Hermanos en letras: historia de una amistad

The modern reader who undertakes to read Cavalca’s Pungilingua after Peraldus’s De peccato

linguae might get the impression that Cavalca is Peraldus’s voice in the vernacular, so similar the

two authors sound. If we consider things in their historical context, it is not difficult to understand why the latter exerted such a powerful influence on the former. Born just one generation apart from Peraldus and belonging to the same fraternal order, sharing thus the same preoccupations with preaching and moral reformation, Cavalca could not remain insensitive to the production of the French master from Lyon. By the time that Cavalca was writing in Pisa, the

Summa Vitiorum et Virtutibus was, as we have seen, already present in several places in Italy.

The fact that Cavalca decided to recare a volgare intendimento Peraldus’s moral texts testifies to the great authority the French moralist had in Italy in the first half of the fourteenth century, when Dante was still alive. Peraldus’s chapter on verbal sin from the Summa Vitiorum must have impressed Cavalca particularly, since he decided to translate it apart from the Summa, as an autonomous book, with a new title. It is highly likely that one of the reasons why Cavalca was so attentive to this class of sins was his intellectual formation as a preacher. Preaching, the main apostolic activity of the Dominicans, was predicated on an intimate relationship to spoken words. Another plausible reason for Cavalca’s idiosyncratic treatment of De peccato linguae might have been the fact that this chapter was, as we have seen, one of Peraldus’s most salient features of

originality in the Summa. And finally, we have to consider that, along with being a moralist and a preacher, Cavalca was also a translator. Reproducing a Latin tract on the sins of the tongue in the Florentine dialect must have seemed a very appealing undertaking to him, since it provided him with the opportunity to verify how Peraldus moral-linguistic theories transferred to the vernacular. Would the spirit of vernacular Italian fit into the mold of Peraldus’s Latin examples? This is one of the questions that might have challenged Cavalca’s mind.

Cavalca’s Pungilingua is more than a slavish reproduction of the De peccato linguae. Pungilingua follows the general pattern of the Peraldian treatment (the division into twenty-four

sins, for example), but at the same time, takes many freedoms with respect to it, in the form of new ideas, additions and amplifications. This ambivalent attitude toward the original text-- fidelity and distance--is clearly expressed in the Prologue to Pungilingua, in which Cavalca gives the rationale for his writing this work and explains the new title. I will reproduce here this prologue not only for its relevance to Cavalca’s relationship to Peraldus, but also for the beauty of the Italian language explaining the harm the tongue can do. It is the same language in which, just a few years before Cavalca, Dante deplored the evils of speech in the Inferno. Cavalca’s prologue can enlighten our understanding of why Dante embedded several verbal sins in the structure of his hell.

Imperocchè, come dice santo Iacopo Apostolo nella sua Epistola, la lingua nostra è inquieto male, piena sì, che versa, di veleno mortifero, ed infiammata di fuoco infernale, ordina, attizza, semina, e nutrica tutti i mali; e macula e disordina la ruota della nostra natività, cioè tutto il tempo e corso della nostra vita; imperocchè presto comincia e persevera insino alla fine; parmi molto utile di scrivere alcune cose a biasimo de’ vizj della lingua, e di dimostrare la loro gravezza e le spezie, i gradi e i remedj, sicchè ciascuno li possa ben vedere, conoscere, odiare e confessare. E perciocchè di questa materia e di questi peccati molto bene, e singolarmente parlò il divoto e sapientissimo Fra Guglielmo di Francia, dell’Ordine dei frati Predicatori, nella sua Summa de’ vizj, nella quale

descrive, e pone ventiquattro peccati mortali, i quali della lingua procedono; intendo principalmente recare a commune volgare la detta opera, aggiugnendovi alcune altre poche cose, ragioni, ovvero esempj, che parlino di simile materia, sicchè, come ogni uomo e letterato ed idiota in questo vizio della lingua offende, così ciascuno in questo volgare trattato possa questi vizj conoscere e confessare. E perchè quest’ opera è fatta per voler reprimere e vituperare i peccati della lingua, così voglio che si chiami Pungilingua; che siccome ella mal punge, così sia punta.

