Epistle VIII.—The letter to the Italian Cardinals, which is mentioned by Villani, and echoed by Petrarch in his canzone on Rome (“Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi”), is found only in Boccaccio’s autograph manuscript. It was written shortly after the death of Clement V. (April 20, 1314), when the cardinals were assembled in conclave at Carpentras; lamenting the desolation of the sacred city, it exhorts them, “for the bride of Christ, for the seat of the bride, which is Rome, for our Italy, and, to speak more fully, for the whole estate of those on pilgrimage on earth,” to restore the Apostolic See to its consecrated place. It is a noble protest of a devout and learned layman against a corrupt and ignorant clergy, of a Catholic and an Italian patriot against the papal desertion of Rome, in which Dante stands forth as the new Jeremiah, renewing for the sacred city of Christendom the lamentation of his Hebrew predecessor for Jerusalem. The letter presents striking analogies with the canto of the simonist popes (Inf. xix.), but is more moderate in tone, as the poet is here less denouncing than attempting to convert the cardinals to his point of view. There is extant a letter to the French King from Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (whom Dante admonishes by name in the epistle) with passages of a somewhat similar kind; it is tempting to suppose that the cardinal had actually received the exhortation and caught fire from the burning words of his fellow Italian.
Epistle IX.—The occasion of the letter refusing the amnesty has been already considered (chap. i.). It was probably written in the latter part of May 1315. In the Boccaccian autograph (in which alone it is found) it has no title; the traditional Amico florentino, “to a Florentine friend,” is a later addition. It is practically the only example of the poet’s personal correspondence that has been preserved. Barbi has thrown grave doubts upon the identification of the person to whom the letter is addressed with Teruccio di Manetto Donati, the brother of Dante’s wife; the nephew mentioned may perhaps be Andrea Poggi (cf. chap. i.) or, more probably, Niccolò Donati, the son of Gemma’s brother Foresino. It is here that Dante calls himself the preacher of justice, vir praedicans iustitiam, a claim which is the key of the Commedia and may be traced from the canzone of the “Tre donne.” Nor is it without significance that the closing words of the letter, nec panis deficiet, “nor will bread fail me,” echo the same chapter of Isaiah (li. 14) which inspired the canzone in which Dante holds his exile as an honour.
Epistle X.—The Epistle to Can Grande stands apart from the others. Although eight MSS. are now known, none are earlier than the fifteenth century, and the two earliest contain no more than the opening sections. Some of the early commentators—Pietro Alighieri, Fra Guido da Pisa, and Boccaccio—were evidently acquainted with it; it was first expressly quoted by Filippo Villani in 1391, and published first in 1700, before any of Dante’s letters had seen the light, excepting the unsatisfactory Italian version of the Epistle to Henry of Luxemburg. If genuine, and its authenticity though much disputed seems now almost certain, it was probably written in 1318 or early in 1319, apparently before the first Eclogue.
Beginning with language of enthusiastic praise and grateful friendship, which recalls analogous passages in Canto xvii., the poet prepares to pay back the benefits he has received with the dedication of the Paradiso. So far (1-4), the epistolary form has been maintained, and this is the only portion of the letter found in the earlier MSS.; but now the writer assumes the office of a lecturer, and, with a quotation from the Metaphysics of Aristotle, proceeds to give an introduction to the Commedia and a commentary upon the first canto of the third cantica. He distinguishes the literal and allegorical meanings, defines the title of the whole (“The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by birth, not by character”) and of the part, and explains the difference between comedy and tragedy from a somewhat different point of view from that of the De Vulgari Eloquentia (ii. 4). The subject of the Paradiso, in the literal sense, is the state of the blessed after death; in the allegorical sense, man according as by meriting he is subject to Justice rewarding. “The end of the whole and of the part is to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to lead them to the state of felicity” (Epist. x. 15). Dante emphasises the ethical aspect of the poem: “The whole as well as the part was conceived, not for speculation, but with a practical object” (x. 16). Then follows a minute scholastic and mystical interpretation of the opening lines of the first canto of the Paradiso in the literal sense, closing in an eloquent and very beautiful summary of the ascent through the spheres of Paradise to find true beatitude in the vision of the Divine Essence. Throughout this part of the letter Dante, when touching upon the details of his vision, always speaks of himself in the third person, evidently following the example of St. Paul in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He unmistakably implies that he has actually been the recipient of some personal spiritual experience, which he is unable adequately to relate. That passionate self-reproach, which sounds in so many passages of the Divina Commedia, makes itself heard here too. If the invidious do not believe in the power of the human intellect so to transcend the measure of humanity, let them read the examples cited from Scripture and the mystical treatises of Richard of St. Victor, Bernard, Augustine. But, if the unworthiness of the speaker makes them question such an elevation, let them see in Daniel how Nebuchodonosor by divine inspiration had a vision against sinners: “For He who ‘maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,’ sometimes in mercy for their conversion, sometimes in wrath for their punishment, reveals His glory, in greater or less measure, as He wills, to those who live never so evily” (Epist. x. 28). This section of the letter, for the student of mystical experience, is of the highest significance.
