Read Ebook: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri Sibbald James Romanes Translator

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FLORENCE AND DANTE, xvii

GIOTTO'S PORTRAIT OF DANTE, cx

The Inferno.

The Slumber--the Wood--the Hill--the three Beasts--Virgil--the Veltro or Greyhound, 1

Dante's misgivings--Virgil's account of how he was induced to come to his help--the three Heavenly Ladies--the beginning of the Journey, 9

The Gate of Inferno--the Vestibule of the Caitiffs--the Great Refusal--Acheron--Charon--the Earthquake--the Slumber of Dante, 17

The First Circle, which is the Limbo of the Unbaptized and of the Virtuous Heathen--the Great Poets--the Noble Castle--the Sages and Worthies of the ancient world, 24

The Second Circle, which is that of Carnal Sinners--Minos--the Tempest--The Troop of those who died because of their Love-- Francesca da Rimini--Dante's Swoon, 32

The Third Circle, which is that of the Gluttonous--the Hail and Rain and Snow--Cerberus--Ciacco and his Prophecy, 40

The Fourth Circle, which is that of the Avaricious and the Thriftless--Plutus--the Great Weights rolled by the sinners in opposite directions--Fortune--the Fifth Circle, which is that of the Wrathful--Styx--the Lofty Tower, 47

The Fifth Circle continued--the Signals--Phlegyas--the Skiff-- Philip Argenti--the City of Dis--the Fallen Angels--the Rebuff of Virgil, 55

The City of Dis, which is the Sixth Circle and that of the Heretics--the Furies and the Medusa head--the Messenger of Heaven who opens the gates for Virgil and Dante--the entrance to the City--the red-hot Tombs, 62

The Sixth Circle continued--Pope Anastasius--Virgil explains on what principle sinners are classified in Inferno--Usury, 77

The Seventh Circle, First Division--the Minotaur--the River of Blood, which forms the Outer Ring of the Seventh Circle-- in it are those guilty of Violence against others--the Centaurs--Tyrants--Robbers and Murderers--Ezzelino Romano-- Guy of Montfort--the Passage of the River of Blood, 84

The Seventh Circle continued--the Second Division consisting of a Tangled Wood in which are those guilty of Violence against themselves--the Harpies--Pier delle Vigne--Lano--Jacopo da Sant' Andrea--Florence and its Patrons, 91

The Seventh Circle continued--the Third Division of it, consisting of a Waste of Sand on which descends an unceasing Shower of Fire-- in it are those guilty of Violence against God, against Nature, and against Art--Capaneus--the Crimson Brook--the Statue of Time-- the Infernal Rivers, 98

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Nature-- Brunetto Latini--Francesco d'Accorso--Andrea de' Mozzi, Bishop of Florence, 106

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Nature-- Guidoguerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, and Jacopo Rusticucci-- the Cataract--the Cord--Geryon, 115

The Seventh Circle continued--the Violent against Art--Usurers-- the descent on Geryon's back into the Eighth Circle, 123

The Eighth Circle, otherwise named Malebolge, which consists of ten concentric Pits or Moats connected by bridges of rock--in these are punished those guilty of Fraud of different kinds-- First Bolgia or Moat, where are Panders and Seducers, scourged by Demons--Venedico Caccianimico--Jason--Second Bolgia, where are Flatterers plunged in filth--Alessio Interminei, 130

The Eighth Circle--Fourth Bolgia, where are Diviners and Sorcerers in endless procession, with their heads twisted on their necks-- Amphiar?us--Tiresias--Aruns--Manto and the foundation of Mantua-- Eurypylus--Michael Scott--Guido Bonatti--Asdente, 145

The Eighth Circle--Fifth Bolgia, where the Barrators, or corrupt officials, are plunged in the boiling pitch which fills the Bolgia--a Senator of Lucca is thrown in--the Malebranche, or Demons who guard the Moat--the Devilish Escort, 153

The Eighth Circle--Fifth Bolgia continued--the Navarese--trick played by him on the Demons--Fra Gomita--Michael Zanche--the Demons fall foul of one another, 161

The Eighth Circle--escape from the Fifth to the Sixth Bolgia, where the Hypocrites walk at a snail's pace, weighed down by Gilded Cloaks of lead--the Merry Friars Catalano and Loderingo--Caiaphas, 168

The Eighth Circle--arduous passage over the cliff into the Seventh Bolgia, where the Thieves are tormented by Serpents, and are constantly undergoing a hideous metamorphosis--Vanni Fucci, 176

