the city of Florence and who was of
the house of certain Florentine citizens called the Portinari, of whom
the author Dante was a suitor. During the life of the said lady, he was
her lover and he wrote many ballads to her honor. After her death in
order that he might make her name famous, he, in this his poem,
frequently introduced her under the allegory and style of theology."

The third witness quoted by W.W. Vernon, is Benvenuto da Imola who
attended the lectures of Boccaccio and succeeded him as incumbent of the
chair of Dantian literature, established by the government of Florence.
This Florentine professor whose "commentary on Dante was written only
fifty years after the death of the poet, expressly states that this
Beatrice (he does not mention her family name) was really and truly a
Florentine of great beauty and most honorable reputation. When she was
eight years old she so entered into Dante's heart that she never went
out from it and he loved her passionately for sixteen years, at which
time she died. His love increased with his years: he would follow her
where-ever she went and always thought that in her eyes he could behold
the summit of human happiness. Dante in his works, at one time, takes
Beatrice as a real personage and at another in a mysterious sense as
Sacred Theology" (Readings on Inf., I, 61.)

The question now arises: Did Beatrice know of Dante's love and did she
reciprocate his passion? Many critics answer in the negative, believing
that an affirmative view must premise a guilty love since Beatrice was
married to Simone de Bardi and Dante to Gemma Donati. But an opposite
view holds that such a deduction overlooks the unique fact that the love
of Dante and Beatrice was purely spiritual and mystical. Doctor Zahm
says that Dante's passion was "a species of homage to the beloved which
was common during the age of the troubadours but which has long since
disappeared--a chivalrous devotion to a woman, neither wife nor
mistress, by means of which the spirit of man, were he knight or poet,
was rendered capable of self-devotion, and of noble deeds and of rising
to a higher ideal of life" (Great Inspirers, p. 245.)

In any event we know that it was a most noble, exalting sentiment and if
we accept the statement of Bishop de Serravalle, the love was mutual and
lasting. This ecclesiastic while attending the council of Florence in
1414 was asked by the Bishops of Bath and Salisbury, England, to make a
Lati