we shall recollect in joy the miseries of confusion."
{Epist. vii. 8.)
But the dawn was delusive ; the day was brief,
and, when the sun sank all too soon, the night set
dark and stormily. Within the third year Henry of
Luxemburg was dead, and Dante once more a home-
less fugitive with a renewed sentence of death upon
his head. A mystery surrounds this portion of his
life. It was on April 16th, 1311, that he had directed
the letter to Henry from " Tuscany near the sources
of the Arno," presumably from some castle in the
Casentino ; and nothing is known with any certainty
of what became of Dante in the downfall of the
imperial cause, until he appears at Ravenna towards
the close of his days. In the interval he may have
been with Uguccione della Faggiuola, and probably
again with Can Grande della Scala ; he is supposed
to have visited Pisa and Lucca ; but it is also pos-
sible, even probable, that in his first bitterness of
despair he retired for a time into that lonely Apen-
nine monastery, Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, and
' Goliath apparently is Robert of Naples, whom Florence had
recognised as her suzerain. " Verily," says Dante, " she resisteth
the ordinance of God, venerating the idol of her own will, Avhile,
scorning her lawful king, she blusheth not in her madness to barter
laws not hers to a king not her own, for power to use ill."
301
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
thence gazed forth upon a desolate world. There is
a well-known reference to this convent in Canto xxi.
of the Paradiso, with that yearning look towards
Florence from which he was now, more than ever,
shut out : —
Tra due liti d'ltalia surgon sassi,
E non molto distant! alia tua patria,
Tanto, che i tuoni assai suonan piu bassi,
E fanno un gibbo cbe si chiama Catria,
Di sotto al quale 6 consecrato un ermo,
Che suol esser disposto a sola latria.
Far. xxi. 106.*
It may have been from this watch-tower of con-
templation that Dante saw the death of Pope
Clement Y. in 1314. A long vacancy of the papal
chair followed. Very early in this interregnum
Dante again seized his pen, and wrote the Letter to
the Italian Cardinals, who, with others of the sacred
College, were assembled in conclave at Carpentras
in Provence. The ideal Emperor, the subject of his
former epistles, had lamentably failed in his attempt
to heal the wounds of Italy before she was ready ;
might not deliverance now come from an ideal Pope,
if such a one could be found, an Italian, who would
return to Rome and so restore one of her luminaries
to the Eternal City? At present the whole world
seemed to Dante as in his youth Florence had been
after the death of Beatrice, widowed and despoiled
^ Between two shores of Italy rise cliffs,
And not far distant from thy native place,
So high, the thunders far below them sound.
And form a ridge that Catria is called,
'Neath which is consecrate a hermitage
Wont to be dedicate to worship only.
Longfellow.
Some writers put Dante's visit to the monastery at a later date,
and one or two deny that he ever was there.
302
DANTE'S LETTERS
of all dignity : quasi vedova e dispogllata di ogni
dignitade. Then, as he tells us in the Vita Nuova,
he had written to the chief persons of the city —
ai principi delta terra — a letter touching somewhat
upon its condition and beginning with certain solemn
words of Jeremiah. The same words rose to the
poet's memory now that Rome lay similarly widowed
and despoiled, for not only was the imperial throne
empty, but the spiritual guide of the De Monarchia,
the allegorical Beatrice, seemed dead, or at least
hidden for a time in the darkness and corruption
of Avignon ; and, taking them as text, he wrote to
the " chief centurions of the Church Militant," to
the Italian Cardinals, a most noble letter.
" Quomodo sedet sola civitas, plena populo ; facta est
quasi vidua domina gentium. When the cupidity of
the Pharisees disgraced the priesthood of the old
law and brought ruin upon the chosen city of David,
God inspired the god-like mind of a prophet to weep
again and again in these words for holy Jerusalem.
Now we, for whose salvation Peter was bidden to
feed the holy sheepfold, we with Jeremiah, not in
mere imitation but with the same grief, are forced
to mourn for Rome widowed and deserted — for
Rome to whom, after the splendour of so many
triumphs, Christ by word and work confirmed the
Empire of the world, and which Peter and Paul
consecrated as the apostolic seat by the sprinkling of
their own blood.
