spirit was broken ; 
 German " Minnesang " decayed to the bloodless " Meister- 
 sang" of citizens. Only in Italy the development was 
 difleEenk. Here the civilisation of^Utiet ^iuuB lo a still 
 more brilliant height than chivalrous culture had ever 
 attained.^ Dante~himself was born in the h appy moment 
 of the change : the knightly nobility had become a knightly 
 class of patrician citizens, its castles were now fortified 
 and~Turreted palaces which looked over the streets of 
 cities no less dark and threateningly than they had done 
 from the rocks, but to the art of doing had been added 
 that of knowing, to graceful deportment and minstrelsy 
 an intense love of freedom and public spirit. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ITALIAN POETRY 
 
 Italian literature was later than any other in developing^ 
 In Italy the Latin language had been the common ver- 
 nacular tongue, and for a long time was believed to be the 
 only idiom fit for the use of cultured people. It had been 
 long dead ere men became aware of the fact. It had long 
 been corrupted or altered by daily use and the influence of 
 foreign races ; in very early Latin documents we encounter 
 here and there words, probably due to a slip of the clerk's 
 pen, that bear all the characteristic signs of the Romance 
 languages, the wearing-down of terminations, declension 
 by means of prepositions, conjugation by means of aux- 
 iliary verbs, constructions of which faint traces only are 
 found in Latin ; though it is certain that - long before the 
 thirteenth century, to which the oldest specimens of Italian 
 literature may be assigned, Italian dialects were spoken by 
 the people. Dante, therefore, designates the Italian lan- 
 guage always as the "vulgar" or vernacular language, that 
 of the common people ; while inflected Latin still seemed 
 to him the real mother-tongue of the land, the far more 
 dignified idiom of scholars and cultivated persons. 
 
 In Italy, too, a mediaeval literature in Latin had not been 
 wanting ; there were poetical tales and songs, countless 
 works of a moral and allegoric character, legends and mys- 
 
ITALIAN POETRY 127 
 
 teries, and a great number of chronicles developing from 
 the rudest notes in the ninth century to the naive master- 
 piece of Brother Salimbene of Parma. Besides, there 
 I was a rich lyrical poetry, religious hymns, as well as the 
 merry songs of the V Goliards," the spirit of which was 
 iust the contrary, and hostile to the Church. Remnants of 
 both still exist in hymns as well as in students' and drink- 
 ing songs. 
 
 When, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the desire , 
 
 Ifor a poetry in a living tongue made itself felt in Italy, 
 French and Provencal were the languages which poets 
 thought fit for their compositions, and it took a long time 
 before the living treasury of their own melodious tongue 
 was discovered by the M cultivated " classes. Its earliest 
 beginnings are rustic poems in provincial dialects, the 
 oldest of them probably much older than any which have 
 come down to our own time. 
 
 Then poets at the Court of Sicily began to imitate the 
 chivalrous poetry of the Provencal troubadours ; the 
 results were artificial and bloodless love-songs, which 
 decayed with the fall of the Hohenstaufens and of chivalry 
 before they had blossomed into any living flower. Yet, 
 arising from the deep poetic impulse of the people, popular 
 poems were composed in the South and in Central Italy, 
 utterances of real life which were not inspired by foreign 
 models. 
 
 Chivalrous poetry continued to be written in Central 
 Italy for some time even after the fall of the Hohenstaufens. 
 Then the stronger life of the people and of the citizens 
 superseded it and found its utterance in songs of peasant 
 life, rude, sensual, and humorous, by unknown authors, 
 until Cecco Angiolieri of Siena strikes our notice. We 
 know but little about him, hardly twenty of his poems are 
 
 ' 
 
i 2 8 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 extant, but his profile is sharply outlined against the back- 
 ground of the period. He was as dissipated as he was 
 gifted and original, a bitter enemy of Dante, against whom 
 he wrote a number of insulting poems. Woman, wine 
 and dice were his themes, and he composed wilder and 
 truer love-songs on his sweetheart, a shoemaker's daughter, 
 than any of the Italian knights ever could have written. 
 Compare verses like the following : 
 
 The man who feels not, more or less, somewhat 
 Of love in all the years his life goes round 
 Should be denied a grave in holy ground, 
 Except with usurers who will bate no groat* 
 
 He hated his parents, and composed poems of exulta- 
 tion on his father's death. A most remarkable sonnet is 
 the following : 
 
 If I were fire, I'd burn the world away; 
 If I were wind, I'd turn my storms thereon ; 
 If I were water, I'd soon let it drown ; 
 If I were God, I'd sink it from the day ; 
 If I were Pope, I'd never feel quite gay 
 Until there was no peace beneath the sun ; 
 If I were Emperor, what would I have done ? 
 I'd lop men's heads all round in my own way. 
 If I were Death, I'd look my father up ; 
 If I were Life, I'd run away from him, 
 And treat my mother to like calls and runs. 
 If I were Cecco (and that's all my hope), 
 I'd pick the nicest girls to suit my whim, 
 And other folks should get the ugly ones.* 
 
 A certain despair of a dissolute soul betrays itself in 
 the songs. He most certainly carried within him the deep 
 sorrow which has made so many humorists the truest 
 
 * Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
ITALIAN POETRY 129 
 
 poets of pain. Humour, as Heine said, " has a laughing 
 tear in its coat of arms." Who, in reading the sorrowful 
 verses of that grimly gay poet, 
 
 My heart is heavy with a hundred things 
 That I would die a hundred times a day, 
 
 is not vividly reminded of the famous verses of Lord 
 Byron : 
 
 And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
 'Tis that I may not weep . . . 
 
 Arrived at this juncture the current of Italian poetry 
 divided, and while one branch was pursuing its rude and 
 popular course, the other strove upwards to supernatural 
 regions. 
 
 Chivalrous poetry became ever less sensual and more 
 elevated ; religious and philosophic ideas were interwoven 
 with it, and even scholasticism did not remain without 
 influence on it. But the essential feature was the position 
 of woman and the new conception which poets had of 
 love. To the ancient world love had meant nothing but 
 the physical relations between the two sexes. Woman 
 was simply woman, being considered neither high nor 
 ethereal nor yet distinctly base. Her social inferiority 
 was but natural in times where physical strength and 
 ability for self-defence were such essential conditions of 
 power. With the beginning of the Middle Ages two 
 opinions, at war with each other, began to prevail. In 
 the Germanic mind a certain reverential regard for women 
 was deeply rooted which had been quite foreign to 
 antiquity. The social position of women often was far 
 from corresponding to this reverence, but from the very 
 oldest specimens of Germanic poetry a different idea of 
 
 1 
 
130 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the female and a warmer feeling about love and conjugal 
 life is evident. On the other side, the Christian doctrine 
 of the early Middle Ages, entirely imbued with monkish 
 ideas, regarded woman as something bad and unclean, 
 and condemned all sensual love in the same way. At the 
 bottom of this movement a deep and highly interesting 
 phenomenon in the psychology of nations might be traced, 
 for it looks as if the unchecked profligacy of the oriental- 
 ised ancient world had led to surfeit and disgust, and, as 
 ever, man, as the stronger and more brutal party, made 
 woman, as the weaker one, suffer under the abasement 
 which he perhaps felt most keenly. All this, combined 
 with the general brutality of the period, explains how, in 
 the early centuries of the Middle Ages, a love-poetry which 
 would deserve the name was still more impossible than 
 in ancient times. Moreover — and this is a further proof 
 of the rudeness and utter want of civilisation of the 
 period — we are unable to discover the existence of one 
 noble and imposing woman in its history. 
 
 All this was changed with the era of chivalry. Then 
 was introduced the cult of women, which, however 
 feigned and superficial it may be, has become a leading 
 feature of modern civilisation. Love in the modern sense, 
 as it still dominates our life or at least our literature, was 
 discovered or invented. To this day " chivalrous" is the 
 word to designate a perfect behaviour towards women. 
 
 In Provencal, German, and all knightly poetry woman 
 was deified and raised to the stars, a flattery which soon 
 became as exaggerated and conventional as the abuse of 
 the monkish times had been. We may find the same 
 worship to this day in the love-poems of all nations, the 
 style of which is still derived from and indebted to the 
 romantic literature of the Middle Ages. 
 
ITALIAN POETRY 131 
 
 But what I should like to call the spiritual school of 
 Italian poetry goes much farther. Its sentiment as well 
 as its expression was tinted with a mystic and religious 
 colour. The beloved woman was indeed deified ; she 
 became the symbol of all that is high and beautiful, and 
 the poet did not mean that as a mere compliment, as did 
 the Provencal knight. His ecstatic mind saw her really 
 so. The love which he felt for the woman appeared to 
 him like an image of divine love, the love that pervades 
 the universe ; it became spiritualised and p latonic in that 
 high sen se in whicn Plato really mpant jg This poetry 
 -T5~soit, sweet and mystical, full of enthusiasm and secrecy, 
 as remote from the sensual love-poetry of Ariosto or 
 Swinburne as from the sentimental lays of the Provencal, 
 which, were they expressions of genuine feelings or 
 conventional, did but exaggerate, but never symbolise. 
 
 The " dolce stil nuovo," the " sweet new style," as 
 Dante calls this poetry, was created by Guido Guinicelli 
 of the noble family of the Principi in Bologna, but it 
 found its true development in Tuscany. Dante himself 
 calls Guinicelli "his sweet master." He repeatedly 
 quotes him in his works, and some of Dante's finest verses 
 are imitations of Guido's'. About his life we know little 
 more than that he was banished from Bologna in the year 
 1274 and died in 1276. 
 
 His celebrated canzone on the origin of love — a favourite 
 subject of the time — might be called a manifesto of the 
 new school : 
 
 Within the gentle heart love shelters him 
 As birds within the green shade of a grove ; 
 
 Before the gentle heart, in nature's scheme 
 Love was not, nor the gentle heart, ere Love . . . 
 
 The fire of Love comes to the gentle heart 
 
132 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Like as its virtue to a precious stone . . . 
 As light sprang with the sun immediately . . . 
 
 Thus woman, like a star, enamoureth 
 The pure and gentle heart. 
 
 Even as the spirit of God is poured from heaven to 
 move us, so the noble face of a woman may move us. 
 
 11 How darest thou," God shall ask my soul when it 
 stands before His iudgment-seat, " to make Me of vain 
 love similitude ? " 
 
 Then may I plead, " As though from Thee he came, 
 
 Love wore an angel's face : 
 Lord, if I loved her, count it not my shame ! " * 
 
 This is the love which makes the man who feels it 
 virtuous and pure, an ecstatic love, from the source of 
 
 l which sprang a wonderful poetry, and which finally loses 
 itself in sensitive morbidness. 
 
 L-^- To the Florentine poets of this new school belonged 
 Lapo Gianni and Dino Frescobaldi, the melancholy Gianni 
 Alfani, and Guido Orlandi. But the greatest of them are 
 Guido Cavalcanti, Cino de' Sinibuldi da Pistoja, and, in 
 his youthful poems, Dante himself. They were all 
 acquainted and exchanged sonnets with one another, 
 many of which are still extant. These sonnets, which 
 sometimes run on a philosophic question, and again on a 
 love affair, and often contain controversies now of a 
 sportive and sometimes of a very embittered character, 
 throw much light on the social life of these young poets, 
 who emphatically called their style the " modern " style. 
 Guido Orlandi in particular, who was the least gifted of 
 all, often sharply rebuked the others in his sonnets. 
 Whether Dante ever answered him we know not. But 
 
 * Translated by D. G. Rossetti. 
 
ITALIAN POETRY 133 
 
 among Guido Cavalcanti's sonnets there is one written 
 against him, full of the proud contempt which that 
 proudest nobleman of Florence knew well how to ex- 
 press : 
 
 Di vil matera mi conven far verso 
 (On a vile theme I needs must write a verse). 
 
 Guido Cavalcanti is the only one whose portrait is 
 somewhat familiar to us. All the rest are but shadows. 
 He played an important part in the town's history, and 
 novelists and historians have tried to paint his personality 
 in sharp and expressive terms. In the kind and loving 
 words which Dante devoted to this dearest friend of his 
 youth, and in his own poems, his character appears as 
 through a mist. Though sometimes spoiled by dry 
 scholastic subtleties, of which, owing to a contemporary 
 freak of bad taste, even Dante was not quite free, his 
 poems contain passionate and beautiful passages, which 
 certainly inspired some of the finest verses in the " Vita 
 Nuova '' : 
 
 Who is she, coming, whom all gaze upon, 
 Who makes the air all tremulous with light, 
 
 And at whose side is Love himself, that none 
 Dare speak but each man's sighs are infinite ! * 
 
 He was a politician and a troubadour, who lived and 
 sang his love affairs in Florence and Toulouse ; a proud 
 and gifted man, like many others. Softer, sweeter and 
 more sensuous are the sonnets of Cino da Pistoja, who 
 of them all has left us the greatest number of poems, 
 almost three hundred : 
 
 I was upon the high and blessed mount, 
 
 And kissed, long worshipping, the stones and grass, 
 
 * Translated by D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 «k 
 
134 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 There on the hard stones prostrate, where, alas ! 
 
 That pure one laid her forehead in the ground. 
 
 Then were the springs of gladness sealed and bound, 
 
 The day that unto Death's most bitter pass 
 
 My sick heart's lady turned her feet, who was 
 
 Already in her gracious life renown'd. 
 
 So in the place I spake to Love, and cried : 
 
 " O sweet my God, I am one whom Death may claim 
 
 Hence to be his ; for lo ! my heart lies here." 
 
 Anon, because my Master lent no ear, 
 
 Departing still I called Selvaggia's name. 
 
 So with my moan I left the mountain-side.* 
 
 y That the pains of lost or unsuccessful love play a great 
 / part in the poems of these sensitive bards cannot be sur- 
 ^ -' N prising. They often call themselves the visible images of 
 death, they bewail the day on which they were born, and 
 complain that the world's joys are not for them, that only 
 sorrow and melancholy fell to their lot. Longing for 
 death is the motive of countless of these poems, yet some- 
 times all this wailing changes into natural anger at its 
 natural cause, as in the following poem of Cino : 
 
 My curse be on the day when first I saw 
 The brightness in those treacherous eyes of thine, 
 
 The hour when from my heart thou cam'st to draw 
 My soul away, that both might fail and pine : 
 My curse be on the skill that smooth'd each line 
 
 Of my vain songs, — the music and just law 
 Of art, by which it was my dear design 
 
 That the whole world should yield thee love and awe, 
 
 Yea, let me curse mine own obduracy, 
 
 Which firmly holds what doth itself confound — 
 To wit, thy fair perverted face of scorn : 
 For whose sake Love is oftentimes forsworn 
 
 So that men mock at him ; but most at me 
 
 Who would hold Fortune's wheel and turn it round.* 
 
 * Translated by D. G, Rossetti. 
 
ITALIAN POETRY 135 
 
 But notes of such unfeigned and natural feeling are 
 rare. The ecstasy of love is the characteristic feature of s/ 
 the new school of poetry. The form of the beloved one 
 becomes ever more mysterious, she is an angelic creature 
 which has just descended from heaven. She astonishes , 
 all the world. Love herself has crowned her with all per- 
 fections ; whosoever sees her becomes humble, to whom- 
 soever she speaks he becomes pure of sin. This poetry 
 abounds in personifications of all kinds : of the soul, the 
 heart, of sighs, of love. A thousand little spirits appear 
 in the poems. A spirit of love flies from the woman's 
 lips, the spirit of the sigh rises to heaven, the spirits of 
 sight are expelled from their place. . . . Carefully ex- 
 amined they often betray a sharp observation of psychic 
 phenomena in the poet's own soul, which are but dis- 
 guised by these truly mediaeval figures. All these poems 
 are preludes to the " Vita Nuova," and help to explain that 
 wonderful little book, in which all the aforesaid elements 
 reappear, still more refined and irradiated by the great and 
 ingenuous soul of Alighieri with a solemn and individual 
 light. 
 
 This poetry was an offspring of chivalrous " Minne- 
 song," developed by the influence of scholasticism and the 
 religious movement. On Dante himself these two ele- 
 ments, the science of the time and its religious tendencies, 
 had such a powerful influence that they soon led him out 
 of this school of Florentine poets to that solitary summit 
 which he alone reached, and to the work in which flaming 
 love, the supreme religious trance, and severest, coldest 
 philosophy are united in the most faultless and yet most 
 personal work of art which has ever been created by 
 man. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE FRANCISCANS 
 
 In a time when religion and religious feelings occupied 
 so large a part of men's lives and souls they could not 
 fail to find expression in poetry. Mention has been made 
 of the religious poetry in Latin; from the thirteenth 
 century religious poetry was composed in the vernacular 
 tongue also : songs of praise, ecclesiastical stories, moral 
 plays and didactic poems and, above all, descriptions of 
 Paradise and Hell — effectual means of impressing and 
 fortifying devout minds. 
 
 In the thirteenth century, the time of revolution and 
 general fermentation, religious life also underwent a 
 change. Ever since the degeneration of Christendom 
 from a pure message of love to a theological system, 
 since the apostolate had frozen to an hierarchy, com- 
 plaints about the worldliness of the Church and demands 
 for reform and a return to the original state had never 
 ceased among the people. All the severe monastic orders, 
 the foundations of Cluny, of Citeaux, of the Chartreuse, 
 had been but attempts to effect this. But the convents 
 had decayed in their turn, and as to the life of the secular 
 clergy, Archbishop Christian of Mainz boasted of having 
 broken the heads of thirty men in one battle with his 
 mace. Unceasing complaints were heard from all countries 
 
THE FRANCISCANS 137 
 
 against the greedy covetousness of prelates, in the 
 pamphlets of indignant authors as well as in the assem- 
 blies of the nobility and in the parliaments of the people. 
 In the year 1409 the revenue of the clergy in England 
 was twelve times greater than that of the rest of the 
 people; half of the land was property of the Church, 
 to the Church were paid five times as many taxes as to 
 the king : the House of Commons in that year strongly 
 advised the king to confiscate all clerical possessions 
 in the kingdom. Among other things, the House com- 
 plained of no less than a hundred murderers in clerical 
 orders living secure and free from fear of punishment in 
 the asylum of the Church. 
 
 A ferocious satire in Latin of a much earlier date, the 
 twelfth century, is cited by Bartoli. It is called the 
 M Evangelium secundum Marcas Argenti." M Here be- 
 ginneth the Gospel according to the Marks of Silver. In 
 those days spake the Lord Pope unto the Romans: If 
 the Son of Man come to the throne of our Majesty, say 
 ye to him first : Friend, wherefore art thou come ? But 
 if he persist in knocking at the door and give you nothing, 
 then hurl him into utter darkness ! And it came to pass, 
 that a poor priest approached the Court of the Lord Pope 
 and cried : ' Have ye at least mercy on me, ye ushers 
 of the Pope's door, for the hand of poverty is upon 
 me ! I am poor and therefore I pray, help me in my 
 misery!' But they, when they heard him, were very 
 wroth and spake: l Friend, thy poverty perish with thee. 
 Get thee hence, Satan, because thou knowest not what 
 wisdom is in Numbers. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
 Thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy Lord ere thou 
 hast given unto him thine uttermost farthing.' The 
 poor man went away and sold his mantle and his coat, 
 
138 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 and all that he had, and gave it unto the cardinals and 
 the chamberlains and the ushers of the door. But they 
 said : ' What is that among so many ? ' and cast him 
 out of the palace before the door ; and there he sat and 
 wept bitterly and found no comfort. But soon after this 
 there came to the Court a rich clergyman, thick, fat, and 
 bloated, who had killed a man in a brawl. And he gave 
 first unto the ushers at the door, and thereafter he gave 
 unto the chamberlains and thereafter unto the cardinals. 
 But when the Lord Pope heard that the cardinals and the 
 servants had received most, he was sore vexed and fell 
 sick and was near death. But the rich man sent him an 
 electuary made of gold and silver and he was healed in 
 the self-same hour. And the Lord Pope summoned the 
 cardinals and the servants and spake unto them : i O my 
 brethren, see that no one tempt you by vain words, but 
 do ye after my example, so that as I take ye take also.' " 
 
 In the third part of the eighth circle of hell, Dante, in 
 the " iron-hued rocks," sees countless round holes, out of 
 the mouth of which burning and writhing feet appear. 
 In these fiery pits stand, with heads downward, the 
 souls of those who sold spiritual graces and dignities. 
 Dante, on recognising one of them, Pope Nicolas III. of 
 the House of Orsini, by a question of the latter, breaks 
 out in verses of bitter indignation : 
 
 Tell me, I pray thee, what great sum to bring 
 
 Our Lord bade Peter ere he would confide 
 
 The sacred keys into his custody. 
 Truly no more than " Follow me," he cried . . . 
 
 Therefore stay here ; thou righteously art pained ; 
 
 And keep thou well thy money basely earned, 
 Which thee to boldness against Charles constrained. 
 
THE FRANCISCANS i 39 
 
 And were it not I have not quite unlearned 
 
 My awe and reverence for those keys supreme, 
 Which by thy hands in yon glad life were turned, 
 
 I would use words that harsher far would seem, 
 Because your avarice fills the world with woe, 
 Crushing the good and those of vile esteem 
 
 Upraising. You the Evangelist did show 
 
 Ye shepherds, when the harlot he displayed, 
 Who, by the streams, doth kings as lovers know . . . 
 
 Silver and gold are now made gods by you, 
 
 And what divides you from the Paynim wild ? 
 Ye worship hundreds, he to one is true ! 
 
 Ah ! Constantine, what evil came as child 
 
 Not of thy change of creed, but of the dower 
 Of which the first rich father thee beguiled ! * 
 
 In all countries a strong movement had arisen against 
 the clergy, manifesting itself not only in the combat of 
 the States against the Church and in the foundation of 
 countless heretical sects, but above all in the intellectual 
 life of the people, in the invective songs of poets, and in 
 the increasing number of freethinkers and absolute un- 
 believers. It is, however, no unusual phenomenon that 
 two combating parties are moved by the same tendencies. 
 Very often the movement even transfers itself from one 
 party to the opposite one. Thus, for instance, reforma- 
 tion and counter-reformation, Protestantism and Catholic 
 reaction, which fought so bitter a struggle against one 
 another, were but phenomena of the same great move- 
 ment of religious reform which in different races and 
 countries necessarily led to different results. It is a fact 
 
 * Translated by Dean Plumptre. 
 
140 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 which never will be understood by partisans, but it is true 
 notwithstanding. 
 
 Thus the reforming movement of the thirteenth century 
 too, aspiring to a thorough purification of the Church and 
 the re-establishment of original and primitive Christendom, 
 had taken possession of the minds of Churchmen, who 
 never thought of breaking her hierarchic rules, as well as 
 of heretics, who did not hesitate to make themselves 
 independent of her. Those who differed but in the choice 
 of their paths, not of their aim, were most bitterly 
 opposed to one another, and carried the religious fight to 
 extermination. 
 
 Dante, in the 12th canto of Paradise, is told : 
 
 The host of Christ so dearly resupplied 
 
 With armour, in the rear of its high sign 
 Was following, few and slow, by doubt sore tried. 
 
 When the great emperor of the realm divine 
 
 Was moved for that imperilled band to care 
 Not for its merits, but through grace benign ; 
 
 And help, as I have said, to his spouse bare 
 By those two champions, through whose words and 
 deeds 
 The scattered people homeward 'gan repair. 
 
 The soul of one with love seraphic glowed ; 
 
 The other by his wisdom on our earth 
 A splendour of cherubic glory showed 
 
 Of one I'll speak ; for, if we tell the worth 
 
 Of one, 'tis true of both, whiche'er we take, 
 For to one end each laboured from his birth. 
 
 We shall not follow Dante in considering these two 
 men equal. One is St, Dominic Gusman, born at 
 
THE FRANCISCANS i 4I 
 
 Calaroga, in Spain, in the year 1170, the founder of the 
 Order of the Preaching Monks for the Conversion of 
 Heretics. 
 
 Where Calaroga stands, the fortunate, 
 
 Beneath the shelter of the mighty shield 
 Where lions subject are and subjugate, 
 Therein the zealous lover was revealed 
 
 Of Christ's true faith the athlete consecrate, 
 
 Kind to her friends, to those who hate her steeled. 
 
 With will and doctrine then himself he threw 
 
 In apostolic office to proceed, 
 Like torrent, which its streams from high source drew ; 
 
 And so upon the heretics' false breed 
 
 He fiercely swept, most vehemently there, 
 Where rebel will did most his course impede. 
 
 In the chapel of the Spanish monks in Florence is a 
 fresco by Simone Martini, representing the Church mili- 
 tant and triumphant ; there we see at the feet of spiritual 
 lords and saints the " dogs of the Lord " — " Domini canes " 
 — attacking and tearing the wolves of heresy. Two great 
 fundamental modes of regarding the world clash here : 
 whosoever believes that all progress begins in heresy, 
 and that almost all heresy is progress, that independence 
 of opinion and thought is to be encouraged to the utmost, 
 and that all orthodoxy is to be condemned as soon as it 
 pretends to be the only right path, and condemns all 
 others, will not join in praising the founder of the Order 
 from which sprang the Inquisition. 
 
 Far different from him, a most lovable, humane and 
 gracious personality, is the founder, the unwilling founder, 
 
142 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 as one may say, of the other Order, St. Francis of 
 Assisi. 
 
 He was born at Assisi in the year IT 82, the son of 
 Pietro Bernardone, a cloth merchant, who gave him a 
 chivalrous education after the French fashion. He took 
 part in several warlike expeditions, and was made 
 prisoner in a battle against the citizens of Perugia, where 
 he remained a full year, even in captivity proving himself 
 the merriest of young knights. On his release, in the 
 midst of gay festivities, he suddenly was struck by a 
 severe illness. Then, in the face of death, certain thoughts 
 came into his mind which never loosed their hold on it. 
 Half cured, a convalescent, he went out into the glory of 
 the young spring, but there again he felt only the torment 
 of his unsatisfied soul. He resolved to take part in an 
 expedition to Apulia, to which the city of Assisi sent a 
 contingent ; he rode out with his comrades clad in brilliant 
 armour, but a few days later left the army and strolled 
 pensive and restless through the mountains. For a long 
 time he could not decide on his course, and sometimes 
 returned to his former life. One night, at a banquet 
 which he had given to his friends, he was elected " king of 
 fools," and the whole party, after the banquet was over, 
 swarmed, merrily singing and shouting, through the 
 streets. Suddenly the others remarked that their king 
 had remained behind. They found him, after a long 
 search, standing lost in deep meditation. One of them 
 said : " Don't you see that he thinks of taking a wife ! " 
 Upon that he answered as one waking up from sleep: 
 M Yes, I think to take a wife, fairer, richer and purer than 
 you can imagine." One day he met a leper; first he 
 turned from him with loathing, but then, forced by an 
 inner voice, he dismounted from his horse, gave him all 
 
Alinari photo. 
 
 DANTE 
 
 FROM A FRESCO BY ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO 
 
THE FRANCISCANS 143 
 
 the money he had with him, and humbly kissed the hand 
 of the stricken man. Henceforth he went about begging 
 and nursing the sick, and by doing so soon came in con- 
 flict with his father, who angrily saw the son, whom he 
 had trained to be a knight, becoming a public fool. On 
 the market-place of Assisi, before all the .people, Francis 
 put down money, clothes and whatever he owned of his 
 father's goods, keeping but the shirt on his body, and, 
 laying the bundle at his father's feet, said : " Until now I 
 had deemed Pietro Bernardone my father ; henceforth I 
 will but say : Our Father who art in Heaven ! " On that 
 the bishop covered him with his own robe and declared 
 him under his protection. The people, who until then 
 had derided him, now acclaimed him. Peasants assisted 
 him in constructing a hut ; gradually a small community 
 of brethren assembled around him, who likewise desired 
 to live in cheerful humility. But though his renunciation 
 was cheerful and free from gloom and terror, it was 
 accompanied by fearful ascetic exercises : he scourged 
 himself with chains, threw himself naked in the snow, 
 fasts of incredible duration made him see visions, the 
 stigmata of Christ's wounds appeared on his body. He 
 was of a loving and ecstatic nature, and a true poet. 
 Most remarkable and characteristic as a psychic pheno- 
 menon seems his love of St. Clara, who, inflamed by his 
 sermons, with his aid eloped from her parent's house to 
 become a nun — a love "unsensualised," the genuine fruit 
 of Christianity and the spirit of the time. Infinite were 
 his humility, his sweet temper and kindness of heart. 
 How often did he make peace between Guelfs and Ghibel- 
 lines ! Love, not for men only, but for all nature, was 
 burning in his soul. He could not bear to see any 
 creature suffering. " If I could but be presented to the 
 
i 4 4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Emperor," he once said, " I should beg him that, for the 
 love of me, he might issue a law forbidding anybody to 
 capture or encage my sisters the larks, and which would 
 prescribe that whosoever kept oxen or asses should be 
 obliged to feed them particularly well at Christmas time." 
 To swallows, disturbing his sermon by their chirp, he 
 said : " My little sisters, you swallows, it is time for me to 
 speak also ; now listen to the word of the Lord and be 
 quiet until I have done." 
 
 At the " Diet of Birds " at Bevagna he spoke to them : 
 "You birds, my sisters, you must needs praise your 
 creator and love him much, for he has given you down 
 feathers to dress and pinions to fly with and whatever 
 else you may have need of. He has made you noble 
 among his creatures, and has appointed the pure air to be 
 your dwelling-place. You need not sow, nor reap, and 
 yet without any toil He sustains and feeds you." Of his 
 poems only the "Hymn to the Sun" has been preserved; 
 it is among the oldest documents of Italian poetry : 
 
 Highest, almighty, bounteous Lord, 
 
 Thine is praise and honour and glory, 
 
 And every blessing ! 
 
 Thine alone are they, 
 
 And no one is worthy to speak Thy name. 
 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, with all Thy creatures. 
 
 Especially our master, brother Sun, 
 
 Who bringeth the day and the light unto us, 
 
 And is fair and radiant with great lustre, 
 
 Of Thee, O Highest, he is the image ! 
 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, by our sister Moon and every 
 
 star, 
 Whom Thou createst in heaven so pure and costly and 
 
 fair ! 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, by our brother Wind, 
 By air and cloud and the sky and. every weather, 
 
THE FRANCISCANS 145 
 
 By them Thou feedest us, every one, Thy children ! 
 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, by our sister the Water, 
 
 Which is humble and useful, and chaste and limpid. 
 
 Praised be Thou by brother Fire, 
 
 Through whom Thou dost illuminate the night, 
 
 And he is fair and joyous and of immense strength ! 
 
 Praised be Thou by our sister, mother Earth, 
 
 Who sustaineth and ordereth us, 
 
 And bringeth forth fruit and many- coloured flowers and 
 
 herbs ! 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, by those who pardon for the 
 
 sake of Thy love, 
 Who endure infirmity and tribulation. 
 Blessed be those who bear it peacefully, 
 For by Thee, O Most High, they shall be crowned ! 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, by our sister, the Death of 
 
 the body, 
 "Whom no living creature may avoid. 
 Woe to those who in deadly sins shall die, 
 Blessed those who on Thy holy Will do rely ! 
 For they will not feel the pains of the second death 
 O praise and bless the Lord with a grateful mind, 
 And with great humility serve Him. 
 
 This wonderful man, whose life Giotto has represented 
 so simply and so appealingly in his frescoes, on whose 
 tomb, as the legend relates, all the swallows and the 
 doves of the neighbourhood fluttered together, never 
 intended to found an Order, but only a community of 
 brethren. Of course he desired to propagate his doctrine 
 and belief. Clad in brown frocks, bound with cords, the 
 brethren were to live in cheerful renunciation of all 
 worldly pleasure. They occupied themselves with all 
 kinds of work and handicrafts, swept the houses, or went 
 around selling fresh water, assisted the peasants at the 
 harvest; begging was allowed to them only in case of 
 necessity, and never for money. They went about 
 
 K 
 
i 4 6 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 preaching and singing ; the " minstrels of the dear Lord," 
 as Francis had called his community. He himself preached 
 everywhere, through the whole of Europe and through the 
 Holy Land, and his disciples did the same. The secular 
 clergy saw the growing influence of the new sect with 
 jealousy and found its expansion not devoid of danger. 
 Several bishops forbade them to preach, and the brethren 
 .Appealed to the Pope. The absolute prohibition of all 
 ^1 possessions on earth seemed objectionable and dangerous 
 to the Pope. " Regally," as Dante says, Francis, who 
 was humility itself, answered by quoting the passage from 
 the gospel of St. Matthew, "As ye go, preach, saying, 
 The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse 
 the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils ; freely ye have 
 received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, 
 nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, 
 neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves ; for the 
 workman is worthy of his meat." That is the doctrine of 
 evangelic poverty. The question whether Christ ever had 
 a coat of his own, and whether therefore priests were 
 allowed to have possessions of their own, was a question 
 which shook the foundations of the Church for centuries, 
 and was answered in the negative as well by the Walden- 
 sians, who severed themselves from her, as by the 
 Franciscans, who wanted to remain within her realm ; but 
 it was almost a mere chance that the latter, who were at 
 bottom a thoroughly revolutionary sect, ever adapted 
 themselves to the hierarchic system and remained within 
 >^it. Very soon — under the reign of Boniface VIII. and 
 / still more strongly in the period of Avignon — they stood 
 for the Emperor's side against the Pope, and a definite 
 <C ^ ru pture between them and the Church was by no means 
 improbable. But so clear-sighted a politician as was 
 
THE FRANCISCANS i 47 
 
 Innocent III. soon recognised what an instrument the new 
 community could become in the hands of the Church, and 
 he confirmed its rule. Thus Francis met the fate which 
 falls to the lot of all founders; his doctrine became a 
 system. The spirit of love and poverty, which should 
 have ruled the souls of the brethren, found outward signs, 
 and the signs soon becoming the essential part of the 
 institution, what had been a community by free choice 
 was changed into one of the severest Orders. Its foun- 
 dation was an historic event of immeasurable importance. 
 It carried a democratic tendency into the Catholic religion,, 
 and to a certain extent even into the hierarchy ; by the 
 institution of the tertiaries or lay-brethren it spread a 
 religious organisation all over the world. By this they 
 prepared and carried on the clerical reaction which 
 followed on the first outbreak of a free spirit in Europe 
 and in this sense caused immense damage, for they cer- 
 tainly considerably retarded the development of intellectual 
 freedom. It was this Order which, more than any other 
 factor, discredited and destroyed the chivalrous civilisation 
 in Germany. On the other hand, it must be conceded 
 that they did much towards giving a deeper tone to the 
 religious life of the period, which had become rather 
 superficial, and indeed to all intellectual life. The influ- 
 ence the brethren exercised in that time is incalculable. 
 It will be remembered that in many tales of the time, even 
 in one or two of Shakespeare's plays, the Franciscan friar 
 is a prominent figure. 
 
 The Order soon divided itself into " Conventuals " and 
 into the brethren of severer observance, who were called 
 "Spirituals." The latter held to the teaching of Abbot 
 Joachim of Flora, whose mystic prophecies of the approach- 
 ing Third Kingdom were much quoted in those troubled 
 
148 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 times. Another was Fra Jacopone da Todi, who originally 
 had been a lawyer, and a man of a particularly cheerful 
 disposition, until in the year 1268 his young wife, whom 
 he loved dearly, was killed sitting at his side at a wedding 
 banquet by the falling-in of the ceiling. From that time 
 he was quite changed. He went about in a hairy penance- 
 shirt and abased himself in whatever way he could. Once 
 he appeared at a feast naked, crawling and bridled like a 
 horse, another time he tarred himself, then rolled in 
 feathers, and in this state walked along the streets. Not 
 until he had done penance for ten years did he think him- 
 self worthy to enter the Order. In the troubled reign of 
 Pope Boniface he was one of his bitterest opponents. 
 As his religious ecstasy in life stood on the verge of mad- 
 ness, so was his poetry. Among splendid and powerful 
 passages we find verses like the following : 
 
 O Lord, O give me by Thy grace 
 Whatever's hurtful to man's face, 
 Pray Thee, send intermitting fever, 
 That every third day makes me shiver, 
 Or send it rather every d\ay ; 
 Whatever's healthy take away ! 
 Let hydropsy my belly bloat 
 And painful soreness quell my throat. 
 To head and teeth send woe and pain, 
 Nor may the stomach less complain. 
 
 And the man who wrote such tasteless things probably 
 was the author of the most beautiful of all Church songs, 
 the " Stabat mater Dolorosa." 
 
 Another Franciscan, Thomas of Celano, was the poet 
 who composed the grand hymn " Dies Irae." 
 
