Paradiso

Canto XV

Cacciaguida—Florence in the olden time.

A will benign, in which reveals itself¹Ever the love that righteously inspires,As in the iniquitous, cupidity,Silence imposed upon that dulcet lyre,And quieted the consecrated chords,That Heaven’s right hand doth tighten and relax.How unto just entreaties shall be deafThose substances, which, to give me desireOf praying them, with one accord grew silent?’Tis well that without end he should lament,Who for the love of thing that doth not lastEternally despoils him of that love!As through the pure and tranquil evening airThere shoots from time to time a sudden fire,Moving the eyes that steadfast were before,And seems to be a star that changeth place,Except that in the part where it is kindledNothing is missed, and this endureth little;So from the horn that to the right extendsUnto that cross’s foot there ran a starOut of the constellation shining there;Nor was the gem dissevered from its ribbon,²But down the radiant fillet ran along,So that fire seemed it behind alabaster.³Thus piteous did Anchises’ shade reach forward,⁴If any faith our greatest Muse deserve,When in Elysium he his son perceived.“O sanguis meus, O superinfusa⁵Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cuiBis unquam Coeli janua reclusa?”Thus that effulgence; whence I gave it heed;Then round unto my Lady turned my sight,And on this side and that was stupefied;For in her eyes was burning such a smileThat with mine own methought I touched the bottomBoth of my grace and of my Paradise!Then, pleasant to the hearing and the sight,The spirit joined to its beginning thingsI understood not, so profound it spake;Nor did it hide itself from me by choice,But by necessity; for its conceptionAbove the mark of mortals set itself.And when the bow of burning sympathyWas so far slackened, that its speech descendedTowards the mark of our intelligence,The first thing that was understood by meWas “Benedight be Thou, O Trine and One,Who hast unto my seed so courteous been!”And it continued: “Hunger long and grateful,⁶Drawn from the reading of the mighty volume⁷Wherein is never changed the white nor dark,Thou hast appeased, my son, within this lightIn which I speak to thee, by grace of herWho to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee.Thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth passFrom Him who is the first, as from the unit,⁸If that be known, ray out the five and six;And therefore who I am thou askest not,And why I seem more joyous unto theeThan any other of this gladsome crowd.Thou think’st the truth; because the small and great⁹Of this existence look into the mirrorWherein, before thou think’st, thy thought thou showest.But that the sacred love, in which I watchWith sight perpetual, and which makes me thirstWith sweet desire, may better be fulfilled,Now let thy voice secure and frank and gladProclaim the wishes, the desire proclaim,To which my answer is decreed already.”To Beatrice I turned me, and she heardBefore I spake, and smiled to me a sign,That made the wings of my desire increase;Then in this wise began I: “Love and knowledge,When on you dawned the first Equality,¹⁰Of the same weight for each of you became;For in the Sun, which lighted you and burnedWith heat and radiance, they so equal are,That all similitudes are insufficient.But among mortals will and argument,¹¹For reason that to you is manifest,Diversely feathered in their pinions are.Whence I, who mortal am, feel in myselfThis inequality; so give not thanks,Save in my heart, for this paternal welcome.Truly do I entreat thee, living topaz!¹²Set in this precious jewel as a gem,That thou wilt satisfy me with thy name.”“O leaf of mine, in whom I pleasure tookE’en while awaiting, I was thine own root!”¹³Such a beginning he in answer made me.Then said to me: “That one from whom is named¹⁴Thy race, and who a hundred years and moreHas circled round the mount on the first cornice,A son of mine and thy great-grandsire was;Well it behoves thee that the long fatigueThou shouldst for him make shorter with thy works.Florence, within the ancient boundary¹⁵From which she taketh still her tierce and nones,¹⁶Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste.¹⁷No golden chain she had, nor coronal,¹⁸Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdleThat caught the eye more than the person did.¹⁹Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fearInto the father, for the time and dowerDid not o’errun this side or that the measure.No houses had she void of families,Not yet had thither come SardanapalusTo show what in a chamber can be done;²⁰Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been²¹By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed²²Shall in its downfall be as in its rise.Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt²³With leather and with bone, and from the mirrorHis dame depart without a painted face;And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio,²⁴Contented with their simple suits of buffAnd with the spindle and the flax their dames.O fortunate women! and each one was certainOf her own burial-place, and none as yetFor sake of France was in her bed deserted.²⁵One o’er the cradle kept her studious watch,And in her lullaby the language usedThat first delights the fathers and the mothers;Another, drawing tresses from her distaff,Told o’er among her family the talesOf Trojans and of Fesole and Rome.As great a marvel then would have been heldA Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella,²⁶As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.²⁷To such a quiet, such a beautifulLife of the citizen, to such a safeCommunity, and to so sweet an inn,Did Mary give me, with loud cries invoked,²⁸And in your ancient Baptistery at once²⁹Christian and Cacciaguida I became.³⁰Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo;From Val di Pado came to me my wife,³¹And from that place thy surname was derived.I followed afterward the Emperor Conrad,³²And he begirt me of his chivalry,³³So much I pleased him with my noble deeds.I followed in his train against that law’sIniquity, whose people doth usurp³⁴Your just possession, through your Pastor’s fault.There by that execrable race was IReleased from bonds of the fallacious world,The love of which defileth many souls,And came from martyrdom unto this peace.”

The Heaven of Mars continued. ↩
This star, or spirit, did not, in changing place, pass out of the cross, but along the right arm and down the trunk or body of it. ↩
A light in a vase of alabaster. ↩
Aeneid, VI, Davidson’s Tr.:— “But father Anchises, deep in a verdant dale, was surveying with studious care the souls there enclosed, who were to revisit the light above; and happened to be reviewing the whole number of his race, his dear descendants, their fates and fortunes, their manners and achievements. As soon as he beheld Aeneas advancing toward him across the meads, he joyfully stretched out both his hands, and tears poured down his cheeks, and these words dropped from his mouth: Are you come at length, and has that piety experienced by your sire surmounted the arduous journey?” ↩
Biagioli and Fraticelli think that this ancestor of Dante, Cacciaguida, who is speaking, makes use of the Latin language because it was the language of his day in Italy. It certainly gives to the passage a certain gravity and tinge of antiquity, which is in keeping with this antique spirit and with what he afterwards says. His words may be thus translated:— “O blood of mine! O grace of God infused / Superlative! To whom as unto thee / Were ever twice the gates of heaven unclosed.” ↩
His longing to see Dante. ↩
The mighty volume of the Divine Mind, in which the dark or written parts are not changed by erasures, nor the white spaces by interlineations. ↩
The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers. Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy, Morrison’s Tr., I 361, says:— “In the Pythagorean doctrine, number comprises within itself two species—odd and even; it is therefore the unity of these two contraries; it is the odd and the even. Now the Pythagoreans said also that one, or the unit, is the odd and the even; and thus we arrive at this result, that one, or the unit, is the essence of number, or number absolutely. As such, it is also the ground of all numbers, and is therefore named the first one, of whose origin nothing further can be said. In this respect the Pythagorean theory of numbers is merely an expression for ‘all is from the original one,’—from one being, to which they also gave the name of God; for in the words of Philolaus, ‘God embraces and actuates all, and is but one.’ … “But in the essence of number, or in the first original one, all other numbers, and consequently the elements of numbers, and the elements of the whole world, and all nature, are contained. The elements of number are the even and the odd; on this account the first one is the even-odd, which the Pythagoreans, in their occasionally strained mode of symbolizing, attempted to prove thus; that one being added to the even makes odd, and to the odd, even.” Cowley, “Rural Solitude”:— “Before the branchy head of Number’s tree / Sprang from the trunk of one.” ↩
All the spirits of Paradise look upon God, and see in him as in a mirror even the thoughts of men. ↩
