Chapter 2: Dante’s Circle in Space

Abstract

“Dante’s Florence” (here and more expansively on the Web with images of the plaques and places at https://www.florin.ms/DanteFlorence.html, each numbered in bold in that guide and in this book) has interacting layers, between the historical one of columns, churches, towers, and palaces in stone and the flesh and blood people who lived among them; then Dante’s writings, themselves hypertexts, written on parchment, next printed on paper, or now electronically on the Web, layering his virtualized vision back upon flesh and blood and stone reality, mapping it. We can peel back its layers in a “theatre of memory”, in this case to Dante’s time, before the Renaissance, before the Medici, from 1265 to 1302, from his birth to his exile. This is the cityscape of his Vita nova and it will be what he nostalgically remembers of his neighborhood in his dream vision in exile, the Commedia, particularly in Paradiso XV–XVI.

…I’ FVI NATO E CRESCIVTO

SOVRA ‘L BEL FIVME ARNO ALLA GRAN VILLA.

…Born was I and grew up

In the great town on the fair River of Arno.

Inf XXIII, 94–95

Imagine virtually, or in flesh and blood reality, that you arrive in Florence by way of Santa Maria Novella’s modern railroad and bus station, opened in 1935, designed by the “architect of hospitality”, Giovanni Michelucci, in Fascist style. Before you is seen the back side of 1. Santa Maria Novella, the great church begun in 1276 by the Order of Preachers where Dante would have gone to hear lectures by the Dominicans expounding Aquinas’ theology in 1291. A Dominican was writing a commentary on the Commedia, until forbidden to do so by the Chapter in 1335 held in the Santa Maria Novella’s Spanish Chapel, when he had to stop at Paradiso XII.¹

“Dante’s Florence” (here and more expansively on the Web with images of the plaques and places at https://www.florin.ms/DanteFlorence.html,² each numbered in bold in that guide and in this book’s map) has many interacting layers, between the real historical one of columns, churches, towers, and palaces in stone and the flesh and blood people of 1265–1302 who lived among them; then Dante’s writings, first written on parchment, now printed on paper, or electronically on the Web, doing just this, layering his virtualized vision back upon flesh and blood and stone reality, mapping it, hypertexting it. Florence is not only the modern city in which to live and move and have our being in this present moment of time, but also having layers that we can peel back in its “theatre of memory”, in this case to Dante’s time, before the Renaissance, before the Medici, from 1265 to 1302, from his birth to his exile. This is the cityscape of his Vita nova and it will be what he nostalgically remembers of his neighborhood in his dream vision in exile, the Commedia, particularly in Paradiso XV–XVI (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Victorian Map to Augustus Hare’s Florence numbering Dante-related sites

From the bustling station, you take the Via Cerretani leading toward the 4. Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. Here you find a plaque honoring Brunetto Latino, Dante’s teacher, on the outside wall of the Cistercian Santa Maria Maggiore church on your right:

…IN LA MENTE M’E FITTA, E OR M’ACCORA,

LA CARA E BVONA IMAGINE PATERNA

DI VOI, QVANDO NEL MONDO AD ORA AD ORA

M’INSEGNAVATE COME L’VOM S’ETERNA!

…in my mind is fixed, and touches now

My heart the dear and good paternal image

Of you when in the world from hour to hour

You taught me how a man becomes eternal.

Inf. XV.82–85

Inside the Santa Maria Maggiore church, in the left-hand side’s chapel, a column, incised with golden roses from King Robert the Wise of Sicily, marks Brunetto Latino’s tomb that was originally in the Piazza San Giovanni, in the part for the tombs (Plates XX, XXI), of the 6. Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele, the Company of the Hymn Singers of 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII a, b),³ this column moved here from Santa Reparata by Giuseppe Maria Mazzei in 1751. Leonardo Bruni tells us that Dante’s mother, Bella degli Abati, had died when he was five, his father when he was a teenager, his stepmother Lapa appointing Brunetto to be his legal guardian at his father’s death.⁴ Brunetto would have educated him by having him copy out documents of state, as his father had previously done with him, documents that are now kept in the State Archives in Piazza Beccaria.⁵ Dante tells us a person has a guardian until he is 25.⁶

Dante would also copy out Brunetto’s literary works dictated to him, perhaps his Rettorica now in the Biblioteca Nazonale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF II.IV.124), his Tesoretto in the Biblioteca Riccardiana (BRicc 2908), and his Tesoro in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (BML Plut. 42.20).⁷ Francesco da Barberino, much later, in the 1330s would again copy out or have copied out the texts of Brunetto Latino’s Rettorica (BNCF II–IV.127), the Tesoretto (BML Strozzi 146), which shows Brunetto being taught by Natura, the Virtues, Ovid and Ptolemy, and the Tesoro in another manuscript shelved beside BML Plut 42.20, BML Plut 42.19, Tesoro, fol. 72^r, showing Brunetto Latino in its “Rettorica” section teaching Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and himself, following the Easter Uprising, 22 March 1282, of the Sicilian Vespers, where Francesco turns admiringly to gaze on Dante, all the students holding the copies they are making of the Tesoro that Brunetto is dictating to them about the embassies he made from 1255 to almost the end of his life (Frontispiece).⁸ Brunetto had gone on embassy to the court of King Alfonso X el Sabio in Spain in 1260 to get help for Florence and had there acquired texts of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Alfraganus’ Astronomy, perhaps the Kitab a-Mirag, from the Arabic, and later Alfonso’s own Las Cantigas de Santa Maria (Plate VII a, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 1^v, Brunetto at Alfonso el Sabio’s Court, Francesco da Barberino, Tesoretto; b, Hall of Ambassadors, Alcazar, Seville; Plate XXXV, a, b, c, d, BNF Suppl. Turc. 190, Kitab al-Mirag, fols. 9^r, 19^r, 28^v, 67^r, Book of the Ladder; Plate XXXIV a, Alfonso X el Sabio, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, with musicians, scribes, singers, Real Biblioteca del Monastero de El Escorial, T-I-1, “Codice Rico”, fol. 5^v; b, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, BNCF Banco Rari 20, fol. 119^v, Miracle of the Cantigas), while observing the Arabic method of teaching with dictating lectures and its consequent multiple book production, Francesco then using these texts and following these practices himself for the “Danti del Cento”.⁹

Next we come to the Piazza San Giovanni with its 2. Cross of San Zenobio (Plate XVI a, b), the 3. Baptistery (Plate XVII a, b, c), the 4. Cathedral (Plate XVIII), the 5. Giotto Tower (4 and 5 were not built before Dante’s exile), the 6. Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele Cemetery (Plates XX, XXI, no longer visible, apart from its Annunciation sculpture), the 7. Misericordia (Plate XXII), and the Opera del Duomo Museum. Florentines call their Cathedral, rebuilt in the Renaissance, now dedicated to Santa Maria del Fiore, rather than the older dedication to Santa Reparata, the “Duomo”, and its great Renaissance dome, the “Cupolone”. This cluster of architectural monuments map Florence’s ecclesiastical center, its aspect of the Church, of the Christian religion, though the energy for their creation derives more from the laity than from the clergy.

