Italian Renaissance. John Addington Symonds
to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The poorer population had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this calamity.
[1] Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which seems to have been well managed.
The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediæval literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this period.[1] Dante's aim is wholly different. Of statistics and of historical detail we gain but little from his prose works. His mind was that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity in his account of facts. I need not do more than mention here the concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise 'De Monarchiâ' we possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations. In the 'De Monarchiâ' Dante bases a theory of universal government upon a definite conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity. Amid the anarchy and discord of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were but cloaks for party strife, Dante endeavors to bring his countrymen back to a sublime ideal of a single monarchy, a true imperium, distinct from the priestly authority of the Church, but not hostile to it—nay, rather seeking sanction from Christ's Vicar upon earth and affording protection to the Holy See, as deriving its own right from the same Divine source. Political science in this essay takes rank as an independent branch of philosophy, and the points which Dante seeks to establish are supported by arguments implying much historical knowledge, though quaintly scholastic in their application. The Epistles contain the same thoughts: peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common head, the duty of the chief to his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, are urged with no less force, but in a more familiar style and with direct allusion to the events which called each letter forth. They are in fact political brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude to the chief actors in the drama of history around him. Nor would it here be right to omit some notice of the essay 'De Vulgari Eloquio,' which, considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise 'De Monarchiâ.' It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation of a common literary tongue for Italy. Though Dante was of course devoid of what we now call comparative philology, and had but little knowledge of the first beginnings of the languages which he discusses, yet it is not more than the truth to say that this essay applies the true method of critical analysis for the first time to the subject, and is the first attempt to reason scientifically upon the origin and nature of a modern language.
[1] We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and Stow, were later by two centuries than the Villani.
While discussing the historical work of Dante and the Villani, it is impossible that another famous Florentine should not occur to our recollection, whose name has long been connected with the civic contests that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his native city. Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to deal with the question of Dino Compagni's Chronicle—a question which for years has divided Italian students into two camps, which has produced a voluminous literature of its own, and which still remains undecided. The point at issue is by no means insignificant. While one party contends that we have in this Chronicle the veracious record of an eye-witness, the other asserts that it is the impudent fabrication of a later century, composed on hints furnished by Dante, and obscure documents of the Compagni family, and expressed in language that has little of the fourteenth century. The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient only in minor details of accuracy. The other stigmatizes it as a wholly untrustworthy forgery, and calls attention to numberless mistakes, confusions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility. After a careful consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro del Lungo's arguments, it seems to me clearly established that the Chronicle of Dino Compagni can no longer be regarded as a perfectly genuine document of fourteenth-century literature. In the form in which we now possess it, we are rather obliged to regard it as a rifacimento of some authentic history, compiled during the course of the fifteenth century in a prose which bears traces of the post-Boccaccian style of composition.[1] Yet the authority of Dino Compagni has long been such, and such is still the literary value of the monograph which bears his name, that it would be impertinent to dismiss the 'Chronicle' unceremoniously as a mere fiction. I propose, therefore, first to give an account of the book on its professed merits, and then to discuss, as briefly as I can, the question of its authenticity.
[1] The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in question was Pietro Fanfani, in an article of Il Pievano Arlotto, 1858. The cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied on this subject are, 1. Florentiner Studien, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2. Dino Compagni vendicato dalla Calunnia di Scrittore della Cronica, di Pietro Fanfani, Milano, Carrara, 1875. 3. Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung, von Dr. Carl Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 4. Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 5. The note appended to Gino Capponi's Storia della Repubblica di Firenze. 6. Dino Compagni e la sua Chronica, per Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, Le Mornier. Unluckily, the last-named work, though it consists already of two bulky volumes in large 8vo, is not yet complete; and the part which will treat of the question of authorship and MS. authority has not appeared.
The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of his descent with Virgil to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani's 'Chronicle,' is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of the preface to his work. 'The recollections of ancient histories,' he says, 'have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and ill-fated events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.' Dino Compagni, whose 'Chronicle' embraces the period between 1280 and 1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in 1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times. He died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante's death, and was buried in the church of Santa Trinità. He was a man of the same stamp as Dante;[1] burning with love for his country, but still more a lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and justice. As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one small but highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate the civic quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his 'Chronicle,' although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays bare the political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable period which embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the struggles of