 From the narrative of Brother Salimbene of Parma we 
 may gather to what degree the institution of the Order 
 
THE FRANCISCANS 149 
 
 affected and influenced the life of men, and how it over- 
 whelmed their hearts. He was born in the year 1221, 
 and when seventeen years old entered the Order of St. 
 Francis, as his brother had done before him. His father, 
 Guido degli Adami, a Parmese knight, in despair at the 
 loss of both his sons, indignantly recalled him. Salim- 
 bene himself says that " Brother Elias had written that, if 
 it were my own wish, they should instantly send me back 
 to my father. If I should not desire to go with my father, 
 they should hold me dearer than their eyeballs. And 
 several knights came with my father to the brethren's 
 home in the town of Fano to see the outcome of the affair. 
 For them I was a spectacle, for myself the source of 
 salvation. When the spiritual and secular brethren had 
 assembled in the chapter-hall, and many words had been 
 spoken from both sides, my father took out the General's 
 letter and showed it to the brethren. After it had been 
 read, Brother Jeremiah, the guardian, answered my father, 
 and all heard him, saying: ' My Lord Guido, we are 
 moved by your pain and we are ready to obey the letter 
 of our father. But here is your son. He is old enough, 
 let him speak for himself. Ask him ! If he wants to go 
 with you, let him go in God's name, but if he does not — 
 we cannot do him violence, to make him go with you.' 
 Thereupon my father asked me whether I wanted to go 
 with him or not, and I said to him : ' No, for the Lord 
 says in the Gospel of St. Luke ix. " No man, having put 
 his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the 
 kingdom of God." ' And my father said to me : ' Thou 
 dost not care for thy father nor for thy mother, who is 
 much grieved for thy sake.' And I answered to him : 
 'It is true, I do not care, for the Lord says in St. 
 Matthew x. " He that loveth his father or his mother 
 
ISO DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 more than me is not worthy of me " ; and of thee, too, he 
 says, " He who loveth a son or a daughter more than me 
 is not worthy of me." Thou oughtest to care for Him, O 
 my father, who for our sake died on the cross, that He 
 might give life eternal unto us. For it is He who says 
 (St. Matthew x.), " I am come to set a man at variance 
 against his father, and the daughter against her mother, 
 and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a 
 man's foes shall be they of his own household. And 
 whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I con- 
 fess also before my Father which is in heaven, but who- 
 soever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny 
 before my Father which is in heaven." ? And the 
 brethren were astonished and full of joy because I said 
 such things to my father. And then my father said to 
 the brethren : ' You have put an evil charm on my son. 
 Let me speak to him apart from you, and you will see 
 that he will soon follow me.' And the brethren were 
 willing to concede it, for after my words they trusted me 
 already a little. But behind the wall they stood listening 
 to what we might speak, for they trembled like a rush in 
 the water, lest my father by his loving words should un- 
 settle my mind. And they not only feared for the salva- 
 tion of my soul, but also that my turning back to the 
 world might prevent others from entering the Order. And 
 my father said to me : ' Beloved son, do not believe those 
 unclean frock-bearers who fooled thee, but come with me, 
 and I shall give thee all my estates.' And I answered 
 my father: 'Go, go, father, for the Sage says in the 
 Proverbs, " Do not hinder him from doing good who can 
 do it." Therefore farewell, and do good thyself.' Then 
 my father said with tears in his eyes : ' O my son, what 
 am I to say to thy mother, who is unceasingly grieved 
 
THE FRANCISCANS 151 
 
 about thee ? ' And I answered to him : ' Thou wilt tell 
 her from me, Thus speaketh thy son ; My father and my 
 mother have forsaken me, the Lord has taken me up.' " 
 
 In this way they went on for some time, then Salim- 
 bene relates : " On hearing that, my father despaired of 
 my returning, and before all the lords and knights who 
 had come with him and before the brethren he flung 
 himself down on the floor and said : ' I recommend thee 
 to a thousand devils, accursed son, and the brother who 
 is with thee, and hath deceived thee. My curse be upon 
 thee for ever, and deliver thee to the spirits of hell ! ' 
 And he went away excited beyond all measure. But we 
 remained in great comfort and thanking God, and said : 
 1 They will curse and Thou wilt bless ! ' And the 
 brethren were very joyful, because the Lord had acted so 
 manfully in such a boy as I was. 
 
 " In that same night the Holy Virgin rewarded me, for it 
 seemed to me that I lay prostrate before the altar, as the 
 brethren are wont to do at morning service. And I heard 
 the voice of the Holy Virgin, who sat upon the altar on 
 that place, where the host and the chalice are kept, and 
 she had her little Boy in her lap and held him out to me 
 and said : ' Come nearer and be comforted and kiss my 
 Son, whom thou didst confess yesterday before men ! ' 
 And still standing fearfully I saw the Child open its arms, 
 in joyful expectation of me. And encouraged by the 
 Boy's innocence and the playfulness, and verily by the 
 rich grace of the Mother herself, too, I stepped nearer 
 and embraced and kissed Him, and the Mother bounte- 
 ously left Him in my arms for a long while. And as I 
 could not satiate myself in kissing Him, the most blessed 
 Virgin blessed me and said : ' Go, beloved son, and lay 
 thee down to rest, that the brethren, who rise for the 
 
152 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 morning service, may not find thee here with us.' And 
 I went to rest and the vision vanished. But in my heart 
 there remained such sweetness that I cannot express it in 
 words. And I confess the truth, that never in the world 
 did I feel such sweetness, and that time I understood that 
 Holy Writ speaks truth where it says, * That if a man 
 has tasted of the Spirit, all flesh will no longer please 
 him.' " 
 
 Thus the same ecstasy had pervaded the religious life 
 of the people which appeared in the feelings and expres- 
 sions of love of the refined. The time had come for 
 the most ecstatic, the most visionary of poets, who united 
 both the ecstasy of love and of religious belief, and who 
 for a time had been himself either a Franciscan novice or 
 a tertiary. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 There are towns on which is shed a certain halo of glory, 
 of beauty and greatness, so that they seem endowed 
 with a more intense and individual life than others : 
 Athens, Rome, Florence, and Venice, London and Paris 
 are such, and many a modern city will increase this 
 number in the course of time. The number of great 
 men and works that Florence has produced is legion; 
 the historical events of the town are a miniature his- 
 tory of the world. The character of her people has 
 been so peculiar, so sharply defined, so different from 
 all others, that the town seems to have harboured a race 
 peculiarly her own. Much has been written on Florence, 
 and yet until lately we knew almost nothing about her 
 first centuries. The chroniclers related the old tradition- 
 ary fables, and historians more or less merely copied the 
 chroniclers. 
 
 It has been reserved for a German historian, Dr. Robert 
 Davidsohn, whose work appeared five years ago, to throw 
 light on the darkness of so many centuries ; and, as it 
 were, by a lucky excavation he has put us into a position 
 to see little old Florence arise and gradually extend and 
 grow before our eyes. That its mother-town was Fiesole 
 was long known. Atalantus, a nephew of Jupiter and 
 
154 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 grandson to Nimrod, so Villani tells, is said to have 
 founded it as the first town after the Deluge. He spoke 
 the words, " Fia sola! " (" Let her be alone") and from 
 that the towns name was derived. History, however, 
 apprises us that from immemorial times a Tuscan town, 
 called Faesulae, was seated on the hill, and that by its 
 citizens a colony was founded on the plain called 
 Florentia, and destroyed by Sulla in the year 82 B.C. 
 The new Roman Florence was founded about the year 
 49 B.C. by Caesar, or at least in following out his agrarian 
 laws. The town soon became richly adorned, and in later 
 years shared the fate of the Roman towns in the declin- 
 ing and falling empire. After having been several times 
 captured and plundered in the many wars of those terrible 
 centuries, it was repeatedly occupied and besieged in the 
 Gothic wars by both sides ; the city legend of later cen- 
 turies, confounding the Gothic king Totila with Attila, 
 related that Totila and the Huns destroyed it, whereupon 
 it lay in ruins for more than two hundred years, until 
 Charlemagne restored it. History knows nothing of all 
 this ; it records but the fact that Charlemagne repeatedly 
 sojourned in Florence, and that he deposed the Longobard 
 Duke Gudibrand from his office, and in his place appointed 
 Count Scrot, from the Lake of Constance, to be Count 01 
 Florence-Fiesole. From that time German margraves 
 governed in Tuscany, most of them of Frankish origin, 
 until they were supplanted later by Vicars of the Empire. 
 The names of the noble families, the Counts Alberti, 
 Aldobrandeschi, Guidi, likewise betray their German 
 origin. They for the time were the real masters of the 
 land, ruling it from their castles. The inhabitants of the 
 town were mostly tenants and serfs. Yet, being the 
 dwelling-place of the bishop and his chapter, it was not 
 
FLORENCE 155 
 
 without a certain importance. A viscount dealt justice in 
 it in the place of the marquis. 
 
 How much or how little time the new municipality took 
 to develop, the exact date when it began to play a part 
 and to become a social power, is not quite known. Yet 
 we find that certain lordly privileges, which formerly had 
 been reserved to the high-born few, soon were granted to 
 the new communities of the lower class. Florence levied 
 an urban tax as early as the eleventh century, and the 
 first municipal offices are to be found about the same time. 
 Noble families, like those of the Suavizi, the Gotizi, the 
 Figuinildi (all names of German origin), began to pass 
 several months of the year in the town. Already the city 
 seems to have enjoyed a certain degree of independence. 
 The Pisans could say to the Pope, " We are neither lords 
 nor serfs," and combats were fought for these privileges 
 even against the duke-marquis. 
 
 In the beginning this development was unconscious, 
 being simply a consequence of the concentration of forces 
 in one place. But from the t welft h century the citizens 
 became conscious of their power and of the ways to 
 increase it, and they began a slow and well-meditated 
 warfare against the noble families, who were rulers of 
 the land. The names of 205 castles which existed in the 
 county about the year 1200 have been preserved, but 
 there undoubtedly were many more of them. One after 
 the other fell in those endless little wars, being either 
 razed, occupied or subjected, and whosoever to-day 
 travelling through Tuscany sees the fortresses of Monte- 
 lupo, Capraja, Certaldo, Colle di Val d' Elsa, and all the 
 numerous little towns and ruined castles, with their high 
 walls built in the rocks, may think how often the scaling- 
 ladders were placed against them, and how often armed 
 
156 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 men rolled down from them into the ditch below. One 
 lordly race after the other — the Aldobrandeschi, the 
 Buondelmonti — were constrained to pass a part of the 
 year in the town, and so become members of the com- 
 mune. In the year 1 108 the Alberti, descended from the 
 blood of Frankish dukes, were made to swear "in a 
 doleful voice " to renounce all taxes which until now they 
 had levied from the citizens passing through their terri- 
 tory. Such was also the fate of the Adimari. The wars 
 against the Guidi never ended. 
 
 The city often made a pretext of fighting for the rights 
 of their bishop, and a candle of wax, which the foe was 
 bound to furnish at the Feast of St. John the Baptist in 
 Florence, was usually the sign of his subjection. Of 
 course, wars against the neighbouring towns were not 
 wanting. In such case the Martinella, the war-bell, rang 
 for a whole month, and the Carroccio, the car of the 
 banner, drawn by oxen, went out with the army. The 
 city did not shrink from opposing the emperor himself : 
 Henry UL was -the first_who had-to-besiege it. That 
 time it had but been the Marchioness Matilda who 
 defended her capital against the enemy of her papal 
 friend; but in the year IJ55 Florence herself shut her 
 gates on Barbarossa. In vain the Emperor raised the 
 Guidi, the Alberti and Aldobrandeschi to the rank of 
 Princes of the Empire, in vain did he confiscate all the 
 town's rights beyond her walls — the invincible progress, 
 which implied a shifting of all powers, was not to be 
 impeded. The town knew how to recover the lost rights, 
 and not the new Princes of the Empire, but the towns, 
 united in the Guelf Tuscan League, became the ruling- 
 power in Tuscany. 
 
 About the year I20ftthe town was governed-by consuls 
 
FLORENCE 157 
 
 and their councils. The people assembled in the church 
 of St. Reparata, organised in guilds or according to the 
 town quarters. Industry began to develop, the manu- 
 facture of silk, paper, furs, carved ivory and the gold- 
 smiths art soon attained a high degree of perfection in 
 Florence. With Pisa and Bologna the town stood in 
 constant commercial relations. Her factories were to be 
 found in Messina; bafaki ng-houses _arose and acquired 
 great wealth. How important the coinage of the town 
 was and how widely spread her commerce is proved by 
 the town's name being commemorated to this day in the 
 "4lQritt." Around the town lay a fruitful and well- 
 cultivated land, rich in wine, corn, oil, fruits and herbs. 
 On market-days once a week the roads were crowded 
 with ox-carts bringing the corn into town and mules 
 carrying oil and wine. The smaller commerce was carried 
 on by pedlars. In every village physicians and apothe- 
 caries were to be found. Schools began to be established, 
 and before long a law-school was founded in Florence. 
 The town itself was a gloomy grey little place, surrounded 
 by its second wall, the first having proved too limited, 
 with narrow streets, houses with jutting upper storeys 
 built in the style which is called Italian-Gothic, small 
 squares and countless towers, for the various quarters 
 were all organised in small corporations, each of which 
 kept a common tower for the sake of quick defence in 
 case of riot. In it dwelled a warlike and money-loving 
 people, gifted and humorous, whose life passed in petty 
 business and little wars. The year was interrupted by 
 fifty-two Sundays and fifty-six holidays. At the great 
 Church festivals processions with flaming candles marched 
 through the town, on the day of St. Agatha all the church 
 bells were rung, and on one and the same day at Easter- 
 
158 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 time all the children born in the year were baptized in 
 that old baptistery of San Giovanni, who was the town's 
 patron. Of art and culture there are but few traces to be 
 found from those times, but all people were devoted to 
 chivalrous exercise, and a great number of clubs served to 
 promote sociability and perfection in arms. 
 
 This small grey town was the bud from which in the 
 thirteenth century, the century of revolution, the Florence 
 of the Renaissance began its glorious unfolding. The 
 Florentines afterwards praised this time as the golden 
 era. Dante sang of it : 
 
 Florence, whose ancient walls around her soil 
 
 Still hear the tierce and nones of neighbouring shrine, 
 Was chaste and sober and without turmoil. 
 
 No golden chains, no crosses, that glittering shine, 
 Nor sandalled dames had she, nor bordered zone 
 That from the wearer drew the gazer's eyne ; 
 
 She made not then the father's heart to groan 
 
 O'er daughters' births, for then the year and dower 
 Had not, this side or that, due bounds outgrown, 
 
 No homes undwelt in had she in that hour, 
 
 Not then had come a new Sardanapal 
 To show a wanton chambering's evil power. 
 
 Bellincion Berti saw I girdled go 
 
 With bone and leather, and I saw his bride 
 Turn from her mirror with no painted show. 
 
 A Nerli and a Vecchio, too, I spied, 
 
 Content with dress, where plain buff met the eye, 
 Their wives with flax and spindle occupied. 
 
 O happy they !— and each might certain die 
 Of her own burial-place, and none was yet 
 For France left lonely in her bed to lie. 
 
FLORENCE 159 
 
 This o'er the cradle watchful care did set, 
 
 And hushed her infant with the babbling speech, 
 Which doeth in parents' hearts delight beget ; 
 
 That from her distaff would the long thread reach, 
 
 And as she conversed with her family, 
 Of Trojans, Fiesole and Rome, would teach, 
 
 Men then had seen with full as wondering eye 
 
 A Cianghella or a Saltorell 
 As now a Cincinnate or Cornelie. 
 
 To such fair life, where all sped calm and well 
 
 True life of citizens, to such a share 
 In citizenship true, to such hostel, 
 
 Did Mary give me, called by many a prayer 
 
 To that your old baptistery, wherein 
 Christian's and Cacciaguida's name I bare, 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 These are the words uttered in Paradise by Dante's 
 ancestor Cacciaguida to his grandson, but, to tell the 
 truth, the customs of the good old time were, as ever, 
 only ruder, not better. 
 
 Until then Florence, despite all her achievements, had 
 been a relatively insignificant town. Rome , was the 
 imperial city, the place of coronation. Venice was one of 
 the first powers in Europe, the Lombards were the re- 
 doubted foes of the Emperor, Pisa ruled Corsica and 
 Sardinia, Genoa rivalled her and Venice, Bologna shone 
 by the glory of her schools. Florence was the last in the 
 line, but now her time had come. For the second time 
 she broke her walls and surrounded herself with the third 
 and last. The great and celebrated buildings were begun 
 and the first great names meet our eyes. Until then the 
 town had been a dull mass ; now individualities began to 
 
160 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 detach themselves from the crowd, a sure sign that the 
 dark age was over. 
 
 In politics the town generally had stood on the Church's • 
 side, in the War of Investiture as well as against the 
 Hohenstaufens ; but now the struggle between Guelfs and 
 Ghibellines first began to stir and to shake the inmost 
 life of the city. Parallel with it went on the discord 
 between the nobility and the common people, by which, as 
 in ancient Rome the complicated Florentine constitution 
 was formed. The interior history of the city became full 
 of dramatic interest with constant revolutions, turbulent 
 street riots and wild rebellious uprisings of the people. 
 A few brilliant or sturdy figures detached themselves 
 from the angry crowd; they do but pass the scene to 
 perish, the catastrophe of their tragedies being either the 
 scaffold or exile. Beautiful episodes in the drama are 
 the flowery feasts and the love-affairs, graceful or bloody, 
 which were glorified by the great poets of later years. 
 The scene is the ever more glorious city, art and artists 
 play their parts, the drama becomes ever more varied and 
 broader, Rome and the emperors take part in it — Charles V. 
 besieges the town for a Medicean pope's sake, and 
 Michael Angelo directs the construction of fortifications 
 against him — until it gradually runs out like so many 
 dramas of history and ends in despotic rigidity. 
 
 The time of Dante's life inarks^but „its_beginni»§. The 
 citizens were divided into the " Grandi," that is, the mem- 
 bers of the old nobility, and the people. The rich mer- 
 chants, who were called the " popolo grasso," soon were 
 separated from the rest of the people, who in their turn 
 became divided into the lesser guilds and into the " plebe 
 minuta," the working class. The incessant conflicts, \ 
 against which the judicial officers proved of no avail, led 
 
Florence 161 
 
 in Florence, as in many other towns, to the institution of 
 the "podesta," that is, a foreign nobleman being intrusted 
 with its government, or rather with the highest judicial 
 power. 
 
 Only an honest and powerful man of noble and, of course, 
 foreign birth could be elected to. that office. His salary 
 varied according to the importance and opulence of the 
 town he was called to govern. We know of " podestas " 
 who received 1500 gold florins. On his arrival in the 
 town, the knights and the common people, the bishop and 
 the ex-podesta at their head, went out to meet him. Some- 
 times he was greeted by maidens bearing green branches. 
 On entering the city he went to a church to pray, after which 
 he swore to observe the statutes, and summoned a general 
 assembly for the next Sunday. His court and his chancery, 
 his notaries, judges, armed men afoot and on horseback, 
 his marshals and knights, were all foreigners, whom he 
 brought with him. He was clad in a scarlet robe, but 
 during his term of office he was neither allowed to leave 
 the town, nor to dine out with any of the citizen's, nor 
 even to have social intercourse with them, so deep was the 
 mistrust of the parties. Another condition generally im- 
 posed on the podesta was his being forbidden to bring a 
 wife with him. The first podesta was called to Florence 
 in the year 1207. 
 
 The Florentine chroniclers and historians record that the 
 great party-dissensions first broke out in the year 12 15. 
 But we know, as Dr. Davidsohn has pointed out, that long 
 before that time, and particularly about the year 1170 wild 
 turmoils and party-struggles raged in the streets of Flor- 
 ence, in which barricades were thrown up, from all towers 
 projectiles were shot, houses were burnt and torn down. 
 But, strange to say, all this entirely fell into oblivion, and 
 
 L 
 
i62 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the origin of the great wars of the parties was traced back 
 to a love-affair of a Buondelmonte, who had been engaged 
 to a lady of the Amidei, but, a few days before that fixed 
 for the wedding, clandestinely married the beautiful 
 Aldruda, the daughter of Messer Fortiguerra Donati. The 
 offended family took council with their friends, and the 
 debate running on. to some length, Mosca de' Lamberti, 
 whose punishment Dante witnessed in hell, ended it with 
 the famous words, " Cosa fatta capo ha." * On the next 
 day Buondelmonte was slain on the old bridge at the foot 
 of the ancient statue of Mars. 
 
 From that time the nobility and the people also were 
 divided into the twohistorical parties; but one must be care- 
 ful not to overvalue their names. Not Church and Emperor 
 were the essential causes of discord for the Italian Guelfs 
 and Ghibellines. They only inclined to one of these two I 
 powers to back their proper aims and interests. Neither 
 was it, as sometimes has been said, an uprising of Guelf 
 patriots against the foreign yoke ; in Florence, for instance, 
 the Guelfs favoured the French policy to such a degree 
 that it became the universal belief that the lily in their coat 
 of arms was derived from the French lily, and had been 
 transferred to the Florentine shield on their own demand 
 and by special permission of the French king, j* No, all the 
 countless causes of dissension which can and will arise in 
 so troubled a time and in a country so torn in itself, all the 
 many conflicting interests, the differences of races, classes, 
 and rival cities, the combat of great ideas as well as the 
 smallest local enmities and family feuds, were all covered, 
 
 * " A thing done is over.". 
 
 f The Guelfs in the year 12 15 had chosen the red lily in a white 
 field, while the Ghibellines kept to the old shield with the white lily in 
 red. 
 
FLORENCE 163 
 
 and in each town differently, by the names of the two great 
 parties. The only thing common to all was strife. 
 
 In Florence the chiefs of the Ghibellines were the family 
 of the Uberti, and, assisted by the Hohenstaufens, they 
 were victorious for a while. Frederic sent his natural son 
 Frederic of AntiocH to Florence as podesta. 
 
 The Guelfs left the city and their towers were de- 
 molished. This happened in the year 1249. Two years 
 afterwards Frederick II. was dead, and the people imme- 
 diately called back the Guelfs. The Florentine people 
 assembled in the Church of San-Lorenzo, where the first 
 democratic constitution was decreed. It organised itself 
 under 1 10 banners, twenty-four for the town and eighty- 
 six for the open country. At their heads stood the 
 "Capitano del popolo," who, like the podesta, had to be 
 a foreigner. Both held the 1 offices of chief-justices of 
 the town. The highest legislative power was conferred 
 on the twelve H Anziani," two for each of the six town- 
 quarters. The popular origin of this revolution, which 
 was called the " Popolo vecchio" (something like "old 
 popular constitution "), is made manifest by a law which 
 fixed the permitted height of the towers on the noblemen's 
 palaces to 180 feet instead of 320, as it had been before. 
 The Ghibelline nobility refusing to submit, and conspiring 
 against the constitution, first its leaders, and then, in the 
 year 1258, the whole party was banished from the town. 
 They assembled at Siena, always hostile to Florence, and 
 prepared for armed resistance, " Better die on the spot 
 than miserably wander through the wide world," said their 
 chief, Farinata degli Uberti. King Manfred sent Count 
 Giordano Lancia with 800 knights to their reinforcement. 
 The city of Florence equipped an army of 30,000 men on 
 foot and 3000 horse, nevertheless at Montaperti they were 
 
1 64 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 totally defeated. That was the battle " which made the 
 Arbia flow in colour red," and of which one may hear the 
 Sienese proudly boast to this day. The Guelfs retired to 
 Lucca, and — a fact highly characteristic for the Italian 
 parties — applied for help to Conradin of Hohenstaufen, 
 who then was a boy of twelve years. The embittered 
 victors wanted to destroy Florence, and it was saved only 
 by the very decided resistance of Farinata the " High- 
 minded," as Dante calls him, who finds him in hell lying 
 among the heretics in their fiery coffins. He declared 
 that he would rather turn his sword against his allies than 
 suffer Florence to be destroyed. The constitution was 
 abolished, Count Guido Novello was elected podesta, and 
 during five years the Ghibelline nobility ruled Florence 
 with a high hand. After this term Manfred was forced 
 by his own precarious situation to call back Giordano 
 with his auxiliaries, and soon after fell himself, on Feb- 
 ruary 26, 1 266, in the battle of Benevento against Charles 
 of Anjou. This was the end of the handsome fair-haired 
 King Manfred, whose name was glorified by so many bards, 
 and of whom a French trouvere sang the following verses : 
 
 Biaus chevalier et preus 
 Et sage fu Mainfrois, 
 De toutes bonnes teches 
 Ent&chies et courtois, 
 En lui ne falloit riens, 
 Forsque seulement fois ; 
 Mais cette faute est laide 
 En contes et en Rois. 
 
 In vain had he asked the Pope for peace. Clement 
 answered : " Let King Manfred know that the time of 
 grace is over. There is time for all, but all is not in time. 
 The hero already steps forth in arms, the axe is laid to 
 
FLORENCE 165 
 
 the root." Charles refused burial to his corpse. The 
 French soldiers, however, full of admiration for the gallant 
 prince, buried him against their king's will. But the papal 
 legate, the Archbishop of Cosenza, of the house of Pigna- 
 telli, ordered the corpse to be dug out again and to be 
 thrown away, because of his having died excommunicated 
 by the Church. Nevertheless Dante, in the seventh canto 
 of Purgatory, meets one "who was fair-haired, hand- 
 some, and of graceful looks, but his brow was split by a 
 sword-cut," and who on his astonished question gives 
 answer : 
 
 Salvation is not lost by a priest's curse, 
 And ever may eternal love give grace. 
 
 XThe Guelfs in Tuscany immediately began to stir; 
 an attempt of the Ghibellines to reconcile them being 
 foiled, Guido Novello left Florence accompanied by 1 500 
 knights. In the meantime Conradin had passed the Alps. 
 The Guelfs, who seven years before had called on him to 
 assist them, now applied to Charles, who sent the Count 
 of Montfort with 860 French knights to them. Without 
 waiting for his arrival, the Ghibellines left the city for 
 ever, on the Saturday of Easter 1267. Two years before 
 that event Dante was born. Henceforth the town was 
 Guelf. The Ghibellines' estates were confiscated and 
 divided, and the "Capitani di Parte Guelfa," that is, the 
 heads*of the Guelf party, henceforth were the chiefs of the 
 town. 
 
 This result by no means implies that the town was the 
 Church's. Besides, the great combat had, as almost all 
 protracted historical struggles do, led to quite different 
 results than those which the conflicting parties had fought 
 for. The Empire and the Papacy had killed each other. 
 
166 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 In the great theocratic sense of the mediaeval ideal they 
 had ceased to exist. The Empire had died with 
 Frederick II. The Papacy fell fifty years later with Boni- 
 face VIII. Henceforth their world-dominating power not 
 only had to abandon all hope of ever becoming established 
 in fact, but was not even acknowledged as a right. Hence-f 
 forth there was no longer one comprehensive empire in 
 Europe, but national states, or groups of such. The old 
 imperial and theocratic ideas still lived on in the minds of 
 the" people, but only to prove their practical impotence. 
 France henceforth was France, Germany was essentially 
 Germany, and Florence was the republic of Florence, no 
 inconsiderable power among the others. 
 
 The city, though it had become Guelf throughout, was 
 not on this account more settled or peaceful. The social 
 preponderance of the nobility, and the consequent dis- 
 content of the people, caused constant dissension and 
 troubles, until they led to the famous second democratic 
 revolution of 1282, which was a bloodless one, and was 
 called the " secondo popolo." By the new constitution 
 the guilds were made the basis of the town's government ; 
 there were seven higher guilds: 1, the lawyers; 2, the 
 clothiers ; 3, the money-changers ; 4, the wool manufac- 
 turers ; 5, physicians and pharmacists; 6, silk-merchants; 
 7, the furriers. The five lesser guilds were : 1, the small 
 merchants of cloth ; 2, the butchers ; 3, the shoemakers 
 and stocking-weavers; 4, the carpenters and masons; 5, 
 the smiths and ironworkers. Later on were added nine 
 " small guilds " of the smaller mechanics. At the head 
 of the administration were placed six Priors, "to super- 
 intend the treasury, to deal justice to all, and to protect 
 the weak and the powerless against the great and 
 strong." Art electoral committee, consisting of the 
 
FLORENCE 167 
 
 retiring Priors, the councillors, the heads of the guilds, 
 and assessors appointed by the committee itself, elected 
 in secret and complicated ballot 126 Priors for forty- 
 two months,> six of whom were drawn by lot to govern 
 the town in turns of two months. While their term 
 lasted they dwelt in the Palazzo del Popolo. The 
 highest judicial power remained in the hands of the 
 podesta, the military command in those of the Capitano 
 del Popolo. ' 
 
 A whole system of councils participated in the govern- 
 ment, and thus limited the power of the " Signori," as the 
 Priors were also called. Only the drafting of the laws 
 and the introduction of them in the Council fell to their 
 office. But even that they were bound to do in common 
 with the '" Savi," the " wise men," and with the heads of 
 the guilds who had the right of sitting and voting in all 
 assemblies. The " Savi," or " Buoni Uomini " (good men), 
 were twelve or fourteen in number, and deliberated either 
 alone or with other " Savi " selected from the different 
 quarters, or with the heads of the guilds. Then there was 
 the " Consiglio speciale " or " di Credenza," and the " Con- 
 siglio generale " of the " Capitano del Popolo," which 
 assembled in the episcopal palace, and later on in San 
 Piero Scheraggio. Further councils were the " Consiglio 
 generale" of the Three Hundred, and the " Consiglio 
 speciale" of the Ninel^n^er^Gbmune." Both were pre- 
 sided over f by the podesta. From the year 1289 there 
 existed a sixth council, that of the Hundred, which was 
 composed of " popolani " alone, for preliminary delibera- 
 tion on the public expenses and other difficult matters. 
 
 This constitution was far from being stable, and its 
 changes were manifold. But its state at the time when 
 Dante took an active part in the politics of his native city 
 
1 68 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 was much as described/ Whatever the Priori had discussed 
 and settled either for themselves with the capitano or the 
 podesta or with their different assistant councillors had 
 to pass through all the councils one after the other. This, 
 of course, caused much talking and debating and referring, 
 and the whole proceeding was rather long-winded. Some- 
 times the debate seems to have been lengthened, as it were, 
 with conscious mockery. An ambassador from Lucca 
 asking when the Florentine army would set out against 
 the Pisans, seven different sessions of councils were 
 summoned from May 7 to 25 to answer his question ; 
 at the end he was baffled by the reply that the army 
 would move on a certain day unless there should occur 
 anything new, or any cause should arise which would 
 make it advisable to postpone the march. All the councils 
 invariably had to be consulted on anything that was 
 against the constitution, as well as on all important pro- 
 posals, expenses and similar questions. Other matters 
 belonged to the competence of only one council. Within 
 the first fortnight of their office the Priors were bound to 
 summon a general assembly of the people, in which every 
 citizen had the right of motion. In case of need, extra- 
 ordinary assemblies of the people were summoned; it 
 was in such a meeting that Dante, the motion being to 
 grant the Pope's request of assistance in his war against 
 the Colonna, gave his voice : quod nihil fiat. The Savi 
 and the Capitudini were summoned by special messengers, 
 all the other councillors by heralds, trumpets, and bells. 
 The right of JxsJLspeedUn the assembly belonged to the 
 podesta, but if he was represented by one of his judges, 
 or whenever the capitano was alone, the first word was 
 the latter's. Then followed the different orators; the 
 voting was performed by rising from the chairs, in impor- 
 
FLORENCE 169 
 
 tant cases by little balls of lead, which were thrown either 
 into a white urn, on which was written the Latin word 
 " sic " (yes), or into a red one, on which was written " non." 
 In common cases the absolute majority decided, sometimes 
 two-thirds were required. T~The " consigliere " had to be 
 twenty-five years old, and was elected for six months by 
 the Priors, and different " Savi " for each quarter J When 
 this term had elapsed, he could not be re-elected before 
 another six months had past. The elected councillor was 
 bound to swear that he would attend the sittings and 
 stay until the close, unless the mover of the bill gave him 
 permission to go. For absence without leave he was 
 fined from two to twenty solidi. In the protocols kept by 
 the notaries we find many absences notwithstanding, and 
 all kinds of excuses. One councillor declared that he had 
 been still in bed, another that he had not heard the 
 bell. Whosoever could swear to this, and could prove 
 that he had been outside the town, was excused ; there- 
 fore many councillors sojourned in the country as much 
 as possible. 
 
 This constitution was complicated, ponderous, and yet 
 most unsteady, but it allowed freest range to all ten- 
 dencies, all powers in the state partaking on an almost 
 equal footing in the government. The town was like a 
 strong electric friction machine, with the electric force 
 streaming from countless points and buttons. And always 
 the atmosphere around it was heavily charged. But no 
 one-sidedness was possible, every citizen being business 
 man, politician and warrior at the same time. 
 
 Ten years later the constitution was again revised amid 
 great turmoil, and developed in a democratic sense. The 
 leader of the popular party was a nobleman, Giano della 
 Bella. By his efforts the small corporations were allowed 
 
1 7 o DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 to share in the government.* At the same time, thirty- 
 three noble families were for ever excluded from all public 
 offices, a number of " privilegia invidiosa" were created for 
 the nobility. Whenever a common citizen was killed by 
 a nobleman's fault, the palace of the nobleman was de- 
 stroyed and all members of his family held responsible. 
 Two witnesses or public report were sufficient to convict a 
 nobleman. To sustain the people's authority a new 
 military organisation was established, at the head of 
 which was placed the " Gonfaloniere della Giustizia" (Stan- 
 dard-bearer of Justice). Under the command of this 
 officer stood eighty companies, each of fifty men, whose 
 service was limited to the town itself, and who in their 
 banner bore the 'scutcheon of the Florentine people, which 
 was a red cross in a white shield. These laws were 
 executed as parties will execute laws ; not a year had 
 passed before the houses of the Galigai j- were demolished 
 because one of the family had murdered a Florentine 
 citizen in France. " The Grandees," Dino says, " vehe- 
 mently complained of these laws, and to those who 
 executed them they said : ' A horse in running touches a 
 citizen's face with its tail, a nobleman in a throng uninten- 
 tionally kicks a citizen, he complains, and because of such 
 trifles a man is ruined.' " They found ways to render 
 Giano della Bella suspect to the people, and he met a 
 similar fate with the Gracchi and so many other leaders 
 of the ungrateful crowd — death in exile. Villani, who 
 belonged to the opposite party, bears witness that he 
 
 * Later, in the year 1342, they received equal rights with the greater 
 guilds; in the year 1378 the same rights were extended to the working 
 people. 
 
 f That is the name given by Dino Compagni, who was in that year 
 Gonfaloniere, and himself records the fact. Villani and Machiavelli 
 give another name and also another Gonfaloniere, Rubaldo Ruffoli. 
 
FLORENCE 171 
 
 was " the most loyal and honest Popolano of Florence, 
 whose every endeavour was for the common best ; a man 
 who sacrificed his possessions to the commonwealth and 
 never enriched himself." Dino Compagni likewise says : 
 " He was a high-minded man, and so bold, that he took 
 upon himself what others abandoned, and spoke what 
 others never dared to utter. " Dante was seventeen years 
 old when this democratic revolution took place. 
 
 Again the people were divided into two parties. The 
 nobility strove to recover their lost rights, and the power 
 which they still possessed, in fact, almost amounted to 
 more than these rights themselves. The Ghibellines, 
 avowed or clandestine, now took the side of the popular 
 party, because it stood against the Guelf aristocracy. 
 The popular party, however, seems to have behaved rather 
 haughtily towards the still lower classes, and to have ex- 
 cluded what they called the " mob," for we soon shall 
 find the latter on the side of the Dor^ati. 
 
