Dante: His Times and His Work
Dante: His Times and His WorkPREFACECHAPTER I.THE THIRTEENTH CENTURYCHAPTER II.GUELFS AND GHIBELINES[8]CHAPTER III.DANTE’S EARLY DAYSCHAPTER IV.FLORENTINE AFFAIRS TILL DANTE’S EXILECHAPTER V.DANTE’S EXILECHAPTER VI.THE “COMMEDIA”CHAPTER VII.THE MINOR WORKSAPPENDIX I.SOME HINTS TO BEGINNERSAPPENDIX II.DANTE’S USE OF CLASSICAL LITERATURECopyright
Dante: His Times and His Work
Arthur John Butler
PREFACE
This little book is mainly compounded of papers which
appeared, part in theMonthly Packet, and part in the Magazine of the Home Reading Union. It will
be seen, therefore, that it is not intended for those whom Italians
call “Dantists,” but for students at an early stage of their
studies. To the former class there will be nothing in the book that
is not already familiar—except where they happen to find mistakes,
from which, in so extensive a field for blundering as Dante
affords, I cannot hope to have kept it free. In the domain of
history alone fresh facts are constantly rewarding the
indefatigable research of German and Italian scholars—a research of
which only the most highly specialised specialist can possibly keep
abreast. Even since the following pages were for the most part in
print, we have had Professor Villari’sTwo
Centuries of Florentine History, correcting in
many particulars the chroniclers on whom the Dante student has been
wont to rely. This book should most emphatically be added to those
named in the appendix as essential to the study of our
author.In connection with some of the remarks in the opening
chapter, Professor Butcher’s Essay onThe Dawn of
Romanticism in Greek Poetryshould be noticed. I
do not think that the accomplished author’s view is incompatible
with mine; though I admit that I had not taken much account of the
Greek writers whom we call “post-classical.” But it is to be noted,
as bearing on the question raised in the second footnote onp. 9, that most or all of the writers whom he
cites were either Asiatics or nearly touched by Asiatic
influences.I have made some attempt to deal in a concise way with two
subjects which have not, I think, hitherto been handled in English
books on Dante, other than translations. One of these is the
development of the Guelf and Ghibeline struggle from a rivalry
between two German houses to a partisan warfare which rent Italy
for generations. I am quite aware that I have merely touched the
surface of the subject, which seems to me to contain in it the
essence of all political philosophy, with special features such as
could only exist in a country which, like Italy, had, after giving
the law to the civilised world, been unable to consolidate itself
into a nation like the other nations of Europe. I have, I find,
even omitted to notice what seem to have been the ruling aims of at
any rate the honest partisans on either side: unity, that of the
Ghibelines; independence, that of the Guelfs. Nor have I drawn
attention to a remarkable trait in Dante’s own character, which, so
far as I know, has never been discussed—I mean his apparent
disregard of the “lower classes.” Except for one or two similes
drawn from the “villano” and his habits, and one or two
contemptuous allusions to “Monna Berta e Ser Martino” and their
like, it would seem as if for him the world consisted of what now
would be called “the upper ten thousand.” In an ordinary politician
or partisan, or even in a mere man of letters this would not be
strange; but when we reflect that Dante was a man who went deeply
into social and religious questions, that he was born less than
forty years after the death of St. Francis, and was at least
closely enough associated with Franciscans for legend to make him a
member of the order, and that most of the so-called heretical sects
of the time—Paterines, Cathari, Poor Men—started really more from
social than from religious discontent, it is certainly surprising
that his interest in the “dim, common populations” should have been
so slight.The other object at which I have aimed is the
introduction of English students to the theories which seem to have
taken possession of the most eminent Continental Dante scholars,
and of which some certainly seem to be quite as much opposed to
common sense and knowledge of human nature as the conjectures of
Troya and Balbo, for instance, were to sound historical criticism.
Here, again, I have but touched on the more salient points; feeling
sure that before long some of the scholarship in our Universities
and elsewhere, which at present devotes itself to Greek and Latin,
having reached the point of realizing that Greek and Latin texts
may be worth studying though written outside of so-called classical
periods, will presently extend the principle to the further point
of applying to mediæval literature, which hitherto has been too
much the sport ofdilettanti,
the methods that have till now been reserved for the two favoured
(and rightly favoured) languages. Unless I am much mistaken, the
finest Latin scholar will find that a close study of early Italian
will teach him “a thing or two” that he did not know before in his
own special subject; so that his labour will not be lost, even from
that point of view. Then we shall get the authoritative edition of
Dante, which I am insular enough to believe will never come from
either Germany or Italy, or from any intervening
country.February,
1895.
CHAPTER I.THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER II.GUELFS AND GHIBELINES[8]
Mention was made, in the last chapter, of the “Guelf” party,
and this, with its opposite, the party of the “Ghibelines,” fills
the entire field of Italian politics during Dante’s life, and
indeed for long afterwards. It would be impossible in the space of
these pages to follow up all the tangled threads which have
attached themselves to those famous names; but since we may be, to
use a picturesque phrase of Carlyle’s, “thankful for any hook
whatever on which to hang half-an-acre of thrums in fixed
position,” a few of the more prominent points in the early history
of the great conflict shall be noted here.
As every one knows, the names originally came from Germany,
and to that country we must turn for a short time to know their
import.
