Chapter 3: Dante’s Schooling, Dante’s Library

Abstract

Dante’s guardian, Brunetto Latino, educated in turn by his father, Bonaccursus Latinus, in Fiesole’s La Lastra, was proficient in Latin texts on oratory, translating speeches, then in exile began to write his Rettorica in Italian prose for a rich banker, a fellow Florentine, while also composing the likewise incomplete Tesoretto in verse, initially as a diplomatic present to Alfonso X el Sabio, candidate for Holy Roman Emperor, a text he later recycled for his Republican students in Florence. In that northern French exile he had come under the influence of the Chartrian Neo-Platonists and their followers, the two authors, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, of the Roman de la Rose, who made use of the autobiographical dream vision form as a frame tale for encyclopedic pedagogy. Brunetto follows suit, describing himself as lost from the true path at the news given him in the Pass of Roncesvalles of the defeat of Montaperti and his consequent exile, from which he wanders into a dream landscape where Natura, the allegorical Virtues, Ovid, and Ptolemy proceed to teach him—and with him the regal, imperial, republican, and democratic readers of his text, who include ourselves—wisdom

…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

I began researching Brunetto Latino (Burnectus Latinus) on finding his Tesoretto in an edition by Francesco Mazzoni in the Berkeley library stacks¹ and realizing his pilgrim allegory influenced Dante’s. I, myself in exile in America from England, was writing on pilgrimage in Dante, Langland, and Chaucer for my 1974 doctoral dissertation that had grown from a Comparative Literature seminar paper on exile in Dante.² I published an edition of the Tesoretto in 1981,³ then, on Sabbatical, proceeded to write Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri, published in 1993,⁴ for which I found eleven documents, ten of them signed, in Brunetto’s own hand, while journeying from library to library and archive to archive with a Eurailpass, sleeping on trains at night because I could not afford hotels. Finally, after fifty years, I published the Italian texts he dictated to his students, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Francesco da Barberino, the Rettorica, the Tesoretto, and the Tesoro, with the Regione Toscana in 2021.⁵

Brunetto, educated by his father, Bonaccursus Latinus, in Fiesole’s La Lastra, was proficient in Latin texts on oratory, translating Ciceronian speeches, then in exile began to write his Rettorica in Italian prose for a rich banker, a fellow Florentine, while also composing the likewise incomplete Tesoretto in verse, initially as a diplomatic present to Alfonso X el Sabio, candidate for Holy Roman Emperor, a text he later recycled for his Republican students in Florence. In that northern French exile he had come under the influence of the Chartrian Neo-Platonists and their followers, the two authors, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, of the Roman de la Rose. Their texts made use of the autobiographical dream vision form as a frame tale for encyclopedic pedagogy. Brunetto follows suit, describing himself as lost from the true path at the news given him in the Pass of Roncesvalles of the defeat of Montaperti and his consequent exile, from which he wanders into a dream landscape where Natura, the allegorical Virtues, Ovid, and Ptolemy proceed to teach him—and with him the regal, imperial, republican, and democratic readers of his text, who include ourselves—wisdom (Plates VII a, IX a, XXXVI a, XLIV b, XLVI a, XLVII c, d, XLVIII c, LIII a, LVII a, b, LIX, LXXVI c, BML Strozzi 146, Brunetto Latino, Il Tesoretto, Francesco da Barberino).

We can make a similar diagram, as for Dante’s Commedia, for Brunetto’s Tesoretto, both being dream vision poems that partake of the Arabic maqāmāt, the playfully autobiographical narration by a sinning, then converting, narrator:

I Florence/Spain/France, Embassy/Exile, 1260–1265 Brunetto Latino, Author True History ―› Material Cause Literal Level Flesh/Blood/Body Outside the Poem

II Spain/France, 1260 Exile/Journey/Dream Brunetto Latino, Dreamer Dream/Fiction ―› Formal and Efficient Causes Moral and Allegorical Levels Mind/Soul Within the Poem

III Everywhere, 1260–now Return Home We the Reader True Efficient and Final Causes Moral and Anagogical Levels Soul Beyond the Poem

His lines (180–190)Verse

Verse |Certo lo chor mi parte. |Di chotanto dolore. |Pensando il grande onore |E la riccha potenza. |Che suole auer fiorenza |Quasi nel mondo tutto |E io in tale chorrotto. |Pensando a chapo chino. |Perdei il grande chammino |E tenni a la trauersa. |D’una selua diuersa, [Truly my heart broke With so much sorrow Thinking on the great honor And the great power That Florence used to have Almost through the whole world; And I, in such anguish, Thinking with head downcast Lost the great highway And took the crossroad Through a strange wood.]

give to Dante his

Verse

Verse     Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.    E quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura questa selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura!    Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte; ma, per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, dirò dell’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.    Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai, tant’ era pien di sonno, a quel punto che la verace via abbandonai, [In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah! how hard to say how wild and harsh and strong this wood was, which remembering brings back fear! So bitter it is that scarcely more is death: but to treat of the good that I found there I will tell of the other things that I discerned. I don’t know how to retell how I entered there, I was so full of sleep at that point that the true way was lost. (Inf I.1–12)]

which he carefully repeats again on meeting his Master in Inferno XV,Verse

Verse   «Là sù di sopra, in la vita serena --rispuosi lui--, mi smarri’ in una valle, avanti che l’età mia fosse piena.    Pur ier mattina le volsi le spalle: questi m’apparve, tornand’ ïo ‘n quella, e riducem a ca’ per questo calle». [“There up above in the clear life, I lost myself!” I replied, “ I was lost in a valley before my age was full. Just yesterday morning I turned my back to it; he appeared to me as I was returning into it, and guides me home again by this road” (Inf XV.49–54)]

Brunetto jokingly fears his pedagogical pages may be torn up, scattered about, and burnt in hell flames by unheeding schoolchildren (lines 104–112). I present here the BRicc 2908 and the BML Strozzi 146 textual versions, the second of which Francesco da Barberino has illustrated with himself—and ourselves—receiving the book from his Master Brunetto (Plate XLVI a, Francesco da Barberino, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 1^r, Tesoretto, Brunetto with student).

| Poi chon dolor lo dicho. |Lu’ uidi in man di fanti. |E rasenprati tanti. |Che si ruppe la bolla. |E rimase per nulla. |S’auen chosì di questo. |Sì dicho che sia pesto. |E di charta in quaderno |Sia gittato in imferno.6

|Poi, con dolor lo dico: |Le uidi in mano di fanti,// |E rasemprati tanti |Che si ruppe la bolla |E rimase per nulla. |S’auiene così di questo, |Si dico ke sia pesto, |E di carta in quaderno |Sia gittato in inferno,

[Then, with sorrow I say this, I saw them in the hand of boys, And so badly copied The seal was broken And they became worthless, If that happens to this, I say: Let it be ripped apart And the unbound leaves Be thrown into hell-fire (104–112)],

a comment Dante will rework first in Inferno XV, 26–27, where he meets Brunetto in hell flames, and then in Paradiso XXXIII, where all the scattered leaves of the universe are gathered up and bound in one Sibylline volume, an economy in which nothing is lost.Verse

Verse    Nel suo profondo vidi ch’e’ s’interna, legato con amore in un volume, ciò che per l’universo si squaderna. [Within its depth I saw ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe. (Par XXXIII.85–87)]

Brunetto Latino’s family, his father, Bonaccursus Latinus, and his brothers, Michael Bonaccursi Latinus, the oldest, Latinus Bonaccursi Latinus, and Bonaccursus Bonaccursi Latinus, lived at La Lastra, above Florence, and were notaries to the Bishops of Fiesole, as we find in the archives in the Bishops’ palace⁷; one of their bishops, the Franciscan Philip of Perugia, even knowing Greek Constantinople.⁸ We gather this from Dante’s teasing banter with Brunetto’s shade, first falsely claiming that Etruscan Fiesolans lack culture (Inf XV.61–63), then mirror-reversing this in the Cacciaguida cantos, where Florentine mothers, while spinning and weaving cloth, tell their babies in cradles and their female companions the stories “d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma” [of Trojans, of Fiesole and of Rome (Par XV.121–126)].

My Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri book made use of the Chronicles of Giovanni Villani⁹ and Dino Compagni,¹⁰ Dante’s contemporaries, and of the great medievalist Robert Davidsohn’s Storia di Firenze,¹¹ among others, to track down the documents in archives concerning Brunetto Latino’s diplomatic activities, ten signed by him and written in his lovely hand, a hundred others mentioning him in the archives. In 1250, as we have discussed, the Florentine Guelfs had expelled the vendetta-waging violent land-owning aristocratic Ghibellines, lowering their towers of pride and using the stones for the walls of common defense constructed by Arnolfo di Cambio, seeking instead to share power peacefully among those whose skills contributed to the common wealth, to prosperity. Burnectus Latinus/Brunetto Latino served as their Notary, their Chancellor, from 1254, at possibly twenty-five years of age, for the Guelf Primo Popolo of 1250–1260, Florence’s initial Republic, writing out documents naming Guido Guerra,¹² Cavalcante Cavalcanti,¹³ Farinata degli Uberti,¹⁴ Tegghiaio Aldobrandi degli Adimari,¹⁵ Jacopo Rusticucci,¹⁶ Tesauro de Becaria,¹⁷ and later, Andrea de’ Mozzi,¹⁸ Ugolino della Gherardesca,¹⁹ and Vanni Fucci,²⁰ involving diplomacy concerning Siena, Orvieto, Volterra, Genoa, Pavia, Arezzo, later, Pisa, and Pistoia, as well as for raising the crusading decima for Popes against Ghibelline King Manfred.

Brunetto Latino was intensely active in Florence’s Comune from 1254, often writing with an initial distinctive flourish and then signing documents, to the ringing of church bells in peacetime or the sounding of trumpets on a battlefield, the ten surviving documents giving his notarial signature of a lilied column and fountain in brown ink (Plate IV a, b, Siena Peace Treaty, 1254).²¹ That notarial sign seems to refer to his description of Cicero, “quasi per una mia sichura cholonna, sicchome fontana che non è istagna” [for me a secure column; like an unstagnant fountain],²² as we see in Plate XXXIII Brunetto Latino’s hand, ASF, Cap. Fir., Reg. 29, 25 August 1254, San Lorenzo, fol. 191^r; ASF, Libro di Montaperti, 1260, fol. 33^r; Vatican Secret Archives, Misc. Instr. 99, 1263.

In 1260, the Libro di Montaperti compiled for the citizen army which was preparing for combat against its rival Siena, frequently named Brunetto Latino, and even had (Plate VI Brunetto Latino, ASF Libro di Montaperti, 1260), its fols. 33^r–35^r for June and July, be written by him in his own lovely hand, while it no longer documented him as participating in that venture after the cut-off date of 24 July 1260.²³ Giovanni Villani noted that instead Brunetto Latino and Guglielmo Beroardi were elected by the Comune as Ambassadors to seek assistance for Florence in its peril in exchange for helping the two opposing candidates, Alfonso X el Sabio of Spain and Richard of Cornwall, be crowned Holy Roman Emperor.²⁴ (It was trickery that Florence was offering to support both rival candidates to be Emperors!)

At that multicultural court of not only Christian but also of Muslim and Jewish scholars, Brunetto observed the King’s methods, adopted from the Islamic world, of dictating simultaneously to multiple scribes,²⁵ translators, artists, and musicians,²⁶ the regal texts to be both illustrated and also sung to music. Manuscripts of the king’s Las Cantigas de Santa Maria (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^r) self-referentially illustrate his methods of composition. Look carefully at the illumination (and even listen!); on the left see the musicians, the first one with the oud, the lute, which Dante will mention with Master Adam of Romena in Inferno (Inf XXXX.49–51) and with Belacqua in Purgatorio (Purg IV.106–135), then flanking the dictating king two scribes writing down the words he is reciting from this book, then on the right the singers of his music, all performing and inscribing the cantigas to the Madonna on the Throne of Wisdom, the Madonna in the Tabernacle. One copy, then in progress (Plate XXXIV b, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, BNCF Banco Rari 20, fol. 119^v), was given by Alfonso el Sabio to Florence, which uniquely includes the miracle of his cure, again self-referentially, from his own Las Cantigas de Santa Maria.²⁷

The “Tesoretto Master” portrays Brunetto in the King’s presence in one of the grisaille miniatures of the BML Strozzi 146 manuscript, an encounter that would have been held in the Alcazar’s formerly Islamic Hall of the Ambassadors (Plate VII a, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 1^v; b, Hall of Ambassadors, Alcazar, Seville). Brunetto was at the peripatetic Court when it was in Seville in August and perhaps part of September, where he acquired such texts as Alfraganus’ Astronomy and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. These would become Dante’s structuring of the Commedia, its scaffolding. As a lawyer himself he would have been especially interested in the King’s Las Siete Partidas, a compilation of laws akin to Justinian’s Code, including its definition of the Tyrant and of the Pilgrim.²⁸ He may also have learned of the Kitab al-Mirag, the Book of the Ladder, as the king was having the Jewish physician, the alfarquim Abraham, and Bonaventura da Siena, translate it into Latin and further languages.²⁹ This is the story of Mahomet’s Dream Vision where he falls asleep in Mecca, the Angel Gabriel comes to him, and they journey together to Jerusalem on a Geryon-like chimaera, the Buraq, a flying horse with a woman’s face, through celestial realms and also Hell. The translation into Latin was next translated into Anglo-Norman in 1264 and that manuscript is now Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 537, as well as its Latin versions in the Vatican Library, BAV lat. 4072 and Paris, BNF lat. 6064. The Paris library possesses also a magnificent illustrated version of the work in Uyghur script, created for Tamurlane’s son (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). Dante will change the gender of the chimaera Geryon on which he rides (Inf XVI.130–XVII) to male and make it malevolent, not benevolent, while speaking of its Islamic beauty.

The Battle of Montaperti took place, 4 September 1260, in which Florence’s Guelf communal government and its citizen army were ambushed and defeated by King Manfred’s mercenary Ghibelline army, Siena seizing the Florentine Carro with its sanctuary bell of St Martin and even the archival Libro di Montaperti, the Arbia running red with blood.³⁰ This tragedy was illustrated in Giovanni Villani’s Nuova cronica by Pacino di Bonaguida (Plate VIII BAV Chig. L.VIII.296, fol. 92^r).³¹

News reached Brunetto of the disaster when he was told of both this and of the sentence of exile against him from a student from Bologna, likely his brother Bonaccursus Bonaccursi Latinus, who gave him a tear-stained letter about the tragedy from their father, Bonaccursus Latinus, now a refugee in Lucca’s San Frediano district, this when Brunetto was journeying through the Pass of Roncesvalles, seeking to return home.³² Again this historical event is documented (Plate XXXVI a, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 2^r, Francesco da Barberino, Brunetto on horseback as a knight, though garbed in ermine as a scholar, the student on a donkey).

