Dante lived in Florence from the day of his birth until 1301-1302, and was active in Florentine political life too. In the Rime preceding his exile and in the Vita Nuova, the city comes across as a mere geographical location, a simple backdrop of no particular significance. The situation changes radically in his later works, especially in the Commedia, where Florence acquires a centrality laden with potent controversial overtones and important ideological implications. There are a few references to Florence in the De Vulgari and Convivio, where the city is criticized for its lack of gratitude in banishing its best sons, or profound nostalgia for the lost homeland is expressed. There are also Dante’s vehement condemnations and apocalyptic denunciations of the villainous Florentines in his political letters. It is in the Commedia, however, that Florence becomes a key theme. Going against an entire historical tradition in which the thriving Tuscan municipality was likened to a legendary ancient Rome, Dante depicts the Florence of his own time as civitas diaboli, mercilessly denouncing the decay resulting from its ferocious internal struggles, legislative fragility, the corruption of its ruling class, and the evil behaviour of its inhabitants. In the Commedia, Dante subjects the city of his own time to fierce invective, comparing it with an Augustinian civitas terrena moving towards its catastrophic destiny. His essential criticism, emerging from the words of Cacciaguida in Par., XV-XVI, concerns its uncontrolled geographical and economic expansion, the uncurbed greed of its people and its profoundly corrupt morals, juxtaposed to the idealized vision of an “ancient Florence” founded on an appropriate and balanced sense of measure. But the negative myth of Florence, transfigured into a “new civitas diaboli”[1], is dialectically linked to the antagonistic and prophetic role taken on by the exile-author of the poem.
[1] E. Brilli, Dalla “città partita” alla civitas confusionis. Sulla tradizione e i modelli della Firenze dantesca, in “Bollettino di italianistica”, n.s., a. III 2006, pp. 73-111, a p. 110.
Florence
