Dante Alighieri (14 page)

    
“And the Cerchi and Donati were neighbours in Florence and in the country, and what with the boorish temper of the one house and the jealousy of the other, there sprang up between them a bitter scorn, which was greatly inflamed by the ill seed of the Black and White parties introduced from Pistoja, for the Cerchi were the heads of the Whites in Florence, and the Donati were the heads of the Blacks. And by the said two parties all the city of Florence and her territory was divided and infected. For which cause the Guelf party, fearing lest these divisions should turn to the advantage of the Ghibellines, sent to Pope Boniface to ask him to heal them. Wherefore the Pope sent for M. Vieri de' Cerchi, and when he was come into his presence, besought him to make peace with M. Corso Donati and his party, and to submit their differences to him, promising to advance him and his friends to a great position, and offering him any spiritual favours he might ask. M. Vieri, although in other matters he was a prudent knight, in this matter showed little wisdom, but was obstinate and touchy, and would do nothing of what the Pope asked, saying that he had no quarrel with any man; and so he returned to Florence, and left the Pope very wrathful against him and his party.

    
“Not long after this it happened that certain of each party were riding on horseback through the city, armed and on the alert, young men of the Cerchi, with some of the Adimari, and others, to the number of more than
thirty horsemen, and young men of the Donati, with some of the Pazzi, and others of their following; and it being the evening of May Day in this year 1300, as they were looking on at a dance of ladies which was being held in the Piazza of Santa Trinita, one party began to provoke the other, and to push their horses one against the other, whence there arose a great scuffle and uproar, and several were wounded, and by ill-luck Ricoverino, son of M. Rico-vero de' Cerchi, had his nose cut from off his face; and by reason of the scuffle that evening the whole city was in alarm and under arms.

    
“And this was the beginning of the dissensions and divisions in the city of Florence and in the Guelf party, wherefrom ensued much evil and great danger to the Guelf party and to the Ghibellines, and to all the city of Florence, and to the whole of Italy also. And in like manner as the death of M. Buondelmonte was the beginning of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in Florence, so was this the beginning of the great ruin of the Guelf party and of our city.”
⁴

    
In consequence of the repeated disturbances caused by the quarrels between the Blacks and the Whites, during Dante's priorate it was decided to banish from Florence the leaders of both parties, in the hope of restoring the city to peace and quiet. Among the leaders of the Whites was the poet, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's earliest friend. It thus came about that in the impartial exercise of his office Dante was instrumental in sending his dearest friend into exile, and, as it proved, to his death; for, though the exiles were recalled after a few weeks, Guido never recovered from the effects of the malarious climate of Sarzana in Lunigiana, to which he had been banished, and died in
Florence at the end of August in the same year (1300).
⁵

    
The feuds between the two factions now reached such a height that, as we have seen, the interference of Pope Boniface was invoked, and at this time the Blacks were clamouring for Charles of Valois, brother of the King of France, to come to Florence as the Pope's representative. The Whites, on the other hand, to which faction Dante himself belonged, were bitterly opposed both to Boniface and to Charles of Valois.

    
In April of the next year (1301), in the midst of these troubles, Dante was entrusted with the charge of superintending the works on the street of San Procolo, which were intended to facilitate the bringing of troops from the outside districts into the city.
⁶
On 19 June in this year Dante voted in the Council of the Hundred against the proposal to supply a contingent of a hundred soldiers to serve with the Papal forces, on the requisition of Pope Boniface;—“Dante Alighieri,” the record runs, “advised that in the matter of furnishing assistance to the Pope, nothing should be done”. He recorded his vote on various
matters several times in one or other of the Councils during the month of September, the last of which mention is preserved being on 28 September. In the following October, in order to protest against the Papal policy, which aimed at the virtual subjection of Florence, and if possible to avert the coming of Charles of Valois, the Whites sent an embassy to Rome, of which Dante was a member. But while Dante was still absent at Rome, the Pope's “peacemaker” Charles arrived in Florence, which he entered on All Saints' Day (1 November, 1301), his entrance having been unopposed, on the faith of his promise to hold the balance between the two parties, and to maintain peace. No sooner, however, had he obtained command of the city, than he treacherously espoused the cause of the Blacks, armed his followers, and threw the whole of Florence into confusion. In the midst of the panic Corso Donati, one of the exiled leaders of the Blacks, made his way into the city, broke open the prisons and released the prisoners, who, together with his own adherents, attacked and pillaged the houses of the Whites during five days, Charles of Valois meanwhile, in spite of his promises, making no attempt to interfere.

