“ accipiendo vel compilando ab aliis ”: De vulgari eloquentia 1.1. Reading Dante with Dante: A contribution to Dante’s theory of language

De vulgari eloquentia: Method and politics

Dante’s readers know that Dante’s vocabulary is precise and in many cases built on layers of meaning that derive from the Greek tradition as translated into Latin. Dante’s language has its own proper signification, once we recognize his utilization of a technical vocabulary and place it within its cultural context.

In the opening of the De vulgari (1.1), Dante informs his readers that his discourse on the vernacular will be inspired by the heavens, his own ingenium, and will be made on his accipere et compilare ab aliis. ¹ This short sentence can be assumed as a declaration of a method that is aligned with the common medieval practice of authority. In discussing vernacular language in order to improve its use among illiterate people, Dante will use the water of his own ingenium and will draw from other authors and texts as well. This method was common to medieval authors and was clearly enunciated by Boncompagno da Signa, Rethorica Novissima, where we read that inventio involves the finding of auctores (Boncompagno da Signa, 1896: 254). In fact, Dante will find texts of auctores, from which he will receive, or rather appropriate, materials before proceeding to compilation (accipere and compilare). The verb compilare, to write—taking from elsewhere but including the use of his own texts as well as those of others—is extremely precise.

Dante’s laboratory shows a lexical awareness that is fundamental to his linguistic theory. A highly learned tradition governs a discourse that intends to improve the awareness of the value of a language used for civic conversation. This idea that the vernacular is the language of civic conversation is traced in Dante’s Convivio, written more or less at the same time as the De vulgari. In the vernacular treatise, we read in fact that Latin lacks conversation (1.6.10), ² thereby suggesting that one of the reasons for Dante’s assertion that the vernacular is superior to Latin lies in its being a language of exchange and civic relation (De vulgari 1.1.4).

In continuity with this goal, the De vulgari updates the disciplines that the curricula studiorum called scientiae eloquentiae (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric), replacing grammar, i.e. Latin, with the vernacular, and thus replacing Latin poetry, traditionally associated with Latin grammar in the curricula, with vernacular poetry. In the 12th–13th centuries, curricula, the so-called scientiae eloquentiae, were widely assumed to be civil sciences and thus associated with politics. We have evidence of this in the curricula studiorum, written by authors like Dominicus Gundissalinus (12th century) who was indebted to Alfarabi’s De scientiis, largely diffused in the West, and in Brunetto Latini’s Tresor.

Dante shows a keen awareness of the relation between the treatise on the vernacular and the scientiae eloquentiae as part of politics. Politics was considered by Aristotle (1926: I.1.1094a–b) as an architectonic science in the sense given in his Metaphysics where he explains that “architectonic” refers to an art that has many disciplines under it (Aristotle, 1933: A 2982a 16–17). According to Brunetto’s Tresor (Latini, 2007: 2.3), the science of speaking well and governing a people is more noble than any other in the world. Politics includes things said and things done. The former are grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Things said, according to Brunetto addresses the importance of rhetoric and spoken language for the life in community. No doubt also for this reason the De vulgari must be considered in its inner relation with the Convivio, a work in which Dante establishes a theoretical frame that coordinates speculation and politics (Ardizzone, 2016). Thus, the treatise works with the Convivio for the education of the citizen, and the De vulgari appears to be written with politics in mind. A political vision is evident in the geography of dialects that Dante organizes in Book 2 of the Latin treatise, which opens up the perspective of a geopolitics of Italy and aims at establishing a linguistic unity. From the poetry written in the 13th century, first in Sicily, there derives, according to Dante, the vernacular illustre. This is the highest model of vernacular language that expresses a linguistic and intellectual koinè based on a virtual political center: the imperial aula of Fredrick the Second and his son Manfredi. This had been a real place in the past, but at Dante’s time are the texts written by poets who represent ideally the aula and the limbs of an intellectual unity (1.18.5).

The political awareness of the Latin treatise lies not only in that reconstruction. Dante’s discussion of language and its origin is a crucial part of a political endeavor. In fact, that Dante attempts to link the discourse on the origin of language with the awareness of the true essence of human being implies a political goal. This is a search that Dante started in his first work and his early poetry. In his philosophical treatise the Convivio or Banquet, the human being is defined as the political animal (compagnevole animale, 4.4.5–7). This assertion includes, for Dante, the centrality of the notion of logos, as established by Aristotle in his Politics (Aristotle, 1990: 1.2.1253)—a notion that Dante had emphasized in his own way since his Florentine years and his first works, as recent studies have underscored (Ardizzone, 2011: 113; 2016: 170–178 and passim). The De vulgari, written in the very first years of exile, shows that Dante’s discourse on language cannot be detached from the human being’s rational essence, an essence that is at once linguistic and relational, i.e. political and social—logos means also relation (Reale, 1991: 233). This awareness frames the De vulgari and is connected with other ancient and medieval lines of thought that are all parts of the announced method of compilatio. To consider a few of these lines will allow our reading to partially reframe Dante’s discourse. Taking into account what he himself has contributed to language since his youth and his first canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, our exploration shows that Dante’s discourse on language did not start with the De vulgari but was active in his works written in the Florentine years, in particular the Vita nuova. Thus, a continuity emerges between Dante’s first work and the Latin treatise that allows a new perspective on the problematic issue of the origin of human language.

