Beatrice

Beatrice was the daughter of Folco Portinari, the founder of Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova hospital, and Cilia de’ Caponsacchi. She married Simone de’ Bardi in 1286 and died at a young age on 8 June 1290. Beyond these biographical details, however, Beatrice is obviously above all a poetic character, defined over time and inevitably transfigured and idealized in a long sequence of episodes. She is present in Dante’s early Rime, in the Vita Nuova, which is divided according to the life and death of his “blessed Beatrice”, and in the Convivio, where the memory of Beatrice gives way to the gentle woman. Her definitive reinstatement emerges with the Commedia, where, after being evoked by Virgil in Inferno she reappears in the earthly paradise to guide Dante to the ultimate kingdom. The independent testimonies of Andrea Lancia, Pietro Alighieri and Boccaccio regarding Beatrice’s historical existence, also backed up by documentary evidence (essentially her father’s will), effectively led to a refutation of the view that she had not actually existed, and also to a reassessment of the basis for interpreting Beatrice the character. No longer reduced to a purely allegorical personification of theology or an abstract symbol of some superior metaphysical reality, occasionally animated by emotions in Dante’s more markedly autobiographical passages, Beatrice’s poetic function can be clarified in two ways. The first is by referring to Auerbach’s concept of figurality, which does not cancel the character’s literal and actual historical reality. The second, and to even greater effect, is by recalling the Patristic and Scholastic concept of analogia entis, in which a creature’s actual identity is shared with the Creator: Beatrice can attend to her lofty role as guide precisely because in her earthly beauty Dante spotted a sign, a “copying” of God’s infinite beauty.