Diagrama de Ishikawa

In 1300, the fictional date of the pilgrim’s journey through the afterlife, no such potential solution immediately presents itself. ‘German Albert’ is clearly no Augustus, and the poet here appears to hold out no greater hope

Divided City, Slavish Italy, Universal Empire 135

for whoever may succeed him, wishing vindictive justice on the whole dynasty:

giusto giudicio da le stelle caggia sovra ’l tuo sangue, e sia novo e aperto,

tal che ’l tuo successor temenza n’aggia! (Purg., vi. 100-02)

[may just judgment fall from the stars onto your blood, and let it be strange and public, so that your successor may fear it!]

But nothing could be further from the way in which Dante had come to feel about Albert’s successor by the time that he was completing Purgatorio.33

This much is evidenced by the series of impassioned letters which Dante composed at this time on themes which echo those of the cantos under consideration in the present chapter: Florence and Italy, Church and Empire.

The letters numbered v, vi, and vii in most editions of Dante’s works were written between Autumn 1310 and the end of April 1311, and all relate directly to the Italian campaign of the successor of ‘German Albert’, Henry

vii, Duke of Luxembourg. Henry had been chosen as Emperor-elect in November 1308 and crowned by the Archbishop of Cologne in January 1309. Only a coronation in Rome, however, could confirm his imperial authority, and so, in Autumn 1310, he set out for Italy, crossing the Alps on 23 October. At this time, Dante wrote to the princes and peoples of Italy, announcing Henry’s arrival in Italy with undisguised joy and hope. This hope was to be short-lived, however. After an enthusiastic reception in Milan, Henry failed to proceed swiftly to a coronation in Rome, and by the spring of 1311, when Dante wrote his letters addressed to the Florentines and to Henry himself, his journey had stalled in the face of strong opposition from Florence and her allies and of delaying tactics on the part of Pope Clement v. Henry died of malaria in 1313, without ever having conquered Florence or established his Empire in Rome.34 _{These letters express, with almost painful intensity,}

Dante’s hopes for a restoration of the great Roman Empire of the past in the

33 It is not possible to date the writing of the Purgatorio with any certainty, but it seems likely that Purgatorio vi was written earlier than 1311, and that Henry’s Italian campaign corresponds roughly with the composition of the second half of the cantica.

34 See William M. Bowsky, Henry VII in Italy: The Conflict of Empire and City-State, 1310-1313

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figure of Henry, who is consistently portrayed as a political saviour, who will bring an end to the wars and factionalism which plague the Italian peninsula, and against which Dante inveighs so vehemently in Purgatorio

vi, and bring about a peace which will be like that only previously achieved under Augustus.

Here, then, far from imagining a Christ who turns his face away from an Italy in turmoil, Dante envisions an imperial Messiah, a bringer of peace, as can be seen from just one example,35 _{taken from the opening paragraphs of}

the first of these missives:

‘Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile’ quo signa surgunt consolationis et pacis. […] Saturabuntur omnes qui esuriunt et sitiunt iustitiam in lumine radiorum eius, et confundentur qui diligunt iniquitatem a facie coruscantis. Arrexit namque aures misericordes Leo fortis de tribu Iuda; atque […] Moysen alium suscitavit, qui de gravaminibus Egiptiorum populum suum eripiet, ad terram lacte ac melle manantem perducens. Letare iam nunc miseranda Ytalia […] quia sponsus tuus, mundi solatium et gloria plebis tue, clementissimus Henricus, divus et Augustus et Cesar, ad nuptias properat. (Epist., v. 1-2) [‘Now is the favourable time’, when signs of solace and of peace are emerging. […] All those who hunger and thirst for justice will then be satisfied in the light of his radiance, while those who love injustice will be confounded by his dazzling face. For the great Lion of the tribe of Judah has pricked up his merciful ears, and […] has called up a new Moses, who will deliver his people from their Egyptian oppression and lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey. Now is the time for you to rejoice, Italy […], because your bridegroom, the world’s comforter and glory of your people, that most merciful Henry, holy Augustus and Caesar, is hurrying to his wedding.]

