Reviewing Dante's Theology: Volume 2 9783034317573, 9783035305586, 3034317573

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 7
Abbreviations and Note on Translations......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 11
Notes on Contributors......Page 13
Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne Introduction......Page 15
Albert R. Ascoli Poetry and Theology......Page 17
Paola Nasti Dante and Ecclesiology......Page 57
Ronald L. Martinez Dante and the Poem of the Liturgy......Page 103
Claire E. Honess Dante and the Theology of Politics......Page 171
George Ferzoco Dante and the Context of Medieval Preaching......Page 201
Ruth Chester Virtue in Dante......Page 225
Zygmunt G. Barański (Un)orthodox Dante......Page 267
Index......Page 345

Citation preview

The two volumes of Reviewing Dante’s Theology bring together work by a range of internationally prominent Dante scholars to assess current research on Dante’s theology and to suggest future directions for research.

CLAIRE E. HONESS is Professor of Italian Studies and Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Leeds, where she also co-directs the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. MATTHEW TREHERNE is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leeds and co-director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. He is principal investigator for the research project ‘Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society’.

Honess and Treherne (eds)

Volume 2 considers some of the broader social, cultural and intellectual contexts for Dante’s theological engagement. The contributors dis­ cuss the relationship between theology and poetry as Dante sees and presents it; Dante’s thought on the nature of the Church; the ways in which liturgical practice helped shape the poet’s work; the links between Dante’s political and theological ideas; the importance of preaching in Dante’s context; the ways in which the notion of virtue connects theological and ethical thought in Dante’s works; and the extent to which Dante’s often surprising, groundbreaking work tests medieval notions of orthodoxy. Each essay offers an overview of its topic and opens up new avenues.

Reviewing Dante’s Theology: Volume 2

leeds studies on dante

Reviewing Dante’s Theology Volume 2

Edited by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne

ISBN 978-3-0343-1757-3

www.peterlang.com

Peter Lang

The two volumes of Reviewing Dante’s Theology bring together work by a range of internationally prominent Dante scholars to assess current research on Dante’s theology and to suggest future directions for research.

CLAIRE E. HONESS is Professor of Italian Studies and Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Leeds, where she also co-directs the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. MATTHEW TREHERNE is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leeds and co-director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. He is principal investigator for the research project ‘Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society’.

www.peterlang.com

Honess and Treherne (eds)

Volume 2 considers some of the broader social, cultural and intellectual contexts for Dante’s theological engagement. The contributors dis­ cuss the relationship between theology and poetry as Dante sees and presents it; Dante’s thought on the nature of the Church; the ways in which liturgical practice helped shape the poet’s work; the links between Dante’s political and theological ideas; the importance of preaching in Dante’s context; the ways in which the notion of virtue connects theological and ethical thought in Dante’s works; and the extent to which Dante’s often surprising, groundbreaking work tests medieval notions of orthodoxy. Each essay offers an overview of its topic and opens up new avenues.

Reviewing Dante’s Theology: Volume 2

leeds studies on dante

Reviewing Dante’s Theology Volume 2

Edited by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne

Peter Lang

Reviewing Dante’s Theology

Leeds Studies on Dante Series Editors Claire E. Honess, University of Leeds Matthew Treherne, University of Leeds

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

Reviewing Dante’s Theology Volume 2

Edited by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951471

Cover image: Benjamin Creswick, Dante (1881), Tiled Gallery, Leeds City Library. Photo © Leeds Library and Information Service. issn 2235-1825 isbn 978-3-0343-1757-3 (print) isbn 978-3-0353-0558-6 (eBook) © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2013 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. Printed in Germany

Contents

Abbreviations and Note on Translations

vii

Acknowledgements ix Notes on Contributors

xi

Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne

Introduction 1 Albert R. Ascoli

Poetry and Theology

3

Paola Nasti

Dante and Ecclesiology

43

Ronald L. Martinez

Dante and the Poem of  the Liturgy

89

Claire E. Honess

Dante and the Theology of  Politics

157

George Ferzoco

Dante and the Context of  Medieval Preaching

187

Ruth Chester

Virtue in Dante

211

vi

Zygmunt G. Barański

(Un)orthodox Dante

253

Index 331

Abbreviations and Note on Translations

The following editions are used throughout, unless otherwise stated. Bible

Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, 4th revised edn, ed. by B. Fischer, R. Weber, R. Gryson, et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994)

Commedia La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994) Conv.

Convivio, ed. by Cesare Vasoli & Domenico De Robertis, vol. I. ii of  Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, 2 vols (Milan & Naples: Ricciardi, 1979–88)

DVE

De vulgari eloquentia, ed. by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, in Opere minori, II, 1–237.

Eclogues Egloge, ed. by Enzo Cecchini, in Opere minori, II, 647–89 Ep.

Epistole, ed. by Arsenio Frugoni & Giorgio Brugnoli, in Opere minori, II, 505–643

Inf.

Inferno, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata

Mon.

Monarchia, ed. by Bruno Nardi, in Opere minori II, 239–503

Par. Paradiso, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata PL

Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina, ed. by J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1844–64)

Purg.

Purgatorio, in La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata

Rime

Rime, ed. by Gianfranco Contini, in Opere minori, I. i, 249–552

VN

Vita nuova, ed. by Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori, I. i, 1–247

viii

Abbreviations and Note on Translations

Unless otherwise stated in individual essays, the following translations have been used:

– The Divine Comedy, trans. by Allen Mandelbaum, 3 vols (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1980–82)

– The Banquet, trans. by Christopher Ryan (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1989) – Monarchy, trans. by Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Acknowledgments

We owe many debts to many people for supporting the development of  this project and of  these volumes. We are grateful to the Leeds Humanities Research Institute and the British Academy for funding the Reviewing Dante’s Theology workshop in Leeds in April 2008. The Faculty of  Arts and the School of  Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of  Leeds provided ongoing support for the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies, and in particular we wish to acknowledge the encouragement we received at this time from Andrew Thompson, then Dean of  the Faculty, and from Stuart Taberner, then Director of  the Leeds Humanities Research Institute. The Department of  Italian at the University of  Cambridge supported the November 2008 workshop; we are grateful to the Department and to Zygmunt Barański for enabling this workshop to happen, as well as for Zyg’s energetic and enthusiastic support and wise counsel throughout the development of  this project. The Society for Italian Studies supported the project with a pump-priming award, and the British Academy Fellowship’s Visiting Fellow scheme enabled us to host Tamara Pollack in Leeds. All participants in the project have been a great pleasure to work with, and we have learned an enormous amount from each of  them. Anna Williams was a wonderfully stimulating and generous advisor in the early stages of  the project. Christian Moevs made stunning contributions to the workshop. Ruth Chester and Kevin Marples worked tirelessly to enable the smooth running of  the workshop, as well as contributing fully to our discussions. Federica Pich of fered invaluable editorial assistance. Our collaboration with our colleagues in Italian Studies at the University of  Notre Dame is hugely important to us, as will be apparent throughout the pages of  these volumes. We are grateful to Peter Lang for its support of  this new book series in Dante studies, and in particular to Hannah Godfrey for her patience and support as we brought this project to fruition.

x Acknowledgments

Finally, we must thank members of  the Dante studies community in Leeds, who have made Leeds such a wonderful place to read Dante: we are fortunate to be surrounded by students, colleagues, researchers and members of  the public who have displayed support and enthusiasm and inspired us in our work on Dante’s theology. In particular, we would like to thank a special group of  friends, namely the researchers who have been members of  the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies over the time that this project has been in development: Ruth Chester, Lois Haines, Nicolò Maldina, Kevin Marples, Anna Pegoretti, Tamara Pollack, Abigail Rowson and Sarah Todd.

Notes on Contributors

ALBERT R. ASCOLI is Terrill Distinguished Professor of  Italian Studies at the University of  California at Berkeley. ZYGMUNT G. BARAŃSKI is Notre Dame Professor of  Dante and Italian Studies at the University of  Notre Dame and Emeritus Serena Professor of  Italian at the University of  Cambridge. RUTH CHESTER is Visiting Research Fellow and AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellow at the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies, University of  Leeds. GEORGE FERZOCO is Research and Teaching Fellow in Medieval Religious Culture at the University of  Bristol. CLAIRE E. HONESS is Professor of  Italian Studies, Head of  the School of  Modern Languages and Cultures, and Co-Director of  the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of  Leeds. RONALD L. MARTINEZ is Professor of  Italian Studies at Brown University. PAOLA NASTI is Associate Professor of  Italian Studies at the University of  Reading. MATTHEW TREHERNE is Senior Lecturer in Italian and Co-Director of  the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of  Leeds.

Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne

Introduction

Reviewing Dante’s Theology, which forms the first two volumes of  the book series Leeds Studies on Dante, is the product of a workshop held in April 2008 in the Leeds Humanities Research Institute at the University of  Leeds, organized by the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies, and of a subsequent seminar held at the University of  Cambridge in November 2008. The workshop aimed to take stock of what had become a vibrant field of study, and to suggest future directions for research. Each participant was invited to present an overview of a particular topic, to sum up the achievements of scholarship so far, and to suggest some of  the future directions for research. Crucially, by bringing together researchers working on diverse aspects of  Dante’s theology, we aimed to avoid the danger of  fragmentation which often accompanies a major topic in a vast field such as Dante studies. Collectively, we wished to test the boundaries of  that field. The spirit and tone of  the conversations at our workshops ref lect the energy currently being devoted to these questions, a genuine willingness on the part of participants to learn from each other and to share ideas, and a common acknowledgment that the study of  Dante’s theology needed to be a shared, rather than an individual, endeavour. The full introduction to the two volumes is printed in Volume 1 and can also be downloaded from the Peter Lang website: www.peterlang.com.

Albert R. Ascoli

Poetry and Theology

Until the appearance of  the invaluable edition by Enzo Cecchini of  Magnae Derivationes of  Hugutio of  Pisa, the early thirteenth-century etymological dictionary to which Dante frequently recurred, was available only in manuscript form and was used by Dante scholars exclusively to clarify the meanings of individual words and concepts where Dante either drew directly on the Derivationes or where that encyclopedic work provided an illuminating analogue.1 Future studies, it is to be hoped, will concern themselves more generally with the hows and whys of  Dante’s engagement with this text.2 For present purposes, however, I would like to recall, yet again, Dante’s 1

2

Uguccione da Pisa, Derivationes, ed. by Enzo Cecchini (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004). The limited bibliography on Dante and Hugutio includes Paget Toynbee, Dante Studies and Researches (London: Methuen, 1902), pp. 97–114; Antonio Martina, ‘Uguccione nel proemio della Monarchia di Dante’, L’Alighieri (1972) 13: 69–74; Giancarlo Schizzerotto, ‘Uguccione’, in ED, V, pp. 800–02; Albert Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. ch. 2, sec. ii, also ch. 5, nn. 20 and 46. On Dante and medieval encyclopedism, see Cesare Vasoli, ‘Dante e l’immagine enciclopedica del mondo nel Convivio’, in ‘Imago Mundi’: la conoscenza scientifica nel pensiero basso medioevale (Todi: Accademia Tudertina, 1983), pp. 37–73; The ‘Divine Comedy’ and the Encyclopedia of  the Arts, ed. by Giuseppe Di Scipio and Aldo Scaglione (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988); L’Enciclopedismo medieval, ed. by Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1994); Zygmunt G. Barański, Dante e i segni: Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri (Naples: Liguori, 2000), pp. 77–102; and esp. Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of  Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), ch. 1. While it is important not to confuse etymological dictionaries with encyclopedias proper, such as Vincent of  Beauvais’s Speculum Maior, the comprehensive tendency is evident. It is worth noting the dif ference between Hugutio’s work, which has in some respects the shape of a modern dictionary, with the best known and most often cited of  the medieval

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Albert R. Ascoli

best known use of  Hugutio, whose importance for his evolving concept of authorship I have treated extensively elsewhere.3 I speak of a series which begins with his explicit recourse to two of  the Pisan’s three derivations of auctor/autor in Convivio IV. vi (the philosophical author from ‘autentin’, so called because worthy of  ‘faith and obedience’; the poetic author from avieo, who binds together words in verse as the five vowels bind together language) – continues with his return to the poetic ‘avientibus’ in De vulgari eloquentia (II. i. 1) – and culminates in his carefully structured passage from Virgil as his poetic and philosophical ‘maestro’ (Inf., I. 85) [master] and ‘autore’ [author] to God as ‘verace Autore’ (Par., XXVI. 40) [truthful author].4 Like his account of allegory in Convivio II. i (of which more anon), and in keeping with Hugutio’s etymological entry, the treatment of  the ‘autore’ in Convivio IV. vi remains overtly within the parameters of  human creativity and knowledge. Unlike Convivio II. i, no mention is made of a theological alternative doubling and superseding that of  the poet whose canzoni bear within themselves allegorically, and even literally, a philosophical content. When the autore returns in the Commedia, however, we find a trajectory leading from poetic-rational authorship to the divine Maker, co-author as Dante-poet would have it, of a ‘poema sacro’ (Par., XXV. 1) [holy poem]. And while, as I have claimed, the ‘verace autore’ is identified in Paradiso XXVI. 40 in such a way precisely as to recall Dante’s Hugutian ‘vowels of authority’, this final allusive evocation of  the ‘autore’ from ‘avieo’ has decidedly turned from the Hugutian/’convivial’ poetic maker who

3 4

etymological works, Isidore of  Seville’s magnum opus which proceeds by topics rather than alphabetically. Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 2. Translations are from The Divine Comedy of  Dante Alighieri, ed. and trans. by Robert M. Durling; comm. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996–2011). On the language of authorship and authority in the DC, see Robert Hollander, ‘Dante’s Use of  Aeneid I in Inferno I and II’, Comparative Literature, 20 (1968), 142–56 (pp. 144–45); Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the ‘Comedy’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 268–69; Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 256–59 and Ascoli, Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 7.

Poetry and Theology

5

unveils rational truth to the ‘theologus-poeta’ who praises the unknowable deity by naming him in multiple languages and according to his infinite attributes. The question is: does Dante’s poem simultaneously turn from an ‘allegory of poets’ to an allegory of  theologians, as some have had it? I will return to the problem of  Dante’s ‘theological poetics’ in Paradiso XXV and XXVI at the end of  this essay. For the moment, however, I would like to dwell on two features of  Hugutio’s text which almost certainly conditioned Dante’s use of  this entry, beyond its specific content, and in a fashion that does show the way to its transformation from the beginning of  the Commedia to its ending. In the first place, Hugutio’s usual tendency, not always strictly observed, is to follow what would become the modern standard for the ordering of encyclopedias and dictionaries, namely alphabetization (not simply the division of words by the first letter, but the subdivision according to the alphabetical order of subsequent letters – ‘ab …’ followed by ‘ac …’ and so on). But the first entry of  the entire work is an exception, namely the word ‘augere’, from whence auctor, one who augments or increases, and in the first instance ‘imperatores … ab augendo rem publicam’ [Emperors … from the augmentation of  the public good]. ‘Augere’ is accompanied by two related etymologies, ‘autor’ from ‘autentin’, referring to ‘philosophers and the inventors of  the arts’, and ‘autor’ from ‘avieo’, meaning ‘to bind’ and referring to poets who tie together ‘song with feet and meter.’ These last two being the definitions which Dante of fers up as alternatives in Convivio IV. vi, with some interesting twists on the Hugutian original. Why is this placement important in itself, and why is it relevant to Dante? Because the position of  the definition, strengthened by contextual factors to which we will turn shortly, suggests it serves not only a general definitional purpose, but also raises the question of what Hugutio’s own standing as author of  this text might be – the same self-ref lexive question, mutatis mutandis, raised indirectly but powerfully by Dante’s citation of  the entry in Convivio. What, one might then ask, does this have to do with the relationship of poetry and theology? While as just seen Dante certainly turns Hugutio’s definitional exercise in that direction – implicitly in Convivio IV. vi and explicitly in Paradiso XXVI – the entry in the

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Albert R. Ascoli

Derivationes makes no reference to the possibility that Auctor is one of  the infinite names of  God. This brings us to the second, and heretofore unremarked, feature of  the Derivationes which may illuminate Dante’s evolving understanding of authorship. Immediately preceding the entry for auctor, the very first of  the Derivationes, as we have just seen, comes the writer’s prologue, describing the nature of  the text to come, and identifying its author in the following way: Si quis querat huius operis quis autor, dicendum est quia Deus; si querat huius operis quis fuerit instrumentum, respondendum est quia patria pisanus, nomine Uguitio quasi eugetio, idest bona terra non tantum presentibus sed etiam futuris, vel Uguitio quasi vegetio, idest virens terra non solum sibi sed etiam aliis. Igitur Sancti Spiritus assistente gratia, ut qui est omnium bonorum distributor nobis verborum copiam auctim suppeditare dignetur, a verbo augmenti nostre assertionis auspicium sortiamur. (Prologus 8–9) [If one were to ask who is the author [autor] of  this work, one would have to say God; if one were to ask who was the instrument in making this work, one would have to answer that it is one whose homeland is Pisa by the name of  Hugutio, as it were from ‘eugetio’, that is, good earth not only for the present times but also for the future, or Hugutio, as it were, from ‘vegetio’, a land green not only for itself  but also for others. Therefore with the assisting grace of  the Holy Spirit – so that He who is the distributor of all good things may deem it worthy to supply us by augmentation (auctim) with an abundance of words – we shall take the beginning for our treatise (nostre assertionis) from the word ‘augmentum’.]5

At least four important considerations arise from a reading of  this passage. First, Hugutio displays a genuine concern with identifying himself personally, through his proper name, with the text he has produced, a concern which certainly points in the direction of  Dante’s obsession with the problematic of personalized, individualized, authorship. Second, although the entry for auctor is, as just mentioned, not explicitly concerned with theological authorship, anyone who has read the preface – beginning with Dante himself – is bound to consider its significance in that light: the passage begins with the word ‘autor’, in the service of claiming that God, 5

Thanks to Frank Bezner for assistance with this translation.

Poetry and Theology

7

in the person of  the Holy Spirit, is the true author of  the text (given the spelling [i.e. no ‘c’] this must be the divine version of  the author in the second or third sense of  the definition that follows). Third, despite the fact that one would be hard pressed to argue that Hugutio is claiming for himself  the status of one of  the human authors, or scribes, of  the Bible, he clearly presents a model of dual authorship, or rather of  the divine Author writing through a human instrument, for the text. Finally, Hugutio explicitly connects his decision to begin the Derivationes with the word ‘auctor’ as a tribute to God as ‘augmentator’ (and thence, of course, ‘imperator’ of  ‘quella Roma onde Cristo è romano’ (Purg., XXXII. 102) [that Rome of which Christ is a Roman]), twice using of  the Deity words (‘auctim’; ‘augmentum’) derived from ‘augere.’ Thus in this short passage Hugutio makes God the ultimate model for human ‘auctores’ and ‘autores’, covering at least two, and possibly all three, of  the forms then treated in the first entry of  the text, which he explicitly states is thus positioned as a tribute to the Divine Author. What is striking, of course, is that the configuration I have just described overlaps to a considerable extent with the scholarly assertion that in the Commedia Dante claims to be a ‘theologus-poeta’, an inspired ‘scriba’ or scribe (cf. Par., X. 27) of  the dictation of  the ‘verace Autore’, on close, potentially blasphemous, analogy with Biblical authors such as Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, John, Paul, and so on.6 Were it not for this evident pertinence to a central issue, for many the central issue, of  Dante criticism, at least in 6

Robert Hollander, Allegory in Dante’s ‘Commedia’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969); idem., ‘Dante as Theologus-Poeta’, Dante Studies, 94 (1976), 91–136. See also Bruno Nardi, ‘Dante Profeta’, in Dante e la cultura medievale, new edn by Paolo Mazzantini (Bari: La Terza, 1985) [1st edn 1942], pp. 265–326; Charles S. Singleton, Dante Studies 1: Elements of  Structure (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954); ‘The Irreducible Dove’, Comparative Literature, 9 (1957), 129–35; Gian Roberto Sarolli, ‘Dante Scriba Dei: Storia e Simbolo’, in Prolegomena alla ‘Divina Commedia’ (Florence: Olschki, 1971), pp. 189–336; cf. Niccolò Mineo, Profetismo e apocalittica in Dante. Strutture e temi profetico-apocalittici in Dante: dalla ‘Vita nuova’ alla ‘Divina Commedia’ (Catania: Università di Catania, Facoltà di lettere e filosofia, 1968); Lucia Battaglia Ricci, Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale (Pisa: Giardini, 1983); Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing

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Albert R. Ascoli

its anglo-american incarnation, this passage might not seem particularly fraught. Surely it is the case that any medieval Christian intellectual would have understood that, as God’s creation, made in His ‘image and likeness’, all that he did and made was in the final instance attributable to the ultimate Auctor both of  the Bible and of  the world itself. Nonetheless, once understood both as a likely inf luence upon Dante’s self-construction as scriba Dei and as possible alternative to the Nardi–Singleton–Hollander interpretation of  Dante the theologian, that is, both as writer of words about God and as mediating channel for the Word of  God, Hugutio’s words assume what can only be described as an ‘over-determined’ importance – at least for the Dante scholar and, perhaps, pending further and wider study, for the late medieval discourse of authorship more generally. The topic of  ‘poetry and theology’ as it pertains to the works of  Dante can be construed in a number of dif ferent ways, given, to begin with, the metonymical ambiguity of  the word ‘and’, as well as for other reasons to which I will return shortly. One way of interpreting the phrase is as referring to poetry’s capacity, or lack thereof, to deliver theological content – and, more specifically, to draw upon, whether simply divulgatively or actively and transformatively, the writings of  theologians from the fathers of  the Church to the Scholastics of  the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Since virtually all the essays in this collection can be said to be about ‘poetry and theology’ in this sense and since, to be perfectly candid, my own credentials as historian of  Christian theology are not especially distinguished, certainly not in comparison with other contributors to this book, I will leave this enterprise largely to the side.7 A second way to understand this topic is as a provocation to the study of  the relationship between two modes of dis-

7

Dante (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), ch. 1. For additional discussion and bibliography, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, p. 121 and ch. 7, sect. v–vi. I will, however, admit a partiality to a reading, for me identified primarily with Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Dante’s Vision and the Circle of  Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) of  the Commedia as an existential, problematized meditation on the manifestations of  the divine in human history. See also Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of  Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Dante’s

Poetry and Theology

9

course: Is poetry opposed to theology? Is poetry a kind of  theology? Does theology sometimes work in a way that can be called ‘poetic’? It is toward this second possibility, notwithstanding the fact that Hugutio’s text is decidedly not ‘poetic’,8 that my opening sally points us and that, indeed, will guide my ref lections in the balance of  this essay. That said, it is crucial to note that without one additional distinction I run the risk of perpetuating a fundamental confusion which, on the one hand, has led Dante criticism astray, time and again, and which, on the other, Dante clearly plays upon, knowingly or not, time and again, throughout his works. The problem at hand is the meaning of  the word ‘theologus’ or ‘teologo’ in the later Middle Ages and in Dante’s works specifically (especially the Convivio), and consequently what exactly we mean when we talk about Dante ‘and theology.’ On the one hand, a theologian is someone, say Thomas Aquinas, who practices the discipline of theology, and who writes words concerned with the nature of divinity and of  the relation of men to God, and this is the way Dante uses the word in the two places it appears in his oeuvre,9 and, for that matter, it is the way Hugutio defines the word ‘Commedia’: Theology as Poetry, ed. by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2010). 8 However, as we have already seen, it does address the question of poetic authorship and leaves tantalizingly open the relationship between God as ‘autor’ and the poetic ‘autor’ from ‘avieo.’ And as we will see, for Dante there is an intimate relationship between the making of poetry in particular and the origins of  language in general, which is in fact Hugutio’s province. 9 In Mon., III. iii. 2 we find ‘theologus vero numerum angelorum ignorat’ [the theologian for his part does not know how many angels there are]. The other occurrence is far more famous, and has sometimes been taken to refer to Biblical authorship, though there is every reason to doubt this (see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, ch. 2; idem., ‘Dante and Allegory’, in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. by Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 128–35), namely the much discussed passage in which Dante says that ‘i teologi questo senso [the literal] prendono altrimenti che li poeti’ in Convivio II. i, of which more below. Later in Convivio II, in listing the various areas of  human study, Dante refers to ‘la scienza divina, che è Teologia appellata’ (Conv., II. xiii. 8) [the divine science, which is called Theology]. In two other places in Dante’s oeuvre forms of  the word theology (one nominal, one adjectival) appear with obvious reference to

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in the Derivationes.10 On the other, and this is the way that Dante critics, most ostentatiously Robert Hollander, and, by a via negativa, Teodolinda Barolini, sometimes use the term, in which case a ‘theologian’ is one who pronounces the Word of  God, i.e. a human author of  Scripture.11 To put it otherwise, in Dante’s discourse and, even more so, in discourse about Dante, the word ‘theology’ has an ambiguity not unlike that which consistently haunts a modern analogue, namely ‘History’ (which is both a discipline and the object studied and/or constructed by the discourse of  that discipline). It would certainly be convenient if  the distinction I just made were one consistently observed by Dante, so that we could simply say that for Dante poetry is ‘theological’ in the sense that it has God as its subject (by which, of course, I actually mean ‘object’ or predicate) rather than in the sense that it is a ‘subjective’ utterance ultimately originating in Deity (by which, of course, I mean that it is a discourse of  ‘objective’ truth rather than of  fallible human subjectivity). Unfortunately – or rather, fortunately, since without this particular feature there would be considerably less for Dante scholars to talk about – while Dante clearly knows that there is such

10

11

human knowledge concerning the divine (Mon., III. iii. 2, 9). The adjectival form of  the word (teologico) appears indicating divine agency directly in two cases in the Convivio (IV. xxi. 11), and once in Monarchia he refers to the ‘virtutes theologicas’ (the human virtues of  faith, hope, and charity which are defined by the science of  theology and which mediate our relationship to the divine). None of  these latter uses refer to divine scripture or the human authors thereof. Variants on ‘theology’ appear, by my count, only seven times in all of  Dante’s works, never in the Commedia, not even in the Heaven of  the Sun where we meet Aquinas and other theologians. In Paradiso XXV. 73 Dante does refer to David’s Psalms as ‘teodìa’ and we will return to this instance (in any case, not strictly relevant to a discussion of  ‘teologia’ and ‘teologi’) towards the end of  this essay. See the entry for ‘Theos’ (pp. 1206–07): ‘Theos grece, latine dicitur deus: theos apud Grecos timor dicitur, unde Deus dicitur theos, quia timor sit ominibus colentibus eum’ [Greek ‘theos’ in Latin is called ‘deus’: for the Greek, ‘theos’ means ‘fear’, because there should be fear in all things pertaining to the worship of  Him]; ‘Theos componitur theologus -a -um, idest de divinis tractans et loquens, unde hec theologia … sermo de Deo …’ [from ‘Theos’ comes ‘theologus, -a -um’, that is one treating and speaking of divine things; whence ‘theologia’ … speech about God]). Hollander, ‘Dante as Theologus Poeta’; Barolini, The Undivine Comedy.

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a distinction, and sometimes makes use of it, at other times he radically confuses the two meanings. Before moving on to a positive assessment of some of the ways in which Dante discusses and/or dramatizes the relationship between poetry and theology, let me mention brief ly two available accounts – one of which he may or may not have known – the other of which he surely did – which he does not explicitly evoke. The first is the idea, derived by Dante’s contemporary, Albertino Mussato, from Aristotle, that (pagan) poets were the first theologians, in the sense that prior to the elaboration of any rational, philosophical discourse about divinity, and long before the Word itself was made f lesh, (pagan) poets used a figurative language of praise to celebrate the inef fable Deity.12 This model, which avoids any confusion between the figure of  the vatic ‘poet-theologian’ and the authors of  the Bible, would, as is very well known, be picked up by Petrarch, Boccaccio, and other

12

Albertino Mussato, Écérinide; Épîtres Métriques sur la Poésie; Songe, ed. and trans. by Jean-Frédéric Chevalier (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000), esp. epistles 1, 4, 7, and 18, and Il pensiero pedagogico dell’umanesimo, ed. by Eugenio Garin (Florence: Giuntine, 1958), pp. 2–19. Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of  Aristotle, ed. and trans. by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1.3.983b.28–30. On Paduan ‘pre-humanism’ and Mussato, see Alfredo Galletti, ‘la ragione poetica di Albertino Mussato e i poeti teologi’, in Scritti varii di erudizione e di critica in onore di Rodolfo Renier (con xx tavole fuori testo) (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1912), pp. 331–59; Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by W. R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 215–21; Gustavo Vinay, ‘Studi sul Mussato I: Il Mussato e l’estetica medievale’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 126 (1949), 113–59; Manlio Dazzi, Il Mussato preumanista (1261–1329): L’ambiente e l’opera (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1964); Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of  Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969); Giorgio Ronconi, Le origini delle dispute umanistiche sulla poesia (Mussato e Petrarca) (Rome: Bulzoni, 1976); Ronald Witt, ‘Coluccio Salutati and the Conception of the Poeta Theologus in the Fourteenth Century’, Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977), 539–63; idem., In the Footsteps of  the Ancients: The Origins of  Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 2000); Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarca e il primo umanesimo (Padua: Edizioni Antenore, 1996); Jean-Frédéric Chevalier, ‘Introduction’, in Albertino Mussato, Écérinide; Épitre Métriques sur la Poésie; Songe, ed. and trans. by Jean-Frédéric Chevalier (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000).

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humanists,13 as well as by some of  Dante’s own later commentators, notably his son Pietro (Hollander 1976: 117 and n.), eager to avoid the possible implication that the Commedia and its author could be assimilated to the Bible itself and its human writers. At no point does Dante explicitly articulate this argument,14 much less attribute it to Aristotle – but, as we shall see, Dante’s ‘stilo della loda’ – the poetry of praise to which he turns in Vita Nova – evolves into something very like the Commedia, when what appears to be a constative language of reference to Deity is sublimated into the performative language of praising-by-naming.15 The second account, of course, is Thomas’s pellucid and oft-cited variant on the acknowledgment of  the presence of  figure and fiction in the 13

14

15

For poetic theology in the fourteenth century see Curtius, European Literature, pp. 214–27; Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarca letterato. I. Lo scrittoio del Petrarca (Rome: 1947), pp. 121–25; idem., ‘Tra Dante e Petrarca’, Italia mediaevale e umanistica, 8 (1965), 201–21; idem., ‘L’altro stil nuovo: Da Dante teologo a Petrarca filologo’, Studi Petrarcheschi, 9 (1994), 1–99; idem., Petrarca e il primo umanesimo; Hollander, ‘Dante as Theologus Poeta’; Ronconi, Le origini; Witt, ‘Coluccio Salutati’; idem., In the Footsteps of the Ancients; Charles Trinkaus, The Poet as Philosopher: Petrarch and the Formation of  Renaissance Consciousness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); Concetta Carestia Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics, 1250–1500 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1981); Claudio Mesoniat, Poetica Theologia: la ‘lucula Noctis’ di Giovanni Dominici e le dispute letterarie tra ‘300 e ‘400 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984). For its use later in the Renaissance, see Daniel Pickering Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972). For additional discussion, see Ascoli, ‘Blinding the Cyclops: Petrarch after Dante’, in Dante and Petrarch, ed. by Theodore Cachey and Zygmunt G. Barański (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2009), pp. 114–73. One might hypothesize that Dante intended to touch on some aspects of  this tradition of  the ‘prisca theologia’ in the never-written fourteenth book of  the treatise, based on the following passage: ‘E perché questo nascondimento fosse trovato per li savi, nel penultimo trattato si mostrerà’ (Conv., II. i. 3). But there is no certainty in the matter. See Ascoli, Dante and the Making, ch. 7, esp. sec. v–vi, as well as nn.120, 122, 124 and 125 for additional bibliography. My reading owes a particular debt to Ronald L. Martinez, ‘The Pilgrim’s Answer to Bonagiunta and the Poetics of  the Spirit’, Stanford Italian Review, 4 (1983), 37–63.

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Bible which requires him to distinguish between the Bible’s use of  these rhetorical devices and those of the poets, not on the basis of linguistic kind, but rather on that of ends. The ninth article of the first question of  the first volume of  the Summa Theologiae poses the question ‘utrum sacra Scriptura debeat uti metaphoris vel symbolicis locutionibus’ [should holy teaching [Scriptures; writings] employ metaphorical or symbolic language?] and enunciates the proposition to be refuted as Videtur sacra Scriptura non debeat uti metaphoris. Illud enim quod est proprium infimae doctrinae non videtur competere huic scientiae, quae inter alias tenet locum supremum … Procedere autem per similitudines varias et repraesentationes est proprium poëticae, quae est infima inter omnes doctrinas. (1.1.9.1.1) [It seems that holy teaching [Sacred Scriptures] should not use metaphors. For what is proper to a lowly type of instruction appears ill-suited to this, which … stands on the summit. Now to carry on with various similitudes and images is proper to poetry, the most modest of all teaching methods.]

The refutation is as follows: Sed contra est quod dicitur Osee ‘Ego visionem multiplicavi eis, et in manibus prophetarum assimilatus sum.’ Tradere autem aliquid sub similitudine est metaphoricum. Ergo ad sacram doctrinam pertinent uti metaphoris. [On the other hand, it is declared in Hosea, ‘I have multiplied visions and I have used similitudes by the ministry of  the prophets.’ To put something across under imagery is metaphorical usage. Therefore sacred doctrine avails itself of metaphors.]

This does not mean, however, that ‘sacra doctrina’ or ‘sacra Scriptura’ and poetry are interchangeable, since Poëtica utitur metaphoris propter repraesentationem, repraesentatio enim naturaliter homini delectabilis est. Sed sacra doctrina utitur metaphoris propter necessitatem et utilitatem […].16

16

We should note that in this article Aquinas uses the phrases ‘sacra doctrina’ and ‘Sacra scriptura’ as apparent synonyms, but also seems to suggest that ‘sacra doctrina’ refers to the ‘science’ of  theology more generally. In other words, the confusion between the

14

Albert R. Ascoli [Poetry employs metaphors for the sake of representation, in which we are born to take delight. Holy teaching, on the other hand, adopts them for their indispensable usefulness …]

The closest Dante comes to confronting this argument in an explicit way is in Beatrice’s ‘accommodation’ speech (‘così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno’ (Par., IV. 40) [to speak thus to your understanding is necessary]), where he specifically attributes to both Scripture and the Church the use of  figurative, personifying language to describe the otherwise incomprehensible Deity. The point in question is why Dante experiences the blessed sequentially in time and space as distributed through the eight heavens when they are all, in fact, simultaneously present in the invisible Heaven of  Heavens, the Empyrean. In re-presenting this cosmic representation, it could be argue, Dante’s poem could be said to partake in a fiction – but, of course, that fiction could also be said to be the ‘truth’ of  the vision which Dante has been given, and, since the staging of  fictional encounters with the various saints (presumably by divine disposition) is analogous, in this respect (‘così convien …’) to the Bible itself, we are no closer to deciding whether the figurative language of  the Commedia, and its fictional narrative, is identical in ontological status to that of  the Bible or just like it in this respect, as even Thomas, as we have just seen, would acknowledge it to be. In what follows, I will pass in rapid review a number of  Dante’s texts which have (for the most part), been central to discussions about the relations between poetry and theology – Convivio II. i; the Epistle to Cangrande, Purgatorio II and XXIV; Paradiso XXV and XXVI – and in each case I will suggest both how Dante indeed foregrounds the status of poetry and the question of its relationship to ‘theology’ in the strong sense, i.e. as Biblical words by and about God, in each case arguing that the innumerable attempts to decide the undecideable (whether Dante, in his heart of  heart, truly believed himself  to be the prophetic instrument of divine two senses of  the word mentioned above seems to be present in the Summa Theologiae itself. Note that at the end of  the first article Aquinas distinguishes between theology as a part of philosophy and theology as a ‘sacra doctrina’, theology in the former sense being that employed by Mussato et alii when they refer to ‘poetic theology.’

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revelations) have more often than not kept us from understanding the textual dynamics of  the passages in question, in themselves and in relation to one another, not to mention their hypothetical relationship to the historical poet Dante, author in proprio or instrument of  the Divine Author as may have been. In so doing I will engage minimally with the vast critical literature that has addressed these texts in particular and this issue (or complex of issues) in general. To the extent that I would wish to describe the historical unfolding of  the debate in the criticism I have done so elsewhere, and to the extent that rehearsing that description or even adding to it would give my assertions here more authority, and a clearer claim to originality, I simply renounce both authority and originality in the name of a speculative meditation whose veracity (I aver) cannot be either confirmed or denied, and whose usefulness will be determined on a case by case basis by its readers.17 We have just seen that a ‘theologian’ can either be a reader, an interpreter, of  the doctrine revealed in ‘sacra Scriptura’ or a (human) author of scripture – although it would of course also be correct to call a human author of  the Bible an ‘interpres’ or intermediary of  God’s word, and it would also be correct to say that a reader of  Scripture becomes a ‘theologian’ when he writes about his reading, as does Aquinas.18 I stress this point because it is precisely upon the slippery slope between reading and writing that Dante consistently places his most explicit and his most famous meditations on the relationship between poetry and theology.19 The first of  these, the most explicit, and a, even the, key point of reference for interpretations of  the Commedia as being written as if it were to be treated by its readers as a book of  Scripture, is of course the first chapter 17 18 19

See my ‘Access to Authority’; Dante and the Making; and ‘Blinding the Cyclops’. See Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 33, 88–92. For my general views on the writer-reader dialectic in Dante’s works, with bibliography, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 4. See also Susan Noakes, Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), and Claudio Giunta, Versi a un destinatario: Saggio sulla poesia italiana del Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002).

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of  the second book of  Convivio There, in the view of some, Dante makes a distinction between two modes of writing, an ‘allegory of  the poets’ and an ‘allegory of  the theologians’, in order to specify that the philosophical canzoni glossed in the treatise are to be read as the former in clear opposition to the latter. In this same view, this distinction is then deliberately, palinodically reversed in the Commedia, specifically in the meta-poetic dyad of  Purgatorio II and XXIV, a reversal then confirmed in Dante’s explanation of  the modus significandi of  the Commedia in the Epistle to Cangrande.20

20 In the past I have scrupulously avoided giving a definitive judgment on the authorship of  the Epistle to Can Grande, largely in order not to wander endlessly in the labyrinthine querelle surrounding its authenticity, and, in particular, not to give the impression that I support the principal interpretations of  the Commedia grounded in an application of  the model expounded in paragraph 7 (again, Singleton Dante Studies 1; Hollander Allegory, ‘Dante as Theologus-Poeta’, Dante’s ‘Epistole to Cangrande’ (Ann Arbor: University of  Michigan Press, 1993), ‘The Epistle to Cangrande and Albert Ascoli’s Recent Book on Dante’, Electronic Bulletin of  the Dante Society of  America [EBDSA] accessed 12 August 2008. Having said this, it does seem to me quite probable that the entire text (and not just the first four paragraphs, as claimed by Bruno Nardi in Il punto sull’Epistola (Florence: Le Monnier, 1960), and then by others) was written by Dante. If  Dante is not the author, I argue, it had to have been composed by someone who had an extraordinarily intimate understanding of  his way of  thinking and working, especially of  his unique propensity for self-commentary (see my ‘Access to Authority: Dante in the Epistle to Cangrande’, in Zygmunt G. Barański (ed.), Seminario Dantesco Internazionale/ International Dante Seminar I (Florence: Le Lettere, 1997), pp. 309–52; for Dantean self-commentary see also n. 35 below). After lying relatively dormant since the early to mid-1990s, the querelle has recently broken out again after the publication of  Luca Azzetta, ‘Le chiose alla Commedia di Andrea Lancia, L’Epistola a Cangrande e altre questioni dantesche’, L’Alighieri, 44 (2003), 5–73, which tends to strengthen the case for authenticity (cf. Barański, ‘The Epistle to Cangrande’, in The Cambridge History of  Literary Criticism; Vol. 2: The Middle Ages, ed by Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 583–89, followed by renewed attacks on Dantean authorship (Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Dante’s ‘Epistle to Cangrande and its Two Authors’, in Proceedings of  the British Academy: 2005 Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 195–216; Alberto Casadei, ‘Il titolo della Commedia e l’Epistola a Cangrande’, Allegoria, 60 (2010), 167–81).

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The situation, however, is more complicated, as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the last half century.21 Four questions in particular pertain to the present topic: 1) what is the dif ference that Dante posits between writing or reading as a theologian and writing or reading as a poet? 2) is Dante speaking about a way of writing or a way of reading? 3) what does it mean that Dante says his ‘sposizione’ of  his own canzoni has to account for ‘quattro sensi’, an interpretative model associated with Biblical exegesis rather than with the glossing of poetry? And 4) what do the specific examples he gives illustrating these four senses tell us about his relation to Biblical writing and exegesis? Let us begin with the part of  the Convivio chapter that has attracted the most scholarly concern:22

See my discussions with bibliography in ‘Access to Authority’; Dante and the Making, esp. pp. 109–20 and nn.; ‘Dante and Allegory’; ‘Tradurre l’allegoria: Convivio 2.1’, in a special issue of  Critica del Testo (2011), ed. by Roberto Antonelli and Piero Boitani. 22 Among the key critics of  the chapter in question are Singleton, Dante Studies I, pp. 84–98; Richard H. Green, ‘Dante’s “Allegory of  Poets” and the Medieval Theory of  Poetic Fiction’, Comparative Literature, 9 (1957), 118–28; Henri De Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Ècriture, 2 vols (Paris: Aubier, 1959–65), vol. 2, pp. 319–26; Hollander, Allegory, pp. 29–40; Jean Pépin, Dante e la tradition de l’allegorie (Paris: Vrin, 1970), pp. 53–57, 60–73; ‘La théorie dantesque de l’allégorie, entre le Convivio et la Lettera a Cangrande’, in Dante, mito e poesia: atti del secondo Seminario dantesco internazionale, Monte Verità, Ascona, 23–27 giugno 1997, ed. by Michelangelo Picone and Tatiana Crivelli (Florence: Cesati, 1999), pp. 51–68; John A. Scott, ‘Dante’s Allegory’, Romance Philology, 26 (1973), 558–91, and ‘Dante’s Allegory of  the Theologians’, in The Shared Horizon, ed. by Tom O’Neill (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1990), pp. 27–40; Marguerite Mills Chiarenza, ‘Falsity and Fiction in the “Allegory of  the Poets”’, in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 1 (1980), 80–86; Maria Corti, La felicità mentale: nuove prospettive per Cavalcanti e Dante (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), pp. 80–82; Antonio D’Andrea, ‘L’“allegoria dei poeti”; Nota a Convivio II. i’, in Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi, ed. by Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1987), pp. 71–78; Ascoli, ‘Access to Authority’, pp. 315–16, ‘Tradurre l’allegoria’; Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Notes on Dante and the Myth of  Orpheus’ in Dante, mito e poesia, ed. by Picone and Crivelli, pp. 133–54; Enrico Fenzi, ‘L’esperienza di sé come esperienza dell’allegoria (a proposito di Dante, Convivio II i 2)’, Studi danteschi, 67 (2002), 161–200; Franco Ferrucci, ‘Allegoria come auto-investitura: osservazioni sul 21

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Albert R. Ascoli Ma però che più profittabile sia questo mio cibo, prima che ‘econ la prima vivanda voglio mostrare come mangiare si dee. Dico che … questa sposizione conviene essere litterale e allegorica. E a ciò dare a intendere, si vuol sapere che le scritture si possono intendere e deonsi esponere massimamente per ‘econd’ sensi. L’uno si chiama litterale, [e questo è quello che non si stende più oltre che la lettera de le parole fittizie, sì come sono le favole de li poeti. L’altro si chiama ‘econd’ic,] e questo è quello che si nasconde sotto ‘l manto di queste favole, ed è una veritade ascosa sotto bella menzogna … Veramenti li teologi questo senso prendono altrimenti che li poeti; ma però che mia intenzione è qui lo modo de li poeti seguitare, prendo lo senso allegorico secondo che per li poeti è usato. (Conv., II. i. 1–4; emphasis added) [But so that my food may prove more profitable, I wish to demonstrate (before the first course arrives) how one should eat. I say … that this exposition ought to be literal and allegorical. And so that this may be understood, it is necessary to know that writings may be understood and must be expounded primarily according to four senses. The first is called the literal [and this is that sense which does not go beyond the letter of  the fictitious words, as in the fables of  the poets. The next is called allegorical]  23 and this that which is hidden beneath the mantle of such fables and is a truth hidden beneath a beautiful falsehood … Truly speaking, the theologians take this sense otherwise than the poets, but because it is my intention here to follow the manner of  the poets, I take the allegorical sense in the way that it is used by those poets.]

The first point to establish is that, while the most common references to this passage suggest that it can tell us how Dante’s poetry signifies, or how Dante wishes us to believe his poetry signifies, it is in fact concerned with explaining how Dante as prose commentator intends to explicate his canzoni: in other words, as I earlier anticipated, it begins as a discussion not of  ‘allegory’ but of  ‘allegoresis’, as evidenced immediately by the metaphor of  textual consumption (I want to show how it should be eaten, i.e. interpreted), as by the fact that in the second paragraph he twice uses the

23

Convivio di Dante’, in Sylva: Studi in onore di Nino Borsellino, ed. by Giorgio Patrizi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002), pp. 81–96. Brackets indicate editorial interpolations in the notoriously corrupt manuscript tradition. My arguments do not rely on the interpolations. For a useful discussion of  the history of  the text, see Cesare Vasoli, ‘Introduzione’, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 1, part 2, ed. by Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988), pp. lxxx–lxxxix.

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word ‘intendere’ in the sense of readerly comprehension and twice uses ‘esponere’/’esposizione’ in the sense of interpretive glossing.24 It is not, however, simply a matter of insisting that the chapter is concerned with allegorical reading (allegoresis) rather than allegorical writing (allegory).25 The confusion between allegory and allegoresis is generated by the text itself. As we have seen, when Dante says he does not ‘take’ the allegorical sense(s) as ‘theologians’ do, he is most probably referring to those who study the ‘queen of sciences’, theology. But when he says he does take that sense as the ‘poets’ do, he is clearly referring to writers of poetry, not to its interpreters. In other words, he presents the distinction between allegory and allegoresis, only to elide it. What allows this? The fact, already put forward, that in Convivio, as against typical medieval examples of allegorical commentary, Dante is both the glosser of poetry and its author. In other words, the ‘confusion’ is underpinned by an (unstated) assumption that in glossing the text Dante is simply making known his own earlier intentions This ambiguity is then intensified by the complex example which Dante uses to illustrate the relationship between the literal sense and the first of  the three allegorical senses, as ‘poets’, as against ‘theologians’, would take it. Dice Ovidio che Orfeo facea con la cetera mansuete le fiere, e li arbori e le pietre a sé muovere; che vuol dire che lo savio uomo con lo strumento de la sua voce fa[r]ia mansuescere e umiliare li crudeli cuori, e fa[r]ia muovere a la sua volontade coloro che non hanno vita di scienza e d’arte: e coloro che non hanno vita ragionevole alcuna sono quasi come pietre. (Conv., II. i. 3)26 24 Pépin, ‘La théorie’, p. 52 and n. 2, notes the frequency with which Dante calls his commentary a ‘sposizione’ in Convivio, observing that expositio is the typical word used of  theological commentaries on the books of  the Bible (p. 67). 25 On this issue see Pépin, Dante: esp. p. 11; Scott, ‘Dante’s Allegory’, esp. p. 34; as well as Ascoli, Dante and the Making: esp. ch. 2, sec. v, and ch. 4, and ‘Tradurre l’allegoria’. For the allegory/allegoresis distinction, see Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Rita Copeland and Stephen Melville, ‘Allegory and Allegoresis, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics.’ Exemplaria, 3.1 (1991), 157–87. 26 Dante’s primary sources are Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI. i–ii; Horace, Ars Poetica, 391–96. Recent important treatments of  the passage are in Barański, ‘Notes on Dante

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Albert R. Ascoli [Ovid says that Orpheus tamed the beasts with his lyre and made trees and stones move towards him, which means that the wise man makes cruel hearts grow tame and humble with the instrument of  his voice, and how he makes those that have no life in science or in art move according to his will: and they who have no rational life are little better than stones.]

At first glance, Dante’s example seems to be a perfect illustration of  the typical allegorization of poetic texts, which largely confines itself  to uncovering a single hidden sense, usually ‘moral’ in its applicability to the behaviour of  the reader. But there are two major complications. The first of  these has to do with the nature of  the example itself. The second concerns the problem of  how to understand the relation of  these two senses to the other two allegorical senses, given that there relatively little precedent for interpreting poetic texts according to a fourfold, ‘theological’ scheme.27 As to the first issue, we should recognize that the tale of  Orpheus is not so much an example as a ‘meta-example’ of poetic allegory, a characteristically Dantean ‘allegory of allegory’ in Ron Martinez’s felicitous phrase: what we are presented with is not a lesson for the reader, but rather an illustration of  how the poet-philosopher or poet-theologian goes about instilling such lessons through the power of  his language.28 In other words, Orpheus allegorizes Dante as the poet whose beautiful verses will ‘delight, instruct, and move’, in the Ciceronian formulation (e.g. Brutus xlix. 185).29 Such an emphasis is in keeping with the argument I have made elsewhere that the supposed pedagogical mission of  the treatise, aimed at instructing the relatively unlearned reader, is consistently def lected into an account and/or justification of  the author’s claims of authority for himself and his poetry.

and the Myth of  Orpheus’, and Fenzi, ‘L’esperienza di sé’. Other useful readings are in André Pézard, Le ‘Convivio’ de Dante: Sa lettre, son esprit (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1940), pp. 15–26; Giorgio Padoan, ‘Orfeo’, in ED, IV, 192; Hollander, ‘Dante as Theologus-Poeta’, pp. 119–20. 27 See Ascoli, Dante and the Making, sec. v., esp. n. 68 for bibliography; also Ascoli, ‘Tradurre l’allegoria’. 28 Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Allegory’, in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 24–34. 29 See Fenzi, L’esperienza di sé, pp. 77–78.

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Thus, even before we get to the problem of applying the ‘four senses’ model of  Biblical exegesis to a poetic text, we find that Dante has already gone well beyond the established parameters of poetic allegorization. Turning now to the larger poetry/theology issue, we can note that the typical poetic allegory could be said to correspond not to the first but to the second of  the three allegorical senses posited by Biblical exegesis – the moraltropological (‘quod agas’: what you, the Christian everyperson, should do) – rather than the first, whose emphasis is epistemological (‘quod credas’: what you believe to be true, what you know), and whose content usually pertains either to Christ or his Church.30 And although Dante does not specify how a theologian would interpret the literal sense dif ferently than a poet does – or even attempt to explain why a theologian would be trying to interpret this particular ‘bella menzogna’ at all – one is tempted to infer that the dif ference in mode of reading would consist precisely in finding a Christological sense rather than a moral one. But what, then, would the next two allegorical senses be if one is ‘reading like a poet’? Before we get to that question, however, we need to probe the example of  Orpheus a little further. Once we have recognized the departure from a typical ‘allegory of poets’, we might also acknowledge an implicit assimilation to the Christological sense of Biblical exegesis, notwithstanding Dante’s disclaimer. In fact, as is well known, Orpheus, because of  his descent into and return from Hell, was often treated as a figura Christi in medieval allegorizations. In the present context this means that the poet himself, in this case Dante, is the allegorical referent, where in the usual fourfold scheme it would be Christ. This does not mean, of course, that Dante is equating himself with divinity incarnate: it does mean that the separation between ‘allegory of poets’ and ‘allegory of  theologians’ is breached in the

30

I follow the traditional phrase: ‘littera gesta docet, quod credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia’, often attributed to Augustine of  Dacia, and also found in Nicholas of  Lira. See Ceslas Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen age (Paris: Vrin, 1944), p. 340; De Lubac, Exegèse I. ii. 23; Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of  Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1988 [first edn 1984]), p. 34.

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very moment it is supposedly illustrated – and that this happens in the name of justifying Dante’s ambitions for himself and his writings. I have already observed that simply in claiming that the exegesis of  his poems should be according to ‘quattro sensi’, Dante has moved into the domain of  Biblical interpretation from which this model derives. However, here too Dante muddies the waters considerably. In the typical use of  the ‘fourfold’ model, a single Biblical text is given as the letter, and then each of  three allegorical senses is derived from the ‘sensus historialis’, as well as forming a logical sequence among themselves. Thus, the set of  beliefs (quod credas) expounded in the first sense, ‘allegory’ proper, provides the foundation for the individual behaviour described by the moral or tropological sense (quid agas), which leads to the eschatological results designated by the third or anagogical sense (quo tendas, i.e. where you will end up after death). To put it otherwise, belief in Christ leads to the imitation of  Christ by the individual Christian, leads to the salvation of  her or his immortal soul. Dante, however, implies no such sequence – indeed, at the end of  the chapter he admits that his expositions will concern almost exclusively the first allegorical sense, touching on the other two ‘incidentally’ (II. i. 15). Moreover, and against traditional practice, rather than illustrating all three allegorical senses in relation to a single literal text, Dante uses a dif ferent ‘letter’ for each: Orpheus, as we have seen for the first; the New Testament episode of  the Transfiguration of  Christ for the second; and the Psalm ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ for the last: Lo terzo senso si chiama morale, e questo è quello che li lettori deono intentamente andare appostando per le scritture, ad utilitade di loro e di loro discenti: sì come appostare si può ne lo Evangelio, quando Cristo salio lo monte per transfigurarsi, che de li dodici Apostoli menò seco li tre; in che moralmente si può intendere che a le secrete cose noi dovemo avere poca compagnia. Lo quarto senso si chiama anagogico, cioè sovrasenso; e questo è quando spiritualmente si spone una scrittura, la quale ancora [sia vera] eziandio nel senso litterale, per le cose significate significa de le superne cose de l’etternal gloria: sì come vedere si può in quello canto del Profeta che dice che, ne l’uscita del popolo d’Israel d’Egitto, Giudea è fatta santa e libera. Che avvegna essere vera secondo la lettera sia manifesto, non meno è vero quello che spiritualmente s’intende, cioè che ne l’uscita de l’anima dal peccato, essa sia fatta santa e libera in sua potestate. (Conv., II. i. 5–7)

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[The third sense is called moral; and readers must watch out for this most carefully as they go through writings, both for their own benefit and for that of  their pupils. So, for example, one may note in the Gospel that when Christ ascended the mountain to transfigure himself  he took three of  the twelve apostles with him. The moral sense of  this is that we should have few companions in our most secret undertakings. The fourth sense is called anagogical, that is, above the senses, and this sense appears when one expounds the spiritual meaning of a text which, even though [it may also be true] in the literal sense, nevertheless points through the things signified to the supernal things of eternal glory. This may be seen in that song of  the prophet which says that Judea was made holy and free in the exodus of  the people of  Israel from Egypt (Psalm 113. 1–2). And although it is manifestly clear that this is true according to the letter, that which is understood spiritually is no less true: that the soul in her exodus from sin is made holy and free.]

The first point to make is that while Dante uses a ‘poetic’ text to illustrate the first allegorical sense, the next two senses are illustrated in relation to Biblical texts. In so doing Dante at once implicitly puts ‘poetry’ on the same footing as the Bible, and his exegesis on the same plane as that of  the theologians. He clamorously fails, however, to draw any explicit conclusions from this assimilation by juxtaposition. Having blurred the boundaries between the interpretation of poetry and the interpretation of  Scriptures by claiming that the former should be carried out according to the canons of  the latter, Dante then distinguishes between how ‘poets’ and ‘theologians’ ‘take’ allegory. Having made that clarifying distinction (though, again, without illustrating how theologians would ‘take’ the story of  Orpheus), he then blurs the boundaries further by following his first ‘poetic’ example with two ostensibly ‘theological’ ones. Furthermore, his treatment of  the ‘sensus moralis’ is confusing in itself. The first peculiarity of  the example given is that the letter, the Transfiguration, is already Christological, as if it were in some way compensating for the absence of  the expected Christological reference in the first allegorical sense. Indeed the scene of  Christ unveiling himself as the Messiah in the company of  the Old Testament prophets and the three

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most favoured Apostles – Peter, James and John31 – can be said to be the event that eliminates the need for the Bible to speak allegorically at all – it is literally the event toward which the Old Testament as a whole points.32 That is, in the letter it enacts the figural fulfillment of  Old Testament events and prophecies.33 The second oddity is that the episode of  the Transfiguration is made to yield up an allegorical sententia that seems almost Machiavellian, signifying

31

32

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The Transfiguration of  Christ is represented in Matthew 17. 1–9, Mark 9. 1–9 and Luke 9. 28–36. In a famous simile (Purg., XXXII. 76–82), Dante compares himself  to the three privileged Apostles who witness the event. On its importance, there and in Commedia generally, see Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments, pp. 180–93; Jef frey Schnapp, The Transfiguration of  History at the Centre of  Dante’s ‘Paradise’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). See also Ascoli, Dante and the Making, pp. 377, 381, 384. It is rarely observed in discussions of  Dantean allegory that the model of  the four senses serves mainly as an instrument to transform the Hebrew Bible into the Old Testament of  the Christian Bible, that is, so that the earlier book is re-read as a prefiguration of  the Incarnation of  God and the foundation of  the Church as revealed in the New Testament, and that this model is not applicable as such to the Gospels and Acts, since in the latter the Christological and ecclesiological senses are almost always historical and literal. See Ascoli, ‘Access to Authority’, pp. 332–33, 350–51, n. 82. For the figural or typological relationship of  the Old Testament to the New, which may also be said to constitute the structure of sacred history, especially as it pertains to Dante, see Erich Auerbach, ‘Figura’, in Scenes from the Drama of  European Literature: Six Essays (New York: Meridian Books, 1959) [first published 1944]), pp. 11–76; Johan Chydenius, The Typological Problem in Dante: A Study in the History of  Medieval Ideas (Helsingfors: Academic Book Store, 1958); A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of  Christian Typology in the Bible and in Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Maria Corti, ‘Dante e la Torre di Babele: una nuova allegoria in factis’, in Il viaggio testuale: le ideologie e le strutture semiotiche (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), pp. 243–56; John Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of  Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); ‘Introduction to the Inferno’, in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. by Rachel Jacof f (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 172–91. Freccero’s observation that the pervasive use of  typology in the Christian Middle Ages and in Dante is sometimes mis-taken for the ‘allegory of  theologians’ is still apt.