 The new parties called themselves " Black " and 
 " White." The names were derived from a bloody family 
 feud which had broken out in Pistoia in consequence of 
 a cruel vengeance between the " black " and the " white " 
 Cancellieri, and which by the Florentines declaring for 
 one or the other party in the subject town had been 
 carried to Florence. Messer Corso Donati was the leader 
 of the Blacks — "a knight after the fashion of the Roman 
 Catiline, but more cruel than he, of noble blood and 
 handsome appearance, a perfect orator with the finest 
 manners, acute mind and the very worst disposition," that 
 is Dino Compagni's description of him. The very begin- 
 ning of his career was a violence done to the law, for he 
 liberated a criminal of noble birth with armed force. In 
 the battle of Campaldino it was he who decided the victory 
 
172 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 by a cavalry attack, which he had been forbidden under 
 penalty of death to make. His sister Piccarda, who was 
 a nun, he carried off from her convent by force and 
 married her to one of his friends. He was said to have 
 poisoned his wife. For the law and the citizens he always 
 and openly showed the utmost contempt. Yet the people 
 admired him in spite of their fear. " Evviva il Barone ! " 
 was the cry heard when on his black horse he rode 
 through the streets of Florence. " This Messer Corso," 
 Villani says, "was the most intelligent knight, the most 
 courageous and best orator, the most able and famous 
 politician of his time in Italy, a man of strong passions 
 and great enterprise." He was Dante's kinsman by mar- 
 riage and his bitterest enemy — "The founder of all evil," 
 Dante calls him, and in " Purgatory " Buonagiunta pre- 
 dicts his fearful end. 
 
 Against him stood the leader of the " Bourgeoisie," 
 Vieri de' Cerchi, as proud and brave as the other, but 
 irresolute and incapable. The Cerchi were the first mer- 
 chant house in Europe. They had bought the palace of 
 the banished Count Guidi, and "imitated the behaviour 
 of the nobility," as the chronicler tells, " nouveaux-riches " 
 of the thirteenth century. The " Intellectuels " of the 
 city were all on their side. It is interesting to read in 
 Dino's book, who equally belonged to the White party, by 
 what reasons, according to his opinion, influential Floren- 
 tines had been decided to follow either party. Guido 
 Cavalcanti had done so " because he was a personal enemy 
 of Corso Donati," Naldo Gherardini " out of hatred against 
 the Manieri," ManettoScali "because hewas kinsman to the 
 Cerchi," Berto Frescobaldi " because they had lent him a 
 good deal of money," Goccia Adimari " because he had 
 fallen out with his family," the young Bernardo Adimari 
 
FLORENCE 173 
 
 " out of good fellowship," those of the house of Tosa "to 
 defy Messer Rosso, their kinsman." 
 
 Both parties sought allies outside. Donati courted the 
 favour of the Pope, the others inclined to the Ghibellines. 
 Civil war had become inevitable, and it broke out with 
 wild bloodshed in the year after the Jubilee, 1301 ; but 
 this event being also the catastrophe of Dante's life, who, 
 energetic and impulsive as he was, had become deeply 
 engaged in the politics of his town, must be reserved to a 
 later chapter. 
 
 Loud are the laments of Dante, of Dino Compagni on 
 this time " of wrong, of scandal, of fury and of fratri- 
 cide." To us it appears like a dramatic piece, in whose 
 conflicts the powerful and interesting characters of the 
 time were formed and sharpened. The great man who 
 was entangled in it and became its victim has shed a 
 personal tragic splendour on this strife, which makes it 
 more attractive than those of other cities. And amidst 
 all this trouble the city rose to ever greater power and 
 beauty. At the same time, with these internal dissensions 
 and these strivings for the constitution, wars were fought 
 and victories gained against Arezzo, Pisa and other neigh- 
 bouring towns. In the short intervals between the erup- 
 tions of public wrath the fervid spirit of useful life and 
 the exuberant joy of this healthy generation continued to 
 celebrate its gladsome feasts. In every town of Tuscany 
 the re were so cial clubs, whose members enjoyed and 
 spent their life carousing in merry wastefulness. The 
 city became ever more beautiful. Dante's friend, Giotto, 
 delivered art from the rigid forms of the earlier times, and 
 painted his frescoes in Florence, as in Padua and Assisi, 
 with all his severe simplicity, which seems so character- 
 istic of his time, and which reappears in the beautiful 
 
 S 
 
1 74 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 lines and cheerful colours of the tower he built in Florence, 
 which seems to rise into the air, as it were, on wings. In 
 the year 1298 Arnolfo di Cambio began the construction 
 of the " Palazzo del Popolo," which, with its strong and 
 powerful forms, its sturdy battlements, and its slender 
 and daring tower, more, perhaps, than any other town hall 
 to this day reflects the spirit of its time, a true sign of old 
 popular sovereignty. In its neighbourhood stands the 
 Palazzo del Podesta, with its wonderful courtyard, where 
 the stone coats of arms on the walls tell of the old podestas 
 of Florence, and on the corridor of the first floor the bells 
 are ranged which rang to the uproar of those far-gone 
 days ; then the light Church of the Franciscans of Santa 
 Croce, Santa Maria Novella, where the frescoes of Martini 
 \ and Taddeo Gaddi, though belonging to a later period, 
 more than others seem to be imbued with the spirit of 
 Dante. It was a city, with a small kingdom's power, in 
 exuberant growth. And then, in the year of the Jubilee, 
 Giovanni Villani saw Rome decayed and fallen, and thinking 
 of his native town arising in such splendour, resolved to 
 write his chronicle, which is among the best historical 
 works of the Middle Ages, and in which a very important 
 chapter is devoted to Dante himself. 
 
 Villani, of course, simply told what he had seen and 
 heard. Every human brain is a camera obscura, but the 
 lens through which the rays enter will refract them at very 
 different angles. We shall find the same world through 
 which until now we have walked in ever narrower circles, 
 totally changed and altered in Dante's head. We shall 
 find it arranged as a wonderful, immense building; we 
 shall enter a cathedral, the foundations of which are laid 
 in the depths of hell, and reflect all the horrors and 
 crimes of those wild and cruel times in the terrible judg- 
 
FLORENCE 175 
 
 ment which the wrathful Deity of mediaeval Christendom 
 deals. Then we shall mount on serene and lucid stairs, 
 leading on, through penitence to purification, to a splendour 
 of dazzling light, such as never poet before or after him 
 knew how to evoke in men's fancies, as painters may 
 perhaps have dreamt but never known to paint. And in 
 every part of this cathedral we shall encounter the men 
 who lived in the world we have tried to describe, and from 
 the howling yells deep below, through the slow, penitential 
 chants of the stairs, up to the blessed choirs in the celestial 
 space, there sounds one music of many-sounding har- 
 monies, in which the voices of all speakers join — the terze 
 rime of Dante. 
 
 But the " Divine Comedy " is not only an image of the 
 time, it does not only assemble the souls of men in its three 
 realms, it is at the same time the secret interior path of 
 Dante through his life. And thus through his life we shall 
 follow him. 
 
I PART II 
 DANTE 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WORK OF DANTE 
 
 Dante's life lies in his work. It is a microcosm, a minute 
 universe ; clear and brilliant with colours like a crystal 
 ball it lies before us, in the firm structure of the terza rima 
 so indissoluble that not one single verse could be taken out 
 without destroying the whole; incredibly small if com 
 pared to the life-work of Shakespeare or Goethe, and yet 
 the ideal of all poetry is fulfilled in it. The Self and the 
 World, which are inseparably mixed in every human soul, 
 are, as it were, caught and reproduced in verse, as mysti- 
 cally and incomprehensibly reflected in each other as 
 they are in reality; an eternal image of both the human 
 soul and the world as they were in those days. 
 
 But of the story of this man who bequeathed us the key 
 to his time, to whom his beautiful town owes its highest 
 and most attractive charm, we know but little. The few 
 facts of Dante's life which are indubitable are soon told.* 
 
 * Most of the so-called biographies of Dante are " romances founded 
 on improbable traditions and arbitrary suppositions " (Scartazzini). It 
 was necessary to put to a severe test the often contradictory notices 
 which his contemporaries left us, and to make cautious use of the 
 important allusions in his writings. Not before our own century, or 
 rather not until the last decades of it, did critical historians contrive to 
 lay bare a meagre thread which may serve us to follow the develop- 
 ment of his work, 
 
 IS 
 
 ■J 
 
180 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 It were a just cause of wonder that contemporaries have 
 so little to tell of a man like Dante, and certainly some 
 notices were lost in the course of so many ages. 
 
 But, in general, Dante's contemporaries had other cares 
 than to tell of Dante. For the men of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury Dante was not at all the Dante whom we know, as 
 little as for those of the sixteenth century Shakespeare 
 was our " Shakespeare." He was simply Dante Alighieri 
 of St. Peter's Gate in Florence, a scholar, of whom it was 
 known that he had written some fine poems, just as 
 Shakespeare was to his countrymen a glove-maker's son 
 from Stratford, a player, who used* to compose plays for 
 the stage. 
 
 When he came to old age he had acquired some fame, 
 though in his latest years he still could write : 
 
 It would be vain to tell you who I am, 
 Because my name does not yet sound afar ; 
 
 but perhaps none of his countrymen had a perfect notion 
 of his overpowering greatness, of the breadth and depth 
 of his genius, of the gigantic edifice of his fancy, for 
 which he laid the foundation slowly year after year by 
 his studies, by his writings, by the events of his life — 
 foundations which were so far stretched that nobody's 
 eye was sharp enough to encompass their circumference. 
 
 To explain this phenomenon, which repeats itself 
 throughout all history, Brandes has used the following 
 simile : 
 
 " When a man is twenty steps in advance of his own 
 time, everybody will follow him and praise him as the 
 guide ; but when he is more than a thousand steps ahead 
 of his generation he becomes invisible, and long after the 
 world walks in his footsteps." But that is only a simile, 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 181 
 
 No one has an idea of the world existing in another's 
 soul, be it great or small ; and just in those men who dig 
 the deepest shafts and inclose the broadest fields work and 
 utterance are slow and incomprehensible. 
 
 A hut may be built in a few days, but it takes a long 
 time before a layman will understand what the foundations 
 of a large building are made for, and whether they have 
 any architectural meaning at all. It would seem that 
 genius works in the same way that the spirits in the 
 "Arabian Nights " built Aladdin's palace — one day it stands 
 there, but nobody saw how it was constructed ; one day 
 the book is published, the picture is shown, and nobody 
 knows that a life was consumed in making it. 
 
 We have a German proverb : u Don't show a half- 
 finished house to a fool," because he never will understand 
 what it is to be. When it comes to judging the half- 
 finished works of genius, almost all men are fools. That 
 was the reason why Dante was not recognised. 
 
 With Shakespeare the cause may have been different ; 
 his works were in such a degree the expression of his 
 time that they seemed quite natural to his contemporaries, 
 as natural as the sea, as the rising of the sun, or the new 
 vegetation of spring seems to be. 
 
 Be this as it may, Dante passed during the first half of 
 iris life for a young man of good family, who occasionally 
 wrote fine poems ; even during the latter half he was 
 a rather unimportant, poor, woe-stricken, joyless, wander- 
 ing man, who often did not know how to live, better known 
 as a politician than as a poet, but even as a politician the 
 follower of a vanquished and hated party, a reactionary 
 whose ideals and wishes were never fulfilled and never 
 could be. 
 
 All this and much more gives a tragic feature to his whole 
 
182 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 y^life. He is, indeed, one of the most tragic men known to 
 ■*! history. A man from whose very temperament necessarily 
 resulted the most painful conflicts, such as inevitably 
 separate a strongly developed, towering personality from 
 his time and his world. No element of tragedy is wanting, 
 not even the " Katharsis," the melodious strain with which 
 the pilgrimage of his life closed. So Carlyle describes 
 his face on that portrait which, " looking at it, you cannot 
 help inclining to think genuine." 
 
 "A most touching face, perhaps of all faces that I 
 know the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, 
 with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless 
 sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also death- 
 less ; — significant of the whole histor}' of Dante ! I think 
 it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from 
 reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There 
 is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, 
 gentle affection as of a child ; but all this as if congealed 
 into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud 
 hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking out so stern, 
 implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of 
 /thick-ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent 
 / scornful one : the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain, 
 J of the thing that is eating out his heart — as if it were 
 *\ withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had 
 V power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The 
 face of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering 
 battle against the world. Affection all converted into 
 I ndignation ; slow, equable, sflent7Iike that ofagbd ! "" 
 
 I said above that we know almost nothing of Dante, 
 and yet we all have so much to tell of him personally. 
 We may even say : " There is perhaps no great poet of 
 whom we know less and perhaps none whom we know 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 183 
 
 better. . . ." Emerson said so of Shakespeare, but how 
 much truer is it of Dante ! 
 
 For what is it that we seek to know when we study 
 the history of a man's life, or inquire in what town he 
 lived, where he got his learning, what society he kept, 
 whether he was loved by women and by what women, 
 and whom he married, and how he acted in the different 
 situations of his life, how it came to pass that he wrote 
 such works ? Why do we hunt for his letters ; why com- 
 pare his portraits and books ? Can these poor facts 
 really be so interesting to us ? Is it only a pedant 
 schoolmaster's love for dates and names ? 
 
 Or is it the real man whom we seek ? I believe we 
 want to know what kind of man was he who stood behind 
 all this, and whom we want to know as well in his deeds 
 as in his writings. This man has moved us by his book. 
 Who was he that wrote such a book, and what kind of 
 man was he ? What was his life ? What provoked him to 
 such utterance ? That is the source of all biography. 
 
 But the most vehement emotions a man can feel, that 
 which stirs him deepest/the true poet will utter in his works. 
 No writer may hope to seize a sensible and thoughtful 
 reader strongly except by giving expression to that which 
 he has felt in his own life, and everybody will paint 
 the world as he himself has seen it ; for this reason we 
 find in the books of a true poet the utterances of his 
 deepest feelings ; for this reason we see from his books 
 how he saw the world ; for this reason the very soul of a 
 man is manifested in his poetical works, whether he wishes 
 it or not. Of course.it is manifested only to him who is 
 able to read, and very few people know how to read a poet. 
 Yet there are great differences in these manifestations. 
 One poet will express himself in a less intimate manner 
 

 184 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 than another. Take Shakespeare, for instance. What 
 does Shakespeare the poet tell of Shakespeare the man ? 
 Of course we look into a giant-brain, an immense fancy, 
 which reflected the whole world, a mind which followed 
 men and women into the most secret folds and corners of 
 their souls ; we must conclude that this man had drunk 
 love and hate to the dregs, that he had seen all the light 
 and all the shadows in nature, for he has written the 
 " Midsummer-Night's Dream " and " King Lear," he knew 
 the most tender beings and the most brutal, for he created 
 Perdita as well as Caliban and Falstaff with his society of 
 revellers; we know this man must have felt the whole 
 depth of human misery and the deepest indignation at the 
 depravity of men ; if he had not, he could not have written 
 " King Lear" and "Timon of Athens." Yet all this we 
 can only say at large, in general, and the results of George 
 Brandes' new book, in which he seeks to reconstruct the 
 psychological history of Shakespeare out of his works, 
 eem very questionable. For nowhere in all his plays 
 does Shakespeare show his own face ; he is always behind 
 the scenes. 
 
 Goethe is quite different. In him the poet's mask is much 
 more transparent. The periods of his development may 
 be sharply traced ; on many pages in " Werther," " Faust " 
 and " Wilhelm Meister " the veil is so thin that it seems 
 torn, it is only Goethe himself who speaks, who tells what 
 Goethe felt, what Goethe suffered, what Goethe did and 
 what Goethe thought. 
 
 Yet we have so many letters of his, so many notices 
 of his works and of his writings ; his contemporaries have 
 told us so much, that we almost know how he passed 
 every day of his life ; so we can no longer decide whether 
 we know what we do know from such direct sources or 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 185 
 
 indirectly from his works. Still, there can be no doubt 
 that his poetry is more personal and subjective than 
 Shakespeare's. 
 
 Now DajUe^sJ^de^j^^ 
 Goethe s. He is the hero of all his works, not a creature 
 o"rHbcrbrain which he may have modelled after his own 
 likeness, as so many poets have done, but he himself: 
 Dante Alighieri of St. Peter's Gate in Florence. He loved 
 Beatrice. He was in Hell, in Purgatory, and in Paradise. 
 He himself. He tells us so. We cannot doubt it. The 
 word " I " may be encountered on every page of his 
 poems. All his works are "■ Truth and Fiction " ("Dicht- 
 ung und Wahrheit ") out of his life. I)ante|s whole*^ 
 poetry is nothing but a poetical autobiography. That is^ 
 the feature which makes them so vivid, which forces us 
 to such deep participation in his feelings. He is a poet 
 of an unheard-of spiritual egoism, he expresses his 
 opinion on every question, on every personage, on every 
 event. For his own time he must have been modern and 
 actual to the highest degree. For does he not mention 
 himself and all his acquaintances by name ? His readers 
 could hear what their late cousin had spoken in the flames 
 of Hell, or what occupied their sister in Paradise. 
 
 And for this reason he tells us so much more of his time 
 than his time had to tell of him. There is but one soul in 
 these distant days whose inmost thoughts are laid before 
 us and may be glanced over : the soul of Dante. 
 
 And it is for this reason that I said we know him so well. 
 Of course we do. We may hear him speak incessantly and 
 all his words are weighty. But here again one must be 
 able to hear. And it almost makes one despair to see 
 how silly clever men become when they read a poet like . 
 Dante, what pedantic methods they adopt, what quibblings 
 
1 86 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 instead of silent enjoyment are the fruits of reading Dante. 
 Nearly all lack the power of synthesis, which is necessary 
 to obtain a true notion of the whole from the parts, to 
 understand the law of a man's being out of a few facts 
 and allusions, and to explain the facts and allusions by 
 the law of his being. But what conclusions are formed 
 instead from single words, from insignificant sentences ! 
 What combinations ! How literal and superficial are the 
 interpretations of scholars who even make pretence of 
 depth ! 
 
 Another common mistake is, that all writers on Dante 
 occupy themselves with his opinions instead of inquiring 
 into the state of his soul. I do not mean this word in a 
 religious sense, but I mean the whole interior state, the 
 condition and qualities of the man. 
 
 Scholars have written very clever and erudite treatises 
 on the connection of Dante's three chief works — on his 
 " Geistesgang" — but in everyone the question is only one 
 of Dante's religious and philosophical opinions ; and no- 
 where, with the single exception of that slight allusion in 
 Carlyle's lecture which I quoted above, is a word said or 
 
 <a thought spent on the deeper question : what a terrible 
 revolution must have taken place in the soul of a man 
 who from such a tender, childlike idyll of innocent love 
 as the " New Life " came to write such a poem of indig- 
 nation and wrath as the "Divine Comedy." 
 
 Most men even say that the time when Dante wrote 
 the " Divine Comedy" was a time of peace and of 
 quietude of soul. People who say so have not the 
 slightest notion of what passes in a poet's soul. For 
 though the man who could write such a work must have 
 been firm and sure of his mission, yet towards the world 
 he was filled with trembling rage and indignation : an 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 187 
 
 unquenchable ire against men burned within the same man 
 who once, to designate his feeling for all men, had found 
 but the one word " love." Scartazzini in his last book 
 calls Dante a man of one casting — " a nature of granite.'' 
 Not so. He only became so gradually and in his later 
 years ; the casting had once been soft and plastic, which 
 by the most tragic fate became so hard and granite-like. 
 
 There is but one work which may be compared to the 
 " Divine Comedy " — the " Faust " of Goethe. Not only are 
 they both poems of humanity, in which the question of man 
 and his destiny is treated, in which we are led " From 
 Heaven through the World to Hell," or the reverse, but 
 the essential resemblance, the reason why I mention 
 " Faust," and not the " Messiad," or the " Paradise Lost," 
 is again the personal and actual element in both poems. 
 They do not treat of Creation and the Fall of Man as 
 Milton does, nor of Christ's Passion as Klopstock ; they do 
 not chant cosmic poems of long-past times, but Goethe 
 and Dante remain in the present — they throw open the 
 doors into the mystic regions which are ever around us. 
 Faust is a modern man, the ideal type of a modern man, 
 and Mephistopheles is a highly modern devil ; and modern 
 life, that is to say life of Goethe's time, fills every scene 
 of the drama. 
 
 The same may be said of Dante. He sings no chant 
 of terror, of a distant Hell to come, no hymn on Paradise, 
 but on Maundy Thursday in the year thirteen hun- 
 dred, when he himself was just thirty-five years old, 
 he came to the door of the dead and through a whole week 
 about Eastertime he wandered through the realms of the 
 dead and tells us with absolute distinctness and with 
 trembling agitation what he saw and heard ; we may 
 check his every step and the events of every hour, exact 
 
1 88 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 plans of the infernal and celestial regions have been 
 designed from his words; every place is described by 
 the most minute comparisons, the whole poem is one of 
 terrific reality. No wonder that the women of Ravenna, 
 when he walked in its streets, stepped aside in fear and 
 pointed to him saying : " That is the man who was down 
 in hell ! " 
 
 The second feature, which makes Dante appear the 
 f most original of all European poets up to his time, is 
 / related to the first. Visions of the spiritual realms had 
 been written before his days. He was clearly influenced 
 by Virgil's " Aeneid," and the descent to the subterranean 
 empire in that poem had been borrowed from Homer. 
 There were plenty of Christian visions too. But the 
 descents to hell of ancient times were fables and myths, 
 those of Christian times were legends composed with the 
 object of terrifying unbelievers — the latter almost all of 
 as little poetic worth compared with Dante's vision as the 
 old marionette-plays of " Faust " compared with the 
 tragedy of Goethe. 
 
 But Dante surpassed his predecessors not only in 
 artistic qualities, but he gave something thoroughly new : 
 " Where I am sailing none has tracked the sea." J 
 
 Dante was born in a glorious time, in which two kinds 
 of poetry prevailed : the chivalrous epic and the song of 
 the Minnesingers. He himself began with love-poems, 
 resembling those of the Provencal knights ; mediaeval 
 religious poetry had influenced him, but his work, if there 
 must be a classification at all, belongs to epic poetry. 
 
 And if we compare the deepest of all these epics, the 
 " Parcival," by Wolfram von Eschenbach — out of which 
 Wagner created his musical drama — if we compare this 
 with Dante, what a difference! There is some fine 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 189 
 
 psychology in Wolfram, some mystic and religious ideas 
 are touched in it, but it is only a touch in passing. 
 
 Dante left all known paths and broke through the wall. 
 He projected our own life to the right and to the left into 
 the spiritual world. His epic is different from all others. 
 
 He tells no story of knighthood and love, nor the 
 development of some young hero, his adventures, his 
 guilt, and his final happy marriage and arrival in the 
 realm which is destined for him ; no, he stood with firm 
 foot in the midst of the real world, and there he looked 
 above and below, he saw into his own soul, and around 
 him; he saw what passed within him and what passed 
 in the souls of other men ; he saw the historical catas- 
 trophes of his time — the downfall of the mediaeval Empire, 
 the triumph and downfall of the Church of Rome, 
 dynasties extinct and town republics in furious revolu- 
 tions, and he did not choose to tell some story of 
 events happening in this world, and passing through it 
 like a thread on which pearls are strung. No; this 
 whole immense real world began to revolve around him 
 and to arrange itself in strange mystic circles ; and in 
 these circles he caught the whole world and constructed 
 it, as it were, anew : the world which had been but a 
 furious vortex of contradictory appearances, of madden- 
 ing crime, love, hate, destruction, and new birth, arose 
 out of his brain as that cathedral the foundations of 
 which are laid in the darkest and most fearful depths of 
 the human soul, in the pool of all sin and damnation — 
 which rises in endless degrees, scales and spires, filled 
 with men singing to the highest and most radiant glory, 
 to the most godlike trance and ecstasy of which the 
 human soul is capable. 
 
 He changed the Visible Church into the Invisible, which 
 
1 9 o DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 he saw and made visible. The subject of Dante's poem 
 is the whole world. 
 
 The world which is so bewildering and incomprehen- 
 sible to the poor human eye became clear to him and 
 arranged itself in cosmic order : " Kosmos," " order," or 
 " beauty," is the Greek word for the world. 
 
 For Dante wanders through the interior of the earth, 
 through its centre, up to the other hemisphere — ever 
 upwards through the air, through the crystalline heavens 
 up to the Empyrean, where the white glowing rose of 
 Paradise unfolds itself, where Deity is throned and the 
 eternal revolution of the world is ruled by Love. 
 
 It arranged itself for him in a second moral order, in 
 three times nine circles, responding to all human qualities, 
 all the glories and all the squalidness of the human soul ; 
 and this not in cold and philosophic classifications, but the 
 circles are filled with well-known faces of men, every one 
 of whom had lived ; their wailing and their joyful singing 
 resound in them ; we find the whole world of Dante's day 
 rearranged in those wonderful circles. With full right he 
 could call it " my sacred song, to which both heaven and 
 earth have set their hand." 
 
 But that is not all ; there soon appears a still deeper 
 meaning in the poem ; at the next glance all this mighty 
 world disappears — the macrocosm becomes a microcosm ; 
 we discover that we are no longer in the world, we are 
 in a soul ; there is stillness and sighing at the outset ; 
 for belief the light from above is wanting. Raging 
 storms come next : these are the passions of the senses, 
 hurrying the soul in every direction ; repulsive mire, filth, 
 and moisture follow, where gluttony and intemperance have 
 made the soul obtuse and dark : seething blood boils 
 around murderers and tyrants, and so forth, until the 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 191 
 
 final obduracy keeps the soul stiff and frozen in the 
 deepest and coldest abyssus of hell. Brighter are the 
 stations of penitence. The sluggard must run, the eyes 
 of the envious are closed by a thread ; the gluttonous 
 fast and famish; the over-hasty lie in immovable quiet; 
 this is the penitent soul which denies itself all that had 
 once led it into temptation. 
 
 The same symbolism repeats itself throughout the in- 
 creasing joys of Paradise. We perceive that this immense 
 moving world is a figure, and that every circle does but 
 symbolise a torment, a penance, or a joy of the soul. 
 The whole mystic wandering is but the path of the soul 
 through temptation, penitence, and purgatory to peace, 
 eternal blessedness, knowledge and unity with God. 
 
 It has the same meaning as that of Bunyan's " Pilgrim's 
 Progress," but is expressed by a far mightier artist and 
 poet. x 
 
 And again a veil drops from our eyes ; it is not only 
 the poor Florentine Dante Alighieri who walks here, 
 who saw all this and found peace — it is the Christian, it 
 is Man, who walks the mystic path of the Fall and of 
 Salvation. That is the reason why the week of Easter 
 was chosen for the pilgrimage. 
 
 This is the world with all its circles and at the same 
 time a soul, and all that a soul passes through in life ; 
 all struggles, all the tortures of penitence, all the joy 
 of enlightenment, it is macrocosm and microcosm in one 
 picture. 
 
 Not that the interpreters found all this— they some- 
 times do find more in a poem than the author ever thought 
 of; but in the "Divine Comedy" all this not only follows 
 clearly out of the whole arrangement and contents of the 
 poem, but Dante himself repeatedly directs our attention to 
 
1 92 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the fourfold meaning of his work. And not until the im- 
 mensity of the attempt and the performance has dawned 
 on us do we know how to read the " Divine Comedy" and 
 only then shall we understand why this poem occupies so 
 high a place throughout the world. 
 
 Let us again take up the comparison with " Faust." 
 Both are the poems of humanity, both tell what man is 
 meant for, what is the aim of his earthly life — Dante in 
 the mediaeval and Christian sense, Goethe in the modern 
 sense. The whole change of the world effected by six 
 centuries, by the Renaissance, Reformation, Science, and 
 the return of Antique Culture is represented in these 
 wo works. 
 
 Both treat the problem of the aspiring soul. As the 
 pilgrim, Dante, in the course of the " Divine Comedy," 
 becomes abstract Man, so the same meaning is obviously 
 expressed in the following verses of " Faust " : 
 
 Das was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt is, 
 Will ich in meinen inneren Selbst geniessen, 
 Mit meinem Geist das Hochst' und Tiefste greifen, 
 Ihr Wohl und Weh auf meinen Busen haufen, 
 Und so mein eigen Selbst zu ihren Selbst erweitern ! 
 
 The difference is that Dante solved the problem as a 
 Christian by penitence and belief, while the modern Faust 
 says, "Wer immer strebend sich bemuht, den konnenwir 
 erlosen." (" Whosoever unceasingly strives upwards . . . 
 him we can save.") More self-reliant, proud and free is the 
 conception of the modern poet, his God far milder and 
 more loving than the hard and ruthless God of mediaeval 
 ^Christians. He demands no more than a pure and active 
 rill, soaring to high aims and free from all egoism. 
 Both poems have still another no less grand quality in 
 
THE WORK OF DANTE 193 
 
 common ; in both the realms of the soul, the depths and 
 the dreams which are in every man's soul are projected 
 into reality. Religion has made at all times, out of the 
 evil and the pure regions in our own soul, heaven and 
 hell, gods and devils, and transplanted them into space. 
 
 Many men may deny that heaven and hell exist in 
 space, but no one can deny that they exist within him 
 personally, with their torments and joys, and both have 
 been expressed and painted in this poem, hard as crystal, 
 palpable and vivid, as nowhere else. 
 
 Dante has solved the immense problem by uniting both, 
 by leading us through hell and heaven as divisions of 
 space, and still never permitting us to forget that we are 
 in a man's soul ; by uniting macrocosm and microcosm as 
 they are united in reality. 
 
 But all this seems still more grand, strange and imposing 
 when we trace Dante's life, and see how curiously his path 
 led him to his works, and through his works to the last 
 and greatest of them, how the first conception of the 
 " Sacred Song " dawned in early youth, and filled his soul 
 ever more and more ; how his very life led him by every 
 step surely and strongly nearer and nearer to the great 
 vision, how the earthly love for a beautiful woman who 
 died early, was purified to celestial love, and led him, as 
 by a golden thread, through the labyrinth of life ; here 
 again the individual love was united with the divine, " the 
 love that rules the world." 
 
 His soul lies before us transparent as crystal, unfolded 
 like a rose ; we can see the first small root, the little 
 growing buds ; we see the first ray that awakes the bud, 
 the first presentiment of coming storms, which will tear 
 the rose and bear its odour and its leaves through all lands 
 and times. We hear in the poem of his first youth that 
 
i 9 4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 There one lives waking, whom great loss shall try 
 And who shall tell the damned in hell's unrest : 
 I have beheld the hope of all the blest. 
 
 And he ends his first work when he is still almost a 
 boy in Florence, hardly ripened to manhood, with words 
 of a strange and wonderful vision and the resolution to 
 work steadfastly, until he shall have told of Beatrice what 
 has never been told of any woman on earth. 
 
 We can trace how in the first period of his life all these 
 great dreams dawn on him, how in the second he tries in 
 vain to enter life, to do as others do, to be active and work 
 like ordinary men, how he is thrown back and repulsed, 
 understood by nobody and left alone with his dreams and 
 the world within him, until after unheard-of toils he 
 expresses all this in that ever-sacred song which will 
 appear holy to men of all times and races and eras ; and 
 his task thus being accomplished dies. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 DANTE'S YOUTH 
 
 In the small grey Gothic Florence, with its dark and 
 crooked streets, small squares, the fortified castles of 
 noblemen, its many towers, with its churches and ringing 
 bells, its joyous feasts and wild riots, Dante was born. 
 
 There was no campanile in Florence at that time, no 
 Ufifizi, no Renaissance palaces ; the construction of the 
 Palazzo Vecchio and of the cathedral had scarcely been 
 begun ; serious, quick-tempered men in strange garbs, in 
 red and green, brown and white gowns with capes and 
 hoods, walked the streets ; there in the quarter called after 
 St. Peter's Gate, near the Piazza San Martino, stood the 
 houses of the Alighieri.* There Dante, or with his full 
 name, Durante Alighieri, was born between May 1 8, 
 and June^jj7, 1 265. The d ates given by old "writers 
 are contradictory. Some name the year 1266. But 
 from Dante's saying, in the first verse of the " Divine 
 Comedy," that when he undertook his descent to hell he 
 stood in the middle of the path of life, which, according to 
 
 * The house which bears the official tablet is certainly not the house 
 in which Dante was born. This has been proved by Witte. But he, 
 too, seems mistaken in designating the house in the Via Santa Mar- 
 gherita as the true one. According to a communication, for which I 
 am indebted to Dr. Davidsohn, the houses of the Alighieri no longer 
 exist. 
 
196 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the Bible, lasts seventy years, and the day of his descent 
 being Good Friday 1 300, then from a similar remark in 
 the " Banquet " and various other circumstances, it follows 
 that 1 265 was the year of his birth. 
 
 That the day fell between May 18 and June 17 
 |is evident from his statement that he was born in 
 the sign of the Twins ; for in that year the sun stood in 
 the sign of the Twins during the term aforesaid. Witte 
 may perhaps be right in concluding, from Dante's special 
 veneration for St. Lucia, and from the important influence 
 on his life which he ascribed to that saint, that he was 
 born on the day dedicated to her, May 30. The 
 family certainly was a noble and ancient one, though it 
 did not belong to the "Grandi." It is not likely that 
 Boccaccio and the younger Villani, who expressly says so, 
 should be mistaken in that. It has become a matter of 
 controversy whether Dante was of noble descent or not. 
 In the catalogue of the noble houses contained in the 
 works of Giovanni Villani and Machiavelli the name of the 
 Alighieri is not to be found. But Alighieri was not then 
 a family name — it was the time when family names were 
 first introduced, but were still unusual except those derived 
 from castles and feudal estates — Alighiero was but the 
 name of Dante's father and of his great-grandfather. 
 Perhaps they belonged to another of the great Florentine 
 families. In the " Divine Comedy," Dante himself speaks 
 of the nobility of his blood. His ancestor, Cacciaguida, 
 had been knighted by Emperor Conrad III. He had 
 accompanied the emperor on his crusade and perished in 
 the Holy Land. Besides, the rapidity of Dante's political 
 career, the circumstance that he could marry a lady from 
 the first house of the town, that of the Donati, moreover 
 that the young King of Naples was one of his personal 
 
DANTE'S YOUTH 197 
 
 friends — all these facts seem to prove his noble birth. 
 Later on he became a common citizen in order to be 
 eligible for public office, after the nobility had been 
 excluded. It is worth mentioning that Alighieri is a 
 German name, and most probably derived from " Aldiger," 
 which has about the same significance as the word 
 " Shakespeare," meaning " the ruler of the spear." 
 
 The family belonged to the Guelf nobility ; they owned 
 houses and estates, but seem to have been deficient in 
 ready money — at least the poet himself undoubtedly was. 
 In the year 1260, as Dante concedes to Farinata in the 
 town of fire, they were banished with the other Guelf 
 nobles, yet his father, Alighiero, seems not to have been 
 among the exiled members of the family. Dante's mother 
 was called Bella, her family name is unknown ; she died 
 early, perhaps at his birth. His father married a second 
 time Lapa de' Cialuffi, by whom he had two children, a 
 son Francesco, who outlived the poet by twenty years, and 
 'a daughter of unknown name, who married a certain 
 Leone Poggi. Both names, Cialuffi as well as Poggi, are 
 plebeian. His father, too, died early. In the year 1283 
 he is spoken of as a man dead some years. He seems to 
 have been a man of no importance. In a sonnet addressed 
 to Dante by his future wife's kinsman, and his own friend, 
 Forese Donati, Alighiero is alluded to with undisguised 
 contempt. The poem, however, is of a jocose nature, and 
 Dante himself is also reviled in it. 
 
 It is a strange and well-known fact that Dante, who 
 wrote in such a personal style and seldom concealed a 
 name, never mentioned, or even so much as alluded to, 
 any member of his family in all his verse, neither father 
 nor mother, brother nor sister, wife nor children. The 
 only exception, if it can be called one, would be the verse 
 
198 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 in the eighth canto of Hell, where Virgil, passing the 
 infernal pool with Dante in the bark of Phlegyas, embraces 
 him and says, " Blessed be she who conceived thee ! " 
 We may ask whether he had causes for being silent con- 
 cerning them, for he mentions his friends, his love, his 
 wife's relations, his ancestor. Yet we know nothing at 
 all about his relations to his family except that his brother 
 occasionally stood surety for his debts, and sometimes 
 lent money to him himself. 
 
 We know nothing about Dante's youth, for what is told 
 by Boccaccio is only invention and fine talk. We may 
 fancy whatever we choose. We may think of little Dante 
 as of a fine gifted child, precocious in all his sentiments, 
 perhaps a lonely child craving after love, who grew up in 
 those small streets near the Piazza San Martino, in the 
 neighbourhood of the houses of the mighty families of the 
 Donati and Portinari. We do not know who were his 
 teachers. Though on one occasion he calls Brunetto 
 Latini, the author of the " Tresor," his master, it is not 
 possible to suppose that this man, who had been Chan- 
 cellor and Prior of the Republic, and who died in 1294, 
 could have been Dante's tutor, as some authors have 
 fancied him to be. It is possible, however, that Dante 
 had heard lectures of his, or had profited by his conver- 
 sation, but more likely he referred only to Latini's works. 
 From his first work, the " Vita Nuova," we may gather 
 that at the time he wrote it, which was in the third decade 
 of his life, he read and wrote Latin, had mastered Pro- 
 vencal and French, had read the poets of these languages, 
 and had studied Dialectics and Natural Science. It is not 
 impossible that he passed some time at a university, most 
 probably at that of Padua or at Bologna. His serious 
 and inquiring soul certainly in some way or other gained 
 
DANTE'S YOUTH 199 
 
 more than most of the companions of his youth did. But 
 his immense knowledge, his all-comprehensive reading, 
 was, as he himself tells us, not acquired until much later. 
 
