The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
122. the sweet idiom: Baby talk.
127-129. Dante is contrasting a man and woman of decayed Florence to a man and woman of republican Rome. Cornelia: Daughter of Scipio Africanus and mother of the Roman paragons, the Gracchii. Dante saw her in Limbo (Inferno, IV, 128). Cincinnatus: See VI, 46-48, note. Cianghella (Chan-GHELL-ah): A Florentine woman married to a lord of Imola. She died about 1330, having acquired a reputation for a sharp tongue, a haughty extravagance, and an easy bed. Lapo: Lapo Saltorello. A Florentine poet and lawyer noted for his extravagant living. He and Dante were banished in the same decree of March 10, 1302.
133-134. Mary . . . called in the pain of birth: Sense: Cacciaguida’s mother, in the throes of her birth pains, cried out a plea to the Virgin Mary, who thereupon granted him life and sweet dwelling in ancient Florence. Baptistry: Of San Giovanni. See Inferno , XIX, 17-18, and note.
136-138. There is no historic record of any of the persons here mentioned.
139. Conrad: Dante says “the Emperor Conrad.” (Conrad III, reigned 1137-1152.) He went crusading in 1147 and was defeated at Damascus. He never visited Florence, however, whereas Conrad II (reigned 1024-1039) knew Florence well. Conrad II crusaded against the Saracens in Calabria. Dante has probably run the two Conrads into one.
143-144. the evil creed: Islam. because your shepherds sin: See Inferno, XXVII, 82 ff. Because of bad Popes (such as Boniface VIII) the Holy Land, which Dante held to be rightfully Christian, was left to Islam. In Dante’s view, a proper Pope would have called for a crusade and hacked it free of un-Godly hands.
149. from martyrdom to my present joys: To call a death in battle a “martyrdom” may be stretching the meaning of the word. In any case, Cacciaguida, having died fighting for the faith—for God—seems to have mounted directly to his place in Heaven. (Cf. the Islamic belief that true believers who die in battle mount instantly to heavenly bliss.)
Canto XVI
THE FIFTH SPHERE: MARS
The Warriors of God: Cacciaguida
DANTE THRILLS WITH PLEASURE on learning that his ancestor had been elevated to knighthood, and feeling the power of pride of ancestry even in Heaven, in which there is no temptation to evil, he has a new insight into the family pride in which mortals glory. Moved by pride, Dante addresses Cacciaguida with the formal “voi,” an affectation at which Beatrice, half amused, admonishes him with a smile.
Dante then asks Cacciaguida for details of his birth and ancestry and of THE HISTORY OF EARLY FLORENCE. Cacciaguida, as if to warn Dante away from pride of ancestry, dismisses the question of his birth and of his forebears as a matter best passed over in silence, and proceeds to a detailed account of the lords and people of Florence in the days when her bloodlines and traditions had not been diluted by the arrival of new families. It is to this “mongrelization” of the Florentines that Cacciaguida attributes all the subsequent degeneracy of Florence.
O trivial pride of ours in noble blood! that in possessing you men are possessed, down here, where souls grow sick and lose their good,
will never again amaze me, for there, too, where appetite is never drawn to evil—in Heaven, I say—my own soul gloried in you!
You are a mantle that soon shrinks and tears. Unless new cloth is added day by day, time will go round you, snipping with its shears!
I spoke again, addressing him with that “voi” whose usage first began among the Romans—and which their own descendants least employ—
at which my Lady, who stood apart, though near, and smiling, seemed to me like her who coughed at the first recorded fault of Guinevere.
“You are my father,” I started in reply. “You give me confidence to speak out boldly. You so uplift me, I am more than I.
So many streams of happiness flow down into my mind that it grows self-delighting at being able to bear it and not drown.
Tell me, then, dear source of my own blood, who were your own forefathers? when were you born? and what transpired in Florence in your boyhood?
Tell me of St. John’s sheepfold in those days. How many souls were then within the flock, and which of them was worthy of high place?”
As glowing coals fanned by a breath of air burst into flames, so did I see that light increase its radiance when it heard my prayer.
And as its light gave off a livelier ray, so, in a sweeter and a softer voice—though not in the idiom we use today—
it said: “From the day when Ave sounded forth to that in which my mother, now a saint, being heavy laden with me, gave me birth,
this flame had come back to its Leo again to kindle itself anew beneath his paws five hundred times plus fifty plus twenty plus ten.
My ancestors and I were born in the place where the last quarter of the course begins for those who take part in your annual race.
Of my fathers, be content with what you have heard. Of who they were and whence they came to Florence silence is far more fitting than any word.
Of men who could bear arms there were counted then, between Mars and the Baptist, the fifth part of what may be mustered there from living men.
