Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/371

 10 s. x. OCT. 17, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

303

Buti's words, as supplied by Scartazzini, are emphatic :

"Dante fu frate minore; ma non vi fece

professione nel tempo della sua fanciullezza (i. 438)

Per questo appare che che '1 nostro autore

infine quando era garzone s'innamorasse de la S. Scrittura ; e questo credo che fusse quando si fece frate dell ' Ordine di S. Francesco, del quale uscitte inariti che facesse professione.'' II. 735.

B. Dean Plumptre remarks :

" Taken by itself, the passage would imply that at some time or other in his life Dante had become a member of the Tertiary Section of the Order, who were not bound by the stricter vows of poverty and celibacy. Add to this (1) that Buti, one of the earliest commentators, speaks of this, here and on 'Par.' xxx. 42, as an 'undoubted fact'; (2) that Dante speaks with more enthusiasm of St. Francis than of any other saint in Paradise ('Par.' xi.) ; (3) that Giotto's painting at Assisi represents a figure coming to St. Francis, in which we recognize the poet's unmistakable features ; and (4) that at his death he was buried, by his own desire, in the dress of the Order ; and there seems, I think, sufficient reason to follow Scart, and other commentators (see especially Weg. 446) in adopting that conclusion. If 1 am right in thinking that it is in a high degree probable that he met Roger Bacon, the great Franciscan friar, at Oxford (Contemp. Rev,, Nov., 1881) before his exile, we may perhaps look to that as the time when he first girt himself with the symbolic cord."

C. Lombard! (himself a Conventual Friar Minor) observes (ed. Roma, 1791) :

" Questo luogo (chiosa il Landino) contiene in se una fizione assai oscura. Alquanti dicono, che Dante in sua puerizia prese 1'abito di S. Francisco,

e dopo parti tosi lo lascio Di questa corda non ne

fanno parola i moderni spositori Volpi, e Venturi " (Ed. Padova, 1727, and Lucca, 1732, respectively).

He adds in a foot-note :

" L' autore delle * Memorie per la Vita di Dante ' pltre di riferire detto dal Buti il medesimo che dice il Landino, aggiunge la testimonianza di F. Antonio Tognocchi da Terrinca, che fosse Dante e morisse Terziario del Francescano Ordine."

D. The Rev. H. F. Tozer writes : "According to Buti, Dante was at one time a

member of the Third Order of the Franciscans, whose emblem was the cord, from which they re- ceived the name of Cordiglieri (cp. ' Inf.,' xxvii. 67, 68). As this statement is not confirmed by any other authority, it may not be true." But the " statement " is, as we have just seen, confirmed by " other authority " than that of Buti. The testimonies of P. Gio- vanni di S. Antonio and F. Antonio Tog- nocchi, together with Giotto's painting at Assisi and Dante's being buried at his own desire in the Franciscan habit, constitute a somewhat respectable authority sup- porting Buti's " statement," which he prof- fered as an " undoubted fact." Besides, the evidence, even standing alone, of so early

a commentator, justifies the adoption of his statement that the poet " fu frate minore ; ma non vi fece professione." This, of course, means a postulant or novice of the First Order, and not merely the Third (or Tertiary), as Dean Plumptre and Mr. Tozer take it to signify, although Dante wasjpro- bably a Tertiary both before and after his- brief probation as Friar Minor, and Tertiaries undergo a probationary year of noviceship and have a habit (minus the cowl), which they wear at functions in church, and in which they are buried. This, however, is far removed from the status of a " Frate Minore."

II. However, habit or no habit suchTas that of the latter, how is Dante's own state- ment, that with the cord

which round my waist I wore, And with it once of old I thought to take The panther with its skin all dappled o'er,

to be understood ? Literally or symbolic- ally ? If the latter, as is presumably the case, we enter upon a veritable quagmire of in- vestigation. Let me cull a specimen or two from the critics already laid under embargo for the question of the poet's friarship.

A. - Dean Plumptre :

"Assuming the ethical interpretation of the- three beasts of C. i. 32-54, the panther, it will be remembered represented the sin of sensu- ality. The ' cord ' must, therefore, be the symbol of that which seemed to promise a victory over sensuality, i.e., the rule of an

ascetic life It may be noted that in the visions

he [Dante] wears it [the cord] just as long as he is

in contact with sins of sensuality, and no longer

Other interpreters see in the cord the symbol of fraud, or integrity, or truth, or vigilance, or self- righteousness. And so the reader must decide. The lines which follow show, at any rate, that the poet had some symbolic meanincr in his thoughts."

B. Gary says:

" It is believed that pur poet, in the earlier part of his life, had entered into the Order of St. Francis. By observing the rules of that profession, he had designed to mortify his carnal appetites, or, as he expresses it, 'to take the painted leopard' (that animal which represented Pleasure) 'with this cord.' This part of the habit he is now desired by Virgil to take off; and it is thrown down the gulf, to allure Geryon to them with the expectation of carrying down one who had cloaked his iniquities under the garb of penitence and self-mortification ; and thus (to apply to Dante on this occasion the words of Milton)

He, as Franciscan, thought to pass disguised."

C. Mr. Tozer' s view is :

"The 'panther with the spotted skin' signifies lust, and the cord by which Dante had proposed to master it signifies the restrictions of the ascetic

life Since the meaning of this emblem [the cord]

was, as St. Francis intended it to be, that the body