Early Commentators.—No sooner had Dante passed away than his apotheosis began with the epitaph by Giovanni del Virgilio:
Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers
—“Dante, the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge,” and the canzone on his death by Cino da Pistoia:
Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte
—“Up the side, Love, of the lofty mountain.” Boccaccio tells us that it was Dante’s custom to send the Divina Commedia by instalments to Can Grande at Verona, and he adds a striking story of how, eight months after his death, the poet appeared in a vision, “clad in whitest garments and his face shining with an unwonted light,” to his son Jacopo, to reveal to the world where the manuscript of the last thirteen cantos of the Paradiso was hidden. It is a fact that in April or May, 1322, Jacopo presented a complete copy of the sacred poem to Guido da Polenta, who was then Captain of the People at Bologna. Straightway the work of copyists and commentators began, above all at Florence and Bologna. The earliest dated MSS. are the Codice Landiano at Piacenza and the Codice Trivulziano at Milan (the latter of Florentine origin), dated 1336 and 1337 respectively. Of commentaries, the first two are those on the Inferno, written in the twenties of the century, by Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri, in Italian, and Ser Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, chancellor of the Commune of Bologna, in Latin. The earliest extant commentators on the complete poem are the Bolognese Jacopo della Lana and the Florentine author of the Ottimo Commento, probably Andrea Lancia; the former wrote shortly before and the latter shortly after 1330. Both wrote in Italian. Pietro Alighieri composed a Latin commentary on his father’s work about 1340, and revised it, with additions, some years later. An important Latin commentary on the Inferno, by the Carmelite Guido da Pisa, dates from the forties of the century. And, before the fourteenth century closed, a new epoch in Dante scholarship was inaugurated by the lectures and commentaries of Giovanni Boccaccio at Florence (1373), Benvenuto da Imola at Bologna (1375-80), and Francesco da Buti at Pisa (1380-90). Of all these earlier commentators, Benvenuto da Imola is by far the greatest; and he unites mediaeval Dantology with England’s cult of the divine poet in the first complete edition of his commentary which was given to the world by Lacaita and William Warren Vernon.
In his proem, Ser Graziolo, or his contemporary translator, strikes the keynote of all reverent criticism of the Divina Commedia, and defines the attitude in which the divine poet and his works should be approached:
“Although the unsearchable Providence of God hath made many men blessed with prudence and virtue, yet before all hath it put Dante Alighieri, a man of noble and profound wisdom, true fosterling of philosophy and lofty poet, the author of this marvellous, singular, and most sapient work. It hath made him a shining light of spiritual felicity and of knowledge to the people and cities of the world, in order that every science, whether of heavenly or of earthly things, should be amply gathered up in this public and famous champion of prudence, and through him be made manifest to the desires of men in witness of the Divine Wisdom; so that, by the new sweetness and universal matter of his song, he should draw the souls of his hearers to self-knowledge, and that, raised above earthly desires, they should come to know not only the beauties of this great author, but should attain to still higher grades of knowledge. To him can be applied the text in Ecclesiasticus: ‘The great Lord will fill him with the spirit of understanding, and he will pour forth the words of his wisdom as showers.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] V. N. xxx. Cf. Moore, Studies in Dante, ii. pp. 123, 124. Del Lungo and others calculate the date as June 19th.
[2] Two daughters are mentioned: Antonia and Beatrice. It is probable that they are one and the same person, Antonia being the name in the world of the daughter who became a nun at Ravenna as “Suora Beatrice.” A recent discovery has revealed the existence of a Giovanni di Dante Alighieri, “Johannes filius Dantis Alagherii de Florentia,” at Lucca in October 1308, who would then have been at least fourteen years old. But it seems more probable that the “Dante Alighieri” in question is not the poet. See M. Barbi, Un altro figlio di Dante? in Studi danteschi, v. (Florence, 1922).