he said it was evident they had no escape. Nevertheless, he was so far restrained by reverence for his native city that, when the Emperor went against Florence and encamped near the gate, Dante would not, he writes, consent to be there, although he had been one of those who encouraged his coming. When, in the following month, the Emperor died at Buonconvento, all hope for Dante vanished, inasmuch as he had cut off any way of pardon for himself, by speaking and writing against the citizens who were governing the republic; and no force remained to him which could give him any promise. Accordingly, laying aside all hope, he passed the rest of his life in poverty, living in different parts of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Romagna, under the patronage of different lords, until at last he repaired to Ravenna, where he ended his days."

From expressions in his letter to Henry VII, we know that Dante was one of those who went to meet, and do fealty to, that Emperor. Where he met the Emperor, is unknown. Some say at Lausanne, others at Milan, others elsewhere. If Dante was in France in 1310, it is not improbable that he received the news of Henry's march into Italy only after the latter had arrived there. The dates of Dante's letters contradict the statement made by Boccaccio, that Henry was already engaged in besieging Brescia when the news of his appearance in Italy reached Dante.1 The most likely view is, that Dante did fealty to the Emperor at Milan, where a multitude of illustrious men assembled at the imperial camp, among them the Malaspinas, Dante's hosts, and Albertino Mussato.

The letter to the princes and peoples of Italy bears no date..

[1 This does not seem entirely certain. The siege of Brescia was very long. Though it was not taken till the end of September, 1311, it may have been invested as early as March. Henry was crowned in Milan on the 6th January of that year. Sismondi says: "Henry consumed the greater part of the summer in besieging Brescia."]

It was probably written immediately after Dante had paid his respects to the Emperor, and while the impression of their meeting was still fresh in his mind. From the dates of the other two, it is evident that in 1311 Dante was in the Casentino, perhaps at Porciano, five miles from the springs of the Arno. There is even a tradition that he was for some time a prisoner in the great tower at Porciano. (See Troya, Il Veltro Allegorico di Dante, pp. 123 sqq.) From the 18th April, 1311, onwards, the traces of Dante are again lost in darkness.

No one will be inclined to praise the virulent language employed by Dante in his letter to the Florentines. Granted that the Poet not only believed himself to be innocent, but really was so, his language was ill-suited to a man familiar with philosophy.1 In seeking for a psychological explanation of this fact, we must remember that the Poet was still in the second phase of his spiritual development, and that he had not yet attained that harmony, peace, and serenity which he afterwards found.

There is very little ground for Leonardo Bruni's praise of the Poet for having refused to take part in the siege of Florence, out of reverence for his country. At the time when Henry VII besieged Florence, Dante Alighieri was in his forty-eighth year, at an age when it no longer required reverence to prevent him from bearing arms against his country. In the condemnation and banishment pronounced in the autumn of 1315, there occurs once more, among the names of the Ghibellines cursed by their country, that of Dante Alighieri, and this time coupled with the names of his sons. It will hardly be possible to find any explanation for this fact, except on the supposition that Dante's sons had fought against the Florentines (perhaps at Montecatini), which would not be a proof of much rever

ence.

[ Cf. Dante's later letter, Pt. I, Chap. IV, § 5.]

§ 9. THE SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE. - Although driven by fickle fortune hither and thither, "like a ship without sails and without rudder," Dante did not leave off his studies and his philosophical speculations. He even devoted himself to them with such fervor as to injure his eyesight, impelled not only by the desire for fame, but by the wish to serve his kind. But the experience which he gradually acquired was such as to cure him of his over-ideal illusions. For a moment, indeed, he saw himself uplifted; but the next moment popular favor turned into deadly hatred, and all the reward he received was to be expelled and cursed by his country, and to be forced to wander through the world, almost begging his bread crumb by crumb, and appearing vile in the eyes of many, himself as well as his works. The events, too, which took place in rapid succession, showed him how little his speculations and his studies benefited his contemporaries in practical life. He who "went signifying what Love within him dictated," 1 every day saw hatred venting itself between both citizens and families. He who proclaimed the sacred rights of the Empire,2 saw the priest exalting himself above all the powers of this earth, and the peoples resisting, with all their

[1

1

"Io mi son un che, quando

Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo

Che detta dentro, vo significando."

— Purg., XXIV, 52 sqq.]

[2 I render the word Monarchia thus. Of course the title of Dante's work De Monarchia means On the Empire, not On Monarchy. See Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, pp. 265 sqq.]

might, that Emperor whose authority, according to him, had been established by God Himself, for the good of the human race. He who wished to see the authority of the Holy Keys venerated and respected, saw "Christ, in the person of his vicar, once more a captive," "once more scorned and put to death between living thieves." And the spiritual authority was falling from the pinnacle of power to the lowest depth of humiliation. The French giant was unyoking from Rome the sacred chariot of the Church, transformed into a monster, and was dragging it through the woods to Avignon, where began the Babylonish captivity of him whose mission on earth was to guide the human race, according to revelation, to spiritual blessedness. Everywhere civil wars, everywhere violence committed by the strong upon the weak, everywhere banishments, robberies, betrayals, and murders! At one time, the peoples, full of religious enthusiasm, were going, by hundreds and thousands, as pilgrims to Rome, in the hope of there securing eternal peace; at another, men, women, and children without number, leaving their professions and occupations, were marching, with the cross at their head, from place to place, shouting for mercy; at another, the doctrines of religion were made subjects of jest and matters for comedies, which often ended in sad tragedies; at another still, men were persecuting, robbing, and killing each other. All the events, discords, disasters, mishaps, and miseries which he saw proclaimed to him that the human intellect with its

speculations was not sufficient to afford effective aid to man, but that he required divine grace and the succor of heaven.

That on his wanderings the Florentine exile devoted himself to study, is shown by the works which he wrote in those years. In The Love Feast (III, 9), he says: "By tiring my eyes much in reading, I so weakened the visual spirits that the stars seemed to me all dimmed with a kind of whiteness. But, by long repose in dark and cool places, and by cooling the body of the eye1 with clear water, I re-collected the scattered virtue, so that I returned to my former condition of good sight."

We must repeat that whoever wishes to know Dante must make himself familiar with the history of his times. Let us add that he must also study the original sources, at least the principal ones. Every student of Dante ought to be perfectly familiar with the works of Villani, Ammirato, etc. In this humble work, we cannot rehearse the history of these times, but must confine ourselves to so much of it as concerns Dante. To help students to understand the relations of the events which we have narrated, we here add a chronological table of the chief contemporary occurrences.

1291. The Christians lose the city of Acre. -The King of France causes all the Italians to be seized and ransomed. "What with the loss of Acre and this seizure by France, the

[1 To understand the expressions “visual spirits,” “body of the eye,” and "scattered virtue," we have only to recall the saying of Dante's "master," Aristotle, that "if the eye were an animate being, vision would be its soul; for this is the ideal essence of the eye" (ei yàp ĥv ¿ ¿plaλμòs ζῷον, ψυχὴ ἂν ἦν αὐτοῦ ἡ ὄψις· αὑτὴ γὰρ οὐσία ὀφθαλμοῦ ἡ κατὰ λόγον. De Anima, B. I; 412 6, 18 sqq.). In The New Life, Dante has much to say about visual and other spirits.]