The Eighth Circle--Seventh Bolgia continued--Cacus--Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti, 184

The Eighth Circle--Eighth Bolgia, where are the Evil Counsellors, wrapped each in his own Flame--Ulysses tells how he met with death, 192

The Eighth Circle--Ninth Bolgia, where the Schismatics in Church and State are for ever being dismembered--Mahomet--Fra Dolcino-- Pier da Medicina--Curio--Mosca--Bertrand de Born, 209

The Eighth Circle--Ninth Bolgia continued--Geri del Bello--Tenth Bolgia, where Counterfeiters of various kinds, as Alchemists and Forgers, are tormented with loathsome diseases--Griffolino of Arezzo--Capocchio on the Sienese, 217

The Eighth Circle--Tenth Bolgia continued--Myrrha--Gianni Schicchi--Master Adam and his confession--Sinon, 225

The Ninth Circle, outside of which they remain till the end of this Canto--this, the Central Pit of Inferno, is encircled and guarded by Giants--Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus--entrance to the Pit, 233

The Ninth Circle--that of the Traitors, is divided into four concentric rings, in which the sinners are plunged more or less deep in the ice of the frozen Cocytus--the Outer Ring is Ca?na, where are those who contrived the murder of their Kindred-- Camicion de' Pazzi--Antenora, the Second Ring, where are such as betrayed their Country--Bocca degli Abati--Buoso da Duera-- Ugolino, 241

The Ninth Circle--Antenora continued--Ugolino and his tale--the Third Ring, or Ptolomaea, where are those treacherous to their Friends--Friar Alberigo--Branca d'Oria, 249

The Ninth Circle--the Fourth Ring or Judecca, the deepest point of the Inferno and the Centre of the Universe--it is the place of those treacherous to their Lords or Benefactors--Lucifer with Judas, Brutus, and Cassius hanging from his mouths--passage through the Centre of the Earth--ascent from the depths to the light of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere, 260

INDEX, 269

FLORENCE AND DANTE.

The history of Florence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries agrees in general outline with that of most of its neighbours. At the beginning of the period it was a place of but little importance, ranking far below Pisa both in wealth and political influence. Though retaining the names and forms of municipal government, inherited from early times, it was in reality possessed of no effective control over its own affairs, and was subject to its feudal superior almost as completely as was ever any German village planted in the shadow of a castle. To Florence, as to many a city of Northern and Central Italy, the first opportunity of winning freedom came with the contest between Emperor and Pope in the time of Hildebrand. In this quarrel the Church found its best ally in Matilda, Countess of Tuscany. She, to secure the goodwill of her subjects as against the Emperor, yielded first one and then another of her rights in Florence, generally by way of a pious gift--an endowment for a religious house or an increase of jurisdiction to the bishop--these concessions, however veiled, being in effect so many additions to the resources and liberties of the townsmen. She made Rome her heir, and then Florence was able to play off the Papal against the Imperial claims, yielding a kind of barren homage to both Emperor and Pope, and only studious to complete a virtual independence of both. Florence had been Matilda's favourite place of residence; and, benefiting largely as it did by her easy rule, it is no wonder that her name should have been cherished by the Florentines for ages after as a household word. Nor is the greatest Florentine unmindful of her. Foe of the Empire though she was, he only remembers her piety; and it is by Matilda, as representing the active religious life, that Dante is ushered into the presence of Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise.

It was a true instinct which led Florence and other cities to side rather with the Pope than with the Emperor in the long-continued struggle between them for predominance in Italy. With the Pope for overlord they would at least have a master who was an Italian, and one who, his title being imperfect, would in his own interest be led to treat them with indulgence; while, in the permanent triumph of the Emperor, Italy must have become subject and tributary to Germany, and would have seen new estates carved out of her fertile soil for members of the German garrison. The danger was brought home to many of the youthful commonwealths during the eventful reign of Frederick Barbarossa . Strong in Germany beyond most of his predecessors, that monarch ascended the throne with high prerogative views, in which he was confirmed by the slavish doctrine of some of the new civilians. According to these there could be only one master in the world; as far as regarded the things of time, but one source of authority in Christendom. They maintained everything to be the Emperor's that he chose to take. When he descended into Italy to enforce his claims, the cities of the Lombard League met him in open battle. Those of Tuscany, and especially Florence, bent before the blast, temporising as long as they were able, and making the best terms they could when the choice lay between submission and open revolt. Even Florence, it is true, strong in her allies, did once take arms against an Imperial lieutenant; but as a rule she never refused obedience in words, and never yielded it in fact beyond what could not be helped. In her pursuit of advantages, skilfully using every opportunity, and steadfast of aim even when most she appeared to waver, she displayed something of the same address that was long to be noted as a trait in the character of the individual Florentine.

