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Pier della Vigna's Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: the ‘Eulogy’ of Frederick II and ‘Inferno’ 13

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

William A. Stephany
William A. Stephany*
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
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Extract

Most twentieth-century readers who know of Pier della Vigna at all know of him through the intermediary of Dante's Inferno. As the suicidal tree who bleeds out words with the sap from his broken branches, Piero is one of Dante's most memorable creations, a figure whose name, like those of Francesca da Rimini and Ugolino da Pisa, is for us associated more with one fictional frozen moment than with the realities of a lifetime. And yet, to Dante and his contemporaries, Piero was neither fictional nor obscure. His fame was sufficient, for example, that Dante never felt the need to name him in Inferno 13: enough that he once held ‘ambo le chiavi del cor di Federigo’ (Inferno 13.58–59).

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Traditio , Volume 38 , 1982 , pp. 193 - 212
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Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 All references to Dante's text are to La commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. Petrocchi, Giorgio, 4 vols. (Milan 1966).Google Scholar

2 For more details of Piero's biography, see Huillard-Bréholles, A., Vie et correspondence de Pierre de la Vigne (Paris 1895) 1–90. Ernst Kantorowicz's analysis of Piero's position and importance in Frederick's court remains of central significance: Frederick the Second, 1194–1250, trans. Lorimer, E. O. (London 1930) 293ff., 511ff., et passim. An excellent summary biography is provided in Emilio Bigi's entry ‘Pietro della Vigna,’ in Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome 1973) IV 511–16.Google Scholar

3 Wieruszowski, Helene, Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome 1971) 373–74; 433–35. Kantorowicz also demonstrates the wide dispersal of the Vignean collections, by the late thirteenth century even to England, where they served as models to clerks of Henry, III and Edward, I. See his ‘Petrus de Vinea in England,’ Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Instituts für Geschichtsforschung 51 (1937) 43–88; and ‘The Prologue to Fleta and the School of Petrus de Vinea,’ Speculum 32 (1957) 231–49.Google Scholar

4 Baethgen, Friedrich, Dante und Petrus de Vinea (Sb. Akad. München [1955]), and Mazzamuto, Pietro, ‘L'epistolario di Pier della Vigna e l'opera di Dante,’ Atti del convegno di studi su Dante e la Magna Curia (Palermo, Catania, Messina 7–11 Nov. 1965) 205. On the availability of the collection in Dante's Florence, Mazzamuto finds, like Wieruszowki, ‘che alla fine del sec. xiii in Europa e quindi anche in Italia e proprio in Firenze circolavano exemplaria dell’ epistolario …’ (202). Two generations after Dante, Boccaccio could still say, in Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, that Pier della Vigna ‘fu ne’ suoi tempi reputato maraviglioso dettatore, e ancora stanno molte delle pístole sue, per le quali apare quanto in ciò artificioso [i.e., abile] fosse.’ Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan 1965) VI 611.Google Scholar

5 Kantorowicz, , Frederick the Second , makes the point passim; see especially 511ff. In The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton 1957), he cautions against an exaggerated reaction to the jargon of thirteenth-century jurists, whose tradition of adapting the language of Christian theology and liturgy can be traced back to the fourth century (100–101; 120), but he also notes that Piero's and Frederick's use of such language is so extreme as to seem indeed blasphemous (118 n. 90). Marjorie Reeves also suggests that Frederick uses such language to promote ‘a kind of Imperial Joachimism,’ and so to exploit thirteenth-century Messianic fervor, in The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford 1969) 309–10.Google Scholar

6 For texts of the documents from Frederick's court that concern Pier della Vigna, see ‘Pièces Justificatives,’ Appendix to Huillard-Bréholles, Vie et correspondence. The document cited appears as No. 110. In No. 111, a Sicilian prelate, seeking Piero's favor, writes in part as follows: ‘Unde non immerito me movet haec externa relatio quod Petrus in cujus petra fundatur imperialis Ecclesia cum augustalis animus roboratur in Coena cum discipulis, tale verbum potuit edixisse: quia dum me facerem eligi, faceretis subsequenter in vacante ecclesia promoveri.’Google Scholar

