Why Does Dante Put His Teacher Brunetto Latini in Hell?

«Are you here, ser Brunetto?» (Inferno XV): so exclaims Dante, in the circle of the sodomites, at the sight of his esteemed teacher Brunetto Latini (c. 1230–1293). At the time, sodomy was punished with exile, with the stake, or with a fine that, if left unpaid, would be commuted into hanging by the genitals. And yet Dante places his teacher in Hell without saying a single word about the nature of his sin, and the absence of any information on the matter in the sources of the period is still the cause of a tormenting dilemma for Dante scholars, intent on investigating Latini’s presumed homosexuality.

Some have spoken of a metaphorical sin “against nature,” tied to the author’s astrological beliefs or to his choice to write in French rather than in the Florentine vernacular; but it is absurd that Dante would condemn him to eternal torment for so little. The doubts persisted until, in 1977, the critic D’Arco Silvio Avalle proposed reading Latini’s poem S’eo son distretto jnamoratamente (“if I am bound fast by love”) as addressed to a man rather than a woman — specifically to the little-known poet Bondie Dietaiuti. In his poem, Latini speaks of the distance of the object of his love and of his own suffering, and calls on his fellow amadori (lovers) to intercede with the beloved, tenderly called bianco fioreauliso (“white lily-flower”), a phrase that epitomizes the refined idiom of medieval love poetry. This composition seems to be answered by one of Dietaiuti’s, Amore quando mi membra (“Love, when I remember”), in which the poet thanks a faithful, faraway fidato amico (trusted friend) who helped him through a difficult moment.

Part of the poem was taken up by Franco Battiato and worked into the track Medievale on his album Fleurs (1999). The poems have been handed down side by side in the manuscripts, but scholars have long debated the hypothetical relationship between the two. Latini’s poem seems to be love lyric, while Dietaiuti’s seems to belong to the canzone d’amico — a poetic subgenre expressing admiration and gratitude toward an acquaintance of great moral stature. Moreover, Latini condemned homosexuality in his works, while Dietaiuti wrote several love poems dedicated to a female figure.

This raises a few questions: is it possible that Latini declared himself so explicitly in a poem (the endings are masculine), despite his own censure of sodomy?

And if so, why was Dante so astonished? Are the amadori mentioned in Brunetto’s poem a small, secret circle of homosexual Florentine poets? Is the flower in fact an erotic metaphor for the female sex? Faced with these mounting doubts, a third possibility opens up (proposed by the critic Peter Armour in 1991): the fioredauliso would be nothing other than Florentia, Florence — so there would be no heterosexual or homosexual love involved at all, but rather amor patriae (love of homeland), expressed through the very same vocabulary and imagery of love poetry, a common practice of the time. Indeed, Latini had been forced into exile in France after the defeat of his Guelph faction at the Battle of Montaperti (1260).

Dietaiuti’s poem, if connected, would thus express sincere admiration for the exile’s stoicism, and the love they share would be love for the civic sphere, now deprived of one of its members: the amadore would therefore be wishing for his friend’s return. It seems to hold together — but if that were the case, we would be back where we started, at Dante’s disquiet and his taboo on the subject. The mystery lingers on…

Illustration by VHRO