The Refining Mine: Inklings of the Comedy in Dante’s Late Exchange with Cino da Pistoia

Leonardo Chiarantini, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

In Cino’s Cercando di trovar minera in oro, the lyric “I” recounts having been pricked by a wicked thorn, that is, a new love, and to be about to die from bleeding (“punto m’ha ’l cor, marchese, mala spina, / in guisa che versando il sangue moro,” 3-4) and goes on to declare that his suffering is dictated by a planet (“cotal pianeta, lasso, mi destina,” 7). We know that Dante’s response was composed in 1306, when he was guest of the Malaspina family in Lunigiana and may have already abandoned the composition of the Convivio to embark upon the enterprise of the Comedy.^[7] In the first verses, Dante praises his fellow poet’s voice as “so sweet and plain” and “worthy of finding all treasure.” Yet, despite the sweetness of Cino’s verses, Dante goes on to say, his inconstancy drives him away from such treasure.

Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro

la voce vostra sì dolce e latina,

ma volgibile cor ve ·n disvicina,

ove stecco d’Amor mai non fé foro.^[8]

In the next verses, Dante describes himself as transfixed by the thorn of love that is healed with sighs (“del prun che con sospir si medicina”); yet he can nevertheless find the mine where this power (“quella virtù”) is refined:

Io che trafitto sono in ogni poro

del prun che con sospir si medicina,

pur trovo la minera in cui s’affina

quella virtù per cui mi discoloro.

The poet goes on to claim that it is not the sun’s fault, but rather his own, if Cino’s “blind brow” (“orba fronte”) cannot see it when it rises and sets:

Non è colpa del sol se l’orba fronte

no·l vede quando scende e quando poia,

ma de la condizion malvagia e croia.

The result of all this is that Dante no longer trusts his friend’s protestations of love. He concludes that, not even if he were to see a rain of tears streaming from Cino’s eyes to bear his graceful words out, could he believe him.

S’io vi vedessi uscir degli occhi ploia

per prova fare a le parole conte,

non mi porreste di sospetto in ponte.

Cino was often accused by his fellow poets of having a changeable heart. Cacciamonte da Bologna likens him to a ship without ballast that sways back and forth (“Nave parete senza savornegio, / che va qua e là,” Prego il nome de la vostra fonta, 9-10). Gherarduccio Garisendi reproves Cino for his vain, unbridled, and lascivious heart (“cor vano, disciolto e lascivo,” Dolce d’amore amico, 5) and for his insincere desire (“disianza infinta,” 13). Likewise, Guelfo Taviani reproaches him for being divided between two ladies and goes on to say that Love has understood his deception and will only give him brief desires (“n’ha ’nfinta / la ’ntenza tua, e dratti desii corti,” Molto li tuoi pensier mi paion torti, 7-8).^[9] Yet, while reproving his friend’s inconstancy, Dante is not just adding his voice to those of Cino’s detractors. He is also defining his own poetics. At issue here is the correspondence between poetic words and actual sentiments. In another sonnet addressed to Cino, Io mi credea del tutto esser partito, Dante likewise rebukes his friend’s fickleness and concludes with a plea that Cino make his deeds accord with his sweet verses, that is, his poetry should tell the truth: “Però, se legger cor così vi volve, / prego che con vertù il correggiate, / sì che s’accordi i fatti a’ dolci detti.” (12-14). In these verses, Dante accuses Cino of having a light heart (“legger cor”), a lightness that suggests a lack of truthfulness or faithfulness.

The “legger cor” of Io mi credea might also allude to the quality of leggiadria. If we are to heed Dante in his moral canzone Poscia ch’Amor del tutto m’ha lasciato, leggiadria is a virtue that unites the chivalric and the ethical. But leggiadria comes from the Occitan leujairia, indicating the virtue of charm.^[10] In the lexicon of troubadours, it also denotes lightness, in the sense of superficiality and flakiness. An example is Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ canso Ges, si tot ma don’ et amors: “Mas jois m’a tan dousas sabors / Que.m pot dar gaug e tolre consirier / Mal grat d’amor et de mon cor leugier” (28-30) – where “leugier” means ‘inconstant’, as is suggested by the first envoi, in which the poet claims, “C’aisill que son camjador e leugier / Son meils amat” (42-43).^[11] Another example is Peirol’s tenso Quant Amors trobet partit, where Love reproaches the poet’s fickle sentiment (“Trop avetz leugier talan!,” 24).^[12] This sort of lightness is cognate with what in the Convivio Dante calls levezza, where the noun indicates erotic as well as moral and intellectual shallowness.^[13] Leggiadria also appears to have a negative meaning in Dante’s Sonar bracchetti, e cacciatori aizzare, where it would denote fickleness and rashness.^[14] Dante uses the adjective legiadro in his sonetto rinterzato O voi che per la via d’Amor passate. Defined a “lamentanza” in the prose of the Vita nova, the sonnet laments the loss of a love that was a source of joy and recalls when Love would place the poet in such a delightful state that his light heart (“legiadro […] cor,” 12) aroused the envy of those around him. Although here the adjective may be taken as meaning merely ‘glad’, scholars have suggested that it may also carry the overtones of levity or superficiality as can be found in Sonar bracchetti and the Occitan leujairia.^[15]

Dante concludes the sonnet to Cino Io mi credea with an invitation to his friend to “correct” his lightness of heart (“legger cor,” 12) by means of virtue, so that his deeds might correspond to his sweet words (“sì che s’accordi i fatti a’ dolci detti,” 14). It is just such a correction through the exercise of virtue that Cino rejects in many of his lyrics, where he claims that Love is an indomitable force that compels him to love, against which he is powerless. Particularly eloquent, in this respect, is Cino’s I’ no spero che mai per mia salute. This canzone is a long illustration of reason’s incapacity to withstand desire: wisdom is driven out by deceiving love, which becomes the lover’s lord and forces him to do its will (“ed Amor ch’è sottile — sì che sforza / l’altrui savere / al su’ volere, — mi si fe’ segnore,” 42-44). Significant is Cino’s claim that the lady’s disdain does not move reason (“non move ragione,” 45) as the enamored subject is forced to comply with his desire (“ché io convegno — seguire isforzato / il disio,” 46-47) even though it is not a virtuous one (“ancor che da vertù sie scompagnato,” 49). More eloquent still is Bene è forte cosa il dolce sguardo, where Cino defines love as an excess that begins with the sight of the lady and impedes the exercise of reason: “non può stare in mezzo per ragione” (12).^[16] The verse is an explicit negation of the lover’s capacity to exercise virtue, defined by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics as “habitus electivus in medietate existens” (a habit of choosing that dwells in the mean) – a definition that Dante translates into the vernacular in Le dolci rime and that he also recalls in the De vulgari, when he notes that, unlike beasts, humans have the capacity to exercise judgment and to make choices.^[17] It is arguably on account of Cino’s repeated denial, throughout his poetry, that we can exercise such virtue that in Io mi credea del tutto esser partito Dante invites him to correct his light heart (“prego che con virtù il correggiate,” 13).

Next to the harsh reprimand of Io mi credea, Degno fa voi has been read as a milder scolding.^[18] But the volgibile of Degno fa voi is synonymous with the legger of Io mi credea, not only because they both bear the meaning of ‘inconstant’, but because they both allude to lyric tenets that are now being reconsidered. In Garin lo Brun’s tenso Noitz e jorn sui en pessamen, leujairia is the opposite of judgment (sen). Leujaria advises the lover to follow pleasure to the extreme (“Non dei ges mon talan laissar,” 28) – advice that is accompanied by a displacement of blame (“non er la colpa mia,” 30).^[19] The two Dantean sonnets are consistent with one another in their response to that leujairia that, by way of Occitan lyric, had entered Duecento poetry.

The shift in tone in Degno fa voi can be seen in that, instead of correggere, Dante uses the verb affinare. Contrasting his own experience of love with Cino’s, the poet declares that he has found “the mine that refines that power” (“pur trovo la minera in cui s’affina,” 7). As Foster and Boyde have observed, the verb affinare could be an echo of Guido Guinizzelli’s Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare, where the Bolognese poet likens the beloved lady to “ricche gioi” (7) and goes on to say that “medesmo Amor per lei rafina meglio” (8).^[20] The refining minera of Dante’s sonnet would thus be an allusion to the lady insofar as she is capable of purifying the poet’s love, or to some other purifying power. We know, from his own declaration, that Cino, like Dante, was familiar with the lapidary science alluded to in the image of the minera.^[21] Lapidaries were “mined” by love poets for properties of gems with which to compare their ladies’ beauty. In his Cercando, to which Dante’s Degno fa voi responds, Cino says he is looking for a “minera in oro,” that could indicate love itself, or the lady, or her requital. In his response sonnet, Dante uses the same term, “minera,” to denote a precious good that refines the poet’s sentiment. Cino’s “minera” has become in Dante’s reply more than just a repository of value; it is an active refinery, a refinery of love (“that power by which I change color”). In Io mi credea Dante calls on Cino to correct his fickle heart by means of virtue with the end of making his deeds match his sweet words; this is what it would mean to refine love.