The origin of human language: The doctrine

In the opening of the first book of De vulgari, Dante’s discourse is centered on language and its origin. Having identified the vernacular with the language we learn by imitation from our nurses, and having recalled that there exists another language, which the Romans called grammatica, i.e. Latin, and established that among the two nobilior est vulgaris (1.1), Dante affirms that language is given only to humans, and that its goal is the expression of concepts that are in our minds. In order for us to communicate, we need a sign that must be both rational and sensual: rational because it has to have a meaning, and sensual in order to be perceived (1.1.2–4). Language, we read, is given by God to the human being and only to them in the act of Creation. What God has given is indicated as a certain forma locutionis (“certam formam locutionis a Deo cum anima prima concreatam fuisse” (“a certain form of language was created by God along with the first soul,” 1.6.4)).

In reconsidering the debated issue on the origins of human language in the treatise on the vernacular, I will first focus on the word forma, which appears in the passage from the first book which I have partially quoted above. My discussion will utilize, in addition, interpretative tools that derive from my previous reading of Vita nuova and Convivio (Ardizzone, 2011, 2016). The strong relations between the De vulgari and Convivio are well known, but those with Vita nuova are for the most part ignored. In the Convivio, these links are evident when Dante compares Latin and vernacular languages, or when he establishes the primacy of Latin in the Convivio 1, shifting to the primacy of the vernacular in the Latin treatise. The final choice for the vernacular, as we read in De vulgari 1.1.4, should take into account that this is a political choice (no doubt also philosophical and theological), a knot which his work testifies to since the Vita nuova. In this work, Dante introduces the issue of the interior word, which, in the wake of Augustine and other readers of John’s Gospel, was identical with verbum or logos. The above-recalled civic conversation that Dante points out in the Convivio is no doubt related to what the Greeks called logos and the Latins verbum. Dante’s discourse on language must be seen in its natural continuity with his first work and the issue of the interior word that he first formulates in his canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, where, in Chapters 17–18, he introduces the “matera” of loda (praise). Praise inscribes in the libello meanings in which the notion of verbum interior is central—a notion that Vita nuova confronts in many ways, while Dante attempts to establish the true nature of the human being (Ardizzone, 2011: 39–114). The link between language and human essence is also traced in the treatise on the vernacular.

Written in Latin, De vulgari heralds the view that the vernacular is the language of a future that is already present. In such a choice, strata of thought originally expressed in a language that was not Latin or vernacular into. When I say strata of thought, I include the consideration of a semantic field that some words require in order to be evaluated. One of them, in the above-quoted fragment of De vulgari 1.6, is the word forma. In presenting his theory, Dante uses the expression forma locutionis and asserts that “a certain form of locution” was created by God along with the first soul: dicimus certam formam locutionis a Deo cum anima prima concreatam fuisse. He then clarifies that forma deals with the vocabulary used for indicating things, the construction of words and the pronunciation of constructions: dico autem “formam”, et quantum ad rerum vocabula, et quantum ad vocabulorum constructionem, et quantum ad constructionis prolationem. This form, he continues, would still be in use, had it not been shattered because of human presumption: qua quidem forma omnis lingua loquentium uteretur, nisi culpa presumptionis humane dissipata fuisset, ut inferius ostendetur.

Then he introduces the first man Adam, who spoke in this forma locutionis: Hac forma locutionis locutus est Adam. All his descendants spoke in this form until the building of the Tower of Babel: hac forma locutionis locuti sunt omnes posteri eius usque ad hedificationem turris Babel… after that it was inherited by the sons of Heber, who were subsequently called Hebrews. To these alone it remained after the confusion… so that our Redeemer would not speak the language of confusion but that of grace: hanc formam locutionis hereditati sunt filii Heber, qui ab eo dicti sunt Hebrei. Hiis solis post confusionem remansit, ut Redemptor noster, qui ex illis oriturus erat secundum humanitatem, non lingua confusionis, sed gratie, frueretur. Finally, he establishes that Hebrew was the “ydioma” which the lips of the first speaker fabricated: Fuit ergo hebraicum ydioma illud quod primi loquentis labia fabricarunt. ³

Medieval schoolmen, and Dante along with them, were aware of the many meanings that converge in the Latin word forma. It is well known that among these meanings, one translates the Greek word “idea,” sometimes translated also as “species” (Gilson, 1960: 198–199; Michaud Quantin, 1974: 113–143). We may thus list forma as an equivocal, or ambiguous, word. Aristotle in his Topics listed words as equivocal and ambiguous (Wolfson, 1938: 151–173). According to Aristotle (1955: 4), equivocal words are those that have more than one meaning.

