Dante Alighieri (7 page)

    
¹⁰
The Calimala was the street which connected the Mercato Vecchio with the Mercato Nuovo. In it were located the cloth-merchants.

    
¹¹
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 13-14.

    
¹²
Villani, bk, vii, ch. 15,

    
¹³
Farinata had died in Florence about two years before. The name of his daughter was Beatrice; the actual date of her marriage to Guido Cavalcanti, by which they had two children, is unknown. Guido at the time of the betrothal cannot have been more than seventeen, at the outside.

    
¹⁴
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 15.

    
¹⁵
Villani, bk. vii. ch. 20.

    
Dante's birth and ancestry—His father and mother—Cacciaguida—Geri del Bello—Beatrice Portinari—Episodes in the
Vita Nuova
—Folco Portinari—Death of Beatrice—Poetical correspondence with Cino da Pistoja, Guido Cavalcanti, and Forese Donati.

    
D
ANTE ALIGHIERI
¹
was born in Florence in May,
²
1265, a few months before, and, according to the Florentine reckoning,
³
in the same year as, the great victory of Charles of Anjou over King Manfred at Benevento, which ruined the Ghibelline cause, and once more restored the Guelf supremacy in Florence and throughout Tuscany. Dante's family were Guelfs.
⁴
This he himself tells us in the
Divina Commedia
, in his account of his conversation with the Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti in Hell. Dante having answered Farinata's question as to who were his forefathers, Farinata says: “They were fierce foes of me and of my fathers and of my party, so that twice we scattered them” (i.e. in 1248 and 1260). To which Dante retorts: “If my side were driven out twice from Florence both times they returned (i.e. in 1251 and 1266), which your side have not been able to do”.
⁵

DANTE'S HOUSE IN FLORENCE

    
Dante's father, whose name was Alighiero, lived in the quarter of San Martino del Vescovo;
⁶
he was the son of Bellincione degli Alighieri, and was descended, as is supposed, from the ancient and noble family of the Elisei, who lived
in
the Sesto di Porta San Piero in Florence. Boccaccio goes so far as to trace Dante's descent from the noble Frangipani family of Rome, but of this connection
we have no evidence. His connection with the Elisei, on the other hand, seems hardly doubtful. Several names occur among Dante's ancestry which are common among the Elisei, and one of his ancestors, who is mentioned in the
Divina Commedia
, actually bore the name of Eliseo.
⁷

    
The name of Dante's mother was Bella, but it is not known for certain to what family she belonged. There are grounds for believing that she was the daughter of Durante, son of Scolaio degli Abati (a Ghibelline family) ; in which case there can be little doubt that Dante's Christian name (a contraction of Durante) was derived from his maternal grandfather. Dante's father was a notary.
⁸
He was twice married, and died when his son was about eighteen.
⁹
Bella, who died in or before 1278, was Alighiero's first wife, and Dante was their only child. By his second wife, Lapa, daughter of Chiarissimo Cialuffi,
¹⁰
Alighiero had three children, a son Francesco,
¹¹
who survived his half-brother Dante more than twenty years, a daughter Tana (i.e. Gaetana),
¹²
and another daughter,
¹³
name unknown, who married one Leon Poggi. A son of this Leon Poggi, called Andrea, was an intimate friend of Boccaccio, who says that he bore a remarkable resemblance to his uncle Dante both in face and figure. From Andrea Poggi Boccaccio learned many details about Dante's habits and manner of life.

    
Dante's father can hardly have been a person of much consequence in Florence; otherwise, as a Guelf, he would have shared the exile of his party after the disastrous defeat of the Florentine Guelfs at Montaperti (4 September, 1260), which, from the fact that Dante was born in Florence in 1265, it would appear that he did not do. At any rate if he did leave Florence on that occasion he must have returned before the rest of his party, since the restoration of the Guelfs did not take place, as has been related in a former chapter, until January, 1267.
¹⁴
The only contemporary references to Alighiero occur in a poetical (and not very edifying) correspondence (or
tenzone
)
¹⁵
between Dante and his friend Forese Donati, from whose expressions it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dante's father was either a personal coward or of little moral worth.

    
Judging from the position of their house in the heart of the city, and from Dante's own allusions in the
Divina Commedia
,
¹⁶
the Alighieri would seem to have been a noble family, as nobility went in those days. The fact that they are not mentioned by Giovanni Villani in his several lists of the important Guelf families of Florence
¹⁷
may be accounted for on the ground that though of “ancient and honourable lineage,”
¹⁸
they were neither wealthy nor numerous.