 We see him, grown up, in the society of young Floren- 
 tine noblemen, one of whom, the poet Guido Cavalcanti, 
 he calls " the first of his friends." Guido was the son of 
 Messer Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, of one of the first Guelf 
 families of the town. Sacchetti, the novelist, calls him " a 
 man who, perhaps, had no equal in Florence." Boccaccio, 
 who in the u Decamerone " tells a story about him, says : 
 * Guido di Messer Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti not only was 
 one of the best logicians that the world held, and a sur- 
 passing natural philosopher, but he also excelled in 
 beauty and courtesy, and was of great gifts as a speaker, 
 and everything it pleased him to do, and what best 
 became a gentleman, he did better than any other." 
 According to all witnesses he was brave and imperious, 
 full of self-confident pride, reserved, yet of a passionate 
 temper. His father, Cavalcante, was a notorious sceptic 
 and materialist, and as such was seen by Dante in the 
 sixth circle of hell, lying in his fiery coffin ; Guido, too, 
 passed for a sceptic. He was ten years older than Dante, 
 and in the latter's youth had great influence on him. He 
 seems to have induced Dante to write the " Vita Nuova " 
 not in Latin but in the popular, that is, the Italian, lan- 
 guage. Dante mentions some other friends, but we do 
 not know anything about them. 
 
 He must have been shy, diffident, and of a loving, 
 thoughtful and passionate nature ; so much we presume 
 from his earliest writings. We may imagine that he was 
 such from that fine picture ot Gtotto's with its rosy and 
 tender skin, the soft lips and eyes, and yet such firmness 
 about the mouth, such strength in chin and nose. We 
 
200 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 must imagine him in the gay feasts in Florence, of which 
 the chroniclers tell, with their baldechins and tribunes 
 hung with wreaths of flowers, the great festival on St. 
 John's Day, when the young men, clad in white, led by the 
 Signor d' Amore, went singing and dancing up the street 
 of Santa Felicita, and women and girls also in wreaths of 
 flowers partook in the festivities, and music and songs and 
 ringing bells filled the air with joyful sounds. It was 
 still the time of fine chivalrous manners, the time of the 
 troubadours and of minstrelsy. 
 
 A sonnet of Dante's, which was not included in the 
 11 Vita Nuova," allows us to glance, as it were, through a 
 window into a sunny room, into the youthful life of 
 Dante : 
 
 Guido, I wish that Lapo, thou, and I, 
 
 Could be by spells conveyed, as it were now, 
 
 Upon a barque, with all the winds that blow 
 
 Along all seas at our good will to hie. 
 
 So no mischance or temper of the sky 
 
 Should mar our course with spite or cruel slip ; 
 
 But we, observing old companionship, 
 
 To be companions still should long thereby. 
 
 And Lady Joan, and Lady Beatrice, 
 
 And her the thirtieth on my roll, with us 
 
 Should our good wizard set, o'er seas to move 
 
 And they three ever to be well at ease, 
 
 As we should be, I think, if this were thus. 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 Does it not seem as if the half-happy, half-longing mood 
 of these enthusiastic youths, revelling in the dreams of 
 love and ardent friendships, were all expressed in this 
 poem ? A passage in the " Vita Nuova " confirms what 
 we gather from this sonnet, that these young fellows had 
 numbered sixty of the ladies and maidens of the city, who 
 
DANTE'S YOUTH 201 
 
 to them seemed fairest, and well knew the number by 
 which each of them was designated. Friend Lapo's 
 sweetheart, from some cause or other, is named only in 
 this u jargon." 
 
 Another poem of Dante's from the same time is the 
 following : 
 
 Last All Saints' holy-day, even now gone by, 
 
 I met a gathering of damozels ; 
 
 She that came first, as one doth who excels, 
 
 Had Love with her, bearing her company ; 
 
 A flame burned forward through her steadfast eye, 
 
 As when in living fire a spirit dwells ; 
 
 So, gazing with the boldness which prevails 
 
 O'er doubt, I knew an angel visibly. 
 
 As she passed on, she bowed her mild approof 
 
 And salutation to all men of worth, 
 
 Lifting the soul to solemn thoughts aloof. 
 
 In heaven itself that lady had her birth, 
 
 I think, and is with us for our behoof : 
 
 Blessed are they who meet her on the earth. 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 We know a few of Cavalcanti's love affairs, and we 
 know from the " Vita Nuova " that Dante himself, from 
 his ninth year, adored a girl whom he had seen in a 
 blood-red dress, and who was a year younger than he 
 was, with a boyish shy and happy love. 
 
 But most certainly his time was not only devoted to 
 studies, to society and to love, but to the exercise of arms 
 also; indeed, in the year 1289, Dante, then a man 
 of twenty-four, stood in the ranks, and on July n in 
 the same year took part in the battle of Campaldino, 
 where the Florentine Guelfs, 15,000 men strong, defeated 
 the Ghibellines and the people of Arezzo. It was this 
 same battle which Corso Donati, the unruly leader of the 
 
202 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Florentine horse (who afterwards became his relative and 
 his enemy), decided by an act of insubordination, and first 
 made himself a name. What Dante felt in this battle is 
 described by himself in a fragment of one of his letters, 
 quoted by Lionardo Aretino, in which he says : " At 
 this time I was in arms, no longer a boy, and felt much 
 fear and afterwards great joy because of the changeful 
 events of the battle." Some verses in the twenty-second 
 canto of Hell prove that Dante served in the Florentine 
 camp at the siege of the castle of Caprona, which in 
 August of the same year, after a siege of eight days, sur- 
 rendered to the Florentines and their allies, the Lucchese, 
 on condition that the garrison be permitted to retire. 
 This manysided life, embracing studies and politics, war 
 and pleasures and cultured society, altogether reminds us 
 of the life of ancient Greeks ; and, indeed, the Italian cities 
 have more than one feature in common with the famous 
 towns of antiquity, and a culture of similar splendour 
 developed within their walls. 
 
 But no less powerful than these must have been the 
 impressions of the great historical events of the time. Of 
 the immense war of the great Emperor against the Popes, 
 the glory and the fall of King Manfred which lay behincj 
 him, he certainly must have heard people continually tell 
 in his childhood, the more so as his own house was in- 
 volved in the catastrophe. He was three years old when 
 young Conradin was defeated in the battle of Tagliacozzo, 
 and beheaded a short time afterwards ; and forty years 
 later, as a man of advanced life, he saw a German kmy 
 with Conradin's bloody head in its banner enter ttaly 
 under the Emperor Henry VII. to revenge that ..cruel 
 deed. ... in vain, his own last hopes perishecf 'with 
 the Emperor's death. He was five years old when all the 
 
DANTE'S YOUTH 
 
 203 
 
 world told with terror how the famous captain Guido of v 
 Montfort, King Charles' governor in Tuscany, had killed 
 young Prince Henry of England in the Church of Viterbo. 
 In his eighth year the Pope's interdict lay on Florence. 
 No bell was permitted to be rung, no mass was read, no 
 priest gave consolation to the dying — a great event for 
 the boy as well as for the town. He saw riots and dis- 
 cords enough in Florence itself, he listened to the great 
 traditions of the city and its parties ; he was a boy of 
 thirteen when the banished Ghibellines returned, fifteen 
 when the Sicilian Vespers took place. In the year 1285 
 Florence demolished its old walls and built new ones, a 
 sign of its rising power; and in 1289, the year of his 
 military service, Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, with 
 his five sons, died of hunger in the tower of Pisa, and on 
 the opposite Adriatic shore, Francesca da Rimini and her 
 lover fell by her husband's sword. In the year 1290 a 
 terrible fire devastated the town ; that same year marked 
 a great epoch in Dante's life, for in it the woman whom 
 he loved died. 
 

 CHAPTER III 
 
 BEATRICE 
 
 About two years later Dante told the story of his love in 
 a strange little book, in which, to a number of poems 
 composed in the course of the preceding ten years, he 
 added a commentary in prose, to explain their meaning 
 and origin. To this book he gave a very remarkable 
 title, calling it the " New Life." It is related in what 
 one should call a " holiday style," simply and touchingly, 
 with finest psychologic details, so true and perfect, that 
 perhaps no one will ever be able fully to understand it 
 who has not experienced similar feelings in early youth. 
 It is the loveliest book created in the Middle Ages; all 
 softness and tenderness, quiet longing, devout love ; such 
 a tenderness as is inaccessible to most people of a coarser 
 nature. Nowhere do we find a trace of the future energy, 
 the sharp lines that seem wrought in steel, the future 
 riches of imagination and thought. A sea of events and 
 strange destinies had to roll by him before the author of 
 the " New Life " could become the poet of the u Divine 
 Comedy." Of the poems contained in the book, the first, 
 as Dante himself informs us, was composed in his 
 eighteenth year, that is, in 1283. According to the custom 
 of the time, he sent it to several poets, who answered it. 
 Some of these answers are extant. Among them is a 
 
BEATRICE 205 
 
 sonnet by Guido Cavalcanti, which, as Dante tells us, was 
 the true beginning of their friendship. Though we are in 
 a position to state that many events told of in the book 
 took place in reality, still we cannot venture to say that 
 it is simply an " ingenious diary of Dante's love." Dante 
 was a most mysterious person, and all that he tells about 
 himself is mystical and full of secrecy. His soul always 
 walks, as it were, on unearthly paths beside his body. He 
 was a man whose inward life was richer and more intense 
 than that of other men, who very soon lifted himselt 
 from the platform of ordinary life to a higher sphere, 
 carrying up with him whatever he touched ; in his writ- 
 ings he gave the most detailed descriptions, not of his 
 outward destinies, but of this higher life of his soul ; an 
 autobiography of his inward development, not of his per- 
 sonal history on earth ; and just because he chose to throw 
 so much light on what passed within him, and so little 
 on his destinies in this world, we must renounce all hope 
 of ever attaining a full knowledge of the latter. The same 
 must be said of the woman whom he loved and made 
 famous as none was made before her. Nay, Beatrice is 
 the most enigmatic creature of all literature. Among the 
 many women made immortal by the poets who loved 
 them, she was exalted to such a height that the dazzling 
 light which the poet shed around her hides her from our 
 glances. All his poetry was for her ; his love for her was 
 the golden thread, which now for a time deserted, again 
 firmly grasped, seems drawn across the labyrinth of his 
 life. She, one may say, is the heroine of the " New Life " 
 as well as of the " Divine Comedy." In the first he tells, — 
 and because he tells it, and because in the " Divine 
 Comedy " the same story recurs, we are forced to 
 consider it the most important event of his life, more 
 
2 o6 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 important than the revolution in Florence and all others, for 
 a man like Dante must be allowed himself to declare which 
 event has been of highest and most decisive importance 
 for him,— in the " New Life " he tells, I say, how, when still 
 a boy of nine years, he suddenly fell in love with the little 
 girl of eight, whom he saw for the first time in a crimson 
 dress, and how " at that moment the spirit of life, which 
 hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, 
 began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of his 
 body shook therewith." 
 V I Vie W&ea that he saw her many times, until one day, 
 after the lapse Vf Vine years, when she was near eighteen, 
 he saw her " dressed all in pure white, between two gentle 
 ladies older than she," and how, " passing through a street 
 she turned her eyes thither where he stood sorely abashed 
 and by her unspeakable courtesy saluted him with so 
 virtuous a bearing that he seemed then and there to see 
 the limits of all blessedness," and how after this he had 
 that marvellous vision in which he saw her constrained by 
 love to eat his flaming heart, that vision which he described 
 in his first poem. ( He tells us how that love completely 
 subdued and overcame him, what bliss and what sorrow it 
 caused him, what he did to conceal it, and what conse- 
 quences followed therefrom. He tells us that he became 
 so weak and so reduced that, when people asked him what 
 was the matter with him, he could not but tell them 
 11 Love," " because the thing was so plainly to be discerned 
 in his countenance that there was no longer any means 
 to conceal it." But when they went on to ask, " ' And for 
 whose sake has Love done this ? ' I looked in their faces 
 smiling, and spake no word in return." 
 
 Then he proceeds to tell of new visions, in which Love 
 appeared to him, and how, whenever he met her, Love 
 
BEATRICE 207 
 
 overpowered him in such a degree " that his body being 
 all subjected thereto remained many times helpless and 
 passive." What her salutation was to him is described in 
 a particular chapter : " I say that when she appeared in 
 any place, and I was allowed to hope for her wonderful 
 salutation, there was no man mine enemy any longer, and 
 such a flame of charity came upon me that most certainly 
 in that moment I would have pardoned whosoever had 
 done me an injury ; and if one should then have ques- 
 tioned me concerning any matter I could only have said 
 unto him ' Love,' with a countenance clothed in humility. 
 And what time she made ready to salute me, the spirit of 
 Love, destroying all other perceptions, thrust forth the 
 feeble spirits of my eye, saying : ' Do homage unto your 
 mistress,' and putting itself in their place to obey, so that 
 he who would might then have beheld Love, beholding 
 the lids of my eyes shake." He tells that once, when he 
 met her unawares at a wedding, he trembled so that he 
 was forced to lean his back against the wall. A while 
 after this certain ladies asked him, " To what end lovest 
 thou this lady, seeing that thou canst not support her pre- 
 sence ? Now tell us this thing that we may know it, for 
 certainly the end of such a love must be new and worthy 
 of knowledge." Thereupon he composed that celebrated 
 canzone, " Ladies that have Intelligence in Love," which at 
 once placed him among the first poets who sang of love : 
 
 Ladies that have intelligence in love, 
 Of mine own lady I would speak with you ; 
 Not that I hope to count her praises through, 
 But telling what I may, to ease my mind. 
 And I declare that when I speak thereof, 
 Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me 
 That if my courage failed not, certainly 
 
208 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 To him my listeners must all be resigned, 
 
 Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind 
 
 That mine own speech should foil me, which were base 
 
 But only will discourse of her high grace 
 
 In these poor words, the best that I can find, 
 
 With you alone, dear dames and damozels : 
 
 'Twere ill to speak thereof with any else. 
 
 An angel, of his blessed knowledge, saith 
 
 To God : " Lord, in the world that Thou hast made 
 
 A miracle in action is display'd 
 
 By reason of a soul whose splendours fare 
 
 Even hither : and since Heaven requireth 
 
 Nought saving her, for her it prayeth Thee, 
 
 Thy Saints crying aloud continually." 
 
 Yet Pity still defends our earthly share 
 
 In that sweet soul ; God answering thus the prayer. 
 
 " My well-beloved, suffer that in peace 
 
 Your hope remain, while so My pleasure is, 
 
 There where one dwells who dreads the loss of her : 
 
 And who in Hell unto the doomed shall say : 
 
 1 1 have looked on that for which God's chosen pray.' " 
 
 My lady is desired in the high Heaven : 
 
 Therefore, it now behoveth me to tell, 
 
 Saying : Let any maid that would be well 
 
 Esteemed keep with her : for as she goes by, 
 
 Into foul hearts a deathly chill is driven 
 
 By Love, that makes ill thought to perish there : 
 
 While any who endures to gaze on her 
 
 Must either be ennobled, or else die, 
 
 When one deserving to be raised so high 
 
 Is found, 'tis then her power attains its proof, 
 
 Making his heart strong for his soul's behoof 
 
 With the full strength of meek humility. 
 
 Also this virtue owns she, by God's will : 
 
 Who speaks with her can never come to ill. 
 
 Love saith concerning her: " How chanceth it 
 
BEATRICE 209 
 
 That flesh, which is of dust, should be thus pure ? " 
 There, gazing always, he makes oath : " For sure, 
 This is a creature of God till now unknown." 
 She hath that paleness of the pearl that's fit 
 In a fair woman, so much and not more ; 
 She is as high as nature's skill can soar ; 
 Beauty is tried by her comparison- 
 Whatever her sweet eyes are turned upon, 
 Spirits of love do issue thence in flame, 
 Which through their eyes who then may look on them 
 Pierce to the heart's deep chamber every one. 
 And in her smile Love's image you may see ; 
 Whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly. 
 
 Dear Song, I know thou wilt hold gentle speech 
 
 With many ladies, when I send thee forth : 
 
 Wherefore (being mindful that thou hadst thy birth 
 
 From Love, and art a modest, simple child), 
 
 Whomso thou meetest, say thou this to each : 
 
 " Give me good speed ! To her I wend along 
 
 In whose much strength my weakness is made strong." 
 
 And if, i' the end, thou wouldst not be beguiled 
 
 Of all thy labour, seek not the defile 
 
 And common sort ; but rather choose to be 
 
 Where man and woman dwell in courtesy. 
 
 So to the road thou shalt be reconciled, 
 
 And find the lady, and with the lady, Love. 
 
 Commend thou me to each, as doth behove. 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 Dante paid himself a fine compliment by relating in the 
 twenty-fourth canto of Purgatory a conversation which 
 he had in the other world with the soul of the Lucchese 
 poet Buonagiunta Orbicciani, who thus addressed him : 
 
 O tell me, do I now see him, whose mind 
 
 Sang new-framed rhymes in Florence which began 
 " O ye who know what love is, ladies kind ! " 
 
 o 
 
210 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 And I to him : " Behold in me a man 
 
 Who when love breathes, listens, — what in me 
 Love doth dictate, I sing it as I can." 
 
 " Now, brother," spake he, " the defect I see 
 
 Which me, the Notary and Guittone barred 
 From that style new and sweet that honours thee. 
 
 Well do I now perceive how thy wings hard 
 
 After that sweet dictator upwards rose, | 
 
 Flight which to us the fates did not award. 
 
 And who considers will see how remote 
 Is the new manner from the other style." 
 
 The following two sonnets from the " Vita Nuova " are 
 characteristic specimens of the Florentine school : 
 
 Sonnet IX. 
 Full many a time there comes into my thought 
 
 The melancholy hue which Love doth give, 
 And such woes come on me that I am brought 
 
 To say, " Ah me ! doth one so burdened live ? " 
 For Love with me so suddenly hath fought, 
 
 That 'tis as though life all my frame did leave ; 
 One living spirit only help hath wrought, 
 
 And that remains discourse of thee to weave. 
 Then I arise, resolve myself to aid, 
 
 And pale and wan, and of all strength bereft, 
 I come to see thee, thinking health to find : 
 And if on thee my longing eyes are stayed, 
 My heart, as with an earthquake, then is cleft, 
 Which makes my pulse leave all its life behind. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 Sonnet XIV. 
 So gentle and so fair she seems to be, 
 My Lady, when she others doth salute, 
 That every tongue becomes, all trembling, mute, 
 And every eye is half afraid to see ; 
 
 
BEATRICE 211 
 
 She goes her way and hears men's praises free, 
 Clothed in a garb of kindness, meek and low, 
 And seems as if from heaven she came, to show 
 Upon the earth a wondrous mystery. 
 To one who looks on her she seems so kind, 
 That through the eyes a sweetness fills the heart, 
 Which only he can know who doth it try, 
 And through her face there breatheth from her mind 
 A spirit sweet and full of Love's true art, 
 Which to the soul saith, as it cometh, " Sigh." 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 He proceeds to tell of her father's death and of his own 
 illness, when in feverish dreams he saw her as one dead ; 
 with the exception of but few outward events he tells the 
 psychological story of his love — of the events within his 
 soul. It is the inner world that is his object, and in the 
 mirror of the soul strange transformations are possible. 
 The image of the beloved woman grows to such a height 
 that the heavens resound with her praise, that God Him- 
 self speaks of her, and that at her death Dante breaks out 
 in the words of Jeremiah : " How doth the city sit solitary, 
 that was full of people ! How is she become as a widow, 
 she who was great among the nations ! " He then tells 
 how it happened that after her death he had almost be- 
 trayed her and loved another young woman, who had 
 looked down on him, sitting in sadness, from the window 
 opposite, gazing upon him with a face full of deepest pity. 
 At last, however, conquering that new passion, he turned 
 back to the loving memory of Beatrice, and then speaks of 
 a last wondrous vision, concluding with the following 
 words : 
 
 " Wherefore if it be his pleasure through whom is the 
 life of all things, that my life continue with me for a few 
 years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her 
 
2i2 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 what hath not before been written of any woman. After 
 the which may it seem good unto him, who is the Master 
 of Grace, that my spirit should go hence to behold the 
 glory of its lady, to wit, to that blessed Beatrice who now 
 gazeth continually on His countenance, qui est per omnia 
 scecula benedictus." 
 
 One thing the " Vita Nuova " and the " Divina Corn- 
 media " have in common : the terrible intensity of all sensa- 
 tion. The whole book is the expression of exalted feel- 
 ings. Not that the precocity of love strikes us as so very 
 remarkable. Lord Byron fell vehemently in love in his 
 sixth year, and many instances of a similar precocity 
 could be quoted from life. But the " Vita Nuova " be- 
 trays an inner life of an incredible intensity. This love 
 not only clutches and rules Dante's soul, but it overflows 
 the soul's limits, and breaking all personal bonds fills the 
 streets with light, heightens the colour of the sky and 
 gilds the churches of Florence. It pervades the world in 
 mystic ways ; the rest of mankind vanish from his eyes 
 and lose all importance ; he is alone with his love. They 
 fill the world to the brim, and " beyond the sphere that 
 spreads to widest space," even God and His angels have 
 to speak of her. 
 
 The graceful little girl whom, on that memorable Ascen- 
 sion-day, he saw for the first time has imperiously mastered 
 Dante's soul, has given a new shape to his world ; and 
 to-day, while the real resounding world, that surrounded 
 him, has long become a shadow and a dream, his dream- 
 world is still real. 
 
 The world within him with its Sabbath-air, its pure sky 
 of serenest blue, with its touching sorrow and soft melody 
 of love, lies a reality before us in the " Vita Nuova " ; 
 and the "girl who has evoked this world has become a 
 
Broqi photo 
 
 DANTE 
 
 FROM A BRONZE OF THE XV CRN ' 
 National Muse: i. 'i i , Naples 
 
BEATRICE 213 
 
 glorified mystery, and perhaps the highest and greatest 
 illustration of that famous verse of Goethe's which is 
 much more difficult to understand than to quote : 
 
 Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan. 
 
 No artist has been more perfectly imbued with the 
 spirit of this wonderful book than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 The pictures which he created to illustrate it appear to 
 me fitly to embody the pure and passionate world of the 
 11 Vita Nuova." But Dante's youthful plan was not carried 
 out so quickly as he had expected. Indeed, it took him 
 his whole life to do it, and there is something overpowering 
 in the thought how literally those last lines came true. 
 But the path was not so even and straight as he seems to 
 have imagined in writing them. Fate, it is true, knows 
 no byways and no circuits, however they may appear to 
 us and to men. The way we are led by it is the only 
 possible way to fulfil our destiny. In the M Banquet " 
 some slight mention is made of Beatrice, but after this 
 not a word is spoken about her until Dante saw her once 
 more in the earthly Paradise. It was Beatrice to whom, 
 after long years, he became indebted for all the glories 
 he was called upon to see. It was the spirit of his half- 
 forgotten love who, out of pity for Dante, lost in the 
 dark wood of life, sent Virgil's shade to his rescue. It 
 was at her bidding that Virgil led him through Hell, 
 where he was shown the souls in pain ; then over the 
 mountain of Purgatory up to the garden of Eden. In 
 Eden Beatrice receives him with reproachful love and 
 with him ascends through the nine heavens to the Empy- 
 rean, where, like an immense white glowing rose, the 
 celestial Paradise unfolds itself, and where, around the 
 holy Trinity, around God himself, the spirits of the 
 
2i4 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 blessed are sitting, and the angels are flying from leaf 
 to leaf like golden bees. Here Beatrice, too, has her 
 place in the inmost row on the fourth seat ; the first is 
 St. Mary's, the second Eve's, the third Rachael's, the 
 fourth is Beatrice's; in the opposite row, among the 
 sainted men, John the Baptist has the first place facing 
 that of the Virgin; on the fourth, corresponding to 
 Beatrice's, sits St. Augustin. 
 
 The question necessarily forces itself on every reader's 
 mind, who was this Beatrice ? What daring mood could 
 induce Dante to assign such a place to the girl he loved ? 
 Yet more daring still, he lets her appear in the terrestrial 
 Paradise in the procession of the triumphant Church : 
 
 Under a heaven thus fair as I narrate 
 
 Did four-and-twenty elders slowly move, 
 In pairs, with fleur-de-lys incoronate, 
 
 And they all sang, " Oh, blessed thou above 
 All Adam's daughters, blessed too for aye 
 
 Be all thy glorious beauties that we love ! 
 And when the flowers and other verdure gay, 
 
 That on the other bank grew opposite, 
 Of those elect ones no more felt the sway, 
 
 As in the heaven there follows light on light, 
 Four living creatures after them drew nigh, 
 
 Each wearing crown of leafage green and bright. 
 Plumed with six wings were all that company ; 
 
 Of eyes their plumes were full, and Argus' eyes, 
 Were they yet living, might with those eyes vie. 
 
 The space within the four a car enrings, 
 That on two wheels in triumph moveth on, 
 I Which harnessed to his neck a Gryphon brings. 
 And his two wings, on this and that side one, 
 
 Are stretched midway, three bands on either side, 
 So that by cleaving he wrought harm to none. 
 
BEATRICE 215 
 
 In vain the eye their height to follow tryed ; 
 
 So far as he was bird, all gold his frame, 
 And white the rest, with vermeil modified. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 The Gryphon, whose wings reach into heaven, is 
 Christ, indicating His double nature ; the car, drawn by 
 Him, is His Church, and on His car stands, veiled, in 
 regal attitude, Beatrice. 
 
 It could not remain doubtful to anybody that this 
 meant more than a simple meeting with the girl, who 
 died on June 9, 1290. The Middle Ages more than any 
 other were the times of allegory and symbolism. Beatrice 
 standing on the car, that represents the Church, must be 
 the living essence of the Church ; so much is clear. 
 Scholars do not agree on a more precise definition. 
 Some maintain that she stands for Theology, some that 
 she is Active Intelligence, others propose Revelation, 
 Efficient Grace, Inspiration, Belief, and the like; all of 
 which notions were sharply distinct in mediaeval theology. 
 To us, however, who cannot treat such conceptions as 
 concrete and clearly defined things, who are no realists in 
 the sense of mediaeval philosophy, to us all these seem, as 
 it were, to melt into each other like clouds, without clear 
 limits or contents. Or let us rather say, they are words 
 by which men vainly try to define different utterances of 
 the same difficult psychological fact. It is sufficient to 
 say, Beatrice in the " Divine Comedy n indicates the 
 Highest that Dante knew, the essential spirit of the 
 Christian Church as he saw it, the highest illumination 
 which Divine Grace concedes to mankind. 
 
 But who was the earth-born woman who was trans- 
 figured to such a symbol? Who was she, glorified as 
 never a woman before her, and allowed to conduct her i 
 
216 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 lover through all heavens, who was made the symbol of 
 the ray of heavenly light given to mankind ? It is easy 
 to conceive that this question has incited the curiosity of 
 Dante's own time as well as of all following generations. 
 
 The answer was soon given. Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, 
 who in the second half of the fourteenth century gave lec- 
 tures by appointment of the Republic in Florence on the 
 " Divine Comedy " — the first Dante professor — declared 
 that he had heard " from a trustworthy person " that she 
 was no other than young Beatrice, the daughter of the 
 noble gentleman and neighbour of the Alighieri, Messer 
 Folco di Ricovero Portinari, who married Messer Simone 
 de' Bardi and died at the age of twenty-four in the year 
 1290. Five centuries of men accepted this assertion 
 without doubt or criticism, through five centuries the 
 daughter of the Portinari enjoyed a glory not due to her 
 — though this seems a matter of small importance con- 
 sidering that even of this Beatrice we know little more 
 than the name. There were a few persons who doubted 
 it ; the Franciscan monk, Francesco da Buti, for instance, 
 who shortly after Boccaccio lectured on Dante in Pisa, 
 and who declared Beatrice to be a totally different person, 
 of the same name; but his opinion did not prevail. 
 Possibly, too, he only alluded to the Beatrice of the 
 " Divine Comedy." 
 
 We to-day know that all that Boccaccio says must be 
 considered with caution, that he was ever writing and 
 thinking novels, that he had no idea of criticism, was of 
 boundless negligence, and very talkative. The only 
 passage corroborating his evidence occurs in a manu- 
 script of the Commentary by Dante's son Pietro, and is 
 strongly suspected of having been forged.* 
 * This is the so-called "Codex Ashburnham." On this point see 
 
BEATRICE 217 
 
 It seems unquestionable that Dante's Beatrice never 
 married. Those who maintained that she had, alleged in 
 proof of their opinion the fifteenth chapter of the " New 
 Life," where it is told that she, with other ladies, accom- 
 panied a newly-wedded bride to her husband's house, 
 saying that only married women were allowed to be 
 present on such occasion. But this is nothing but an 
 arbitrary supposition, which never has been proved. I, 
 for my part, am sure that these ladies simply were brides- 
 maids, unmarried women, who then as well as to-day and, 
 in fact, long before that time, used to accompany the bride 
 to the altar and then to her husband's home. This 
 passage, therefore, seems to prove the very contrary, 
 that Beatrice, at least at the time when this event hap- 
 pened, was still unmarried. 
 
 But, more than such paltry evidence, the utter want of 
 inward probability seems decisive to me. To a man who 
 loved as Dante did, the marriage of his beloved would 
 have been such a terrible shock that some sign of it, some 
 allusion to the event surely would be found in the " New 
 Life." Some change would have to be noted in the tone in 
 which he speaks of Beatrice, who certainly must have 
 become an altered being in his eyes from the moment of 
 her marriage. If she had been a married woman already 
 when he first knew her this might have been different, but 
 he had known her as a little girl of eight, her marriage to 
 another man must have been the greatest event in the his- 
 tory of his love ; but not a word is said on it, not a word 
 betrays the terrible disappointment it must have been to 
 him ; quite the contrary, the more he proceeds the happier 
 
 Scartazzini, " Dantologia," p. 77; Moore, "Studies in Dante," second 
 series, pp. 150, 151 ; and particularly Gietmann, "Beatrice," pp. 146- 
 151. 
 
218 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 he seems to become. And then, a man's love for a woman 
 who is married to another man may be something very 
 high and beautiful, but the more it is so the more vehement 
 will be the moral conflict in the lover's heart, more espe- 
 cially in a heart so devout and earnest as was Dante's ; 
 there cannot have been that deep, quiet, and pure joy that 
 pervades the " New Life." We need but compare how dark 
 and burning Dante has painted such a love, which he him- 
 self probably experienced in his later days, in the famous 
 episode of Francesca and Paolo. 
 
 There are authors who against this allege the poetical 
 fashion of the time, to praise married women only ; all 
 troubadours and minstrels did so. That is most true, but 
 what troubadour ever did celebrate his mistress as Dante 
 did ? His style of praising her is entirely different from 
 that of the troubadours, however indebted he may be to 
 them in many technical respects. There is a moral element 
 in Dante's love-poetry which is unknown in common min- 
 strelsy. Dante's love is not only a torment and a joy, but x 
 iie calls it " holy " ; he is not only made happy or unhappy, 
 as every lover is by his love, but he becomes devout and- 
 pure. Not the slightest trace of anything similar can be 
 found in the poetry of the Provencals. Besides, their lays 
 leave small doubt of their being addressed to married 
 women, while the very tone of the w New Life " makes it 
 quite unbelievable. No more maidenly form can be ima- 
 gined than Beatrice, no feeling can be more pure, more 
 peaceful and elevated than Dante's. And why should 
 Dante, who was an exceptional being in all respects, not 
 have made an exception in this too ? Yet it cannot even 
 be maintained that such a love^and its poetical glorifica- 
 tion is contradictory to the literary custom oFthe time. 
 Lyrical poetry in the Middle Ages was occupied only with 
 
BEATRICE 219 
 
 love for women married to other men, but in the numerous 
 epic poems and tales of the period which possibly were read 
 still more, love to a damozel, to an unmarried princess is the 
 general theme, and the death or the wedding of the lovers is 
 the story's end. Whenever the poets expressed their per- 
 sonal adventures or feelings, they sang of married women or 
 pretended to do so ; but whenever they told stories which 
 they wanted to make seem true to the reader and to catch 
 his interest, then they were forced to imitate real life, in 
 which wooing and wedding at all times played an important 
 part, and they invented or adorned tales of dangerous 
 courtships and difficult marriages, and only sometimes, as 
 in the tales of Tristan and Isolde, of Lancelot and Gui- 
 nevere, tell of unlawful love. If we were to draw any con- 
 clusions from the favourite themes of the time, we should 
 even be forced to infer — just as from the usual popular 
 novels of the day — that love-matches were the only ones 
 existing. The truth is that customs, opinions, and expres- 
 sions change, but not the fundamental impulses of men, 
 and the literature of a period only represents what occu- 
 pied the minds of men, what seemed possible or desirable 
 to them, and therefore never gives a perfect picture of the 
 real state of things, unless due allowance is made for this 
 difference. To an unbiased critic the time of the trouba- 
 dours will not appear to have been so very different from 
 our own. Love-songs were the fashion, and many poets 
 sang of love who had never really felt it. It is easy to 
 recognise this from the poems themselves, and as Diez 
 says, " to distinguish at the first glance the naive tender- 
 ness of Bernart de Ventadour from the cold artificiality of 
 Arnaut Daniel." It was the fashion to address one's love- 
 songs to a married lady of the highest rank possible ; the 
 object, too, was selected according to fashion. In cases 
 
220 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 when the songs were the fruits of real passion, dramas and 
 tragedies were not wanting. There was a sufficient number 
 of husbands enamoured of their own wives, and most at 
 least were prone to jealousy. If we glance now at our 
 own literature, we shall find just the same; there are few 
 poems of our lyrical poets addressed to their own wives, 
 but many praising women whose lovers they were or desired 
 to be. At all times a commendable hesitation may have 
 prevented poets from singing aloud of a love of which all 
 the world knew, a fact which cannot but be distasteful to 
 persons who are tenderly and deeply in love. 
 
 But Beatrice never was Dante's wife, only a girl whom 
 he adored. And we need not even go so far to prove that 
 such an adoration expressed in poetry was not so very ex- 
 ceptional. Dante's friend, Cino da Pistoja, in one of his 
 sonnets, proposes the question whether it be better to love 
 a girl or a married woman, saying that he would think him a 
 fool who, having the choice of both, would decide for the 
 married woman. That certainly proves that to love a girl 
 was then no more an unheard-of thing in a poet than it is 
 now. But if no other man had dared to infringe the laws 
 of fashion and sing of a maid, no rule of fashion can be 
 alleged against Dante ; no work of his followed the fashion ; 
 they stand aloof from all works of his contemporaries. 
 There is no analogous work to the " Vita Nuova " or to 
 the " Divina Commedia." All his works were " Nova," 
 and he who dared to speak of his own appearance in 
 heaven and hell would have been bold enough to sing of a 
 maid that appeared so pure and wondrous to him as 
 Beatrice, even if no other man would ever have attempted 
 a similar thing. Scartazzini is quite right in saying, u If 
 we are informed about the troubadours, we are still better 
 informed about Dante, and know that his judgment in 
 
BEATRICE 
 
 moral and sexual matters was severer not only than that 
 of most of his contemporaries, but even than that of most 
 men of our days." That does not impeach the fact that 
 this passionate man, in the time of his aberration, which 
 he himself condemned so severely afterwards, had loved 
 married women also. 
 
 We know nothing of Dante's loves ; we do not know 
 whether his love was ever successful or unrequited. But 
 we know that he has celebrated other women in after 
 years — at least one — and that nobody who never had felt 
 the like himself could have painted the sinful love of 
 Francesca and Paolo so touchingly, in so vivid colours, 
 and above all so compassionately as Dante has done in 
 the fifth canto of Hell. There are things which nobody 
 can paint without having gone through. Only a poet 
 who had passed through such dark and tragic experiences 
 as Lord Byron could find the strong words in " Heaven 
 and Earth " which so vividly remind us of that dark love- 
 scene in the second circle of Hell : 
 
 Great is their love who love in sin and fear. 
 