The first Equality is God, all whose attributes are equal and eternal; and living in Him, the love and knowledge of spirits are also equal. ↩
Will and power. Dante would fain thank the spirit that has addressed him, but knows not how. He has the will, but not the power. Dante uses the word argument in this sense of power, or means, or appliance, Purgatorio II 31:— “See how he scorns all human arguments, / So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail / Than his own wings, between so distant shores.” ↩
Dante calls the spirit of Cacciaguida a living topaz set in the celestial cross, probably from the brilliancy and golden light of this precious stone. He may also have had in his mind the many wonderful qualities, as well as the beauty, of the gem. He makes use of the same epithet in Canto XXX 76. The Ottimo says, that he who wears the topaz cannot be injured by an enemy; and Mr. King, Antique Gems, p. 427, says:— “If thrown into boiling water, the water cools immediately; hence this gem cools lust, calms madness and attacks of frenzy.” In the same work he gives a translation of the Lapidarium of Marbodus, or Marboeuf, Bishop of Rennes in 1081. Of the chrysolite, which is supposed to be the same as the topaz, this author says:— “The golden Chrysolite a fiery blaze / Mixed with the hue of ocean’s green displays; / Enchased in gold, its strong protective might / Drives far away the terrors of the night; / Strung on a hair plucked from an ass’s tail, / The mightiest demons neath its influence quail.” ↩
He had been waiting for the coming of Dante, with the “hunger long and grateful” spoken of in line 49. ↩
The first of the family who bore the name of Alighieri, still punished in the circle of Pride in Purgatory, and needing the prayers and good offices of Dante to set him free. ↩
Barlow, Study of the Divina Commedia, p. 441, says:— “The name of Florence has been variously explained. With the old chroniclers the prevalent opinion was, that it was derived from Fiorino, the Praetor of Metellus, who during the long siege of Fiesole by the Romans commanded an intrenched camp between the River and the Rock, and was here surprised and slain by the enemy. The meadows abounded in flowers, especially lilies, and the ancient ensign, a white lily on a red ground, subsequently reversed (XVI 154), and similar to the form on the florin (fiorino), with the name given to the Duomo, St. Maria del Fiore, tend to show that the name was taken from the flowery mead, rather than from the name of a Roman praetor. Leonardo Aretino states that the name of the city originally was Fluentia, so called because situated between the Arno and the Mugnone: and that subsequently, from the flourishing state of the colony, it was called Florentia. Scipione Ammirato affirms that its name from the first was Florenzia. “The form and dimensions of the original city have not been very accurately recorded. In shape, probably, it resembled a Roman camp. Malespini says that it was ‘quasi a similitudine di bastie.’ The wall was of burnt bricks, with solid round towers at intervals of twenty cubits, and it had four gates, and six posterns. The Campidoglio, where now is the Mercato Vecchio, was an imitation of that of the parent city, Rome, whose fortunes her daughter for many centuries shared. … “The cerchia antica of Cacciaguida was the first circle of the new city, which arose from the ruins of the Roman one destroyed by Totila; it included the Badia, which the former did not; Dante, therefore, in mentioning this circumstance, shows how accurately he had informed himself of the course of the previous wall. The walls of Dante’s time were begun in 1284, but not finished until nine years after his death; they are those of the present day.” ↩
Tierce, or Terza, is the first division of the canonical day, from six to nine; Nones, or Nona, the third, from twelve to three in the afternoon. See note 526. The bells of the Abbey within the old walls of Florence still rang these hours in Dante’s time, and measured the day of the Florentines, like the bells of morning, noon, and night in our New England towns. In the Convito, IV 23, Dante says:— “The service of the first part of the day, that is, of Tierce, is said at the end of it; and that of the third and fourth, at the beginning. … And therefore be it known unto all, that properly Nones should always ring at the beginning of the seventh hour of the day.” ↩
