MAY 30, 2021

of Maria Anna Avveduto

 

DANTE ALIGHIERI
We are in 2021 and it is the 700th anniversary
of the death of the great poet.

Baptized with the name of Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri but known to all of us as Dante Alighieri, he was born in Florence between 21 May and 21 June 1265 (the exact date of birth is not known) and died in the night between 13 and September 14, 1321, today are seven hundred years since his death as we said before.
Poet, writer but also politician, considered the father of the Italian language.
He is known all over the world as the author of the most famous work of all, the "Divine Comedy".
Expression of medieval culture, filtered through the lyric of the Dolce stil novo, the "Divine Comedy" is also an allegorical vehicle of human salvation, which is concretized in touching the dramas of the damned, the purgatorial pains and the celestial glories, allowing Dante to offer to the reader a glimpse of morals and ethics.
The date of birth is not known with certainty and the year of birth of the same has been deduced by some scholars by analyzing some autobiographical allusions written in the "Vita Nova" and in the canticle of Hell which begins with the famous verse «In the middle of the walk of our life ”and given that half of man's life is for Dante the thirty-fifth year of life and the imaginary journey of the work takes place in 1300, it would thus go back to the year 1265.
The historian Giovanni Villani in his work "Nova Cronica" reports "this Dante died in exile in the municipality of Florence at the age of about 56", a proof that would confirm these studies.
Furthermore, some verses of the Paradise of the "Divine Comedy" indicate that he was born under the sign of Gemini and therefore in the period between May 21 and June 21.
The great poet was also baptized on March 27, 1266 and that day all those born of that year were brought to the source, and therefore it seems to be attributable to the year of his birth as well.
Dante belonged to the Alighieri family.
A family of secondary importance within the Florentine social elite but with a certain economic wealth.
Although Dante claims that his family descended from the ancient Romans, the most distant relative he mentions is the great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida degli Elisei, a Florentine and knight in the second crusade.
Dante's paternal grandfather, Bellincione, was a commoner and a commoner married Dante's sister. Bellincione's son (and Dante's father), Aleghiero or Alighiero di Bellincione, practiced the profession of money changer, with which he managed to procure a dignified dignity to the large family.
Thanks to the discovery of two parchments preserved in the Diocesan Archives of Lucca, however, we learn that Dante's father was also a usurer, drawing enrichments through his position as judicial prosecutor at the court of Florence.
He was also a Guelph but without political ambitions: for this reason the Ghibellines did not exile him after the battle of Montaperti as they did with other Guelphs, considering him a non-dangerous opponent.
Dante's mother was called Bella degli Abati, daughter of Durante Scolaro and belonging to an important local Ghibelline family. Her son Dante will never mention her among her writings and we have very little biographical information about her. Bella died when Dante was five or six years old and her husband Alighiero remarried almost immediately perhaps between 1275 and 1278 with Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi.
From this marriage were born Francesco and Tana Alighieri called Gaetana.
Not much is known about Dante's training. In all likelihood he followed the educational process of the time which was based on training with a grammarian with whom he first learned the linguistic rudiments and then landed on the study of the liberal arts.
Official education was then accompanied by "informal" contacts with the cultural stimuli now coming from high-ranking urban environments
Dante was lucky enough to meet in the eighties the Florentine politician and scholar Ser Brunetto Latini, returning from a long stay in France both as ambassador of the Republic and as a political exile.
Dante, after the death of his beloved Beatrice, in a period that oscillates between 1291 and 1294/1295, began to refine his philosophical culture by attending schools organized by the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella and by the Franciscans of Santa Croce.
Some critics believe that Dante stayed in Bologna. Giulio Ferroni also believes Dante's presence in the city of Bologna to be certain.
They believe that Dante studied at the University of Bologna, but there is no evidence for this.
Instead it is very likely that Dante stayed in Bologna between the summer of 1286 and that of 1287, where he met Bartolomeo da Bologna, who partly adheres to the theological interpretation of the Empyrean Dante. Regarding the stay in Paris, there are many doubts but they believe that Dante may have actually traveled to Paris between 1309 and 1310.
Dante also had the opportunity to participate in the lively literary culture revolving around the vulgar lyric. In the sixties of the 13th century, the first influences of the "Sicilian School" arrived in Tuscany, a poetic movement which arose around the court of Frederick II of Swabia and which reworked the amorous themes of Provencal lyricism.
