Beatrice

   Sovra candido vel, cinta d’oliva
donna m’apparve sotto verde manto
vestita del color di fiamma viva.

(Purgatorio XXX.31-33)

   The Lady appeared to me under a green mantle,
wearing a white veil and wreathed in olive leaves,
dressed in the color of living flame.

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In these verses, our poet begins the narration of his reunion with Beatrice in Purgatorio. You’ll remember that Dante, after being dunked in the river of Lethe, sees a procession of allegorical characters being led by a candelabra that leaves psychedelic trails of light behind its flames. He then sees the 24 elders, the four beasts of the Apocalypse and a chariot pulled by the magical griffin. He spots Beatrice silhouetted against the sunrise and, remembering that he’d once trembled in her presence, confesses: “I felt the immense power of old love” (Paradiso 30.48).

It’s hard to explain the importance of their love affair. In his early work, called the Vita nova, Dante recounts his love for, and often paralyzing interactions with, Beatrice. She was not only a woman; she was also the number 9. In other words, she was so close to human perfection that her beauty made her seem like an angel. In the Vita nova, Dante tells the story of how that beauty awakened in him a natural desire, one that seemed at first romantic but, after Beatrice died, turned out to be a longing for the divine Love that moves the sun and other stars.

In the first few pages of the Divine Comedy, we discover that the Virgin Mary was distressed by Dante’s sins and, having received permission for a special one-time deal from God, she asks St. Lucy to save him somehow. (St. Lucy was Dante’s particular favorite, perhaps in part because she was the patron saint of those with poor eyesight and Dante himself tells us that he often struggled to read up close.) Beatrice, instructed by St. Lucy to be helpful, descends into Hell where she convinces Virgil to find Dante in the “dark wood” of his perdition and to save his soul by letting him see the fates of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Beatrice, nicknamed Bice, was born in 1266 to Folco Portinari. Her family became wealthy thanks to trade and banking, and not surprisingly, belonged to the consorteria of the Cerchi family who headed the faction of the White Guelphs. Folco, who is buried in the chapel of Sant’Egidio in the Santa Maria Nuova hospital complex, selected Simone de’ Bardi to be her husband. He came from a richer family and one that was on its way to being even more powerful in the 1300s.

Beatrice lived here, only steps from the church of Santa Margherita, which is practically adjacent to the house where Dante lived. Her nursemaid, Monna Tessa, was said to have accompanied her everywhere, as was the custom among privileged families like the Portinari. Poor Beatrice died, as tearfully recounted in the Vita nova, on June 8, 1290, just days before her 24th birthday.

Courtly lyric and later Tuscan poetry often praised adulterous love affairs, especially of the non-sexual variety. This is because ‘normal’ marriages were arranged and, as such, rarely led to breathless love affairs. There is no concrete evidence that Dante and Beatrice were involved in a physical relationship, or that they weren’t. Dante was married to Gemma Donati who had lived next to the Donati tower in piazza San Pier Maggiore (below) before moving to Dante’s house.

Gemma belonged to the Black Guelph Donati clan who had other properties very close to the Alighieri houses as well. We cannot say whether Dante loved her, or she him. After Dante’s edict of exile, Gemma never left Florence. She allowed his children to leave the city to be with him as they came of age, but she apparently wasn’t interested in ever seeing him again. In fact, their daughter Antonia moved to Ravenna to join her father and there joined a convent, taking the name “Sister Beatrice.” Gemma couldn’t have liked that much.

Coat of arms of the Portinari family

Coat of arms of the Bardi family. Beatrice married Simone de’ Bardi and is very likely buried with his family in Santa Croce, despite what you may have heard to the contrary.