Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Today's reading addresses two subjects: the growing importance of legal expertise during this period, and a significant literary figure who is sometimes perceived as belonging to the Middle Ages, sometimes to the Renaissance. Dante Alighieri, pictured at left, is most famous for the Divine Comedy, in which he casts himself as a pilgrim travelling through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid; next by Beatrice, a woman whom Dante passionately loved, and who represented to him the peak of human perfection; and finally, at the highest point of paradise, by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. We are getting the merest glimpse into his world with a reading of the four cantos, two from the Inferno and two from the Paradiso.
Dante's masterpiece has inspired many other artists by its breathtaking scope and poetic power. Dante uses poetry to communicate an experience of God at all levels of the Divine Comedy, for God's presence is felt as much in the Inferno (by the very fact of His absence) as in the Paradiso.
The entire drama is a kind of pilgrimage for Dante, who stands in for all humans facing the implications of their own mortality. It begins when Dante is at midlife, lost in a forest, wandering in the half-light. He is befriended by the shade of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who has been sent to conduct Dante through Hell for the sake of instructing him. This is the dignified person Dante encounters in Canto I of our reading, whose parents were both of the Lombard race. From there he will proceed to Purgatory, eventually seeing Paradise (guided by "a spirit worthier than I") and the Beatific Vision.
In Dante's version of the afterlife, souls find that place that most accurately expresses what they were in life, from the vantage point of their most profound commitments, testimony to what each of them most loved. Thus in Hell, souls act out for all eternity their relationships to their chosen love-objects, in an endless, sterile repetition that never brings satisfaction of their longing. Dante stresses throughout that the souls in Hell have all chosen to be there, through their stubborn refusal to give up their preoccupations with earthly things and look to God for their ultimate satisfaction. What we find here is a system for classifying sins, punishing the sins of carnality the most lightly, the sins of malice most heavily. In canto V, we meet Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with Paolo, her brother-in-law. Note how the quality of their punishment reflects the emotions of lustful attachment; note also how she reflects on her experiences, and Dante's response.
Dante began work on the Divine Comedy in 1308, during his exile from Florence. The poem is called a comedy because of the progression it follows: it moves from Hell to Paradise, ending in joy rather than in destruction. It's a religious allegory, aesthetic achievement, personal statement, and a depiction of the political life of the time, all at once.
The setting is the life of the northern Italian communes in the 13th and 14th centuries, which we've been studying thus far. Life in a commune was characterized by the intensity of its public dimension. During Dante's time, Florence was the largest it would ever be in the late medieval and Renaissance periods, around 100,000 people (it would lose population in the Plague mid-century). It was small in area: within a second set of walls, one could walk across town in 10 minutes. A third set of walls was in the planning stages in 1300. The problem was that it was very crowded at the center, because the population boom during the 13th century had brought in hordes of new people form the surrounding countryside. This cased social problems and strains, which are reflected in the Divine Comedy. The entire area of Florence, including the countryside, encompassed 250,000 people or thereabouts.
The frame of reference for people living there was limited in space, but deep in time; for example in the Paradiso, cantos XV--XVII one of Dante's 12th century ancestors, Cacciaguida, describes the city at that earlier time (we're reading XV and XVI). This sense of a shared connection with the past was, unfortunately, not conducive to peaceful relations, for it engendered a struggle for control over the city's past, present, and future. Canto 10 of the Inferno presents the character of Farinata degli Uberti, a Ghibelline leader, recalling a famous battle, the Battle of Montaperti in 1260. This spirit is an enemy of Dante's family, and yet when they meet in the underworld they converse. There was an intimate quality to urban life, for though the population may have been large at this time, the significant families all knew one another; for example, Dante's relationship with his love, Beatrice, was shaped by the urban environment: he meets her at banquets, in church, and in the streets. In these encounters, a glance takes on special significance.
As you already know, the history of Italy during this period presents a contrast with that of northern Europe. The Papacy had an effect on Italian history because of the Papal States stretching across the middle, dividing Italy into North and South. Southern Italy came under Muslim domination in the 9th century, but was conquered by Norman noblemen (from northern France) in the 11th century. What developed there was a bureaucratic monarchy, far different from the developments in the north. Southern and northern Italy thus became culturally distinct, with no real sense of common ground. Popes in the meantime strove to keep Italy divided, in an effort to protect the autonomy of the Papal States.
Italy, unlike northern Europe, retained its ties with its past in the ancient world. There were reminders in the physical remains of ancient buildings; also, these cities retained a more urbanized commercial life when northern European culture was distinctly agrigultural. Italy itself had a relatively poor agricultural base, but was well located for trade. As a result of all these factors, feudal patterns of land tenure did not evolve as extensively as in northern Europe. There was a variety of social classes, including freemen with varying levels of material life and skills. There was also greater social fluidity than in the north, with the nobility and the commercial classes not widely separated. Dante's expresses his disapproval of these developments in the Paradiso cantos through the mouthpiece of his 12th century ancestor Cacciaguida, who compares Florence unfavorably with the virtuous, simple life of the past.
Thus, instead of the extensive consolidation of feudal estates under a powerful landed nobility, popular elements in city government were able to develop into commercial and manufacturing elites. As we know, many governments in the communes were modelled on the corporate structure that governed guild institutions. Such institutions were strong in Italy: even knights, for instance, organized themselves into corporate groups, and associations of friendly families allied with one another into consorteria. Communal privileges over trade, taxation, minting of coinage, legislation, and administration were all gradually established in towns such as Florence, which became free from the strictures of obligations to feudal landlords.
Dante himself had been a prior, one of the governing body of the regime, in Florence's government in the year 1300. His most important political work, De Monarchia, expresses a wish to see a universal (i.e., imperial) government. He was banished under penalty of death when the Black Guelphs, enemies of the White Guelphs with whom he was allied, staged a coup with the help of Pope Boniface VIII. He wrote the entire epic while in exile, never returning to Florence.
Finally, with all of our emphasis on Dante, we don't want to ignore Giotto, who was praised by the sixteenth century artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari as an artist who first began to paint in a way that attempted to be realistic rather than stylized. Contrast his paintings to the art on pages 10 and 14 in your textbook to get a sense of what is new in his approach.
We will begin with just a few of the most obvious terms from the textbook:
Terms:
Homework Questions:
Dante's text is difficult to interpret without a lot of notes, but I'll point out a few things here. Dante sets the onset of his journey on the night before Good Friday, 1300, at which point he was 35 years old. The three beasts at the beginning have a variety of interpretations; some see them as lust, pride, and avarice. The "dark forest" in which he finds himself at midlife most likely refers to his involvement in public life, which led to his ruin. The three women who enlist Virgil to help Dante by guiding him on his journey are Saint Mary, Saint Lucia, and Beatrice, who is in Paradise (she died in her mid-20s). In canto XV, the soul who addresses Dante in line 28 as "my own blood . . . brimming with God's grace" is his great-great grandfather Cacciaguida.
Laurel Carrington carringt@stolaf.edu
Most recent update: January 19, 2012