as much of so inscrutable a mystery as can be per-
mitted to any created intellect even in the Beatific
Vision,

Ma non eran da cio le i:)roprie penne,
Se nou che la mia inente fu percossa
Da un fulgore, in che sua voglia venne.

AU'alta fantasia qui manco possa ;

Ma gia volgeva il mio disiro e il velle,
Si come rota ch'egualmente e mossa,

L'Amor clie move il sole e I'altre stelle.

Par. xxxiii. 139.'

Thus then the vision ceases, to be renewed the
second and final time that Dante is to ascend the
stairway of the Eternal Palace, ceases with the poet's
desire and will moving in perfect harmony with the
will of God. He is united to God by charity, to God
who is the ultimate end of the human mind, and
thus his mind has attained its perfection ; for, unuiii-
quodque dicitur esse perfectum, inquantum attingit
pi'oprlum fincm, qui est idtima rei perfectio, " each
thing is said to be perfect inasmuch as it attains to
its proper end, which is the ultimate perfection of
the thing." The j)erfection attained in this close
of the vision is the perfection which St. Thomas
describes as absolute on the part of the person
loving, in that the whole power of his affection is^

^ But my own wings were not enougli for this,

Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy :

But now was turning my desii'e and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

Longfellow.

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DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

«ver absolutely fixed upon God ; but tbis is a perfec-
tion that is only possible in the essential or literal
Paradise. Therefore the perfection of charity to
which Dante has actually attained in his poem is
that which is possible to have in this life, in the
<dlegorlcal or moral Paradise, — the charity which
excludes from the heart not only all that is contrary
to charity, but also all that hinders the entire con-
centration of the heart upon God {Summa, II. — 2,
q. 184, a. 2). It is a glorious foretaste upon earth of
the Beatific Vision in Paradise. " To that Beatific
Vision," so Benvenuto da Imola piously concludes his
commentary, " May He bring us all In patrla, who
deigned to bring this most fortunate author thereto
in via ; to whom is honour, glory and perpetuity, for
over and ever. Amen. Deo Gratlas."



286



CHAPTER VII
DANTE'S LETTERS



DANTE'S LETTERS

Such were his words. It is indeed
For ever well our singers should
Utter good words and know them good,

Not through song only ; with close heed
Lest, having spent for the work's sake
Six daj's, the man be left to make.

RosSETTi, Dante at Verona.

IN this age of destructive and sceptical criticism, it
is growing dangerous to speak of any of the
letters ascribed to the di^^ne poet as having really
come from his pen. That Dante did indeed write
many letters, and that these were noble in tone,
eloquent in diction, and eminently characteristic of
the man, we know from the testimony of Dante's
contemporary, the Florentine chronicler Giovanni
Villani, and from that of his earliest biographers,
Boccaccio and Leonardo Bruni. The two latter seem
to have seen autograph letters of Dante's, now lost,
and Leonardo especially gives us very tantalizing hints
in the way of fragments. Regret for the very scanty
knowledge that we have of Dante's correspondence
is heightened by the character of the little that is
still left us, and by coinparison of its minute quantity
with what remains in this kind from Dante's suc-
cessor, Petrarch- In striking contrast to the immense
mass of epistles in verse and prose, in which Petrarch
reveals so much of his own personality and admits
us into his surroundings and the life of his times,

289 u



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

there are only sixteen letters (fourteen prose epistles
and two Eclogues) that have ever been even indirectly
ascribed to Dante, besides one or two doubtful pas-
sages from others ; and, of these sixteen, only ten
(including the two Eclogues) admit of serious discus-
sion, whilst the authenticity of only two or three can
really be regarded as approaching to anything like
complete freedom from suspicion.^

The starting point of all study in this matter is the
following well-known passage in Yillani's Chronicle
(Book ix. 134 or 136), where he speaks briefly of the
life and works of his exiled fellow-citizen and neigh-
bour Dante Alighieri, on the occasion of the latter's
death : —

" He wrote amongst others three noble letters.
One of these he sent to the rulers of Florence,
complaining of his unjust exile. Another he sent
to the Emperor Henry Tvhen he was besieging
Brescia, rebuking him for his delay in almost pro-
phetical language. The third was to the Italian
Cardinals, during the vacancy after the death of
Pope Clement, urging them to unite in electing an
Italian Pope. All were in Latin with lofty diction and
Avith excellent sentences and authorities, which were
much commended by the wise and understanding."

