ghieri, or Aldighiero, who, in the year named, promised to the priest Tolomeo and his successors to cut down, whenever requested to do so, a fig-tree of theirs, which grew close to the wall of St. Martin's. Aldighiero had a son named Bellincione, who was the father of Gherardo, Brunetto, and Aldighiero, the father of Dante. In ancient documents, Bellincione is spoken of as a member of the council, and a bourgeois. Aldighiero, the father of Dante, a lawyer by profession, had, for his first wife, Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi; his second wife, Dante's mother, is known only by the name of Donna Bella, probably because she was of very obscure origin. Dante had a brother, Francesco, who married Pietra di Donato Brunacci, and a sister, whose name is unknown, but who married Leone Poggi. Thus, not only Dante's ancestors, but all his nearest relatives were bourgeois.

Leonardi Bruni writes: "Before his expulsion from Florence, Dante, though by no means immensely rich, was still not poor, having a fair patrimony, sufficient to enable him to live honorably."

From documents still in existence, it is proved that Dante and his brother Francesco contracted, in the years from 12931 to 1300, debts to a considerable amount, a fact which does not appear to indicate much wealth.

[1 Here the original has 1297; but see Karl Witte's Dante-Forschungen, Vol. II, pp. 61 sq. From the account there given, it appears that, in the year 1300, the indebtedness of the two brothers was 9301⁄2 gold florins of Florence, or upwards of 37,000 French francs.]

Todeschini, Gius.: Scritti su Dante, I, 263 sqq., 344-360. Scartazzini, G. A.: Dante's Abstammung und Adel (Abhandlungen über Dante Alighieri), I, pp. 1–53.

Fenaroli La Stirpe, il Nome di Famiglia, e la Data del Nascimento di Dante Alighieri. Turin, 1882, 8vo.

P. P.: Notizie genealogiche della Famiglia Alighieri, estratte dal Litta ed altri. Florence, 1865, 32m0.

Passerini, Luigi: Della Famiglia di Dante (Dante e il suo Secolo). Florence, 1865-66, 4to, pp. 33-78.

Frullani, Emilio, and Gargani: Genealogia della Famiglia Alighieri (Della Casa di Dante), I, 57.

§ 2. DATE OF DANTE'S BIRTH. - All Dante's biographers and commentators fix the date of his birth in the month of May, 1265, and the poet himself confirms this date in several passages of his works. In The New Life, he says he was born a year before Beatrice, who must have been born in 1266, since she was twenty-four years old when she died on the 9th June, 1290. In The Love-Feast, he tells us that he had reached the culmination of his life, when, in 1301, he left Florence, never to return, which means that he lived in Florence till his thirty-fifth year. And, according to The Divine Comedy, he was, in the year 1300, the year when his vision is supposed to have taken place, “midway on the journey of our life," that is, in his thirty-fifth year; and was born when the sun was in the constellation Gemini, that is, between the 18th May and the 9th June, 1265. The chronicler Giovanni Villani states that Dante died "at the age of about fifty-six years."

Indeed, if he was born in the second half of May, or in the first days of June, 1265, he must have been fiftysix years and about four months old when he died at Ravenna, on the 14th of September, 1321. In one word, all accounts, whether in documents, in his own. works, or in the writings of his biographers and commentators, agree in confirming the ancient and invariable tradition that Dante was born in May, 1265.

But, since it is certain that Dante was born in Florence, we are met by the objection that he could not have been born there in 1265, because his parents and relatives belonged to the Guelph party, and the Guelphs were at that time in banishment, and did not return to Florence until the following year. This objection has very little weight, because we have no certain information that the father of Dante was among the banished Guelphs, and, even if he was, this does not in the smallest degree exclude the possibility that Madonna Bella may have found shelter among her relatives in Florence, and that the birth took place there. Women were not included in decrees of banishment.

Peoples have always had a fondness for surrounding the cradles of their great men with miraculous events. The garrulous Boccaccio tells us a long story about a miraculous dream, in which Dante's mother, shortly before his birth, saw what the fruit of her womb was destined to be. But Boccaccio's story has no other value than that of a dream. It is recorded also that Brunetto Latini, observing the state of the heavens at the mo

ment of Dante's birth, cast his horoscope, and declared that he would be a man of great genius and learning, and that he would win immortal fame. But in 1265 Brunetto was not in Florence to work this miracle.

Grion, Giusto Che l' Anno della Visione di Dante è il 1301, e il Di natale il 18 maggio 1267. Udine, 1865, 8vo.

Labruzzi di Nexima, Francesco: Quando nacque Dante Alighieri? Two studies published in the Propugnatore at Bologna, 1877-79. Vol. X, pt. II, pp. 3-16; Vol. XII, pt. I, PP. 313-24.

Scartazzini, G. A.: Wann wurde Dante geboren? Abhandlungen, I, 54-97.

[Witte, Karl: Vermuthungen über Dante's Geburtstag, in Dante-Forschungen, Vol. II, pp. 28-31.]

§ 3. DANTE'S NATURAL GIFTS. - Dante Alighieri belonged to that small number of men to whom Providence confided ten talents, and whom Nature loaded with her gifts. In all his works, whether in poetry or prose, we recognize a man of extraordinary depth and delicacy of feeling, and of marvellously keen intellect. Of all the gifts of heart and head, not one is lacking in him. He brought with him into the world the will and the inclination to dive into the deep and not over-clear waters of mysticism, as well as to make his tabernacle in the arid, sandy wastes of scholasticism. The gifts of his heart could not do otherwise than incline him to the supernatural ecstasies which lay in the tendencies of his time; and, on the other hand, his acute intellect

could not fail to be delighted, not only with the excessively subtle occupations of scholasticism, but perhaps also with the speculations of that philosophy which was in vogue in his time, which called itself Epicureanism, and was Materialism.

Allusions to Dante's natural gifts are not rare in his works, especially in his chief poem. It is by "loftiness. of genius" that he passes through the blind world: he has but "to follow his star, and he cannot miss a glorious harbor."2 The beneficent influences of the heavens and the free gift of divine graces conspired to render him "virtually such that every right disposition would have made admirable proof in him."3 But let us listen to his earliest biographers.

Boccaccio says: "Moreover, this poet was endowed with wondrous capacity, with a most retentive memory, and with a perspicacious intellect. With the loftiest genius and with subtle

Non puoi fallire a glorioso porto. — Hell, XV, 55 sq.]