by Giulio Leoni
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
THE KINGDOM of Light, like its predecessor, The Third Heaven Conspiracy, is scattered with embedded quotations and references from Dante’s Divine Comedy. While many of these would be instantly familiar to Italians – as quotes from Shakespeare might be to us – even the most alert English-speaking readers couldn’t possibly be expected to spot them all. To take a couple of examples: towards the end of Chapter 1, Dante says to Lapo: ‘But anyway, in church with the saints and in the inn with the gluttons.’ The phrase comes from Inferno, Canto XXII, ll. 15–16:
… ma ne la chiesa
coi santi e in taverna coi ghiottoni.
In the passage in question, Dante and Virgil are being escorted through Hell by a group of ten demons. Here the church, in Dante’s throwaway proverb, represents heaven, and the tavern hell – a theme that will be picked up in Leoni’s novel.
Perhaps more obviously, in Chapter 9 Dante finds his way obstructed by three armed men wearing the insignia of a leopard, a lion and a wolf. These are the allegorical beasts which, in Canto I of the Inferno, block the poet’s path to salvation, representing (in the poem, not necessarily in the novel) lust, pride and avarice. And towards the end of the same chapter, Dante orders that a funeral be conducted ‘with tapers quenched’; the Italian phrase, ‘a lume spento’, is from Purgatorio, Canto III.
These are just a few of the allusions buried in the book – and if readers are tempted to track down others by returning to Dante’s great work, that may well be part of the author’s intention.
GLOSSARY
al-Jazari (1133–1206) – the greatest machine-maker and inventor of a famous Persian family who made automata; he is best known for writing the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, in which he described how to construct fifty mechanical objects
al-Kindi (c.801–73) – Islamic philosopher, scientist, astronomer and physician, known for trying to introduce Greek and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world and considered one of the greatest philosophers of Arab descent
Cecco Angiolieri (1260–c.1312) – a dissolute poet from Siena, born into a wealthy Guelph banking family and an acquaintance of Dante – they fought together at the battle of Campaldino (see below), where Angiolieri did not distinguish himself; he addressed various bantering sonnets to Dante, but their relationship subsequently deteriorated as his life became ever more turbulent
astrolabe – an instrument used by classical astronomers and navigators to predict the position of the sun, moon, stars and planets and to measure local latitude and longitude; it consisted of a disc marked in degrees along the edge, a pivoted pointer (alidade), a pierced rotating disc (rete) with a projection of the ecliptic plane, and various ‘flames’ showing the position of the stars
bargellini – armed guards (of which the Bargello was the head) responsible for maintaining order in the Republic of Florence
Beatrice/Bice dei Portinari – the woman who takes over from the poet Virgil as guide in Dante’s Divine Comedy and also appears in his La Vita Nuova; Dante met and fell in love with the real Beatrice in Florence, and although she died in 1290 (three years after marrying the banker Simone dei Bardi), continued to dedicate work to her throughout his life
Guido Bigarelli – thirteenth-century sculptor. He is known chiefly for the font in the baptistery of Pisa
Guido Bonatti – thirteenth-century Italian astronomer from Forlì, astrologer to the court of Frederick II and the most famous astronomer of his time throughout Europe; he was mentioned in Dante’s Inferno and wrote The Book of Astronomy, offering rare glimpses into the working life of a medieval astrologer
Boniface VIII (c. 1235–1303) – Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1294 until 1303; born Benedetto Caetani, he was elected Pope after Celestine V renounced the papacy, and pushed papal supremacy to the limit, leading to bitter quarrels with Philip IV of France and, indeed, with Dante, who portrayed him in the Inferno as being destined for hell
Campaldino – a battle on the banks of the River Arno between the Guelphs (led by Florence) and the Ghibellines (led by the commune of Arezzo) on 11th June, 1289, in which the twenty-four-year old Dante fought for the victorious Guelphs (see below)
Castel del Monte – a thirteenth-century castle in Puglia, built by Frederick II between 1240 and 1250 in the shape of an octagonal prism (possibly as an intermediate symbol between the square – representing the earth – and a circle – representing the sky); it is now a World Heritage Site
Cavalcanti – a prominent Florentine Guelph family, of which the poet Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255–1300) was a friend of Dante, but had to be exiled by him for factionalism; Guido is celebrated for his poetry exploring the philosophy of love, written in the dolce stil nuovo (‘sweet new style’) Cerchi and Donati – the Cerchi were a leading Florentine banking family, head of a Guelph consortium, who were increasingly at odds with the Donati family, leading to virtual civil war between the rival ‘Whites’ and ‘Blacks’; this ended in victory for the Blacks and exile for many Whites, including the Prior of the Republic of Florence, Dante Alighieri
Council of Lyon (1245) – the Thirteenth Ecumenical Council, at which Pope Innocent IV announced the deposition of the Emperor Frederick II, although he did not have the means to enforce it
Elias of Cortona (c.1180–1253) – Minister General of the Franciscans and a disciple of Saint Francis of Assisi, to whom various alchemical manuscripts have been attributed