The Florentine poet, Antonio Pucci, in his Centi-
loquio, a kind of poetical paraphrase of Yillani's

' In addition to these Latin letters in prose and verse, there are
certain epistolary sonnets which niaj" be included under Dante's
poetical correspondence ; the sonnets to Betto Brunelleschi and
Guido Cavalcanti, of which the former is of doubtful authenticity ;
three sonnets to Forese Donati ; five to Cino da Pistoia ; and one
(also rather doubtful) to Giovanni Querini. Of these I hope to
speak more fully in a forthcoming work on the Canzoniere.

290



DANTE'S LETTERS

Chronicle, writes in a similar strain of Dante's letters,
which he seems to erroneously suppose to have been
written in Italian : —

Poi tre Pistole fece copiose

Pure in volgar, con tanto intendimento,

Che forse mai non fur si belle prose.
L'una mando in Firenze al Reggimento,

Mostrando cli'era senza colpa fuore

Di casa sua, facendone lamento.
L'altra mando ad Arrigo Imperatore,

Essendo a Brescia, quasi profetando,

Clie la sua stanza non era il migliore.
E poi la terza, la Chiesa vacando,

Mando ai Cardinali italiani,

Di Papa Italian tutti pregando.
Le qua' venendo alle discrete mani,

Fur commendate assai, se ben discerno,

Da que' cbe avevan gl'intelletti sani.^

0£ these tre nohili pistole, which Villani names,
there was up to the end of last century only known
an Italian translation of the Letter to the Emperor.
In addition there existed an Italian version of a very
similar production, not mentioned by Yillani, written
on the same occasion, but slightly earlier : "To all
and each of the kings of Italy and senators of the
blessed City, as also the dukes, marquises, counts
and people of the same, the humble Italian Dante
Alighieri, Florentine and unjustly exiled, prayeth
peace " : that is, urges submission to Henry. It is

* It would be needless to add a translation, as Pucci's lines are
merely a paraphrase of the passage already quoted from Yillani.
Antonio Pucci was born at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
and was still living in 1373, when he abriiptly ends his Centiloquio
by describing himself (in a sonnet) as too old and wea'rj- to pi'oceed.
In his 55th Canto he treats of Dante, following in the main Villani,
but adding a vision of his own in which the seven sciences are
weeping over the poet's bier. Pucci is decisive upon Dante having
been at one part of his career a Guelf : —

Ed era Guelfo e non fu Ghibellino.

291



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

generally known simply as the Letter to the Princes
and People of Italy. There was likewise the Latin
text of that famous Epistle to Can Grande della Scala,
dedicating the first part of the Pcwadiso to him, and
furnishing a most interesting commentary upon its
first Canto. As we have already seen, this letter had
been ascribed to Dante from the time that Filippo
Villani, the nephew of the great chronicler and the
successor to Boccaccio in his professorship at Florence,
had lectured upon the Divine Comedy towards the
end of the fourteenth century ; but the question of
its authenticity is one of the most difficult problems
in the study of Dante's works. Moreover there were ex-
tant, and had been first published in 1719, the two Latin
Eclogues, two charming pastoral letters written in
hexameters, to Giovanni del Virgilio ; which, although
not mentioned by Giovanni Villani in the list of
Dante's writings that he gives us in the Chronicle,
were well-known to Boccaccio and to Leonardo
Bruni. Then, before the eighteenth century closed,
the famous Letter to a Florentine Friend, full of
burning indignation and indignant refusal of the
proffered amnesty with its degrading conditions,
was discovered and published by Dionisi in 1790 :
" This is not the way to return to my country,
Father. If by no honourable way an entrance can
be found into Florence, therein will I never enter.
Can I not from any corner of the earth behold the
sun and the stars ? "

During the first half of the present century other
Dantesque letters came to light, mainly through the
researches of Karl Witte and Dr. Heyse. The original
Latin text of the letter to the Emperor Henry and of
the letter to the Princes and People, a terrible letter
to " the most wicked Florentines within," and the