The Tuscan writers, under the influence of the lyrics of Giacomo da Lentini and Guido delle Colonne, developed a lyric oriented both towards courtly love but also towards politics and civil commitment. Guittone d'Arezzo and Boniacca Orbicciani, that is to say the main exponents of the so-called Sicilian-Tuscan school, had a follower in the figure of the Florentine Chiaro Davanzati, who imported the new poetic code within the walls of his city. It was precisely in Florence, however, that some young poets (headed by the noble Guido Cavalcanti) expressed their dissent towards the stylistic and linguistic complexity of the Sicilian-Tuscans, advocating on the contrary a sweeter and more gentle lyric: the dolce stil novo.
Dante found himself in the midst of this literary debate. In his early works, the link with both the Tuscan poetry of Guittone and Bonagiunta and with the more purely Occitan poetry is evident.
The young Dante, however, soon tied himself to the dictates of stilnovist poetics, a change favored by the friendship that bound him to the older Cavalcanti.
In 1277, when Dante was twelve, his marriage was agreed with Gemma, the daughter of Messer Manetto Donati whom he then married at the age of twenty in 1285. Marriage at such an early age was quite common at that time and it was done with an important ceremony and with formal deeds signed before a notary.
The family to which Gemma belonged - the Donati - was one of the most important in late medieval Florence and later became the reference point for the political party opposite to that of the poet, namely the black Guelphs.
The marriage between the two must not have been very happy, according to the tradition gathered by Boccaccio, Dante did not write a single verse to his wife, while no news has been received of her on the actual presence at her husband's side during exile.
Whatever the union between Dante and this woman, he fathered two sons and a daughter: Jacopo, Pietro, Antonia and perhaps a possible fourth, Giovanni. Of the three certain, Pietro was a judge in Verona and the only one who continued the Alighieri lineage, Jacopo chose to pursue an ecclesiastical career while Antonia became a nun with the name of Sister Beatrice seems to be in the Olivetane convent in Ravenna.
Shortly after the marriage Dante began to participate as a knight in some military campaigns that Florence was conducting against its external enemies including in Arezzo in the battle of Campaldino in 1289 and in Pisa in the capture of Caprona in the same year.
Subsequently, in 1294, he would have been part of the delegation of knights who escorted Carlo Martello d'Angiò, son of Charles II of Anjou, who was in Florence.
In 1293 the Laws of Giano Della Bella came into force which excluded the ancient nobility from politics and allowed the bourgeois class to obtain roles in the Republic as long as they were enrolled in an Art.
Dante as a noble was excluded from city politics until July 6, 1295, when the "Temperaments" were promulgated, laws that gave the nobles the right to hold institutional roles, as long as they enrolled in the Arts.
Dante, therefore, enrolled in the Art of Doctors and Apothecaries.
The exact series of his political appointments is not known as the minutes of the assemblies have been lost. However, through other sources it has been possible to reconstruct a good part of his activity: he was in the People's Council from 1295 to 1296; in the "Savi" group; in the "Council of Hundred".
He was then sent from time to time as ambassador to San Gimignano.
In the year 1300 Dante was elected one of the seven priors and despite belonging to the Guelph party, he always tried to oppose the interference of his arch enemy Pope Boniface VIII.
With the arrival of Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta, Dante managed to hinder his work.
Also during his priory, Dante approved the grave provision by which eight exponents of the black Guelphs and seven of the white ones were exiled, including Guido Cavalcanti who soon died in Sarzana.
This provision had serious repercussions on the developments of future events: not only did it prove to be a useless provision but it caused the black Guelphs themselves to risk a coup d'état.
Blessed Pope Boccasini tried, in his short pontificate, to restore peace within Florence by sending Cardinal Niccolò da Prato as peacemaker.
This will turn out to be the only pontiff on whom Dante did not utter any condemnation but also towards which he expressed full appreciation, so much so as not to appear in the Comedy.
Dante was in Rome, detained by Boniface VIII, when Charles of Valois at the first city turmoil took the pretext to put Florence to fire and sword with a stroke of his hand.
On November 9, 1301, the conquerors imposed as mayor Cante Gabrielli da Gubbio, who belonged to the faction of the black Guelphs of his native city and therefore began a policy of systematic persecution of white politicians hostile to the pope.
The poet was sentenced in absentia, to the stake and the destruction of the houses. From that moment, Dante never saw his homeland again.
After the failed attempted coups of 1302, Dante as captain of the army of exiles, together with Scarpetta Ordelaffi, organized a new attempt to return to Florence.
However, the enterprise was unfortunate: the mayor of Florence, Fulcieri da Calboli managed to win in the battle of Castel Pulciano.
Dante, considering it correct to wait for a more politically favorable moment, sided against yet another armed struggle, finding himself in the minority to the point that the most intransigent formulated suspicions of treason on him; he thus decided not to participate in the battle and to distance himself from the group.
Dante was, after the battle of Lastra, a guest of various courts and families of Romagna, including the Ordelaffi themselves. The stay in Forlì did not last long, as the exile moved first to Bologna in 1305, then to Padua in 1306 and finally to the Marca Trevigiana at Gherardo III da Camino.