Dante’s refining minera may also recall Guinizzelli’s account of the refinement of a precious stone in the second stanza of Al cor gentil, where love is said to be kindled in the noble heart “come vertute in petra prezïosa” once the latter has been ennobled by the sun. In the fourth book of the Convivio, Dante refers to Guinizzelli’s account of the ennoblement of the stone as well as to his claim that the haughty man is like mud which, struck all day by the sun, nevertheless remains vile:^[22]

onde se l’anima è imperfettamente posta, non è disposta a ricevere questa benedetta e divina infusione: sì come se una pietra margarita è male disposta, o vero imperfetta, la vertù celestiale ricever non può, sì come disse quel nobile Guido Guinizzelli in una sua canzone, che comincia: Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore. Puote adunque l’anima stare non bene ne la persona per manco di complessione, o forse per manco di temporale: e in questa cotale questo raggio divino mai non risplende. (Conv. 4.20.7-8)

Guinizzelli had claimed that, just as a stone made noble by the sun can be informed by the power of the star, so the gentle heart “donna a guisa di stella lo ’nnamora” (20). In the first tercet of Degno fa voi, Dante claims that Cino cannot see the sun because of his own depraved state: “Non è colpa del sol se l’orba fronte / no·l vede quando scende e quando poia, / ma de la condizion malvagia e croia.” (9-11). In light of Guinizzelli’s theory, Dante would be saying that Cino cannot see the sun because he is not yet disposed or prepared to be enamored by the lady. His heart must be first transformed; he must find that refining power that, unlike him, Dante has been able to find. Read in light of the passage in the Convivio, the tercet may also indicate the divine ray that, on account of his vile condition, Cino is not able to receive. The principle whereby the divine light shines – or overflows – upon all creation with one effluence, but is received in various measures, according to the mode of being and merit of the recipient, is to be found in the Liber de causis and in the corpus of the Pseudo-Dionysius.^[23] This variance in receptivity, to which Dante alludes in several places in the Convivio, may also be at issue in the sonnet. Cino’s alleged “condizion” indicates here, as elsewhere in Dante’s works, the state of either body or soul;^[24] and the adjective that qualifies it, “croia,” means ‘evil’ (like “malvagia” in the dyad), but also ‘hard’ and thus impenetrable. In the Dionysian corpus, the divine ray is said to be received by angels who shine upon those below them the light they absorb from God. This doctrine is also what substantially underlies Dante’s notion of the angelic lady as means to blessedness.

In Duecento lyric poetry, there are examples of the sun signifying the beloved, who becomes a domina splendens that shines upon the lover. Chiaro Davanzati likens the splendor of his lady’s gaze to the sun’s power to light up the night: “La splendïente luce, quando apare, / in ogne scura parte dà chiarore; / cotant’ha di vertute il suo guardare” (1-3).^[25] In Guinizzelli’s Tegno de folle ’mpres’, a lo ver dire, the beloved is likened to a “lucente sole” (23) and her light is said to bring joy to what is around her (“ché tutta la rivera fa lucere / e ciò che l’è d’incerchio allegro torna,” 33-34). In many of his poems, Bonagiunta Orbicciani extols his lady’s luminosity, calling her “lumera” and “spera” and declaring that her radiance is superior to that of every star and source of light.^[26] Dante takes the image of the lady-sun that he finds in the poetry of his forerunners and expands upon it. In Quantunque volte, lasso!, mi rimembra, the splendor of the beloved becomes “spirital bellezza grande, / che per lo cielo spande / luce d’amor” (22-24). In Di donne io vidi una gentil schiera, Dante uses the term lumiera to denote a donna-luce who resembles an angel: “Degli occhi suoi gittava una lumiera […] in la sua ciera / guarda’, e vidi un a[n]giol figurato” (5-8). And, in the Commedia, one of Beatrice’s primary roles is to mediate divine light.^[27]

Cino, too, makes the beloved out to be a donna di luce and, as Antonio Gagliardi has pointed out, sometimes explicitly according to the Neoplatonic doctrine of illumination.^[28] An example is Lo intelletto d’amor ch’io solo porto, in which Cino speaks of a “deità d’Amore” that shines on an Intelligence (“alta intelligenza,” 11) through which it reaches the lover (“e luce a me per la somma piagenza / di quella donna,” 13-14). The motif of the donna-sole appears in Cino’s Sta nel piacer de la mia donna Amore, where love is said to reside in the lady’s beauty like the ray in the sun and the star in the sky (“come nel sol lo raggio e in ciel la stella,” 2). The poet says that her splendor is such that his eyes cannot bear it (“Soffrir non posson li occhi lo splendore,” 5). On account of the poet’s celebration of the beloved’s brightness and of his subsequent claim that she possesses angelic demeanor (“angelico diporto,” 10), Gagliardi has argued that the lady of this sonnet is a hypostasis of the angelic Intelligence.^[29] Yet Cino’s further description of her as “tutt’amorosa di sollazzo e gioco” (12) somewhat undercuts the exaltedness of the lady’s angelic state. Both terms are characteristic of fin’amor and the dyad “solazzo e gioco” occurs in Giacomo da Lentini’s Chi non avesse mai veduto foco, where it indicates the delight the lover wishes to find in the “amorous fire.”^[30]

Indeed, in other Cinian poems, the lady’s light is far from uplifting. In Io son sì vago de la bella luce, the dazzling light of her eyes is said to annihilate the lover’s virtue and reason:

E quel che pare e quel che mi traluce

m’abbaglia tanto l’uno e l’altro viso,

che da ragione e da vertù diviso

seguo solo il disio come mio duce. (5-8)

If in the Dionysian corpus and in the Liber de causis the reception of light advances the perceiver toward the greatest light mediated by the angelic intelligences, Cino’s lady does not appear to act like an angel in these terms, since he is made to ignore reason and virtue and to follow desire blindly as if it were his lord.

When Dante says it is not the sun’s fault if Cino cannot see it, in the first terzina of Degno fa voi, he may also be indicating this lover’s inability to see the lady as sun – to recognize her for what she is, which would be the sort of ennobling lady celebrated in the Vita nova, fortified by a developing Neoplatonism. Dante could have counted on Cino’s familiarity with the Neoplatonic theory of light since it also informs some of Cino’s poems.^[31] In this respect, Cino’s blindness is a lack of insight: his incapacity to understand the role of the beloved as signifier and vehicle toward beatitude rather than an end in herself. In their gloss on this terzina, Foster and Boyde point to verses 77-80 of Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona, where Dante recants his description of the lady as disdainful in Voi che savete ragionar d’amore by saying that the sky is always bright and of itself never dark, and yet our eyes, for various reasons, at times call the star dim:

Tu sai che ’l ciel sempr’è lucente e chiaro,

e quanto in sé non si turba già mai;

ma li nostri occhi per cagioni assai

chiaman la stella talor tenebrosa.

Among the reasons for not seeing the star’s light, as explained in Convivio 3.9, can be disease and fatigue.^[32] These are not the reasons given for the weakness of Cino’s intellectual sight in the response sonnet, instead imputed to his morally depraved state (“condizion malvagia e croia”).

Dante’s claim that the sun is not at fault also contradicts Cino’s blame of a planet in his sonnet Cercando: “cotal pianeta, lasso, mi destina / che dov’io perdo volentier dimoro” (7-8). On account of this planet (arguably Venus), the poet-lover succumbs to the new passion and gladly remains there.^[33] In spite of Cino’s use of the adverb “volentier,” the verb “destinare” conveys necessity, as though his defeat were pre-destined and therefore inevitable. Cercando thus voices a notion of astral determinism – a notion that Dante will refute in the central cantos of Purgatorio and at the outset of Paradiso 8, where he disavows the belief that Venus (“la bella Ciprigna”) is responsible for immoderate desire.

Underlying the sonnet is the debate on celestial causality that Dante will thematize in Purgatorio 16. Acknowledging that the world is cloaked by iniquity (“di malizia gravido e coverto,” 60), the viator asks Marco Lombardo to help him see the cause of wickedness since some put it in the heavens and others here below (“nel cielo uno, e un qua giù la pone,” 63). The causality of heavenly bodies was the frame within which theology posed some of its crucial questions such as that of free choice.^[34] Albert the Great believed that the heavens exercised their influence only on individuals’ inclinations, leaving their capacity to act in accordance with such inclinations or against them unaltered.^[35] Aquinas addresses the question in his Summa where he asserts that “if intellect and will were powers affixed to corporeal organs […] it would follow of necessity that the heavenly bodies are the cause of human choice and action” (sequeretur quod corpora caelestia essent causa electionum et actuum humanorum) and that human beings are led by natural instinct to their acts “for whatever is done here below in virtue of the action of heavenly bodies is done naturally” (nam illud quod fit in istis inferioribus ex impressione corporum caelestium, naturaliter agitur, ST 1 q. 115 a. 4 co.).^[36]