 But at the time of the " Vita Nuova " Dante deemed 
 himself a pure child of God, not yet was he lost in the 
 dark wood of life — it was the time of which Beatrice 
 speaks to the angels : 
 
 Not only as the wheels majestic sweep 
 
 That guide each seed to its appointed end, 
 According as the stars their concert keep, 
 
 But through the bounteous graces God doth send, 
 Which have such lofty vapours for their rain, 
 
 No mortal can his glance so far extend, 
 He, when his New Life he did first attain, 
 
 Potentially was such that every good 
 In him had power a wondrous height to gain. 
 
 (Plumptre. 
 
222 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 The ruling experience of such a time, that in after years 
 appeared so pure and godly to him, cannot have been the 
 love for another man's wife. 
 
 At any rate, it was not Beatrice dei Bardi, ne'e Portinari.* 
 Who she was we do not know, and probably never shall. 
 The name of the woman that was glorified more than any 
 other seems by a curious coincidence to have been lost 
 for ever. 
 
 The question has been put whether she returned 
 Dante's love. It seems to have been the case by some 
 allusions of Dante and by his whole way of treating the 
 subject. Yet the fact is of little importance to us. Per- 
 haps she was but a pretty Florentine girl, not even capable 
 of appreciating a man like Dante, a girl who perhaps 
 passed him with a slight pity and nodding of her head, 
 though this is not likely. For only the first poems com- 
 plain of her cruelty, the later are all joy and loving 
 admiration. But, as I said, it is a matter of little import- 
 ance to us ; for, whoever she was or whatever felt, on 
 him she has made such an impression that for her sake 
 
 He stepped apart from out the common herd. 
 
 The image which remained of her in the poet's brain is 
 essential, for we know her only by that. She has been 
 
 * Her christian-name seems to have been Beatrice, though one 
 might doubt it. For Beatrice means " she who makes blessed," and 
 in the place where Dante first speaks of her, he calls her " the glorious 
 lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew not where- 
 fore." I was myself of this opinion, that Dante only chose this signifi- 
 cant name for her, and I have expressed this opinion in my little book 
 on the "Vita Nuova," but Lieutenant-Colonel Pochhammer called my 
 attention to the fact that if Beatrice were a solemn and allegoric name, 
 Dante never would have used the tender abbreviation of " Bice," and 
 spoken of her in the same breath with " Vanna " (Jennie), Guido's love. 
 The passage quoted above probably means, that when she was baptized 
 the name of Beatrice was chosen, not without Divine inspiration. 
 
BEATRICE 223 
 
 praised in innumerable songs, painted by countless artists 
 — yet we do not know who she was nor how she 
 appeared. 
 
 This ignorance and the evident symbolism of the 
 14 Divine Comedy " were the causes that led some authors 
 to express doubts whether she existed at all, and to de- 
 clare the Beatrice of the " New Life," too, to have been 
 only an allegory. The principal authors of recent date 
 who have maintained this interpretation in pleasant con- 
 cordance of opinion have come to these results : Gabriele 
 Rossetti, that Beatrice indicates the Roman Empire, while 
 Father Gietmann proves just the contrary, that she means 
 the Roman Church ; Francesco Perez declares her to be 
 " Active Intelligence," and Professor Bartoli maintains 
 that she is simply the Ideal Woman. 
 
 Many have replied to this with the ironical questions 
 why Dante, just at the age of nine, should have en- 
 countered the Roman Empire, aged eight, in the streets 
 of Florence, and why the Roman Empire laughed so 
 merrily whenever it saw him, and how the Church could 
 ever go to Church, and how it was possible that the 
 Active Intelligence died precisely on June 9, 1290; and 
 a hundred similar things which are not to be understood. 
 One " Idealist " refutes the other, and hardly any has 
 found adherents.* 
 
 All these writers may be great scholars, but they are 
 no psychologists ; they seem to have no idea of what 
 passes in a poet's brain, and how actual events of his life 
 may be transformed in his fancy. Those who think 
 Dante's language too rapturous and exalted do not know 
 
 * A more detailed refutation of these interpretations may be found in 
 my translation of the "Vita Nuova" (•• Das Neue Leben des Dante 
 Alighieri." Otto Hendel ; Halle, 1897). 
 
224 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the feeling and the language of pure and enthusiastic 
 passion, for such Dante wrote the verse, 
 
 Intender non la puo chi non la prova. 
 
 The language of one of the greatest German poets, 
 Friedrich Holderlin, is quite as exalted, though dimmed 
 with the morbid element of his impending madness ; and 
 if we did not know so surely that the Diotima of his 
 poems was a real woman, Madame Gontard, the wife of a 
 banker in Frankfort, perhaps professors in time to come 
 would declare her only an abstract ideal and an allegory. 
 If we accept at all the insipid discrimination between 
 sensual and spiritual love, which Nietsche rightly says 
 nobody who ever loved truly could make, even if we 
 accept it at all, then, in the fifth canto of Hell, where 
 Dante's theme is not only sensual but sinful love, and 
 where Francesca speaks of Paolo's love for her fair body, 
 this love is called " Amor che al cor gentil ratto s' ap- 
 prende " ("Love that so easily befalls a noble heart ") — the 
 same quotation from Guido Guinicelli, of which Dante 
 makes use to characterise his love for Beatrice in the 
 " New Life." 
 
 And how is it that Dante, who always and everywhere, 
 in the " Banquet " as well as in the " Divine Comedy," 
 warns the reader not to interpret his words too literally, 
 but expressly calls his attention to the symbolic meaning, 
 failed to do this in the " New Life ? " As for me, those 
 insipid interpretations would mar and spoil the joy I feel 
 in reading the " New Life." What is the use of knowing 
 that a rose which we believed to be a real, fresh and dewy 
 rose, is only a paper imitation, painted and scented ? 
 Why should Dante not have been a man of sound heart 
 and senses ? And how could he write such beautiful 
 
BEATRICE 2*5 
 
 love-poems if he never loved a real woman ? I at least, 
 and many others, when reading the " New Life," have 
 the psychological certainty that the rose is a true one, and 
 that is sufficient. Who prefers the artificial rose may 
 stick to it ; that is a matter of taste and intuition ; a final 
 and decisive argument is impossible. 
 
 But, having once made certain of this, we may say in 
 quite a different sense : Yes, Beatrice is a symbol ; 
 Beatrice in the u New Life " and in the " Divine Comedy " 
 are the same. Dante did love a real woman, and that 
 woman was Beatrice, was the light of Heaven itself. And 
 the Beatrice of the " Divine Comedy " is no other than 
 the beloved of his youth. Dante certainly never doubted 
 for a moment that Virgil, who in the sacred epic stands 
 for human wisdom or the like, once lived as a real Roman 
 poet; he was sure that Leah and Rachel, who in his 
 poem, thereby following the interpretation given in a letter 
 of Pope Gregory I., symbolise active and contemplative 
 life, were once living girls in Judaea of old ; he himself in 
 the " Comedy " represents man in general, and yet was 
 Dante Alighieri the Florentine poet ; the nine heavens in 
 the " Banquet " denoted the nine sciences, and still in his 
 opinion continued to turn around the earth. Even so, 
 Beatrice was at the same time the Florentine girl he had 
 loved in early days, and the symbol of divine love in 
 Heaven. In his works we trace all the steps and phases 
 of her glorification. At first she was but an earth-born 
 woman he loved, but the world is full of symbols and 
 symbolism, and all poetry is based en this fact. The 
 more poetical a man's soul is, the better is he enabled 
 to see it. We cannot speak without using figures and 
 symbols. Every flower that grows and fades is a symbol 
 of the fate of man, of art, of nations, of the globe itself. 
 
 p 
 
226 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Think of all the similes in the gospel, of the million of 
 figures in poetry ! There is no phenomenon in the world 
 which could not be made an exemplification of a deeper 
 meaning. Why should a lily or a sower be a better 
 symbol than a beautiful human being ? 
 
 There is no great poetry without symbolism. The 
 purer a poet receives life, and the fuller it falls in his 
 soul's mirror, the richer in meaning will his work be. 
 But if he try to force it into too distinct invented allegory, 
 life will oppose such violence and the clear sharp images 
 will become dark and misleading. For the world is a 
 great manifest mystery, and the greatest of all wonders 
 is our getting so accustomed to them that we no longer 
 see that we are walking in wonderland. 
 
 We have no need of such violent interpretations. We 
 need not force more symbolism into Dante's poetry than 
 it contains, and we shall find it but the more strikingly 
 beautiful and mysterious for its being natural and clear. 
 The real woman that Beatrice was, appeared to him 
 as something so high and as a reflection of something 
 higher still; just as he expressed it in the "Divine Comedy," 
 where she looks into the face of God and he into hers to 
 catch the reflection of Divine Love, which in itself would 
 be unbearable to him. She seemed to be the sweetest 
 thing that God could create, a thing of heavenly nature 
 that had returned to its source, a lovely wonder, a 
 " novem," a " nine " whose root is the " three," that is, the 
 Holy Trinity, and she a thing that the Holy Trinity 
 created, in the loving purpose to make mankind blessed 
 by her presence. All this is but the exaltation of a 
 lover's trance and will not appear so very exaggerated to 
 anybody who ever really loved ; it is as natural as that 
 the town seemed void and empty to him when she died. ' 
 
BEATRICE 227 
 
 But what now follows is a psychic phenomenon that 
 resembles a painter's choice of the fairest and noblest 
 woman he knows to sit to him for a picture of the Blessed 
 Virgin. So Dante chose the fairest and noblest woman 
 he knew to become the symbol of Divine Love and Grace. 
 
 She was to him an emanation from heaven, a concentra- 
 tion of all that is beautiful ; she must of necessity become 
 a symbol of the highest that he knew. As Sir Philip 
 Sidney said of " Stella," whose reality has never been 
 doubted,* that 
 
 Virtue, if it once met with our eyes, 
 
 Strange flames of love it in our souls would raise ; 
 But — for that man with pain this truth descries 
 
 Whiles he each thing in sense's balance weighs, 
 And so nor will nor can behold those skies 
 
 Which inward sun to heroic mind displays — 
 Virtue of late, with virtuous care to stir 
 
 Love of herself, took Stella's shape, that she 
 To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her. 
 
 (From Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet xxv.) 
 
 What the inner sense gives to heroic souls the beloved 
 woman gives to her lover, but her beauty will make it 
 manifest to unheroic souls too. That is the language of 
 a high-minded and enthusiastic time. 
 
 This it was that passed in Dante's soul. A common 
 mind — and such he*would have had if those commentators 
 were in the right — would have invented some ideal woman 
 for his allegory ; that is the common way. But Dante 
 chose a living woman whom he glorified. 
 
 Here as ever he dared to draw from life. He did not 
 invent some female figure to embody a divine meaning, 
 
 * " Stella" was married to Lord Rich in 1581. Sidney married in 
 1583. The sonnets in all other respects differ very much from those of 
 Dante. 
 
228 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 he saw the divine meaning embodied in the living woman. 
 And when she died and became a spirit the thing was 
 rendered still easier. For now that she was a spirit, 
 dwelling in the invisible world, and the corporeal garment 
 was put off, he had but to heighten her rank, not to 
 change her substance. He makes this quite clear in the 
 verses of the " New Life " : 
 
 But from the height of woman's fairness, she, 
 Going up from us with the joy we had, 
 
 Grew perfectly and spiritually fair ; 
 
 That so she spreads even there 
 A light of love which makes the angels glad, 
 
 And even unto their subtle minds can bring 
 
 A certain awe of profound marvelling. 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 She had been a mysterious being to him already in the 
 " Vita Nuova." The "New Life " is no common love-story. 
 In a mind so strange and extraordinary as Dante's was, 
 every event reflected itself in a strange and original way. 
 He nowhere speaks of his desire to kiss her, to wed her, 
 though he certainly desired it, for he tells how the 
 Florentine ladies smiled at his timidity, but there he only 
 speaks of the impression which her appearance made on 
 his soul ; the sense of happiness, which makes him see 
 the whole creation as a world of blessedness and joy, 
 until he perceives that in her he loves the Universe. 
 Love itself, the powerful ruler of beings, rules him through 
 her. 
 
 And even when raised to Paradise she never ceased to 
 be his former love ! Fancy the poet sitting at his desk 
 or walking in a country lane and working at the " Divine 
 Comedy " ; the more vividly he saw before his spiritual 
 eyes the shape of the woman so soon lost and so long 
 
BEATRICE 229 
 
 deplored, the more his language, when speaking of the 
 great symbol on the Divine Car, took the form of earthly 
 love. Compare the verses in which he describes their 
 meeting in Eden : 
 
 Oft have I seen how all the east was crowned 
 
 At very break of day with roseate hue, 
 And all the sky beside serener found ; 
 
 And the sun's face o'erclouded came in view, 
 
 The vapours so attempering its powers, 
 That the eye gazed long while, nor weary grew : 
 
 And so, enveloped in a cloud of flowers, 
 
 Which leapt up, scattered by angelic hands, 
 And part within and part without sent showers, 
 
 Clad in white veil with olive-wreathed bands, 
 
 A lady in a mantle bright and green 
 O'er robe of fiery glow before me stands. 
 
 And then my spirit, which so long had been 
 
 Without the wonder that had once dismayed, 
 When that dear presence by mine eyes was seen, 
 
 Though nothing more to vision was displayed, 
 
 Through secret power that passed from her to me 
 The mighty spell of ancient love obeyed. 
 
 Soon as I stricken stood, in act to see, 
 
 By that high power that pierced me with his dart 
 Ere yet I passed from out my boyhood free, 
 
 I to the left with wistful look did start, 
 
 As when an infant seeks his mother's breast 
 When fear or anguish vex his troubled heart, 
 
 To say to Virgil : " Trembling, fear-opprest, 
 
 Is every drop of blood in every vein ; 
 I know that old flame's tokens manifest." 
 
 And she herself later on tells the angels who plead for him ; 
 
230 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Awhile my face was strong his life to build, 
 
 And I, unveiling to him my young eyes, 
 In the straight path to lead him on was skilled. 
 
 So soon as I had reached the point where lies 
 Our second age, and I my life had changed, 
 Me he forsook, and chose another prize. 
 
 And when I had from flesh to spirit ranged, 
 And loveliness and virtue in me grew, 
 I was to him less dear and more estranged. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 I believe these verses should leave no doubt on the 
 double nature of Beatrice. 
 
 At the close of " Faust " Goethe made use of several 
 motives of Dante's, though in a colder and paler form, 
 for the glowing ecstasy of Dante, to whom all mortal 
 things were in truth but similes, was not given to him. 
 There we find the celebrated verse which I quoted before : 
 11 Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan." Pochhammer 
 and Bulle have both called our attention to the fact that 
 this verse, almost Goethe's last, which is so seldom under- 
 stood, is to be found among the last verses of Dante too, 
 in his adieu to Beatrice : 
 
 Lady, in whom my hope breathes quickening air, 
 
 And who for my salvation didst endure 
 To pass to Hell and leave thy footprints there, 
 
 Of all mine eyes have seen with vision pure, 
 
 As coming from thy goodness and thy might, 
 I the full grace and mercy know full sure. 
 
 Thou me, a slave, to freedom didst invite, 
 
 By all the means and on the glorious way 
 Thy power alone could work such ends aright. 
 
 Still keep for me thy bounteous love's display 
 
 So that my soul, which owes its health to thee, 
 May, pleasing thee, be freed once from this clay ! 
 
BEATRICE 231 
 
 With these words he takes leave of her, St. Bernard 
 steps into her place, and through the mediation of the 
 Virgin leads him to see the countenance of God. Now all 
 the prophecies of the " New Life " were fulfilled. As his 
 own soul rose ever higher and higher by mysterious 
 ways, so he raised her, who was his leading star, higher 
 still. He raised her — but by a strange delusion, which 
 seems an optic law of all poetry, he fancied that it was 
 she who elevated him. And who is to say what is 
 delusion, what reality, in such mysterious phenomena ? . 
 
 That is the " Geistesgang " of Dante, as far as Beatrice is f >CU/ *' $ \ 
 concerned, and in those dry interpretations the link is 
 torn, the path destroyed, on which Dante led his " blessed 
 giver of bliss," and himself, too, from the love for a 
 beautiful young Florentine woman — as she was in the 
 " New Life " — to that high Beatrice who is seen standing 
 on the car of Christ, who is light itself, and sits enthroned 
 at the Virgin's side in the flaming rose of Paradise. 
 
 His whole life was given up to this path ; but he trans- 
 posed the mystic meeting in the other world from the late 
 years, when he described it, into the Easter week of the 
 year 1 300. We do not know why ; the year certainly was 
 an important and decisive one for him, and the interval of 
 ten years that lies between it and Beatrice's death was an 
 agitated and eventful time, that formed the second period 
 of his life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 
 
 Deep despair seems to have hovered over Dante's soul 
 after the death of Beatrice, at least for the few following 
 years. History has little to tell us about him, yet we 
 may broadly trace the ways he now took, and which after- 
 wards appeared to him false and erroneous, and in a certain 
 sense may have been so, but which for his development 
 certainly were as necessary as all others. He himself 
 says in the " Banquet," in the thirteenth chapter of the 
 second treatise : " When the first joy of my soul was lost, 
 I remained in such sorrow that no consolation could bring 
 comfort to me. Yet after a certain time, as neither my 
 own nor foreign consolation was of avail to me, my spirit, 
 that longed for healing, found rescue in the way in which 
 other disconsolate persons had found relief before. And 
 I began to read that book of Boethius, which is not known 
 to many, and with which he comforted himself in prison 
 and in banishment." Then he proceeds to speak of other 
 books he read, and tells what he thought and wrote of 
 them, and how " he had seen strange things as in a dream 
 before," "and as it often happens that a man goes forth 
 to seek silver and without intention finds gold, which a 
 hidden cause, perhaps not without Divine Providence, puts 
 in his way, so did I, who sought to console myself, find 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 233 
 
 not only comfort for my tears but a knowledge of authors, 
 sciences and books, and considering these I judged that 
 Philosophy, who was the mistress of all these authors, 
 sciences and books, must needs be something very high. 
 And I fancied her in the shape of a noble woman, and I 
 could not think of her otherwise but as of a being full of 
 gentle pity, and my sense of truth saw her with such 
 pleasure that it scarce could ever turn from her. And 
 from this imagination I began to go thither, where she 
 revealed herself in reality, that is, to the schools of con- 
 vents and to the disputations of the learned, so that in a 
 short time, perhaps in thirty months, I began to feel so 
 much of her sweetness that my love for her expelled and 
 destroyed every other thought." 
 
 So we hear from his own mouth that, after the death of 
 his beloved, Dante devoted himself to studies, and that 
 he did this with all the vehemence of his temper. In the 
 first chapter of the third book he says : " Oh how many 
 nights did pass, when the eyes of other men were closed 
 in slumber while mine looked fixedly and immovably on the 
 dwelling-place of my love ! " And again in the ninth 
 chapter : " In that same year I so weakened the spirits 
 of vision by too much reading that the stars seemed to 
 me surrounded by a kind of white mist, and only by long 
 repose in dark and cool places, and by cooling the eye- 
 balls with limpid water, did I recover the diseased power, 
 so that it returned to its former state of health." 
 
 Dante never gave up his studies ; he became one of the 
 most learned men of his time ; one who had read all 
 works of importance and was master of all its knowledge. 
 He seems to have made one farther step : we know from 
 a trustworthy report that Dante for some time was a 
 novice of the Order of St. Francis, but left the cloister 
 
234 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 without taking orders. In the subterranean journey he tells 
 that around his waist he wore the cord by which he for a 
 time had thought to master the " pard," thatjs, the spirit of 
 lust. There is some probability that this may have happened 
 in those years, but possibly, too, it was much later. In 
 those years of literary occupation he probably composed 
 the book written in the memory of his youthful love. 
 
 Yet dimly, dimly through the dark mist which the 
 length of six hundred years and the utter want of notices 
 have spread over Dante's life, we may recognise that his 
 retirement from the world was not of long duration. 
 The " ways of error," with which he so passionately re- 
 proached himself in after years, began and led him into 
 that dark forest with the description of which the " Divine 
 Comedy " opens, and out of which he was saved by his 
 passage through the realms of the dead. He returned 
 to life and entered its arena with all the ardent activity of 
 his mind. But " Experience sullies " — he, too, came to 
 know that. 
 
 In the u VitaNuova " we are informed of a second love, 
 against which he fought, and which is described with no 
 less grace and loveliness than the first. 
 
 Subtle inquiries have been made by interpreters who 
 attempted to discover who the lady of this second love 
 may have been, whether she was Philosophy or even, as 
 Scartazzini will have it, Dante's wife. We do not know 
 it. It may have been some other woman for whom he 
 perhaps might have felt a passing inclination in the time 
 between the death of Beatrice and his own marriage. 
 Scartazzini's supposition that the " donna della finestra " 
 was Dante's wife seems quite untenable, for Dante every- 
 where and always avoided speaking of the latter, so that 
 this would be the only instance of his mentioning her. 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 235 
 
 That is impossible in itself, and, besides, it would have 
 been done in another manner.* 
 
 But we know that Dante for a time led rather a dissolute 
 life, which cannot well have been in another period, and 
 which probably was but another way in which he tried to 
 deaden his despair at the loss of Beatrice. There is a 
 sonnet that Guido Cavalcanti addressed to him, in which 
 he says : 
 
 I come to thee by daytime constantly, 
 
 But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find ; 
 
 Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind, 
 And for thy many virtues gone from thee. 
 It was thy wont to shun such company, 
 
 Unto all sorry concourse ill inclined : 
 
 And stiyll thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind, 
 Had made me treasure up thy poetry. 
 But now I dare not, for thine abject life 
 
 Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes ; 
 Nor come I in such sort that thou mayst know. 
 
 Ah ! prythee, read this sonnet many times : 
 So shall that evil one who bred this strife 
 
 Be thrust from thy dishonoured soul and go. 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 * It is true that Dante himself says in the •■ Banquet " that the object 
 of this second love was Philosophy. But I do not think we can believe 
 him, the more so as he wrote this passage at a time when he thought 
 himself obliged to be ashamed of his love-songs, and declared all of 
 them to be only allegories. Those who are of the opinion that Beatrice 
 is a mere symbol have, of course, always alleged that place in their 
 favour. How little is proved by it I have tried to state in my work on 
 the " Vita Nuova," in the notes to chapter xxiv. Indeed, few authors 
 trusted Dante's explanation in this matter ; nor did he give it with 
 much skill, for in the "Vita Nuova" he had called this second love 
 " faithless," " accursed," and " vile," and in the " Banquet " it is called 
 a "love of heavenly power," and one originated by Divine influence. 
 The reverse order were possible, but thus this late interpretation, 
 authentic though it be, seems but an unsuccessful and unskilful attempt 
 to hide the real state of things 
 
236 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 This poem would not be sufficient proof, for friends are 
 apt to be susceptible, and if a man does not live according 
 to their counsel and theories, they will soon find that he 
 is on the way to perdition. A man like Dante could well 
 walk paths which were not always understood by a 
 Cavalcanti. 
 
 But in the 23rd canto of Purgatory Dante encounters 
 his brother-in-law, Forese Donati, among those who had 
 led a life of gluttony, and says, " I do not like to think of 
 the life we two once led in each other's company." We 
 have besides four sonnets, two by Dante and two by 
 Forese Donati, poems of mutual mockery, which, though 
 not containing things which would deserve to be called 
 infamous, nevertheless are written in a rather ignoble tone 
 of rude and vulgar jest, a kind of tap-room poetry, 
 especially those of Dante. The first runs thus : 
 
 O Bicci, pretty son of who knows whom, 
 Unless thy mother, Lady Tessa, tell, — 
 Thy gullet is already crammed too well, 
 
 Yet others' food thou needs must now consume. 
 
 Lo ! he that wears a purse makes ample room 
 When thou goest by in any public place, 
 Saying, " This fellow with the branded face 
 
 Is thief apparent from his mother's womb." 
 
 And I know one who's fain to keep his bed 
 
 Lest thou shouldst filch it, at whose birth he stood 
 Like Joseph when the world its Christmas saw. 
 
 Of Bicci and his brothers it is said 
 That with the heat of misbegotten blood 
 
 Among their wives they are nice brothers-in-law. 
 
 Bicci was Forese's nickname. In his answer, Forese 
 taunts him with having forborne to take revenge for the 
 murder of his relative, Geri, son of Bello, and among other 
 things he says : 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 237 
 
 Right well I know thou'rt Alighieri's son . . . 
 Thou hast taught us a fair fashion, sooth to say, — 
 That whoso lays a stick well to thy back 
 Thy comrade and thy brother he shall be . . . 
 
 And again Dante answers : 
 
 To hear the unlucky wife of Bicci cough, 
 
 (Bicci, — Forese as he's called, you know — ) 
 You'd fancy she had wintered, sure enough, 
 
 Where icebergs rear themselves in constant snow ; 
 And, Lord ! if in mid-August it is so, 
 
 How in the frozen months must she come off ? 
 To wear her socks abed avails not — no, 
 
 Nor quilting from Cortona, warm and tough. 
 Her cough, her cold, and all her other ills, 
 
 Do not afflict her through the rheum of age, 
 But through some want within her nest, poor spouse ! 
 This grief, with other griefs, her mother feels, 
 
 Who says, " Without much trouble, I'll engage, 
 She might have married in Count Guido's house ! " 
 
 (Rossetti.) 
 
 That certainly was not written in a commendable style. 
 Yet he always was sharp and irritable, and in jest as well 
 as in earnest the men of those times were ruder than we 
 care to be to-day. Thus the two men for once may have 
 given a loose rein to their jesting mood without really being 
 in earnest in what they proffered, nor desiring it to be 
 believed. Every man may go too far sometimes — perhaps 
 in a drunken mood — and it does but complete, not abase 
 Dante's portrait if he for once suffered his robe to trail 
 in the mud. We know nothing more about this episode, 
 nor how long it lasted, nor exactly what he did : neither 
 can we determine the date with any degree of certainty. 
 
 Another step into the common life of ordinary men was 
 his marriage, which occurred about the year 1295, that is, 
 
238 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 about his thirtieth year. His wife was Gemma Donati, 
 the daughter of Manetto, a kinswoman of Corso Donati, 
 of the most powerful baronial family of Florence. Whether 
 this marriage was a love-match, or, as is more probable, 
 a marriage of convention, concluded at the request of his 
 family, or maybe from political motives, is not known to 
 us. At any rate, this marriage into the very first family of 
 Florence proves the high social rank which he either held 
 by birth or had won by his merit. The question whether 
 Dante was happy in his married life or not is a controversy 
 as old as Dantology. Again, there is but one answer to 
 it : we do not know. Boccaccio, who pleases himself in 
 reviling the female sex, and likes to warn men, particularly 
 great men, from marrying, on this occasion, too, discusses 
 largely and loosely what disadvantages spring from mar- 
 riage for all men, and especially for a poet ; how it disturbs 
 him in his work and many things more. At the end he 
 says: " Whether 'all' this was the case in Dante's 
 marriage or not I will not venture to affirm, because I do 
 not know it. Yet it is true that for this reason, or what- 
 ever reason else, he once separated never would return 
 where she was, nor did he ever suffer her to come to him, 
 though she had borne him several children." The known 
 untrustworthiness of Boccaccio taken into consideration, it 
 may have been something like this. Dante certainly was 
 not a man who could easily be happy in marriage, nor was 
 he a man with whom it was easy to live, especially if he 
 did not love, and that does not seem to have been the 
 case. He never, in all his writings, mentions his wife, or 
 even so much as alludes to her. She had borne him at 
 least four children. Of his daughter Antonia we know 
 nothing more than that she existed. Of a second daughter 
 it is said in a record that the Brethren of the Blessed Virgin 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 239 
 
 of " Or San Michele " gave ten gold florins to Giovanni di 
 Boccaccio that he might bring them to sister Beatrice, 
 daughter of the late Dante Alighieri, a nun in the convent 
 of Santo Stefano dell' Uliva in Ravenna." That is all 
 we know about her. One of his sons, Pietro, was a lawyer 
 in Verona, another son, called Jacopo, is reported to have 
 lived in Florence. To both are ascribed commentaries on 
 their father's works. A descendant of Pietro's, Ginevra 
 Alighieri, in the sixteenth century, married a Count 
 Serego ; from her the present Counts of Serego-Alighieri 
 are descended. 
 
 From the fact that Dante in this time contracted such 
 enormous debts that many years later the family saw 
 itself constrained to sell estates to pay them, it becomes 
 evident that his financial situation was not brilliant, unless, 
 of course, the money was needed and spent for political 
 purposes, for Dante was soon very active in political life. 
 Like every man of good family who after the year 1282 
 wanted to be in office, he was forced to become a common 
 citizen and enter a guild. He caused himself to be 
 inscribed — we know not why — in the guild of physicians 
 and pharmacists, in the official registers of which his name 
 may still be read. He seems to have soon played an 
 important part. He several times was a member of the 
 Council of the Hundred. He once or twice represented 
 the republic as ambassador ; * he became the personal 
 friend of the young King of Naples, who was in Florence 
 about the year 1 290 ; and finally, in the fatal year 1 300, 
 was elected Prior, and so became a member of the Govern- 
 
 * In the town-hall of the many-towered little town San Gimignano, 
 which to this day is a typical picture of a mediaeval Tuscan town, he, 
 in the name of the Florentine Government, moved the annual renewal 
 of the Guelf League. 
 
240 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 ment. " This unhappy Priorate," he once said, " was the 
 cause of all my misfortune." 
 
 The mutual hatred of the rival parties in Florence, the 
 Whites and the Blacks, had risen to its highest pitch when 
 the notable and fatal year 1 300 came. Wherever members 
 of both parties met, insults and quarrels were the conse- 
 quence. At the burial of a lady of the Frescobaldi family 
 a man's movement, that had been misunderstood, had 
 caused bloodshed. The Donati had been the aggressors. 
 A few days later, Guido Cavalcanti, riding through the 
 streets with a small party of other young men, chanced to 
 meet Corso on the way with his son Simone and others, 
 and in sudden anger spurred his horse directly against 
 him, and people asserted that in riding up to him he threw 
 his lance or his dagger at the Donati. Corso, Simone and 
 Cecchino de' Bardi instantly pursued him with drawn 
 swords and threw stones at him. From the windows, too, 
 stones were thrown, but though wounded in the hand he 
 managed to escape. One should read the vivid and 
 dramatic narrative of Dino Compagni, how the events 
 went on their threatening course, with gossip, hate and 
 rude insults, as they will do in a small excitable town ; 
 " more damage was done in Florence by falsely reported 
 words than by the points of the swords." Still the Whites 
 were in power, and the government was in their hands in 
 Florence as well as in Pistoja, but their leaders were slack 
 and irresolute, while their adversaries were ready to do 
 their worst. 
 
 In the year 1 300, while Dante was one of the Priors, 
 they made an attempt to ensure peace by banishing the 
 most unruly chiefs of both parties. Among the exiled 
 Blacks was Corso Donati, while Dante, with his severe 
 sense of justice, had suffered his friend Cavalcanti to be 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 241 
 
 confined at Sarzana, where he fell ill from the unhealthy 
 climate and died on his return to Florence two months 
 later.* Everybody said that peace would have been main- 
 tained had not Pope Boniface meddled with the affairs of 
 Florence. This remarkable man played such a part in 
 Dante's life and works, and again the events of his life are 
 of such dramatic interest, the time of his pontificate indi- 
 cates such a signal change in the world's history, that we/ 
 must pay closer attention to him. 
 
 When Nicolas IV. died in the year 1292 there 
 anarchy in Rome, and in the conclave the cardinals could 
 not agree on their election ; months passed in vain, until 
 a sudden word of Cardinal Latino became decisive. On 
 the Morrone, a mountain in Campagna, there lived a 
 hermit called Peter, a peasant's son from the Abruzzi, 
 who belonged to the Franciscans of the Severe Obser- 
 vance, and was said to work miracles. It was truly 
 mediaeval that, as soon as Latino pronounced the name, all 
 these false, violent and worldly men, suddenly seized by 
 religious inspiration, chose this man to be Pope ! They 
 went out to fetch him in triumph, accompanied by great 
 masses of people. They found him in a little hut with 
 railed windows, a pale man with unkempt beard and hair, 
 emaciated by fasting, his eyes red with weeping, clothed 
 in a hairy sackcloth. They uncovered before him and fell 
 upon their knees ; he instantly did the same. On their 
 telling him that he had been elected Pope he ran away, 
 believing they wanted to mock him ; but the brethren of 
 his Order seeing in his election a sign of Divine Grace and 
 an event in their favour, persuaded him to accept the 
 
 * There he composed the beautiful ballad which begins : 
 Because I think not ever to return, 
 Ballad, to Tuscany . . . 
 
242 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 office, and on August 24, 1294, he entered Apulia riding 
 on an ass, led by the kings of Hungary and Naples, the 
 people, the barons, the clergy, two hundred thousand men 
 in all flocking together and accompanying him, crying 
 " Hosanna." There was general exultation and great 
 jubilee ; the old simple times seemed restored to mankind 
 and a true Vicar of Christ to fill his place. But the old 
 simple times were past. This man, who as Pope called 
 himself Celestine V., was not fit for governing the troubled 
 world. He had no idea what to do, he was unable to 
 refuse any demand that was put to him ; he got so shy 
 and bewildered by all the pomp and all the trouble around 
 him that he hid himself in a grotto of the papal palace, 
 "as the wild pheasant hides its head," a biographer of 
 him says. 
 
 And now Cardinal Cajetano empowered himself of the 
 weak and bewildered man. He became his adviser and 
 absolute master, making him decree what he, Cajetano, 
 thought good, and governing through him* Finally, with 
 the silent approval of King Charles II. of Naples,, he made 
 him sign a decree in which Celestine declared himself 
 incapable and renounced his dignity* On December 24 
 in the same year, Cajetano, the son of Loffredo, ancestor 
 of the present Dukes Gaetani of Sermoneta, entered Rome 
 as Pope Boniface VIII., riding on a snow-white horse, 
 again led by two kings, followed by a pompous train of 
 barons, knights ancl warriors, and at the banquet of the 
 coronation he sat alone at his table, all the cardinals and 
 kings after them sitting at another table below him. This 
 was the " high-minded sinner," as a contemporary calls 
 him, a man learned, eloquent, full of dignity, of handsome, 
 regal, commanding appearance, haughty and irascible, 
 with the nature of a despot, not of a priest, and withal 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 243 
 
 one of the best hated men known in history. His un- 
 happy predecessor, Celestine, fled through Italy, but 
 Boniface ordered him to be pursued. He was taken in 
 Dalmatia and kept a close prisoner in a cell of the papal 
 palace until he died. The manner of his death was uncer- 
 tain, and many openly hinted at his having been poisoned 
 by order of the new Pope, who, as long as his reign lasted, 
 was attacked by the severe Franciscans with bitterest 
 enmity. His reign was the culminating-point of Church 
 power — the topmost height reached immediately before the 
 fall. The empire lay prostrate. To the elected Emperor, 
 Albert of Hapsburg, who asked for the Pope's confirma- 
 tion, Boniface replied, " Ego sum imperator." To enhance 
 the splendour of his Court he gave princely rank and the 
 purple to the cardinals. He excommunicated the Colonna 
 and made furious war against them, enriching his own 
 family with their estates. Twice he ordered the town of 
 Palestrina, a fief of the Colonna, to be burned and left in 
 ashes. Sciarra Colonna was made prisoner and sent to 
 the galleys. In his discord with Philip the Fair of France 
 he issued the famous Bull, " Unam sanctam," that begins 
 with the words : " We remind thee that to the Roman 
 priest every human creature is subject."" 
 
 Philip ordered the Bull to be burned. On December 15 
 the Pope in Anagni took the expurgatory oath in the pre- 
 sence of the cardinals. He was going to excommunicate 
 and depose Philip on the 18th. But the night before, 
 William of Nogaret, Sciarra Colonna, and other conspira- 
 tors entered the town with some hundred men under the 
 cry of "Morte al papa! Evviva Francia!" The papal 
 palace was besieged during nine hours ; the Pope rejected 
 all conditions; the cathedral took fire, and the palace 
 finally was stormed. The Count of Fundi and Francesco 
 
244 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Gaetano fled, and over the corpse of a bishop the con- 
 spirators entered the hall. Boniface sat on his throne, 
 the tiara on his head. A moment they stood awed in 
 silence, then they outraged him. Sciarra Colonna shook 
 him by the arm and threatened him with his drawn sword. 
 But three days and nights the inflexible old man — he was 
 eighty-six — sat on the throne in silence, giving no answer 
 and taking no nourishment, until he was delivered on the 
 fourth day by the Cardinal Fiesco and the people, terrified 
 by sudden remorse. He continued to live for thirty-five 
 days, but he was mad. Whosoever approached him he 
 fancied to be a foe who wanted to take him prisoner. 
 Dante, who was a good hater, and who hated him as the 
 cause of his own misfortune, called him the " great priest." 
 " He bound the Pope to the car of his wrath, and nine 
 times he dragged him through the pit of hell," says Tosti. 
 Nine times Boniface is mentioned in the " Commedia," not 
 in a pleasant way. "Art thou here already, Boniface?" 
 asks his predecessor, Nicolas Orsini, who with burning feet 
 and head downwards stands in his hole when Dante 
 passes. And yet Dante was deeply indignant at that pro- 
 fanation of the highest priestly office even in his enemy's 
 person. 
 
