Authors: Dante
70–71.
Some commentators explain that, while Verona was not in fact the first place that Dante was received as he began his twenty years of exile (he did not arrive there for between one year and two [in 1303 or 1304] after he left Rome in 1302), it was nonetheless his first “real” shelter.
The succession of the Scaligeri, the ruling family of Verona in Dante’s time, was as follows: Mastino della Scala had become the ruler in 1262; he was succeeded by his brother Alberto in 1277. Alberto died in 1301 and was succeeded, in turn, by each of his three sons: Bartolommeo (who died in March 1304), Alboino (who died late in 1311, having just been named by Henry VII his imperial vicar, a title passed along at his death to his younger brother, who had joined him in joint rulership in 1308), and Cangrande (the youngest, born in 1291 and who died in 1329, eight years after Dante’s death). (Alberto also sired their illegitimate half brother Giuseppe, abbot of San Zeno [see
Purg.
XVIII.124].) According to what, after Petrocchi’s work, has become a widespread understanding, Dante left Verona soon after the accession of Alboino in 1304 and returned in 1312 or 1313, that is, once Cangrande had assumed sole power. It has become an assumption in Dante studies that for some reason Dante and Alboino just did not get along, thus explaining the poet’s eight years or more of absence from a city for which he obviously felt deep affection.
For a sketch of the historical situation after Cangrande’s accession to unshared power, after Alboino died in 1311, see Manselli (Mans.1966.1). Manselli takes Dante’s praise of Cangrande as genuine, since he was the
only one active on the scene whom Dante considered capable, both in his personal qualities and by virtue of his political position, of carrying out the lofty imperial mission unsuccessfully initiated by Henry VII.
There is a large literature devoted to what was at one time a vexed question: Which Scaliger governed Verona when Dante first arrived? Now just about all agree that it was Bartolommeo. For a summary of the dispute, in English, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 70–75). For a fuller treatment, summarizing the entire debate and concluding, with nearly all the early commentators, that Bartolommeo was indeed Dante’s first meaningful supporter in his exile, see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 70–93).
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72.
See Tozer (comm. to vv. 71–72): “The arms of the Scaligers were a golden ladder in a red field, surmounted by a black eagle, which was the imperial ensign.” Unfortunately for Dante’s sake, this insignia was not chosen by the Scaligeri (at the earliest, by Bartolommeo) before 1301. By making it present now, in 1300, the poet hurries history along faster than it wants to go.
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73–75.
That is to say, Bartolommeo and Dante will grant one another’s requests even before the other can make them, while in most cases the granting follows much later than the asking (i.e., it may not be forthcoming at all).
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76–90.
Commentators agree that this passage refers to Cangrande della Scala, one of the great figures of his time in northern Italy. He was indeed a “son of Mars,” a fearless and fabled warrior, and a man of, in Dante’s eyes, impeccable political convictions, an extreme supporter of Emperor Henry while he lived, and a man who refused to relinquish his title as imperial vicar even when the pope insisted that he do so (since there was no longer an emperor to be vicar to). For a portrait of the man and his court, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 76–93).
It has seemed reasonable to some to point out that Cangrande was too young in 1300 to be the subject of so dramatic a prophecy (not to mention the one in
Inf.
I, if that, also, applies to him), since he was only nine years old in 1300 and only around fourteen or fifteen when Dante began writing the poem. However, those who have made this argument have neglected to take three things into account: First, stories about Cangrande as a child prodigy were abundant (e.g., in one such the boy is depicted as being shown a chest, opened to reveal the coins and jewels it contains; he reaches out and covers that pelf back over with its cloth: See Cacciaguida’s words in vv. 83–84 and Benvenuto’s gloss to them [comm. to
vv. 82–84]; and see the similar sentiment expressed of the
veltro, Inf.
I.103); second, Cangrande had been named commander in chief of the Veronese armies before he was in his teens; third, and in general, expectations of the princes of royal houses and other such luminaries were simply out of all proportion to our own expectations of the young. See the note to
Inferno
I.100–105. Further, if this later passage was written when Cangrande was well into his twenties, as it undoubtedly was, it is not surprising that it looks to him to take over the role of the
veltro
and of the “five hundred ten and five.” But see the note to
Paradiso
XXVII.142–148.
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78.
What does Dante imagine Cangrande will accomplish politically? Somehow, he apparently must think, Cangrande will finish the task that Henry started but failed to complete, the reestablishment of conditions leading to the refounding of Aeneas’s Rome. That is the only surmise possible that might justify the amazingly positive things said throughout this eventually unexpressed (or better, suppressed [see vv. 92–93]) prophecy. It is not, perhaps, “officially” one of the three “world prophecies” that appear, one in each
cantica
(
Inf.
I,
Purg.
XXXIII,
Par.
XXVII), but it reflects the first two of them and informs the third.
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79–81.
Dante takes the sticks out of the hands of those who would beat him about the head for prognosticating such things about a mere child. See the note to verses 76–90.
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82–84.
The “Gascon” (Pope Clement V) first led Henry on and then tried to undermine his imperial efforts. The date most commentators affix to the pope’s open hostility to Henry is 1312, when the emperor hoped to be crowned (a second time in Italy) in St. Peter’s, but was put off and finally relegated by decision of Clement to St. John Lateran, outside the walls of the city and in ruins. The “sparks” of virtue with which Cangrande is credited here may have been his demonstrations of support for the emperor; similarly, his “toil” is perhaps his effort, unrewarded, on Henry’s behalf (for this view, see Carroll [comm. to vv. 76–93]). More likely, the first signs of virtue apparent in his not caring for worldly possessions was, apparently, a part of his “legend” (see the note to vv. 76–90); as for the
affanni
(toils) he does not complain about, most who remark on them take them as referring to his military exercises.
