Of participation in such baseness (had his partisans been really guilty of it), Dante must stand clearly acquitted by every one who takes his character from the matter-of-fact statements, perverted as they are, of his adversaries themselves, much more from the unimpeachable evidence of his own writings;—open, undaunted, high-spirited, and generous as a friend, he was not less violent, acrimonious, and undisguisedly vindictive as an enemy. So exasperated, however, were the Neri against him, that they demolished his dwelling, confiscated his property, and decreed a fine of 8000 lire against him, with banishment for two years; not for any crime of which he had been convicted, but under pretence of contumacy, because he did not appear to a citation which had been issued when they knew him to be absent,—absent, it might be said, on their own business (his mission to Rome), where he could not be aware of the nature of his imputed offence till he heard of the condign punishment with which it had been thus prematurely visited. In the course of a few weeks a further inculpation of Dante and his associates was promulged, under which they were condemned to perpetual exile, with the merciless provision that, if any of them thereafter fell into the hands of their persecutors, they should be burnt alive. And this execrable measure seems to have been determined upon before the exiled party had made any attempt, by force of arms, to reenter Florence.
When Dante was informed at Rome of the revolution in Florence, he hastened to Siena, where, learning the full extent of his misfortune, he was driven, it may be said, by necessity to join himself to his homeless countrymen in that neighbourhood, who were concerting (though with little of mutual confidence, and miserably inadequate means) how they might compel their fellow-citizens to receive them back. Arezzo, the city of the Aretines (with whom Dante had combated at Campaldino), afforded them an asylum, and became the headquarters of the Bianchi; who thenceforward, from being, like the Neri, Guelfs, transferred their affections, or rather their wrongs and their vengeance, to the Ghibellines; deeming the adherents of the emperor less the enemies of their country than their adversaries were. Their affairs were managed by a council of twelve, of whom Dante was one. Great numbers of malecontents from Bologna, Pistoia, and the adjacent provinces of Northern Italy, gradually flocking to their standard,—in the course of two years they were sufficiently strong to take the field with a force of cavalry and foot exceeding 10,000, under count Alessandro da Romena, and to commence active hostilities. By a bold and sudden march, they attempted to surprise Florence itself, and were so far successful that their advanced guard got possession of one of the gates; but the main body being attacked and defeated on the outside of the walls, the former gallant corps was overpowered by the garrison; and the enterprise itself, after the campaign of a few days, was abandoned altogether. Dante, according to general belief, accompanied this unfortunate expedition; and so did Pietro Petracco, the father of the celebrated Petrarca (Petrarch), who had been expelled with the Bianchi from Florence; and it is stated, that on the very night on which the army of the exiles marched against the city, Petracco's wife Eletta gave birth to the poet who was to succeed Dante as the glory of his country's literature.
After this miscarriage Dante quitted the confederacy, disgusted by the bickerings, jealousies, and bad faith of the heterogeneous and unmanageable multitude, which, common calamities had driven together, but could not cement by common interests. The poet refers to this motley and discordant crew in the latter lines of the celebrated passage, in which he represents his ancestor. Cacciaguida, as prophesying his future banishment with the miseries and mortifications which he should suffer from the ingratitude of his countrymen:—
"For thou must leave behind thee every thing
Thine heart holds dearest.—This will be the first
Shaft which the bow of exile shoots against thee:
And thou must prove how salt the bread that's eaten
At others' tables, and how hard the path
To climb and to go down a stranger's stairs:
But what shall weigh the heaviest on thy shoulders,
Will be the base and evil company
With which thy lot hath cast thee in that valley;
For every thankless, lawless, reckless wretch
Shall turn against thee:—yet confusion, soon,
Of face shall cover them, not thee, with blushes;
Their brutishness will be so manifest,
That to have stood alone will be thy glory."[10]
Del Paradiso, XVII.
To the personal humiliations of which he chewed the cud in hitter secrecy, through years of heart-breaking dependence on the precarious bounty of others, there is a striking but forced allusion at the close of the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio." Dante enquires concerning a proud spirit bent double under a huge burden of stones, which he is condemned to carry for as many years as he had lived, till he shall he sufficiently humbled to pass muster through the flames into Paradise. This is Provenzano Salvani, who for his acts of outrageous tyranny would have been doomed to a much harder penance, but for one good deed.—A friend of his being kept prisoner by Charles of Anjou, and threatened with death unless a ransom of 10,000 golden florins were paid for his freedom, Salvani so far degraded himself as to stand (to kneel, say some,) in the public market-place of Siena, with a carpet spread on the ground before him, imploring, with the cries and importunity of a common beggar, the charitable contributions of every passenger towards raising the required sum. This he accomplished, and his friend was saved.