Napier, Florentine History, I 572, writes as follows:— “The simplicity of Florentine manners in 1260, described by Villani and Malespini, justifies a similar picture as drawn by their great poet. ‘Then,’ say these writers, ‘the Florentines lived soberly on the simplest food at little expense; many of their customs were rough and rude, and both men and women went coarsely clad; many even wearing plain leather garments without fur or lining: they wore boots on their feet and caps on their head: the women used unornamented buskins, and even the most distinguished were content with a close gown of scarlet serge or camlet, confined by a leathern waist-belt of the ancient fashion, and a hooded cloak lined with miniver; and the poorer classes wore a coarse green cloth dress of the same form. A hundred lire was the common dowry of a girl, and two and three hundred were then considered splendid fortunes: most young women waited until they were twenty years old and upwards before they married. And such was the dress, and such the manners and simple habits of the Florentines of that day; but loyal in heart, faithful to each other, zealous and honest in the execution of public duties; and with their coarse and homely mode of life they gained more virtue and honor for themselves and their country than they who now live so delicately are able to accomplish.’ ” What Florence had become in Dante’s time may be seen from the following extract from Frate Francesco Pippino, who wrote in 1313, and whose account is thus given by Napier, II 542:— “Now indeed, in the present luxurious age, many shameful practices are introduced instead of the former customs; many indeed to the injury of people’s minds, because frugality is exchanged for magnificence; the clothing being now remarkable for its exquisite materials, workmanship, and superfluous ornaments of silver, gold, and pearls; admirable fabrics; wide-spreading embroidery; silk for vests, painted or variously colored, and lined with divers precious furs from foreign countries. Excitement to gluttony is not wanting; foreign wines are much esteemed, and almost all the people drink in public. The viands are sumptuous; the chief cooks are held in great honor; provocatives of the palate are eagerly sought after; ostentation increases; moneymakers exert themselves to supply these tastes; hence usuries, frauds, rapine, extortion, pillage, and contentions in the commonwealth: also unlawful taxes; oppression of the innocent; banishment of citizens, and the combinations of rich men. Our true god is our belly; we adhere to the pomps which were renounced at our baptism, and thus desert to the great enemy of our race. Well indeed does Seneca, the instructor of morals, in his book of orations, curse our times in the following words: ‘Daily, things grow worse because the whole contest is for dishonorable matters. Behold! the indolent senses of youth are numbed, nor are they active in the pursuit of any one honest thing. Sleep, languor, and a carefulness for bad things, worse than sleep and languor, have seized upon their minds; the love of singing, dancing, and other unworthy occupations possesses them: they are effeminate: to soften the hair, to lower the tone of their voice to female compliments; to vie with women in effeminacy of person, and adorn themselves with unbecoming delicacy, is the object of our youth.’ ” ↩
Villani, Cronica, VI 69, as quoted in note 1595:— “The women used unornamented buskins, and even the most distinguished were content with a close gown of scarlet serge or camlet, confined by a leathern waistbelt of the ancient fashion, and a hooded cloak lined with miniver; and the poorer classes wore a coarse green cloth dress of the same form.” ↩
Dante, Convito, I 10:— “Like the beauty of a woman, when the ornaments of her apparel cause more admiration than she herself.” ↩
Eastern effeminacy in general; what Boccaccio calls the morbidezze d’ Egitto. Paul Orosius, “the advocate of the Christian centuries,” as quoted by the Ottimo, says:— “The last king of Syria was Sardanapalus, a man more corrupt than a woman, (corrotto più che femmina?) who was seen by his prefect Arabetes, among a herd of courtesans, clad in female attire.” ↩
