Dante Alighieri (11 page)

    
“After this, as it pleased God, the Florentines had the victory, and the Aretines were routed and defeated; and there were killed more than seventeen hundred, horse and foot, and more than two thousand taken prisoners, whereof many of the best were got away secretly, some by their
friends, and others for ransom; but seven hundred and forty of them were brought into Florence in bonds. Among the slain was M. Guglielmino degli Ubertini, Bishop of Arezzo, who was a great warrior, and M. Guglielmo de' Pazzi of Valdarno and his nephews, who was the best and most crafty captain of war of his time in Italy; and there was killed too Buonconte, son of Guido da Montefeltro, and three of the Uberti, and one of the Abati, and many other exiles from Florence. On the side of the Florentines scarce one man of note was slain, but many both of the Florentines and of their allies were wounded.

    
“The news of this victory came to Florence that very day, at the very hour it took place; for the Priors being gone to sleep and rest after their meal, by reason of their anxiety and watching the night before, suddenly there was a knocking on the door of their chamber, with the cry: Arise, for the Aretines are defeated; and having risen and opened the door, they found no one, and their servants outside had heard nothing, wherefore it was held to be a great and notable wonder, inasmuch as it was the hour of vespers before any one came from the host with the news. And this was the truth, for I heard it and saw it; and all the Florentines marvelled whence this could have come, and waited in suspense. But when the messengers from the host were come, and brought back the news to Florence, there was great gladness and rejoicing; as well there might be, for at this defeat were left dead many captains and brave men of the Ghibelline party, enemies of the commonwealth of Florence, and the arrogance and pride, not of the Aretines only, was brought down, but of the whole Ghibelline party and of the Empire.”
¹⁴

    
Of those who fought on the same side as Dante in this battle two, Vieri de' Cerchi and the impetuous Corso Donati, were destined to play an important part in the fortunes of Florence, and incidentally in those of Dante himself.

    
One of the leaders on the opposite side, the Ghibelline Buonconte da Montefeltro, forms the subject of one of the most beautiful episodes in the
Divina Commedia
. Buonconte's body, it seems, was never found after the battle, and Dante, when he meets him in the confines of Purgatory, asks him : “What violence, or what chance, carried thee so far astray from Campaldino, that thy burial-place was never known ?” Buonconte replies: “At the foot of the Casentino crosses a stream, named the Archiano; at the place where its name becomes void (i.e. at its junction with the Arno) I arrived, pierced in the throat, flying on foot, and staining the plain with blood. There I lost my sight, and my speech finished with the name of Mary, and there I fell, and my flesh remained alone. I will tell the truth, and do thou repeat it among the living. The Angel of God took me, and he of Hell cried out: ‘O thou from heaven, why dost thou rob me ? Thou bearest away for thyself the eternal part of this one, for one little tear which takes him from me; but of the other
part I
will make other governance.' Then, when the day was spent, he covered the valley with cloud, from Pratomagno to the great ridge (of the Apennine), and made overcast the heaven above, so that the teeming air was turned to water. The rain fell, and to the trenches came so much of it as the earth did not endure; and as it gathered in great streams it rushed so swiftly towards the royal river that nothing held it back. The swollen Archiano found my body, cold, near its outlet, and thrust it into the Arno, and loosed on my breast the cross which
I made of myself when the pain overcame me. It rolled me along its banks, and along the bottom, then with its spoil it covered me and girt me.”
¹⁵

    
Dante's military experiences did not end, as probably they did not begin, with the battle of Campaldino. In the following August, in consequence of the death of the unhappy Count Ugolino, and of the expulsion of the Guelfs from Pisa, the Tuscan Guelfs, headed by the Florentines and Lucchese, invaded the Pisan territory, and ravaged it for the space of twenty-five days. During this time they laid siege to the castle of Caprona, about five miles from Pisa, which after eight days capitulated. By the terms of the surrender the garrison were allowed to march out under a safe-conduct from the besieging force. Dante tells us in the
Divina Commedia
that he was present on this occasion, and witnessed the alarm of the beleagured foot-soldiers, as they filed out between their enemies, lest the latter should not keep their compact.
¹⁶