"'He in his height of glory,' said the other,
Casting aside all shame, spontaneously,
Stood in the market of Siena, begging;
He, to redeem his friend from infamy
And death, in Charles's dungeons, did what made him
Tremble through every vein.—No more; my speech
Is dark; thy countrymen, ere long, will do
That which will help thee to interpret it."[11]
In despair of being able to force his way, sword in hand, back to Florence, Dante next endeavoured, by supplicating the good offices of individuals connected with the government, by expostulatory addresses to the people, and even by appeals to foreign princes, to obtain a reversal of his unrighteous sentence. Disappointment, however, followed upon disappointment, till, hope deferred having made the heart sick, he grew so impatient under the sense of wrong and ignominy, that he again had recourse to the summary but perilous redress of violence;—not indeed by force which he could command, though one in a million for energy, courage, and perseverance; but a powerful auxiliary having appeared in 1308, he gave up his whole soul to the main object of his desire at this time,—the chastisement of his inexorable fellow-citizens. Henry of Luxembourg, having been raised to the throne of Germany, eagerly engaged, like his predecessors, in the delusive contest for the "Iron crown" of Italy, though "Luke's iron crown"[12] (placed red hot on the brow of an unsuccessful aspirant to that of Hungary) was hardly more painful or more certainly fatal than this, except that it was far more expeditious in putting the wearer out of torture. Dante now rose from the dust of self-abasement, openly professed himself a Ghibelline, and changed his tones of supplication into those of menace against his refractory countrymen. Henry himself denounced terrible retribution upon the Guelfs, and at the head of an army invaded the Florentine territory; from which, however, he was compelled to make an early retreat; and the magnificent flourish of drums and trumpets, with which the imperial actor entered, was followed by a dead march, that closed the scene before he had turned round upon the stage—except to hurry away. He died in 1313, poisoned, it was reported, by a consecrated wafer. To this prince Dante dedicated his political treatise, in Latin, "De Monarchia," in which he eloquently asserts the rights of the emperor in Italy against the usurpations of the pope. He has been accused of exciting Henry to abandon the siege of Brescia, and undertake that of Florence; though, from regard to his native land, he himself forebore to accompany the expedition. He had affected no such scruple when the Bianchi, like trodden worms, turned upon the parent foot which spurned them from the soil where they were bred. There must, therefore, have been some other motive than patriotism,—nobody will suspect that it was cowardice,—which restrained him from witnessing the expected humiliation of his persecutors.
Several of his biographers state, that after this consummation of his ruin,—a third decree having been passed against him at Florence,—the poet retired into France, and strove to reconcile his unsubdued spirit to his fate, or to forget both it and himself in those fashionable theological controversies, for which he was, perhaps, better qualified than either for the council-chamber or the battle-field. This, however, is doubtful, and, in fact, very improbable, when we recollect that, next to the malice of the Neri, he was indebted for his misfortunes to Charles of Valois, their patron, who was brother to Philip the Fair, king of France. Be this as it may, the remainder of Dante's life was spent in wandering from one petty court to another, in exile and poverty, accepting the means of subsistence, almost as alms, from lukewarm friends, from hospitable strangers, and even from generous adversaries. Hence we trace him, at uncertain periods, through Lombardy, Tuscany, and Romagna, as an admitted, welcomed, admired, or merely a tolerated guest, according to the liberality or caprice of his patrons for the time being. Little more can be recorded of these "evil days" and "years," of which he was compelled to say, "I have no pleasure in them," than a few questionable anecdotes of his caustic humour, and the names of some of those who showed him kindness in his affliction.
Among the latter may be honourably mentioned Busone da Gubbio, who first afforded him shelter at Arezzo, whither he himself had been banished from Florence as an incorrigible Ghibelline; but being a brother poet, he was too noble to let political prejudice (Dante was at that time a Guelf) interfere either with his compassion towards an illustrious fugitive, or his veneration for those rare talents which ought every where to have raised the unhappy possessor above contempt, though, in some instances, they seem to have exposed him to it. Yet he knew well how to resent indignity. While residing at Verona with Can' Grande de la Scala (one of his most distinguished protectors), it happened one day, according to the rude usages of those times, that the prince's jester, or some casual buffoon about the palace, was introduced at table, to divert the high-born company there with his waggeries. In this the arch fellow succeeded so egregiously, that Dante, from scorn or mortification, showed signs of chagrin, whereupon Can'Grande sarcastically asked,—"How comes it, Dante, that you, with all your learning and genius, cannot delight me and my friends half so much as this fool does with his ribaldry and grimaces?"—"Because like loves like," was the pithy retort of the poet, in the phrase of the proverb. Another story of the kind is told by Cinthio Geraldi.—On occasion of a jovial entertainment, Can' Grande, or his jester, had placed a little boy under the table, to gather all the bones that were thrown down upon the floor by the guests, and lay them about the feet of Dante. After dinner these were unexpectedly shown above board, as tokens of his feasting prowess. "You have done great things to day!" exclaimed the prince, affecting surprise at such an exhibition. "Far otherwise," returned the poet; "for if I had been a dog, (Cane, his patron's name,) I should have devoured bones and all, as it appears you have done."[13]