Brunetto wrote about the trauma of this exile in his Rettorica (BNCF, II.IV.127, fols. 1^v–2^r):

La cagione per che questo libro è facto si è cotale, che questo Brunettus Latinis, per cagione della guerra la quale fue tralle parti di Firenze, fue isbandito de la terra, quando la sua parte guelfa si tenea col papa et cola chiesa de Roma fue cacciata et isbandita de la terra,

in his Tesoretto in BRicc 2908, fol. 5^r:

Che guelfi di firenze/ Per mala prouedenza/ E per força di guerra/ Eran fuor de la terra/ E’l dannagio era forte/ Di pregioni et di morte,

in his Livres dou Tresor (ed. Carmody, p. 45):

Et sachés que la place de tiere ou Florence est fu jadis apelee chiés Mars, c’est a dire maisons de batailles; car Mars, ki est une des .vii. planetes, est apelés deus de batailles, ensi fu il aourés ancienement. Por ce n’est il mie merveille se li florentin sont tozjors en guerre et en descort, car celui planete regne sor aus. De ce doit maistre Brunet Latin savoir la verité, car il en est nés, et si estoit en exil lors k’il compli cest livre por achoison de la guerre as florentins,

and in his Tesoro, BML Plut 42.19, fol. 11^r:

Et di ciò sae mastro burnecto latino la di=/ ritta ueritade. che fu nato di quella terra. Et al=/ lora che elli compilò questo libro/ sin era elli cacciato di fuori/ per la guerra de fiorentini.³³

Brunetto, to support himself, first began the Rettorica in Italian where he started to translate and to comment on Cicero’s De rhetorica for a bank-rolling patron, whom he calls his “porto”, his harbor.³⁴ He also began the Tesoretto, which he called in the text the “Tesoro”. He describes losing his way, because of this trauma, into a dream landscape (lines 187–190), which in turn Dante will plagiarize for his Commedia twice over (Inf I.1–21; XV.49–54); then Brunetto chronicles historically that he journeys to Montpellier. It is a most delightful dream vision poem, playing upon Ovid and Ptolemy, Alanus de Lille and Guillaume de Lorris/Jean de Meun, even to pre-dating Jean de Meun’s masterpiece, and which includes his own autobiographical account of his embassy to imperial Alfonso X el Sabio, which he dedicates to that wise king, as well, as later, to his republican students.

Brunetto leaves both the Rettorica and the Tesoretto unfinished in order to take up the massive task of creating multiple encyclopedia copies of Li Livres dou Tresor, including Theology, History, Geography, Zoology, Ethics, Rhetoric, and Politics, ending with instructions to Charles of Anjou on how to govern justly for peace in Europe. The editors Polycarpe Chabaille and Francis J. Carmody, then the art historians Alison Stones and Brigitte Roux, note the plethora of manuscripts of Li Livres dou Tresor that primarily emanated in the Picardy dialect around Arras, sometimes with French scribes, sometimes Italian ones, often richly illuminated by miniaturists, as, for instance, BSt Petersburg, Fr. F.v.III.4, fols. 54^v–55^r, some even in the Jerusalem Kingdom, these all writing out its French text, usually in the Picardan dialect of the Arras region, from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries.³⁵

Plate XXXVI documents this period: a. Brunetto learns of exile, BML Strozzi 146, Francesco da Barberino, Tesoretto, fol. 2^r; b. Brunetto teaching, Li Livres dou Tresor, BSt Petersburg, Fr. F.v.III.4, fol. 5^r;³⁶ c. Vatican Secret Archives, Instr. Misc. 99; d. Westminster Abbey, Muniment 12843; e. Arnolfo di Cambio, Charles of Anjou, “Sanatore”, Capitoline, Rome. It is clear that Brunetto, from the wording of his texts and from the miniatures, was using his legal chambers also as a lecture hall, his several discipuli scriptores, his students, copying King Alfonso X el Sabio’s methods in taking down his texts in dictation, even translating his spoken Italian into their written Picardan French, to create multiple copies, not only the one for Saint Louis’ unsaintly, avaricious, and martial brother Charles, Count of Anjou and Provence, whom he addresses with the familiar “tu” of an equal, but as well recycling the book for all the other heads of governments, emperors and kings, popes and archbishops, in the same way, and as well teaching paying students, thus giving the Florentine republican mode of communal governance to all European hierarchies. It is typical for these manuscripts to begin, self-referentially, with the image of “maistre Brunet Latin”, “maestro Brunetto Latino”, who is lecturing to students who write down his book, in the French Li Livres dou Tresor manuscripts (Plate XXXVI b, BSt Petersburg, Fr. F.v.III.4, fol. 5^r), this even visually documented in a Tesoro manuscript in Italian by a student (Frontispiece: BML 42.19, fol. 72^r), showing that Brunetto continued this practice also on his return home to Florence after many years’ absence.³⁷ From documents Brunetto penned in 1263 and 1264, now in the Vatican Secret Archives, Instr. Misc. 99 (Plate XXXVI c), and in Westminster Abbey’s Muniment Room and Library, Muniment 12843 (Plate XXXVI d), we learn that he was in Arras and participating in the Lendit Fair at Bar-sur-Aube, raising funds for Charles of Anjou.³⁸

Not only did the Florentine Guelf bankers have Brunetto Latino create Li Livres dou Tresor in French to teach “Buon Governo” [Good Government], to Charles of Anjou (who refused to learn Italian), they also had Arnolfo di Cambio sculpt the statue of him as togaed and seated on a lion throne swearing the Oath of Office as Podestà that is embedded in Brunetto’s text (Plate XXXVI e). The statue is still in the Roman Capitoline, in the place, in situ, where Charles was inaugurated as “Sanatore” of Rome, 21 June 1265.

Charles and his wife Beatrice were next crowned King and Queen of Sicily and Jerusalem in the Vatican, 6 January 1266. He won the Battles of Benevento, 26 February 1266, against King Manfred, illustrated by Pacino di Bonaguida (BAV Chig. L.VIII.296, fol. 103^r; Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica), and of Tagliacozzo, 23 August 1268, against the successor, the adolescent Conradin (BAV Chig. L.VIII.296, fol. 110^v), having the young boy king beheaded following the battle (BAV Chig. L.VIII.296, fol. 112^v). Having already faced a tax revolt in 1257 in Provence he now proceeded to bleed Sicily white with taxes to fund a crusade armada against Christian Constantinople in a get-rich-quick scheme which no one wanted.

