from the study of long biographical monographs which promise all the world, while, in reality, they contain nothing that has not been said before, or else mere wild individual fancies. As names are odious, we shall not mention examples, although there is certainly no lack of them. But, alongside the chaff, we have also the good grain; alongside so much stuff that is useless and worse, we have serious and very important studies, which must not be overlooked by any one who wishes to treat of Dante's life. A list of these biographical monographs would take more room than we can afford. The more important of them will be named in their proper connection.

Since the present work cannot give bibliographical notices even approximately complete, but must confine itself to a very small selection of works likely to be of special use to the student, we must refer those who wish to know what industry has accomplished in this field to the following bibliographical works.

Batines, Columb de: Bibliografia Dantesca, ossia Catalogo delle Edizioni, Traduzioni, Codici manoscritti e Commenti della Divina Commedia e delle Opere minori di Dante, seguito dalla Serie de Biografi de lui. Prato, 1845. Two large volumes, 8vo. A most careful work, indispensable to the student of Dante, but, unfortunately, unfinished.

Ferrazzi, Giuseppe Jacopo: Bibliografia Dantesca (forming vols. IV and V of the learned and most diligent author's Manuale Dantesco). Bassano, 1871-1877. Two large volumes, 12m0 and 8vo. A work of marvellous erudition, but less essential to the student than the preceding.

Petzholdt, Julius: Bibliographia Dantea ab Anno MDCCCLXV inchoata. Dresden, 1876-1880, 8vo. Distinguished for its admirable system and scrupulous bibliographical accuracy.

Scartazzini, G. A.: Dante in Germania. Storia letteraria e Bibliografia Dantesca alemanna dal Secolo XIV sino ai nostri Giorni. Milan, 1881-1883. Two volumes, 4to. Contains a complete catalogue of all German publications on Dante, ancient and modern.

CHAPTER II.

FIRST PERIOD OF DANTE'S LIFE.

FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE DEATH OF BEATRICE.

1265-1290.

PERIOD OF FAITH AND INNOCENCE.

§ 1. DANTE'S FAMILY. During his ecstatico-symbolic journey through the three kingdoms of eternity, Dante meets, in the heaven of Mars, his great-greatgrandfather Cacciaguida, and asks him: "Tell me, who were your ancestors?" Cacciaguida replies that he and his ancestors were born in St. Peter's-gate ward,1 in Florence, but that with regard to who they were, and whence they came thither, it is better to keep silence than to speak. It follows that the traditions of Dante's family did not go back beyond his great-great-grandfather, since Dante himself knew nothing further.

Cacciaguida himself tells us that his wife came from the valley of the Po; and that from her came the surname Alighieri. Boccaccio tells us: "When Cacciaguida was a youth, his parents married him to a damsel belonging to the Aldighieri family of Ferrara, -a damsel

[1 Sesto di Porta San Piero (Parad. XVI, 40 sqq.). Florence was originally divided into four quarters, but afterwards into sixths. Dante's sixth, or ward, was on the east side of Old Florence.]

distinguished no less for beauty and character than for nobility of origin, — with whom he lived several years, and by whom he had several children. How the rest of these were named is not known; but the mother, with a weakness common to mothers, being anxious to perpetuate the name of her ancestors, called one boy Aldighieri, a name afterwards, by the loss of the d, corrupted into Alighieri." It follows that, up to the time of Cacciaguida, no family of the name of Alighieri existed in Florence, and, indeed, we find no traces of any Florentine family of that name. Dante's ancestors could not yet boast of a family name, and were called merely by their Christian names, or by those of their parents, as was long the custom among people of the middle class, and very much longer among those of the lower classes.1 Giovanni Villani, a most diligent collector of the memorials of his native city, and not only a fellow-citizen, but even a neighbor, of the Alighieri, never mentions them either among the grandees, or even among the notable bourgeois families, a sure proof that the family which gave to the world Dante Alighieri was not only bourgeois, but likewise very obscure.

However, as is usually the case in this world, even this very obscure bourgeois family, afterwards rendered so illustrious and ennobled by Dante, had its traditions and its pretensions. It claimed the honor of being descended from the old Romans, and even had stories

[1 In some parts of Italy it is so still.]

to tell about nobility of blood, either possessed by them since the days when Florence was founded, or else acquired by an ancestor, but lost with the lapse of time, the descendants of the mythical knight Cacciaguida not having taken care to add new cloth to that mantle of nobility which adorned him,1 and which he had won for his descendants. Hence, on the one hand, a contempt for nobility, in the historical sense of that term, -a contempt which found eloquent expression in the fourth treatise of The Love-Feast; -on the other, a contempt, mingled with hatred and envy, for the so-called "new citizens" of Florence, a contempt which found still more eloquent expression in The Divine Comedy. was Dante's own fault that these traditional fables regarding his family were not merely published to the world, but were even accepted as history and amplified by ancient and modern biographers, who have gone on romancing that Dante belonged to the grandees, that is, to the nobles or patricians of Florence, whereas the truth is, that he came of a very obscure bourgeois family.

It

The accounts of this family do not go back, and, even in its own traditions, did not go back, beyond the twelfth century, since, on Dante's own showing, the ancestors of Cacciaguida and his brothers, Moronto and Eliseo, were unknown. Historically, nothing is known of this Cacciaguida, further than that he was dead in 1189, and that he had two sons, Preitenitto and Ala

[1 See Parad. XVI, 7 sqq.]