Baptistry

   Se mai continga che il poema sacro
al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
sì che m’ha fatto per più anni macro,
   vinca la crudeltà, che fuor mi serra
del bello ovile, ov’io dormii agnello
nimico ai lupi che gli danno guerra;
   con altra voce ormai, con altro vello
ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
del mio battesmo prenderò il cappello.

(Paradiso XXV.1-9)

   Should it ever happen that the sacred poem,
on which heaven and earth laid their hands
such that the work kept me lean for many years,
   conquer the cruelty that keeps me away
from the fine sheepfold, where as a lamb I slept,
the enemy of the wolves that now attack it,
   with a different voice and different fleece
I shall return a poet, and upon the font
of my baptism, I shall don the wreath.

These verses outside San Giovanni express Dante’s wistful optimism, both that he be allowed to return one day to his city and that his masterpiece be recognized for its magnificence. Sadly, the cruelty that kept Dante exiled from Florence never subsided enough for his banishment to be overturned. And, just as sadly, unlike Mussato before him and Petrarch after him, Dante was never crowned poet laureate as he hoped. Nevertheless, there are very many representations of him wearing the wreath, such as that of his cenotaph in Santa Croce.

These verses were written in the last five or six years of Dante’s life. He must’ve known by then that it was very unlikely he would ever return. And even if he did see Florence again, it was no longer the same city he left in his mid-30s. Why, then, did he write this? Because these lines open the canto in Paradiso where he is examined by St. James on hope. Though neither thing ever happened, the return to Florence and being crowned poet laureate were the objects of his rightful desire.

The baptismal font mentioned here was the same one that Dante admits to breaking during his meeting with the simonists (those turned head-down and buried one after the other into the rock) in Inferno. It was common for a medieval baptismal font, like the one you can still see in Pisa, to have several bucket-sized wells carved into it for the baptism of more than one child at a time. All of the oldest commentaries agree that Dante had once broken Florence’s font to save a child who had fallen into one of those holes.

Unfortunately, we will never see that old cracked font because it was destroyed in 1577 in preparation for the baptism of Philip de’ Medici. Philip, whose elder sister Maria would go on to become the queen of France and mother of Louis XIII, was the first to join the faith in that new font. Tragically, he died at the age of four from hydrocephalus and was buried in red silk clothes in the church of San Lorenzo.