Since, as the Apostle St. James says in his Epistle, our tongue is a restless evil, so full of mortal poison that it spills out, and enflamed with infernal fire, orders, ignites, sows, and nurtures all evils; and it stains and disrupts the wheel of our birth, that is to say, all the time and course of our life, since once it gets started it perseveres up to the end, it seemed very useful to me to write a few things to blame the vices of the tongue, and to prove their gravity and species, the(ir) degrees and the(ir) remedies, so that everyone may see them well, know them, hate them and confess them. And as of this topic and of these sins spoke, in a unique way, the devout and most wise Father William of France, of the order of the Preachers, in his Summa Vitiorum, in which he describes and posits twenty-four mortal sins proceeding from the tongue, I mainly undertake to translate into the vernacular the above-mentioned work, adding to it a few other things, reasons, or examples which speak of the same topic, so that, since every man both learned and unlearned offends in this vice of the tongue, everyone may be able to know these vices from this vernacular tract and confess them. And because this work is designed to repress and vituperate against the sins of the tongue, I want to call it Pungilingua (‘The Wounding Tongue’), for just as the tongue wounds, I want it to be wounded.

Here, Cavalca introduces himself as a humble compiler of Peraldus, whose originality and wisdom in writing about matters of transgressive speech he deeply admires and acknowledges. It is important, however, that Cavalca forewarn his readers about his personal contribution to the Peraldian text: he confesses that he added similar material to Peraldus’s insights and enriched it with additions and new examples. Aware of his own originality as a translator-author, Cavalca contrives a title for this new product and calls his adaptation

Pungilingua, a pun articulated on the twofold ability of the tongue, that of harming and being

harmed. 58 The same vehicle for sin that is the tongue can be harmed by this tract in the vernacular, which aims at repressing, through a positive and virtuous language this time, the

58 _{This title, just as the notion of the tongue as the main “culprit” for the evils of sppech is typical of Peraldus and} Cavalca, but will be abandoned by the great scholastics, Aquinas, in particular, who will stress that the one

tongue’s proneness to evil. Cavalca’s self-awareness as a writer is paralleled by his concern as an ecclesiastic writer in the vernacular: he motivates his linguistic choice by the universality of the verbal sin, which can affect both the educated and the unlearned. His pastoral care encompasses, thus, a category of people unable to read Peraldus’s tract in the original: the uninstructed laity, barred from access to Latin. The laymen, too, had to be made aware of all the harm that may derive from speech, and in this process of spiritual education, the vernacular language, in its most quotidian and accessible aspect, was for Cavalca the ideal linguistic tool.

After the prologue, the author dedicates the first chapter of his book to the ideal of

raffrenare or guardare la lingua (the now traditional appeal to custodia linguae), and speaks Di quelle cose che c’inducono a bene guardare la lingua, e mostranci la gravezza dei suoi peccati generalmente (‘Of those things that motivate us to control the tongue, and, in general, of those

things which show us the gravity of its sins’). In this chapter, the eighteen reasons for the

custodia linguae listed by Peraldus at the beginning of the De peccato linguae are reduced to

twelve.59 The first of these motives speaks of the unique gift God made to man by giving him the power to speak. The great benefit of such a gift can be verified through the fact that, when a man loses his speech, he would rather get it back than gain a large amount of money. It is therefore a great misfortune that man uses specifically the tongue, the anatomic organ in which God honored him, to offend the divinity. Secondly, we should consider that the tongue is reason’s vehicle; therefore we should only speak according to reason, not to the senses. Being such a noble organ, the tongue ought to be used only in verbal functions like praying, praising, thanking God, confessing, getting the Eucharist and preaching, and not to vituperate against God or others. Another reason regards the intimate connection between heart and words: since the spoken

59 _{It is likely that Cavalca did not fail to notice that some of Peraldus’s ‘reasons’ for custodia linguae were} overlapping.