 I in Alagna see the fltur-de-lys. 
 Christ, in His Vicar, captive to the foe. 
 
 Him once again as mocked and scorned I see, 
 I see once more the vinegar and gall, 
 
 And slain between new robbers hangeth He. 
 
 He undoubtedly had seen the Pope and had known him 
 personally. He most probably had been in Rome in the 
 year of the jubilee in 1300, and had seen the masses of 
 pilgrims thronging the bridge before the castle of St. 
 Angelo at the time when Boniface saw his power on the. 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 245 
 
 summit. Dino Compagni, Boccaccio and others, tell that 
 he had been Ambassador of Florence at Rome, but many 
 causes make this appear improbable and even impossible. 
 At any rate, he from the beginning most decidedly 
 opposed the Pope, who claimed Tuscany as the property 
 of the See of Rome, as forming part of the inheritance of 
 the Countess Matilda, and made use of every occasion to 
 meddle in Florentine affairs. He had done so repeatedly, 
 and in the year 1300 he again sent the Cardinal Matthew 
 of Acquasparta to Florence to M make peace among the 
 parties; but, being a haughty and unskilful man, the 
 Cardinal had only succeeded in making matters worse. 
 Among other things, he had asked the republic to send the 
 Pope an auxiliary troop of a hundred men for his wars 
 with the Colonna, and Dante in the Council of the Hundred 
 had given his famous vote of Nihil fiat. 
 
 The Pope, by secret understanding with the Blacks, 
 sent the French prince, Charles of Valois, as " pacifi- 
 cator " to Florence. He came with the " lance of Judas," 
 Dante says. With a train of unarmed followers he 
 entered Florence on All Souls Day 1301. Some days 
 before the alarmed Priors had sent ambassadors to meet 
 him at Poggibonsi, to whom in a sealed letter he pledged 
 himself not to exercise any sovereign rights in Florence, 
 nor to change any of the laws. But in Florence suspicion 
 and trouble daily increased — and Charles' behaviour was 
 not qualified to quiet it — ever more armed men assembled 
 around him ; the Government was at a I03S what to do, for 
 their friends kept counsel, but could not decide on any 
 resolute deed. " Their hearts failed," cries Dino, who 
 himself was Prior in those days, and he adds, " Never 
 would I have believed that so great a lord and one of the 
 royal house of France, ever could break his word and 
 
246 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 oath." Charles began to claim great sums of money, his 
 armed men occupied the doors of the city, Corso Donati 
 entered it on horseback with numerous friends, and terror 
 began to rule in Florence. In vain the great bell was 
 rung, nobody appeared to obey the call, and the Priors 
 renounced their office. "Many shameful crimes were 
 perpetrated," Dino writes, " on women and maids, houses 
 were plundered, the weak were bereft of their goods, or 
 they hunted them out of the town. Many did whatever 
 they pleased, the accused were forced to confess, and 
 there was no rescue." "A noble city perishes under 
 thee ! " a clergyman of Charles' suite said. The prince 
 answered, " Can it be true ? I did not know it." Messer 
 Cante de' Gabrielli, from Agubbio, was made podesta, a 
 man who has become immortal because, among many 
 other sentences, by which hundreds of the White were 
 banished and outlawed, he issued the decree against 
 Dante which to this day may be read in the so-called 
 "Libro del Chiodo" in the Archive of Florence. It is 
 written in a most barbarous Latin, and dated from 
 January 2J } 1301.* Dante and four others are con- 
 demned for peculation, fraud, extortion, bribery, rebellion 
 against the Pope and Charles, breach of peace, and the 
 like; no further details are given; as proof public fame is 
 alleged, and " Having been regularly summoned by a 
 herald and failing to appear, and having been condemned 
 to fines of 5000 gold florins each for contempt of court, 
 they are considered as confessing, and therefore con- 
 demned to return all the money unjustly extorted, failing 
 which all their possessions should be confiscated and 
 ruined. Furtnermore, they should be banished from 
 
 * Readers are not to forget that then the New Year formerly began 
 in Florence and elsewhere on March 25. 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 247 
 
 Tuscany for the space of two years, and Palmieri degli 
 Altoviti, Dante, Lippo Becchi and Orlanduccio Orlandi in- 
 scribed in the public statutes as forgers and defrauders 
 for perpetual memory, and excluded for ever from all civil 
 honours." 
 
 On March 10, 1302, the sentence was confirmed and 
 extended to ten other Florentine citizens, and having 
 failed to appear in Court, all the accused in it were de- 
 clared outlaws and exiles in perpetuity, and if ever one 01 
 them should be caught on Florentine soil he should be 
 burned alive. 
 
 Most of the chiefs of the White party had left the city 
 at Christmas, Dante probably among them. Of course 
 none had appeared to justify himself, as the consequence 
 would have been immediate death. Not a word is to be 
 said on Dante's guilt. Energetic, resolute, regardless of 
 hate and danger as he was, he probably had incurred the 
 special animosity of the victorious Blacks. Then his self- 
 conscious pride seems to have made many men his 
 enemies. Boccaccio tells that once, when the question 
 arose who had to be appointed ambassador to Rome, 
 Dante was reported to have said : " If I remain, who 
 goes ; and if I go, who remains ? " And he adds : " This 
 word is said to have had bad consequences for him." 
 
 From this time he remained in exile until his death, 
 and until his death was tormented by insatiable longing 
 to return to Florence. As in ancient Rome and in the 
 Greek cities, banishment in the Italian republics was con- 
 sidered worse than death ; the exile was a typical appari- 
 tion in mediaeval Italy as in old Grecee. Out of Florence 
 he never could be happy ; now in love, now in glowing 
 anger and hatred he expressed his ardent longing to 
 return, in verses " hearing which " Burckhardt says, " the 
 
248 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 heart of every Florentine could not but tremble." All his 
 poetry is full of this. First he begged to be allowed to 
 return. One letter begins thus : " Popule mee, quid feci 
 tibi ? " (" My people, what have I done thee ? ") All his 
 despair lies in those few words, which alone remain of the 
 letter. 
 
 From all the powers he expected a chance of returning 
 — from a revolution in Florence, from a victory of the 
 banished party, from the princes who were his friends, 
 from the Roman Emperor, and at last from his great 
 poem. There is almost no canto in which he does not 
 speak of his ungrateful country. In the twenty-sixth 
 canto of Hell he addresses her : 
 
 Rejoice, O Florence, since so great thy fame, 
 
 That over sea and land thy wings are spread, 
 And through the depths of Hell resounds thy name. 
 
 Five such I found among the scoundrel dead, 
 
 Thy citizens, whence shame my soul doth fill, 
 Nor do they with much honour crown thy head. 
 
 Still more famous are the verses at the close of the sixth 
 canto of Purgatory, that follow aftejr the grand address to 
 the slave, Italy : 
 
 Thou, O my Florence, mayst be well content 
 
 With this digression which is nought to thee, 
 Thanks to thy people, wise in argument. 
 
 Many with justice in their hearts we see 
 
 Linger, lest unadvised they draw the bow ; 
 Thy people hath it on the tongue's tip free. 
 
 Many to bear the common charge are slow ; 
 
 But thy good anxious people, though none call, 
 Are heard to cry, " The yoke I'll undergo." 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 249 
 
 Rejoice thee now, thou hast the wherewithal ; 
 
 Rich art thou, thine is peace, and thou art wise ! 
 If true my words, facts will not hide at all. 
 
 Athens and Lacedsmon, whence did rise 
 
 The laws of old, on civil order bent, 
 Took but short step to where life's true good lies. 
 
 Compared with thee, so subtly provident 
 
 Of wise reforms, that, half November gone, 
 Nought lingers that was for October meant. 
 
 How often in the time to memory known, 
 
 Hast thou changed laws, coins, polity and right, 
 And altered all thy members one by one ! 
 
 And if thou well reflect, and see the light, 
 Thou shalt behold thyself as woman sick, 
 
 Who on her pillow finds no rest at night, 
 And seeks to ease her pain by turning quick. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DANTE IN EXILE 
 
 It is well known how embittering even a successful 
 political life is, how the few men of pure intention are 
 made to hate and despise mankind by the unavoidable 
 co-operation with others, who are moved by ambition 
 only or desire of profit ! One may imagine how much of 
 this Dante must have experienced and how much more 
 in exile, when people no longer had to pay regard to him 
 — from what new and repulsive sides he must have 
 learned to know them. 
 
 In the beginning he remained near Florence, in t v «* 
 company of other gentlemen of the White party, who hau 
 fraternised with the long-banished Ghibellines, and maac 
 several attempts, all unsuccessful, to recover Florence by 
 force of arms. We do not know what part Dante took 
 in those enterprises. He had become a proud, severe, 
 not very amiable man, one who, while feeling the deepest 
 reverence for every man of true worth, yet knew his own 
 worth compared to that of others, and was not inclined 
 to pardon any want of respect towards himself, and pro- 
 bably did not easily forgive those who did not follow his 
 advice. The consequence was that he soon left his 
 fellow exiles in bitter indignation and went his own way. 
 In Paradise he makes his ancestor predict 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 251 
 
 And that which most upon thy back shall weigh 
 
 Will be the mad and evil company 
 Which in that dreary vale with thee shall stay ; 
 
 For they ungrateful, impious, base to thee 
 Shall prove ; yet but a little while attend, 
 And they, not thou, shall blush for infamy. 
 
 And of that brute stupidity their end 
 
 Shall furnish proof, and well with thee 'twill fare. 
 Alone, a party for thyself to wend 
 
 Thy lonely path . . . 
 
 With such words of boundless pride he severed the 
 tie that had bound him to the others. Like almost all 
 men of surpassing greatness, Dante stood alone. One 
 generation later all parties strove to claim him as their 
 own. 
 
 He- went to Verona, where he was twice the guest of 
 the princes of that town ; first, before 1 304, of Barto- 
 lommeo della Scala, and probably afterwards at the 
 Court of Can Grande. To this day, in the town through 
 which the Adige rolls its waters in a wide curve there 
 stand, on the wonderful little Piazza de' Signori, the 
 remnants of the old palace, with its tower and battle- 
 ments, and a tablet commemorating him who was once 
 here as guest. In the year 1306 he certainly was in 
 Lunigiana with one of the Marquises of Malaspina. It 
 is further certain that for a time he sojourned in Padua, 
 in Bologna, and in Paris. He was probably a student at 
 the universities of these towns, he may even have lectured 
 there himself. But he never attained the rank of a 
 regular professor. And he was probably never well to 
 do, whether he was a teacher or the guest and protege of 
 princes. His ancestor Cacciaguida tells him in Paradise : 
 
252 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 How salt that bread doth taste thou then shalt know 
 
 That others give thee, and how hard the way 
 Or up or down another's stairs to go. 
 
 In the "Banquet," in the third chapter of the first 
 treatise he says : " Since it pleased the citizens of that 
 fairest and most renowned daughter of Rome — Florence 
 — to expel me from her dear lap, in which I was born and 
 reared until the culmination-point of my life, and in which 
 I desire with all my heart to repose my weary soul in 
 peace with her and to conclude the time that is conceded 
 to me — since that moment I have wandered as a pilgrim 
 and almost as a beggar through almost all the regions 
 where this our language is spoken. And against my 
 will I have displayed the wounds of fate with which 
 people are wont unjustly to reproach the wounded him- 
 self. Verily, I have been a vessel without a sail and 
 without a rudder, erring through many ports and bays 
 and shores, chased by the dry wind that blows from 
 painful poverty, I have appeared inconsiderable in the 
 eyes of many men who, perhaps, moved by some rumour, 
 had fancied me to be quite different, and in whose eyes 
 not only my person lost in value but my works also, those 
 which are already completed as well as those which still 
 are to be so?' 
 
 Dante's external appearance seems to have been by no 
 means imposing. Boccaccio, who had seen him when a 
 child, says of him : " He was small and insignificant- 
 looking, rather stooping, and wore a dark and heavy 
 beard." Nothing is said in those words about Dante's 
 face, nor do they correspond to the well-known ex- 
 pressive countenance. We would fain believe that the 
 portraits which are confirmed and sanctioned by old 
 traditions, and all show the same characteristic lines, are 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 253 
 
 really Dante's. And though the proofs are not perfectly 
 stringent and incontestable, it is at least highly probable 
 that the portraits are genuine.* If they were not so, if 
 the world had half-unconsciously invented such a form, 
 mythical as it then would be, it would only the more 
 prove the greatness of the man for whose portrait the 
 artistic imagination of mankind has created this almost 
 terrible head. Its expression is of an intensity which 
 Mr. W. H. Dircks, applying to Thoreau, designates simply 
 as M Dantesque," because it cannot be compared to any- 
 thing but to itself. Two types of the same head are 
 extant : one youthful, soft, full of refinement and yet of 
 a hidden severity, in Giotto's fresco in the chapel of the 
 Bargello in Florence,! the portrait with the rose ; then the 
 portraits of the exiled Dante, with the hollow cheeks, the 
 large forehead the energetic hooked chin, and especially 
 the eye 
 
 That, deep and flaming, pierces like a sharp 
 Inexorable dagger that obeys 
 The ruthless hand. 
 
 (Vrchlicky.) 
 
 Both types are essentially the same. One is the Dante 
 of the " Vita Nuova," the other he of the " Divine Comedy." 
 There is the same difference between the two faces that 
 there is between the two works. The hard and stormy 
 experiences of the intervening period explain the differ- 
 
 * VideF. X. Kraus in the chapter on "Dante's korperliche Ers- 
 cheinung, seine Bildnisse " (" Dante, sein Leben und sein Werk, sein 
 Verhaltnis zu Kunst und Politik," Berlin: Grote'sche Verlags-Buch- 
 handlung, 1897). 
 
 f It was discovered on July 20, 1840, and was marred in the attempt 
 to restore it. The frontispiece reproduces it as it was before the restor- 
 ation. 
 
254 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 ence ; the natural development of the man leads from one 
 to the other. 
 
 He was proud and self-conscious in his behaviour, yet 
 of the finest manners, but not adapted to society ; of an 
 unyielding temper, often abstracted and lost in thought. 
 
 Where he had been in all those years, who knows ? 
 And what scenes fill his imagination in those endless 
 wanderings, when the visions of the great poem were in 
 his mind ! Who is to follow the flight of that powerful 
 and matchless fancy ? He never ended his deep and com- 
 prehensive studies — a self-taught man, who thought him- 
 self a dilettante, when his powerful mind, that knew how 
 to make more of a few crumbs than others of the science 
 of a thousand books, had long surpassed all professional 
 scholars and masters of the school. 
 
 Between 1308 and 131 1 the "Banquet" was written. 
 The " Convivio Amoroso," as it is called in some early 
 editions, is no light book. In the first chapter he explains 
 the title and his intention in writing it. He says that, 
 "though he had not himself been sitting at the blessed table, 
 he yet had sat at the feet of those who are gathered round 
 it, and had collected the crumbs that had fallen from their 
 feast." And because of the sweetness which that little had 
 afforded to him, he had been moved to pity those who had 
 not even that ; and " as those who have knowledge always 
 liberally offer of their good plenty to those who are really 
 poor and thus become as a living source by whose water is 
 quenched the natural thirst," so he, too, had desired to 
 arrange a general banquet, and to offer them first the 
 necessary bread. The dishes of the banquet would be 
 served in fourteen courses. He meant to write fourteen 
 treatises commenting on so many canzoni, the allegory of 
 which he intended to be explained in the treatises. By the 
 
dX] 
 
 NTE IN EXILE 255 
 
 " bread " is understood the first treatise, in which he 
 explains why he had written Jiis work in Italian, not in 
 Latin. That he did so once again makes evident his 
 splendid insight, which never shrank from going unusual 
 ways. It was not the fashion then to write learned books 
 otherwise than in Latin, and many men reviled him for 
 doing so and thought but little of his work. Full four 
 hundred years had to pass before in Germany anybody 
 thought of writing a learned book in "Deutsch," which 
 literally means the " people's " language. Only four trea- 
 tises were completed. The second book treats of the 
 several sciences, the third of philosophy, while in the fourth 
 is expounded a theory of nobility which seems highly re- 
 markable for the time of its origin. The form, of course, 
 is antiquated, but the essence is most modern. He tries 
 to prove, what to us is self-evident, that true nobility has 
 nothing to do with birth, title, descent, or riches, but is based 
 on personal worth alone. " Not the race makes a noble- 
 man, but the man makes a noble race. I know that I 
 speak in opposition to all the world." The scholastic 
 method adopted throughout the book renders it difficult to 
 read, yet it is most interesting, and the beautiful, simple 
 language in which it is written, full of noble harmony, 
 gives it a great charm. Besides, there is that passionate 
 vehemence in it which is always characteristic of Dante. 
 All his fiery temper is found in every sentence ; there are 
 no dead passages. One feels how he must have started at 
 his desk in writing the words, " What, you say a horse is 
 noble because it is good in itself, and the same you say of 
 a falcon or of a pearl ; and a man should be called noble 
 because his ancestors were so . . . not with words, with 
 knives must one answer such a beastly notion ! " 
 
 He had more and more become an " intransigeant " ; his 
 
256 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 terrible love of truth makes him utter words in the perilous 
 fourteenth century which in the nineteenth century would 
 be impossible in almost any country. In " Conv." iv. 6, 
 speaking of the princes of his time, he exclaims, M O you 
 miserable, who are governing the world, O you more 
 miserable, who are governed ! beware you,enemies of God, 
 beware of the revolution that approaches you who are hold- 
 ing in your hands the rod of government in Italy ! I tell 
 Carlo and you, Federigo, kings, and you other princes 
 and tyrants, take care who are your advisers ; mark how 
 often, on every day the real end of human life is shown 
 to you by those your ministers ! Better were it for you 
 to fly low like the swallows than like vultures to circle 
 high over the vilest things ! " 
 
 At the same time he wrote his thoughtful book, M De 
 Vulgari Eloquentia," "of eloquence in the vernacular 
 language." It is the first attempt to write a theory of 
 poetry in Italian, and not a few far-seeing ^linguistic ideas, 
 which long afterwards were developed by scientific phil- 
 ology, are suggested in it. This work also remained in- 
 complete. Both probably were interrupted by the arrival 
 of the Emperor Henry VII. of Luxemburg in Italy. 
 
 The old Guelf had become a Ghibelline, expecting from 
 the Emperor peace and order for Italy and his own return. 
 At this time he probably wrote the book " De Monarchia," 
 in which he defended the idea that the Emperor was the 
 ruler of the world, the same idea for which Charlemagne 
 and the Hohenstaufen had fought, and which was irretriev- 
 ably lost. 
 
 In these books there are beautiful passages and deep 
 thoughts — but no original system of philosophy, as some 
 over-enthusiastic admirers of the poet would have it. 
 His poetical conception of the world was most original, 
 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 257 
 
 but in philosophy he was the disciple of others. And he 
 never was a freethinker in a time when many such were 
 to be found. Through all his life Dante was a devout 
 Catholic; in spite of his violent opposition to the temporal 
 government of the Popes and the pernicious riches ff the 
 Church, he always felt the deepest reverence for the 
 Church herself as she should have been, and never for a 
 moment doubted the truth of her doctrines. Doubt was 
 perhaps not foreign to him, but certainly not the slightest 
 trace of this is to be found in his works. Whatever Witte 
 and Scartazzini have said against this seems to me far 
 from convincing.* Nowhere can I find anything but 
 devout Catholic faith. I am glad to find this view con- 
 firmed by a learned work on Dante's " Geistesgang," the 
 author of which, Dr. Franz Hettinger, is a Catholic 
 clergyman. Beatrice, who in the "Divine Comedy " 
 stands for the light of the Church, reproaches Dante with 
 having been faithless to her. Now Witte and Scartazzini 
 assert that in saying this Beatrice condemns Dante's 
 devotion to philosophy, for which, according to them, he 
 expressed too high an admiration in the ** Banquet," valu- 
 ing it even more than faith. But no trace of such an 
 over-estimation is found in the " Banquet," nor is the 
 slightest approach to religious doubt expressed anywhere. 
 In the fourth chapter of the second book the absolute 
 infallibility of all teachings of the Church is expressly 
 acknowledged. 
 
 If Dante ever doubted, I should say that the only thing 
 he may have doubted was God's justice on earth. It even 
 seems probable to me that such doubts in his soul were 
 
 * The notion of the "Trilogy " in Dante's works, which Witte was 
 the first to establish, though it be very clever, seems to me a most 
 unhappy idea, I hope to say more on the topic on another occasion. 
 
 R 
 
258 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 the source from which sprang his great poem, which is 
 essentially a song of retribution. 
 
 Yet I believe that Beatrice's reproaches less concern 
 these doubts than moral aberrations — the aberrations in 
 the forest of life. Dante makes Beatrice reproach him ; 
 that is to say, Dante reproaches himself with having 
 turned from the ideals and noble aims of his youth and 
 rushed into the always polluting whirl of the world. 
 We to-day are no longer in a position to tell what he 
 may have exactly meant. In a literal sense it may have 
 been his marriage and other loves, in an allegorical sense 
 many a lower and more worldly aim, that made him 
 swerve from his high path as prophet and poet. 
 
 There is one point more to be touched on here. Boc- 
 caccio records a great many love affairs of Dante's later life, 
 and other authors have increased the number with a fertile 
 power of invention. When this dull stuff had reached 
 its climax it veered round to the opposite direction, and 
 Scartazzini, for instance, never tires in his prudish en- 
 deavour to defend Dante against any taint of this kind, 
 and repeats over and over again what a frigid and dry old 
 scholar Dante was. One is as ridiculous as the other. 
 We are no longer so prudish and severe in judging men, 
 and not so quick in throwing stones at them. That Dante 
 was of a loving and fiery disposition, passionate as few 
 men ever were, is evident in every line he wrote. That, 
 on the other side, his character was severe and pure, that 
 he certainly was no professional hero of French novels, 
 nor a man of brutal sensuality, is likewise evident. But 
 to deny passion to a man, to unman him as it were, 
 while one pretends to justify him, is rather a strange 
 beginning. In this respect we need neither accuse nor 
 justify him— we have suffered enough from all the 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 259 
 
 superfluous nonsense we have had to hear on the life of 
 Goethe. 
 
 It may be sufficient that Dante gave evidence against 
 himself and judged himself severely. For what else could 
 it mean that, through all the penances of Purgatory Dante 
 walks free and unmolested ; only through the flames, in 
 which the sins of carnal lust are purged, he has to pass, 
 and stands trembling and hesitating until he is admonished 
 by Virgil that Beatrice stands expectant on the other side. 
 Scartazzini and others affirm that all the canzoni of the 
 so-called second cycle, in which women are praised, have 
 but an allegorical meaning. Suppose they were right in 
 that, I should still say that a man who borrows all his 
 similes from love and in these similes speaks a lover's 
 language with such a fire of life that nobody will believe 
 them to be mere allegories — a man who could write the 
 story of Francesca and Paolo must have known woman 
 and loved well, and must have devoted to them a good 
 part of his life. 
 
 Yet we need but glance at the poems themselves. 
 Some are quite cold and full of learned definitions — in 
 short, versified scholastic tracts; in others the allegory 
 is evident ; some are of doubtful sense ; but then we 
 suddenly are struck by a canzone beginning in the follow- 
 ing way : 
 
 Fain in my speech I would be harsh and rough 
 As is in all her acts that rock so fair . . . 
 
 and then 
 
 My heart doth tremble when I think of her . . . 
 For Death is tearing me with Love's sharp teeth, 
 Prostrate I lie — bent over me he stands, 
 The sword with which Dido was slain in hands, 
 In vain I cry for mercy . . . 
 
2 6o DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 If only those fair ringlets I could grasp, 
 Which Love for my undoing crisps with gold, 
 Ah ! how my hand would revel in their hold : 
 Ah ! if I had those tresses in my hand 
 Which as a rod and scourge to me have grown, 
 If I could grasp them in the hour of dawn 
 I should not courteous be or gently gay, 
 No — like a she-bear in her cruel play ! 
 
 Whosoever can think that this poem of terrible and 
 tormenting passion is addressed to the fair tresses of 
 philosophy must be a philosopher indeed. It is true that 
 mediaeval mystics often borrowed their similes from 
 sensual love, but such passages have quite a different 
 sound, they are clumsier as well as colder. One needs 
 but compare the passages quoted by Perez from the 
 writings of the monks of St. Victor or the sonnet by 
 Jacopone da Todi, "Ciascuno amante che ama il Sig- 
 nore," which, as Bartoli said, is written P as it were, in 
 an erotic trance in the words, the rhythm and the figures 
 of glowing sensuality," and every man of a refined taste 
 will instantly feel how misplaced these unnatural similes 
 of sensual passion in such poems are. 
 
 There are some who even believe they enhance 
 Dante's fame by such interpretations ; those who 
 always fain would make unclean what God has cleansed. 
 As long as the Creator deems love between man 
 and woman the right way to conserve mankind, those 
 pious souls should be a little more modest in their 
 devotion and not blame His ways with such arro- 
 gance. 
 
 Then in a sonnet addressed by Dante to Cino da 
 Pistoja, of unknown date, which almost could be called 
 an erotical confession Dante says ; 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 261 
 
 I have with Love in contact close been thrown, 
 From the ninth year the sun did mark for me, • 
 And know how he now curb, now spur may be, 
 
 And how beneath him men may smile and groan. 
 
 Who strives with him, with skill and strength alone, 
 Acts as he does who, when the storm plays free, 
 Rings out a peal, as though the vaporous sea 
 
 And thunderous strife that music could atone. 
 
 Wherefor within the range of that his bow 
 Free choice to act hath not its freedom true, 
 
 So that our counsels vain dart to and fro. 
 Well with new spur in flank may he us prick, 
 
 And each new pleasure he before us lays, 
 We must needs follow, of the old joy sick. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 That is all we know. In the " Divine Comedy " a few 
 words are spoken of a very young girl called Gentucca, 
 who was to please him so well, that for her sake he was 
 even to like Lucca, her native town, which he had before 
 hated, but that may have been only a fatherly admiration 
 of an old friend — we know nothing about it. But these 
 poems, as all his poetry, give us insight into Dante's 
 nature, which was severe as well as passionate. 
 
 Among the allegorical canzoni, some of which are 
 composed in a cold and severe style, marble-like, and full 
 of striking similes, there is one addressed to Florence, 
 another of doubtful sense, which, perhaps, equally turns 
 on love and likewise concludes with verses to Florence, 
 the never-forgotten city hated and loved alike : 
 
 Dear mountain song of mine, thou goest thy way, 
 
 Perchance thou'lt Florence see, mine own dear land, 
 
 That drives me, doomed and banned, 
 
 Showing no pity, and devoid of love. 
 
 If thou dost enter there, pass on, and say, 
 
 " My lord, no more against you can wage war, 
 
262 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 There whence I come, his chains so heavy are, 
 That, though thy fierce wrath placable should prove, 
 No longer freedom hath he thence to move." 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 Meanwhile, a time of new hopes dawned on him. In 
 the year 1310 Henry of Luxemburg came to Italy. By 
 no one was he saluted with such exultation as by Dante. 
 He wrote letters full of wild and triumphant joy to Rome 
 and Florence and to all princes of Italy. He had an 
 audience with the Emperor ; in his letters he called him 
 the " New Moses " and " The Lamb of God " ; he was full 
 of the most ardent hopes — but the enterprise failed and 
 the Emperor died at Buonconvento on August 24, 1312. 
 In the year 1315 he was buried in the Campo Santo at 
 Pisa ; at the feet of the sarcophagus is an eagle holding 
 a scroll in its claws, on which are written the words : 
 " Quidquid fecimus venit ex alto."* " He lies as one in a 
 troubled sleep," Ampere said of this monument. What 
 Dante felt at this blow he never expressed. Now all was 
 over, all hope gone for ever. The Florentines renewed the 
 sentence in the year 1 3 1 2 and again in the autumn of 1315, 
 including his sons in the condemnation. Anybody by the 
 new sentence was allowed to do with their person and 
 property whatever he liked ; if they ever should be taken 
 on Florentine ground, they should be led to the scaffold 
 and be beheaded. Again he wandered a banished fugi- 
 tive on unknown ways, until he found his last refuge in 
 Ravenna. 
 
 He probably had become old before his time, a broken 
 man wholly retired within himself. That is the picture 
 which is before one's eyes when one thinks of Dante. 
 
 * M Whatever we did came from above." Kraus thinks this inscrip- 
 tion strong and stern enough to have been composed by Dante. 
 
DANTE IN EXILE 263 
 
 Not the youthful portrait with the rose, but the stooping 
 man with the haggard features, the., deep and terrible 
 eyes, in whose face we see exile and care and sorrow and 
 unfathomable mystic thought, that is the Dante we know, 
 the exiled one — " Dantes Alagherii Florentinus exul im- 
 meritus," as he always styles himself in his letters — 
 " Dante the son of Alighiero, a Florentine, exiled though 
 guiltless," that is the Dante who wrote the " Divine 
 Comedy." 
 
 How long the plan may have slumbered and ripened 
 within him, at what time the first cantos were conceived, 
 and when the last were completed, is all unknown to us. 
 The contents give scant evidence as to the date of their 
 origin, because, undoubtedly, all was repeatedly corrected 
 and changed and gone through over and over again. The 
 last cantos were not found until some time after his death. 
 Still, in his last years Dante, conscious of the greatness 
 of his work, hoped that for its sake he would one day be 
 recalled to Florence. The twenty-fifth canto of Paradise 
 begins with these verses : 
 
 Should it e'er chance that this my sacred song, 
 
 To which both Heaven and earth have thus set hand 
 And which had made me lean through years full long, 
 
 O'ercome the cruelty that keeps me banned 
 From the fair fold where I as lamb did rest, 
 Foe of the wolves, who war against the land, 
 
 With other voice, in other fleece then drest, 
 
 I shall return as poet, laurel- crowned, 
 And at my baptism's font my brow invest. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 Dante could never suffer himself to accept the poet's 
 crown — proud as ever — for who was there to judge him ? 
 
DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 He pronounced himself worthy of the crown, and wanted 
 to put the laurel on his head himself after his return in 
 his " beautiful San Giovanni." It was not to be. As 
 Michael Angelo sang : 
 
 Heaven opened wide its doors to him 
 While his dear city drove him from her own. 
 
 % 
 
* OF THE ^P 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE "DIVINE COMEDY 
 
 Boccaccio records the legend that at Dante's death the 
 thirteen last cantos of the "Divina Commedia" were miss- 
 ing, and notwithstanding the most minute research could 
 not be found. Some months had passed, when one night the 
 poet appeared to his son Jacopo in a dream, and revealed 
 to him the place where the manuscript wa^flrifen. 
 
 That a resurrection of a dead man h BJssary to 
 preserve the work that tells of the dSJ^eems almost 
 natural; one cannot marvel so much at it. The poem 
 itself is still more marvellous. What a spirit dwelt in the 
 man who dared, as it were, to pass judgment on the world, 
 to pronounce God's sentence on His creatures ! He did 
 so in terrible emotion, and fully persuaded of his mission. 
 The trembling agitation with which he wrote is felt in 
 every line of the poem. From what a " Patmos of Thought " 
 was this book written — that seems like a message from 
 the world beyond, the reminiscences of a soul which had 
 once already left its " tenement of clay." 
 
 We can but distantly surmise what the man must have 
 suffered who was driven to such a work ! In vain had 
 he entered the world and tried to obtain a place in it ; 
 repulsed and misunderstood; wandering through it, an 
 erring outcast fugitive, at last he turned from it, and 
 
266 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 from a far distant height, his soaring soul dared to pass judg- 
 ment upon it. One of the loneliest men who ever lived ! 
 For him and his like the word has been spoken which the 
 apostle heard : " My grace is sufficient for thee ! " 
 
 The man who wrote the " Divine Comedy " was a 
 tragic, not an unhappy man. For whosoever has ex- 
 perienced the deep joys which an artist feels in creating 
 may conceive what hours of boundless pride, what con- 
 centrated sensations of deep happiness such a work must 
 have afforded him. He knew quite well who he was, and 
 what a task had been allotted to him. No poet ever felt so 
 proudly, and at the same time so modestly, the surprising 
 magnitude of his work. That none of his contemporaries 
 was aware of his greatness could not for a moment make 
 him falter. He undoubtedly alluded to himself in that 
 passage in the eleventh canto of Purgatory where, speak- 
 ing of the poets of his time, he says : 
 
 One Guido did the other's fame abase, 
 
 And yet perhaps that man's already born 
 Who both from their high- seated nest will chase ! 
 
 In Hell, Ser Brunetto prophesies : 
 
 ... If thou follow but thy star 
 Thou canst not fail to reach a glorious shore 
 If right I saw in life, that seems so far . . . 
 Fortune such honours has prepared for thee. 
 That both the parties will thine aid desire, 
 But let the goats far from the sweet grass be ! 
 
 In Paradise he is saluted as a chosen one by the blessed 
 spirits. 
 
 O thou thrice blessed one who to the throne 
 Of the eternal triumph hast been called, 
 Before thy mortal vessel be destroyed ! 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY *■ 267 
 
 Nevertheless the first, whom he judged and found 
 wanting, was himself. He saw what he had been, and 
 what had become of him, how he had found the right path, 
 made his peace with God, and recognised that all had been 
 right and necessary. 
 
 Many hidden meanings are expressed in the grand epic. 
 Its many-sided symbolism allows of many interpretations. 
 First it tells, legend-like, that the man Dante has been in 
 Hell and in Heaven, and has seen much that is hidden 
 from the eyes of mankind. This is the first and most 
 literal sense of it. The second step is remoter, but is 
 not yet quite an allegory ; it is Dante's confession of his 
 own salvation, and how it was brought about. Further 
 meanings are indicated in the first chapter of this part ; 
 but, above all, it means that Dante was saved out of the 
 wilderness of doubt, into which his own unhappy fate and 
 the frightful state of the world had plunged him. He had 
 suffered all ill chance that could fall to the lot of man. 
 He loved and had lost his beloved one ; his family life 
 was unhappy ; he was a statesman, and as such was un- 
 successful ; he saw his party defeated and driven from the 
 land, and when the Emperor, from whom he had expected 
 the redemption of Italy and his own reinstatement, entered 
 Italy with a victorious army, he saw him die. He had 
 been full of the noblest intentions, yet men not only gave 
 him no thanks, but had hunted him out, had branded his 
 name with foul crimes and condemned him to death. He 
 had lost his whole fortune ; one of the proudest of men, 
 he was forced continually to humble himself and to live 
 on foreign alms ; one of the greatest poets of all times, 
 he saw himself neither understood nor honoured. His 
 whole life was devoted to his native city, he clung to it 
 with all his heart, and he passed twenty-two years longing 
 
268 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 in vain to return to it. A devout Catholic, full of rever- 
 ence for his Church, he saw it degraded, governed by 
 " New Pharisees," and at last fallen and dishonoured. 
 Italy, whose unity was dear to him, he saw torn by the 
 hatred of parties and cruelly devastated by war. A sea 
 of wrong had passed over him, he saw a sea of wrong 
 raging over the world in which he lived ; wherever he 
 turned his eyes everything was such as to drive him to 
 despair, but he despaired not. He believed, and in spite 
 of all, recognised the high harmony of the world. He had 
 found the path for his soul, the work for his mind, by 
 which he got rid of the weight which crushed him, and at 
 the same time took his proud revenge on the men who had 
 so maltreated him. In " eternal letters of fire " he wrote 
 his terrible judgment " as lightning writes its cipher on 
 the rocks " to be read by all posterity, that men might 
 one day fix the balance between this one man on the one 
 side and mankind on the other. 
 
