DANTE 



673 



In 128'J Dante took part in the Iwittle of Caw 



j.aldino, in which ill.' Hun-lit iii'-- ami tlit-ii < '< iielplnc 

 nl lift) defeated tlie (JhiKelline league of AH-//.I. 

 The Ili-lit ami death of Biionconte, \\li fought 

 on tin- <>ppo-ite. side, is tin- subject <if HIM* of the 

 IIIH-.I splendid episodes in tin- /tiriint I'uininrilta 

 (1'iinj. v.). Later in the same \ear he was present 



ai the capitulation of Caprona, aa lie himself tells 

 its in ////'. xxi. i4. With these experiences his 

 military life seems to have cloned. Soon lifter, we 

 liii'l him lie-inning to take part in politics, and 

 according to the custom f the times, he first le- 

 came registered in one of the city guilds viz. that 

 of the Apothecaries, he Inking then thirty years of 

 a-<-. It is interesting to note that he i- there 

 entered as ' Dante d'Aldighieri, noeta.' It should, 

 perhaps, have been mentioned tliat we know little 

 of his early education, except that he is said to 

 have studied at the then celebrated- university of 

 Hologmi, ami that he was certainly for some time 

 a pupil of Brunetto Latini, of whom he speaks with 

 the utmost veneration and affection, though astern 

 sense of justice compels him to place him in Hell 

 (Inf. xv.). At the outset of his public life his 

 sympathies were with the Guelph party, to which 

 he would naturally have been attached by family 

 ties Itoth through his father and his wife. After 

 tilling minor public offices, and possibly going on 

 some embassies abroad (though, doubtless, not all 

 of those which later writers in their admiration have 

 attributed to him ) in the ever-memorable year 1300, 

 the mezzo cammino of his own life, when he was 

 thirty-five years old, the beginning of a new cen- 

 tury, the year of the first Jubilee at Rome, the 

 assumed year of the great poetic vision of the Corn- 

 media, he attained to the dignity of one of the six 

 priors of Florence. That singular office, lasting 

 for only two months, seems (as Mr Lowell suggests ) 

 to have been invented by the Florentines ' appar- 

 ently to secure at least six constitutional chances 

 of revolution in the year.' It should be explained 

 that this was a very critical and stormy period at 

 Florence. Not only was the eternal feud or Guelph 

 and Ghibelline in full force, but a new excuse for 

 party hatred had been found in the distinction of 

 IJIack and White Guelphs, t!:e latter being the 

 more moderate party, who tended to verge towards 

 the Ghibellines, and under certain circumstances to 

 make common cause with them. So far as Dante 

 could be called 'a party man ' at all (see Par. vi. 

 100-3 ; xvii. 68-69 ), it was towards this section 

 that his sympathies tended. His office as prior 

 lasted from June 15 to August 15 in the year 1300. 

 He distinguished his brief tenure of om'ce by pro- 

 curing the banishment of the heads and leaders of 

 the rival factions by which Florence was torn asun- 

 der. He carried out this process with charactci i>t !< 

 sternness and impartiality on Guelph and (ihibel- 

 line, White and Black alike, unmoved by any con- 

 siderations of relationship, friendship, or political 

 sympathy. Shortly afterwards the leaders of the 

 Whites were permitted somehow to return. The 

 partiality thus shown was a prominent feature in 

 the accusation against Dante ; but he had a com- 

 plete answer in the fact that he was no longer in 

 olKce at the time that it occurred. 



In the following year, 1301, and probably in the 

 autumn, in alarm at the threatened interference of 

 Charles of Valois, who had now crossed the Alps, 

 Darute was sent on an embassy to Rome to Pope 

 Boniface VIII., under whose instigation Charles 

 was acting. From that embassy he never returned, 

 nor did he ever again set foot in his native city. 