In Cercando, Cino claims that a planet has decreed his fate. That love derives ineluctably from a planet is not a mere image, but appears to be a belief that Cino truly held, given that, in Come li saggi di Neron crudele, he speaks of “quella per cui lo spirito d’amore / in me discende da lo suo pianeto” (9-10), in Io guardo per li prati ogni fior bianco he ascribes the inception of his love to the conjunction of Venus and Mars, and also engages with astral causality in a sonnet he sent to Onesto da Bologna, where, after claiming his subjection to Love, he acknowledges the irresistible effect of Mars (“che sento de la guerra sotto Marte,” Anzi ch’Amore ne la mente guidi, 11).^[37] Degno fa voi responds to this supposed ineluctability by inviting Cino to recognize his own agency. To Cino, who says he is constrained by Love, Dante replies that he should acknowledge his fault rather than blame it on an external object – whether it be the heaven of Venus (“cotal pianeta […] mi destina”), the god of love, the lady, or his own eyes hypostatized.^[38] This demand that Cino must seek the failing within himself suggests that, in Degno fa voi, Dante is not merely chastising his friend in a light and affable way. Rather he is rectifying his view on a principle of utmost significance, subject of much debate in the schools of the mendicant orders and in those disputations held by the philosophers that Dante speaks of as his education in the Convivio.^[39]

In the late thirteenth century, the act of making a choice (the electio) was one of the most debated themes in the context of scholastic disputes, especially after the Condemnation of 1277 prohibiting heterodox doctrines that Arts masters and students disseminated both in writing and in the course of debates.^[40] Of the 219 condemned theses, nineteen concerned free choice.^[41] Disputations modeled on those of the Parisian faculty of Arts were held in the mendicant Studia.^[42] And we know that there was a controversy among the friars concerning the principle of freedom.^[43] Dante’s claim in the sonnet that the fault is not in the star (“non è colpa del sol”) testifies to his engagement with the ongoing debate on the role of the celestial bodies and on the principle of human agency. Dante is here already debating with Cino on what will become a central theme of the Comedy. We know that Cino’s studies were not only juridical – that he studied various disciplines first in Pistoia and then in Bologna, where he also lectured.^[44] His knowledge of classical and late antique sources is witnessed by his Lectura in codicem, which also attests to his familiarity with Latin Neoplatonism.^[45] His poems – besides a profound knowledge of Sicilian and Cavalcantian lyric – in fact show his engagement with angelology and with the doctrine of light. Cino was thus for Dante a most suitable interlocutor. This is arguably why Dante chose him as his privileged correspondent in the years between the beginning of his exile and the end of Cino’s. One of the recurring themes of this correspondence is precisely electio.

It is within this discourse and in the context of blindness that Dante stages the central discussion of free choice in the middle of the Purgatorio. Upon hearing Dante’s question about the cause of evil (“che m’addite la cagione,” 61), Marco Lombardo, now blinded by the penitential smoke of wrath, calls out the blindness of the world:

lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui.

Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate

pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto

movesse seco di necessitate.

Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto

libero arbitrio (Purg. 16.66-71)

It is, in essence, a blindness to freedom. If the heavens moved everything with them of necessity, Marco says, free choice would be destroyed. Even if the spheres set our appetites in motion (“Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia,” 73), we have received a light to discern good and evil (“lume v’è dato a bene e a malizia,” 75). The heavens have the power to initiate motions in the soul, but individuals possess discernment and free will (“libero voler,” 76). Against judicial astrology, that predicated the power of celestial bodies to dictate human acts, the Comedy reaffirms human beings’ capacity to choose. Therefore, if the world has gone astray, the cause must be sought in us (“in voi è la cagione,” 83). In much the same way, in the sonnet Dante claims that the star is not to blame, but rather the fault is to be sought in Cino himself – in his “condizion malvagia e croia.”

Dante’s reprimand reassesses the notion of love that Cino and he both inherited from their lyric forerunners, thus prefiguring the discourse of the central cantos of the Comedy, in which Dante redirects the lyric tradition toward an understanding of how love relates to human freedom. Building on Marco Lombardo’s speech, in Purgatorio 18 Virgil’s disquisition on love exposes the error of those whom he describes as “ciechi che si fanno duci” (the blind who claim to lead). This blindness appears to consist, on the one hand, in claiming that love is an indomitable force that cannot be resisted; and, on the other, in a failure to make distinctions, when such blind leaders assume that all love is intrinsically good: “Or ti puote apparer quant’è nascosa / la veritate a la gente ch’avvera / ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa” (34-36). Not to distinguish between the natural love that cannot err and elective love that can is the blindness in question. It is blindness to think of all love as a natural necessity that is by definition good precisely because it is natural.

Just such natural necessity is what we find Cino claiming in his poetry. In Sì è ’ncarnato Amor del suo piacere, he describes love as excess (“m’ha preso in ciascun membro fòr misura,” 2) and goes on to justify his excessive desire by saying that it comes from nature and therefore cannot be resisted (“tutto è convertito già in natura, / sì che di contrastar non ho podere,” 3-4). Here nature entails necessity. Cino is articulating the very claim that the character of Virgil defines as the error of the blind leaders: he reduces elective love to natural love, as if he had no choice.

Cino’s blindness, expressed as “orba fronte” in Degno fa voi, may consist in this very lack of discernment that Dante has Virgil address at the core of the poem. As Domenico De Robertis puts it in his gloss on the first tercet of the sonnet, on account of his error of perception Cino is either not aware of how fickle he is in love or does not understand what love is and is not.^[46] It is precisely this lack of distinction between different kinds of love that constitutes the error ascribed to the blind leaders in Purgatorio 18.

Some scholars have argued that one of these blind leaders is Andreas Capellanus, whose treatise on love must have been quite widely known, if Cavalcanti can speak of the bow of love as Andreas’ bow (“e d’Andrea coll’arco in mano”).^[47] Foster and Boyde proposed that the “rime riche” of Cino-uncino in Io mi credea (“messer Cino […] pigliar vi lasciate a ogni uncino”) could be an allusion to Andreas’ claimed derivation of amor from amo – “to catch with a hook” (hamo).^[48] Allusions to precepts we can find in the De amore are also in Degno fa voi, for example where Dante defines love as “that power that drains the color from my face” (“quella virtù per cui mi discoloro,” 8). That pallor is a consequence of love is asserted in Ovid’s Ars amatoria (“Palleat omnis amans: hic est color aptus amanti,” 1.729), but also in Andreas’ fifteenth regula amoris (“Omnis consuevit amans in coamantis aspectu pallescere”). Dante’s “stecco d’amor” resembles Andreas’ amoris aculeis – the thorn of love that wounds those who are capable of doing “the works of Venus.”^[49] And finally, Cino’s blindness would, according to Andreas Capellanus, disqualify him from love as this disability impedes the formation of the image upon which to reflect immoderately.^[50] Dante may have intentionally deployed a series of allusions to the chaplain as he knew how profound Cino’s debt was to the De amore, especially if we understand Cino’s declaration that he only studies “nel libro di Gualtieri” in Perché voi state forse ancor pensivo as a reference to Andreas Capellanus’ treatise, dedicated to his friend Walter (Gualterius).^[51]

Although Andreas affirms that “No one can be bound by a double love” (Nemo duplici potest amore ligari), he contemplates the substitution of one beloved for another and justifies it as a compelled act: “Novus amor veterem compellit abire” (a new love puts to flight an old one), where the verb compellere conveys the coercive force of love.^[52] The replaceability of the beloved – that Cino claims in many of his poems – is also hinted at in Avegna ched el m’aggia più per tempo – the canzone he sent to Dante after Beatrice’s demise. As Enrico Fenzi has observed, even in the consolatoria, while recognizing the beatifying nature of Dante’s love for his gentilissima, Cino suggests that this does not impose faithfulness, but rather that he be comforted however he may please.^[53]

Ella parla di voi con li beati,

e dice loro: “Mentre ched io fui

nel mondo, ricevei onor da lui

laudando me ne’ suo’ detti laudati.”

E priega Dio, lo Signor verace,

che vi conforti sì come vi piace. (71-76, emphasis mine)

This sentiment contrasts mightily with the Vita nova, where the thought of finding consolation in another lady is condemned as most vile (“vilissimo”) and the donna pietosa who threatens Dante’s memory of Beatrice is portrayed as an adversary of reason (“avversario de la ragione”). It is against the constancy of reason (“costanzia de la ragione”) that Dante’s heart allows itself to be possessed by desire for the pietosa.^[54] Thus, although Cino is reflecting Dante’s vision of Beatrice as mediator in heaven (“Ella parla di voi con li beati,” Avegna, 71), the license to find comfort however he pleases (“come vi piace,” 76) appears reminiscent of ‘Walter’s book’. It is Cino’s subscription to a notion and a poetics of love superseded in the libello and dismissed once and for all in the Commedia that Dante reproves in the sonnet he writes on behalf of Moroello.

Cino’s allegiance to the sort of teachings we find in the De amore may also be attested by the second quatrain of the sonnet to which Dante’s is an answer. In Cercando di trovar minera in oro, when Cino claims to be doomed to his new passion and goes on to say, “che dov’io perdo volentier dimoro,” this may be an echo of Andreas’ principle whereby we are naturally inclined to seek what is forbidden or denied us (“Nitimur in vetitum cupimus semperque negatum,” De amore 1.6.7). By the time he composes the Comedy, Dante can no longer endorse Cino’s claim to be fated to his destructive passion as he has come to regard love as seed of all vice as well as virtue (“sementa […] d’ogne virtute / e d’ogne operazion che merta pene,” Purg. 17.104-105).

