Dante & his time

Front matter

DANTE & HIS TIME

Point Caliiomitt

DANTE

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, Shakespeare, 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 himself, 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

b 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 earl}^ 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 I saw as I read Dante.

These I have tried to give as concisely as possible. To the reader who knows them, the things which occupied 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 xvii

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 investigations 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 Hbraries 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 translation 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 in the musical bonds of verse can be translated out of one language into another without all its harmony and sweetness 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 orations 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."

Part I The Time

CHAP. J'AGE

I. The Destruction of the Antique', • . • 3

II. The New Moral Ideal lo

III. The Political Ideal 22

IV. The Combat between Church and State . . 30 V. The Hohenstaufen 41

VI. Social Conditions 58

VII. Medieval Knowledge 74

VIII. Scholasticism 92

IX. The Universities 108

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 Verlagt

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 portrait was discovered by Mr, f agues Mesnil in 1901, and is reproduced from a photograph by Brogi . . To/ace 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 /ace page 212

Mask, in the Uffizi, Florence, reproduced from a photograph by

Brogi ........ To face page 280

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 concentration 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 hne 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 geniey 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 Ariosio. 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 forgetting 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 themselves, represent the smallest fraction of Dante's subordinate 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 enjoyed.

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 " 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 Christendom, 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 statements 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 incredulity 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 wellattested facts, the same effort to put himself at Dante's point of view — a very different one, it ma}^ 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 statements 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 scepticism, 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 th6 * Divine Comedy.'" He dismisses Witte's famous theory (which, indeed, few would now be found to support) that these two works with the *'Convito " form a ** 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 consideration are based on something more than the mere advantage 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 igo2.

Y

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 interwoven 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, which changed the face of the earth, the remnants of the old empire, the remnants of antique civihsation 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 centuries, 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,

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 : *^ 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 I

The Germans had hardly begun to settle when Mohammedanism 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 tjme of Pope Sergius II., they sacked the 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, *^ 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 philosophers, 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 education, but earn their living by studying them and imparting 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 destruction, and understand that there are people who tremble for our own civilisation, and who say : " 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 Maximijs 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 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 buildings 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 incredible dirt. *' 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

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 impartially 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 representative 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