Ravenna, a Study

by Edward Hutton

XV

DANTE IN RAVENNA

Before following the fortunes of Ravenna under that new and alien government into the Renaissance and the modern world, it will be well if we turn to examine more closely her one great moment in the Middle Age, the moment in which Dante found in her a last refuge, and then linger a little among such of her mediaeval buildings as the modern world has left her.

In any attempt to deal, however briefly, with Dante's sojourn in Ravenna we must first find out what we really know concerning it and distinguish this from what is mere conjecture or deduction. Now the first authority for Dante's life generally, is undoubtedly Boccaccio, and as it happens he was in Ravenna, where he had relations, certainly in 1350 and perhaps in 1346. In 1350 he was the envoy of the Or San Michele Society, who by his hand sent Beatrice, the daughter of Dante, then a nun in the convent of S. Stefano dell' Uliva in Ravenna, ten gold florins He was thus in communication with Dante's daughter so that when he came to write the Vita di Dante, probably in 1356-1357, he was certainly in possession of facts. It will be well then if we state to begin with in his own words what he has told us of the years Dante spent in Ravenna.

But first as to the date of Dante's coming to Ravenna. Boccaccio would seem to place it immediately after the death of Henry VII. in 1313. To modern scholarship this has seemed incredible for various reasons, and it prefers to allow Dante to visit Verona first and to come to Ravenna in 1317. Yet let us hear Boccaccio.

He begins by telling us that the too early death of the emperor, who was poisoned, as is thought, at Buonconvento in southern Tuscany on S. Bartholomew's day in 1313, cast every one of his faction into despair "and Dante most of all; wherefore no longer going about to seek his own return from exile he passed the heights of the Apennines and departed to Romagna where his last day, that was to put an end to all his toils, awaited him.

"In those times was Lord of Ravenna (a famous and ancient city of Romagna) a noble cavalier whose name was Guido Novello da Polenta; he was well skilled in the liberal arts and held men of worth in the highest honour, especially such as excelled others in knowledge. And when it came to his ears that Dante, beyond all expectation, was now in Romagna and in such desperate plight, he, who had long time before known his worth by fame, resolved to receive him and do him honour. Nor did he wait to be requested by him to do this, but considering with how great shame men of worth ask such favours, with liberal mind and with free proffers he approached him, requesting from Dante of special grace that which he knew Dante must needs have begged of him, to wit, that it might please him to abide with him. The two wills, therefore, of him who received and of him who made the request thus uniting on one same end, Dante, being highly pleased by the liberality of the noble cavalier, and on the other side constrained by his necessities, awaited no further invitation but the first, and took his way to Ravenna, where he was honourably received by the lord thereof, who revived his fallen hope by kindly festerings; and giving him abundantly such things as were fitting, he kept him with him there for many years, yea, even to the last year of his life.

"Never had his amorous longings, nor his grieving tears, nor his domestic anxieties, nor the seducing glory of public offices, nor his miserable exile, nor his unendurable poverty, been able with all their force to turn Dante aside from his main intent, to wit, from sacred studies; for as will be seen hereafter, when mention shall be made severally of the works that he composed, he will be found to have exercised himself in writing in the midst of all that is fiercest among these passions. And if in the teeth of such and so many adversaries as have been set forth above, he became by force of genius and of perseverance so illustrious as we see, what may we suppose he would have been if, like many another, he had had even as many supports; or, at least, had had no foes; or but few? Indeed I know not. But were it lawful so to say, I would declare that he had surely become a God upon the earth.

[Illustration: Casa Polentana]

"Dante then, having lost all hope of a return to Florence, though he retained the longing for it, dwelt in Ravenna for a number of years, under the protection of its gracious lord. And here by his teachings he trained many scholars in poetry, especially in the vernacular, which vernacular to my thinking he first exalted and brought into repute amongst us Italians no otherwise than did Homer his amongst the Greeks or Virgil his amongst the Latins. Before him, though it is supposed that it had already been practised some short space of years, yet was there none who by the numbering of the syllables and by the consonance of the terminal parts had the feeling or the courage to make it the instrument of any matter dealt with by the rules of art; or rather it was only in the lightest of love poems that they exercised themselves therein. But he showed by the effect that every lofty matter may be treated in it; and made our vernacular glorious above every other.