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that ‘that we should have few companions in our most secret undertakings’, a meaning which has no obvious spiritual, or even ethical, implications. In other words, despite the use of a Biblical example, this allegorical sense could be said to be more that of  ‘the poets’ than of  ‘the theologians.’ In addition, like that of  Orpheus this example could also be read meta-poetically, since its allegorical sententia provides an implicit justification for the obscurity of  the poets’ allegorical discourse (and is in keeping with Dante’s oscillation throughout the Convivio between a desire for the divulgation of  knowledge and the need to speak obscurely and to the few, for purposes of af firming his authority).34 Only the final, anagogical, example, which moves back from the Gospels to the Psalms (and thence to the Exodus story retold in this particular Psalm) represents an unproblematic reproduction of  the Biblical model (or rather, problematic only in its placement within this sequence of examples, and its use to transfer canons of  literal exegesis from Biblical commentary to commentary on Dante’s canzoni). As we shall see shortly, it is precisely this example which becomes the focal point for claims that the Commedia presents itself as written in the manner of  the Bible and that the Epistle to Cangrande reads the ‘poema sacro’ as if were written in that manner. Having examined each of  Dante’s illustrations of  the three allegorical sensus, it is tempting to posit an ascending ‘typology’ (in the modern classificatory meaning) of examples: one strictly ‘according to the poets’; one that mingles elements of poetic and Biblical exegesis; and one that keeps strictly to the paradigm of  ‘i teologi’, even apparently referring to the signifying structure of an allegoria in factis, which, in the formulations of  Augustine, Aquinas, and other theologians, is characteristic of  God’s writing alone (‘by the [literally] signified things, signifying the supernal things’).35 34 Cf. Ascoli, Dante and the Making, ch. 2, sect. 3 and 5, ch. 4, sect. 3. 35 Pépin, ‘La théorie’, p. 57. The phrase was first used by Augustine (De Trinitate XV. ix. 15), and was then put into its best known formulation by Aquinas (Summa Theologiae Ia, q. I, art. 10, resp), who writes that while human beings communicate with signs alone (allegoria in verbis), God is able to signify both by means of signs and by means of  the things referred to by signs (allegoria in factis). In Dante and the Making,

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Even here, however, the ‘allegory of  theologians’ is immediately def lected back toward Dante’s own allegory and allegoresis, because it becomes the occasion for the insistence that allegorical interpretation, of whatever kind, must begin from the letter, whether that letter is fictive (poetic) or true (Scriptural), a caveat which governs Dante-commentator’s practice in the balance of  the unfinished treatise. For the specific purposes of  this essay, three basic points stand out from a reading of  Convivio II. i. First, Dante’s understanding of poetic allegory and allegoresis is explicitly articulated in relation to Biblical allegory, whatever the dif ferences between the two modes of writing and/or reading; second, the innovative adoption of a quadripartite model of signification for the interpretation of poetry remains formal and procedural – no claims are made either for the historical truth of  the literal sense or for the power of poetry to delivery theological content; third, perhaps the single most striking point of resemblance between poetic and theological allegory foregrounded by Dante’s juxtaposition of  the two modes is the fundamental role in the letter of  the text, whether fictive or historical, in interpreting either type of writing.36 In the strong interpretation of  Dante’s assumption of  the role of  ‘theologus-poeta’, the one associated most closely with Charles Singleton and Robert Hollander, the ambiguities and uncertainties of  Convivio II. i find their clarification and resolution in the poetic practice of  the Commedia and the interpretive model presented in the Epistle to Can Grande.37 In both cases the primary marker of development from and supercession of 

pp. 349–50 and n. 77 I expressed scepticism concerning the presence of  this concept in Convivio II. i. Pépin has persuaded me to the contrary. 36 Minnis, Medieval Theory, pp. 5, 27, 73–118; Spicq, Esquisse, especially p. 288; Smalley, The Study of  the Bible, pp. 292–308; De Lubac, Exegèse, II, 277–79; Pépin, Dante, pp. 82–93 – all previously noted the increasing emphasis on the importance of  the sensus litteralis in Biblical exegesis by thirteenth-century scholastics, especially Aquinas. For Dante’s own emphasis on the textual ‘letter’, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 2, sect. v, nn. 71, 87; ch. 4, sect. iii, nn. 68, 69; ch. 5, sect. ii, n. 26. 37 Singleton, Dante Studies I, ‘The Irreducible Dove’; Hollander, Allegory, ‘Dante as Theologus-Poeta’.

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Convivio is the recurrence of  the example given in the latter text to illustrate the third or anagogical sense, namely Psalm 113, which begins, ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’. As is very well known, in the ‘accessus’ section of  the Epistle to Can Grande, which constitutes a prologue introductory to the Commedia in general and its third canticle, the Paradiso, in particular, an ‘I’ purporting to be ‘Dantes Alagherii f lorentinus natione non moribus’ [Dante Alighieri, Florentine by birth, not by manners; my translation] prefaces his treatment of six standard accessus topics with the af firmation that the poem ‘non est simplex sensu, ymo dici potest polisemos, hoc est plurium sensuum’ (par. 7) [the meaning of  this work is not of one kind only, rather the work may be described as ‘polysemous’; that is, having several meanings]. He illustrates this point in the following manner: primus sensus est qui habetur per litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram. Et primus dicitur litteralis, secundus vero allegoricus, sive moralis, sive anagogicus. Qui modus tractandi, ut melius pateat, potest considerari in hiis versibus: ‘In exitu Israel de Egipto, domus Iacob de populo barbaro, facta est Iudea sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius’ (Psalm 113. 1–2). Nam si ad litteram solam inspiciamus, significatur nobis exitus filiorum Israel de Egipto, tempore Moysis; si ad allegoriam, nobis significatur nostra redemptio facta per Christum; si ad moralem sensum, significatur nobis conversio anime de luctu et miseria peccati ad statum gratie; si ad anagogicum, significatur exitus anime sancte ab huius corruptionis servitute ad eterne glorie libertatem. Et quamquam isti sensus mistici variis appellentur nominibus, generaliter omnes dici possunt allegorici, cum sint a litterali sive historiali diversi. Nam allegoria dicitur ab ‘alleon’ grece, quod in latinum dicitur ‘alienum’, sive ‘diversum’. [the first meaning is that which is conveyed by the letter, and the next is that which is conveyed by what the letter signifies; the former is called the literal, while the latter is called the allegorical or mystical. And for the better illustration of  this method of exposition we may apply it to the following verses: ‘When Israel went out of  Egypt, the house of  Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion’ (Psalm 113. 1–2). For if we consider the letter alone, the thing signified to us is the going out of  the children of  Israel from Egypt in the time of  Moses; if  the allegory, our redemption through Christ is signified, if in the moral sense, the conversion of  the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to a state of grace is signified; if anagogical, the passage of  the sanctified soul from the bondage of  the corruption of  this world is signified. And although these mystical meanings are called

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Albert R. Ascoli by various names, they may one and all in a general sense be termed allegorical, in as much as they are dif ferent from the literal or historical; for the word ‘allegory’ is so-called from the Greek alleon, which in Latin is alienum or diversum.]

The return to the exemplification of allegory through the instance of  ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ is one of several ways in which the document connects itself  to Convivio in particular and to Dante’s auto-exegetical and self-critical practice in general,38 as well, of course, to the crucial citation of  the same Psalm in Purgatorio II (to which we will return shortly). Of course, a great deal has changed since Convivio. No longer is there any confusion between allegory and allegoresis: the passage speaks directly to the senses intrinsic to the text under consideration. No longer is there any distinction made between a poetic and a theological version of  the ‘four senses’ model of signification; rather, the seemingly superf luous final example of  Convivio, the only one which conformed strictly to the tradition of  Biblical exegesis, and which had no apparent applicability to Dante’s expository practice, has assumed centre stage by itself. The formulation of  the four senses model indeed now follows traditional practice, with a single text read in its literal-historical and three allegorical meanings. If  this model is to be applied ‘tale quale’ to the Commedia, then it is hard to resist the Singleton–Hollander assertion that Dante conceives of  his poem as ‘theological’ in the strong sense.

38 On Dantean self-exegesis, see, among others, Luis Jenaro-MacLennan, ‘Auto­ comentario en Dante y comentarismo latino’, Vox Romanica, 19 (1960), 82–123; Bruno Sandkühler. Die frühen Dantekommentare und ihr Verhältnis zur mitteralterlichen Kommentartradition (Munich: Münchner romanistiche Arbeiten, 1967); Francesco Tateo, Questioni di poetica dantesca (Bari: Adriatico, 1972); Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Dante commentatore e commentato: rif lessioni sullo studio dell’iter ideologico di Dante’, Letture Classensi, 23 (1994), 135–58; idem., ‘Dante Alighieri: Experimentation and (Self-)Exegesis’, in Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (eds), The Cambridge History of  Literary Criticism; Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 561–82.; Ascoli, ‘Access to Authority’; idem., Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 4; Sherry Roush, Hermes’ Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 2002).

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But here is the problem: does this model accurately describe the signifying practice of  the Commedia; and does the balance of  the Epistle to Can Grande, in the rest of  the accessus section and in the truncated commentary which follows, apply it to a reading of  the ‘sacro poema’? The former point is endlessly arguable – and the dif ficulty of making a case for it based on the text of  the Commedia alone is in part proven by the tenacity with which Hollander has insisted upon the authenticity of  the Epistle to Can Grande, as if in tacit recognition that his case would be considerably weaker if paragraph 7 did not describe Dante’s own account of  the matter. However, even assuming that the Epistle to Can Grande is Dante’s (and, as noted above, I believe that the strongest reasons favour the hypothesis of authenticity; see again n. 20 above), there are serious dif ficulties with the claim that paragraph 7 is intended to describe the Commedia’s modus significandi. I have discussed these in detail elsewhere,39 and will rehearse them summarily here. The first is that while the formulation of  the fourfold model is standard, its inclusion in the accessus genre is not, a fact put in relief in the previous paragraph which lists the six standard topics to be treated and ostentatiously does not include the contents of paragraph 7 among them. The second is that paragraph 7 does not actually present itself as a description of  the Commedia per se, but rather of fers the example of  ‘In exitu Israel’ as an illustration of what is meant by ‘polysemy.’ The third is that while the example stresses the derivation of  the allegorical senses from the letter, it formulates the matter in such a way as to avoid the necessity of  the letter’s truth: when he says ‘alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram’ [another meaning which is conveyed by what the letter signifies] he is not necessarily describing an ‘allegoria in factis’, but could simply be claiming, as he does in Convivio, that whatever the status of  the letter, the allegorical sense(s) cannot be understood without it. The fourth, is that paragraph 8, which does specifically treat the ‘subject’ of  the Commedia, does not employ the fourfold model, but rather gives two senses – the literal (‘status animarum post-mortem’ [the state of  the souls after death]) 39

In my ‘Access to Authority’.

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and the allegorical (‘subiectum est homo prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est’ [the subject is man according as by his merits and demerits in the exercise of  his free will he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice]). Fifth: not only does this paragraph not apply the fourfold model to the Commedia, it (and the related paragraph 15) imply that the letter of  the text is anagogical – while its single allegorical meaning is equivalent to the moral-tropological sense of paragraph 7.40 Finally, when the Epistle to Can Grande finally turns from accessus to commentary in paragraph 17, it states as clearly as possible that it will only describe the letter of  the Paradiso (and then, indeed, only the first few lines of  the first canto). None of  this is to deny that paragraph 7 of  the Epistle to Can Grande implies the possibility of adopting the categories of  Biblical signification and theological exegesis to the Commedia, an implication that is even stronger if one compares this passage to the corresponding segment of  Convivio II. i. What it does suggest, however, is that even at this late point Dante stops just short of openly equating his poetic enterprise with the writing of  the Bible. No doubt that the content of  the Commedia is ‘theological’ – we hardly need paragraph 7 to tell us that – but in this it dif fers little from any number of writings by poets, philosophers, and theologians throughout the Middle Ages. With that, it is time to turn at last to the Commedia itself. And let me begin with the canto that has been, arguably, the most central to North American Dante criticism’s obsessive attempts to define the ratio between theology and poetry over the half century and more: Purgatorio II. Very near its outset, Dante-personaggio watches from the shores of  Mount Purgatory as a rapidly moving white glow gradually becomes distinguishable as a boat guided by an angelic pilot or ‘galeotto’, which then is revealed to contain some hundred dead souls freshly transported from the land of  the living. As they arrive Dante hears them singing:

40 ‘Access to Authority’, pp. 351–52, n. 82.

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    ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto.41 [‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’, they were singing all together with one voice, with as much of  that psalm as is written thereafter.]

The singing of a psalm is very much in keeping with the prayerful, liturgical character of  the second realm, which is redolent with citations, paraphrases, translations and dramatizations of  Scripture.42 It focuses the consistent imagery of risky sea-voyage (Inf., I and XXVI) as metaphor of spiritual error and deliverance; constitutes a narrative alternative in bono to Charon’s (and Phylegias’s) transportation of  the damned; and provides a key focal point for the poem-long thematics of exile. But what concerns us here, of course, is that from the point of view of  the poetry-theology question under review, this episode has been seen, as it were, to stand at the midpoint between the anomalous illustration of anagogy in Convivio II. i and the apparently straightforward application of  the four senses model to 41 On the crucial importance of  the singing of  ‘In exitu’ for the thematic of  the Commedia as a whole, begin with Singleton ‘ In Exitu Israel de Aegypto’, Annual Report of  the Dante Society of  America, 78 (1959), 1–24, and Dunstan J. Tucker, ‘“In Exitu Israel de Aegypto”: The Divine Comedy in Light of  the Easter Liturgy’, The American Benedictine Review, 11 (1960), 43–61. Among the many readings of  the thematic of exile, spiritual and otherwise, in Dante which take as a fundamental point of departure the thematic of  Exodus, I would particularly cite Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert. 42 On the pervasive references to and use of  the liturgy in the Commedia generally and Purgatorio in particular, see the essay by Ronald L. Martinez in this volume (also ‘The Poetics of  Advent Liturgies: Vita Nuova and Purgatorio’, in Studi in onore di Roder Hollander (Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale), ed. by Theodore Cachey, Margherita Mesirca, and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2004), pp. 271–304, and ‘The Places and Times of  Liturgy from Dante to Petrarch’, in Dante and Petrarch, ed. by Theodore Cachey and Zygmunt Barański (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2009), pp. 320–70), as well as Matthew Treherne, ‘Liturgical Personhood: Creation, Penitence and Praise in the Commedia’, in Dante’s ‘Commedia’: Theology as Poetry, ed. by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne, pp. 131–60, and forthcoming work.

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the Commedia in the Epistle to Can Grande. In other words, despite certain obstacles we will return to, the passage has been read as a figure for Dantean figuralism, a gloss, as it were, on the revivification of  ‘la morta poesí’ at the very beginning of  the canticle (Purg., I. 7). And, more precisely, one might argue that in singing the song the souls reveal, now literalized, the polysemous allegorical significance of  the Exodus of  the Jews – a conversion from sin to grace made possible by Christ’s sacrifice, resulting in the ‘exitus anime sancte ab huius corruptionis servitute ad eterne glorie libertatem’, precisely that freedom which is identified as the fundamental motive of  Dante’s journey, as it had been of  Cato’s ‘self-sacrifice’ (Purg., I. 71–72). Such an interpretation is favoured by the fact that the Biblical text is a song composed by the Bible’s most poetic human author, David – and perhaps also by the fact that it is performed under the auspices of a heavenly ‘galeotto’, with evident recall of  the damnable ‘galeotto’ – both book and author – that Francesca blames for her lamentable fate and that of  Paolo. Even more to the point, as innumerable critics have remarked over the years, is the fact that the canto concludes with the performance of another song, this one Dante’s own canzone, glossed in the third book of  the Convivio as a hymn to Dante’s love of wisdom (Filosofia): ‘Amor che nella mente mi ragiona’. The song is sung, at Dante’s own request, by his old friend Casella – and with its sweetness absorbs the attention not only of  Dante and Virgil, but that of all the newly arrived souls as well, much to the displeasure of  Cato, who chastises their ‘negligenza’ in attending to the purgatorial process which awaits them:     E io: ‘Se nuova legge non ti toglie memoria o uso a l’amoroso canto che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie,     di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto l’anima mia, che, con la sua persona venendo qui, è af fannata tanto!’.    ‘Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona’ cominciò elli allor sì dolcemente, che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.     Lo mio maestro e io e quella gente ch’eran con lui parevan sì contenti, come a nessun toccasse altro la mente.

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    Noi eravam tutti fissi e attenti a le sue note; ed ecco il veglio onesto gridando: ‘Che è ciò, spiriti lenti?     qual negligenza, quale stare è questo? Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.’ (Purg., II. 106–23) [And I: ‘If a new law has not taken from you the memory or habit of  the amorous singing that used to quiet all my desires, let it please you to console my soul a little in that way, for, coming here with its body, it is so wearied!’ ‘Love that discourses with me in my mind’, he began then, so sweetly that the sweetness still sounds within me. My master and I and those poeple that were with him seemed as contented as if nothing else touched anyone’s mind. We were all fixed and attentive to his notes; and here was the venerable old man, crying ‘What is this, laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to shed the slough that keeps God from being manifest to you.’]

The opposition between ‘In exitu’ and ‘Amore che nella mente’ – or perhaps I should say between the performances of  the two songs – is radical. One is Scripture – theological writing – written by God through his human amanuensis; one is a purely human poetic composition (though, by its own account, the fruit of an inner dialogue between its author and ‘Amore’). One marks a journey, a quest; the other seemingly leads to spiritual stasis. One celebrates God’s justice and grace; the other either human eros (if  taken at the letter) or human reason (if understood in the light of  Dante’s allegorization in Convivio III). In short, Dante’s earlier poetry, and his authorship of it, are sharply contrasted with Biblical verse and its divine author, in a way that, at least in conjunction with the strong interpretation of paragraph 7 of  the Epistle to Can Grande, seems to identify Dante’s writing in the Commedia with the former rather than the latter modality. This interpretation, the Singleton–Hollander interpretation, let us call it, and in fact most interpretations with which I am familiar, are concerned with the authorship of  the two songs and their content – divine vs. human, theological vs. philosophical (or erotic).43 But in the context of  43 For the by-now-canonical reading of  the singing of  ‘Amor che nella mente’ as a theological palinode, a veritable recantation, of  the philosophical interpretation of 

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the canto, this is not what is foregrounded. Rather, in both cases the stress falls on the performance of  the song, and on its reception by an audience, and in particular by Dante-personaggio. In the first case the song is performed chorally in its entirety (‘tutti insieme ad una voce / con quanto di quel canto è poscia scripto’) by the souls whose presumed audience, since Dante’s presence is entirely unanticipated, is themselves, God’s minister, and God. And as they perform the song, the souls also perform the meaning of  the song in its tropological and anagogical meanings: they sing of exodus out of spiritual captivity to the liberation of a promised land, even as they travel to that promised land. In the second the song is performed by a single individual at the request of another, and rather than experience the song as a whole and its content, all of  the hearers become rapt in a ‘sweetness’ that removes thought of anything else, above all the fact that their journey to promised land is not yet complete. What is most peculiar about the performance of  ‘Amor che nella mente’, of course, is that Dante becomes the passive audience of a song he himself wrote although, oddly, this is usually referred to Dante’s past as author and subject of  love rather than to his role as reader/audience (even though, as stressed above, Convivio is the text of an author become his own interpreter). To the extent that Dante is cast as interpreter in this episode, it is as the active, critical, palinodic reader of  his past as poet, now superseded by his turn to faith and the role of  theologus-poeta.44

the poem in Conv., III, see for instance Freccero, Dante and the Poetics, pp. 186–94; Hollander, ‘Purgatorio II: Cato’s Rebuke and Dante’s “Scoglio”’ Italica, 52 (1975), 348–63; ‘Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old’, Lectura Dantis, 6 (1990), 28–45; and Barolini 1984: esp. 31–56. For contrary views, see John A. Scott, ‘Dante and Philosophy’, Annali d’Italianistica, 8 (1990), 258–77; ‘The Unfinished Convivio as a Pathway to the Commedia’, Dante Studies, 113 (1995), 31–56.; Lino Pertile, ‘Dante’s Comedy Beyond the Stil Nuovo’, Lectura Dantis, 13 (1993), 47–77. For a general consideration of  the palinode as Dantean rhetorical strategy, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, esp. ch. 6. 44 To the extent that this question has been raised, it has been in the context of a separate debate over the oral vs. written character of  Dante’s poetry into which I will not enter here.

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To understand better what is at stake here, we need to make a detour through another ‘pre-text’ of  Purgatorio II, one which has been consistently overlooked as critics focus on the association between ‘Amor che nella mente’ and the project of  Convivio. That pre-text is book two of  De vulgari eloquentia and, more specifically, that part of it where Dante sets out to define the poetic form which alone is worthy of  the noblest, ‘illustrious’ vernacular, the cantio, which we usually translate as canzone, but could as easily be rendered as canto, or song. As I have shown elsewhere, this is also the point where the author of  the treatise explicitly identifies himself as the examplar of  the poet who writes such poems.45 Here is the crucial passage: Est enim cantio, secundum verum nominis significatum, ipse canendi actus vel passio, sicut lectio passio vel actus legendi. [… C]antio dupliciter accipi potest: uno modo secundum quod fabricatur ab autore suo, et sic est actio – et secundum istum modum Virgilius primo Eneidorum dicit Arma virumque cano –; alio modo secundum quod fabricata profertur vel ab autore vel ab alio quicunque sit, sive cum soni modulatione proferatur, sive non: et sic est passio. Nam tunc agitur; modo vero agere videtur in alium, et sic tunc alicuius actio, modo quoque passio alicuius videtur. Et quia prius agitur ipsa quam agat, magis, immo prorsus denominari videtur ab eo quod agitur, et est actio alicuius, quam ab eo quod agit in alios. Signum autem huius est quod nunquam dicimus ‘Hec est cantio Petri’ eo quod ipsam proferat, sed eo quod fabricaverit illam. (DVE, II. viii. 3–4) [A cantio, according to the true meaning of  the word, is an act of singing, in an active or a passive sense, just as lectio means an act of reading, in an active or a passive sense … [C]antio has a double meaning: one usage refers to something created by [its] author [and in this sense it is an action] – and this is the sense in which Virgil uses the word in the first book of  the Aeneid, when he writes ‘arma virumque cano’; the other refers to the occasion on which this creation is performed, either by the author or by someone else, whoever it may be, with or without a musical accompaniment – and in this sense it is passive. For on such occasions the cantio itself acts upon someone or something, whereas in the former case it is acted upon; and so in one case it appears as an action carried out by someone, in the other as an action perceived by someone. And because it is acted upon before it acts in its turn, the argument seems plausible, indeed convincing, that it takes its name from the fact that it is acted upon, and is somebody’s action, rather from the fact that it acts

45 Ascoli, Dante and the Making, ch. 3, sect. iv., esp. pp. 161–62, ch. 4, sect. iv, 222–23.

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Albert R. Ascoli upon others. The proof of  this is the fact that we never say ‘that’s Peter’s song’ when referring to something Peter has performed, but only to something he has written.]

The relevance of  this passage to the present context should be clear, and only becomes clearer if we note that the last canzone cited before this passage, and in an exceptionally emphatic position, is precisely ‘Amor che nella mente.’46 Where in De vulgari eloquentia Dante is establishing himself as the ‘active’ maker of the cantio par excellence, here he has focused instead on the ‘passive’ authorship of  Casella, and has cast himself in the role of  the lector, alluded to in passing in the cited excerpt, and indeed as a passive reader, acted upon, rather than as an active one, interacting with what he hears.47 The focus of  the episode then is not, or at least not only, on what the author of  ‘Amor che nella mente’ intended to say, on what he spends fifteen chapters of  Convivio saying he meant to say, but rather on what happens when that poem is read or heard in the wrong way: that is, as a passive experience of surpassing sweetness which cancels all other thought, all other activity. At the same time, in casting himself as a passive reader of  his own poem, in ef fect, and paradoxically, he parodies his own strenuous ef forts in Vita Nova, Convivio, and De vulgari eloquentia to portray himself as an author-maker in full control of  his own meanings. From this perspective, 46 DVE, II. vi. 6–8. Chapter vi begins with a list of examples of prose ‘constructions.’ The passage that concerns us then continues with a list of vernacular poetic examples of  this type of construction, which leads from the troubadours (Girhault, Folquet and Arnaut), through one representative of  the Sicilians (Guido da Colonna) to the ‘dolce stil’ poets – Guinizelli, Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and ‘amicus eius’, Dante. This list, by far the longest list of examples in the treatise (11 – the runners-up – both in chapter 5 – have 7), culminates with the one and only reference in DVE to ‘Amor che nella mente’, which thus becomes, temporarily, the ne plus ultra of vernacular writing. The exemplary list, a literary history in miniature of romance vernacular poetry, is followed by, with the implication that it is the reason for, a highly unusual reference to the vernacular writers as ‘autores.’ The chapter thus constitutes one of  the high water-marks, to that date, in Dante’s project of appropriating the classical designation of  ‘auctor’ for the vernacular in general and for his own work in particular. 47 For some further discussion see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, p. 128 and n. 97, p. 188 and n. 34. I anticipate developing this line of argument in future work on Purgatorio II.

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the alternative to the experience of  Casella’s performance is not a return to active authorship (and the active readership of self-commentary through which the figure of  the active author is constructed), but rather the collective performance of  ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ in which, as I have already suggested, what Dante called ‘passive authors’ in De vulgari eloquentia become ‘active readers’, to the extent that they not only interpret but in fact instantiate, fulfill, the divinely inspired text they recite. In other words, they are the meaning of what they sing, actively, allegorically interpreted. To understand fully the implications of  this episode for Dante’s negotiation, as author, of  the relationship between poetry and theology, we need to turn to two later episodes – one in which he re-describes the process by which he produces poetry – one in which he places himself in the company of  the human authors of  the Bible, and measures both himself and them against God, the Author of all authors. As to the former, it is well known that ‘Amor che nella mente’ is poised within the economy of  Purgatorio, not only against the performance of  ‘In exitu’, but also, though at a considerable distance, against Dante’s second major auto-citation, this one in canto XXIV:48     ‘Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore trasse le nove rime, cominciando “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore”.’     E io a lui: ‘I’ mi son un che, quando Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando.’     ‘O frate, issa vegg’ io’, diss’ elli, ‘il nodo che ‘l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo!     Io veggio ben come le vostre penne di retro al dittator sen vanno strette, che de le nostre certo non avvenne; e qual più a gradire oltre si mette, non vede più da l’uno a l’altro stilo.’ (Purg., XXIV. 49–62) 48 See among the many possible discussions Teodolinda Barolini’s fundamental treatment in Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the ‘Comedy’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1984), esp. pp. 31–56.

38

Albert R. Ascoli [‘But tell me if  I see here the one who drew forth the new rhymes, beginning Ladies who have intellect of  love? And I to him: ‘I in myself am one who, when Love breathes within me, take note, and to that measure which he dictates within, I go signifying.’ ‘O my brother, now I see’, said he, ‘the knot that held the Notary and Guittone and me back on this side of  the sweet new style I hear. I see well how your pens follow close behind him who dictates, which with ours certainly did not happen; and whoever sets himself  to looking further will not see any other dif ference between on style and the other.’]

I will not revisit the vast literature that surrounds these lines, but simply claim the following: that Dante clearly casts himself, qua poet, as a scribe or notary who copies out words dictated to him by Love; that Love in this case is clearly assimilated to the inspiration of  the Holy Spirit and that this process is said to be the same one which produced ‘Donne ch’avete’ and which is still operating in the present of  the poem’s narrative (i.e. might be said to describe the process that this same ‘Dante personaggio’ will shortly undertake in writing the Commedia). Finally, I recall that the cited canzone, in the context of  the Vita Nova, represents the turn to a new mode of writing, the ‘stilo de la loda’, that is, praise of  the beloved object as against description of  the poet-lover’s experience of  the vicissitudes of desire.49 Assuming, as most critics do, that the meaning of  this positive selfcitation is at least in part determined by its juxtaposition with the negative version in Purgatorio II, one can make some additional observations. The most obvious of  these is that where in that episode the performance of a poem of  Dante’s is juxtaposed, to its disadvantage, with the performance of a Biblical text, here another poem of  Dante is described positively, in a way that many of  taken to constitute an assimilation to the double authorship of  the Bible, with Dante playing the role of scriba Dei. In this scenario, the opposition of poetry and theology in Purgatorio II is resolved into a poetry which speaks the Word of  God (although the poem in question, it must be remembered praises Beatrice, not God, albeit in her capacity as emanation of divine goodness and beauty). But it is here that our opening

49 Martinez, ‘The Pilgrim’s Answer’; also Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 89.

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gloss on Hugutio’s preface seems apt: one can be inspired to write by Grace without claiming parity with the authors of  the Bible. If we read the passage in the light of  the problem of performance and its relation to the question of authorship and readership brought out in Purgatorio II, there is still more to be said. In the terms of  De vulgari eloquentia then transformatively dramatized in the Casella episode, Dante’s response to Bonagiunta casts him as a ‘passive author’ in bono, reciting the words of another, but also and again as active reader, able to interpret his role ref lectively. Moreover, if we consider the phrase ‘quel che e’ ditta dentro vo significando’ carefully, it might be taken to suggest not only that Dante signifies by writing what Love dictates, but that he, in fact, is himself a signifier of  love, in the same way that the souls singing ‘In exitu’ also enact and fulfill the meaning of  the psalm.50 From this perspective, rather than as author of a new book of  the Bible, Dante depicts himself as a signifier in God’s other book, the poem of creation itself – i.e. he is an ‘allegoria in factis’ whether or not he is writing one.51 Let us now turn to a final example of  Dante’s negotiation of poetry and theology in the Commedia. The ‘poema sacro’, it must be said, provides one

As I have argued elsewhere, in this way Purgatorio XXIV can be seen as the explicitation of  the array of relationships between human poets and the works they compose in Purgatorio XXI–XXII: where Virgil’s poetry signifies the salvation in Christ though its author does not (Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert, pp. 221–24), while Statius himself embodies salvation (by means of reading Virgil’s poetry), but does not signify his Christianity in his poems (Barolini Dante’s Poets, pp. 258–70, as well as Ferrante, The Political Vision, pp. 237–39). The implication that Dante does both is then realized in the passage from canto XXIV under consideration (Ascoli, Dante and the Making, pp. 319–22). 51 Pertile, La punta del disio: Semantica del desiderio nella ‘Commedia’ (Florence: Cadmo, 2005), pp. 85–113, of fers a revisionist reading of  the passage, arguing that it hinges on metaphorics not of writing (‘penne’ = pens), but rather of  falconry (‘penne’ = feathers). The implication would be then that Dante is emphasizing spiritual experience through the traditional imagery of  f light rather than poetics. My double understanding of  ‘vo significando’ would suggest that the two meanings of  ‘penne’ coexist and complement one another. See also my Dante and the Making, p. 323 n. 27.

50

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climax after another in the process of defining Dante-personaggio’s evolution into Dante-poeta, and thus to claim that Paradiso XXV–XXVI (and the sojourn in Dante’s natal constellation in the Heaven of  the Fixed Stars, of which they are a part)52 constitute the defining moment in that itinerary is a priori unpersuasive. It does, of course, have the advantage of coming both after, in the temporality of reading, and above, in what is obviously a graded hierarchy of spiritual experience and understanding, the majority of its competitors, only two of which we have sampled in this essay.53 It has the further advantage of  being the locus of  the redefinition of authority alluded to at the beginning of  this essay, and of  being the place where Dante for the first and only time claims for himself  the title of  ‘poeta.’ It is also the moment when he apparently changes the title of  the work from Commedia to ‘sacro poema’, and may even assimilate it to the ‘teodïa’ (‘godsong’ – words in praise of  God; Par., XXV. 73) the name he assigns to David’s Psalms, and himself  to the ‘sommo cantor del sommo duce’ (72).54 It is the locale, finally, where he af firms that this ‘poema sacro’ is dually authored by ‘heaven and earth’ (1–2) and places himself conspicuously in the company of  human authors of  the New Testament, after which he receives the last and most explicit of  the prophetic commissions to deliver upon his return to the world of  the living (Par., XXVII. 19–66, 121–48). Let me begin with the question of possible assimilation into the ranks of the human authors of  the Bible, since on this point, most obviously, hangs 52

My understanding of  the Heaven of  the Fixed Stars episode is particularly indebted to Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s ‘Rime Petrose’ (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1990), pp. 240–58. 53 In the Paradiso alone one thinks of  the opening invocations of cantos I (1–36) and II (1–8), Beatrice’s speech on the accommodating personifications of  Scriptural language; Dante’s encounter with the theologians in cantos X–XIII (and his selfdescription as ‘scriba’ at the beginning of  that episode: X. 25–27); his encounter with Cacciaguida in cantos XV–XVII (especially his ancestor’s exhortation to ‘make his vision manifest’ free from any [poetic?] ‘menzogna’ (XVII. 127–42; cf. Inf., XVI. 124–29); and so on. 54 On David as model for Dante-poeta, see Barolini, Dante’s Poets, pp.  275–78, Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments, esp. pp. 82–84; V. Stanley Benfell, ‘Biblical Truth in the Examination Cantos of  Dante’s Paradiso’, Dante Studies, 115 (1997), 89–110.

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the question of  Dante’s claim to theological authorship in the strongest sense. As is well known, and as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Ascoli, Dante and the Making: ch. 7, sect. v–vi), in Paradiso XXIV–XXVI, Dante undergoes an examination of  the three theological virtues – faith, hope, charity – at the hands, respectively – of  St Peter, St James and St John – the three favoured apostles of  Christ,55 who, most significantly, were those who alone shared the revelatory experience of the Transfiguration. The examination process places Dante, quite deliberately, on a boundary line between ‘theologian’ as academic student of  theological doctrine and ‘theologian’ as Biblical author (although, as throughout the Commedia, the words ‘theologian’ or ‘theology’ are not used, even if, as noted above, the hapax, ‘teodïa’, is). On the one hand, the examination is staged precisely in the manner of a quaestio addressed by a ‘baccialier’ or ‘discente’ at the behest of  his teacher, like those through which aspiring academic theologians were trained at the University of  Paris, and the questions addressed are at the heart of  theological doctrine. On the other, the ‘maestri’ in question are among the human authors of  the New Testament, so that, on analogy with the transformation of  ‘bacialier’ into ‘magister’ in his own right, one might argue that Dante’s successful conclusion of  the examination elevates him to the status of  those who have just tested him. And from yet another point of view still it is clear that Dante stresses there is only one ‘verace Autore’, author of all things, that no human being indeed has claim to that title, and that human language, whether biblical or ‘poetic’, can never tell ‘the truth’ about Him, since there is no proper name or names, no adjectival superlative or superlatives, that can encompass him. It is for this reason that poetry comes to the fore once again at this crucial moment, and in particular the poetry of praise, ‘lo stilo della loda’ alla divina, which iterates the approximate, metaphoric designations of its 55

My interpretation of  the examination scene is partly inf luenced by Benfell, Biblical Truth; Kevin Brownlee, ‘Why the Angels Speak Italian: Dante as Vernacular Poeta in Par., XXV.’ Poetics Today, 5 (1984), 597–610; and Mengaldo Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, ‘Appunti sul canto XXVI del Paradiso’, in Linguistica e retorica di Dante (Pisa: NistriLischi, 1978), pp. 223–46; Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments, pp. 72–95 and Brownlee, ‘Paradiso XXVI’, Lectura Dantis, 6 (1990), 46–59.

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inef fable object – a move entirely compatible with Aquinas’ justification of  the necessity for theologians and Biblical scribes to use metaphorical language, like that of  the poets.56 It is for this reason that the names of  God are iterated throughout the episode and in canto XXVI particularly. It is for this reason that Dante alludes to the apparently restrictive etymology of  the author from ‘avieo’ by naming God as ‘autore’, but also through four ‘vocalic’ designations (‘Alpha’, ‘O’, ‘I’ and ‘El’). It is for this reason that the canto culminates with Dante’s encounter with Adam, and with the latter’s discourse on the ephemerality of all human language whose origins, here, as in the De vulgari eloquentia before, are identified precisely with the principal name assigned to God. In Convivio the analogy between the poetic binding of words ‘with rhythm and rhyme’ and the binding together of  language by the five vowels, betrays the more fundamental fact – previewed in Book I – that in writing vernacular poetry Dante aspires precisely to make permanent his natal language. The same assimilation of poetry to language itself pervades De vulgari eloquentia as well. In both, one might argue, Dante’s af finities with Hugutio, whose task it is precisely to of fer a comprehensive account of  the origins, history, and significance of  the Latin language, are noteworthy indeed. But, of course, even as the canto emphasizes that human beings make the language(s) that they use, it also has Adam himself insist upon the absolute contingency and ephemerality of all human utterances, while making plain the consequent, inevitable metaphoricity of  the theologian’s attempts to name that which can never properly be named. In Paradiso XXVI, and in many ways throughout the Commedia as a whole, rather than claiming that poetry, at least this poem, is theology, in whichever sense one might take that word, Dante repeatedly af firms that theology is, finally, necessarily, poetic.

56 For further discussion with bibliography, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making, ch. 7, sect. v, esp. n. 124.

Paola Nasti

Dante and Ecclesiology1

Questioning Ecclesiology The primary object of ecclesiology is the structure of  the Church and its theological self-understanding. It addresses a variety of complex theological questions. What is the foundation of  the Church? What is the connection of  the Church with the Trinity? What is the role of  the Church in the history of salvation? Why is the Church one? How should the Church Militant live? What is the destiny of  the Church? What is the role of  the clergy? In whom does the Church’s authority reside? What does the Bible say about the Church?2 In most Christian ecclesiologies, the Church’s structures, modes of governance and conditions of membership are said to ref lect the eternal principles and axioms through which God reveals himself  to man. Yet the history of ecclesiology shows that the institutional structures of  the Church and its identity clearly evolve to accommodate expediency or events.3 Seen from this perspective, ref lexive ecclesiology entails a textual tradition that narrates the tension between the Church’s 1

2 3

I would like to thank Zygmunt G. Barański for his invaluable comments on a previous version of  this article. I would also like to thank my Masters student Paola Gotti, with whom I have shared several conversations on the Monarchia and Dante’s perception of  the Church. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives (Downers Grove: Varsity Press, 2002); Roger D. Haight, Christian Community in History, 3 vols (New York: Continuum, 2004–08). Gillian Evans, The Church in the Early Middle Ages (London: Tauris, 2007), p. 44. See Haight’s discussion of  the need to reconstruct a ‘bottom-up’ ecclesiology alongside a top-down one: Haight, Christian Community in History, I. 4–6.

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formulas of self-description, the structures of  human relations within it and the changes imposed by historical events. Such tensions are clearly inevitable when the Church, a historically conditioned corporate experience, also claims to be the eternal and universal vessel of  God’s grace. For that reason, understanding ecclesiology requires both the study of events and the interpretation of  texts or narratives produced by competing social groups, the meaning of which is defined by the historical and cultural contexts in which they were generated.4 Yves Congar, the great scholar of medieval thought on the Church, was of  the opinion that the Middle Ages never had a fully f ledged ecclesiology.5 Indeed, systematic treatises on the nature and structure of  the Church started to appear regularly only by the second half of the fourteenth century, and their focus was ‘mainly juridical in nature and papal in orientation’.6 Seen in the context of  late medieval history, this is unsurprising.7 The main contributors to the doctrine of  the Church were papalists, conciliarists, orthodox and heterodox, ranging from the Augustinian James of  Viterbo to the anti-papalist and revolutionary Marsilius of  Padua, who wrote in 4 5

6

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James Ginther, ‘The Church in Medieval Theology’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. by Gerard Mannion and Lewis Seymour Mudge (London: Routledge 2007), pp. 48–62. Yves Congar, ‘Ecclesia ab Abel’, in Abhandlungen über Theologie und Kirche (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1952), pp. 79–108. See also L’église de Saint Augustin a l’époque moderne (Paris: Cerf, 1970). Karkkainen notes that ‘the doctrine of  the church, did not gain its own established standing in systematic theology until the time of  the Reformation […]. Ecclesiology was not a separate locus either in the early church or in the Middle Ages’ (An Introduction to Ecclesiology, p. 10). Ginther, ‘The Church in Medieval Theology’, p. 50. See also Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), pp. 176–226. Of course, inf luential works on ecclesiology were also composed in the twelfth century: Gratian’s Decretum, for example, was composed c. 1139. For a good introduction see Stanley Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of  California Press, 1972); Jean Leclerq, L’ecclésiologie du XII siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1942). Francisco Bertelloni, ‘La teoria politica medieval entre la tradición clasica y la modernidad’, in El pensamiento politico en la Etad Media, ed. by Pedro Roche Arnas (Madrid: Fundación Ramón Arces, 2010), pp. 17–40 (p. 18).

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response to political events and explored the apologetic and juridical aspects of ecclesiology which historical developments had brought into question. Most fourteenth-century treatises on the Church were precipitated by the conf lict between Philip IV and Boniface VIII over the temporal power of  the Papacy,8 and in particular over the limits of  the pope’s jurisdiction in the context of a world tainted by sin,9 the power of  the pope within the Church, and the extent of  his prerogatives in the secular sphere.10 The Church of  the time was trying to ascertain its juridical position within the structures of  the dying Empire and the newly developing national states. 8

9

10

For a useful survey of  the topic see: Walter Ullmann, The Growth of  Papal Government in The Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2009); Eamon Duf f y, Saints and Sinners: A History of  the Popes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy, 1050–1250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Gerd Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); The Crisis of  Church and State, 1050–1300, ed. by Brian Tierney (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 1964); John A. Watt, The Theory of  Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 1965). Michael Wilks, The Problem of  Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); see also his ‘Papa est nomen iurisdictionis: Augustinus Triumphus and the Papal Vicariate of  Christ’, The Journal of  Theological Studies, 8 (1957), 71–91. Innocent III had been the first to use this argument in his decretal Novit ille, which proclaimed the need for the Pope to interfere in temporal government to help the judgement of men who are ultimately stained by mortal sin. On Innocent III’s views of  the Church see: Morris, The Papal Monarchy, 1050–1250, pp. 417–47; Kenneth Pennington, Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1984); and Brian Tierney, ‘Tria quippe distinguit iudicia. A note on Innocent III’s Decretal Per venerabilem’, Speculum, 37 (1964), 48–59. ‘The conf licts between Philip and Boniface produced a f lood of  tracts devoted to the questions raised: as a crisis which stimulated political thought it bore comparison with the Investiture Contest. […] All shades of opinion, pro-papal, pro-royal and those seeking a middle way, agreed that Christ had divided the two powers; but this statement created more problems than it solved. In temporalities, was the king subject to the pope or was the church subject to the king? What did it mean to say that the powers were distinct?’: Joseph Canning, A History of  Medieval Political Thought 300–1450 (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 140.

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To af firm its independence, the curia had actually embraced an aggressive ‘foreign policy’ which promoted the supremacy of  the pope above any other authority. To establish hegemony, it created an ecclesiological tradition that sought to define the Church both as an institution and a mystery, something both visible and invisible. That is to say, the institution built its well-defined power structure upon the claim that it held the key to the truth and to the mysteries of grace and salvation proclaimed by the Bible and supported by the Christian tradition.11 Conversely, those who wrote on ecclesiological matters to dispute such views were often serving the interests of political lords, or were members of religious groups which were coming under the attack of  the curia itself.12 In other words, medieval systematic ecclesiology, and medieval ecclesiological tracts in particular, were discourses about the Church based on biblical, philosophical and legal principles shared by social groups whose contrasting visions of  the Church ref lect dif ferent economic, cultural and political concerns. However medieval ecclesiological treatises are just one piece of a complex jigsaw. Taken as a whole, medieval ecclesiological discourse is not narrow and limited, as Congar once thought; rather, our knowledge of it is still in development.13 A large number of relevant texts and documents remain unedited and unknown, and we are some way of f a full

11

12

13

‘The three major theoretical tracts written in the context of  the conf licts amounted to a new genre for the Middle Ages, in that they were not mirrors-of-princes but works of synthesis focused on specific themes, and in particular that of power. They were produced within a year or so of one another: all three were products of intellectual formation at the university of  Paris’: Canning, A History of  Medieval Political Thought 300–1450, p. 142. Canning is referring here to the Ecclesiastica Potestate by Giles of  Rome, De regimine christiano by James of  Viterbo and De regia potestate et papali by John of  Paris. Marsilius of  Padua, for example, supported the interests of  the Ghibelline Della Scala and Visconti families and later lived at the court of  Ludvig the Bavarian. His Defensor Pacis is in fact considered a ‘call’ for Ludvig to intevene against the papacy and bring Marsilius’ political theory into praxis. See Frank Godthardt, ‘The Life of  Marsilius of  Padua’, A Companion to Marsilius of  Padua, ed. by Gerson MorenoRiaño and Cary Nederman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 13–56, esp. pp. 17–20. Ginther, ‘The Church in Medieval Theology’.

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understanding of  the medieval Church as a body politic and manufacturer of  beliefs. The textual resources that make up this less familiar ecclesiology are to found in liturgical commentaries (such as Durandus’ Rationale divinorum of ficiorum),14 in Biblical exegesis (the Psalms15 and Song of  Songs16), in glosses to the works of  Dionysius the Areopagite, in sermons, and in hagiography.17 The Fathers, medieval theologians, and preachers had always had much to say about the Church. They posed questions about her gifts, her destiny and duties; they presented their theological judgement on her inner nature and on her spiritual roles. Their ecclesial discourses depicted the Church as the ecclesia primitiva, an idealized image of  the earliest Christian community based on the example and teachings of  Jesus and his disciples.18 Yet, in spite of its composite nature, this ecclesial 14 Stephen Mark Holmes, ‘Reading the Church: William Durandus and a New Approach to the History of  Ecclesiology’, Ecclesiology, 7.1 (2011), 29–49. Before 1286 William Durandus of  Mende, a friend of  Pope Boniface VIII, composed a commentary on the liturgy which promoted a very dif ferent ecclesiology from that of  Unam Sanctam. The vision of  the Church that emerges in the Rationale divinorum of ficiorum finds its roots in the New Testament and the Fathers of  the Church. The text had a very wide circulation in late medieval and early modern Europe, and it certainly contributed to the ‘survival’ of a traditional ecclesiology which ignored canon law. 15 Ginther has argued convincingly in favour of a reading of  the medieval Psalm commentaries as a ‘point of where Christology and ecclesiology simply intersect’, suggesting that the ‘exposition of  the Psalter appears to have been an ideal place to construct a theological perception of  the Church’ (The Church in Medieval Theology, p. 55). 16 See my ‘Caritas and ecclesiology in Dante’s Heaven of  Sun’, in Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry, ed. by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2010), pp. 210–44. 17 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 18 For a very good synthesis of  the early Church’s self-understanding and history see: Gillian Evans, ‘The Church in the Early Christian Centuries: Ecclesiological Consolidation’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, pp. 28–47; Haight, Christian Community in History, pp. 69–140. St Augustine’s ecclesiology was of  fundamental importance for medieval conceptions of  the Church; on his views see Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. by Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001); Scott H. Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via (Leiden: Brill,

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tradition shared a consistent set of images, quotations and concepts that pertained to the true nature of  the Church. Such terms and images were normally biblical in origin,19 less frequently philosophical or juridical. Unsurprisingly this ‘ecclesial langue’ pervaded even Unam Sanctam and the wave of systematic tracts on ecclesiology that followed it.20 It is easy to infer that to grasp the peculiarities of dif ferent ecclesial discourses or narratives and understand the processes by which medieval ecclesiologies were established, one must read ecclesial judgements and theories within this dense textual continuum and reconstruct, diachronically, the semantic evolution of  terms and symbols used by theologians and mystics alike. Needless to say, in dealing with such a large tradition, scholars can only proceed by adding details to the bigger picture of  the medieval ecclesiological landscape. In this essay, I will explore the uses and reprises of  biblical texts in competing arguments on the nature and structure of  the Church. My corpus will include some of  the most popular ecclesiological treatises, 1974); Stanislaus J. Grabowski, ‘St Augustine and the Doctrine of  the Mystical Body of  Christ’, Theological Studies, 7.1 (1946), 72–125; id., The Church: An Introduction to the Theology of  St Augustine (St Louis: Herder, 1957). On the Church Fathers’ ecclesiology see also: Marcia L. Colish, The Fathers and Beyond: Church Fathers Between Ancient and Medieval Thought (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). 19 On the language of  the bible and lectio divina, see: Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1957); Jean Leclercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Age (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1957); Gillian Evans, The Language and Logic of  the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of  Chicago Press, 2011); Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2 vols (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Duncan Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of  Reading (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011); Beryl Smalley, The Study of  the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). 20 The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of  Beryl Smalley, ed. by Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985); The Practice of  the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. by Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

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biblical commentaries and theological texts of  the time; I shall consider Dante as an ecclesial thinker and his works as expressions of ecclesiological judgements which emerge largely through a carefully orchestrated use of  biblical events, quotations and images. As a zealous member of  the Church who read, studied and believed in the mystery of  the Word, Dante felt no fear in of fering his theological judgement and presenting his own interpretation of  the eternal and universal axioms upon which the Church should be founded. The Commedia is in fact fully engaged with the definition, assessment and judgement of  the Church. The poem is ecclesiological whether it attends to the description of  the of fices of ministry, or looks at the sacramental life, the ideals and practices of religious in monasteries, and of  the laity in the world, or whether ‘it takes up along the way ethics, spirituality and theories of  the Christian life […], considers church law, church authority, church administration [and] the relation of  the Church to the world, that is, to society […] and to ruler’.21 As a text on late medieval ecclesiology or theology of  the Church, the Commedia has prompted interest from historians, philosophers and theologians since its publication.22 Its first commentators discussed 21 Haight, Christian Community in History, p. 9. 22 The bibliography on Dante and the Church is notoriously vast, to the extent that it would be impossible to of fer a comprehensive bibliography on the subject. I shall mention here only those studies that have most inf luenced the composition of  this essay. V. Stanley Benfell, ‘Prophetic Madness: the Bible in Inferno XIX’, Modern Language Notes, 110.1 (1995), 145–63; Steven Botterill, ‘Ideals of  the Institutional Church in Dante and Bernard of  Clairvaux’, Italica, 78.3 (2001), 297–313; Anthony Cassell, ‘Luna est Ecclesia: Dante and the “Two great lights”’, Dante Studies, 119 (2001), 1–26; Sergio Cristaldi, La profezia imperfetta. Il veltro e l’escatologia medievale (Caltanissetta: Salvatore Sciascia, 2011); Dante and the Church. Literary and Historical Essays, ed. by Paolo Acquaviva and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), especially Matthew Kempshall, ‘Accidental Perfection: Ecclesiology and Political Thought in Monarchia’, pp. 127–71; Charles T. Davis, ‘Dante and Ecclesiastical Property’, in Dante: The Critical Complex, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York: Routledge, 2003), V, 294–307; Id., Dante’s Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1984), especially pp. 42–70; Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman, ‘The Commedia: Apocalypse, Church, and Dante’s conversion’, in Dante: The Critical Complex, vol 5, pp. 350–401; Enrico

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at length issues of ethics and spirituality, sacramental life, Christian doctrine and religious exempla, whilst at the same time distancing themselves from most of  the harshest judgements against the institutional Church passed by the poet.23 Modern Dante scholarship has focused primarily on

23

Fenzi, ‘Tra religione e politica: Dante, il mal di Francia e le “sacrate ossa” dell’esecrato san Luigi (con un excursus su alcuni passi della Monarchia)’, Studi Danteschi, 69 (2004), 23–117; Joan Ferrante, The Political Vision of  the Divine Comedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Kenelm Foster, ‘The Canto of  the damned Popes, Inferno XIX’, in The Two Dantes and Other Studies (Berkeley: University of  California Press; Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 86–106; George Holmes, ‘Monarchia and Dante’s attitude to the Popes’, in Dante and Governance, ed. by John R. Woodhouse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 46–57; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957); Id., ‘Dante’s Two Suns’, in Selected Studies (Locust Valley & New York: Augustin, 1965), pp. 325–26; Michele Maccarrone, ‘Papato e Impero nella Monarchia’, Nuove Letture Dantesche, 8 (1976), 259–332; Nicolò Mineo, ‘Dante: un sogno di armonia terrena’, in Letture classensi, 29 (2000), 191–237; Bruno Nardi, ‘Intorno ad una nuova interpretazione del terzo libro della Monarchia dantesca’, in Dal ‘Convivio’ alla ‘Commedia’ (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992), pp. 151–313; Nicola Longo, I papi, Roma e Dante. L’idea e le immagini di Roma nella ‘Commedia’ dantesca (Rome: Bulzoni, 2004), John A. Scott, ‘The Rock of  Peter and Inferno XIX’, Romance Philology, 23 (1970), 462–79; Raoul Manselli, ‘Dante e l’ecclesia spiritualis’, in Dante e Roma. Atti del Convegno di studi, Roma, 8–10 aprile 1965 (Florence, 1965), pp. 115–35; id., Da Gioacchino da Fiore a Cristoforo Colombo. Studi sul francescanesimo spirituale, sull’ecclesiologia e sull’escatologismo basso medievale (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1997); id., ‘Saint Francis and Saint Dominic in the cantos of  Paradiso’, Greyfriars Review, 17 (2003), 329–38; Jaroslav Pelikan, Eternal Feminines: Three Theological Allegories in Dante’s Paradiso (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Gian Luca Potestà, ‘Dante profeta e i vaticini papali’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1 (2004), 67–88; John Took, ‘Ecclesiology on the Edge: Dante and the Church’, in The Church and Literature, ed. by Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 65–82. I been unable to consult Dante e i Papi. Altissimi cantus: rif lessione a 40 anni dalla lettera Apostolica di Paolo VI, ed. by Lia Fava Guzzetta, Gabriella Di Paola Dollorenzo, and Giorgio Pettinari (Rome: Studium, 2009). See for example, Guido da Pisa’s note on Inferno I. 91: ‘Non autem intendo vel contra fidem vel contra Sanctam Ecclesiam aliquid dicere sive loqui. Si autem aliquid

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Dante’s perception of  the institutional Church, on the poet’s treatment of  the social aspects of  Christ’s redemptive work, and on his indignant denunciation of  the popes’ conduct, of  their political manoeuvring against the Empire and of  their alliances with the French monarchy. Conversely, theoretical issues concerning the poet’s definition of  the mystery of  the Church, of its spiritual and intimate dimensions have generated less interest. Present-day scholars have defined Dante’s political ecclesiology as utopian or apocalyptic, while others have shed light on the events in which the Commedia’s ecclesiology was developed and have pointed to some of its models or adversaries. The ecclesiological credentials of  the Commedia are also enhanced by the Monarchia, Dante’s brief  treatise on ecclesiological and political structures and principles, written whilst the poet was completing the last cantica of  the poem.24 The Monarchia includes a sophisticated, complex and authoritative ecclesiological narrative which established a

inepte dicerem, volens textum autoris exponere, ne aliquid remaneat inexcussum, ex nunc revoco et annullo, et Sancte Romane Ecclesie et eius of ficialium correctioni et ferule me submitto. Quia si in ista Comedia esset aliquod hereticum, quod per poesiam seu aliam viam sustineri non posset, non intendo illud tale defendere vel fovere, immo potius, viso vero, totis conatibus impugnare. Rogo te autem, o lector, ut autorem non iudices sive culpes, si tibi videatur quod ipse autor in aliquo loco vel passu contra catholicam fidem agat, quia poetice loquitur et fictive. Et ideo iste liber dicitur Comedia, que est quoddam genus poesie ad quam spectat vera integumentis poeticis et propheticis ambagibus nubilare’ (cited from the DDP). 24 Once again the bibliography on the Monarchia is vast: I cite here only a few examples. As well as the essential treatment of  Monarchia by Pier Giorgo Ricci, in ED, VI, 775–801, see Bruno Nardi’s commentary on the Monarchia, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, 2 vols, ed. by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979), pp. 241–503; Anthony K. Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy: An Historical Study with Accompanying Translations of  Dante Alighieri’s Monarchia, Guido Vernani’s Refutation of  the Monarchia Composed by Dante, and Pope John XXII’s Bull Si Fratrum (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of  America Press, 2004); Ovidio Capitani, Chiose minime dantesche (Bologna: Pàtron, 1983); Giovanna Puletti, ‘Temi biblici nella Monarchia e nella trattatistica politica del tempo’, Studi Danteschi, 61 (1989), 231–88; Id., ‘La donazione di Costantino nei primi del 300 e la Monarchia di Dante’, Medioevo e Rinascimento, 4 (1993), 113–35; Vittorio Russo, Impero e stato di diritto. Studio su Monarchia ed Epistole politiche di Dante

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dialogue with those theologians who had written on the nature of  the Church, from Augustine to Giles of  Rome. Dante composed the treatise towards the end of  his life,25 probably to clarify the Commedia’s ideological position and to respond, in a systematic and scholarly fashion, to likely criticisms of  his poem. Such is the attention that Dante dedicated to Ecclesia throughout his intellectual career that we might reasonably consider his meditations on the Church as a significant expression, if not an original development, of  late medieval ecclesiology. To understand its distinctiveness we must scrutinize the way in which Dante chose to write of ecclesiological matters, the textual means through which he elaborated his vision of  the Church. Unlike other ecclesiological writers his means of expression are varied in nature; he shifts from poetry to prose, from epistolography to epic, from (self-)commentary (Convivio) to scholastic demonstrations, from satire to mellif luous ‘stilnuovo’ representations of  the sacred. In each instance his implied audience changes, from cardinals and popes to the man in the street, from the papalist professors of  Paris to the opponents of papal potestas. When I have previously analysed the ecclesiology of  the Commedia, I have argued that we must approach it as a representation of  the Church rather than as a concept or theory of it (to put it another way, as Kirchenbild rather than as Kirchenbegrif f) because the poem’s ecclesial discourse is articulated through metaphors and imagery.

25

(Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987); Walter Ullmann, Scholarship and politics in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum Reprints, 1978), pp. 101–13. All modern editors of  the Monarchia still concur with Ricci’s dating of  the treatise to 1318. Many commentators, including Cassell, argue that the treatise was probably written in the wake of  the promulgation of  John XXII’s Bull Si Fratrum in 1317. The decree proclaimed the imperial throne empty and excommunicated those who maintained the title of vicarius of  the Empire. Significantly, Can Grande della Scala had such a title and refused to renounce it; in 1318 the pope declared his title expired and excommunicated him. ‘Dante came to the aid of  his friend and former patron, applying his remarkable learning in theology, history, logic and even canon law to compose a treatise baring the roots of  the issue: the tangled question of papal interference in temporal af fairs’ (Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, p. 3, but see also his very useful remarks at pp. 204–06). See also Ferrante, The Political Vision, pp. 3–43.

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In the poem, there are no systematic or scholastic lessons on the topic. From Inferno XIX to Purgatorio XV–XVIII, and from the Pageant in Eden to the dancing souls of  the Heaven of  the Sun, Dante’s understanding of  the Church is a vision made of striking images: two suns in the sky, brides dancing for their lovers, plants blooming and dying, grif fins, lights, f lowers, crosses, blood and fire. As many scholars have observed, most of  this extraordinary symbolic paraphernalia echoes biblical texts, their exegetical traditions as well as their contemporary re-use in polemical and theological texts.26 However, Dante’s rewriting of such a popular and rich textual tradition never fails to display a personal ecclesiological vision which defies straightforward classifications. The ecclesial discourse of  the Commedia is dense, stratified and ‘informed’; it requires diachronic and synchronic approaches, intertextual, intratextual and interdiscursive investigations, contextualization and deconstruction. However complex, the results of  these extensive enquiries can only partially elucidate the ecclesiological judgements expressed in the Monarchia or the Epistles, for their modes of writing and audiences dif fer as do their aims and motivations. Besides, we would need to understand whether the poet’s vision

26 Here, too, it is impossible to of fer a full account of  the bibliography on theological and biblical issues in the representation of ecclesial topics in the Commedia. Some interesting examples are to be found in the following studies on the last cantos of  Purgatorio: Alan C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife. The Dialectics of  Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Sergio Cristaldi, ‘Un ipotesto biblico: l’Apocalisse’, in Letture classensi, 37 (2008), 83–117; Joan Friedman, ‘La processione mistica di Dante. Allegoria e iconografia nel canto XXIX del Purgatorio’, in Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi, ed. by Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1987), pp. 125–48; Peter S. Hawkins, ‘Scripts for the pageant: Dante and the Bible’, in Stanford Literature Review, 5 (1988), 75–92; Robert E. Kaske, ‘Dante’s Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII: A Survey of  Christian History’, University of  Toronto Quarterly, 43 (1974), 193–214, Richard Lansing, ‘Narrative Design in Dante’s Earthly Paradise’, Dante Studies, 112 (1994), 101–13; Lino Pertile, La puttana e il gigante. Dal ‘Cantico dei Cantici’ al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1998). See also the famous collection on Dante and the Bible: Memoria biblica nell’opera di Dante, ed. by Enzo Esposito, Raf faele Manica, Nicola Longo and Riccardo Scrivano (Rome: Bulzoni, 1996).