 To attain this he had to do in a spiritual sense what 
 the Greek mathematician had demanded : he, as it were, 
 overleaped the boundaries of life and found a standpoint 
 beyond it. Imperfect, full of wrong, incomprehensible as 
 this world must needs seem in itself, he was forced to 
 search for its justification in the world invisible ; he was 
 forced to follow all the lines, that appear in this our world 
 only in broken strands, to their perfection in the other ; 
 what is but an incomplete fragment of an arch here, darting 
 from none knows where to none knows whither, will close to 
 a perfect circle in the spiritual world that became visible to 
 that grand seer. His eye pierced through the boundaries 
 of time and space into the surrounding sphere of eternity : 
 the wrongs done here were repaired and punished there. 
 To see this it had become necessary, or, as he explains 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 269 
 
 it, the heavenly powers by mediation of loving and friendly 
 spirits had so decreed it that his soul should be shown the 
 way through the metaphysical realms, where he could see 
 the terrible retribution of God's justice and be satisfied. 
 The state of horrible crime on earth was not all — the last 
 word was not spoken here — he could be calmer and 
 endure all, knowing what was to follow. He had seen 
 eternal justice and the end of life face to face, and while 
 his soul was still trembling from the sight of those sombre 
 glories, he sat down to tell of it. 
 
 All the secret sense, mystic connections and hidden 
 allusions of the work, in which he gave utterance to his 
 high insight will probably never be fully known. Already 
 at the time when Beatrice had been lost to him, and his 
 thoughts followed her into the other world, his mind 
 was deeply and intensely occupied with the Invisible 
 and his imagination attracted by its glories and hidden 
 terrors. Even then he spoke of wonderful visions and 
 strange intuitions. What the reason was, that later, 
 when he came to tell of the great vision, he chose the 
 year 1300 as the date of his illumination, is unknown. 
 The year, perhaps, was an important one to him from 
 reasons which he alone knew, relating to changes within 
 him — reasons which could only be investigated by read- 
 ing in the soul of the man ; perhaps the fact that it was 
 the year of the jubilee of Christ's birth was decisive. So 
 much is certain; he began his mystic pilgrimage on 
 Maundy Thursday 1300, and ended it in the week of the 
 Resurrection of Christ.* Into these eight days was con- 
 centrated the whole essence of his life. 
 
 * My esteemed friend, Lieutenant-Colonel Pochhammer, has alleged 
 good reasons for believing that Dante meant the date of his descent to 
 be Saturday, March 25, 1301. However, the question seems by no 
 means decided, and I still prefer the interpretation above given. 
 
270 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 What title he originally chose for his work is unknown. 
 If the letter to Can Grande of Verona, in which the 
 Paradise is dedicated to that prince, be genuine, he called 
 it the " Comedy," or rather a " Comedy." In those times 
 every poem which ended happily was called a comedy, as 
 he says in the letter itself. In one or two, and not very 
 early, editions, it is called the " Vision of Dante Alighieri"; 
 in a few, simply " Le terze rime di Dante." Afterwards 
 the attribute of <( Divino," which Italians like to confer on 
 their great artists, was given to the poet, and in the 
 sixteenth century the work itself was called " Divine." 
 That was the natural origin of this title, which since has 
 become the universal one, and nowadays is mostly be- 
 lieved to have another and mystic sense, corresponding 
 to the contents of the work. 
 
 There exists no poetical work elaborated with such 
 consummate art as this. The smallest detail is worked 
 out ; it resembles a technical work, every iron-joint, 
 every nail of which has been considered before. Even 
 the number of the words seems to have been counted. 
 The mystical properties of numbers on which such stress 
 is laid already in the "Vita Nuova," where the number 
 Nine — that of the miraculous — recurs ever and again, and 
 Beatrice herself is called a Nine, that is, a wonder whose 
 root is the Trinity — these properties are worked out to 
 the utmost in the structure of the "Divine Comedy." The 
 numbers Three — that of the threefold Deity ; Nine — that 
 of wonder and second birth ; and Ten — the number of the 
 Perfect, are the basis of its construction. Three are the 
 rhymes, three verses form a stanza, three animals arise 
 to terrify Dante, three holy women intervene for him, three 
 guides lead him. Three in number are the realms, and cor- 
 respondingly the whole poem is divided into three parts ; 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 271 
 
 the book opens with an introductory canto, then follow 
 ninety-nine cantos, thirty-three for each of the three realms, 
 corresponding to the years of Christ's life on earth, so 
 that the number of all the cantos is a hundred, the number 
 of the Whole. Each of the three realms is divided into 
 ten regions, Hell into Limbo and the nine circles ; Purga- 
 tory into three preparatory divisions and the seven circles 
 of the capital sins ; in Paradise there are nine heavens and 
 as tenth region the Heaven of perfect light, the Empyrean. 
 Even verses and words seem to have been counted, for 
 the number of the words is 99,542 ; and of verses Hell 
 contains 4720, Purgatory 35 more, and Paradise again 
 three more. And each of the three parts ends with the 
 word " stars." 
 
 To procure a fit scene for his poem, Dante, as it were, 
 created the world anew in his fancy. In the centre of 
 the ten heavens the round ball of the earth is floating. 
 Its northern hemisphere bears the continent, in the very 
 midst of it is Jerusalem, in its interior is placed the funnel 
 of hell. In its deepest depths, in the earth's centre, the 
 point of concentrated gravitation and cold, where all 
 warmth and all light end, at the farthest distance from 
 God and His heavens, is the dwelling of Satan, who is 
 confined there in eternity. The opposite southern hemi- 
 sphere is that of the wide waters; from a solitary island 
 rises a mountain of immense height on whose summit, near 
 to the zone of fire and the moon, the terrestrial paradise, 
 the Garden of Eden, is situated. 
 
 Somewhere on the earth's surface, half dreaming, the 
 
 poet has left it and on unknown paths has entered the 
 
 realm beneath it. That is the well-known grand opening : 
 
 " In the midst of our life's path I found myself in a dark 
 
 forest, and the right path was lost, so dark and terrible 
 
272 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 was that forest, that even in thinking of it its terror seems 
 to return ! Death cannot be more bitterly felt ! " And 
 yet so good has been its result that he must tell all 
 that happened there ! He no longer knows how he 
 entered it, so full of slumber was his soul when he lost 
 his first path ; yet he knows this much, that at the end of 
 that Vale of Tears he reached a hill on whose summit the 
 planet's rays already fell, which is the sure leading star 
 of mankind. The planet was the Sun, the Light of God. 
 He begins to feel some relief, 
 
 And gazes back upon the scene behind, 
 Which never living man had yet passed o'er ! 
 
 But just as he begins to ascend that sloping hill he sees 
 with terror a leopard supple, lithe and fleet, with dusky- 
 spotted skin, barring his way; yet it being springtime 
 and the hour of morning, he hopes that the beast will 
 withdraw, when lo ! a lion appears, with upraised head 
 and fierce hunger, and a she-wolf, that in her very lean- 
 ness seems laden with every filthy greed. Trembling he 
 stands, and slowly, slowly turns back towards the depth, 
 where " the sun is silent." 
 
 Thus recoiling in the deepest despair, a form suddenly 
 rises before him that seems dumb with the silence of 
 centuries. "Have pity on me, whosoever thou art, man 
 or shade ! " Dante cries. It is Virgil, who makes himself 
 known and asks : " How is it that thou turnest back to 
 such bitterness ? Why dost thou not ascend the Delect- 
 able Mountain, which is the cause and beginning of all 
 joy ? " " O art thou then Virgil ! " Dante begins, his fore- 
 head reddened with shame ; " O thou my master ! source 
 of all honour, which I drew from that style I took from 
 thee! My guide ! by all the love I ever applied to thy great 
 

 THE "DIVINE COMEDY " 273 
 
 work, thou seest the beast that threatens my way ; save 
 me from it, renowned sage!" "Another way must be 
 thine," Virgil replies ; " on the paths of this world there is 
 no rescue from that dire she-wolf of greed which primordial 
 envy once let loose from hell to ruin mankind, which 
 weds with many other beasts, and will continue to do so 
 until the Greyhound come, who will be her death, and who 
 will save that poor and suffering Italy ! " 
 
 Virgil was thought to be the greatest of all wizards and 
 sages of antiquity. The fourth Eclogue, which, indeed, 
 sounds like a prophecy of Christ's birth, had procured him 
 such fame. He continues : 
 
 11 Wherefore for thee I think and judge 'tis well 
 
 That thou should'st follow, I thy leader be, 
 And guide thee hence to that eternal cell, 
 
 Where thou shalt hear sharp wails of misery, 
 
 Shalt see the ancient spirits in their pain, 
 For which, as being the second death, men cry : 
 
 Those thou shalt see who, in the hope to gain, 
 
 When the hour comes, the blessed ones' happier clime ; 
 Can bear the torturing fire nor yet complain. 
 
 To these would'st thou with eager footsteps climb, 
 
 A soul shall guide thee worthier far than I : 
 With her I'll leave thee when to part 'tis time. 
 
 For that great Emperor who reigns on high, 
 
 Because I lived a rebel to His will, 
 Wills that through me none come His city nigh. 
 
 Through all the world He rules, yet there reigns still 
 
 There is His city, there His lofty throne. 
 Thrice blessed whom He doth choose those courts to 
 fill ! " 
 
 Then spake I, " By the God thou didst not own, 
 
 O Poet, I of thee a boon desire, 
 That I may 'scape this woe, or worse unknown, 
 
 s 
 
274 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 That whither thou hast said thou lead me higher, 
 
 So that St. Peter's gate in sight I find, 
 And those thou tell'st of in their torments dire." 
 
 Then he moved onward and I trod behind. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 The second canto begins with that beautiful passage : 
 The day was closing and the dusky air softly began to 
 free all beings from their cares. I alone prepared to 
 sustain the toil of the way and of pity, which my unerring 
 mind will now retell." Doubts were filling his mind: 
 what does Virgil — that is, he himself — expect from him ? 
 How can he trust him ? At whose side is he going to place 
 himself? Aeneas, of course, destined to found Imperial 
 Rome, could dare it ; the other who, living, ever saw the 
 other world was the " chosen vessel," the Apostle Paul, 
 for in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians is written : 
 
 " It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will 
 come to the visions and revelations of the Lord. 
 
 " I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago 
 (whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the 
 body I cannot tell ; God knoweth), such an one caught up 
 to the third heaven. 
 
 " And I knew such a man . . . how that he was caught 
 up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is 
 not lawful for a man to utter. . . . 
 
 " For though I would desire to glory I shall not be a 
 fool, for I will say the truth. . . . 
 
 " And lest I should be exalted above measure through 
 the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a 
 thorn in the flesh. . . ." 
 
 At the Apostle's side Dante had dared to place himself 
 as the third elected and he now hesitates : " I am not 
 Aeneas, nor Paul. Who am I that I should try such a 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 275 
 
 thing ? Who concedes it ? " He is full of misgivings 
 as to his strength. But Virgil warns him to beware of 
 cowardice, and then explains to him how he came to be 
 there. He had been sitting in the society of heroes and 
 poets of antiquity when suddenly a lady called him, 
 blessed and fair, softly and sweetly speaking with angelic 
 voice, who said : " My friend, no friend of fortune's, is so 
 entangled in the perilous net of life, that he will be lost if 
 thou with thy well-graced words do not rescue him." 
 The Virgin herself and St. Lucia had asked her why she 
 did not help him, who once had loved her so much that 
 
 For her sake he left the common herd, 
 
 14 1 am Beatrice," she says, " who bid thee go, 
 
 Love moved me, and from Love my speech did flow. 
 
 Why dost thou falter then ? why hesitate 
 
 While three such ladies, blessed by God's dear grace, 
 
 There are in Heaven, caring for thy fate ? " 
 
 Much has been written by way of explaining the sym- 
 bolism of these two first cantos.* There can be but little 
 doubt that it indicates how Dante in the dark forest of 
 life was threatened and hindered by the three chief vices 
 — luxury, pride and avarice — and how the gracious Queen 
 of Heaven herself, aided by the saint who seems to have 
 been the patroness of Dante and by Beatrice, sends out 
 Virgil — that is, the old wisdom of this earth — to save him. 
 Yet all these symbols possibly may have more meanings 
 than one. What he certainly — and whatever sense may 
 be hidden in the different figures — wishes to imply, is 
 that the heavenly powers made an attempt to save him 
 by according him those special revelations which he 
 
 * Vide Kraus, "Dante," p. 441 sqg., "Die Allegorie der zivei ersten 
 Gesange des Inferno." Paul Pochhammer, "Die Gottl. C medie," 
 Leipzig, 1901. Einfiihrung. 
 
276 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 proceeds to describe, that great illuminating vision of the 
 " mystery of creation." What is most discussed of all are 
 the prophecies of Virgil, the question who may be the 
 greyhound by whom the she-wolf will be vanquished and 
 Italy be delivered. Some say that Can Grande is meant 
 by it, or Henry of Luxemburg and others ; some are even 
 of the opinion that Dante alludes to the world's Saviour 
 Himself. The question does not promise ever to be solved. 
 Nor do I think it a matter of great importance to us. 
 
 They go and approach the dark portal with the well- 
 known inscription : 
 
 Through me men pass to city of great woe ; 
 Through me men pass to endless misery ; 
 Through me men pass where all the lost ones go. 
 
 Justice it was that moved my Maker high, 
 
 The Power of God it was that fashioned me, 
 Wisdom supreme and primal Charity. 
 
 Before me nothing was of things that be, 
 Save the Eterne, and I eterne endure : 
 Ye that pass in, all hope abandon ye. 
 
 On entering through it : 
 
 There sighs and tears and groans disconsolate 
 So sounded through the starless firmament, 
 That at the outset I wept sore thereat. 
 
 Speech many-tongued and cries of dire lament, 
 
 Words full of wrath and accents of despair, 
 Deep voices hoarse and hands where woe found vent, — 
 
 These made a tumult whirling through the air, 
 
 For evermore in timeless gloom the same, 
 As whirls the sand storm-driven here and there. 
 
 Dante asks who these are, and the answer betrays a 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 277 
 
 conception of surpassing grandeur. For that is not yet 
 hell ! but these are the sorrowful souls of those " who 
 lived without glory and without shame." The indifferent, 
 the worthless, the inert, who had lived in sordid quiet 
 and devoid of aspirations. Heaven expels them and hell 
 refuses them. " They have no hope, even in death," for 
 that is passed, and their blind life is so base that they 
 envy any other lot. 
 
 Nothing remains to tell that they ever lived. Justice 
 and Mercy alike scorn them — " better not speak of them 
 but pass in silence," Virgil says. If you keep in mind 
 that we are not only in hell, but that every scene sym- 
 bolises a certain state of soul, that every circle is to 
 show the living, where they are and what is their state in 
 reality, the obvious sense of the verses will appear to be 
 " worse than all sin is narrow indifference." These are 
 the miserable "che mai uon fur vivi," "who have never 
 lived at all," 
 
 Hated by God and by God's enemies. 
 
 They arrive at the shore of Acheron, where lamenting and 
 tremblingsouls are transported by Charon to the other shore. 
 Charon thrusts back the living man, who, in a way that is 
 not quite clear to him, suddenly finds himself in the first 
 circle of hell, where the heroes and sages of antiquity and 
 pagan lands dwell in peaceful and happy meadows. Not 
 having been Christians, Paradise is closed to them. Here 
 are the patriarchs, with the exception of those who, like 
 Adam, Moses, David, after Christ's descent to hell, were 
 raised to heaven. Here are Homer, Saladin and others, 
 and with . proud modesty Dante records with what 
 courtesy Homer, Horace and other poets received him. 
 11 1 was the sixth among five such men," 
 
278 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 In the second circle they find those who sinned from 
 love, hurled to and fro by eternal whirlwinds — the symbol 
 of restless passion. That is the canto which contains the 
 famous episode of Francesca da Rimini, " a thing/' as 
 Carlyle says, " woven as out of rainbows on a ground of 
 eternal black." No translation will ever be made to render 
 all the charm of these most touching lines, placed like an 
 island in that ocean of gloom and darkness, yet themselves 
 burning with a sombre glow, as a night lightened by the 
 flaring eruption of a volcano ; the song of saddest, ten- 
 derest love and most intense pain. Thousands he saw 
 passing him who all had been undone by love : Paris, 
 Tristan, all the knights and fair ladies. Deepest pity 
 filled the man's soul, who himself had known love so well, 
 and he stands with troubled mind. Then he expresses 
 the desire to speak to two, who fly together, and seem to 
 be carried so lightly on the air. He conjures the " pained 
 souls " by the love " that once united and undid them " 
 to come to him. And they come, like doves descending 
 on open wings through the serene sky, so powerful was 
 his loving call, " O gracious, O kind being that descend- 
 est through this dark and pernicious region to visit us, 
 whose blood dyed the earth," 
 
 If he were kind to us who rules the world 
 We would pray unto Him to grant thee peace, 
 Because thou pitiest our misery. 
 
 Peace seems sweetest and most desirable to those rest- 
 less souls. And Francesca tells her story with that triple 
 invocation of love. " Love, which so quickly befalls a noble 
 heart, enamoured him of my fair body ; Love, which never 
 spares loving to the beloved, enamoured me of him with 
 such power, that even here in hell he leaves me not ; Love 
 
THE « DIVINE COMEDY" 279 
 
 led us to one common death ! It was Love which did 
 all." And Dante bows his head in deepest thought, until 
 the poet asks him, " What art thou thinking of ? " And he 
 answers : "Alas, how many fond thoughts, what deep desire 
 led those two to the unhappy pass ! " and turning to the 
 spirit says, " Francesca, thy suffering makes me so sad, so 
 full of pity, that I could well weep with thee ; but, tell me, 
 in the time of the sweet sighs, how did Love grant that thou 
 too shouldest come to know the doubtful pangs ? " And she, 
 " There is no greater grief than to remember past joys in 
 misery ; but if thou wishest so strongly to hear what the 
 first root of our love was, I will tell thee, though I must 
 speak with tears. We once sat and read, for pleasure's 
 sake, of Lancelot and how Love held him fast — we were 
 alone and had no misgivings . . . yet oftentimes our eyes 
 stopped reading and met, our faces grew pale, but there 
 was one passage that undid us ; — when we read how that 
 sweet smiling mouth was kissed by such a lover, then he, 
 who never may be separated from me, all trembling, kissed 
 my mouth . . . our Gallehault was the book, and he who 
 wrote it . . . on that day we did not read one line more ! " 
 And while one of the spirits thus speaks, the other weeps 
 so pitifully that Dante, pale and broken by compassion, 
 faints and falls, like a dead man. 
 
 In the third circle the sins of gluttony are punished. 
 Souls lie in foul mud and mire under an " accursed eternal 
 cold and heavy rain " of dark water, snow and hail. Here 
 a Florentine sinner, Ciacco, predicts to Dante his imminent 
 exile. In the next canto prodigals and misers (among 
 the latter many churchmen), with the wild cries and howls 
 of beasts, roll huge stones against each other. Most 
 remarkable is the symbolism in this passage; with 
 these souls alone in all hell no exchange of words is 
 
280 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 possible. They have no sense left for anything; there 
 is no speaking to men who live for money alone, their 
 spirit is dead to all aspiration ! Over the Stygian 
 pool he is rowed in the bark of the horse-maned 
 Phlegyas to the burning town of Dis. The souls of those 
 who once wasted their lives with grumbling, moroseness, 
 and needless ire arise from out of the slimy pool, clutch 
 the boat with their hands and teeth, tear each other, and 
 again sink into the waters. A mighty wall of red-hot 
 iron, occupied by thousands of devils, encloses the deep 
 interior funnel of hell. By it a sharp philosophic dis- 
 tinction is indicated. Until now Dante had but seen the 
 sinners who had failed by insufficient will to do right, 
 whose force of resistance against temptation had not been 
 strong enough. Now follow those who were active in 
 evil and intentionally bad. The first are the heretics, 
 silently lying in countless burning coffins. Here is 
 Frederick II., here the elder Cavalcanti, and Farinata 
 degli Uberti. Notwithstanding his mediaeval opinions, 
 Dante here again proves that the beginnings of more 
 modern ideas were dawning in him. Whereas his theory 
 forces him to condemn, yet he is unable to exult in the 
 damnation of souls, who, in spite of their crimes, appear 
 noble and great to him. Just as he cannot conceal his 
 pity for Francesca and Paolo, so he bows his head with 
 deep reverence in the presence of the high-minded Farinata 
 and again on the glowing sand to his master, Ser Brunetto, 
 nay, Virgil himself admonishes him to be courteous to three 
 other great Florentines, doomed and damned though 
 they be. 
 
 Passing on through ever new torments and new classes 
 of sinners, they descend deeper and deeper. The vivid 
 distinctness with which the landscape, the scenes, all 
 
firotji photo. 
 
 DANTE 
 
 FROM A PLASTER CAST 
 ( U/fvKi Gallery . Florence / 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 281 
 
 movements are painted is admirable beyond expression. 
 By the movement of his throat while drawing breath, by 
 the stones that give way under his foot, the spirits notice 
 with terror that a living man is passing, while in the 
 lighter regions they perceive it by the shadow which his 
 body throws in the sun. But here below there is no sun, 
 but all is darkness, or fire and terror. There is the Hell 
 of Serpents, Hell full of lacerated and bleeding bodies and 
 limbs, others full of all disgusting, stinking sickness, a 
 wild phantasmagoria of torments. In one of the " Evil 
 Pits " where the dishonest officers are drowned in seething 
 pitch, and raise their heads out of it to cool them, " as 
 frogs will thrust out their muzzles in a watery ditch," 
 there follow scenes of grotesque and wild hellish frolic in 
 which devils watch and catch one of the sinners and 
 fight for the prize of tearing him. 
 
 Ever deeper he descends until he reaches the place 
 where the ghosts of traitors are imprisoned in eternal ice ; 
 walking over the glassy surface he describes his own 
 horror at seeing the livid frozen bodies in the green 
 transparent ice beneath him. Suddenly he comes upon 
 two spirits imprisoned in one pit, one bent over the other, 
 gnawing and biting the latter's skull. On Dante's asking 
 who he is, the sinner, wiping his mouth on the other's 
 hair, uplifts himself from the horrible repast and says : 
 41 I know not who thou art, yet to hear thee, know I that 
 thou wast born in Florence ; learn, then, that I was Count 
 Ugolino n — and then he tells the world-famous story, with 
 all the terrifying art which Dante is master of, the abrupt 
 and vivid painting, condensing all sweetness and all horrors 
 into one short sentence. The dream before dawn that 
 frightened the father: how he saw wolf and wolf-cubs 
 chased by lean hounds, bearing the faces of his Pisan 
 
282 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 enemies, and, waking, heard the children crying in their 
 sleep for bread ; how he heard the guards locking the 
 tower's door, and suddenly struck by the fearful meaning 
 of that noise, stared speechlessly into his children's faces. 
 Little Anselm cried : " Why dost thou look at me so, 
 father ? " He answered not, he shed no tear, hour on hour 
 passed by, day and night ; with the new morning a small 
 ray of light fell into the gloomy cell, and he saw the horror 
 in his own pale face reflected in that of the four boys, and 
 in despair he bit his own arm ; and the boys deeming it to 
 be hunger, not wrath, cried : " Eat mine, father, our flesh 
 is poor enough, but it is thine own ! " Then he calmed him- 
 self to quiet them, and again day by day passed, and on the 
 fourth one of the boys dying cried out: "Why dost thou 
 not help me, father ? " On the fifth day he alone was living, 
 blind, stumbling over them ; then, what grief had not 
 done hunger did — the last sentence darkly implies what 
 so often has been told. He had not yet quite finished his 
 story when his teeth, like fangs, were again tearing the 
 Archbishop's skull by whose order that horror had been 
 perpetrated, and the bare bones are heard cracking as if 
 a dog were satiating himself. 
 
 But Dante, who on this occasion breaks out into wild 
 imprecations against Pisa, the blot of shame, 
 
 Del bel paese dove il si suona, 
 
 immediately after shows himself as the vengeful and 
 ruthlessly passionate Italian he was ; of a no less 
 mediaeval mind than those whose vengeance had been 
 wreaked with such atrocity. Already before this scene 
 he had by chance struck the head of one of the sinners 
 with his foot, and on the spirits' angry remonstrance 
 asked for his name; but the sinner wants it to remain 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 283 
 
 hidden, and requests him to take himself hence nor 
 vex his soul. Upon that Dante angrily clutches him 
 by his w hinder scalp " and threatens not to leave one 
 single hair upon his skull unless he confess his name. 
 The sinner again sullenly refuses, and more than one 
 good handful has Dante torn out, when another spirit 
 strikes in, calling the first by name. What a truly hellish 
 scene in that den of ice and woe ! The faces of the 
 tormented are covered by a crust of frozen tears, and 
 one of them begs the passing Dante to free his eyes 
 from it. Dante promises to do so if he answers his 
 questions, adding the doubtful oath, " May I go down still 
 deeper if I fail to do so." Upon that the spirit confesses 
 himself to be Fra Alberigo of Faenza, and the soul freez- 
 ing at his side that of the Genoese Branca d'Oria. " I 
 trow," Dante replies, "that thou deceivest me here; 
 Branca d'Oria is yet alive on earth." But the other 
 explains that his body may still exist on earth possessed 
 by an evil spirit, but the soul certainly is here below ! 
 "And now open my eyes." "And I," says Dante, "I 
 opened them not — it was virtuous to cheat such a beast." 
 How that paints the man who so well knew how to hate, 
 and how truly devilish to say of a man alive that his soul 
 had left him long ago, and that a fiend was living in his 
 body, in a time when such things were believed. 
 
 Ever deeper, darker and narrower the pit becomes, 
 until, like an immense black cloud, the three-headed body 
 of Lucifer arises before them. Holding on by his shaggy 
 hide they descend through the rocks around his middle, 
 when Virgil suddenly, with toil and labouring breath, 
 turns round and seems to climb back to hell ; and Dante 
 following, sees high above him Lucifer's legs and feet. 
 They have passed the centre of the earth, and find them- 
 
284 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 selves in a large cave, through which they wander, until 
 by an opening above them they once more see the stars 
 of heaven. 
 
 Pochhammer somewhere calls the u Divine Comedy " a 
 triptych, the central picture of which is the most perfect. 
 Carlyle was of the same opinion, as well as Alfred von 
 Berger in a recent essay on Dante. S. Heller admired 
 the Paradise more than the rest. But most men are 
 attracted and deeply impressed by the ever-changing 
 horrors and the grotesque and monstrous scenes of hell, 
 and find the two other parts comparatively monotonous. 
 Passion, revenge and sin certainly allow of more life and 
 dramatic movement than penitence and religious ecstasy. 
 The Inferno is surely more easily understood than the 
 two other parts. 
 
 " A sweet lustre of oriental sapphire " greets the wan- 
 derers, coming from hell, when they once more behold 
 the sky. The morning breeze and the victorious dawn of 
 day clear the mist, and as a trembling light Dante sees the 
 wide ocean of the southern hemisphere sparkling before 
 him. In the midst of the island on which they stand the 
 mountain arises. More rapidly than ever bird flew a 
 light darts across the sea. It is the radiant wings of the 
 angel who is guiding a ship full of souls to the shore. 
 Among them Dante recognises a friend of his youth, the 
 singer Casella, and upon Dante inviting him to sing, 
 Casella intones Dante's own canzone, " Amor che nella 
 mente mi ragiona ! " 
 
 At the foot of the mountain are resting and wandering 
 those who in life have failed to turn to God, or postponed 
 it until the last moment. Here Dante meets King Man- 
 fred and many others, and just on his taking leave of a 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 285 
 
 group of souls a woman addresses him with the words : 
 "O think of me, I am La Pia" — Pia de' Tolomei of 
 Siena whom her jealous husband had ordered to be thrown 
 out of a window of his castle in the Maremma. The sixth 
 canto contains his memorable meeting with the trouba- 
 dour Sordello and the famous outcry of Dante on the 
 doleful state of Italy : 
 
 Ah, slave Italia, home of sad despair, 
 
 Ship without pilot, where the storm blows shrill, 
 No Queen of Kingdoms, but a harlot's lair. 
 
 They enter Purgatory by a narrow gate, over the 
 mystic steps' which symbolise the sacrament of penitence. 
 The angel who is warder of the gate writes seven P's 
 (peccatum, sin) on Dante's forehead with the point of his 
 sword. On the seven cornices, which run round the 
 mountain sides, the seven deadly sins of gride, Envy, 
 Anger, < ^2!h»" , AYiflllfiifoi Pl u tt(m y an j Las cividgsScss'aJfe 
 purged ; and in every one they encounter swarms of 
 souls who joyfully bear the torments of their penitence, 
 full of the hope once to reach the blessed state. 
 
 Our Father, Thou who dwellest in the Heaven, 
 
 Not bound by space, but by love more intense, 
 Which Thou unto Thy primal works hast given, 
 
 Praised be Thy name and Thine omnipotence 
 
 By every creature, as 'tis meet and right 
 To render thanks to thy sweet effluence. 
 
 Upon us may Thy kingdom's peace alight, 
 
 To which we cannot of ourselves arise, 
 Unless it come with all our reason's might, 
 
 As of their will Thine angels sacrifice 
 
 Make to Thee, while their lips " Hosanna " say, 
 So may men offer all their will's device ! 
 
286 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Our daily manna give to us to-day, 
 
 Without which whoso through this desert drear 
 Journeys, goes back, though pressing on his way : 
 
 And as the trespass we from others bear 
 
 We forgive each, so, Lord, do Thou forgive 
 Of bounty, nor to count our merit's care. 
 
 Our virtue, which so soon doth harm receive, 
 
 Put not to peril with our ancient foe, 
 But from his evil sting deliverance give. 
 
 This final prayer, dear Lord, from us doth flow, 
 
 Not for ourselves, for we no longer need, 
 But for their sakes whom we have left below. 
 
 So praying for themselves and us " God speed ! " 
 
 Those souls went on their way beneath their weight, 
 As oft in dreams such evil fancies breed ; 
 
 Round still and round, in anguish disparate, 
 
 Are wearied all, along the bank they wound, 
 While I, all bent, with them my way did take. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 In this circle Dante feels he, too, will once have to do 
 penance, and again in the last ; the flames of carnal lust, 
 pride and sensuality are the sins with which he re- 
 proaches himself most. Like all high-minded persons, he 
 is little afraid of the second circle where the piteous vice 
 of the narrow and small-minded, Envy, is punished with 
 eyelids sewn together with a thread. 
 
 A serene atmosphere of hope pervades the second 
 realm, from the beginning, coloured by the morning dawn, 
 to the end with its strange charm as of twilight ; then a 
 mysterious and starry night approaches, which will 
 give place to a still brighter morning. The higher they 
 mount the easier the ascent becomes ; one feels they are 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 287 
 
 getting ever farther from the earth and all terrestrial and 
 ponderous things. 
 
 They ascend the mountains in a spiral line, resting at 
 night ; and at every new stair leading to a higher terrace 
 the watching angel, by a waving of his wings, obliterates 
 one of the P's on Dante's brow. In the third night they 
 rest on the mountain's last step — immeasurably high 
 above the waters and the earth. Dante now is free from 
 earthly sin, and Virgil ends his task, saying : 
 
 Look not for me to signal or to speak ; 
 
 Free, upright, healthy is thine own will now, 
 And not to do as it commands were weak ; 
 
 So crowned and mitred, o'er thyself rule thou. 
 
 With the opening day they enter the earthly Paradise, 
 a heavenly fragrant grove surrounds him, where birds sing 
 and limpid waters flow ; a beautiful lady 
 
 Who as she went 
 Sang evermore and gathered flower on flower, 
 With whose bright hues her path was all besprent, 
 
 walks along the other shore. The verses in this part of 
 the poem are of a strange picturesque beauty; they 
 breathe an air of serene quiet ; it is as if a man recovering 
 from long illness and expecting joy and health, entering a 
 beautiful landscape there meets a friend, who comes but 
 to announce a still greater joy : for after Matilda follows 
 Beatrice. 
 
 She approaches in the procession of the Church 
 Triumphant. Seven flaming golden candlesticks — like 
 moving trees of gold — come first, drawing their flames 
 like pennons of rainbow-bands through the air ; twenty- 
 four sainted elders follow; then the car drawn by the 
 
288 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Gryphon, whose wings reach into heaven ; seven virgins 
 and the four symbolic animals of the Evangelists stride at 
 the chariot's side. Then follow two aged men, one hold- 
 ing the sword the other the key ; four humble men come 
 next ; and, finally, alone and half asleep, he who, dwelling 
 on Patmos, wrote the Apocalypse. Thunder is heard 
 and the procession stops. 
 
 And one of them, as if by Heaven sent there, 
 
 Sang, "Veni, Sponsa, come from Lebanon ! " 
 Three times, and all the rest took up the air. 
 
 As at the last call every blessed one 
 
 Shall quickly from his cavern-tomb return, 
 And " Alleluias " sing with voice re-won, 
 
 So where the car divine was onward borne 
 
 A hundred rose ad voccm tanti Senis, 
 Angels and heralds of the life etern ; 
 
 And all said " Benedictus es qui venis" 
 
 And, scattering flowers above them and around, 
 " M ambus O date Mia plenis ! " 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 She who stands on the car, queenlike in look and 
 gesture, whom he recognises by his own trembling, 
 speaks out: "Gaze well upon me. Yes, I am, I am 
 Beatrice ! " 
 
 How didst thou deem thee fit to climb the hill ? 
 
 Didst thou not know that here the blessed be ? 
 Mine eyes then fell upon the waters still, 
 
 But there myself beholding, to the grass 
 I turned, such shame upon my brow weighed ill. 
 
 She held her peace, and from the angels rang 
 " In te speravi, Domine." 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 289 
 
 They pray for him, and the ice that lay around Dante's 
 heart melts : he can weep. Beatrice, turning to the angels, 
 addresses them in verses that remind us of the solemn 
 beauty of the prologue of Faust : 
 
 Ye in the day eternal know no rest, 
 
 So that nor night nor sleep from you can steal 
 One step upon the world's great path imprest. 
 
 " You therefore know how that man," she says, " whom 
 I once led on the right path * after my death and passage 
 to glory, deserted me and faithlessly turned to ways 
 which were not true." 
 
 O thou who art beyond the sacred stream . . . 
 Say, say if this be true or not ! 
 
 A " Yes," stifled by tears and shame, is Dante's answer. 
 Deeper guilt, of which Virgil did not know, is purged ; 
 Matilda dips his head in the waters of Lethe, the river of 
 Forgetfulness, and Beatrice unveils her face to him. The 
 dramatic intensity and musical force of these passages are 
 indescribable ; they certainly are the culminating part of 
 the great poem. 
 
 Now follows that memorable vision, ending with the 
 transformation and profanation of the car, representing 
 the severance and fall of Church and Empire. Dante's, 
 poem is the world, and the two great catastrophes of his. 
 time are seen by him reflected in a mystical image on the 
 summit of his earthly pilgrimage. With unheard-of 
 audacity he dared to incorporate in his own destiny the 
 world-shaking historical events in which he was so pas- 
 sionately interested. 
 
 One more draught from the sweet waters of Eunoe, the 
 source of memory of all good, and he rises 
 
 * See chapter iii. 
 
 T 
 
290 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Pure and made meet to mount where shines each star. 
 
 On this side noon, that midnight, neared their birth ; 
 
 And wholly bright was all one hemisphere, 
 The other swathed in gloom through all its girth, 
 
 When to the left I looked, beholding there 
 
 My Beatrice, turned to see the sun ; 
 Never did eagle's glance so fixed appear. 
 
 And as a second ray is wont to run 
 
 Forth from the first, and reascend on high, 
 Like pilgrim turning when his course is done, 
 
 So from ner act, upon my phantasy 
 
 Through sight impressed, my own its birth did take, 
 And on the sun fixed unaccustomed eye. 
 
 There much may be that here the law would break 
 Which our sense limits, thanks to that high place 
 Fashioned that there mankind their home might make 
 
 Not long I bore it, nor for such short space 
 But that I saw the sparks fly all around, 
 As molten iron from furnace flows apace. 
 
 And . uddenly it seemed as day were found 
 Added to day, as though the Omnipotent 
 With yet another sun the heaven had crowned. 
 
 And Beatrice, with her whole gaze bent 
 
 On the eternal spheres, stood still, and then 
 I,jwith my glance down-turned and eyes intent. 
 
 In gazing on her, felt within as when 
 
 Glaucos of old of that strange herb did eat, 
 Which with the sea-gods made him denizen. 
 