7 ‘Pièces Justificatives’ No. 2. In this same document, which will be cited again later in this essay, Nicholas also calls Piero another Moses (‘velut novus Legifer Moyses de monte Synai, legum copiam concessam sibi coelitus hominibus reportavit’), another Joseph, (‘alter Joseph, cui tanquam fideli interpreti, ejus studio magnus ubique Caesar … circularis orbis regna gubernanda commisit’), and even another opener of the books of Revelation (‘praeter clausi libri septem signacula, divinus intuitus revelavit’). Dante would probably have concurred with Huillard-Bréholles’ evaluation of this document: ‘Il paraǐt difficile de pousser plus loin l'exagération de l’éloge et l'audace d'une comparaison qui fait jouer à Pierre de la Vigne le rǒle de l'Agneau mystique dans l'Apocalypse’ (Vie et correspondence 55).Google Scholar

8 ‘Pièces Justificatives’ No. 107; in earlier printed editions of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, it appeared as III 44.Google Scholar

9 Mazzamuto, Pietro, ‘L'epistolario’ 203. Kantorowicz says that it ‘served as a paragon of panegyric plenty’ (‘Prologue to Fleta’ 240). Of its original function, Kantorowicz says the following: ‘The Eulogy … was a panegyric oration with which Frederick may actually have been greeted on some occasion, just as it was customary on festal days to honor the Byzantine emperors by a panegyric address. More likely, however, the Eulogy was not recited, but was merely a written encomium’ (‘Prologue to Fleta’ 235). By Dante's day, of course, its fame would have been exclusively documentary. (I am following Kantorowicz's usage in this essay in italicizing Eulogy.)Google Scholar

10 Also noted by Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’ 234, in his textual notes. For example, cp. Metamorphoses 1.15, and Consolation of Philosophy 3 m. 9, with the Eulogy's fourth sentence: ‘Hunc si quidem terra et pontus adorant, et aethera satis applaudunt, utpote qui mundo verus Imperator a divino provisus culmine … mundum perpetua relatione gubernat.’Google Scholar

11 Cp. Is. 2.4.Google Scholar

12 That this document and others from the Vignean collection are echoed in Inferno 13 has been previously noted, for example by Ettore Paratore, ‘Analasi “retorica” del canto di Pier della Vigna,’ Studi danteschi 42 (1965) 281–336, and by Pietrobono, Luigi, 27 canto XIII dell’ Inferno (Lectura Dantis Romana; Turin 1962). Neither deals with my precise topic, though both of these excellent essays have in various ways influenced my reading of the canto.Google Scholar

13 Ezech, . 17.3 and Jer. 51.14.Google Scholar

14 The words I have italicized allude to Is. 45.8.Google Scholar

15 4 Reg. 24.6–16; 2 Par. 36.9ff.Google Scholar

16 Jeremias also denounced this plan as doomed to fail (Jer. 27.12ff.). Nevin, Thomas has recently argued that Brunetto Latini's ‘lazzi sorbi’ (Inferno 15.65) recall Jer. 24.2–9, where the good basket of figs are the exiles in Babylon who will be renewed and restored, while the bad basket of figs are Sedecias and the others who remain in Jerusalem. See Dante Studies 96 (1978) 25–26.Google Scholar

17 See 4 Reg. 25.4–7.Google Scholar

18 The exact cause of Piero's downfall is uncertain, but Huillard-Bréholles’ conclusion should be recalled: ‘Cependant il est certain que parmi les contemporains ou du moins dès la génération suivante s'accrédita l'opinion que la chute de Pierre de la Vigne était due à la découverte d'une connivence secrète avec le pape Innocent IV’ (Vie et correspondence 57). He cites a late thirteenth-century French chronicle from Reims to this effect. An analogous anecdote is told by the contemporary Franciscan chronicler Salimbene, From St. Francis to Dante, trans. Coulton, G. G. (2nd ed.; Philadelphia 1972) 121–22. Boccaccio repeats the story that Peiro's downfall came as a result of suborned testimony that he had had secret dealings with the Pope, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante 611. Kantorowicz speculated that Piero may have been guilty of bribery or embezzlement (Frederick the Second 664–66). If so, Isidore's gloss of 4 Reg. 25.4–7 is appropriate: ‘Sedecias, cujus oculos in Reblatha rex Babylonis evulsit, divites et peccatores hujus mundi significat; in Latinum enim vertitur Reblatha multa haec ideoque iste significat eos qui in hujus mundi multa actione et affectione involuntur, atque, a diabolo capti, intelligentiae oculos perdunt’ (Allegoriae quaedam Scripturae Sacrae, PL 83.114).Google Scholar