" The impious mock at our Sabbaths, and false
prophets declare that your wilful choice of evil was
inevitable. You, the chief centurions of the Church
Militant, have neglected to guide the chariot of the
Spouse along the manifest path of the Crucified,
303
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
and have dragged it out of the track hke the false
charioteer Phaethon. You should have illuminated
the flock following you through the forest pastures
of this peregrination, but you have drawn it with
yourselves to the brink of the precipice. You have
turned your faces away from the chariot of the
Bride, like the men that were shown to Ezekiel
w^ith their backs to the temple of the Lord. Ye
despise the fire sent from heaven, where the altars
smoke with strange fire which w^as not commanded ;
ye sell doves in the temple and traffic in sacred
things. But beware of the scourge of little cords,
beware of the fire from the Lord that destroyed
Nadab and Abiu, and do not tempt the patience of
God who awaits your repentance. Ye have been
parties in the sin of Alcimus with Demetrius.^
" Perchance you will indignantly ask, Who is this
man that, in spite of the fate of Oza, dares to put
forth his hand to the ark, as though it were falling ?
Verily, of the sheep of Jesus Christ's pastures I am
one of the least ; I abuse no pastoral authority, for
I have no riches. Not then by the grace of riches,
but by the grace of God I am what I am, and ' the
zeal of His house hath eaten me up.' Of old the
divine praises sounded from the mouths of sucklings
and infants, and the man born blind confessed the
truth in spite of the Pharisees. Nor can any one
^ In Alcimiim cum Demetrio consensistis. Alcimus is Clement
Y. ; Demetrius, Philip the Fair. " And Demetrius sat upon the
throne of his kingdom, and there came to him the wicked and
ungodly men of Israel ; and Alcimus was at the head of them,
who desired to be made high priest . . . and the wicked
Alcimus he made high priest, and he commanded him to take
revenge upon the children of Israel" (1 Machabees vii.)- Dante
similarly finds types of Pope Clement and King Philip in 2 Macha-
bees iv. in the persons of Jason and Antiochus {Inf. xix.).
304
DANTE'S LETTERS
reproach me with the guilty presumption of Oza ;
for he put his hand to the ark, but I only attend
to the oxen that are kicking and dragging it away
from the right path. May He help the ark, who
opened His saving eyes upon the tossing ship.
" Are ye not ashamed that, out of so many false
shepherds and so many neglected sheep, only one
faithful voice should be heard in this death of Mother
Church, and that of a private person ? Each one,
even as you have done, has taken to wife covetous-
ness, she who is never the mother of piety and
justice, as charity, but ever of impiety and iniquity.^
The lives of the clergy make manifest the result ;
almost all are veritable children of the daughters of
the horse-leech.^ The great Doctors are thrown
aside, and only the writers of decretals studied ; for
those sought God as their supreme end, but these
get livings and benefices. And do not flatter your-
selves, fathers, that I stand alone in this, and that
the rest of the faithful will always endure it in
silence nor render testimony to their Maker. The
Lord liveth, and He who moved the tongue of
Balaam's ass is the Lord also of modern brutes.
" May shame induce repentance and amendment.
And in order that this amendment may be effectual
* Cf. Inf. i. 100, where Dante says of the Lupa —
Molti son gli animali, a cui si ammoglia.
' Praeter Lunensein pontificem, 'â– except the Bishop of Luni."
This is evidently sarcastic, like the fuor che Bonturo of Inf. xxi.
41. Gherardino Malaspina, Bishop and Count of Luni, an ecclesi-
astic in high favour with Clement V,, had been placed under tho
ban of the Empire by Henry VII., and had allied himself with
" the most wicked Florentines within." For the full history of
this personage, see Giovanni Sforza, Castruccio Casfracani in
Lunigiana (Atti e memorie delle RR. deputazioni di storia patria
per le provincie modenesi e parmensi, S. iii., vol. vi. j Modena, 1890).
305 X
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
and permanent, restore Rome from what she now is,
deprived of both her luminaries, sitting widowed
and alone, to that ideal city of Rome which we have
conceived in our minds. I speak above all to you
who as children knew the sacred Tiber. For although
the Latian Capital is to be piously loved by all
Italians, ye above all are bound to worship her who
are Romans by birth. If the misery of this x^resent
time fills all Italians with grief and shame, still more
should ye blush and mourn who were the cause of
this her eclipse. It will indeed be amendment, al-
though a shameful scar will be left branded upon
the apostolic see, if ye all, who were the cause of
this wandering from the path, unanimously and
manfully do battle for the Spouse of Christ, for the
seat of the Spouse, which is Rome, for our Italy, and
indeed for the whole community of voyagers on
earth. Enter gloriously upon the conflict, which has
already begun and upon which all eyes are fixed,
so that ye may hear the Gloria in excelsis resound,
and the disgrace of the Gascons, who lusted to usurp
for themselves the glory of the Italians, may stand
as an example to ]30sterity throughout all future
ages."