Following the 1260 embassy to Alfonso el Sabio there was still an exchanging of diplomatic gifts, Brunetto Latino sending from France a now lost copy of the Tesoretto,³⁹ and later from Florence an illustrated copy of the “Second Redaction” Li Livres dou Tresor, still treasured in the Escorial (BEscorial L.II.3), to King Alfonso el Sabio, and Alfonso in turn perhaps sending to Florence the sumptuous illustrated codex of Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, still treasured in Florence, which includes the unique illumination, present only in this regal Cantigas, of the miraculous healing of the King from sickness from being presented with a self-referencing, mise-en-abyme, copy of his own codex (Plate XXXIV b, BNCF Banco Rari 20, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, fol. 119^v).⁴⁰ This regal manuscript seems to become the structuring of Orsanmichele’s Madonna in a Tabernacle with their multiple miracles and songs. These manuscripts were influenced by the parallel Arabic culture of love poetry prevalent in Spain as well as Africa and Asia and also the French Neo-Platonist and encyclopedic materials that Brunetto encountered next in his exile.⁴¹ They were doing so in the form of the Arabic maqāmāt, the playful, jocular, and very effective telling of a tale against sin by a sinner, like the Roman de la Rose’s Faus Semblaunt, like Chaucer’s Pardoner, like the Tesoretto’s “Brunetto”, like the Commedia’s “Dante”.

However, following Charles’ victories, Brunetto Latino vanished from the archives and, from this point on, Florentines, both Guelf and Ghibelline, kept writing of Charles’ tyranny, in poetry, especially in the tenzone debate form, and prose, in a paper war against him.⁴² The BML Plut 42.20 “First Redaction” Tesoro and the 1474 Treviso editio princeps, both have Brunetto state that he writes the text for love of his enemy, “per amore del suo nimicho”, some manuscripts containing the moving lament by the Ghibelline Count Jordan to his right hand that had dubbed so many fair knights, lopped off along with his right foot, his right eye gouged out, by order of Charles.⁴³ Similarly Dante’s Purgatorio XI.121–142 has Oderisi da Gubbio point out the figure of the Ghibelline Provenzan Salvani who humbled himself to beg in the public square of Siena for the huge ransom needed to free a friend from Charles of Anjou’s imprisonment.

In Paradiso VIII.73–75 Dante speaks of the Sicilian Vespers uprising against Charles’ oppression,Verse

Verse se mala segnoria, che sempre accora li popoli suggetti, non avesse mosso Palermo a gridar: “Mora! mora!”. [had not bad governing, which always breaks down subjected peoples, moved Palermo to cry, ‘Die, Die!’.]

And in Purgatorio XX.67–69 Dante sarcastically proclaims Charles’ beheading of the teenaged Conradin and, as well, claims he had Thomas Aquinas murdered for opposing the election of the French Pope, Martin V,Verse

Verse Carlo venne in Italia; per vicenda, vittima fé di Curradino; e poi ripinse al ciel Tommaso, per amenda. [Charles came to Italy, and, for victory, made a victim of Conradin, and thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends]

Both Guelph and Ghibelline came to share their rage against Charles’ tyranny, though he had been elected by Guelph bankers to regain their lost Florence.

Editors, librarians, and scholars long thought that the “First Redaction” Tesoro manuscripts were a translation by the Ghibelline Judge Bono Giamboni, though the manuscripts clearly ascribe themselves to Brunetto Latino, apart from one late manuscript in the Veneto region with the Giamboni ascription.⁴⁴ This came about from their non-study of Giovanni Villani, Michele Amari, Robert Davidsohn, and Sir Steven Runciman, who all showed how Charles d’Anjou came to be seen as cruel, stupid, and mercenary, causing the Guelphs and the Ghibellines to unite in conspiring against him at the Peace of Cardinal Latino and again with the Sicilian Vespers’ revolt against his tax-collecting French soldier in Sicily.⁴⁵ Brunetto’s Tesoro manuscripts in Italian of the cluster dictated to his students in the 1280s–1290s carefully chronicled the secret diplomacy against Charles in which Brunetto seems himself to have played a significant role as companion of Gianni di Procita, the two disguised as Franciscans, who journeyed to Genoa, Barcelona, Siena, the various Popes (apart from Martin V), and to the Byzantine Emperor Michael Paleologus, to dismantle Charles’ projected “Crusade” against Christian Constantinople in order to loot her of her wealth.

From the dearth of documents in archives after 1270 until 1282, Brunetto Latino specifically noted as being absent,⁴⁶ we find that he continued to be away from Florence for years. Meanwhile his Li Livres dou Tresor manuscripts proliferated from Arras across the known world of Christendom, eighty-one of these still extant in major European and American libraries, while there is only one in Florence, though that city will come to have thirty Tesoro manuscripts in Italian. Only Michele Amari published the interesting 1280s–1290s “First Redaction” version of the Tesoro.⁴⁷ Therefore scholars generally assume Dante knew and used the Li Livres dou Tresor in French, not understanding that Dante himself likely copied out the BRicc 2908 Tesoretto and the BML Plut 42.20 Tesoro versions in Italian in his own hand for his education from Brunetto and that these are the versions of the Italian “Tesoro” (Inf XV.119) from which scholars should quote, not from Li Livres dou Tresor in French.⁴⁸

Brunetto carefully chronicled and documented his involvement in secretly plotting the Sicilian Vespers for the Florentine Comune against Charles of Anjou to his student scribes, his discipuli scriptores, in the 1280s–1290s “First Redaction” of his Tesoro, a text he translated orally to them in Italian, from his French Li Livres dou Tresor on his return to Florence (Frontispiece, BML Plut. 42.19, fol. 72^r), now adding to it how Gianni di Procita and he even went, humorously, to Charles himself who was unwitting of their plot against him, for the passports and funds to bring about the downfall of their tyrant king. Not only is the tale told in Brunetto’s early Tesoro manuscripts (as well as in several Sicilian manuscripts); it is also vividly documented in Pacino di Bonaguida’s miniatures to Giovanni Villani’s Nuova cronica in BAV Chig L.VII.296, where King Charles manipulates Martin IV’s election, fol. 122^v, Emperor Michael Paleologus encourages the Sicilian rebellion, fol. 123^v, King Peter III of Aragon with ambassadors garbed as Dominicans, fol. 124^r, the Sicilian Vespers taking place, fol. 124^r, to Pope Martin IV and King Charles I’s grief, fol. 124^v, and the women of Messina defending their city against Charles, fol. 126^v.⁴⁹

Brunetto had already been briefly present in Florence at the 1280 Peace of Cardinal Latino which brought together Guelf and Ghibelline, marrying their progeny to each other in a peace-weaving, Beatrice, Farinata degli Uberti’s daughter, as we noted, being espoused to Guido, Cavalcante Cavalcanti’s son (Inferno X presents the two fathers-in-law for an eternity in one Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele tomb), allying the families against Charles of Anjou’s unjust governing⁵⁰ and overly heavy taxation in preparation for Charles’ “Crusade” against Christian Constantinople.

Following the Sicilian Vespers, Brunetto returned to Florence permanently in 1282 and became extremely active again in both teaching and in Florentine communal government until 1292. Several of his manuscripts testify to his use of Aristotle, come to him by way of Arab commentators such as Avverroës, translators such as Herman the German and Michael Scot, and even in the illuminations to his Li Livres dou Tresor, as seen in the Plate I BCarpentras 269, fol. 108^r depiction of the tale of Aristotle, Alexander, and Phyllis. When he dictates his newer version of the Tesoro he now devotes a long section to praising not Guelf Charles but the brilliant cosmopolitan Ghibelline Emperor Frederic II of Sicily. He includes in that account the tale of Michael Scot’s prophesy concerning Frederic’s death in Florence (Firenze), which actually occurs in 1250 in the similarly named Firenzuola (BLM Plut 42.20, fol. 58^v):Verse

Verse Et quiui moriò di sua morte sicchome fu piacere di nostro singnore dominedio sicchome gli auea detto il maestri michele schotti nato di schozia il qual fu un de- buoni maestri del mondo in ist= orlomia apresso al gran profeta merlino.