Like Italy’s modern Constitution,¹⁰ Florence was based on work, the various Guilds involved in banking and textiles coming together as the Arte de’ Giudici e Notai (judges and notaries, Brunetto Latino’s Guild, whose symbol on their shield or stemma is the Star), the Arte di Calimala (Mercatanti, cloth merchants, the Eagle), the Arte della Lana (wool, the Lamb of the Agnus Dei), the Arte di Cambio (banking, Florins), the Arte della Sete (silks, Door), the Arte dei Medici e Speziali (doctors and spice merchants, Dante Alighieri’s Guild, the Virgin and Child), the Arte dei Vaiai e Pelliciaiai (fur and leather, Ermine), their occupations shown in the sculptures on the 5. Giotto Tower. Of these the Arte della Lana was involved in the building of the 4. Duomo, the Arte di Calimala, with the 3. Baptistery and 44. San Miniato al Monte, the Arte della Seta, with the later Hospital of the Innocents, while all the Guilds collaborated and competed with the Compagnia dei laudesi di Orsanmichele to build and adorn the huge 30. Orsanmichele granary.

2. Cross of Saint Zenobius (Plate XVI). San Zenobio, in the legend, was the Bishop of Florence, whose coffin, when it was brought from the church of San Lorenzo, founded by Milan’s Saint Ambrose, to that of Santa Reparata, touched a dead elm tree in the Piazza San Giovanni which came to life again, this cross raised in the memory of the legend. Botticelli painted the other miracles of the saint.¹¹ Every 25 May its base is adorned with red and white roses. Another medieval cross, the Trebbio, can be found at the meeting of three streets near Santa Maria Novella. Florence has many such customs, rituals, and monuments carried out from medieval times to the present.

3. The Baptistery

…NEL MIO BEL SAN GIOVANNI

…in my beautiful St. John.

Inf XIX.17

Here, in front of the Duomo of Florence, is the ancient octagonal 3. Baptistery, which Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani both believed had been originally a Temple dedicated to the pagan god of war, Mars (Plate XVII a, Baptistery: Massimo Tosi, Firenze prima di Arnolfo; b, Octagonal Dome; c, Coppo di Marcovaldo, Satan devouring Brutus, Cassius, Judas; d, Michelangelo, Brutus).¹² Here, on Holy Saturday, 27 March 1266, Dante was baptized and would have seen the beginnings of these mosaics, though not yet the facing in white and green marble by Arnolfo di Cambio. The Holy Saturday liturgy includes the Psalm 113, “In Exitu Israel de Aegypto” with its unique tonus peregrinus,¹³ of which Dante wrote in the Convivio and which is said in the Letter to Can Grande to be the entire allegory of the Commedia, bringing the soul from bondage to freedom, Dante having the 100 pilgrims sing it in unison in Purgatorio II.46–49. Dante dates the Commedia from Good Friday through Easter Week, 25 March 1300/1301,¹⁴ and he has his baptism reflected twice over in the Purgatorio, when Cato has Virgil baptize him, girding or crowning him with a rush, the Red Sea being called Ram Suf, the Sea of Rushes (Purg I.102–136: BL Add. 19587, fol. 62^r; BL Egerton 943, fol. 54^v), and again when Matelda drags him through the waters (Purg XXXI.93–96: BL Egerton 943, fol. 120^v).¹⁵ Dante, when adult, he tells us, once broke one of the side fonts of the Baptistery to rescue a drowning child (Inf XIX.16). He notes that his ancestor, his crusading great great grandfather, Cacciaguida, was also baptized here (Par XV.133).

The 3. Baptistery’s mosaics include Coppo di Marcovaldo’s enormous figure of Satan with three mouths devouring three sinners, which becomes Dante’s figure of Satan devouring Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in Inferno XXXIV (Plate XVII c). Dante began his project of writing the Commedia with his dream of imperial peace for Florentine factions to be wrought by the Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, hopes dashed with Henry’s death from fever in 1313. But this had led him to the choice of imperial Virgil as poet guide, rather than Brunetto’s republican Cicero. It had also led him to assign Brutus and Cassius as traitors to imperial Caesar, the contrary of Michelangelo’s sculpture of Brutus (now in the 20. Bargello Museum, Plate XVII d), considered a virtuous Republican assassin against the tyranny of the princely Medici. “Put not your trust in princes!” (Psalm 146.3).

The stone by the Baptistery, humbly on the ground, is now cracked, like the black one on the Confession Gate (Purg IX.97–99).

SE MAI CONTINGA CHE ’L POEMA SACRO

AL QVALE HA POSTO MANO E CIELO E TERRA

SI CHE M’HA FATTO PER PIV ANNI MACRO,

VINCA LA CRVDELTA’ CHE FVOR MI SERRA

DEL BELLO OVILE, OV’IO DORMI’ AGNELLO

NIMICO A’ LVPI, CHE GLI DANNO GVERRA,

CON ALTRA VOCE OMAI, CON ALTRO VELLO

RITORNERO’ POETA, ED IN SVL FONTE

DEL MIO BATTESMO PRENDERO’ IL CAPELLO.

If e’er it happens that the Poem Sacred

To which both heaven and earth have set their hand,

So that it many a year hath made me lean,

O’ercome the cruelty that bars me out

From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered,

An enemy to the wolves that war upon it.

With other voice forthwith, with other fleece

Poet will I return, and at my font

Baptismal will I take the crown.

ParXXV. 1–9

You are now at the present 4. Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore, begun by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296, the 7. Misericordia workers laying its foundation stone, the work paid for by the Arte della Lana, the wool Guild, and which would be finished by Brunelleschi in 1436. But in Dante’s day it had been 4. Santa Reparata, with the Baptistery beside it, as can be seen in a careful reconstruction (Plate XVIII: Santa Reparata, Massimo Tosi, Firenze prima di Arnolfo).¹⁶ It was here on 20 April 1254 that Brunetto Latino notarized the Peace Treaty with Siena, to the ringing of the bells, the people of Florence assembled to hear it read and see it signed, the original document still preserved in the Sienese State Archives (Plate IV a, b, ASS 20 April, 11 June 1264: “Et ego Burnectus Bonaccursi Latinus notarius predictis interfui et ea dictorum dominorum potestatis, capitanei, Anzianorum et consiliorum omnium predictorum mandato, publice scripsit”).

On Maundy Thursday, the day on which Inferno opens in 1300/1301, the liturgy within Santa Reparata, and now in the Duomo, would have been of the procession with the great olive-branched cross, carrying the Blessed Sacrament under a golden canopy with four great candles, these born by 7. Misericordia workers whose feet have been washed by the Cardinal at the Cena Domini Mass. If you are in Florence at Easter attend this Mass, participating in its procession around the vast cathedral’s great labyrinth. Dante will create of this the liturgical procession in the Earthly Paradise, in which Dante “Author” has Dante “Pilgrim” see what he mistakenly believes are olive trees but which turn out to be great candles (Purg XXIX.43–50), to be followed by Beatrice in her chariot, her carro.

On your right as you enter the 4. Duomo is the tomb of the Bishop Antonio D’Orso that Dante’s fellow student Francesco da Barberino commissioned Tino da Camaino in 1322 to sculpt (Plate XIV a). The tomb gives the motif much used by Francesco da Barberino, for Death (Plate XIV b), and for Love, particularly the 1283 celebration in 39. Piazza Santa Felicita (Plate IX a, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 21^r; Plate XLVII a, b, Documenti d’amore, BAV Barb.lat. 4076, fols. 1^r, 99^v), as having two bows from which the allegorical figures shoot arrows at us.