It is also well known that the word “idea,” since the time of Plato, holds an important position in the philosophical tradition and in particular in ancient and medieval thought, because Plato postulated the world of ideas and gave them intellectual existence. We know that a direct reading of Plato’s works in the Middle Ages was seriously limited. Very few works were available, and they were not read. The Latin Middle Ages, however, did know Plato’s Timaeus. In Chalcidius’ partial Latin translation and commentary, this work was largely diffused. In Chalcidius (a Christian neoplatonic scholar of the 4th century CE), the platonic ideas become ideas that live in the mind of God. This doctrine was crucial in the Middle Ages and was circulated.

Looking at the auctores well known to Dante, we may see that in Augustine, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas we find the word forma used in its meaning as idea. In Aristotle, of course, we find the word forma, but its meaning is not derived solely from the field of Platonism. In the Latin Aristotle, the word forma is the correlative of matter: materia and forma, or potentia and actus are in his Metaphysics the first principles of being (Aristotle, 1933: IX). These are central issues in Aristotle, who, as is well known, rejected the platonic ideas. We emphasize, however, that Dante uses forma locutionis, and that, following a common use of forma as synonymous with “idea,” the meaning of this passage would be that an idea (in the mind of God) was given to human beings, and that this idea is the efficient cause of human language. Because “idea” implies that an intellectual being is given to the human being, forma locutionis could be regarded as activating a logical process which, according to Augustine, will culminate in the act of producing a sensuous language. ⁴ This culmination is coincident with what we read in the very last paragraph of 1.6, where Dante writes that the human lips of the first speaker fabricated the original Hebrew “ydioma.”

The fragment I have quoted above is famous for the extensive exegesis it generated. I will briefly recall the readings that I consider as crucial in the debate, as it took place in the second half of the last century and continues today. In particular, it is the meaning of the phrase forma locutionis that has governed the discussion. Does forma locutionis, in this context, indicate that God gave Adam an already made language, or rather that God gave Adam a structure on which he could construct his language?

Mengaldo’s commentary to his edition of the De vulgari eloquentia offers his interpretation of the word forma, which he reads as synonymous with act, according to the Aristotelian categories of potentiality and act. Mengaldo (in Alighieri, 1979: 54) thinks that forma cannot be a potentiality but is rather un organismo formato, or as he says, an act. Here he recalls, in order to oppose it, the interpretation given by Benvenuto Terracini who reads the passage in a different way and assumes that God gave the first human not an already formed language but a linguistic structure (Terracini, 1957: 237–246). Of course, the two interpretations conflict with one another.

The debate on this passage became intense in the 1980s when Maria Corti (1981), on the basis of speculative grammar, read forma as a potentiality given to Adam to create a language. The opposition to Corti’s interpretation has been enormous and for reasons that go well beyond the debate on the De vulgari eloquentia (Marmo, 2014: 1–17). In general, the assumption is that Adam received from God an already made language and, according to Mengaldo (in Alighieri, 1979: 54), Un organismo in sé già attuato e compiuto. Tavoni, in his recent edition (Alighieri, 2011b), reiterates that forma means an already made language and recalls that this interpretation has been shared since the edition of Marigo and reiterated by Mengaldo etc. In her French edition of the De vulgari, Irene Rosier confirms this interpretation. According to Rosier, Adam receives a well-formed language. She notes that it is because the language was well formed that human beings after Babel were able to create a new language (Rosier-Catach, 2010: 37). Rosier’s observation, however, can be used to argue for the opposite reading. Because human beings had an endowed potentiality for creating a language, once they had lost the original language that was the result of the form-idea, this form which was preserved enabled them to create a new language. Adam’s enterprise of fabricating (fabricaverat) the Hebrew language, according to what we read at 1.6, further implies that the form-idea is a causative, generative principle that allows Adam to create his “ydioma.” In the context of his commentary on the De Causis, Albert the Great speaks of God as dator formarum, the giver of forms, and explains that these forms have in themselves an inchoate principle, that is, a generative principle (de Libera, 1990: 141–144).