The powerful and eloquent composition, of which
the above is partly a paraphrase and partly an
abridgment, is, in some respects, the most note-
worthy of the Dantesque Epistles. There seems to
be an echo of it in Petrarch's famous Canzone to
the spirito gentile, the ideal ruler of Rome. It is
complementary to the De Monarchia and Dante's
writings on behalf of the Empire. The supposed
Ghibelline, who had striven so ardently with his
pen for the inviolable eternal Rome of the successor
306
DANTE'S LETTERS
of Csesar, is now found breaking a lance for the
no less sacred Rome divinely established as scat of
the successor of Peter —
U' siede il successor del maggior Piero:
as the poet had sung in the second Canto of the
Inferno. It completes the ideal Rome of Dante's
conception (as he himself implies) : Rome the seat
of Pope and Emperor, of man's spiritual and tem-
poral guides alike, from whom as from two suns
both paths, the earthly and the heavenly, should be
illuminated for mankind — in short, the ideal set
forth in so many passages of the Divine Comedy.
Dante's own attitude towards the Church and her
rulers finds the clearest expression here : that Church
which he loved more intensely and with almost
fiercer devotion, as he saw her spotted with corruii-
tion and disgraced by the lives and conduct of those
who sat in her highest places. It is not the ark,
but the unruly oxen, with which he concerns him-
self ; but it must be admitted that the hand he j)uts
out to steady them contains a stinging whip for their
correction, and he is fond of lashing those labouring
oxen even to excess !
There is a famous episode in the Paradiso which,
with its probable allegorical significance (noted to
some extent by Benvenuto da Imola), should be set
side by side with this letter. It occurs just after the
description of the monastery of Santa Croce at the
end of Canto xxi. and beginning of Canto xxii. In
the seventh heaven, St. Peter Damian has rebuked
the luxurious lives of the Cardinals and prelates —
O pazienza, clie tanto sostieni !
*' O patience of God to endure so much ! " The other
307
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
contemplative spirits join with him in invoking tho
Divine vengeance upon such unworthy pastors, and
their cry is like thunder, stupefying Dante with its
terrible sound ; for these spirits are united with the
angelic order that moves this seventh heaven, the
Thrones, the very mirrors of the terrible judgments
of God. It is doubtless the same thought as here
in this letter : " Beware of the scourge, beware of
the fire from heaven, and tempt not the patience
of God." Oppressed with terror at the outcry of
these saints against the vices of the pastors of the
Church, Dante turns to his guide Beatrice as a child
to its mother, and she reassures him. Taking Bea-
trice as representing both Theology and the ideal
spiritual guide of the De Monarchia, the allegori-
cal meaning may perhaps be that, himself seeing the
wickedness and corruption of the Popes and prelates,
reading too in the writings of Peter Damian of even
worse things in his time, and finding these scandals
confirmed in the books of so many other holy writers,
Dante was assailed with doubts as to the truth of the
faith that he held, but yielded his own judgment to
the authority and theological teaching of the Church.
Benvenuto, who calls this " a pleasing fiction of our
author," and regards Beatrice as a symbol of Theo-
logy or of the Holy Scripture, gives a somewhat
analogous interpretation : —
'* This is a pleasing fiction of our author, for verily
the mind of every wise man is often much stupefied
when he considers what holy doctors have said con-
cerning the vices of prelates ; and it seems a wonder-
ful and horrible thing that God, who rules all,
governs justly, and only wills what is good, should
tolerate such deeds. Nevertheless, in this perturba-
308
DANTE'S LETTERS
tion of mind he has recourse to Beatrice, that is, to
Holy Scripture, which demonstrates to him how God
in His pro\'idence permits these things for many-
causes, although man cannot see all ; for often, on
account of the sins of the subjects, He permits bad
pastors and hypocrites to rule."
Besides throwing light upon several minor points
in the Divine Comedy, this letter to the Cardinals
very clearly shows Dante's own position in the ranks
of the Prophets. He would regard himself as the
Jeremiah of the new law, and claims to take the same
stand for Rome as Jeremiah did for Jerusalem, now
that the seventy years' slavery to the King of Baby-
lon was to be repeated in the seventy years' practical
subjection of the Papacy to the French at Avignon.