The storm was weathered, although not wholly without loss. When, towards the close of his life, and after he had broken his strength against the obstinate patriotism of Lombardy, Frederick visited Florence in 1185, it was as a master justly displeased with servants who, while they had not openly rebelled against him, had yet proved eminently unprofitable, and whom he was concerned to punish if not to destroy. On the complaint of the neighbouring nobles, that they were oppressed and had been plundered by the city, he gave orders for the restoration to them of their lands and castles. This accomplished, all the territory left to Florence was a narrow belt around the walls. Villani even says that for the four years during which Frederick still lived the Commonwealth was wholly landless. And here, rather than lose ourselves among the endless treaties, leagues, and campaigns which fill so many pages of the chronicles, it may be worth while shortly to glance at the constitution of Florentine society, and especially at the place held in it by the class which found its protector in Barbarossa.

Much about the time at which the Commonwealth was relieved of its feudal trammels, as a result of the favour or the necessities of Matilda, it was beginning to extend its commerce and increase its industry. Starting somewhat late on the career on which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were already far advanced, Florence was as if strenuous to make up for lost time, and soon displayed a rare comprehension of the nature of the enterprise. It may be questioned if ever, until quite modern times, there has been anywhere so clear an understanding of the truth that public wellbeing is the sum of private prosperity, or such an enlightened perception of what tends to economical progress. Florence had no special command of raw material for her manufactures, no sea-port of her own, and no monopoly unless in the natural genius of her people. She could therefore thrive only by dint of holding open her communications with the world at large, and grudged no pains either of war or diplomacy to keep at Pisa a free way out and in for her merchandise. Already in the twelfth century she received through that port the rough woollens of Flanders, which, after being skilfully dressed and dyed, were sent out at great profit to every market of Europe. At a somewhat later period the Florentines were to give as strong a proof of their financial capacity as this was of their industrial. It was they who first conducted a large business in bills of exchange, and who first struck a gold coin which, being kept of invariable purity, passed current in every land where men bought and sold--even in countries where the very name of Florence was unknown.

In a community thus devoted to industry and commerce, it was natural that a great place should be filled by merchants. These were divided into six guilds, the members of which, with the notaries and lawyers, who composed a seventh, formed the true body of the citizens. Originally the consuls of these guilds were the only elected officials in the city, and in the early days of its liberty they were even charged with political duties, and are found, for example, signing a treaty of peace with a neighbouring state. In the fully developed commune it was only the wealthier citizens--the members, we may assume, of these guilds--who, along with the nobles, were eligible for and had the right of electing to the public offices. Below them was the great body of the people; all, that is, of servile condition or engaged in the meaner kinds of business. From one point of view, the liberties of the citizens were only their privileges. But although the labourers and humbler tradesmen were without franchises, their interests were not therefore neglected, being bound up with those of the one or two thousand citizens who shared with the patricians the control of public affairs.

There were two classes of nobles with whom Florence had to reckon as she awoke to life--those within the walls, and those settled in the neighbouring country. In later times it was a favourite boast among the noble citizens--a boast indulged in by Dante--that they were descended from ancient Roman settlers on the banks of the Arno. A safer boast would in many cases have been that their ancestors had come to Italy in the train of Otho and other conquering Emperors. Though settled in the city, in some cases for generations, the patrician families were not altogether of it, being distinguished from the other citizens, if not always by the possession of ancestral landward estates, at least by their delight in war and contempt for honest industry. But with the faults of a noble class they had many of its good qualities. Of these the Republic suffered them to make full proof, allowing them to lead in war and hold civil offices out of all proportion to their numbers.

Like the city itself, the nobles in the country around had been feudally subject to the Marquis of Tuscany. After Matilda's death they claimed to hold direct from the Empire; which meant in practice to be above all law. They exercised absolute jurisdiction over their serfs and dependants, and, when favoured by the situation of their castles, took toll, like the robber barons of Germany, of the goods which passed beneath their walls. Already they had proved to be thorns in the side of the industrious burghers; but at the beginning of the twelfth century their neighbourhood became intolerable, and for a couple of generations the chief political work of Florence was to bring them to reason. Those whose lands came up almost to the city gates were first dealt with, and then in a widening circle the country was cleared of the pest. Year after year, when the days were lengthening out in spring, the roughly organised city militia was mustered, war was declared against some specially obnoxious noble and his fortress was taken by surprise, or, failing that, was subjected to a siege. In the absence of a more definite grievance, it was enough to declare his castle dangerously near the city. These expeditions were led by the nobles who were already citizens, while the country neighbours of the victim looked on with indifference, or even helped to waste the lands or force the stronghold of a rival. The castle once taken, it was either levelled with the ground, or was restored to the owner on condition of his yielding service to the Republic. And, both by way of securing a hold upon an unwilling vassal and of adding a wealthy house and some strong arms to the Commonwealth, he was compelled, along with his family, to reside in Florence for a great part of every year.

