> A few weeks ago Otfried
>pointed me to the following, which I pass on to you:
Dear David,
This is a rather flattering way of circumscribing the fact that I had
thrown a bibliography at you where you were bright enough to pick yourself
what you needed!
>2. While I am on the subject of Dante, I am wondering if there is any
>scholarly consensus on Dante's knowledge of John of Salisbury's
>Policraticus. (I've checked several eds. of De monarchia, and don't find
>his name in the indices there.)
I am not sure about D's minor writings, but as regards the _Commedia_ there
is in fact a sort of consensus that it shows traces of D's familiarity with
the _Policraticus_. A possible case of influence is D's presentation of
Thais in Inf. 18,126ss. among the fraudulent adulators, where she is
credited with words which in Terentius' _Eunuchus_ are not spoken by Thais
herself, but by Gnato referring to her. It seems that this misunderstanding
in Dante is somehow due to Cicero's _De amicitia_, where these words are
quoted as an example of "adsentatio" in a way that could have led to
attributing them to Thais herself; yet the _Polycraticus_, too, where
Terentius and Cicero are quoted, may have influenced D's understanding of
Thais, because John presents her as an example of "adulationis fraus". See
Paul Renucci, _Une source de Dante, le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury_,
The\se comple/mentaire [masch.], Paris 1951; Marino Barchiesi, _Un tema
classico e medievale: Gnatone e Taide. Padova: Antenore, 1963, 182 pp.
Other parallels have been noted, as in D's presentation of the story of St.
Gregory and Trajanus (cf. Pg 10,75 "mosse Gregorio a la sua gran vittoria",
Pd 20,45 "la vedovella consolo' del figlio", and Policr. 5,8: "His uerbis
motus imperator descendit de equo et causam praesentialiter examinauit et
condigna satisfactione uiduam consolatus est", quoted and discussed
somewhere in Renucci), and in his use of Phaeton and Hippolytus in Pd 17
(vv.1-4 and 46-48): in this latter case (see Marguerite Mills Chiarenza,
_Time and Eternity in the Myths of Paradiso XVII_, in: *Dante, Petrarch,
Boccacio. Studies in the Italian Trecento. In Honor of Charles S.
Singleton, edited by Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini, Binghamton
[N.Y.] 1983 [= medieval & renaissance texts & studies, 22], p.133-150), D's
juxtaposition or quasi-juxtaposition of these two mythological examples
parallels their quotation in Cicero's _De officiis_ (3,94) and in Hyginus
(_Fabulae_ 250), and Cicero is a particularly likely source, because the
next following chapter 3,95 seems to have been used for Agamemmnon in Pd
5,68; yet John of Salisbury (3,11) does not only continuate this earlier
tradition of combining these two mythological examples, but also has as an
additional point of comparison the proverbial notion that "iacula quae
previdentur feriunt minus" which is paralleled in D's canto by the saying
"che' saetta previsa vien piu' lenta" (Pd 17,27).
In addition to the studies quoted above (and of which I myself have only
seen Mills Chiarenza), you might also check Andre/ Pe/zard, _Du
Policraticus a\ la Divine Come/die_, in: Romania 70 (1948/49), p.1-37,
p.163-191.
Speaking of flattery and of Thais, I wonder whether any commentator ever
noticed that the infernal punishment of this ancient "puttana" offers some
striking parallels with the repentance of her Christian colleague and
namesake, the once whore and then saint Thais. Dante's Thais is condemned
to a place in Hell which is filled with what seems to be stinking
excrements (metaphorised as pasture: "ripe... grommate d'una muffa, / per
l'alito di giu' che vi si appasta / che con li occhi e col naso faceo
zuffa", pasture also for the visitors' eyes: "E quinci sian le nostre viste
sazie"), and where Thais is rabidly scratching herself "con l'unghie
merdose" and restlessly changing her position by lying down and getting
back to her feet ("or s'accoscia e ora e' in piedi stante"). Whereas the
Christian Thais (on which see the anonymus _Vita sanctae Thaisis
meretricis_, PL 73,661ss.), a beautiful Egyptian whore converted by saint
Paphnutius (who was saint enough to buy his way into her "lectum pretiosis
vestibus stratum" in order to save her soul), repented her sins as an
incluse immured in the "cellula parva" of a monastery, where she was
ordered by Panuphtius to live in her own excrements ("Quo jubes, pater, ut
aquam meam effundam? At ille respondit: In cella, ut digna es."), and to
pray without invoking the name of God with her sinful lips and without
raising her 'sordid hands' to the sky ("Non es digna nominare Deum, nec in
labiis tuis nomen divinitatis ejus adducere, sed nec ad coelum manus
expandere, quoniam labia tua iniquitate sunt plena, et manus tuae sordibus
inquinatae"). Yet while D's ancient Thais has to suffer a similar
punishment in eternity and in eternal unrest, the Christian saint after
three years was relieved and again fifteen days later ended up, according
to the vision of one of the disciples of St. Antonius, in a more
comfortable bed in the skies ("vidit ... in coelo lectum pretiosis vestibus
adornatum, quem tres virgines, clara facie fulgentes custodiebant").
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