19 Huillard-Bréholles, , ‘Pièces Justificatives’ no. 1.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. no. 11.Google Scholar

21 Ibid. no. 2. A similar pun is found in a contemporary distich on Piero's sudden and extreme rise and fall: ‘Vinea per saltum subito devenit in altum: / Fertilis, ampla fuit, sed putrefactor ruit.’ (Cited by Huillard-Bréholles, 82 n.)Google Scholar

22 Jerome, , after a lengthy summary of the historical significance of Ezech. 17, concludes ‘Tropologice de credentibus loquens,’ by making this very connection: ‘Et granum sinapis, quod cum minimum sit omnibus seminibus, postquam creverit avium habitaculum est [Matt. 13.32]. Quidam aliter interpretantur, lignum sublime humiliarum, et humile exaltatum, referentes ad passionem Domini Salvatoris’ (Commentarium in Ezechielem, PL 25.166). See also Maurus, Rabanus, Commentarium in Ezechielem , PL 110.700 for a very similar reading.Google Scholar

23 It is also interesting that after Virgil's speech (13.46–54) placates Piero with its offer of a refreshed fame in the world above, his response begins with lines whose rime words come from the technical jargon of falconry: ‘Sì col dolce dir m'adeschi’ (55) and ‘io un poco a ragionar m'inveschi’ (57). The opportunity to contribute to a revisionist view of his biography was indeed an irresistible lure, and his speech in which he shows how richly he deserves his eternal situation proves a symbolic birdlime, in which he traps himself forever for the poem's readers. Could it be that such imagery is particularly appropriate to one who served so faithfully the author of the monumental De arte venandi cum avibus? If so, it is equally interesting that Piero's obsession in Inferno 13 is with Invidia, a vice disciplined in Purgatorio 13 by an adaptation of the techniques of falconry: the eyes are seeled.Google Scholar

24 Pietrobono, Luigi speculates whether reference to Ezechiel's eagle in the Eulogy might be ‘l'immagine, che abbia per contrapposto suggerita l'idea delle brutte Arpie, degenerazioni del simbolo sacrosanto del romano impero?’ Il canto XIII dell'Inferno, 16. On the question of false belief, Pietrobono also makes the point that faith forms ‘il motivo dominante della narrazione’ (17).Google Scholar

25 Huillard-Bréholles, , ‘Pièces Justificatives’ No. 2.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. No. 34. Even more blasphemous than the Imperial court's affectation that Piero is St. Peter to Frederick's Messiah is the occasional suggestion that he is the second person of the Trinity to Frederick's first (as in the implications of his title as Frederick's logothetes). Unmistakable in the ‘vine and branches’ strain of imagery is the echo of John 15.5, ‘Ego sum vitis, vos palmites: qui manet in me, et ego in eo, hic fert fructum multum, quia sine me nihil potestis facere.’ The pun may have been intended to celebrate Piero's position in the ecclesia imperialis, but his eventual fate, it turns out, depended more on his own relationship as branch to the vitis vera, as the subsequent verse in John implies: ‘Si quis in me non manserit, mittetur foras sicut palmes, et arescet, et colligent eum, et in ignem mittent, et ardet’ (John 15.6).Google Scholar

27 Maurus, Rabanus, De universo (PL 111.507).Google Scholar

28 Cassiodorus, , Expositio in Psalterium (PL 70.582).Google Scholar

29 The allusion is also a figural reminder of Christ, a more proper object of faith, since Cyrus is a typus Christi. For a full review of scriptural evidence (including Jer. 51), see Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate 18 (PL 167.1521–22).Google Scholar