Taking his cue from Dante’s discourse in Amor che ne la mente, Raffaele Pinto has argued that Dante’s refining mine (“minera in cui s’affina”) is philosophy and thus reads the exchange as testifying to a conflict that arose between Dante and Cino when the Florentine poet abandoned a poetics of eros to study philosophy.^[55] But the lady whose benignity Cino is not able to recognize is not necessarily the donna gentile of the Convivio. Indeed, what Dante’s minera refines is unmistakably love, that which makes the lover turn pale (“quella virtù per cui mi discoloro”). I propose that, rather than testifying to Dante’s abandonment of love poetry in favor of the philosophy of the Convivio, Degno fa voi foreshadows the poet’s return to the love in accordance with the “fedele consiglio de la ragione” consecrated by the youthful libello. Dante’s “minera in cui s’affina” indicates not philosophy, but virtue, the “virtù” that, in Io mi credea del tutto esser partito, the poet says should correct Cino’s light heart and may be meant as loving in accordance with reason.

The issue of the subject’s free choice is at the very heart of Dante’s exchange with Cino, as also suggested by Io mi credea and Cino’s reply. In that sonnet, Dante tells Cino that his vaunted love is really only a fleeting fancy: “Chi s’innamora sì come voi fate / or qua or là, e sé lega e dissolve, / mostra ch’Amor leggermente il saetti” (9-11). While underscoring Cino’s erotic shallowness, Dante alludes to his correspondent’s agency: he is the one who chains himself (“sé lega”). In his reply, the Pistoian poet shows to have understood Dante’s point and shifts responsibility by reattributing agency to the lady’s beauty. He uses the argument of likeness to justify passion for another lady and claims that, in the absence of his beloved, by necessity he finds pleasure in ladies of like beauty: “ch’un piacer sempre mi lega ed involve, / il qual convien ch’a simil di beltate / in molte donne sparte mi diletti” (Poi ch’i’ fu’, Dante, dal mio natal sito, 12-14). There is but one beauty – that of his beloved Selvaggia – which binds and trammels him, but, given that she is out of reach, he is compelled to take delight in the molte donne sparte who bear a resemblance to her. Just as scholars have observed that – with its invitation to virtue – Io mi credea appears to foreshadow the Comedy,^[56] so too the refining minera of Degno fa voi testifies to Dante’s incipient return to the theologized love poetry of the Vita nova.

The verb affinare is used by Dante’s lyric predecessors and fellow poets. Pier della Vigna declares that his refinement is hopeless and yet expresses the wish that love will avail him: “Vagliami Amore per cui non rifino, / ma senza spene affino, / ch’a lui servendo, gio’ m’è la travaglia.” (Amando con fin core e con speranza, 52-54). In I’ sono alcuna volta domandato – attributed to the Amico di Dante – the speaker claims that he whom love has purified does not care about anything else: “d’altro non mette cura c’ha [a]ffinato” (7).^[57] In these examples, the lover’s refinement is still inscribed within the frame of fin’amor and is performed as a service to the god of love. The crucial difference in the sonnet addressed to Cino is that Dante affirms that love itself can be refined.

The verb affinare reminds us very much of Purgatory. In Purgatorio 26, the same verb is used to indicate, specifically, the refinement of erotic desire in the last stage of purgation (“nel foco che li affina,” 148). And in Purgatorio 8 it is Moroello’s kinsman, Currado, who alludes to the purgatorial refinement of love when he recalls having born to his own “l’amor che qui raffina.” (120). Furthermore, the syntagma dolci detti, which occurs in Io mi credea, the other poem taking Cino to task, is used on the terrace of Lust to describe the poetry of Dante’s great lyric forerunner, Guido Guinizzelli. Dante tells Guido, “Li dolci detti vostri, / che, quanto durerà l’uso moderno, / faranno cari ancora i loro incostri” (Purg. 26.112-14). In fact Dante describes Guido’s verses as both dolci and leggiadri, since Guinizzelli is “il padre / mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai / rime d’amor usar dolci e leggiadre” (97-99). The adjective leggiadre in the purgatorial canto may be an allusion to an old manner of composing poetry, more closely connected with Occitan love lyric, as we have seen. Indeed it is Arnaut Daniel, forefather of them all, who goes on to conclude the canto of lust to tell us, in Occitan, that the erotic love celebrated and lamented in his own poetry, he now recognizes as “folor,” and who invokes the power (“valor,” 145) that will lead both him and Dante “up the stairs” (“al som de l’escalina,” 146). In Degno fa voi, Cino is said to be unable to find the “treasure” because his changeable heart shows that love’s thorn has not really stuck him (“ove stecco d’Amor mai non fé foro,” 4). Dante, who really has been pricked by the thorn that is assuaged by sighs (“prun che con sospir si medicina,” 6), has found what Cino has not: that is, the mine by whose power love is refined (“pur trovo la minera in cui s’affina / quella virtù per cui mi discoloro,” 7-8).

Cino’s love is not believable. Neither his polished words (“le parole conte”), nor other exterior signs, such as an abundance of tears (“degli occhi ploia”), will remove the suspicion that he is not telling the truth (“non mi porreste di sospetto in ponte”). When Dante characterizes the novelty of his own poetry, in his exchange with Bonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatorio 24, it appears to hinge on this very correspondence between poetic expression and authentic sentiment lacking in Cino:

Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore

trasse le nove rime, cominciando

‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’”

E io a lui: “I’ mi son un che, quando

Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo

ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando” (49-54)

While denoting poetry as external expression of the internal voice, Dante’s declaration of poetics highlights the authenticity of that externalization: the outer manifestation faithfully mirrors the inner sentiment, rendering it as is (“a quel modo”). The correspondence between sweetness of sound and internal truth is precisely what is at issue in Degno fa voi. Gilda Caïti-Russo has suggested that the sonnet conveys the need for an accordance between verba and res, but in the sense that the words must reflect the things and that this requires a refinement of language.^[58] But what Dante claims in Degno fa voi is what he will claim later in Io mi credea, that is, that the poet’s deeds must reflect his words – the heart must match what is said in the sweet verses. What appears to be a poetic or rhetorical point (how aptly to express some reality) Dante turns into a moral point about poetry: that we should transform reality to match the poetic ideal, we should behave in accordance with our sweet words. When Dante points out that Cino has a sweet voice, but a “volgibile cor,” he suggests that the correspondence between verba and res requires first of all a refinement of love.

As Guglielmo Gorni observed, the incipit of Dante’s sonnet is meant to echo Cino’s Degno son io ch’io mora, the first Cinian canzone that Dante recalls in the De vulgari.^[59] Here Degno son io illustrates the amoris accensio, one of the three principal themes on which illustrious individuals have composed poetry in the vernacular, along with prowess in arms (armorum probitas) and command of one’s own will (directio voluntatis). The poem conveys the phenomenology of excessive love that conquers the lover, deprives him of power over himself, and ultimately kills him:

per se stesso m’uccide

e dentro mi conquide,

sì che sovente mi fa trarre guai:

questa preda dal cor vita divide (22-25)

To the declaration of powerlessness, Cino adds the request for forgiveness of his folly: “Vedete ben ched i’ non ho possanza. / Dunque il mio folleggiare / piacciavi perdonare” (35-37). In the De vulgari, Cino’s canzone is recalled as an illustrious example of poetry of love since, in the Latin treatise, the theme associated with Venus is the ‘ardor’ of love (accensio), which is wholly distinct from the theme associated with Virtus, the directio voluntatis: Cino is representative of the former, Dante of the latter. But, if the love Dante speaks of in the De vulgari is appetitus, by the time he composes Degno fa voi the Venus of the treatise has been refined. The love addressed in the sonnet is no longer one of the three magnalia of the De vulgari. On the contrary, Dante’s invitation to Cino to acknowledge his agency and liability, his claim that love can be subject to refinement, and his suggestion that the poet’s heart must match the sweetness of his verses all indicate that, at this juncture, Venus and Virtus no longer stand apart and the poet has recovered the love that remains in accordance with the faithful counsel of reason described in the libello. It is this love that will constitute the foundation of the Comedy.

Far from a dismissal of the rime d’amor, Degno fa voi attests to a return to love poetry. Only a certain kind of love lyric is rejected – the elegiac one, of which Cino has been one of the most prominent representatives. Cino’s favorite theme is indeed the lover’s ineluctable suffering, voiced with an elegiac tone. Dante calls attention to Cino’s elegiac voice in the last tercet of Degno fa voi: “S’io vi vedessi uscir degli occhi ploia / per prova fare a le parole conte, / non mi porreste di sospetto in ponte.” Dante’s claim that not even a rain of tears falling from Cino’s eyes would make him believe his words may be a Cinian intertext as we find in his sonnet Se conceduto mi fosse da Giove the complaint that the tears that rain from his eyes do not move his beloved lady (“’l pianto che dagl[i] occhi piove […] lei no[n] move,” 5-8). In fact most of Cino’s poetic corpus is characterized by a plaintive tone. The speaker of Cino’s poems knows that he is condemned to suffer – that he will have nothing but sorrow and weeping (“ch’io non èi poi se non dolore e pianto, / e certo son che non avrò giammai,” Amore è uno spirito ch’ancide, 13-14). Nonetheless, he claims that he cannot cease to love his lady (“né posso disamar voi bella gioia,” Oimè lasso, 4).