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85.
Poletto (comm. to vv. 85–87) makes the point that only Beatrice (
Par.
XXXI.88) and the Virgin (
Par.
XXXIII.20) are allowed to share this word with Cangrande. See also the first word of the dedication to him of
Epistle
XIII, “Magnifico.”
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89–90.
Steiner was the first among the commentators to see the possible connection with a part of Mary’s hymn of praise for her Lord, Luke 1:52–53: “He has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent away empty” (comm. to vv. 89–90). In light of this scriptural connection, Porena (comm. to these verses) thinks of Cangrande as a sort of Lombard Robin Hood.
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91–93.
It is difficult to see how this blank “prophecy” of the things that will be accomplished by Cangrande, imperial vicar that he was and insisted on being even after Henry’s death, is anything but “imperial” in nature. (Henry, betrayed by Pope Clement V in 1312, is referred to a few lines ago [verses 82]). See Di Scipio’s (Disc.1983.1) convincing attack on Passerin D’Entrèves (Pass.1955.1) for denying Dante’s significant involvement with imperial ideas (in favor of religious orthodoxy), a position that simply fails to account for such clearly political (and imperial) passages as these.
It seems likely that Dante’s optimism about Cangrande’s future deeds is more the result of desperation than hope. Here was a man who had decided, upon precious little evidence, when he was writing the fourth book of
Convivio
, that the Roman Empire would be active once more. Within a decade an emperor comes down to Italy and behaves like the new Charlemagne, as far as Dante is concerned. One can only imagine (but the edgy tone of his second epistle to the emperor tells us a great deal about his growing disillusionment) the bitterness he felt once Henry had died in 1313. And now, some four or five years later, here he is, shouting at the top of his lungs, “The emperor is dead, long live the emperor!” He had, with little in the way of hard evidence, simply decided that Rome must rise again. And events made him correct. If Italy had not been ready for Henry (see
Par.
XXX.137–138), it would have to be ready for what Cangrande would do to clear the path for the
next
emperor. It may not be excessive to suggest that Dante felt as “keyed in” to the political events of his day, even before they occurred, as Fyodor Dostoyevski felt himself endowed with prescience about those of his time.
Carolyn Calvert Phipps (in a seminar in 1980) pointed out that there is a possible dependence here on the prophetic book referred to in the Apocalypse (10:4): “Signa quae locuta sunt septem tonitrua: et noli ea scribere” (Seal up those things which the seven thunders said and write them not). This is the instruction given John by the angel who brings him God’s prophetic book for him to ingest. What makes Professor Phipps’s
observation particularly worthy of study is that there may be another possible visitation of the tenth chapter of the Apocalypse in this canto; see the note to vv. 130–132.
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94–96.
Concluding, Cacciaguida characterizes his utterances over the last seventeen tercets (vv. 43–93) as
chiose
(glosses); this long prophetic passage is unique in the poem, both for its length and for its personal import for the protagonist. It is divided into three sections, lines 43–69 (the pains of exile [Dante]); 70–75 (the first stay in Verona [Bartolommeo]); 76–93 (the second stay in Verona [Cangrande]).
What exactly do these “glosses” predict of Dante’s difficult life as an exile? See the note to verses 52–54 for the range of possibilities according to the commentators. And to what specific prognostications do they respond, only Cacciaguida’s here or to some of the earlier ones we heard in the first two
cantiche
, and if so, to which ones? We can say with some security that only the first section of his ancestor’s prophecy, that concerning Dante’s harsh political fate, is involved. It is worth remarking that the time frame that Cacciaguida seems to have in mind is short (
a pochi giri
), and that thus we should probably think that the events of 1304, just four revolutions of the heavens away from the date on which he speaks (1 April 1300), are likely what he has in mind.
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97–99.
Cacciaguida’s repeated promise of Dante’s vindication in the punishment of his enemies sounds very much as it did when it first was uttered in vv. 53–54. As for the notion contained in the neologism
s’infutura
(present tense of Dante’s coinage,
infuturarsi
[lit. “to infuture oneself”]), ever since the early days of the commentary tradition at least some have argued that it would have been bad taste and out of keeping with Christian doctrine (not to mention the poet’s own stated views) for Dante to have boasted at having survived his enemies in the flesh. Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this tercet) does not even consider this possibility, referring only to Dante’s honorable name as what will survive him, and survive longer than the dishonor of his enemies. Nonetheless, such a vaunt has been a long-standing trait in those who have survived the threatening behaviors of such powerful enemies as Boniface VIII (dead in 1303) or Corso Donati (dead in 1308). (Boniface is mentioned in this context by several commentators, although it is a bit of a stretch to believe that Dante thought of him as a “neighbor.”) Porena points out (comm. to this tercet) that the “orthodox” interpretation, ridding Dante of a perhaps petty desire to outlive his enemies, makes little sense, since his immortal longings (see vv. 119–120)
are considerably grander than the afterlives he foresees for his Florentine enemies, clearly meant to be in oblivion while Dante lives on. If that was his wish, he has been rewarded.
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