Dante Alighieri (12 page)

    
Some of his biographers state that Dante during his early manhood studied at the universities of Bologna and Padua, but there is no evidence to support this statement, which is probably little more than a conjecture.

    
Within a few years of the death of Beatrice, certainly not later than 1298, Dante married. His wife, whose name was Gemma,
⁷
was the daughter of Manetto and Maria Donati, of the same ancient and noble Guelf family to which belonged Dante's friend Forese,
⁸
and the impetuous Corso Donati, who, as we have seen,
⁹
distinguished himself at the battle of Campaldino. Boccaccio states that Dante's marriage was brought about by his relations in order to console him for the loss of Beatrice, and he further draws a melancholy picture of what he supposes Dante's married life to have been.

    
“Dante,” he says, “formerly had been used to spend his time over his precious studies whenever he was inclined, and would converse with kings and princes, dispute with philosophers, and, frequent the company of poets, the burden of whose griefs he would share, and thus solace his own. Now, whenever it pleased his new mistress,
he must at her bidding quit this distinguished company, and bear with the talk of women, and to avoid a worse vexation must not only assent to their opinions, but against his inclination must even approve them. He who, whenever the presence of the vulgar herd annoyed him, had been accustomed to retire to some solitary spot, and there to speculate on the motions of the heavens, or the source of animal life, or the beginnings of created things, or, may be, to indulge some strange fancy, or to compose somewhat which after his death should make his name live into future ages—he now, as often as the whim took his new mistress, must abandon all such sweet contemplation, and go in company with those who had little mind for such things. He who had been used to laugh or to weep, to sing or to sigh, according as pleasing or painful thoughts prompted him, now must not dare, or, should he venture, must account to his mistress for every emotion, nay, even for every little sigh. Oh ! what unspeakable weariness to have to live day by day, and at last to grow old and die, in the company of such a suspicious being !”
¹⁰

    
In spite of Boccaccio's express avowal that he cannot positively assert the truth of all this,
¹¹
nevertheless his picture has been accepted seriously by many writers as an accurate representation of Dante's married life. As a matter of fact there is very little real ground for supposing that Dante lived unhappily with Gemma. The arguments adduced in support of the contention are as follows: that men of genius are notoriously “gey ill to live with,” and consequently, even if Gemma was not the shrew painted by Boccaccio, Dante no doubt was an unbearable companion, wherefore they must have been unhappy together;
again, that Dante nowhere in his works makes any reference to his wife; and lastly, that when Dante was exiled from Florence he left Gemma behind him, and, so far as is known, never saw her again. Only one of these arguments has any real weight The first is based on a pure assumption. If the absence of any reference to Gemma in Dante's works necessarily implies that they lived on bad terms, the same must be assumed in the case of Dante's parents, to whom his references are of the vaguest,
¹²
and of his children. On the other hand, the fact that Gemma did not subsequently live with Dante, so far as our information goes, when he settled at Ravenna with two of his children, lends some colour to the supposition that the affection between them was not of the strongest. Boccaccio makes the most of this circumstance. He concludes his account of this ill-assorted match, as at any rate he supposed it to have been, with the following words : “Certainly I do not affirm that these things happened in Dante's case, for I do not know. But, at any rate, whether that be the truth or not, once Dante was separated from her who had been given to console him in his grief, he never would come where she was, nor would he ever allow her to come to him.”
¹³

    
This is an explicit statement, and it is probable that Boccaccio, who was in communication with members of Dante's family, did not make it without some authority. At any rate, whatever the domestic relations between Dante and Gemma may have been, it is certain that they had a family of four children, all of whom were born in Florence before the year 1302. These children were two
sons, Pietro and Jacopo, and two daughters, Antonia and Beatrice. Pietro, the eldest son, who was the author of a commentary on the
Divina Commedia
,
¹⁴
became a lawyer, and died in Treviso in 1364.
¹⁵
Jacopo, who also wrote a commentary on the
Commedia
(or at any rate on the
Inferno
)
¹⁶
and a didactic poem called
Il Dottrinale
, entered the Church, became a canon in the diocese of Verona, and died before 1349. Of Antonia it is only known that she was still alive in 1332. Beatrice became a nun in the Convent
of Santo Stefano dell' Uliva at Ravenna, where in 1350 she was presented by Boccaccio with the sum of ten gold florins on behalf of the Capitani di Or San Michele of Florence.
¹⁷
She died before 1370, in which year there is a record of the payment of a bequest of hers of three gold ducats to the. convent where she had passed her days.
¹⁸
Three of Dante's children, Pietro, Jacopo, and Beatrice, lived with him during the last three or four years of his life at Ravenna. Gemma, who, as we have seen, is supposed never to have rejoined Dante after his exile from Florence, was still living in 1332, eleven years after Dante's death.