292



DANTE'S LETTERS

letter to the Italian Cardinals mentioned by Villani,
were all published, together with others more or less
doubtful, until the first complete edition of the
Epistles of Dante, printed in 1842, exclusive of the
two Eclogues, contained fourteen. But, of these four-
teen, four may be absolutely dismissed at once. Three
letters, supposed to be written from the Countess of
Battifolle to the Empress Margaretha, have nothing
to do with Dante ; a fourth, a preposterous account, in
Italian, of an altogether impossible embassy to the
Venetians on behalf of Guido da Polenta, the lord of
Ravenna, is a clumsy forgery. Two others may also
be excluded from discussion here — the letters to the
Cardinal Nicholas of Prato, and to the nephews of
Alessandro da Romena ; the latter may possibly be
a genuine letter from one of the Florentine exiles,
which some scribe or copyist has erroneously ascribed
to Dante (though it strikes me personally as a
forgery, differing only in degree of clumsiness from
the letter to Guido da Polenta) ; the former, if
genuine, is a valuable historical document, but there
is no adequate reason for connecting it with Dante.^

There is, indeed, one great letter which has yet to
be rediscovered, — if it anywhere still exists. Villani
tells us that Dante sent a letter to the rulers of
Florence, complaining of his unjust exile ; and it
seems almost certain, from Leonardo Brum's nar-
rative, that this was not that violent letter which
we now have (Epist. vi. in the Oxford Dante), but
another, written after Dante had broken with his
fellow-exiles and had sought his primo rifugio e primo

^ For recent views as to the authenticitj- of the letters, see Mr.
Wicksteed's Appendix to Witte's Essays on Dante (London : 1898) ;
Michele Barhi in the Bullettino della Societd Dantesca Italiana
(N.S. TI. fasc. 1, 2) ; and V. Cian {Bull. N.S. V. 8-10).

293



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

ostello in the courtesy of the " great Lombard." Let
us hear Leonardo himself : —

" Here he was very courteously received by the
Lords della Scala, and remained with them some time
utterly humbled, seeking by good deeds and good
behaviour to gain the grace of permission to return
to Florence by the spontaneous recall of the govern-
ment of the place. And to this intent he laboured
much, and often wrote, not only to indiA^idual citizens
in the government, but to the people also ; and
amongst the rest was a long letter that begins :
Popule mi quid feci tibi ? " ^

It is, I think, highly probable that it was in this
letter that Dante described his services to the Guelf
cause at Campaldino — concerning which one passage
has sur\dved in Leonardo Bruni's Life — and also
defended his impartiality in the Priorate, especially
Avith reference to the recall of the leaders of the
White faction from where they had been put under
bounds. Leonardo Bruni tells us that Dante declares
that, when they were recalled, " he was no longer in
office as prior, and that it should not be imputed to
him ; and he further declares that their recall was
due to the illness and death of Guido Cavalcanti, who
fell sick at Terezzana [Sarzana] because of the bad
climate, and soon after died." This statement is
absolutely confirmed by documentary evidence that
Dante was prior from June 15th to August 15th,
1300, and that Guido Cavalcanti died on August 28th
or August 29th of the same year." Possibly this

^ Mr. "Wicksteed's translation.

^ Published by I. del Limgo, in his Dal Secolo e dol Poeina di
Dante and Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica, respectively.

294



DANTE'S LETTERS

letter is waiting in some hitherto unstudied codex,
as also the lost Canzone quoted in the De Vulgari
Eloquentia (ii. 11 : Traggemi della mente Amor la
stiva), for some fortunate investigator in Witte's
footsteps. " Happy man be his dole ! "

We are thus left with eight prose letters and two
Eclogues. The letters to Moroello Malaspina and to
Cino da Pistoia would, if authentic, belong to the
first epoch of Dante's exile, before the advent of
Henry of Luxemburg ; they do not concern us here, as
they are connected with the cycle of the Canzoniei^e,
and not with the Divina Co^nmedia. We have the
Epistle to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, written
after the Emperor's first coronation, but before he
had entered Italy, that is, before October, 1310 ; the
Epistle to the "most wicked Florentines within," and
the Epistle to the Emperor Henry, both written in
1311, the first year of the Emperor's Italian expedi-
tion ; the Epistle to the Italian Cardinals, probably
written in 1314 ; the rather doubtful, or at least much
debated, Letter to a Florentine friend, Amico Floren-
tino, which, if authentic, was written in 1316 ; the
also much-questioned Letter to Can Grande della
Scala, of 1318 or 1319; and the two Eclogues to
Giovanni del Virgilio, which were evidently composed
between 1318 and 1321, the year of Dante's death.
But upon the delicate fabric of their authenticity the
sledge-hammer blows of modern critics have fallen
heavily. As things now stand, there is not a single one
of Dante's letters of which the authenticity is univer-
sally accepted. Dr. Scartazzini regards them all as
more or less probable forgeries, excepting the letter
to the Emperor, which he is disposed to accept as
genuine, and, but more doubtfully, the Eclogues. Dr.
Kraus rejects even the letter to the Emperor, and