Dante will likewise mention the scholar of Aristotle and Avveroës, Michael Scot, in Inferno XX.115–117:Verse

Verse Quell’ altro che ne’ fianchi è così poco, Michele Scotto fu, che veramente de le magiche frode seppe il gioco. [The other who is so small about the flanks is Michael Scot who, of a truth knew the play of magic frauds.]

Dante, born in 1265, was orphaned at the age of five with the loss of his mother, Bella degli Abati, in 1270, then again as a teenager with the death of his father Alagerius before 1283, his stepmother, Lapa, appointing Brunetto Latino his legal guardian, as Leonardo Bruni informs us.⁵¹ He would have first learned how to write from his father, that tradition among notarial families from Roman times. We have seen his parent’s hand in Plate II a, b, 29 September 1239: “Et ego Alagerius imperiali auctoritate judex atque notarius cc. praeceptis feci”.⁵² Dante could well have written out in an immature hand on poor parchment, the BRicc 2908 manuscript of the Tesoretto and the Mare amoroso as an adolescent. We find the same use of the cancelleresca script as his parent’s, with an “r” that similarly goes below the line, the letters “a”, “o”, “c”, “p”, “f”, “t” being likewise similar, though the “l” and “d” are different, and, indeed, like those written by Brunetto Latino in his many extant autographed notarial documents.

While Dante scholars today seek to find his schooling from the friars of Dominican 1. Santa Maria Novella and 43. Franciscan Santa Croce,⁵³ I believe, as his own Inferno XV movingly acknowledges, it was far more first from his parent, the imperial notary and judge Alagerius, from whom Dante would have learned the alphabet in chancery script and Latin, then orphaned, as Leonardo Bruni tells us,⁵⁴ from his stepmother’s choice for his guardian, from Maestro/Ser Brunetto Latino, who typically signed himself, “et ego Burnectus Bonaccursi Latinus notarius”, in a clear and lovely rounded Chancery hand. Dante’s Convivio I.x.4, tells us of his learning the vernacular from his mother, whom he lost too young, and his father, who then remarried, and Brunetto Latino also teaching him Latin by way of the vernacular, as we find in Brunetto’s careful translations into Italian of Cicero, Aristotle and many other texts that he dictates to his students.⁵⁵ Brunetto Latino made use of his vast library, of the Roman classics taught him by his father, the Greco-Arabic materials he acquired from Alfonso in Spain, the materials from his exile in France, to teach youths how to be good Ciceronian Republicans, as well as also Dante’s medical studies perhaps at Folco Portinari’s 8. Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in order to join the Arte de’ Medici e Speziali.⁵⁶

Dante Alighieri was 15–17 when Brunetto Latino returned to Florence, 1280/1282, to be active in both politics and in teaching and this is possibly when BRicc 2908 with the Tesoretto and the Mare Amoroso could have been written by the student for the teacher. If Dante is the scribe of the Tesoretto in BRicc 2908 and the Tesoro in BML Plut 42.20, he writes out the first in a schoolboyish hand on poor parchment, the second when he is more mature. Dante is about 26 when he writes the Vita nova between 1291 and 1294 and presents the work at Easter to his teacher with the delightful sonnet given at the opening of this book, “Master Brunetto, this my little maid” in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation, whose own father was in political exile from Italy in London. Dante is suggesting that Brunetto consult with the Dominicans at 1. Santa Maria Novella, schooled by Albertus Magnus, to understand his conversion tale around the death of Beatrice Portinari from the previous stalking, grooming, harassment by him with sonnets to changing to see her as emblem of Christ. He declares this is a work with Janus-like doubleness of perspective, a palinode, a maqāmāt. It is influenced by Cicero’s Somnium, by Augustine’s Confessions, by Boethius’ Consolation. Brunetto had had ties with the last remnant of the Jerusalem Kingdom,⁵⁷ Acre, now lost, 18 May 1291, Dante thus is converting not only his authorial Augusinian/Boethian self by way of Beatrice, but he now also converts Florence into Jerusalem, lamenting in a Jeremiad her lost feminine “Christ”.

Later, Francesco da Barberino, his schoolmate, would also write, and even illustrate, the Tesoretto with delicate grisaille drawings (BML Strozzi 146 passim), giving portraits of their teacher. He does the same with the Tesoro (BML Plut 42.19, fol. 72^r, Frontispiece), illustrating the “Rettorica” section with a scene of Brunetto’s lecture hall in his chancery chambers in which we see the blue-clad apprentice Dante with the Tesoro open in his lap, Francesco beside him, gazing at him in admiration, while scarlet and ermine-clad Maestro Brunetto dictates to them from his cathedra his French Li Livres dou Tresor, presenting it in their Italian, having his officina now operate in his legal chambers in Florence with young Florentines, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Francesco da Barberino, as his discipuli scriptores, his apprentice scribes, during these years from the 1280s to the 1290s, Francesco da Barberino documenting his memory of this in the 1330s’ manuscript.

Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola commented of Brunetto, “Non solum docebat Dantem, sed alios iuvenes fiorentinos; unde multos fecit magnos eloquentes et morales” [he not only taught Dante, but also other young Florentines, thus making many greatly eloquent and moral],⁵⁸ likewise Francesco da Buti wrote of Brunetto teaching Dante,⁵⁹ as would later Leonardo Bruni.⁶⁰ Florence did not yet have a university. Brunetto seems to have functioned in these years as a one-man store front Free University, training them for the Secondo Popolo, Florence’s second Republic following on her Primo Popolo of the ten glorious years before Montaperti, both these governments exiling the blood-feuding nobles who lacked marketable skills or education for contributing to the prosperity of the city.⁶¹ This group of students can well be held responsible for the 1280s–1290s cluster of Tesoro manuscripts teaching against tyranny studied by Michele Amari, Adolfo Mussafia, Helene Wieruszowski, and Sonia Minutello.⁶²

“Ser” and “Maestro” Brunetto taught his students the texts of Cicero, Lucan, Sallust, Statius, Aristotle, and Alfraganus, the last two which he translated into French following his 1260 exile, then giving this material in Italian in the 1280s–1290s, training his readers and hearers in “Buon Governo”, in Good Government. Brunetto defined government as the love of God and neighbor, “l’amor di Dio e del prossimo”, and even for love of one’s enemy, “per amor del nemicho”. He described how the Podestà was elected from a different city, avoiding corruption, being quartered with his judges, notaries, soldiers, and servants in the 20. Bargello (Plate XXVII a, b, c), being sworn to uphold Justice, to study and execute the City’s statutes, to protect widows and orphans, merchants and pilgrims, to repair roads and bridges, to defend the citizens in war and peace, for their common prosperity.

