Widely regarded as one of the greatest literary works composed in the Italian language and one of the foremost books of world literature, the Commedia was anointed “Divina” by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) around 1357 in his Trattatello in laude di Dante (Short Treatise in Praise of Dante).
Dante Alighieri’s major purpose in writing the Commedia is practical, redemptive, and moral: “to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to bring them to a state of happiness.”1 Dante does not define “happiness” as merely a pleasant state of mind, however that might be achieved. Instead, his understanding of human well-being tracks most closely those of Greco-Roman philosophers and Christian theologians who align happiness with an objective condition of the soul, mind, or psyche, which attains and reflects the human telos.2 As such, the Commedia purportedly guides human beings to earthly fulfillment and eternal bliss. Having been led astray by their susceptibility to the seven capital vices, the wrongful examples set by false spiritual leaders, and the corruption endemic within political and social structures, Dante’s contemporaries require explicit counsel that is more than pedagogic. Accordingly, in a quasi-autobiographical context, Dante employs his breathtaking mastery of poetry, aesthetics, theology, and philosophy to illustrate, not merely narrate, truths about the nature of the human telos and the proper recipe for realizing it.
The theme is the journey of Dante the pilgrim as he not only learns about the nature of sin, the potential for human perfectibility, and the beatific vision, but as he earns spiritual salvation. Guided by the great poet Virgil in the first stages of his transformation, the pilgrim requires divine grace, in the form of his beloved Beatrice, as well as loving contemplation, in the form of St. Bernard, to reach paradise. Spiritual redemption, then, requires humility, education, right will, and divine grace. The pilgrim begins his journey ignorant and bearing a host of wrongful dispositions. He concludes his journey wise and righteous, while basking in divine grace and in the theological virtues.
In Dante’s view, the pilgrim’s journey is the trek that all those yearning for earthly happiness and eternal salvation must undertake. Along the way, the pilgrim participates in the sins of the reprobates he meets and often identifies with their temptations and shortcomings. Dante invokes both mythological and historical figures as the pilgrim journeys from hell to paradise.
This work is concerned mainly with the moral lessons exemplified by the pilgrim’s encounters with four of the more vivid characters in Dante’s hell: Piero della Vigna, who rose from modest circumstances to become the foremost jurist, rhetorician, and wordsmith of Frederick II’s imperial order; Brunetto Latini, a thirteenth-century Florentine teacher, scholar, and statesman who directly influenced Dante; Farinata degli Uberti, an aristocratic warrior, who both vanquished and preserved Florence; and Guido da Montefeltro, who exemplified as no other in his era the qualities of the shrewd fox, attributes antecedently judged by Cicero as unworthy of political authorities but later extolled by Machiavelli as essential for artful governance. Also, the work focuses on and provides detail analyses of the two capital vices that Dante indicts as distinctively viperous: pride and envy. In sum, this work takes Dante’s avowed major purpose seriously and highlights the philosophical and moral underpinnings of his mission.
That Dante aspired to transmit moral lessons in his Commedia is unmistakable. However, precisely what moral lessons he intended to communicate with respect to his renderings of the lives of Piero, Brunetto, Farinata, and Guido is disputable. Accordingly, the moral lessons we elicit from Dante’s Commedia are interwoven with how we interpret his depictions of the major characters he introduces in his work. Our interpretations of Dante’s motives and intentions in that regard will fuel the moral conclusions that we derive. In that vein, this book is an interdisciplinary examination of four important figures in Inferno that keeps faith with Dante’s major objective in writing his Commedia ; includes original analyses of pride, envy, arrogance, and their relation to human well-being; encompasses historical, biographical, philosophical, psychological, literary, and theological dimensions; and expects to inspire readers to examine their own lives.
Throughout the work, I refer to the author of the Commedia as “Dante” and the protagonist of the Commedia as “the pilgrim.” While, as noted, the Commedia is quasi-autobiographical, the author and the protagonist enjoy some distance. Dante composed the Commedia over about a decade. The first of the three volumes composing the Commedia , and the volume most pertinent to this work, Inferno, was completed in 1314 and begun several years earlier. The third volume, Paradiso , was still being refined in the year of Dante’s death, 1321. The Commedia is set, however, at an earlier time; it begins on the night before Good Friday and concludes on the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. As a result, characters in the work often “prophesy” events to the pilgrim in their fictional setting of 1300 that Dante, composing up to twenty years later, has already experienced or witnessed.