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remained largely monolithic, or whether it evolved in the face of changes and events. In other words there could be many Dantean ecclesiologies, each responding to dif ferent external stimuli or intertextual needs; or conversely a highly informed but linear thought that Dante articulates in dif ferent ways to write about the true Church as a theologian, a poet, a citizen and ultimately a scriba Dei. In what follows we can only sketch some of  the complex issues involved in the genesis of  Dante’s ecclesial discourse. Towards the end of  the essay I shall look at Dante’s treatment of some biblical images as correlatives of ecclesiological concepts in the Commedia. However I shall begin by considering the Monarchia’s systematic approach to biblical loci on the Church, and ref lect on the ecclesial system that emerges across the two works.27

To Understand Words is a Poet’s Task Book III of  the Monarchia has lived in the shadow of scholars’ interest in Dante’s staunch defence of  the autonomy of imperial authority and potestas.28 Whilst the political significance of  the treatise’s ecclesial discourse is 27 On Dante’s use of  the Bible in the Monarchia, as well as Puletti, ‘Temi biblici’, see: Giuseppe Cremascoli, ‘La Bibbia nella Monarchia di Dante’, in La Bibbia di Dante. Esperienza mistica, profezia e teologia biblica in Dante. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Ravenna, 7 novembre 2009, ed. by Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2011, pp. 31–47; Cesare Vasoli, ‘La Bibbia nel Convivio e nella Monarchia’, in Dante e la Bibbia. Atti del Convegno internazionale promosso da ‘Biblia’, Firenze, 26–28 settembre 1986, ed. by Giovanni Barblan (Florence: Olschki, 1988), pp. 19–39. 28 Cassell argues in relation to Monarchia III that ‘ironically, Dante had returned there to agree with the earlier decretist, dualist positions that some papal canonists had once held – especially […] Uguccione da Pisa who had defended the discrete and distinct divine origin of  the dual powers’ (Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, p. 83); but see also Cassell’s important remarks and bibliographical references on Uguccione at pp. 219–21. The last sentence of  Monarchia III also seems to confirm

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undeniable, the book is probably also the most overtly theological piece of writing produced by the poet.29 This is not necessarily only because of  the subject matter, but also because of  the manner in which it is treated. As I shall argue here, in this text Dante gives a valuable and ef fective example of  how theological truth can be established through a rational and logical examination of  the word of  God. Whilst symbolic discourse evokes af fective responses, rational procedures define and clarify.30 Book III is therefore a repository of definitions which elucidate the meaning of Dante’s ecclesial thought and terminology within the wider context of  fourteenth-century ecclesiological debates. The book also stands as (self-)commentary on the ecclesial imagination presented in the Commedia. The true significance of  his creation of  the paradoxical image of  the ‘due soli’ (Purg., XVI. 107) [two suns] that illuminated the Holy Roman Empire, for example, could hardly be grasped aside from his long discussion of  the papalist use of  the image of  the ‘duo luminaria’ taken from the book of  Genesis 1. 14–19.31 that Dante agreed with Uguccione’s belief  that in some way (quodammodo) the authority of  the Emperor required the blessing of  the pope and was subject to his spiritual jurisdiction; see Mon., III. xvi, 17. See also Cassell, ‘The exiled Dante’s hope for reconciliation: Monarchia 3:16. 16–18’, Annali d’Italianistica, 20 (2002), 425–49. 29 See Kenelm Foster’s, ‘Teologia’, in ED, V, 564–68 (p. 565). On the methodology employed by Dante in other sections of  the treatise see: Gillian R. Evans, ‘The use of mathematical method in medieval political science: Dante’s Monarchia and the Defensor Pacis of  Marsilius of  Padua’, Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 32, 108 (1982), 78–94; Paolo Chiesa and Andrea Tabarroni, ‘Dante demonstrator nel secondo libro della Monarchia’, in Leggere Dante oggi. I testi, l’esegesi. Atti del Convegno-seminario di Roma, 25–27 ottobre 2010, ed. by Enrico Malato and Andrea Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno, 2012), pp. 141–62. Generally commentators on the Monarchia have noted a calm detachment from contemporary events, see: Holmes, Monarchia and Dante’s attitude to the Popes. But this is, to a certain extent, a misunderstanding of  the text: Dante vehemently attacks the pope and his supporters as well as the decretalists. 30 Leclercq, The Love of  Learning; Kevin W. Irwin, ‘Lectio Divina’, in Encyclopedia of  Monasticism, 2 vols, ed. by William M. Johnston (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), I, 751. 31 I shall not discuss Dante’s criticism of  the hierocratic interpretation of  the biblical image of  the two luminaries here, because this important issue has been very

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Nonetheless, although the analysis of  Monarchia III runs alongside the figurative imagery of the sacrato poema, its discourse develops independently and coherently in its main intent to establish the nature of papal authority. Following a preamble on the nature of power exercised by humans as opposed to that of  God, Book III moves directly to a definition of  the authority of  the Church. The discussion involves a statement on the foundation of  the ecclesial institution formed by and for the congregation of  the faithful. The question regarding ecclesial authority is central to any theology of  the Church, but in the late Middle Ages, following the radicalization of papal claims over temporal matters, it had become a major point of debate.32 Both canonists and publicists developed a considerable

32

widely discussed in Dante scholarship. Of  the many sources available on this topic see the studies cited above by Russo, Cassell and Kantorowicz. Nonetheless a brief summary might be useful. The account in Genesis 1. 14 of  the creation of  the sun and the moon was first used to support hierocratic theories by Innocent III, who claimed (in his letter Sicut universitatis conditor), that the Church, like the sun, had the greatest power and splendour. From the Hostiensis to Remigio de’ Girolami, Innocent’s allegorical interpretation of  Genesis 1. 14 became a topos of  hierocratic discourses. The greatest supporter of  this theory was obviously Boniface VIII, who quoted the passage in his Allegatio. In Monarchia III. iv, Dante tries to counter the argument by attacking the ‘assumed casual relationship’ between the sun and the moon on the basis of scientific arguments, and finally by exposing the hierocrats’ wrong use of syllogism; see Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, pp. 86–90, quote at p. 89. Cassell notes that in Monarchia III. iv, by discussing the issue in such terms ‘Dante has permitted, ironically, the lame curial platitude of  the “two great lights” to reassert itself  because he did not deploy his powerful image of  the two suns’ (p. 90). However in my opinion it is all the more important that Dante dismisses a priori any allegorical reading of  Genesis by citing Augustine’s auctoritas on the necessity of discarding interpretations of  the Bible that pervert its spiritual meaning. From the ninth century onwards papal government had extended its temporal power and developed arguments to limit the sovereignty of secular rulers. In particular, following Innocent III’s bull Per Venerabilem most supporters of papal supremacy would maintain that the pope had inherited royal authority directly from God. To support this claim they mentioned the Old Testament figure of  Melchisedech who, being priest and king, had both regal and pontifical power (Genesis 14. 18); Hebrews 6. 20 identifies Jesus as a priest in the ‘order of  Melchisedech’. This led successive popes to claim for themselves the title of  Vicarius Christi (as opposed to the traditional

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body of  hierocratic arguments to back the pope’s claim to supreme power. In particular, as mentioned, the papal publicists, from Giles of  Rome to James of  Viterbo and Augustinus Triumphus, established a fully f ledged political theory in a number of successful treatises which would stimulate the reaction of  French publicist and Aristotelian thinkers alike (from John of  Paris to Marsilius of  Padua). Reacting to these events and texts, Dante lays out a fundamental dif ference between himself and the papal supporters, who in his view pervert the traditional doctrine of  Christ: iam audiverim quendam de illis dicentem et procaciter asserentem traditiones Ecclesie fidei fundamentum: quod quidem nefas de oppinione mortalium illi summoveant qui ante traditiones Ecclesie in Filium Dei Cristum sive venturum sive presentem sive iam passum crediderunt, et credendo speraverunt, et sperantes caritate arserunt, et ardentes ei coheredes factos esse mundus non dubitat. (Mon., III. iii. 10) [I once heard one of  them say and stubbornly insist that the traditions of  the Church are the foundation of  faith. Let this wicked belief  be removed from the minds of mortals by those who, before the traditions of  the Church, believed in Christ the Son of  God (whether Christ to come or Christ present or Christ already crucified), and who in believing hoped, and hoping burned with love, and burning with love became co-heirs along with him, as the world does not doubt.]

Crucially, this statement clarifies the criteria upon which the membership of  the Church should be determined according to Dante. To be coheirs of  God’s kingdom, the poet maintains, imitation of  Christ and the profession of  faith, hope and charity are all that is needed. Once again, the assertion seems canonical and elementary. Yet read against contemporary hierocratic claims that swamped traditional definitions regarding the membership of  the Church in favour of  those who supported the pope, Dante’s simple statement stands as polemical. Vicarius Petri) and therefore ultimate power over both realms, the temporal and the spiritual. See: Wilks, The Problem of  Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages; Michele Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi. Storia del titolo papale (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1952); idem, ‘Potestas directa e potestas indirecta nei teologi del XII e XIII secolo’, in Sacerdozio e regno da Gregorio VII a Bonifacio VIII (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1954), pp. 27–47.

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To understand the controversial nature of  the poet’s theological argument, a brief discussion of  the word coheredes used by Dante ought to suf fice. The expression clearly recalls Romans 8. 17: ‘si autem filii et heredes quidem Dei coheredes autem Christi si tamen conpatimur ut et conglorificemur’ [Now if we are children, then we are heirs of  God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his suf ferings in order that we may also share in his glory]. The line, which exemplifies the Pauline doctrine of  the ‘whole Church’, had become central to Augustine’s theory on God’s adoption of  the Church. The theologian considered that as a child of  God and co-heir of  Christ,33 the Church would acquire the power (potestas) to inherit eternal life; this would be granted not only on account of  her deeds but also by the mysterious intervention of  God’s grace.34 We cannot examine 33

See Augustine’s understanding of  this concept in his Easter sermons: ‘Et quoniam quod vocamur ad aeternam haereditatem, ut simus Christi coheredes et in adoptionem filiorum veniamus 36, non est meritorum nostrorum sed gratiae Dei, eamdem ipsam gratiam in orationis principio ponimus, cum dicimus: Pater noster. Quo nomine et caritas excitatur – quid enim carius filiis debet esse quam pater? – et supplex af fectus, cum homines dicunt Deo: Pater noster, et quaedam praesumptio impetrandi quae petituri sumus, cum priusquam aliquid peteremus, tam magnum donum accepimus, ut sinamur dicere: Pater noster, Deo. Quid enim non det iam filiis petentibus, cum hoc ipsum ante dederit, ut filii essent? Postremo quanta cura animum tangit, ut qui dicit: Pater noster, tanto Patre non sit indignus? Si enim quisquam plebeius senatorem grandioris aetatis ab eo ipso permittatur patrem vocare, sine dubio trepidabit nec facile audebit cogitans humilitatem generis sui et opum indigentiam et plebeiae personae vilitatem; quanto ergo magis trepidandum est appellare Patrem Deum, si tanta est labes tantaeque sordes in moribus, ut multo iustius eas a sua coniunctione Deus expellat quam ille senator cuiusvis mendici egestatem, quando quidem ille hoc contemnit in mendico, quo et ipse potest humanarum rerum fragilitate devenire, Deus autem in sordidos mores numquam cadit. Et gratias misericordiae ipsius, qui hoc a nobis exigit ut Pater noster sit, quod nullo sumptu sed sola bona voluntate comparari potest! Admonentur hic etiam divites vel genere nobiles secundum saeculum, cum christiani facti fuerint, non superbire adversus pauperes et ignobiles, quoniam simul dicunt Deo: Pater noster, quod non possunt vere ac pie dicere, nisi se fratres esse cognoscant’: Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte libri duo, II. iv. 16, PL 34. 34 See also: ‘[O]mnes gentes coheredes Christi per Testamentum Novum ad possidendam vitam aeternam regnumque caelorum’ (Augustine, De civ. Dei, XVII. iii. 1).

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in detail here the importance of  Augustinian and Pauline ecclesial judgements amongst medieval thinkers; nor can we trace the complex exegetical history of  Romans 8. 17. It might be useful to note, however, that by the thirteenth century the Pauline passage had entered the canonists’ arena to support their discussions on matters regarding excommunication and anathema.35 What had been a theological statement for Augustine had now been translated into a canonical rule according to which church membership (that is to say participation in sacramental life) could be denied to those whose deeds and words appeared godless to the pope as vicarius Christi. The manipulation of  Augustinian principles could not have been greater. Where the Bishop of  Hippo had invoked grace as the only dispenser of  ‘inheritance rights’, the canonists considered the pope and clergy as the only administrators of  God’s grace through the sacraments. Even more problematically for Dante, the terms hereditas and heredes occurred in the

35

The concept is essential also in the liturgical tradition, see for example the Lauda Sion salvatorem written by Aquinas for the Mass of  Corpus Christi and preserved in the Missale Romanum approved by the Council of  Trent: ‘Tu, qui cuncta scis et vales: Qui nos pascis hic mortales: Tuos ibi commensáles, Cohærédes et sodales, Fac sanctórum cívium’; see: David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), II, 172–95. See for example Magister Honorius’ Summa de iure canonico tractaturus: ‘ecommunicationi minori, scil. Que separate a fraternal societate, i.aa. sacramentis per que fratres ef ficiamur et coheredes Christi et in corpus consociamur’ cited by Zeliauska, De Excommunicatione vitiata apud glossatores 1140–1350 (Zurich-Rome: Pas Verlag, 1967), p. 116. See also the Decretum Gratiani: ‘Item Ambrosius. [in oratione funebri de obitu fratris] Aduocauit ad se Ciprianus episcopum Satyrum nec ullam putauit ueram, nisi uerae fidei gratiam, percunctatusque ex eo est, utrumnam de catholicis episcopis esset, hoc est si cum Romana ecclesia conueniret. Et forte ad id locorum in scismate regionis illius ecclesia erat. Lucifer enim se a nostra conmunione diuiserat, et quamquam pro fide exulasset, et fidei suae reliquisset heredes, non tamen putauit fidem esse in scismate. Nam etsi fidem erga Deum tenerent, tamen erga Dei ecclesiam non tenebant, cuius patiebantur uelut quosdam artus diuidi et membra lacerari. Etenim, cum propter ecclesiam Christus passus sit, et Christi corpus sit ecclesia, non uidetur ab his exhiberi Christo fides, a quibus euacuatur eius passio, atquedistrahitur.’ Decretum, Pars II, c. XXIV, q. I, c. xxiii accessed 9 April 2013.

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Decretum of  Gratian, the collection of  thousands of authoritative statements by popes, councils, theologians, and other authorities, which had become the essential textbook for the study of canon law in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, with one exception, these terms are only discussed by the canonist in relation to the inheritance of churches and dioceses as material properties.36 We can be confident that Dante would have been aware of  the old and new ‘history’ of concepts and terms such as coheredes. We can be equally certain that he intentionally used such vocabulary to engage with diverging ecclesial opinions, and to mark the dif ference between his theories and those of  his opponents. Indeed, at the outset of  the book, he openly declares that he is arguing with competing ecclesiologies and ecclesiologists as a true heir of  God. His opponents (or one might say his implied audience), instead, are clearly identified in the third paragraph of  his book on the Church as sophists or betrayers. Notably there are three categories of men whose ecclesial errors Dante wishes to dispel, the pope and the curia, the ‘decretalists’ and those who in his eyes defend f lawed theocratic theories for their own benefit and greed.37 All three groups are criticized for their parochial, biased judgements and definitions of  the authority of  the Church. Dante’s piercing dismissal of canon law and decretals as sources

36 See Decretum, pars II, c. XII, q. II, c. xxiv and c. XVI, q. VII, c. xxi, xxxvi. 37 ‘Summus nanque Pontifex, domini nostri Iesu Cristi vicarius et Petri successor, cui non quicquid Cristo sed quicquid Petro debemus, zelo fortasse clavium, necnon alii gregum cristianorum pastores, et alii quos credo zelo solo matris Ecclesie promoveri, veritati quam ostensurus sum de zelo forsan – ut dixi – non de superbia contradicunt. Quidam vero alii, quorum obstinata cupiditas lumen rationis extinxit – et dum ex patre diabolo sunt, Ecclesie se filios esse dicunt – non solum in hac questione litigium movent, sed sacratissimi principatus vocabolum aborrentes superiorum questionum et huius principia inpudenter negarent. Sunt etiam tertii – quos decretalistas vocant – qui, theologie ac phylosophie cuiuslibet inscii et expertes, suis decretalibus – quas profecto venerandas existimo – tota intentione innixi, de illarum prevalentia – credo – sperantes, Imperio derogant’ (Mon., III iii, 7–9). The second group, as I shall argue, is the real addressee of  the Monarchia and identifying it seems essential to understand the significance of  Dante’s originality as well as his allusions to other texts and contexts.

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of authority has been well studied,38 and, knowingly, it also reverberates across the cantos of  the Heaven of  the Sun (Par., XII. 82–87), which were most probably written at about the same time as the Monarchia.39 There, the poet scorns the decretalists for wasting their time in inane activities that do not benefit the people of  God. What is under attack in both texts is in all probability not the value of canon law per se but the decretalists’ assumption that the legal tradition could be used to establish the auctoritas of  the Church. Instead, as Monarchia III. iii af firms, the principles upon which the Church should regulate itself are described and set by the book of  God, the Bible, which predated and predicted the victory of  the Church.

Still important for the study of canon law in the Monarchia is Michele Maccarrone, ‘Teologia e diritto canonico nella Monarchia’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 5 (1957), 7–42; Id., ‘Il terzo libro della Monarchia’, in Studi danteschi, 33 (1958), 5–142; See also: ‘Legge’, in ED, III. 613–17. A good bibliography on the topic is of fered by The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of  Arts and Sciences, ed. by Giuseppe C. Di Scipio and Aldo Scaglione (New York: Benjamins, 1988), pp. 304–13. 39 The decretalists are also attacked for their greed in Mon., II. x. 1, and Conv., IV. xxvii. 13–14. However, amongst the wise men who appear to the pilgrim in that Heaven, the poet celebrates Gratian, compiler of  the Decretum. This detail complements the general declaration of respect for canon law prof fered by Dante in Monarchia III. iii. For clarity, decretals were collection of papal decrees which followed Gratian’s Concordantia discordantium canonum (Decretum), edited and reorganized by Raymundus de Peñafort under Pope Gregory IX. A large number of commentaries on the Decretales were written by thirteenth-century canonists (Aegidius de Fuscarariis, Balduinus Brandenburgensis, Bernardus de Montemirato Bernardus Parmensis (Glossa Ordinaria), Boatinus of  Mantua, Bonaguida Aretinus, Franciscus de Albano, Gof fredus de Trano (Tranensis), Guillelmus Naso, Henry of  Merseyburg, Henry of  Susa, Innocent IV, Johannes de Ancona, Johannes Hispanus de Compostela, Johannes de Phintona, Petrus Sampson and Vincentius Hispanus). As was well articulated by Raoul Manselli: ‘Questo complesso di norme, che venne ben presto arricchito di glosse e commenti, venne assumendo insieme con l’opera di Graziano la stessa importanza che, per la vita civile, ebbe il Corpus juris civilis di Giustiniano. Rappresentò inoltre lo sforzo più grandioso e potente di tradurre in formulazioni giuridiche la Sacra Scrittura e la lunga serie di decisioni conciliari e poi papali per regolare la vita dei fedeli.’ (Raoul Manselli, ‘Decretali’, ED, II. 332–33, p. 333).

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Paola Nasti Ante quidem Ecclesiam sunt vetus et novum Testamentum, quod ‘in ecternum mandatum est’ ut ait Propheta; hoc enim est quod dicit Ecclesia loquens ad sponsum: ‘Trahe me post te’. […] Quod si traditiones Ecclesie post Ecclesiam sunt, ut declaratum est, necesse est ut non Ecclesie a traditionibus, sed ab Ecclesia traditionibus accedat auctoritas. (Mon., III. iii. 12–16) [Before the Church are the Old and New Testaments, which ‘he hath commanded for ever’, as the Prophet says; for this is what the Church says speaking to her bridegroom: ‘Draw me after thee’. […] Or if  the traditions of  the Church postdate the Church, as we have explained, authority must not come to the Church from its tradition but to the traditions from the Church].

The principal councils, at which Christ was present, Dante maintains, were also to be venerated ‘as Matthew bears witness’, and the writings of divinely inspired fathers of  the Church such as ‘Augustine and others’ should also be given consideration (Mon., III. iii. 11). We shall soon return to the vital significance of  Augustine in this passage, but for now let us brief ly comment upon Dante and the scriptural theology of  the Church. The position of  Monarchia III. iii is not original. All contributors to the medieval ecclesiological debates acknowledged Scripture as the principal authority in matters of  Christian dogma. Yet because theologians had been unable to of fer a univocal interpretation of  the sacred text, the definition of authority remained a problematic issue which each writer tried to resolve through the accumulation of arguments taken from the fathers and glosses, or from the councils and the papacy.40 The hermeneutical approaches employed by the majority of  those who wrote about the Church seemed rather alike and yet, as Dante was acutely aware, often reached contrasting conclusions. Leaving the decretalists aside, those who most worried Dante drew ecclesial judgements from a variety of appropriate sources: ‘pluribus et diversis argumentis moventur; que quidem de de Sacra Scriptura et de quibusdam gestis tam summi Pontificis quam ipsius Imperatoris, nonnullum vero rationis indicium habere nituntur’ (Mon., III. iv. 1) [are inf luenced by a number of dif ferent arguments, which they draw from the holy Scriptures and from 40 On this issue see Christopher Levy, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of  the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2012).

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certain actions both of  the supreme Pontif f and the Emperor himself; but they seek to have some support from reason on their side as well]. These are clearly the real antagonists of  Dante’s ecclesiological discourse on the authority of  the Church. But who are they? The matter is of no small importance considering that, as I shall argue, the Monarchia is a discourse on theological methodology as well as ecclesiology. According to Cassell, these ‘reprobates’ are ‘those who, by exploiting their allegiance to the Guelph party, stand to gain the greatest temporal benefits by their ascendancy in Italy’.41 The interpretation is based on Cassell’s suggestion that the Guelphs were called by the papacy ‘sons of  the Church’. However true this might be, the suggestion is far from exhaustive. ‘Sons of  the Church’ is a common expression, here triggered by the occurrence in Monarchia III. iii of images such as the father-devil and the mother-Church. I believe that Dante’s text of fers a series of subtle clues which could help us define this group dif ferently. As the above-mentioned passage from the Monarchia clarifies, these ‘sons of  the devil’ employ the hermeneutical strategies of  theologians and exegetes (the Bible, philosophy and history). This probably indicates that they exercise their support for the pope’s absolute potestas by writing not in the political arena (though their writings clearly had political weight). If  this is the case, Dante’s opponents could be identified with the authors of recent treatises on the Church and in particular, as I would like to argue, the friars of  the Augustinian Order who supported the theocratic designs of  Boniface VIII and Clement V: namely, Giles of  Rome and James of  Viterbo (Augustine Triumphus was also an Augustinian Hermit but wrote after the Monarchia).42 There is little space here to delve into the history of  the Austin friars; however, for the purposes of  this essay it is important to recall a few facts relating to the Order and its major figures. Having emerged in 1244 from various Tuscan communities of  hermits, 41 Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, p. 84. 42 On the Order of  the Augustinian Hermits and their relationship to the papacy, see: Frances Andrews, The Other Friars: The Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack And Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006); on the Augustinian Order, see: Eric L. Saak, High Way to Heaven: the Augustinian Platform Between Reform and Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

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the friars came under attack at the 1274 Council of  Lyon, when their very existence (alongside that of  the Carmelites), was called into question. Their survival was aided by the support of  Nicholas IV, the first mendicant pope; however it was under Boniface VIII that the ban on the order was finally lifted (1298) and the Austin friars rose to important positions of power. Traces of  Boniface’s personal af filiations to the order are unmistakable. Clement of  Osimo, an inf luential Prior of  the Order, had been Boniface’s personal confessor. Likewise Giles of  Rome, a highly respected theologian, and the first Doctor of  the order whose work on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas had gained success and authority, was also a close associate and supporter of  Boniface.43 Boniface had elected Giles to the archbishopric of  Bruges soon after his own ascent to the papal throne in 1294, and so close was the relationship between the two that many still wonder whether the friar was in fact the author of  the infamous Bull Unam Sanctam. It would be dif ficult and probably unnecessary to prove Giles’ authorship of  the Bull, his De ecclesiastica potestate (c. 1302) has long been considered

43 Dante mentioned Giles’ De Regimine Principium in Conv., V. xxiv. 9. In his mirror for the prince, the Augustinian had shown a much more moderate position arguing in favour of  Aristotelian political philosophy to educate the prince of  France entrusted to him by Philip II of  France (later Philip V). A brief  bibliographical note from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of  Philosophy might be useful here: ‘between 1281 and 1284 Giles played an important role in the government of  his Order, taking part in various chapters held in Italy. At the provincial chapter of  Tuscania (nowadays in Lazio, Italy) in 1285 he acted as vicar of  the prior general of  his Order, Clement of  Osimo […] the general chapter of  Florence decreed that Giles’ works (even future ones) should be considered as the of ficial doctrine of  the Order, to be defended by all Augustinian bachelors and masters. In 1292, at the General Chapter of  Rome he was elected prior general of  his Order. Benedict Caetani’s election to the papal See marked a further radical change in his career, as Boniface VIII appointed him archbishop of  Bourges in 1295. As a matter of  fact, Giles was very often absent from his See, spending extended periods of  time at the papal curia. In his De renuntiatione, he defended the legitimacy of  Celestine’s abdication, and, consequently, of  Boniface’s election. When the contrast between Boniface VIII and Philip IV reached its most critical point, he continued to side staunchly with the pope’ accessed 9 April 2013.

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as the theological text upon which Unam Sanctam was based.44 In the treatise, Giles systematically maintains the supreme authority of  the pope not only over the Church but also in the temporal sphere and defends this through et racio et res gesta et auctoritas.45 Following in the steps of  Giles, the Augustinian theologian James of  Viterbo also wrote in support of  the hierocratic theory promoted by Boniface. His De Regimine Christiano is in fact a commentary on Unam Sanctam written in 1302 which echoes Giles’ extreme positions, bringing new arguments in favour of papal supremacy. There is little doubt that Boniface’s (and subsequently Clement V’s) promotion of  the order and its key figures was ‘a reward for the support the Augustinians were providing during the pope’s dispute with Philip IV over control of  the French Church’.46 There was probably more to the ecclesiology of  these Augustinian theologians than Machiavellian calculation, yet it is not dif ficult to see why, given their troubles, it made sense for them to join their ef forts to those of  the Vatican oligarchy. If it is true, as Dante 44 Francisco Bertelloni maintains that there are profound dif ferences between the concepts of papal power that inspire the two texts (‘Sobre las fuentes de la bula Unam Sanctam (Bonifacio VIII y el De ecclesiastica potestate de Egidio Romano)’, Pensiero Politico Medievale, 2 (2004), 89–122). See also Luna’s comments on a sermon written by Giles and delivered at the papal curia before the publication of  the Unam Sanctam: C. Luna, ‘Un nuovo documento del conf litto tra Bonifacio VII e Filippo il Bello: il discorso De potentia domini pape di Egidio Romano’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 3 (1992), 167–243; Roberto Lambertini, ‘Il sermo De potestate domini papae di Egidio Romano e la difesa di Bonifacio VIII: acquisizioni e prospettive della storiografia piu recente’, in Le culture di Bonifacio VIII. Atti del Convegno organizzato nell’ambito delle Celebrazioni per il VII Centenario della morte, Bologna 13–15 dicembre 2004 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2006), pp. 93–108. 45 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power. The De ecclesiastica potestate of  Aegidius Romanus, trans. by R. W. Dyson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), part 1, ch. vi, p. 36. Note here the similarity between Giles’ definition of  his own method and Dante’s terminology: ‘pluribus et diversis argumentis moventur; que quidem de de Sacra Scriptura et de quibusdam gestis tam summi Pontificis quam ipsius Imperatoris, nonnullum vero rationis indicium habere nituntur’ (Mon., III. iv. 1). 46 Andrews, The Other Friars, p. 93.

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himself seems to af firm, that his own discourse on the Church is a response to the ecclesiology of  his time, there are probably good reasons to believe that, albeit not exclusively, these are the theologians whom Dante is criticizing in Monarchia III. iii. 8 for their obstinata cupiditas. Cupiditas could refer here to both personal gains and to those secured by the Austin friars for supporting Boniface and his successors. Giles’ and James’ treatises also ‘movent litigium’ against the divine right of  the monarch (supported by Dante in the first two books of  the Monarchia) and maintain that the pope, whose absolute power descends from God, simply delegates (ad nutum) the temporal ‘sword’ to lay sovereigns in order to devote himself  to his allimportant religious duties.47 So extreme is their justification of  the pope’s plenitudo potestatis,48 that in their works, even the Pauline and Augustinian theories on the inheritance of  God’s kingdom acquired through sacraments were transformed into an argument to submit the temporal to the spiritual. Giles of  Rome for example dedicated two lengthy paragraphs of  his De ecclesiastica potestate (II. vii–viii) to the discussion of spiritual inheritance rights, claiming that since there was no salvation outside the Church, there could be no dispensation of  God’s inheritance without her

47 Interestingly Giles opens his treatise with an emphasis on ignorance: ‘Capitulum I: In quo est prologus huius libri, declarans quod, ne ignoremur Domino, non debemus Summi Pontificis potestatem ignorare. summo opera debemos ignoranciam fugere, et potentissime illorum nescienciam […] que fidem edificat atque mores’ (Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, I. i, p. 4). This opening reverberates with the opening of  Mon., III. iii. 1–3: ‘In introitu ad questionem hanc notare oportet quod prime questionis veritas magis manifestanda fuit ad ignorantiam tollendam, quam ad tollendum litigium; sed que fuit secunde questionis, quasi equaliter ad ignorantiam et litigium se habebat: multa etenim ignoramus de quibus non litigamus. […] Huius quidem tertie questionis veritas tantum habet litigium, ut, quemadmodum in aliis ignorantia solet esse causa litigii, sic et hic litigium causa ignorantie sit magis’. 48 Cassell rightly underlines that ‘involvement in direct power over temporals worried […] the later hierocrats’ who cited Bernard’s De consideratione to warn the popes against secular af fairs’ (The Monarchia Controversy, p. 212). This preoccupation led the Augustinian Giles to stress the concept of papal voluntary delegation (ad nutum) of earthly power. Yet there can be no doubt that the hierocrats advocated the sovereignty of  the pope over creation as a whole.

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involvement. But because God is considered lord of all things, material and spiritual, the notion of inheritance is here stretched to both spiritual gifts and earthly possessions. If man owns the material world through God, then, Giles maintains, ‘hereditatem tuam et omne dominium tuum et omnem possessionem tuam magis debes recognoscere ab ecclesia’ [you should acknowledge that your inheritance and all your lordship and all you have come from the Church and through the Church].49 Seeing as the Church and the pope are synonymous in Giles’ mind, all God-given inheritance belongs to the pope to whom ‘omnes debent esse subiecti, sive reges quasi precellens sive quicmque alii’.50 Both Giles and James utilized traditional hermeneutical strategies which drew on the fathers and the holy doctors in order to explain the biblical text, yet Dante seems to attack them for their mis-interpretation of  both the authorial intention and the literal sense of  the Bible. In his eyes, the ecclesiologies he is competing against are the result of  bad reading practices which stretch the mystical sense beyond plausibility. In fact, to uphold his criticism, Dante illustrates the ways in which allegorical interpretation can go wrong: ‘quod circa sensum misticum dupliciter errare contingit: aut querendo ipsum ubi non est, aut accipiendo aliter quam accipi debeat’ [it must be borne in mind that one can make two kinds of error when dealing with the mystical sense: either looking for it where it does not exist, or taking it in some inadmissible way].51 By accusing his opponents of  hermeneutical failure, Dante launches a heavy-handed attack on the well-trained Austin theologians. All the more so if we consider that to back his understanding of  hermeneutical rules Dante quotes the teaching of  Augustine (whose name is the only one to feature amongst those who, according to Dante, have authority through divine inspiration in Monarchia III. iii. 13): Propter primum dicit Augustinus in Civitate Dei: ‘Non omnia que gesta narrantur etiam significare aliquid putanda sunt, sed propter illa que aliquid significant etiam ea que nichil significant actexuntur. Solo vomere terra proscinditur; sed ut hoc fieri

49 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, II. vii (pp. 140–41). 50 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, I. v (p. 22). 51 Mon., III. iv. 6.

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If, according to Augustine, not all biblical passages can be interpreted mystically, when mystic senses are detected, the exegete must respect the intentio auctoris, and avoid the risk of  bad or over-interpretation. The passage is of great significance. The presence of  Augustine seems to support my suggestion that Dante is specifically targeting the ecclesiological textual tradition of  the Augustinian friars. Dante entertained a life-long dialogue with the great theologian, yet Augustine was rarely openly quoted by the poet. Direct quotations from the Confessions appear in Convivio (in Conv., I. ii. 14 and I. iv. 9),52 whereas the De civitate Dei and De doctrina christiana are mentioned only in the passages here under discussion (Mon., III. iv. 7; III. iv. 8).53 Why is Augustine so openly paraded here? There are probably 52 53

Dante also quotes Augustine’s De Quantitate Animae in Ep. XIII. 80. On Augustine and language see: Elena Lombardi, The Syntax of  Desire: Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae, Dante (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007). Unfortunately I have been unable to see: Simone Marchesi, Dante and Augustine: Linguistics, Poetics, Hermeneutics (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2011). On Augustine in Dante see also: Francesco Tateo, ‘Percorsi agostiniani in Dante’, Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, 76 (2001), 43–56; John Took, ‘Dante and the Confessions of  Augustine’, Annali d’Italianistica, 8 (1990), 360–82; Cesare Vasoli, ‘Agostino nel Convivio e nella Monarchia’, Moderni e Antichi. Quaderni del Centro di studi sul classicismo, 2–3 (2004–05), 263–84. For Augustine’s political theory see Robert A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of  St Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

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several reasons. First of all, as one might expect, the Austin theologians had made extensive use of  Augustine’s authority to support their views; in particular they relied heavily on his negative treatment of  human justice and (Roman) government.54 On the other hand, what Dante appears to be suggesting is that, unlike him, the Austin friars had ignored the teaching of  their ‘guardian’. As highlighted in the following instance, Augustine had often underlined that the authority of  the Church must be found first and foremost in Scripture: ‘in iis enim quae aperte in Scripturis posita sunt, inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi, spem scilicet atque caritatem, de quibus libro superiore tractavimus’ [for among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of  life, to wit, hope and love, of which I have spoken in the previous book].55 As well as being an attack on the Augustinian hierocrats, Dante’s use of  the Bishop of  Hippo as an authority might also point to the fact that his 54 For example, Giles of  Rome quotes De civitate Dei IV. iv to support his claim that all power comes from the pope. Like other hierocrats Giles also maintains that in the Old Testament Samuel’s appointment of  Saul shows that religious authorities pre-date secular ones: ‘Et si primus rex in populo fideli fuit de mandato Domini per sacerdocium constitutes, intelligere debent omnes posteriores reges quod vel non regnant ut mandavit Dominus, vel debent se recognoscere quod sunt in regimine hominum et gubernacione fidelium per Ecclesiam constituiti: ut puta, quia sunt per Ecclesiam regenerati. Aliter enim non essent veri reges, cum apud infidels non sunt vera regna sed magis, secundum sentanciam Augustini, sunt quedam magna latrocinia. Ipsi ergo fideles sunt per ecclesiam constituiti reges’: Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, III. ii (p. 284). Quoted at least twenty-six times, Augustine is the most cited authority after the Bible in Giles’ treatise. As noted by Arnas, Giles quotes Augustine and writes in an Augustinian ‘style’ but ‘es evidente para San Agustín que todo poder procede de Dios así como la mayor dignidad de la Iglesia respecto del poder temporal por tener a su cargo las cosas divinas. Pero esta mayor dignidad de lo espiritual no supone que el poder temporal, cuyo origen divino nadie discute, derive del poder eclesiástico, proceda de la autoridad espiritual’: Pedro Roche Arnas, ‘Dos poderes, una autoridad: Egidio Romano o la culminación del pensamiento teocrático medieval cristiano’ in El Pensamiento politico, pp. 113–40 (p. 118). 55 Augustine, De doctrina christiana libri quator, PL 34, coll. 15–122, II. ix. 14. See also De civ. Dei, XI. iii.

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ecclesiology derives from Augustine himself, at least as far as the principles of  his spiritual theology of  the church are concerned. These principles are essential to ascertain what Dante considered to be the correct interpretation of  the role and nature of  the church whilst, at the same time, singling out the dangerous errors af fecting the theological discourse of others. Augustine had clearly set out guidelines for the interpretation of  the Scriptures in the De doctrina christiana. Books I, II and III are a careful study of signs and their interpretation and of fer guidance on how to solve ambiguity of meaning in the study of  the Bible. The guiding principle of  Augustine’s discussion is that, so long as they do not oppose sound doctrine, all interpretations are acceptable (De doctrina christiana, III. xxvi), but consistency as well as virtue is essential to understand the Scriptures properly. Augustine also emphasizes the need for proper motives, namely to establish the rule of charity.56 Following Augustine’s methodology Dante seeks to expose the hierocrats as malicious supporters of sophisms that subvert the truth about ecclesiology because they are pursuing non-Christian principles, namely that the foundation and authority of  the Church is the pope. By adhering to the Augustinian rule that ‘qua cavemus figuratam locutionem, id est translatam quasi propriam sequi, adiungenda etiam illa est, ne propriam quasi figuratam velimus accipere’ [we must also pay heed to that which tells us not to take a literal form of speech as if it were figurative],57 Monarchia III shows how the Austin friars and the papalist writers assigned figurative meaning to Scripture in ways which accommodated and justified Vatican politics. A good example of  Dante’s procedure, which is both exegetical and polemical, is found in his treatment of one of the most recurrent hierocratic arguments based on the biblical episode concerning the ‘two swords’ in 56 ‘Regula in figuratis locutionibus servanda proponitur. Sic eversa tyrannide cupiditatis caritas regnat iustissimis legibus dilectionis Dei propter Deum, sui et proximi propter Deum. Servabitur ergo in locutionibus figuratis regula huiusmodi, ut tam diu versetur diligenti consideratione quod legitur, donec ad regnum caritatis interpretatio perducatur. Si autem hoc iam proprie sonat, nulla putetur figurata locutio’ (De doctrina christiana, III 15, 23). 57 De doctrina christiana, III. x. 14.

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the Gospel of  Luke (22. 35–38).58 Dante sums up the papalist argument, reinforced by Unam Sanctam,59 quite neatly: Accipiunt etiam illud Luce, quod Petrus dixit Cristo, cum ait ‘Ecce duo gladii hic’; et dicunt, quod per illos duos gladios duo predicta regimina intelliguntur, que quidem Petrus dixit esse ibi ubi erat, hoc est apud se: unde arguunt illa duo regimina secundum auctoritatem apud successorem Petri consistere. (Mon., III. ix. 1) [They also take those words spoken by Peter to Christ in Luke, when he says: ‘Behold, here are two swords’; and they maintain that by those two swords we are to understand the two powers mentioned earlier, which Peter said were present wherever he was (i.e. belonged to him); and from this they argue that those two powers as far as their authority is concerned reside with Peter’s successor.]

In the hands of  the curia Luke 22. 38 had become a key passage to explain the jurisdictional scope of  the Church’s ministry and a potent biblical argument in defence of  the pope’s plenitudo potestatis. Interestingly, Giles of  Rome dedicated several chapters to the significance of  the gospel’s ‘swords’. At the end of  Book II of  his De ecclesiastica potestate,60 following a wide-ranging discussion, Giles clarifies ‘quomodo per duos gladios in Evangelio nominatos figurantur duo gladii qui sunt Ecclesia’ (II. xv) [how the two swords which are in the Church are represented by the two swords mentioned in the Gospel]. He admits that the swords mentioned in the Gospel can be considered either literally or figuratively, and goes on to 58

‘Et dixit eis quando misi vos sine sacculo et pera et calciamentis numquid aliquid defuit vobis at illi dixerunt nihil dixit ergo eis sed nunc qui habet sacculum tollat similiter et peram et qui non habet vendat tunicam suam et emat gladium dico enim vobis quoniam adhuc hoc quod scriptum est oportet impleri in me et quod cum iniustis deputatus est etenim ea quae sunt de me finem habent at illi dixerunt Domine ecce gladii duo hic at ille dixit eis satis est’. 59 For a good summary of  the ‘two swords’ argument used by hierocrats and imperialists alike see: J. A. Watt, ‘Spiritual and Temporal Powers’, in The Cambridge History of  Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450, ed. by J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 367–423 (pp. 370–90). 60 For an analysis of  Giles of  Rome’s treatment of  the two swords image see: Arnas, ‘Dos Poderes’. On Giles see also the important introduction to his English translation of  De potestate ecclesiastica by R. W. Dyson, On Ecclesiastical Power, pp. xi–xxxiv.

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explore the biblical passage from both perspectives. His figural interpretation does not dif fer from the standard papalist use summarized by Dante and first introduced in the Dictatus papae of  Pope Gregory VII. On the other hand, Giles’s literal interpretation of  the passage is trivializing and negative: Nam si illi duo gladii considerantur non secundum figuram sed secundum rem, sic responsio Domini erat ironica et derisiva, quia ad defendendum discipulos, si volebant inniti auxilio humano, forte mille gladdii non suf fecissent eis.61 [For if  these two swords are considered not figuratively, but literally, then the Lord’s reply was ironic and mocking because, if  they wished to rely upon human aid, perhaps a thousand swords would not have suf ficed for the defence of  the disciples.]

Indeed the same interpretation had been advanced by the Greek Fathers, as recorded by Thomas Aquinas in the Catena Aurea,62 but their

61 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, II. xv (p. 266). 62 It is worth quoting a large section of  the Catena to show the real concerns of  the exegetes of  Luke. No traditional exegete ever mentioned the possibility of interpreting the swords in a political fashion: ‘Basilius. Vel dominus non iubet portare marsupium et peram et emere gladium; sed praedicit futurum, quod scilicet apostoli obliti temporis passionis, donorum et legis domini, auderent sumere gladios: saepius enim Scriptura utitur imperativa sermonis specie loco prophetiae. In pluribus tamen libris non invenitur accipiat, tollat, vel emat; sed tollet et emet. Theophylactus. Vel per hoc praenuntiat eis quod incurrerent famem et sitim, quod innuit per peram; et adversitates nonnullas, quod innuit per gladium. Vel aliter. Quod dominus dicit qui habet sacculum, tollat similiter et peram, videtur sermo ad discipulos fieri; sed revera respicit quamlibet Iudaei personam; quasi dicat: si quis Iudaeorum abundat facultatibus, congestis omnibus fugiat; si autem quis ultima oppressus penuria colit regionem, hic etiam amictum vendat et gladium emat: invadet enim eos intolerabilis impetus pugnae, ut nihil ad resistendum suf ficiat. Deinde pandit horum malorum causam: quia scilicet passus est poenam profanis debitam, cum latronibus crucifixus. Et cum ad hoc perventum fuerit, sumet finem verbum dispensationis; persecutoribus autem accident quae a prophetis sunt praedicta. Haec igitur dominus praedixit de futuris regioni Iudaeorum; sed discipuli non intelligebant profunditatem dictorum, putantes ob futurum proditoris insultum gladiis opus esse; unde sequitur at illi dixerunt: domine, ecce duo gladii hic. At ille dixit eis: satis est. Chrysostomus.

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emphasis had been on the apostles’ inability to understand Christ’s prophecy regarding their dif ficult future. In fact, all exegetes had noted that whereas Christ had asked his apostles to get ready to defend themselves with courage (the sword), Peter had unwisely brandished two real weapons. In fact, none of  the Greek interpreters had suggested that on account of its ironic hints the passage could not be read literally. That Peter answered Christ’s call by displaying two swords clearly showed the apostles’ blindness to the events that were taking place, but Christ’s answer, ‘Satis est’, simply acknowledged their confusion. The Latin Fathers had been less certain about Peter’s misunderstanding of  Christ’s speech. Bede had conceded such a possibility, but did not consider Christ’s response as ironic; on the contrary he had deemed Jesus’ and Peter’s references to swords as pointing either at the disciples’ gift to resist future persecutions, or at their teacher’s love for suf fering. In both cases, Bede considered Luke 22. 38 as a passage detailing the qualities of  the future Church: the faith, humility and charity of  both Christ and his disciples. Ambrose of fered a somewhat less complex view claiming that Christ’s response to Peter had not been ironic.

Et quidem si humano eos volebat uti auxilio, nec centum suf ficerent gladii; quod si nolebat eos uti humano subsidio, etiam duo supervacui sunt. Theophylactus. Noluit ergo dominus eos reprehendere quasi non intelligentes; sed dicens satis est, eos dimisit. Quidam autem dicunt, dominum ironice dixisse satis est; quasi dicat: ex quo duo sunt gladii, suf ficiant nobis ad tantam multitudinem quanta nos debet invadere. Beda. Vel duo gladii suf ficiunt ad testimonium sponte passi salvatoris: unus qui et apostolis audaciam pro domino certandi et domino virtutem medicandi doceret inesse; alter qui nequaquam vagina exemptus, ostenderet eos nec totum quod potuere pro eius facere defensione permissos. Ambrosius. Vel quia lex referire non vetat, fortasse Petro duos gladios of ferenti satis esse dicit, quasi licuerit usque ad Evangelium; ut sit in lege aequitatis eruditio, in Evangelio bonitatis perfectio. Est etiam gladius spiritalis ut vendas patrimonium, et emas verbum quo mentis penetralia vestiuntur. Est etiam gladius passionis ut exuas corpus, et immolatae carnis exuviis ematur tibi sacra corona martyrii. Movet adhuc quod duos gladios discipuli protulerunt: ne forte unum novi, unum veteris testamenti sit, quibus adversus Diaboli armamur insidias. Deinde dicit dominus satis est, quasi nil desit ei quem utriusque testamenti doctrina munierit.’ Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea. Expositio in Lucam, Textum Taurini 1953, cap. 22 l. 10 accessed 9 April 2013.

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Following the Latin Fathers, Dante analyses the narrative structure of  Luke 22. 38 and considers the context and the psychology of  the characters who are part of  the story of  the Last Supper in order to attack what he considered a papalist sophism. More specifically, the exegetical procedure adopted by Dante aimed at demolishing the allegorical interpretations prof fered by the pope’s allies, who read ‘illos duos gladios, quos assignavit Petrus’ as the spiritual and temporal ‘regimina’. This interpretation, Dante explains, cannot be accepted ‘quia illa responsio non fuisset ad intentionem Cristi’ (Mon., III. ix. 2) [that reply would have been at odds with Christ’s intention]. To ascertain the meaning of  the words, the poet’s explanation follows a careful examination of  Luke’s text, which takes full advantage of  his literary understanding of  texts as coherent and independent structures that are built to generate literal meaning. According to Christ, the sword, Dante comments in accordance with the Fathers, was a metaphor for the battles that the apostles would have to fight for the salvation of  humanity after the Passion.63 Furthermore, Dante goes on to af firm something I have been unable to find in other sources: In quo satis aperte intentio Cristi manifestatur; non enim dixit ‘ematis vel habeatis duos gladios’ ymo duodecim, cum ad duodecim discipulos diceret ‘qui non habet emat’ – ut quilibet haberet unum. (Mon., III. ix. 6) [From this Christ’s meaning is clear enough; for he did not say: ‘Buy or obtain two swords’, but twelve, since he said to the twelve apostles ‘he that hath no sword, let him buy one’, so that each of  them might have one.]

Dante’s explanation adds an interesting logical step to the traditional interpretation, and in so doing it underlines how the numerological interpretations of  Luke 22. 38 of fered by all ‘political’ writers might ultimately be arbitrary. In the text, Christ refers to twelve swords, Dante notes, while Peter’s reply refers to two swords (‘ecce gladii duo hic’). This prompts 63

‘Et hoc etiam dicebat premonens eos pressuram futuram et despectum futurum erga eos, quasi diceret: “Quousque fui vobiscum, recepti eratis; nunc fugabimini. Unde oportet vos preparare vobis etiam ea que iam prohibui vobis propter necessitate”’ (Mon., III. ix. 7).

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Christ’s rebuke: ‘Satis est’ [that is enough]. Numerical precision, Dante will comment, is not at the centre of  Jesus’ message. What matters instead is first of all Jesus’ warnings about the hard battles of  the future, and second Peter’ misunderstanding of  his message. Yet instead of  highlighting the possible ironic overtones of  the episode, as Giles had done, Dante investigates the nature of  Peter’s exclamation to show how Christ’s response was dictated by love and forgiveness. Peter’s reaction, Dante says, was ‘festina et inpremeditata’ (Mon., III. ix. 9) [hasty and impulsive] in full accordance with the Gospel description of  the simple and ingenuous nature of  the apostle’s character. The poet therefore defines Christ’s response not as ironic but forgiving: instead of reproaching Peter for his misapprehension, as he does in other sections of  the New Testament, Jesus lets it pass ‘quasi diceret: “Propter necessitatem dico; sed si quilibet habere non potest, duo suf ficere possunt”’ (Mon., III. ix. 8) [as though to say: ‘I say this because of your need; but if each of you cannot have one, two will suf fice’]. To reinforce his reading of  the episode, the poet composes a close analysis of  the character of  Peter, as an impulsive, superficial, but passionate speaker. The list of episodes is rather lengthy, as Dante says: Iuvat quippe talia de Archimandrita nostro in laudem sue puritatis continuasse, in quibus aperte deprehenditur quod, cum de duobus gladiis loquebatur, intentione simplici respondebat ad Cristum. (Mon., III. ix. 17) [It is helpful to have listed these episodes involving our Archimandrite in praise of  his ingenuousness, for they show quite clearly that when he spoke of  the two swords he was answering Christ with no deeper meaning in mind.]

The reasons for this list are several. First, Dante wants to show how to interpret the Bible correctly by observing Augustine’s rules on exegesis according to which ‘Ubi autem apertius ponuntur, ibi discendum est quo modo in locis intellegantur obscuris’ (De doctrina christiana, III. xxvi) [obscure passages are to be interpreted by those which are clearer]. This brings the poet-theologian to a daring conclusion: if  ‘Peter explains Peter’, that is to say, if  Peter’s behaviour in Luke 22. 38 is explained by Peter’s character as it emerges in other sections of  the Gospels, the number of  the swords he brandished in Luke 22. 38 did not necessarily mean much

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because the New Testament reveals how often Peter rambled on and misunderstood the spiritual meaning of  Christ’s language.64 More seriously however, Dante’s hermeneutical procedure has interesting theological repercussions because it points to how often Peter spoke incorrectly about doctrine thereby leaving his authority slightly blemished. Although Peter’s zeal is never denied in Monarchia III. ix, his mistakes are listed one by one, almost as if  Dante wished to draw attention to the fallible nature of  the first vicarius Christi. If  this was the poet’s intention, these paragraphs of  the Monarchia would have significant political overtones. Since Peter Olivi’s Questio on the infallibility of  the pope, the hierocrats had persistently defended the theory that the successor of  Peter could never err.65 Both Olivi’s and Giles of  Rome’s definitions of papal infallibility had considered the possibility of  human error in relation to the Pontif f (in dif ferent ways and for dif ferent purposes); in both their discussions, the pope ultimately emerged de of ficio as the ‘spiritualissimus [qui] omnia iudicat […] et ipse a nemine poterit iudicari’ [the most spiritual man who judges all things […] and will himself  be subject to the judgement of no one].66 In Giles’ words the pope is ‘a creature without halter and bridle’.67 Significantly both

64 One should note how this presentation of  Peter reverberates in Par., XXVII, where the blessed apostle is inf lamed by rage, thus showing the same impetuousness detailed by Dante in Mon., III. ix and Augustine’s sermons on the first pope. 65 The theory of papal infallibility was first discussed by Peter John Olivi, who, probably writing around 1280, included in his treatise De perfectionis evangelica a quaestio entitled ‘Whether the Roman pontif f is to be obeyed by all Catholics in faith and morals as an unerring rule’. The questio maintained that, on the basis of  the promise of  Jesus to Peter (Luke 22. 32), the pope cannot err in matters of  faith and doctrine. The origin of  the theory of papal infallibility has been magisterially studied by Brian Tierney, Origins of  Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350: A Study on the Concepts of  Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1972) (although see also for a dif ferent view Ulrich Horst, Papst-Konzil-Unfehlbarkeit: Die Ekklesiologie der Summenkommentare von Cajetan bis Billuart (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1978); idem., Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte: Studien zur Unfehlbarkeitsdiskussion von Melchior Cano bis zum I. Vatikanischen Konzil (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1982). 66 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, I iii, p. 12. 67 On Ecclesiastical Power, III. viiii (p. 361).

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Olivi’s and Giles of  Rome’s statements regarding the infallibility of the pope were dictated by their wish to protect their orders against the decisions of  future popes who could strip them of  the privileges granted by Boniface VIII.68 However to protect their side, both friars sanctioned one of  the most theocratic principles in relation to the concept of plenitudo potestatis of  the successor of  Peter. In particular Olivi’s treatise, although ultimately intended to guard the Church from an anti-pope (a pope not protected by the grace of  God), gave ammunition to later pronouncements on the infallibility of  the head of  the Church in matters of  Christian doctrine. In contrast, although never calling into question the primacy of  Peter, and in spite of  his respect for the Holy See, Dante seemed to wrestle all his life with the idea of papal error, even in matters of doctrine. It is suf ficient to quote Inferno XIX and XXVII or Paradiso XXVII, to observe how Dante, the self-appointed prophet, judged the popes of  his time and considered them guilty of idolatry, corruption, godlessness and betrayal of doctrine (namely on forgiveness and repentance). In the Monarchia, the naive mistakes of  the fallible Peter listed by the poet would seem to work as a negative commentary on the doctrine of infallibility, thereby leading to the conclusion that not only can the pope be judged (by Christ and by other Christians) for his personal failings, but he can also err in the interpretation

68 Olivi wanted to theorise the pope’s supreme authority in order to protect the position of  the Franciscan Order, and more importantly Nicholas III’s approval of  the Spirituals’ positions on absolute poverty. In other words Olivi wanted to preserve the validity of  Nicholas III’s decree Exiit (1279), which proposed a new doctrine of evangelical poverty. ‘This doctrine was very precious to Olivi, but it was so far from commanding the general assent of  the Church that Nicholas III forbade all discussion of it. When Pope John XXII revoked his predecessor’s ban in 1321, widespread opposition was expressed […] Now Olivi, on the basis of  his apocalyptic speculations, actually anticipated that in the near future a pseudo-pope would seek to revoke the doctrine of evangelical poverty asserted in Exiit. It was therefore of supreme importance for Olivi to assert that a true pope – and no one ever denied that Nicholas III was a true pope – was unerring in his pronouncements “on faith and morals”’ (Tierney, ‘John Peter Olivi’, p. 320). As I hope to argue in future work, these considerations should be taken into account when analysing Dante’s definition of pseudo-popes in the earthly paradise and Paradiso XXVII.

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of  Christ’s teaching and misunderstand the call of grace (Christ’s sword). Dante, of course, was not alone in considering Peter fallible; Ambrose and Augustine in particular, had insisted on his weaknesses and transformed the apostle into the prototype of a sinner reconciled with God through the workings of grace, an example of  how love of  God can save man in a moment of despair.69 Once again, as in Augustine, Dante’s Peter is fallible yet zealous; a martyr and a man and at the same time. I shall come back to Peter shortly. For now I should return to Monarchia III. x and note how Dante, content with the literal sense of  Luke 22. 38 he has established, adds a mystical interpretation possibly to prove that there are more plausible, and therefore correct, allegorical meanings for the two swords than those proposed by the hierocrats (i.e. temporal and spiritual authorities). In order to substantiate his reading, Dante once again turns to Augustinian exegetical rules and takes into consideration other occurrences of  the word ‘gladium’ attributed to Christ in the New Testament. Interestingly he ignores the incidences of  the word in the Old Testament, and only quotes those used by Christ in Matthew 10. 38.70 There, Christ’s references to a sword are considered by a long exegetical tradition as referring to the word of  God, or the action of  ‘docere verbum Dei’. From here Dante infers that the sword mentioned by Christ in Luke 22. 38 and the two swords mentioned by Peter can be seen as referring spiritually to the apostles who ‘ad verba enim et opera parati erant’ (Mon., III. ix. 19) [were ready both for the words and for the actions]. In this case, Dante’s exegesis 69 Augustine, following Origen, was fascinated by the character of  Peter, the loved apostle who is also addressed as ‘Satan’ by Jesus in Matt. 16:17–23. According to Augustine, ‘in Peter, weak in himself and strong only in his connection with Christ, the church could see the image of its own total dependence on God’s grace’: Karlfried Froehlich, ‘Saint Peter, Papal Primacy, and Exegetical Tradition, 1150–1300’, in The Religious Roles of  the Papacy: Ideals and Realities, 1150–1300, ed. by Christopher Ryan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Medieval Studies, 1989), pp. 3–45 (p. 9). 70 ‘Quod si verba illa Cristi et Petri typice sunt accipienda, non ad hoc quod dicunt isti trahenda sunt, sed referenda sunt ad sensum illius gladii de quo scribit Matheus sic: “Nolite ergo arbitrari quia veni mictere pacem in terram: non veni pacem mictere, sed gladium. Veni enim separare hominem adversus patrem suum”’ (Mon., III. ix. 18).

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seems to echo John of  Paris’ explanation but his procedure is original,71 and his overall strategy is to discredit the credibility of  the papalists’ allegorical interpretation, which seemed to disregard Augustine’s teaching on the relationship between doctrine and biblical interpretation. Monarchia III is intended to expose the theologians’ deafness to Augustine’s warning about the risks related to the abuse of sacred texts. Their readings ignore the example of  Christ who, as his scolding of  Peter shows, is always seen to reject interpretations which deny the principles of charity. Finally, in Dante’s eyes, the hierocratic Augustinians turn their backs to textual logical and rhetorical mechanisms which, if correctly analysed, can help establish the literal meaning of a narrative. In the following chapters of  Monarchia III, Dante continues to reply to the biblical, historical and philosophical arguments of mendicant theologians and curialists in a systematic way only to arrive to the most traditional of definitions on the ‘form’ or nature of  the Church: created as a remedy for man’s sin, the Bride of  God does not obey ‘the law of nature’ but that of divine grace and love. The biblical passage quoted by Dante to substantiate this well-established ecclesiological statement is nonetheless very significant: Unde, cum Ecclesia non sit ef fectus nature, sed Dei dicentis ‘Super hanc petram hedificabo Ecclesiam meam’, et alibi ‘Opus consummavi quod dedisti michi ut faciam’, manifestum est quod ei natura legem non dedit. (Mon., III. xiii. 3) [Thus, since the Church is not an ef fect of nature, but of  God who said: ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church’, and elsewhere: ‘I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do’, it is apparent that it is not nature which gave its law to the Church.]

As I have mentioned, the assertion does not appear to be controversial: no Christian would deny that according to the biblical narrative (Matt. 16. 18), it was God – through Christ – who laid down the first rock of  71

In his De ecclesiastica potestate, John of  Paris, had said the two swords were the ‘sword of  the word and the sword of impending persecution’, cited by Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, p. 330. John’s explanation is clearly closer to Dante’s than those of  the hierocrats and yet not the same.

