Dante's ‘DXV’ and ‘Veltro’

Abstract

A fresh attempt on the two most formidable puzzles in the Divina Commedia, by one who cannot even profess to be a Dantist, may seem peculiarly open to what a contemporary scholar has called ‘the mild raillery that attends those who persist in offering solutions of problems apparently worked to death.' Yet a survey of the massive bibliography surrounding Dante's DXV and Veltro produces the strong impression that no explanation proposed for either of them so far has won for itself any real core of acceptance. If this one-sentence summary of six hundred years' scholarship is accurate, it suggests that a fruitful approach is less likely to emerge from comparative re-assessments of the existing theories, than from an exploration of some of the all-but-forgotten corners of medieval Christian tradition, in search of an interpretation that will fit the two prophecies and their contexts more precisely. In the present study, Part I will offer an interpretation of the DXV which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been proposed; Part II will demonstrate the compatibility of this interpretation with other crucial parts of the Commedia; Part III will offer a somewhat less original interpretation of the Veltro; and Part IV will examine the relationship between the two prophecies as I have interpreted them.

The Veltro and Dante's Prologue to the <i>Commedia</i>

“…XXIV. [1][2][3] The other time, the occasion is a human banquet and this time it is a book, Dante's Commedia, that feeds the reader:…”

“…i. [3][4] The first meaning, the literal, is always only a sign that posits the possibility of meaning, that is, of another meaning to which it alludes, the meaning of the allegory. In the now famous letter to Cangrande, Dante gave the etymology of allegory as that which is other, different.…”