allegorical Carlo Troya
In the same year in which the light was Frederick II, a mysterious corporation affiliated with the cathedral builders of the Magistri Comacini depicting the Baptistery of Parma the profile of a hound dog . And 'in fact, with the image of a greyhound that finishes the zooforo Antelami, namely the following seventy-nine figures surrounds the building and which presents, among other "imaginary animals," even those three which will bump the Alighieri: the panther, the lion, the wolf. Dante, as is known, is lost in the "dark forest" more than a century later, but both animals and obstacles in his path is the Greyhound preannunciatogli Virgil are already on the Parmesan Baptistery.
The relationship between the work Antelami and the doctrine of the Holy Empire, we've been busy elsewhere (1). Here we would like to be remembered as the Ghibellines in the environments of the territory between Parma and Reggio anthroponyms the Greyhound is recorded from 1246: it took (and passed it on to a of her children) free lord of the castle and the land of Vallisnera, condominium in the valleys of the Knights, that Greyhound from which the branches of Vallisneri descended to the present day (2). Moreover, the figure of a greyhound appears in the arms of the family, which is described thus: "From gold to red band posted by greyhound current silver, gold collared, accompanied by a red star in the head" ( 3).
So it is not the case for greater stress on the relationship of the Greyhound with the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Empire and with the Ghibellines. If anything, we can wonder about the basis on which this report is based.
Aroux, which identifies the Greyhound with Can Grande La Scala, said that the name Can "lent itself to a double allusion, in the sense of hunting dog, hound, an enemy of the Roman she-wolf, and the sense of Khan of the Tartars" (4). It was short of "that Khan, who was born at the opposite end of Eurasia, was historically able to reunite almost all in one giant empire, becoming at once recognized as the sovereign authority of spiritual leaders from exoterism Taoist, Buddhist, Islamic and even Christian Nestorian "(5). Aroux writes elsewhere: "These Tartars, according to Yvon (Narbonne, ed), regarded their kings as gods, principes suorum tribuum deos vocantes (...) According to He, however, these Tartars, who at the time you cared so much, "they had chosen as one of their chief, who was raised on a shield covered with a piece of cloth, on a poor FELT was removed, and called Kan (... ) was called Cane, which in their language means emperor. (...) It is no wonder too bizarre names and Hound Dog, Scale data to those who ruled over Lombardy and the Ghibellines recognize as their leaders. What Greyhound is not that a synonym (...) "(6). Based on the interpretation of
Aroux, Guénon adds that "in different languages, the root can or kan means 'power', which connects still in the same order of ideas "(7), Guénon also points out (8) that the title turkish-Tatar Khan equivalent of the Latin Dux, as applied to the same Greyhound Dante
... a five hundred ten and five, put
of God, slay the thievish
with that giant who commits a crime with her.
(Purgatorio XXXIII, 43-45).
Transformed into a Greyhound dog, and then in the title of khan was then transferred on both the universal and archetypal figure of the monarch on a number of historical figures of the Ghibellines.
addition to Can Grande della Scala, which in this regard is perhaps the most cited, other persons have been identified with the Greyhound Dante, because of their more or less satisfy the essential characteristics of the archetype. We simply mention three: Henry VII of Luxembourg, Louis of Bavaria and the Uguccione Faggiola.
Henry VII, "the noble Henry," in Dante's Paradiso is represented in terms of alignment with the archetype of imperial, as was brilliantly demonstrated by Vasile Lovinescu:
"Out in the 'convent' militia holy, then the third wall, is the throne of Henry, superimposed on the engine block, in a state of identity with it. Henry VII, in such a state of identity, the universe is directly Unmoved Mover and then the center is immanent in the world, and due to a downward shift along the polar axis, is also the center of a group of monks, knights. Therefore, can only be the representative of royal power? Just how effective Henry VII, it does not matter. The important thing is that the function of certain Roman Emperor "monasteries" of the Middle Ages represented both the powers due to its continuity with the function of the Roman Caesar, who was both Emperor and Pontifex Maximus "(9).
Dante. 'The Divine Comedy' Flaxman As illustrated by Ludwig of Bavaria, "which appeared when he was elected a valiant man and free to Giovanni Villani, had more parerlo who was exiled from his homeland and eagerly waiting impatiently, news and events that gave victory to the party down "(10). Exiled from their homeland, Dante died seven years later that Louis, in 1314, became king of Germany, raising expectations of those imperial restoration that the "down side" of the Ghibellines continues to have later in life. In fact, as reported by the chronicler Guelph, "in the year of Christ 1326, the month of January on account of the coming of the Duke of Calabria in Florence and the Ghibellines' tyrants of Lombardy and Tuscany and part of the empire sent their ambassadors in Alamagna sommuovere to Lodovico, Duke of Bavaria elected King of the Romans, so that I could resist and combat the forces of the Duke and told the people of the Church, who was in Lombardy (11).
On May 31, 1327 Louis circled the Iron Crown, so that "incontinent, and in that same time, almost all of Italy was moved to new things, and 'Romans rose in uproar and feciono people (...) and they sent their ambassadors to Avignon in Proenza to Pope John, who was praying with the Court in Rome, as goddesses stand for reason, and if it did not, sir riceverebbono to their king the Romans' said Ludwig of Bavaria, and they sent their ambassadors to similar sommuovere called the said Louis Bavaro "(12). The following year Ludovico
of Bavaria was crowned emperor, but not by the pope, but by the Roman people, because he had embraced the doctrine of Marsiglio of Padua.