"But since his hour is assigned to every man, Dante when already in the middle or thereabout of his fifty-sixth year fell sick and in accordance with the Christian religion received every Sacrament of the Church humbly, and devoutly, and reconciled himself with God by contrition for everything, that, being but man, he had done against His pleasure; and in the month of September in the year of Christ one thousand three hundred and twenty-one, on the day whereon the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is celebrated by the Church, not without greatest grief on the part of the aforesaid Guido and generally all the other Ravennese citizens, he rendered up to his Creator his toil-worn spirit, the which I doubt not was received into the arms of his most noble Beatrice, with whom, in the sight of Him who is the supreme good, the miseries of this present life left behind, he now lives most joyously in that life the felicity of which expects no end.

"The magnanimous cavalier placed the dead body of Dante, adorned with poetic insignia, upon a funeral bier, and had it borne on the shoulders of his most distinguished citizens to the place of the Minor Friars in Ravenna, with such honour as he deemed worthy of such a corpse And here, public lamentations as it were having followed him so far, he had him placed in a stone chest, wherein he still lieth. And returning to the house in which Dante lately lived, according to the Ravennese custom he himself delivered an ornate and long discourse both in commendation of the profound knowledge and the virtue of the deceased, and in consolation of his friends whom he had left in bitterest grief. He purposed, had his estate and his life endured, to honour him with so choice a tomb that if never another merit of his had made him memorable to those to come, this tomb should have accomplished it.

"This laudable intent was in brief space of time made known to certain who in those days were most famous for poetry in Ravenna; whereon each one for himself, to show his own power and to bear witness to the goodwill he had to the dead poet, and to win the grace and love of the signore, who was known to have it at heart, made verses which, if placed as epitaph on the tomb that was to be, should with due praises teach posterity who lay therein. And these verses they sent to the glorious signore, who, by great guilt of Fortune, in short space of time lost his estate, and died at Bologna; wherefore the making of the tomb and the placing of the verses thereon were left undone. Now when these verses were shown to me long afterward, perceiving that they had never been put in their place, by reason of the chance already spoken of, and pondering on the present work that I am writing, how that it is not indeed a material tomb, but is none the less—as that was to have been—a perpetual preserver of his memory, I imagined that it would not be unfitting to add them to this work. But in as much as no more than the words of some one of them (for there were several) would have been cut upon the marble, so I held that only the words of one should be written here; wherefore on examining them all I judged that the most worthy for art and for matter were fourteen verses made by Messer Giovanni del Virgilio the Bolognese, a most illustrious and great poet of those days, and one who had been a most especial friend of Dante. And the verses are these hereafter written:

"'Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers,
Quod foveat claro philosophia sinu,
Gloria musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor,
Hic iacet, et fama pulsat utrumque polum,
Qui loca defunctis, gladiis regnumque gemellis,
Distribuit, laicis rhetoricisque modis.
Pascua Pieriis demum resonabat avenis,
Atropos heu letum livida rupit opus
Huic ingrata tulit tristem Florentia fructum,
Exilium, vati patria cruda suo.
Quem pia Guidonis gremio Ravenna Novelli
Gaudet honorati continuisse ducis.
Mille trecentenis ter septem Numinis annis,
Ad sua septembris idibus astra redit.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: The translation is Mr. Wicksteed's The Early Lives of Dante. He adds a translation of the verses "Theologic Dante, a stranger to no teaching that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom; glory of the Muses, author most acceptable to the commonalty, lieth here and smiteth either pole with his fame, who assigned their places to the dead, and their jurisdictions to the twin swords, in laic and rhetoric modes. And lastly, with Pierian pipe he was making the pasture lands resound, black Atropos, alas, broke off the work of joy. For him ungrateful Florence bore the dismal fruit of exile, harsh fatherland to her own bard. But Ravenna's piety rejoices to have gathered him into the bosom of Guido Novello, her illustrious chief. In one thousand three hundred and three times seven years of the Deity, he went back on September's Ides to his own stars.">[

So far Boccaccio. Though his account tells us much it certainly does not permit us to make many definite statements as to Dante's life in Ravenna. One of the first things, for instance, that any modern biographer would have noted with accuracy would have been the house in which Dante lived. Something definite, too, we might have expected as to his friends and correspondents, as to his occupations and habits. Of all this there is almost nothing. It will, however, especially be noted that Boccaccio speaks of Dante as "training many scholars in poetry especially in the vernacular." What can this mean?