Fedeli d’Amore (The Faithful of Love) – a secret sect of poets, led by Guido Cavalcanti (see above), struggling against the despotism of the popes and devoted to Sapienta (wisdom); Dante tried to contact them in 1283 by writing a poem to them and was eventually invited to join the group
Leonardo Fibonacci (c.1170–1250) – Italian mathematician also known as Leonardo of Pisa, renowned for spreading the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe (as described in his Book of Calculation) and for the number sequence named after him, in which after 0 and 1 each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers
Frederick the Second (1194–1250) – Holy Roman Emperor 1220–50; Italian pretender to the title of King of the Romans from 1212 and unopposed monarch of Italy from 1215; he was known as Stupor mundi (‘the wonder of the world’) for his wide learning and was one of the foremost Christian monarchs in Europe during the Middle Ages, but his dynasty lost its influence after the death of his son Conrad in 1254, although there were continuing rumours of the attempted advent to the throne of another son
Giano della Bella – a wealthy, aristocratic Guelph politician who became the leader of a popular Florentine revolt against the magnates during the 1290s; having aroused the hostility of the guilds and the grandees, he was forced into exile
Guelphs and Ghibellines – rival factions in thirteenth-century Italy, supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively; the Guelphs (to whom Dante belonged) comprised middle-class merchants, shopkeepers and traders, while the Ghibellines consisted of an alliance of leading merchants and the feudal nobility. In 1300, after their victory at Campaldino (see above), the Florentine Guelphs themselves split into two factions: the Whites and the Blacks (see Cerchi and Donati above)
guild – a professional and trade association in medieval Europe; there were seven ‘great guilds’, fourteen ‘lesser guilds’ (craft guilds) and seven liberal arts guilds in Florence, setting the standards for the occupation in question and granting privileges and protection to their members; in the novel the Builders’ Guild is specifically mentioned
Inquisition – a series of Roman Catholic bodies charged with suppressing heresy throughout Europe from about 1184; they were a response to the threat presented by large popular movements such as those of the Cathars and Waldensians in France and northern Italy, which were viewed as heretical by the Catholic Church
Jubilee – on 22nd February, 1300 Boniface VIII convoked a holy year of ‘great remissions and indulgences for sins’ for those who visited the basil
icas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Rome and confessed their sins; this started a tradition in the Catholic Church that continued every twenty-five or fifty years; Dante is reputed by some to have visited Rome in 1300 for this purpose
Kitab al-Mi’raj – The Book of Ascension, a Muslim book written in Arabic about the ascension of Mohammed into the heavens, after his one-night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem; it was translated into Latin in the mid-thirteenth century as the Liber scalae Machometi and is believed by some scholars to have influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy
Monna Lagia – the brothel-keeper in the novel is possibly named after the Monna Lagia who had a relationship with the poet Lapo Gianna and who is mentioned in poems by Dante and Cavalcanti
Bianca Lancia – an Italian noblewoman whose full name was Bianca Lancia d’Algiano, she became mistress and (reputedly on her deathbed) wife of Emperor Frederick II; her last son was thought by some to be the ‘lost’ heir to Frederick
Liber scalae Machometi – see Kitab al-Mi’raj above
Mainardino da Imola – Bishop loyal to the Emperor Frederick, and author of the Chronicles
Oltrarno – a central district of Florence located south of the River Arno (from the Italian meaning ‘beyond the Arno’) and containing many of its historic buildings
Pietra – in 1296 Dante composed a series of verses to one Donna Pietra, who was possibly named for her stony indifference to him (pietra being Italian for ‘stone’); it may have been a reference to Pietra degli Scrovigni, daughter of a Paduan money-lender assigned to the circle of usurers in Dante’s Inferno
prior – the Florence in which Dante lived was a republic, governed by an elected Council of Priors, comprising six members, based on the previous Priors of the Guilds; in the novel Dante’s term as prior is due to end shortly
Michael Scotus (c.1175–1234) – one of the foremost philosophers, mathematicians and scholars of the thirteenth century, who rose to prominence as an astrologer at the court of Frederick II and translated some of the Arabic works of Averroes and Avicenna; he featured among the magicians in Dante’s Inferno and in the work of Boccaccio and Sir Walter Scott
La Serenissima – the Republic of Venice, from its title in Venetian: ‘the Most Serene Republic’
tokamak – a device for creating controlled thermonuclear fusion energy, invented by Soviet physicists during the 1950s
The Virgin of Antioch – also known as Saint Margaret and Margaret of Antioch; she was scorned by her father for her Christian faith, tortured when she refused to renounce it and, after various miraculous incidents, put to death in AD 304
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Copyright © Giulio Leoni 2005
English translation copyright © Shaun Whiteside 2009
Giulio Leoni has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Italy as I Delitti Della Luce in 2005 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A, Milano. This edition published by arrangement with Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Harvill Secker
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