Of the order of Dante's studies
nothing can be certainly affirmed. His biographers send him to Bologna,
Padua, Paris, Naples, and even Oxford. All are doubtful, Paris and Oxford
most of all, and the dates utterly undeterminable. Yet all are possible,
nay, perhaps probable. Bologna and Padua we should be inclined to place
before his exile; Paris and Oxford, if at all, after it. If no argument
in favor of Paris is to be drawn from his _Pape Satan_[13] and the
corresponding _paix, paix, Sathan,_ in the autobiography of Cellini, nor
from the very definite allusion to Doctor Siger,[14] we may yet infer
from some passages in the _Commedia_ that his wanderings had extended
even farther;[15] for it would not be hard to show that his comparisons
and illustrations from outward things are almost invariably drawn from
actual eyesight. As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt
that he went through the _trivium_ (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the
_quadrivium_ (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of the then
ordinary university course. To these he afterward added painting (or at
least drawing,--_designavo un angelo sopra certe tavolette_),[16]
theology, and medicine. He is said to have been the pupil of Cimabue, and
was certainly the friend of Giotto, the designs for some of whose frescos
at Assisi and elsewhere have been wrongly attributed to him, though we
may safely believe in his helpful comment and suggestion.
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