Category: Biographies
I. The End of the Middle Ages.--II. Dante’s Childhood and Adolescence.--III. After the Death of Beatrice.--IV. Dante’s Political Life.--V. First Period of Exile.--VI. The Invasion of Henry VII.--VII. Last Period of Exile.--VIII. Dante’s Works and First Interpreters 1
I. The End of the Middle Ages.--II. Dante’s Childhood and Adolescence.--III. After the Death of Beatrice.--IV. Dante’s Political Life.--V. First Period of Exile.--VI. The Invasi...
2. CHAPTER II3. CHAPTER III4. CHAPTER IV5. CHAPTER IFROM GREGORY VII. TO FREDERICK II.--The twelfth and thirteenth centuries cover the last and more familiar portion of the Middle Ages. They are the period of chivalry, of the cru...
6. Canto V. of the _Purgatorio_. On the lower slopes of the Mountain ofPurgation wanders the soul of Buonconte da Montefeltro, who led the Aretine cavalry, and whose body was never found; mortally wounded and forsaken by all, he had died gasping ou...
7. CHAPTER IIGuido Guinizelli is acknowledged by Dante himself as his master in poetic art and the founder of the great new school of Italian poetry: “The father of me and of the others, my...
8. CHAPTER IIIIn the first treatise of the _Convivio_ (i. 5), Dante announces his intention of making a book upon _Volgare Eloquenza_, artistic utterance in the vernacular. Like the _Convivio...
9. BOOK I.--At the outset Dante strikes a slightly different note fromthat of the _Convivio_, by boldly asserting that vernacular in general (as the natural speech of man) is nobler than “grammar,” literary languages like Latin or Greek, which he...
10. BOOK II.--The unfinished second book is of the utmost value to thestudent of Italian poetic form. It makes us realise, too, how zealously Dante sought out technical perfection, studying subtle musical and rhythmical effects, curiously weighing...
11. Book i. cannot be much later than the beginning of that year. Dante’sevident friendly feeling for Bologna (which altered before he wrote the _Commedia_) may be connected with the time when the Florentine exiles were welcomed in that city, before...
12. BOOK I.--The _Monarchia_ is divided into three books, correspondingto the three questions to be answered touching this most useful and least explored amongst occult and useful truths, the knowledge of the temporal monarchy (i. 1). In its ideal...
13. BOOK II.--The second book answers the question whether the Roman peopletook to itself this dignity of Monarchy, or Empire, by right. But right in things is nothing else than the similitude of the Divine Will, and what God wills in human society is...
14. BOOK III.--And this rebuke to the clergy, from whom the main oppositionto the Empire proceeded, naturally leads to the great question of the third book, the pith of the whole treatise.[22] Does the authority of the Roman Monarch or Emperor, who is...
15. CHAPTER IVLETTER AND ALLEGORY.--The _Divina Commedia_ is a vision and an allegory. It is a vision of the world beyond the grave; it is an allegory, based upon that vision, of the life and...
16. xxxiii. 124), those who slew treacherously, under mask of hospitality,have only their faces showing above the ice, their tears frozen into a crystalline mask; on earth their bodies ofttimes still seem to live, tenanted by a demon until their time...
17. iii. 89, 5), works done in charity, although in a sense dead throughsin, are brought to life through penance. Through repentance they regain their efficacy of leading him who did them into eternal life. Therefore Dante writes: “I returned from t...
18. CANTO I.--In a lyrical prologue of stately music (_Par._ i. 1-36),the poet sings of the glory of the First Mover, and prays for light and inspiration to complete this third most arduous portion of his divine poem. Then, in the noblest season o...