The Sicilian Vespers accounts in this cluster of Tesoro manuscripts frankly read like a historical novel, such as could have been written by Benjamin Disraeli or John Le Carré. They have all the chutzpah and immediacy of eye-witness reporting. They tell of the two conspirators, one of them Gianni di Procita, the other named elsewhere in documents as “Accardo” or “Latino” or “L”, both disguised as Franciscans, who journey throughout Europe, to the Popes, to the Emperor Michael Paleologus of Constantinople (their passports to Constantinople granted by the unwitting Charles of Anjou), to the Genoese, to the Aragonese, to the Sienese, and together they participate in plotting against Charles’ tyranny.⁶³ The Li Livres dou Tresor Chronicle section had ended in its “First Redaction” version before Charles’ victories; its “Second Redaction” included these victories in its Chronicle section; while the 1280s–1290s Tesoro cluster updates that Chronicle section through the Sicilian Vespers, 30 March 1282, and Charles’ death, 7 January 1285. Then, in the 1330s, Francesco da Barberino, as their editor, will revert to the censored “First Redaction” Li Livres dou Tresor account in his 1330s rendition of the Tesoro (BML Plut 42.19), similarly reverting to the original Tesoretto version before BRicc 2908 in his 1330s rendition of it in BML Strozzi 146 (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

a, BRicc. 2908, fol. 19^v, 1280s; b, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 13^r, 1330s, Comparison of Tesoretto manuscripts’ dating

Brunetto from 1282 to 1289 had to carry out secret diplomacy with Ugolino della Gherardesca, while seeming to be for Charles’ desire to punish Pisa with a blockade against all food stuffs entering the city, “Vinum, Granum, Avena, Carnes, Caseus, Mel, Figus, Nuces, Oleum, Fabe, Legumina” [wine, grain, oats, meat, cheese, honey, figs, nuts, oil, beans, vegetables, beans], etc., to disastrous effect, resulting in the starvation and cannibalism of Ugolino della Gherardesca, imprisoned for that treachery by Archbishop Ruggiero (Inf XXXIII–XXXIV; Plate XXXVII a, b, ASF, Capitoli di Firenze, Reg. 43, 13 Ottobre 1284, fol. 36^v, Florence, obeying Charles of Anjou, blockades all foodstuffs from reaching Pisa). Guido Cavalcanti and Dino Compagni were all involved with Brunetto Latino in this disastrous Pisan diplomacy.⁶⁴ King Charles of Anjou died, January 1285.⁶⁵ The BNCF II.VIII.36 Tesoro, possibly written by Guido Cavalcanti, dated 1286, adds the Sommetta of formulae for diplomatic letter writing, for instance, for Pope Gregory to write to Archbishop Ruggieri of Pisa, fol. 75^v.⁶⁶

The Chronicle sometimes attributed to Brunetto Latino immediately followed the account of the deaths by starvation and cannibalism of Ugolino and his progeny, 18 March 1289, caused by the 1284 blockade of all foodstuffs to Pisa on order of Charles of Anjou, with the account of the establishing of 30. Orsanmichele as a granary to feed even the enemy in time of famine (Plate XXXII a, b, d).⁶⁷ Guido Cavalcanti wrote the sonnet given at the opening of this book, “Una figura della Donna mia/ s’adora, Guido, a San Michele in Orto”, explaining that the friars of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella were jealous about the miracles attributed to the statue of the Madonna and Child in Orsanmichele, a granary cum shrine built and adorned by Florentine lay confraternities, her Guilds.⁶⁸

The Compagnia dei Laudesi di 30. Orsanmichele⁶⁹ was of greatest importance, Guido Cavalcanti wrote the sonnet in 1292 praising it, Brunetto’s daughter, Biancia, would grant it a legacy in 1348,⁷⁰ it would send Giovanni Boccaccio to Dante’s daughter Antonia, now named “Beatrice” and a nun in Ravenna in 1350, with a gift of ten golden florins,⁷¹ and to it Pietro, Dante’s Alighieri’s son, would will their 25. Casa di Dante in Florence in 1364, Leonardo Bruni showing that house to Dante’s descendant in 1436, while we find that Burnetto Bonaccursi Latino, Filippo Argenti (as “Philippus Arçentius”), Burnectus Brunelleschi (Betto Brunelleschi), and Guido Cavalcanti were all buried in the 6. Orsanmichele cemetery by Santa Reparata as members of the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele.⁷² We can see images of the Madonna and Child by the “Master of the Dominican Effigies” in the Libro del Biadaiolo (Plate XXXII d, BML Tempi 3)⁷³ and by Pacino di Bonaguida in the Nuova cronica (BAV Chig.L.VIII.296, fol. 152^r), the first amid the hustle and bustle of the granary, in scenes that echo those of Las Cantigas de Santa Maria giving the conversion miracles about the shrine of the Madonna and Child (Plate XXXII c).

The thaumaturgical image of the Madonna and Child within a tabernacle was adopted as the stemma of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the Guild of Doctors and Spice Merchants, that Dante would join in 1295, such Guild membership being required for participation in the Florentine government in the Ordinaments of Justice established by Giano Della Bella in 1293,⁷⁴ against the nobility’s chronic obsession with blood feuding in Florentine streets. It was this image of the Madonna and Child, combined with that of the “Dormition of the Virgin” sculpted by Arnolfo di Cambio, where Christ tenderly carries up to Heaven the soul of his Mother, shown with the anatomical boning of a baby girl (“Figlia del tuo Figlio”, God’s Daughter, Wisdom, Plate XXIII c), that Dante has St Bernard evoke in Paradiso XXXIII. The other of the two sonnets opening this book, Dante Alighieri’s presentation to Brunetto Latino of the circa 1292 dolce stil novo “Fedeli d’amore” Vita nova with the sonnet on his maqāmāt prosimetron, “Ser Brunetto, questa pulzeletta” [Master Brunetto, this my little maid], has lines concerning the Easter eucharistic banquet that echo his teacher’s Lauda “CEnare effare pasqua d’amore”, given in this book’s online Appendices.

The final document naming Brunetto, 22 July 1292, was in connection with Vanni Fucci and a horse,⁷⁵ that same Vanni Fucci who would rob the figures of the Madonna and the Twelve Apostles (Plate XXXVIII Pistoia, Silver Altar to St James of Compostela, shown as a Pilgrim), 25 January 1293, and thus earn his place among the thieves of Inferno XXIV.⁷⁶

A manuscript of Li Livre dou tresor at Ferrara has Dante’s charming sonnet, “Guido, io vorra che tu e Lapo e io” on its fly leaf.⁷⁷ Dante’s Vita nova plays with his great friendship with Guido Cavalcanti. Tragically the Guelf party to which Brunetto, Guido, and Dante all belonged would fracture into that of the Black Guelfs of the family into which Dante had been betrothed when young, the Donati, with its Trump-like leader, Corso Donati, versus the White Guelfs, led by the Cerchi and to which Dante and Guido belonged. Dante, elected Prior and in the 23. Torre della Castagna, adjacent to his 25. natal house⁷⁸ (Plates XXIX, XXXI),⁷⁹ according to Giano Della Bella’s Ordinaments of Justice of 1293, had to exile both Corso and Guido who were feuding with violence against each other, voting to do so with chestnuts. This brought about the death from malaria of his great friend in August 1300.⁸⁰ The Commedia is almost a Lycidas/In Memoriam epitaph to Cavalcanti, so absent in Inferno X, while the Donati family members of his marriage to Gemma Donati,⁸¹ Corso, Forese, and Piccarda Donati, are so present in Inferno XX, Purgatorio XXIV, and Paradiso III.