The sirma of Dante’s Degno fa voi may be responding to Cino’s lachrymose style and to his recurrent complaint that his merciless lady is not moved by the sight of his tears.^[60] An allusion to Cino’s tearful tone is to be found in the last tercet of Cacciamonte da Bologna’s Prego il nome de la vostra fonta, where the Bolognese poet advises Cino not to be a whiner: “Consiglio che non siate proratore, / ch’[a] Amor dispiace e allo su’ collegio: / e chi da lui diffida, dàlli ardore.” (12-14). Yet, Cacciamonte’s reprimand is a defense of the ethos of fin’amor. Indeed he prompts Cino to be faithful to the Lord of love – to serve him well – in order to acquire the greatest achievable joy, that is, as Maria Rita Traina has pointed out, the sensual joi of the Provençal poets.^[61] The subject of Prego il nome is thus the poet’s relentless service to the god of love. Dante’s point is instead that a quantity of tears demonstrates nothing. It would not make Cino’s “parole conte” any more believable, or suspend Dante’s suspicion (“non mi porreste di sospetto in ponte”). Even if he were to see showers of tears stream from Cino’s eyes, he would not believe him. Cino’s elegiac sweetness is actually deceptive.

As a final note, the correction of Cino in these sonnets is part of what I think is Dante’s reconsideration of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy leading up to the Comedy. Although Boethius was at times classified as a model of elegiac poetry,^[62] in the first book Lady Philosophy rebukes those Muses for the deception effected by the sweetness of their singing. Scholars agree that Dante’s dream of the dolce serena with her beautiful song in Purgatorio 19 recalls Dame Philosophy’s expulsion of the elegiac camenae at the outset of Boethius’ Consolation. The siren’s elegiac sweetness is contrasted with the honesty of the “donna […] santa e presta” who appears to put a halt to the viator’s alluring vision (Virgil identifies her as “quella onesta”).

quand’una donna apparve santa e presta

lunghesso me per far colei confusa.

“O Virgilio, Virgilio, chi è questa?”

fieramente dicea; ed el venìa

con li occhi fitti pur in quella onesta (26-30)

In his Convivio, Dante defines friendship per onestade as one that does not look for a reward and, in the Vita nova, “onestade” likewise conveys a purity of sentiments. But, for Dante, the adjective onesto can also indicate truthfulness – as when, in Inferno 2, Dante says he will trust Virgil’s “parlare onesto” (113). Beatrice says in the same canto that she chose Virgil for his “parola ornata” (67). Presumably it was not for the sort of parole ornate that Jason used to deceive women with signs of love described in the first bolgia of fraud in Inferno 18 (“Ivi con segni e con parole ornate / Isifile ingannò,” 91-92). It is possible, therefore, for a parola ornata to be a vehicle of truth.^[63]

When Dante refers to Cino’s verses as “parole conte” in Degno fa voi, he is picking up on the adjective conte that Cino used in the first terzina of Cercando, where it means something like ‘known’ or ‘made known.’ In Dante’s reply it means ‘adorned’, ‘studied’, ‘polished’, but not necessarily truthful, and therefore, despite any quantity of tears, such lovely words would be unable to make Dante believe them – “non mi porreste di sospetto in ponte.”^[64] The connotation of adornment that the rhyme-word “conte” takes on in the response sonnet conveys again the lack of correspondence between poetic voice and sentiment, as is further suggested by Dante’s “per prova fare” – to demonstrate the truth (of Cino’s elegant words). By alluding to Cino’s polished but not truthful words, to his tearful tone and to his sweet but not honest voice, Degno fa voi foreshadows Dante’s later rejection of the misleading sweetness and adornment that can be associated with the elegiac style.

Significant, in this respect, is Dante’s reference in the sonnet to the lover’s sighing (“sospir”). Lamenting sighs occur all over the place in Duecento poetry as they are the physical manifestation of the lover’s travail. In Degno fa voi, Dante posits that sighs can heal: the thorn of love finds its medicine in sighing (“Io che trafitto sono in ogni poro / del prun che con sospir si medicina,” 5-6). As Natascia Tonelli has pointed out, the formation of sighs in immoderate lovers is explained by Arnaldus de Villa Nova in his Tractatus de amore heroico: “cum ad compressum diu cordis recreationes copiosius aer attractus forti spiritu cum vaporibus diu prefocatis interius expellatur, oritur in eisdem alta suspiriorum emissio.”^[65] Sighing is thus a way for the lover to vent the suffering caused by love. Both sign and symptom of erotic suffering, sighs are also a medicine insofar as they relieve, to some extent, the sorrow of the lover. Yet, if sighing is the medicine theorized by the physiology of love, Dante finds another remedy: he finds a “minera” in which love is refined. Behind Dante’s refinery there may again be “that little-known book by Boethius” that the poet declares to have studied after Beatrice’s demise.^[66] In the first prose of the Consolatio, Lady Philosophy claims that the elegiac Muses cannot offer any remedy for Boethius’ pain, but will only intensify it with their sweet poisons (“quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis”) and goes on to say that they “kill the fruitful harvest of reason with the sterile thorns of the passions; they do not liberate the minds of men from disease”^[67] (Hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant). Dante’s prun – which responds to Cino’s spina – may also be reminiscent of Boethius’ affectuum spinis. Indeed, just as Dante finds a remedy, so does the Boethian Philosophia, who dismisses the elegiac camenae with their poisonous sweetness and replaces them with her own healing Muses (meisque eum Musis curandum sanandumque relinquite). That lamentation arrests the healing process is reiterated at the outset of the following prose: “Sed medicinae […] tempus est quam querelae” (1 pr. 2.1). Philosophy acknowledges that Boethius has abandoned his native light and – his intellectual sight dulled – trains his gaze upon the ground:

Heu, quam praecipiti mersa profundo

mens hebet et propria luce relicta […]

nunc iacet effeto lumine mentis

et pressus grauibus colla catenis

decliuemque gerens pondere uultum

cogitur, heu, stolidam cernere terram (1 m. 2, 1-27)

Although the meter is a lamentation – and thus remains elegiac like the preceding one – what Lady Philosophy laments is the prisoner’s own lamenting. At the end of her poetic rebuke, she indeed dispels the clouds of self-absorbed misery (“tristitiae nebulis”) that had dimmed the prisoner’s intellectual vision so that he can thus recover discernment (“mentem recepi,” 1 pr. 3.1).

What is significant is that Boethius’ indulgence in the company of the elegiac Muses leads him to forget his responsibility and to see his suffering as the result of an external force or of another’s will. Throughout the Consolatio, Lady Philosophy prompts Boethius to acknowledge his own agency and liability. She teaches the Roman prisoner that he cannot blame his misery on anyone but himself: he himself has forged the chains that he now bears (“nectit qua ualeat trahi catenam,” 1 m. 4, 18).

The outset of book 3 suggests that, unlike the elegiac Muses, Lady Philosophy brings a good and healing sweetness. She has just finished singing the hymn Quod mundus stabili fide and the now comforted prisoner is prepared to take the remaining medicines, which are the kind that are “bitter on the tongue, but sweet when swallowed” (talia sunt quippe quae restant, ut degustata quidem mordeant, interius autem recepta dulcescant, 3 pr. 1.3). Likewise, in the meter that follows, Philosophia claims that honey tastes sweeter if a bitter flavor first displeases the tongue (“Dulcior est apium mage labor, / si malus ora prius sapor edat,” 5-6) and goes on to explain what she means: “Deceitful are the goods you first discern. / Withdraw your neck, and leave their yoke behind; / Then truth at once will infiltrate your mind” (Tu quoque falsa tuens bona prius / incipe colla iugo retrahere: / Uera dehinc animum subierint, 11-13). The whole third book is devoted to this teaching. In the following prose, Dame Philosophy claims that a desire for the true good is naturally “implanted” in all individuals, and all strive to achieve it by different paths, but error “diverts them off course”: “Hunc, uti diximus, diuerso tramite mortales omnes conantur adipisci: est enim mentibus hominum ueri boni naturaliter inserta cupiditas, sed ad falsa deuius error abducit” (3 pr. 2.4). This lesson, that Dante explicitly recalls in the Convivio and that shapes his distinction between natural and elective love in the central cantos of the Comedy,^[68] as well as the related lesson that the sweetness of the elegiac Muses leads people astray – that underlies the dream of the dolce serena of Purgatorio 19 – are also at issue in Degno fa voi.