In order to understand forma, perhaps the text that offers the most panoramic view of the platonic theory of forms as discussed in the 13th century is that of Aquinas, who confronts this topic in many different works. John Wippel has offered a powerful contribution to our understanding of this theory and discusses the way in which the medieval philosopher presents divine ideas as models or exemplars that are used by God in his creative activity (Wippel, 1993: 1). He stresses that these ideas have a causative character and function as the causatrix of essence, and that Aquinas uses the word forma quoting the Pseudo Dionysius who uses paradigmata as synonymous with “ideas” and says that in God they are operative forms (Wippel, 1993: 6). If the given “form” is operative, then can forma locutionis be understood as the causatrix essentia of human language?

Forma as idea is testified by Augustine. In his De Diversis quaestionibus, 46, he discusses the theory of ideas in the mind of God and notes that idea is synonymous with forma and species. According to Augustine, the human being’s verbum is an internal intellectual principle; his Commentary on the Gospel of John explains the equivalence between verbum and idea (Augustine, 1841b: 1.16–17). According to Aquinas, Creation implies that there was placed in the human being an imitative principle of the idea or form that is in the mind of God. In light of this context, I look now at the word forma, following Dante’s indication that this form was concreata with the first soul.

Because language and intellect are one and the same thing and only rational creatures can have language, if we read the genesis of language as it is discussed in the De vulgari in relation to the creation of the intellective soul, and as it is explained in Convivio 4, we reach a better understanding of this problematic issue. The fact that these two texts are close in time is perhaps relevant. Two specific passages are useful to my purpose. In the first, Dante writes that the human being is called divino animale because of his intellect (Convivio 3.2.14). In the second, he discusses the origin of the soul and states that once the sensitive soul is produced, it receives the possible intellect from God:

La quale, incontanente produtta, riceve dalla vertù del motore del cielo lo intelletto possibile; lo quale potenzialmente in sé adduce tutte le forme universali, secondo che sono nel suo produttore, e tanto meno quanto più dilungato dalla prima Intelligenza è. (Convivio 4.21.5) ⁵

Nardi explains this passage as follows: “Once the sensitive soul has been produced by the seed power and thanks to celestial virtue, i.e. when the seed’s virtue is developed and becomes sensitive soul, it receives from God, who is the first motor, the possible intellect. As we read at 4.21.7: ‘the possible intellectual virtue, mentioned above, descends into it, in the manner mentioned’.” ⁶

Nardi’s commentary on this passage is crucial, because he underlines the potentiality of the given forms. On the one hand, for the forme universali he recalls Proclus, noting that Dante links him to Augustine. In addition, he says that such forms through which we achieve our likeness to God are just active seeds of knowledge and are similar to the rationes seminales that God has imposed on matter in correspondence to the ideal rationes of eternal mind. ⁷

In conclusion, I stress that the forma locutionis, in order to be understood, must be read in its historical context, which includes a philological attention. In fact, these words are clues.

In the light of what is discussed, forma does not imply or indicate a language already fashioned. In fact, form-“idea,” in so far as is a generative intellectual power given to the human being, includes the sense of a temporal becoming. Such becoming is confirmed in the De vulgari by Dante’s use of the verb fabricare which, in turn, involves time. ⁸ As we read, Fuit ergo hebraicum ydioma illud quod primi loquentis labia fabricarunt (“So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker molded”). The word forma as synonymous with “idea” indicates that the first human being received a linguistic principle and not an already formed language. Forma in this case would be a universal principle. From this principle, the first human will develop (fabricare) the spoken language, i.e. Hebrew. While ydioma is a particular language and belongs to a precise culture and territory, form is universal, as are also the divine ideas.

The genesis of verbum: De vulgari eloquentia 1.4

That the discussion of the origin of language in the De vulgari implies a discourse on the true essence of the human being is confirmed if we read the chapter in which Dante introduces Adam in a biblical context which he refashions. Reading this fragment in its inner relation to the passage on forma locutionis 1.6, we find an element that opposes the widely accepted interpretation of forma locutionis as an already made language. However, in the sequence of De vulgari, this fragment enters at 1.4 before Dante introduces forma locutionis at 1.6; therefore, I have postponed considering it in order to emphasize the importance of the former passage for a correct understanding of the latter.