295



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

suggests that the two Eclogues were forged by
Giovanni del Virgilio in order to link his own name
to that of Dante. ^ This is surely excessive scepticism:
" the expense of spirit in a waste of doubt" Setting
aside the letters to Cino and to Moroello Malaspina,
which are usually rejected as spurious and which do
not concern us here, the probability in favour of the
genuineness of the Epistles to the Princes and People,
to the Florentines, to the Emperor, and to the Italian
Cardinals, together with the two Eclogues, is so strong
as almost to aipourit to certitude; and the arguments
against the Letter to the Florentine friend and the
Epistle to Can Grande seem to me decidedly the
reverse of conclusive.

It will thus be seen that Dante's genuine letters —
or those that we shall venture to regard as genuine
— fall into three classes, which correspond to their
chronological order of production. First come five
letters in prose, dealing with the two burning
political questions of his times and with the poet's
own attitude towards his native city ; upon these
follows a composition which is practically a philo-

' I must confess to not having read Dr. Kraus' work, but gather
from Prof. Ciaij (I.e.) that this is his view. It is, of course, not
impossible that the Epistles to the Emperor and the Cardinals may
have been forged, in the fourteenth century, for political purposes
on the basis of Villani's statement ; but the internal evidence of
the letters themselves seems strongly against this. Besides the
testimony of Bruni and Boccaccio, there are four or five indepen-
dent manuscripts of the Eclogues. The Latin text of the Epistle to
the Emperor (Epist. vii.) exists in three MSS. ; that of the Epistle
to the Princes and Peoples (Epist. v.) in two MSS., both of the four-
teenth century. The letter to the Florentines (Epist. vi.) exists in
only one MS., but is mentioned by Leonardo Bruni. The letters to
the Cardinals and to the Florentine friend (Epist. viii. and ix.) are
found only in Boccaccio's autograph in the Laurentian Library.
There are several manuscripts of the Epistle to Can Grande
(Epist. X.), but none of them are earlier than the fifteenth century.

296



DANTE'S LETTERS

sophical and critical treatise assuming the epistolary
form ; and finally, in the strongest possible contrast
to these, are the two pastoral Eclogues, addressed in
a half-playful tone to the young Bolognese scholar.
In some respects it is a happy circumstance that
these should be the sole remnants left to us of
Dante's correspondence ; for they treat of no trivial
or unworthy matters, but give us a certain repre-
sentation of the man and of his life-work. The first
group deals with the two chosen ideals of his heart,
at definite moments when they seemed about to be
actually effected and become living realities for Italy
and for Christendom : the restoration of the Empire
and the purification of the Church. The poet's spirit
is bitter within him as he writes these letters. The
moment passed away, and the ideals faded out of the
regions of practical politics and possible fulfilment.
Then the gates of Florence are finally closed in his
face ; and he must resign himself to behold the sun
and the stars from some other corner of the earth.
He turns now to another line of action, and, in the
next letter, we find him interpreting his own great
poem, the immortal work in which Dante strove to
do for man what Emperor and Pope had failed to
accomplish — " to remove those living in this life
from their state of misery, and to lead them to the
state of felicity." Then lastly, when the great work
of his life was drawing to a close, the Eclogues give
us a bright and almost peaceful picture of his latest
days, when most of the bitterness had passed away,
and show how much calmer Dante's fierce spirit
became towards the end of his life.

A mediaeval Latin letter is, even at its best, a
somewhat laboured and disappointing affair. The
four letters which come first are practically four

297



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

glorified political pamphlets, on Henry VII.'s ro-
mantic invasion of Italy to reassert the decadent
power of the Holy Roman Empire, and on the Baby-
lonian captivity of the Popes at Avignon. In each
letter Dante's burning passion and intense enthu-
siasm are manifest ; they are full of his yearning for
return to Florence and his indignation at the in-
justice which he and others have endured, of his
ardent hopes for Italy and for Rome, his worship of
the Empire, his devotion to the Church. "Not by
the grace of riches," he cries in one, " but by the
grace of God, I am what I am ; and ' the zeal of His
house hath eaten me up.' " But, in the somewhat
barbarous and frequently obscure language that he
adopts, Dante seems ever, as it were, a captive in an
unknown land ; that mighty spirit is ever striving to
burst asunder the fetters of clumsy mediaeval Latin
that bind him, and to soar aloft into the pure ether
of Italian poetry. If only Dante had written his
letters in simple Italian prose, as in his own Vita
Nuova and Convivio, or as St. Catharine of Siena
wrote her letters not many years later, these four
compositions would have been priceless treasures
indeed. Even in their present form there are occa-
sionally passages full of the spirit of true and stirring
poetry, though frequently merely echoed from the
Vulgate. It is with the exultation of an oppressed
patriot in the approach of a longed-for revolution
that the first of these letters opens : —