Uguccione Faggiola (1250-about 1319) was a famous leader of the Ghibellines of Tuscany, which would send Dante's Inferno in 1307. After holding five times in the office of mayor, from 1309 to 1310 he was lord of Arezzo, mayor and captain of war in other cities, vicar of Henry VII to Genoa and finally, in 1313, Lord of Pisa, in Pisa and later Lucca exercised absolute power. In 1313 he defeated the Guelphs in Montecatini, but in 1316 a rebellion forced him to escape, so he spent the last years of his life in the service of Can Grande della Scala.
The identification of the Greyhound with Dante Uguccione Faggiola was supported by Carlo Troya in an essay entitled Dante's allegorical at the greyhound, which was published in 1825 in Florence "by Joseph Mills, in the name of Dante." Totally ignored by the literary histories currently in use in high schools, Carlo Troya nevertheless played a role of some importance in Italian culture of the last century, so we should draw a profile summary of his life and his work.
Luigi Valli, The secret language of Dante and the Faithful of Love Born in Naples on June 7, 1784 by devout family, the Bourbons, in '98 the young Charles was brought to Sicily by father, court physician to King Ferdinand in the ensuing escape. Returning to Naples in 1802, he began to mature liberal guidelines, so in '20 he became editor of Minerva Neapolitan "and in '21 he was appointed superintendent in Basilicata. Exiled from the reaction of '24, took refuge in Tuscany, where he visited historic sites, archives and libraries in search of memories of Dante. Thus was born the study of Dante's allegorical Greyhound, run as a kind of methodological approach is summarized by the same masons who Troya as follows: "Of the many species which are stories of my vocation, the tenuous nature of my intellect and my first institution made me choose and love the kind of story that would call empirical, that is, to narrate the facts as they emerge from the documents that I believe true "(13).
The publication of Dante's allegorical Veltro unleashed a series of indignant reactions, which earned the author the title is not unjustified "papist" and "Guelph". In fact the thesis of Troy, as we find it summarized in a letter to the father of 24 December 1824, which is Dante's "unjust embittered exile became furious as the first had been ardent ghibellino Guelph, but the story of that ghibellino serves to raise awareness what were the highs, such as reasoning, which the hopes of faction much better than all of that chronic century. "
In this interpretation undoubtedly acted as we would today call "ideological bias", or, if you prefer, "suggestions of character patriotic, noble as you want but misleading, unfair transfer (as in so much of Dante criticism of the early nineteenth century) the ideals of the time in the history of the past "(14). So much so that Troya do in Dante had sought the intervention of "foreign": "For me, - he wrote to G. Pepe August 4, 1827 - tell me what I want, I will cry forever anathema to anyone who called him a foreigner in Italy or the suffered: he is brother, dad, Chierchia, baron or any other. But more than any pope, and I feel guilty Chierchia baron or a Florentine, a country that sort of ingenuity and abused in favor of the alien. "
On March 12, 1826, in a time when Troya was traveling in various parts of Italy in the company of Joseph and Xavier Canopies Poerio, he was lifted the ban of exile, but did not return at once to Naples, but chose to continue his long journey of study and pursue his research in libraries.
in 1832 was so that he could give to press another work of Dante exegesis, enriched by numerous documents, the greyhound allegorical of the Ghibellines, where the Greyhound lost those boundaries so individualized that it had received in the previous essay: "If Dante could not or would not say what his 'Hound', this is about him: I have just shown that the first Uguccione Faggiola and then Castruccio Castracani were after the exile of Dante 'Veltri Ghibellines', and especially of Fazio degli Uberti and other White out of Florence "(p. 147).
age of Dante, the historic interest of Troy will be moved further back to Charlemagne and barbaric Europe. The monumental History of Italy during the Middle Ages, which was to be up to the fourteenth century, but was interrupted the Lombard period, came to Naples in 1839-43, the first volume, Apparatus to the history of Italy, who studies the barbarian peoples on their arrival in Italy and also contains a discourse of the conditions of the Romans conquered the Lombards and the real lesson of some words of Paul the Deacon. In 1844, when he returned to Naples and Troya founded the Historical Society, went to print the second volume, covering Heruli and Goths and bears three appendages on the Fasti ciency or gothic, Daco-ciency-Normans and the Visigoths.
During the ephemeral constitutional government began February 16, 1848, Troy held on the liberal newspaper "Time" a book on the history and political issues of Sicily; from April 3 to May 15 he served as chairman of the Council of Ministers. The reaction is not caused him any trouble. "Troy? - Quipped Ferdinand II - Let him alone in the Middle Ages "in the Middle Ages and the student was quiet until his death on July 28, 1858.
In 1851 his History of Italy was now in its third volume, entitled Greeks and Lombards. The fourth, published posthumously in 1852-55, reports the diplomatic code Lombard, enriched with historical notes, observations and dissertations, mainly in order to clarify the status of the Romans conquered the Lombards and the quality of the conquest. The design of the Neo-Guelphism
History of Italy is manifested mainly in assessing the "necessity" of the temporal power of popes, to whom we owe the new civilization "Roman-Christian." In this stance is also linked to the characteristic antithesis between the Goths and Lombards: the former, adorned the most beautiful virtues, it would certainly be merged with the Latino population, if they did not nell'arianesimo stubborn, while the "fedissimi" Lombards were Always a warrior caste who followed the subjugation of the Latins and produced a deep social division and national levels.
Di Carlo Troya we are finally, in addition to a copious correspondence largely unpublished, wrote a collection Istoriche more necessary to who writes history of Italy, published in 1832 on the "progress of science, literature and arts, as well as two volumes of notes in the margins of the Annals of Muratori (Naples, 1869-71).
And to think that there were those who feared the possibility that the Greyhound was Veltroni ...