While on the left wall of the 4. Duomo is the much later painting of Dante preaching to Florence as her Prophet, by Domenico di Michelino (Plate XIX), showing Florence as it became in 1645, with three gates, of Hell, of Purgatory, and of Florence, each shown like those built by Arnolfo da Cambio (Plate LXVIII a, b, c), while its Mount Purgatory is a composite of Fiesole’s Monte Ceceri with its galleries quarried for pietra serena, a gray porous sandstone (the galleries now hidden by the cypresses planted by Victorian Englishmen), and of Mount Sinai, similarly with terraces and with gates at which the monks of St Catherine’s Monastery heard pilgrims’ confessions (Plate LXXIII a, b, c, Confession Gate on Sinai), to be discussed later in “Chapter 7: Dante’s Labyrinth, Dante’s Cosmos”.¹⁷

The 5. Giotto Tower begun in 1334 was built after Dante’s exile from Florence.

A sculpture of the 6. Annunciation is placed on the wall of the Duomo to show where the cemetery was for the tombs of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di 30. Orsanmichele members (Plate XX). As we have noted, the rose-adorned marble column for Brunetto Latino, Dante’s teacher, now in Santa Maria Maggiore, was originally among the tombs that had littered the Piazza San Giovanni, those of the members of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele being grouped beneath that sculpture of the 6. Annunciation, formerly on the exterior wall of Santa Reparata, now on the Duomo wall by the 5. Giotto Tower. That Annunciation sculpture was remembered by Dante in Purgatorio X.37–51. The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore’s Archive still has the manuscript of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele/Santa Reparata Necrologia (Archive I.3.6), listing the days, though usually not the years, of these burials, of the women and men from the families such as the Cavalcanti, the Adimari, the Galigai, the Bonaccorsi, the Bardi, the Portinari, the Alderotti, among them “Burnetto f. Bonaccorsi”, our Brunetto Latino (fol. 3^v, Inf XV), “philippus arçenti”, Filippo Argenti (fol. 8^r, Inf VIII), Guido Cavalcanti (fol. 41^r, Inf X), and Betto Brunelleschi.¹⁸ Florence’s New Year began at the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, considered also the date of the Creation of the World and the Crucifixion of Christ.¹⁹ Dante similarly, with poetic license, dates his magnum opus, the Commedia, as initiating at that date, 25 March 1300/1301, as at the Creation, as at the Annunciation, and as at Good Friday, conjoining Creation, Conception, and Crucifixion.²⁰

Boccaccio’s Sixth Day, ninth story, of the Decameron, describes Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s friend and fellow poet, ten years older than he, as vaulting over these 6. tombs by San Giovanni to escape Betto Brunelleschi and the other adherents of Corso Donati’s Black Guelfs taunting of him (Plate XXI, BNF italien 63, fol. 203^v, Boccaccio, Decameron VI.9²¹):

Now one day, Guido had walked from 30. Orsanmichele, along the 12. Corso degli Adimari [now via Calzaiuoli] as far as 3. San Giovanni, which was a favorite walk of his because it took him past those 6. great marble sarcophagi, now to be found in 4. Santa Reparata, and the numerous other graves that lie all around San Giovanni. As he was threading his way among the tombs, between the porphyry columns that stand in that spot and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto²² and his friends came riding through the piazza of 4. Santa Reparata, and on seeing Guido among all the tombs they said, “Let’s go and torment him.” And so, spurring their horses and making a mock charge, they were upon him almost before he had time to notice, and they began to taunt him, saying: “Guido, you spurn our company: but supposing you find that God doesn’t exist, what good will it do you?” Finding himself surrounded, Guido promptly replied: “Gentlemen, in your own house you may say whatever you like to me”. Then placing a hand on one of the tombstones, which were very tall, he vaulted over the top of it, being very light and nimble, and landed on the other side, whence, having escaped from their clutches, he proceeded on his way.

The Cavalcanti family members, including Guido himself, were all buried in these tombs, Dante, Inferno X.32–113, meeting Guido’s father, Cavalcante Cavalcanti, and Guido’s father-in-law, Farinata degli Uberti, as lodged forever in such a marble sarcophagus, the iconography of Farinata that of the Pietà of Christ, seen rising from the tomb, Botticelli drawing this scene recalling the Cavalcanti tombs of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele that once littered the Piazza del Duomo. Also buried with Guido Cavalcanti was his Black Guelf tormentor, Betto Brunelleschi, Dante and Boccaccio knowing of these burials and these tombs when ironically discussing them in their dream vision, Inferno X.32–113, and their tale, Decameron VI.9.

The Vita nova and the Commedia are as if poetic elegies to Beatrice Portinari and Guido Cavalcanti. Beatrice had died in 1290, at the time of the loss of the Jerusalem Kingdom, the Fall of Saint Jean d’Acre taking place in 1291, events which color the Vita nova with grief. Guido was to die in August, 1300, in consequence of Dante’s sentencing of both Corso Donati, his enemy, and Guido Cavalcanti, his friend, when Prior in the 22. Torre della Castagna (Plate XXIX a, b), to exile because of their feuding. Dino Compagni in his autobiographical Cronica, I.20, describes the feuding, Guido going on pilgrimage to Compostela, Corso seeking to assassinate him, Guido on returning to Florence retaliating.

The Bigallo was part of the 7. Misericordia, and its 1342 fresco of the Madonna della Misericordia, later than Dante’s lifetime, presents the city of Florence and her citizens sheltered under the Madonna’s cloak, which in turn is embroidered with the Seven Acts of Mercy (Plate XXVIII b, Bigallo, c, Libro del Biadaiolo, BML Tempi 3, and written for 30. Orsanmichele, d, Polyptych of Saint Umiltà, 1310, in the Uffizi, e, Domenico di Michelino), all show medieval Florence as it was in Dante’s time, while the Domenico di Michelino tableau (Plate XIX) is painted later, in 1465, after the new Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore was built.

The 7. Misericordia Madonna of Mercy gives the Seven Acts of Mercy, 1. Feed the Hungry, 2. Give drink to the Thirsty, 3. Clothe the Naked, 4. Shelter the Stranger, 5. Visit the Sick, 6. Visit the Prisoner, 7. Bury the Dead as embroidered on her cloak (Plate XXII). In this tour of Florence one sees the First Act of Mercy, to Feed the Hungry, with 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII d, BML Tempi 3, Libro del Biadaiolo), the granary to feed even the enemy in time of famine; the Fifth Act of Mercy to Care for the Sick, including pilgrims, 8. Santa Maria Nuova Hospital and the Oblate nursing order, founded by Folco Portinari, Beatrice’s father, and Monna Tessa, her nurse (Plate XXIV a, b, c, d); the Sixth Act of Mercy, to visit the prisoner, with the Ghirlandaio fresco (Plate X b, 19. Buonuomini di San Martino), visiting and ransoming the prisoners in the Stinche; the Seventh Act of Mercy (not in Matthew’s Gospel), to Bury the Dead, of the 7. Misericordia caring for the sick, the dying, the dead (Plates XXII, XXIII a, b).