As Mary Carruthers has articulated, in the Middle Ages ‘sweetness’ was a very ambiguous term.^[69] Dante’s works illustrate this ambiguity by representing both a sweetness in bono – such as that of his new style – and a sweetness in malo – like the detrimental sweetness of the siren’s voice. Likewise, in Degno fa voi, Dante suggests that the sweetness of the poet’s voice is not in bono if it is not accompanied by other characteristics – such as honesty and subtlety. In the De vulgari, Dante indicates Cino and himself as the two who composed poetry sweetly and subtly (“dulcius subtiliusque”), arguably ascribing sweetness to Cino’s verses and subtlety to his own. Enrico Fenzi, who reads the construct dulcius subtiliusque as denoting a ‘sweet subtlety’, argues that subtilitas requires poets to enrich their verses with an intellectual component, through which sweetness is re-qualified, and he goes on to say that an example of such re-qualification is the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.^[70] In the Vita nova, Donne ch’avete is the first expression of Dante’s sweet new style – new because Dante takes up a new and more noble subject matter, that is, he ceases to speak to the lady of his torments and begins to speak of the lady – to praise her. After declaring his intention to embrace such “matera nuova,” Dante goes on to say that the occasion for his new subject matter is pleasant to hear: “E però che la cagione de la nuova matera è dilettevole a udire, la dicerò” (VN 17). As regards the adjective dilettevole, Selene Sarteschi has recalled what Dante says of the adjective soave in his Convivio: “‘soave’ è tanto quanto ‘suaso’, cioè abbellito, dolce, piacente e dilettoso.”^[71] The dilettevole of the Vita nova would thus be a synonym for dolce and would suggest that the sweetness of poetic language is utterly good only if it is a vehicle to express a new, more noble subject matter. The “matera nuova e più nobile che la passata” is – as Dante tells us about his remarkable love for Beatrice – a love in accordance with ‘the faithful counsel of reason’, a love that does not look for a reward, a love whose intellectual component – its subtlety and profundity – is advertised in the very incipit of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore. In Degno fa voi, Dante in no way denies Cino’s ability to write sweet verses, but he suggests that the sweetness of his poetic voice requires first a refinement of the heart.

Far from being the umpteenth rebuke of Cino’s inconstancy, or a mere example of linguistic experimentation, Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro addresses crucial issues in Dante’s development as a poet-philosopher, a development I argue is strongly influenced by the poet-philosopher Boethius. By targeting Cino’s blindness of discernment and underscoring his liability for such blindness, Degno fa voi anticipates the discourse on free choice of the purgatorial cantos. By opposing what Cino claims is a compulsion with what Dante calls a refining mine, we can detect the beginning of a return to that accord between love and counsel celebrated in the libello and reaffirmed once and for all in the poem. By pointing out that Cino’s words are elegant but not honest, that his voice is sweet but deceptive, Dante’s sonnet is part of a redefinition of dolcezza that we can trace from the Vita nova to the Comedy.

1. In De vulgari eloquentia 1.10.2, Dante refers to himself using the label “amicus eius”: “Tertia quoque, [que] Latinorum est, se duobus privilegiis actestatur preesse: primo quidem quod qui dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt, hii familiares et domestici sui sunt, puta Cynus Pistoriensis et amicus eius.” The phrase occurs again in DVE 1.17.3, 2.2.8, 2.5.4, and 2.6.6. As scholars have observed, Cino comes to replace Cavalcanti, the “first friend” of the libello. See, for instance, Mirko Tavoni, ed., De vulgari eloquentia, in Dante Alighieri, Opere, vol. 1, eds. Claudio Giunta, Guglielmo Gorni, Mirko Tavoni (Milan: Mondadori, 2011). On the significance of friendship in Dante’s poetry, see Teodolinda Barolini, “Amicus eius: Dante and the Semantics of Friendship,” Dante Studies 133 (2015): 46-69. ↑

2. This exchange through a third party is the fourth sonnet exchange between Dante and Cino. The first exchange appears to have occurred before 1302, with Cino’s proposal Novellamente Amor mi giura e dice and Dante’s reply I’ ho veduto già senza radice. The rest of the correspondence is thought to have taken place between the beginning of Dante’s exile (1302) and the end of Cino’s (1306) and it includes – besides Cercando and Degno fa voi – Dante’s Perch’io non truovo chi meco ragioni and Cino’s reply Dante, i’ non odo in quale albergo soni, Cino’s Dante, quando per caso s’abandona and Dante’s response Io sono stato con Amore insieme, and Dante’s Io mi credea del tutto esser partito, to which Cino responds with Poi ch’i’ fui, Dante, dal mio natal sito. On the dates of these exchanges, see Emilio Pasquini, “Appunti sul carteggio Dante - Cino,” in Le “Rime” di Dante. Gargnano del Garda (25-27 settembre 2008), eds. Claudia Berra and Paolo Borsa, (Milan: Cisalpino Istituto Editoriale Universitario, 2010), 1-15. ↑

3. See Gilda Caïti-Russo, “Il marchese Moroello Malaspina, testimone ideale di un dibattito tra Dante e Cino sull’eredità trobadorica,” Dante Studies 124 (2006): 137-48. The scholar expands upon Gianfranco Contini’s observation that, in the sonnet, Dante uses a language that is “risentitamente occitanico, di stile arcaizzante” and “rime rare, che lo fanno apparire miglior provenzalista” and considers more closely Dante’s borrowings from Provençal poetry and his own innovations. See Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Gianfranco Contini (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 202 and 197. ↑

4. See Claudio Giunta, ed., Dante Alighieri, Rime (Milan: Mondadori, 2018), 524: “La volubilità di Cino era tanto nota da aver fornito materia a vari testi di corrispondenza nei quali gli amici lo biasimavano e lo esortavano a mutare atteggiamento […] la replica di Dante va aggiunta a questo dossier.” ↑

5. Moroello Malaspina was the leader of the Florentine and Lucchese Black Guelphs from 1302 until their defeat of the Pistoian Whites in 1306. There is a large consensus among scholars about Cino’s affiliation with the Black faction. Cino was indeed able to reenter Pistoia in 1306, when the army led by Moroello drove out the White faction. Yet, conjecturing Cino’s sympathizing with the White faction for some time after his exile, in the hope of returning to his hometown, Marco Grimaldi has suggested that, in addressing his sonnet to Moroello, Cino may have hoped to ingratiate himself with the Marquis after the Blacks were back in power. Accordingly, when reproaching Cino’s inconstancy in his reply, Dante may be chastising his friend’s changing affiliation. The hypothesis is in fact suggestive, especially as, in some of Cino’s poems, we find a binary of black and white which, at times a plain allusion to the lady’s eyes, may at other times denote party conflict. In the absence of any solid evidence of Cino’s affiliation with the Whites, Grimaldi’s suggestion remains a plausible but unverifiable hypothesis, as the scholar himself admits. My contention that this particular sonnet exchange is concerned with love, choice, and lack thereof is nonetheless consistent with a core theme that informs the entire correspondence between the two poets, starting with Cino’s early Novellamente Amor mi giura e dice. See Grimaldi’s introduction to the exchange in Dante Alighieri, Le opere, vol. 1, no. 2, eds. Donato Pirovano and Marco Grimaldi (Salerno: Rome, 2021), 1225-26. For Cino’s ambiguous allusions, in his poems, to a black-white conflict that may be read as denoting either biographical or amorous concerns, see Catherine Keen, “Cino da Pistoia and the Otherness of Exile,” Annali d’Italianistica 20 (2002): 89-112. ↑

6. See Raffaele Pinto, “La poetica dell’esilio e la tenzone con Cino,” Tenzone. Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantología 10 (2009): 41-74, at 61. ↑

7. 1306 is the year of the peace treaty of Castelnuovo Magra, signed by Dante as attorney of the Malaspina family on October 6. ↑

8. The texts of Dante’s poems are from Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Domenico De Robertis (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005). ↑

9. On the poetic rebukes of Cino’s inconstancy, see Maria Rita Traina, “Il “volgibile cor” di Cino da Pistoia: l’auto-ostentazione dell’antietica amorosa e la percezione dell’esperienza poetica individuale come grande narrazione,” in Ortodossia ed eterodossia in Dante Alighieri. Atti del convegno di Madrid (5-7 novembre 2012), eds. Carlota Cattermole, Celia de Aldama, and Chiara Giordano (Madrid: Ediciones de La Discreta, 2014), 527-55. Traina dates the exchange with Cacciamonte to the last decade of the thirteenth century. The correspondence with Gherarduccio has been dated by Guido Zaccagnini to the same years. As for the exchange with Guelfo Taviani, Zaccagnini dates it to the very beginning of the fourteenth century. See Le rime di Cino da Pistoia, ed. Guido Zaccagnini (Genève: Olschki, 1925). ↑

10. On these and other meanings of leggiadria, see Teodolinda Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova' (1283-1292) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), esp. 71-72. ↑

11. The text of Raimbaut’s canso is from The Poems of the Troubadour, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, ed. Joseph Linskill (The Hague: Mouton, 1964). ↑

12. The text of Peirol’s poem is from Peirol, troubadour of Auvergne, ed. S. C. Aston (Cambridge: University Press, 1953). ↑

13. See the entry “Levezza” in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–1978), vol. 3, 636. The term occurs in Convivio 3.1.11: “sarei stato ripreso di levezza d’animo, udendo me essere del primo amore mutato.” Quotations from Dante’s Convivio are from Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 2, eds. Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1995). ↑