It is a favourite exercise of Villani and other historians to trace the troubles and revolutions in the state of Florence to chance quarrels between noble families, arising from an angry word or a broken troth. Here, they tell, was sown the seed of the Guelf and Ghibeline wars in Florence; and here that of the feuds of Black and White. Such quarrels and party names were symptoms and nothing more. The enduring source of trouble was the presence within the city of a powerful idle class, constantly eager to recover the privilege it had lost, and to secure itself by every available means, including that of outside help, in the possession of what it still retained; which chafed against the curbs put upon its lawlessness, and whose ambitions were all opposed to the general interest. The citizens, for their part, had nothing better to hope for than that Italy should be left to the Italians, Florence to the Florentines. On the occasion of the celebrated Buondelmonti feud , some of the nobles definitely went over to the side of the people, either because they judged it likely to win in the long-run, or impelled unconsciously by the forces that in every society divide ambitious men into two camps, and in one form or another develop party strife. They who made a profession of popular sympathy did it with a view of using rather than of helping the people at large. Both of the noble parties held the same end in sight--control of the Commonwealth; and this would be worth the more the fewer there were to share it. The faction irreconcilable with the Republic on any terms included many of the oldest and proudest houses. Their hope lay in the advent of a strong Emperor, who should depute to them his rights over the money-getting, low-born crowd.

Long before they were adopted in Italy, the names of Guelf and Ghibeline had been employed in Germany to mark the partisans of the Bavarian Welf and of the Hohenstaufen lords of Waiblingen. On Italian soil they received an extended meaning: Ghibeline stood for Imperialist; Guelf for anti-Imperialist, Papalist, or simply Nationalist. When the names began to be freely used in Florence, which was towards the close of Frederick's reign and about a century after their first invention, they denoted no new start in politics, but only supplied a nomenclature for parties already in existence. As far as Florence was concerned, the designations were the more convenient that they were not too closely descriptive. The Ghibeline was the Emperor's man, when it served his purpose to be so; while the Guelf, constant only in his enmity to the Ghibelines, was free to think of the Pope as he chose, and to serve him no more than he wished or needed to. Ultimately, indeed, all Florence may be said to have become Guelf. To begin with, the name distinguished the nobles who sought alliance with the citizens, from the nobles who looked on these as they might have done on serfs newly thriven into wealth. Each party was to come up in turn. Within a period of twenty years each was twice driven into banishment, a measure always accompanied with decrees of confiscation and the levelling of private strongholds in Florence. The exiles kept well together, retreating, as it were in the order of war, to camps of observation they found ready prepared for them in the nearest cities and fortresses held by those of their own way of thinking. All their wits were then bent on how, by dint of some fighting and much diplomacy, they might shake the strength and undermine the credit of their successful rivals in the city, and secure their own return in triumph. It was an art they were proud to be adepts in.

When it was discovered that they were treating with Manfred, there was an outburst of popular wrath against the disaffected nobles. Some of them were seized and put to death, a fate shared by the Abbot of Vallombrosa, whom neither his priestly office nor his rank as Papal Legate availed to save from torture and a shameful end. Well accustomed as was the age to violence and cruelty, it was shocked at this free disposal of a great ecclesiastic by a mercantile community; and even to the Guelf chronicler Villani the terrible defeat of Montaperti seemed no more than a just vengeance taken by Heaven upon a crime so heinous. In the meantime the city was laid under interdict, and those concerned in the Abbot's death were excommunicated; while the Ghibelines, taking refuge in Siena, began to plot and scheme with the greater spirit against foes who, in the very face of a grave peril, had offended in the Pope their strongest natural ally.