It has been suggested and with some authority that Dante was not entirely dependent upon his host Guido Novello, that he was able to gain a livelihood, at least, by lectures either in his own house or in some public place, and that it is even probable that he occupied an official position in Ravenna of a very honourable sort, that he was, in fact, professor of Rhetoric in that city. There is no evidence to support such a theory. It is true that though we know the names of the professors of Grammar or Rhetoric in the very ancient schools of Ravenna, schools which date from the time of Theodosius the Great, we do not find the name of him who filled that chair during the time of Dante's sojourn in Ravenna. In 1268 Pasio della Noce was lecturing on Jurisprudence in Ravenna; in 1298 Ugo di Riccio was professor of Civil Law there; in 1304 Leone da Verona is teaching Grammar and Logic in the city. Then we hear no more till we come to the year 1333, when a certain Giovanni Giacomo del Bando is professor.[1] The mere absence of names—a silence which does not coincide in any way with Dante's advent or with Dante's death—is, certainly, not enough to allow us to assert the probability of the great poet's having filled the office of lecturer or professor of Civil Law in the school of Ravenna. It is true that Saviozzo da Siena tells us:

"Qui comincio a leggere Dante in pria
Retorica vulgare e molti aperti
Fece di sua Poetica armonia"

and that Manetti, an early biographer, seems to support the theory. But the best evidence, if evidence it can be called, which we have for this theory is to be found in a codex in the Laurentian Library, quoted by Bandini and cited by Dr. Ricci, which says: "It is commonly reported that Dante, being in Ravenna, studying and giving lectures as a doctor to his pupils upon various works, the schools became the resort of many learned men." This statement upon hearsay, however, does little more than confirm the definite assertion of Boccaccio that Dante "trained many scholars," not in civil law, but in "poetry, especially in the vernacular."

[Footnote 1: For a full discussion of all that may be known of Dante at the Poleata court see Dr. Ricci's large work, L'Ultimo Rifugio di Dante (1891). A charming book in English, Dante in Ravenna (1898), by Catherine Mary Phillimore, is to a great extent based upon Dr. Ricci's work. A valuable book that should be consulted is the more recent volume by P.H. Wicksteed and E.G. Gardner, Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio (1902).]

It is quite unproved then that Dante lectured in Ravenna as a professor of Civil Law. It might seem equally certain that he did lecture upon Poetry and the vulgar tongue, and it seems likely that we have the text of his lectures in the latter if not in the earlier part of the De Vulgari Eloquentia "in which in masterly and polished Latin he reproves all the vulgar dialects of Italy." Boccaccio tells us he composed this when he was "already nigh his death," and though modern criticism seems inclined to date its composition not later than 1306 the evidence of Boccaccio is not lightly to be set aside[1].

[Footnote 1: The first part of this work was certainly not written later than 1306 the second part may well have been later.]

Lonely as he doubtless was in Ravenna he was not alone there. With him it would seem was his daughter Beatrice, who became a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva, and his sons Pietro and Jacopo. The latter, though a lawyer and not in holy orders, held two benefices in Ravenna, but most of his time seems to have been spent in Verona where Jacopo, his brother, later held a canonry. And then there were his friends.

In his lectures upon Poetry one of his most eager pupils would seem to have been his best friend and host, Guido Novello, who evidently knew well at least those parts of the Divine Comedy, chiefly the Inferno be it noted, which deal with his ancestors, for he quotes one of the most famous of them—an unforgettable line spoken by his aunt Francesca da Rimini:

"Questi che mai da me non fia diviso."

in a sonnet of his own[2].

[Footnote 2: Cf. Ultimo Rifugio, p. 384, where the sonnet is given in full.]

After the lord Guido Novello, we must name the archbishop of Ravenna, Rainaldo Concorreggio, as among Dante's friends. It is possible that he had known Dante at the University of Bologna and he had been a chaplain of Boniface VIII. He was a brave man, learned in theology, law, and music, and devoted to his religion, an eager student, and he had composed a treatise which has come down to us upon Galla Placidia and her church.

And then there was Giotto who came to paint if not in S. Maria in Porto fuori, certainly in S. Giovanni Evangelista. He was Dante's dear friend and it was probably at the poet's suggestion he had been invited to Ravenna. We do not know whether these two men attended Dante's lectures. But the true audience there which came simply to hear was probably various, consisting of poets, notaries, and all sorts of men, some of whom were Dante's friends and companions. There was Ser Dino Perini, Ser Pietro di Messer Giardino—he was a notary—and Fiduccio dei Milotti, who walked with Dante in the Pineta. All these names have come down to us in the Latin eclogues written by Dante while in Ravenna to his friend Giovanni del Virgilio—del Virgilio because he could so well imitate Virgil.