Dante then pretends, his son Pietro writes,⁸² that he meets that “dear paternal” shade, “la cara e buona imagine paterna”, in the Commedia’s Inferno XV.83, and pays movingly affectionate tribute to that surrogate fathering, mirror-reflecting the similar encounter with ancestral Cacciaguida in Paradiso XV. He includes in the Commedia the events already found amid the Brunetto Latino documents and manuscripts he may himself have copied out earlier as his discipulus scriptor, concerning such figures as Cavalcante Cavalcanti and Farinata degli Uberti⁸³ in Inferno X, Guy de Montfort in Inferno XII,⁸⁴ Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, and Iacopo Rusticucci⁸⁵ in Inferno XVI, Vanni Fucci⁸⁶ in Inferno XXIV.112–25.33, Florence’s boast before Montaperti in Inferno XXVI.1–3, the Columns of Hercules⁸⁷ in Inferno XXVI.106–108, Alardo de Valéry in Inferno XXVIII.17–18,⁸⁸ Tesauro of Vallombrosa⁸⁹ in Inferno XXXII.118–120, Ugolino della Gherardesca⁹⁰ in Inferno XXXII.124–XXXIII.90, the stone and Satan stuck at the center of the earth by gravity (before Newton’s round apple fell upon his round skull), Inferno XXXIV.76–136, the player at dice, Purgatorio VI.1–12,⁹¹ Charles I of Anjou singing together with his enemy in Purgatorio VII.112, Charles having Aquinas poisoned, Purgatorio XX.67–69, the Sicilian Vespers in Paradiso VIII.62–84, the book “squaderno”⁹² and bound in one volume, Paradiso XXXIII.85–87, and the Squaring of the Circle, Paradiso XXXIII.133–138.

Dante’s Library

I know from my own experience as an exile, first to America, then to Italy, that one must never give up one’s books. Or at least retain a Boethian memory of them where they are lost. In the Commedia’s miniatures and also in his portraits, Dante is often shown with a book. In Andrea del Castagno’s fresco, now in Florence’s Uffizi, he carries it under his arm, in Domenico di Michelino’s painting in Florence’s Duomo he reads from its opening page, in Luca Signorelli’s fresco in Orvieto’s Duomo he writes it while consulting other books in his library. In manuscript miniatures to the Commedia this book appears to be at first Virgil’s Aeneid, the tragic poem of the “degli dèi falsi e bugiardi” [the false and lying gods (Inf I.72)], that “alta mia tragedia” [my high tragedy (Inf XX.112–113)], of the lacrimae rerum [the tears of things (Aeneid I.462)], over which Dante has fallen asleep while reading—if we take as his model the Roman de la Rose, its dreamer falling asleep over the Somnium Scipionis—then the held book becomes Luke’s Gospel at Emmaus (Plate LXII a, Silos Cloister sculpture; b, BAV lat. 4776, fol. 39^r). In Virgil’s classical world and in Dante’s medieval one, authors and their books are conjoined as performative acts, as the word which is flesh, body, voice, filled with humanity, filled with music, filled with art, of Virgil reading the Aeneid to Caesar Augustus (within which Aeneas recounts the Fall of Troy to Dido), of Alfonso dictating his many books to his scribes, of Brunetto his to his students, of Dante reading the Commedia to Moroello Malaspina, Can Grande Della Scala, Guido Novella da Polenta, within which Paolo and Francesca read of Camelot’s Fall, of Chaucer reading the Troilus and Criseyde to King Richard II. Medieval canzoniere showed the author portraits as if Zoom boxes, as their voices with their faces.⁹³ Such books eschewed modernism’s abstraction of our silent pages printed in black and white. Even when books were read silently in a study there was still the sense of a conversation, of voices across centuries, of time being contracted, collapsed into eternity.

I took the Vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, though this third to the Gospel rather than to a Bishop. I renounced all except my books, the computer, and book binding equipment and shipped my library with the last of my life’s earnings from Sussex to Berkeley to Princeton to Boulder to Sussex to Florence. When I was researching Dante’s teacher, Brunetto Latino, of which there are many copies in libraries of his Li Livres dou Tresor and his Etica in Spain and which were used to educate Aragonese princes in republicanism, that diplomacy having been productive in literature, as in Cervantes’ magnm opus. if not in imperialism, I found myself reading medieval manuscripts in the Sala de Investigadores of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (lisp that ‘c’ as ‘th’!), whose walls are hung with paintings of Don Quixote reading medieval manuscripts—and going mad in consequence—and I smiled, thinking of Dorothy Sayers, of Jorge Luis Borges, of Umberto Eco. Also of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh whose heroine finds crates of her dead scholar father’s books in the attic and devours them, educating herself, though this was forbidden to Victorian women.⁹⁴ Her nine book epic poem begins “Of writing many books there is no end” from Ecclesiastes. Similarly Christine de Pizan as a child, given the run of the French king’s library, could then in turn create books, among them her Feminist Divine Comedy, Le Chemin de Lonc Estudes.⁹⁵ Books exist in an echo chamber, in a hall of mirrors, coming into being like the progeny of genealogical family trees. They gestate from libraries.

This library in Florence’s English Cemetery seeks to replicate Dante’s, with first the Hebrew Bible and Greek Testament in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (a translation solely made possible by the funding, language learning, and editorial assisting in the Bethlehem cave next to that decreed by Saint Helena to be that of the Nativity, by the mother and daughter Saints Paula and Eustochium), next all the Classics in Greek and Latin, then the medieval texts Dante knew. How to find Dante’s library? We can if we remember Boethius’ Philosophia telling that author on Death Row that even though he has lost his scrolls in ivory and crystal cabinets he has not forgotten them.⁹⁶ We can trace Dante’s memoried library from his teacher Brunetto Latino’s library, initially of the Roman classics, Cicero, Lucan, Sallust, Terence, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, Statius, Horace, Palladius, Orosius, and the Bible; then the books Brunetto acquired from Alfonso X el Sabio’s Seville, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Ptolemy’s Astronomy conveyed through Arabic texts translated into Latin at his court, perhaps the Kitab al-Mirag, the Libro della Scala, of Mahomet’s Jerusalem vision guided by the angel Gabriel, and their flight upon a Geryon chimaera, translated by the Jewish alfarquim Abraham and by Bonaventure da Siena from Arabic into Latin and French,⁹⁷ also the regal Las Cantigas de Santa Maria, still present in Florence and which had perhaps shaped 30. Orsanmichele (Plate XXXII a, b, c, BNCF Banco Rari 20); next Brunetto’s acquaintance with the Latin works of Alanus de Lille, the De Planctu Naturae and the Anticlaudianus, and of Andreas Capellanus’ De arte honeste amandi, the French of the Roman d’Alexandre, of Richard de Fournival’s Bestiare d’Amour, of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, and Gossuin de Metz’ Image du Monde, as well as the Provençal trobadors’ lyrics. All this library was taught Dante through the texts Brunetto distilled from them in the Rettorica (Cicero), the Tesoretto (Ovid), and the Tesoro (Bible, Ptolemy/Alfraganus’ Almagest, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s Rhetoric, etc.). For instance, Aristotle’s comment in the Ethica on one swallow not making spring is cited by all three writers, Aristotle, Brunetto, and Dante (Convivio I.ix).

Dante going into exile had these memories, had this education, having been led by his teacher through his books about books. But also we can find Dante Alighieri’s library in the books his son Pietro Alighieri clearly possessed and used from which to comment and elucidate the Commedia. Among them we find all of the above, such as Terence’s Comedies⁹⁸ and Andreas Capellanus’ De art honeste amandi and also Cassiodorus and Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s Poetria nova.⁹⁹ Pietro, Jacopo, and Giovanni, Dante’s three sons, who were to join him in exile, would have been educated by him when younger as he in turn was educated first by “Alagerius” and then by Brunetto. They are lay persons who partake of legal training, as well as of poetry. We would do well to turn young students, both women and men, amid such a library that they, too, may become a Dante Alighieri and a Christine de Pizan.