But the citizenry, now mongrelized by the blood of Campi, of Certaldo, and of Figghine, was pure then, down to the humblest planer of wood.
Oh how much better to have been neighbors of these of whom I speak, and to have Trespiano and Galuzzo still fixed as your boundaries,
than to have swallowed them and to bear the stink of the yokel of Aguglione, and of Signa’s boor who still has eyes to swindle and hoodwink.
Had the world’s most despicable crew not shown a hard stepmother’s face and greed to Caesar but been a loving mother, one who is known
as a Florentine, and who trades in goods and debt, would be back in Simifonti, where his grandsire once gypsied in the streets for what he could get.
Montemurlo would still be owned by its own counts, the Cerchi would be in the parish of Acone, and in Valdigreve, still, the Bondelmounts.
It has always been a fact that confusion of blood has been a source of evil to city-states, just as our bodies are harmed by too much food;
and that a bull gone blind will fall before a blind lamb does. And that one sword may cut better than five has been proved in many a war.
If you will think of Luni and Urbisaglia, how they have passed away, and how, behind them, are dying now Chiusi and Sinigaglia,
it should not be too hard to comprehend, or strange to hear, that families dwindle out, when even cities come at last to an end.
All mankind’s institutions, of every sort, have their own death, though in what long endures it is hidden from you, your own lives being short.
And as the circling of the lunar sphere covers and bares the shore with never a pause, so Fortune alters Florence year by year.
It should not, therefore, seem too wondrous strange to hear me speak of the good Florentines whose fame is veiled behind time’s endless change.
I knew the Ughi, the Catellini, the line of the Greci, Filippi, Ormanni, and Alberichi—illustrious citizens, even in decline.
I knew those of Sannella, and those of the Bow, and the Soldanieri, Ardinghi, and Bostichi; as grand as they were ancient, there below.
Not far from the portal that now bears the weight of such a cargo of new iniquity as soon, now, will destroy the ship of state,
once lived the Ravignani, from whom came Count Guido Guerra, and whoever else has since borne Bellincione’s noble name.
The della Pressa were already furnished with knowledge of how to rule, and Galigaio had his gold hilt and pommel already burnished.
Great already were the lands of the vair, Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti, Barucci, and Galli, and of those who blush now for the stave affair.
The trunk that bore the many-branched Calfucci had grown already great; already called to the curule were Sizii and Arrigucci.
How great I have seen them who are now undone by their own pride! And even the balls of gold—in all great deeds of Florence, how they shone!
So shone the
That overweening and presumptuous tribe—a dragon to all who run from it, a lamb to any who stand and show a tooth or bribe—
were coming up, though still so parvenu Donato was hardly pleased when his father-in-law made him a relative of such a crew.
The Caponsacchi had come down by then from Fiesole to market; the Infangati and Giudi were established as good townsmen.
And here’s an astonishing fact, though little known: in ancient times a gate of the inner wall was named for those of the Pera, now all gone.
All those whose various quarterings display the staves of the great baron whose name and worth are kept alive every St. Thomas’ Day
owe him the rank and privilege they enjoy, though one who binds those arms with a gold fringe makes common cause today with the hoi polloi.
Gualterotti and Importuni were then well known. And Borgo would still be a peaceful place had it not acquired new neighbors from Montebuon’.
The line from which was born your grief and strife because of the righteous anger that ruined you, and put an end to all your happier life,
was honored in itself and its allies. O Buondelmonti, what ill you did in fleeing its nuptials to find comfort in other ties!
Many would still be happy whom we now pity, had God seen fit to let the Ema drown you on the first day you started for the city.
But it was fitting that to the broken stone that guards the bridge, Florence should offer a victim to mark the last day’s peace she has ever known.
With such as these, and others, my first life’s years saw Florence live and prosper in such peace that she had, then, no reason to shed tears.
With such as these I saw there in my past so valiant and so just a populace that none had ever seized the ensign’s mast
and hung the lily on it upside down. Nor was the red dye of division known.”
NOTES
1. in noble blood: Pride of birth into a family with patents of nobility.
6. my own soul gloried in you: On hearing that Cacciaguida had been knighted by (whichever) Conrad. The point is curiously made. Despite the statements of many of Dante’s commentators, who were probably working backward from Dante’s own claim rather than from any historical record, there is no recorded evidence either that Cacciaguida had been knighted, or even that he had served in the crusades. Dante may be following a family legend, or he may be inventing his own claim to nobility, the latter an oddly uncelestial act of pride. Dante, in any case, hastens to disclaim any real merit in the possession of noble ancestry unless the descendants labor to maintain the family’s true nobility of soul.
