Brunetto Latini. Boccaccio tells us that he became very familiar with Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Statius, and all other famous poets. From the age of eighteen he, like most cultivated young men of that age, wrote poetry assiduously, in the philosophical amatory style of which his friend, older by many years than himself, Guido Cavalcanti, was a great exponent, and of which Dante regarded Guido Guinicelli of Bologna as the master (Purg. xxvi. 97, 8). Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, writing a hundred years or more after his death, says that “by study of philosophy, of theology, astrology, arithmetic and geometry, by reading of history, by the turning over many curious books, watching and sweating in his studies, he acquired the science which he was to adorn and explain in his verses.” Of Brunetto Latini Dante himself speaks with the most loving gratitude and affection, though he does not hesitate to brand his vices with infamy. Under such guidance Dante became master of all the science of his age at a time when it was not impossible to know all that could be known. He had some knowledge of drawing; at any rate he tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice he drew an angel on a tablet. He was an intimate friend of Giotto, who has immortalized his youthful lineaments in the chapel of the Bargello, and who is recorded to have drawn from his friend’s inspiration the allegories of Virtue and Vice which fringe the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua. Nor was he less sensible to the delights of music. Milton had not a keener ear for the loud uplifted angel trumpets and the immortal harps of golden wires of the cherubim and seraphim; and the English poet was proud to compare his own friendship with Henry Lawes with that between Dante and Casella, “met in the milder shades of purgatory.” Of his companions the most intimate and sympathetic were the lawyer-poet Cino of Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti and others, similarly gifted and dowered with like tastes, who moved in the lively and acute society of Florence, and felt with him the first warm flush of the new spirit which was soon to pass over Europe. He has written no sweeter or more melodious lines than those in which he expresses the wish that he, with Guido and Lapo, might be wafted by enchantment over the sea wheresoever they might list, shielded from tempest and foul weather, in such contentment that they should wish to live always in one mind, and that the good enchanter should bring Monna Vanna and Monna Bice and that other lady into their barque, where they should for ever discourse of love and be for ever happy. It is a wonderful thing (says Leonardo Bruni) that, though he studied without intermission, it would not have appeared to anyone that he studied, from his joyous mien and youthful conversation. Like Milton he was trained in the strictest academical education which the age afforded; but Dante lived under a warmer sun and brighter skies, and found in the rich variety and gaiety of his early life a defence against the withering misfortunes of his later years. Milton felt too early the chill breath of Puritanism, and the serious musing on the experience of life, which saddened the verse of both poets, deepened in his case rather into grave and desponding melancholy, than into the fierce scorn and invective which disillusion wrung from Dante.
We must now consider the political circumstances in which lay the activity of Dante’s manhood. From 1115, the year of the death of Matilda countess of Tuscany, to 1215, Florence enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted peace. Attached to the Guelph party, it Political life.remained undivided against itself. But in 1215 a private feud between the families of Buondelmonte and Uberti introduced into the city the horrors of civil war. Villani (lib. v. cap. 38) relates how Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, a noble youth of Florence, being engaged to marry a lady of the house of Amidei, allied himself instead to a Donati, and how Buondelmonte was attacked and killed by the Amidei and Uberti at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, close by the pilaster which bears the image of Mars. “The death of Messer Buondelmonte was the occasion and beginning of the accursed parties of Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence.” Of the seventy-two families then in Florence thirty-nine became Guelph under the leadership of the Buondelmonte and the rest Ghibelline under the Uberti. The strife of parties was for a while allayed by the war against Pisa in 1222, and the constant struggles against Siena; but in 1248 Frederick II. sent into the city his natural son Frederick “of Antioch,” with 1600 German knights. The Guelphs were driven away from the town, and took refuge, part in Montevarchi, part in Capraia. The Ghibellines, masters of Florence, behaved with great severity, and destroyed the towers and palaces of the Guelph nobles. At last the people became impatient. They rose in rebellion, reduced the powers of the podestà, elected a captain of the people to manage the internal affairs of the city, with a council of twelve, established a more democratic constitution, and, encouraged by the death of Frederick II. in December 1250, recalled the exiled Guelphs. Manfred, the bastard son of Frederick, pursued the policy of his father. He stimulated the Ghibelline Uberti to rebel against their position of subjection. A rising of the vanquished party was put down by the people, in July 1258 the Ghibellines were expelled from the town, and the towers of the Uberti razed to the ground. The exiles betook themselves to the friendly city of Siena. Manfred sent them a reinforcement of German horse, under his kinsman Count Giordano Lancia. The Florentines, after vainly demanding their surrender, despatched an army against them. On the 4th of September 1260 was fought the great battle of Montaperti, which dyed the Arbia red, and in which the Guelphs were entirely defeated. The hand which held the banner of the republic was sundered by the sword of a traitor (Inf. xxxii. 106). For the first time in the history of Florence the Carroccio was taken. Florence lay at the mercy of her enemies. A parliament was held at Empoli, in which the deputies of Siena, Pisa, Arezzo and other Tuscan towns consulted on the best means of securing their new war power. They voted that the accursed Guelph city should be blotted out. But Farinata degli Uberti stood up in their midst, bold and defiant as when he stood erect among the sepulchres of hell, and said that if, from the whole number of the Florentines, he alone should remain, he would not suffer, whilst he could wield a sword, that his country should be destroyed, and that, if it were necessary to die a thousand times for her, a thousand times would he be ready to encounter death. Help came to the Guelphs from an unexpected quarter. Clement IV., elected pope in 1265, offered the crown of Apulia and Sicily to Charles of Anjou. The French prince, passing rapidly through Lombardy, Romagna and the Marches, reached Rome by way of Spoleto, was crowned on the 6th of January 1266, and on the 23rd of February defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento. In such a storm of conflict did Dante first see the light. In 1267 the Guelphs were recalled, but instead of settling down in peace with their opponents they summoned Charles of Anjou to vengeance, and the Ghibellines were driven out. The meteor passage of Conradin gave hope to the imperial party, which was quenched when the head of the fair-haired boy fell on the scaffold at Naples. Pope after pope tried in vain to make peace. Gregory X. placed the rebellious city under an interdict; in 1278 Cardinal Latini by order of Nicholas III. effected a truce, which lasted for four years. The city was to be governed by a committee of fourteen buonomini, on which the Guelphs were to have a small majority. In 1282 the constitution of Florence received the final form which it retained till the collapse of freedom. From the three arti maggiori were chosen six priors, in whose hands was placed the government of the republic. Before the end of the century, seven greater arts were recognized, including the speziali,—druggists and dealers in all manner of oriental goods, and in books—among whom Dante afterwards enrolled himself. They remained in office for two months, and during that time lived and shared a common table in the public palace. We shall see what influence this office had upon the fate of Dante. The success of the “Sicilian Vespers” (March 1282), the death of Charles of Anjou (January 1285), and of Martin IV. in the following March, roused again the courage of the Ghibellines. They entered Arezzo, where the Ghibellines at present had the upper hand, and threatened to drive out the Guelphs from Tuscany. Skirmishes and raids, of which Villani and Bruni have left accounts, went on through the winter of 1288–1289, forming a prelude to the great