There is a distinct analogy between the letter from
Dante in Italy to the Cardinals at Carpentras and
the letter which Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the
captives in Babylon, in spite of the strongly con-
trasted contents and the different objects that the
two writers had in view. Almost at the opening of
each, there comes the solemn warning against false
prophets : " Let not your prophets that are in the
midst of you and your diviners deceive you. For
they prophesy falsely to you in my name : and I have
not sent them, saith the Lord" (Jer. xxix. Vulgate).
Much of the first Canto of the Divina Coinmedia is
based upon the prophecies of Jeremiah, or at least
offers analogous features. The slumber from which
Dante has awakened, the mountain at whose foot he
has arrived, have their prototypes in Jeremiah xxxi. —
" the beauty of justice, the holy mountain " and " I
was, as it were, awaked out of a sleep and I saw "
(verses 2.3 and 26) ; although, but for the Divine Mercy
309
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
and the three gracious Ladies that aroused him^
Dante's sknnber would have rather resembled the
everlasting sleep of the sinner (Jer. li. 39), and his^
attempt to ascend the mountain, repulsed by the three
beasts, is a practical illustration of the words of the
Psalmist : " Who shall ascend into the mountain of
the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place ? The
innocent in hands and clean of heart." For the poet
was not yet one of these. Those three beasts that
drive him back are clearly derived from the fifth
chapter of Jeremiah, 'â– A lion out of the wood hath
slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them,
a leopard watcheth for their cities " : a derivation
which makes it difficult to accept unreservedly the
ordinary interpretation of these beasts as luxury,
pride and avarice, in spite of the almost universal
testimony of Dante's earliest commentators.^ Pos-
sibly the same chapter afforded the germ of Caccia-
guida's injunction to his descendant in Paradiso xvii. :
" I will go therefore to the great men and will speak
to them" (Jer. v. 5). Dante, likewise, is to address
himself mainly to those in high places and to exem-
plify his teaching from the fate of famous souls,
Vanime che son per fama note : —
Questo tuo griclo fai*^ come vento,
' Dr. Scartazzini regards tliem as representing incredulity, pride
and false doctrine, but other passages in tlie Divine Comedy cer-
tainly justify the more usual interpretation of the leopard and tlie-
wolf. Savonarola, in his trattato on the government of Florence,
shows that if a tj-rant has pride, luxury and avarice, he has virtu-
ally all the sins of the world. The Flesh, the World and the Devil,
is also an interpretation supported by an early commentator. It
is needless to say that until the end of last century no one imagined
that the three beasts stood for Florence, France and Eome,althoug]i
some germs of such an interpretation may be found in Benvenuto'*
connecting the wolf with the avarice of the prelates of the
Church.
310
DANTE'S LETTERS
Che le piu alte cime piii percote;
E ci6 non fia d'onor poco argomento.
Par. xvii. 133.i
So too, again and again, does Dante sternly and
bitterly repeat in other words the Prophet's text
(Jer. xxiii. 15), " From the prophets of Jerusalem
corruption is gone forth into all the land " : — •
Che la vostra avarizia il monclo attrista,
"Because your avarice afflicts the world" {Inf. xix.
104). The full significance of the symbolical episode
of the Harlot and the Giant, in Canto xxxii. of the
Purgatorio, is seen by comparing it both with the
Apocalypse of St. John and the prophecy of Jeremiah.
The influence upon Dante of his Hebrew prototype
is strongly marked in Canto xxvii. of the Paradiso.
Indeed, the text of the whole Canto is surely Jeremiah
vii. 17 : " Seest thou not what they do in the cities of
Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem ? " And where
St. Peter, glowing red with celestial indignation,
rebukes his unworthy successor, his triple repetition
of il loco mio, my place that has been usurped, il loco
miOi il loco mio, il loco mio, recalls, and was probably
suggested by Jeremiah vii. 4 : " Trust not in lying
words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple
of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord." In many
other passages of this Canto the resemblance to the
utterances of Jeremiah is obvious. For instance, St.
Peter s denunciation of the bishops of the separate
dioceses (lines 55, 56) —
In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci
Si veggion di quassu per tutti i paschi :
* This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind,
Which smiteth most the most exalted summits,
And that is no slight argximent of honour.
Longfellow.