These eclogues are full of shrewd and curious thought, a real correspondence, and they help us to see the men who surrounded the poet in Ravenna. They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an impression of the strength and keenness of Dante's powers of observation as many a passage in the Divine Comedy in which Ravenna and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great Guido of Montefeltro that Dante speaks of Romagna in the Inferno. Feeble and anaemic though the great lines become in any translation, even so all their virtue is not lost:

"Never was thy Romagna without war
In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now;
But open war there left I none. The state
Ravenna hath maintained this many a year
Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle[1] broods,
And in his broad circumference of plume
O'ershadows Cervia[2]. The green talons[3] grasp
The land, that stood e'erwhile the proof so long
And piled in bloody heap the host of France.
The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young[4]
That tore Montagna[5] in their wrath still make
Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs,
Lamone's[6] city and Santerno's[7] range
Under the lion of the snowy lair[8],
Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides
Or ever summer yields to winter's frost.
And she whose flank is washed of Savio's wave[9]
As 'twixt the level and the steep she lies,
Lives so 'twixt tyrant power and liberty."

[Footnote 1: The coat of the Polenta.]

[Footnote 2: Cervia, the least secure of the Polenta possessions.]

[Footnote 3: The green lion of the Ordelaffi of Forli.]

[Footnote 4: Malatesta and Malatestino, lords of Rimini, deriving from
Verrucchio, a castle in the hills.]

[Footnote 5: The Malatesta were Guelfs, Montagna de' Parcitati, whom they murdered, was the leader of the Ghibelline party in Rimini.]

[Footnote 6: Faenza.]

[Footnote 7: Imola.]

[Footnote 8: Maghinardo Pagano, whose arms were a blue lion in a white field.]

[Footnote 9: Cesena.]

All Romagna with its untamable fierceness and confusion lies in these lines which, as Dante wrote them, seem as unalterable as those in which the creation of the world is described.

Nor is Dante forgetful of the great destiny that had been Ravenna's.
In the sixth canto of the Paradiso it is Justinian himself, "Cesare
fui e son Giustiniano" who recounts to Dante the victories of the
Roman eagle:

"When from Ravenna it came forth and leap'd
The Rubicon,"

or when

"with Belisarius Heaven's high hand was linked,"

or when

"The Lombard tooth with fang impure
Did gore the bosom of the Holy Church
Under its wings, victorious, Charlemagne
Sped to her rescue."

Nor is Dante forgetful of Ravenna's other claims to glory. In the seventh heaven, which is the planet Saturn, led by Beatrice, he finds S. Romualdo, and speaks of S. Peter Damiano, and blessed Peter Il Peccatore, the founder of the church of S. Maria in Porto fuori, two of them of the Onesti house of Ravenna.

"In that place was I Peter Damiano
And Peter the sinner dwelt in the house
Of our blest Lady on the Adriatic shore."

Of the earlier Podesta, too, he is not unmindful:

"Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro,…
Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou seest me weep
When I recall those once loved names …
With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's,
Each race disinherited."

With the pitiful story of Francesca da Polenta we have seen how he dealt and how he spoke of Guido Vecchio. These people live because of him, and Ravenna in the Middle Age still holds our interest and our love because he dwelt there and she harboured him.

It was in her service, too, he met his death as we have seen, and in her church of the Friars Minor that he was laid to rest by Guido Novello.

Nine months later the lord of Ravenna received the first complete copy of the Divina Commedia, made by Jacopo Alighieri from his father's autograph. A very curious incident is related by Boccaccio in connection with this. It was Dante's custom, Boccaccio tell us, "whenever he had done six or eight cantos, more or less, to send them from whatever place he was in before any other had seen them to Messer Cane della Scala, whom he held in reverence above all other men; and when he had seen them, Dante gave access to them to whoso desired. And having sent to him in this fashion all save the last thirteen cantos, which he had finished, but had not yet sent him, it came to pass that, without bearing it in his mind that he was abandoning them, he died. And when they who were left behind, children and disciples, had searched many times, in the course of many months, amongst all his papers, if haply he had composed a conclusion to his work, and could by no means find the remaining cantos; and when every admirer of his in general was enraged that God had not at least lent him to the world so long that he might have had opportunity to finish what little remained of his work; they had abandoned further search in despair since they could by no means find them.