4. The “Eclogae”
Belonging, like the tenth Epistle, to that closing period of Dante’s life when he was engaged on the Paradiso, are two delightful pastoral poems in Latin hexameters. Here, too, we owe much to the piety of Boccaccio. The earliest and most authoritative of the five manuscripts is again in his handwriting, in the Zibaldone Boccaccesco (where the poems are accompanied by explanatory notes), in the Laurentian Library.
Giovanni del Virgilio, a young lecturer and a poet, had written to Dante from Bologna a letter in Latin verse, expressing his profound admiration for the singer of the Commedia, but respectfully remonstrating with him for writing in Italian, and suggesting some stirring contemporary subjects as worthy matters for his muse: the death of Henry VII., the battle of Montecatini, a victory of Can Grande over the Paduans, the struggle by sea and land between King Robert of Naples and the Visconti for the possession of Genoa. The reference to this last event shows that the letter cannot have been written before July 1318, while a passage towards the close clearly indicates the early part of the following year. It further contains a pressing invitation to come and take the laurel crown at Bologna, or, at least, to answer the letter, “if it vex thee not, to have read first the feeble numbers which the rash goose cackles to the clear-voiced swan.”
Dante’s first Eclogue is the answer. Adopting the pastoral style, he himself and his companion Dino Perini (whom Boccaccio afterwards knew) appear as shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus, discussing the invitation from Mopsus. It was probably written in the spring or early summer of 1319. In a medley of generous praise and kindly banter, Dante declines to visit Bologna, “that knows not the gods,” and still hopes to receive the poet’s crown at Florence. When the Paradiso is finished, then will it be time to think of ivy and laurel; and in the meanwhile, to convert Mopsus from his errors with respect to vernacular poetry, he will send him ten measures of milk fresh from the best-loved ewe of all his flock—ten cantos from the Paradiso, which evidently are not yet published, since the sheep is yet unmilked.
Mopsus in his answer expresses the intense admiration with which he and his fellow Arcadians have heard this song, and adopts the same style. Condoling with Dante on his unjust exile, he foresees his return home and reunion with Phyllis, who may perhaps be Gemma or (as Carducci suggested) an impersonification of Florence. But, in the meanwhile, pastoral pleasures and an enthusiastic welcome await him at Bologna, if Iolas (Guido da Polenta) will let him go. A reference to “Phrygian Muso” enables us to fix approximately the date; towards the beginning of September, 1319, Albertino Mussato, the Paduan poet and patriot, was at Bologna, endeavouring to get aid from the Guelf communes for his native city against Can Grande. Dante could hardly have with consistency accepted the invitation.
The writer of the notes on the Laurentian manuscript, whether Boccaccio himself or another, commenting upon a poem sent by Giovanni del Virgilio to Albertino Mussato, states that Dante delayed a year before answering this Eclogue, and that his reply was forwarded after his death by his son. His second Eclogue is in narrative form, and professes to be no more than the report by the writer of a conversation between Dante and his friends which is overheard by Guido da Polenta. A new associate of the poet’s last days is introduced to us: the shepherd Alphesiboeus, who is identified with Fiducio de’ Milotti of Certaldo, a distinguished physician resident at Ravenna. The tone is the same as that of the other Eclogue. Ravenna becomes the pastures of Pelorus, while Bologna is the Cyclops’ cave, to which Dante still refuses to go, for fear of Polyphemus, whose atrocities in the past are recorded.[26] And the crown expected now is, perhaps, no longer one which any earthly city can give: “For this illustrious head already the Pruner is hastening to award an everlasting garland.”