311
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
*' In garb of pastors rapacious wolves are seen from
here above through all the pastures," evidently
imitates the opening of the Prophet's chapter xxiii. :
" Woe to the pastors that destroy and tear the sheep
of my pasture " ; and the promise of succour from
God which follows, and Dante's perpetual hope of a de-
liverer to come, correspond with Jeremiah's prophecy,
in the same chapter, of the just branch that the Lord
will raise up to David. Even the concluding injunc-
tion of St. Peter to Dante, to conceal nothing of what
he has heard and seen, is an echo of Jeremiah xxW. 2,
with its admonition from the Lord to His prophet
not to leave out one word ; and at the very end of
the Canto, when Beatrice prophesies of the roaring
of the heavens (xxvii. 14i) to usher in the change of
fortune, —
Ruggiran si questi cei'chi superni,
we are again reminded of Jeremiah (although similar
expressions are famihar enough in Joel and others
of the prophets) : " The Lord shall roar from on high
and shall utter His voice from His holy habitation."
This letter also illustrates Dante's attitude towards
another and more modern kind of prophet, the fol-
lowers of the Abbot Joachim. Joachim himself had
vigorously assailed corruption in high places of the
Church, and had regarded himself as having a special
gift from God to interpret the prophetical books of
the Scriptures, with special reference to the history
of the Church ; and it is well known how the ad-
herents of this extraordinary mystic had filled Italy
with their prophecies concerning the Church and
the Papacy, France and the Empire, to which latter
power they were entirely hostile. Joachim himself
was supposed to have prophesied that France was the
312
DANTE'S LETTERS
reed that should pierce right through the hand of the
Pope who leaned upon it, and the assertions of his
followers in the same direction might certainly appear
to have been partly fulfilled by the continuance of
the Papal exile at Avignon. " Thy prophets have
seen false and foolish things for thee : and they have
not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance :
but they have seen for thee false revelations and
banishments." Although perhaps suggested by the
Lamentations, Dante's words in this Epistle concern-
ing false prophets, " crude prophets that assert as
necessary what ye have deliberately chosen by mis-
use of your free will," ^ would certainly seem to be a
hostile reference to these prophecies of the later
Joachimists. It was not to justify their assertions
that these things had come to pass. Dr. Dollinger
has regarded Dante himself as, to some extent, an
adherent of this sect : " Dante was a Joachimist, but
after his own eclectic fashion, with the reservation
which his favourite doctrine of the divine right and
calling of the Empire rendered indispensable." ^ He
has pointed out that many of Dante's more mysterious
utterances, such as the Veltro of Inferno i. and the
cinquecento diece e cinque of Purgatorio xxxiii., may
be derived from Joachim and his followers, who
taught that a new dark-robed order was to arise, a
spiritual power in the period of the Holy Spirit, who
Vv-ould abstain from worldly possessions and convert
and regenerate mankind. The later followers of
Joachim believed, too, in an Emperor to come, who
* His actual words are : Astronomi quidam et crude prophetantes
necessarium asserunt, quod, male usi libertate arhitrii, eligere
maluistis. — Epist. viii. 3.
^ Dollinger, Dante as a Prophet (Studies in European History),
p. 96.
313
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
should punish France and the Papacy ; but this
Emperor himself would be no deliverer, but a cruel
oppressor.^ Certainly Dante's judgment upon the
Calabrian Abbot himself is a highly favourable one :
he is in the heaven of the Sun, in the second circle of
great doctors by the side of St. Bonaventura {Par. xii.
140), as one
Di spirito profetico dotato,
endowed with prophetic spirit. It is, however, per-
fectly clear that Dante's admiration for the man
himself did not extend to his followers. In the
same Canto {Par. xii.), St. Bonaventura rebukes
Joachim's Franciscan admirers in the person of
Ubertino da Casale, a friar who headed the spirituals,
the party among the Franciscans who held by the
doctrines of Joachim and desired to draw still
tighter the severe rules that bound the members of
the order. Dante probably intended to at once ex-
press his belief in Joachim's own sincerity and re-
pudiate the exaggerated tenets of his later adherents.
He makes Bonaventura couple this Fra Ubertino with
Matteo d'Acquasparta, the lax Franciscan Cardinal
whose endeavours to interfere with the government
of Florence were successfully resisted by Dante in hi.s
priorate, and in part led to his exile ; neither from
Casale nor from Acquasparta will the true follower
of St. Francis come {Par. xii. 124).
Like the letters on the Emperor's expedition, so
this on the papal election ends in hope, in hope which
was not fulfilled in the poet's lifetime. The Italian
Cardinals entered into the strife, but were worsted
* DoLLiNGER, Dante as a Prophet (Studies in European History),
p. 100. Cf. also Dollinger's Prophecies and the Prophetic Spirit
in the Christian Era.
314
DANTE'S LETTERS