Dante, Riccobaldo and Empire

Scholars have long stressed the centrality of empire to Dante’s political theology. Charles Till Davis devoted much of his brilliant career to elucidating the details of what he famously called Dante’s “idea of Rome,” tracing the poet’s evolving views on empire in Convivio, Monarchia and the Commedia. The Romans were a chosen people, chosen by God for world rule on account of their nobility and justice, made manifest by their deeds in war and divine miracles. Empire represented an authority that directed all other authorities. It regulated the civil order (human civiltas) and restrained avarice, which was its greatest adversary. The divine choice of Rome specifically negated the claims to secular rule of the papacy. Empire existed prior to the church. It was indivisible and only its exercise by the Romans, and Emperor Henry VII (1310–1313) in Dante’s lifetime, could bring about the peace that the poet so desired.¹

The Monarchia represents Dante’s lengthiest and most detailed discussion of empire. It was written in Latin and intended, as Charles Till Davis argues, for a “highbrow” audience.² A more succinct treatment of empire is in the sixth canto of Paradiso. Here the Byzantine ruler Justinian, who brought empire and its imperial symbol, the Eagle, back west from the “bounds of Europe” (Constantinople), tells the history of the Roman empire, highlighting the proper relationship between the emperor, who ruled the world, and the pope, who addressed religious issues. Justinian represents the ideal figure of the Roman emperor for Dante. He brought divine justice to the earthly realm through codification of Roman law, transposing in the process the heavenly model of a single, indivisible and universal imperium to the earthly sphere.

Dante’s treatment of empire was part of an extensive contemporary discourse. The historian Robert Folz called the years “from 1270 to the early fourteenth century”—corresponding roughly to Dante’s lifetime—a period of “intense discussion” of empire.³ Joseph Canning described the era as the “most productive and profound” of the whole Middle Ages in terms of the publication of lengthy treatises on political thought.⁴ Surprisingly little is known, however, of the details of this discourse. Scholars have too often focused on the same handful of writers: the hierocrats on the one hand, who favored papal power; and their anti-papal opponents on the other, who argued on behalf of monarchical power.⁵ Political theorists highlight the competing papal and imperial claims in a wholly western framework and typically situate Dante’s views in terms of immediate historical antecedents such as the struggle between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, and noteworthy subsequent events such as the contest between Emperor Louis of Bavaria and Pope John XXII and the writings of Marsiglio of Padua (1275–1342). For Dante’s contemporaries, however, the discussion of empire included consideration not only of competing papal and imperial claims, but also of Byzantine Greek imperial claims and concerns about the division of empire east and west.⁶ The problem was brought to the forefront in Dante’s day by the recapture in 1261 of Constantinople by the Byzantine Emperor Michael Paleologus and by the Council of Lyon (1274), which attempted to heal both the religious schism with Byzantium and the division of empire.⁷

The discourse on empire was more complex and contested than historians have presented it. Numerous contemporary works and treatises have yet to receive careful scholarly attention. The aim of this essay is to examine Dante’s views on the subject in the terms of those of Riccobaldo of Ferrara (1245–1318). Riccobaldo’s Compilatio Chronologica, written in 1313, and Compendium Romanae Historiae, written in 1317/18, both deal with empire but have received scant attention. A close reading of Dante’s Monarchia and Paradiso 6 alongside Compilatio and Compendium reveals crucial divergences, particularly with regard to the figures of Charlemagne and Justinian, which shed light on Dante’s “idea of Rome.” I will argue that Dante deliberately constructs imperium in a wholly western framework, avoiding the issue of Greek Byzantium and subverting in the process the traditional roles afforded...