Authors: Dante
81.
The phrase “pennuti in ali” (feathered wings) picks up (from verse 54 [“vestì le piume”] and verse 72 [“crescer l’ali”]) to make this one of the densest insistences on Dante’s heavenly flight in the poem. See Shankland’s two studies (Shan.1975.1; Shan.1977.1) for discussion of the pun on the poet’s surname (Alighieri) available in the Latin adjective for “winged,”
aliger
.
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85.
The protagonist addresses his ancestor as “topaz.” Alain de Lille, cited by Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 68, says that there are two colors of topaz, sky blue and golden.
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87.
We perhaps have already forgotten the elaborate preparation for this simple question. Cacciaguida says that he already knows what Dante wants to ask but wants him to ask it anyway, to bring him greater pleasure (vv. 55–69); and then Dante spends nearly as much poetic space (vv. 73–84) explaining why he cannot express his gratitude for Cacciaguida’s welcome. That the inquiry about Cacciaguida’s identity took so long to make it from Dante’s lips is, perhaps, amusing, a sort of Scholastic joke, the sort of thing that would offer Rabelais, two centuries later, endless opportunity for spirited (and antagonistic) amusement at the expense of medieval modes of expression. However, Dante may have felt that the reader (even
the fourteenth-century reader) may have needed to be reminded of the gulf that separates souls that have come to God, enjoying an eternal and quasi-angelic spiritual existence, and even ultimately favored mortals, like Dante Alighieri. When we consider this aspect of the third
cantica
, we probably all agree that the poet manages to present himself as feeling proper humility at finding himself prematurely among the blessed, something that is not perhaps as often observed as it might be. For a useful presentation of what is known about Cacciaguida, see Fiorenzo Forti, “Cacciaguida,”
ED
I (1970).
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88–135.
For the perhaps surprising presence of so many virtuous women representing “the good old days” in Florence, see Honess (Hone.1997.2), esp. pp. 108–14.
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88–89.
Cacciaguida’s presentation of a genealogical “tree” (Bosco/Reggio point to the presence of the image of the family tree in
Purg.
VII.121,
Purg.
XX.43, and
Par.
IX.31) of Dante’s family, of which he declares himself the root, begins his wider exploration of the history of Florence, the subject of some forty verses (88–129). Beginning with Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 88–90), there has been appreciation of the fact that Cacciaguida’s words remember those attributed to God the Father (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22): “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
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91–94.
Cacciaguida refers to his son Alighiero (Dante’s great-grandfather) as the source of the poet’s surname (since Alighiero’s own son, Dante’s grandfather, was known as Bellincione degli Alighieri). Alighiero was perhaps given a Christian name reflecting his mother’s maiden name, Alaghieri (see the note to vv. 137–138). We know from documentary evidence that he was alive in 1201, which means that Dante was misinformed as to the date of his death, since the poet has Cacciaguida represent him as having spent more than one hundred years in Purgatory purging his pridefulness (there results a certain family resemblance [see
Purg.
XIII.136–138]) and the calendar in the poem stands at 1300.
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95–96.
The news of Alighiero’s presence on the terrace of Pride comes with an admonition of Dante’s family duty, to pray for the deliverance of his soul from torment. There is a parallel moment in
Inferno
(XXIX.18–36), Dante’s discovery of his ancestor, Geri del Bello, a cousin of his father, among the sowers of discord, an apparition that causes him to feel guilty for not having avenged a relative’s violent death. For another
similar distribution of a family, consider the case of the Donati (Corso in Hell, Forese in Purgatory, and Piccarda in Heaven [see the note to
Purg.
XXIII.42–48]; but there are several other examples as well).
See the note to
Paradiso
I.35–36 for the understanding that the purpose of the poem is to affect its readers’ prayers. Here is an internal example of precisely that effect.
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97–99.
“The old line of walls dated from 1078 a.d. (Villani, iv. 8); it was now ‘old,’ because the wall of Dante’s time was commenced in 1284 …. The Badia [the church of S. Stefano in Badìa], the chimes of which are here referred to, stood just within the ancient walls; the Florentines took their time from these.… The factions and civil dissensions in Florence did not commence until 1177” (Tozer, comm. to this tercet).
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100–102.
Dante, in Cacciaguida’s voice, has harnessed his wagon of complaint about a typical target of medieval moralizers, luxurious living, to a misogynistic diatribe against costly female overdecoration (for a cry against related but opposite behavior in Florentine women, see
Purg.
XXIII.98–105).
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103–105.
The tirade now turns toward marriage contracts, with their two related ills: the lowering age at which fathers feel forced to “sell” their daughters to a man, and the rising cost of doing so, represented by the dowry the girl’s family had to put up. The two details manage to make the Florentine institution of marriage sound more like sexual bondage than matrimony.
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106.
The line has caused difficulty. The early commentators thought it referred to the thirteenth-century Florentine luxurious living in the early Renaissance equivalent of McMansions, showier houses than family life required; later ones believed that Dante was referring to marriages that were only for show, allowing the couple to lead dissolute lives. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), reviewing the dispute, sides with the older view, because it better accords with the context, which is unnecessary luxury, as the following two lines demonstrate.
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107–108.