 To paint that life transhumanised unmeet 
 
 Were any words : this instance may suffice 
 Him for whom Grace keeps that experience sweet. 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY " 291 
 
 If I was then all Thou didst last devise 
 
 In Thy creative work, Supremest Love 
 Thou know'st Who with Thy light did'st bid me rise. 
 
 When that high sphere Thou dost for ever move 
 
 With strong desire, my thoughts towards it drew, 
 By music Thou dost temper and approve, 
 
 It seemed as though the sky so fiery grew 
 
 With the sun's flame, that never rain nor flood 
 A lake across a wider surface threw. 
 
 The strange new sounds and wondrous light imbued 
 
 My soul with such desire the cause to know, 
 As never until then had stirred my blood. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 That is Dante's entrance into the Spheres. People 
 who think it necessary to find fault call this third part 
 weaker than the former, saying that Dante had attempted 
 the impossible. It is true he repeatedly interrupts him- 
 self, saying: "I cannot describe what I saw; I was 
 another when I was up there ! " Yet I do not think that 
 these words are an avowal of the poet's feeling of im- 
 potence to give adequate expression to his own surpassing 
 imagination, but rather a trick to make the reader feel 
 how much more grand and beyond all description the 
 vision still was. It is true that Dante in this work tries 
 to explain the supernatural by visible signs, to suggest 
 what is beyond man's thoughts, to depict what is with- 
 drawn from our sight, to speak what is unspeakable. 
 But what of the superhuman a man's imagination can 
 conceive and his art express he has fulfilled in this work. 
 He was " trasumanato," carried beyond the limits of 
 human nature, made susceptible of transcendent things. 
 
 Here every line is music that defies translation. The 
 
292 DANTE AND HIS TIMt 
 
 numerous theological and scholastic discussions on Free 
 Will and other topics may sometimes, interesting as they 
 are, interrupt the rich poetical flow, but what do such 
 little spots matter? By some persons the continual 
 exultation, the ever-growing joy and rapture, the increas- 
 ing songs of the blessed choirs have been found mono- 
 tonous. I must think of what Goethe said : 
 
 Wenn jeder Augenblick mich durchschauert, 
 Was soil ich fragen, wie lang es gedauert ? 
 
 The moments of light which Dante paints are of a 
 variation and cumulative power, and of a rising force of 
 ecstasy, that to me seems the highest that human art 
 ever has performed in face of the most difficult task : 
 the expression of the triumph of good. The whole 
 poem is the culminating-point of Christian poetry, the 
 highest fruit of Christian civilisation. 
 
 Dante passes through the heavens with Beatrice, " as 
 a ray passes through glass." The spirits, whose seat is 
 the Empyrean, appear in the lower heavens as pale pearls 
 in transparent water ; but they become even more radiant 
 and bright the farther he ascends from heaven to heaven. 
 Ever stronger and sweeter becomes the light as well as 
 the music. 
 
 " To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," began 
 
 That Gloria, chante4 by all Paradise, 
 And I was drunk with joy, so sweet it ran. 
 
 It was as though a smile did meet mine eyes 
 
 From all creation, so that joy's excess, 
 Through sight and hearing did my mind surprise. 
 
 O bliss, O joy, no mortal may express ! 
 
 O life, filled full with love and peace, good store ! 
 
 O riches, free from selfish eagerness ! 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 293 
 
 That is in the eighth heaven, where Christ and the 
 angels appear to him, where Gabriel descends in a robe 
 of flames to crown the Virgin, where Dante makes his 
 confession of faith to the Apostles, and Adam explains to 
 him the fall of man. Then St. Peter speaks of his Vicar 
 on earth, while the skies darken around him. 
 
 The exulting verse gives way to accents of terrible 
 anger and indignation against him 
 
 Who occupies my place on earth, my place ! 
 
 From the ninth heaven Dante sees the nine choirs of 
 angels, who revolve the nine heavens around the earth, 
 themselves turning in radiant circles faster and ever 
 faster around one sparkling point of ineffable light. That 
 conception is of an unexampled grandeur : that which 
 in the world of the senses seemed to turn slowly and 
 heavily around the earthly centre of man, here in the 
 spiritual world, which is the truly real one, is seen gyra- 
 ting around God. 
 
 But soaring ever higher he has already reached the 
 Empyrean itself. 
 
 In fashion of a white rose glorified 
 
 Shone out on me that saintly chivalry, 
 Whom with His blood Christ won to he His bride ; 
 
 But the other host, which, as it soars on high, 
 
 Surveys, and sings, the glory of its love, 
 The goodness, too, that gave it majesty, — 
 
 As swarm of bees that deep in flowerets move 
 
 One moment, and the next again return 
 To where their labour doth its sweetness prove, — 
 
 Dipped into that great flower which doth adorn 
 
 Itself with myriad leaves, then mounting, came 
 There where its love doth ever more sojourn. 
 
294 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Their faces had they all of living flame, 
 
 Their wings of gold, and all the rest was white, 
 That snow is none such purity could claim. 
 
 And to the flower from row to row their flight 
 
 They took, and bore to it the peace and glow, 
 Gained by them as they fanned their flanks aright. 
 
 Nor did the crowd then moving to and fro, 
 
 Between the flower and that which rose above, 
 Impede the sight or splendour of the show ; 
 
 Seeing that the light of God doth freely move 
 
 Through the whole world, as merit makes it right, 
 So that nought there can hindrance to it prove. 
 
 This realm, secure and full of great delight, 
 Filled with the hosts of old or later time, 
 To one sole point turned love alike and sight. 
 
 O Trinal Light, that in one star sublime 
 
 Dost with thy rays their soul so satisfy, 
 Look down with pity on our storm-beat clime ! 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 Once more all the bitterness of the exile bursts forth'in 
 his verse. If the barbarians once stood aghast in face 
 of the splendour of Imperial Rome, think how I was 
 stunned — 
 
 I, who to God had now passed on from man, 
 
 From time to that great sempiternal day, 
 From Florence to a people just and sane. 
 
 Beatrice sits already high above him in her place near 
 the Virgin, and from the depth of his heart he sends; his 
 prayer of thanks up to her. St. Bernard now steps in 
 her place, and for him speaks that famous prayer to 
 which no translation will ever do iustice : 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 295 
 
 O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, 
 
 Lowlier and loftier than all creatures seen, 
 Goal of the counsels of the Eternal One, 
 
 Thyself art she who this our nature mean 
 Hast so ennobled that its Maker great 
 Deigned to become what through it made had been. 
 
 In thy blessed womb the Love renewed its heat 
 By whose warm glow in this our peace eterne 
 This heavenly flower first did germinate. 
 
 Here, in Love's noon-tide brightness, thou dost burn 
 
 For us in glory ; and to mortal sight 
 Art living fount of hope to all that yearn. 
 
 Lady, thou art so great and of such might, 
 
 That he who seeks grace yet turns not to thee, 
 Would have his prayer, all wingless, take its flight ; 
 
 Nor only doth thy kind benignity 
 
 Give help to him who asks, but many a time 
 Doth it prevent the prayer in bounty free. 
 
 In thee is mercy, pity, yea, sublime 
 
 Art thou in greatness, and in thee, with it, 
 Whate'er of good is in creation's clime. 
 
 He who stands here, who, from the lowest pit 
 
 Of all creation, to this point hath pass'd 
 The line of spirits, each in order fit, 
 
 On thee for grace of strength himself doth cast, 
 
 So that he may his eyes in vision raise 
 Upwards to that Salvation noblest, last. 
 
 And I, who never for my power to gaze 
 
 Burnt more than now for his, pour all my prayer, 
 And pray it meet not failure nor delays : 
 
 Wherefore do thou all clouds that yet impair 
 
 His vision with mortality, remove. 
 That he may see the joy beyond compare. 
 
296 # DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 And next I pray thee, Queen, whose power doth prove 
 Matched with thy will, that thou wilt keep his mind, 
 After such gaze, that thence it may not rove. 
 
 Let thy control all human impulse bind ; 
 
 See Beatrice, how through my prayers she 
 And many a saint their hands in prayer have joined. 
 
 (Plumptre.) 
 
 And Dante sees God. But here the song ends : 
 The force of his high fancy faileth him. 
 
 But his spirit already floats with the seraphic leader 
 in the holy circle, willing, what is willed there, one with 
 God, moved by that love 
 
 That moveth the Sun and all the other stars. 
 
 Now all is fulfilled that he had designed at the close of 
 the " New Life," and even the wish expressed there had 
 been granted. No human being will sustain such ecstasy. 
 Not in vain has it been said, " He dies who saw Jehova's 
 face/' 
 
 The last gigantic scenes were scarcely finished when 
 the soul left the shaken and exhausted body. 
 
 He died at Ravenna on September 14, 1321, on the day 
 of the Erection of the Cross, while staying at the court of 
 Guido da Polenta, with whom he had passed his last years. 
 It is possible that on returning from Venice, where he 
 had been sent as Guido's ambassador, he caught a fever 
 in the swamps he had to pass, which led to his death. 
 He was a little more than fifty-six years old. 
 
 He was buried in the Franciscan Convent, opposite the 
 house in which he had dwelt. 
 
THE "DIVINE COMEDY" 297 
 
 We know as little about these last years as about the 
 rest of his life. Yet it seems that here at least he was 
 duly honoured ; his embassy to Venice in the prince's 
 name leaves no doubt of it. 
 
 Repeatedly the Florentines asked the people of Ravenna 
 to return his bones to them, but always in vain. The last 
 time they did so was in the year 1864. 
 
 In the year 1329 the Cardinal Bertrand du Poyet, who 
 had ordered Dante's book, " De Monarchia," to be burnt 
 in public, wanted to do the same with his bones, " to the 
 eternal shame and extinction of his memory," and it 
 would have been done but for the strenuous opposition of 
 Pino della Tosa, a noble Florentine, and Messer Ostagio 
 da Polenta, who prevented it. 
 
 In the quiet town of exiles, at the corner of the Via 
 Dante, stands the little chapel with the monument and 
 the two inscriptions, one of which, composed by Bernardo 
 Canaccio, concludes with the strong verses : 
 
 Hie claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris, 
 Quern genuit parvi Florentia mater amc-ris. 
 (Here I am enclosed, Dante, exiled from my native country, 
 Whom Florence bore, the mother, that little did love him.) 
 
 In one corner above the portrait the words are written : 
 11 His non cedo malis." (" I do not give in to misfortune.") 
 
 The chapel touches the weathered tile-walls of the long- 
 deserted cloister; behind an iron screen are seen the 
 sarcophaguses of the Princes of the House of Polenta, the 
 old tower of the convent looks over the wall. Grass 
 grows at the margin of the solitary street — no resting- 
 place could be more quiet. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot of Malmesbury, see Eri- 
 
 gena 
 Abelard, Peter, 10, 99, 102 
 Adami, Guido degli, 149 
 Adimari, Bernardo, 172 
 Adimari, Goccia, 172 
 Adimari, The, 156 
 ^Eneas, 28 
 Albert of Hapsburg, Emperor, 
 
 243 
 Alberti, Counts, 154 
 Alberti, The, 156 
 Albertus Magnus, Archbishop of 
 
 Ratisbon, 99-100, 108 
 Albigensian War, 125 
 Albrecht, Emperor, 42 
 Aldobrandeschi, Count, 154, 156 
 Alfani, Gianni, 132 
 Alighieri, see Dante 
 Alighieri, Genevra, 239 
 Alighieri, Counts of Serego-, 239 
 Amidei, The, 162 
 Anjou, House of, 57 
 Anselm of Lucca, Bishop, 37 
 Anti-Pope, 39 
 Antique civilisation, 4, 28 
 Antique, Destruction of the, 1-9 
 Antiquity and mediaeval society, 
 
 27 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 11, 102 
 Aretino, Lionardo, 202 
 Ariosto, 131 
 
 Aristarchus of Samos, 78 
 Aristotle's works, 81, 94, 95, 99 
 Arnaut, Daniel, 120-121 
 Art treasures of old Rome, 7 
 " Aspis," Brunetto's, 87 
 Assisi, 142, 173 
 
 Astronomy, ancient and modern, 
 
 79-81 
 Averroes, Arabic philosopher, 103- 
 
 104 
 Averroistic doctrines, 103-104 
 Avignon, 146 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 100-101, 102 
 
 " Banquet," Dante's, 224, 232, 
 
 254-256, 257 
 Baptismal custom of sixteenth 
 
 century, 14 
 Barbarossa, Emperor, 156 
 Bartoli, Professor, 137, 223 
 Beatrice, Dante's, 204-231, 269, 
 
 290, 292 
 Beatrice die Bardi, nee Portinari, 
 
 222 
 Bede, 109 
 
 Benevento, Battle of, 164 
 Berenger of Tours, 99 
 Berger, Alfred von, 284 
 Bernardone, Pietro, 142, 143 
 " Bicci " (Forese Donati), 236 
 Biography, source of, 183 
 Boccaccio, 196, 198, 199, 216, 238, 
 
 245, 247, 252, 258, 265 
 Boethius, 94, 232 
 Bologna, 157 
 Bologna University, 109, no, 159, 
 
 198 
 Bolognese, 54 
 Boniface VIII., Pope, 146, 148, 
 
 241, 242-244 
 Born, Bertrandde, 69, 120 
 Brandes, George, 180, 184 
 Brunetto, see Latini 
 
300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, doctrine, 79 
 
 Bulle, 230 
 
 Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress, 
 
 191 
 Buondelmonte's death, 156, 162 
 Burckhardt, 247 
 Buti, Francesco de, 216 
 Byron, Lord, 129, 212, 221 
 
 Cacciaguida, Signor, 159, 196, 251 
 Cajetano, Cardinal, 242 
 Calaroga in Spain, 141 
 Campaldino, battle, 201 
 Canaccio, Bernardo, 297 
 Can Grande, Court of, 251, 270, 
 
 276 
 Canossa, castle, 36, 37 
 Capraja, fortress, 155 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 182, 278, 284 
 Caroccio, the car of the banner, 
 
 156 
 Cassella, 284 
 Catholic faith, 103 
 Catholic religion of Rome, 16-21 
 Cavalcanti the elder, 280 
 Cavalcanti, Guido, 132, 133, 199, 
 
 201, 235, 236, 240 
 Caesar, 94, 154 
 
 Cecco Angolieri of Siena, 127-128 
 Celestine V., Pope, 242, 243 
 Cerchi, Vieri de', 172 
 Charlemagne, 23, 24, 32, 77, 154 
 Charles V., Emperor, 160, 165 
 Charles of Valois, 245 
 Charm, 277 
 
 Chivalry, 114, 115-116, 125, 130 
 Christian Church typified, 215 
 Christian of Mainz, Archbishop, 
 
 136 
 Christian religion, influence, 1, 10, 
 
 12, 13 
 Christian warriors of Middle Ages, 
 
 Church, The, cradle of intellect, 
 
 92-93 
 Church and Empire, 289 
 Church and Reformation, 139- 
 
 140 
 Church and State, 30-40, 43, 45 
 Church of Rome, 136, 189 
 
 Church, States of the, 62, 63 
 
 Ciacco, 279 
 
 Cino de' Sinibuldi da Pistoja, 132, 
 
 133, 134, 220, 260 
 Cities, rise of, 69-72 
 Civilisation of Ancient Rome, 7-8 
 Clement, Pope, 164 
 Clergy in 1409, 137 
 "Clerk," derivation, 92 
 Cluny, 33, 34 
 Codex Ashburnham, 216 
 Colle Val d'Elsa, 155 
 Coin, Archbishop of, 92 
 Colonna, Sciarra, 243, 244 
 Comedy, term, 270 
 Commerce and exchange, 66-67, 
 
 72 
 Compagni, Dino, 170, 172, 173, 
 
 240, 245 
 " Conceptualists," 97, 99 
 Conrad III., Emperor, 196 
 Conrad IV. , Emperor, 57 
 Conradin, Emperor, 57, 165, 202 
 Constance of Sicily, 44, 45, 54 
 Constans II., Emperor, 23 
 Constantine, 48, 49 
 Contard, Madame, banker's wife, 
 
 224 
 " Conventuals," 147 
 Convivio Amoroso, see ' ' Banquet " 
 Copernicus, Nicholas, 79, 82, 89 
 Covenant of Old Testament, 94 
 Crusades, 46, 47, 125 
 
 Dante (or Durante) Alighieri, 
 birth, 125, 165, 188, 195-196; 
 few facts known of him, 179; 
 genius unrecognised by contem- 
 poraries, 180 ; his Urza rimu, 
 179 ; considered of good family, 
 181; expressive face, 182,252; 
 personal appearance, 252-253 ; 
 portraits, 253 : personality, 254 ; 
 aim, 74 ; style, 185 ; philology 
 his first step, 88 ; erudition, 77, 
 233 ; his works a poetical auto- 
 biography, 185 : intensity of 
 soul, 186, 193 ; his vision as ex- 
 pressed in the ' ' Divine Comedy, ' ' 
 186, 187-188 ; at Ravenna, 188 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 influenced by Virgil, 1&8 ; epic 
 based on a real world, 189; 
 symbolical view of the world, 
 82 ; his world, 80-82 ; the Visi- 
 ble Church changed into the 
 Invisible, 189 ; world and men 
 of Dante's day re-arranged, 190; 
 his symbols, 190-191 ; writings 
 a mystical reflection of his life, 
 107 ; love of Beatrice, 193 ; first 
 period of life, 193, 194, influence 
 of St. Lucia, 196 ; marries a 
 Donati, 196, 237, 238 ; King of 
 Naples' friendship, 196, 239 ; his 
 mother's family, 197 ; youth, 
 198-203 ; his friends, 199, 205 ; 
 portrait of Giotto, 199 ; at battle 
 of Campaldino, 201 ; at siege of 
 Caprona, 202 ; his poem of the 
 new life, "VitaNuova," 112, 133, 
 
 204, 210 ; Beatrice its heroine, 
 
 205, 211-212, 216, 222 ; his in- 
 spiration, 210 ; his son Pietro, 
 216 ; his aberration, 221 ; views 
 as to his ideal, 223, choice of 
 symbol for divine love and 
 grace, 227 ; ruled by love 
 through Beatrice, 228 ; idyllic 
 meeting in Eden, 229 ; Beatrice's 
 death, 231 ; and Dante's despair, 
 
 232 ; philosophy symbol, 233 ; 
 novice of Order of St. Francis, 
 
 233 ; dissolute period, 235 ; his 
 debts, 239 ; verses on Forese 
 Donati, 236 ; social status, 238 ; 
 his sons and daughters, 238- 
 239; active politician, 239; in, 
 councils of Florence^ 168, 171 ; 
 Prior ot Florence, 240 ; action 
 of Pope Boniface affects Dante, 
 241, 245 ; revolution in Florence, 
 173 ; condemnejcLlQ_exile, 247, 
 252 ; his latter day aspect, 250 ; 
 quits fellow exiles, 251 ; studies 
 at Padua, etc., 251 ; his " Ban- 
 quet," 81, 84, 254; his "Song 
 of Florence," 158-159, 261-262; 
 his "De Vulgari Eloquentia," 
 256; his " De Monarchia," 28, 
 
 256, 297 ; a devout Catholic, 
 
 257, 268; false hopes, 262; 
 audience with Henry of Luxem- 
 
 bourg, 262 ; trilogy in works, 
 257; affections in later life, 258- 
 259 ; portrait as an exile, 263 ; 
 production of Divine Comedy, 
 263-269 ; self-criticism, 266-267 ; 
 epitome of career, 267 ; a friend, 
 284 ; bitterness of exile, 248, 
 294 ; dies at Ravenna, 296 ; 
 burial, 296 ; his patron, 297 ; 
 ambassador to Venice, 296-297 ; 
 his tomb, 297 ; minor references, 
 94, 120, 121, 126, 127, 128, 131, 
 133, 135, 146 
 Dante's daughter Antonia, 238 
 Dante's second daughter Beatrice, 
 
 239 
 Dante's son Jacopo, 239, 265 
 Dante's son Pietro, 239 
 "Das Ewig - Weibliche," etc., 
 
 Goethe and Dante, 230 
 Davidsohn, Dr. Robert, 153, 161, 
 
 195 
 
 Degrees, university, no 
 
 Democracy, rise of, 72 
 
 Democritus, 95 
 
 Desiderius, Gallic Bishop, 76 
 
 " Dies Irae," 148 
 
 Diez, 219 
 
 Dircks, Mr. W. H., 253 
 
 Dino, see Compagni 
 
 Dino, Frescobaldi, 132 
 
 Disputes of Middle Ages, 68-69 
 
 " Divine Comedy," 42, 175, 215, 
 224, 261, 265-297 ; 5th Canto of 
 Hell, 221, 224 ; 6th circle, 53 ; 
 7th circle of Hell, 83 ; 8th Canto 
 of Hell and Pope Nicolas II., 
 138-139; 10th Canto of Hell, 56; 
 7th Canto of Purgatory, King 
 Manfred, 165 ; 23rd Canto, 236 ; 
 24th Canto of Purgatory, 209, 
 210 ; 10th Canto of Paradise, 
 109; 12th Canto, 140; 25th Canto, 
 263 ; the Comedy compared with 
 "Faust," 187, 205 
 
 " Diotima," 224 
 
 " Doctor Angelicus," 100 
 
 " Doctor Subtilis," 100 
 
 Doctrine of original sin, 16 
 
 Donati, Corso, 171,172,201,240,246 
 
 Donati, Forese, 197, 236 
 
 Donati, Gemma, 238 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Donati, M. Fortiguerra, 162, 171 
 Donation of Constantine, 30, 49 
 Donation of Kings Pipin and 
 
 Louis, 30 
 Dress in mediaeval times, 66 
 
 Education, 93 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 74, 101, 105, 106, 
 
 183 
 Emperor, title of, 23, 24, 25, 32 
 Emperor Henry III., 33, 35 
 Emperor Henry IV., 36 
 Emperor Lewis, 101 
 Empire, the, 25, 166 ; high offices 
 
 in, 92 
 Empire of women, <&7, 115-116 
 Empiric sciences, gr 
 Empyreum, 80 
 Encyclopaedia, Brunetto's, 84 
 Erigena, Johannes Scotus, 95, 98, 
 
 100, 105 
 Erigio, capture of, 54 
 Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 188 
 Europe devastated by barbarians, 
 
 6 
 Eusebius, 76 
 Evangelium secundum Marcus 
 
 Argenti, 137-138 
 Experimental science, 113 
 
 Fjesuljz, Tuscany, 154 
 
 Faith, 105 
 
 Fano, town of, 149 
 
 Farinata, see Uberti 
 
 Faust, 187, 192, 230, 289 
 
 Feudal system, 64-65, 72 
 
 Feudalism decline, 43 
 
 Fia sola ! 154 
 
 Fiefs of office, 65 
 
 Fiesole, 153 
 
 Figuinildi family, 153 
 
 Fiorentino, 56 
 
 Flagellants, 53, 54 
 
 Florence, 64, 133, i53-*75. *95» 
 
 239, 245, 250, 261 
 Florentia, plain of, 154 
 "Florin," origin of, 157 
 France, 114 
 Francescaand Paolo, 218, 221, 224, 
 
 259, 280 
 
 Franciscan monks, 136-152 
 
 Frederic Barbarossa, 38, 43, 44 
 
 Frederic of Antioch, 163 
 
 Frederic II., 46-47, 50, 53, 54-56, 
 61, 62, 99, 109, 163, 166, 280, 
 death of his son Henry, 54 
 
 Fulcher of Chartres, 39 
 
 Gabrielli, Cante de', 246 
 
 " Geistesgang " of Dante, 231, 257 
 
 Genoa, 159 
 
 Gentucca, a girl, 261 
 
 Gerbert of Rheims, 77 
 
 Geri, son of Bello, 236 
 
 German Margraves, 154 
 
 German Popes, 33, 34 
 
 Germanic poetry, 129 
 
 Germans, 3, 4, 6, 12, 14, 22, 43, 147 
 
 Germany in Middle Ages, 61,66, 71 
 
 Ghibellines, 40, 53, 55, 143, 162, 
 
 163, 165, 171 
 Giano della Bella, 169, 170, 171 
 Gibel, 53 
 
 Gietmann, Father, 223 
 Giotto, 145, 173 
 Gothic architecture, 114 
 Gothic wars, 154 
 Goethe, 74, 88, 105, 11 1, 230, 259, 
 
 292 
 Goliards, Songs of the, 127 
 Gracchi, The, 170 
 ** Grande" of Florence, 160 
 Gratian, 108 
 
 Greek influence in Italy, 23 
 Gregory I., Pope, 225 
 Gregory the Great, Pope, 76 
 Gregory VII., Pope, 32, 36, 37, 38, 
 
 45 
 Gregory IX., Pope, 38, 46, 49, 50 
 
 Gudibrand the Longobard, Duke, 
 
 154 
 Guelf, 45, 47, 53, 56, 83, 143, 163, 
 
 164, 165, 166, 171 ; Tuscan 
 
 League, 156, 162 
 Guidi, Count, 154, 156 
 Guinicelli, Guido, 131, 224; his 
 
 canzone, 131-132 
 
 Hadrian I., Pope, 23 
 Hapsburg Dynasty, 42 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Haureau, 94, 99 
 
 Heine, 129 
 
 Hell, conceptions of, 73 ; shades 
 in, 64 ; symbolised, 280 
 
 Heller, S., 284 
 
 Henry II. of England, 38 
 
 Henry IV., Emperor, 156 
 
 Henry VI., 44, 54 
 
 Henry VII. of Luxemburg, Em- 
 peror, 256, 262, 276 
 
 Hettinger, Dr. Frank, 257 
 
 Hildebrand, Pope, 34 
 
 History, theme of, 58 
 
 Hohenstaufens.Tne.32, 41-57, 127, 
 160, 163 
 
 Holderlin, Friedrich, 224 
 
 Homer, 277 
 
 Honorius III., 46 
 
 Huns, The, 154 
 
 Hymn to the Sun, St. Francis's, 
 144-5 
 
 Idealism, 97 
 Imperial ideas, 24 
 Innocent III., 147 
 Innocent IV., 40,45, 50 
 Innocent VH.'sDe contcmptu mundi, 
 
 17 
 Inquisition, The, 141 
 Investitures, War of, 35 
 4 ' Isagoge ' ' of Porphyry, 94 
 Isidore, 109 
 
 Isidorus, Decretals of, 31 
 Italian cities, power of, 43 
 Italy, Kings of, 23, 32 
 Italy in Middle Ages, 61-64 
 Italy. 126, 268, 285 
 
 Jerusalem, 46 
 
 Jesus, 104 
 
 Jews in Sicily, 55 
 
 Joachim, Abbot of Flores, 147 
 
 Justinian, Emperor, 12 
 
 Kadi Abul Ibn Roscht, 103 
 Klopstock, 187 
 Kyffhauser, Mount of, 56 
 
 " Ladies that have intelligence in 
 
 Love," 207-209 
 Lamberti Mosca de', 162 
 Lamprecht, 36, 125 
 Lapo Gianni, 132, 201 
 Latin tongue, 26, 126 
 Latino, Cardinal, 241 
 Latini Ser Brunetto, 83-84, 87, 88 
 Laws of the Middle Ages, 68 
 Learning, revival of, 77 ; de- 
 veloped and retarded, 93 
 Leo, Abbot of San Bonifazio, 76 
 Leo IV., 24, 25 
 Life as viewed in Middle Ages, 17- 
 
 19; in time of Frederic II., 51- 
 
 52 
 "Li tresors" Brunetto's description, 
 
 84-88 
 Limbo, 103 
 Literature, Italian and Mediaeval, 
 
 126 
 Lombard, Peter, 19, 109 
 Lombards, 159 
 Longobard Dukedoms, 62, 71 
 Lothar, Emperor, 32 
 Love, 135,228; poetry, 129-130, 
 
 207-210, 218-219 
 Lucca, 164, 261 
 Lyons, Council of, 50 
 
 Machiavelli, 38, 196 
 
 Mainz, Archbishop of, 92 
 
 Manfred, 53 ; Emperor, 56, 57 ; 
 King, 163, 164,202, 284 
 
 Mankind, development of, 58-59 
 
 Mantua, 47 
 
 Martinella, Florence war bell, 156 
 
 Martini, Simone, 141 
 
 Matilda of Tuscany, 37, 156 
 
 Matildan inheritance, 45 
 
 Mediaeval city life, 8-9 ; know- 
 ledge, 74-91 ; life, 59-61 ; motive 
 power, 90 ; philosophy, 101 
 
 Messina factories, 157 
 
 Michael Angelo, 160, 264 
 
 Middle Ages, German tradition, 3; 
 learning, 92; life in— its coun- 
 terpart, 60 ; political ideal, 28 ; 
 superstitions, 78 
 
 Milan, 53 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Milton, 187 
 
 11 Minnesong," 125, 135, 188 
 
 "Monarchia, De," 28, 256, 297 
 
 Monastic life, 16-17 
 
 Monetary system, 72 
 
 Montagnagout, Guillem de, 116 
 
 Montarperti, 163 
 
 Montelupo fortress, 155 
 
 Montfort, 165, 203 
 
 Moral development, 13, 15 
 
 Morals, Ancient and Christian, 15 
 
 Mussulmans, 95, 115 
 
 Mysticism of Middle Ages, 33-34 
 
 Myths, early, 89 
 
 Naples, King of, 239 ; University, 
 
 109 
 National growth, 166 
 Natural Science in Middle Ages, 
 
 83 
 " Naturae, De Divisione," 98 
 Natural History of Middle Ages, 
 
 86-88 
 "New Life," see "Vita Nuova" 
 Nicolas I., Pope, 32 
 Nicolas II., Pope, 34, 138 
 Nicolas IV., Pope, 241 
 Nobleman's revenue, 67 
 Nominalism, 97, 101, 105 
 Novello, Count Guido, 164, 165 
 
 Ockham, William of, 100-101 
 Office in the " Middle Age " Em- 
 pire, 92 
 M Or San Michele," 239 
 Orbicciani, Buonaguinta, 209 
 Orlandi Guido, 132 
 Orthodox belief, 75 
 Otfried of Weissenburg, 27 
 Otto III., 49, 77 
 Oxford University, no 
 Ozanam, 92 
 
 Padua, 5 x > j 73, 198 
 Pallav icini > Marquis of, 53, 62 
 Papal power, 25 
 
 Paradise, see Divine Comedy 
 
 Paris, 108,114, 278 ; and Aver roism, 
 104 
 
 Parmese, 54 
 
 Perez, Francesco, 223, 260 
 
 Perugia, 142 
 
 Petrarca, 121 
 
 Philip the Fair, 243 
 
 Philosophy, 12, 94, 95, 101, 104, 
 233, 235 
 
 u Phoedo," 94 
 
 Pisa, 157, 159, 173 
 
 Pisans, The, 155 
 
 Planets, 80 
 
 Plato, 90, 94, 95, 96, 131 
 
 Pliny, 86 
 
 Plumptre, Dean, 139, 159, 211, 215, 
 221, 230J 249, 261, 262, 263, 274, 
 286, 288-289, 292, 294, 296 
 
 Pochhammer, Lt.-Col., 222, 230, 
 269, 284 
 
 Podesta of Florence, 160, 163, 174 
 
 Poet, the book of a true, 183 
 
 Poetry in eleventh and twelfth cen- 
 turies, 127; chivalrous, 127, 129; 
 Italian, 126-135 5 religion's, 127, 
 136 ; without symbolism, 226 ; 
 Provencal, 218 
 
 Poets, Florentine, 132; of Middle 
 Ages, 118 
 
 Polenta, Guido de, 296 
 
 Polenta, Ostagio, 297 
 
 Popes and temporal power, 29, 32, 
 
 33 
 Pope Boniface VIII., 146, 166 \see 
 
 Clement, Gregory, Hildebrand, 
 
 Innocent and Nicholas 
 Porphyry, 94, 96 
 
 Portinari, Folco di Ricovero, 216 
 Prayer to the Virgin, 295-296 
 " Primum Mobile," 80 
 " Protonous " of Greeks, 81 
 Provencals, The, 1 14-125 
 Ptolemceus Claudius, 76 
 Puy-Laurent, Guillem de, 117 
 
 Rabands, Maurus, 99 
 Rambaut of Vacqueiras, 122 
 Raphael's M School of Athens," 95 
 " Realism of Middle Ages," 97, 105 
 
INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 Reality, 22 
 
 Reason, 102, 103 
 
 Religion, change in, 77 ; of medi- 
 aeval times, 74-75 
 
 Renaissance, 27 
 
 Rienzi, C, 27 
 
 Rimini, Francesca da, 278-279 
 
 Roman Church, 31, 33, 35, 93 
 
 Roman empire, decay, 4-9 ; of the 
 German nation, 42 
 
 Roman law, 25-26 
 
 Romance tongues, 117 
 
 Rome, 38, 42, 159, 160 ; fall of, 5, 
 7 ; residence of God's Vicar, 82; 
 and the Popes, 38 
 
 Romish exactions, 50 
 
 Roscellinus, 99 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 132, 133, 200, 201, 
 209, 213, 228, 235 
 
 Sacchetti, 199 
 
 St. Agatha, 157 
 
 St. Anselm, 99 
 
 St. Benedict, 11 
 
 St. Bernard, 106, 107, 231, 294 
 
 St. Bonaventura, 107 
 
 St. Clara, 143 
 
 St. Dominic Gusman, 140 
 
 St. Elizabeth, 55 
 
 St. Francis of Assisi, 94, 142-147; 
 
 Order of, 100, 136-152 
 St. Lucia, 275 
 
 St. Reparata, Church of, 157 
 St. Thomas Aquino, 100, 102, 107, 
 
 108 
 Saladin, 277 
 Salerno University, 109 
 Salimbene of Parma, Fra, 51, 54, 
 
 56, 116, 127, 148-149; his choice, 
 
 149-151 
 San Giovanni, baptistery, 158 
 Saracens in Sicily, 55, 56 
 Scartazzini, 179, 187, 217, 220, 234, 
 
 257. 258 
 Schools founded, 77 
 Science, 76 83 
 Scrot, Count, 154 
 Serego, Count, 239 
 Shakespeare, 179, 180, 183, 184 
 Sicilian Counts of Aquino, 100 
 Sicily, 44, 55; Poets at Court of, 127 
 
 Sidney, Sir P., "Stella," 227 
 
 Siena, 163 
 
 Sigier of Brabant, 108 
 
 Social conditions in Dante's time, 
 
 58-73 
 Social degrees, 65-66 
 Socrates, 90 
 
 Sordello of Mantua, 122, 285 
 Spinoza, 95, 98 
 Spirituals, 147 
 
 "Stabat Mater Dolorosa," 148 
 ■ ' Stella," Sidney's, 227 
 Suavizi family, 155 
 Sulla, 154 
 Swinburne, 131 
 Sylvester II. , 77 
 
 Tertullian, 15 
 
 Theodora, mother of St. Thomas 
 
 Aquino, 100 
 Theology, triumph of, 104-5 
 Thomas of Celano, 148, 150,1 51-1 52 
 Timasus, 94 
 
 Todi, Jacopone da, Fra, 148 
 Torre, Lords Delia, 53 
 Tosa, Pino della, 297 
 Totila, 154 
 
 Trajan, Emperor 5, 11 
 Trajan Rhipeus, 11 
 Treuga Dei, 69 
 Trier, Archbp., 92 
 Trinity, The, 98 
 Tristan, 278 
 Troubadours, 118-119, 122 
 
 Ubaldini, Cardinal, 53 
 
 Uberti, Farinata degli, 53, 163, 
 
 164 
 Ugolino, Count, 281 
 Unbelief of thirteenth century, 104 
 Universe of Middle Ages, 78, 80 
 Universals, 96 
 Universities, The, 108-114 
 
 Vallombrosa, 34 
 Vauvenargues, 106 
 
3 o6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Venice, 159 
 
 Ventadour, Bernard de, 118, no- 
 
 120 
 Vicars of the Empire, 154 
 Victor, 108 
 Villani, G., Florentine chronicler, 
 
 47. 54. 154. i7°- I 7i,i72, 174. *96 
 Virgil, 10, 28, 188, 213, 225, 229, 
 
 259, 272, 273, 274, 275, 289 
 •• Vita Nuova," Dante's, 133, 135, 
 
 198, 200, 204-205, 210-213, 220, 
 
 221, 222, 225, 228, 231, 234, 235 
 
 Vogelweide, Walther von der, 49, 
 119 
 
 Wagner, 188 
 
 Waldensians, 146 
 
 War of the Investitures, 40 
 
 Witte, 195, 196, 257 
 
 William of Ockham (see Ockham, 
 
 William of) 
 Women in Middle Ages, 11 5-1 16, 
 
 129-131 
 
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