Toynbee "Malaspina, Moroello"

Unlike most of the members of the Malaspina family, Moroello was a Guelph; in 1288, he appears to have acted as captain of the Florentines in their campaign against the Ghibellines of Arezzo; in 1297, the Guelphs of Bologna elected him captain-general in their war against Azzo of Este, and in the next year they appointed him podestà of Bologna. In 1299 the Milanese appointed him captain of their forces during their operations against the marquis of Montferrat, on which occasion he gained a great reputation for valour and political sagacity. From 1301 to 1312, he was constantly in arms on behalf of the Neri of Tuscany, and during the campaigns of the latter against the Ghibellines of Pistoia he added greatly to his military fame. After the reduction of Pistoia by the Florentines and Lucchese in 1306, he was appointed captain of the people in that city, and in 1307 he was chosen captain of the Guelphic league in Tuscany. Moroello appears to have been sent as imperial vicar to Brescia in 1311 by the Emperor Henry VII, and to have died three or four years later.

Vanni Fucci (in Bolgia 7 of Circle VIII of Hell), in his prophecy to D. of the defeat of the Bianchi on the Campo Piceno, refers to Moroello Malaspina as vapor di Val di Magra, [Inf. xxiv. 145] [Campo Piceno: Macra]; he is believed to be the Moroello to whom D. addressed a letter, with an accompanying canzone (Rime cxvi), Epist. iv, in his name, D. replies to a sonnet (Rime cxii) addressed to Moroello by Cino da Pistoia, Rime cxiii [Cino].

Boccaccio, Benvenuto, and other early commentators, state that D. was a friend and guest of Moroello Malaspina, and relate that it was while under his roof in Lunigiana that D. was induced to continue the D.C., the composition of which had been interrupted by his exile from Florence.

The story told by Boccaccio, both in his Vita di Dante and in his Comento (on [Inf. viii. 1], Io dico, seguitando), is to the effect that five years or more after D. had been exiled, when Florence was more or less in a settled state, those who had claims against the estates of any of the exiles began to demand their rights from the persons who had come into possession of the forfeited property; and that D.'s wife, Gemma, being advised that she might thus recover her dowry, employed a friend, a certain Andrea, a nephew of D., to search for the necessary documents in a strong box, containing valuables and important papers, which had been removed to a place of safety at the time of D.'s condemnation. In the course of the search, besides a good many canzoni and sonnets in D.'s handwriting, a small book was discovered containing the first seven cantos of the D. C.. These Andrea showed to Dino Frescobaldi, a well-known man of letters, who, being greatly struck with them, sent them to Moroello Malaspina with whom D. then was staying, and begged him to induce D. to proceed with the poem. D. consented to do so, and in this way the D.C. came to be completed, the continuation being marked at the beginning of Canto VIII by the words, Io dico, seguitando. Boccaccio adds that this story was also told him by a certain Dino Perini, who claimed that he, not Andrea, had been the finder of the lost cantos. He finds it difficult, he says, to accept the story because of the fact that it would make D. out to be a prophet (which he will in no wise admit, 'certa cosa è, che Dante non avea spirito profetico'), since some of the events predicted by Ciacco (Inf. vi. 64-72) were still actually in the future; he points out that this prophecy could not have been added afterwards, because in that case the passage would have been wanting in the copies made by Dino Frescobaldi immediately after the discovery, and distributed by him to his friends, which he does not learn to have been the case.

Benvenuto, whose version of the story (which he accepts without question) is somewhat different, attributes D.'s warm feelings towards the Malaspini to a sense of gratitude for the encouragement given him hy Moroello to persevere with his poem:

Per [marchionem Moroellum] reductus fuit ad istud nobile poema quod omiserat per exilium suum, cuius principum credebat esse amissum. . . .Ideo non mireris, lector, si poeta noster fecit tam operosam commendationem de illa stirpe illustri. Certe morbo ingratitudinis laborasset, si praeteriisset ita nude.

There is a tradition, based on a statement of Boccaccio in his Vita di Dante, to the effect that D. dedicated the Purgatorio to Moroello Malaspina, but it lacks confirmation.