The peace treaty signed at Castelnuovo Magra

One of the few certain details in Dante’s life is that in October 1306, at Castelnuovo Magra, in the Lunigiana, on behalf of Franceschino Malaspina, he signed a peace agreement between the Malaspina Marquises and the Bishop of Luni, Antonio da Camilla. Two notarial documents drawn up by the ser Giovanni Parente Stupio and currently held at the State Archives of La Spezia bear witness to this event. The second document contains a thorough and detailed exordium, the so-called arenga, passionately and vigorously condemning the strife afflicting the Lunigiana, blaming it on the Evil of the devil. The rich bibliography on Dante contains frequent references to the suspicion that this exordium, whose elegant diction seems highly unlike the notarial documents of the time, may not in fact have been the work of the notary. Its forceful call to peace and an end to conflict, the biblical references, and the elaborate formal structure of its Latin prose all point to the unmistakeable mark of Dante’s style, suggesting that it may be the first, as yet insufficiently investigated, example of his political thought. Of particularly significance in attributing authorship to Dante is the way in which the text equates before Christ, the summus pater, the Malaspina Marquises and the Bishop of Luni, a stance that is clearly in keeping with one of the main ideas in the Monarchia, namely, the equality of temporal and spiritual power before God. While definitive proof is still required for this fragment to be assigned to the canon of works by Dante, it nonetheless deserves inclusion, alongside the Fiore, the Detto d’Amore, and other letters, in the appendix of works “attributable” to him.