In Chapter 4 of the first book, having established that language has been given only to humans, Dante declares his intention to investigate which human being was the first to speak, where and in which language they spoke, and what they said. Dante’s answer seems at first to accept the biblical tradition, which identifies Eve as the first human being who spoke. But after that, he expresses his doubts about it. We read that it was in fact Adam who spoke first, and his speech was the uttering of the name of God. Such speech was an act of laude (praise) as a vocal sign of joy addressed to Him who gave him so many gifts. In recalling this shifting from the biblical tradition on the primiloquium, my goal is to evaluate how the genesis of verbum takes place, then its relation to praise, and finally to understand whether the praise on which Dante has focused since his first book, the Vita nuova, is organic to the discourse on the origin of language.

What is said at 1.4 is essentially the following: the first to speak was Adam. Adam uttered the name of God, that is, El, and human locutio did begin with an expression of joy. ⁹ In fact, however, God knew Adam’s mental conception without his having spoken; yet God still wished that Adam should speak, so that He who freely gave so great a gift should be glorified. According to this, human language starts with praise, and such praise consists in naming (1.4–5). ¹⁰

This passage, however, tells us something more, namely, that Adam did have a “concept” in his mind (“conceptum primi loquentis” 1.5.2), and that from this concept comes the sensible sign of giving a name to God. We have therefore an element of importance, because Dante points out that before his speech a concept was in the mind of Adam, and that his speech was the uttered word for this concept. According to an ancient and medieval tradition, “concept” is the interior verbum or word (Panaccio, 1999: 104–119). The concept of Adam that God knows before he speaks is coincident with the interior word or verbum mentale. This fragment therefore testifies to the transition from the verbum mentale to the verbum that is pronounced—or, according to the ancient Greek tradition, the transition from the logos endiathetos to the logos prophoricos (Pohlenz, 1978: 61) In addition, this prolatio verbis in pronouncing the name of God (El) has as its goal the expression of praise.

I stress that in this passage Dante is clearly introducing something that is basic to his theory of human language, i.e. the interior word. That there is no language without the interior word was an issue of crucial importance to Augustine and his medieval tradition (Ardizzone, 2013). Such interior language was, according to him, proper to all human beings and to all languages (De Trinitate 15.10). Thus, the “archana” (1.5) that God knows before Adam speaks is a clear allusion to the theory of mental language or interior word and to what Augustine indicates as the true word able to activate a process: from the first logical moment in which some mental informal form is in us to the moment in which spoken language will emerge from the concept. ¹¹

A passage in Augustine De Trinitate helps us to understand the lines (De vulgari 1. 4) that I have quoted above which, according to Dante, present the genesis of verbum. ¹² This genesis originates with our interior pronunciation: dicendo intus gignimus means that the plexus (knot) of the interior word is the efficient cause of the genesis of language (Arens, 1980). My point is that these fragments at 1.4 and 1.5.2, which open the discourse on the origin of language if read in relation to the passage that introduces forma locutionis (1.6), and throw light on the meaning of forma locutionis. As noted above, forma as idea was by Augustine identified with the interior verbum. According to him, the interior verbum is identical to the verbum-logos of the Gospel of John, and Augustine identifies logos and idea in his Commentary on the Gospel of John. If God has given human beings a form-idea, then he has given them the verbum-logos. In the thinking of Augustine and the tradition he assumes and reshapes, it is from the interior word that sensible language emanates. According to him, without the interior language the spoken language is empty (Ardizzone, 2013; Augustine, 1945: 1304–1306). ¹³ Thus, what Dante’s text seems to establish at 1.6 is that the forma as idea is an interior, mental verbum generative of the spoken language. The transition from what is interior and not expressed to the pronounced word shows that the signum sensibile is part of the process generated by the interior word that manifests itself. This binary relation between interior or mental and sensible is crucially important. In fact, in Dante’s text it is said that although God knows what is in the human mind, he wanted Adam to express his thought, so that the name of “God” (El) would be the sensuous expression of God’s idea or form (conceptum) that is given by God and is in the mind of Adam. It is worth emphasizing again that the word conceptum is part of the semantics of “idea.” In the ancient-medieval tradition, the verbum mentale is a conceptum, and conceptum and idea are synonymous (Panaccio, 1999: 104–119). Dante is accurate in his exposition, as his vocabulary shows. This is part of the process of thinking, which is identical with the interior speech or mental language, and from this interior speech language will be generated. Dante has created a path that can account for a chain of significance, of which the word conceptum is part.

Vocabulary and ambiguity

According to what we read at 1.4, human language begins with Adam’s uttering the name of God. Here, interior word or concept (1.4) and spoken word (the name of God) are presented in a relation that is logical and temporal at once.