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the Church. However, in theological and ecclesiological writings of  the time, what this rock may signify had become a matter of great theological importance, because it had a vital ef fect on the doctrinal understanding of  the foundation of  the Church. Unsurprisingly, Matthew 16. 18 generated widespread disagreement amongst exegetes who dealt with the dilemma engendered by the meaning to be attributed to petra.72 Notably, Augustine had first equated the petra with Peter as representative of  the whole community of  the faithful.73 However, he later retracted and considered Christ to be the cornerstone in question.74 This dual interpretation would survive 72 In addition to the general studies on the papacy so far quoted, see: Klautz Schatz, Papal Primacy: From its Origins to the Present (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996); Roberto Rusconi, Santo Padre: la santità del papa da San Pietro a Giovanni Paolo II (Rome: Viella, 2010). 73 ‘Tamquam diceret: Dixisti mihi, dico tibi. Quid? – Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam et portae inferorum non vincent eam. Tibi dabo claves regni caelorum. Quae ligaveris in terra, erunt ligata et in caelo; quae solveris in terra erunt soluta et in caelo. Videmus in Petro commendatam petram. Apostolus autem Paulus dicit de populo priore: Bibebant de spiritali consequente petra; petra autem erat Christus. Ergo iste discipulus a petra Petrus, quomodo a Christo Christianus. Quare ista volui praeloqui? Ut commendarem vobis in Petro Ecclesiam cognoscendam. Aedificavit enim Christus Ecclesiam non super hominem sed super Petri confessionem. Quae est confessio Petri? Tu es Christus filius Dei vivi. Ecce petra, ecce fundamentum, ecce ubi est Ecclesia aedificata quam portae inferorum non vincunt. Quae sunt portae inferorum, nisi superbia haereticorum?’ (Augustine, Sermo 229, 1–5). 74 ‘[D]ixi quodam loco de apostolo Petro, quod in illo tamquam in petra fundata sit Ecclesia, qui sensus etiam cantatur ore multorum in versibus beatissimi Ambrosii, ubi de gallo gallinacio ait: Hoc ipse petra Ecclesiae canente, culpam diluit. Sed scio me postea saepissime sic exposuisse quod a Domino dictum est: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, ut super hunc intellegeretur quem confessus est Petrus dicens: Tu es Christus filius Dei vivi, ac sic Petrus ab hac petra appellatus personam Ecclesiae figuraret, quae super hanc petram aedificatur et accepit claves regni caelorum. Non enim dictum illi est: “Tu es petra”, sed: Tu es Petrus. Petra autem erat Christus; quem confessus Simon, sicut eum tota Ecclesia confitetur, dictus est Petrus. Harum autem duarum sententiarum quae sit probabilior, eligat lector’ (Retractationum Libri Duo, PL 32, I 20, 1). He maintains this position also in sermones 229 1 and 26. ‘Augustine rigorously separated the name-giving from

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throughout the centuries, even though the majority of  the western medieval exegetes (from Rabanus Maurus to Aquinas and Bonaventure) would agree with the view of  the later Augustine. The identification of  Peter with the rock, however, survived and its resonance became more prominent in the literature produced by the curia. As we know, the theological ramifications of such dif ferent viewpoints were enormous. Reading the rock as Jesus was of  fundamental importance to maintain that the institution of  the Church was divine, and not human, in origin. This, however, would make it impossible to identify the power and role of  Peter with that of  Christ. On the other hand those who considered the rock to be Peter could use this as evidence of  the unique privilege granted to the apostle and his authority. They could also use it, as Leo the Great had, to claim and establish the principles of papal succession and primacy on the day of  his elevation to the papacy.75 Overall, ‘thirteenth-century scholastic readings of  Matthew 16:18 neither reject nor suggest the idea of  Petrine primacy, let alone papal primacy’,76 but within papalist circles Matthew 16. 18 was read along with Luke 22. 32 and John 21. 15–17 to support the Vatican’s move towards centralization and absolutism. To an extent the uncertainties regarding the interpretation of  this passage led to it to being used loosely. Giles of  Rome, for example, did not deny the common interpretation of  Matthew 16. 18, because he understood the importance of preserving the belief in the divine origin of  the Church, but he expanded on the verse as follows: ‘Tu igitur Petrus, qui a me petra nomen accepisti, totam Ecclesiam super me fundatam reges et gubernavis. Tu pasces oves its explanation: Christ did not say to Peter: “you are the rock” but “you are Peter.” The Church is not built upon Peter but upon the only true rock, Christ. Augustine and the medieval exegetes after him found the warrant for this interpretation in 1 Cor. 10. 4. The allegorical key of  this verse had already been applied to numerous biblical rock passages in the earlier African testimonial tradition. Matt. 16. 8 was no exception. If  the metaphor of  the rock did not refer to a negative category of  “hard” rocks, it had to be read christologically’ (Froehlich, ‘Saint Peter, Papal Primacy, and Exegetical Tradition, 1150–1300’, pp. 8–9). 75 Leo the Great, Sermo III, PL 54. 76 Tackashi Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 218.

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meas’ [And so you Peter, who have received from me the name ‘Rock’ will rule and govern the whole Church founded upon me. You will feed my sheep].77 Nowhere in Matthew 16. 18, is there a hint of issues of government or hierarchy; yet Giles’ reference to John 21. 15–17 added a ‘political’ dimension to the passage, and led him to maintain that ‘all the power that Christ has given to the Church he has given it to the Pope to wield it as a monarch’.78 Significantly, John’s verse was also quoted by Boniface in his Unam Sanctam and then repeated verbatim by Giles: Igitur ecclesiae unius et unicae unum corpus, unum caput, non duo capita, quasi monstrum, Christus videlicet et Christi vicarius, Petrus, Petrique successor, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: ‘Pasce oves meas’ [ John 21. 17]. Meas, inquit, generaliter, non singulariter has vel illas: per quod commisisse sibi intelligitur universas. Sive ergo Graeci sive alii se dicant Petro ejusque successoribus non esse commissos: fateantur necesse est, se de ovibus Christi non esse, dicente Domino in Joanne, unum ovile et unicum esse pastorem. [ John 10. 16]79 [Therefore, of  the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of  Christ, Peter and the successor of  Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: ‘Feed my sheep’ [ John 21. 17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if  the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of  Christ, since Our Lord says in John ‘there is one sheepfold and one shepherd’.]

My brief excursus into the uses and abuses of  the petra-petrus topos should illuminate the complex debate which the poet tried to address in Monarchia III. xiii. 3 and more specifically the modalities of  his attack on what he judged as abhorrent uses of  Scripture in current ecclesiological writing. In this regard, it should be noted that throughout the book, when quoting Matthew 16. 18, the poet completely omits any reference to Peter.

77 Giles of  Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, II, iv, p. 92. 78 Dyson, ‘Introduction’, in On Ecclesiastical Power, p. xxvi. 79 Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam accessed 9 April 2013.

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Instead the text is used only to prove the divine nature of  the Church and therefore its spiritual concerns as opposed to its worldly ones. That Dante’s omission is intentional seems to be confirmed by that fact that his Christological interpretation of  the rock had already come to the surface in chapter ten of  Monarchia III, where, following Augustine, he quotes Paul to gloss Matthew 16. 18: Nam Ecclesie fundamentum Christus est; unde Apostolus ad Corinthios: ‘Fundamentum aliud nemo potest ponere preter id quod positum est, quod est Christus Iesus’. Ipse est petra super quam hedificata est Ecclesia. (Mon., III. x. 7) [For the foundation of  the Church is Christ; hence the Apostle in Corinthians says: ‘For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ He is the rock on which the Church is built.]

By the same token, Dante uses John 21. 17 (quoted by Boniface and Giles to define the pope’s power), but defuses its political overtones by including it in his own definition on the true spiritual nature of  the Church in Mon., III. xv. 3.80 Here Dante looks in scholastic terms at the substantial form of ecclesia, that is to say at the form through which the Church can be considered as the universal Church not subject to accidental and qualified forms. This form is not a set of uses or traditions approved by the Church, nor even a set of structures and infrastructures, nor the norms of  the Decretum, but the example given by Christ to the Church Militant, to its shepherds and especially to the pope (pastor summus): Forma autem Ecclesie nichil aliud est quam vita Christi, tam in dictis quam in factis comprehensa: vita enim ipsius ydea fuit et exemplar militantis Ecclesie, presertim pastorum, maxime summi, cuius est pascere agnos et oves. Unde ipse in Iohanne

80 Clearly in Inf., XIX. 14, the infernal landscape made of  ‘pietra livida’ has been considered as an inverted parody of  the rock upon which the Church is said to be built in the gospel: see especially Scott, ‘The Rock of  Peter’. This reading does not seem to contrast with the position of  Monarchia on Peter. In Inferno XIX, the rock could refer more generally to the Church, or, more interestingly, could allude to the hierocrats’ reading of  Matthew 16. 18. In other words, the popes who claimed to be the rock of  the Church are trapped in rock for eternity.

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The statement is clear: Dante acknowledges the primacy of  Peter and even his succession, but only as far as his of fice is concerned. The of fice however is to imitate Christ, live the gospel, and provide a good example. John 21. 17 is not a declaration of potestas universalis but a spiritual rule for the pope, the clergy and the Church Militant as a whole. My examination of  biblical uses in Monarchia III could and should continue but further examples would add little to the general understanding of  Dante’s ecclesiology. As is well known to Dante scholars, the message of  Book III is ultimately simple and clearly expressed from its incipit: the pope is ‘aliquo Dei vicario vel ministro, quem Petri successorem intelligo, qui vere claviger est regni celorum’ (Mon., III. i. 5) [some vicar or minister of  God, by which I mean Peter’s successor, who assuredly holds the keys to the kingdom of  heaven]. The pope’s authority is limited to his spiritual ministry, and, as Dante will observe later, this responsibility is also shared with bishops and priests alike.81 In political terms the poet’s ecclesiology

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‘Item assummunt de lictera eiusdem illud Cristi ad Petrum: “Et quodcunque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in celis; et quodcunque solveris super terram erit solutum et in celis”; quod etiam omnibus apostolis est dictum’ (Mon., III. viii. 1). This position is, in fact, quite striking, given that the hierocrats had completely denied the possibility of reading this verse of  Matthew 16 as a lessening of  the pope’s total authority. See, from this perspective, Innocent III’s use of  the passage in his Sermo III. De consacratione pontificie, PL 217, coll. 653–60, especially, 658–59.

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is still largely Gelasian.82 He believes in the existence and independence of powers and ministries and in the overall superiority of spiritual happiness over worldly concerns; but from a mystical point of view, Dante’s ecclesial thought is traditionally Augustinian and very close to the interpretation of  Bonaventure. The fundamenta ecclesiae are Christ and his example of  humility and charity. However equally important for the survival of  the Church is the correct study and understanding of  Scripture, because, as Dante shows in his quotation of  De doctrina christiana I. 37, ‘titubabit fides, si Divinarum Scripturarum vacillat autoritas’ [Faith will waver if  the authority of  the Holy Scriptures is shaken] (cited by Dante at Mon., III. iv. 9). This statement is essential to the understanding of  the Monarchia and its ecclesiology; the treatise is written under the aegis of  this Augustinian maxim, and attacks not only the sinful popes but also those who, having read and quoted Augustine extensively in their texts (above all Augustinian doctors), distort Scripture and in so doing abuse the Holy Spirit.83 Ultimately what really motivates Dante’s systematic ecclesial discourse is the need to reveal the ignorance of other ecclesiologists whilst at the same time proposing the infallibility of  his own methodology, a methodology that generally leads him to consider most biblical passages quoted by the papalists (and indeed by most of  their adversaries) as erroneously used to describe the structure and organization of  the Church. The Bible, Dante claims, is only concerned with the spiritual life of  the Church, those who look to

82 Clearly this term is used here in a broad sense. For a very careful analysis of  the significant variations within this category, see Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, pp. 216–19. Cassell notes: ‘Dante is, of course, a “dualist” or, better, a “dual originist” in my use of  the term; however, as is evident, especially in Mon., 3:16, he works, sometimes distressingly, within the vicious stranglehold of what the Gelasian fabric had become, as did Uguccione da Pisa’ (p. 216). 83 ‘O summum facinus, etiamsi contingat in sompniis, ecterni Spiritus intentione abuti! Non enim peccatur in Moysen, non in David, non in Iob, non in Matheum, non in Paulum, sed in Spiritum Sanctum qui loquitur in illis. Nam quamquam scribe divini eloquii multi sint, unicus tamen dictator est Deus, qui beneplacitum suum nobis per multorum calamos explicare dignatus est’ (Mon., III. iv. 11).

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it for the justification of  their political theories will simply abandon the true path, which is Christ.84

Conclusions As I have tried to show, throughout Monarchia III, Dante demonstrates how little there is in the Bible that directly refers to practical matters of government. Instead he demonstrates how some of  the biblical passages used by the hierocrats relate to the spiritual rule of  the militant Church, to its nature and doctrina. What this doctrine declares, in Dante’s view, is that what pertains to the life of  the Church can only be in accordance with the principles endorsed by Christ: ‘Nam Ecclesie fundamentum Cristus est […] Modo dico quod, […] Ecclesie fundamento suo contrariari non licet, sed debet semper inniti super illud iuxta illud Canticorum “Que est ista, que ascendit de deserto delitiis af f luens, innixa super dilectum?”’ (Mon., III. x. 7–8) [For the foundation of  the Church is Christ […] Now I say that […] the Church is not allowed to act against its own foundation, but must always rest upon it, in accordance with those words in the Song of  Solomon: ‘Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, f lowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?’]. The biblical passage used by the poet in this occasion is once more of paramount importance. The verse is clearly taken from the Song of  Songs, the only text of  the Bible which had consistently attracted ecclesiological interpretations in Christian exegesis. The beautiful love poem musing about the relationship between a bride and her groom had persistently been read as the representation of  the alliance between Christ and the Church, God and his people. This allegory of  love

84 ‘[…] quod “ita fallitur ac si quisquam deserens viam eo tamen per girum pergeret quo via illa perducit”; et subdit: “Demonstrandum est ut consuetudine deviandi etiam in transversum aut perversum ire cogatur”’ (Mon., III. iv. 8).

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perfectly conforms to Augustine’s ecclesiological view, according to which the unfailing sign of  the Church’s holiness was caritas.85 Just as importantly, for the bishop of  Hippo, the principle of caritas was also an essential hermeneutical tool to preserve the truth of doctrine and distinguish between good and bad interpretations. In the passage from De doctrina christiana quoted by Dante, Augustine had in fact stated: Titubabit fides, si Divinarum Scripturarum vacillat autoritas. Porro fide titubante carita etiam ipsa languescit. Nam si a fide quisque ceciderit, a caritate etiam necesse est ut cadat. Non enim potest diligere quod esse non credit. (I. 37) [Now faith will totter if  the authority of  Scripture begin to shake. And then, if  faith totters, love itself will grow cold. For if a man has fallen from faith, he must necessarily also fall from love; for he cannot love what he does not believe to exist.]

The Church cannot go against its foundations, against the intention of  Christ, or against the Scriptures, because this will lead to the death of  faith and ultimately to the dissolution of  the bond of  love between God and his Church. Hermeneutical and ecclesiological statements cannot dif fer. Ultimately like Augustine, Dante embraces the same principle to combat what he considers heretical theories and readings which risked tearing the unity of  the Church apart. Unmistakably, the focus on caritas leads Dante to quote the Song of  Songs to define the holy conduct of ecclesia as firmly rooted in the love of  God. The Church for him is the bride of  God, and the poem he was completing at the time of  the Monarchia would regularly present it as such. The ecclesiology of  the Commedia is constructed mainly at the figurative level, through the power of images and the sweetness or bitterness of words. Dante fully exploits what Augustine had also acknowledged in relation to the Song of  Songs: that ‘its ef fectiveness […] in the realm of  human motivation’ made its figurative language and exegesis a

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powerful tool for directing the hearts of  the faithful to caritas and reprimanding the wicked at the same time.86 Dante’s ecclesiology follows a well-established tradition and is in many respects close to that of  Bonaventure, Augustine, Aquinas or Bernard. It is the hermeneutics of  the Church that matter to him. As Simone Sinn puts it: ‘the Church can be called a hermeneutical community because the understanding of  the scriptural message is at the centre of  the life of  the Christians. [Therefore] the church is hermeneutical with regard to her origin, her nature and her mission’.87 Appropriating words, especially divine words, requires hermeneutical discipline and method – whether the method proceeds by syllogism, as in the Monarchia, or by figurative imagery, as in the Commedia.

86 Cameron, ‘Augustine’s Use of  the Song of  Songs’, p. 104. See my ‘Caritas and ecclesiology’ for a detailed discussion of  the relationship between Dantean and Augustinian ecclesial principles. 87 ‘Hermeneutics and Ecclesiology’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, pp. 576–93 (pp. 576–77).

Ronald L. Martinez

Dante and the Poem of  the Liturgy

Consequences of  Liturgy for Dante’s Writing In one concise definition, liturgy is ‘communal worship according to prescribed forms’; it is even more succinctly described as ‘the Church at prayer’, translating the title of  A. G. Martimort’s monumental L’Eglise en prière. Proposing this last definition, Eileen Witz adds: ‘in unof ficial as well as of ficial modes, in vulgar tongues as well as in Latin, in private as well as in public’. For David Hiley, aiming at the intention of  liturgy, it consists of  ‘the communal forms of worship of  the Christian church, gathered together to praise and adore god […] and especially to relive in a symbolic way the events of  Christ’s life on earth, most importantly the last supper’.1 Hiley identifies the narrative centre of  Christian liturgy, the life and Passion of  Christ, which is commemorated in its totality in the year-long round, the circulum anni of  the Temporal of  the Of fice, and in the daily Mass: from Advent and Nativity to Epiphany, Lent and Easter, Ascension and Pentecost.2

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Eileen Witz, ‘The Liturgy and Vernacular Literature’, in, The Liturgy of  the Medieval Church, ed. by Thomas J. Hef fernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 2001), pp. 551–52; David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 2; Jean Leclercq, The Love of  Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of  Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), pp. 232–49. Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi are instituted as feasts only during Dante’s lifetime. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 196–97, reports that the liturgy of  the feast

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Sometimes referred to as epic exploits, the gesta salvatoris, Christ’s saving acts reach their climax in the death on the Cross and the Resurrection, the victory over death and Hell. Petrarch, perhaps thinking of  Dante’s poema sacro as well as of  Macrobius’s praise of  the Aeneid, describes David’s psalter, the substance of  the Of fice, in terms which link the poetic and the sacred.3 To Dante’s contemporaries and followers, Mass and Of fice re-enact the same heroic narrative, for Petrarch’s words recall those of  the late thirteenth-century liturgical exegete Durandus, who assimilates into his Rationale divinorum of ficiorum Innocent III’s description of  the Mass as a representation of  Christ’s life from his descent in Incarnation to his Ascension in glory.4 From this perspective, the pilgrim’s imitation of  the gesta of  Christ in the descent into Hell, and ascent beyond the stars, represents an intrinsically liturgical dimension to Dante’s poem. More fundamentally for the purposes of  this study and the volume in which it appears, the poem’s imitation of  liturgical action is a signal instance of  the how the poem’s theology is performed in narrative terms. Dante had opportunities to witness liturgical language and action not only at daily and Sunday masses, but in the cathedral (or secular) Of fice, in monastic Of fices attended or overheard, and at ceremonials such as litanies, funerals and the church dedications frequent in Florence in the last decades of  the thirteenth century. Laypersons owned psalters which

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was inserted in the Temporale of numerous Italian books early in the fourteenth century; in Venice, the feast was celebrated by 1295. ‘Sacrum illud poema quod beatum virum, scilicet Christum, canit nascentem morentem descendentem ad inferos resurgentem ascendentem reversurum’ (Familiares X. iv. 6–7, in Francesco Petrarca, Le familiari [Libri I–XI], trans. and ed. by Ugo Dotti, 2 vols (Urbino: Argalia, 1974), II. 1095–96). Petrarch, writing to his brother Gerardo about the liturgy, refers specifically to the Gallican psalter (not, as Dotti translates, to the whole Vulgate as well). For Petrarch’s words, see For Innocent’s account, see Guillaume Durand, Rationale divinorum of ficiorum, ed. by A. Davril and T. Thibodeau, 3 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995–2000) (henceforth Rationale), IV. i. 11: ‘ex quo de celo descendit usque dum in celum ascendit, gesta sunt magna ex parte contineat, et ea, tam verbis quam signis, admirabili quadam specie representat’. Christ’s exploit is also related in the Apostle’s Creed: ‘crucifixus, mortuus est, et sepultus, et descendit ad infera’.

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later gave way to Books of  Hours. Liturgy mediated entrance into life with baptism and exit from life with last rites and the Of fice for the Dead. Holy orders were a chief milestone for clerics, as was marriage for the laity, and because of processions, including the civic liturgies attending royal and imperial entrances, the yearly cycle was vividly memorable for all. Two of  the most widely read books of  the early fourteenth century, Jacobus da Varagine’s Legenda aurea and the Meditationes vitae Christi of  Johannes de Caulibus closely ref lect the liturgical parsing of  time in their organization: the arrangement of saints’ lives in the Legenda derives in part from the liturgical exegesis of  John Beleth, while the latter work co-ordinates meditation with the canonical Hours of  the day.5 But liturgy also decisively inf luenced the two great fourteenth-century vernacular literary monuments that register the inf luence of  Dante’s poem, Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Boccaccio’s Decameron: Petrarch strews his collection with poems marking the anniversity of  his first sight of  Laura on a Good Friday, while Boccaccio marks the onset of  the great plague of 1348 with the feast of  the Annunciation and the new Florentine year, and exploits liturgical parody to great comic ef fect throughout his collection.6

5

6

For the use made of  John Beleth (d. 1182) in Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, ed. by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols (Florence, SISMEL, 1998), see Thiboudeau in Rationale, III. 250–51. This aspect of  the work goes unmentioned in Sherry Reames, Legenda aurea: A Reexamination of its Paradixical History (Madison: University of  Wisconsin Press, 1985). For Petrarch in this respect, see my ‘Places and Times of  Liturgy in Dante and Petrarch’, in Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition, ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2009), pp. 320–49; for Boccaccio, see Victoria Kirkham, ‘Morale’, in the Lessico critico decameroniano, ed. by Renzo Bragantini and Pier Massimo Forni (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), pp. 249–68 (esp. pp. 264–68). Boccaccio’s Filocolo (c. 1335) is organized around Holy Saturday and Pentecost; see Victoria Kirkham, Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and Art of  Medieval Fiction (Ann Arbor: University of  Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 251–76. See also Natascia Tonelli, ‘Petrarca (R.v.f. 2–3), Boccaccio e l’innamoramento nel tempio’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 28 (2000), 199–219.

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Dante himself attests to the pervasive ef fect of  the liturgical calendar on Florence both ancient and modern in Cacciaguida’s description of  the city, where the Badia rings the daily canonical hours, Tierce and Nones (Par., XV. 97–99).7 The old crusader also recalls the Annunciation, 25 March (Par., XVI. 34), the palio of  San Giovanni, 24 June (Par., XVI. 42), and the Feast of  Thomas the apostle, 21 December (Par., XVI. 129). A fourth date is furnished by the placement of  the pilgrim’s meeting with his ancestor in the shining cross in Mars, so that the feast of  the Exaltation of  the Cross, 14 September, is implicit.8 In this way the four corners of a liturgical year are suggested, a temporal circumscription of  the city corresponding to the physical enclosure of its walls. Dante’s Commedia draws on a wide range of  liturgical materials. It includes significant parts of  the Compline Of fice (Purg., VII–VIII), and its specific borrowings range over many liturgical genera: psalms (Psalm 50, Miserere mei; Psalm 78, Deus venerunt gentes; Psalm 24, Ad te levavi, etc.); metrical hymns (Vexilla regis prodeunt; Summe deus clementiae); Marian Compline Antiphons (Salve regina and Regina celi); sequences or proses (Te deum); the hymnus angelicus of  the Mass preface (Sanctus, Osanna) and the ‘lesser’ doxology (Gloria patri); elements from the ordinary of  the Mass (Gloria in excelsis, Agnus dei, Credo); and opening petitions or preces (Domine, labia mia aperies), to name some of  those explicitly indicated. Both variety and plenitude of reference are suggested, and it is no exaggeration to say that Dante treated the liturgy as a vital context for his own

7

8

How profoundly liturgy might af fect everyday life became sharply evident in those countries where traditional rituals were abrogated during the Protestant Reformation. See, for example, the work of  Eamon Duf f y, The Stripping of  the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982). A mnemonic jingle reproduced in Rationale VIII. iii. 25 correlates the solstices to Christmas and St John’s day and the equinoxes to the Annunciation and the feast of  the Exaltation of  the Cross. For the Cross feasts and the sphere of  Mars, see Jef frey Schnapp, The Transfiguration of  History at the Center of  Dante’s Paradise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 84–85 and 127–28. Dante’s lampeggiar and balenar of  the cross of  Mars (Par., XIV. 104 and 108) echoes the Cross hymns ‘Crux benedicta nitet’, and ‘Vexilla regis prodeunt’ (‘fulget crucis mysterium’).

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work, and not only, as we shall see, in the Commedia.9 In its elaboration of  the Italian vernacular Dante’s poem is frequently in dialogue with the Latin of  the liturgy, and the poet’s sense of  his own discourse is in part modelled on the liturgy as praise of  God, a point I take up later. Dante the pilgrim’s journey, most readers would agree, is framed in liturgical time. According to the prevailing reckoning, the pilgrim’s journey begins on Good Friday of 1300 and extends to the Wednesday after Easter, after which, since the pilgrim is travelling through the planetary spheres, determining the days becomes less important. The most vivid consequence of  this schedule is the pilgrim’s emergence from the pit of  Hell on Easter Sunday; the Resurrection event is then echoed within the poem with Dante’s comparison of  the appearance of  Statius (Purg., XXI. 7–18) to that of  Christ on the way to Emmaus; Dante’s places his episode on Easter Tuesday, while the Emmaus episode is liturgically remembered on the Monday after Easter.10 Psalm 113, In exitu Israel de Aegypto, whose fourfold interpretation is treated by the Letter to Can Grande as a model for the poem’s mode of signifying, and which is recited by the souls arriving in Purgatory (Purg., II. 46), was sung at Vespers from Easter Sunday until 9

10

Despite this, there is no entry for ‘liturgia’ in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, nor in the Dante Dictionary. A welcome exception is John Barnes, ‘Vestiges of  the Liturgy in Dante’s Verse’, in Dante and the Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, ed. by John C. Barnes and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995), pp. 231–63. Of recent publication are Erminia Ardissino, Tempo liturgico e tempo storico nella ‘Commedia’ di Dante (Vatican City: Libreria editrice Vaticana, 2009) and Francesco Ciabattoni, Dante’s Journey to Polyphony (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 2010); I received these too late for full consideration in this essay. The latter book is not about liturgy per se but of fers an interpretation of musical instances in Dante’s poem. Stephen Joseph Peter Van Dijk, Sources of  the Modern Roman Liturgy; The Ordinals by Haymo of  Faversham and Related Documents (1243–1307), 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1963): II. 93–94. Other schemes have been proposed that do not have the pilgrim emerge on Easter Sunday (some discussed in Barnes, p. 261). Dante’s recall of  the Emmaus episode on Easter Tuesday instead of  Monday is not only an indication of  freedom of  treatment; the liturgy itself displaces the episode, supposedly occurring on the same day as the Resurrection, to the day following Easter (as Rationale VI. lxxxix. 27 points out: ‘non tamen illa facta fuit ea die sed in precedenti.’).

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Easter Saturday, and on Holy Saturday was part of  the procession ad fontes for the sacrament of  baptism.11 Communion at Mass on Easter Wednesday, the last recorded day on which the pilgrim travels, is the occasion for the of fertory chant including the words ‘panem angelorum manducavit homo’ [men did eat the bread of angels] and so suited to the proem of  the final cantica (Par., II. 10–12) as O’Brien has noted.12 If  liturgy frames the pilgrim’s journey, liturgical allusion also marks the articulations of  Dante’s texts and thus is part of  their form. In the Vita nova, the use of  ‘Incipit vita nova’ to title the work may ref lect the fact that ‘Incipit lamentatio Ieremie prophete’ [Here begins the lamentation of  the prophet Jeremiah] is used to introduce the tenebrae readings of  the Matins Of fice on Thursday in Holy Week, and thus anticipates the medial articulation of  the libello by Lamentations 1. 1, ‘Quomodo sedet sola civitas’ [Oh, how lonely […] sits the city]; the work also concludes with a liturgical formula, ‘Qui est per omnia saecula benedictus’.13 I have argued that 11

12

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For the Easter vigil and procession, see O. B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), pp. 141–67; for a representative pre-Tridentine text of  these liturgies, see Missale romanum Mediolani 1474, ed. by R. Lippe, 2 vols (London: Harrison and sons, 1899–1907): I. 161–212. In Roman curial use Psalm 113 was replaced by Psalm 42 (Van Dijk, II. 247) but Durandus refers to Psalm 113 in his account of the procession (Rationale VI. lxxxix. 10–11). ‘“The Bread of  Angels” in Paradiso II: A Liturgical Note’, Dante Studies, 97 (1995), 97–106. Other co-ordinations have been proposed (see, for example, Albert E. Wingell, ‘Dante, St Augustine, and Astronomy’, Quaderni d’Italianistica, 2 (1981), 123–42), though these are complicated by the time dif ference between Purgatory and Italy. Guglielmo Gorni, Lettera nome numero: l’ordine delle cose in Dante (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), pp. 45–46 sees the ‘Benedictus’ ending the Vita nova resumed with the ‘Benedictus qui venis’ of  Purg., XXX. 19; he also observes that this same phrase is self-consciously used to close the Letter to Can Grande, where the subject is God as ‘Alpha e O, idest principium et finis […] in ipse deo terminatur tractatus, qui est per omnia saecula benedictus’. For Alpha and O[mega] as a formal principle for the Commedia, see Robert M. Durling’s ‘Additional Note 14’, in Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, trans. by Robert M. Durling with commentary by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); see also Albert

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the interruption and reorganization of  the Vita nova at Beatrice’s death (a canzone left unfinished after two stanzas, the ragioni and divisioni shifted to precede, rather than follow, the poems, so that the work will appear ‘più vedova’ [all the more widowed]), alludes to the suppression of initial and closing liturgical formulas during the tenebrae services of  holy week to express the desolation of  the Church at the death of  Christ, an instance of  how not just liturgical language, but liturgical gesture and performance is assimilated to Dante’s texts.14 Such framing by liturgical cues is also found in liminal passages in the Commedia. Inferno I. 1, ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’ [At one point midway on our path in life] with its allusion to the beginning of  the canticle of  Hezekiah (‘Ego dixi: in dimidio dierum meorum vadam as portas inferi’ (Isaiah 38. 10) [In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of  hell]), and XXXIV. 1, ‘Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni’ frame the first cantica even as both refer (if we keep the source of  Inferno I. 1 in mind) to its vulgate title. Purgatorio II. 46, ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto / cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce’ [‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’: / they sang this all together, in one voice], is complemented by Purgatorio XXXIII. 1, ‘Deus, venerunt gentes, alternando / or tre or quattro, dolce salmodia / le donne incominciaro’ [‘Deus, venerunt gentes’ – alternating / three, then four – the seven donne […] / […] sweetly began to chant that psalm], incorporating Psalm 78. 1, so juxtaposing direct psalmody with the alternating, choral singing of  the angels, while in narrative and thematic terms, the exitus of souls to freedom that begins the second cantica is contrasted with a final prophecy of  the exile and captivity of  the Church.15 Finally, Paradiso II. 10–12 (‘voialtri pochi, che drizzaste il collo / per tempo al pan degli angeli,

14 15

Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 391–96. See Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Mourning Beatrice in the Vita Nuova’, MLN, 117 (1997), 1–29 (pp. 16–20). Barański points out (‘Poetics of  Meter’, p. 40 n. 73) that ‘Dante underscored the proximity between canticum and psalmus by opening Purgatorio 33, the canto which closes with the reference to “questa cantica seconda” (33. 140) with an allusion to Psalm 78 as “dolce salmodia”’.

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del quale / vivesi qui, ma non sen vien satollo’ [You other few who have already stretched / straight-necked, through t ime to reach for angel-bread / (the food we live by here, unsatisfied)]), with its evocation of ‘panis angelicus manducat homo’, an Of fertory with Allelluia in Easter week, may be set against Paradiso XXXII, where we find three distinct liturgical references: to David as the singer of  the psalm Miserere (which, bridging an even longer interval, also recalls the pilgrim’s first utterance at Inferno I. 65); to Gabriel singing the ‘divina cantilena’ [sacred cantilene] Ave Maria, and to Anna the mother of  the Virgin Mary singing hosanna.16 Not only do these citations touch on both the penitential and laudatory notes of  the liturgy, they serve as a kind of summary of  the poem’s liturgical instances, since each element appears several times earlier in the poem.17 That osanna rhymes with manna further resonates with the ‘bread of  the angels’ at Paradiso II. 11. In short, liturgical reference contributes to ‘lo fren de l’arte’ [the reins of art] (Purg., XXXIII. 141), the discipline that imposes boundaries on the poem’s extension. Indeed, the ensemble of  liturgical passages on the mountain are verbal instruments for its corrective discipline, as is implied by Dante’s use of  the metaphor of whips and bridles for the calls to Love and reproaches of envy in Purgatorio XIII. 37–42.18 The image of  the bridle is itself plausibly drawn from the camo et freno of  Psalm 31. 9, cited with respect to discipline both in Monarchia III. xvi. 9 (referring to imperial authority) and in the Purgatorio (XIII. 37–42, XIV. 143–44). Durandus 16 17

18

See Gorni, ‘La teoria’, p. 167, who points out that the last cantos in the first two cantiche begin with a dominance of  Latin, while the last of  the final cantica is entirely vernacular. For an account of  the modulation of penitential and laudatory notes in Dante’s liturgical passages in Purgatorio and Paradiso, see Matthew Treherne, ‘Liturgical Personhood: Creation, Penitence and Praise in the Commedia’, in Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry, ed. by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2010), pp. 131–60. My study of  Dante’s seven instances in the poem of  Osanna/osannar is forthcoming in a volume of studies, Dante oggi, ed. by Roberto Antonelli, Piero Boitani, and Arianna Punzi. See the notes to Purgatorio XIV. 143–51 in Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, trans. and ed. by Robert M. Durling, with commentary by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 239–40.

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observes that opening the Matins Of fice with Psalm 50. 17 is a form of correction for transgressions of  the mouth (peccatum oris), the function that it serves in Dante’s purgatorial circle of  the gluttons (see Purgatorio XXIII. 10–15; 37–39).19 In this context, Psalm 31. 1 (‘Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata’), sung by Matelda at the beginning of canto XXIX in concert with a set of allusions to Guido Cavalcanti’s ballata ‘In un boschetto trovai pastorella’, suggests how in Purgatorio generally the language of  the psalms governs, that is, steers and limits, Dante’s vernacular expression. The structure and performance of  the liturgy also casts light on how Dante’s poem signifies. The polysemy that the Letter to Can Grande claims, after the model of  the psalm In exitu Israel, is explicitly realized in liturgical texts like the Holy Saturday Exultet, which links the Exodus to the redemption wrought by Christ, thus to the allegorical sense; or through the use of  Psalm 113 in its anagogic use in the transport of  the dead to church, as indicated in the thirteenth-century Roman Pontifical, whose implications for Dante’s poem I take up later. It is no accident that late medieval popularizing typological summae like the Speculum humanae perfectionis and the Biblia pauperum are organized in correlation with the great feasts of  the Church. As Durling observes, ‘the entire structure of  the medieval liturgy in fact asserts a figural relation to biblical events of each moment of  the Church year’.20 Vividly acted out in the yearly liturgy, this correlation of  text and action, scripture and history was also probably publicly reiterated within Dante’s culture by the series of miracle and mystery plays (sacre rappresentazioni) whose choice of subjects followed the liturgical calendar.21

19 See Rationale, V. ii. 8; see also Benedict of  Nursia, Regula VI. 1, ‘posui ori meo custodiam’: Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary, by Terrence P. Kardong (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), p. 118. 20 See Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. 21 Dante likely knew some form of religious drama. Scholars of  fifteenth-century Florentine sacra rappresentazione view the corpus of plays as correlated with the life of  Christ as summarized in the Apostle’s Creed (see Nuovo corpus di sacre rappresentazioni fiorentine del Quattrocento, ed. by Nerida Newbigin (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1983), pp. xxvi–xxxiii.

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Indeed, what Auerbach has described as the ‘earthly reality of  human beings’ visible in Dante’s poem also owns a debt to liturgy, since it involves the mimetic representation, of scriptural narratives, what scholars of sacre rappresentazioni refer to as the ‘Word made f lesh’ through drama.22 Liturgical plays, the Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday quem quaeritis trope, the performance of deacons and acolytes in Palm Sunday processions, the division of voices in the Good Friday Reproaches (Improperia), and the action of  the of ficiant in the Mass in the place of  Christ (Rationale IV. xxx. 1–2), all exemplify mimetic action within liturgical ritual. In the case of  Purgatorio X, a passage I take up again below, Mary’s response to Gabriel’s Ave with Ecce ancilla dei is visible in her sculpted attitude and posture; in the adjacent bas-relief, the liturgical elements of incense and singing around the Ark of  the Covenant, the Old Testament foreshadowing of  the Church (Purg., X. 55–66), appear audible and aromatic, as if  the cult were really being celebrated.23 Dante’s rhetorical use of sculpted imagery itself exemplifies the traditional Gregorian justification of religious imagery in churches.24

22 See Erich Auerbach, ‘Farinata and Cavalcante’, in Mimesis: the Representation of  Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 174; Nerida Newbigin, ‘The Word made Flesh’, in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. by Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 361–75. On the possible echo of a sacra rappresentazione in Farinata’s address to the pilgrim, see Silvio Pellegrini, ‘Dante e la Passione di Montecassino’, Belfagor, 17 (1962), 299–313. 23 In cantos X–XII the references to pavement tombs (XII. 16–18), the Annunciation subject, the incense, and the architectural supports (telamons; X. 130–32), sketch a ‘virtual’ church and its service. On the theatrical aspect of  the sculptures, see Peter Armour, ‘Comedy and the Origins of  Italian Theater’, in Writers and Performers, pp. 1–31 (pp. 8–9); see also Matthew Treherne, ‘Ekphrasis and Eucharist: The Poetics of  Seeing God’s Art in Purgatorio X’, The Italianist, 26 (2006), 177–96. A recent study is McGregor. 24 Rationale I. iii. 4, cites Gregory’s Pastorali II. 20, ‘“dum exteriorum rerum intrinsecus species attrahuntur, quasi in corde depingitur quicquid fictis ymaginibus deliberando cogitator”. […] Pictura namque plus videtur movere animum quam scriptura […] hinc etiam est quod in ecclesia non tantam reverentiam exhibemus libris quantam

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Part of  the vividness of  Dante’s otherworld results from its rendering through a first-person narrative. Despite the fact that the Gothic Church largely directed the Mass at the clergy within the quire, beyond the rood screen, personal involvement of individual worshippers in Church ritual was far from rare, especially when so of necessity, as in the case of auricular confession during the sacrament of  Penance made standard for all the faithful by the canons of  the fourth Lateran Council.25 The personal aspect is also marked in the Of fice of  the Dead, where the readings from Job are thought of as voiced by the soul whose exequies are being conducted.26 If we take the first line of  Dante’s poem to be an echo of  the Canticle of  Hezekiah, which begins ‘Ego dixi’, we have an example of  how liturgical allusion can focus the identification of a reader with Dante’s first-person account.27 Regularly used as the lesser canticle at Tuesday Lauds in Lent, Hezekiah’s canticle was also used to commemorate Christ’s descent into Hell at Matins and Lauds on Holy Saturday, where its Antiphon is the petition of  the dead to be snatched from the gates of  Hell,28 and also for Lauds in the Of fice for the Dead. In light of  the pilgrim’s arrival at the portal to Hell (Inf., III. 1–9), Hezekiah’s canticle, recalled in its liturgical ymaginibus et picturis’. Compare Purg., x. 99–101: ‘mi dilettava di guardare / le imagini di tante umilitadi / per lo fabbro loro a veder care’. 25 See Histoire de la France réligieuse, ed. by Jacques Le Gof f et al., 4 vols (Paris: Seuil, 1988–92), I. 382–84. 26 For allusions to the Of fice of  the Dead in Purgatorio XXIII, see Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Dante’s Forese, the Book of  Job, and the Of fice of  the Dead: A Note on Purg. 23’, Dante Studies, 120 (2002), 1–16. For the identification of  the dead with Job, see Knud Ottosen, Responsories and Versicles of  the Latin Of fice of  the Dead (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1993), pp. 53–90. 27 See Anthony K. Cassell, Inferno I (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1989), pp. 7–8, for discussion of  the association of  Isaiah 38. 10, Hezekiah’s canticle, with Inferno I. 1. The gloss is found in Pietro di Dante’s three versions, was noted by Lombardi and Berthiez and appears in most recent commentators; none refers to the liturgy, however. See however the notice in Barnes, p. 265; commenting on Purgatorio XXX. 139, Anna Maria Chiavacci-Leonardi, in her commentary (Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio (Bologna: Zanichelli, 2000), ad loc.), associates Isaiah 38. 10 with Beatrice’s descent to Hell. 28 ‘A porta inferni eripe me, domine’: see Van Dijk, II. 87.

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context, is sharply relevant to the action of  the poem, which begins with the pilgrim’s descent to Hell in the wake of  Christ; that Beatrice herself in the Earthly Paradise recalls her own descent to Hell on behalf of  the pilgrim in similar terms (Purg., XXX. 39) confirms the point. The pilgrim’s journey, and Dante’s retelling of it, distantly originate with Hezekiah’s canticle declaring the prospect of a journey to Hell, a liturgical element that coordinates Christ’s descent with the downward journey that the dying fear will be their lot.29 In the liturgy, canticum designates psalm-like poetic texts from the Old and New Testaments like that of  Hezekiah, and it could be argued that several of  the liturgical canticles have relevance for Dante’s poetry.30 At a more fundamental level, the complementarity or reciprocity of speech and music, as in the nomenclature of canto, cantica for the poem’s formal divisions, invites us into the world of  liturgy, much of which is sung, but even in the case of prayers and scriptural readings was recited on a pitch (tenor), with melodic f lourishes for punctuation.31 It is striking that of  29 Seven of  thirteen uses of porta in Inferno refer to one of  the two gates of  Hell (III. 11; VIII. 82, 115, 125; IX. 89; XIV. 45, 86); six of seven uses in Purgatorio refer to the gate of  St Peter. 30 The canticle of the three children (canticum trium puerorum), which begins Benedictus, for Sunday Lauds during Lent, is relevant to Purgatorio XXV. 121–26; for other instances, see below. 31 I leave aside the fact that Dante’s lines were set to music or recited musically, and not just by Casella (see John Ahern, ‘Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of  the Commedia’, in Dante: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 214–38, especially pp. 214–16, pp. 226–27). Contemporary evidence shows that secular song was routinely compared to liturgical singing, and vice-versa: see Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh, ‘I musicisti di Dante (Casella, Lippo, Scochetto) in Niccolò de’ Rossi’, Studi danteschi, 48 (1971), 151–66. For the meaning of  Dante’s term cantica for the principal division of  the poem, see also Lino Pertile, ‘Cantica nella tradizione medievale e in Dante’, Rivista di storia e di letteratura religiosa, 18 (1992), 404–12, and Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Poetics of  Meter’, in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press 1995), pp 3–42; both emphasize the relation of  Dante’s term to Solomon’s Cantica canticorum and the ‘canticum novum’ of  the Psalms; neither explores the use of cantica in the liturgy, however. For the origin of 

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Dante’s more than seventy uses of cantare in the poem, some twenty append to the verb a liturgical quotation, often in Latin or Hebrew (for example, ‘osanna’ (Purg., V. 25; XI. 11; Par., XXXII. 135), ‘Miserere’ (Inf., I. 65; Purg., V. 24; Par., XXXII. 12), while another thirty refer to what can fairly be described as liturgical singing. Thus to sing in Dante’s poem means more often than not to sing liturgically, or, when in Hell, to deform that singing in contexts implicitly or explicitly quasi-liturgical (as in Inferno VII. 33; VII. 125; XXXI. 69),32 where they systematically parody celestial music and song.33 Indeed, Dante uses rhyme to place the unintelligible words of  Nimrod’s babble (‘Raphél mai amecche zabí almi’; Inf., XXXI. 67) in relation to the pilgrim’s confession of  faith in Paradiso XXIV. 136–38, where the fiery Holy Spirit is acknowledged as the inf lux that renders Scriptural authors nourishing (‘vi fe’ almi’), including David and his liturgical salmi.34 More fundamentally still, Dante conceives of the originary inspiration and discipline of  his poetic utterance, indeed of all language whatsoever, as coeval with liturgical song. ‘Domine, labia mea aperies, et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam’ [Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will speak out your praise], the opening versicle of  Matins (Psalm 50. 17),35 three words liturgical cantica in Moses’s song of victory (‘Moyses autem legitur primus omnium instituisse cantica quando Pharao submersus est’) see Durandus, Rationale V. iv. 19, and for the use of canticles across the liturgy see Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Of fice: A guide to their Organization and Terminology (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 1982), pp. 24–25, pp. 66–67, pp. 365–66. 32 Since the avaricious of  Inf., VII. 33 are apparently all clerics (see ll. 37–48), the mutual reproaches of  the avaricious and prodigal suggest a parody of  liturgical psalmody. 33 See Joan Ferrante, ‘The Relation of  Speech to Sin in the Inferno’, Dante Studies, 87 (1969), 33–46; Denise Heilbronn, ‘Master Adam and the Fat-Bellied Lute’, Dante Studies, 101 (1983), 51–65; Amilcare Iannucci, ‘Musical Imagery in the Maestro Adamo Episode’, in Da una riva e dall’altra: Studi in onore di Antonio d’Andrea, ed. by Dante della Terza (Florence: Cadmo, 1995), pp. 103–18, and Erminia Ardissino, ‘Parodie liturgiche nell’Inferno’, Annali d’Italianistica, 25 (2007), 217–32. 34 For this correlation and its implications, see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Sole nuovo, luce nuova’: Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996), pp. 119–23. 35 See Benedict’s Rule, ed. by Kardong, IX (pp. 171–72): ‘the night Of fice should commence with the versicle: “Lord, you shall open my lips and my mouth shall declare

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of which are penitentially intoned by the gluttons in Purgatorio XXIII. 11, and frequently echoed in formulas describing adlocutions in Purgatorio and Paradiso,36 is also arguably in the background of  the passages in De vulgari eloquentia that describe the first acts of speech, or primiloquia (DVE, I. vi. 7: ‘primi loquentis labia fabricaverunt’ [the lips of  the first speaker moulded]) and which define the pondered utterance of poets (DVE, II. iii. 9: ‘quicquid de cacuminibus illustrium poetantium prof luxit ad labia’ [whatever has f lowed down to the lips of illustrious poets]). For in the first book of  the De vulgari eloquentia the liturgy – the sung and spoken worship of  God – is invoked precisely with respect to the question of who, in the context of  linguistic origins, begins to speak, and to what purpose. In describing how God, the angels, man and beasts communicate, Dante specifies that only human beings need speech. Angels intuit one another voicelessly (alterum alterum [known themselves, in themselves]),37 but Adam speaks audibly to address God as Deus;38 God in turn communicates to man through sounds produced by created thunder, snow, and ice. your praise”’; Rationale V. iii. 9 treats this as a request to God for worthily opening the mouth (‘ut ei os aperiat ad digne ipsum laudandum dicens: “labia mea aperies”’) by way of recognizing God as Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. On the opening preces of  the Matins Of fice, see Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, pp. 55–56. 36 See Purgatorio VII. 93 (‘move la bocca a li altrui canti’); VIII. 14 (‘le uscìo di bocca’); XXV. 19 (‘apri la bocca’); XXXI. 14 (‘un tal “sì” fuor de la bocca’); XXXI. 33 (‘e le labbra a fatica la formaro’); Par., I. 87 (‘la bocca aprio’); XXIV. 119 (‘la bocca t’aperse’); XXVII. 65 (‘apri la bocca’). Dante’s utterance of  the first Convivio canzone follows a pattern similar to the inception of  ‘Donne ch’avete’ (VN, XIX. 2; see Convivio II. xii. 8–9: ‘quasi maravigliandomi apersi la bocca […] Cominciai dunque a dire …’). 37 DVE, I. ii. 3: ‘cum igitur angeli ad pandendas gloriosas eorum conceptiones habeant promptissimam atque inef fabilem suf ficientiam intellectus qua vel alter alteri totaliter innotescit per se’; I. iii.1: ‘per spiritualem speculationem, ut angelum, alterum alterum introire contingit’ (emphases mine). 38 I leave to the side here the complex issue of  the relation between Latin Deus and Adam’s Hebrew (in the De vulgari) or the nature of  Adam’s speech as described in Paradiso XXVI). On Dante’s extraordinarily free treatment of  traditional accounts by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas of  Adamic and divine speech in Genesis, see Pier Vicenzo Mengaldo’s preface to his edition of  De vulgari eloquentia (Padua: Antenore, 1968), pp. xxxiii–xxxv, and Barański, Sole nuovo, pp. 96–101. An illuminating recent

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Each form of communication has its liturgical equivalent: the angels’ alter alteri and alterum alterum echo Isaiah 6. 3 (‘Et clamabant alter ad alterum’ [And they cried out to one another]), where the Seraphim call out to each other praising God with Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. God’s ‘speech’ through rough weather (DVE, I. iv. 6: ‘ad tantas alterationes moveatur aer imperio nature inferioris, que ministra et factura Dei est, ut tonitrua personet, ignem fulgoret, aquam gemat, spargat nivem, grandines lancinet’ [the air can be moved, at the command of  the lesser nature which is God’s servant and creation, to transformations so profound that thunderbolts crash, lightning f lashes, waters rage, snow falls, and hailstones f ly]) adopts terms from the Laudatio psalms sung during Lauds.39 In a universe where all verba follow a liturgical model, Dante’s Adam addresses God as joy and in joy to praise His glory.40 Thus the first man begins to speak by praising and glorifying God for the gift of  the creation, one of  the fundamental motives of  the liturgy.41 The co-operation of  the liturgical and linguistic impulses in the De vulgari eloquentia casts light on other inaugural moments in Dante’s poetry. The calling of  the Seraphim to each other in Isaiah 6. 3, the passage which,

account of  Adam’s language in both De vulgari and Commedia is in Ascoli, Dante and the Making, pp. 136–49 and pp. 385–99. 39 Psalms 146–48; see 148. 8: ‘ignis, grando, nix, glacies, spiritus procellarum, Quae faciunt verbum eius’; 146. 15: ‘qui emittit eloquium suum terrae, velocitur currit sermo eius, qui dat nivem sicunt lanam, nebulam sicut cinerem spargit. Mittit crystallum suam sicut buccellas: ante faciem frigoris eius quis sustinebit? emittet verbum suum, et liquefaciet ea’. Other passages of scripture are similar, but not likely to have been as familiar as Psalm. 148; see Job 37. 5–6, Ecclesiasticus 46. 20. 40 DVE, I. iv. 4: ‘ipse deus totus sit gaudium’; I. v. 2: ‘ut in explicatione tante dotis gloriaretur ipse qui gratis dotaverat’. 41 In addition to Psalms 146–50 sung at Lauds (Laudate dominum, etc.), Christian liturgy begins in the last words of  Luke (24. 53, ‘laudantes et benedicentes Deum’). Augustine begins his Confessions (I. 1) by addressing God as ‘laudabilis valde’ and asserting: ‘laudare te vult homo’. Dante’s Te deum laudamus (Purg., IX. 140), Padre nostro (‘Laudato sia il tuo nome’, Purg., XI. 4), and the balance of  the Gloria in excelsis begun at Purg., XX. 136 (‘laudamus te, benedicimus te’) are three of  Dante’s liturgical allusions in Purgatorio that touch on the theme of praise.

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along with Revelations 4. 2, furnishes the tersanctus and the scriptural basis for the Preface to the Mass, also helps to inspire the second stanza of  Dante’s epoch-making first canzone of  the Vita nova, ‘Donne ch’avete’ (‘Angelo clama in divino intelletto’ [The mind of  God receives and angel’s prayer]; l. 15), and suggests the distinction in operation, but also the continuity of motive, between angelic communication within the divine mind and the spontaneous movement of  the poet’s tongue in the prose ragione preceding the canzone (VN, XIX. 2),42 a passage that itself recalls not only the opening of  the lips in Psalm 50. 17, but the exultation – literally ‘leaping out’ – of  the tongue (‘exultat lingua mea’) of  Psalm 50. 16 as well.43 In this connection, Gorni’s proposal that the Bonagiunta episode evokes the muteness and subsequent eloquence of  Zechariah, the father of  John the Baptist, would link the invention of  Dante’s stile della loda to the inaugural performance of  the liturgical canticle of  Zechariah, a fixture at Lauds to herald the rising Sun of  Christ.44 Looking further along, the seraphic tersanctus that helps to inform the early moments of  the De 42 Paola Rigo, Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante (Florence: Olschki, 1994), p. 31 associates the poet’s tongue in VN, XIX. 1 with the tongue of  Orpheus in the Georgics (‘vox ipsa et frigida lingua’), speaking the name of  Eurydice (Georgics IV. 523–27). 43 As is well known, Psalm 44. 2 also inf luenced Dante’s passage (‘lingua mea calamum velociter scribentem’); for the identifications of  these and other psalms, see Mario Casella, reviewing F. Figurelli’s Il dolce stil nuovo (Naples: Ricciardi, 1933) in Studi danteschi, 18 (1934), 108, Domenico de Robertis, Il libro della ‘Vita nuova’ (Florence: Sansoni, 1961), pp. 101–05; Guglielmo Gorni, ‘Il nodo della lingua’ and ‘La teoria del “cominciamento”’, in Il nodo della lingua e il verbo d’amore: studi su Dante e altri duecentisti (Florence: Olschki, 1981), pp. 145–86; see also Domenico de Robertis, ‘Poetica del (ri)cominciamento: Incipit Vita nova’, in Dal Primo all’ ultimo Dante (Florence: Le Lettere, 2001), pp. 103–10. 44 Gorni, in Il nodo (pp. 13–21), associates Bonagiunta’s shortcomings as a poet with the muteness God imposes on the Baptist’s father Zechariah for his disbelief in his son’s coming birth; later his mouth is opened (‘apertum est autem illico os eius, et lingua eius, et loquebatur benedicens Deum’), and he sings the Benedictus, the canticle for Lauds (Luke 2. 68–79). See Augustine, Confessions I. 9: ‘in tuam invocationem rumpebam nodos linguae meae’. For liturgical contexts to Bonagiunta’s reply to Dante at Purg., XXIV. 52–54 (for example, the rhymes of  XXIV. 53–57 echo those of  XXIII.

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vulgari eloquentia and ‘Donne ch’avete’ recurs triumphantly in vernacular form in the canto of  Paradiso that includes Dante’s meeting with the first human speaker, Adam.45 Indeed, at the celestial extreme of  Dante’s cosmos, in Paradiso, several of  the poet’s audacious vernacular neologisms describe the intuition between the pilgrim and the blessed. The pronouns Dante coins into the verbs inmeare, intuare, inluiare, inleiare, suggest a paradigm of coinherence, and betray a conceptual and morphological relation to the reciprocal intuition between angels (‘Nec […] alterum alterum introire contingit’ [nor is it given to us to enter into each other’s minds]; DVE, I. iii. 2). At the same time, the in- prefix, Dante’s principal morphological instrument for shaping new words, is likely borrowed from the sestina by the poet’s professed poetic ancestor, Arnaut Daniel, which includes coinages such as enongla (meaning ‘embeds in the fingernail’) and the related s’enpren (‘seizes on, grips’).46 More generally, the enheavening of  Dante’s mind by Beatrice (Par., XXVIII. 3) transforms Arnaut’s desire to enter paradise by loving well: ‘Qu’en paradis n’aura doble joi m’arma, / si ja nuills hom per ben amar lai intra’ (‘Lo ferm voler’, ll. 35–36) [And my soul will have double joy in Paradise / in anyone enters there because he loved well]. Dante’s ‘imparadisa’ here is one of several Paradiso neologisms meaning ‘to enter a space’, again, as in the tornada of  Arnaut’s sestina: ‘cui pretz in cambra intra’ [whose merit enters the chamber] (‘Lo ferm voler’, l. 39), which brings 11–15, describing the singing of  Psalm 50. 17), see my ‘“L’amoroso canto”: Liturgy and Vernacular Lyric in Dante’s Purgatorio’, Dante Studies, 127 (2009), 93–127. 45 Par., XXVI. 67–69. This passage is too complex to be treated here; but see Kevin Brownlee, ‘Why the Angels Speak Italian: Dante as Vernacular Poeta in Par., XXV’, Poetics Today, 5 (1984), 597–610, and now Ascoli, Dante and the Making, pp. 374–77 and p. 393, who makes the claim that Adam is also the first poet. 46 More than thirty of  Dante’s forty-plus coinages in the poem begin with the inprefix. See ‘Lo ferm voler’, line 31, as suggested in Marianne Shapiro, ‘Purgatorio XXX: Arnaut at the Summit’, Dante Studies, 100 (1982), 71–76 (p. 75). For Arnaut in Dante, see Maurizio Perugi, ‘Arnaut Daniel in Dante’, Studi danteschi, 51 (1978), 51–151; also Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Dante Embarks Arnaut’, NEMLA Italian Studies, 15 (1991), 5–28. Text of  ‘Lo ferm voler’ is taken from Arnaut Daniel, Canzoni, ed. by Gianluigi Toja (Florence: Sansoni, 1960), pp. 375–78.

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us back to the angelic introire.47 If  Dante takes the impetus for his verbal account of  the relations of  the blest from a profane love poet intimating desire for carnal union,48 in a theological sense the paradigm of neologism seems fashioned after the verb incarnarsi, which, though not itself a neologism, is a hapax legomenon in the poem when used by Beatrice at Paradiso VII. 120 and points to an inherence more marvellous than the reciprocal inherence or intersubjectivity Dante’s coinages strive to express. Indeed, incarnarsi points to the final mystery the pilgrim strives to comprehend at the conclusion of  the Commedia. Dante’s morphological inventiveness is driven by a kind of poetic virtù informativa (Purg., XXV. 41 and 89) that parallels the formative power of  Nature, and of  Beatrice’s discourse, as seen in other contexts:49 an intention that, as often in the poem, links the making of poetry to the Incarnational mystery of  the Verbum. The vocalic gamut and labdacism of some elements in Dante’s prepositional paradigm (inluia, inleia) have an evident relation to the voiced, embodied and joyous speech postulated in Eden of  the future resurrected (‘la revestita voce alleluiando’ [dressed in new voice, to echo ‘Alleluia’]; Purg., XXX. 15), anticipating their harmonization with the angels in the

47 See, for example, ‘inciela’ (Par., III. 97), ‘indovarsi’ (Par., XXXIII. 138); the latter term, also the last such coinage in the poem, refers to how the second Person of  the Trinity is circumscribed by a body, that is, to the union of  the human and divine Natures in the Person of  Christ. In Paradiso, entrare is used sixteen times, but only once as a rhyme word (as in Arnaut): Par., XXIII. 108: ‘farai dia / più la spera suprema perche lì entre’ (in rhyme with the Virgin’s ‘ventre’); and twice in pure initial position: ‘Entra nel petto mio’ (I. 18); ‘intrava per l’udire e per lo viso’ (XXVII. 6; emphases mine). 48 Indeed, three elements of  the paradigm show up in the heaven of  Venus (IX. 73 and twice in IX. 81; see also incinquarsi at IX. 40), where Folquet of  Marseilles, another love poet writing in Provençal, appears. Folquet has a close textual relation to Arnaut, since the latter begins his Provençal discourse at Purgatorio, XXVI. 14 with Folquet’s incipit ‘Tan m’abbelis’; the other term, inleiarsi, is at Paradiso, XXII. 127. The coinage of  Pasiphae’s ‘bestialized’ planks (‘imbestiate schegge’; Purg., XXVI. 87) in the canto where Arnaut appears registers a perverse instance of matter given artistic form by Daedalus’ craft; see Durling and Martinez, Purgatorio, pp. 454–55. 49 Other uses of informare are at Purg., XVII. 17; XXIII. 24; Par., II. 110; VII. 135.

