DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0072
50
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
was no skeptical bystander looking on at the devout crowds,
hot and eager and weary, but a pious Catholic of the middle
ages, no doubt thankful enough for the indulgence which
gave him a tremulous sense of forgiveness and amnesty for
all his errors, and humbly earning the same by the fifteen
days of devotion prescribed, making his weary way from
San Pietro across the bridge to San Paolo on the other side
of the river. Many thoughts were in his mind, no doubt,
among his Aves and Paternosters, as he made the daily
pilgrimage. His fellow-pilgrim, Giovanni Villani, was so
touched and stimulated by the unusual scene, finding him-
self “in that blessed pilgrimage, in that holy city of Rome,
seeing all the great and ancient things, and reading the
histories and great deeds of the Romans,” that he made up
his mind to begin his history of Florence “ the daughter
and creation of Rome,” as soon as he returned home. The
poet’s thoughts might well have received a similar yet still
higher impulse. A great purpose had risen in his mind
years before when the world had been made dim to him by
the loss of Beatrice, and he had vowed in a passion of love
and grief, “ to say of her that which never yet was said
of any woman.” What had become of this high hope
and resolution? Years had passed since then, and the
commoner life had seized upon Dante, and his force of
manhood and vitality had carried him into many busy
scenes, and passions far removed from that sacred circle in
which Beatrice dwelt. He had lived in a vulgar, every-
day region far out of the “Vita Nuova;” he had fought,
argued, ruled, contended with, and persuaded his fellow-
creatures, and had found solace and enjoyment in the
ringliiera and the council chamber and before foreign
kings and potentates, and he had loved—perhaps coarsely,
vulgarly—tasting those grosser sweetnesses which are as
apples of Gomorrah, full of ashes and bitterness. Storm-
ing through this mid-career of his life, the vehement,
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
was no skeptical bystander looking on at the devout crowds,
hot and eager and weary, but a pious Catholic of the middle
ages, no doubt thankful enough for the indulgence which
gave him a tremulous sense of forgiveness and amnesty for
all his errors, and humbly earning the same by the fifteen
days of devotion prescribed, making his weary way from
San Pietro across the bridge to San Paolo on the other side
of the river. Many thoughts were in his mind, no doubt,
among his Aves and Paternosters, as he made the daily
pilgrimage. His fellow-pilgrim, Giovanni Villani, was so
touched and stimulated by the unusual scene, finding him-
self “in that blessed pilgrimage, in that holy city of Rome,
seeing all the great and ancient things, and reading the
histories and great deeds of the Romans,” that he made up
his mind to begin his history of Florence “ the daughter
and creation of Rome,” as soon as he returned home. The
poet’s thoughts might well have received a similar yet still
higher impulse. A great purpose had risen in his mind
years before when the world had been made dim to him by
the loss of Beatrice, and he had vowed in a passion of love
and grief, “ to say of her that which never yet was said
of any woman.” What had become of this high hope
and resolution? Years had passed since then, and the
commoner life had seized upon Dante, and his force of
manhood and vitality had carried him into many busy
scenes, and passions far removed from that sacred circle in
which Beatrice dwelt. He had lived in a vulgar, every-
day region far out of the “Vita Nuova;” he had fought,
argued, ruled, contended with, and persuaded his fellow-
creatures, and had found solace and enjoyment in the
ringliiera and the council chamber and before foreign
kings and potentates, and he had loved—perhaps coarsely,
vulgarly—tasting those grosser sweetnesses which are as
apples of Gomorrah, full of ashes and bitterness. Storm-
ing through this mid-career of his life, the vehement,