If you visit the Museo Opera del Duomo, you will see how Michelangelo sculpted his self-portrait in the Pietà (Plate XXIII a, b, Michelangelo, “Pietà”, formerly in the 4. Duomo), portraying himself as Nicodemus, showing himself as hooded like a Misericordia member, helping to bury the dead Christ. This is proof of the contemplative practice of collapsing time, of identifying oneself in a “Sacred Conversation”, of shaping Florence as a new Jerusalem, its inhabitants being subsumed into the figures in the Gospels, of Dante mourning Beatrice as if she were Christ, Michelangelo as if Nicodemus. These Seven Acts of Mercy are still what holds the city of Florence together, its Guilds and compagnie dei laudesi inspiring its pedagogical and socially useful art and architecture, rather than that of the later self-aggrandizing Medici.²³

In this same museum, again you will also see the Arnolfo di Cambio sculptures that had been on its facade, one of them of the “Dormition of the Virgin”, which shows Christ tenderly taking up the soul of his Mother, as a girl child (Plate XXIII c), remembering Proverbs 8.12–31 on God’s Daughter, Wisdom, playing at his side at the Creation of the World, which illustrates perfectly Paradiso’s XXXIII’s “Vergine Madre, Figlia del tuo Figlio” [Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son]. Oderisi da Gubbio, mentioned by Dante in Purgatorio XI.79–94, perhaps also shows this scene (Plate XXIII d). Orcagna sculpts it on his 30. Orsanmichele tabernacle and the “Master of the Dominican Effigies” illustrates it in an Impruneta manuscript.²⁴

Now take the Via dell’ Oriolo to the right of the Opera del Duomo, next turn left at Via Folco Portinari, and ahead of you is the 8. Santa Maria Nuova Hospital (Plate XXIV a, b, in the Middle Ages, c, in the Renaissance and d, today) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Map of Dante’s Florence

The Oblate building (now the Oblate library), in front of it, housed the women’s charitable order founded in 1288 by Beatrice’s nurse, Monna Tessa, the Suore Oblate Ospedaliere, who still carry out its nursing, while Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, founded the hospital which is still in use.²⁵ The women nurses used a tunnel to reach the hospital from their convent with its great laundries. Florence Nightingale, born in Bellosguardo above Florence, would borrow their model for her institution of hospitals with nurses in the Crimea and elsewhere. Sarah Parker Remond, the Afro-American Abolitionist, friend of Frederick Douglass, came to study medicine here with a letter from Giuseppe Mazzini in 1866–1868. We recall Dante’s Vita nova and its accounts of the deaths of both the banker Folco Portinari, 31 December 1289, and his daughter Beatrice (married to Simone de’ Bardi), perhaps in childbirth, 12 June 1290. Though Dante’s father, Alighiero Alighieri, and his guardian, Brunetto Latino, were notaries and judges, Dante does not join the Arte de’ Giudici e Notai, but instead the Arte de’ Medici e Speziali, for which he may have studied medicine at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova of the Portinari family.

You can now continue down the Via Sant’Egidio from the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital until on your right you see an archway. Go through this to find yourself in 9. Piazza San Piero Maggiore with the towers of the Donati and Albizzi families (Plate XXV a, b, c, d: Piazza San Piero Maggiore). The former church façade, now an arch, is to your left. It was founded by San Zenobio. The medieval towers on your right are those of the Donati and Albizzi families. This square and its history of violence can explain why Dante came to be exiled from this city. The noble land-owning Ghibellines, prone to bloodshed and violence and lacking much education, built tall towers such as these, but then far taller, like those in San Gimignano, while feuding in street gang warfare against each other, both in Florence and in Rome. In 1250 the Guelf party in Florence, composed of merchants and bankers, ousted them, sending them away into exile where they continued to build towers as robber barons in the countryside. Meanwhile in Florence the merchant Guelfs sought peace and prosperity, leveling the height of the Ghibelline towers and using the excess stone for Arnolfo di Cambio to build the city walls of common defense. The Guelfs in 1250 and their Notaio/Chancellor, Brunetto Latino, modeled this new government, on Cicero and other Latin authors’ Roman Republic, and on the concept of the “love of God and neighbor”, “l’amore del Dio e del prossimo”, even of the love of one’s enemy, “per amor del suo nimicho”, from the Gospel, creating of Florence a Republican Commonwealth, her “Primo Popolo”.

Then the disastrous ambush of the Florentine Guelf forces at Montaperti in 1260 by King Manfred and the Sienese Ghibellines (Plate VIII BAV Chig. L.VIII.296, fol. 92^v, Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, Pacino di Bonaguida,), ended in the exile of the Guelfs until the victorious Battles of Benevento and Tagliacozzo under their elected champion and condottiere, the avaricious and belligerent Count Charles of Anjou and Provence, whom they rewarded first with the title of “Sanatore” (Healer) of Rome (Plate XXXVI e, Arnolfo di Cambio, Charles of Anjou, “Sanatore”, Capitoline, Rome, 1265), then as crowned King of Jerusalem and Sicily, 1266. The 1280 Peace of Cardinal Latino, working against Charles’ tyranny, next allied Guelf and Ghibelline families in Florence, with peace-weaving marriages between them, for instance, with Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti’s daughter, named Beatrice, being wed to Guelf Cavalcanti’s son, Guido, for which see Inferno X where the two politically opposed fathers-in-law are forever in one 6. Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele marble tomb. To further stabilize Florence, Giano Della Bella, proclaimed the Ordinaments of Justice, 3 July 1292, taking effect, 18 January 1293, which prohibited blood feuding on pain of exile and death, the Podestà with the Gonfalone or Banner of Justice, arriving at the scene with his armed policing band to arrest the perpetrators and end the violence. However this Utopian dream failed to live up to reality. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Corso Donati had a man murdered and the Florentines rebelled at Giano Della Bella’s failure to punish Corso’s criminal violence, exiling Giano, 5 March 1294, who would eventually die abroad. Yet his Ordinaments of Justice continued, following his departure, to be upheld by the people of Florence, administered by the Priors in the Torre della Castagna (Plate XXIX a, b, 22. Priors’ Torre della Castagna).

The Donati were Dante’s in-laws, through his wife, Gemma Donati, to whom he was betrothed when still a teenager and who bore him four children, Antonia, Pietro, Jacopo, and Giovanni. He was thus related by marriage also to the children of the knight Simone Donati who lived in this 9. Piazza’s Donati Tower (Plate XXV c, d: Piazza San Piero Maggiore), Forese, Ravenna, Piccarda, and Corso, all except Ravenna, being mentioned by Dante in the canticles of the Commedia. He and Forese Donati earlier wrote scurrilous tenzoni, debate poems, against each other. Then he imagines he meets Forese (Purg XXIII.49). Dante also poignantly imagines meeting with Piccarda (Par III.49), in the sphere of the inconstant moon, whom Corso Donati snatched from her convent, forcing her marriage and making her break her Vows to God. Her monastery is in Oltrarno, the other side of the Arno river and up narrow streets at Monticelli. Maria Grazia Beverini Del Santo wrote a fine book about her convent, founded by St Clare’s sister, Agnes, who was given St Francis’ saio, his shabby habit.²⁶ Dante alluded to Corso in the Commedia (Purg XXIV.82–87), where he describes him as dismembered from being dragged by a horse at San Salvi after seeking to escape from the enraged Florentine populace from this piazza, 6 October 1308.