“Sardanapalus, last legendary king of the Assyrian empire of Ninus, noted for his luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy. He spent his days in his palace, unseen by any of his subjects, dressed in female apparel, and surrounded by concubines. The satrap of Media, having determined to
renounce allegiance to such a worthless monarch, rebelled against him, and for two years besieged him in Nineveh, until Sardanapalus, unable to hold out any longer, collected all his treasures, wives, and concubines, and placed them on an immense funeral pile, to which he set fire destroying himself at the same time”
(T)
. The identity of Dante’s source here is debated; those most commonly proposed are Juvenal (
Satires
X.362), Cicero (
Tuscul
. V), Justinus (
Hist
. 1.3), Orosius (
Hist. contra paganos
I.xix.1), and Aegidius Colonna
(De regimine principum
II.xvii), this last favored by Toynbee (in the entry from which the opening passage is cited) because it specifically refers to Sardanapalus’s nefariously luxurious activity as being confined to a single room. For discussion of the likely sources of Dante’s Sardanapalus, see Brugnoli (Brug.1999.1).
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109–111.
The thought here is that Florence after Cacciaguida’s day rapidly eclipsed Rome in urban splendor, but its fall from supremacy will be even more swift. In synecdoche, Monte Mario and Uccellatoio represent Rome and Florence, respectively. Explaining these lines, Carroll has this to say (comm. to vv. 97–120): “Montemalo (now Monte Mario) is the hill on the way from Viterbo from which the splendour of the Eternal City is first seen; and Uccellatoio is the point on the road from Bologna from which the first flash of the greater splendour of Florence breaks on the traveller’s view.”
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112–113.
Bellincion Berti is exemplary of the citizenry of “the good old days” of Florence. Giovanni Villani (
Cronica
IV.1) speaks of him in similar terms. He was father of the “good Gualdrada” of
Inferno
XVI.37. While males, with the exception of the effeminate Sardanapalus and the corrupt Lapo (see verse 128), are not used to exemplify improper municipal behavior, they surely are present in the rest of the canto as representatives of Florentine virtue.
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114.
A good woman, as we would expect in this context, eschews facial cosmetics.
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115–117.
The heads of noble Florentine families (the Nerli and the Vecchietti) are, like Bellincion Berti, content with simple clothing, without adornment; their wives exhibit their virtue by what they take pleasure in doing: household chores.
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118–120.
Two different sort of ills befalling Florentine wives are referred to here: Some were taken along by their husbands when they were exiled
and eventually died in foreign lands; others, married to men who took themselves off to a life of trade in France (cf. the first story in Boccaccio’s
Decameron
), led lonely lives at home.
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121–123.
This vignette from “Scenes from Florentine Family Life, ca. 1125,” by Dante Alighieri, features baby talk (see Hollander [Holl.1980.2], p. 127), a phenomenon that Dante is (perhaps surprisingly) most interested in. Florentine babies, goo-gooing in their cribs, are represented as teaching their mommies (and daddies, too) to speak in that “idiom.” That word, which first appears here and then will be used only once more in the poem (
Par.
XXVI.114), where it is used to delineate Adam’s first speech, is unmistakably “vernacular” Hebrew. And thus the word
idïoma
, here, may offer an insight into Dante’s theory of the history of language: Each infant recapitulates the primal linguistic moment, speaking a version of Adamic vernacular, until, in the push and pull of maternal and paternal instruction and the infant’s response, that vernacular takes on a local flavor, in this case Florentine. See Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 121–126): “scilicet, maternum linguagium, scilicet,
la ninna nanna
.” It is perhaps useful to know that Vellutello regularly uses the word
idioma
to refer to various Italian vernaculars.
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124.
A second female presence is probably the husband’s mother, also doing useful chores, working at her loom.
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125–126.
This grandmother narrates for the children in the family (but heard by all) the prehistory of Florence, with its roots in Troy, Rome, and Fiesole. Torraca (comm. to vv. 121–126) explains the details, common to many chronicles of the time, as follows: “The Florentines told of the origins of their city in the following way. After the linguistic division made as a result of the attempt to construct the tower of Babel, Atlas built the first city, which thus
fu sola
[stood alone] and was therefore called Fiesole. Another of Atlas’s sons, Dardanus, traveling in the East, built Troy there. From Troy Aeneas came to Italy. One of his descendants founded Rome. The Romans destroyed Fiesole. Romans and Fiesolans founded Florence.”
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127–129.
Dante alludes to two of his Florentine contemporaries, first Cianghella, daughter of Arrigo della Tosa. She married a man from Imola, after whose death she returned to her birthplace and behaved in such fashion as customarily gave widows a very bad name (cf. Boccaccio’s
Corbaccio
), leading a life marked by lust and luxury. The profile of Lapo Salterello
sounds a good bit like that of Dante (to what must have been the poet’s dismay). He was a jurist and poet who, in 1294, represented his city to the papacy, and was then elected prior of Florence; further, in 1300 he denounced several of his cocitizens for collaborating with Pope Boniface VIII; in 1302 he, like Dante, was sent into exile (for fomenting discord and for barratry) by the victorious Black Guelphs. In chiastic order, Cianghella and Lapo are compared with two virtuous figures from the era of the Roman republic, Cincinnatus and Cornelia (see
Inf.
IV.128), the mother of the Gracchi. For Dante’s overwhelming admiration of the Romans of those days, see Hollander and Rossi (Holl.1986.1). And for a revisionist (and convincing) analysis of the republican roots of Dante’s imperialist views, see Armour (Armo.1997.2)
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