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celestial liturgy. Dante’s gerund improves on alleluia by displaying the full gamut of vowels. That this jubilation is part of  Beatrice’s reception upon her advent in Eden is appropriate, since Virgil had earlier alluded to Beatrice’s descent in aid of  the pilgrim as her absence from the felicity of singing in heaven (‘tal si partì da cantare alleluia’ [Someone whose hymn is the ‘Alleluia’]; Inf., XII. 88). Used liturgically to emphasize the joy of  the Resurrection, the alleluia, whether added to elements of  the Of fice or as part of  the Ordinary for Mass, and despite the fact that the Hebrew word simply means ‘praise the Lord’, was taken by interpreters of  liturgy from Augustine to Durandus as suited to an unbounded jubilation, one that opens with the final vowel a, the jubilus, into joyfulness signified by melismatic extravagance.50 Thanks to the ambiguous syntax of its expression, the alleluiando in Eden both rejoices in the resurrection of  the f lesh and, with the recovered human voice, in the gift of speech, recalling how Dante, using an equally self-ref lexive construction, writes in his treatise that Adam wields his language at the outset to glorify God for the gift of  language itself.51 It is again no accident that the gaudium Adam enjoys in singing praises of  One who is Joy itself (‘ipse Deus totus sit gaudium’) is cognate with the joi that is Arnaut’s expressed goal as a troubadour (‘jauzirai joi, en vergier o dinz cambra’ [I’ll enjoy pleasure in the garden or in the room]; ‘Lo ferm voler’, l. 6), as it is of  the gaudium spirituale supposedly expressed with alleluia.52 The liturgy of praise and Dante’s vernacular love 50 On the Jubilus, see Rationale V. iv. 4–5, regarding Allelluia at Lauds: ‘hoc of ficium laudibus est plenum, alleluya enim laus est angelica: tum quia dominici dies resurrectionem Domini representant. Sicut ergo in tempore paschali, quod est resurrectionis, alleluya multiplicatur, sic merito et in eis debet multiplicari […] Adhuc ideo certus numerus in Alleluya non prefinitur, quoniam devote anime certus modus vel numerus in laudando Deum prefigi non potest’. See also Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, pp. 85–86 and 362; Hiley, Medieval Plainchant, pp. 130–39. 51 For the syntax of  Purgatorio, XXX. 19 (the gerund can be taken as transitive or intransitive) see Chiavacci-Leonardi’s note (Purgatorio, p. 903) which argues for the transitive, and cites Franca Ageno’s discussion, ED, VI. 300–02. But the amphibology seems deliberate, as it expresses the celebration of  the voice with the voice. 52 Rationale V. ii. 33: ‘Sane, neume que in missa fiunt gaudium representant que potius fieri solent in e, ut in “Kyrieleison”, vel in a ut in “Aleluya” quam in aliis vocalibus, ad

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poetry spring from the same original motive, both are a praise style, a stile della loda, and both begin in, and because of, joy (‘rationabile est quod ante qui fuit [peccatum] inciperet a gaudio’ [It is reasonable that he who existed before [sin] should have begun with a cry of joy]; DVE, I. iv. 4).53 Just after Adam’s words in Paradiso, Dante’s treatment of  the Gloria patri (Par., XXVII. 1–2) displays how his poetic voice, in af firming divine glory, refashions the liturgical original to fit the Commedia: the phrasing of  the doxology is inverted, which results in the sole canto incipit in the Commedia dedicated to the three persons of  the Trinity; the same inversion means that gloria, isolated and deferred to the chief metrical stress of  the second line, becomes the goal and focus: sung by ‘tutto’l paradiso’ [all Heaven] (Par., XXVII. 2) the emphasis on gloria returns us to the first nominal subject of  the cantica (‘La gloria di colui …’ [Glory, from Him …]; Par., I. 1) and recalls the original motive given for angelic communication in the linguistic treatise (‘ad pandendas gloriosas eorum conceptiones’ [in order to communicate their own glorious conceptions]; DVE, I. ii. 3); here too, glory is announced in joy (Par., XXVII. 7: ‘oh gioia!’ [The joy of  that!]). That the words of  Psalm 50. 17 for opening the mouth in praise and song are found in a psalm beginning ‘Miserere mei’ is also significant, since it is the psalm that touches most closely on David’s personal transgression and repentance. Along with the rest of  Christendom, Dante knew David not only as the instrumental author of  the Psalms but as a founder of  liturgy, and so showed him before the Ark, the sacred cult object, and surrounded by seven choirs in Purgatorio; the scene is reiterated in part

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notandum gaudium spirituale quod nobis restitutum est in partu Virginis cui facta est mutatio huis nominis Eve in Ave, dicente angelo: Ave Maria etc., et ibi: “Mutans nomen Eve”’. For the Annunciation scene, see below. Cantos XXIII–XXV, as often observed, concern the generation of poetry as well as the sin of gluttony. See especially Robert Durling, ‘Deceit and Digestion in the Belly of  Hell’, in Allegory and Representation: Selected Papers from the English Institute 1979–80, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 61–93, and ‘Manfred’s Wounds’, in John Freccero, Dante and the Poetics of  Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 200–05; see also Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante Poet of  the Desert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 191–226.

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when David is introduced again in Paradiso XX.54 Davidic music-making is thus prominent in the central cantos of  Paradiso, where the psalterium et cithara of  liturgical praise (Psalm 150, one of  the psalms sung at Lauds) model Dante’s comparison of  the cross of  Mars (Par., XV. 6) to the ‘giga e arpa’ [harp or viol] (Par., XIV, 118) and ‘dolce lira’ [sweetly sounding lyre] (Par., XV. 4) that produce the ‘dolce tintinno’ [tempered harmony] in the fifth sphere (Par., XIV. 119). That the instrument of psalmody is both a lyre and a cross demonstrates visually the Christological content supposedly implicit throughout the Psalms, which were understood as presenting the words of  Christ himself: indeed this is one sense in which the Martian cross ‘f lashes’ Christ.55 That David’s poems are a model for both the pilgrim’s experience and Dante’s poem has been often remarked.56 The pilgrim’s first words are David’s Miserere mei (Inf., I. 63) while the psalmist’s sorrow (‘doglia’) is quoted again, in his own voice, near the end of  the poem (Par., XXXII. 11); the pilgrim also cites Psalm 9. 11 (‘sperent in te’ [To Yahweh, with his home in Zion, sing praise]; Par., XXV. 70–75) as the inspiration of  his hope, words rendered in the poet’s vernacular as well (‘sperino in te’ [Let 54 See Par., XX. 37–38, ‘il cantor de lo spirito santo / che l’arca traslatò di villa in villa’. See Rationale II. ii. 2: ‘Sane David, prophetarum eximius, cultum Dei volens sollempnius ampliare cantores instituit qui coram archa federis Domini musicis instrumentis et modulatis vocibus decantarent’. The pairing of  David and the Ark and the Trajan/Gregory episode probably ref lect Gregory’s traditional role as the inspired dictator and organizer of  the corpus of chant; see Rationale, V. ii. 65 (‘Ordinem cantilene in diurnis sive nocturnis horis creditur beatus Gregorius plenaria ordinatione distribuisse, cum multi et ante et post eum orationes, antiphonas et responsoria composuerunt’). The seven choirs surrounding David (compare 2 Kings 6. 12) may be typologically related to Gregory’s sevenfold grouping and ranking of persons in the great litany procession (see Rationale VI. cii. 3: ‘septiformis, ex eo quod beatus Gregorius septeno ordine iri in ea in maioribus ecclesiis ordinavit’). 55 On the dif ferent ‘voices’ of  the Psalter (vox apostolicorum, Ecclesiae, Christi, Patris) see Gunilla Iversen, Chanter avec les anges: poésie dans la messe médiévale; interprétations et commentaires (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2001), p. 29. 56 See now Theresa Federici, ‘Dante’s Davidic Journey: From Sinner to God’s Scribe’, in Montemaggi and Treherne (eds), Dante’s ‘Commedia’, pp. 180–209. Federici does not discuss the liturgical function of psalms.

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those have hope in you]). With its varied level of style and sublime subject, Dante’s poem is fittingly compared to the teodia sung in David’s book (Par., XXV. 72), given that, as the Psalter includes both penitential sorrow (doglia) and jubilant praise, it assimilates and transcends the work of a comic or a tragic poet (Par., XXX. 22–24).57 But David qua poet is also closely identified with Dante’s idea of  the poet in the Commedia. David is three times referred to in Paradiso as cantor, a term used otherwise only for Virgil and the pilgrim’s ancestor Cacciaguida.58 David is the ‘sommo cantor’: indeed, the reiterated modifier in ‘sommo cantor del sommo duce’ recalls Dante’s account of  the best poets in De vulgari eloquentia, who tune their harps that they may break out in the loftiest strains about the loftiest subjects (DVE, II. iv. 9–11), where the forceful verb (‘prorumpunt’) again recalls how Dante captures the moment at which speech breaks from the mouth, and thought becomes word.59 In this connection Auerbach’s arguments regarding the sermo humilis of  the Vulgate as a model for Dante’s mixed style hold for the liturgy as well, a plurilingual (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) macrotext in prose and polymetric verse, based on the Bible, whose fundamental subjects are the Incarnation and Passion through which the Word humbled itself  to gain the victory over death.60 57 Dante arranges the association of  the ‘melode’ from the cross, the ‘teodia’ of  the psalms, and the ‘tragedo’ that is superseded, all terms etymologically related and in rhyme position. For Dante’s poem as Davidic teodia, see Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 275–79; Ascoli, Dante and the Making, pp. 380–83. 58 David is thrice a cantor: ‘cantor de lo spirito santo’ (Par., XX. 38), ‘sommo cantor del sommo duce’ (Par., XXV. 72), and ‘il cantor che per doglia / del fallo disse: Miserere mei’ (Par., XXX. 11–12). Cacciaguida earns his title of cantor enumerating for the pilgrim the Christian soldiers in Par., XXVIII. 28–51, each able to furnish material for a poem (XVIII. 31–33). Dante’s ancestor is a singer at once Virgilian and Davidic, so that Dante has both ‘in his blood’. 59 As Gorni puts it (Il nodo, p. 162), ‘quel voler sorprendere il momento in cui la voce interna si fa parola, e le labia si schiudono’. The passage from the De Vulgari complements DVE, II. iii. 9, cited above. David is also one of  li sommi in the eye of  the eagle (Par., XX. 36). 60 See Erich Auerbach, ‘Sermo humilis’, in Literary Language and its Public in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965),

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On a dif ferent note, liturgical allusion can underline the historicity of  the poem. Although Psalm 78, the first hemistich of which Dante quotes at Purgatorio XXXIII. 1, had a long association with the capture of  the Holy Land and the destruction of  the Temple, its insertion into Dante’s poem in about 1314 probably entails allusion to the clamor for Jerusalem, inserted in the daily Mass between the Kiss of  Peace and the Eucharist (as well as at other places). The version of  the clamor promulgated by Innocent IV in 1245 was reaf firmed, with modifications, by Nicholas III in 1280 and by John XXII in 1322, and included in the inf luential Pontifical of  Guillaume Durand, which began circulating in the 1290s. The 1245 version of  the clamor centered on the psalm Deus, venerunt gentes [O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance] accompanied by several versicles (Exurge domine [Rise up, Lord], etc.). Though Nicholas III replaced Psalm 78 with the eirenic Psalm 121, Laetatus sum [I was glad when they said unto me], the older version continued to be performed.61 In this reading, Beatrice’s sorrow over the seizure of  the Ark (allegorically, the transfer of  the papacy to Avignon) would resonate with a daily clamor at Mass lamenting that the holy city had fallen into enemy hands (as occurred in 1187–88 and again in 1245) but also that after the fall of  Acre in 1291 no Christian foothold remained in Palestine. When the psalm is sung in Purgatory, Dante of course alters the meaning so that it is the Babylonian captivity of  the Church that is deplored. In a more general sense, the clamor, or, in Italian, grido against the corruption of  the Church and other injustice is a principal feature of  the mission the poet’s ancestor, Cacciaguida, entrusts to Dante in the central canto of  Paradiso (Par., XVII. 133: ‘Questo tuo grido farà come vento’ [The

61

pp. 25–66. That the Mass is in three languages is traditional; see Sicardus of  Cremona, ‘Et attende quod tribus linguis missa celebratur: Hebraica propter legem, Graece propter sapientiam, et Latina propter regnum’ (Mitrale, III. 2; PL, CCXIII. 96). The easy translatability back into liturgical Latin of passages in the first canto of  Paradiso was demonstrated by Cesare Gof fis; see his ‘Canto I’, in Lectura dantis scaligera: Paradiso (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968), pp. 1–36. See Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), especially pp. 37–49.

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words you shout will be like blasts of wind]). It can be no accident than the following sphere, that of  Jupiter, is the sphere of  Justice where feckless earthly sovereigns are subject to a reckoning in a series of judgments recorded in Dante’s lines (Par., XIX. 112–48). That the voice of  Dante’s text, castigating misrule both clerical and lay might be one of a chorus of voices crying out all over Europe in the early fourteenth century is a good example of  how the public context and historical setting of  liturgy can enhance understanding of  the poem’s expressive resources.62

Inf luence of  Liturgy in Dante’s Minor Works Dante’s minor works reveal a significant investment in liturgy: in each case there is a sense in which the work is ‘liturgical’ in form, or addresses the ground and motives of  liturgy. As we saw, the treatise on vernacular eloquence posits an Adamic language that includes the liturgical motive of addressing and praising God.63 The Vita nova draws on the two chief  liturgical seasons in describing the advent of  Beatrice and in the use of  the lessons from Lamentations sung during Holy Week. The Convivio introduces the vernacular, the novel medium of its teaching, with allusion to the liturgies of  Advent, Nativity, and Epiphany. Through references to the 62 For other liturgical texts in this passage, see note 115; for the monastic clamor, see Lester K. Little, Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). A sonnet attributed to Cino da Pistoia refers to Dante in the NT terms for John the Baptist, ‘Vox clamantis in deserto’; see Poeti del Trecento, ed. by Mario Marti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1969), pp. 818–19. 63 Other passages in the treatise, such as DVE, I. viii. 1, which draws on Psalm 79. 9–12, and on other texts ( John 15. 1–2), have liturgical equivalents as well. The opening verses of  Psalm 79 are to the fore in both Of fice and Mass during the weeks of  Advent, beginning with the first Sunday, when ‘Excita quaesumus domine potentiam tuam et veni’ (Psalm 79. 3) is the opening prayer after the Introit at Mass, and the second Sunday, when ‘Qui regis israel, intende’ (Psalm 79. 2) is the Introit psalm. Psalm 79 is thus vividly associated with the beginning of  the liturgical year.

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psalms, Monarchia deploys a carefully graduated presentation of David the psalmist as an exemplar for the militant and combative author, and draws upon the imperial associations with Epiphany liturgy, while the political epistles allude to the advents and epiphanies of  Christ in order to herald the Emperor’s descent into Italy and to recommend to Henry VII the acts of power such a progress implied. The way in which Dante’s vernacular assimilates liturgical language and structures is illustrated in the poet’s first narrative work, the Vita nova. The book presents Beatrice’s entry into Dante’s life as an advent,64 and her presence as a manifestatio of  her status and power, an epiphany. The book depicts at its centre the ascension of  the soul of  Beatrice as a triumphal adventus of  the soul into heaven modelled on Christ’s Ascension and the Assumption of  the Virgin, but also on the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem: the protagonist, delirious on his sickbed, dreams that he hears Osanna (Matthew 21. 9) as Beatrice ascends, and her exemplary humility resonates with one of  the texts for Palm Sunday, Philippians 2. 5–11, describing the ‘emptying’ (exinanitio) of  Christ in his Incarnation and Passion that justifies the exaltation of  his name (as Beatrice will be exalted by Dante in a future work, as stated in Vita nova XLII. 2). The posthumous appearances of  Beatrice signify her second advent within the speaker’s mind and memory, so that the Advent through Ascension pattern embraces the whole book.65 The justification of  the use of  the vernacular also motivates Dante’s borrowings from liturgy in the Convivio, and a second motive is added 64 Attention to the language of  Advent liturgy is close throughout: in the sonnet Cavalcando (VN, IX. 9, ll. 9–10), for example, Love addresses the speaker: ‘Quando mi vide, mi chiamò per nome / E disse: “Io vegno di lontana parte”’. Compare ‘Ecce nomen domini venit de longinquo’ (Isaiah 30. 27), the Antiphon to the Vespers Magnificat canticle on Saturday before the first Sunday in Advent. 65 For the proposals in this section, see also Ronald L. Martinez, ‘The Poetics of Advent Liturgies: Dante’s Vita nova and Purgatorio’, in Le culture di Dante: studi in onore di Robert Hollander. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale (University of  Notre Dame, 25–27 settembre 2003), ed. by Michelangelo Picone, Theodore J. Cachey Jr., and Margaret Mesirca (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2004), pp. 271–304. For Dante’s use of  Lamentations in the Vita nova, see Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Mourning Beatrice: The Rhetoric of  Threnody in the Vita nuova’, MLN, 113 (1998), 1–29.

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by Dante’s justification of  Rome’s imperial destiny through invocation of  both Scripture and liturgy. Thus at the end of  the first book of  the Convivio, by way of insisting on the abundance of  his rhetorical provender for nourishing his vernacular audience, Dante invokes the feeding of  the five thousand by Christ ( John 6. 1–14), so reiterating the metaphor of  the banquet that underpins the entire commentary. John’s Gospel furnishes this pericope for the fourth Sunday in Lent (Laetare Sunday), and the same text is ref lected in antiphons from Lauds through the minor hours on the same day, including two that impinge directly on Dante’s vernacular expression: in one case, the text of  the Antiphon (‘De quinque panibus et duobus piscibus satiavit dominus quinque milia’ [the lord fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes]) is much closer in phrasing to Dante’s words (‘quello pane orzato dal quale si satolleranno migliaia’ [that bread made with barley by which thousands shall be satiated]; Conv., I. xiii. 12) than are the corresponding Gospel passages (Matthew 14. 15–21, especially verse 20, ‘Et manducaverunt omnes, et saturati sunt’ [They all ate as much as they wanted]; also Mark 6. 33–44, especially verse 42).66 Laetare Sunday itself would have interested Dante, since it commemorates ‘the permission to return from servitude to freedom granted to the people of  Israel’ and was also correlated with the triple anointing of  David, and so with one of  the traditional occasions for the coronation of  the Holy Roman emperor (Rationale VI. liii. 11). Convivio IV. v. 3–9 outlines an argument later developed in the first two books of  Monarchia, closely identifying the birth of  Christ with the authority of  the Roman empire. This chapter digests materials from the Advent, Nativity and Epiphany liturgies in order to buttress the providential role of  Rome. Dante refers to Isaiah 11 (Conv., IV. v. 6: ‘nascerà virga de la radice di Iesse, e fiore de la sua radice salirà’ [There shall come forth a rod out of  the root of  Jesse, and a f lower shall spring from his root]) and to Luke 2. 1–2 (Conv., IV. v. 8: ‘a la voce d’un solo principe del

66 See Van Dijk, Sources, II. 75–76. In Rationale VI. liii. 6 the loaves and fishes are, allegorically, the books of  Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets: that is, nourishing texts, like Dante’s canzoni and commentary.

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roman popolo e comandatore [si descrisse], sì come testimonia Luca evangelista’ [the voice of  the one sole prince and commander of  the Roman people, as Luke the Evangelist testifies]),67 the Gospel text that in Dante’s eyes makes explicit how Christ acknowledges Roman authority by being counted in census.68 Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 11. 1–5) ‘Egredietur virga de radice Iesse’ [A shoot springs from the stock of  Jesse] is the reading for Ember Fridays during the Advent season and ‘Egredietur virga’ is the Antiphon to the Benedictus at Lauds on Monday after the third Sunday in Advent and the response verse to the reading of  Luke 3. 1 (‘Anno quintodecimo Imperii’ [In the fifteenth year of  Tiberius Caesar’s reign]) on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday in Advent.69 Dante twice mentions the descent of  the Virgin Mary from the ‘house of  David’ (Conv., IV. v. 5 and IV. v. 6), as he introduces the parallel between the age of  Troy and the epoch of  the Kings. Dante’s apostrophe to Wisdom, ‘O inef fabile […] sapienza di Dio’ [Oh inef fable […] wisdom of  God] (Conv., IV. v. 9) is a probable echo of  the Advent liturgy, for the first Advent O antiphon for the period between December 17th and 23rd is ‘O sapientia, quae ex ore altissimi prodiisti’ [O wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of  the most high],70 a text resonant with the subject matter taught in Convivio. Luke’s account of  the census ordered by Caesar is in turn a chief  text of  the Nativity liturgy in

67 See Luke 2. 1–2: ‘ut describeretur universum orbis’; see also Legenda aurea, I. 40. 68 Compare Monarchia II. 10–11. 69 In the Of fice, ‘Ecce radix Iesse’ is a response verse at Matins on the third Sunday of  Advent; ‘O radix Iesse’ is one of  the O antiphons of  the Advent season (Van Dijk, Sources, II. 24–25); ‘Erit radix Iesse’ is also found in the epistle for the second Sunday in Advent (Romans 15. 4–13; Missale, 3); for Antiphons, Responses and Versicles see also Van Dijk, Sources, II. 26, ‘Egredietur virga’ as Antiphon; II. 29, as Response. Rationale VI. xi. 1 gives: ‘unus solus Deus est; et quia ex utroque testamento unum evangelium factum est. Et est epistolaris lectio: “egredietur virga”, que est Ysa. xi. c, et manifeste de adventu Domini, et de beata Virgine intelligitur’; see also Rationale VI. xi. 4, on ‘O radix Iesse’. 70 Rationale VI. xi. 4: ‘prima est: O sapientia, etc. Sunt autem septem, quia diriguntur ad Christum, in quo requievit spiritus sapientie, et intellectus’.

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the form of a Gregorian homily during Matins on the Nativity, and also as a reading for the first Mass on Christmas day.71 This reliance on the Advent and Nativity liturgies beginning the fourth and longest book of  Convivio, on the life of  the noble soul, should not surprise us, for Dante announces the Advent context at the end of  the first book, immediately following his appeal to the story of  the loaves and fishes, when announcing his gift of vernacular wisdom as a ‘new sun’ that comes to illuminate those long in darkness: ‘Questo sarà luce nuova, sole nuovo, lo quale surgerà la dove l’usato tramonterà e darà lume a coloro che sono in tenebre e in oscuritade, per lo usato sole che a loro non luce’ (Conv., I. xiii. 12) [This shall be a new light, a new sun which shall rise where the old sun shall set and which shall give light to those who lie in shadows and in darkness because the old sun no longer sheds its light upon them]. The idea of shedding light on the benighted is admittedly topical in rhetorical treatises Dante knew; a close parallel may be discerned in the exordium to the De vulgari eloquentia (I. i. 1). But the passage also unmistakably evokes the Advent and Nativity liturgy, in which Christ comes to free those who expect him from the darkness and captivity of sin, ignorance, and paganism. Dante’s text calls on Isaiah 9. 1–2 and 42. 7, which inform the canticum Zachariae of  Luke 1. 68–79, a passage familiar, we saw, because recited daily during Lauds as the Benedictus,72 but also drawn on for the Great O Antiphons at Advent and even for the text of  the Harrowing of  Hell in the Gospel of  Nicodemus. As given in the popular Legenda aurea, the fourth and fifth of  these Antiphons are: ‘O clavis David Rationale, IV. xiii. 24–25: ‘quod in missa quae est de aeterna genitura legitur evangelium de humanitate, sc. Exiit edictum’; for the reading at first Mass at Christmas (Luke 2. 1–14) see Missale, 16. For Luke 3. 1 on the fourth Sunday in Advent, ‘Anno quintodecimo’, see Missale, 14; see also Van Dijk, Sources, II. 32, for this reading in the Matins Of fice; Rationale VI. xiii. 16 and 24–25. 72 The Benedictus concludes: ‘In quibus visitavit nos, oriens ex alto, illuminare his qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent: ad dirigendos pedes nostros in viam pacis’. Compare Rationale VI. xiii. 2: ‘in dominica veniens, oriens ex alto, nos illuminaret […] et in nocte natus est, ut se sub carne latentem venire signaret; vel ut se ad illuminandam noctem nostram venire monstraret, quoniam: habitantibus in regione umbrae mortis, lux orta est eis’.

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[…] veni et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis’ [O key of  David … Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death] and ‘O oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et Sol iustitiae, veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis’ [O Morning Star, splendour of  light eternal and sun of righteousness: come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.]73 Durandus notes that the seven Antiphons, perhaps the most distinctive features of  the entire liturgical season, voice the expectation of  the just fathers in Limbo for the first Advent of  Christ as much as they do that of contemporaries for the second: ‘quia notant desiderium tam antiquorum patrum expectantium primum salvatoris adventum, quam modernorum expectantium secundum’ (VI. xi. 4).74 Just as Dante characterizes the food he of fers in his commentary in terms that recall the panis angelorum that will feed the saved at the Supper of  the Lamb, anticipating the second canto of  the Paradiso, Dante evokes with the language of  Isaiah some of  the most characteristic imagery of  the Advent of  Christ in the f lesh, stoking expectations of an illumination comparable to that of  the New Covenant itself, even of  the experience of  being released from the darkness of  Limbo and Hell. This solar imagery recurs frequently in

Legenda aurea vulgo historia Lombardica dicta, ed. by Thomas Graesse (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965; reprint of 1890 edn), pp. 4–5. The texts include material from Revelation 3. 7 (‘habet clavem David’); and Isaiah 9. 2 and 42. 7, also digested in the canticle of  Zechariah (Luke 1. 63 and 68): ‘benedictus dominus deus Israel, quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebis suae […] In quibus visitavit nos, oriens ex alto: illuminare his qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent’. 74 Shortly after the beginning of  the Descensus text narrating the Harrowing of  Hell, we find, ‘Populus qui sedet in tenebris videbit lucem magnam, et qui sunt in regione umbrae mortis lux fulgebit super eos’. I have relied on the edition of  the Descensus included in The Gospel of  Nicodemus: Gesta salvatoris, ed. by H. C. Kim (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Medieval Studies, 1973), hereafter Gesta. Much of  Nicodemus was digested into the Speculum Historiale of  Vincent of  Beauvais (1624; reprint Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1964), VII. 40–63, with the Descensus. possibly the version Dante knew, found in chapters 59–63. A condensed version is also found in chapter 52 of  the widely circulated Legenda aurea (ed. by Maggioni; I. 365–69). 73

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the poet’s work, for example introducing Francis of  Assisi in Paradiso X. The same imagery – a new sun rising that will free captives from darkness and prison – will frame the approach of  the Emperor Henry VII in the political letters, as is discussed below. Defending the right of  the Empire also drives Dante’s use of  liturgy in Monarchia. There are some dozen psalms quoted or referred to in the treatise, six in the first book, two in the second, and four in the third. The first two books begin with citations to the first two psalms, Beatus vir, typically used in the Of fices for saints, and ‘Quare fremuerunt gentes’ (Psalm 2. 1), a verse specific to Good Friday and Holy Saturday liturgy, and one that helps Dante put the case that those who resist the Emperor also resist Christ.75 The rest of  the psalms range over the whole psalter: of  these, 71, 94, 111, and 132 are prominent liturgically. The first psalm, whose initial capital B was routinely illuminated in Bibles and psalters with the image of  David composing on his harp, announces the programme of references to David in Monarchia, which are arranged in gradatio, ascending toward a climax. The following reference (Psalm 49. 16; Mon., I. xiii. 5) is to David’s reproach by God;76 in the next, David asks for wisdom for self and son (‘Deus, iudicium tuum regi da, et iustitiam tuum filio regis’ [God, give your own justice to the king, your own righteousness to the royal son]; Psalm 71. 1; Mon., I. xiii. 8); subsequently he is the Psalmist, praising unity in wills (Psalm 4. 8; Mon., I. xv. 3); then the trumpet of  the Holy spirit, singing Psalm 132. 1 (‘bonum et iucundum est fratres habitare in unum’ [how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity] Mon., I. xvi. 5). After beginning with Psalm 2.

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Psalm 2. 1 is the Versicle to the Response furnished by Psalm 2. 2 in the third Nocturn of  Matins on Holy Saturday: and the same two verses furnish the invitatory psalm and Antiphon at Matins on Good Friday. This verse is also alluded to in Dante’s Ep. VI. 5 to chastise the contumacious Florentines. 76 This psalm is cited in the Rationale (I. iv. 6; IV. xxiv. 9; V. iii. 9; V. v. 11), in reference to chastisement, including that of  the mouth; see also Benedict, Regula, VI. 1 (Rule, ed. by Kardong, pp. 118–21) citing Psalm 38. 2–3, and Richard Trexler, The Christian at Prayer, An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987), p. 199.

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1–3, the second book cites Psalm 10. 8 (Mon., II. ix. 1), which is sixth in the whole series and placed just before mention of  David’s victory over Goliath as an archetype of  the duel that gave Rome the bravium of empire (Mon., II. ix. 11). At Monarchia III. i. 4, David is the mouthpiece of  the Spirit coeternal with father, announcing that the ‘righteous are not afraid of ill report’ (Psalm 111. 7, used for the commendation of martyrs in the Of fice, as is Psalm 132. 1). Subsequently at Monarchia III. iv. 11 David is one of a list of witnesses including Moses, Job, Matthew and Paul, through whom the Holy Spirit speaks – a grouping that assigns to David, as frequently in medieval exegesis on the psalms, the status of prophet and evangelist.77 Finally (Mon., III. xv. 6), David appears as the composer of  Psalm 94, the invitatory psalm of  the Matins Of fice through most of  the year, thus in a sense a metonymy for the Of fice that begins the liturgical day. Moreover, Psalm 94, when not the invitatory psalm, is proper at the third Nocturn of  Matins on Epiphany: thus by referring to Psalm 94 Dante alludes to Epiphany, the feast most congenial to imperial af firmation.78 Beginning with David as a sinner and secular King,79 Dante’s series finds its centre with mention of  David as providential victor over Goliath, has David then become the singer of psalms and inspired prophet, and finishes by presenting him as the author of  the liturgical psalms, a role he will resume in the eagle’s eye of  the Heaven of  Jupiter in Paradiso. But perhaps the most important sense in which Monarchia is related to Epiphany is through the name of  the treatise itself. According to a tradition going back to Orosius, one of  Dante’s chief sources for Roman history, it was on VIII Ides of  January ( January 6th), the date that foretold, and

77 See, for example the preface to Peter Lombard’s commentary on the Psalms (PL, CXC. 55–57; esp. p. 57), where it said regarding the prophecies of  Christ’s Passion in the Psalms, ‘David prophetarum excellentissimus ita evidentissime aperuit, ut magis videatur evangelizare quam prophetare’. 78 For allusions to Epiphany in late medieval royal entries, see Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theater, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 115–81. 79 Rationale VI. i. 33 lists David the adulterer and homicide, along with the persecuting Saul, as a reformed enemy of  God who encourages sinners to enter the Church.

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would become, Epiphany, that Octavian was first acclaimed as Augustus with the triple triumph that signified universal peace in the Empire; the same occasion marked the Empire as a monarchy.80 Not only does Dante appear to allude to this historical juncture in the text of Monarchia, his conclusion of  ten of  fifteen chapters in the first book with a similarly phrased reiteration of  the necessity of monarchy, in ef fect repeating the title of  the treatise, stamps as it were the seal of authorial intention on the work.81 As both singer and warrior David is an exemplar for Dante, whose rhetorical task in Monarchia is decidedly polemical. At Monarchia II. i. 1, Dante the author enters the ring to strive for the Empire. The principal trope justifying the violence of  Roman conquest, that of  the duel, the contest for the bravium, is assumed by the author, though he enhances his own position and that of imperial Rome by clothing both contests in the language of  Paul’s apostolic struggles. At I. i. 5, Dante goes for the prize ‘ut palmam tanti bravii primus in meam gloriam adipiscar’ [so that I may be the first to win for my own glory the honour of so great a prize] (compare I Corinthians 9. 24); at III. i. 3 he enters the arena, trusting to God’s right

80 Orosius (Historia adversus paganos, VI. 20) asserts that Octavian’s triple triumph on 6th January in 27 BC prefigures the Christian epiphany, Christ’s manifestation as King. See Rationale VI. xvi. 8: ‘Ideo autem institutum fuit hac die festum de tribus miraculis, quia hec dies fuit antiquitus celebris in honore Augusti Cesaris, propter triplicem eius triumphum’; also Legenda aurea, ed. Maggioni, I. 87–88. On this same day, according to Orosius, Octavian assumed the name of  Augustus and Rome became a monarchia. As a term for one-man rule Monarchia was current both in anti-papal French political propaganda (see John of  Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, trans. by J. A. Watt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Medieval Studies, 1971), pp. 76–77) and in describing the royalty of  Christ (see Jean Leclerq, L’idée de la royauté du Christ au moyen âge (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1959), including an edition of  Thomas Aquinas’ Advent sermon; especially ‘regnum est sicut monarchiam quaedam’ (p. 91)). 81 Dante appears to refer to Orosius’s institution narrative at Mon., I. xvi. 1, where the names of  the ruler and the institution coincide: ‘non inveniemus nisi sub divo Augusto monarcha, existente Monarchia perfecte, mundum undique fuisse quietum’. Chapters 5–7 and 9–15 of  Book I of  Monarchia end with the phrase ‘ad bene esse mundi necesse est Monarchiam esse’ or variant (e.g. ‘Est igitur Monarchia necessaria mundo’).

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arm;82 and at III. iii. 18, he enters the field to cast out the unworthy, ‘pro salute veritatis in hoc libro certamen incipio’ [I engage in battle in this book in the cause of  truth].83 The emphasis in Monarchia on the role of  King David as an inspired singer, as the antecedent of  the Christian Roman Emperor, and as a model for Dante as poet, combatant, and prophet – roles that are operative, we saw, in the Commedia – are in turn aspects of  traditional imperial liturgy. Imperial coronation ordines treat the Emperor as an anointed King and imitator of  David.84 As we also saw, David is for Dante a contemporary of  Aeneas, the ancestor and forerunner of emperors. In this context, Psalm 71. 1, cited at Monarchia I. xiii. 7, stands out for its function as one of  the chief  Epiphany psalms, furnishing both an Introit Antiphon/Psalm for Mass on Epiphany, and texts to several Epiphany

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‘Gignasium praesens ingrediar, et in brachio Ilius qui nos de potestate tenebrarum liberavit in sangue suo impium atque mendacem de palestra, spectante mundo, eiciam’. There is no lack of scriptural witness to God’s strong right arm (e.g. Psalm 76. 16; Psalm 88. 11; Psalm 117. 16, the Magnificat (Luke 1. 51)); but the Advent O Antiphon, which calls upon the Lord to rescue his people, is suggestive: ‘O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento’: the immediate reference is to the harrowing of  Hell. 83 Compare the language for Rome’s battles: Mon., II. vii. 9; ‘Certamine vero dupliciter Dei iudicium aperitur, vel ex collisione virium […] per duellum pugillum […] ex contentione plurium […] per pugnam athletarum currentium ad bravium’. See also Mon., II. vii. 11–12; II. ix. 1. Emphasizing the citation at Mon., III. i. 1 of  Daniel 6. 22, Ascoli (Dante and the Making, pp. 270–73) links Dante’s role as champion to the prophet Daniel. 84 See Reinhard Elze, ‘The Ordo for the Coronation of  King Roger II of  Sicily: An Example of  Dating from Internal Evidence’, in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. by János M. Bak (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1990), pp. 165–78: ‘sicut unxit Samuel David in regem’ (p. 177); ‘et ipse, qui est clavis David et sceptrum domus Israel’ (p. 175); see also Le pontifical de Guillaume Durand, ed. by Michel Andrieu (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1940), p. 439 (XXVI. 15). The Palm Sunday processional hymn Gloria, laus, et honor refers to Christ as ‘Israel rex Davidis inclita proles’. For Dante’s use of  this hymn, see Martinez, ‘The Poetics’, pp. 289–99.

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antiphons (Omnes de Saba, Reges Tharsis, Omnes gentes) that come to be associated with the visit of  the Magi to the King born from David’s line.85 Dante’s vigorous assumption of  the role of defender of the the Imperial prerogative is reiterated in the political letters, where the poet acts as the praecursor of  Henry VII.86 When Dante invites Henry VII to proceed against his enemies at Epistola VII. 29, he directly anticipates Monarchia by recalling the victory of  David son of  Jesse over Goliath: ‘rumpe moras, proles altera Isai, sume tibi fiduciam de oculus Domini Dei Sabaoth coram quo agis, et Goliam hunc […] prosterne’ [cease delaying, new son of  Jesse. Draw strength from the eyes of  the Lord God of  Hosts, in whose sight you act, and cast down this Goliath]. It is in this context that Dante develops in elaborately liturgical terms his epistolary account of  the descent of  Henry VII into Italy between 1310 and 1313. Paola Rigo has shown how Advent and Easter liturgies inform the language of  Dante’s fifth Epistle, announcing to the people and princes of  Italy the coming of  Henry VII.87 The words in the epistle for the propinquity of  the Emperor (Ep. V. 5–6: ‘ad nuptias properat See Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 130–32 and 139–41. The reference in Ep. XIII. 3–4 to Can Grande as a Solomon whose fame the Queen of  Sheba, representing the author of  the letter, finds short of  Can Grande’s reality, is part of  the same association of imperial protocol and Epiphany liturgy: see Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 158–61. For aspects of imperial symbolism under Frederick II, see Claudia Villa, ‘Trittico per Federico II “immutator mundi”’, Aevum, 71 (1997), 331–57. 86 For the cursor in the royal Adventus, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘The King’s Advent and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of  Santa Sabina’, Art Bulletin, 26 (1944), 207–31 (esp. pp. 219–22). 87 Rigo, Memoria classica, points passim to the Gospel for the 1st Sunday of  Advent: Luke 21. 28: ‘levate capita vestra, quoniam appropinquat redemptio vestra’; which, along with Romans 13. 11, from the Epistle for the same Sunday, ‘Nunc autem propior est nostra salus’, inform Dante’s words of comfort at the heart of  the letter: ‘vos autem qui lugetis oppressi, “animum sublevate, quoniam prope est vostra salus”’ (Ep. V. 15). She also mentions Luke 21. 25–27 (Gospel, 2nd Sunday); and from Isaiah 45. 8: ‘Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum; aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem et iustitia oriatur simul’ (Antiphon and Versicle at Matins and Lauds in 4th week of  Advent). Regarding Lent, she mentions texts from Isaiah 66. 10 (‘lac et mel’) and Exodus 3. 7–8; also II Corinthians 6. 2: ‘ecce nunc tempus acceptabile’ and ‘Laetare Jerusalem’, for 4th Sunday in Lent (Laetare Sunday). 85

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[…] nam prope est’ [is hurrying to his wedding […] he […] is nearby]) echo language from the Advent season, indeed from many of  the readings that inaugurate the liturgical year.88 In the same vein, the invitatory Psalm 94 (Ep. V. 20–21), discussed by Rigo as Dante’s vehicle for asserting Henry’s authority over the world, might in the context of  Advent also be thought the inaugural psalm of  the yearly Of fice round itself, especially as it begins with Venite, which voices the characteristic expectation of  Advent: indeed, the covering Antiphon for the psalm on the first Sunday of  Advent is the highly relevant ‘Ecce veniet rex’. Significantly, too, as we saw, Psalm 94 is proper during the third Nocturn of  Matins on Epiphany.89 Dante’s representation of Henry’s descent into Italy is in fact a full-scale imperial Adventus and manifestation of  the King, including reference to the Nativity and Epiphany seasons as well as to Advent. Gordon Kipling has illustrated how, in order to represent at once the advent of  the sovereign and the manifestation of  his power, the iconography of medieval royal entries ran together the Advent and Nativity liturgical seasons right through the weeks after Epiphany.90 Henry’s advent was of course designed to exploit significant moments in the liturgical calendar, and Dante doubtless noticed that Henry’s descent into Italy concided with the Advent and Christmas season, as Henry entered Milan on 23 December 1309 – the last day for

88 See Rationale VI. vi. 15, 1st Sunday of  Advent, Epistle: ‘Nox precessit, dies autem appropinquavit’ (Romans 13. 13); Rationale VI. v. 2, 3rd Sunday in Advent, ‘Dominus prope est’; Rationale VI. i. 4, ‘prope est dies domini’; we also note, for 4th Sunday in Advent, ‘prope est dominus’; Rationale VI. xi. 2, anticipating the Nativity, writes ‘Canite igitur, quia prope sunt nuptiae’; Missale 14, the Introit for vigil of  Nativity: ‘hodie scietis quia veniet dominus’; Missale 8, Introit for Ember Fridays in Advent: ‘Prope esto domine’. 89 For the treatment of  Psalm 94 in liturgical manuscripts, which render it conspicuous to the eye, see Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, pp. 56 and 116–17. In the Roman curial use on the second and third Sundays of  Epiphany the Antiphon for Psalm 94 is from the psalm itself, and this continues, with variations, through much of  the year, but because of  the proper invitatory Antiphons at Advent and Nativity, this regularity of  the Psalm 94 Antiphon is first obvious at Epiphany. See Van Dijk, Sources II. 49 and 61. 90 See Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 21–37 and 130–34.

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an Advent O Antiphon at Vespers – and was crowned there on Epiphany, 6 January 1310.91 Even the date originally appointed by Clement V for Henry’s Roman coronation, Candlemas (2 February) 1312, was within the extended Epiphany season, as Candlemas was the feast of  Hypapante or occursus domini, the advent of  the Lord to his temple.92 The Advent to Epiphany pattern – and the advent to Hell as well, in the form of  the reproach of  the Florentines – is manifest in all three letters. Not only is the Invitatory Psalm 94 itself, we saw, proper for Epiphany, the reference to Augustus’s triumph at Epistola V. 24 also refers to that feast, correlated, as we also saw, with Octavian’s triple triumph. The claim in the sixth letter that the helmsman and oarsmen of  Peter’s ship are asleep (Matthew 8. 26), coincides with the Gospel reading during the fourth Sunday in Epiphany. More important, verses 5–6 of  Psalm 18, which furnish liturgical material throughout the Nativity, Epiphany, and Ascension seasons, steer much of  the figurative language in the letters, from the imagery of  the Emperor as a solar-giant (Ep. V. 3, VII. 5; compare Psalm 18. 6), to the emperor-elect’s role as the sponsus of  his state (Ep. V. 5; compare Psalm 18. 6); to his leap over the Alps (‘Apenninis iuga transiliens’), exactly like the sponsus of  Song of  Songs 5. 2;93 to the idea of  his passage as a cursus, as 91

As he had been crowned as Emperor-elect in Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) on 6 January 1309, and venerated the relics of the Magi at Cologne soon thereafter; he was crowned with the iron crown in Milan on 6 January 1311. See William M. Bowsky, Henry VII in Italy: The Conf lict of  Empire and City-State, 1310–1313 (Lincoln: University of  Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 19; also Kaiser Heinrichs Romfahrt. Die Bilderchronik von Kaiser Heinrich VII und Kurfurst von Luxemburg 1308–1313, im Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, ed. by F. J. Heyen (Coblenz: Harald Boldt, 1985), pp. 60–62. Dante’s political epistles are translated into English, with useful commentary, by Claire E. Honess, Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters (London: MHRA, 2007). 92 See Rationale VII. vii. 5: ‘primum quoad partum, quod dicitur festum Ypapanti, id est obviation […] qui adventus Domini in templum significant adventum eius in Ecclesiam […] Hunc adventum predixit Dominus per Malachiam iii: “Ecce ego mitto angelum meum et praeparabit viam ante faciem meam”’. For this feast in imperial liturgy and the implications of  the text from Malachi, see Kantorowicz, ‘The King’s Advent’, especially, pp. 217–31; Malachi 3. 1 begins most coronation orders. 93 In the Mass, Psalm 18 furnishes two Graduals for Ember Saturdays in Advent, ‘A summo celo egressio eius et occursus eius usque ad summum eius’ (with Versicle ‘Celi

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marked in the subscripts dating the letters (Ep. VI. 27; VII. 31; compare Psalm 18. 6); to his sudden ‘descent’, not in incarnation like Christ but in avenging majesty like an eagle (Ep. V. 11; compare Psalm 18. 7).94 In the seventh letter, Dante addresses Henry regarding his delay, once again addressing the Emperor as the Sun and world-ruler (‘Sol noster’; Ep., VII. 7). On this occasion, however, the letter is sharply challenging in tone. Liturgical texts recalling John the Baptist’s certification of  Christ, on the second Sunday in Advent, come to the fore. The testimony of  the Vox precursoris is the reading for the 2nd (or 3rd) Sunday in Advent,95 with Dante’s choice of words from this reading, ‘tu est qui venturus es, an aliud expectamur?’ [Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for enarrant’, from Psalm 18. 1), and ‘In sole posuit tabernaculum suum et ipse tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo’ (Versicle ‘A summo celo egressus eius’), as well as the communion verse, ‘Exultet ut gigas ad currendam viam; a summo celo’ (Missale 9, 10, 13). In the Of fice, ‘Celi enarrant’ begins the Psalm for the third Nocturn of  Matins on the first Sunday in Advent, while the Antiphons ‘Tamquam sponsus’ and ‘In sole posuit’ serve during Matins during the Nativity and on the Vigil of  the Octave of  Christmas for the first Nocturn of  Matins (Psalm is ‘Celi enarrant’, Versicles are ‘Tanquam sponsus’ in both cases): Van Dijk, Sources, II. 18, 32, 39, 43. The third Nocturn for Sunday in Epiphany includes the Versicle ‘Tamquam sponsus’ as well. Commenting on these uses, see Rationale VI. xi. 12: ‘dies natalis domini, in qua Christus desponsavit sibi humanam naturam, secundum quod dicitur in Psalmo: “et ipse tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo”’; VI. xi. 4: ‘propter geminam Christi […] naturam, unde: “Gemine gigas substantie”’; VI. xiii. 1: ‘“Descendit de celo Christus, de sinu Patris, ut apparet visibilis”, unde “egressus eius a Patre”, idest ab occulto et intimo Patris’; VI. xiii. 9: ‘“Descendit de celis”, in quo ostenditur […] Deum descendisse a Patre in Virginem’; VI. xiii. 11: ‘in versu: “Tamquam sponsus”’; VI. xvi. 9 (Epiphany): ‘In omnia terra exivit sonus’; VI. xvi. 12 (Epiphany): ‘A summo celo’. 94 As Rigo shows (Memoria classica, pp. 33–35), the theme of  the Emperor’s universal sovereignty is based on Psalm 94, ‘Venite exultemus’. For the topic of universal domination in Ep. V. 20–21, compare also Psalm 18. 5, ‘in omnem terram, in fines orbis’. References to the Song of  Songs in the Epistles are emphasized in Paola Nasti, Favole d’amore e ‘saver profondo’: la tradizione salomonica in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2007), pp. 131–57. 95 See Isaiah 40. 10, in Matthew 3. 3, Luke 7. 19 (‘mitto angelum meum’; Malachi 3. 1) in Missale 3 (2nd Sunday in Advent); Rationale VI. iii. 2–3 (2nd Sunday in Advent); VI. v. 2 (3rd Sunday in Advent).

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someone else?] (Ep., VII. 8), echoing those spoken in the Gospel by an embassy sent from John to Christ.96 But the other quotation of  John the Baptist, ‘ecce Agnus dei’ [behold the Lamb of  God] (Ep., VII. 10; John 1. 29), associated with John’s baptism of  Christ,97 is taken from the Octave of  Epiphany, the season of  the Lord’s public appearance as the King and Son of  God.98 In this instance we note Dante’s use of  the ostensive Ecce, which Aquinas, in his Advent sermon on the royalty of  Christ, describes as the verbal transcription of  the pointing finger of  the Baptist.99 If  the Henry of  the Epistles is a Christmas King, Dante is his Christmas prophet, attested by the reference at Epistola VII. 14 to Luke 2. 1 (‘Exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto’), the gospel reading for the first Mass at Christmas (Rationale VI. xiii. 19; Missale 16), which parallels the passages in the Convivio and Monarchia that Dante approved as giving an imperial Roman frame to the birth of  Christ. Following his advent and nuptials with widowed Italy, Henry will also release his people, including willy-nilly the Florentines, from captivity: ‘nam prope est qui liberabit te de carcere impiorum’ (Ep., V. 6) [he who will free you from the prison of  the ungodly is nearby],100 an act of power consistent with Advent and Epiphany liturgy, which celebrates the freeing of  the

96 The passage is drawn from Matthew 11. 10–11; see also Luke 7. 18–35. 97 For the baptism of  Christ on Epiphany, see Rationale VI. xvi. 5; and for the use of  Epiphany imagery in royal entries see Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 115–41. 98 Durandus also registers this text for the Feast of  the Circumcision (1st January). Rigo notes the reference in Epistola VII to Luke 7. 19, and to Isaiah 11. 1, ‘virga de radice Iesse’, as references to Advent liturgy (p. 38). For the Advent Os in Royal entries, see Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 54–56 and 64–66. 99 Leclercq, L’ideé, p. 90: ‘Et Johannes digito eum demonstravit ut praesentem dicens: Ecce agnus Dei’. 100 See Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 237–54, and Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body, trans. by R. Burr Litchfield (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 93–94. Bertelli’s assignment to an ‘anthropological origin’ (p. 94) of  the custom of releasing captives upon a triumphal entry entirely overlooks the model of  Christ’s harrowing of  Hell.

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just patriarchs in Limbo at approach of  the powerful Lord.101 Invoked in letters written by Italian cities to the Emperor before his advent,102 the role of  the emperor as a figure of  Christ harrowing Hell had long been institutionalized. In the coronation order in Durandus’ Pontifical, the Emperor is exhorted to model himself on the Christ who freed the captives in the shadow of death.103 The Descensus text of  the Gospel of  Nicodemus also imagines the souls of  the just as bound by original sin, ‘originale peccato astrictos’ (Gesta, p. 43),104 which may have suggested Dante’s description of  the Florentines clapped in irons, ‘in compedibus astrictos et manicis’ [shackled with chains and fetters] (Ep. VI. 21) gazing from the door of  their self-imposed prison.105 In this context, the Emperor’s approach heralds a new day dawning for Italy: ‘Nam dies nova splendescit auroram demon101 ‘Leva Ierusalem’, the Magnificat Antiphon for Mondays in Advent, includes the words ‘salvare te a vinculo’; see Van Dijk, Sources II, 21. But liturgical exegesis sees the entire season of  Advent, as well as the Mass Introit (which also commemorates Advent) as signifying the coming of  the Lord to free his people from captivity in Limbo: see Rationale 6.2.3–4, 4.5.1. 102 That Henry was seen as the harrowing Christ is explicit in a letter swearing the fealty of  Casale Monferrato to the newly crowned sovereign in Milan, and comparing Henry’s entry into Italy to Christ’s advent with a strong arm to despoil the infernal prisons, that is, the cities and realms of  Italy. See MGH, Const. IV. 4: 407–08 (cited in Bowsky, Henry VII, 227): ‘quod sicut unigenitus Dei filius pro salute humani generis, ut ipsum de laqueo dyabolice servitutis eriperet, ad yma mundi descendit, sic veneranda imperialis maiestas divini nomine gratia misericorditer predotata in totius christianitatis remedio et salute ad partes Ytalicas ad quietandum christianum populum, qui per discordias hominum totus dilaniatus cadebat, ut resurgeret divina virtute preambula, potentissimo brachio condescendit.’ 103 ‘Sitque tibi auctor, qui educit vinctum de domo carceris, et umbra mortis’: Durand, Pontifical (ed. Andrieu, 442), for the blessing of  kings. Note the reference to the Emperor’s anointing in Dante’s Epistola 7.19. 104 See Ps.-Augustine, PL 39.2060; ‘omnes justos, qui originali peccato astricti tenebantur, absolvit’; also Gesta 42; Bernard, Sermo de Adventu domini, PL 183.38–40; also 183.472. 105 Dante’s ‘servitutis ergastula’ is also a set phrase; compare Hugh of  St Cher’s commentary on the moral sense of  Psalm 113, cited in Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alla Divina Commedia (Florence, 1971): 30: ‘cum homo Deum habens prae oculis … exire vult de tenebris, et ergastulo peccatorum …’

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strans, que iam tenebras diuturne calamitatis attenuat […] quoniam Titan exorietur pacificus’ [For a new day is breaking and the light of that dawn is now allaying the shadows of our long period of adversity […] when Titan will rise in peace] (Ep., V. 2–3) This language echoes again in broad strokes the imagery dominant in the Christmas and Epiphany liturgies, describing Christ who comes ‘oriens ex alto’ to those who, like souls in Limbo, languish in darkness and captivity, ‘qui in tenebras et in umbra mortis sedent’ (Luke 1. 79) [that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death].

Dante’s Reception of  Liturgical Reforms Complementing the implications of  liturgy as oral performance is the special nature of  liturgical books, and the circumstances of  their development. The history of  liturgy is in large part a history of  how liturgical books were compiled, organized, combined and transmitted. From scattered fascicles of ordines romani and other kinds of  liturgical materials bound into codices to the first missals and of fice breviaries (which gave suf ficient instruction and cues to perform the Mass and Of fice throughout the year), the abbreviation, simplification, standardization, and eventually the portability and wide dif fusion of  the principal liturgical books marks the stages of  Western liturgical development.106 Shortly before Dante’s day, in the wake of reforms made by Innocent III and IV, further reform, streamlining, and standardization of  the liturgy in its breviaries, missals, ordinals, and pontificals, was set in motion, a reform galvanized by the needs of  the mendicant reformers Francis and Dominic and their highly successful orders.107 106 This complex history, still being researched and written, is well summarized in Eric Palazzo, Histoire des livres liturgiques: Le Moyen Âge, des origines au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1993). 107 For the Franciscan reforms, see S. J. P. Van Dijk and Joan Hazelden Walker, The Origins of  the Modern Roman Liturgy (London: Darton, Longmans and Todd, 1959).

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Before the mid-thirteenth century, both Franciscans and Dominicans had rationalized their liturgies: in the case of  the Franciscans, their reforms became by the end of  the Duecento the usus ad consuetudinem romana curia, and the Franciscan breviary and missal, along with the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Roman pontificals, are the books from which modern Roman liturgy derives.108 On the other hand the Dominican liturgy, based on the reformed Cistercian liturgy, thanks to its Master General Humbert of  Romans produced a comprehensive volume including fourteen kinds of  liturgical books that enshrined the standard liturgy for the order.109 Although Roman curial use was not immediately obligatory outside of  Rome (or even in all of  Rome itself ) the growing power of  the monarchical papacy fostered by Innocent III, spread through a growing episcopate and the dedication of new churches, hastened standardization.110 Thus during the late twelfth century and the first half of  the thirteenth century – the same period that saw the dif fusion throughout the European universities of  the teachings of  Aristotle, and the systematization of scholastic method – the liturgy was reformed, abbreviated, and ultimately rendered in portable, largely homologous missals and breviaries that came to be dif fused over a wide area of  Italy and Europe. What liturgy did Dante know? Petrarch’s breviary and psalter, which survives, announces on its first page that it follows the use of  the curia of  Rome, but we know of no such book that belonged to Dante. Older Florentine liturgical traditions looked West and North to Milan, Bologna, Nonantola, and Ravenna, rather than to Rome, and it was only in 1310,

108 The Franciscan Ordines for the Missal and Breviary are furnished in Van Dijk, Sources, II. 109 Recent work suggests this was not a master exemplar for copying, however, but a reference edition. See Leonard E. Boyle, ‘A Material Consideration of  Santa Sabina Ms. XIV L 1’, in Aux origines de la liturgie dominicaine: le manuscrit Santa Sabina XIV L I, ed. Leonard E. Boyle and Pierre-Marie Gy (Rome and Paris: CNRS, 2004), pp. 19–42. 110 The ef fects of papal inf luence on the episcopate in the direction of centralization is brought out by Eric Palazzo, L’évêque et son image: L’illustration du Pontificale au Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 21–30.

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well after Dante’s exile, that the use of  Rome was of ficially imposed on the liturgy of  Santa Maria Novella, the cathedral-in-progress to replace Santa Reparata.111 But if  Dante frequented lessons or lectures at Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, he would plausibly have come into contact with the reformed Franciscan and Dominican liturgies. As the 1310 reform included adding several French Angevin saints to the Kalendar, it would presumably not have pleased the severely anti-Angevin Dante, while liturgical uniformity – initiated, after all, by Innocent III, the architect of papal plenitudo potestatis – might have appeared to (and did) further ecclesiastical claims to universality and supremacy over the secular power, ambitions that infuriated Dante, who zealously desired an apostolically poor church and a vigorous Empire. Yet at the same time the use the Roman curia had been reformed and propagated by the Franciscan order – an order with whose founder Dante identified profoundly, and whose ideals, as Nick Havely’s study demonstrates, helped to authorize the poet’s own career as an impoverished and unarmed prophet.112 Sympathy for things Franciscan trumped the poet’s repugnance for papal presumption. It is then probable that Dante’s dating of  his poem in the year of  the Roman Jubilee (acknowledged, if not greatly emphasized, in Purgatorio);113 the emphasis throughout the poem on the Rome of  Peter and Paul as successors to Virgil’s imperial city; the location of  Rome as the stazione 111 For Florentine liturgical uses between the thirteenth and sixteenthcenturies, see Marica S. Tacconi, Catholic and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of  Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The surviving Florentine ordinals from the late middle ages, Ritus in ecclesia servandi and Mores et consuetudines canonice f lorentine, have now been transcribed in full in Franklin B. Toker, On Holy Ground: Liturgy, Architecture, and Urbanism in the Cathedral and the Streets of  Medieval Florence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 157–308. 112 See Nicholas R. Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the Commedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 113 On the Jubilee’s circumscribed role in the Purgatorio, see Robert M. Durling, ‘Dante, le Jubilé de 1300, et la question des indulgences’, Revue des études italiennes (forthcoming), and JoAnn Heppner Moran Cruz, ‘Dante, Purgatorio 2 and the Jubilee of  Boniface VIII’, Dante Studies 122 (2004), 1–26.