Belligerent Corso fought well in Florentine battles, his career consisting of martial political offices, being hired as the mercenary Podestà, the condottiere, to such cities as Pistoia, Parma, Bologna, and Treviso, while at home he became the tyrannical leader of the Black Guelf faction, even to releasing criminals from prison for them to support him. Giovanni Villani and Dino Compagni call Corso Donati a new “Catiline” after the handsome violent noble traitor to Cicero and the Roman Republic, while Pacino di Bonaguida, who also illustrated copies of the Commedia, showed that mayhem in the Vatican manuscript of Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica, first the scene of Corso freeing the criminals from the Stinche (the prison once situated in Via Ghibellina, toward Santa Croce), breaking down its one narrow door (Plate X a, BAV Chig L.VIII.296, fol. 167^r), and second, his death beyond the walls of the city (Plate XII BAV Chig L.VIII.296, fol. 193^r). That sole door to the massive Stinche prison, built from the stones of the Ghibelline Tower of Farinata degli Uberti’s family and begun in 1300, was called the “Porta della Miseria”, Ghirlandaio later frescoing it as the sixth of the Seven Acts of Mercy, to Visit the Prisoner (Plate X b). Dante may be recalling its door of despair with his Gate to Inferno III and Purgatorio IX.

Now walk up the Borgo degli Albizzi until you come to the Via del Proconsolo. Turn right on the Via del Proconsolo, then take the first left to come to the Via dell’ Oche. We will now walk boustrophedon (like oxen plowing a field back and forth) up the Via dell’ Oche, toward the Via Calzaiuoli (hosiers), then down the Corso toward the Via del Proconsolo again to the 20. Bargello (Plate XXVII a, b, c, Bargello), next the 21. Badia (Plate XXVIII Badia), and up the Via Dante Alighieri and Via Tavolini to 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII Orsanmichele). Dante (Par XVI) discourses with his crusading Florentine ancestor Cacciaguida about their city, recalling together its narrow streets of the old center and all these neighbors, as one does in conversations and in dreams, as Joyce was to do, also in exile, with his city of Dublin, in Ulysses. In the following we only present some of the buildings, while the online app will give all of them, 11. Visdomini,²⁷ 12. Adimari (ParXVI.112–114),²⁸ also the stemma and the verses on the marble plaques attached to them by decision of the city in 1900. They are now being cleaned, but some are lost.

We come again to the Via Calzaiuoli, formerly Via Adimari, where you turn left to come to the modern Piazza della Repubblica, built during the Risorgimento, doing so tearing down much of medieval Florence and, almost, the beautiful 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII Orsanmichele). Here we turn left to the Via Speziali, which becomes Via del Corso, finding the palaces of 13. Alighieri (Par XVI.40–42)²⁹ and 14. Donati (Purg XXIV.79–84).³⁰ Just before the incorrect plaque on the Donati Tower (for its wording belongs to the Piazza San Piero Maggiore branch of the Donati family, not this one), we also find the arch to the little 14. Piazza de’ Donati (Plate XXVI a, b), behind Dante’s House, where Dante probably played as a boy, with his half-sister Tana and half-brother Francesco and, after him, his own children. It is where you can dine under the stars at the Trattoria Il Pennello. We were reading the Commedia and the Vita nova here, then having supper. And yes, that’s my bicycle, partly in the photograph I took.

The next arch leads you on your left to the church dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of childbirth, 15. Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi, just down the street from the fake Museo Casa di Dante. This is where Beatrice Portinari was married at twenty to Simone de’ Bardi in 1286. She died four years later, 8 June 1290, and would have likely been buried with the de’ Bardi family in Santa Croce, while the Portinari tombs, not including that of her father Folco and her nurse Monna Tessa, were in this small church, those two other tombs as its Founders at 8. Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. Dante’s family instead went to the church dedicated to 24. San Martino.

Then turn back again to Via del Corso, 18 (Inf VIII.61–63), where the 16. Adimari palace stood, straddling the two streets, Via delle Oche and Via del Corso. It was Boccaccio degli Adimari, of the Black Guelf family, who took possession of the poet’s confiscated goods when he was exiled, his brother, Filippo de’ Caviciuoli, nicknamed “Argenti” because he shoed his horses with silver, being named in the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele’s Necrologia, as buried beside Santa Reparata (“dns Philippus arçenti”, fol. 8^r; Inf VIII.52–63).³¹ Then, Via del Corso, 6, on your left, is where the 17. Portinari palace stood (Purg XXX.31–33). Folco Portinari, Beatrice’s banker father, founded the hospital of 8. Santa Maria Nuova, her nurse, Monna Tessa, founding the adjacent Order of the Oblate, who still nurse the sick and dying there, while the 7. Misericordia by the 4. Duomo carry the sick and the dying, now running the free ambulances, and, until recently, had buried the dead. Dante celebrated the family in his Vita nova. The plaque describes Beatrice’s appearance to him in the colors of red, white, and green, that would become Italy’s national flag at the Risorgimento. Via del Corso, Via del Proconsolo, to your right, is where the 18 Ravignani palace stood, its plaque being about Bellincion Berti who was Dante’s grandfather (Par XV.112–114). Via del Corso, 4 red, on your left, is where the 19. Cerchi palace stood, the family so prominent in the White/Black Guelf feuding (Par XVI. 94–96). Now we turn into the Via del Proconsolo.

On our left we come to the Podestà’s Palace, the 20. Bargello (Plate XXVII a, b, c). The Podestà [Power] was the hired outsider under contract for a limited term of office (like the American President), who had to swear to uphold and administer the Constitution, the Statutes, bringing with him soldiers, lawyers, and judges, with which to administer justice, prevent crime, mend roads and bridges, and care for widows, orphans, merchants, and pilgrims. This part of the city of Florence with the 20. Bargello, the 22. Torre della Castagna, and the 40. Palazzo Vecchio, then called the Palazzo del Popolo, is dedicated to its government, to the State, rather than the Church, to Justice, complemented by Mercy. In 1255 the Primo Popolo of the City of Florence pridefully placed the plaque on the front wall of the 20. Bargello, written by Dante’s teacher, Brunetto Latino, using words from Lucan (Plate V).³² That pride would be undone at the Battle of Montaperti, 1260, and Brunetto be exiled in Spain and France. Its words “QVE MARE QVE TERRA[M] QUE TOTV[M] POSSIDET ORBEM” will be echoed sarcastically in the Ulysses canto,

Verse

Verse Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande  che per mare e per terra batti l’ali,  e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande! Inf XXVI.1–3

Brunetto Latino, before leaving on embassy to Spain, wrote pages in his own hand in the Libro di Montaperti, which is now kept in the Florentine State Archives (Plate VI ASF, Libro di Montaperti, fols. 33^r–35^r).

In 1302, the Podestà Cante de’ Gabrielli di Gubbio, put in place by Pope Boniface VIII and supporting Black Guelf Corso Donati, condemned Dante to exile. The 1302 Libro del Chiodo (Plate XI a, b, c, d), in which Dante is named as to be first exiled, then executed, was originally kept in the 20. Bargello, the city’s prison, the Palace of the Podestà, and the Council of Justice of Florence. Dante metamorphosed this Book of his Exile, into the Commedia, the Book of Pilgrimage, just as had Brunetto converted the Libro di Montaperti into the Rettorica, the Tesoretto, the Livres dou Tresor, and the Tesoro.