If we confront the two passages (1.4 and 1.6), we note a certain similarity. In the first fragment, we read that language has its beginning when Adam pronounces the name of God, which is de facto an impositio nominis. Since the name given to God, El, is a Hebrew name, it is evident that language starts at this very moment. In the second, the given forma locutionis initiates a process culminating in the fabrication of the Hebrew “ydioma” made by Adam. Thus, the two passages are complementary, and perhaps such complementarity offers tools for a correct understanding. That Adam was endowed with a forma locutionis leads to a narrative that is ambiguous. This ambiguity is responsible for the debate it generated. Dante does not explain in what sense and meaning he uses forma. His discourse, in the paragraph in which he introduces forma locutionis, appears enigmatic. I have pointed out that forma—“idea” and “concept”—can be synonymous with verbum interiore. In fact, it is this forma that is responsible for the genesis of the sign at first mental and later spoken or said. In virtue of this forma, we read, we have the genesis of language that is the creation of a vocabulary for naming things, for the construction of names, and for the construction of their pronunciation (1.6). The fact that this form is concreata with the first soul implies our likeness to God. As we read in the Bible, God made man according to his image and likeness, and Augustine says that the interior word is our likeness to God in enigma. ¹⁴

That enigmas were instructive and highly formative is evident in St. Paul’s per speculum in enigmate (1Cor. 13.12), a statement that in many ways forged ancient and medieval cultures (Cook, 2001: 349–378). Perhaps Dante inserts this ambiguous word forma with the purpose of enigmatically constructing his discourse on the origin of human language. However, this enigmatic texture, if read in relation to the fragment at 1.4 on the genesis of the first man’s speech, becomes in part understandable. In fact, the passage (1.6) sounds ambiguous because of the equivocal meaning of the word forma. As above touched Aristotle (1955) in his Sophistical Refutations (4) discusses equivocation. There are three modes, he says, connected with equivocation and ambiguity: (1) when the expression or name properly signifies more than one thing, (2) when we customarily use a word in more than one sense, and (3) when a word has more than one meaning in combination with another word.

These three modes are fitting for our case; in the above-recalled paragraph of the De vulgari, the word forma in fact can have the meaning of an already fashioned language or also of “idea” or verbum interior generative of language. We may ask why Dante is ambiguous. The answer can be found within medieval logic, where obscurity and ambiguity had the goal of being instructive. An example of this is the sophismata, which were traditionally merely deceptive but later in the 13th century were utilized with the goal of instruction (Kretzmann, 1982: 217). Cavalcanti was a master of this, but Dante himself shows his penchant for an enigmatic or equivocal speech on more than one occasion (Ardizzone, 2002: 66:70).

If we assume that the equivocation had an instructive purpose, what Dante was searching to establish is the true essence of human language in its inner link between verbum interior and spoken language, a link that Augustine and his tradition emphasized and that Dante starts to evaluate and pronounce from the Vita nuova onwards. Thus, the ambiguity of the word forma is utilized, but its goal is not ambiguous. The difficulty that we experience in reading should make us aware that in human language two different levels are active: the interior word or interior language, and the spoken word. These must be understood in their organic relation. At its basis is the notion that the intellectual nature of the human being is essentially linguistic. This is in Dante the result of years of reflection. De vulgari eloquentia conceives of Dante’s exploration of the origin of language as deeply tied to the problematic issue of the essence and nature of human beings. In light of this tie, the Treatise formulates its own political discourse: it is the interior word or verbum-logos that is the basis for the communal human life. The political animal of Aristotle is rethought in light of Augustine and the theory of the interior word (verbum-logos). The fact that in Purgatorio 24 Dante’s stil novo is formulated on the interior word that amore “ditta dentro” (interius dictat) and the poet transcribes testifies to the importance and complexity of this theory in Dante (Ardizzone, 2011: 22–27).

The ur- phase of Dante’s discourse on language

Dante had focused on the interior word long before the De vulgari. Recent studies have emphasized the relevance of the interior word or verbum mentale in Dante’s Vita nuova, exploring praise (laude) and stressing its significance and importance.

In the fragment in which Adam gave a name to God, we read that this was a spoken word which was pronounced in praise of the Creator. Mengaldo (Alighieri, 1979: 48) in his edition of the De vulgari, commenting on the fact that human language starts with praise, recalls Psalm 50. On the basis of the Psalms, Christian neoplatonic tradition (Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas) constructed praise as the intellectual language of angelic intelligences and as the impulse and desire of God. When Dante in the Vita nuova introduces praise, defining it as a troppo alta matera (18.9), he is aware of that tradition (Ardizzone, 2011: 39–52). What Dante in the De vulgari writes in relation to Adam’s first speech (1.4) is similar to what we read in Plato’s Timaeus in the Latin translation and commentary of Chalcidius, who asserts in fact that the first speech was to glorify the giver of life. ¹⁵

