Dante Alighieri (17 page)

    
Boccaccio goes on to say that many years afterwards he was shown some of the verses which had been composed for Dante's epitaph, but that he did not consider any of them worthy of preservation, saving only fourteen lines by Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, which he transscribes.
⁴⁹
The sarcophagus (no doubt an ancient one) in which Dante's remains were deposited by Guido da Polenta was apparently left without any inscription until late in the fourteenth century. It is known, from the record of an eye-witness, that in the year 1378 there were two epitaphs inscribed upon the tomb.
⁵⁰
One of these, consisting of six hexameters,
⁵¹
was by Menghino Mezzano of Ravenna, a contemporary and friend of Dante;
⁵²
the other, consisting of three rhyming hexameter couplets, was by a certain Bernardo Canaccio, who is conjectured also to have been personally acquainted with Dante. This second epitaph, which runs as follows:—

was till comparatively recently supposed to have been written by Dante himself. The real author, however, was established to be Bernardo Canaccio by the discovery about fifty years ago of a passage in a fourteenth century manuscript of the
Commedia
, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in which the lines are ascribed to him by name.
⁵⁴

    
Dante's burial-place, left incomplete, as Boccaccio records, owing to the misfortunes which overtook Guido da Polenta, appears to have been neglected and to have gradually fallen into decay. The tomb was restored in 1483 by Bernardo Bembo (father of the celebrated cardinal, Pietro Bembo), who was at that time Prætor of the Venetian Republic in Ravenna. He entrusted the work to the Venetian sculptor and architect, Pietro Lombardi, who, among other things, recarved the face of the sarcophagus, and inscribed upon it the epitaph of Canaccio mentioned above, to which the letters S. V. F.
⁵⁵
were prefixed, evidently under the impression that the author of the lines was Dante himself; while the epitaph of Menghino Mezzano was omitted.

DANTE'S TOMB AT RAVENNA

    
Much of the work executed by Lombardi under Bembo's directions, including the inscribed epitaph, and the marble relief of Dante reading at a desk, remains to this day.
⁵⁶

    
The tomb was a second time restored, more than two hundred years later (
in
1692) by Cardinal Domenico Maria Corsi, the Papal Legate
⁵⁷
; and a third time, in 1780, by Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, who erected the mausoleum, surmounted by a dome, as it now stands.

    
Not only was the death of Dante recorded as an event of importance by his fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, in his Florentine chronicle,
⁵⁸
but numerous elegies were written on the occasion by friends and contemporaries of the poet in various parts of Italy. Among these were poems by Cino da Pistoja, and Giovanni Quirini of Venice, with both of whom Dante had exchanged sonnets in his lifetime.
⁵⁹
Cino, who thirty years before had addressed a canzone to Dante on the death of Beatrice,
⁶⁰
now wrote a canzone on Dante's own death, addressed to Love, whose
ardent and faithful votary Dante had ever been; after bewailing the bitter loss sustained by all lovers of the Italian tongue, of which Dante had been, as it were, the fount and source, he turns to Florence and points to the fulfilment of Dante's own prophecy in the
Inferno
(xv. 72) that however much his native city might desire to have him back her wish would be unavailing; he concludes with congratulations to Ravenna on being deservedly in possession of the great treasure which Florence had cast out.
⁶¹
Quirini, besides a lament on Dante's death, wrote a sonnet in defence of his friend's memory against the imputations of Cecco d' Ascoli, and he addressed another to Can Grande della Scala, urging him to give to the world without delay the cantos of the
Paradiso
which had not yet been made public.
⁶²
Quirini's lament, which is an eloquent testimony to the estimation in which Dante was held by his contemporaries, is as follows :—

 

    
¹
Paradiso
, xvii. 55-60. It is most natural to suppose that among the “things beloved most dearly” left behind in Florence Dante intended to include his wife. But this is not admitted by those who hold that Dante's marriage was an unhappy one.

    
²
Convivio
, i. 3, 11. 15-40.

    
³
De Vulgari Eloquentia
, ii. 6, 11. 36-9.

    
⁴
Paradiso
, xvii. 61-9.

    
⁵
This is supplied by Flavio Biondo in his
Historiae ab inclinato Romano Imperio
(see
Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana
, No. 8 (1892), pp. 21-8, where the evidence is discussed by M. Barbi).

    
⁶
Paradiso
, xvii. 70-2.

    
⁷
Vita di Dante
, ed. cit. pp. xx.-xxxi. No other trace of this letter has been preserved.

