John Lord - Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06 - Renaissance and Reformation

Born in Florence, of the noble family of the Alighieri, in the year 1265, his early education devolved upon his mother, his father having died while the boy was very young. His mother's friend, Brunetto Latini, famous as statesman and scholarly poet, was of great assistance in directing his tastes and studies. As a mere youth he wrote sonnets, such as Sordello the Troubadour would not disdain to own. He delights, as a boy, in those inquiries which gave fame to Bonaventura. He has an intuitive contempt for all quacks and pretenders. At Paris he maintains fourteen different theses, propounded by learned men, on different subjects, and gains universal admiration. He is early selected by his native city for important offices, which he fills with honor. In wit he encounters no superiors. He scorches courts by sarcasms which he can not restrain. He offends the great by a superiority which he does not attempt to veil. He affects no humility, for his nature is doubtless proud; he is even offensively conscious and arrogant. When Florence is deliberating about the choice of an ambassador to Rome, he playfully, yet still arrogantly, exclaims: "If I remain behind, who goes? and if I go, who remains behind?" His countenance, so austere and thoughtful, impresses all beholders with a sort of inborn greatness; his lip, in Giotto's portrait, is curled disdainfully, as if he lived among fools or knaves. He is given to no youthful excesses; he lives simply and frugally. He rarely speaks unless spoken to; he is absorbed apparently in thought. Without a commanding physical person, he is a marked man to everybody, even when he deems himself a stranger. Women gaze at him with wonder and admiration, though he disdains their praises and avoids their flatteries. Men make way for him as he passes them, unconsciously. "Behold," said a group of ladies, as he walked slowly by them, "there is a man who has visited hell!" To the close of his life he was a great devourer of books, and digested their contents. His studies were as various as they were profound. He was familiar with the ancient poets and historians and philosophers; he was still better acquainted with the abstruse speculations of the schoolmen. He delighted in universities and scholastic retreats; from the cares and duties of public life he would retire to solitary labors, and dignify his retirement by improving studies. He did not live in a cell, like Jerome, or a cave, like Mohammed; but no man was ever more indebted to solitude and meditation than he for that insight and inspiration which communion with God and great ideas alone can give.

And yet, though a recluse and student, he had great experiences with life. He was born among the higher ranks of society. He inherited an ample patrimony. He did not shrink from public affairs. He was intensely patriotic, like Michael Angelo; he gave himself up to the good of his country, like Savonarola. Florence was small, but it was important; it was already a capital, and a centre of industry. He represented its interests in various courts. He lived with princes and nobles. He took an active part in all public matters and disputations; he was even familiar with the intrigues of parties; he was a politician as well as scholar. He entered into the contests between Popes and Emperors respecting the independence of Italy. He was not conversant with art, for the great sculptors and painters had not then arisen. The age was still dark; the mariner's compass had not been invented, chimneys had not been introduced, the comforts of life were few. Dames of highest rank still spent their days over the distaff or in combing flax. There were no grand structures but cathedral churches. Life was laborious, dismal, and turbulent. Law and order did not reign in cities or villages. The poor were oppressed by nobles. Commerce was small and manufactures scarce. Men lived in dreary houses, without luxuries, on coarse bread and fruit and vegetables. The crusades had not come to an end. It was the age of bad popes and quarrelsome nobles, and lazy monks and haughty bishops, and ignorant people, steeped in gloomy superstitions, two hundred years before America was discovered, and two hundred and fifty years before Michael Angelo erected the dome of St. Peter's.

But there was faith in the world, and rough virtues, sincerity, and earnestness of character, though life was dismal. Men believed in immortality and in expiation for sin. The rising universities had gifted scholars whose abstruse speculations have never been rivalled for acuteness and severity of logic. There were bards and minstrels, and chivalric knights and tournaments and tilts, and village fêtes and hospitable convents and gentle ladies,–gentle and lovely even in all states of civilization, winning by their graces and inspiring men to deeds of heroism and gallantry.

In one of those domestic revolutions which were so common in Italy Dante was banished, and his property was confiscated; and he at the age of thirty-five, about the year 1300, when Giotto was painting portraits, was sent forth a wanderer and an exile, now poor and unimportant, to eat the bread of strangers and climb other people's stairs; and so obnoxious was he to the dominant party in his native city for his bitter spirit, that he was destined never to return to his home and friends. His ancestors, boasting of Roman descent, belonged to the patriotic party,–the Guelphs, who had the ascendency in his early years,–that party which defended the claims of the Popes against the Emperors of Germany. But this party had its divisions and rival families,–those that sided with the old feudal nobles who had once ruled the city, and the new mercantile families that surpassed them in wealth and popular favor. So, expelled by a fraction of his own party that had gained power, Dante went over to the Ghibellines, and became an adherent of imperial authority until he died.

It was in his wanderings from court to court and castle to castle and convent to convent and university to university, that he acquired that profound experience with men and the world which fitted him for his great task. "Not as victorious knight on the field of Campaldino, not as leader of the Guelph aristocracy at Florence, not as prior, not as ambassador," but as a wanderer did he acquire his moral wisdom. He was a striking example of the severe experiences to which nearly all great benefactors have been subjected,–Abraham the exile, in the wilderness, in Egypt, among Philistines, among robbers and barbaric chieftains; the Prince Siddârtha, who founded Buddhism, in his wanderings among the various Indian nations who bowed down to Brahma; and, still greater, the Apostle Paul, in his protracted martyrdom among Pagan idolaters and boastful philosophers, in Asia and in Europe. These and others may be cited, who led a life of self-denial and reproach in order to spread the truths which save mankind. We naturally call their lot hard, even though they chose it; but it is the school of greatness. It was sad to see the wisest and best man of his day,–a man of family, of culture, of wealth, of learning, loving leisure, attached to his home and country, accustomed to honor and independence,–doomed to exile, poverty, neglect, and hatred, without those compensations which men of genius in our time secure. But I would not attempt to excite pity for an outward condition which developed the higher virtues,–for a thorny path which led to the regions of eternal light. Dante may have walked in bitter tears to Paradise, but after the fashion of saints and martyrs in all ages of our world. He need but cast his eyes on that emblem which was erected on every pinnacle of Mediaeval churches to symbolize passing suffering with salvation infinite,–the great and august creed of the age in which he lived, though now buried amid the triumphs of an imposing material civilization whose end is the adoration of the majesty of man rather than the majesty of God, the wonders of creation rather than the greatness of the Creator.

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