Donati

   “.......... ’l loco, u’ fui a viver posto,
di giorno in giorno più di ben si spolpa
ed a trista ruina par disposto.”
   “............ quei che più n’ha colpa
vegg’ io a coda d’una bestia tratto
inver la valle, ove mai non si scolpa.”

(Purgatorio XXIV.79-84)

   “.......... the place where I was put to live,
is day by day stripped of its goodness
and seems destined for woeful ruin.”
   “............ him who is most at fault,
I see dragged by the tail of a beast
into the valley where no one is forgiven.”

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These verses come from the very end of Dante’s conversation in Purgatorio with his old (and now dead) friend, Forese Donati. Our poet had happily ‘discovered’ his friend among the oddly emaciated souls of the gluttonous in the previous canto, but here they’re sharing the last goodbye before Dante ‘returns’ again to Purgatory post mortem. More specifically, Dante speaks the first three lines and Forese pronounces the last three.

Readers will remember that Dante ‘assigns’ a member of the Donati family to each of the Comedy’s three canticles: Piccarda appears, shining like a pearl, in the third canto of Paradiso. Forese is here. And, lastly, Forese tell us in these lines that Corso will be damned to hell.

Forese, with whom Dante had exchanged tenzoni (sonnets sent back and forth, repeating the same rhyme scheme), is not the only poet on this terrace. In fact, it is here that Bonagiunta da Lucca coins the phrase dolce stil novo in reference to Dante’s superior artistic talent (Purg. 24.57). This is the source of the name “Sweet New Style,” which is often used to refer to the poetic group to which Dante and Guido Cavalcanti belonged during their youth.

Above: Doré’s portrayal of the two friends reunited

The Donati family’s origins are shrouded in mystery. They possessed large swaths of land outside the city gates and were extremely wealthy by the end of the eleventh century. They founded the church of San Pier Maggiore, and even a leper hospital in 1186. Together with the Adimari and the Cerchi families, the Donati were patrons of the church of Santa Margherita too. The tower to which this plaque is attached was one of several in this neighborhood that belonged to the Donati, and two others still stand near Piazza di San Pier Maggiore. There were a lot of Donati around. In fact, Forese was a third cousin of Dante’s wife Gemma Donati.

Corso Donati (ca. 1250-1308), the epitome of the elite wealthy nobleman, was the leader of the Black Guelphs and a central figure in the political and social life of late thirteenth-century Florence. He seems to have been quite a ruthless person who spent a great deal of energy trying to emerge from the shadow of his father, one of the most powerful political characters of the previous generation. As a matter of fact, he was widely known for personally killing more than one person who had made him angry.

Corso served during the 1280s as podestà of several nearby communes and fought alongside Dante in the Battle of Campaldino (1289). After the approval of the Ordinances of Justice in 1293, noble magnates were excluded from public office, a situation that severely diminished Corso’s influence. Nevertheless, he made his displeasure known and fought particularly against losing privilege, becoming along the way the de facto figurehead of the nobles who called him “the Baron.”

He survived Guido Cavalcanti’s assassination attempt and regularly fomented street violence whenever chaos played to his advantage. When the infamous riot between the Donati and the Cerchi broke out in 1300, Corso was in Rome on a mission to Pope Boniface VIII. With the Pope’s blessing, Charles of Valois entered Florence to help the Black Guelphs the following year.

During the bedlam, many White Guelphs fled and Corso flung open the doors of the jail, letting the criminals, as well as his own men, sack the city for five days. In this way, he became the undisputed ruler of Florence, a position he held until 1308, when many of his supporters were alarmed by his overtures to foreign antagonists and by his marriage to the daughter of the feared Ghibelline general Uguccione della Faggiola.

Fearing Corso’s bellicose ambitions, the government of the Popolo then managed to have him declared a traitor. He was cut down near San Salvi.

Coat of arms of the Donati family