Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/674

 670 DANTE That his ancestors had been long established in Florence is inferred from some expressions of the poet, and from their dwelling having been situated in the more ancient part of the city. The most important fact of his genealogy is, that he was of mixed race, the Alighieri being of Teutonic origin. It is supposed, from a pas- sage in Boccaccio's life of Dante, that Alighiero the father was still living when the poet was nine years old. If so, he must have died soon after, for Leonardo Aretino says Dante lost his father while yet a child. Of the order of Dante's studies nothing can be certainly affirmed. His biographers send him to Bologna, Padua, Paris, Naples, and even Oxford. All are doubtful, Paris and Oxford most of all, and the dates utterly undeterminable. As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt that he went through the trivium (grammar, dialectics, rhet- oric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of tiie then or- dinary university course. To these he after- ward added painting, or at least drawing, theology, and medicine. He is said to have been the pupil of Cimabue, and was certainly the friend of Giotto, the designs for some of whose frescoes at Assisi and elsewhere have been wrongly attributed to him. To prove his love of music, the episode of Oasella were enough, even without Boccaccio's testimony. The range of Dante's acquirements would be encyclopaedic in any age, but at that time it was literally possible to master all that was to be known, and he seems to have accomplished it. The Convito gives us a glance into Dante's library. We find Aristotle (whom he calls the philosopher, the master) cited 76 times; Cicero, 18; A Ibertus Magnus, 7; Boethius, 6; Plato (at second hand), 4 ; Aquinas, Avicenna, Ptolemy, the Digest, Lucan, and Ovid, 3 each ; Virgil, Juvenal, Statius, Seneca, and Horace, twice each ; and Algazzali, Alfragan, Augus- tine, Livy, Orosius, and Homer (at second hand), once. Of Greek he seems to have understood little ,* of Hebrew and Arabic a few words. But Dante acquired perhaps the better part of his education in the streets of Florence, and later in those wanderings which led him (as he says) wherever the Italian tongue was spoken. Nothing seems to have escaped his eye, or failed to be photographed upon his sensitive brain, to be afterward fixed for ever in the Commedia. The few well ascertained facts of Dante's life may be briefly stated. In 1274 he first saw Beatrice Portinari. In 1289 he fought at Campaldino on the side of the Guelphs, who there utterly routed the Ghib- ellines, and where, he says, "I was present, not a boy in arms, and where I felt much fear, but in the end the greatest pleasure from the various changes of the fight." In the same year he assisted at the siege and capture of Caprona. In 1290 died Beatrice, married to Simone dei Bardi, precisely when is uncertain, but before 1287, as appears by a mention of her in her father's will, bearing date Jan. 15 of that year. Dante's own marriage is assigned to various years, ranging from 1291 to 1294 ; but the earlier date seems the more probable, as he was the father of seven children (the youngest a daughter, named Beatrice) in 1301. His wife was Gemma dei Donati, and through her Dante, whose family was of the lesser no- bility, became nearly connected with Corso Donati, the head of a powerful clan of the grandi or greater nobles. In 1293 occurred what is called the revolution of Gian Delia Bella, in which the priors of the trades took the power into their own hands and made no- bility a disqualification for office. A noble was defined to be any one who counted a knight among his ancestors. Delia Bella was exiled in 1295, but the nobles did not regain their power. On the contrary, the citizens quarrel- led among themselves, and subdivided into the popolani grossi and popolani minuti, or great- er and lesser trades, a distinction of gentility somewhat like that between wholesale and re- tail tradesmen. The grandi continuing turbu- lent, many of the lesser nobility, among them Dante, drew over to the side of the citi- zens, and between 1297 and 1300 there is found inscribed in the book of the physicians and apothecaries, Dante d'Aldighiero, degli Aldighieri, poeta fiorentino. In 1300 we find him elected one of the priors of the city. In order to a perfect misunderstanding of every- thing connected with the Florentine politics of this period, one has only to study the va- rious histories. A few words, however, are necessary, if only to make the confusion pal- pable. The rival German families of "Welfs and Weiblingens had given their names, soft- ened into Guelfi and Ghibellini, to two par- ties in northern Italy, representing respec- tively the adherents of the pope and of the emperor, but serving very well as rallying points in all manner of subsidiary quar- rels. The nobles, especially the greater ones, were commonly Ghibellines, or imperialists; the bourgeoisie were very commonly Guelphs, or supporters of the pope. Sometimes, how- ever, the party relation of nobles and burghers to each other was reversed, but the names Guelph and Ghibelline always substantially represented the same things. The family of Dante had been Guelphic, but just before his assumption of the priorate a new complication had arisen. A family feud, beginning at the neighboring city of Pistoja, between the Can- cellieri Neri and Cancellieri Bianchi, had ex- tended to Florence, where the Guelphs took the part of the Neri and the Ghibellines of the Bianchi. The city was instantly in a ferment of street brawls. Both parties appealed at different times to the pope, who sent two am- bassadors, first a bishop and then a cardinal. Both pacificators soon flung out again in a rage, after adding the new element of excommunica- tion to the causes of confusion. It was in the midst of these things that Dante became one of the six priors (June, 1300), an office which