    
⁸
See Imbriani,
Studi Danteschi
, pp. 385-8. There is, however, grave reason to doubt whether the “Dantinus quondam Alligerii de Florentia” mentioned in this document can be Dante, since a “Dantinu's (presumably the same) is mentioned again several times in Paduan documents many years after Dante's death, e.g. in 1339, 1345, 1348, and 1350 (see Zingarelli,
Dante
, p. 214).

    
⁹
See
Annual Report of the Cambridge
(U.S.A.)
Dante Society
for 1892 (pp. 15-24).

    
¹⁰
Purgatorio
, viii. 118-34.

    
¹¹
See
Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana
, No. 8 (1892), p. 27.

    
¹²
To this period (about 1308) is usually assigned Dante's supposed visit to the Camaldolese Monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo in Lunigiana, an account of which is given in a letter (of doubtful authenticity) from Frate Ilario, one of the monks, to the Ghibelline leader, Uguccione della Faggiuola. According to the writer, Dante presented himself at the monastery, and, being asked what he sought, answered “Peace”. The monk then entered into conversation with Dante, who presently produced a book (the
Inferno
) from his bosom, and gave it to him with a request that he would forward it to Uguccione, adding that if Uguccione desired to see the other two parts of the poem, he would find them in the hands of the Marquis Moroello Malaspina and King Frederick of Sicily (to whom respectively the
Purgatorio
and
Paradiso
are said to have been dedicated). This letter has long been regarded as a forgery, possibly from the hand of Boccaccio. But recent investigations have proved that at any rate Boccaccio cannot have forged it, and there is now a tendency to accept it as genuine (see Wicksteed and Gardner,
Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio
, 1902, pp. 326-34; and Rajna,
La Lettera di Frate Ilario
, Perugia, 1904). A translation of this letter, which was written in Latin, is given in
Appendix
B.

    
¹³
Bk. ix. ch. 136.

    
¹⁴
                              “Novisti forsan et ipse

    
¹⁵
“Dilexit theologiam sacram, in qua diu studuit tarn in Oxoniis in regno Angliae, quam Parisius in regno Franciae.”

    
¹⁶
Epistola
v. §
1
.

    
¹⁷
Epistola
vi.

*
I.e. Dantem.

    
¹⁸
Epistola
vi. §§ 2, 3, 4.

    
¹⁹
Epistola
vii. § 2.

    
²⁰
The text is printed by Del Lungo in
Dell
'
Esilio di Dante
, pp. 107 ff.

    
²¹
Vita di Dante
, ed. cit. p. xxi: “Il tenne tanto la riverenza della patria, che, venendo l' imperadore contro a Firenze e ponendosi a campo presso alla porta, non vi volle essere, secondo lui scrive, contuttochè confortatore fusse stato di sua venuta”.

    
²²
Epistola
vi. § 3.

    
²³
“The Florentines,” says Villani, “fearing the coming of the Emperor, resolved to enclose the city with moats from the Porta San Gallo to the Porta Santo Ambrogio, and thence to the Arno; and then from the Porta San Gallo to the Porta dal Prato d' Ognissanti, where the walls were already begun, they had them raised eight cubits. And this work was done at once and very quickly; and it was without doubt the salvation of the city, for it had been all open, the old walls having been in great part pulled down, and the materials sold” (bk. ix. ch. 10).

    
²⁴
A few days after the event the following letter was addressed by the Signoria of Florence to their allies announcing the news: “To you our faithful brethren, with the greatest rejoicing in the world we announce by these presents the blessed news, which our Lord Jesus Christ, looking down from on high as well to the necessities of ourselves, and other true and faithful Christians, the devoted servants of Holy Mother Church, as to those of His own cause, has vouchsafed to us. To wit, that the most savage tyrant, Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the rebellious persecutors from old time of said Mother Church, namely the Ghibellines, the treacherous foes of you and of ourselves, called King of the Romans, and Emperor of Germany, and who under cover of the Empire had already consumed and laid waste no small part of the Provinces of Lombardy and Tuscany, ended his life on Friday last, the twenty-fourth day of this month of August, in the territory of Buonconvento. Know further, that the Aretines and the Ghibelline Conti Guidi have retired themselves towards Arezzo, and the Pisans and Germans towards Pisa taking his body, and all the Ghibellines who were with him have taken refuge in the strongholds of their allies in the neighbourhood. . . . We beseech you, therefore, dear brethren, to rejoice with ourselves over so great and fortunate accidents.”