"Wherefore I moved right on towards my guide,
The devils marshalling themselves before,
For much I fear'd lest they should not keep faith:
So saw I once Caprona's garrison
Come trembling forth, upon capitulation,
To find themselves among so many foes.
I crouch'd with my whole frame beside my master,
Nor could I turn mine eyes away from watching
Their physiognomy, which was not good."[9]
During this active period of his citizenship, Dante is stated to have been frequently employed on important embassies; and, among others, to the kings of Naples, Hungary, and France; in all of which his eloquence and address enabled him to acquit himself with honour and advantage to his country: but as there is no allusion in any of his works, even to the most distinguished of these, it is very questionable whether the traditions are not, in many cases, wholly unwarranted; and probably founded upon misapprehension of the verbiage and bombast of Boccaccio, in his account of the political, philosophical, and literary labours of his hero.
In the year 1300, Dante was chosen, by the suffrages of the people, chief prior of his native city; and from that era of his arrival at the highest honour to which his ambition could aspire, he himself dated all the miseries which (like the file of evil spirits above mentioned) accompanied him thenceforward to the end of his life. In one of his epistles, quoted by Aretino, he says,—"All my calamities had their origin and occasion in my unhappy priorship, of which, though I might not for my wisdom have been worthy, yet on the ground of age and fidelity was I not unworthy; ten years having elapsed since the battle of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline party was routed and nearly exterminated; wherein, also, I proved myself no novice in arms, but experienced great perils in the various fortunes of the fight, and the highest gratification in the issue of it." Since that triumph, the Guelfs had maintained undisputed predominance in Tuscany; but the citizens of Florence split into two minor factions as bitterly opposed to each other as the Guelfs and Ghibellines.
The following circumstance (considerably varied in particulars by different narrators) has been mentioned as the origin of this schism:—Two branches of the family of Cancellieri divided the patronage of Pistoia, which was then subject to Florence, between them. The heads of these were Gulielmo and Bertaccio. In playing at snow-balls, a son of the first happened to give the son of the second a black eye. Gulielmo, knowing the savage disposition of his kinsman, immediately sent his son to offer submission for the unlucky hit. Bertaccio, eager to avail himself of a pretext for quarrelling with the rival section of his house, seized the boy, and chopped off the hand which flung the snowball, drily observing, that blows could only be compensated by blows—not with words. Another version of the story is, that the young gentlemen, quarrelling over some game, drew their swords, when one wounded the other in the face; in retribution for which, Foccacio, brother to the latter, cut off his offending cousin's hand. The father of the mutilated lad immediately called upon his friends to avenge the inhuman outrage; Bertaccio's dependants not less promptly armed themselves to maintain his cause; and a civil war was ready to break out in the heart of the city. An ancestor of the Cancellieri family having married a lady named Bianchi, in honour of her one of the parties took the denomination of Bianchi (whites), when the other, in defiance, assumed the reverse, and styled themselves Neri (blacks).
This happened during the priorship of Dante, who, with the approbation of his colleagues, summoned the leaders of the antagonist factions to repair to Florence, to prevent that extremity of violence with which they threatened not Pistoia only, but the whole commonwealth. This, as Leonardo Bruni observes, was importing the plague to the capital, instead of taking means to repress it upon the spot where it had already appeared. For it so fell out, that Florence itself was principally under the influence of two great families,—the Cerchi and the Donati,—habitually jealous of one another, and each watching for opportunity to obtain the ascendancy. When, therefore, the hostages for preserving the peace of Pistoia arrived, the Bianchi were hospitably entertained by the Cerchi, and the Neri by the Donati; the natural consequence of which was, that the people of Florence were far more annoyed by the acquisition, than those of the neighbouring city were benefited by the riddance of so troublesome a crew. What these incendiary spirits had been doing in a small place, on a small scale, they forthwith began to do on a large scale, in a large place. Jealousies, fears, and antipathies were easily awakened among the families with which the partisans respectively associated. From these, through every rank of citizens down to the lowest, the contagion spread; first seizing the youth, who were sanguine and restless, but soon infecting persons of all ages; till every man who had a mind or an arm to influence or to act, enlisted himself with one side or the other. In the course of a few months, from whisperings the discontents rose to clamours, from words to blows, and from feuds in private dwellings to battles in the streets; so that not the metropolis only, but the whole territory, became involved in unnatural contention.