 For meanwhile had occurred the dreaded advent of 

 Charles, nominally as peacemaker, on November 1, 

 1301. He espoused Me side of the Am' or Blacks, 

 and for three days the fight raged in the streets of 

 Floience. Finally, the victory of the Neri was 

 147 



complete, their opponent* ware nlain or banudied, 

 nml their houses hacked. Soon after, in January 

 I :{<_', the sentence of banishment went forth against 

 haute and others, nominally on the charge, an 

 utterly baseless one, of baratterta, or malversation 

 in the ollice uf prior in 1300. Thin was followed by 

 a yet severer sentence on March 10, condemning 

 them to be burned alive if ever caught, which wan 

 repeated again on September 2, 1311, and yet once 

 more on November 6, 1315. \Ve need not attempt 

 here to follow the wanderings of his exile of twenty 

 years. He made at first one or two hopeless 

 attempts to return, but abandoned them, partly in 

 disappointment at their failure, partly in disgust at 

 the Kind of associates with which such proceedings 

 linked him (see 1'ar. xvii. 61-69). 



His principal halting-places seem to have been 

 first Verona, under the protection of one of the 

 Delia Scala family, described by him as 'gran 

 Lombardo ' with much eulogy in 1'ar. xvii. 71. 

 Then in succession he sojourned in Tuscany (with 

 Count Salvatico), in the Lunigiano (with \loruello 

 Malaspina), near Urbino (with Uguccione della 

 Faggiuola), and then at Verona again. During 

 this period he is said to have visited Paris ; but 

 though there seems little doubt that he was 

 actually there at some time of his life, yet some 

 of his biographers connect this visit with the period 

 of his early education. Among these is Serravalle, 

 who wrote, it should be noted, as late as 1417, and 

 who is also the sole authority for Dante's alleged 

 visit to England and Oxford. Those who, like 

 Boccaccio, take him to France during his exile, 

 suppose him to have been recalled to Italy 

 and politics by the election of Henry of Luxem- 

 burg as emperor, and his visit to Italy, where 

 no emperor had set foot for more tnan fifty 

 years (see Pttry. vi. 105, &c.). The exile's hopes 

 were now roused to the highest pitch, and he 

 addressed an epistle to Henry, couched in language 

 borrowed largely from Scripture, which to our ears 

 sounds extravagant. His nopes were once more 

 and finally crushed by Henry's unexpected death 

 on August 24, 1313, after which Dante took refuge 

 in Romagna, and finally in Ravenna, where for the 

 most part he remained, under the protection of 

 Guido Novello da Polenta, until his death. This 

 took place on September 14, 1321. The precise 

 cause of it is unknown. He was no doubt utterly 

 broken in spirit and in health. He hat! been 

 employed by his patron in an emlwssy to Venice, 

 which proved unsuccessful, and he died very soon 

 afterwards, as some biographer say, from grief 

 and annoyance at his failure at Venice, and as 

 others, with more probability, assert, from the 

 effects of a fever, aggravated if not originally 

 caused by the unhealthy marshes which he had 

 traversed on his return to Ravenna by land, the 

 Venetians having harshly refused to allow him to 

 make the journey by sea. 



He was buried with much pomp bv his friend 

 Guido at Ravenna, and there he still lies. At 

 some unknown period, bv unknowr* hands, and 

 from a motive still unexplained, his lx>dy was re- 

 moved from the sarcophagus in which it lay, and 

 was walled up in the nefyriMNUilg church of St 

 Francis, in a rough box, inwrilK-d Ihmti* Otto. 

 There it was discovered by pure accident on May 

 27, 18<T>, and after the Itone* had Iteen identified 

 lieyond possibility of doubt, they were replaced in 

 the sarcophagus, from which it was found they had 

 been abstracted. Dante ha- 1 seven children. -i\ 

 sons and one daughter, Beatrice, who was a nun in 

 a convent at Ravenna. His family, however, be- 

 came extinct in the 16th century. His personal 

 appearance is too well known to need much de- 

 scription. Fortunately, a cast was taken from his 

 face after death, so that we have an absolutely 