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termini of  the passage from this world to the next (the angelic gondolier of  Purgatorio departs from the mouth of  the Tiber) and the fact that for Beatrice paradise is ‘quella Roma ove Cristo è Romano’ (Purg., XXXII. 102) [that Rome of which Christ is a Roman] warrant the assumption that Dante’s concept of  the liturgy was consistent with the increasingly widespread use of  the Roman curia. There is, moreover, nothing obviously at variance with Roman curial use in Dante’s liturgical choices: there is no emphasis on local Florentine saints such as Zenobius, Minias or Reparata, for example; rather it is Lucy, Nicholas and Stephen, venerated in the standardized Roman Kalendar, to whom Dante refers.114 Conversely, there is some positive evidence that the Franciscan or Roman curial use is the liturgy of reference for the poem.115 Dante’s Paternoster in Purgatorio XI. 1–21 includes a pair of verses (‘laudato sia ’l tuo nome … / da ogne creatura’ (4–5) [may your name be blessed … by every creature]) that has rightly reminded many readers of verses in St Francis’ Cantico di frate sole. Also suggestive of a Franciscan liturgical presence is the fact that Saint Francis comes for Guido da Montefeltro’s soul in Inferno XXVII. 112–13, as if invoked in the litany that is part of  the Ritual for the Last Sacraments. Francis’ name is missing from this Litany in the thirteenth-century Roman pontifical, but present in the rite as found in reformed Franciscan breviaries, where it replaces the name of no less than St Michael the archangel, the longstanding psychopomp

114 It may be significant that Dante’s St Peter makes a place for the early popes Pius and Cletus (Par., XXVII. 40–45), who were added to the Kalendar of  Sta. Maria del Fiore after the reforms of 1310 (the other martyred popes in St Peter’s list, Linus, Sixtus, and Calixtus, go back to Gelasian and Gregorian Kalendars). See Tacconi, Catholic and Civic Ritual, pp. 72–73. 115 It has been claimed that Dante, describing Joachim of  Flora as ‘di spirito profetico dotato’ echoes the Florense liturgy for a Vespers Antiphon on the founder’s feast day of 29th May, which had been authorized to exalt him as ‘spiritu dotatus prophetico’ (see Arsenio Frugoni, s.v. Gioacchino in ED). Similar phrasing is also found in the mid-thirteenth-century liturgy for St Francis by Julian of  Speyer, where the saint is ‘spiritu prophetico / provisum’: Antiphon for first Vespers, as given in La Letteratura francescana, ed. by Lino Leonardi, 5 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 2004–12), II, p. 278.

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to the next world.116 Even more precisely indicative of a Franciscan mark on Dante’s liturgical borrowing is the apparent citation of  the Dies irae in Paradiso XIX. 112–14.117 Now believed to have been composed in the mid-thirteenth century by the Franciscan Thomas of  Celano, this poem is found in the Of fice of  the Dead in the Franciscan breviary, whence it passes into the Roman liturgy. But it is plausible that when Dante was growing up in the 1270s its provenance would have been fresh in the minds of  those who heard it. Finally, Aquinas’s mention of  Dominic as the ‘degno / collega’ (Par., XI. 118–19) [worthy colleague] to Francis, and the use of  ‘collegio’ on several occasions to refer to the society of  the blessed (Purg., XXVI. 129; Par., XXII. 98) may also echo the liturgical of fice composed for St Francis in the mid-thirteenth century, which included a hymn for the Matins of fice by Thomas of  Capua regarding Francis’ reception as a ‘novus collega’ in the ‘caeleste collegio’.118 But perhaps the best evidence of  Dante’s liturgical sympathies may be the composition of  the heaven of  the Sun itself. There are suggestions within the heaven of  the Sun, Paradiso 10–14, that the Franciscan liturgy, in synchrony with the Dominican, which dif fered from it only slightly, was recognized by Dante as the model for a universal rite. Within the frame of

116 Van Dijk and Walker, Origins, 347–53, 381, 521; van Dijk, Sources, II, 390–91. 117 Cited by Barnes, ‘Vestiges’, p. 268. Compare Dante’s ‘quel volume aperto / nel qual si scrivon tutti suoi dispregi’ (Par., XIX. 113–14) and Celano’s ‘liber scriptus proferetur / in quo totum continetur / unde mundus judicetur’. The principal reference remains of course Apocalypse. 20. 12. 118 The Franciscan use, and thus that of  the papal chapel, and that of  the Dominicans as well, are secular uses, not monastic – they have festive Matins of fices with nine, not twelve lessons, and a distinct weekly cursus of psalms. Although it has long been assumed that Dante’s Compline liturgy in cantos VII–VIII of the Purgatorio is based on a monastic service, none of  the elements there – the hymn Te lucis ante, the Salve regina Marian antiphon, allusions to Psalm 90 – is absent from secular Compline (of course in Dante’s version, none of  those said to be reciting the service are identified as monks, rather, they are secular princes). Some students have been misled by the apparent absence of  Compline in liturgical books containing the secular cursus – but this occurs because, having few proper elements, it is often taken for granted; see Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, pp. 74–75.

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a cosmic liturgy suited to the sphere of  the Sun, articulated as the double dance of  two choirs and two crowns of wise men whose interwoven song suggests a form of alternating psalmody,119 we find not only an explicit comparison of  the action of  the blessed to the liturgical exercise of nocturnal Of fices (Par., X. 139–48, discussed below), and a possible borrowing, as we saw, from the liturgy in honor of  St Francis, but an evocation of  the action of  the whole Church and of all of  Paradise. By way of introduction it should be noted that Paradiso X. 139–48 is part of a pattern of  liturgical reference, based on like-numbered cantos, that embraces all three cantiche: Inferno X–XII depicts the punishment of  those who denied the Resurrection of  the body, a tenet explicit in the Apostolic Creed.120 Farinata and Cavalcante evoke the iconography of  the Resurrection in that they partly emerge from their tombs, which are described as ‘arks’ (arche): save that their doom is not to escape, but rather

119 The two choirs, also crowns (Par., X. 65, ‘di sé far corona’), perform a double dance (XIII. 20, ‘doppia danza’) with their movement, and respond in concert (XIV. 62, ‘l’uno e l’altro coro a dicer Amme’), or in careful coordination of  their two motions and songs (XII. 6, ‘moto a moto e canto a canto colse’). Cf. Rationale on liturgical choirs (I. i. 18): ‘Sane chorus clericorum est consensio cantantium vel multitudo in sacris collecta. Dictus est autem chorus a chorea vel a corona: olim enim in modum corone circum aras stabant et ita psalmos concorditer concinebant, sed Flavianus et Theodorus alternatim psallere constituerunt […] due ergo chori psallentium designant angelos et spiritus iustorum quasi reciproca voce laudantium et se ad bonam operationem invicem exhortantium.’ See also Rationale V. ii. 29, of  the singing of antiphons with psalms: ‘Cantatur etiam a duobus choris alternatim, ad notandum mutual dilectionem sive caritatem que in paucioribus quam duobus consistere nequit. Coniungit ergo antiphona duos choros, ut caritas per bonum opus coniungat duos fratres.’ On the motion of  the two circles of  teachers in the Heaven of  the Sun, see Robert Durling, Additional Note 3, in Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, trans. and ed. by Robert M. Durling, with commentary by R. M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 708–13; see also Alison Cornish, ‘Sons and Lovers, Guido in Paradise’, MLN, 124:5 (2009), 51–69. 120 ‘Crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit ad caelos’.

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to be enclosed within their tombs after the Last Judgment (Inf., X. 10–12).121 Dante further emphasizes Resurrection iconography with mention in the following canto of  the 5th century Pope Anastasius (Inf., XI. 6–10): inscribed on his tomb, his name is an ironic pun, since the Greek name Anastatius means ‘resurrected’ and refers to the Anastasis iconography of  Christ rescuing Adam from Hell, the victory repeatedly recalled in Inferno (for instance at IV. 52–63; IX. 64–72; XII. 37–42; XXI. 112–14).122 Given the pilgrim’s descent during the days before Easter, the scene around Farinata’s fiery tomb can be seen as a parody of  the visit of  the Maries to Christ’s tomb, the visitatio sepulchri:123 the Gospel episodes of  the Maries at Christ’s tomb are the origin of  the famous play or trope, versions of which are contemporary with Dante, but the scene is also evoked in the readings, Antiphons, and Responses for Saturday Vespers and Easter Sunday Matins.124 Of course in the case of  Inferno X the tombs are not empty, as

121 See Robert M. Durling, ‘Farinata and the Body of  Christ’, in Stanford Italian Review 2 (1981): 5–35, esp. 12–16. Durling points out that the erect position in the tomb also invokes the iconography of  the Imago pietatis or ‘Man of  Sorrows’, with Eucharistic implication. For other implications of  the arche, see Anthony K. Cassell, ‘Farinata and the Image of  the Arca’, in Yale Italian Studies 1 (1972), 335–70. 122 Dante could have known this iconography from examples in Venice, Torcello, Ravenna or Rome; see Ronald L. Martinez, ‘“Anastasio Papa guardo” (Inferno 11.8–9): The Descent into Hell, and Dante’s Heretics’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 15–30. 123 Durling, ‘Farinata’, pp. 17–19; Dante’s account of  the three Maries is at Conv., IV. xxii. 13–18. Durandus gives a version of  the trope, acted by ‘persone sub formis et habitu mulierum et duorum discipulorum’ before the Te deum is sung following Matins on Easter Sunday (Rationale VI. lxxxvii. 5); on Easter Day, the procession before Mass is seen as the procession into Galilee to see the resurrected Christ (VI. lxxxviii. 1–3). The quem quaeritis trope is much studied; see at least, Hardison, Christian Rite, pp. 178–243; and, revising previous assumptions, Johann Drumbl, ‘Quem quaeritis’: teatro sacro nell’alto medioevo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), pp. 157–290. 124 Vespere autem sabbati is the Antiphon for Magnificat at Vespers on Holy Saturday, Van Dijk, Sources, II, 87; Easter Sunday Matins readings are from Gregorian homilies on Mark 16. 1–8, and the Response is Angelus domini; see Van Dijk, Sources, II, 88. Maria magdalene is a Response at Matins on Monday after Easter; see Van Dijk, Sources, II, 89.

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in the visitatio, but full (IX. 128–29), so that in Hell the promise of escape found in the Gospel and liturgical texts remains unfulfilled.125 In the case of  the second cantica, the liturgical and ecclesiological context of  Purgatorio X–XII is one of  the most elaborate of  the poem. The arrangement by which the which the proud are bent to see images of pride cast down, even as they must strive to imitate the upright images of  humility on the walls, acts out the words of  Mary’s Magnificat, the Vespers Canticle praising God’s exaltation of  the humble and casting down of  the proud (‘deposuit potentes de sede; et exaltavit humiles’; Luke 1. 52 [he has put down the mighty from their seat and has exulted the humble]). The terrace is also characterized by the troped and vernacular Padre nostro at canto XI. 1–21, traditionally a remedy against pride, and ubiquitous in liturgical use in the Mass, the Of fice, and in special rituals like the Of fice for the Dead; it is unique in the poem as the only common liturgical text reported in full, in the vernacular, and at the beginning of a canto. Especially authoritative because taught by Christ himself (Matthew 6. 9–13), it was often recommended – by St Francis among others – as a substitute for the Of fice in the case of  laypersons or the illiterate.126 As we have seen, Dante’s troped version closely paraphrases Francis’ Canticum and may ref lect Francis’ special interest in the prayer.127

125 See Cassell, 345. The pilgrim’s delayed answer to Cavalcante, ‘il suo nato è co’ i vivi ancor congiunto’ (Inf., X. 111) might allude to the angel’s ‘non est hic, surrexit enim’ (Matthew 28. 6; see also Mark 16. 6). 126 See Van Dijk, Sources, I, 40–42 for this practice among Franciscans, based on Francis’ Regula non bullata 3.8–10, as given in François d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Théophile Desbonnets et al (Paris, 1999), 128; also in the second rule (regula bullata), in Écrits, 186–87. Gilles Meersseman, Dossier de l’ordre de la pénitence au XIIIe siècle (Freibourg: Editions universitaires, 1961), documents this provision for other umiliati and penitents (p. 89), as well as Fratri gaudenti (pp. 300–01) for earlier use ‘ab idiotis’, see Trexler, Christian at Prayer, pp. 185–86; for the Pater in the liturgy, see Rationale V. ii. 1, V. iii, V. v, V. xxiii and Van Dijk, Sources, II, 17–18, 54–55, etc., also 192–95, 199–200, 392–95; Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts 21, 55–56, 66, 90–92, 152, 250. 127 Compare Francis’ ‘Laudato sie mi’ Signore, cum tucte le tue creature’ and Dante’s Purg., X. 4–5 (‘Laudato sia … / da ogne creatura’). Troped and vernacular paternosters were common. There are examples in the Memoriali Bolognesi; see Dorothea

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Dante’s three examples of  humility are closely related in their typology and liturgical implication. The annunciate Mary, of  the line of  David and Jesse, will bear Christ in her womb, the filii David of  Palm Sunday acclamation; he is the clavis David of  the Advent O Antiphon and of  the royal coronation orders,128 but thought of  here as wielded by Mary’s humility: her acceptance ‘volse la chiave’ (Purg., X. 42) [turned the key], opening her to the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation. But Christ’s humility is also implied, as he did not shrink from entering Mary’s womb: in the words of  the Te deum, ‘non horruisti virginis uterum’ [you did not abhor the Virgin’s womb].129 David as more and less than king (‘più e men che re’; Purg., X. 66) embodies the paradoxical exaltation of  the humble, expressed in the Gospel, but also in the royal coronation order of  Durandus (‘David in humiltate exaltatus’):130 like Mary, who avers herself  God’s handmaid (‘Ecce

Kullmann, ‘Osservazioni sui Memoriali bolognesi (con un frammento di lauda inedita)’, Zeitschrift fur Romanische Philologie 119 (2003): 256–80, esp. 275–78, as well as among the works of  St Francis (see the Expositio in ‘Pater noster’, in Letteratura, ed. Leonardi, I, 122–24). Rejecting his natural father Pietro Bernardone, Francis prefers the ‘pater noster qui est in caelis’, as reported in Bonaventura’s Legenda maior, II. iv, as given in Francesco d’Assisi, gli scritti e la legenda, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1993). 128 For the use, see Van Dijk, Sources, II, 25; Rationale VI. xi. 4–5; Durandus, Pontifical XXVI. xxiii. The texts include material from Apoc. 3.7 (‘habet clavem David’); and Isaiah 42.7; cf. Luke 1. 63 and 68, the Benedictus sung by Zachariah. See Van Dijk and Walker, Origins, pp. 116, 355; Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, p. 429; and Thomas G. Knoblach, ‘The O Antiphons’, Ephemerides liturgicae 106 (1992), 177–204. 129 Christ’s humility stands of course under that of all three figures. See Erich Auerbach 1946, ‘Figurative Texts Illustrating Passages in Dante’s Commedia’, Speculum 21 (1946), esp. pp. 476–77, also Dante Isella, ‘Canto X del Purgatorio’, in Studi Danteschi 45 (1968), 145–56, who observes that Dante repeatedly employs iuncturae of  humility and exaltation: the Virgin is ‘umile e alta’ in Par., XXXIII. 2; David is both ‘raised’ (‘trescando alzato’) and ‘lowered’ (‘più e men che re’); the images are ‘di tante umilitadi’ (Purg., X. 98). 130 See Luke 14. 11; and Durandus, Pontificale I. xxvi. 8; also: ‘David puerum tuum regni fastigio sublimasti.’ Rationale VI. cxxv. 4, David ‘coram archa domini’; Auerbach, ‘Figurative Texts’, 476–77; Isella and others have observed that Convivio IV. v. 1–6 associates the arrival of  Aeneas in Italy with the kingship of  David.

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ancilla Dei’; Purg., X. 44), David dancing with legs uncovered (‘trescando alzato’; Purg., X. 65) is in the Scriptural source derided by the disdainful Michal as a spectacle for the serving-girls (2 Samuel 6. 20: ‘discooperiens se ante ancillas servorum’). Finally Trajan, the Roman emperor who cities justice and piety (‘giustizia vuole e pietà mi ritiene’; Purg., X. 93) as his motives for turning back to fulfill a poor widow’s petition, foreshadows the anointed, Davidic Holy Roman Emperor,131 who in the coronation orders engages himself  to live justly and piously, to avenge injustices and defend widows;132 as such, Trajan will be enshrined close to David in Paradiso.133 For Rome, too, we recall, is bound to spare the humble and beat down the proud, as Anchises recommends to Aeneas in the Elysian fields.134 The liturgical implications of  the three episodes are both specific and comprehensive. The Ave spoken to Mary and her answer are found in the Marian liturgies of  the Breviary three times a year in addition to the 25th March Annunciation (at Advent, Assumption, Nativity).135 David’s establishment of  the Ark in Jerusalem, we saw, marks the introduction of choral music for the cult,136 and adumbrates Church liturgy more generally, given that the Ark is the type of  the Church, as it is of  Mary who received

131 Reinhard Elze, Die Ordines für die Weihe und Krönung des Kaisers und der Kaiserin (Hannover: Hannsche, 1960). Henry VII is presented as an anointed, Davidic king in Ep., V. xix (‘unxitque te Dominus in regem super Israel’), the of fspring of  Jesse (Ep. 7.29, ‘proles altera Isai’); since anointed, he is of course technically a christus (Ep., VI. xxv, echoing Isaiah 53. 4, a passage thought to be prophetic of  Christ). 132 See Elze, Die Ordines, XIX. xxv (p. 94): ‘viduas ac pupillos clementer adiuves … desolata restaures … ulciscaris iniusta’; xxix (p. 95): ‘et ita iuste et misericorditer et pie vivas’. 133 The words spoken by the Eagle at Par., XIX. 13–14, ‘per esser giusto e pio / son qui essaltato a questa gloria’, could be spoken by Trajan. See Dante, Epistle V. vii, ‘cum sit Caesar et maiestas eius de fonte def luat pietatis’; and Monarchia II. v. 5: ‘recte illud scriptum est, romanum imperii de fonte nascitur pietatis.’ 134 Durandus, Pontificale, XXVI. xxiii: ‘disperdere superbos et relevare humiles.’ See Monarchia II. vi. 9, quoting Aeneid VI. 848–54. 135 Van Dijk, Sources, II, 27–30, 132–33, 156, 160. 136 Rationale II. ii. 2, and Daniel H. Weiss, ‘Biblical History and Medieval Historiography: Rationalizing Strategies in Crusader Art’, MLN, 108 (1993), 710–37.

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Christ, bringer of  the New Covenant, in her womb.137 According to traditions Dante knew, Gregory shaped the entire Of fice by compiling the Antiphoner, and was also celebrated for his institution of  the Great Litany asking for the intercession of  the Saints – ora pro nobis – such as is recalled in Inf., XX. 7–9 and employed in vernacular form at Purg., XIII. 49–51.138 Indeed, Gregory’s papal prayer for Trajan exemplifies the intercessory power of  the whole Church.139 As Mary’s humility draws down the decree that opens heaven after its long interdict (‘suo lungo divieto’, Purg., X. 36), Gregory’s bold petition reverses the decree of damnation against Trajan: in this sense, the ‘gran vittoria’ (Purg., X. 75) [great victory] Dante attributes to Gregory is an extension of  that of  Christ over death and Hell.140 The Trajan episode thus speaks to the question of ef ficacious prayer for the dead raised by the pilgrim and clarified by Virgil in Purg., VI. 28–42, as well as to the large-scale pattern of intercessive prayers for both living and dead in Purgatorio.141 Moreover, Gregory’s prayer is a model for all the petitions by the penitent souls on the several terraces: all are prayers in one form or another.

137 The Arca is discussed in Durandus, Rationale I. ii. 4–9; for the Virgin as arca foederis; see especially Bernard’s Sermon on the Assumption, PL 184.1016–17C: ‘Haec est enim scala, rubus, arca, sidus, virga, vellus, thalamus, porta, hortus, aurora … arca foederis, arcam gratiae, sanctitatem scilicet Mariae’. 138 For these traditions, see Rationale VI. xii. 2–3, and Iversen, Chanter, pp. 23–24, Hiley, Medieval Plainchant, pp. 510–15. 139 The widow herself symbolizes the Church, owed protection by the Emperor; see the Imperial coronation order, in Elze, Ordines, XIX. 25 (p. 94). For Gregory’s roles in the Commedia, and especially the Paradiso, see Vittorio Montemaggi, ‘Dante and Gregory the Great’, in this collection of essays. 140 See Inf., IV. 54, ‘con segno di vittoria coronato’; it is by virtue of  the same victory over Hell that Christ is called on to confirm kings and emperors in some coronation orders: ‘per dominum nostrum qui virtute sancte crucis tartara destruxit’ (Elze, ‘Ordo’, p. 172). 141 Cf. Purg., III. 140, where the ecclesiastical decreto enforces Manfred’s exclusion from active purgation (‘esto divieto’, line 144), an impediment which can be reduced through prayer (line 145).

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Though a recent discussion of  the episode of  Trajan minimizes Gregory’s importance, Dante has given the pope a uniquely privileged status among the figures named in the examples.142 The prideful Michal witnesses David’s humiliation, exemplifying an erroneous reading of  the event, but the Annunciation scene has no inscribed spectator. It is Dante’s Gregory, though only mentioned and not depicted, who acts as a dynamic co-spectator, framing the scene of  Trajan and the widow for the poet’s readers.143 Because moved to his act of prayer by a visual representation of  Trajan’s justice, Gregory exemplifies his own celebrated recommendation that visual images be used to instill piety: the visibile parlare praised by Dante (‘non vide meglio di me chi vide il vero’), insofar as it is instructs and guides, is not other than ‘Gregorian.’144 Returning to Paradiso, the solar placement of  Dante’s chief depiction of  the liturgy is significant: the Sun is the central planet of seven, radiating life, love, heat and light to all the others, just as divine Wisdom illuminates the virtues and the human mind. The sphere highlights Aquinas’ account of  Francis (Par., XI. 43–117), whose birthplace Ascesi Thomas renames 142 Gordon Whatley, ‘The Uses of  Hagiography. The Legend of  Pope Gregory and the Emperor Trajan in the Middle Ages’, Viator 15 (1984), 25–63, esp. 44–49, unfairly minimizes Gregory’s role to make it conform with Dante’s excoriation of corrupt popes elsewhere in the poem. 143 Gregory’s gloss on David’s humility in dancing before the ark (Moralia in Job, XXVIII. xvii) may be the most inf luential for the exegetical tradition, so that in this sense too Gregory informs Dante’s art. 144 See Rationale, I. iii. 4. Mary Carruthers, The Book of  Memory: A Study of  Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 221–27 points out that Gregory’s advocacy of religious art as a litteratura for nonreaders should be taken to mean that images may render discursive meaning, which seems Dante’s point in having Mary’s posture ‘speak’ the words of  her answer to Gabriel; cf. also Purg., XII. 21, where pavement tombs stimulate memory of  the dead, ‘solo ai pii dà delle calcagne’. Nancy Vickers, ‘Seeing is believing: Gregory, Trajan, and Dante’s Art’, Dante Studies 101 (1983), 67–85 reconstructs Gregory’s experience of  Roman art as the stimulus for his prayers, though without considering Gregory’s status as defender of images; James H. McGregor, ‘Reappraising Ekphrasis in Purgatorio 10’, Dante Studies 121 (2003), 25–42, also overlooks Gregory’s role in promoting religious imagery.

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Oriente [Mal. 6.2], for the rising sun that is the nascent Francis bringing comfort to the whole world: his rising sun conforms to the pattern of  the Advent Christ prophesied in Isaiah 9. 2 (‘Populus qui ambulabat in tenebris, vidit lucem magnam’ [the people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light]), a text exploited in the Nativity liturgy and quoted in the prologue to Bonaventure’s Legenda maior.145 That the motions and singing of  the wise men express the love that binds Christ to his Church in a nuptial embrace, as Dante has it in Par., X. 139–48, can probably be said of all the liturgical action and song of  Paradiso (see Par., III. 79–87). The poem to Paradiso X is also dogmatically prominent: it of fers the first explicit reference to the Trinity in the cantica, underscoring the filioque from the ‘liturgical’ Nicene Creed,146 and the poet’s characterization of  the opening apostrophe as a foretaste (23) echoes the ‘pan degli angeli’ of  Paradiso II. 11 and points to the nuptial feast of  the Lamb (Apocalypse 19. 7–9), the celestial fulfillment of  the last supper at which the pilgrim’s presence is assured.147 With the proem, the ultimate goal of paradise, to taste and see the Incarnation, anticipated in the sight of  the Gryphon at Purgatorio XXXII. 127–29, comes into focus just as the pilgrim moves into the heaven of unalloyed light.148 The solar cantos are accordingly sown with liturgical references and gestures: passage into the solar sphere begins with Beatrice urging the 145 See Zacharia 6.12: ‘Ecce vir Oriens nomen eius’. And see Rationale V. ii. 57 on the orientation of churches and of prayer, quoting passages from Zechariah and Isaiah. 146 The Sanctus, Par., VII. 1, alluding to the trinitarian tersanctus, is an implicit reference, as is the descent of  the Verbo, VII. 28–30. In Dante’s scheme in Convivio, the sun is the sphere where the angels contemplate the relations of  the Holy Spirit with the Son (Conv., II. v. 7–11). 147 Par., XXIV. 1–9, ‘lo sodalizio eletto alla gran cena / del benedetto agnello … per grazia di Dio questi preliba’; Par., XXX. 135, ‘prima che tu a queste nozze ceni’. Note that XXVII. 1–3 is another explicit reference to the Trinity. 148 Cf. Psalm 33.9, the communion chant Gustate et videte …; see Rationale I. ii. 9, of  the manna contained in the Ark of  the Covenant: ‘debet etiam ibi esse manna divine prelibationis ut quam suavis est Deus gustemus et videamus quia bona est negotiatio eius’ (quoting Proverbs 31. 18 rather than Psalm 33.9); see also Marco Ariani, ‘“Abyssus luminis”: Dante e la veste di luce’, Rivista di letteratura italiana 11 (1993), 9–71.

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pilgrim to give thanks (Par., X. 52–54) and closes with a prayer formula (Amme; Par., XIV. 62). Sacraments mentioned include Dominic’s entry into the church through baptism (Par., XII. 61), and, implicitly, Francis’ exitus with the last rites from the church militant on earth (Par., XI. 117: ‘non volse altra bara’ [he wished for no other bier]). The nuptial metaphor, based on the ‘great sacrament’ anchored in Christ’s espousal of  the Church with his death on the cross, appears at Par., X. 139–48, XI. 31–33 and XII. 61–63. The dancing and singing in the Sun (the souls are ‘non da ballo sciolte’ (Par., X. 79) [not freed from the dance]; ‘tripudio’ (Par., XII. 22) [solemn dance]) are recognizably liturgical in that they echo David’s dancing before seven choirs and the Ark at Purg., X. 55–63,149 while instances of  figured trinitarian praise suggest the triple iteration of  the tersanctus and trisagion, of  the Kyrie and Gloria patri.150 The Church and its parts are repeatedly figured: as ‘una rota de la biga’ (Par., XII. 106) [a wheel of  the chariot] (cf. Par., XII. 107, ‘la santa chiesa si difese’); as the vine (Par., XII. 86, ‘la vigna’) and the garden (XII. 72: ‘all’orto suo’, and 104: ‘l’orto cattolico’); as a household (XI. 86: ‘quella famiglia’; XII. 115: ‘la sua famiglia’); as Jacob’s ladder (X. 86: ‘quella scala’); as a f lock (X. 94: ‘santa greggia’). It is identified as the arca or treasure-chest for the elect (XII. 120), fulfilling its appearance as the Ark in Purgatorio X and XXIX–XXXIII, and in contrast to the tombs of  the heretics in Inferno (X. 29: ‘arche’). Identifying the first seven wise men Aquinas names or implies the Church: Peter of  Spain of fered his works for the Church (Par., X. 107–08: ‘con la poverella / of ferse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro’); Solomon, though explicitly remembered for his regal prudence (Par., XIII. 105–08), also built the Temple, and narrated 149 Par., X. 76: ‘sì cantando quelli ardenti soli’; XI. 96: ‘meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe’; XII. 23: ‘del cantare e sì del fiammeggiarsi’; XIII. 25: ‘lì si canto non Bacco, non Peana’: XIII. 28 ‘compié il cantare e’l volger sua misura’; XIV. 31: ‘tre volte era cantato da ciascuno’. 150 The chiastic praise of  the Trinity at Par., XIV. 28–30 resembles the Invitatory Antiphon chant for Matins on Trinity Sunday, ‘Deum verum unum in trinitate et trinitatem in unitate’, although of ficial institution of  this feast falls late in Dante’s life.

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in Canticles the love of  Christ for the Church that informs the nuptial metaphors of  the sphere;151 the Areopagite’s information regarding ‘l’ angelica natura e’l ministerio’ (Par., X. 117) [the nature and ministry of angels] is the archetype of  Church hierarchy; and Orosius was ‘l’avvocato dei tempi cristiani’ (Par., X. 119 [the advocate of  Christian times]) when he recounted how the Church prevailed against Rome. Gratian’s compilation of  Canon Law aided both sacred and secular fora (Par., X. 104–05).152 The ecclesiological emphases are not unexpected, given Dante’s intention to celebrate the mendicants’ reform of  the Church (albeit themselves currently in need of reform): but it is also plausible that among the reforms of which Dante approved is the mendicant reform of  liturgy, which brought uniformity, and greater clarity, but also abbreviation, in order to make the cult compatible with the demanding preaching and teaching missions of  the orders. In any case, when Dante does describe liturgy explicity, he brings in a clock. For Dante’s clearest and most consequential statement of  the meaning of  liturgy in the poem springs from the poet’s account of  the rotation of  the circle of  the theologians in the heaven of  the Sun. Dante compares this rotation to the movement of what is possibly the works of a mechanical clock, but what is certainly the ringing or tintinnabulation of a bell, or possibly a set of  bells, designed to call the faithful to recitation of  the Of fice:     Indi, come orologio che ne chiami ne l’ora che la sposa di Dio surge a mattinar lo sposo perché l’ami,

151 See Ronald Herzman, ‘From Francis to Solomon’, in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 320–33 (p. 329), referring to I Kings 6. 31 and 7. 23–25, where Solomon’s building of  the temple is associated with the king’s wise imitation of  heavenly order; cf. Wisdom 11. 20, a book traditionally attributed to Solomon. On Solomon in the Paradiso, see Nasti, Favole d’amore. 152 In the same vein, candle-f lames, as the teacher Aquinas is described at Par., X. 15 (‘il lume di quel cero’), can signify expositors of  Scripture, as in Rationale IV. xxiv. 14: ‘due cerei illuminati, doctores Ecclesie per quos Ecclesia illuminatur et qui debent habere notitiam utriusque testamenti, designat.’

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    che l’una parte e l’altra tira e urge, tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota che ’l ben disposto spirito d’ amor turge     così vid’ïo la gloriosa rota muoversi e render voce a voce in tempra e in dolcezza ch’esser non pò nota     se non colà, dove gioir s’insempra. (Par., X. 139–48) [Then, like a clock that calls us at the hour in which the bride of  God, on waking, sings matins to her Bridegroom, encouraging His love (when each clock-part both drives and draws), chiming the sounds with notes so sweet that those with spirit well-disposed feel their love grow; so did I see the wheel that moved in glory go round and render voice to voice with such sweetness and such accord that they can not be known except where joy is everlasting.]

Dante’s use of  ‘mattinar’ has been associated with the Provençal lyric genre of  the alba, the dawn-song of soon-to-be-parted lovers; and with the serenata, the social ritual in which night music is of fered to the lady love.153 Both the suggestive eroticism of  Dante’s language, and the poet’s audacious blending of sacred and secular song, are worthy of remark, but will not be my focus here.154 Dante’s lines 140–41 speak directly to the liturgical context invoked. Recall of  Psalm 118. 62, ‘media nocte surgam ad confitendum tibi’ [I rose at midnight to give praise to you], which Saint Benedict identified as the Psalmist’s exhortation to nocturnal worship, is inevitable: Dante’s passage ref lects one of  the fundamental psalm texts 153 On the lyric alba, see Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric (London: Hutchinson, 1968), pp. 167–85, and Jonathan Saville, The Medieval Erotic Alba: Structure as Meaning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). 154 For Dante’s use of  the eroticized nuptial metaphor in the Sun, see Auerbach, ‘Saint Francis of  Assisi’, in Scenes from the Drama of  European Literature (New York: Russell and Russell, 1959), pp. 77–98, esp. pp. 88–90; Marguerite Chiarenza, ‘Dante’s Lady Poverty’, Dante Studies, 111 (1993), 153–75; Olivia Holmes, Dante’s Two Beloveds: Ethics and Erotics in the Divine Comedy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 167–82 and Paola Nasti, ‘Caritas and Ecclesiology in Dante’s Heaven of  the Sun’, in Dante’s Commedia, ed. Montemaggi and Treherne, esp. 221–29. The relation of  Dante’s Par., X. 140 to Purg., IX. 13–15, XIX. 1–3 and XXVII. 94–96 needs closer study.

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thought to prescribe the frequency of  liturgical practice.155 But in light of  the close proximity of  Francis’s espousal of  Lady Poverty, described in the following canto (XI. 31–33, 64, 84), and the importance of  the nuptial metaphor in Paradiso, we are also justified in hearing an echo of  Canticles 3. 1–2, where the voice is that of  the Bride (the Church, or the Soul, in the standard allegoreses): ‘In lectulo meo, per noctes, quaesivi quem diligit anima mea[…]. Surgam, et circuibo civitatem’ [In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth … I will rise, and will go about the city].156 Through these allusions Dante’s lines bind the male voice of  the psalmist to the female gender of  the personified Church (an individual nun or faithful soul, anima, are also implied), vastly increasing the suggestive range, and indeed the broad-spectrum eroticism, of the words. The passage means that the early morning Of fices – but as they are the first of  the day, better thought of as a synechdoche for the entire Of fice – are a call to the Spouse.157 The personified Church solicits Christ’s loving embrace – shakes him awake with song, so to speak – and this embrace is of fered as the final cause of worship generally. The language and the placement of  the passage – ten lines concluding canto X, in the heaven of  the Sun (a central fourth of seven planets) – associates to a universal cosmic desire the devotion of  the whole incorporate Church. As Christian Moevs points out, the pushing and pulling of  the bell mechanism (‘tira e urge’, in suggestive rhyme with ‘d’amor turge’), adopts the same principle of spiritual peristalsis that unifies the nine angelic orders along their hierarchy, within which all pull and all are pulled, ‘tutti tirati son, e tutti tirano’ (Par., XXVIII. 129). The rhymes on nota and rota link

155 There are other prescriptions at Psalm 118. 148 and 164; see Benedict, Regula, ch. 16 (Rule, ed. Kardong, 191), and Rationale V. iii. 3. 156 Cf. the other uses of surgere in cantos X–XIII: X. 114, ‘a veder tanto non surse il secondo’; XI. 26, ‘non surse il secondo’; XII. 46–47, ‘in quella parte ove surge ad aprire / Zefiro dolce …’; XIII. 106, ‘e se al surse drizzi li occhi chiari’; XIII. 142, ‘che quel puo surgere, e quel puo cadere.’ 157 Either Matins or Lauds might be indicated, but since the two Of fices were often run together, and laudes were widely known as matutinae laudes, the distinction may not be necessary or useful.

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the passage to others in the Purgatorio and Paradiso (XIV. 20–24; XXIV. 10–18; XXVIII. 9) where the wheeling of  the heavens, and the dancing of  the blessed or the singing of  the angels are coordinated, and the same may be said of  the intrinsically musical rhymeword tempra, used at Purg., XXXII. 33, Par., I. 78 and especially Purg., XXX. 91–94, where a chorus of angels, ‘quei che notan sempre / dietro alle note de li etterni giri’ (92–93) [those whose notes ever follow the notes of  the eternal spheres], sing in harmonies that are sweet because they express pity for the pilgrim. More specifically, the use of  ‘che ne chiami’ (Par., X. 139) [which call us] of  the stimulant-bell echoes the same verb used at the beginning of  the canto to declare the need of  the earth for the formative inf luences of  the planets, insofar as these are modulated by their alignment with the solar ecliptic (X. 14–15: ‘l’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta, / per sodisfare il mondo che li chiama’ [the circle branching obliquely to bear the planets that satisfy the world in need of  them]). If, as Dante says in Monarchia (III. xv. 3), the life of  Christ is the form of  the Church, it follows that the Church desires the embrace of  Christ as the sublunar earth yearns to be formed by the angelically administered planetary orders, the instruments of providence. Precisely this relationship is implied by Beatrice’s account of  the cosmic order at Par., XIII. 49–84, where she cites the fashioning of  Adam and of  Christ as the two occasions when the intentions of  Nature were realized: ‘così fu fatta già la terra degna / di tutta l’animal perfezione’ (XIII. 82–83) and ‘così fu fatta la Vergine pregna’ (XIII. 84). On these occasions the cosmic nuptials yielded prolific results, and co-operated in generating the two men who define Christian history. Nor is the material reality of  the clock and its bells unsuited to the loftier meaning of  the passage: indeed, the onomatopoetic tin tin attaches the passage to an instance of  literal, acoustic reality. The linking of  Par., X. 139–48 to the opening proem and its astronomy lesson on solar motion is relevant to the relation between the times of worship and the motion of  the stars and luminaries. Monasteries required clocks to determine the time of  the nocturnal of fices; more indirectly, the variations of solar position, which creates seasons and times (Par., X. 16–18), notoriously af fected the liturgy, which necessarily adjusted to longer and shorter nights according to the season; on an annual basis, the observation of  the luminaries and

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the measurement of  temporal intervals was essential to determining the date of  Easter, the chief annual feast. Words equivalent to Dante’s tempra were also used to describe the adjustment of  bell-ringing mechanisms (including the tuning of  their bells) and their attached clocks, as well as the adjustments made in the duration of  the Of fices so that they might be completed in time available.158 Ironically, the monastic or cathedral clocks that woke monks, nuns, or canons to sing the nocturnal Of fices were intended to replace individuals who reckoned the time from the stars (and who were luckily still handy when the clock mechanisms failed), that is, from the kind of scrutiny the poet invites in Par., X. 1–27.159 The whole passage also has a prosaic parallel, and perhaps part of its origin, in the liturgy of  the benediction of  the church clock found in the Roman Pontifical. We can hear in the text of  this blessing several elements similar to those in Dante’s passage: the mention of  the bell (tintinnabulum) and its use to excite to worshipful song and to the increase of devotion, even the language of  human love to explain divine.160 If  Dante’s orologio does refer to an early form of mechanical clock, as often argued, Dante may have conceived of its mechanism as imitating, either theoretically or in practice, the movements of  heavenly bodies.161 At the least, we can probably assume that the bell-striking mechanism Dante envisioned was a set of  bells arranged in a circle, an arrangement often 158 See Gerhard Dohrn-Van Rossum, History of  the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. and ed. by Thomas Dunlap (Chicago: University of  Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 60–66, on temperare in these senses. 159 For the account of monastic time-telling, and many of  the details in this paragraph, see Dohrn, History, 29–123 and Christian Moevs, ‘Miraculous Syllogisms, Clocks, Faith and Reason in Paradiso 10 and 24’, Dante Studies 117 (1999): 59–84. 160 ‘Cum clangorem illius [tintinnabulum] audierint filii christianorum, crescet in eis devotionis augmentum, ut festinantes ad pie matris ecclesie gremium, cantent ibi canticum novum in ecclesia sanctorum, deferentes in sono preconium tube, modulationem psalterii, suavitatem organi’: Durandus, Pontificale II. xxii. 3 (ed. Andrieu, p. 534). 161 Dohrn, History, thinks a striking mechanism more likely than a clockwork itself (pp. 92–94); see also Peter Dronke, Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 82–102, esp. pp. 100–02.

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illustrated, and one that satisfies the conditions of  Dante’s text, since the gloriosa rota of the twelve wise teachers seems to be compared to the orologio with its several parts (‘una parte e l’altra’: Par., x. 142). On either reading, the clock is a miniature simulacrum of  the turning heavens, a model of  the cosmos. The audible tin tin of  the bell complements the visual spectacle of fered by the crossing of  the ecliptic and celestial equator in the opening lines of  the canto. As gazing on the celestial wheels stimulates the desire of mortals to understand, love, and imitate the wisdom of creation, the clock arouses the faithful to worship the Creator in exercise that prepares the continuation of  that worship in heaven, forever, without temporal limit: thus the last word of  Dante’s canto is the characteristically formed neologism s’insempra, in rhyme with tempra for the harmonious singing of  the wise (‘voce a voce in tempra’; 146), and describing the ‘forevering’ of joy, just as Adam’s original vociferation to God had begun, according to Dante, in joy.

A Large-scale Liturgical Pattern in the Commedia: The Soul’s Reception Dante’s account of  the reception of souls in the next world, a ceremony fundamental to the poem, originates in and draws upon a liturgical rite, that of  the commendation of  the dead, or the ritual for the Last Sacraments.162 Commentators have noted that Dante makes explicit reference to this liturgy in the Convivio to describe the exit of  the noble soul from the body: 162 Found in the the Roman Pontifical, but also modified and bound with Franciscan missals and breviaries; see Van Dijk, Sources, I, 135–39; later incorporated into Books of  Hours. For text of  the Rite, see Van Dijk, Sources, II, 392–93; also Le Pontificale de la curie romane du XIIIe siècle, ed. by Michel Andrieu (Vatican City, 1940): 493. For the development of  the rite, see Damien Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans l’église latine des origines à la réforme carolingienne (Münster: Liturgie wissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, 1978).

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‘sì come a colui che viene di lungo cammino, anzi ch’entri ne la porta de la sua cittade, li si fanno incontro li cittadini di quella, così a la nobile anima si fanno incontro, e deono fare, quelli cittadini de la etterna vita’ (Convivio IV. xxviii. 5) [just as when someone is completing a long journey his fellow citizens come out to greet him before he passes through the gates of  his city, so when the noble soul is in this stage those who are citizens of eternal life come out to greet it, as they ought]. The words closest to Dante’s, as taken from the Pontifical and the Roman rite, are from the prayer Delicta iuventutis: ‘veniant illi [morituro] obviam sancti Angeli dei, et perducant eum in civitatem caelestem Ierusalem’ [May the holy angels of  God meet him and guide him into the city of  the heavenly Jerusalem].163 If  the Paradiso can at times appear as an extended reception of  the pilgrim by the heavenly citizenry – the scenario explicitly envisioned in the commendation prayers – this process actually begins in the Purgatorio. The ascent from each terrace requires the intervention by the angel or angels of  the beatitude, who score the souls’ progress by erasing the incised Ps from its forehead, such that the terraces of  Purgatory present a serialized reception of saved souls and of  the pilgrim. The formulas employed by the angels and other Purgatorial guides to send candidates to the next level add up to nine invitations, six using venire and three intrare.164 The series conf lates the invitation to the good servant (‘intra in gaudium domini’, Matthew 25. 21 [enter into the joy of  the Lord]) with Christ’s invitation ‘venite benedicti’ [come, you blessed ones], to those who have done works 163 Sapegno in commenting on Par., IV. 28 (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1955, ad loc) sees the prayer as explaining Dante’s expedient of  having souls appear in the various planetary spheres as if  they had descended from heaven (‘per far segno’), even though they remain in the Empyrean: by this logic, an important part of  the structure of  Paradiso depends on the commendation prayer. 164 These are: intrar, II. 99; intrate, III. 101; intrate, IX. 131; venite, XII. 91–92; intrate, XV. 35; venite, XVIII. 43; intrate, XXVII. 11; ‘Venite benedicti patris miei’, XXVII. 58; and ‘vien con lui’, XXXIII. 135. For Rationale VI. iv. 3, ‘Venite benedicti’ are words spoken by Christ at his advent in judgment; liturgically, the invitation is used as the Benedictus Antiphon at Lauds on Monday in the first week of  Lent, and as the Introit on Easter Wednesday (see Rationale VI. xcii. 1, Van Dijk, Sources, II, 78, 252).

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of mercy for himself in others (Matthew 25. 34–35). The invitation radiates down the terraces from the angelic invitation to pass into Eden, made when the upward journey on the mountain is nearly complete. Given the importance of  Psalm 113 in Dante’s accounts of polysemy, the use of  In exitu Israel as the song that accompanies souls in their crossing to Purgatory (Purg., II. 46–48), based on the Roman use that called for reciting Psalm 113 when the dead body was transported to church for the of ficium mortuorum, or to the cemetery for the burial service, points to the reception of souls as one of  the more important events in the poem.165 In the Roman use the psalm is accompanied by the Antiphon ‘Chorus angelorum te suscipiant’, which summarizes the sentiment of  the commendation prayers.166 The emphasis in the Letter to Can Grande on exitus in the anagogical sense (‘exitus animae sanctae ab huius corruptionis servitute ad aeternae gloriae libertatem’; Ep., XIII. 21 [the sanctified soul leaves the servitude of corruption for the freedom of eternal glory]) echoes these

165 Psalm 50, the Miserere, recited in part several times in Purgatorio (V. 24; XXIII. 11, ‘labia mea aperies’; XXXI. 98, ‘asperges me’) is used in its full text, and in Antiphons and prayers, for the rituals preceding death, during the reconciliation of  the sick and dying, for the ritual of commendation itself, and for services following death, bearing the body to tomb. See the rubric for reconciling penitents, relevant to the excommunicate Manfredi: ‘sequantur alii fratres processionaliter dicendo plane psalmum Miserere mei deus’; the violently killed in Antepurgatory sing Psalm 50 complete (Purg., V. 22–24). See also the Litany of  Saints, alluded to at Purg., XIII. 50–51, part of  the service for the dying. 166 The rite consists of prayers and the Antiphon Subvenite sancti Dei with versicle Suscipiat eum, including petitions for assistance by heavenly powers (occurite angeli domini; subvenite sancti dei) that the soul be taken up (suscipiat te christus) to the sight of  God (in conspectu altissimi) and guided (et perducat te; ut pervenire mereatur) to the bosom of  Abraham (et in sinum Abrahae angeli deducant te) and the place of salvation (In locum sperande sibi salvationis). After the soul has left the body (egressa autem anima, exitus anima a corpore) comes the recitation of  the Antiphon subvenite sancti Dei with versicle suscipiat eum; after these comes the care of  the body, and its transport to church, singing In exitu Israel, for further services (the Of fice of  the Dead), before the body is taken to the cemetery for the burial ceremony.

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rites for the dying: litanies, communion, extreme unction, and commendation prayers begin when the soul is seen to enter its final agony (‘ad exitus appropinquare’).167 The Exodus psalm informs Dante’s poem generally as a narrative module that charts transit from a bad place to a good, from Egypt to the promised land, from the infernal pit to the dome of  heaven.168 In other passages, Dante draws on the miracles that attend the historical events registered in the Psalm 113 and the Exodus narrative.169 Still other echoes of  the psalm depend on the passage to freedom (libertas) and power (potestas) – the freedom from sinful habit and consequent ability to pursue the right course unimpeded – that comprise the pilgrim’s moral quest in Purgatorio 167 Both Psalm and rite arguably inf luenced Dante’s narratives of souls departing the body: in the Vita nuova XXII. 1, Folco Portinari (if it is he) ‘di questa vita uscendo, a la gloria etternale sen gio’ anticipates Conv., II. i. 7; ‘… ne l’uscita dell’anima del peccato, essa sia fatta santa e libera nella sua potestate’; or, rather, the departure of  Beatrice’s father furnishes the anagogical instance lacking in the Convivio account of  the Psalm (see also Inf., XX. 58). Note also the emphasis in the Purgatorio on the moment of death (Cato at I. 73–74 (‘lasciasti / la vesta’); Casella at I. 88–89; Sapia at V. 134, ‘disfecemi Maremma’; Omberto Aldobrandeschi at XI. 59 (‘io ne morì’); Philip the Bold at VII. 5 (‘morì disfiorando il giglio’); Corso Donati at XXIV. 87 (‘corpo disfatto’); more elaborately, Jacopo del Cassero and Buonconte da Montefeltro (V. 82–84, 97–102). In the Paradiso, the same logic applies to Rhipeus and Trajan, who leave the body for Paradise (see Par., XX. 103–04: ‘D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi, / Gentili, ma Cristiani’). 168 Dunstan J. Tucker, OSB, ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto: The Divine Comedy in the Light of  the Easter Liturgy’, American Benedictine Review 11 (1960), 43–61, points to Par., XXV. 56, where the pilgrim hears that has been permitted to journey from Egypt to Jerusalem before his death (‘li è conceduto che d’ Egitto / vegna in Gerusalemme’); and, within the Empyrean rose, Par., XXXI. 39, where the pilgrim finds he has passed from Florence to a people just and hale (‘da Firenze in popolo giusto e sano’). As this last passage begins comparing the pilgrim to barbarians astonished by Rome’s grandeur (‘se i barbari, venendo di tal plaga’), de populo barbaro from Psalm 113 sets the contours of  the passage, which begins with barbari and ends with popolo giusto. 169 In Purg., XVIII. 133, midway through the second cantica, among the examples of sloth are the people of  Israel, ‘la gente a cui il mar s’aperse’; at Par., XXII. 94, ‘Iordan volto retrorso, / più fu, e’ l mar fuggir … mirabile a veder, che qui’ l soccorso’, echoes how in the Psalm the sea reacts to the Exodus: ‘mare vidit et fugit’.

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(‘libertà va cercando’; Purg., I. 71 [he goes in search of  freedom], Virgil says to Cato). In these cases the psalm’s moral sense is to the fore. Accounts of  free will furnish the central discussions of  the poem, including a passage in Purgatorio XVIII. 68–72, spoken by Virgil, that coordinates through rhyme the phrases ‘innata libertate’ (68) [innate liberty] and ‘in voi la potestate’ (72) [in you the power], recalling how in the Convivio exegesis of  Psalm 113, the soul becomes ‘santa e libera in sua potestate’ (II. i. 7) [holy and free in its power]. Exemplifying this new freedom, the poet Statius, rising from the terrace of  the prodigal, enjoys ‘libera volontà di miglior soglia’ (Purg., XXI. 69) [the free will of a better threshold].170 For the pilgrim, the completion of  his ascent of  the mountain means that his power of choice, his arbitrio, is crowned by Virgil ‘libero, dritto e sano’ (Purg., XXVII. 140) [free, upright and whole]. In a kind of verbal network not dissimilar from how the themes of a liturgical feast are distributed across several genera (e.g. psalm, Antiphon, readings, prayer), all these moments in the poem – historical, tropological and anagogical – can be viewed as expressions of  Psalm 113, which as the textual viaticum for the liberated dead also may be said to accompany the living pilgrim on his entire journey. Indeed, use of  the psalm to narrate both passage and the scheme of moral progress come together in the valediction to Beatrice near the end of  the Paradiso, when the poet testifies that through Beatrice he was ‘da servo tratto in libertate, / per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi / che di ciò fare avei la potestate’ (Par., XXXI. 85–87). This recalls the glossed version of  the psalm in Ep. 13.21, ‘exitus animae ab hoc corruptio servitutis ad aeternae gloriae libertatem’ [the departure of  the soul from servitude of corruption to the freedom of eternal glory], with the term potestate recurring again from the Convivio version. As the pilgrim expresses the hopes 170 Peter Armour, ‘The Theme of  Exodus in the First Two Cantos of  the Purgatorio’, in Dante Soundings, Eight Literary and Historical Essays, ed. by David Nolan (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981), pp. 59–99, esp. p. 88, identifies the shaking of  the mountian at Statius’s completed purgation – the subclimax of  the Purgatorio – with the moving of  the earth before the divine presence in Psalm 113 (‘mota est terra’). See also Robert Hollander, Allegory in Dante’s Commedia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 66–69.

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that his soul, healed by Beatrice, will be pleasing to her as it departs his body (‘piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi’; Par., XXXI. 90), this final, most intimate instance of  the Psalm recapitulates how it was introduced into the poem to accompany those newly departed from life.171 The ritual of  the soul’s reception is fully developed in Paradiso. Just as Beatrice’s descent to Limbo – in the wake of  Christ – to address Virgil leads the way for the pilgrim’s own descent into Hell, Beatrice’s assumption to heaven in Vita nuova XXIII anticipates the pilgrim’s anabasis to the Empyrean. Based on the Palm Sunday triumph of  Christ as he enters Jerusalem liturgically understood as a summary of  his victorious gesta (that is, recalling his Incarnation, announcing his victory over death in the Resurrection, and anticipating his ascension), Beatrice’s entrance is a triumphant one on the principle that every such ascent of a soul to heaven is a triumph and deserves festive reception.172

171 Domenico De Robertis, ‘Dante e Beatrice in Paradiso’, in Dal primo all’ultimo Dante (Florence: Le Lettere, 2001), pp. 137–54, notes echoes of  Psalm 70. 18–20 in the pilgrim’s valediction. There is also an echo of  the close of  the Vita nuova (XLII. ii): ‘E poi piaccia a colui che è sire de la cortesia che la mia anima sen possa gire a vedere la gloria della sua donna’, a petition that the scene in canto XXXI self-fulfills, so to speak. 172 See Kantorowicz, ‘King’s Advent’, pp. 206–09 and Kipling, Enter the King, p. 203, for the soul’s ascent to heaven as a triumphal entry. For the Palm Sunday entry of  Christ as a summation of  his victorious gesta, recapitulating the Advent in the f lesh (‘primum adventum est in carnem, scilicet in utero virginis assumptam, de quo dictum est: Osanna filio David’), see Rationale VI. ii. 1–2; as anticipating his Passion and victory, Rationale VI. lxvii. 11 (‘illi namque ferentes ramos triumphum Christi nondum completum sed tempore passionis complendum prefigurabant’); and as foretelling his Ascension in triumph, bearing with him the ‘spoils’ of  Hell, the newly saved, Rationale VI. lxvii. 9 (‘significat etiam quod Dominus ad nos veniet, et ad aeterna tabernacula nos ducet’). The balance of  the prayer Dante alludes to in Conv., IV. xxviii. 5 is usefully recalled here: ‘egredienti autem anime tue de corpore splendidissimus angelorum chorus occurrat; iudex apostolorum tibi senatus occurrat; candidatorum tibi martirum triumphator exercitus obviet: liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet; iubilantem te virginum chorus excipiat et beate quietis in sinu patriarcharum te complexus astringat; mitis atque festivus Christi Iesu tibi conspectus appareat’ (emphases mine).

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Propelled upward through the heavens by Beatrice the pilgrim is met by personal aquaintances (Piccarda, Charles Martel) and a blood ancestor (Cacciaguida), along with personnel from the commendation prayers: angels, virgins (insofar as nuns, Piccarda and Costanza), confessors (Folco, Benedict, Bernard), apostles (Peter, James, John), martyrs (Boethius, Cacciaguida, Peter, John, James) as well as Christ, who comes in triumph in canto XXIII, though direct sight of  him is deferred. In several instances, terms for the approach of members of  the reception committee are used (‘trarsi ver noi’, Par., V. 104 [drawing towards us]; ‘a noi venir’, Par., VIII. 26 [come towards us]) that echo the occurrat and obviet of  the commendation prayer;173 their ef fulgence (splendori) resonates with the splendidissimus of  the prayer as well.174 In the last planetary heaven of  Saturn, with the descent of  Damian and Benedict and the appearance of  the ladder, the scheme of descent, meeting and return upward becomes explicit (Par., XXI. 64–65: ‘giù per li gradi de la scala santa / discesi tanto sol per farti festa’ [down along the degrees of  the holy stairway I have come solely to welcome you]). Both the rising contemplatives (‘e ’l collegio si strinse / poi, come turbo, in su tutto s’avvolse’; Par., XXII. 98–99 [the college gathered itself  together and like a whirlwind swept upwards]), and the approaching crowd of  the blessed (‘turba triumfante / che lieta vien’; Par., XXII. 131–32 [the glad triumphant throng approaching]) assume the role of  the victorious armies (‘martirum triumphator exercitum’) and crowd of confessors (‘confessorum 173 In the Convivio, Dante translates with ‘li si fanno incontro’ the phrase ‘veniant illi obviam’ for the procession of angels to meet the ascending soul; this phraseology recurs in the poem: see Purg., V. 29 (‘corser incontr’a noi a dimandarne’) of  the violently slain; see also XXIX. 58–60, ‘l’alte cose / si movieno incontro a noi sì tardi / che foran vinte da novelle spose’, of  the procession in Eden as it approaches the pilgrim. For other uses of  ‘venire incontro’ or related expressions in Purgatorio, see II. 76 (‘trarrersi avante’, of  Casella); VI. 73 (‘surse ver lui’, of  Sordello); VIII. 52 (‘ver’ noi si fece’, of  Nino Visconti); XII. 88 (‘a noi venia’, of  the angel who dismisses from the first terrace); XV. 27 (‘e pare inver’ noi esser mosso’, of the second angel); see also XXVIII. 46, 53–59 (Matelda). 174 Souls as splendori: Par., III. 109, V. 103, IX. 13, XIV. 95, XXI. 32, esp. XXIII. 82, XXIX. 138. Dante also has the pilgrim and Beatrice surrounded by circling spirits in the sphere of  the Sun (cf. circumdat, in the prayer).

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turma’) who receive blessed souls in the commendation prayer, as well as the crowds who receive the triumphant Christ as he enters Jerusalem in the Gospel (‘turbe autem que precedebant et que sequebantur’, Matthew 21. 9 [the multitudes that went before and that followed]) and in the Palm Sunday procession Antiphon.175 That the upward motion of  the blessed souls in Paradiso is associated in Dante’s imagination with the ascent of  the soul understood as a Palm Sunday triumph is assured by the upward snowfall at Par., XXVII. 67–72, which recalls the upward rain of manna of  Beatrice’s ascent, surrounded by angels singing Osanna in excelsis, in Vita nuova XXIII. xxv.176 The beginning of  Paradiso XXIII, where Beatrice is compared to a bird awaiting the coming of  the sun (1–15), refers immediately to the coming triumphs of  Mary and Christ, the only two humans assumed bodily into heaven, as announced (see XXII. 131–32). But in a more general way Beatrice’s expectation is of  the Christ who always comes as the rising sun of  the Advent and Nativity liturgies, and the triumphant Christ of  the Palm Sunday entrance, anticipating his future Ascension accompanied by the souls rescued from Limbo, the spoils of  his victory. In Dante’s Paradiso XXIII. 19–21, these spoils are the entirety of  those saved: ‘ecco le schiere / del triunfo di Cristo e tutto il frutto / ricolto del girar di queste spere’. In addition to the links with the liturgy of  Palm Sunday and of  Ascension, Dante’s account resembles the Virgin’s assumption as narrated, based largely on apocryphal sources, in the Legenda aurea.177 Similarities 175 ‘Occurrerunt turbe cum f loribus et palmis redemptorem obvium, et victori triumphanti digna dant obsequia’. 176 Compare VN, XXIII. xxv: ‘e vedea, che parean pioggia di manna, / gli angeli che tornavan suso in cielo’ and Par., XXVII. 67–72: ‘Sì come di vapor gelati fiocca / in giuso l’aere nostro, quando’l corno / de la capra del ciel col sol si tocca, / in su vid’io così l’etera addorno / farsi e fioccar di vapor triunfanti / che fatto avien or noi quivi soggiorno’). The VN passage recalls Exodus 15.27–16.7, which includes the words ‘Ecce ego pluam vobis panem de caelo’, referring to manna in a text read on Palm Sunday. 177 Legenda aurea, ch. 115 (ed. Maggioni, II, 779–810); da Varagine acknowledges that the account is drawn from apocryphal sources, while citing a passage from Jerome that excludes only a few details as apocryphal.

