[107] 'O ye, who have hitherto been following me in some small craft, ... put not further to sea, lest, losing sight of me, you lose yourselves' (_Parad._ ii. 1). But, to tell the truth, Dante is never so weak as a poet as when he is most the philosopher or the theologian. The following list of books more or less known to him is not given as complete:--The Vulgate, beginning with St. Jerome's Prologue; Aristotle, through the Latin translation then in vogue; Averroes, etc.; Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen; much of the Civil and Canon law; Boethius; Homer only in scraps, through Aristotle, etc.; Virgil, Cicero in part, Livy, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Lucan, and Statius; the works of Brunetto Latini; the poetical literature of Provence, France, and Italy, including the Arthurian Romances--the favourite reading of the Italian nobles, and the tales of Charlemagne and his Peers--equally in favour with the common people. There is little reason to suppose that among the treatises of a scientific and quasi-scientific kind that he fell in with, and of which he was an eager student, were included the works of Roger Bacon. These there was a conspiracy among priests and schoolmen to keep buried. Dante seems to have set little store on ecclesiastical legends of wonder; at least he gives them a wide berth in his works. [108] In the notes to Fraticelli's _Vita di Dante_ (Florence 1861) are given copies of documents relating to the property of the Alighieri, and of Dante in particular. In 1343 his son Jacopo, by payment of a small fine, recovered vineyards and farms that had been his father's.--Notes to Chap. iii. Fraticelli's admirable Life is now in many respects out of date. He accepts, _e.g._, Dino Compagni as an authority, and believes in the romantic story of the letter of Fra Ilario. [109] The details are given by Witte, _Dante-Forschungen_, vol ii. p. 61. The amount borrowed by Dante and his brother (and a friend) comes to nearly a thousand gold florins. Witte takes this as equivalent to 37,000 francs, _i.e._ nearly £1500. But the florin being the eighth of an ounce, or about ten shillings' worth of gold, a thousand florins would be equal only to £500--representing, of course, an immensely greater sum now-a-days. [110] _Purg._ viii. 76. [111] See in Scartazzini, _Dante Alighieri_, 1879, page 552, extract from the will of her mother Maria Donati, dated February 1314. Many of these Florentine dates are subject to correction, the year being usually counted from Lady-Day. 'In 1880 a document was discovered which proves Gemma to have been engaged in a law-suit in 1332.--_Il Propugnatore_, xiii^a. 156,'--Scheffer-Boichorst, _Aus Dantes Verbannung_, page 213. [112] _Purg._ xxiv. 37. [113] _Inf._ xxi. 40.