" Lo, now is the acceptable time in which the signs
of consolation and of peace are rising. The dawn of
a new day shineth, before which the darkness of long
calamity is passing away. Already a quickening
breeze doth blow from the orient ; on the horizon

298



DANTE'S LETTERS

the sky is blushing red, filling the people with joyful
expectation. We too shall see the looked-for joy,
who have long passed the night in the desert ; for
the Sun of Peace will arise and Justice will revive in
his dawn. All that hunger and thirst will be filled
in the light of his rays, and they that love iniquity
will be confounded at the face of his brightness.
The strong lion of the tribe of Judah hath merci-
fully hearkened, and, taking pity upon the wail of
universal captivity, hath raised up another Moses
who will deliver his people from the burdens of the
Egyptians and lead them into a land flowing with
milk and honey. Rejoice, then, Italy, for thy spouse,
the consolation of the world and glory of thy people,
the most clement Henry, Augustus and Caesar, is
hastening to the nuptials. Dry thy tears and put
away the signs of mourning, O most beautiful one ;
for he is near who will deliver thee." {Epist. v. 1.)

Dante had hastened back to Italy from Paris, to
exult in the coming triumph of the cause and in the
anticipation of his own return to Florence. It was
in the seeming glory of this new day that he walked
as he composed the three letters : — to the Princes
and People of Italy, urging them to arise and go
forth to meet the King that God had given them and
that Peter had blessed ; to the Florentines, no longer
craving permission to return, but taunting them with
their coming destruction, and foretelling in prophetic
language the terrible vengeance of the Roman Eagle ;
and lastly to the Emperor himself, urging him to
advance without delay. They throw a vivid light
upon this chapter in Italian history, and make us
realise what the failure of Henry's enterprise meant
to such Italians as Dante. They are full of his

299



DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS

favourite arguments for the divinely instituted
Roman Empire, sanctioned by Christ Himself at His
Birth and Passion ; his cherished ideals of Caesar and
Peter, their power bifurcating from God as from a
single point, gain new force now that they seem at
last to have entered into the field of practical politics.
Reason and Authority seem now like avenging Angels
hovering over the imperial host and pointing the
way to Rome, already chanting the song of victory.
Curio is no longer a sower of sedition, as in the
Inferno, but an enlightened patriot for urging Caesar
on against the Republic. The golden bird of God,
the sacrosanct sign of the Empire, has started again
upon its triumphant course, irresistible in might ; all
Italy shall hear the thunder of those outspread
wings as it sweeps on towards the Eternal City, and
Florence shall surely feel its beak and claws on the
way. Let the minister of God, the son of the
Church, the promoter of Roman glory, delay no
longer in Lombardy when all the earth is awaiting
him ; but let him march onwards and smite the
accursed city of Florence, from whence proceeds all
the opposition to the imperial majesty. Yet a cloud
of doubt seems hanging over this last letter and
already threatening to obscure the sunrise ; already
his first eager cry, " Behold the Lamb of God, behold
him who taketh away the sins of the world," has
yielded to a half-doubtful repetition of the words of
the Precursor : " Art thou he that art to come, or
look we for another ? " Still it is in accents of hope
that the third letter ends, as the first had begun, — of
hope, both personal and national : —



" Delay no longer, great child of Jesse. Take con-

jrod
300



fidence from the Lord God of Hosts in whose sight



DANTE'S LETTERS

thou dost act, and lay low this Goliath ^ Tvith the
sling of thy ^^^sdonl and the stone of thy power ; for,
in his fall, night and the shadow of fear will cover
the camp of the Philistines ; they will fly and Israel
be liberated. Then will our stolen heritage, for
which we have incessantly grieved, be entirely re-
stored to us. And whereas now, like exiles in
Babylon, we weep when we remember sweet Jeru-
salem, so then, as citizens and breathing in peace,