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The word is used with a signification similar to that which it has in our own early literature, and fuller than that which it now retains. It refers both to race, as in the phrase "of gentle birth," and to the qualities of character. "Gentleness means the same as nobleness," says Dante, in the Convito; "and by nobleness is meant the perfection of its own nature in anything." Tratt. iv. c. 14 16.
If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the Convito would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," is single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens or concubines or maidens; but she is the 'Dove, and the 'perfect one' 'Dove, because without stain of strife; 'perfect, because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest."
Above all, the "Divine Comedy" has many references to it, while the "Convito" would seem to show that it was probably the book that most influenced Dante.
And if in the present work, which is named "Convito" the Banquet, the glad Life Together I desire that the subject should be discussed more maturely than in the Vita Nuova the New Life I do not therefore mean in any degree to undervalue that Fresh Life, but greatly to enhance it; seeing how reasonable it is for that age to be fervid and passionate, and for this to be mature and temperate.
Upon the other hand I delighted in every age where poet and artist confined themselves gladly to some inherited subject matter known to the whole people, for I thought that in man and race alike there is something called 'unity of being, using that term as Dante used it when he compared beauty in the Convito to a perfectly proportioned human body.
It is natural to suppose that Dante's death at Ravenna in 1321 caused the Convito, a work of his latter years, to be left unfinished. But there are arguments that have been especially dwelt upon by writers who regard the Convito as a work begun before the conception of the Divine Comedy, and dropped when the Poet's mind became intent upon that masterpiece.
Dante was not the man to give and take in such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace, and at another in a solitude. It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one of the moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he wrote that affecting passage in the Convito, which was evidently a direct effort at conciliation.
And so hard was this struggle, and so painful, that Dante took refuge from it in the composition of a poem addressed to the Angelic Intelligences who move the third heaven, that is, the heaven of Venus; and it is to the exposition of the true meaning of this Canzone that the second book or treatise of the "Convito" is directed.
The Charles and Frederick here addressed were Charles II. of Anjou, King of Naples, and Frederick of Aragon, King of Sicily; and King Charles died in the year 1310. It has been inferred, therefore, that the four treatises of the Convito were not written consecutively.
But it is not from the "Convito" alone that this portion of the "Vita Nuova" receives illustration. In that passage of the "Purgatory" in which Beatrice is described as appearing in person to her lover the first time since her death, she addresses him in words of stern rebuke of his fickleness and his infidelity to her memory.
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