[Illustration: DANTE'S TOMB]

"So Jacopo and Piero, sons of Dante, both of them poets in rhyme, moved thereto by certain of their friends, had taken it into their minds to attempt to supplement the parental work, as far as in them lay, that it might not remain imperfect, when to Jacopo, who was far more zealous than the other in this work, there appeared a wondrous vision, which not only checked his foolish presumption but showed him where were the thirteen cantos which were wanting to this Divine Comedy and which they had not known where to find. A worthy man of Ravenna whose name was Piero Giardino, long time a disciple of Dante's, related how, when eight months had passed after the death of his master, the aforesaid Jacopo came to him one night near to the hour that we call matins, and told him that that same night a little before that hour he, in his sleep, had seen his father, Dante, approach him, clad in whitest garment, and his face shining with an unwonted light; whom he seemed to ask if he were yet living, and to hear in reply that he was, but in the true life, not in ours. Whereon he seemed further to ask him if he had finished his work or ever he passed to that true life; and if he had finished it, where was the missing part, which they had never been able to find. To this he seemed to hear again in answer, 'Yea! I finished it.' Whereon it seemed that he took him by the hand and led him to that chamber where he was wont to sleep when he was living in this life; and touching a certain spot said, 'Here is that which ye so long have sought.' And no sooner was uttered that word than it seemed that both Dante and sleep departed from him at the same moment. Wherefore he averred that he could not hold but come and signify what he had seen, that they might go together and search in the place indicated to him, which he held most perfectly stamped in his memory, to see whether a true spirit or a false delusion had shown it him. Wherefore since a great piece of the night still remained, they departed together and went to the place indicated, and there found a mat fixed to the wall, which they lightly raised and found a recess in the wall which neither of them had ever seen, nor knew that it was there; and there they found certain writings all mouldy with the damp of the wall and ready to rot had they stayed there much longer; and when they had carefully removed the mould and read, they saw that they contained the thirteen cantos so long sought by them. Wherefore, in great joy, they copied them out, and after the author's wont sent them first to Messer Cane and then joined them on, as was meet, to the imperfect work. In such a manner did the work of so many years see its completion."

As Boccaccio tells us, Guido Novello had scarce buried Dante in that temporary tomb in the church of the Friars Minor when he lost his lordship. On April 1, 1322, he was elected captain of the people in Bologna, and when he was about to return to Ravenna he suddenly heard that the archbishop had been murdered and that the city was in the hands of his enemies. Do what he would he never returned to his own city, and thus his intentions with regard to the tomb of the poet were never carried out. The noble sepulchre which Guido had planned was not built and the body of Dante reposed in the ancient sarcophagus in which it had been first placed. There it remained when Boccaccio came to Ravenna, probably in 1346 and certainly in 1350, as the bearer of a gift from the Or San Michele Society to Beatrice di Dante, then a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva.

Boccaccio, it will be remembered, had in his life of Dante bitterly upbraided Florence for her treatment of her greatest son, and to his blame had added a prophecy that she would soon repent of her shameful ingratitude and would envy Ravenna "the body of him whose works have held the admiration of the whole world." This prophecy fulfilled itself many times and first in 1396. In that year, upon December 22, Florence made the first of her many demands for the body of Dante, which she now wished to bury in S. Maria del Fiore. The demand, as Boccaccio had foreseen, was refused. It was repeated in 1429 and again refused. By 1476, when her next attempt was made, Ravenna had passed into the power of the Venetian Republic. It was therefore to Venice that Florence now turned through the Venetian ambassador, who is said to have been none other than Bernardo Bembo.

Bembo's request on behalf of Florence was, of course, a failure, but he seems to have himself repaired the tomb and to have placed upon it an epitaph.

"Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas
Squallenti nulli cognite pene situ.
At nunc marmoreo subnixus conderis arcu
Omnibus et cultu splendidiore nites
Nimirum Bembus musis incensus ethruscis
Hoc tibi quem in primis hoc coluere dedit.

Ann Sal. mcccclxxxiii. vi. Kal. Jvn.
Bernardus Bemb. Praet. aere suo Posuit."