In 1307, after leaving Lunigiana, Dante moved to the Casentino, where he was a guest of the Counts Guidi, Counts of Battifolle and Lords of Poppi with whom he began to write the canticle of Hell.
The stay in the Casentino lasted a very short time: between 1308 and 1310.
Dante was in Forlì in 1310 where he received the news of the descent into Italy of the new emperor Arrigo VII. Dante between 1308 and 1311, writing the "De Monarchia", expressed his open imperial sympathies by hurling a violent letter against the Florentines.
Dante's dream of a Renovatio Imperii was shattered on 24 August 1313 when the emperor suddenly passed away.
The death of the emperor dealt a fatal blow to the poet's attempts to return permanently to Florence.
Following the sudden death of the emperor, Dante accepted Cangrande della Scala's invitation to reside at his court in Verona.
When Bartolomeo died in 1304, Dante was forced to leave Verona as his successor Alboino was not on good terms with the poet.
On the death of Alboino in 1312, his successor became his brother Cangrande, a friend of Dante, who by virtue of this bond called the Florentine exile and his children to him, giving them security and protection from the various enemies they had made over the years.
The friendship and esteem between the two men was such that Dante exalted, in the Canticle of Paradise - composed for the most part during his stay in Verona -, his generous patron in a panegyric by the mouth of the ancestor Cacciaguida.
Dante, for reasons still unknown, left Verona to land in Ravenna in 1318 at the court of Guido Novello da Polenta.
The last three years of his life passed relatively quietly in the Romagna city, during which Dante created a literary cenacle frequented by his sons Pietro and Jacopo and by some young local writers including Pieraccio Tedaldi and Giovanni Quirini.
On behalf of the lord of Ravenna he carried out occasional political embassies such as the one that led him to Venice.
Dante's embassy had a good effect for the safety of Ravenna but it was fatal to the poet who, returning from the lagoon city, contracted malaria while passing through the marshy Comacchio valleys.
The fevers quickly brought the fifty-six-year-old poet to death which took place in Ravenna on the night between 13 and 14 September 1321.
The funeral, performed with great pomp, was officiated in the church of San Pier Maggiore today San Francesco in Ravenna in the presence of the highest city authorities and the poet's children.
Dante's sudden death caused widespread regret in the literary world.
Dante initially found burial in a marble urn placed in the church where the funeral was held.
When the city of Ravenna then passed under the control of the Serenissima, the mayor Bernardo Bembo ordered the architect Pietro Lombardi in 1483 to create a large monument that would adorn the poet's tomb.
Returning the city to the Papal States, the pontiffs neglected the fate of Dante's tomb, which soon fell into ruin.
Over the next two centuries, only two attempts were made to remedy the disastrous conditions in which the tomb lay: the first was in 1692, when Cardinal Domenico Maria Corsi and the prolegated Giovanni Salviati restored it.
Although a few decades had passed, the funeral monument was ruined due to the raising of the ground below the church, which prompted the cardinal legate Luigi Valenti Gonzaga to commission the architect Camillo Morigia in 1780 to design the neoclassical temple still visible today.
Dante's mortal remains were the subject of disputes between the Ravenna and Florentines already after his death a few decades.
If the Florentines claimed the remains as fellow citizens of the deceased, the Ravenna citizens wanted them to remain in the place where the poet died, believing that the Florentines did not deserve the remains of a man they had despised in life.
To save the poet's remains from a possible stealing by Florence, the Franciscan friars removed the bones from the tomb built by Pietro Lombardi, hiding them in a secret place and then making the Morigia monument a cenotaph.
When Napoleon ordered the suppression of religious orders in 1810, the friars who had handed down the place where the remains were from generation to generation decided to hide them in a walled door of the adjacent oratory of the quadrarco of Braccioforte.
The remains remained in that place until 1865 when a mason intent on restoring the convent on the occasion of the sixth centenary of the poet's birth accidentally discovered a small wooden box under a walled door, bearing inscriptions in Latin signed by a certain Friar Antonio. Saints who reported that Dante's bones were contained in the box.
Indeed, an almost intact skeleton was found inside the box.
The urn was then reopened in the small temple of Morigia which was found empty except for three phalanges, which matched the remains found under the walled door, certifying its actual authenticity.
The body was reassembled and exhibited for a few months in a crystal urn and then re-cumulated inside the temple of Morigia in a walnut chest protected by a lead casket.
In Dante's sepulcher, under a small altar there is the epigraph in Latin verses dictated by Bernardo da Canaccio at the behest of Guido Novello but engraved in 1357.
Dante has become one of the symbols of Italy in the world thanks to the name of the main body for the diffusion of the Italian language, the Dante Alighieri Society, while critical and philological studies are kept alive by the Dante Society.

 

           

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