Villani's Chronicle Part 35

[Sidenote: 1320 A.D.]

-- 122.--_How the count Gaddo, lord of Pisa, died; and how the count Nieri was made lord thereof._ -- 123.--_How peace was made by the king of France with the Flemings._ -- 124.--_How there was great dissension amongst them of the house of Flanders._ -- 125.--_How the Ghibellines were expelled from Rieti._ -- 126.--_How there was a great enrolling of armies by two emperors elect of Germany._ -- 127.--_How the Marquis Spinetta allied himself with the Florentines against Castruccio, but it turned out to the shame of the Florentines._ -- 128.--_How the offices were changed in Florence._ -- 129.--_How the Marquis Cavalcab, with the league of Tuscany, was routed in Lombardy._ -- 130.--_How M.

Galea.s.so of Milan had the city of Cremona._ -- 131.--_How there was an eclipse of the sun, and the king of France died._ -- 132.--_How the Bolognese expelled from Bologna Romeo de' Peppoli, the rich man, and his followers._ -- 133.--_How the emperor of Constantinople had war with his sons._ -- 134.--_How Frederick of Sicily was excommunicated, and how he had his son crowned over the kingdom._ -- 135.--_How the Florentines sent to Frioli for hors.e.m.e.n._

-- 136.--_Concerning the poet Dante Alighieri of Florence._

[Sidenote: 1321 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Inf. i. 87.]

[Sidenote: Epistola vii.]

[Sidenote: viii.]

[Sidenote: Cf. Canzone, 58-63.]

In the said year 1321, in the month of July, Dante Alighieri, of Florence, died in the city of Ravenna, in Romagna, having returned from an emba.s.sy to Venice in the service of the lords of Polenta, with whom he was living; and in Ravenna, before the door of the chief church, he was buried with great honour, in the garb of a poet and of a great philosopher. He died in exile from the commonwealth of Florence, at the age of about fifty-six years. This Dante was a citizen of an honourable and ancient family in Florence, of the Porta San Piero, and our neighbour; and his exile from Florence was by reason that when M. Charles of Valois, of the House of France, came to Florence in the year 1301 and banished the White party, as has been afore mentioned at its due time, the said Dante was among the chief governors of our city, and pertained to that party, albeit he was a Guelf; and, therefore, for no other fault he was driven out and banished from Florence with the White party; and went to the university at Bologna, and afterwards at Paris, and in many parts of the world. This man was a great scholar in almost every branch of learning, albeit he was a layman; he was a great poet and philosopher, and a perfect rhetorician alike in prose and verse, a very n.o.ble orator in public speaking, supreme in rhyme, with the most polished and beautiful style which in our language ever was up to his time and beyond it. In his youth he wrote the book of The New Life, of Love; and afterwards, when he was in exile, he wrote about twenty very excellent odes, treating of moral questions and of love; and he wrote three n.o.ble letters among others; one he sent to the government of Florence complaining of his undeserved exile; the second he sent to the Emperor Henry when he was besieging Brescia, reproving him for his delay, almost in a prophetic strain; the third to the Italian cardinals, at the time of the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, praying them to unite in the election of an Italian Pope; all these in Latin in a lofty style, and with excellent purport and authorities, and much commended by men of wisdom and insight. And he wrote the Comedy, wherein, in polished verse, and with great and subtle questions, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful ill.u.s.trations, comparisons, and poetry, he dealt and treated in 100 chapters or songs, of the existence and condition of h.e.l.l, Purgatory and Paradise as loftily as it were possible to treat of them, as in his said treatise may be seen and understood by whoso has subtle intellect. It is true that he in this Comedy delighted to denounce and to cry out after the manner of poets, perhaps in certain places more than was fitting; but may be his exile was the cause of this. He wrote also The Monarchy, in which he treated of the office of Pope and of Emperor. [And he began a commentary upon fourteen of his afore-named moral odes in the vulgar tongue which, in consequence of his death, is only completed as to three of them; the which commentary, judging by what can be seen of it, was turning out a lofty, beautiful, subtle, and very great work, adorned by lofty style and fine philosophical and astrological reasonings. Also he wrote a little book ent.i.tled, De Vulgari Eloquentia, of which he promises to write four books, but of these only two exist, perhaps on account of his untimely death; and here, in strong and ornate Latin and with beautiful reasonings, he reproves all the vernaculars of Italy.] This Dante, because of his knowledge, was somewhat haughty and reserved and disdainful, and after the fas.h.i.+on of a philosopher, careless of graces and not easy in his converse with laymen; but because of the lofty virtues and knowledge and worth of so great a citizen, it seems fitting to confer lasting memory upon him in this our chronicle, although, indeed, his n.o.ble works, left to us in writing, are the true testimony to him, and are an honourable report to our city.

END OF THE SELECTIONS FROM BOOK IX.