10-12. voi: The second person plural. It seems to have come into use as the deferential form of address to a single person in about the third century A.D., but Dante is following the popular belief of his time that it was first used in addressing Caesar when he assumed all the high offices of the Republic and so became, in effect, many personages in one. English does not distinguish between “tu” (you-singular) and “voi” (you-plural) except perhaps in the dialect of the southern states where “you” (singular) and “you-all” (plural) is standard. least employ: The modern Romans, always a mannerless lot, made the least use of this polite or deferential form. The “you” that begins each of the three sentences in lines 16-18 is this “voi.”
13-15. Beatrice notes Dante’s foible in using the “voi” form and admonishes him with a half-amused smile that reminds him of the wife of Mallehaut (see Inferno, V, 124-134, and notes) who coughed when she first saw Guinevere with Launcelot.
25. St. John’s sheepfold: Florence. John the Baptist was its patron saint.
34. Ave: Hail. The first word spoken to Mary by the Angel of the Annunciation.
37-39. this flame: Mars. its Leo: Astrologers asserted various special connections between Mars and Leo. Both were classified as “hot and dry.” And Leo is the constellation of the Lion, the warlike and heraldic beast perhaps closest to the god of war.
39. THE DATE OF CACCIAGUIDA’S BIRTH. The Annunciation took place on March 25. Scartazzini cites a text of Dante’s time that sets the Martian year at 686.94 days. That figure multiplied by 580 and divided by the 365.2466 days of the earth year (as Scartazzini asserts, my mathematics floundering in his wake) yields as a birthdate January 25, 1091. Even Scartazzini does not complicate his computations by entering a correction for various calendar reforms. In any case, Cacciaguida is thought to have died when he was about 56.
40-42. The annual race was run in Florence on June 24, the Feast of St. John. “Quarter” here signifies “quarter of a town,” as in “Latin Quarter.” Scholars disagree as to the course of the race and the exact quarter Dante had in mind. Porta San Piero is generally favored by the commentators.
43. Of my fathers: This much in answer to Dante’s first question, and also as a rebuke to Dante for his pride of ancestry, but note, too, that this answer covers Dante’s own ignorance of his remoter ancestry.
47. between Mars and the Baptist: To be between Mars and the Baptist signifies, in effect, to be in Florence, the statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio and the Baptistry of St. John marking two of the limits of Florence in Cacciaguida’s time. In 1300 Florence had a population of about 70,000, of which (according to a doubtful estimate by Scartazzini) about 30,000 were able to bear arms.
50. of Campi, of Certaldo (tchehr-TAHL-doh), and of Figghine (fee-GHEE-neh): All are nearby places a self-righteous Florentine would think of as the backwoods. Florence was on the main highway of invasion from the north. Inevitably, therefore, many tribal strains were joined in its people. Dante is seldom temperate in his views of outsiders.
52-57. these of whom I speak: In line 50. Trespiano: A crossroads village now at the edge of Florence, but in Cacciaguida’s time an hour’s walk away on the road to Bologna. Galuzzo: A village at about the same distance on the road to Siena. the yokel of Aguglione (ah-goo-LYOW-neh): Baldo d’Aguglione. His family name traces to a “backwoods” castle in Val di Pesa, but he became a power in Florence. He was probably involved in the swindles Dante cites in Purgatorio, XII, 100-105. On September 3, 1311, he issued a decree recalling a number of Florentine exiles but left Dante’s name off the list, whereby, of course, he put himself on Dante’s list to be registered as a stink in Heaven. Signa’s boor: Fazio dei Morubaldini of Signa (SEE-nyah), a hamlet near Florence. Fazio was a lawyer of Dante’s time with a considerable reputation as a grafter, swindler, and barrator.
58-59. crew: The clergy. Caesar: Here as a symbol of temporal government. Sense: Had the Church been a loving mother in temporal affairs.
60. one who is known: Dante may have had a specific person in mind but many Florentines, old-line and parvenu, traded as merchants and pawnbrokers. Dante seems to charge all such evil commerce to the influx of new families that resulted from the political scheming of the Church.
62. Simifonti: A castle and town in Valdessa captured by Florence in 1202.
64. Montemurlo: A castle between Pistoia and Prata. It formerly belonged to the counts Guidi (see Inferno, XXX, 76-77). In 1254, unable to defend the castle against the Pistoians, the counts sold it to Florence.
65. the Cerchi (TCHEHR-kee); Acone (ah-CON-eh): is in Val di Sieve. In Dante’s time, the Cerchi had become leaders of the White Party in Dante’s own soi-disant ancestral quarter of Porta San Piero.
66. Valdigreve: South of Florence where the Buondelmonti had a castle called Montebuoni. In 1135 the castle was taken from them by the Florentines and they were forced to move into Florence, where they became powerful in Borgo Sant’ Apostolo.
67. confusion of blood: The admixture of new blood lines to those of an old established population.