Being Savage # 55 - Is Babylon = to Avignon

[Anonymous]

Dante's Letter to Emperor Henry VII
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3712947

http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/20B/HenryVII.html

The Dating of this letter is in question. Officially historians place it in 1311, but realistically it should be place after 1453.

Letter VII: To the Roman Emperor Henry VII

(1) To the most glorious and most fortunate Conqueror, and sole Lord, the Lord Henry, by Divine Providence King of the Romans, and ever Augustus, his most devoted servants, Dante Alighieri, a Florentine undeservedly in exile, and all the Tuscans everywhere who desire peace, offer a kiss on the ground before his feet.

(2) As the boundless love of God bears witness, the heritage of peace was left to us, that in its wondrous sweetness the hardships of our warfare might be softened, and that by its practice we might earn the joys of the triumphant Fatherland.

(3) But the envy of the ancient and implacable enemy, who ever secretly plots against the prosperity of mankind, having dispossessed some of their own free will, has, owing to the absence of our guardian, impiously stripped us others against our will.

(4) Wherefore we have long wept by the waters of Confusion, and unceasingly prayed fur the protection of the just king, who should destroy the satellites of the cruel tyrant, and should stablish us again under our own justice.

(5) But when you, the successor of Caesar and of Augustus, o'erleaping the ridge of the Apennines, did bring back the venerated Tarpeian standards, forthwith our deep sighing was stayed, and the flood of our tears was dried up; and like the rising of the long-awaited Sun, a new hope of a better age shone abroad upon Italy.

(6) Then many, going before their wishes in their joy, sang with Maro of the reign of Saturn, and of the return of the Virgin.

(7) But because our Sun (whether it be the fervour of our longing, or the appearance of truth which suggests it) is believed to be tarrying, or is suspected to be turning back, as though at the bidding once again of Joshua or of the son of Amoz, we are constrained in our uncertainty to doubt, and to break forth in the words of the Forerunner: 'Art you he that should come? or look we for another?'

( And though prolonged desire, as is its wont, turns into doubt in its frenzy things which owing to their being close at hand seem to be certain, nevertheless we believe and hope in you, declaring you to be the minister of God, the son of the Church, and the furtherer of the glory of Rome.

(9) For I too, who write as well for myself as for others, beheld you most gracious, and heard you most clement, as beseems Imperial Majesty, when my hands touched your feet, and my lips paid their tribute.

(10) Then my spirit rejoiced within me, when I said secretly within myself: 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world'.

(11) But we marvel what sluggishness holds you so long, in that, long since victor in the valley of Po, you do abandon, pass by, and neglect Tuscany, not otherwise than as if you did suppose the imperial rights entrusted to your guardianship to be limited by the boundaries of Liguria; forgetting in sooth, as we apprehend, that the glorious dominion of the Romans is confined neither by the frontiers of Italy, nor by the coast-line of three-cornered Europe.

(12) For although it has been constrained by violence to narrow the bounds of its government, yet by indefeasible right it everywhere stretches as far as the waves of Amphitrite, and scarce deigns to be circumscribed by the ineffectual waters of Ocean.

(13) For it is written for our behoof : 'From the fair line of Troy a Caesar shall be born, who shall bound his empire by the ocean, his glory by the stars'.

(14) And when Augustus decreed that all the world should be taxed (as the lowing of our Evangelic Ox, aglow with the flame of the eternal fire, records), if the decree had not issued from the court of a most just prince, in vain would the only-begotten Son of God, made man, in order to the declaring a himself subject to the edict, in accordance with the nature he had assumed, have willed to be born of the Virgin at that time. For He, whom it behoved to fulfil all righteousness, would not have counselled an unrighteous act.

(15) Let him, then, for whom the whole world is looking, be ashamed to be entangled so long in such a narrow corner of the world; and let it not escape the consideration of Augustus that the tyrant of Tuscany is encouraged by the assurance that he is delaying, and daily by appealing to the pride of the evil-doers gathers fresh strength, heaping daring upon daring.

(16) Let the voice of Curio to Caesar be heard once again: 'While the factions are in confusion and without support, away with delay! delay was ever the bane of the ready—equal toil and fear are more dearly bought'.

(17) Once again let the voice of Mercury chiding Aeneas be heard: 'If the glory of such mighty deeds leave you unmoved, and you wilt not exert thyself for yours own fame's sake, yet consider the young Ascanius, Iulus yours hope and heir, to whom are due the kingdom of Italy and the land of the Romans'.