Here, the biblical references in support of Henry’s messianic status come thick and fast. Dante announces the ‘favourable time’, as Paul had done in his second letter to the church at Corinth, immediately associating Henry’s mission in Italy with that of Christ and his first followers on earth;36 _there

are echoes of both the Beatitudes and the Nunc dimittis;37 _{Henry is a second}

Moses, who will transform Italy into a new Promised Land; he is the Lion

35 For a brief survey of the many Christological references in these letters, see my ‘“Ritornerò poeta…”: Florence, Exile, and Hope’, in ‘Se mai continga…’: Exile, Politics, and Theology in Dante, ed. by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne (Ravenna: Longo, 2013), pp. 85-103 (pp. 94-98).

36 The reference is to ii Corinthians 6.2, which in turn cites Isaiah 49.8. Both passages express the certainty of God’s imminent intervention to restore order to human affairs. 37 See Matthew 5.6; Luke 2.32.

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of Judah,38 _{and the bridegroom of the Song of Songs;}39 _{Henry is, in short,}

both a new Augustus and a second Christ.

Dante is here making utterly exceptional claims for Henry. And the more he exalts Henry in this way, the more severely he appears to judge those who – out of petty self-interest – would resist his divinely-willed arrival on Italian soil. The language that Dante uses in the letter to the Florentines, for example, follows very closely that of the invective of Purgatorio vi:

solio augustali vacante, totus orbis exorbitat, quod nauclerus et remiges in navicula Petri dormitant, et quod Ytalia misera, sola, privatis arbitriis derelicta omnique publico moderamine destituta, quanta ventorum fluentorumve concussione feratura verba non caperent. (Epist., vi. 1)

[When the throne of Augustus is vacant, the whole world goes awry, the captain and the oarsmen of the ship of St Peter fall asleep, and wretched Italy, left alone, at the mercy of private decisions and devoid of any public control, is so battered and buffeted by gales and floods that words cannot describe it.]

Not only does the imagery of the storm-tossed ship here echo the reference to Italy as a ‘nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta’ [ship without a pilot in a great storm] (Purg., vi. 77), but the same adjective ‘misera’ [wretched] (Purg., vi. 85) is used in both passages, and in both cases the impact of the lack of imperial direction is far reaching: not a single part of Italy enjoys peace, just as the whole world is seen to go awry without its Emperor.

In these letters, as in the three cantos presently under consideration, however, the poet’s strongest rebukes are reserved for Florence, which is described in the letter to Henry – in a passage of invective that surpasses, for sheer bile, anything in the Commedia – through a series of images which evoke the city’s cunning, violence and moral turpitude, piling one image on top of another in a relentless verbal onslaught:

Hec est vipera versa in viscera genetricis; hec est languida pecus gregem domini sui sua contagione commaculans; hec Myrrha scelestis et impia […]; hec Amata illa impatiens […]. Vere matrem viperea feritate dilaniare

38 This term is used throughout the Bible (from Genesis 49.9 to Revelation 5.5) to designate the Messiah.

39 Biblical exegesis traditionally associated the Bridegroom of the Song of Songs with Christ and the Bride with the Church. See E. Ann Matter, ‘The Voice of My Beloved’: The Song of Songs in Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990).

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contendit dum contra Romam cornua rebellionis exacuit […]. Vere fumos, evaporante sanie, vitiantes exhalat […]. (Epist., vii. 7)

[She is the viper who turns against the vitals of her own mother; she is the sick sheep which infects her master’s flock with her disease; she is Myrrha, wicked and ungodly […]; she is the wrathful Amata […]. With all the ferocity of a viper she strives to tear her mother to pieces, as she sharpens the horns of her rebellion against Rome. […] She gives off fetid fumes, dripping with gore […].]

This passage, with its accumulation of animal images, recalls Dante’s description of the monstrous Cerberus in Inferno vi, ruling over a circle of sinners reduced by their greed to all that is most primitive and bestial in human nature, and of the pig-like glutton,40 _{Ciacco. In Purgatorio too}

the image of the wild beast recurs when the horse that Justinian had once tamed is seen to have become fierce and cruel, untamed and wild, as it rampages, riderless and out of control; while in Paradiso Justinian warns the Florentine Guelphs that to try to appropriate the imperial ensign for themselves risks reprisals from ‘li artigli / ch’a più alto leon trasser lo vello’ [the claws that flayed a greater lion] (Par., vi. 107-08).