There are passages in the Convivio which appear to be contradicted in the Divina Commedia. One of the most curious is the treatment of Guido da Montefeltro, who, in Conv. iv. 28, is “our most noble Italian,” and a type of the noble soul returning to God in the last stage of life, whereas, in the Inferno (Canto xxvii.), he is found in the torturing flames of the evil counsellors. Several opinions are directly or indirectly withdrawn in the Paradiso; but these are to be rather regarded as mistakes which, in the light of subsequent knowledge, Dante desired to rectify or repudiate; such as the theory of the shadow on the moon being caused by rarity and density, based upon Averroës, and a peculiar arrangement of the celestial hierarchies, derived from the Moralia of St. Gregory the Great. And, in the Purgatorio, the poet discards his “dread of infamy,” when he dares not meet Beatrice’s gaze in the Garden of Eden; he casts aside the allegorical veil he had tried to draw over a portion of the past, and makes the full confession which we find in Cantos xxx. and xxxi. In the fourth treatise, an erroneous sentence attributed to Frederick II. (in reality a mutilated version of the definition of nobility given by Aristotle in the Politics) leads Dante to examine the limits and foundation of the imperial authority, the divine origin of Rome and the universal dominion of the Roman people, the relation of philosophy to government; a theme which he will work out more fully and scientifically in the Monarchia. The result is two singularly beautiful chapters (iv.-v.); a prose hymn to Rome, an idealised history of the city and her empire. It is the first indication of the poet’s conversion from the narrower political creed of the Florentine citizen to the ideal imperialism which inspires his later works.
It has sometimes been held that portions of the Convivio were written before exile. Nevertheless, while two of the canzoni were composed before 1300, it seems most probable that the prose commentaries took their present shape between Dante’s breaking with his fellow-exiles and the advent of Henry VII. A passage concerning Frederick II., “the last emperor of the Romans with respect to the present time, although Rudolph and Adolph and Albert were elected after his death and that of his descendants” (Conv. iv. 3), shows that the fourth treatise was written before the election of Henry VII., in November 1308; while a reference to Gherardo da Cammino, lord of Treviso (iv. 14), seems to have been written after his death in March 1306. From the mention of Dante’s wanderings in exile through so many regions of Italy (i. 3), it has sometimes been argued that the first is later than the subsequent treatises. It is tempting to associate the breaking off the work with Boccaccio’s story of the recovery of the beginning of the Inferno. Be that as it may, the advent of the new Caesar, Dante’s own return for a while to political activity, probably interrupted his life of study; and, when the storm passed away and left the poet disillusioned, his ideals had changed, another world lay open to his gaze, and the Convivio was finally abandoned.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d’alcuna: dicer (dire) and detta, have here (as elsewhere in Dante) the sense of artistic utterance, and more particularly composition in poetry, whether in Latin or the vernacular. Cf. V. N. xxv.
[11] Livi has shown that the first documentary evidence of the existence of the Vita Nuova as a book is found at Bologna in June 1306.
[12] The Sexcentenary Dante admits as authentic one canzone not included in this series: Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce (Rime lxviii., O. canz. xvi.*); which is evidently an early composition.
[13] Cf. Rime xlviii., lvi., lxiii. and the later xcix.; O. son. xlviii.*, ball. viii., son. I.*, son. xxxvii.*
[14] Note especially Rime lix., lxvi.; O. sonnets lv., xxxviii*.
[15] To this group I would assign the sonnet, Chi guarderà già mai sanza paura, and the ballata, I’ mi son pargoletta bella e nova, without attaching any special significance to the fact that “pargoletta” (“maiden” or “young girl”) occurs also in the canzone, Io son venuto al punto de la rota, and in Beatrice’s rebuke, Purg. xxxi. 59.
[16] Cf. G. Livi, Dante suoi primi cultori sua gente in Bologna, p. 24.