(18) For John, your royal first-born, the king, whom, after the setting of the day which is now rising, the succeeding generation of the world awaits as their ruler, is to us as a second Ascanius, who, following in the footsteps of his great sire, shall rage like a lion against the followers of Turnus wheresoever they be, and towards the followers of Latinus shall be as gentle as a lamb.

(19) Let the lofty counsels of the most sacred king take heed lest the judgement from on high renew the bitter words of Samuel: 'When you wert little in yours own sight, were you not made the head of the tribes of Israel? and the Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites'. For you likewise have been anointed king that you may smite Amalek, and not spare Agag; and may avenge him that sent you on 'the brutal people', and their 'over-hasty rejoicing' (which things verily 'Amalek' and 'Agag' are said to signify).

(20) Through the spring as through the winter do you linger at Milan, thinking to extirpate the pestiferous hydra by cutting off its heads? But, if then had turned your thoughts back to the mighty deeds of glorious Alcides, then would perceive that you, like him, are deceiving thyself; for the noisome beast, as its ever-multiplying head sprouted again, grew stronger through the loss, until the hero in good earnest attacked the seat of life, itself.

(21) For to destroy a tree the mere lopping of branches is of no avail—nay, the noxious growth will but come again the more thickly, so long as the roots are uninjured and can supply nourishment.

(22) What do you, the sole ruler of the world, imagine then wilt have accomplished when you have set your foot upon the neck of rebellious Cremona? Will not some unlooked-for madness next break out at Brescia or at Pavia? Yea, and when this has been chastised and has subsided, presently another will break out at Vercelli, or at Bergamo, or elsewhere, until the root cause of this exuberance be removed, and, the root of all the mischief being plucked up, the spiny branches shall wither together with the trunk.

(23) Do you not know, most excellent Prince, and can you not descry from the watch-tower of yours exalted Highness where that stinking vixen has her lair, undisturbed by the hunters? Truly the culprit drinks neither of headlong Po, nor of yours own Tiber, but her jaws pollute e'en now the rushing stream of Arno, and Florence—can you be unaware?—Florence is the name of this baleful pest.

(24) She is the viper that turns against the vitals of her own mother; she is the sick sheep that infects the flock of her lord with her contagion; she is the abandoned and unnatural Myrrha, inflamed with passion for the embraces of her father Cinyras; she is the passionate Amata, who, rejecting the fated marriage, did not shrink from claiming for herself a son-in-law whom the fates denied her, but in her madness urged him to battle, and at the last, in expiation for her evil designs, hanged herself in the noose.

(25) Truly with the ferocity of a viper she strives to rend her mother, when she sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome, which made her in her own image and after her own likeness.

(26) Truly she exhales pestilential fumes from the reek of corruption, whence the neighbouring flocks all unknowing waste away, when by the lure of lying blandishments and deceit she wins over to herself those on her borders, and having won them deprives them of their senses. Truly she burns for the embraces of her own father, when she wickedly and wantonly seeks to compass a breach between you and the supreme Pontiff, who is the father of fathers.

(27) Truly she resists the ordinance of God, worshipping the idol of her own will, when, spurning her rightful king, she is not ashamed, mad as she is, to barter rights not her own with a king not her own for the power to do evil. But let the infuriate woman take heed to the noose wherein she is entangling herself.

(28) For oft-times such an one is 'given over to a reprobate mind', to the end that when so given over he may 'do those things which are not convenient'. For though the deeds be unjust, yet as retribution they are seen to be just.

(29) Up then! make an end of delay, you new scion of Jesse, and take confidence from the eyes of the Lord God of Hosts, in whose sight you strive; and overthrow this Goliath with the sling of your wisdom and with the stone of your strength; for at his fall night and the shadow of fear shall cover the camp of the Philistines—the Philistines shall flee and Israel shall be delivered.

(30) Then our heritage which was taken away, and for which we lament without ceasing, shall be restored to us whole again. But even as now, remembering the most holy Jerusalem, we mourn as exiles in Babylon, so then as citizens, and breathing in peace, we shall think with joy on the miseries of Confusion.

(31) Written in Tuscany, from beneath the springs of Arno, on the seventeenth day of April, in the first year of the most auspicious passage of the holy Henry into Italy.

[Anonymous]

AF HFoS page 256 to 321