14. The speaker appears to reproach himself for the lightness with which he replaced the company of ladies with such an inferior pleasure as hunting: “Or ecco leggiadria di gentil core, / per una sì selvaggia dilettanza / lasciar le donne e lor gaia sembianza!” (10-12). Although verse 10 may be read as ironic and thus as opposing a graceful conduct to the “savage delight” of the following verse, both Riccardo Viel and Claudio Giunta have read the noun leggiadria in the sonnet as having a negative connotation. See Riccardo Viel, “La “leggiadria”: origini d’una virtù dantesca,” in Lectura Dantis Lupiensis. Vol. 6-2017, eds. Valerio Marrucci and Valter Leonardo Puccetti (Ravenna: Longo, 2020), 61-82, at 70-71. For “leggiadria” in the sonnet as meaning sventatezza, see Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Giunta, 136. ↑

15. See Viel, “La “leggiadria”: origini d’una virtù dantesca,” 71-72; and Furio Brugnolo, “Conservare per trasformare. Il transfer lirico in Dante (Vita nuova e dintorni),” in Atti degli incontri sulle Opere di Dante. I. “Vita Nova”. “Fiore”. “Epistola XIII”, eds. Manuele Gragnolati, Luca Carlo Rossi, Paola Allegretti, Natascia Tonelli, Alberto Casadei (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), 25-65, at 27-28. ↑

16. I’ no spero must predate the last part of Dante’s correspondence with Cino, as Dante recalls it in De vulgari 2.5.4 as an example of a canzone that begins with a hendecasyllable. As for Bene è forte cosa il dolce sguardo, its markedly Cavalcantian lexicon suggests an early date of composition. ↑

17. “Dico ch’ogni vertù principalmente / vien da una radice, / vertute, dico, che fa l’uom felice / in sua operazione. / Quest’è, secondo che l’Etica dice, / un abito eligente / lo qual dimora in mezzo solamente” (Le dolci rime, 81-87). In the De vulgari, Dante claims, “Cum igitur homo, non nature instinctu, sed ratione moveatur, et ipsa ratio vel circa discretionem vel circa iudicium vel circa electionem diversificetur in singulis, adeo ut fere quilibet sua propria specie videatur gaudere, per proprios actus vel passiones, ut brutum animal, neminem alium intelligere oppinamur” (1.3.1). On Dante’s translation of Aristotle’s definition, and more broadly on the vernacular reception of Aristotle, see Teodolinda Barolini, “Aristotle’s Mezzo, Courtly Misura, and Dante’s Canzone Le dolci rime. Humanism, Ethics, and Social Anxiety,” in Dante and the Greeks, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2014), 163-79. Antonio Gagliardi has observed a reference to Aristotle’s Ethics in Cino’s sonnet. See Antonio Gagliardi, Cino da Pistoia. Le poetiche dell’anima (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2001), 113. Aristotle’s definition is in Nicomachean Ethics 2.6, 1106b36. ↑

18. After recalling Dante’s rebuke of Cino in Degno fa voi, Bruno Nardi affirms, “E più seriamente Dante stesso in proprio nome, come si conveniva ad uomo che ormai s’era del tutto dipartito da questo genere di rime non più confacenti alla sua età, lo ammoniva di non lasciarsi pigliare «a ogni uncino».” Bruno Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale (Bari: Laterza, 1990), 67. ↑

19. The text of Garin’s poem is from Les Poetes Francois, Depuis Le XII. Siecle Jusqu’a Malherbe, vol. 1, ed. Pierre René Auguis (Impr. de Crapelet: Paris, 1824). ↑

20. See Dante’s Lyric Poetry, eds. Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 327. The texts of Guinizzelli’s poems are from Guido Guinizzelli, Rime, ed. Luciano Rossi (Turin: Einaudi, 2002). ↑

21. In his sonnet Perché voi state forse ancor pensivo, Cino declares that he is studying a lapidary so as to become expert of gems: “Ancor, per divenir sommo gemmieri, / nel lapidaro ho messo ogni mio ’ntento” (9-10). ↑

22. See Ronald L. Martinez, “Guinizellian Protocols: Angelic Hierarchies, Human Government, and Poetic Form in Dante,” Dante Studies 134 (2016): 48-111, at 80-81. ↑

23. See, for instance, propositions XIX (XX) and XXI (XXII) and De divinis nominibus 4.1. ↑

24. See Bruna Cordati Martinelli’s essay “Condizione” in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, vol. 2, 139. ↑

25. The text of Chiaro’s poem is from Poeti del Duecento, pt. 1, ed. Gianfranco Contini (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960). ↑

26. In Ben mi credea, Bonagiunta declares that the splendor of his beloved is greater than that of every other source of light (“Tant’è lo suo splendore / che passa il sole, di vertut’e spera, / e stella e luna ed ogn’altra lumera,” 22-24) – a claim he repeats in the adnominatio of Vostra piacensa (“chera - sovra l’altre rischiarate, / d’uno sprendore sprendente isprendete / che più risprende che del sol li rai,” 12-14). In Feruto sono, he addresses his beloved as “mia spera”: “Però chiero mersede a voi, mia spera, / dolce mia vita e tutto mio conforto” (9-10). The texts of Bonagiunta’s poems are from Bonagiunta Orbicciani da Lucca, Rime, ed. Aldo Menichetti (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012). ↑

27. At the outset of Paradiso 3, Beatrice is referred to as “Quel sol che pria d’amor mi scaldò ’l petto” (1). On Beatrice’s act as an infusion of light and, more broadly, on the theology of light in Dante’s Paradiso, see Marco Ariani, “Lux inaccessibilis”. Metafore e teologia della luce nel “Paradiso” di Dante (Rome: Aracne, 2010). ↑

28. See Gagliardi, Cino da Pistoia. Le poetiche dell’anima, esp. 134-36. ↑

29. Ibid., 127-28. Zaccagnini has observed that Sta nel piacer must have been composed by 1300, as it is to be found in a Memoriale of that year. ↑

30. “Chi non avesse mai veduto foco / no crederia che cocere potesse, / anti li sembraria solazzo e gioco […] quello d’Amore m’à tocato un poco, / molto me coce - Deo, che s’aprendesse! / Che s’aprendesse in voi, donna mia, / che mi mostrate dar solazzo amando” (1-10). The text of Giacomo’s poem is from I poeti della scuola sicilina, vol. 1, ed. Roberto Antonelli (Milan: Mondadori, 2008). ↑

31. Dionysius’ works were the subject of numerous commentaries in the late Middle Ages. The major scholastic commentaries, Aquinas’ commentary on the De divinis nominibus and Albertus Magnus’ commentary on the De coelesti hierarchia, which are behind Dante’s assimilation of Dionysius’ doctrine, may have been Cino’s sources as well. Cino may have encountered Neoplatonic writings over his Bolognese stay. As Maria Luisa Ardizzone has pointed out, there was indeed a connection, at the University of Bologna, between the study of law and that of philosophy and theology. The debate on light that took place in the second half of the Duecento may have been a further vehicle for Cino’s encounter with the Dionysian doctrine and with that of the De causis. On the influence of the Dionysian corpus on medieval thought, and for Dante’s knowledge of Dionysius’ works, see Diego Sbacchi, La presenza di Dionigi l’Areopagita nel “Paradiso” di Dante (Florence: Olschki, 2006); Susanna Barsella, In the Light of the Angels: Angelology and Cosmology in Dante’s Divina commedia (Florence: Olschki, 2010), esp. 4-32. On the connection in Bologna between jurisprudence and the study of philosophy and theology, and on the thirteenth-century debate on light, see Maria Luisa Ardizzone, “Guido Guinizzelli’s “Al cor gentil”: A Notary in Search of Written Laws,” Modern Philology 94, no. 4 (1997): 455-74. ↑

32. “Però puote anche parere così per l’organo visivo, cioè l’occhio, lo quale per infertade e per fatica si transmuta in alcuno coloramento e in alcuna debilitade” (13). ↑

33. See Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Giunta, 522-23. ↑

34. Tullio Gregory, Speculum naturale: percorsi del pensiero medievale (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007), 73. ↑

35. As noted in Barsella, In the Light of the Angels, 110. ↑

36. The translations are from Summa Theologica, literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, vol. 1 (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007). ↑

37. In Io guardo per li prati, Cino speaks of the arrow that pierced his heart when Mars “looked” at Venus: “nel tempo che, guardando Vener Marte, / con quella sua saetta che più taglia / mi diè per mezzo il core” (7-9). As Zaccagnini has observed, “guardare” is here a technical verb. Come li saggi is addressed to the Bolognese poet Gherarcuccio Garisendi. Zaccagnini has dated the exchange to the years of Cino’s formation in Bologna in the last decade of the thirteenth century. Cino’s correspondence with Onesto is also believed to have taken place over Cino’s Bolognese stay. Indeed, another part of their correspondence – Onesto’s sonnet to Cino «Mente» ed «umìle» e più di mille sporte – has been dated to sometime between 1297 and 1301. See, on this dating, Sara Ferrilli, “Per raggio di stella”: Cecco d’Ascoli e la cultura volgare tra Due e Trecento (Ravenna: Longo, 2022), 306. On the prominent role of astrology in Bologna, where Cino studied and taught, see Nancy Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils. Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). ↑

38. In Donna, io vi miro e non è chi vi guidi, Cino claims that a new lady has taken utter possession of his imagination and he cannot fight it although his heart would want it. In Bella e gentile amica di pietate, the sin is imputed to the Lord of love (“peccato che fa ’l meo segnore,” 6). In Audite la cagion de’ miei sospiri, the Pistoian poet ascribes responsibility for his detrimental passion to his eyes which make him turn to look at the lady against his will (“contra ’l mi’ voler mi fanno gire,” 13). ↑