Editions of Brunetto Latino’s Opera

In the 700th anniversary year of Dante’s death Florence’s Regione Toscana published an edition, with MLA’s Scholarly Edition Seal, of the manuscripts of Brunetto Latino’s Opere, his Rettorica, Tesoretto, and Tesoro.¹⁰⁰ Its Volume I in the accompanying DVD gives the manuscripts in facsimile with facing page transcriptions that cluster about the 1280s–1290s, when Brunetto Latino was teaching Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, Francesco da Barberino, and others, in the Arabic manner he had acquired from the court of Alfonso X el Sabio in Seville in 1260.¹⁰¹ Its Volume II gives the more conservative and carefully edited manuscripts, again in facsimile with facing page transcriptions the fellow student and longer-lived Francesco da Barberino and his officina copied out that was set up in Florence in the 1330s on his return from exile.¹⁰² It is hoped that young Italian scholars may now produce a National Edition of Brunetto Latino’s Italian and Latin writings. His French Li Livres dou Tresor has already been edited by French, American, and Italian scholars.¹⁰³

Brunetto Latino, like Francesco da Barberino after him, wrote in three languages, Latin, Italian, and French. Daniela De Rosa assisted me in transcribing all the Latin documents found in Florentine, Sienese, San Gimignano, Vatican, and Westminster Abbey archives in the 1993, Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri. These documents, eleven in his own hand, over a hundred which name him, show immense activity prior to the 1260 Battle of Montaperti, including the plaque in marble on the 20. Bargello (Plate V)¹⁰⁴ and autograph folios of the preparatory Libro di Montaperti (Plate VI);¹⁰⁵ next, two documents for the Guelph Florentine bankers in exile with him, found in the Vatican Secret Archives and the Muniment Room of Westminster Abbey (Plate XXXVI c, d); a few documents following their return, next where Brunetto is noted as being absent from Florence until the 1280 Peace of Cardinal Latino, and then many documents after the Sicilian Vespers on his October 1282 final return to Florence’s comune. It can only be during this time, in the 1280s–1290s, that he taught Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, Francesco da Barberino, and others.¹⁰⁶

Brunetto Latino’s Rettorica was edited critically by Francesco Maggini.¹⁰⁷ Federigo Ubaldini edited the Tesoretto critically, followed by Berthold Wiese, Giovanni Pozzi, Gianfranco Contini, Francesco Mazzoni, and “one other”.¹⁰⁸ Li Livres dou Tresor, written initially for presentation to Charles of Anjou in 1265, then further proliferating in European legal chambers and those of the Jerusalem Kingdom, for Popes, Emperors, Bishops, and Kings, has been critically edited from the Picardan French by Polydore Chabaille and by Francis J. Carmody, Spurgeon Baldwin transcribing the Escorial manuscript and Pietro Beltrami the Verona manuscript. The Picardan French text is noted to have two versions, the “First” and “Second Redactions”, in the “Second” its Chronicle section being updated to include Charles of Anjou’s two victories against the Ghibellines.¹⁰⁹ This Li Livres dou Tresor text in Picardan French is mistakenly considered to be Dante’s primary source and is constantly cited by scholars though there are thirty Italian Tesoro manuscripts to be found in Florentine libraries and archives to only one of the French Li Livres dou Tresor in a medieval manuscript in Florence.¹¹⁰

The Tesoro in Italian was initially published in print in Treviso in 1474 from the version edited, it seems, by Francesco da Barberino who appears to have re-translated the “First Redaction” Li Livres dou Tresor into the “Second Redaction” Tesoro. Further printed editions of the Tesoro were of poor quality, going downhill from that edited by Luigi Carrer in Venice, 1839, and coming to be erroneously ascribed to Bono Giamboni from one late manuscript in the Veneto.¹¹¹ Adolfo Mussafia, Michele Amari, and Sonia Minutello all noted that the Tesoro manuscripts had two redactions, the “First Redaction” Tesoro manuscripts clustering about the 1280s–1290s, updating the Chronicle section through the Sicilian Vespers and the death of Charles of Anjou, and giving careful designs from Gauthier/Gossouin du Metz’s Image du Monde for its astronomy section (Plate LXXU Tesoro, Gossuin de Metz on Gravity, a, b, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.20, fol. 72^v; c, BNCF Magl.VIII.1375, fol. 26^r; d, BAmbrosian G75 sup, fol. 29^v; e, BGuarnerian 238, fol. 96^r), while the later “Second Redaction” Tesoro manuscripts paradoxically and conservatively return to the initial French “First Redaction” of Li Livre dou Tresor’s astronomy section based on the Ptolemy/Alfraganus material Brunetto had acquired from Alfonso X el Sabio, its Chronicle section merely concluding with the 1260 exile following the Montaperti disaster.¹¹²

The two Tesoretto redactions, similarly, initially update from 1260 to the 1280s in the Florence, BRicc 2908, manuscript, possibly written out by the teenaged Dante, Brunetto’s legal ward, then conservatively return in the 1330s to the initial 1260 reading of the material in the Florence, BML Strozzi 146, manuscript, whose scribe and illuminator is Dante’s fellow student, Francesco da Barberino, the subject of our next chapter.¹¹³

Of Brunetto’s students Guido Cavalcanti died tragically in 1300¹¹⁴ and the Commedia is as if an elegy to his absence from it, just as the Vita nova was an elegy to the dead Beatrice. Dante was to die in 1321. But Francesco da Barberino lived to great old age, giving up his own career as a poet to instead oversee an officina that copied Brunetto’s methods of mass manuscript production that copied in turn Alfonso X el Sabio’s Arabic methods of mass manuscript production. Francesco da Barberino copied out and signed the Commedia in 1337 at 73 and again in 1347 at 83. When he died of the Black Death in 1348 at 84 and was buried in Santa Croce, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote his epitaph and inherited his mantle of propagating Dante’s Commedia.

Study Questions

Imagine your own education as by Brunetto Latino, teaching you the republican history of your city to train you to participate in its politics with ethics. Discuss how Florence, a new city, took ancient Republican Rome as its model, particularly honoring Cicero and his stress on integrity. In the past this was also the model used for politics in the United States, Thomas Jefferson, from Filippo Mazzei, taking the model of the Podestà for the role of the President elected for a limited term of office who swears to uphold the Statutes, the Constitution. Discuss how multiculturalism’s use of more efficient industrializing communication technologies could benefit society or cause problems. Discuss the pluralism of the Mediterranean societies and the Silk Road brought about through trade and cultural exchanges, particularly through peaceable encounters with Islam’s greater knowledge of ancient Greek texts. Discuss the trauma of pederasty in education, for instance, in residential schools. Catalogue, from Brunetto Latino, Dante Alighieri, Pietro Alighieri, their shared library. Discuss the effect on scholarship of Dante’s and our condemnation of Brunetto Latino. Discuss the accounts of the Sicilian Vespers in medieval histories, for instance, Giovanni Villani, and in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, I Vespri siciliani, in the context of Italy’s Risorgimento, paralleling Procida and Garibaldi.