    
There are other reminiscences in the
Commedia
of Dante's campaigning days. One of these passages, in which he speaks of how “at times a horseman goes out at a gallop from his troop during the charge and seeks to win the honour of the first assault,”
¹⁷
is pretty certainly a recollection of what took place at the beginning of the battle of Campaldino. In another passage he gives a vivid picture of the various scenes he must have witnessed during the hostilities between Florence and Arezzo, including the running of the horse-races under the enemy's walls, as the Florentines did before Arezzo the year before Campaldino:
¹⁸
—“I have seen ere now horsemen change their ground, and set out to charge, and make their muster, and sometimes fall back in their retreat; I have seen
skirmishers overrun your land, men of Arezzo, and I have seen raiders go out, tourneys held, and jousts run, now with trumpets, now with bells, and with drums and with signals from castle-walls”.
¹⁹
And elsewhere he describes a troop of soldiers manœuvring on the field, how they wheel with the banner at their head, as they change front under cover of their shields.
²⁰

    
All these are indications that Dante's military experiences were a very real part of his life, even though they occurred at the very time when, as we know from his own confession in the
Vita Nuova
, his mind was most deeply occupied with the thought of Beatrice and of his love for her. In less than a year after the triumphant return from Campaldino the loss of “his most gentle lady” was to turn gladness into mourning, so that, while all the world in Florence was feasting and rejoicing, to Dante, as he sat weeping in his chamber, the city was desolate—“How doth the city sit solitary,” he cries with Jeremiah, “she that was full of people! how is she become a widow, she that was great among the nations!”
²¹

 

    
¹
See
Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana
, No. 5-6 (1891), pp. 39-45.

    
²
Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, who was secretary of the Florentine Republic from 1427 till his death in 1444. In his
Vita di Dante
he claims to have seen several letters of Dante in the poet's own handwriting, which he describes as being “fine and slender and very accurate” (“era la lettera sua magra e lunga e molto corretta, secondo io ho veduto in alcune epistole di sua mano propria scritte” ;—elsewhere, in his
Dialogus ad Petrum Histrum
, speaking of Dante, he says: “Legi nuper quasdam eius litteras, quas ille videbatur peraccurate scripsisse: erant enim propria manu atque eius sigillo obsignatae”—quoted by Bartoli,
Storia della Letteratura Italiana
, v. 89). In this letter Dante is represented as saying that at the battle of Campaldino he was present “not as a child in arms” (“non fanciullo nell' armi”)

    
³
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 128;
Inferno
, xxxiii.

    
⁴
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 130.

    
⁵
Maghinardo, though a Ghibelline by birth, supported the Florentine Guelfs. His political inconsistency is alluded to by Dante,
Inferno
, xxvii. 51.

    
⁶
Of Ancona.

    
⁷
Of Spoleto.

    
⁸
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 131.

    
⁹
Bruni says that Dante in his letter gave an account of the battle, together with a plan: “Questa battaglia racconta Dante in una sua epistola, e dice esservi stato a combattere, e disegna la forma della battaglia,”
Vita di Dante
, ed. Brunone Bianchi, 1883, p. xv.

    
¹⁰
It is probable from what Leonardo Bruni says that Dante was among these.

    
¹¹
One of the six divisions into which the city of Florence was at this time divided.

    
¹²
Doubtless in allusion to the fact that they were opposed to Aimeri de Narbonne, a name familiar in the old
Chansons de Geste
as at one time a foe of Charlemagne and afterwards as one of his doughtiest warriors.

    
¹³
This was the second time that Guido Novello distinguished himself by running away. The first occasion was when he abandoned Florence after the defeat of Manfred at Benevento (see above, pp. 32-3).

    
¹⁴
Villani, bk. Vii. ch. 131.

    
¹⁵
Purgatorio
, v. 91-129.

    
¹⁶
Inferno
, xxi. 93-6.