words express the inner thoughts or feelings, the better one controls his speech, the better he will be able to dominate his feelings, and therefore a better person and Christain he will be. Unfortunately, says Cavalca, the tongue is located, in the human body, in a very humid and slippery place; therefore it is prone to many ‘slips’ or sins. Indicative of the tongue’s natural disposition toward sin is the fact that it is the only limb imprisoned in the body; 60 all the others are palese (‘in sight’). Cavalca reiterates St. James’s notion that every animal nature, bird or beast, or serpent, can be tamed, but nobody can tame the human tongue. When the Holy Spirit showed himself to the Apostles, he chose to manifest himself as a fiery tongue, because it was necessary that the evil of the tongue be redeemed and purified by a transcendental tongue. For the same need for purification, the Holy Church decreed that at baptism, one grain of salt be placed into the mouths of those to be baptized. If St. James, Cavalca explains, chose for the tongue the metaphor of fire, it is because fire is the most dangerous of all the natural elements, able to cause the greatest destruction in the shortest time. In the same way, spiritually, the harm produced by the tongue is the most rapid and the most destructive. For, Cavalca says, the tongue of an evil lawyer, or counselor, immediately gives rise to wars, scandals, and many other misfortunes. (Che, come veggiamo, la lingua d’un malo avvocato, o consigliere, o renunziatore

subitamente genera guerre, scandoli e mali assai). It is a Peraldian perception of speech that we

will see masterfully exemplified both in the Divine Comedy, through the figures of Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro, or Bertrand de Born, and in Pungilingua, through very many exemplary stories used to illustrate the sins of the mali consilieri and the seminatori di discordie.

For Cavalca, the tongue is a three-fold knife, for it may harm three beings: God, oneself and the other. It may harm nearby or at a distance, secretly or publicly. Thus, it is no wonder,

that once in hell, the sinners painfully bite their tongues. At work is the divine law according to which the sinner is punished in the limb with which he has sinned. 61

The eleventh consideration that should motivate us to rein in our tongue—the utility that might ensue—is Cavalca’s most developed motive. With our tongues we can do very many useful things, such as enriching ourselves spiritually, praising God or praying, accusing ourselves or teaching others, confessing our sins and obtaining the absolution. Under the same eleventh consideration, Cavalca takes up the doctrine of verbal discretio (‘discernment), and lists the main circumstances that the speaker should consider: chi dice, la qualità di chi ode, il

tempo.62 The last of the twelve considerations that should move men to govern their tongues is the example of the Saints, who all used their spiritual gift of speech in positive and virtuous ways. In the wake of Peraldus, a multitude of biblical quotes are amassed under each of the twelve considerations to reinforce the moral teaching.63 All these quotes are common places in the lingua-texts drafted in Latin, in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. Cavalca’s merit is that of having translated them into Italian vernacular, in a form of expression accessible to his fellow countrymen deprived of education in Latin.

Unlike Peraldus’s De peccato linguae, which was divided into twenty-four chapters according to the twenty-four sins of the tongue he had established, Cavalca’s book is structured in thirty chapters, because some of the sins are paid more attention to than others, and treated in more than one chapter. The list of the sins is as follows:

61 _{As an example, Cavalca invokes the scriptural story of the rich man, who, in Hell, begged Abraham to send down} Lazarus, to put his cool finger on the rich man’s inflamed tongue. This story, was, of course, a common place

exemplum in the lingua-texts.

62 _{Here these circumstances concern, however, only the preacher.}

63 _{To give just a few examples: the Proverbs’ aphorism Morte e vita è in mano della lingua, Jesus’s warnings: Per le}

tue parole sarai giustificato, o condannato, or: per l’abbondanza del cuore parla la lingua; John Chrysostom’s

connection between the moral quality of the speech and the moral quality of the speaker: Tale è l’uomo quale è la

lingua sua, ciascuno si conosce alla lingua, s’egli è di cielo, o di terra o di inferno; St. James’s notion that Vana è la religione di colui il quale la sua lingua non raffrena.

