Abstract
This chapter examines the lessons and life of Brunetto Latini, philosopher, rhetorician, teacher, and statesman, a leading figure in Florentine social life for almost forty years. Brunetto meets the pilgrim in canto fifteen of Inferno. Residing among sodomites in the third ring of the seventh circle of Dante’s hell, the pilgrim recognizes that Latini taught him to make himself eternal. This chapter explains what that suggests in the context of Latini’s exile from and return to Florence, as well as his encyclopedic and philosophical writings. An ongoing, irresolvable scholarly dispute centers on why Dante places Brunetto in the third ring of the seventh circle given we lack any historical evidence that Latini was a sexual sodomite. After sketching divergent interpretations of the narrative in canto fifteen, this chapter evaluates the historical and textual evidence in search of Brunetto’s sin. Finally, I take seriously the possibility that Dante unfairly assesses Brunetto Latini.
Who has so feeble a mind and so ignoble a courage that, in reading the great deeds of Caesar, Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal, and so many others, he is not kindled with a great longing to be like them, and would not choose that perpetual fame rather than this perishing life which lasts but a day or two? But the unlearned know not glory, and seek not to be famous.
—Count Lodovico da Canossa (1476–1532) in Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478–1529) The Courtier
Speech is a powerful lord that with the smallest and most invisible body accomplished most godlike works. It can banish fear and remove grief and instill pleasure and enhance pity. … Divine sweetness transmitted through words is inductive of pleasure, reductive of pain. Thus, by entering into the opinion of the soul the force of incantation is wont to beguile and persuade and alter it by witchcraft.
—Gorgias (ca. 485–ca. 380 BC)
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Notes
- 1.
Giovanni Villani, Chronicle: Selections, trans. Rose E. Self (Lexington, KY: CreateSpace, 2017), VIII. 10.
- 2.
Peter Armour observes, “It is uncertain whether Brunetto’s last words to Dante in Inferno XV, 119–20 … refer to the lengthy pose Tresor in French or to the innovatory Italian narrative poem, the Tesoro, or perhaps both. The former, precursor of [Dante’s] Convivio , was more famous; but the latter had suggested the starting point for the vernacular Comedy and, as a poem, however defective or ‘municipal’ in its language, would have been the more appropriate vehicle for immortality.” “Brunetto, the Stoic Pessimist,” Dante Studies 112 (1994): 14.
- 3.
See, for example, Mark Musa, Dante’s Inferno, Notes, Canto XV (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1971); Massimo Verdicchio, Reading Dante Reading (Edmonton, AL: M. V. Dimic Research Institute, 2008); John Aherne, “Troping the Fig: Inferno XV 66.” Lectura Dantis 6 (1990): 80–91 (sodomy); Lorenzo Guelfi, Nuovi Studii sui Dante (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1911) (onanism); Peter Armour, “Brunetto, the Stoic Pessimist,” Dante Studies 112 (1994): 1–18 (pessimistic about human nature) “Dante’s Brunetto: The Paternal Paterine?” Italian Studies 38 (1) (1983): 1–38 (Manichaean heresy); Mario De Rosa, Dante e il padre ideale (Naples: Federigo and Ardia, 1990) (Latini is condemned as an exemplar of an entire generation of Florentines); John Freccero, “The Eternal Image of the Father,” in The Poetry of Allusion, ed. Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford University Press, 1991) (refusal to be bound by human limitations); Diane Culbertson, “Dante, the Yahwist, and the Sins of Sodom,” Italian Culture 4 (1) (1983): 11–23 (lust for fame); Thomas Nevin, “Ser Brunetto’s Immortality,” Dante Studies 96 (1978): 21–37 (lack of spiritual vision and indifference to grace); Nicholas R. Havely, “Brunetto and Palinurus,” Dante Studies 108 (1990): 29–38 (excessive worldliness); Elio Costa, “From locus amoris to Infernal Pentecost,” Quaderni d’Italianistica 10 (1989): 109–132 (rejection of love);Sally Mussetter, “Dante and the Sin of Brunetto Latini,” Philological Quarterly 63 (1984): 431–448 (professional malfeasance; amplified humanism); Lillian M. Bisson, “Brunetto Latini as a Failed Mentor,” Medievalia et Humanistica 18 (1992): 1–15 (obsession with earthly fame); Massimo Verdicchio, “Re-reading Brunetto Latini and Inferno XV,” Quaderni d’Italianistica 21 (1) (2000): 61–81 (pride and glory); James T. Chiampi, “Ser Brunetto, Scriba and Litterato,” Rivista di Studi Italiani 18 (1) (2000): 1–25 (excessive individualism and solitude); Andre Pezard, Dante sous la pluie de feu (Paris: Vrin, 1950) (Latini blasphemed against the Italian language by writing in Trésor in French); Richard Kay, Dante’s