30 An excellent scriptural gloss to Pier della Vigna's overall circumstances — earthly and infernal — is provided by Pietro Alighieri, Commentarium, ed. Nannucci, Vincenzio (Florence 1845) 158, who cites Ecclus, . 6.2–4: ‘Non te extollas in cogitatione animae tuae velut taurus, ne forte elidatur virtus tua per stultitiam; et folia tua comedat, et fructus tuos perdat et relinquaris velut lignum aridum in eremo. Anima enim nequam dsperdet qui se habet, et in guadium inimicis dat illum, et deducet in sortem impiorum.’Google Scholar

31 Super Cantica Canticorum expositio, PL 79.545.Google Scholar

32 Damian, Peter, In librum Numeri , PL 145.1036. For more elaborate interpretations making the same point, see Damian, Peter, Sermones , PL 144.785–88; Rupert of Deutz, De divinis officiis, PL 170.212–16; Maurus, Rabanus, Enarratio super Deuteronomium , PL 108.844–46. This analysis of the duo viri as the two peoples, Jews, and Christians, , recalls Giuseppe Mazzotta's discussion in Dante, Poet of the Desert (Princeton 1979) of Purgatorio 22.67–69, where Statius says to Virgil, ‘Facesti come quei che va di notte, / che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, / ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte.’ Mazzotta cites Paul and Augustine in suggesting that Jews bore for Christians the light that was useless to themselves (220–21). The botrus borne on a pole by two men was traditionally interpreted as making exactly this doctrinal point.Google Scholar

33 The Messianic connection is natural since the passage refers to Cyrus in litteram (see note 29 above). The Glossa ordinaria says that Is. 45.8 treats ‘de adventu Christi, per Cyrum significati’ (PL 113.1288). See also Alanus de Insulis, Sermo 7, ‘In Adventu Domini,’ in Sermones octo (PL 210.214).Google Scholar

34 In the Eulogy, at the end of the sentence that contains this reference to Isaias, Piero also alludes to one of Jesus’ parables with exactly the same retrospectively ironic force as the prophetic allusions that we have been considering. His reference there to the ‘filii tenebrarum, qui ex ore sedentis in trono in generatione sua prudentiores lucis filiis nuncupantur’ surely was meant simply as part of the elaborate praise of Frederick, , but could Dante have failed to recall the appropriateness to Piero's subsequent fate of its context in the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16.1–13), which concludes ‘non potestis Deo servire et mammonae’? If Piero has been as faithful to Frederick as he claims, he has at the very least been an unjust steward to God. If it is true that he was found guilty of treason or embezzlement (see note 18 above), he may have become unjust to both by serving Mammon. Of the specific line in Luke to which Piero alludes, ‘quia filii huius saeculi prudentiores filiis lucis in generatione sua sunt’ (Luke 16.8), Bede (In Lucae Evangelium expositio) says the following, also in retrospect applicable to a man of Piero's intellectual accomplishments: ‘Audiant sapientes hujus saeculi, ut stultam sapientiam deserere et sapientem Dei stultitiam discere queant, quanti eorum sapientiam divina aequitas aestimaverit, quos non vere prudentes, sed in generatione sua prudentes esse commemorat’ (PL 92.530).Google Scholar

35 Higgins, David H., ‘Cicero, , Aquinas, , and Matthew, St. in Inferno XIII,’ Dante Studies 93 (1975) 61–94. Much as I admire Higgins’ analysis at the essay's beginning of the Ciceronian structure of Piero's speech and his discussion at its end of echoes in Canto 13 of Matt. 12.25–37, many of the premises and conclusions of pp. 68–87 seem to me ill-founded.Google Scholar

36 For two classic examples of a romantic perception of Piero, similar to that of Higgins, see Vaccalluzzo, Nunzio, ‘Severino Boezio e Pier della Vigna,’ in Miscellanea di studi critici edita in onore di Arturo Graf (Bergamo 1903) 223–33; and Olschki, Leonard, ‘Dante and Peter de Vinea,’ Romanic Review 31 (1940) 105–11.Google Scholar

