Dante, Divine Comedy Paradiso Canto XIV Dante meets his great-great-grandfather,
Cacciaguida in Heaven
Cacciaguida:"O blood of mine! O overbrimming grace of God!
For
whom was ever heaven’s gate / Thrown open twice, as it has been for you?"
Dante:
"I do, however, beg you....To satisfy my longing with your name."
Cacciaguida:
"O leaf of mine, in whom I found my pleasure /Only awaiting you: I was your root." ....
"The man from whom your family name/ Comes
down, and who a hundred years or more
Had trudged around the first ledge of the mountain [of Purgatory]
"Was my son, and your own grandfather’s father. / Surely it is right that you should shorten
By your good works his long laborious trial. [Merits can be applied to ancestors in Purgatory.]
"
From which she still hears tierce and nones toll out [church bells marking 3rd
& 9th hours]]
Lived in peace, her people chaste and sober.
100 "There were no
necklaces, no coronets,/ No lace-embroidered gowns, no
silken girdles,
Meant to be looked at rather than the person.
"Nor
did the daughter at her birth yet cause/ Fear to her father, for
her age and dowry /
105
Had not run to excesses either way.
"No houses stood vacated by their families [i.e., there was no failure to produce male successors].
No Sardanapalus had yet arrived [Persian king, symbol of corruption, luxury, homosexuality]
To show what can many things can be done in one’s bedroom.
"I
saw Bellincione Berti [Florentine
noble] wearing/ Simple bone and leather, while his wife
Stepped from her mirror with her face unpainted.
115 "I saw the lords
of Nerli and of Vecchio [Florentine noble]
Content to wear a coat
of plain-dressed skins, /
And
their wives ply the spindle and the flax.
"O happy women, each of them assured /
Of
her own burial spot, and none abandoned
120
Yet in her bed because of trips to
And soothingly employed that infant speech / Fathers and
mothers first delight in using.
"Another, as she drew threads from the distaff [spindle],
125
Would tell her family household the old stories
Concerning Troy and
130 "To such a restful
and a lovely life / Among the citizens, to such a
loyal
Community, to such a cordial home,
"Mary presented me, called by loud prayers:
And I became, in your old baptistery [San
Giovanni, central building of
135
At once a Christian and a Cacciaguida. …
"I later served the Emperor Conrad, / And with his knighthood
he invested me,
So highly I won favor by good deeds./ "I followed him to fight against the evil
Religion [Islam] of those people who
usurp,
By your shepherd’s [the Pope’s] negligence,
your rightful lands [Holy Lands,
Jerusalem].
145 "There finally
falling to that filthy horde [Cacciaguida
died in the Crusades],
I gained release from that deceitful world, / The love of which debases many souls,
"And to this peace I came from martyrdom [that is, dying on the Crusade].