    
The Blacks, having thus gained the upper hand in Florence, began without delay to strengthen themselves by getting rid of their opponents. On 27 January, 1302, the Podestà, Cante de' Gabrielli of Gubbio, pronounced a sentence against Dante and four other Whites, who had been summoned before the Podestà and had failed to appear. The charge against them was the infamous one of “barratry,” that is, of fraud and corrupt practices in office, including the extortion of money and the making of illicit gains. They were further charged with having conspired against the Pope, against the admission into the city of his representative, Charles of Valois, and against the
peace of the city of Florence and of the Guelf party. The penalty was a fine of five thousand florins, and the restitution of the sums illegally exacted; payment was to be made within three days of the promulgation of the sentence, in default of which all their goods were to be forfeited
⁷
and destroyed. In addition to the fine, the delinquents were sentenced to banishment from Tuscany for two years, and to perpetual deprivation from office in the commonwealth of Florence, their names to that end being recorded in the book of the Statutes of the People, as peculators and malversators in office.

    
This sentence having been disregarded, on 10 March in the same year a second severer sentence
⁸
was pronounced against Dante and the others (with whom ten more were now included), condemning them to be burned alive
⁹
should they ever be caught: “if any of the aforesaid at any time should come into the hands of the said Commonwealth, such an one shall be burned with fire so that he die”.

    
That Dante was entirely innocent of the charge of corruption brought against him there can hardly be the
smallest doubt It was merely a base device on the part of his enemies within the city to disqualify him and the rest of the Whites from taking any further part in the government of Florence. None of his early biographers believes in his guilt, while his contemporary and fellow-citizen, the chronicler, Giovanni Villani, who belonged to the opposite party, states frankly that he was driven into exile for no other fault than that of being an adherent of the Whites. “The said Dante,” he says, “was one of the chief magistrates of our city, and was of the White party, and a Guelf withal; and on that account, without any other fault, with the said White party he was driven out and banished from Florence.”
¹⁰

    
Dante's private property, which, as stated above, was condemned to be confiscated at the time of his exile, was, it may be gathered, not inconsiderable. Boccaccio states that his father's fortune at the time of his birth was abundant, abundant at any rate for those days;
¹¹
and Leonardo Bruni tells us that before his exile, though not very wealthy, he was by no means a poor man, but had a sufficient patrimony to enable him to live comfortably.
¹²
Bruni adds that, besides house property in Florence, he owned land in the neighbourhood of the city, which is known from other sources to have consisted of farms, vineyards, oliveyards, and plantations.
¹³
He also says, on
Dante's own authority, that he possessed a quantity of valuable furniture.
¹⁴
It might be supposed consequently that Dante was possessed of ample means; but it appears, not only from certain allusions in a sonnet addressed to him by Forese Donati,
¹⁵
but also from documentary evidence, that even before his exile he was in embarrassed circumstances, and was obliged to borrow considerable sums of money. Thus, on 11 April, 1297, he and his half-brother, Francesco, borrowed
gold florins (“fiorini di buon peso d' oro di Firenze”) from Andrea di Guido de' Ricci;
¹⁶
on 23 December, of the same year they borrowed 480 florins from Jacopo di Lotto and Pannochia di Riccomanno; Dante further borrowed ninety florins from Perso Ubaldino, and forty-six florins from Filippo di Lapo Bonaccolti; these three last sums on the security of Manetto Donati, Dante's father-in-law, as we learn from the will of his widow, Maria, dated 17 February, 1315.
¹⁷
Again, on 14 March, 1299, Dante borrowed 125 florins from his half-brother, Francesco; and another ninety florins from the same on 11 June of the following year, four days before he entered on his office as Prior.
¹⁸

    
For what purpose these debts, amounting in all to more than 1000 florins, were contracted there is nothing to show. From the facts that in several of the loans Dante was associated with his half-brother, and that his father-in-law was security, it may be inferred that they were incurred in the family interest. At any rate, to whatever cause they may have been due, they were all punctiliously discharged after Dante's death by his half-brother, Francesco, and his sons, Pietro and Jacopo, who sold sundry parcels of land for the purpose, as is recorded in various documents still preserved in the Florentine archives.
¹⁹

 

    
¹
See above, pp. 58, 61.

    
²
Vita di Dante
, ed. cit. pp. xvii-xviii.

    
³
Dino Compagni, bk. i. ch. 20.

    
⁴
Villani, bk. viii. ch. 39.

    
⁵
From Guido's last poem, written at Sarzana during his exile, it is evident that he never expected to return. If certain expressions in this poem are to be taken literally, it would appear that Guido already felt the hand of death upon him:—