39. In Convivio 2.12.7, Dante relates that he began to go where philosophy demonstrated itself most truthfully, that is, “ne le scuole de li religiosi e a le disputazioni de li filosofanti.” ↑

40. On the aim of the Condemnation, see Luca Bianchi, “Students, Masters, and ‘Heterodox’ Doctrines at the Parisian Faculty of Arts in the 1270s,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 76, no. 1 (2009): 75-109. ↑

41. Propositions 151 through 169 all concern freedom of choice. Proposition 76 also touches on individual choice as it regards the influence that the intelligence that moves the heaven exerts on the rational soul. Proposition 102 is also related as it concerns the question of future contingents. I follow Hissette’s list in Roland Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Louvain-Paris: 1977). Many are the contributions on the thirteenth-century debate on free choice. In the field of Dante studies, see Paola Nasti, “Purgatorio XVI,” in Lectura Dantis Bononiensis. VII, eds. Emilio Pasquini and Carlo Galli (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017), 117-41; Pasquale Porro, “Canto XVIII. Amore e libero arbitrio in Dante,” in Lectura Dantis Romana. Cento canti per cento anni. II. Purgatorio. 2. Canti XVIII-XXXIII, eds. Enrico Malato and Andrea Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno, 2014), 523-60. ↑

42. See Fioravanti’s commentary in Dante Alighieri, Convivio, ed. Gianfranco Fioravanti (Milan: Mondadori, 2019), 215. ↑

43. See Paolo Falzone, “Purgatorio XVIII, o del buon uso degli affetti,” Bollettino di Italianistica 14 (2017): 46-70. ↑

44. On Cino’s studies, see Luigi Chiappelli, Vita e opere giuridiche di Cino da Pistoia (Pistoia: Fratelli Bracali, 1881 [repr. Bologna: A. Forni, 1978]), esp. 19-28. ↑

45. See Chiappelli, Vita e opere giuridiche di Cino da Pistoia, esp. 207-14. As for Cino’s knowledge of late-antique Platonism, as Silvia Tranfaglia has observed in his Lectura Cino explicitly recalls Boethius’ discourse on nobility. See Silvia Tranfaglia (2016) La ‘ragione’ poetica in Cino da Pistoia. Lingua e stile oltre lo ‘Stilnovo’ [Dissertation thesis] Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, 173. ↑

46. See Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. De Robertis, 508. ↑

47. See Cavalcanti’s mottetto to Gianni Alfani Gianni, quel Guido salute, v. 10. On Dante’s supersession of Andreas’ view, see Maria Simonelli, “Il tema della nobiltà in Andrea Cappellano e in Dante,” Dante Studies 84 (1966): 51-64, esp. 60-61. See also the commentaries on Purgatorio 18 by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi and Nicola Fosca in Purgatorio, comm. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Milan: Mondadori, 1994) and Purgatorio, comm. Nicola Fosca (Canterano: Aracne, 2019). ↑

48. See Foster and Boyde, eds., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, 328-29. Andreas’ claim is in De amore 1.3: “Dicitur autem amor ab amo verbo, quod significat capere vel capi. Nam qui amat captus est cupidinis vinculis aliumque desiderat suo capere hamo. Sicut enim piscator astutus suis conatur cibiculis attrahere pisces et ipsos sui hami capere unco.” ↑

49. See De amore 1.5.1. ↑

50. “Caecitas impedit amorem, quia caecus videre non potest unde suus possit animus immoderatam suscipere cogitationem” (De amore 1.5.6). For a discussion of blindness in Andreas’ treatise, see Julie Singer, Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 2011); Don A. Monson, Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition (Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2005). ↑

51. Bindi and Fanfani, proposing the lectio “Guarnieri,” have suggested that Cino is alluding to a legal text by the jurist Irnerius. See Le rime di messer Cino da Pistoja, ridotte a miglior lezione da Enrico Bindi e Pietro Fanfani (Pistoia: Tipografía Niccolai, 1878), 242. Both Zaccagnini and Fenzi take Cino’s verse as a reference to the De amore. See Zaccagnini, Le rime di Cino da Pistoia, 234-35; and Enrico Fenzi, “Ancora sulla Epistola a Moroello e sulla ‘montanina’ di Dante (Rime, 15),” Tenzone: Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantología 4 (2003): 43-84, at 72. ↑

52. Translations are from The Art of Courtly Love. With an Introduction, Translation, and Notes by John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). ↑

53. See Enrico Fenzi, “Intorno alla prima corrispondenza poetica fra Cino e Dante: la canzone per la morte di Beatrice e i sonetti "Perch’io non truovo chi meco ragioni" e "Dante, i’ non odo in qual albergo soni",” in Cino da Pistoia nella storia della poesia italiana, eds. Rossend Arqués Corominas and Silvia Tranfaglia (Florence: Cesati, 2016), 75-97, esp. 89-90. ↑

54. See Vita nova 38-39. The text is from Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 1, no. 1, ed. Domenico De Robertis (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1984). ↑

55. See Pinto, “La poetica dell’esilio e la tenzone con Cino,” esp. 61-62. ↑

56. See Pasquini, “Appunti sul carteggio Dante - Cino,” 11-12. See also Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. De Robertis, 509. ↑

57. The texts of Pier della Vigna’s poem and of I’ sono alcuna volta domandato are both from Contini’s Poeti del Duecento. ↑

58. See Caïti-Russo, “Il marchese Moroello Malaspina,” 148. ↑

59. See Guglielmo Gorni, Lettera nome numero. L’ordine delle cose in Dante (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 53. ↑

60. A striking example is I’ no spero che mai per mia salute: “I’ no spero che mai per mia salute / si faccia, per vertute — di soffrenza / o d’altra cosa, / questa sdegnosa — di Pietate amica; / poi non s’è mossa da ch’ell’ha vedute / le lagrime venute — per potenza / de la gravosa / pena che posa — nel cor che fatica.” (1-8). ↑

61. Traina, “Il "volgibile cor" di Cino da Pistoia,” 532. Cacciamonte writes, “che sia costante e monti la u’ dismonta / d’Amor[e], che per tutto ’l mondo splende. / E per lo certo, chi a lui s’aponta, / acquista gioia qual magior attende” (Prego il nome de la vostra fonta, 3-6). ↑

62. As the early commentators of the Comedy testify, in Dante’s time Boethius’ Consolation was widely taken as a chief example of elegy. Stefano Carrai recalls Jacopo Alighieri’s glosses, where, distinguishing the four styles of tragedy, comedy, satire, and elegy, Dante’s son indicates Boethius as representative of the last one. Carrai also refers to Pietro Alighieri, Jacopo della Lana, and the Anonimo fiorentino, who all indicate the Latin prosimetrum as an example of elegiac style, as well as to the poet Nicolò de’ Rossi, who claims, “Elegia dicitur loquutio de miseria et consolatione, ut Boetius.” See Stefano Carrai, Dante elegiaco. Una chiave di lettura per la “Vita Nova” (Florence: Olschki, 2006), 18-19. ↑

63. On the difference between Virgil’s parole ornate and Jason’s, and for an analysis of Dante’s poetry through the notion of honestum, see Mario Trovato, “Dante’s poetics of ‘Honestum’: The difference: ‘Parlare onesto’ and ‘Parola ornata’,” Quaderni d’Italianistica 17, no. 2 (1996): 5-35. ↑

64. On the meaning of “conte” in the two sonnets as rendering, respectively, the Latin cognitae and comptae, see Leyla Livraghi, “Dante (e Cino) 1302-1306,” Tenzone: Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantología 13 (2012): 55-98, at 85. ↑

65. See Arnaldi de Villanova, Opera medica omnia, vol. 3 (Barcelona: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 1985), 52; Natascia Tonelli, “La canzone montanina di Dante Alighieri (Rime, 15): nodi problematici di un commento,” Per leggere 19 (2010): 7-36, at 28. ↑

66. In Convivio 2.12.2, Dante reveals that, so as to console himself after the loss of the gentilissima, he began to read “quello non conosciuto da molti libro di Boezio.” ↑

67. The translations of Boethius’ Consolatio are from The Consolation of Philosophy, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Richard H. Green (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1962) and The Consolation of Philosophy, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by P. G. Walsh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). ↑

68. See Convivio 4.12.15, Marco Lombardo’s discourse on the anima semplicetta (Purgatorio 16.85-93), and Virgil’s distinction in Purgatorio 17.94-96. ↑

69. See Mary Carruthers, “Sweetness,” Speculum 81, no. 4 (2006): 999-1013. ↑

70. See Enrico Fenzi, (ed.), De vulgari eloquentia, in Dante Alighieri, Le opere, vol. 3 (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2012), 71. ↑

71. Convivio 2.7.5. Emphasis mine. See Selene Sarteschi, “Notazioni intorno ad “Amor che movi tua virtù dal cielo" e ad altre rime di Dante,” in Da Guido Guinizzelli a Dante. Nuove prospettive sulla lirica del Duecento, eds. Furio Brugnolo and Gianfelice Peron (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2004), 305-32, at 315. ↑