Of course, the praise that Adam expresses in his state of innocence implies joy and naming, and thus a tension toward ascent and return to our origin as the first impulse: “it is reasonable that he who existed before should have begun with a cry of joy; and, since there is no joy outside God, but all joy is in God and since God Himself is joy itself, it follows that the first man to speak should first and before all have said ‘God’,” 1.4.4. ¹⁶ Because the nature of this diction is to glorify the creator, as we read, God himself willed it: “yet He still wished that Adam should speak, so that He who had freely given so great a gift should be glorified in its employment. And likewise, we must believe that the fact that we rejoice in the ordered activity of our faculties is a sign of divinity in us,” 1.5.2. ¹⁷

But as anticipated, laude has a prehistory in Dante. This prehistory starts with Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore and the prose that introduces it. In my reading (Ardizzone, 2011: 39–52), the central assertion here is that the logical subject of this canzone was a mental-linguistic speech, that is, the mental-linguistic act in relation to different acts of speech that were all mental. The canzone, in order to praise (lodare) Beatrice, introduces a kind of linguistic performance in which God, angels, and saints participate. The source that I have identified for this is Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. So far lode, a lode given to Beatrice, is the focus of the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, as Dante announces in the prose text (Vita nuova, 17–18) in his conversation with the ladies who have intellection of Love. But the fact that praise in the canzone is suggested to be infinite (v.3) and is given both to her and God creates a meaningful parallel. The verse Angelo clama in divino intelletto, to be understood, requires an awareness of Aquinas’ discourse on the speech of angels in the Summa. There we read that laude is the language (intellectual, of course, intellectualis operatio, or conceptio) of angels, who do not need sensible signs and, as Thomas suggests, it is mental or interior language, and Thomas focuses on clamor to signify the magnitude of affect. I quote: “Clamor ille non est vocis corporeae… sed significat magnitudinem rei quae dicebatur vel magnitudinem affectus” (“This cry is not a corporeal voice but makes manifest the magnitude of what they say or the magnitude of their affect,” Aquinas, 1988: 1.107.4.2). But the fact that praise is also given to Beatrice by the author of the canzone implies that the interior language is proper to human beings, who share a likeness with the purely intellectual beings.

The discourse about lode offers a strong contribution to the definition of the human being’s essence in a way that is indirect and evocative. In addition, it suggests that love can be purely spiritual and that in order to speak about love as intellectual, the language of praise must come into play. As a result of this choice, a link is established between the praised being, the subjects who praise, and the language of praise itself.

The infinite praise evoked for Beatrice points to Beatrice’s nature as both divine and human—a miracle that the Incarnation allows. Reading the Vita nuova, we see that the importance of lode is reiterated in the sequence of poems labelled as poesie di lode (Ardizzone, 2011: 99–114).

Going back to the De vulgari, if we read this passage on the origin of human language in the awareness of praise as interior language that shows our likeness to God as an enigma (Augustine, 1968: 15.10), we may start by considering that the words forma locutionis must be considered with great care in a larger context. At the very least, this is because the theory of language, as I have tried to explain, involves Dante in a long meditation in which the nature of the human being is introduced indirectly, as it emerges from human interior speech.

The assertion that God created a forma locutionis together with the human soul must be read in continuity with the scene of the primiloquium and its context. The fact that God wants Adam to express his gratitude with praise and use a sensible sign, which is coincident with Adam’s naming of God, means more than one thing. The human praise of God shows that humans are endowed with the interior word. This thought introduced in Dante’s first canzone, Donne ch’avete, written in Florence, returns in the two canzoni Voi ch’intendendo il terzo ciel movetete e Amor che nella mente mi ragiona. Because praise is an interior language that we share with the angels, praise and its context Donne ch’avete and other poems work as a kind of introduction to the primiloquium and the way Dante presents it. In my study (Ardizzone, 2011), I have indicated as an intellectual paradigm a series of textual events that include a ur-phase of linguistic attention. This ur-phase is testified also in the canzoni I have recalled above, Voi ch’intendendo and Amor che nella mente, that Dante wrote after the death of Beatrice and probably in 1294 or a little later. The intellectual nature of the human being is the true focus of these canzoni and laude returns in both. All the texts I am recalling open a path to be recognized (Ardizzone, 2011: 115–215).

