world considering that our city of Florence, the daughter and creature of Rome, was rising, whilst Rome was declining, it seemed to me fitting to collect in this volume and chronicle all the deeds and beginnings of the city of Florence, in so far as it has been possible for me to find and gather them together, and to follow the doings of the Florentines in detail, and the other notable things of the universe in brief, as long as it shall be God's pleasure; in hope of whose grace rather than in my own poor learning, I have undertaken the said enterprise; and thus in the year 1300, having returned from Rome, I began to compile this book, in reverence to God and the blessed John, and in commendation of our city of Florence." Having a clear mind, and being accustomed to business and the observation of mankind, in his Cronica Fiorentina, which extends from Biblical times down to 1346, he has given us a vivid description of the intellectual, political, and economic life of his native city. Being a contemporary of Dante, the description of him is of incomparable value.

I

1

GIOVANNI VILLANI'S ACCOUNT OF DANTE 1

In the month of July, 1321, died the poet Dante Alighieri of Florence, in the city of Ravenna in Romagna, after his return from an embassy to Venice for the Lords of Polenta, with whom he resided; and in Ravenna before the door of the principal church he was interred with high honor, in the habit of a poet and great philosopher. He died in banishment from the community of Florence, at the age of about fiftysix. This Dante was an honorable and ancient citizen of Porta San Piero at Florence, and our neighbor; and his exile from Florence was on the occasion of Charles of Valois, of the house of France, coming to Florence in 1301, and the expulsion of the White party, as has already in its place been mentioned. The said Dante was of the supreme governors of our city, and of that party although a Guelf; and therefore without any other crime was with the said White party expelled and banished from Florence; and he went to the University of Bologna, and into many parts of the world. This was a great and learned person in almost every science, although a layman; he was a consummate poet and philosopher, and rhetori

1 Cronica, lib. ix. cap. 136. Tr. in Napier's Florentine History, book i. ch. 16.

cian; as perfect in prose and verse as he was in public speaking a most noble orator; in rhyming excellent, with the most polished and beautiful style that ever appeared in our language up to this time or since. He wrote in his youth the book of The Early Life of Love, and afterwards when in exile made twenty moral and amorous canzonets very excellent, and among other things three noble epistles: one he sent to the Florentine government, complaining of his undeserved exile; another to the Emperor Henry when he was at the siege of Brescia, reprehending him for his delay, and almost prophesying; the third to the Italian cardinals during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, urging them to agree in electing an Italian Pope; all in Latin, with noble precepts and excellent sentences and authorities, which were much commended by the wise and learned. And he wrote the Commedia, where, in polished verse and with great and subtile arguments, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful figures, similes, and poetical graces, he composed and treated in a hundred chapters or cantos of the exist ence of hell, purgatory, and paradise; so loftily as may be said of it, that whoever is of subtile intellect may by his said treatise perceive and understand. He was well pleased in this poem to blame and cry out, in the manner of poets, in some places perhaps more than he ought to have done; but it may be that his exile made him do so. He also wrote the Monarchia, where he treats of the office of popes and emperors. And he began a comment on fourteen of the abovenamed moral canzonets in the vulgar tongue, which in consequence of his death is found imperfect except on

three, which, to judge from what is seen, would have proved a lofty, beautiful, subtile, and most important work; because it is equally ornamented with noble opinions and fine philosophical and astrological reasoning. Besides these he composed a little book which he entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia, of which he promised to make four books, but only two are to be found, perhaps in consequence of his early death; where, in powerful and elegant Latin and good reasoning, he rejects all the vulgar tongues of Italy. This Dante, from his knowledge, was somewhat presumptuous, harsh, and disdainful, like an ungracious philosopher; he scarcely deigned to converse with laymen; but for his other virtues, science, and worth as a citizen, it seems but reasonable to give him perpetual remembrance in this our chronicle; nevertheless, his noble works, left to us in writing, bear true testimony of him, and honorable fame to our city.1

1 Vide pp. 95 ff.

II

BOCCACCIO'S VITA DI DANTE

DR. EDWARD MOORE,1 than whom there is not a more careful and judicious Dante scholar, discusses as follows the reliability of Boccaccio's account of Dante :

"It is needless to point out the peculiar advantages possessed by Boccaccio as a biographer of the poet. He was born during Dante's lifetime,

ancorche fosse tardi,

/too late indeed for personal knowledge of him, though not too late to have intercourse and acquaintance with those who knew him familiarly; at a time consequently when in living memories there existed a store of anecdotes and personal reminiscences of the man as he lived and moved among his fellows, of the aspect he wore to them, of the impression he made upon them. Boccaccio had also another qualification, that of

lungo studio e grande amore,

in respect of the poet and his works. When the Florentines in 1373 determined to establish a public Lectureship on Dante, Boccaccio was appointed to the office, and delivered his first lecture on October 12th in that year, in the Church of San Stefano, near the Ponte Vecchio. His Lectures took the form of a minute and elaborate Commentary, which is preserved to us as a fragment only, since his work was unhappily interrupted by death in December, 1375, when his Commentary had reached the 17th line of the 17th Canto of the Inferno. The language of this Commentary

1 Dante and His Early Biographers. Edward Moore, D. D. Rivingtons, London, 1890. (By permission.)