While this was in process, the heads of the Neri held a meeting by night in the church of the Holy Trinity, at which a plan was suggested to induce pope Boniface VIII. to constitute Charles of Valois, (who was brother to Philip the Fair, king of France, and then commanded an army under his holiness against the emperor,) mediator of differences and reformer-general of abuses in the state. The Bianchi, having received information of this clandestine assembly, and the unpatriotic project which had been devised at it, took grievous umbrage, and went in a body, with arms in their hands, to the chief prior, with whom they remonstrated sharply upon what they deemed a privy conspiracy hatched for the purpose of expelling themselves and their friends from the city; at the same time demanding summary punishment on the offenders. The Neri, alarmed in their turn, flew likewise to arms, and assailed the prior with the same complaint and demand reversed,—namely, that their adversaries had plotted to drive them (the Neri) into exile under false pretences; and requiring that they (the Bianchi) should be sent into banishment, to preserve the public tranquillity.
The danger was imminent, and prompt decision to avert it indispensable. The prior and magistrates, therefore, by the advice of Dante their chief, who was the Cicero in this double conspiracy, though neither so politic nor so fortunate as his eloquent archetype, appealed to the people at large to support the executive government; and, having conciliated their favour, banished the principal instigators of tumult on both sides, including Corso Donati (Dante's wife's kinsman) of the Neri party, who, with his accomplices, was confined in the castle of Pieve in Perugia; while Guido Cavalcanti (Dante's own particular friend) and others of the Bianchi faction were sent to Serrazana.
This disturbance, and the severe remedy necessary to be adopted, painfully tried the best feelings of Dante, who seems to have acted on truly independent principles in the affair, though suspected at the time of favouring the Bianchi. That, indeed, was probable; for though as chief magistrate he knew no man by his colours, yet, being a genuine Florentine,—and such he remained when Florence had banished and proscribed him,—he could not but he opposed to so preposterous a scheme as that of bringing in a stranger to lord it over his native city, under pretence of assuaging the animosities of malecontents, who cared for nothing but their own personal, family, or party aggrandisement, at the expense of the common weal.
This apparent impartiality was openly arraigned, when the Bianchi exiles were permitted to come back after a short absence, while the Neri remained under proscription. Dante vindicated himself by saying, that he had attached himself to neither party; that in condemning the heads of both he had acted solely for the public safety; and at home had used his utmost endeavours to reconcile the adverse families, who had implicated all their fellow-citizens in their feuds. With respect to the return of the Bianchi, he denied that it had been allowed on his authority, his priorate having expired before that event took place; and, moreover, that their release had been rendered necessary by the premature death of Guido Cavalcanti, who had been killed by the pestilent air of Serrazana. The pope, however, eagerly availed himself of the opportunity as a plea for sending Charles of Valois to Florence, to restore tranquillity by conciliation. That prince accordingly entered the city in triumph at the head of his troops, with a solemn assurance that liberty, property, and personal safety should in no instance be violated. In consequence of this he was well received by the people; but he had no sooner seated himself in influence than he obtained the recall of the Neri, who were his partisans. Then, having secured his authority by their presence, he threw off the mask, and began to play the part of dictator within the walls, as well as throughout the adjacent territory, by causing 600 of the principal men of the Bianchi to be driven forth into exile.
At the time of this expatriation of his friends, Dante was absent, having undertaken an embassy to Rome to solicit the good offices of the pope towards pacifying his fellow-citizens without foreign interference. Boccaccio records a singular specimen at once of his self-confidence, and his disparagement of others, which, if true, betrays the most unamiable feature of his character, and throws additional light on a circumstance not otherwise well accounted for,—why, with all his admirable qualities, Dante was unhappy in domestic life, and in public life made so many and such inveterate enemies.—When his associates in the government proposed this embassy to him, he haughtily enquired,—"If I go, who will stay? If I stay, who will go?" It was fortunate for the poet that his holiness and himself, on this occasion, were unconsciously playing at cross purposes, though he was beaten in the game,—the very intervention which he had gone to deprecate taking place whilst he was on the journey. Had he been at home, it is not improbable that death, rather than banishment with the Bianchi, would have been his lot, from the exasperation of the Neri against him individually, whom they regarded as the chief agent in their disgrace and exile, as well as the patron of their rivals. It is remarkable that the pretext on which the failing party were now expelled was, that they had secretly intrigued with Pietro Ferranti, the confidant of Charles of Valois, to give him the castle of Prato, on condition that he prevailed upon his master to allow them the ascendancy under him in Florence. Charles himself countenanced the accusation, and affected high displeasure at the insulting offer, as derogatory to his immaculate purity; though the purport of it was no other than to concede to him the express object of his ambition, if he would grant to the Bianchi faction what he did grant to the perfidious Neri. A document was long preserved as the genuine letter to Ferranti, with the seals and signatures of the principal Bianchi attached, containing the traitorous proposal; but Leonardo Aretino, who had himself seen it in the public archives, declares his perfect conviction that it was a forgery.