1. bestemmiare Dio

2. mormorare (four distinct chapters)

3. difendere e scusare il peccato suo o altrui 4. spergiuro, e male giudicare

5. bugiare

6. detrazione (three chapters)

7. peccato degli adulatori (accompanied, in the same chapter, by the kindred sin of those who listen to flatterers)

8. maladire e bestemmiare 9. convizio

10. contenzione e garrire 11. derisione (two chapters),

12. peccato de’mali consiglieri e confortatori al male 13. peccato dei renunziatori e seminatori di discordie 14. peccato dei bilingui e novellieri

15. peccato della jattanza 16. peccato del rivelare i secreti

17. peccato dello stolto promettere e minaciare altrui 18. peccato del parlare ozioso e multiloquio

19. peccato del parlare disonesto e giullaresco

20. peccato di varj e dissoluti balli e canti (two chapters) 21. peccato degl’indovini ed incantatrici e malefici

If we compare this list with that of Peraldus, the structural changes are obvious: Cavalca conflates two distinct sins in Peraldus: murmur with rumor, adds a new category of verbal sinners (the novellieri ‘peddlers’), which he treats in the same chapter with the double-talkers, groups the sins of foolish promise and menace in one chapter; he does the same with idle talk and loquacity, whereas he develops the scurrilitas into the sins of dissolute songs… and dance,

of which the French Dominican had not spoken. The last sin in Peraldus’s list, indiscreta

taciturnitas is replaced in Pungilingua by the sins of the diviners and magicians, who misuse

their verbal gifts to predict future events or to drive people to idolatry. Cavalca does acknowledge the existence of a transgression such as mal tacere (‘evil silence’), but he considers it a twenty-fifth sin (Peraldus spoke only of twenty-four), and promises to deal with it at length, in a separate tract, since this type of transgression is too serious to be treated in just one chapter.64 The idea of such a new project might also explain the most striking omission with respect to Peraldus’s treatment: the absence of the tally of remedies for verbal sins with which the French ecclesiastic concluded his De peccato linguae.

Like Peraldus, Cavalca defines the sin through the behavior of the sinner. Sometimes, however, Cavalca does not mention the technical name of the sin (adulatio, or pravum consilium, for instance, as Peraldus did at the beginning of his chapters), but introduces it indirectly (‘the sin of the flatterers’, ‘the sin of evil counselors’, etc.). A new aspect in Pungilingua, an aspect that is to be accounted for by Cavalca’s skills as a translator, is the constant care he takes to explain the technical terms he uses. When he introduces terms such as convizio, adulatori or derisione, for instance, he immediately specifies the meaning of the words: del convizio, cioè di villaneggiare e

vituperare il prossimo con parole d’obbrobrio (‘of insult, that is, of vilifying and vituperating

against one’s neighbor with words of disgrace’), or: del peccato degli adulatori ciòe dei

lusinghieri, (‘of the sin of the sweet-talkers, that is to say flatterers’, or again: della derisione, cioè di fare beffe d’altrui ‘of derision, that is to say, mocking the other’).

64 _{Cavalca will keep the promise made at the end of the Pungilingua, by writing, a few years later, a new tract, I}

frutti della lingua, which is, as I have mentioned, a thorough study of the benefits of speech (prayer, confession,

Thanks to Cavalca’s efforts at proper and subtle translation, many lexical resources of Italian vernacular have been exploited and fixed in a written form. Unfortunately, we do not possess today a modern study devoted to a thorough examination of Cavalca’s outstanding activity and talent as a translator from Latin into Italian. His contribution to the creation, enrichment or consolidation of a moral lexicon in vernacular Italian deserves a much deeper consideration than I can give here. As far as this dissertation is concerned, however, Cavalca’s activity as a moralist of speech, albeit briefly underscored, is fundamental. The lengthy explanations Cavalca furnished in the everyday language to the so great variety of verbal sins Peraldus had discussed in Latin, just as the wealth of exemplary stories with which Cavalca illustrated these sins can constitute a major key in understanding Dante’s own view of the sins of the tongue and their treatment in a poetic work written in vernacular at about the same time. I will use this hermeneutic key and will, thus, constantly refer to the Pungilingua throughout my discussion of the verbal sins punished in the Inferno.