Swift and Strong (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978) (from Dante’s perspective, Latini failed to recognize the rightful authority of the emperor and instead obsessed over Florence as an independent republic); Francesca Guerra D’Antoni, Dante’s Burning Sands (New York: Peter Lang, 1991) (administrative improprieties involving conflicts of interests; exploiting ancient wisdom for profit); Eugene Vance, Marvelous Signals (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986) (political opportunism, material aggrandizement while in office, excessive pride);Gregory B. Stone, “Sodomy, Diversity, Cosmopolitanism,” Dante Studies 123 (2005): 89–132 (deranged ethnocentrism);Julia Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told Tales (New York: Peter Lang, 1993) (usury): Holloway, ed. and trans. Il Tesoretto (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981) (following Cicero too closely); Glenn A. Steinberg, “Dante’s Bookishness” Modern Philology 112 (1) (2014): 25–55 (although Latini is portrayed as a sodomist, Dante places him the seventh circle because of his inadequate poetry); Jeffrey Richards, “Dante’s Commedia and Its Vernacular Narrative Context,” (Princeton Dissertation: Princeton, NJ, 1978) (Dante is jokingly complying with Brunetto’s instructions in Tesoretto, 103–112); C.T. Davis, “Brunetto Latini and Dante,” Studi Medievali 8 (1967): 421–450 (structure of the poem, connecting Brunetto, Marco Lombardo, and Cacciaguida). This list barely scratches the surface of the ongoing centuries-long scholarly speculation on Brunetto’s sin in the eyes of Dante.
- 4.
That Brunetto Latini was an unapologetic, staunch advocate of republicanism and a strident adversary of monarchism is indisputable. Julia Bolton Holloway observes, “In his persona as Aristotle [in Trésor] [Brunetto] was even to deliberately mistranslate the text of Nicomachean Ethics where it praised monarchy, changing this to its opposite, the praise of the commune, the republic, of government by people, not princes … the Trésor was a book likely commissioned by republican Florentine bankers and compiled by Brunetto Latini—to educate kings and emperors how to govern constitutionally. … It was used by aristocrats and revolutionaries to correct tyranny.” Twice-Told Tales, 8, 13.
- 5.
In his, De Vulgari Eloquentia , Dante indicts Brunetto, as one of the Tuscans who anoint themselves renown, although composing verses appropriate only for local consumption: “[W]e come to the Tuscans, who, rendered senseless by some aberration of their own, seem to lay claim to the honor of possessing the illustrious vernacular. And it is not only the common people who lose their heads in this fashion, for we find a number of famous men have believed as much: like Guittone d’Arezzo, who never even aimed at a vernacular worthy of the court, or Buonagiunta de Lucca or Gallo of Pisa, or Mino Mocato of Siena, or Brunetto the Florentine, all of whose poetry, if there were space to study it closely here, we would find to be fitted not for a court but at best for a city council.” De Vulgaria Eloquentia : Dante’s Book of Exile, trans. Marianne Shapiro (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), I 13.1.
- 6.
The linkage of Brunetto Latini, Marco Lombardo, and Cacciaguida runs as follows: Brunetto seemingly emphasizes astrological influences and personified forces such as Fortuna when explaining the course of natural events and individual destiny; riles against conflict among Roman and Fiesolean elements in Florence; and intones about the pilgrim’s glorious destiny (I 15.55–78). Marco Lombardo strongly denies all determinism and describes the nature of free will and personal responsibility. Marco adds that the exalted values, adherence to honor, and glorious principles of olden times have evaporated; corrupt and self-serving deeds now pervade. Finally, Marco stresses the need for cooperation between the mutually independent domains of imperial and papal authority (P 16. 73–93). Cacciaguida, presumably Dante’s great-great grandfather (Par. 15–17) predicts Dante’s future exile from Florence and his estrangement thereafter; provides information regarding twelfth-century Florence; and waxes nostalgic about the “Roman” era in Florence, when the city was much smaller and had not yet absorbed rural immigrants whose ambitions fueled municipal conflict. The common themes are determinism versus free will; the pilgrim’s future; current and past conditions in Florence; and the conflict supposedly arising from “Roman” and “non-Roman” elements within the city’s population.
- 7.
Joan M. Ferrante, The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 161 n. 40.
- 8.
Joseph Pequigney, “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio,” Representations 36 (1991): 25.
- 9.