After Dante’s death in exile in Ravenna, 1321, his fellow student Francesco da Barberino, now returned from exile, may have commissioned the 20. Bargello, Magdalen Chapel fresco by Giotto’s studio, its figures, going from right to left, of Dante Alighieri, Corso Donati, to whom Francesco had been Notaio when Corso was Podestà in Treviso in 1308 (identified so by Giorgio Vasari), Brunetto Latino in red and ermine (who had taught Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri and Francesco da Barberino in the 1280s–1290s), an indistinct figure, perhaps Guido, and Bishop Antonio D’Orso (mitred), all now dead, with himself, in his customary pink, as still alive, kneeling in front of his fellow students, their teacher, and his former patrons (Plate XV). Those condemned to death would spend the night before their execution in prayer in this Bargello Chapel dedicated to the penitent Saint Mary Magdalen.

Francesco da Barberino, we noted, commissioned the Tomb for Bishop Antonio D’Orso by Tino da Camaino for the 4. Duomo in 1322 (Plate XIV a, b).³³ Francesco would carefully rehabilitate Dante’s memory in Florence, seeing to it that a hundred manuscripts of the Commedia, the “Danti del Cento”, issued from his Florentine publishing house, his officina employing multiple scribes, two manuscripts of the Commedia which he carefully signed himself, and of which around some sixty survive.³⁴

Now we turn back from the 20. Bargello to the 21. Badia, Via del Proconsolo, 17 red,³⁵ on our left (Par XVI.137–139), entering the door up the steps, to the first cloister, then entering its church now on the left. The ancient monastery was founded by Willa, the mother of Count Ugo. Each year on St Thomas’ feast day, December 21, the city dignitaries still come here to the now-Renaissance tomb to celebrate Ugo’s memory as if the city’s founder.

There, as a boy, Dante would have heard the bells rung from the landmark bell tower of the 21. Badia that we see through time (Plate XXVIII a, b, c, d, e, f). He would have heard the monks sing at Terce and Nones, at nine o’clock and then at three o’clock, at the third and ninth hours of daylight. The monks’ other Offices of Prayers would have been Lauds, Matins, Sext, Vespers, and Compline, as well as Mass. The monks’ singing of David’s Psalms in Latin Gregorian chant Dante would learn well and he places these throughout the Commedia. When we performed the “Music of the Commedia” in concerts we used the manuscripts of Dante’s epoch from 4. Santa Reparata, the 21. Badia, and elsewhere.³⁶ In Convivio IV.23, Dante’s own words tell us:

Concerning the parts of the day it should be briefly observed that…the Church in distinguishing among the hours of the day makes use of the temporal hours, of which there are twelve in each day, long or short according to the length of the solar day. Because the sixth hour (that is, midday) is the most noble hour of the entire day, and the most virtuous, she draws her offices near to each side of it (that is to say before and after) as much as possible. For this reason the office of the first part of the day, namely tierce, is said at the end of that part of the day, and the offices of the third and the fourth part are said at their beginning. And for this reason tierce is said before the bell is rung for that part of the day, and nones after it is rung for that part of the day, and as is vespers. It should be clear to everyone, then, that the proper nones must always be rung at the beginning of the seventh hour of the day.

Filipino Lippi would paint Saint Bernard’s Vision of the Virgin, who is telling him what to write in his commentary to King Solomon’s Song of Songs, a painting that now hangs in the church of the 21. Badia to your left as you enter (Plate XXVIII g). Dante had evoked this vision in Paradiso XXXIII, the Commedia’s three Canticles of a hundred Cantos, his Song of Songs, filled with psalms, having him be as David, as Solomon, as Bernard, as Alfonso in writing his Cantigas de Santa Maria, in the Commedia. Boccaccio would lecture on Dante’s Commedia in its chapel of St Stephen to your right along the cloister. We held our readings of the Commedia here.

Now continue further along the cloister to the other door leading to the Via Dante Alighieri. On your left as you come out of the 21. Badia (Par XV. 97–99), there is the Priors’ 23. Torre della Castagna, where votes were carried out using bags with chestnuts (castagni), hence this name for the Tower of the Priors of the Guilds who were elected for two months’ office (Plate XXIX a, b). Dino Compagni’s words are on the plaque on the 23. Torre della Castagna, Piazza San Martino, where Folco Portinari, Brunetto Latino, Dante Alighieri, Dino Compagni, and Francesco da Barberino all served as Priors, Dante, during his two-month term of office, exiling his friend, Guido Cavalcanti and their violent enemy, Corso Donati, Guido dying of fever from that exile.³⁷

24. St Martin’s Church, the Chiesa di San Martino del Vescovo, not the original one, is across from the 23. Torre della Castagna and from 25. Dante’s House (Plate XXX a, Church of San Martino; b, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Seven Acts of Mercy). It was probably founded by Irish monks who customarily dedicated their churches in Italy to St Martin. Dante married Gemma Donati here in 1285 when he was twenty years old. Later than Dante’s day, in 1442, Bishop Antonino would found the Buonuomini di San Martino, the Twelve Good Men of St Martin, here and it would be rebuilt and frescoed with the Seven Acts of Mercy, which are listed at the Misericordia’s Madonna della Misericordia 7. Just as the 7. Misericordia (Plate XXII) and the 8. Santa Maria Nuova Hospital (Plate XXIV) still continue as charitable foundations to help the sick, the dying, and the dead, so does this little church still carry out Florence’s Seven Acts of Mercy. See on your right a slot within a metal cross for giving money and on your left a marble slot for letters “Per le istanze”. You can give them the alms which the twelve Buonuomini (Good Men) of Sam Martino who meet every Friday give to the deserving proud poor, signaled out to them in the letters given to them through the other slot. The only medieval and Renaissance foundation/confraternity no longer functioning is 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII), built as a granary to feed even the enemy in time of famine. These lay confraternities and the professional Guilds, the Arti, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, create Florence’s art, rather than the Church or the Medici. They still continue today as the moral structuring of the city, derived from the Gospels and from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, brought from Spain’s multiculturalism of Arabic learning which preserved Greek philosophy, taught by Brunetto in his Tesoro and by Dante in his Commedia.Verse

Verse …I’ FVI NATO E CRESCIVTO SOVRA ’L BEL FIVME ARNO ALLA GRAN VILLA. …Born was I and grew up In the great town on the fair River of Arno

The 25. Dante House on your right, Via Dante Alighieri, 2 (Plate XXXI), is Dante’s birthplace (Inf XXIII.94–95). The present Museo Casa di Dante near it is fake, built in the early twentieth century and on the wrong street, but this building is the one shown by Leonardo Bruni to Dante’s great grandson, Leonardo Alighieri. It was here that first Dante’s mother, Bella degli Abati, then his father Alighero, died, and then his four children by Gemma Donati, Antonia, Pietro, Jacopo, and Giovanni, were born. Gemma remained behind in Florence, under the protection of the Donati, in their pillaged house, but his children came to join him in exile, Antonia as a nun taking the name of “Beatrice” in religion, Giovanni Boccaccio sent to her in 1350 from Florence’s Compagnia dei Laudesi di 30. Orsanmichele with ten golden florins.³⁸ Brunetto Latino’s daughter, Biancia, similarly, in 1358, left a large legacy to the Compagnia dei laudesi di Orsanmichele. Also, Pietro Alighieri, Dante’s first-born son, left this house, the 25 Casa di Dante, in the Piazza San Martino to the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele in his will written in 1364. (See especially the documentation by the Comune in 1865, Della Casa di Dante: Relazione con Documenti al Consiglio Generale del Comune di Firenze.³⁹) We can see this same door architecture in panels painted by Pietro Lorenzetti showing scenes from the life of Dante’s contemporary, Saint Umiltà, who died in 1310 (Plate XXXI c, d). Behind the true Dante house, reached by way of the trattoria “Il Pennello” or the archway in Via del Corso, is the 14. Piazza Donati (Plate XXVI a, b), where we noted Dante would have played as a child, and likewise his four children.