Montemalo, or Montemario, is the hill from which the traveller coming from Viterbo first catches sight of Rome. The Uccellatojo is the hill from which the traveller coming from Bologna first catches sight of Florence. Here the two hills are used to signify what is seen from them; namely, the two cities; and Dante means to say, that Florence had not yet surpassed Rome in the splendor of its buildings; but as Rome would one day be surpassed by Florence in its rise, so would it be in its downfall. Speaking of the splendor of Florence in Dante’s age, Napier, Florentine History, II 581, says:— “Florence was at this period well studded with handsome dwellings; the citizens were continually building, repairing, altering, and embellishing their houses; adding every day to their ease and comforts, and introducing improvements from foreign nations. Sacred architecture of every kind partook of this taste; and there was no popular citizen or nobleman but either had built or was building fine country palaces and villas, far exceeding their city residence in size and magnificence; so that many were accounted crazy for their extravagance. “ ‘And so magnificent was the sight’ says Villani, ‘that strangers unused to Florence, on coming from abroad, when they beheld the vast assemblage of rich buildings and beautiful palaces with which the country was so thickly studded for three miles round the ramparts, believed that all was city like that within the Roman walls; and this was independent of the rich palaces, towers, courts, and walled gardens at a greater distance, which in other countries would be denominated castles. In short,’ he continues, ‘it is estimated that within a circuit of six miles round the town there are rich and noble dwellings enough to make two cities like Florence.’ And Ariosto seems to have caught the same idea when he exclaims— ‘While gazing on thy villa-studded hills / ’Twould seem as though the earth grew palaces / As she is wont by nature to bring forth / Young shoots, and leafy plants, and flowery shrubs: / And if within one wall and single name / Could be collected all thy scattered halls, / Two Romes would scarcely form thy parallel.’ ” ↩
The “which” in this line refers to Montemalo of the preceding. ↩
Bellincion Berti, whom Dante selects as a type of the good citizen of Florence in the olden time, and whom Villani calls “the best and most honored gentleman of Florence,” was of the noble family of the Ravignani. He was the father of the “good Gualdrada,” whose story shines out so pleasantly in Boccaccio’s commentary. See note 224. ↩
“Two ancient houses of the city,” says the Ottimo; “and he saw the chiefs of these houses were content with leathern jerkins without any drapery; he who should dress so nowadays would be laughed at: and he saw their dames spinning, as who should say, ‘Nowadays not even the maid will spin, much less the lady.’ ” And Buti upon the same text:— “They wore leathern dresses without any cloth over them; they did not make to themselves long robes, nor cloaks of scarlet lined with vaire, as they do now.” ↩
They were not abandoned by their husbands, who, content with little, did not go to traffic in France. ↩
Monna Cianghella della Tosa was a gay widow of Florence, who led such a life of pleasure that her name has passed into a proverb, or a common name for a dissolute woman. Lapo Salterello was a Florentine lawyer, and a man of dissipated habits; and Crescimbeni, whose mill grinds everything that comes to it, counts him among the poets, Volgar Poesia, III 82, and calls him a Rimatore di non poco grido, a rhymer of no little renown. Unluckily he quotes one of his sonnets. ↩
Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus from his neglected locks, taken from his plough and made Dictator by the Roman Senate, and, after he had defeated the Volscians and saved the city, returning to his plough again. Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, and mother of the Gracchi, who preferred for her husband a Roman citizen to a king, and boasted that her children were her only jewels. Shakespeare, Tit. Andron., IV 1:— “Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care / Read to her sons, than she hath read to thee / Sweet poetry, and Tally’s Orator.” ↩
The Virgin Mary, invoked in the pains of childbirth, as mentioned Purgatorio XX 19:— “And I by peradventure heard ‘Sweet Mary!’ / Uttered in front of us amid the weeping, / Even as a woman does who is in child-birth.” ↩
The Baptistery of the church of St. John in Florence; il mio bel San Giovanni, my beautiful St. John, as Dante calls it, Inferno XIX 17. ↩
Of this ancestor of Dante, Cacciaguida, nothing is known but what the poet here tells us, and so clearly that it is not necessary to repeat it in prose. ↩
Cacciaguida’s wife came from Ferrara in the Val di Pado, or Val di Po, the Valley of the Po. She was of the Aldighieri or Alighieri family, and from her Dante derived his surname. ↩
The Emperor Conrad III of Swabia, uncle of Frederic Barbarossa. In 1143 he joined Louis VII of France in the Second Crusade, of which St. Bernard was the great preacher. He died in 1152, after his return from this crusade. ↩
Cacciaguida was knighted by the Emperor Conrad. ↩
The law or religion of Muhammad. ↩