DANTE
632
DANTE
spired poetry of the sentence of Richard of St. Victor:
'• Through Mary not only is the light of grace given to
man on earth, but even the vision of God vouchsafed
to souls in Heaven."
Our earliest account of the life and works of Dante is contained in a chapter in the "Croniche Florentine" of Giovanni Villani (d. 1348), who speaks of the poet as "our neighbour". There are six commentaries extant on the "Divina Commedia", in whole or in part, composed within ten years of the poet's death. Three of these — by Graziolo de' Bambaglioli, then chancellor of the commune of Bologna; an uniden- tified Florentine known as Selmi's Anonimo, and Fra Giiido da Pisa, a Carmelite — e.xtend to the " Inferno ' ' alone; those by Jacopo Alighieri, the poet's second son, Jacopo della Lana of Bologna, and the autlior of the " Ottimo Commento ' ' deal with the entire poem. Graziolo appears as the first defender of Dante's orthodoxy (then fiercely assailed in Bologna); the author of the "Ottimo'* (plausibly identified with a Florentine notary and poet, Andrea Lancia) professes to have actually spoken with Dante, and gives us various interesting details concerning his life. About 1.340 Dante's elder son, Pietro Alighieri, set himself to elucidate his father's work; two versions of his Latin commentary have been preserved, the later containing additions which (if really his) are of con- siderable importance. Some time after 1348, Gio- vanni Boccaccio (q. v.) wrote the first formal life of Dante, the "Trattatello in laude di Dante", the authority of which, once much derided, has been largely rehabilitated by more recent research. His commentary on the "Inferno" is the substance of lectures delivered at P'lorence in 1373. A few years later came the commentaries of Benvenuto da Imola and Francesco Buti, which were originally delivered as lectures at Bologna and Pisa respectively. Ben- venuto's is a living book, full of humour and actuality as well as learning. Tlie little "Life" by Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444), the famous chancellor of the Floren- tine Republic, which supplements Boccaccio's work with fresh information and quotes letters of the poet other than those which are now known, and the slighter notice by Filippo Villani (c. 1404), who is the first commentator who refers in explicit terms to the "Letter to Can Grande", bring the first age of Dante interpretation to an appropriate close. The title of father of modern Dante scholarship unquestionably belongs to Karl Witte (1800-83), whose labours set students of the nineteenth century on the right path both in interpretation and in textual research. More recently, mainly through the influence of G. A. Scar- tazzini (d. 1901), a wave of excessive scepticism swept over the field, by which the traditional events of Dante's life were regarded as little better than fables, and the majority of his letters and even some of his minor works were declared to be spurious. This has now happily abated. The most pressing needs of Dante scholarship to-day are more textual study of the "Divina Commedia", a closer and more thorough . acquaintance with every aspect of the minor works, and a fuller investigation of Dante's position with regard to the great philosophies of the Middle Ages — such as will justify or restate the pregnant opening of the epitaph that Giovanni del Virgilio composed for his tomb: "Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers quod foveat claro philosophia sinu" (Dante the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom).
Dante may be said to have made Italian poetry, and to have stamped the mark of his lofty and com- manding personality upon all modern literature. It can even be .clMinicd that his works liave had a direct share in shajjiiig the aspirations and destinies of his native country. His influence upon English letters begins with tlie poetry of Chaucer, who hails him worthily in the "Moiikes Tale", and refers his readers
to him as " the grete poete of Itaille that highte Dant".
Eclipsed for a while in Tudor times by the greater
popularity of Petrarch, he was afterwards ignored or
contemned from the Restoration until the end of the
eighteenth century. The first complete translation of
the "Divina Commedia" into English, the work of
an Irishman, Henry Boyd, was published in 1802
(that of the "Inferno" having been issued in 1785).
Dante came again into his heritage among us with the
great flood of noble poetry that the beginning of the
nineteenth century witnessed. The eloquent tributes
rendered to him by Shelley (in " Epipsychidion ", the
"Triumph of Life", and "A Defence of Poetry") and
by Byron (especially in the "Prophecy of Dante"),
as after them by Browning and Tennyson, need not be
repeated here. Through Dante Gabriel Rossetti and
the Pre-Raphaelites, he has been a fruitful influence
in art no less than in letters. In the interpretation
and criticism of Dante, English-speaking scholars at
present stand second only to the Italians.
Never, perhaps, has Dante's fame stood so high as at the present day — when he is universally recognized as rankmg with Homer, iEschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, among the few supreme poets of the world. It has been well observed that his inspiration resembles that of the Hebrew prophet more than that of the poet as ordinarily understood. His influence, moreover, is by no means confined to mere literature. A distinguished Unitarian divine has pointed out that the modern cult of Dante is "a sign of enlarging and deepening spiritual perception as well as literary ap- preciation", and that it is one of the chief indications of "the renewed hold which the later Middle Ages have gained upon modern Europe" (Wicksteed, "The Religion of Time and of Eternity"). The poet's own L son, Pietro Alighieri, declared that, if the Faith were cxtingui.shed, Dante would restore it, and it is note- worthy to-day that many serious non-Catholic stu- dents of life and letters owe a totally different con- ception of the Catholic religion to the study of the "Divina Commedia". The power of the sacred poem in popularizing Catholic theology and Catholic philos- ophy, and rendering it acceptable, or at least intel- ligible to non-Catholics, is at the present day almost incalculable.
The place of honour among Dante societies belongs unquestionably and in every sense to the "Societa Dantesca Italiana", an admirably conducted associa- tion with its headquarters at Florence, which wel- comes foreign students among its members, and is dis- tinguished for its high and liberal scholarship. In addition to courses of lectures delivered under its auspices in various Italian cities, it publishes a quar- terly "BuUctiuo", a sur\'ey of contemporary Dante literature, and has begun a series of critical editions of the minor works. Of these latter, vohnnes dealing with the "De Vulgari Eloquent ia" and the "Vita Nuova", by Pio Rajna and Michele Barbi respectively, have already appeared, and may l>e truly said to mark an epoch in the critical and textual study of Dante's Latin and Italian writings alike. The association known as the "Dante Alighieri", on the other hand, is essentially a national and political society, and is only indirectly concerned with the jioet whose name it bears. Of Dante societies other than Italian, the "American Dante Society" of Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, stands first in importance. The small but distinguished "Oxford Dante Society" docs work of a high order of scholarship. The "Dante Society of London" is noteworthy for its large nimiber of mem- bers, and publishes its sessional lectures in vohmie form; but its aims appear to be social rather than scholarly. A svmimary of some of the works on Dante will be found below.
The biblioKranhy of Dante i.s so vast and voluminous that it is only pcissiblo here to make a brief selection of recent and general works. Complete editions: Moore, Tulle le Open di