We continue in this neighborhood with the habitations of the 26. Galigai (Par XVI.101–102),⁴⁰ 27. Della Bella (Par XVI. 127–128, 130–132),⁴¹ 28. degli Abati (Inf XXXII.79–81, 106–108).⁴² Dante steps on a lost soul embedded in the ice in the deepest part of Inferno, reserved for traitors. A debate ensues, echoing the encounter with Pier delle Vigne, Dante offering to name him in his poem, the soul desiring to remain nameless. Another identifies him as the Ghibelline Bocca degli Abati, who joined the Guelfs, pretending to be on their side, then cut off the hand of their standard bearer, bringing about their defeat, also told in Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, I.78. Dante was not yet born at the time of the Montaperti ambush, though Brunetto, his teacher, was deeply involved in its history. Earlier, in the Circle of Thieves, Dante had already met with the Black Guelfs, Buoso degli Abati and Cianfa degli Abati of the same family, among the thieves who looted his own home at Dante being exiled (Inf XXV.43,77). Dante was related by his dead mother to the 28. degli Abati family. Thus he is by blood implicated in this treachery against Guelf Florence, and his own relatives stole from him all he had, though the house was left standing for his Donati wife, Gemma.

Turn left on the Via Calzaiuoli, 11 red, to see the plaque on your left, on the 29. Cavalcanti palace (Inf X, 58–63). Guido Cavalcanti, ten years older than Dante, was, together with him, a major part of the dolce stil nuovo, the “Sweet New Style” Fedeli d’amore movement in poetry, Dante creating the Vita nova about himself and his adulterous/courtly love for Beatrice, Cavalcanti, his for Giovanna, when both Cavalcanti and Dante are married, Cavalcanti to Farinata’s daughter, with the same name, Beatrice, Dante to Gemma Donati, both being students of Brunetto Latino. Guido Cavalcanti, among many lyrics, wrote a sonnet in 1292 about 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII), how her Madonna achieved, in a lay setting, so many miracles, that the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce were envious. It is presented in Italian and in English, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, at the opening of this book.⁴³ Rossetti makes a mistake in his translation; it was not two but a multitude of candles that blazed before the image and whose purchasing paid for the constructions of the granary and shrine.⁴⁴ Guido, with many other members of his family, will be buried in Santa Reparata’s 6. Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele’s cemetery.⁴⁵

Turn back on Via Calzaiuoli to 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII a, b, Daddi, Orcagna, 1347, 1357, with candles; c, BNCF, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, p. 164, with candles; d, BML, Libro del Biadaiolo, BML Tempi 3). The present Orsanmichele was built in 1337; the present Madonna della Grazia was painted by Bernardo Daddi, in 1347; then Andrea Orcagna’s Tabernacle was built for the painting in 1357. But Dante knew the earlier similar building, painting, and shrine, before it was burnt in 1304. First walk all around its outside, then enter its church with the Andrea Orcagna shrine to the Bernardo Daddi painting of the Madonna and Child;, next go back outside and cross over to the Arte della Lana, the Wool Guild (which traded cloth and wool with England and built the Duomo), and mount its great staircase to come to the bridge to Orsanmichele’s second and top floors. The Arte della Lana, the Wool Guild, building is where the Società Dantesca Italiana has its fine library, its lecture hall and offices. 30. Orsanmichele was built as a granary to feed even the enemy, such as Siena and Pisa, in time of famine, in reparation for Florence’s war crime of the embargo of foodstuffs to Pisa (Plates XXXVII a, b, ASF, Capitoli di Firenze, Reg. 43, 13 Ottobre 1284, fol. 36^v; LI BML Tempi 3, d, e, f), resulting in the cannibalism of Ugolino of his children in Inferno XXXII–XXXIII. Its shrine seems to be modeled on the Madonnas in tabernacles illustrated throughout Alfonso X el Sabio’s Las Cantigas de Santa Maria (Plate XXXII c, BNCF, Banco Rari 20, p. 164, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria; manuscript facsimile: https://archive.org/details/b.-r.-20/mode/1up). Dante’s Guild of the Medici e Speziali used the Madonna and Child as their emblem. Arnolfo di Cambio sculpted the Virgin’s Soul as a girl child, Wisdom, God’s Daughter, carried to Heaven by Christ on Santa Reparata (Plate XXIII c). All these were used by Dante in Paradiso XXXIII, “Vergine Madre, Figlia del tuo Figlio”. We recall that both Black and White Guelfs, as members of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di 30. Orsanmichele (Plates XX, XXI), were buried beside Santa Reparata (to be rebuilt as Santa Maria del Fiore), beneath the sculpture of the 6. Annunciation.

Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VII.clv, 1322–1348:

Of the Marian Miracles in Florence’s Orsanmichele,1292

In that year on the third of July began so many great and obvious miracles in Florence through a painting of Saint Mary on a pillar in the loggia of Orsanmichele where they sell grain, healing the sick, straightening the crippled and restoring eyesight in great numbers. But the Dominicans and the Franciscans through envy, or for other reasons, did not believe this, disparaging the Florentines. Long ago in the place of Orsanmichele was a church of Orsanmichele (under the Abbey of Nonantola in Lombardy), which had been torn down to make the piazza; but the lay people customarily prayed to the figure, every evening the laity singing songs of praise [Franciscan laude]: and the fame of Our Lady’s miracles grew so great that people came from all over Tuscany on pilgrimage on the Marian feast days, bringing images in wax of the different miracles, so that the loggia, both inside and out, was filled with these ex-votos, and the wealth of this Company of Hymn Singers of Orsanmichele, numbering many of the best people in Florence, increased from so many gifts, offerings and inheritances, intended for the poor that they received in that year more than six thousand livres, and, from not acquiring property, they gave it all to the poor.

Beyond 30. Orsanmichele and near the 37. Ponte Vecchio we come across the families deeply involved in the feuding that started between Guelf and Ghibelline in Florence: 31. Lamberti (Par XVI.110–111),⁴⁶ 32. Davanzati,⁴⁷ 33. Gianfigliazzi (Inf XVII.58–60).⁴⁸ In this part of Florence one finds Piazza Limbo, Via Inferno, Via Purgatorio, and the ancient and very beautiful church of the Santi Apostoli, the Saint Apostles, where they keep the flint and lantern from which to light the Easter Fire, a ceremony brought back from the First Crusade’s Jerusalem Sepulchre, that is then carried to the Duomo and used on Easter Sunday to light the Dove, the Colomba, that flies out of the Cathedral to light the Carro, the great war chariot that is brought through the streets, drawn by white oxen with garlanded gilded horns, setting off its fireworks. Dante’s great great grandfather, Cacciaguida, was present in Jerusalem at the Second Crusade, dying there. When Dante creates the Chariot for Beatrice in Purgatorio it is with the memory of this Carro, captured by the Sienese and Ghibellines at Montaperti and then restored to Florence.