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include Gabriel, presented as the Virgin’s personal messenger in the Legenda, who is seen dancing attendance on her in Par., XXIII. 103– 11.178 The presence in the Legenda of  the apostles and the Virgin together (‘omnes apostolos congregatos vidisse’), drawn together by miracle, make the Legenda account an early gathering of  the whole Church. And when, at the appointed hour Christ comes ‘cum angelorum ordinibus, patriarcharum cetibus, martyrium agminibus, confessorum acie virginiumque choro’, the list of  the blessed who receive souls in the commendation prayer is rendered nearly complete, though slightly dif ferent terms are employed.179 An interesting aspect of  the Legenda account is that the Virgin’s passing is explicitly treated as a liturgical ritual, with Peter, standing for the entire Church, chanting the invitation to Mary to take up her heavenly crown.180 Though this text from Canticles is in the Sanctoral typically assigned to feasts of virgin martyrs, it is in this context also a likely model for the invitation to Beatrice in Purg., XXX. 10–12, during the Palm-Sunday-like procession that descends to receive the pilgrim, and which includes parallels between Beatrice and the Virgin Mary (‘Benedicta tue / nelle figlia d’Adamo’; Purg., XXIX. 85–86 [Blessed are you among the daughters of  Adam]). A final detail of  the Virgin’s obsequies in the Legenda would likely have caught Dante’s eye: as the apostolic pallbearers bear her body to the tomb (from which it will later be raised to heaven), they sing a version of  Psalm 113, with its traditional emphasis as a psalm of joy and victory, and followed by a jubilus: ‘Exiit Israel de Aegypto, Allelluia’.

178 ‘Ave, inquit, benedicta … ecce autem ramum palmae de paradiso ad te dominam attuli’. 179 Legenda aurea, ch. 115 (ed. Maggioni, II, 780). Gabriel grants the Virgin’s request not to see demons upon her ascent: the request of  the commendation prayer that the soul be spared this af f liction is implicit (‘Ignores omne quod horret in tenebris’); see Legenda aurea, ch. 115 (ed. Maggioni, II, 780). 180 ‘Tunc cantor cantorum omnibus excellentius intonavit: “Veni di libano, sponsa, veni di Libano, veni, coronaberis.” Et illa: “Ecce venio.”’

Claire E. Honess

Dante and the Theology of  Politics

‘Tanto essilio’ It is surely no coincidence that when Dante’s Adam describes the punishment inf licted on him as a result of  that original and definitive sin which stains and corrupts all his descendents, he does so in terms which specifically recall medieval Italy’s most common form of political punishment: that of exile:     Or, figliuol mio, non il gustar del legno fu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio, ma solamente il trapassar del segno. (Par., XXVI. 115–17) [My dearest son, the tasting of  the tree was not itself  the cause of  banishment, but rather our transgression of  the mark.]1

Coming only nine cantos later, this choice of  term cannot but recall Cacciaguida’s extended prophecy, in Paradiso XVII, of  Dante’s own exile from Florence, an exile which is also presented, in the broader episode of  the Heaven of  Mars (Paradiso XV–XVII), as the loss of an ideal environment – a sort of civic locus amoenus – in the form of  the ‘dolce ostello’ (Par., XV. 132) [sweet […] resting place] of  the eleventh-century Florence known to Dante’s illustrious ancestor.2

1 2

Translations of  the Commedia throughout are those of  Robin Kirkpatrick: Dante: The Divine Comedy, 3 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006–07). On the locus amoenus in Classical and medieval literature, see Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by Willard R. Trask (Princeton,

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Of course, Adam’s ‘exile’ from Eden is, primarily, a spiritual rather than a political one, more akin to the smarrimento of  Dante-personaggio in the Dark Wood than to that of  the real, historical exul inmeritus from Florence.3 Yet, for Dante, the spiritual and the political are always closely bound up together. If  his ‘poema sacro’ [sacred work] would never – as the poet wishes so fervently in the famous opening lines of  Paradiso XXV – overcome the cruelty of  those who banished him from Florence,4 it nonetheless clearly delineates an alternative narrative of return from the wilderness of  the infernal ‘selva oscura’ (Inf., I. 2) [dark wood] to the ‘vera città’ [true city] of  Heaven (Purg., XIII. 95), while at the same time providing the poet with a platform from which to condemn the corruption of  his own earthly city, and others like it. In this chapter, I will explore the significance of  this synthesis of political and spiritual concerns in Dante’s works, and will argue that, for Dante, politics and theology are inseparable aspects of a world-view whose politics is as theological as its theology is political.5

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NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 182–202. The locus amoenus was not, however, traditionally a civic but a beautiful and tranquil natural environment. In these cantos Dante metaphorically transports the biblical Eden to the eleventh-century Florence of  his ancestor. John Took suggests that in Inferno I ‘we are confronted by the prospect of  loss, by the symptoms of man in his estrangement’; that is, we are shown the condition of  the human being exiled from God. John Took, ‘Dante, Augustine and the Drama of  Salvation’, in Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the ‘Divina Commedia’, ed. by John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), pp. 73–92 (p. 81). The term ‘Florentinus et exul inmeritus’ is used in self-description by Dante in several of  his letters (see Epistole III, V, VI, and VII). On the issue of political and theological hope in this episode of  the Paradiso, see my ‘“Ritornerò poeta …”: Florence, Exile and Hope’, in ‘Se mai continga …’: Exile, Politics and Theology in Dante, ed. by Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne (Ravenna: Longo, 2013), pp. 87–105. My book, From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of  Citizenship in Dante (Oxford: Legenda, 2006), represents an attempt to situate Dante’s thinking about civic life on earth in both its religious and its poetic contexts, in contrast to an earlier critical tendency to focus on real, individual cities (Dante and Florence, and so on). Other recent works have also adopted this broader approach; of particular

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Ordinatio ad unum This conception of  the apparently disparate threads within Dante’s poetry and thought coming together within a single, harmonious and inseparable whole, itself parallels one of  the central tenets of medieval Christian political thought: the theory of ordinatio ad unum, which saw the political state as a unity deriving directly from the absolute unity of  God.6 Aquinas, for example, asserts in his commentary on the Sentences that ‘cum omnis multitudo procedat ab unitate aliqua […], oportet universitatis multitudinem ad unum principium entium primum reduci, quod est Deus’ [since every multitude proceeds from some unity, […] it is necessary that the multitude of all that is should be reduced to one primary principle of  being, which is God],7 and elsewhere he argues that, in politics as in nature, unity necessarily precedes and is superior to plurality: ea, quae sunt ad naturam, optime se habent: in singulis enim operatur natura, quod optimum est. Omne autem naturale regimen ab uno est. In membrorum enim multitudine unum est quod omnia movet, scilicet cor; et in partibus animae una vis principaliter praesidet, scilicet ratio. Est etiam apibus unus rex, et in toto universo

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note, for their focus on the relationship between human and providential history, are Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert: History and Allegory in the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), and Jef frey Schnapp, The Transfiguration of  History at the Center of  Dante’s Paradise (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). ‘Unity is the root of  All, and therefore of all social existence’; Otto Gierke, Political Theories of  the Middle Age, trans. by Frederic W. Maitland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 10. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis (Parma: Fiaccadori, 1856), I. d. 2 q. 1 a. 1 co. All references to Aquinas’s writings are taken from the electronic Opera omnia, ed. by Enrique Alarcón (Pamplona: University of  Navarre, 2000–12), available at accessed 8 April 2013. English translation by Federica Pich, for whose support in the editing of  this chapter I am hugely grateful.

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Claire E. Honess unus Deus factor omnium et rector. Et hoc rationabiliter. Omnis enim multitudo derivatur ab uno.8 [Whatever is in accord with nature is best, for in all things nature does what is best. Now, every natural governance is governance by one. In the multitude of  bodily members there is one which is the principal mover, namely, the heart; and among the powers of  the soul one power presides as chief, namely, the power of reason. Among bees there is one king bee, and in the whole universe there is One God, Maker and Ruler of all things. And there is a reason for this. Every multitude is derived from unity.]

For Aquinas, then, the theological foundation of  the political order on earth is patently clear. Just as the single Creator is both the source and the ultimate goal of  the whole variety and diversity of  Creation, so unity is both the origin and the aim of political states, in which, therefore, plurality is ideally subordinated to oneness, the part to the whole, and the individual to the community. Consequently, the ‘common good’, the good of  the community as a whole, is considered to precede and to subsume within itself  the good of  the smaller groups or individuals who make up that community: Manifestum est autem quod omnes qui sub communitate aliqua continentur comparantur ad communitatem sicut partes ad totum. Pars autem id quod est totius est, unde et quodlibet bonum partis est ordinabile in bonum totius. Secundum hoc igitur bonum cuiuslibet virtutis, sive ordinantis aliquem hominem ad seipsum sive ordinantis ipsum ad aliquas alias personas singulares, est referibile ad bonum commune, ad quod ordinat iustitia.9

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Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum ad regem Cypri [De regno], ed. by R. M. Spiazzi (Turin & Rome: Marietti, 1954), I. 3; On Kingship to the King of  Cyprus, trans. by Gerald B. Phelan, rev. by I. T. Eschmann, OP (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Mediaeval Studies, 1949), re-ed. by Joseph Kenny, OP, available at accessed 8 April 2013. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Rome: Leonine, 1888), IIa–IIae. q. 58. a. 5 co.; Summa Theologiae, trans. by Thomas Gilby, OP, 59 vols (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1975), vol. XXXVII.

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[Now clearly all who are contained in a community are related to it as parts to a whole. A part as such belongs to the whole, so that any good of  the part can be subordinate to the good of  the whole. Accordingly the value in each and every virtue, whether it composes a man in himself or whether it disposes him in relation to others, may be referred to the common good, to which justice orders us.]

An example of  this subordination of  the part to the whole, the individual to the community, can be seen in what has been described as the ‘radical corporationalism’ of  Dante’s contemporary, the Dominican, Remigio de’ Girolami,10 according to whose view of  the individual in society, a human being deprived of a community can no longer even be seen as fully human. Using the standard analogy of  the ‘body politic’, Remigio maintains that an individual without a community would be like an amputated limb. Just as a hand needs to be attached to a body in order to function for those purposes for which hands were created, so the individual, in order to function as a human being and a ‘political animal’, needs to be attached to a community.11 Totum enim ut totum est existens actu, pars vero ut pars non habet esse nisi in potentia […]. Manus enim abscisa non est manus nisi equivoce puta sicut lapidea aut depicta […]; non enim habet operationes manus, puta sentire tangibilia, cibum ori porrigere, scalpere et huiusmodi. Iterum esse partis dependet ab esse totius et non e converso, sicut posterius dependet a priori et non e converso […]. Unde destructa civitate remanet civis lapideus aut depictus, quia scilicet caret virtute et operatione quam prius habebat, puta miles in militaribus, mercator in mercationibus, artifex in artificialibus artis sue, of ficialis in of ficialibus, pater familias in familiaribus, et universaliter liber in operibus liberis, puta ire ad podere suum, facere ambasciatas, habere dominia aliarum civitatum.12

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Ernst. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 478. ‘The hand severed from the body is not really a hand; the individual severed from the community is not really a man’; Charles T. Davis, ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio de’ Girolami’, Proceedings of  the American Philosophical Society, 104 (1960), 662–76 (p. 668). Remigio de’ Girolami, De bono comuni, ed. by Emilio Panella, Memorie domenicane, 16 (1985), 123–68 (pp. 137–38), quoted from the electronic edition at accessed 8 April 2013. English translation by Federica Pich. ‘[L]a umana civilitade […] a uno fine è ordinata, cioè a vita felice’ (Conv., IV. iv. 1).

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exceptions – experienced by individual souls in isolation from one another. From the gate of  Hell, which announces entry into a ‘città dolente’ (Inf., III. 1) [grief-wracked city], to the Empyrean – also described by Beatrice as a city, when she says ‘vedi nostra città quant’ella gira’ (Par., XXX. 130) [our city, look! And see how wide it sweeps] – the souls whom Dante encounters experience the afterlife as members of a ‘community’, a community which attains the common good only in Heaven.14 Only here, as Piccarda explains, is the will of each individual soul identical with that of  God (described here in political terms, as ‘lo re’, [the king]), leading to that peace which results when all the limbs and organs of  the body politic work in perfect harmony:     […] come noi sem di soglia in soglia per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace com’a lo re che ’n suo voler ne invoglia.     E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace. (Par., III. 82–85) [In us […] there is, throughout this realm, a placing, rung to rung, delighting all – our king as well in-willing us in will. In His volition is the peace we have.]

Moreover, and significantly, what Piccarda reveals to the pilgrim here is not only that the perfect society of  Heaven depends on the unity of each individual soul in willing only what God wills, but also that, within this unity (and by no means to its detriment), the distinctive diversity of each individual is preserved, and determines their ordering ‘di soglia in soglia’, within the celestial spheres. And this too – as we are reminded in the encounter with Charles Martel – represents the perfect heavenly fulfilment of  the ideal political order on earth, for this too not only allows for, but actually requires diversity:

14 For a much fuller discussion of  the ways in which Dante’s afterlife mirrors earthly political life and structures, see my From Florence to the Heavenly City, especially pp. 51–63.

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Claire E. Honess     ‘E puot’elli esser, se giù non si vive diversamente per diversi of fici? Non, se ’l maestro vostro ben vi scrive’.     Sí venne deducendo infino a quinci; poscia conchiuse: ‘Dunque esser diverse convien di vostri ef fetti le radici […]’. (Par., VIII. 118–23) [‘And could it be that men should live down there except by dif ference in their dif ferent tasks? By no means – if your teacher writes the truth.’ He’d reached this point by formal argument, and then, concluding: ‘It must therefore be that there are dif fering roots for what you do.’]

Dante’s ‘maestro’, Aristotle, had indeed compared the citizens of a polis to sailors, who all carry out dif ferent functions in execution of a single basic aim – the safe passage of  their ship,15 just as, in the passage quoted earlier, Remigio had argued that only within a community did the individual roles and talents of soldiers, merchants, artisans, and politicians contribute to the fulfilment of  the common good. And it is in the Paradiso that the reader finds perhaps the most eloquent Dantean illustration of  that Remigian ideal of  the absolute subsuming of  the individual into the community, of plurality into unity. This is seen, in particular, in the Heavens of  the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, in each of which the souls appear not in airy bodies like those in Hell and Purgatory, nor even as individuals enveloped in heavenly light, as in the case of  Piccarda, but collectively form symbolic shapes – circles, a cross, an eagle and a ladder – ref lecting the diversity-within-oneness of  the ideal community.16 Most significantly of all, in an episode devoted, precisely, to justice, the eagle, made up of a collection of souls – individual and distinct just rulers – speaks to the pilgrim with a single, communal voice: 15

16

And compare Dante’s use of  the same metaphor in Convivio, IV. iv. 5–6: ‘Sì come vedemo in una nave, che diversi of fici e diversi fini di quella a uno solo fine sono ordinati, cioè a prendere loro desiderato porto per salutevole via’. See also Aquinas’s De regimine principum, I. 3. On the way in which Dante brings together and harmonizes divergent points of view in the Heaven of  the Sun, in particular, see Angela G. Meekins, ‘Ref lecting on the Divine: Notes on Dante’s Heaven of  the Sun’, The Italianist, 18 (1998), 28–70.

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    […] io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro, e sonar ne la voce e ‘io’ e ‘mio’, quand’era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’. (Par., XIX. 10–12) [I saw and heard that Eagle’s beak form words that rang, in what they voiced, as ‘I’ and ‘mine’, although in meaning they were ‘we’ and ‘us’.]

Magna latrocinia That Dante should choose, precisely, an eagle to represent the perfect community in this way should come as no surprise, for the eagle – as Justinian’s lengthy speech in Paradiso VI reminds us – is the symbol of  that Roman Empire which for Dante constitutes the closest possible earthly approximation to the perfect coming-together of unity and multiplicity which we see illustrated in Heaven, Amplius, humana universitas est quoddam totum ad quasdam partes, et est quedam pars ad quoddam totum ad regna particularia et ad gentes, ut superiora ostendunt; et est quedam pars ad totum universum. Et hoc est de se manifestum. Sicut ergo inferiora humane universitatis bene respondent ad ipsam, sic ipsa ‘bene’ dicitur respondere ad suum totum; partes enim bene respondent ad ipsam per unum principium tantum, ut ex superioribus colligi potest de facili: ergo et ipsa ad ipsum universum sive ad eius principem, qui Deus est et Monarcha, simpliciter bene respondet per unum principium tantum, scilicet unicum principem. Ex quo sequitur Monarchiam necessariam mundo ut bene sit.17 [Furthermore, the human race constitutes a whole in relation to its constituent parts, and is itself a part in relation to a whole. It is a whole in relation to individual kingdoms and peoples, as has been shown above; and it is a part in relation to the whole universe. So much is self-evident. And just as the lesser parts which make up the human race are well adapted to it, so it too can be described as being well adapted

17

Monarchia, I. vii; English translation by Prue Shaw, Monarchia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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Claire E. Honess to its whole; for its parts are well adapted to it in relation to a single principle, as can easily be deduced from what was said earlier: and so absolutely speaking it too is well adapted to the universe (or to its ruler, who is God and Monarch) in relation to a single principle, i.e. one ruler. And thus it follows that monarchy is necessary to the well-being of  the world.]

The universal Roman emperor, therefore, stands in relation to his Empire as God does to the created universe, and – like the pilot of  the ship of state – is responsible for guiding the state to its ‘desiderato porto’; that is, to a life of peace on earth, in preparation for the true peace of  Heaven. However, if, in the passages that we have been examining, the wellordered state on earth is seen as ref lecting and preparing for the peace and fellowship of  the Kingdom of  Heaven, elsewhere in Dante’s writing a more ambivalent conception of  the role and value of  the state seems to be put forward. In the Convivio, for example, Dante’s starting-point is the fundamental Aristotelian notion that human beings are by nature ‘political animals’, designed to live with and for their fellows. Indeed, they are unable to live well (to attain that ‘vita felice’ to which they aspire) in any other way: la umana civilitade […] a uno fine è ordinata, cioè a vita felice; a la qualo nullo per sé è suf ficiente a venire sanza l’aiutorio d’alcuno, con ciò sia cosa che l’uomo abbisogna di molte cose, a le quali uno solo satisfare non può. E però dice lo Filosofo che l’uomo naturalmente è compagnevole animale.18 [Human society […] is established for a single end: namely, a life of  happiness, which no one is able to attain by himself without the aid of someone else, since one has need of many things which no single individual is able to provide. Therefore the Philosopher says that man is by nature a social animal.]

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Convivio, IV. iv. 1; English translation by Richard Lansing, available at accessed 8 April 2013. Compare Aquinas’s formulation, ‘homo naturaliter est animal politicum et sociale’ (Summa Theologiae, Ia–IIae. q. 72. a. 4. co.), and Aristotle, Politics, ed. by Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), III. 6: ‘Man is by nature a political animal’.

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Yet as this passage goes on, it seems to suggest that a much more negative interpretation is to be attached to political organization and the communal nature of  human existence, one which draws its authority less from the Christian Aristotelian thinking of  Aquinas, but from a much more pessimistic theological source. In this passage, the peace which the Emperor (and the Emperor alone) can bring to the world is not the realization on earth of  the peace of  Heaven, nor it is the result of  his role as guarantor of  the common good; rather it is presented as a mere truce, brought to bear on a world otherwise characterized by conf lict and by what Dante here calls the ‘gloria d’acquistare’, which inevitably taints human relations at all levels: Onde con ciò sia cosa che l’animo umano in terminata possessione di terra non si queti, ma sempre desideri gloria d’acquistare, sì come per esperienza vedemo, discordie e guerre surgere intra regno e regno, le quali sono tribulazioni de la cittadi, e per le cittadi de le vicinanze, e per le vicinanze de le case, [e per le case] de l’uomo; e così s’impedisce la felicitade. Il perché, a queste guerre e le loro cagioni torre via, conviene di necessitade tutta la terra, e quanto a l’umana generazione a possedere è dato, essere Monarchia cioè uno solo principato, e uno prencipe avere; lo quale, tutto possedendo e più desiderare non possendo, li regi tegna contenti ne li termini de li regni, sì che pace intra loro sia, ne la quale si posino le cittadi, e in questa posa le vicinanze s’amino, in questo amore le case prendano ogni loro bisogno, lo qual preso, l’uomo viva felicemente; che è quello per che esso è nato. (Conv., IV. iv. 3–4) [Since the human mind does not rest content with limited possession of  land but always seeks to achieve glory through further conquest, as we see from experience, discord and war must spring up between one kingdom and another. Such things are the tribulations of cities, of  the surrounding cities, of  the communities, and of  the households of individuals; and so happiness is hindered. Consequently, in order to do away with these wars and their causes, it is necessary that the whole earth, and all that is given to the human race to possess, should be a Monarchy – that is, a single principality, having one prince who, possessing all things and being unable to desire anything else, would keep the kings content within the boundaries of  their kingdoms and preserve among them the peace in which the cities might rest. Through this peace the communities would come to love one another, and by this love all households would provide for their needs, which when provided would bring man happiness, for this is the end for which he is born.]

This political pessimism seems to be derived from the views of  St Augustine, for whom post-lapsarian humanity is inevitably characterized

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by cupiditas (not just greed for possessions, but any kind of immoderate desire or ambition) and by the lust for power and desire for domination over others.19 For Augustine, this desire to dominate others – that is, the desire to work for the good of  the individual, at the expense of  the common good of  the many – has its roots in the sin of pride, which lies at the basis of  the sin of  Lucifer and that of  Adam and Eve. Sinful human beings are seen as wanting to elevate themselves to the status of gods by lording it over those who should be their equals,20 and this leads to a situation in the world where political authority has to be constituted to maintain a semblance of peace and order, using the coercive force (whether overt or otherwise) of  the state to clamp down on the coercive force which citizens would otherwise use against one another.21 This leads to Augustine’s famous remark that earthly kingdoms are not so very dif ferent from bands of robbers,22 and is summed up in his allegation that ‘nisi per iniustitiam rem publicam stare gerique non posse’ (De civitate Dei, XIX. 21) [a state cannot stand or be governed except by injustice]. For Augustine, in fact, the only possible justification for the power of  the secular state is that its rule prevents the truly wicked from committing evil acts without fear of punishment: hoc veluti validissimum positum erat, injustum esse, ut homines hominibus dominantibus serviant; quam tamen injustitiam nisi sequatur imperiosa civitas, cujus est magna respublica, non eam posse provinciis imperare: responsum est a parte justitiae, ideo justum esse, quod talibus hominibus sit utilis servitus, et pro utilitate eorum fieri cum recte fit, id est, cum improbis aufertur injuriarum licentia. (De civitate Dei, XIX. 21)

See, for example, De civitate Dei, I. preface, where the City of  Man is described as ‘ipsa ei dominandi libido dominatur’; Augustine, De civitate Dei, in PL, XLI, 13–804; English translation by Henry Bettenson, Concerning the City of  God against the Pagans (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). 20 See H. A. Deane, The Political Ideas of  St Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 49. 21 See The Political Writings of  St Augustine, ed. by H. Paolucci (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962), p. xvi. 22 ‘Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia? quia et latrocinia quid sunt nisi parua regna?’ (De civitate Dei, IV. 4).

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[And it was posited as the strongest point in this case that it was unjust that men should be servants to other men as their masters; and yet an imperial city, the head of a great commonwealth, cannot rule its provinces except by adopting this injustice. Now it was urged in reply on the side of justice, that this situation is just, on the ground that servitude is in the interest of such men as the provincials, and that it is established for their benefit, when rightly established – that is, when unprincipled men are deprived of  the freedom to do wrong with impunity.]

Peace in the temporal order is, therefore, in Augustine’s view, at best an uneasy truce, and political society is construed as nothing more than a holding-at-bay of  the forces of disorder and anarchy. Even for Augustine, however, the social nature of  human beings – the fact that ‘l’uomo naturalmente è compagnevole animale’ – was taken as read.23 Augustine concedes that God did not place Adam alone in the Garden of  Eden, but gave him a mate in the form of  Eve. Since all human beings are descended from Adam, there ought, therefore, to be innate in them a sense of  fellowship, of  fundamental sociability: [U]num ac singulum creavit, non utique solum sine humana societate deserendum, sed ut eo modo vehementius ei commendaretur ipsius societatis unitas vinculumque concordiae, si non tantum inter se naturae similitudine, verum etiam cognationis af fectu homines necterentur. (De civitate Dei, XII. 22) [God created man as one individual; but that did not mean that he was to remain alone, bereft of  human society. God’s intention was that in this way the unity of  human society and the bonds of  human sympathy be more emphatically brought home to man, if men were bound together not merely by likeness in nature but also by the feeling of  kinship.]

And this conception of  the basic kinship which unites all human beings enables Augustine – even at his most pessimistic – to work out a modus operandi which allows those Christians on earth who are already ideally citizens of  the civitas Dei (the ‘City of  God on pilgrimage in this life’) to co-exist with, and to exist within, the civitas terrena: 23

‘Nihil enim est quam hoc genus tam discordiosum vitio, tam sociale natura’ (De civitate Dei, XII. 28).

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Claire E. Honess Et sunt istae duae civitates permixtae interim; in fine separandae: adversus se incivem confugentes; una pro iniquitate, altera pro justitia; una pro vanitate, alter pro veritate. Et aliquando ipsa commixtio temporalis facit, ut quidam pertinentes ad civitatem Babyloniam, administrent res pertinentes ad Jerusalem; et rursum quidam pertinentes ad Jerusalem, administrent res pertinentes ad Babyloniam.24 [At present these two cities are mixed, but at the end they will have to be separated. They fight against each other, the one for injustice, the other for justice; the one for vanity, the other for truth. And sometimes, thanks to their co-existence in time, it happens that some that belong to the city of  Babylon administer things belonging to Jerusalem, whereas some that belong to Jerusalem administer Babylon’s interests.]

Augustine does not expect Christians to live apart from temporal political society. Rather, he advises them to co-operate passively with the civitas terrena – always with the proviso that its coercion does not order them to sin – taking no active part in its rule, but keeping their hopes fixed on the world to come. Political life is clearly distinct from the eternal life which is the goal of  the civitas Dei, yet it is nonetheless essential for the preservation of  that fragile peace which is the best that the temporal sphere can hope to achieve: Civitas autem coelestis, vel potius pars ejus, quae in hac mortalitate peregrinatur, et vivit ex fide, etiam ista pace necesse est utatur, donec ipsa cui talis pax necessaria est, mortalitas transeat. Ac per hoc dum apud terrenam civitatem, velut captivam vitam suae peregrinationis agit, jam promissione redemptionis et dono spirituali tanquam pignore accepto, legibus terrenae civitatis, quibus haec administrantur, quae sustentandae mortali vitae accommodata sunt, obtemperare non dubitat: ut, quoniam communis est ipsa mortalitas, servetur in rebus ad eam pertinentibus inter civitatem utramque concordia.25 [In contrast, the Heavenly City – or rather that part of it which is on pilgrimage in this condition of mortality, and which lives on the basis of  faith – must needs make use of  this peace also, until this mortal state, for which this kind of peace is essential,

24 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, in PL, XXXVI & XXII (LXI. 8); English translation by Federica Pich. 25 De civitate Dei, XIX. 17. The argument is expounded in detail throughout this chapter and also in XIX. 26.

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passes away. And therefore, it leads what we may call a life of captivity in this earthly city as in a foreign land, although it has already received the promise of redemption, and the gift of  the Spirit as a kind of pledge of it; and yet it does not hesitate to obey the laws of  the earthly city by which those things which are designed for the support of  this mortal life are regulated; and the purpose of  this obedience is that, since this mortal condition is shared by both cities, a harmony may be preserved between them in things that are relevant to this condition.]

The Augustinian injunction that Christians’ primary af filiation be to the civitas Dei, even when they find themselves in the here-and-now incidentally caught up with the life of  the civitas terrena, is best exemplified in Dante’s work in the character of  Sapìa. Indeed, in her reply to the Pilgrim’s question as to whether any of  the souls being cleansed in the terrace of  Envy is Italian, she explicitly identifies herself as a member of  the true city of  God, and – temporarily – as a pilgrim through Purgatory, as she had formerly been a pilgrim in Italy:     O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire che vivesse in Italia peregrina. (Purg., XIII. 94–96) [We are, dear brother, now all citizens of one true place. But you must mean: ‘… who winged his pilgrim life through Italy’.]

Yet Sapia’s earthly life provides anything but an example of peaceful coexistence and co-operation with the civitas terrena. When she refers to ‘li cittadin miei’, barely twenty lines after her statement of  belonging to the civitas Dei, she is not talking about her fellow citizens in the city of  God in Heaven, nor even about her fellow penitents in Purgatory, but about the citizens of  Siena whom she notoriously betrayed in battle.26 The reader must wait until the central cantos of  the Paradiso – and an episode which takes place, literally, under the sign of  the Cross, a reminder that Christ too had been a pilgrim in the civitas terrena – in order to receive an example of properly disengaged engagement with the earthly city. The description of 

26 See Purgatorio, XIII. 115–22.

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Cacciaguida’s Florence in Paradiso XV and XVI presents us with a group of citizens whose civic virtues and Christian morality allow them to exist in an earthly city which is already a ref lection of  the city of  God in heaven, with its ‘così bello | viver di cittadini’ [so fine a life of citizens] and ‘così fida cittadinanza’ [such a true civility].27 As forAugustine, however, for Dante too – and even as he describes the almost-perfect Florence of  Cacciaguida – the prevailing tone in descriptions of  the human political order is inevitably one of pessimism. ‘Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte | sì come voi’ (Par., XVI. 79–80) [All human things have their own deaths to meet, as you do also], Cacciaguida tells the pilgrim, pre-empting Adam’s clarification that his language had been subject to change even before the Babelic confusion of  tongues:     La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spenta innanzi che a l’ovra inconsummabile fosse la gente di Nembròt attenta:     ché nullo ef fetto mai razionabile, per lo piacere uman che rinovella seguendo il cielo, sempre fu durabile. (Par., XXVI. 127–29) [The language that I spoke was wholly spent before the tribe of Nimrod set their minds on work that could not, ever, reach fulfilment. For nothing that our natural powers ef fect (since human pleasures, as the years pass by, are always new) was ever durable.]

Corruption, then, in a postlapsarian world is inevitable, and one of its most dangerous ef fects for Dante is the way in which it undermines the political and social bonds between individuals. Indeed, there are close connections between the corruption in the political sphere identified by Cacciaguida and the linguistic decay discussed 27

I have argued elsewhere that by using as his primary examples the female citizens of  Cacciaguida’s Florence Dante is able to ensure that the focus in these cantos is on virtue and ethics, rather than on politics understood in a narrow, ‘party-political’, sense; as elsewhere, it is the value of  the social experience (and the ways in which this can be corrupted) that is the poet’s primary concern. See my ‘Feminine Virtues and Florentine Vices: Citizenship and Morality in Paradiso XV–XVII’, in Dante and Governance, ed. by John R. Woodhouse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 102–20.

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by Adam, for it is precisely the faculty of  language which enables human beings to interact socially and therefore to be compagnevoli animali. In the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante argues that it is precisely because they are not meant to relate to one another in this way that language is denied to the beasts;28 and the importance of  language as the primary civilizing inf luence, which enables human beings to live and relate to one another in an ordered political and social existence (‘amicabile commertium’), is a medieval commonplace,29 which leads to the view that rhetoric – or the art of using language well – is essential to the political order.30 When language is used badly, then, the social life which depends upon it is also necessarily corrupted, as is illustrated perfectly in Dante’s own account of  the ‘ovra inconsummabile’ of  Nimrod in the De vulgari eloquentia. Here the fragmentation of  language is presented as rendering impossible the social and political ideal of co-operation towards a common goal (of  living ‘diversamente per diversi of fici’), since only those workers engaged on the same type of work (architects, foremen, bricklayers, masons and so on) are endowed with the same language: Siquidem pene totum humanum genus ad opus iniquitatis coierat: pars imperabant, pars architectabantur, pars muros moliebantur, pars amussibus regulabant, pars trullis linebant, pars scindere rupes, pars mari, pars terra vehere intendebant, partesque diverse diversis aliis operibus indulgebant; cum celitus tanta confusione percussi sunt ut, qui omnes una eademque loquela deserviebant ad opus, ab opere

28 ‘non solum non necessaria fuit locutio, sed prorsus dampnosa fuisset, cum nullum amicabile commertium fuisset in illis’ (DVE, I. ii. 5). 29 Such a view is put forward, for example, by Brunetto Latini, who states very clearly that ‘la plus haute science de cité governer si est rectorique, c’est a dire la science du parler; car se parleure ne fust cités ne seroit, ne nus establissemens de justice ne de humaine compaignie’; Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. by Francis J. Carmody (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975), III. i. 2; and compare Cicero, De oratore I, viii, 33–34. On this, see also Catherine Keen, Dante and the City (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), pp. 38–41. 30 ‘[R]ettorica è la maggiore parte della civile scienza […] che certo per rettorica potemo noi muovere tutto ’l popolo, tutto ’l consiglio, ’l padre contro ’l figluolo, l’amico contra l’amico, e poi li rega in pace e benevoglienza’; Brunetto Latini, La rettorica, ed. by Francesco Maggini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968), p. 50.

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Claire E. Honess multis diversificati loquelis desinerent et nunquam ad idem commertium convenirent. Solis etenim in uno convenientibus actu eadem loquela remansit: puta cunctis architectoribus una, cunctis saxa volventibus una, cunctis ea parantibus una; et sic de singulis operantibus accidit. Quot quot autem exercitii varietates tendebant ad opus, tot tot ydiomatibus tunc genus humanum disiungitur; et quanto excellentius exercebant, tanto rudius nunc barbariusque locuntur. (DVE, I, vii, 6–7) [Indeed almost all mankind had gathered for this wicked undertaking. Some were supervisors, some master masons: some were building the walls, some keeping them straight with levels, some plastering them with trowels; some were intent on breaking rock, some on transporting it by sea, some by land; and various parties were engaged in various other activities; when they were struck by such confusion from Heaven that, where all with one and the same language were contributing to the work, from the work they left of f, separated into many languages, and never joined together in mutual relations. Indeed only for those joining together in one activity did their language remain the same: e.g. one for all the master masons, one for all who rolled the stone, one for all who prepared it; and the same thing happened to individual workers. And as many as were the kinds of activity that were striving at the work, into so many languages is mankind at that time divided; and the higher the work which they were performing, the more rudely and barbarously do they now speak.]

Before Babel, human beings not only spoke a single language, they also formed a single community, and God’s punishment of  the rebellious builders thus strikes at the heart of  the political ideal by actively preventing social co-operation. As in Remigio de’ Girolami’s example of  the hand amputated from its body, which is no longer capable of carrying out the actions of a hand, so the masons and bricklayers at Babel are prevented from fulfilling their roles within this group enterprise by the fact that they cannot communicate with one another, or with the project’s architects and foremen. The result of  Babel, in other words, is something approaching the permanent state of conf lict in the political order described in Convivio IV. iv or in Purgatorio VI – a world in which neighbourhoods, cities, and kingdoms ‘non stanno sanza guerra’ [stand nowhere free of war], and in which not one place ‘di pace gode’ [rejoice[s] in peace] (Purg., VI. 82, 87).

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Agnus Dei What distinguishes the political thought of  Dante – at least in the form that it takes until about 1313 – from that of  Augustine, however, is that, whereas for Augustine the only society free of  the libido dominandi that is the result of  human cupiditas is that of  the civitas Dei, for Dante, there is, potentially at least, an earthly remedy for the ‘gloria d’acquistare’, in the form of a universal emperor, who, in the fullness of  his power, can build a society on earth that mimics already that of  heaven. Although they are expressed in theoretical terms in both the Convivio and the Monarchia, as well as in the Commedia, the hopes that Dante has for the realization of  his imperial dream coalesce and find clearest expression in the letters that he writes in 1310 and 1311 in support of  the Italian campaign of  the emperor Henry VII.31 In these letters Henry is thoroughly and fervently ‘theologized’, so that, as we shall see, he begins to be presented not simply as a political saviour for war-torn Italy, but as a saviour tout court. That Roman imperial history and salvation history were inextricably bound up together had already been made clear by Dante in the Convivio, written between about 1304 and 1307,32 in which work the Roman imperial ideal is revealed to be, in Dante’s conception, the product not of mere human political ambitions, but of divine providence.33 The providential nature of imperial authority is revealed, Dante suggests, in the way in which 31

32 33

These are the letters numbered V, VI, and VII in modern editions, addressed respectively to ‘the princes and peoples of  Italy’, to the Florentines, and to Henry himself. For a fuller discussion of  these letters in relation to Dante’s conception of peace, see my ‘“Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile”: Henry VII and Dante’s Ideal of  Peace’, in The Italianist, 33 (2013), 484–504, as well as the notes to my translation Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters, trans. with a commentary by Claire E. Honess (London: MHRA, 2007). On the dating of  the Convivio, see Cesare Vasoli, ‘Introduzione’, in Dante Alighieri, Convivio, ed. by Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori (Milan & Naples: Ricciardi, 1988), I. ii, xi–lxxxix (pp. xiv–xv). For example, ‘Onde non da forza fu principalmente preso per la romana gente, ma da divina provedenza, che è sopra ogni ragione’ (Conv., IV. iv. 11).

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the Empire’s earliest history is intertwined with the biblical history which culminates in the birth of  Christ: E tutto questo fu in uno temporale, che David nacque e nacque Roma, cioè che Enea venne di Troia in Italia, che fu origine de la cittade romana, sì come testimoniano le scritture. Per che assai è manifesto la divina elezione del romano imperio, per lo nascimento de la santa cittade che fu contemporaneo a la radice de la progenie di Maria. (Convivio, IV. v. 6) [All this occurred at one point in time: David was born when Rome was born – that is, when Aeneas came to Italy from Troy, which was the origin of  the Roman city, according to written records. As a result the divine choice of  the Roman empire is made manifest by the birth of  the holy city which was contemporaneous with the root of  the family of  Mary.]

And this connection is reinforced by the fact that the birth of  Christ occurs in the plenitudo temporis which coincides with the culmination of imperial authority and world peace under Augustus:34 Né ’l mondo mai non fu né sarà sí perfettamente disposto come allora che a la voce d’un solo, principe del roman popolo e comandatore, [si descrisse], sí come testimonia Luca evangelista. E però [che] pace universale era per tutto, che mai, più, non fu né fia, la nave de l’umana compagnia dirittamente per dolce camino a debito porto correa. (Convivio, IV. v. 8) [Nor was the world ever, nor will it be, so perfectly disposed as at the time when it was guided by the voice of  the one sole prince and commander of  the Roman people, as Luke the Evangelist testifies. Since universal peace reigned everywhere, which it never did before nor ever shall again, the ship of  human society was speeding on an even course directly toward its proper port.]

34 See Galatians 4. 4: ‘at ubi venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum factum ex muliere factum sub lege’; and compare Orosius: ‘Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo firmissimam uerissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus cuius aduentui pax ista famulata est’; Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversus Paganos Libri vii, ed. by M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet, 3 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1990–91), VI. 22.

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In the letters written at the time of  the imperial campaign, however, Dante sets out his hopes for a renewal of  the plenitudo temporis, under a figure who is both Emperor and Messiah. In his letter to the ‘princes and peoples of  Italy’, then, Dante strikingly describes Henry, right from the beginning of  the letter, through a series of messianic images which suggest that Dante’s quotation ofPaul in the very first sentence is meant to be taken at more than face-value. ‘“Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile”, quo signa surgunt consolationis et pacis’ (Epistola, V. 1) [‘Now is the favourable time’, when signs of solace and of peace are emerging]:35 the quotation is from II Corinthians 6. 2, a passage in which Paul himself quotes Isaiah, reinforcing not only the salvation operated through Christ (‘ecce nunc tempus acceptabile ecce nunc dies salutis’ [Well, now is the favourable time; this is the day of salvation]), but also the fulfilment in Christ of  the Messianic prophecies of  the Old Testament.36 For Dante, then, the notion that this is a ‘favourable time’, is not, I would suggest, merely an easy ‘form of words’, implying nothing more than that Henry’s coming will resolve a series of earthly political problems, but rather – in Dante’s letter, as in Paul’s – this ‘tempus acceptabile’ is linked precisely with the plenitudo temporis of  the coming of  Christ and of a time of peace and freedom which are more than merely temporal. In line with this interpretation, Dante goes on to describe Henry as both the Lion of  Judah (‘Leo fortis de tribu Iuda’ [the great Lion of  the tribe of  Judah]; Epistola, V. 1),37 and as a new Moses, who will transform the Egyptian wasteland of contemporary Italy into a land f lowing with

35 36

37

English translations of  Dante’s letters are taken from my Four Political Letters. ‘Ait enim tempore accepto exaudivi te et in die salutis adiuvavi te ecce nunc tempus acceptabile ecce nunc dies salutis’ (II Corinthians 6. 2); ‘haec dicit Dominus in tempore placito exaudivi te et in die salutis auxiliatus sum tui et servavi te et dedi te in foedus populi ut suscitares terram et possideres hereditates dissipatas’ (Isaiah 49. 8). Biblical translations are taken from The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1974). This term is habitually used in the Bible to designate the Messiah, as, for example, in Genesis 49. 9–10: ‘catulus leonis Iuda […] non auferetur sceptrum de Iuda et dux de femoribus eius donec veniat qui mittendus est et ipse erit expectatio gentium’.

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milk and honey (‘Moysen alium […], qui de gravaminibus Egiptiorum populum suum eripiet, ad terram lecte ac melle manantem perducens’ [a new Moses, who will deliver his people from their Egyptian oppression and lead them to a land f lowing with milk and honey]; Epistola, V. 1). In an echo of  the Nunc dimittis, Henry is described as ‘gloria plebis tue’ [glory of your people];38 and, as in the Song of  Songs he is compared to a bridegroom hastening to be joined with his beloved (‘sponsus tuus […], clementissimus Henricus […] ad nuptias properat’ [your bridegroom […], that most merciful Henry […] is hurrying to his wedding]; Epistola V. 2). Since one of  the standard exegetical interpretations of  the erotic love of  the Bridegroom of  the Song of  Songs for his Bride was as the love of  Christ for his Church,39 this comparison therefore draws yet another analogy between Henry and Christ, suggesting that ‘the wedding between Henry and Italy is meant to re-enact the mystical union of  Christ and the Church’.40 These references combine in a striking accumulation of  biblical, and specifically messianic, images which suggest that, when Dante announces the new time of peace and solace that will be ushered in by Henry’s arrival in Italy, he is thinking of something more substantial and more significant than merely the imposition of some sort of  truce on Italy’s warring factions by a stronger power. Rather Dante implies that Henry’s authority will come not from his human electors and supporters but from God, once again bolstering his arguments with a series of  biblical quotations. Thus in the 38

Compare Luke 2. 30–32: ‘quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israhel’. Just as Simeon, with these words, recognizes Christ as Israel’s promised Messiah, so Dante, in his letter, asserts that Henry is Italy’s promised saviour. 39 On the Song of  Songs in the Middle Ages, see: E. Ann Matter, ‘The Voice of  My Beloved ’: The Song of  Songs in Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Paola Nasti, Favole d’amore e ‘saver profondo’: La tradizione salomonica in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2007), pp. 15–41; Lino Pertile, La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1998), pp. 26–42. 40 Lino Pertile, ‘Dante Looks Forward and Back: Political Allegory in the Epistles’, Dante Studies, 115 (1997), 1–7 (p. 8). See also Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of  the Desert, p. 133, n. 41.

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letter’s fourth paragraph he addresses the Lombards, imploring them to accept Henry as their legitimate ruler. He urges them not to allow themselves to be swayed by that ‘gloria d’acquistare’ or cupiditas which, as we have seen, lies for Dante at the root of all political discord,41 but to declare their obedience to the Emperor-elect immediately, bearing in mind that ‘potestati resistens Dei ordinationi resistit’ (Epistola, V. 4) [anyone who resists authority is rebelling against God’s decision]. Dante here quotes another Pauline passage, in which Paul urges the early Church in Rome to respect and obey civil authority: ‘Non est enim potestas nisi a Deo quae autem sunt a Deo ordinatae sunt. Itaque qui resistit potestati Dei ordinationi resistit qui autem resistunt ipsi sibi damnationem adquirunt. […] Dei enim minister est tibi in bonum’ (Romans 13. 1–4) [Since all government comes from God, the civil authorities were appointed by God, and so anyone who resists authority is rebelling against God’s decision, and such an act is bound to be punished […] The state is there to serve God for your benefit]. Dante aims to show not only that he believes Henry’s authority to be willed by God, but also that there is good biblical authority for believing that the state can (even if it does not always) act as an intermediary between the citizen and God. And the seriousness with which he takes this is underlined by yet another biblical quotation, this time from the Acts of  the Apostles, with which the paragraph closes. The phrase ‘durum est contra stimulum calcitrare’ (Epistola, V. 4) [it is hard to kick against the goad],42 indicating the futility of any resistance to Henry, is taken from the account of  the conversion ofPaul on the road to Damascus. The parallels here are clear. Those who resist the Emperor are like Saul, who persecutes not only the early Christians but also, by extension, Christ himself: ‘Audivi vocem loquentem mihi hebraica lingua: Saule Saule quid me persequeris? Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare. Ego autem dixi: quis es Domine? Dominus autem dixit: ego sum Iesus quem tu persequeris’ (Acts 26. 14–15)

41

‘Nec seducat alludens cupiditas, more Sirenum nescio qua dulcedine vigiliam rationis mortificans’ (Epistola, V. 4). 42 Compare Acts 9. 5 and 26. 14, where the phrase refers to the futility of  Saul’s persecution of  Christians.

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[I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you, kicking like this against the goad’. Then I said: Who are you, Lord? And the Lord answered, ‘I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me’]. Implicitly, then, Dante once again equates Henry with Christ. Similarly Christological language is also a key feature of  the letter to Henry VII himself. The frustration which Dante feels at the delays and setbacks which are af f licting Henry’s Italian campaign does not dim his conviction that Henry and Henry alone can bring universal peace to the world and, therefore, happiness to the individuals within it. Rather, the doubts unleashed in Henry’s followers by his failure to proceed swiftly to Rome and a triumphant coronation are used by Dante to bind Henry ever more closely to the figure of  Christ. Dante maintains that ‘incertitudine dubitare compellimur et in vocem Precursoris irrumpere sic: “Tu es qui venturus es, an alium expectamus?”’ (Epistola, VII. 2) [our uncertainty leads us to doubt, and to burst out with the words of  Christ’s precursor: ‘Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?’]. According to the account in the gospels of  Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist, had sent his followers to Christ from his prison to ask him this very question.43 Christ’s reply to John serves to confirm his messianic status in no uncertain terms: ‘caeci vident claudi ambulant leprosi mundantur surdi audiunt mortui resurgunt pauperes evangelizantur et beatus est quicumque non fuerit scandalizatus in me’ (Luke 7. 22–23) [the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf  hear, the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimed to the poor and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me]. In the same way here, by reiterating the parallel between Henry and Christ, Dante exhorts Henry’s doubting followers not to lose faith. This renewed statement of confidence in Henry is given even more emphatic expression at the end of  this paragraph of  the letter, when Dante explains that he has, himself, seen and paid homage to the Emperor-elect: ‘Nam et ego qui scribo […], velut decet imperatoriam maiestatem benignissimum vidi et clementissimum te audivi, cum pedes tuos manus mee 43 See Matthew 11. 3; Luke 7. 19.

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tractarunt et labia mea debitum persolverunt. Tunc exultavit in te spiritus meus, cum tacitus dixi mecum: “Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi”’ (Epistola, VII. 2) [‘For I too, who write this letter […], saw in you the great benevolence and heard in you the great humility which are fitting to your imperial majesty, when my hands touched your feet, and my lips paid homage to you. Then my spirit exulted in you, and I silently said to myself: “Behold the lamb of  God that takes away the sins of  the world”’]. This passage contains two further confirmations of  Henry’s Christ-like status. The phrase ‘tunc exultavit in te spiritus meus’ clearly echoes the words of  the Magnificat: ‘et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo’ (Luke 1. 47) [my spirit exults in God],44 while the quotation with which the paragraph closes is a reference to the account inJohn’s gospel of  Christ’s acclamation by John the Baptist: ‘Altera die videt Iohannes Iesum venientem ad se et ait: ecce agnus Dei qui tollit peccatum mundi’ ( John 1. 29) [The next day, seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said, ‘Look, there is the lamb of  God that takes away the sin of  the world]. Both these biblical passages recurred as key elements within the liturgy, which would have made them instantly recognizable to Dante’s first readers, underlining and also extending their significance. This is particularly true in the case of  the Agnus Dei, which, in its liturgical formulation, ends with a prayer for peace (‘dona nobis pacem’). In this letter, therefore, the earthly peace which Dante hopes that Henry’s mission will bring is compared, once again, to the perfect peace of  Heaven, bestowed by the Lamb of  God. If only, Dante implies, the rebellious Italians were prepared to subordinate their individual wills to the greater will of  the Emperor for the common good, the perfect community described by Piccarda, in which submission to ‘la […] volontade’ of  ‘lo re’ guarantees the peace of  the whole, might finally be realized on earth.

44 A variant reading of  this passage in Dante’s letter has here ‘exultavit in me spiritus meus’. In both cases, the echo of  the Magnificat is clear. For the alternative reading, see Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of  Dante, ed. by Paget Toynbee, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), ad loc.

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Vital nodrimento Of course, what Dante did not know in 1310 and 1311 when he wrote these letters, but what was all-too-clear by the time he came to write the Paradiso towards the end of  his life, was that, for all the messianic rhetoric attached to Henry in the letters, his mission to ‘drizzare Italia’ (Par., XXX. 137) [rule Italy] was a lost cause, and in the Empyrean his throne and his crown are refigured from a purely other-worldly perspective:     E ’n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni per la corona che già v’è sù posta, prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,     sederà l’alma, che fia giù agosta, de l’alto Arrigo, ch’a drizzare Italia verrà in prima ch’ella sia disposta. (Par., XXX, 133–38) [Your eyes are fixed upon a single throne, drawn by the crown already set on that. And long before you join this marriage feast, the soul will sit – imperial in the world – of noble Arrigo, who came to rule an Italy unready for him yet.]

The ultimately politically disappointing figure of Henry VII, therefore, serves as a useful model for Dante’s conf licted views on the relationship between politics and theology. Convinced of a providential role in human history and of  the possibility (in theory) of the attainment of the common good under a universal ruler modelled on God, as ruler of  the Universe, Dante is finally forced to concede that – in his time, at least – the civitas Dei might be destined to remain (as it was for Augustine) attainable only in Heaven. Paradoxical as it may seem, this also seems to be the view that emerges from the poet’s treatise on Empire, the Monarchia. While the dating of  this work remains problematic, it seems most plausible that the Monarchia was written close to the end of  Dante’s life, and certainly after the death of  Henry VII,45 and it should come as no surprise, then, that the secular world 45 For a summary of  the debate, see Prue Shaw, ‘Introduction’, in Dante: Monarchy, ed. by Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. xiii–xli

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described in the treatise is one in which the intervention of no political Messiah can now be envisioned. Thus, although the Monarchia continues to assert the need for an Empire in order for human beings to attain their proper ends on earth, it also seems to present the hope of  these ends ever being achieved in the real world of early fourteenth-ce ntury Italy as a near impossibility. Indeed, the Monarchia remains, throughout, determinedly theoretical, not engaged at all with contemporary political events,46 and concerned only to expound general philosophical points, whose relevance to the political debates of  the time can extrapolated but is never stated explicitly. It is, in Cassell’s felicitous formulation, ‘a text disincarnate’ (Cassell, p. 617), detached, theoretical and – unexpectedly for a treatise on politics – unworldly. And while some have read the text in an optimistic vein,47 Dante’s decision to analyse the concept of  Empire in isolation from the specific dif ficulties which the institution faced in the first decades of  the fourteenth century, seems rather the product of a defiant resignation, of  hopes dashed but a conviction still standing.48 Far from being a blueprint for (pp. xxxviii–xli). A later dating is supported by the precise reference to Paradiso V in Book I of  the treatise: ‘Hec libertas […] est maximum donum humane nature a Deo collatum – sicut in Paradiso Comedie iam dixi’ (Mon., I. 12. 6; referring to Paradiso V. 19–22: ‘Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza | fesse creando […] | […] | fu de la volontà la libertate’). 46 ‘The reader approaching this treatise is struck by the poet’s tactic of shrouding any reference to immediate contemporary af fairs’ (Anthony K. Cassell, ‘Monarchia’, in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 616–23 (p. 616). 47 ‘The Empire is the instrument for the realization of  the end of  the human race as a whole, of humana civilitas. […] Dante’s political optimism seems here unbounded. The task he assigns to the Empire is the highest on earth’: Alessandro Passerin D’Entrèves, Dante as a Political Thinker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 57. D’Entrèves dates the Monarchia to after the political letters but before the death of  Henry VII (c. 1312–13), and suggests, idiosyncratically, that the Commedia was not conceived until 1313, after Henry’s death. 48 In consonance with this point of view, Shaw suggests that it is perfectly ‘plausible in terms of psychology that Dante would compose a treatise demonstrating the need for an emperor when his hopes in practical terms of ever seeing this come about in his own lifetime had been definitively dashed’ (p. xl).

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some future utopia, under the rule of a universal Emperor, the Monarchia can be read, I believe, as an attempt to understand the reasons for Henry’s failure, and for the failure of  the imperial ideal more generally, via a thorough exploration of  those first principles – the necessity of  Empire; the necessity that it be Roman; the divinely ordained nature of  Roman imperial authority – which the princes and peoples of  Italy (and Florence in particular) had so singularly failed to grasp in 1311–13.49 With this return to first principles, then, and the corresponding retreat from the identification of any one individual political ‘saviour’, Dante calls into question not the theological nature of  the political order, which is clearly stated and restated throughout the Monarchia,50 but the likelihood of an immediate resolution to the Augustinian problems of cupiditas and the libido dominandi in his own here-and-now. But if  Henry was not the political Messiah that Dante had assumed him to be, and if no alternative remedy for the world’s cupiditas can be proposed, this does not mean that the poet, in the final cantica of  the Commedia, must renounce political engagement altogether. Rather, in that Babelic disunity, the poet’s voice takes on an evergreater importance and urgency. In a world in which language is degraded and confused, it is all the more important that there should be those who are able to speak to their communities and to guide them towards that limited temporal peace which is attainable on earth.51 In the Bible this role is fulfilled by the Prophets; in Trecento Italy, it is undertaken – at the 49 ‘Maxime autem de hac tria dubitata queruntur: primo nanque dubitatur et queritur an ad bene esse mundi necessaria sit; secundo an romanus populus de iure Monarche of fitium sibi asciverit; et tertio an auctoritas Monarche dependeat a Deo inmediate vel ab alio, Dei ministro seu vicario’ (Mon., I. 2. 3). 50 It is made abundantly clear, for example, that the right ordering of  human society is willed by God (‘ius in rebus nichil est aliud quam similitude divine voluntatis’ (Mon., II. ii. 5), and the Bible – as we have seen also in the case of  the political letters – remains the poet’s most important authority throughout (see Shaw, p. xxxv). 51 ‘Ita etiam terrena civitas, quae non vivit ex fide, terrenam pacem appetit; in eoque defigit imperandi obediendique concordiam civium, ut sit eis de rebus ad mortalem vitam pertinentibus humanarum quaedam compositio voluntatum’ (De civitate Dei, XIX. 17).

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heavenly instigation of  Cacciaguida – by Dante himself, whose prophetic voice is able to provide its readers with the spiritual nourishment that has the capacity to make them better citizens and better people:52     Ché se la voce tua sarà molesta nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta. (Par., XVII. 130–32) [For if at first your voice tastes odious, still it will of fer, as digestion works, life-giving nutriment to those who eat.]

And it is no coincidence that these words immediately follow Cacciaguida’s prophecy of  Dante’s exile from Florence, for it is almost an essential prerequisite that the prophet should be an outsider, rejected by the city which he addresses.53 It is in this context that Cacciaguida’s paradoxical assertion that it would be ‘bello’ for Dante to be a ‘parte per [s]e stesso’ (Par., XVII. 68–69) [the finer course […] would be to form a party on [his] own] starts to make sense: Dante must not renounce his engagement with the secular world, but must rather engage with it from outside of it, with a voice which is at one and the same time the voice of authority and the voice of  the exile.

52

53

An engagement with the importance of  the prophetic mode and the way in which it helped shape political discourse, connecting the social context of its audience with broader questions of  theological significance, forms a key strand within the AHRC-funded project ‘Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society’, on which I shall continue to work, along with PhD student Kevin Marples, in the coming years. I am grateful to Kevin for our many fruitful and enjoyable discussions about Dante, prophecy, politics and Empire, many of which have fed into the present chapter. Christ himself asserts: ‘amen dico vobis quia nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua’ (Luke 4. 24).

George Ferzoco

Dante and the Context of  Medieval Preaching

The medieval sermon is a genre of singular and outstanding importance. This declaration is made, on the one hand, by simply noting the increasing attention scholars have given to sermon literature and preaching in recent decades. A major on-going project, started in the early 1970s and spearheaded by scholars from the Université Catholique de Louvain, aims eventually to publish a volume on each of the many areas of study that reveal the religious history and culture of  the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Most of  the volumes in the ‘Typologie des sources du moyen âge chrétien’ to date are compact, perhaps on average not more than one hundred pages or so in length.1 The volume dedicated to the medieval sermon, on the other hand, is 998 pages long, and in itself serves as a springboard to further scholarly study of  the genre, its understanding and its use.2 What made sermon literature so prominent in the Middle Ages has much to do with its primary function of  transmitting information within the context of  the Mass. The liturgy would follow a relatively fixed set of readings, but in the middle of each service there would be a time for the priest to speak directly to those in attendance, in words of his own choosing and in a language understood by the audience. It was commonly the case that the preacher would use the sermon to repeat and to explain the day’s readings, especially the one from the Gospel. In this way, the congregation

1 2

To date eighty-two volumes have been published in this series (plus an index and two addenda). Beverly Mayne Kienzle, The Sermon (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). As noted in a review by Catherine Vincent in Revue d’Histoire de l’Eglise de France 91 (2005), 127, ‘cet ensemble constitue un matériau de tout premier plan pour la connaissance de la période médiévale, encore sous-exploité’.

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would have instilled in them not only the literal content of  the readings but also how these readings were to be understood in a profound and spiritual sense. In order to make his theological and spiritual messages more ingrained, the preacher would and could often make reference to what was happening in the ‘real world’ of  his listeners.3 Indeed, the sermon could be seen to be the transmitter not only of  theological truths and spiritual aspirations, but also of information regarding social and cultural matters directly af fecting listeners; in this way, it can be considered as an unparalled mass medium of  the medieval world.4 Another way of connecting with the audience was to relate the message of  the day’s Gospel reading to an anecdote that illuminates the moral message therein. Often such anecdotes would be set in places known to those listening. These illustrative exempla were often so entertaining that collections of  them were written and compiled either for preachers to use in their sermons, or for people to read on a stand-alone basis.5 Just as there was not simply one sort of poem, or one sort of prose, sermons took on various forms, according to historical and liturgical time. The latter temporal aspect, that of  liturgy, is particularly significant, given that sermons were normally intended for delivery on specific feasts. Sermon collections were usually bundled according to the type of  feast on which they were delivered. We find, most frequently, books of sermones 3 4

5

The most obvious sources are de mortuis sermons, related to the death of a notable figure. See David d’Avray, Death and the Prince: Memorial Preaching before 1350 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). The strongest expression of  this is in David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage Sermons. Mass Communication in a Culture without Print (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 15–30: ‘Unlike Reader’s Digest, sermons had something like a monopoly of mass communication in the thirteenth century. They must have had enormous inf luence. The massive scribal force of  the two mendicant orders combined with the production of commercial scribes to put stereotyped materials into the hands of preachers. The medium anticipated the impact of printing without needing technological innovation’ (p. 30). Claude Brémond, Jacques Le Gof f and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’‘exemplum’, second edition (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996).

