3 The “Epistolae”
Dante tells us in the Vita Nuova that, on the death of Beatrice, he wrote a Latin letter to the chief persons of the city, concerning its desolate and widowed condition, beginning with the text of Jeremiah: “How doth the city sit solitary.” Neither this nor the letter mentioned by Leonardo Bruni, in which Dante described the fight at Campaldino, has survived. Many epistles ascribed to Dante were extant in the days of Boccaccio and Bruni. Bruni tells us that, after the affair at Lastra, Dante wrote for permission to return to Florence both to individual citizens in the government and to the people, especially a long letter beginning: “O my people, what have I done unto thee?” This may perhaps have been the letter which Bruni records, in which the poet defends his impartiality when the leaders of the two factions were banished; but there appears to have been another, denying that he had accompanied the Emperor against Florence. From one of these the perplexing fragment may have come, about his want of prudence in the priorate and his service at Campaldino. Giovanni Villani mentions three noble epistles, the style of which he praises highly: one to the government of Florence, “complaining of his unjust exile,” which is probably the lost letter mentioned by Bruni; the second, to the Emperor Henry, and the third, to the Italian cardinals, have both been preserved. Flavio Biondo, in the fifteenth century, professes to have seen letters at Forlì dictated by Dante, notably one addressed by the poet, in his own name and on behalf of the exiled Bianchi, to Can Grande della Scala concerning the reply of the Florentines to the ambassadors of the Emperor.
There are now thirteen extant Latin letters ascribed to Dante. They have come down to us mainly in two fourteenth-century manuscripts; three have been preserved in Boccaccio’s handwriting in the Laurentian MS., known as the Zibaldone Boccaccesco; nine others in a Vatican MS., of which Boccaccio was perhaps the original compiler. Two of these latter have also been found in another MS. of the fourteenth century—the San Pantaleo MS. at Rome. No MS. of the letter to Can Grande is known earlier than the fifteenth century.24
Epistles I. and II.—Epistles i. and ii. are connected with Count Alessandro da Romena, who, Bruni states, was appointed captain of the Bianchi in their meeting at Gargonza, and whom Dante brands with infamy in Inferno xxx. The former is addressed in the name of Alessandro, the council and whole body of the White party, to the Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, legate of Benedict XI., assuring him of their gratitude and confidence, promising to refrain from hostilities in expectation of his good offices in the pacification of Florence. It may be accepted as an authentic document of 1304; but whether it was written by Dante, who had perhaps already left his fellow-exiles, is still open to question. The second is a letter of condolence to Alessandro’s nephews, Oberto and Guido, on the occasion of their uncle’s death, which probably occurred in the same year. Its authenticity is highly doubtful. Both letters are found only in the Vatican manuscript.
Epistles III. and IV.—Epistles iii. and iv. are directly connected with the Rime. The third, which occurs in the Boccaccian autograph, seems to be to Cino da Pistoia, affectionate greetings from the Florentine exile to the Pistoian, explaining how one passion may be replaced by another in the soul. It was accompanied by a poem, which is identified with the sonnet, “Io sono stato con Amore insieme.” If authentic, its date would be not later than 1306, when Cino’s exile ended. The fourth letter, found in the Vatican MS., is addressed to the Marquis Moroello Malaspina, apparently from the Casentino, and describes in forcible language how the writer was suddenly enamoured of a woman’s beauty. It, too, was accompanied by a poem, evidently the canzone, “Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia.” The more probable date is 1307 or thereabouts.25 The authenticity of these two letters is doubtful, but on the whole probable.
Epistles V., VI. and VII.—Next come the three great political letters, glorified pamphlets on the enterprise of Henry of Luxemburg. Letter v., the manifesto to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, seems to have been written in September or October, 1310, before Henry crossed the Alps. It announces the advent of Henry, the bridegroom and glory of Italy, as bringing a new era of peace, declares the rightful authority and historical sanctity of the Empire, exhorting the peoples to free and joyous submission, and those who, like the writer himself, have suffered injustice to be merciful in their anticipated triumph. The letter, one of the noblest of Dante’s utterances, is a landmark in the growth of the national idea in Italy; rulers and peoples are admonished as members of one body; the good tidings are announced to the nation as a whole; the writer’s Italian citizenship is placed before his Florentine origin, when he subscribes himself: “The humble Italian, Dante Alighieri, a Florentine unjustly exiled.” It was in the bitter indignation caused by the Guelf opposition, the alliance between Florence and King Robert, and the doubt occasioned by the Emperor’s own delay in Lombardy, that Dante from the Casentino wrote the terrible Letters vi. and vii., on March 31st, 1311, to the Florentines, “the most wicked Florentines within,” and on April 17th to Henry himself, “the most sacred triumphant and only lord.” The former denounces the Florentines for their rebellion, their “shrinking from the yoke of liberty,” their attempt to make their civic life independent of that of Rome, and, in prophetic fashion, warns them of their coming destruction at the hands of “the prince who is the giver of the law.” In the latter, adopting the part of Curio towards Caesar (which he himself condemns in the Inferno), Dante urges the Emperor without further delay to turn his forces upon Florence, who “sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome which made her in her own image and after her likeness.” The poet’s attitude is that of the Hebrew prophets; his motive, the conviction that his native city had adopted a line of policy opposed to the true interests of Italy. These three letters are contained in the Vatican MS.; Letters v. and vii. (of both of which early Italian translations are extant) also in the S. Pantaleo MS., and there is a third (fifteenth century) MS. of the letter to the Emperor.
Epistles VII.*, VII.** and VII.***.—These three letters are a humble pendant to the three just considered. They are addressed to Margaret of Brabant, the wife of the Emperor Henry, in the name of the Countess of Battifolle (Gherardesca, daughter of Count Ugolino, married to Guido di Simone of the Conti Guidi). They are in answer to letters from the Empress, and, while containing mere expressions of loyal devotion and aspirations for the triumph of the imperial cause, their place in the Vatican MS. among the letters of Dante, together with the close resemblance in style and phraseology with the latter, has led to a general acceptance of the view that they were written by the poet. They were written in the spring of 1311, the third being dated from Poppi on May 18th.
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.