Next are the 34. Buondelmonte (Par XVI.140–144),⁴⁹ 36. Amidei (Par XVI.136–139), palaces,⁵⁰ the 37. Ponte Vecchio, where there was a statue of Mars, said to have earlier been in the pagan Temple to Mars changed into St John’s Baptistery (Par XVI.145–147), and 38 (Inf XIII.146). The Guelf/Ghibelline strife in Florence, Giovanni Villani tells us, began at the jilting by a Buondelmonte betrothed to a daughter of the Amidei family, a jilting caused by a Donati lady, Buondelmonte then being murdered at this statue of the god Mars on the Ponte Vecchio, shown in Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, BAV Chig L.VIII.297, fol. 70^r. These illustrations to Florentine history in Giovanni Villani’s Cronica are by Pacino da Buonaguida who also illustrates several “Danti del Cento” Commedia manuscripts. Dante thus poeticizes historical chronicles. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose father, a great scholar of Dante, was in political exile from Italy in London, self-referentially painted the scene of Dante painting angels (now in the Ashmolean Museum), imagining the 25. Dante House as by the Arno with a view of this old bridge, the 37. Ponte Vecchio.

Once you have crossed the 37. Ponte Vecchio, which had the statue of the god of war and violence, Mars, into the “Oltrarno” (the other side of the Arno River, like Rome’s other side of the Tiber River, the Tevere, as “Trastevere”), you will see on your left-hand side the little 39. Piazza Santa Felicita with the column bound in iron at its center (Plate IX a, BML, Strozzi 146, fol. 42^r, Brunetto Latino, Tesoretto, miniaturist, Francesco da Barberino, with Amore standing on the Santa Felicita column, shooting arrows; b, Piazza Santa Felicita), Giovanni Villani tells us, Nuova Cronica VI.lxxxix, that on St John’s Day, 24 June 1283, when Dante was 18, a thousand young Florentines gathered there, dressed in white, to celebrate the god of Love, Amore, that Amore to be found in the Tesoretto, the Vita nova, the Documenti d’Amore, and the Canzoniere Palatina. Francesco da Barberino was a fellow student with Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti of Brunetto Latino, this event taking place during their adolescence and part of the Fedeli d’Amore “dolce stil nuovo” movement among poets. It is as if Brunetto was encouraging his students, as in the 1960s, to “Make Love, not War”, who taught them the love of God, of neighbor, and of enemy, “l’amore di Dio, del prossimo e del nemico”, for the peace of the city. The scene is from the pages of his Tesoretto.

Then turn back again across the bridge and to your right coming to the Palazzo della Signoria, its Palazzo del Popolo, now called the 40. Palazzo Vecchio, and the Piazza della Signoria, following the Medici’s building of the Uffizi and the Vasarian Corridor to reach the Palazzo Pitti. If you visit the Uffizi Gallery you will see the early gold-leafed paintings of Dante’s era, once in the churches for all the people but now monetarized for tourists. But not even the present Palazzo Vecchio was there before Dante’s exile. It came to be built on the site of the church of 40. San Piero Schieraggi.⁵¹ It was the custom in Florence to read and sign Peace Treaties in such churches in the presence of the populace to the ringing of the bells, such as that Brunetto Latino wrote between Siena and Florence in 1254 (Plate IV a, b), having churches be also political secular places. In wartime such documents would be read instead on the battle field to the sound of trumpets.

There are several plaques in the Palazzo Vecchio and also one in Borgo dei Greci. You can continue down the Borgo dei Greci coming out into the Piazza Santa Croce and its great Franciscan church, 42. Santa Croce, begun in 1294 by Arnolfo di Cambio, with the statue of Dante outside to the left and its cenotaph to Dante inside to the right, both created during the Risorgimento’s movement to unify Italy from its numerous medieval city states. Dante is instead buried in Ravenna, again with Franciscans. But Francesco da Barberino, Dante’s fellow student, is truly buried here, from dying from the plague at 84 in 1348, having just finished his final copy of the Commedia the previous year, he being Brunetto’s and Dante’s Florentine publisher, following his return from exile. Boccaccio writes the epitaph for his tomb. Guido Cavalcanti had already died and been buried, as we have noted, beside Santa Reparata in 1300. Every year representatives of the Comunes of Florence and Ravenna and of the Società Dantesca Italiana process with the Gonfalone of Justice from the 40. Palazzo Vecchio to the 25. Dante House and to 42. Santa Croce with its empty cenotaph in honor of Dante.

The two churches, 1. Santa Maria Novella by the station for the Dominicans and 42. Santa Croce for the Franciscans, where Dante would have heard lectures on theology, were formerly outside the city walls. From 42. Santa Croce you can turn to the right past the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF), with its many Brunetto and Dante manuscripts and go along the Arno, coming to Piazza Piave on the Arno. A plaque on the old tower of the 43. Zecca, where Florence’s florin of her Primo Popolo was minted, Europe’s first euro (Plate III a, b), speaks of the shared source of the Arno and Tiber rivers (Purg XIV. 16–18), analogizing Florence to Rome.

In via San Salvatore al Monte, Oltrarno, San Niccolò, reached by crossing the Arno at the Ponte della Grazia, built by the Podestà Rubaconte and formerly called the Ponte Rubaconte, is the beginning of stairs (Purg XII.100–105), at the top of which one comes to 44. San Miniato with its stories of that Armenian saint,⁵² of the Vallombrosan monastics, Saint Gualberti, Abbot Tesauro Beccaria, and Dante’s contemporary, Abbess Saint Umiltà.⁵³ The Florentines’ murder of the Ghibelline and Pavian Abbot Tesauro became the casus belli for Montaperti and the Papal Interdict against Florence.

The city walls and their massive city gates, constructed by Arnolfo di Cambio, surrounding Florence like a great crown, were built from the stones of the leveled towers of pride of the Ghibellines, then were mostly torn down by the architect Giuseppe Poggi to make Florence like Paris with boulevards, the Viali, at the Risorgimento when Florence briefly became capital of Italy. Still extant are Porta Romana, Porta San Frediano (Oltrarno), Porta San Niccolò (Oltrarno), Porta di Prato, Porta San Gallo, and Porta Beccaria (where executions were carried out from that of San Miniato by the Romans until Cesare Beccaria’s book against capital punishment as cruel and unusual caused Tuscany to abolish the death penalty in 1786).

The 45. Porta a’ Pinti gate had the stemma of the city, the lily and the cross, sculpted by Arnolfo di Cambio. At its destruction these were placed by Giuseppe Poggi on the wall of the English Cemetery in Piazzale Donatello. The lily is actually the wild Florentine iris, which we have now planted in profusion throughout the cemetery demarking its paths. Frederic, Lord Leighton, William Holman Hunt, and others sculpt it on many of our tombs.

FormalPara Study Questions

Use the app https://www.florin.ms/DanteFlorence.html for a fuller experience of Dante’s neighborhood and create a sociogram of the Guelf and Ghibelline families around him that he mentions in his text. Imagine Dante and also his sons and daughter playing with these other families as children in the 14. Piazza de’ Donati and attending the churches in the area. He sees Beatrice at her 17. house, in the 21. Badia, and in the 39. Piazza Santa Felicita. Think of the stabling of horses, donkeys, and mules, instead of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters. Imagine the smells of open sewage, of cooking with olive oil and garlic, the eating of apples, grapes, figs, the noises of the city, the bells, the Gregorian chant in the churches, the popular songs, its heat in summer, the cold in winter. Think of the production of cloth, wool, silk, linen, the spinning wheels and looms, the dyeing of cloth in the Arno. Think of the production of parchment, the creation of legal documents and of manuscripts. Write a story on the telling of stories in that context, of tales within tales.