37 For me the best commentary on Pier della Vigna's attempt to flee indignity through death is his infernal situation itself. As da Pisa, Guido put it: ‘Sed in hoc dedignationem non fugit, quia ipsam ad inferos secum duxit,’ Commentary on Dante's Inferno, ed. Vincenzo Cioffari (Albany 1974) 250.Google Scholar

38 Higgins, praises Piero, for his magnaminity in blaming Envy, , rather than his enemies, for his downfall: ‘Pier avoids personal invective, and incriminates not a man, nor men, but with something of the detachment of a philosopher and sage, the moral abstract Envy’ (75). Piero's suicide he sees as the result of his having made the wrong choice between ‘the worldly law of honour and revenge … and the spiritual law of love… . In the cases of few other persons in the Inferno does Dante so clearly reveal the deliberate miscalculations in the sinner's exercise of his choice’ (83).Google Scholar

39 Charity, A. C., Events and Their Afterlife (Cambridge 1966) 192. For interesting arguments in this vein, see Levenson, Jon D., ‘The Grundworte of Pier delle Vigne,’ Forum Italicum 5 (1971) 499–513; and Capuccio, Maria, ‘Interpretazioni dantesche: Virgilio e Pier della Vigna,’ Il Centenario di Dante (Marcianise 1966) 115–38.Google Scholar

40 L'Ottimo commento (Pisa 1827) suggests that this line evokes Peter, St.: ‘Questi era un altro Piero: cui egli sciogleva, era sciolta da Federigo; e cui elli legava, era dallo Imperadore legato’ (I 245).Google Scholar

41 Wieruszowski, , Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy , suggests that the words are part of the technical jargon of thirteenth-century ars dictaminis, with serrare meaning to write obscurely (435 n. 5 and 468 n. 8). This may be part of the overall preciousness of Piero's language in Inferno 13, seen by most readers as Dante's attempt to recall in this canto something of Piero's complex rhetorical style. See Paratore, , ‘Analasi “retorica”’ 321–27, for a discussion of the history of this insight from its modern origin in De Sanctis, through its challenge by Contini, to Paratore's defense of the consensus attitude.Google Scholar

42 Imagery of binding and loosing admittedly is, however, also part of the canto's contrapasso. The boughs of the trees are ‘nodosi e ‘nvolti’ (Inferno 13.5), and Virgil questions Piero about his infernal condition as follows:Google Scholar

spirito incarcerato, ancor ti piaccia

di dirne come l'anima si lega

in questi nocchi; e dinne, se tu puoi,

s'alcuna mai di tai membra si spiega. (Inferno 13.87–90, my italics)

Such imagery may in part parody Pier Frederick's imperial iconography. For example, the fourteenth-century chronicler Franciscus Pipinus records a now lost relief or painting in a palace in Naples. Frederick was shown pointing to C della Vigna, while petitioners knelt before him seeking justice. An accompanying inscription had them asking ‘Caesar, amor legum, Friderice piissime regum, causarum telas notrasque resolvere querelas.’ Christie K. Frederick, in the words of his inscription, directed them to Piero for judgment. See Thomas. Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Immutator Mundi (Oxford 1972) 333–34. Without indicating that the verses accompanied a work of visual art, Guido da Pisa quotes both inscriptions in full (Commentary 249). For a more extensive consideration of Piero's function in Frederick's iconography, see the essay by Fengler and William A. Stephany, ‘Frederick II's Gateway Capuan and Pier della Vigna Dante's,’ Dante Studies 99 (1981).

43 Huillard-Bréholles, , ‘Pièces Justificatives’ No. 2. I have altered Nicholas’ punctuation a bit to accommodate my syntax.Google Scholar

44 Paratore, , ‘Analasi “retorica”’ 333.Google Scholar

45 Mazzotta, , Dante, Poet of the Desert 254. For other recent discussions of palinode organized around specific examples, see Ransom, Daniel J., ‘Panis Angelorum: A Palinode in the Paradiso,’ Dante Studies 95 (1977) 81–94; and Jacoff, Rachel, ‘The Post-Palinodic Smile: Paradiso VII and IX,’ Dante Studies 98 (1980) 111–22.Google Scholar

46 An earlier version of parts of this essay was read at the Fourteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 1979.Google Scholar