    
At some period not long after the death of Beatrice Portinari, Dante appears to have been entangled in an amour of a more or less discreditable nature. It seems clear from the language used to Dante by Beatrice in the
Divina Commedia
that this must have been the case. She says that as soon as she was dead and gone, Dante became unfaithful to her, and “gave himself to another,” whereby “he fell so low” that she despaired of his salvation.
¹⁹
The names of several ladies which occur in Dante's lyrical poems have been connected with this charge; and there can be little doubt that some similar entanglement took place at Lucca after his exile, as appears from the account of Dante's meeting with the Lucchese poet, Bonagiunta, in Purgatory.
²⁰

    
In 1295 or 1296, whether before or after his marriage we have no means of ascertaining, Dante, in order to
qualify himself for the higher offices in the government of Florence, enrolled himself in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries,
²¹
he having now reached the age at which, by the Florentine law, he was entitled to exercise the full rights of citizenship. This was Dante's first step in his political career, which was destined within a few years to lead him into lifelong exile from his native city. The Guild selected by Dante was one of the wealthiest and most important in Florence, concerned as it was with the costly products of the East, in which were included not only spices and drugs, but also pearls, precious stones, and other valuables. Dante's choice of this particular Guild, however, may perhaps be explained by the fact that in those days books also were included among the wares dealt in by apothecaries; and further, to this Guild were attached those who practised the art of painting, an art which, it may be gathered, had special attractions for Dante, and in which, as we have already seen,
²²
he was to some extent a proficient.

    
A few details of Dante's public life in Florence have been preserved in various documents in the Florentine archives.
²³
It is recorded
²⁴
that on 6 July, 1295, he gave his opinion in favour of certain proposed modifications of the “Ordinamenti di Giustizia,” ordinances against the power of the nobles in Florence, which had been enacted a couple of years before. On 14 December of the same year he took part in the bi-monthly election of Priors; and on 5 June, 1296, he spoke in the Council of the Hundred (“Consiglio dei Cento”). In the spring of 1300 he went as ambassador to San Gemignano, a town about ten miles from Siena, to announce that an assembly was to be held for the purpose of electing a new captain of the Guelf League of Tuscany, and to invite the citizens of San Gemignano to send representatives. The room in the Palazzo of San Gemignano, where Dante was received as ambassador to Florence, and where he spoke in discharge of his office six hundred years ago, is still preserved in much the same condition in which it was on that occasion.

SAN GEMIGNANO

    
The contemporary record
²⁵
of the event, which, like all similar records of that time, is in Latin, tells how “on 8 May the General Council of the commonwealth and people of San Gemignano having been convoked and assembled in the palace of the said commonwealth by the sounding of a bell and by the voice of the crier, according to custom, at the summons of the noble and valiant knight, Messer Mino de' Tolomei of Siena, the honourable Podestà of the commonwealth and people of the said city of San Gemignano, . . . the noble Dante Alighieri, ambassador of the commonwealth of Florence, explained to the assembled Council on behalf of the said commonwealth how it was expedient at that time for all the cities of the Tuscan League to hold a parliament and discussion in a certain place for the election and confirmation of a new Captain, and how further it was expedient that the appointed syndics and ambassadors of the said cities should assemble themselves together for the despatch of the said business”. It appears that Dante's mission was successful, for the record goes on to state that the proposition of the Florentine ambassador, having been debated, was approved and ratified by the Council.

    
A few weeks after his return from San Gemignano
Dante was elected to serve as one of the six Priors, for the two months from 15 June to 15 August, this being the highest office in the Republic of Florence.
²⁶
“From this priorate,” says Leonardi Bruni, “sprang Dante's exile from Florence, and all the adverse fortunes of his life as he himself writes in one of his letters, the words of which are as follows: ‘All my woes and all my misfortunes had their origin and commencement with my unlucky election to the priorate; of which priorate, although I was not worthy in respect of worldly wisdom, yet in respect of loyalty and of years I was not unworthy of it; inasmuch as ten years had passed since the battle of Campaldino, where the Ghibelline party was almost entirely broken and brought to an end, on which occasion I was present, not inexperienced in arms, and was in great fear, and afterwards greatly exultant, by reason of the varying fortunes of that battle.' These are his words.”
²⁷

 

    
¹
When he meets Brunetto in Hell Dante says to him: “In my mind is fixed the dear and kind fatherly image of you, when in the world you from time to time taught me how man becomes eternal” (
Inferno
, xv.82-5). This probably means nothing more than that Dante learned much from Brunetto's
Trèsor
, and especially from the compendium of the
Ethics
of Aristotle which it contains.

    
²
Vita Nuova
, § 3, 11. 69-71: “I had already learned of myself the art of setting words in rime”.

    
³
Vita Nuova
, § 35, 11. 4-15 (trans. by Rossetti).

    
⁴
The
De Consolatione Philosophiae
.

    
⁵
The
De Amicitia
.

    
⁶
Convivio
, ii. 13, 11. 5-36. The “scuole de' religiosi,” which Dante further on in this same passage (11. 47-8) says he attended at this time, were doubtless those of the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella, to which laymen were admitted. Here Dante would have received instruction in the seven liberal arts of the
Trivium
(grammar, logic, rhetoric) and
Quadrivium
(music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy), and in natural and moral philosophy (see G. Salvadori,
Sulla Vita Giovanile di Dante
, pp. 106 ff.).

    
⁷
Some think that Gemma Donati is the “donna gentile” of the concluding chapters of the
Vita Ntiova
(§§ 36-9). See, for instance, Fraticelli,
Vita di Dante
, cap. 5, where, in reference to the appearance of the lady at a window (
Vita Nuova
, § 36), he points out that the houses of the Donati and of the Alighieri were opposite to each other, back to back.