His work of reparation and of adornment was carried out by Pietro Lombardo who was already at work in Ravenna for the Venetian republic, the sculptured effigy of Dante in relief being also from his hand.

But Florence was by no means at the end of her resources. In 1509 Ravenna had passed into the hands of the pope. In 1519 Leo X., a Medici, being on the throne of Peter, the Accademia Medicea of Florence petitioned the pope (among the signatories of the petition was Michelangelo, who offered to "make a worthy sepulchre for the divine poet in an honoured place" in Florence), to be allowed to carry away the bones of Dante from Ravenna to the City of Flowers. The pope gave the Florentine envoys the permission they required as was expected. They proceeded to Ravenna and opened the sarcophagus; but when they lifted the lid, they found it empty, save for "a fragment of bone and a few withered leaves of the laurel which had adorned the poet's head." From that time till our own day the resting place of Dante's bones has been a complete mystery.

It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an entrance into the Piazza, as we see it. The interior of the tomb was, however, left in some confusion so that the papal legate determined himself to repair it. In this he met with much opposition from the friars who claimed, as of old, jurisdiction over the sepulchre. Nevertheless he completed the work, and in 1692 placed the following upon the tomb:

Exulem a Florentia Dantem Liberalissime
Excepit Ravenna.
Vivo fruens Mortuum colens
Magnis cineribus licet in parvo magnifici parentarunt
Polentani Principes erigendo
Bembus Praetor Luculentissime extruendo
Praetiosum Musis et Apollini Mausoleum
Quod injuria temporum pene squallens
E. mo Dominico Maria Cursio Legato
Joanne Salviato Prolegato
Magni civis cineres Patriae reconciliare
Cultus perpetuitate curantibus
S. P. Q. R.
Jure Ac Aere suo
Tanquam Thesaurum suum munivit
Instauravit ornavit
A.D. MDCXCII.

Outside the tomb he placed his coat-of-arms, and on either side that of the legate of the province and that of the Franciscan Order. In 1760 the third restoration was undertaken and the tomb assumed the form we now see and was given yet another inscription:

Danti Aleghiero
Poetae sui temporis primo
Restitutori
Politioris humanitatis
Guido et Hostasius Polentiani
clienti et hospiti peregre defuncto
monumentum fecerunt
Bernardus Bembus Praetor Venet. Ravenn.
Pro meritis eius ornatu excoluit.
Aloysius Valentius Gonzaga Card.
Leg. prov. Aemil.
Superiorum Temporum negligentia corruptum
Operibus ampliatis
Munificentia sua restituendum
curavit
Anno M DCC LXXX.

At the same time the tomb was opened again and was found to be empty. In spite of this fact in 1864 the municipal authorities in Florence wrote to Ravenna again demanding the body of the poet, only to be again refused. This, however, was the sixth centenary of Dante's birth and the sarcophagus was again to be opened to "verify the remains." The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this—little more than the removal of a few stones—the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the box was found this inscription:

Dantis ossa
Denuper revisa die 3 Junu
1677

Dantis ossa
A me Fre Antonio Santi
hic posita
Ano 1677 die 18 Octobris

Medical experts were summoned. They made, Miss Phillimore tells us, "a careful examination of the bones, and proceeded to reconstruct the skeleton…. The stature answered to that of the poet as nearly as the measurement of a skeleton can represent the living form, and the skull found in the chest corresponded exactly with the mask taken from Dante's face immediately after his death, which was brought from Florence for the purpose of making this comparison."

What seems to have happened has been made clear for us by Dr. Ricci. Between 1483, when Bembo reconstructed the tomb, and 1520, when the Florentines again claimed the body, and for the first time with a certainty of success, the body of Dante disappeared. It seems that in 1520 the Franciscans entered the mausoleum, abstracted the body, and hid it to save it for Ravenna. In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance to the Braccioforte chapel had been; to be discovered by chance in 1865.

It is curious that even as the last cantos of the Divine Comedy were discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery of the bones of Dante.

"The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo … This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who it was, replied, 'I am Dante.' The sacristan died in May 1865, a few days before the discovery of the bones on the 27th of that month. Upon June 26, 1865, the bones of Dante were replaced in their original sarcophagus, ornamented by Pietro Lombardi, after having lain in state for three days, during which thousands from all over Italy passed before them. There it is to be hoped they will remain.

[Illustration: CAMPANILE OF S. FRANCESCO]