Ibid., 27, 28. Michele Barbi remarks, “Another prize for which the foot race was run was a banner and a rooster and a pair of gloves; the winner was awarded the banner and the last man in the race the rooster, which he had to carry openly in the city.” “Review of Paget Toynbee: A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante.”In Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana N.S. 6 (1899): 217.
- 10.
Benedetto Croce, The Poetry of Dante (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922), 125–126.
- 11.
Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 71, 93, 157.
- 12.
Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 58.
- 13.
For example, Julia Bolton Holloway reports: “The Tesoretto , a dream vision poem which takes place in the pilgrimage pass of Roncesvalles, which is autobiographically about Latino’s exile, and which combines reality and allegory, praxis and theory, deeply influenced Dante’s exilic Commedia , and this has been observed by Latino editors and scholars for centuries.” Twice-Told Tales, 292. Latini’s tale of redemption is prefigured by Cicero’s Dream of Scipio and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, among others. Massimo Verdicchio adds: “Quotations from Latini’s works abound both in the Convivio and the Commedia , and as critics have shown, much of the first canto of the Inferno is indebted to Latini, as the situation and most of the expressions seem right out of his Il Tesoretto .” Reading Dante Reading: A Postmodern Reading of Dante’s Commedia (Edmonton, AB: M.V. Dimic Research Institute, 2008), 164.
- 14.
Giovanni Boccaccio, Life of Dante, trans. Philip H. Wicksteed (London: Oneworld Classics, 2009), 88.
- 15.
Holloway observes that in 1250 the Primo Popolo drove wealthy Ghibelline landowners out of Florence and into the rural Fiesolan surroundings, “Brunetto seemed to have chafed at the establishment of Fiesole and its Ghibelline flavor in his own quest for the simplicity of Cato, the severity of Cicero. He was to stress, in the Rettorica and in the section on rhetoric in the Tresor, the need to civilize and educate such people; through eloquence bringing them to understand the need for law and justice.” Twice-Told Tales, 181.
- 16.
Giovanni Villani records the legend that Florence was founded under the auspices of the god of war, Mars: “After that [the birth from the contrary influences of Romans and Fiesolans] the city of Florence was built and peopled … and then by the Arno they brought stone and columns from Fiesole, and founded and built the said temple. … Very noble and beautiful they built it with eight sides, and when it had been built with great diligence, they dedicated it to the god Mars … and adopted him as their god so long as paganism continued in Florence.” Chronicle, I. 42.
- 17.
Charles T. Davis, Dante’s Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 189–190.
- 18.
Giovanni Villani relates the myth of the creation of Florence arising from the Roman trouncing of the Catalinian conspiracy and the genetic foundation of recurrent conflict in Florence thereafter: “And note that it is not to be wondered at that the Florentines are always at war and strife among themselves, being born and descended from two peoples so contrary and hostile ad different in habits as were the noble Romans in their virtue and the rude Fiesolans fierce in war.” Chronicle, I. 38.
- 19.
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Reading Dante (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 3, 4.Filippo Villani (1325–1407), nephew of Giovanni Villani (1276–1348), described Brunetto Latini as “the rhetorician of Florence, noting that he was both witty and learned, capable of moving audiences to laughter, but nevertheless governing himself with morality.” Cited in Brunetto Latini, Il Tesoretto, trans. Julia Bolton Holloway (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981), xi.
- 20.
Virgil remarks in canto fifteen of Purgatorio: Però che ru rificchi/la mente pur a le cose terrene/di vera luce tenebre dispicchi. (P 15. 6–66) (“Since you insist on limiting your mind to thoughts of worldly things alone, from the true light you reap only the dark.”)
- 21.
Pequigney, “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio,” 22, 23.
- 22.
Ibid. 24.
- 23.
Santagata, Dante, 72; see also, 381 n. 45 for a fuller discussion of this matter.
- 24.
Peter Armour “The Love of Two Florentines: Brunetto Latini and Bondie Dietaiuti,” Lectura Dantis Virginiana 9 (1991): 11.
- 25.
Dante della Terza observes, “An irreducible, consubstantial ambiguity results from the counterpoint of Brunetto’s two personalities—the first arising from his discourse, the second from his sin; the one belonging to a far-sighted teacher, the other rooted in a humbling nearsightedness, the mala luce of the damned.” “Canto XV. The Canto of Brunetto Latini,” in A. Mandelbaum, A. Oldcorn and C. Ross, eds. Lectura Dantis: Inferno, a Canto-by-Canto Commentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 203.
- 26.