The leader of the exiles was Farinata, one of the Uberti, a family which, so long ago as 1180, had raised a civil war to force their way into the consulship. Ever since, they had been the most powerful, perhaps, and certainly the most restless, clan in Florence, rich in men of strong character, fiercely tenacious of their purpose. Such was Farinata. To the Florentines of a later age he was to stand for the type of the great Ghibeline gentleman, haughty as Lucifer, a Christian in name though scarcely by profession, and yet almost beloved for his frank excess of pride. It detracted nothing from the grandeur of his character, in the judgment of his countrymen, that he could be cunning as well as brave. Manfred was coy to afford help to the Tuscan Ghibelines, standing out for an exorbitant price for the loan of his men-at-arms; and to Farinata was attributed the device by which his point of honour was effectually touched. When at last a reinforcement of eight hundred cavalry entered Siena, the exiles and their allies felt themselves more than a match for the militia of Florence, and set themselves to decoy it into the field. Earlier in the same year the Florentines had encamped before Siena, and sought in vain to bring on a general engagement. They were now misled by false messengers, primed by Farinata, into a belief that the Sienese, weary of the arrogance of Provenzano Salvani, then all-powerful in Siena, were ready to betray a gate to them. In vain did Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, one of the Guelf nobles, counsel delay till the German men-at-arms, wearied with waiting on and perhaps dissatisfied with their wages, should be recalled by Manfred. A march in full strength upon the hostile city was resolved on by the eager townsmen.

The fortifications of Florence had been recently completed and strengthened, and it was capable of a long defence. But the spirit of the people was broken for the time, and the conquerors found the gates open. Then it was that Farinata almost atoned for any wrong he ever did his native town, by withstanding a proposal made by the Ghibelines of the rival Tuscan cities, that Florence should be destroyed, and Empoli advanced to fill her room. 'Alone, with open face I defended her,' Dante makes him say. But the wonder would rather be if he had voted to destroy a city of which he was about to be one of the tyrants. Florence had now a fuller experience than ever of the oppression which it was in the character of the Ghibelines to exercise. A rich booty lay ready to their hands; for in the panic after Montaperti crowds of the best in Florence had fled, leaving all behind them except their wives and children, whom they would not trust to the cruel mercy of the victors. It was in this exile that for the first time the industrious citizen was associated with the Guelf noble. From Lucca, not powerful enough to grant them protection for long, they were driven to Bologna, suffering terribly on the passage of the Apennines from cold and want of food, but safe when the mountains lay between them and the Val d'Arno. While the nobles and young men with a taste for fighting found their livelihood in service against the Lombard Ghibelines, the more sober-minded scattered themselves to seek out their commercial correspondents and increase their acquaintance with the markets of Europe. When at length the way was open for them to return home, they came back educated by travel, as men must always be who travel for a purpose; and from this second exile of the Guelfs dates a vast extension of the commerce of Florence.

To Florence Charles proved a useful if a greedy and exacting protector. Under his influence as Pacificator of Tuscany--an office created for him by the Pope--the Guelfs were enabled slowly to return from exile, and the Ghibelines were gradually depressed into a condition of dependence on the goodwill of the citizens over whom they had so lately domineered. Henceforth failure attended every effort they made to lift their heads. The stubbornly irreconcilable were banished or put to death. Elaborate provisions were enacted in obedience to the Pope's commands, by which the rest were to be at peace with their old foes. Now they were to live in the city, but under disabilities as regarded eligibility to offices; now they were to be represented in the public councils, but so as to be always in a minority. The result of the measures taken, and of the natural drift of things, was that ere many more years had passed there were no avowed Ghibelines in Florence.

The Commonwealth, busy in resettling its government, was but slightly interested in much that went on around it. The boy Conradin, grandson of Frederick, nephew of Manfred, and in a sense the last of the Hohenstaufens, came to Italy to measure himself with Charles, and paid for his audacity upon the scaffold. Charles deputed Guy of Montfort, son of the great Earl Simon, to be his vicar in Florence. The Pope smiled and frowned in turn on the Florentines, as their devotion to him waxed and waned; and so he did on his champion Charles, whose ambition was apt to outrun his piety. All this was of less importance to the Commonwealth than the promotion of its domestic interests. It saw with equanimity a check given to Charles by the election of a new Emperor in Rudolf of Hapsburg , and a further check by the Sicilian Vespers, which lost him half his kingdom . But Siena and Pisa, Arezzo, and even Pistoia, were the objects of a sleepless anxiety. Pisa was the chief source of danger, being both from sentiment and interest stubbornly Ghibeline. When at length its power was broken by Genoa, its great maritime rival, in the naval battle of Meloria , there was no longer any city in Tuscany to be compared for wealth and strength with Florence.

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