Chapter 2 introduces Piero della Vigna by summarizing the highlights of his life. It then briefly explains and analyzes the pilgrim’s encounter with Piero in canto thirteen of Dante’s Inferno. Among other matters, Piero signals his ongoing concern with his posthumous reputation on earth, a concern that is reflected elsewhere in hell by other condemned sinners. Why would reprobates bereft of all redemptive hope nevertheless brood over the evaluations of survivors in the world? Answering that question requires a sidebar on the nature of posthumous benefit and harm. After completing that inquiry, the rest of the chapter explains, examines, and assesses the historical and textual evidence, in the context of Dante’s main purpose in writing the Commedia , in relation to four prominent interpretations of canto thirteen.
The first rendering (“the straight interpretation”) takes the narrative in that canto at face value: Piero is a diligent, uncommonly gifted imperial statesman who falls victim to the invidious connivances of mediocre courtiers who cloud Emperor Frederick II’s judgment, leading to Piero’s political demise and eventual suicide. Piero is fundamentally a talented, diligent public servant who is victimized by the envy of imperial epigones. As such, Dante’s message is that Piero merits our empathy, just as he earns the pilgrim’s compassion in canto thirteen, even while we recognize his rightful placement in hell as an unrepentant self-destroyer.
The second interpretation (“the disloyalty reading”), on the contrary, argues that Piero’s treachery and disloyalty to Frederick are the occasions of Piero’s degradation. On this view, Piero misused his position by avariciously accepting bribes, engaging in fraudulent land swindles, and placing his economic interests above the rule of law. Piero slyly exploited his role of chief imperial legal, diplomatic, and economic agent in the Kingdom of Sicily to enhance his own standing, subvert the common good, and undermine the emperor’s interests when doing so served Piero. The imperial courtiers, although envious of Piero’s access to the emperor, bring his malfeasance to Frederick’s attention. Piero’s suicide is the natural, predictable outcome of his underlying vicious dispositions. On this interpretation, Dante mercilessly condemns Piero, whose suicide does not highlight his victimhood but only underscores the fixed condition of his avaricious, treacherous soul. Dante trusts that discerning readers, unlike the pilgrim at this stage of his moral development, will piece through surface appearances and perceive the eternal darkness of a civil servant who curried and attained favor only to exploit his benefactor’s largesse for base, personal amplification.
The third reading of the text (“the excessive loyalty explanation”) concludes that Piero’s deeper shortcoming is excessive loyalty, bordering on idolatry, to Frederick. While the rhetorical panache of Pier’s epistolary collection is undeniable, the content of these missives exuded, at best, self-promotional propaganda and, at worst, bordered on heresy. By virtually deifying the emperor, Piero heretically worshiped Frederick as an idol, thereby ignoring his spiritual obligations and duties to God. Piero controlled access to his idol so fastidiously that he inadvertently promoted the envy of lesser courtiers, whose invidious machinations eventually facilitate Piero’s calamities. Piero’s outrageous deification of Frederick and selfish control of access to the emperor nurture the subsequent connivance of his fellow courtiers. Accordingly, Piero bears at least partial causal and moral responsibility for his political reversal of fortune. Dante’s message is that Piero, in effect, eventually reaps what he had recklessly sown.
The fourth explanation of canto thirteen (“the authorial identification treatment”) accepts that Piero was a treacherous, disloyal, avaricious fraud who met his just deserts, but insists that Dante willingly ignores, even smoothes over, Piero’s felonious deeds and alarming dispositions. Dante is presumably motivated by two concerns: his own political victimization and exile precipitated by the forces of envy in Florence and Pier’s standing as a poet, statesman, and intellectual. On this account, Dante interprets Pier’s plight so closely with his own fate that he willingly and knowingly ignores or falsifies the historical record in order to underscore the special insidiousness of envy, the indefensible political effects that vile disposition spawns, and the special vulnerability of prodigious talents.
Chapter 3 continues the argument by re-examining more closely and refining the third reading of the thirteenth canto. In so doing, the chapter analyzes the nature of esoteric composition, an authorial art of masking one’s literary intent within surreptitious poetic style, ironic dissimulation, and metaphorical misdirection. Did Dante conceal his deepest convictions within a special code for perspicacious readers capable of piercing through literary appearances? If so, what motivation fueled this literary masquerade? Does this literary strategy invite false interpretations from the mass of readers lacking the supposed special discernment powers of the cognoscenti? In any case, how are such inquiries related to interpreting canto thirteen reasonably?
Chapter 4 examines the lessons and life of Brunetto Latini, philosopher, rhetorician, teacher, and statesman,...