    
¹⁷
Purgatorio
, xxiv. 94-6.

    
¹⁸
Villani, bk. vii. ch.

    
¹⁹
Inferno
, xxii. 1-8.

    
²⁰
Purgatorio
, xxxii. 19-24.

    
²¹
Vita Nuova
, §§ 29, 31; Lamentations, i. 1.

    
Early studies—Brunetto Latino—Classical acquirements—Marriage—Gemma Donati—Children—Public life—Embassy to San Gemignano—Priorate.

O
F Dante's studies during his early years we know but little for certain. From a misunderstanding of an expression in the
Divina Commedia
¹
it has been assumed that he was a pupil of Brunetto Latino, a Florentine notary and statesman, who was the author of a book called the
Trèsor
, a sort of encyclopædia of the knowledge of the day, written in French. Brunetto could hardly have been Dante's master, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, inasmuch as he was about fifty-five when Dante was born; besides which he was too constantly occupied with the affairs of the commonwealth to allow of his having leisure for teaching during the years of Dante's boyhood.

    
Already, when he was only eighteen, Dante had acquired the art of versifying, as he tells us in the
Vita Nuova
.
²
And from the same source we know that he was to some extent practised in drawing, for he relates how on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death, “remembering me of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did : also I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived them. Perceiving whom, I arose for salutation, and said: Another was with me. Afterwards, when they had left me, I set myself again to mine occupation, to wit, to the drawing figures of angels.”
³

    
In letters also, as may be gathered from the
Convivio
, Dante was largely his own instructor. After the death of Beatrice, he says, “I remained so overwhelmed with grief that no comfort availed me. Howbeit, after some time, my mind, which was striving to regain its health, resolved (since neither mine own nor others' consolation was of any avail) to have recourse to the plan which a certain other disconsolate one had adopted for his consolation. And I set myself to read that book of Boëthius,
⁴
whose contents are known but to few, wherewith, when a prisoner and in exile, he had consoled himself. And hearing also that Cicero too had written a book, in which, treating of friendship, he had spoken of the consolation of Laelius, that most excellent man, on the death of his friend Scipio, I set myself to read that.
⁵
And although at first it was hard for me to understand the meaning of them, yet at length I succeeded so far as such knowledge of Latin as I possessed, and somewhat of understanding on my part, enabled me to do. And as it befalls that a man who is in
search of silver sometimes, not without divine ordinance, finds gold beyond his expectations, so I, who sought for consolation, found not only healing for my grief, but instruction in the terms used by authors in science and other books.”
⁶

    
At the time referred to in this passage Dante was past his twenty-fifth year. It is evident, therefore, that in his early manhood he was by no means far advanced in his classical studies. With Provençal literature, on the other hand, it is probable that he was early familiar, not only from the references in the
Vita Nuova
, but from the fact that the work itself was composed more or less after a Provençal model. From the authors quoted in the
Vita Nuova
(which was written between 1292 and 1295, at any rate when Dante was not more than thirty) it is possible to form a pretty accurate estimate of the extent of his classical acquirements at that period. He shows some familiarity with the
Ethics
and
Metaphysics
of Aristotle (not of course in the original Greek—a language he never knew—but through the medium of Latin translations), and quotes Homer twice, once from the
Ethics
of Aristotle, and once from the
Ars Poëtica
of Horace. Ovid, Lucan, Horace, and Virgil are all quoted directly, the last several times, but there is not much trace of intimate acquaintance with any one of them. Dante also displays a certain knowledge of astronomy in the
Vita Nuova
, Ptolemy being quoted by name, while to the Arabian astronomer,
Alfraganus, he was certainly indebted for some of his
data
as to the motions of the heavens, and for his details as to the Syrian and Arabian calendars. If we add to these authors the Bible, which is quoted four or five times, and the works of Cicero and Boëthius already mentioned, we have practically the range of his reading up to about his thirtieth year, at any rate so far as may be gathered from his writings, which in Dante's case is a fairly safe criterion