The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri [best thriller novels of all time TXT] 📗

If other families committed the same disorders, if they troubled the state by their private feuds and outrages, the signoria was authorized to ennoble them, as a punishment of their crimes, in order to subject them to the same summary justice.”

Dino Compagni, a contemporary of Giano, Cronica Fiorentina, Book I, says of him:⁠—

“He was a manly man, of great courage, and so bold that he defended those causes which others abandoned, and said those things which others kept silent, and did all in favor of justice against the guilty, and was so much feared by the magistrates that they were afraid to screen the evildoers. The great began to speak against him, threatening him, and they did it, not for the sake of justice, but to destroy their enemies, abominating him and the laws.”

Villani, Cronica, VIII ch. 8, says:⁠—

“Giano della Bella was condemned and banished for contumacy,⁠ ⁠… and all his possessions confiscated,⁠ ⁠… whence great mischief accrued to our city, and chiefly to the people, for he was the most loyal and upright popolano and lover of the public good of any man in Florence.”

And finally Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Book II, calls him “a lover of the liberty of his country,” and says, “he was hated by the nobility for undermining their authority, and envied by the richer of the commonalty, who were jealous of his power”; and that he went into voluntary exile in order “to deprive his enemies of all opportunity of injuring him, and his friends of all opportunity of injuring the country”; and that “to free the citizens from the fear they had of him, he resolved to leave the city, which, at his own charge and danger, he had liberated from the servitude of the powerful.” ↩

The Borgo Santi Apostoli would be a quieter place, if the Buondelmonti had not moved into it from Oltrarno. ↩

The house of Amidei, whose quarrel with the Buondelmonti was the origin of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in Florence, and put an end to the joyous life of her citizens. See Note 137. ↩

See the story of Buondelmonte, as told by Giovanni Fiorentino in his Pecorone, and quoted Note 137. ↩

Much sorrow and suffering would have been spared, if the first Buondelmonte that came from his castle of Montebuono to Florence had been drowned in the Ema, a small stream he had to cross on the way. ↩

Young Buondelmonte was murdered at the foot of the mutilated statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio, and after this Florence had no more peace. ↩

The banner of Florence had never been reversed in sign of defeat. ↩

The arms of Florence were a white lily in a field of red; after the expulsion of the Ghibellines, the Guelfs changed them to a red lily in a field of white. ↩

The Heaven of Mars continued. The prophecy of Dante’s banishment.

In Inferno X 127, as Dante is meditating on the dark words of Farinata that foreshadow his exile, Virgil says to him:⁠—

“ ‘Let memory preserve what thou hast heard
Against thyself,’ that Sage commanded me,
‘And now attend here’; and he raised his finger.
‘When thou shalt be before the radiance sweet
Of her whose beauteous eyes all things be hold,
From her thou It learn the journey of thy life.’ ”

And afterwards, in reply to Brunetto Latini, Dante says, Inferno XV 88:⁠—

“What you narrate of my career I write,
And keep it for a lady, who will know,
To gloss with other text, if e’er I reach her.”

The time for this revelation has now come; but it is made by Cacciaguida, not by Beatrice. ↩

Phaeton, having heard from Epaphus that he was not the son of Apollo, ran in great eagerness and anxiety to his mother, Clymene, to ascertain the truth. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, Dryden’s Tr.:⁠—

“Mother, said he, this infamy was thrown
By Epaphus on you, and me your son.
He spoke in public, told it to my face;
Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace:
Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong,
Restrained by shame, was forced to hold my tongue.
To hear an open slander, is a curse:
But not to find an answer, is a worse.
If I am heaven-begot, assert your son
By some sure sign; and make my father known,
To right my honor, and redeem your own.
He said, and, saying, cast his arms about
Her neck, and begged her to resolve the doubt.”

↩

The disaster that befell Phaeton while driving the steeds of Apollo, makes fathers chary of granting all the wishes of children. ↩

Who seest in God all possible contingencies as clearly as the human mind perceives the commonest geometrical problem. ↩

God, “whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere.” ↩

The heavy words which Dante heard on the mount of Purgatory, foreshadowing his exile, are those of Currado Malaspina, Purgatorio VIII 133:⁠—

“For the sun shall not lie
Seven times upon the pillow which the Ram
With all his four feet covers and bestrides,
Before that such a courteous opinion
Shall in the middle of thy head be nailed
With greater nails than of another’s speech,
Unless the course of justice standeth still”;

and those of Oderisi d’ Agobbio, Purgatorio XI 139:⁠—

“I say no more, and know that I speak darkly;
Yet little time shall pass before thy neighbors
Will so demean themselves that thou canst gloss it.”

↩

The words he heard “when descending into the dead world,” are those of Farinata, Inferno X 79:⁠—

“But fifty times shall not rekindled be
The countenance of the Lady who reigns here,
Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art”;

and those