    
Nothing is known for certain of any of Dante's ancestors further back than his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, whose existence is attested by a document dated 9 December, 1189, in which his two sons, Preitenitto and Alighiero,
¹⁹
bind themselves to remove a fig tree growing against the wall of the Church of San Martino. In another document recently discovered, and dated 28 April, 1131, appears the name of a Cacciaguida, son of Adamo,
²⁰
who on plausible grounds has been identified with Dante's ancestor; in which case our knowledge of Dante's ancestry goes back one generation further. Cacciaguida's history, in so far as we are acquainted with it, is related in the
Divina Commedia
,
²¹
where we are told that he was born in Florence in the Sesto di Porta San Piero about the year 1090; that he belonged (as is supposed) to the Elisei, one of the old Florentine families which boasted Roman descent; that he was baptized in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence; that he had two brothers, Moronto and Eliseo; that his wife came from the valley of the Po (probably from Ferrara), and that from her, through his son, Dante got his surname of Alighieri; that he followed the Emperor Conrad III on the Second Crusade, and was knighted by him; and finally that he fell fighting against the infidel about the year 1147. Cacciaguida indicates
²²
the situation of the house in which he and his ancestors lived in Florence as being “in the place where
the last sextary is first attained by him who runs in the yearly horse-race,” i.e. on the boundary of the district known later as the Sesto di Porta San Piero.
²³

    
By his wife, Alighiera degli Alighieri, Cacciaguida had two sons, already mentioned, namely, Preitenitto and Alighiero. The latter (who it seems, according to Pietro di Dante,
²⁴
Dante's eldest son, married a sister of “la buona Gualdrada” of
Inferno
, xvi. 37, and daughter of Bellincion Berti of
Paradiso
, xv. 112; xvi. 99) in his turn had two sons, one of whom, Bellincione, was Dante's grandfather; while the other, Bello (i.e. Gabriello), was the father of the Geri del Bello, in connection with whom Dante alludes in the
Divina Commedia
²⁵
to a piece of family history, which shows that the
Vendetta
was a recognized institution in Florence in those days, and moreover that it was approved by Dante. It appears that Geri was a turbulent and quarrelsome person, and had
stirred up bad blood among certain members of the Sacchetti family of Florence, one of whom retaliated by killing him. His murder had not been avenged at the time Dante wrote, and consequently Dante represents him as regarding himself, when they met in Hell, with a threatening and indignant mien because of this neglect on the part of his kindred. Subsequently, more than thirty years after the event, and quite possibly as a result of Dante's allusion to the incident, Geri's death was avenged by his nephews, who murdered one of the Sacchetti in his own house. This blood-feud between the Alighieri and the Sacchetti lasted till 1342, when an act of reconciliation
²⁶
was entered into between the two families at the instance of the Duke of Athens, the guarantor on the part of the Alighieri being Dante's half-brother, Francesco, who appeared on behalf of himself, and his two nephews, Dante's two sons, Pietro and Jacopo.

    
Bellincione, the son of Alighiero, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Alighiero, was Dante's father; the youngest, Brunetto, took part in the battle of Montaperti, where he was in charge of the Florentine Carroccio.

    
That Dante was born in Florence we know from his own statements several times repeated in his works, the most explicit of which occurs in the
Divina Commedia
²⁷
where he says: “I was born and bred up in the great city on the fair river Arno”. We know from himself too that, like his ancestor Cacciaguida, he was baptized in the ancient Baptistery of San Giovanni.
²⁸
Years afterwards, he tells us,
²⁹
he was instrumental in breaking the font for the purpose of rescuing from suffocation a small boy
³⁰
who had fallen into one of the circular spaces at the side, where the officiating priest stood during baptisms in order to escape the pressure of the crowd.
³¹

BAPTISTERY OF SAN GIOVANNI AT FLORENCE

    
Of the history of Dante's early years we know little beyond the episode of his love for Beatrice, which is narrated in the
Vita Nuova
. Dante says that he first saw Beatrice when she was at the beginning of her ninth year, and he had nearly completed his ninth year, that is to say in the spring of 1274. “Her dress on that day,” he narrates,
³²
“was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited her very tender age.” At the moment when he saw her Dante's heart was possessed by a passionate love for her, which from that time forward, he declares, completely mastered his soul. Boccaccio, who probably had the information from one of the Portinari family,
³³
and (quite independently) Dante's own son, Pietro, tell us that this Beatrice was the daughter of Folco Portinari, a highly respected and influential citizen of Florence. Boccaccio gives the following description of the scene of their
first meeting, as he, with his intimate knowledge of Florence and of Florentine ways, imagines it to have taken place:—

    
“In that season of the year when the tender heavens clothe the earth once more with its adornments, and make it everywhere smile with many-coloured flowers mingled with green leaves, it was the custom in our city for the men and women of the several districts to hold festival together in companies, each in his own.
³⁴
Wherefore it came to pass that, among the rest, Folco Portinari, a man much in honour at that time among his fellow-citizens, had on the first of May assembled his neighbours for a festival at his own house. Among the company was the Alighiero of whom we have spoken, attended (as children are wont to attend their parents, especially on festal occasions) by Dante, who had not yet completed his ninth year. And it befell that mingling here with the others of his own age, both boys and girls, of whom there were many in the house of the giver of the feast, after the first course had been served, in childish fashion he began to play with the others in such wise as befitted his tender years. Among the crowd of children was a daughter of the aforesaid Folco, whose name was Bice (although Dante always called her by her full name Beatrice), and who was then about eight years old. She was very graceful and pretty in her girlish way, and very gentle and pleasing in her manners, and more grave and modest in her demeanour and speech than might have been expected of her years. Besides this the features of her face were very delicate and regular, and full not only of beauty but of such comeliness and charm that by many she was held to be little short of an angel. She then, such as I describe her, or, it may be, far more beautiful, appeared at this feast, not as
I suppose for the first time, but for the first time with the power to kindle love, before the eyes of our Dante, who, though still a boy, received into his heart the beauteous image of her with so great affection that from that day forward, so long as he lived, it never departed from him.”
³⁵