Lode in the Vita nuova introduced a discourse on the deep essence of language and thus on the true essence of the human being. In addition, and importantly, in the Vita nuova, the death of Beatrice seems to include a figurative narrative about the loss of the verbum/logos. The city, because of her death, is a widow. Using Lamentations, the passage expresses a loss that affects not only the lover but the City (not coincident just with Florence) and the life of the people living there. The theme implies a political awareness and identifies her death as a political loss. The fact that Dante writes to the principi della terra to inform them of Beatrice’s death shows his political perspective (Vita nuova 31.1)

What this confirms is that Dante’s discourse on the origin of human language cannot be detached from the precedent of Vita nuova and the importance the young Dante gives to the intellectual dimension of the human being. Essentially, what takes form between Vita nuova, its theme and sequence of lode, and the two canzoni related to donna gentile shows the importance of the theme of lode and the intellectual, interior dimension that he is attempting to establish for human beings. Such antecedent was certainly not forgotten in the De vulgari; rather it was reiterated. It is not just a geopolitics perspective that presides over the De vulgari, but also a philosophical awareness of the natural basis—both intellectual and linguistic—of human community.

The fact that in De Vulgari human eloquio starts from lode, if read in continuity with Vita nuova, shows the importance of interior speech as the basis for the genesis of spoken language. In light of this, the name Adam gives to God is the sensible sign of an interior word. If this interior word is coincident with forma locutionis as a given idea that is a generatrix essentia given by God, praise (as the interior word we share with the angels) confirms the meaning of forma locutionis. Because the form that is given is not a readymade language but a form whose essence is causative (Thomas’s explanation of “idea”), languages are able to die and restart and are, of course, mutable. In the vernacular treatise, the Hebrew ydioma was dispersed because of the sin of the Babel tower (1.9). But the fact that the human race was able to create or make a new language shows that the inchoate potentiality of the “forma” as interior word was preserved, so that Dante is perfectly aware of the ambiguity of the word forma. Forma locutionis in the passage I have recalled has a double meaning. On one hand, it is “idea” or verbum interiore as an inchoative principle rational that works toward the sensible sign; on the other hand, it is a language that this inchoative principle allows to make.

In concluding, I summarize my reading:

A forma locutionis has been given to the human being in the act of creation. Forma is a principle or verbum interiore which is the efficient cause of language;

A continuity is established in this way between the genesis of verbum as presented at 1.4–5 and the forma locutionis of 1.6. This continuity heralds, in its equivocal texture, the impossibility of speaking about language in such a way as to detach the interior word from the spoken word. Paradiso 26, where the Pilgrim meets Adam, confirms this interpretation. Here we read that the language made by Adam was no longer used before the confusion of Babel. Human beings were thus able to make a new language. Here Adam says that there is no difference between languages and that human beings can use whatever language they want. This confirms incontrovertibly that the creation of language belongs to human beings. It also confirms that what God gave in his creation of humankind was the principle of being able to generate language. The activity of impositio nominis returns in this canto. Here we have two names for God, and the first name is not El, but I. This change is important and perhaps, in Paradise, is consequent to Dante’s theory of the One, which he establishes in Monarchia 1.

I have emphasized as important in the impositio nominis of De vulgari 1.4 the fact that such impositio is a praise that shows the impulse of human beings to return to their origin. In Augustine, we read that the genesis of verbum takes place at the very moment in which the human being contemplates the Divine being. The different names of God in which the name of God is a simplicissimum signum locutionis on which human ydioma will be fabricated by Adam thus means that Dante is seeking to forge a continuity between the theory or principle of One, as discussed in Monarchia (1.14) and the origin of language. In this case, there is a parallel between the causatrix essentia of the “idea” or forma locutionis and that of the imposition of the name of God, from which sensible language springs. “I” and later “El,” while stressing the mutability of language and the ad placitum from which the first ydioma springs, reiterate that naming is a human intellectual enterprise. Adam in Paradise, however, in the narrative which implies a shifting from the perspective of the vernacular treatise, seems to emphasize the precision of pristine fabrication. To the naming of the One corresponds one spoken letter, that is, “I.” A one-to-one correspondence takes place here in continuity with Monarchia.

Dante’s compilation, as announced at the beginning of the Latin treatise on the vernacular, is thus confirmed; so too is the fact that Dante fashions the material thanks to his own ingenium and his previous reflections and writings. If the passages on language and form are a kind of puzzle or enigma, there is no doubt that solving the puzzle requires attention and intelligence on the part of the reader, who participates in the formative project Dante is activating in those years in the De vulgari, as well as in his Convivio. That this formative project includes a political goal and its evolution in Dante’s thought is evident once we consider that forma locutionis as “idea” is universal, and that for Augustine and his followers the interior word is universal and does not belong to any one people but to all. Dante’s idea of humanitas in Monarchia and his idea of Empire, as well as that of intellect, better actualized by the entire humanity (Monarchia 1), is formulated on the ground and evolution of his linguistic theory as confronted first in his Florentine years, later in his treatises De vulgari eloquentia and Convivio, and culminating in the Commedia.