Charles S. Singleton observes: “What basis Dante had for imputing to Priscian guilt of a sexual nature is not known; there is nothing to justify the accusation in any of the scanty notices of him that have reached us. The early commentators [for example, Boccaccio] believe he is meant to represent the whole tribe of pedagogi and would justify Dante’s condemnation of him by the argument, pedagogus ergo sodomiticus (“teacher, therefore sodomite”).” Inferno: Text and Commentary, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 269 n. 109. If so, Dante advances a sad argument for a sorry moral lesson.
- 27.
See, for example, Richard Kay, Dante’s Swift and Strong (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 6–7.
- 28.
Ibid., 54–55.
- 29.
Ibid., 57.
- 30.
Ibid., 66.
- 31.
Giovanni Boccaccio, Expositions on Dante’s Comedy, trans. Michael Papio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 567.
- 32.
Kay, Dante’s Swift and Strong, 71, 109.
- 33.
Ibid., 154.
- 34.
Pequigney, “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio,” 38.
- 35.
Kay, Dante’s Swift and Strong, 209–306.
- 36.
Ibid., 154.
- 37.
Dante della Terza views the dearth of historical evidence in a different light: “As for the possibility that Priscian, Accorso, and Andrea del Mozzi, whom Brunetto names, were guilty of sodomy, it must be said that what we see on the surface is the Dantean representation of preemptory gesture whose affirmative force is inversely proportional to the quality of the historical proof that sustains it. But this is not surprising. Doesn’t the power of conviction, the compulsive force of Dante’s reality, always depend more on the irreversible flash of an action rather than on historical correctness for justification? … an excessive attempt to rationalize that rapport between poetic representation and the historical facts on which it is based can distort our perspective of literature and make us lose our way.” “Canto XV. The Canto of Brunetto Latini,” 209, 210.
Della Terza offers a powerful point regarding literary interpretation. But we must wonder if the strategy he identifies facilitates Dante’s stated aspiration “to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to bring them to a state of happiness.” Writing in the vernacular allows the work to reach a wider audience and promotes the goal of moral instruction for the masses. Does writing in a thickly esoteric and radically representational style at odds with the historical evidence about famous Florentines who have recently died advance that goal?
- 38.
See, for example, Santagata, Dante, 72–74; Thomas Nevin, “Ser Brunetto’s Immortality: Inferno XV.” Dante Studies 96 (1978): 21–37; Peter Armour “The Love of Two Florentines: Brunetto Latini and Bondie Dietaiuti,” Lectura Dantis Virginiana 9 (1991): 11–33.
- 39.
In Rettorica, Brunetto demonstrates his familiar with the work of Pietro della Vigna and praises his rhetorical, both oral and written, skills and political acumen (R 5).
- 40.
Holloway, Twice-Told Tales, 203.
- 41.
Ibid, 297.
- 42.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. 2, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), MXV. 871–879.
- 43.
The case for punishing Brunetto Latini for his Tresor arises from Dante’s comments in Convivio : “I declare to the eternal shame of the evil Italians who extol the vernacular of other peoples and disparage their own that their action stems from five execrable causes. The first is blindness in the power of discrimination; the second is fraudulent justification; the third greed for empty glory; the fourth fault-finding prompted by envy; and, the fifth and last, baseness of mind, or pusillanimity.” Convivio, trans. Andrew Frisardi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), I 11.1–2).
Presumably, Brunetto wrote Tresor in French because of “greed for empty glory.” In that work, Brunetto observes: “If anyone should ask why this book is written in Romance according to the usage of French, even though we are Italian, I would say that there are two reasons: one, that we are in France; the other, that French is more pleasant and has more in common with all other languages.” (T I.1.8)
However, Brunetto composed his Tesoretto and La Rettorica in Italian, and I agree with Armour that Tesoretto is the “more appropriate vehicle for immortality.” Thus, that Brunetto viewed the Italian vernacular as base or unworthy does not follow. Brunetto was hardly a traitor to his nation or region; he was in fact an ardent patriot; and if Dante did consign him to hell primarily because he wrote Tresor in French while exiled in France and because he was an ersatz poet, that reflects more poorly on Dante than it does on Latini.
- 44.
Kenelm Foster, “An Introduction to the ‘Inferno,’” in Dante, ed. Jeremy Tambling (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), 19.
- 45.
Cited in Davis, Dante’s Italy, 186–187.
- 46.
Nevin, “Ser Brunetto’s Immortality,” 31, 33.
- 47.
Ibid, 34.
- 48.
Peter Armour, “Dante’s Brunetto: The Paternal Paterine?” Italian Studies 38 (1983):29.
- 49.
Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 36–37, 40–48.
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Belliotti, R.A. (2020). How to Earn Immortality: Brunetto Latini (1220–1294). In: Dante’s Inferno. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40771-1_4
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