Chapter VII: Book II: The unfinished second book is of the utmost value to the

student of Italian poetic form. It makes us realise, too, how zealously Dante sought out technical perfection, studying subtle musical and rhythmical effects, curiously weighing the divisions of his stanzas, balancing lines, selecting words, harmonising syllables. No less noteworthy are his modest references to his own work and his generous appreciation of that of others, his predecessors and contemporaries, with reference to whose poems, as well as to his own, he illustrates his maxims. There is a certain limitation in that Dante conceives of poetry as only lyrical and written to be set to music (ii. 4), recognising only the most elaborate and least spontaneous forms of lyrical poetry--the Canzone (of which the Sestina is a variety), the Ballata, the Sonnet (ii. 3). There is no hint of that splendid rhythm, at once epical and lyrical, in which the _Divina Commedia_ was to be written; though it is possible that Dante would have dealt with it in the fourth book, in which he intended to treat the discernment to be exercised with a subject fit to be sung in the “comic” style, in which sometimes the “middle” and sometimes the “lowly” vernacular may be used (ii. 4), and also, dealing with poems in the “middle” vulgar tongue, to treat specially of rhyme (ii. 13). The third book would perhaps have been concerned with the use of the illustrious vernacular in Italian prose (ii. 1.)

The illustrious vulgar tongue having been found, Dante proceeds thus to show the noblest use to which it can be put by the poet. Only three subjects are sufficiently exalted to be sung in this stateliest form of Italian speech, this highest vernacular: _Salus_, _Venus_, _Virtus_; or those things which specially relate to them: the rightful use of arms, the fire of love, the direction of the will; and the first of these themes had not been handled, according to Dante, by any Italian poet. He cites Bertran de Born as having written on arms, Arnaut Daniel and Cino da Pistoia on love, Giraut de Borneil and “the friend of Cino” (himself) on _rectitudo_ (ii. 2). Of the three legitimate lyrical forms the canzone is noblest, and contains what Rossetti called the “fundamental brainwork” of the most illustrious poets (ii. 3). And the ballata is nobler than the sonnet. It is in the canzone alone, in the “tragic” or highest style, that these sublime themes are to be sung; the style in which the stateliness of the lines, the loftiness of the construction, and the excellence of the words agree with the dignity of the subject. In this superexcellent sense, a canzone is a composition in the loftiest style of equal stanzas, without a refrain, referring to one subject.[21] And the rest of the book is occupied with rules for its proper construction; the different lines to be used, the choice of words, the structure of the various types of stanza, in which the whole art of the canzone is contained, the arrangement of rhymes; the work breaking off at the point where Dante was about to treat of the number of lines and syllables in the stanza. It is noteworthy that, though he illustrates his practical rules by examples from the Provençal troubadours, his Italian predecessors and contemporaries, and his own canzoni, the great Latin poets are set up as models: “The more closely we imitate these, the more correctly we write poetry” (ii. 4). There is some indication that the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ would have been dedicated to Cino da Pistoia as the _Vita Nuova_ had been to Guido Cavalcanti.

DATE OF COMPOSITION.--The _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ was probably written about the same time as the _Convivio_ or slightly earlier. From a mention of the Marquis Giovanni of Monferrato apparently as living (_V. E._ i. 12), who died in January (?) 1305, it has been supposed that Book i. cannot be much later than the beginning of that year. Dante’s evident friendly feeling for Bologna (which altered before he wrote the _Commedia_) may be connected with the time when the Florentine exiles were welcomed in that city, before the decree of expulsion in 1306. It has sometimes been thought that Book ii. may be a much later piece of work, produced as a poetical textbook at Ravenna in Dante’s last years, and broken off, as Boccaccio suggests, by his death. Nevertheless, when the tone of the work and the probable dates of the lyrics quoted be taken into account, it seems more probable that what we have of the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ was written between 1304 and 1306; it represents part of the labours which were interrupted by the advent of Henry VII., or abandoned when the poet turned to the _Divina Commedia_.

2. _The “Monarchia”_

THE EMPIRE.--Upon all the political life of mediaeval Italy lay the gigantic shadow of a stupendous edifice, the Holy Roman Empire. Although the barbarians had struck down the body of the Empire of Rome, the spirit of Julius Caesar was mighty yet, as in Shakespeare’s tragedy. The monarchy of Augustus, of Trajan, of Constantine and Justinian, still lived; not in the persons of the impotent Caesars of Byzantium, but in those of the successors of Charlemagne. From the coronation of Otto the Saxon (962) to the death of the Suabian Frederick II. (1250), the mediaeval western world saw in the man whom the Germans recognised as their sovereign the “King of the Romans ever Augustus,” the Emperor-elect, who when crowned at Rome would be “Romanorum Imperator,” the supreme head of the universal Monarchy and the Vicar of God in things temporal, even as the Pope was the supreme head of the universal Church and the Vicar of God in things spiritual. In the eyes of Dante, the Papacy and the Empire alike proceeded from God, and were inseparably wedded to Rome, the eternal city; from which as two suns they should shed light upon man’s spiritual and temporal paths, as divinely ordained by the infinite goodness of Him from whom the power of Peter and of Caesar bifurcates as from a point (_Purg. xvi._ 106-108, _Epist._ v. 5).

PAPAL CLAIMS.--With the increase of their temporal power, the successors of Hildebrand, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had extended their authority from spiritual into purely secular regions. For them the imperial dignity was not of divine origin, but the gift of the Church to Charlemagne and his German successors. “What is the Teutonic King till consecrated at Rome?” wrote Adrian to Frederick Barbarossa: “The chair of Peter has given and can withdraw its gifts.” In the interregnum that followed the fall of the house of Suabia, the Popes had claimed to exercise imperial rights in Italy, with disastrous results. They had joined the sword with the pastoral staff; and the Church, by confounding in herself the two governments, had fallen into the mire (_Purg._ xvi. 109-112, 127-129). And this tendency in the Papacy culminated in the extravagant pretensions of Boniface VIII., in his relations with both the Empire and France, and his famous Bull _Unam Sanctam_ (November 1302), declaring that the temporal power of kings is subject to the spiritual power of the priesthood, and directed by it as the body by the soul.

DATE OF THE “MONARCHIA.”--The _Monarchia_ is Dante’s attempt to solve this burning mediaeval question of the proper relations of Church and State, of spiritual and temporal authority. Although it is undoubtedly the most famous of his prose works, the most widely divergent views have been held as to its date of composition. If the _Vita Nuova_ is the most ideal book of love, the _Monarchia_ is one of the most purely idealistic works ever written on politics. Even as Beatrice is the most glorious lady of the poet’s mind, _la gloriosa donna de la mia mente_, so the temporal monarchy or Empire is to be considered by the poet in its ideal aspect according to the divine intention, _typo et secundum intentionem_ (_Mon._ i. 2). Like the _Vita Nuova_, and unlike any other of Dante’s longer works, the _Monarchia_ contains no mention of the poet’s exile, and no explicit references or allusions to contemporary events or persons. From this, and other considerations, it has sometimes been held that the _Monarchia_ was written during his political life in Florence. Boccaccio, on the other hand, declares that Dante made this book on the coming of Henry VII., and the trend of criticism to-day is to accept 1313 as the approximate date. There are, however, scholars who consider it more probable that the _Monarchia_ was written towards the close of the poet’s life.