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domenicales or de tempore, or sermons that were preached on Sundays;6 there were also books of sermones de sanctis, or sermons preached on the feasts of saints. These would cover the chronological year, but even in the supposed regimentation of  liturgy we find variants, particularly in regard to de sanctis sermons. A saint might be unheard of in one area, but be the patron saint of another. And with the feast of  the patron came a holiday, a day on which people not only did not engage in manual labour, but also on which they were obliged to attend Mass.7 As a mass medium, a sermon’s form became part of its message. It was not necessary for a sermon to be in a Mass in order for it to be considered a sermon, and it was also possible for other genres to use homiletic modes of rhetoric and structure, and homiletic content, too.8 Formal orations or letters, for example, could take the form of a sermon, particularly in beginning with a biblical citation that would provide the theme for what follows. Many examples exist, but to cite one, we have a letter by Iacopo da Viterbo, who as archbishop of  Naples wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XI in June 1304, in which he urges that a particular person be canonized. The letter begins with a biblical citation or theme, from James 1. 17: ‘Every excellent gift and every perfect endowment is from above, descending from the father of  light’; it proceeds to expound upon the verse such that it argues that it is right and proper for the pope to canonize a holy person, who is a particular and appropriate gift from God.9 This document is almost certainly a letter, given that there is no indication that the author and the addressee were in the same place in June 1304, but it takes the form of a sermon. Moreover, material that was clearly intended for preaching could be presented in texts that were not, strictly speaking, homiletic. The most 6 7 8 9

Related to these are sermons preached for specific liturgical seasons of  the year, especially Lent which gave rise to collections of sermones quadragesimales. See David d’Avray, The Preaching of  the Friars: Sermons dif fused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Ibid., pp. 64–131, for the media related to medieval preaching. George Ferzoco, ‘An Italian Archbishop’s Sermon to the Pope’, Medieval Sermon Studies, 43 (1999), 67–74.

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striking example of  this would be in noting the main writings of  Iacopo da Varazze.10 The Dominican archbishop of  Genoa wrote a compilation of saints’ lives most commonly known as the Legenda aurea or Golden Legend.11 It presents, in the order of  the liturgical year, hagiographical information – etymologies, life stories, miracles – relative to many saints whose feasts would have been celebrated liturgically. The Legenda aurea became one of  the most widely copied works of  the later Middle Ages, witnessed by the fact that even today, close to one thousand medieval manuscripts of  this work remain in existence. This colossal popularity has been ascribed to the work being used by preachers who needed material for their sermons – in this way, the Legenda aurea can truly be said to be sermon literature, even if its contents are not in the form of sermons. Preachers frequently used, and even cited, hagiographical material as the source of passages in their sermons. For example, Aldobrandino Cavalcanti (c. 1220–79), the Florentine Dominican bishop of  Orvieto and author of widely circulated series of sermons, specifically states in various places of  his de sanctis collection that the incidents he has narrated come from the lives of  the saints in question.12 Pelbartus of  Temesvár, a major preacher of  fifteenth-century Hungary, used excerpts from the Legenda aurea in his de sanctis sermons.13 But not only was the Legenda aurea a major ‘bestseller’, but Jacopo da Varazze’s own sermon collections were also among the most widely 10 Born in the Ligurian town of  Varazze in 1228, Jacopo died in Genoa in July 1298. Presently, scholars refer variously to his given name as ‘James’ or ‘Jacques’ or ‘Jacobus’, and his toponymic as ‘Voragine’. 11 A monumental critical edition by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni is in Legenda aurea, second edition (Tavarnuzze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998–99). 12 Aldobrandino Cavalcanti, Sermones de sanctis, in ms. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc., Theo. 2, f.125rb and f.176va (in the latter: ‘Item vite presentis sancta conversatio, unde Martinus obitum suum longe ante prescrivit … Hec satis patent in legenda eius’). 13 See Zoltan J. Kosztolnyik, ‘Pelbartus of  Temesvár: a Franciscan preacher and writer of  the late Middle Ages in Hungary’, Vivarium, 5 (1967), 100–10; and Ildikó Bárczi, ‘La diversité thématique dans les prédications de Pelbart de Temesvár’, Archivum franciscanum historicum, 100 (2007), 251–310.

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transmitted of  the last centuries of  the medieval period.14 We have no record of  Jacopo having actually preached these sermons; this is not to say he did not do so. However, the reason they were so widely copied is because of  their service as models for other preachers, who could copy or borrow from them at will.15 The content of  Jacopo’s Legenda was not the same as that of  his sermones de sanctis; it is likely, especially given the very wide circulation of  both works, that the author’s intention was for his sermons to serve as models in terms of  their intended moral aims, while the hagiographical work could be mined by preachers who wanted to insert episodes they believed to be useful or interesting for their listeners: both works could be used in tandem.16 Were Jacopo’s works to have been used only by preachers, their inf luence would have been tremendous, as countless Christians would have heard, at least in part, his materials read aloud to them. But model sermons and hagiographical works did not need to be transmitted from written to oral discourse; they could also simply be read, as a source of spiritual nourishment. For some, this reading could take place as a sort of  lectio divina; for others, it could be read in a meditative, comfortable situation – or to borrow from the phrase coined by Michel Zink, these sermon texts could quietly perform the role of  ‘preaching in an easy chair’.17

Johann-Baptist Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350, 11 vols (Münster: Aschendorf f, 1969–90); see vol. 3 (1971), pp. 221–83 for lists of  these manuscripts, and for their incipits and explicits. 15 The practice of copying, or lightly adapting, sermons written by others was widespread. Indeed, one of  the most widely circulated late medieval collections of sermons was entitled ‘Dormi secure vel Dormi sine cura’, as the author (the Franciscan John of  Werden) intended his readers to sleep soundly on Saturday nights, knowing that there was material for Sunday’s sermon contained in the book. On this collection, see John Dahmus, ‘Dormi Secure: The Lazy Preacher’s Model of  Holiness for His Flock’, in Models of  Holiness in Medieval Sermons: Proceedings of  the International Symposium (Kalamazoo, 4–7 May 1995), ed. by Beverly Kienzle et al. (Louvain-laNeuve: Fédération internationale des Instituts d’études médiévales, 1996), pp. 301–16. 16 D’Avray, The Preaching of  the Friars, pp. 70–71. 17 Michel Zink, ‘Les destinataires des recueils de sermons en langue vulgaire au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle: prédication ef fective et prédication dans un fauteuil’, Actes du 14

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Preaching was not linked only to textual sources, as sermons frequently made use of visual images and references; in fact, recent research is showing how single images or groups of  them were consciously composed using homiletic techniques, so that either a preacher could give a sermon on a specific image or set of images, or a Christian could ‘read’ the same as if  he or she were interpreting them through a sermon. Images on pulpits, for example, could serve to inform the audience’s understanding of  the content of a sermon or of  the preacher’s intentions;18 sermons could inf luence the manner in which art was produced and presented;19 images in churches and in cities could serve as permanent visual reminders of  the moral content of a important biblical tales;20 and finally, preachers could refer to works of art known to the audience,21 and even – in the celebrated case of  the

99e Congrès des sociétés savantes (Besançon, 1974). Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1977); ‘La piété populaire au Moyen Âge’, pp. 59–74; and idem, La Prédication en langue romane avant 1300 (Paris: H. Champion, 1976), p. 478. 18 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, The Renaissance Pulpit: Art and Preaching in Italy 1400– 1550 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) explores this interrelationship in Tuscan churches, between preacher, pulpit and audience. 19 Creighton Gilbert, Lex amoris. La legge dell’amore nell’interpretazione de Fra Angelico (Florence: Le Lettere, 2005). 20 Pietro Delcorno, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Painted Sermon at the Door of  the Cathedral of  Bressanone’, Medieval Sermon Studies, 55 (2011), 55–83. 21 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘The Preacher as Goldsmith: The Italian Preachers’ Use of  Visual Arts’, in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 127–53; and, in the same volume, Miriam Gill, ‘Preaching and Image: Sermons and Wall Painting in Later Medieval England’, pp. 155–80 (esp. pp. 161–66). For the mnemomic import of images in preaching, see Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini. Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2002), also in English translation by Carole Preston and Lisa Chien: The Web of  Images. Vernacular Preaching from Its Origins to St Bernardino da Siena (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); and Kimberly A. Rivers, Preaching the Memory of  Virtue and Vice: Memory, Images and Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

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later medieval preacher Bernardino da Siena – hold up works of art for the veneration of  those who gathered together for the sermon.22 All these forms of  texts and images, that can be termed ‘preaching material’ (materia predicabilis) or ‘sermon literature’, fed into providing spiritual and theological information, either indirectly through clergy or directly to lay readers, who would receive that information in the vernacular. And just as there can be distinctions made between forms of medieval theological instruction such as monastic or scholastic, according to the aims and audiences of  their respective teachings, so too does one find a growing scholarly consensus in accepting another form of  theology: vernacular theology. Just as monastic theology’s name derives from the theology taught to, and learned by, monks, and as the term ‘scholastic theology’ denotes essentially the teachings of medieval clerical schools, so too must the late medieval form of  theology that was taught to common people take its name from its intended audience, the common people. A suitable medieval appellation might be ‘teologia volgare’ or ‘vulgar theology’, but we can content ourselves with the approximate and (to our sensibilities) more elegant equivalent, ‘teologia vernacolare’ or ‘vernacular theology’. Vernacular theology was aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at lay people, especially those who were not f luent or trained formally in Latin. Their education was in their own native tongue. One tendency of vernacular theology was that its concerns were of interest – or at least, perceived to be of interest – to the lives of its readers and listeners. One sees in vernacular texts less concern with the comparatively speculative minutiae of, for example, scholastic theology; rather, there is more emphasis on what listeners needed to know was theologically and morally correct. Hence the insistence of  Dante’s contemporary Ramon Llull, that preachers (that is, those who teach the faithful in their own language) must be theologians.23

22 Emily Michelson, ‘Bernardino of  Siena Visualizes the Name of  God’, in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Ref lections on the Medieval Sermon, ed. by Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman and Richard Utz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 155–79. 23 Ramon Llull, Ars generalis ultima [or Ars magna], pars 10, n. 14: ‘Praedicator debet esse theologus, ut sciat loqui de Deo.’

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The rise of  the vernacular, in all forms of  late medieval Italian culture, was very closely tied to new trends in preaching and lay devotion. Dante’s lifetime witnessed a growing and evolving symbiosis between preaching and the vernacular, and it is not an exaggeration to say that Dante’s apparent calm in planning and writing a Christian epic in the vernacular can be understood in the context of  the normal transmission of spiritual and theological information through spoken, if not written, sermons. The religious culture – that is to say, the dominant aspect of culture – in thirteenth-century Italy was marked by the establishment of  the mendicant orders, and they aimed to preach ef fectively and directly to as many people as possible. We can be sure that this preaching was in the vernacular. But it is with Giordano da Pisa that we witness a sea change in the recording of sermons. Up until the early fourteenth century, most medieval sermon collections written in Italy were preserved in Latin, but Giordano marks the beginning of a growing trend of sermons being written in the vernacular.’24 Much has been written in recent years, particularly by Carlo Delcorno, concerning textual matters in homiletic literature.25 But the symbiosis 24 Among the few textual witnesses to vernacular oral preaching before Giordano da Pisa are the twelfth-century proto-Piedmontese Sermones subalpini; see Silvana Delfuoco and Piergiuseppe Bernardi, eds, Sermoni subalpini, XII secolo. Biblioteca nazionale universitaria di Torino, manoscritto D.VI.10, second edition (Turin: Consiglio regionale del Piemonte, Centro studi piemontesi, 2005). Notes taken in relation to the sermons of  the Florentine Graziadio Berlinghieri, Bishop of  Pistoia (1223–50) have been examined by Malcolm B. Parkes, ‘Tachygraphy in the Middle Ages. Writing Techniques Employed for Reportationes of  Lectures and Sermons,’ in Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of  Medieval Texts (London: The Hambledon Press, 1999), pp. 19–34, and by Stefano Zamponi, ‘Le prediche del vescovo di Pistoia nel 1233. Un caso di collaborazione fra copisti?’, in Herrad Spilling, ed., La collaboration dans la production de l’écrit médiéval. Actes du XIIIe Colloque international de paléographie latine (Weingarten, 22–25 september 2000) (Paris: École nationale des chartes, 2003), pp. 69–87. As David d’Avray puts it: ‘That the [thirteenth-century] friars achieved their undoubted successes by preaching in a language which their audience could not understand is so wildly implausible that the onus of proof is on those who propose it’ (The Preaching of  the Friars, p. 94). 25 Professor Delcorno’s contributions are numerous and valuable, and one can only refer to his many works on medieval Italian sermon literature, particularly in regard

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between Dante and theology, witnessed in ‘vernacular theology’, and on the reception of preaching in Dante’s Italy, requires more investigation. The term ‘vernacular theology’ appears to have first been used in the midtwentieth century, notably in a 1953 doctoral dissertation at the University of  Cambridge.26 But apart from one or two instances it has only come into its own in the past two decades. Its use has been almost exclusively in the Anglophone world of medieval studies: some examples have been in the area of medieval English literature, others in medieval spirituality and mysticism.27 It has been cited by francophones occasionally (almost exclusively in reference to the medieval English and German milieus),28 and there is recent use of  the related concept of  ‘Frömmigkeitstheologie’ primarily by

to Dante. For a selection of some of  his articles, see Carlo Delcorno, ‘Quasi quidam cantus’, in Studi sulla predicazione medievale, ed. by Giovanni Baf fetti, Giorgio Forni, Silvia Serventi and Oriana Visani (Florence: Olschki, 2009); a full bibliography, of  his representative publications to 2009, appears on pp. xi–xxii. 26 A. I. Doyle, ‘A Survey of  the Origins and Circulation of  Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of  the Part of  the Clergy therein’, 2 vols. 27 Relative to the English sphere, see for example: Nicholas Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70 (1995), pp. 822–64; Vincent Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Paul Strohm, ed., Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 401–20; and Ian Richard Johnson, ‘Vernacular Theology / Theological Vernacular: A Game of  Two Halves?’, in Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh, eds, After Arundel. Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 73–88. One reason why Anglophone scholarship should focus on this approach might be, as noted by Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), that the use of  the vernacular seemed to be a political and social issue only (or most greatly) in England. 28 See, for example, Jean-Pascal Pouzet, ‘Les droits du diable. Quelques aspects de la théologie de la redemption dans le Château d’amour de Robert Grosseteste’, in Leo Carruthers, ed., Anges et démons dans la littérature anglaise au moyen âge (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), pp. 111–40.

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German scholars,29 but it has been almost utterly absent from the Italian scene; the terms ‘teologia vernacolare’ or ‘teologia volgare’ barely exist in the Italian lexicon. Arguably more than any other scholar, Bernard McGinn has made the term accepted over the course of  his decades of scholarly research on medieval mysticism, especially his 1998 book, The Flowering of  Mysticism.30 This mysticism is intimately bound up with the rise of vernacular theology that, from 1200, takes its place alongside the established monastic theology and a newly mature scholasticism.31 McGinn sees the mystical writers of  this period as engaged in a multifaceted discourse between women and men, between Latin and the vernaculars, and between the older ideal of voluntary isolation on the one hand, and the new ‘public spirituality’ typified by the friars and lay communities such as beguines and, especially in the Italian context, confraternities. McGinn’s model is explicitly one of conversation rather than confrontation; it is not a drawing of  boundaries that mutually exclude one theological approach from another.32 In vernacular theology, 29

30 31

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See, for example, The Reformation of  Faith in the Context of  Late Medieval Theology and Piety: Essays by Berndt Hamm, ed. by Robert J. Bast (Leiden: Brill, 2003); and Frömmigkeit-Theologie-Frömmigkeitstheologie. Contributions to European Church History: Festschrift für Berndt Hamm zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Gudrun Litz, Heidrun Munzert and Roland Liebenberg (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of  Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), The Presence of  God: A History of  Western Christian Mysticism, 3 (New York: Crossroad, 1998). For the classic work on monastic theology, see Jean Leclercq, The Love of  Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of  Monastic Culture, trans. by Catharine Misrahi, third edition (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). A recent and thorough overview of scholastic education and culture is to be found in Ulrich Gottfried Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, trans. by Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of  America Press, 2010). In the mid 1980s, Jean Leclercq and Edward Synan led a workshop at Western Michigan University on monastic and scholastic approaches to truth. There developed a consensus that by the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was considerable borrowing between the two schools of  theology. Many of  the workshop’s papers, in expanded form, are available in E. Rozanne Elder, ed., From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic and Scholastic Approaches to Truth. The Spirituality of  Western

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one evidences a linguistic exchange that is better explained by a mutually enriching relationship rather than a ‘top-down’ arrangement.33 Women such as Mechthild of  Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete wrote for themselves and their communities in their vernaculars, and only afterward were their works transposed into Latin.34 People who appear, on the surface, to be as dif ferent from each other as were Francis of  Assisi and the austere Marguerite d’Oin wrote texts in Latin as well as in their native tongues.35 And although Mechthild of  Hackeborn’s companions recorded her revelations in Latin, these became known more widely in vernacular versions.36 The new vernacular theology, McGinn argues, developed not only new challenges to traditional communication, but it also developed genres that favoured dialogue or that brought greater emphasis to spiritual

Christendom, III (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986). Of particular interest is an article in this book by Thomas J. Renna, ‘The Idea of  Jerusalem: Monastic to Scholastic’, pp. 96–109, and another by Jean Leclercq, ‘Monastic and Scholastic Theology in the Reformers of  the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century’, pp. 178–201. See also Brian P. Gaybba, Aspects of  the Medieval History of  Theology: 12th to 14th Centuries (Pretoria: University of  South Africa, 1988), pp. 52–57. 33 For another view of  ‘vertical’ as opposed to ‘horizontal’ bilingualism, see Paul Zumthor, ‘Un problème d’esthétique médiévale. L’utilisation poétique du bilinguisme’, Le Moyen Âge, 66 (1960), 303–36 and 561–94. 34 For Mechthild of  Magdeburg, see Waltraud Verlaguet, L’éloignance: la théologie de Mechthild de Magdebourg (XIIIe siècle) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005); for Mechthild and for Marguerite Porete, see Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife. Mechthild of  Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 1995). 35 For the writings of  Francis, see Claudio Leonardi, ed., La letteratura francescana, vol. 1: Francesco e Chiara d’Assisi (Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla; Milan: A. Mondadori, 2004) and also Carlo Paolazzi, ed., Scripta Francesci Assisiensis (Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 2009). For Margaret, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, The Writings of  Margaret of  Oingt, Medieval Prioress and Mystic (d. 1310): Translated from the Latin and Francoprovençal. With an introduction, essay and notes (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). 36 Rosalynn Voaden, ‘Mechtild of  Hackeborn’, in Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden, eds, Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c. 1100–c. 1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 431–51 (especially p. 442).

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autobiography (or, it may be said, autohagiography) and the narrative of visions. McGinn does not say it, but it is obvious that there are strong elements of  these genres in the Commedia. The resonances for the study of  Dante’s poem are many: to take just one example, when discussing women’s mystic visions, McGinn declares: ‘It might be better to speak of […] “visualizations” rather than visions, in order to stress the fact that they are imaginative creations “seen” by the mystic as she strives to appropriate the inner meaning’ of a liturgical event, a text or an image.37 Another element of  this sort of visionary literature can be seen at the summit of  Dante’s comedic voyage, when the pilgrim sees the face of  God. This vision is in keeping with the comparative burst of people – especially Franciscans – in and around Dante’s lifetime who reported and described their own visions of  the Godhead. Accounts were written in the decade of  Dante’s death of  Fra Egidio snatched to the third heaven, of  Bernardo da Quintavalle having seen God many times, and Giovanni d’Alvernia who saw not only all of  Creation and all of pre-Resurrection history but also the Trinity itself. The text that presents these events, the Actus Beati Francisci et sociorum eius, was written, probably not distant from the time of  Dante’s death, in Latin; it was based heavily on oral (vernacular) tradition, and served as materia predicabilis for vernacular sermons as well. 38 Another text, written in Latin but obviously based on vernacular oral tradition, tells in great detail the vision of  the face of  God witnessed by Peter of  the Morrone (1210–96);39 the similarities between this account and Dante’s are striking.40

37 McGinn, The Flowering of  Mysticism, p. 270. 38 Marino Bigaroni, Giovanni Boccali and Jacques Cambell, eds, Actus Beati Francisci et sociorum eius (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1988). 39 The Latin original and an Italian translation are in: Cristina Isolan, ed., Auto e biografia di papa Celestino. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1990. For an English translation see ‘The Autobiography of  Peter of  the Morrone’, trans. by George Ferzoco; in Thomas Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (London and New York: Garland, 1999), pp. 729–43. 40 George Ferzoco, ‘Towards an Understanding of  the Beatific Vision in Dante and Late Medieval Culture’, in Margaret Baker, Flavia Coassin and Diana Glenn, eds,

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Sermon literature is by far the predominant genre in vernacular theology is. It is estimated that for the period c. 1150–c. 1350 there are extant about one hundred thousand sermons, written in Latin (as was the tradition, regardless of  the language in which a sermon was or could actually be delivered), and that about 95 per cent of  these date from the thirteenth century onward.41 It is accepted that sermons preached to lay audiences would normally have been delivered in the vernacular, and those preached to the clergy would have been delivered in Latin. Even if sermons were written and preserved in Latin, the onus was on the preacher to translate them into a language that could be grasped by the audience. This, therefore, was a common task for many preachers as most medieval sermons, until the fourteenth century, were normally preserved in Latin whether or not they were uttered in the vernacular. One example will suf fice: Bonaventure wrote in Latin, and his vernacular was that of  Bagnoregio, but when he delivered a Christmas sermon in Montpellier it was, as he wrote, ‘in gallico’, not in Latin.42 When preaching before nuns in Paris, he apologized for not being f luent in French: ‘Although I do not know how to speak French very well, this is no reason that the word of  God which I must utter should have any less value’.43 We see a change in the transmission of sermon literature during the later thirteenth century with the growth of  the reportatio, a transcription of  the words of a spoken sermon. These transcriptions were often recorded Flinders Dante Conferences 2002 & 2004 (Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2005), pp. 143–53 (pp. 150–52). 41 Nicole Bériou, ‘Les sermons latins après 1200’, in Beverly Mayne Kienzle, The Sermon, pp. 363–447 (p. 412). 42 Bonaventure, ‘Sermo de tempore 18’, in Opera omnia, vol. IX: Sermones de tempore, de sanctis, de B. Virgine Maria, et de diversis, ed. by P. P. Collegii and S. Bonaventura (Quaracchi: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1901), p. 120. 43 Bonaventure, ‘Sermo 1, de sancto Marco Evangelista’, in Opera omnia IX, p. 519. For more on the context of  Bonaventure’s non-Latin and non-Italian preaching, see Carolyn Muessig, ‘The Vernacularization of  Late Medieval Sermons: Some French and Italian Examples’, in Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby, eds, Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours, Medieval Texts and Cultures of  Northern Europe, 20 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 267–84.

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by lay people, and frequently are in the vernacular or in a sort of macaronic form, with the scribe writing the words that came most readily to mind while listening and trying to copy the preacher’s message. More importantly, it is only at the turn of  the fourteenth century when we see a drastic shift in the written versions of sermons from Latin to the vernacular. Medieval Florence provides a capital example with the arrival of  Giordano da Pisa in the first years of  the fourteenth century; his preaching was extremely popular, and listeners recorded, in the vernacular, the content of  his sermons, often along with observations about the place, the size of the crowd, and even the weather. That this was a transitional time is evident in noting that Giordano, trained to write in Latin rather than his native vernacular, sometimes had dif ficulty in expressing himself as forcefully as he would like, since certain appropriate terms would occur to him initially and most powerfully in Latin.44 Sermons were not the only Latin religious works to be incorporated into vernacular texts. Of particular popularity were Jacopo Passavanti’s Specchio della vera penitenza, the Meditationes Vite Christi (originally attributed to Bonaventure but actually written by Giovanni da Calvoli), and Domenico Cavalca’s version of  the lives of  the early Christian fathers. These manuscripts were primarily for female readers, as witnessed either by the patron or the provenance of extant manuscripts. This is perfectly synchronous with the ownership of sermon manuscripts translated into Italian vernaculars. Eliana Corbari has ef fected an in-depth study of extant Florentine manuscripts of vernacular versions of  the Legenda aurea, Jacopo Passavanti’s Specchio della vera penitenza, and Giordano da Pisa’s sermons, and has argued convincingly that, at least in the cases of  Giordano da Pisa and Jacopo Passavanti, it was women who owned and read a majority of  the manuscripts.45 It is also clear that confraternities were active in com44 Carlo Delcorno, Giordano da Pisa e l’antica predicazione volgare (Florence: Olschki, 1975), p. 37. 45 Eliana Corbari, ‘Vernacular Theology: Dominican Sermons and Audience in Late Medieval Italy’ (doctoral dissertation, University of  Bristol, 2008), see in particular p. 251. A revised version of  this dissertation is published as Vernacular Theology: Dominican Sermons and Audience in Late Medieval Italy (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013).

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piling and creating manuscripts of religious texts, especially ones dealing with preaching.46 It is precisely this increase in vernacular religious texts, synchronous with a demand for ef fective preaching and sermon literature, that provides fertile ground for new studies of  the cultural, intellectual and theological context of  Dante and his Commedia. One example is a recent book of collected essays, devoted to tracing the relationship between preaching and literature in late medieval and renaissance Italy; although no article is devoted solely to Dante, the poet’s name seems ever present throughout these articles that analyse subjects ranging from Ficino’s compositions in the form of sermons, to the way vernacular preachers used the visual arts, and contextual links between Florentine theatre and sermons.47 This outbreak of vernacular religious texts – of which Dante’s Commedia is obviously one – can be explained by the thirteenth century’s trend toward a new sort of religious living, that of  the emergence of  the laicus religiosus. This term was used c. 1255 by the canonist and cardinal Henry of  Segusio (also known as Hostiensis, or Henry of Susa) to describe lay people who lived in a religious manner in their own homes.48 The laici religiosi of  Florence would regularly have attended sermons, and although Dante would not have heard Giordano da Pisa preach in Florence (as Giordano arrived after Dante went into exile), he would undoubtedly have heard great and inf luential preachers such as Remigio de’ Girolami (c. 1235–1319), Pierre Olivi (1248–98) and Ubertino da Casale (c. 1259– c. 1329);49 so too would Dante have been in contact with men like Riccoldo 46 Daniel L. Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 21. 47 Ginetta Auzzas, Giovanni Baf fetti and Carlo Delcorno, eds, Letteratura in forma di sermon: i rapporti tra predicazione e letteratura nei secoli XIII–XVI (Florence: Olschki, 2003). 48 For a general discussion of  this concept and the broader search for a spirituality adapted to the needs and desires of  the laity, see André Vauchez, La spiritualité du Moyen Âge occidental, VIIIe–XIIe siècle (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975), pp. 105–45. 49 For these three writers, see respectively (among the vast quantities of scholarly literature about each one): Sonia Gentili, ‘Girolami, Remigio de’, Dizionario biografico

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da Monte Croce (c. 1242–1320) and Petrus de Trabibus (f l. 1300).50 Such preachers, and many others like them, served as a sort of oral library to the young Dante.51 Dante’s contact can be safely assumed, if not by the fact that he was quite simply an intellectual and devoted man living in the intimate beehive that was Florence, but by the oft-discussed words he wrote to describe his own education: E da questo imaginare cominciai ad andare là dov’ella [i.e. filosofia] si dimonstrava veracemente, cioè ne le scuole de li religiosi e a le disputazioni de li filosofanti. Sì che in picciol tempo, forse di trenta mesi, cominciai tanto a sentire de la sua dolcezza, che lo suo amore cacciava e distruggeva ogni altro pensiero. (Conv., II. xii. 7) [Drawn by this image, I began to go to where she truly revealed herself, that is, to the schools of  the religious and the disputations of  the philosophers. And so in a short time, perhaps some thirty months, I began to experience so profoundly the sweetness she brings that love of  her drove out and destroyed all thought of anything else.]

So it was that Dante frequented ‘the schools of  the religious and the disputations of  the philosophers’ for about thirty months. Some have assumed that the schools could only have been the studia of  the two major mendicant orders in Florence, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, and that Dante was one of a very tiny group of  lay people who managed to attend these schools that normally were reserved for the education of  friars (and

50

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degli italiani 56 (2001); Paolo Giannoni, ‘La grande teologia a Firenze. II. Pietro Olivi nello studio di S. Croce. Le forme secolari dell’evangelio’, Vivens homo 10 (1999), 231–64; and Charles T. Davis, ‘Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia’, Yearbook of  Italian Studies 4 (1980), 59–86. See Rita George Tvrtković, ‘The Ambivalence of  Interreligious Experience: Riccoldo da Monte Croce’s Theology of  Islam’ (PhD dissertation, University of  Notre Dame, 2007); and Sylvain Piron, ‘Le poète et le théologien: une rencontre dans le studium de Santa Croce’, Picenum Seraphicum 19 (2000), 87–134. Charles T. Davis, ‘The Florentine “Studia” and Dante’s “Library”’, in Giuseppe Di Scipio and Aldo Scalgione, eds, The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of  Arts and Sciences: Acta of  the International Dante Symposium, 13–16 November 1983, Hunter College, New York (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1988), pp. 339–66.

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possibly secular clergy).52 This is reinforced by the views of other scholars, such as one who says that Dante, as a young man, ‘hammered out his own vision of  the universe with the help of  the Dominican teachers at Santa Maria Novella’.53 But there exist no medieval registers bearing Dante’s name, and no documents that definitely tie the poet to a specific school or teacher. What form could this man’s education have taken over the course of  these thirty months? Recent research is open to the possibility of  Dante having been educated directly, whether formally or informally, by the mendicants. He could have attended classes that to some extent were open to non-mendicants, and there was even a greater chance of his having attended public disputations and quodlibetal sessions. Most of all, though, Dante could have attended the frequent sermons – often two a day, in both the studia – that were the focal point of contact between mendicant religious on the one hand, and pious lay people on the other.54 These sermons were often the battleground between ideological and intellectual factions, and could serve as the cutting edge of  theological instruction and debate.55 52

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See, for example, Peter S. Hawkins, ‘Dante and the Scriptural Self ’, in The Papers of  the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 63–86, reprinted as ‘The Scriptural Self ’ in Peter S. Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 19–35; see p. 27. M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the bow is bent in study …’: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Mediaeval Studies, 1998), p. xi. It has been estimated that in a typical Dominican church in Dugento Italy, about 250 sermons would be preached yearly; see Gille Gérard Meersseman, ‘La prédication dominicaine dans les congrégations mariales en Italie au XIIIème siècle’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 18 (1948), 131–61 (p. 149). Given the singular importance of  the Dominican studium in Florence, many more sermons would have been preached at Santa Maria Novella in a typical year; it is reasonable to assume that a similar number of sermons would have been preached at Santa Croce by the Franciscans. For the Franciscans, see for instance Bert Roest, ‘The Franciscan School System. Re-assessing the Early Evidence (ca. 1220–1260)’, in Michael Robson and Jens Röhrkasten, eds, Franciscan Organisation in the Mendicant Context. Formal and Informal Structures of  the Friars’ Lives and Ministry in the Middle Ages (Berlin: Lits, 2010), pp. 269–96; and Neslihan Şenocak, The Poor and the Perfect. The Rise of  Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

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Very little has been noted, to date, regarding the specific content of sermons we know to have been delivered in Florence in the last years of  the thirteenth century.56 We do know, as noted above, that sermons were normally associated with liturgy: whether in the context of a typical mass, a significant season of  the Christian calendar, or a special feast. Whether at a learned level of rigorous dogmatics or at a popular level of spiritual guidance, medieval people ‘were educated in their religion primarily by the liturgy’, and sermons were an integral and most illuminating part of  that liturgy.57 For readers of  the Commedia, then, one might find it useful to read late medieval sermons delivered during the liturgical period covered by the fictive journey itself, particularly from Good Friday to Easter, in order to better understand the cultural framework grasped by most of  Dante’s contemporaries.58

2012) esp. pp. 237–42 (concluding: ‘It is quite conceivable that by way of directly training the secular clergy and monks in many cities and towns, the Franciscans might have transferred, consciously or not, their own particular understanding of evangelical doctrine to their audience.’ For the Dominicans, see for example M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘Education in Dante’s Florence Revisited: Remigio de’ Girolami and the Schools of  Santa Maria Novella’, in Ronald B. Begley and Joseph W. Koterski, eds, Medieval Education (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005) pp. 143–81 (esp. p. 168: ‘Dante could certainly have absorbed the Christian Aristotelianism that figured in the Dominican sermons preached from the pulpit at Santa Maria Novella, however, and this more obvious channel of dif fusion should not be overlooked’). 56 For the practice of preaching in Dugento and Trecento Florence, see Daniel R. Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of  Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, GA: University of  Georgia Press, 1989), and the relevant pages (especially pp. 207–11) of  George W. Dameron, Florence and its Church in the Age of  Dante (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 57 See Evelyn Birge Vitz, ‘Liturgy as Education in the Middle Ages’, in Begley and Koterski, eds, Medieval Education, pp. 20–34. 58 Such Lenten sermon collections abound, and a dozen dissertations would not cover a fraction of  the material that could be mined. However, for a start toward understanding possible links of material, theme and expression between Dante and his contemporary preachers, one could start fruitfully with the extremely popular collection of  Lenten sermons by Jacopo da Varazze, Sermones quadragesimales, ed. by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence: Società Internazionale per lo Studio del

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Here, I wish to underline how the practice of preaching can be seen to have an ef fect on the medieval reader’s reception of an episode in the Commedia, on how liturgical and hagiographical material that would certainly have been transmitted or reinforced via sermons can help twenty-first century readers to grasp a passage that at first may appear strange, and on the characterization of one of  the main players in the work.59 All of  the three episodes I will indicate are in the Paradiso. Of  the great number of preachers that populate Dante’s afterworld, a clear majority are in the final cantica. The familiarity that Dante’s readers had with preaching practice helps explain a narrative choice made by the author in the Heaven of  the Wise, where Bonaventure presents the soul of  Dominic to the pilgrim, and Thomas does likewise with the soul of  Francis. The content of  both sermons is hagiographic, much akin to what one would hear from a preacher or read in a book of sermons. It is often the case that modern commentators on this extended passage will emphasize how, in choosing a Dominican to introduce a Franciscan, and in choosing a Franciscan to present a Dominican, the author is simply trying to show how collaborative heaven is, and how peace overcomes any rivalries that exist on earth (such as the most virulent of all for Dante, that between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines). However, to a medieval reader this passage would have been a reminder of  the way that on the feast of  Saint Dominic, a Franciscan would visit a Dominican convent and preach on the life and virtues of  Dominic,

59

Medioevo Latino, 2005). For a study of  how Jacopo and Dante treat spiritual meaning, see Giovanni Farris, Significati spirituali nei ‘Sermones’ di Jacopo da Varazze e nella ‘Divina Commedia’, second edition (Savona: M. Sabatelli, 1998). I am not dealing with the rhetoric of preaching as used by the author of  the Commedia, except to say that Carlo Delcorno has shown exhaustively the extent to which the techniques of preachers like Giordana da Pisa mirror those used by Dante in his epic poem. For just one detailed example, see Carlo Delcorno, ‘Schede su Dante e la retorica della predicazione’, in Miscellanea di studi danteschi in memoria di Silvia Pasquazi, ed. by Alfonso Paolella, Vincenzo Placella and Giovanni Turco (Naples: Federico & Ardia, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 301–12. As for the continued use of implicit theatricality by later medieval preachers, see the doctoral dissertation of  Valentina Berardini, ‘La teatralità implicita. Aspetti performativi della predicazione di Bernardino da Siena’, Università degli Studi di Macerata, 2011.

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and that on the feast of  Saint Francis of  Assisi, a Dominican would speak to Franciscans about their founder.60 Understanding and accepting the spiritual concerns of  Dante’s readers, and of  Dante himself, can aid in understanding certain passages of  the Commedia that may appear obscure without grasping the familiarity that late medieval readers would have had, if not with sermons on Francis of  Assisi, then certainly with texts that served not only as hagiographical authorities but also as sermon material. In Paradiso XII, when Bonaventure indicates to Dante the members of one of  the rings of  the wise saints, contemporary readers – and most commentators – are f lummoxed by the presence of  two people who they can barely recognize, if at all: ‘Illuminato e Augustin on quici, / che fuor de’ primi scalzi poverelli / che nel capestro a Dio si fero amici’ (130–31) [Illuminato and Agostino are here, who were among the first barefoot paupers to become friends with God by wearing the rope].61 These figures are profoundly obscure to almost everyone 60 Raymond of  Peñafort, while master of  the Dominican order from 1238 to 1240, agreed with the local Franciscan guardian of  Barcelona that ‘propter roborandam et conservandam caritatem et unitatem et propter exemplum et edificationem’ they would exchange preachers on the feasts of  Dominic and Francis (and at funerals). See Angelus Walz, Compendium historiae Ordinis Praedicatorum, second edition (Rome: Pontificum Athenaeum Angelicum, 1947), pp. 253–54. The earliest commentator of  the Commedia to mention this practice (and one of  the very few to do so, in any century) is Bernardino Daniello, Dante con l’espositione di M. Bernardino Daniello da Lvcca sopra la sua Comedia dell’Inferno, del Purgatorio, & del Paradiso (Venice: Pietro da Fino, 1568); the commentary to Par., XI. 40–42 reads: ‘Et dice che dirà dell’uno, percioche tendendo l’opere di ciascun d’essi due ad un medesimo fine; dell’un parlando, si veniva ancora à parlare dell’altro: & è da sapere che nel principio di tali religioni nel giorno della festa di san Francesco havevano in costume i Francescani di far predicar uno di quelli di san Domenico, ilquale la vita del Santo laudava, perche, Laus in ore proprio sordescit. all’oncontro i Dominicani nel dì solenne del Santo facevan predicar uno di quelli de san Francesco, & da questo mosso il Poeta stimo io, introducesse l’Aquinate, ch’era dell’ordine di san Domenico, à lodar san Francesco; & Bonaventura ch’era di quel di san Francesco, à dir le laudi di san Domenico.’ 61 Translations from Dante are taken from Paradiso, trans. and ed. by Robert M. Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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who reads the Commedia today, but in Dante’s time it would have been far more likely that readers and listeners could identify the two, and the reasons why they might be included here. Both were early companions of  Francis. But even among these select few, these two had particular graces bestowed upon them. Illuminato, for example, is the man Francis turned to in order to consider what to do about his stigmata – should he hide them, or should he talk about them to others (and if so, to whom precisely); Francis is portrayed as taking his disciple’s advice. Agostino, on the other hand, had the grace to see, while he lay dying, Francis’s soul leaving this world for the next. The quiet irony of these narratives lies in the fact that the poet has placed the names of  these two men in the mouth of  Bonaventure, and that it was Bonaventure who, most authoritatively, spoke of  these two Franciscans to everyone, through his of ficial hagiographical and liturgical works regarding Francis.62 The last – and some would argue, the greatest – extended discourse by Dante’s beloved Beatrice is near the end of  her time with the pilgrim. In Paradiso XXIX, she launches into a visceral attack on the bad preaching practices of  the times, and the bad attitudes of many preachers themselves, and in so speaking, Beatrice follows many of  the preaching strategies, rhetorical f lourishes and biblical allusions used by the very people she is criticizing.63 But here she is condemning bad preachers, while speaking as a preacher, and doing so near the very end of  the heavenly ascent to the face of  God. How can a woman, even Beatrice, be permitted to speak this way? There were moments in the history of medieval Europe when, despite the usual admonitions against women preaching, one finds that women did in fact go out and preach. Sometimes it was solely to a restricted group, such as their convent; other times, it was public. Hildegard of  Bingen went so far as to not only preach to her nuns regularly, but to record the oldest known collection of sermons written by a woman; she even had papal

62 Bonaventure, Legenda major: regarding Illuminato, see cap. 13, par. 4; regarding Agostino, see cap. 14, par. 6. 63 For a full discussion of  this episode, see Carlo Delcorno, ‘Beatrice predicante (Par., XXIX, 85–126)’, L’Alighieri, 35 (2010), 111–31.

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permission – on four separate occasions – to go out and preach publicly. In a dif ferent manner, Umiliana de’ Cerchi (1219–46), a Florentine lay woman, was said to have preached, as did Umiltà of  Faenza and Rosa of  Viterbo.64 There were circumstances when there combined charisma, eloquence and holiness that permitted women to teach others – including men – how to act and what to expect in the future that God will reveal. This exceptional and prophetic mode of preaching precedes the appearance of  the pilgrim’s third and final guide: Bernard of  Clairvaux, whose fame as a holy man rested in no small part on his preaching, particularly in relation to the Song of  Songs.65 After Dante’s death in 1321, Guido da Polenta invited suggestions for the epitaph to be placed on Dante’s tomb. The best-known entry in this literary competition was by the layman and professor of  literae humaniores at the University of  Bologna, Giovanni da Virgilio.66 This proposed epitaph

64 For a nuanced study of medieval preaching by women, along with its reception and its portrayal, see (primarily in the context of  Tuscany) Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ‘Catherine of  Siena, Preaching, and Hagiography in Renaissance Tuscany’, in Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco and Beverly Mayne Kienzle, A Companion to Catherine of  Siena (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 127–54, and also Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker, eds, Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of  Christianity (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1998). Useful discussion and bibliography is to be found in Carolyn Muessig, ‘Sermon, Preacher and Society in the Middle Ages’, Journal of  Medieval History, 28 (2002), 73–91. 65 Steven Botterill, Dante and the Mystical Tradition. The Figure of  St Bernard in Dante’s Commedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 13–63 (especially p. 32). 66 Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatis expers, / quod foveat claro philosophia sinu: / gloria musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor, / hic iacet, et fama pulsat utrunque polum: /qui loca defunctis gladiis regnumque gemellis distribuit, laycis recthoricisque modis. [Dante the theologian, skilled in every branch of  knowledge that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom, glory of  the muses, author most acceptable to the vulgar, here lies and reaches both poles with his fame; who assigned their places to the defunct souls, and their jurisdictions to the twin swords (of  lay and spiritual power), in the fashion of  the laity and of rhetoric.] (Original in Giovanni Boccaccio, ‘Trattatello in laude di Dante’ (second redaction), as edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci in the collection Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. by Vittore Branca, vol. 3

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of  Dante has struck readers as excessive in its attribution of  the predicate ‘theologus’ to Dante, but I would argue that this composition is less a work of rhetorical fantasy, and one of dry (albeit f lorid) fact. The context of medieval preaching, and of vernacular theology, helps us to see that Dante was, by some at least, seen as a theologian – more particularly, a vernacular theologian. His contemporaries would not have recognized that expression, but they would have understood it implicitly. The acceptance of  the Commedia as a theological work is witnessed in its use as a theological authority in some later Italian sermons. One example of many will suf fice here. In a fifteenth-century manuscript, conserved in Venice, of miscellaneous near-contemporary sermons, one finds not one but two sermons in which Dante is cited as an illustrious and illustrative authority. In one sermon, devoted to a consideration of  the nature and ef fects of grace, reference is made to the ef ficicacy, even the necessity, of calling upon the intercession of  Mary;67 and in the other, on the impediments to confessing, in dealing with the ef fect of excessive greed.68 Many other examples of such homiletic interest in Dante have been the subject of (Milan: Mondadori, 1974) pp. 497–538 (p. 511); translation adapted from Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio: Including a Critical Edition of  Dante’s ‘Eclogae Latinae’ and of  the poetic remains of  Giovanni del Virgilio, by Philip H. Wicksteed and Edmund G. Gardner (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Company, 1902; reprinted Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), p. 175. 67 ‘Sermo de gracia’, in manuscript Venezia, San Francesco della Vigna, Biblioteca, Fondo S. Michele, IV-11, f.208va–211vb: [210va] ‘Nulla enim gratia venit de celo ad terram nisi transeat per meritam virginis marie. Vnde Dantes dicit: [210vb] “Donna sey tanto grande e tanto valle / Che chi vole gracia et a te non recorre / Soa desianza vol volare senza alle”.’ The Petrocchi reading of  Paradiso XXXIII. 13–15 is: ‘Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali, / che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre, / sua disïanza vuol volar sanz’ ali.’ 68 ‘Sermo de impedimentis confessionis’, in manuscript Venezia, San Francesco della Vigna, Biblioteca, Fondo S. Michele, IV-11, f.46vb–51ra: [48vb] [after discussing the dif ficulty of dealing with the sin of avarice] … dicebat Dantes: “O auaritia che poi piu farme [sic] poi che lo sangue mio che a te si atrato che non se cura de la propria carne”.’ The Petrocchi reading of  Purgatorio XX. 82–84 is: ‘O avarizia, che puoi tu più farne, / poscia c’ha’ il mio sangue a te sì tratto, / che non si cura de la propria carne?’

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scholarly attention.69 Ultimately, we see that Giovanni di Virgilio’s view of  Dante as theologian was not sterile or purely academic; those who remembered and even revered the exiled Florentine also saw him unabashedly as a theologian, and expressed that conviction in their sermons.70

69 Oriana Visani, ‘Citazioni di poeti nei sermonari medievali’, in Letteratura in forma di sermone, ed. by Agnello Baldi, Dante e il francescanesimo (Cava dei Tirreni: Avagliano, 1987), pp. 123–45. 70 More on Dante’s relation to medieval preaching may be expected in publications resulting from work on this topic undertaken by Nicolò Maldina as part of  his doctoral research at the Università degli Studi di Pisa and his current postdoctoral research at the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies.

Ruth Chester

Virtue in Dante

When we read the word ‘virtue’ in its various forms in Dante’s works, what do we understand by it? The Enciclopedia Dantesca points our understanding of the term in two dif ferent directions, those most immediately apparent in Dante’s texts: a notion of virtue as acquired, moral modes of action and structuring principles of  human character; and a notion of virtue as the creative, informing power of  God imprinting upon the celestial heavens who, in turn, contain inferior types of virtue, which then go on to inform the sub-lunar world. While these two meanings are acknowledged and articulated in modern scholarship, there is a notable absence of  thorough studies whose focus is on the presence of  the idea of virtue, ‘virtù’, in all its complexity. I hope this chapter will begin to acknowledge and clarify that complexity. The first of  the two dimensions of virtue mentioned above finds its fullest philosophical endorsement in the Convivio, and its poetic manifestation in the terraces and purifying punishments of  the Purgatorio and the structural ordering of  the heavens in the Paradiso. In the Convivio Dante endorses Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, defining moral virtue as an ‘abito elettivo consistente nel mezzo’ (Conv., IV. xvii. 7) [a habit of choice that keeps to the mean], which is acquired through repeated actions to become a fixed disposition of character. Such a definition of virtue also closely connects it with the fulfilment of a thing’s potential power, Aquinas’ ‘potentia animae’ (ST I.IIae.56.1); to understand a thing’s proper virtue, one must understand the capacities of its nature. The principle behind the form of  the punishments in Purgatory adopts Aristotle’s recipe of  the acquisition of virtue through repeated actions; by repeatedly doing the right act, that act passes from an individual event to a fixed disposition; in other words, it becomes a virtue. Central to the Aristotelian conception is the division

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of virtue into categories, indeed into the virtues. Such categorization is adopted by Dante to distinguish the terraces of  Purgatory, and to arrange the order of  heavens in Paradise, where we find a heaven for each of  the four cardinal virtues: prudence for the sun, fortitude for Mars, justice for Jupiter and temperance for Saturn. In modern scholarship, the importance of virtue as a structuring principle of  the arrangement of  Dante’s afterlife is addressed with a theological emphasis by Manuele Gragnolati, who points out the pattern of  Purgatorio in which simultaneously, a vice is curbed and a virtue inculcated on each of  the terraces. This inculcation is done through repeated action and through the use of exemplars (the chief of whom being the Virgin Mary) and its acquisition is witnessed by the singing of  the Beatitudes at the completion of each stage of purgation. Gragnolati also stresses the relation between Mary, Christ and virtue claiming that, ‘the aim of purgatory is to attain the virtues that are represented by Christ and Mary-as-Christ’.1 Marc Cogan, also focusing on the acquisition of virtue in Purgatory, introduces a further Aristotelian aspect into the question of virtue, stressing the inherent freedom in being virtuous. A virtuous soul ‘is not enslaved to the passions’. Cogan addresses the notion of  the straightening of  the will through the redirection of desire which takes place in Purgatory.2 These two strands of  thought come together in Virgil’s final address to the pilgrim at the summit of  Mount Purgatory. The pilgrim has now become both free and well directed: ‘libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio’ (Purg., XXVII. 140) [your will is free, erect, and whole]. Furthermore, Cogan addresses the distinction between the human virtues as they are acquired on earth and the Beatitudes which mark the souls’ progress in Purgatory. He explores this within a discussion of  Dante’s treatment of  the state in which souls exist after death (Purg., XXV) and which is ‘meant to complete our reori1 2

Manuele Gragnolati, Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 2005), p. 134. Marc Cogan, The Design in the Wax: The Structure of  the Divine Comedy and its Meaning (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 91–93. Dante employs the image of straightening the distorted will throughout Purgatory. See Purg., XXIII. 124–26; Purg., XXVII. 140.

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entation from faculties and virtues of  this world to faculties and virtues of  the next, and to resolve the problem of which faculties it is that have the Beatitudes as their virtues by explaining to us which it is about the human soul that endures after death’ (p. 129). Dante is dealing with the human soul post-mortem in which its relationship to first the body and secondly to God, is dif ferent from an embodied soul on earth. This acknowledges two levels of  human existence, that of  this life, and that of  the next. In the afterlife the soul, if it is be in a state of salvation, must have virtues which raise it beyond the human and allow it to participate in the divine. The second more distinct meaning of virtue in Dante, that of divine virtue as an informing principle or power, especially pervades the structure and content of  the Paradiso, from Beatrice’s explanation of  the varying intensities of virtue in the moon spots in canto II, to the positioning of  the celestial heavens themselves, to Dante’s accreditation of  his own poetic ‘virtue’ to the informing virtue of  Gemini when he arrives in the Heaven of  the Fixed Stars in canto XXII. Canto II also introduces the necessary relation between the informing Divine virtue and the quality and nature of  the material which it informs. Dif ferent substances will have dif ferent individual virtues, when virtue is understood as a thing’s proper and unique way of operating. It is the interaction of potential matter and informing celestial virtue which creates dif ference and individuality in creation. This is of particular relevance in the human being whose soul, as we are informed by Statius in Purgatorio XXV, is created and infused directly by God. A further strand of study relative to virtue in Dante is the consideration of virtue in the Vita Nuova, in which virtue is considered the morally ennobling quality originating in Love itself, which passes through the figure of  the beloved (Beatrice) to the lover by means of  her beauty and goodness. This presupposes a certain state of moral being on the part of  the lover, in order for them to be properly disposed to respond to this mediated virtue, while at the same time, part of  the special quality of  Beatrice herself is that she creates this state of morality which was not pre-existing in those who saw her, emphasizing her miraculous, more-than-human nature. In the Convivio virtue also appears around Dante’s other lady love, Philosophy, being that which both inspire in him; but here virtue is specifically moral virtue, or at most theological virtue and divine wisdom as present in the

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human sphere. Virtue, Beatrice, and the moral improvement of  Dantecharacter continue to be grouped as we move into the Commedia. Here it is Beatrice’s virtue conceived of as energizing power which draws the pilgrim up through the celestial spheres. Virtue, as something which aids in man’s ascent towards God, is also apparent in the role which Dante gives to virtue in the process of man’s attainment of  his dual states of  happiness, earthly and divine. Possibly taking the thought of  Thomas Aquinas as his model, Dante states that moral, human or civic virtues are that which compose and enable man’s ultimate happiness in temporal life, while the theological virtues are that which enable man to attain towards his second and ultimate state of  happiness that is the vision of  God (Conv., IV. xxii. 18).3 Dante acknowledges the necessary interaction of divine and human virtue in man’s progress towards God, ‘ad quam propria virtus ascendere non potest, nisi lumine divino adiuta’ (Mon., III. xv. 7). However, the complexity of  this interaction is yet to be fully considered. So far I have spoken in general terms of virtue, giving a cursory sense of where its presence and meaning is most obvious in Dante. However, none of  this has really provided a definition of virtue which really encompasses the full contextual richness of  the term and which would thus open up the discussion. The discrete definitions of virtue implicitly accepted in readings of  Dante, while not wrong in themselves, are simply f lat. Once we begin to question what virtue is within the rich context of  the Commedia we are able to ask more interesting questions about what virtue is for Dante. Virtue, as we have initially defined it, has the combined meaning of a capacity which a particular thing has to realize itself in its unique operation, and the fulfilled action itself  by which a thing is most perfect. This makes the assumption that a thing is most fully itself when it is performing its own proper action and consequently that being is fulfilled in act. So really virtue is a category both of a thing’s substance – what the potential nature of a thing is – and a category of a thing’s action – by what action a thing

3

This is also the argument Aquinas puts forward in the ST I.IIae.5.7.

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is most perfectly itself.4 To establish further the grounds for discussion, we must recognize virtue as a factor in dif ferent discourses. It is a moral category in discourses on ethics, relating to human behaviour in terms of  ‘bests’ or ‘excellences’. But it is also an ontological category, being i) the substance of  God Himself, ii) the substance specifically of  Christ (God’s creative principle) and iii) a kind of  life force in humans which makes them be what they are. The relation of virtue to theology must consider not only the qualities of virtue in these two discourses separately, but much more importantly must consider how these two dif ferent understandings of virtue in fact interact; what is the relation between divine and human virtue? What bearing does human virtue have on the attainment of  God? What form should human virtue take if  the end aim of  human existence is God? What will become apparent, I hope, in the coming chapter, is the central role which virtue plays in the theological interactions between God, man and the created world. Essentially, God gives His own virtue (power, creative impulse) to mankind in terms, primarily of existence itself, but also as an of fer of perfection and salvation. It is then the role of mankind to respond to that of fer by aiming to developed their own human virtue and trying to become the best they can in human terms, and guiding their ‘material’ actions by the ‘immaterial’ standard of virtue whose aim is ultimately God. Virtue then regulates mankind’s interaction with the world, ensuring that man does not place his happiness in the contingent things of creation, but rather in the aim of union with the ultimate ground of all being, God. The subtlety of such an idea means that virtue’s presence in the Commedia is not only found in direct references or explicit discourse, but also in the metaphysical, doctrinal, and theological fabric of  the ideas of  the poem. My aim in this chapter is to build from the current scholarly focus on human, moral virtue, but rather than just reading virtue’s development as a journey in progressing perfection, instead read it as an assisted return to a true state of  being, aided by the source of  that being itself. Throughout

4

Various forms of  this definition can be found in Philippe Delhaye and Giorgio Stabile, ‘Virtù’, ED, V, 1050–59.

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Purgatory, mankind’s attitude to the created world is rebalanced through virtue itself, and the individual souls move from a state of dependence on contingencies, to a state of  being which directly participates in God through the imitation of  Christ. My argument will focus on a number of  key issues. These are: the relationship and interaction between God and man; Christ as the locus of  this interaction; and the way in which interaction with Christ tends the soul towards a unity with God and a perfected state of  being. By examining these issues in relation to virtue, it will become clear that when we read about interaction, Christ, unity, and being, we are also reading about virtue itself. Or to turn the point round, when virtue appears in the Commedia, it is referring to the divine-human relationship manifested through Christ and leading to a state of unity and perfected being.

Theological Background Focusing on place of virtue in the work of  Augustine, Gregory and Aquinas will enable us to establish something of  the traditions of virtue which Dante inherited and to demonstrate the complexity of  the theme. The aim of  this is not to establish or suggest direct sources for Dante’s ideas, but instead to acknowledge the traditions of  thought which may have pervaded Dante’s intellectual milieu, and to put the ideas relating to virtue in dialogue to enrich our understanding of  this complex theme. The relationship of man to God is what gives value to all human action. If no relationship exists, then human action, however morally praiseworthy it may appear to be, falls short of a truly virtuous action if it is separated from God as its source and aim. True virtue is given by God, aided by God and rewarded with God Himself. All this Augustine establishes in the City of  God: ‘Praemium virtutis erit ipse qui virtutem dedit eique se ipsum, quo melius et maius nihil posit esse, promisit’ (De civ. Dei, XXII. xxx) [The reward of virtue will be God himself, who gave the virtue, together with

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the promise of  himself, the best and greatest of all possible promises].5 Dante appears to adopt this Augustinian principle in the structuring and logic of  Limbo; the worthy moral actions of  the pagan souls there are in fact worthless being unsupported by the relationship with God: ‘proinde virtutes quas habere sibi videtur, perquas imperat corpori et vitiis, ad quolibet abipiscendum vel tenendum rettulerit nisi ad Deum, etiam ipsae vitia sunt potius quam virtutes’ (De civ. Dei, XIX. xxv) [the virtues which the mind imagines it possesses, by means of which it rules the body and the vicious elements, are themselves vices rather than virtues if  the mind does not bring them into relation with God]. Real virtue is not founded simply upon human self control or intellectual achievement, in fact to believe such a thing is to move away from virtue towards the sin of pride; rather, virtue comes from ‘following after God’: ‘si sequimur, bene, si assequimur, non tantum bene sed etiam beate vivimus’ (De mor. Eccl., VI. x) [in following after whom we live well, and in reaching whom we live both well and happily].6 What is virtuous is so, not because it appears an objectively ‘good’ action, but because of a previously established and acknowledged relationship between a creature and its creator. For human virtue to have worth, it must be understood as the ‘activization’ of  that relationship, in which the creature acts in order to bring itself closer to its creator, and the actions which it manifests are manifestations of  the nature of  the creator Himself. While Classical philosophy, most notably Aristotle, established virtue as something human-centric, early Christian accounts of virtue instead seek to emphasize the importance of  the correct relationship between creature and creator. Rather than attaining virtue through its own perceived self 5 Augustine, City of  God, 6 vols (London: W. Heinemann, 1957). Translation: City of  God, trans. by Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003). 6 Augustine, De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum libri duo, ed. by Johannes B. Bauer (Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1992). Translation: Augustine, On the Morals of  the Catholic Church, trans. by Richard Stothert (Buf falo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887); revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight accessed 10 October 2013.

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achievement, the human soul is required to recognize its full dependency as a created being. As Augustine puts it in his early work De moribus Ecclesiae: Ergo cum etiam deus dignis animis notus non nisi per intelligentiam posit esse, cum tamen sit ipsa qua intelligitur mente praestantior, quippe creator eius atque auctor est, verendum erat ne animus humanus, eo quod inter invisibilia et intelligibilia numeratur, eiusdem se naturae arbitraretur esse, cuius est ipse qui creavit et sic ab eo superbia decideret, cui caritate iugendus est. Fit enim deo similis quantum datum est, dum illustrandum illi atque illuminandum se subicit. (De mor. Eccl., XII. xx) [exalted though He is above the intelligent mind as being its Creator and Author, there was danger lest the human mind, from being reckoned among invisible and immaterial things, should be thought of as the same nature with Him who created it, and so should fall away by pride from Him to whom it should be united by love. For the mind becomes like God, to the extent vouchsafed by its subjection of itself  to Him for information and enlightenment.]

Augustine’s theology of virtue, at least at this point in his theological development, is at the same time a philosophy of  love. The relationship of  God and man is essentially a loving one, and it is by loving God that man can return to Him. Augustine conceives this love for God in human kind as manifested as virtue: ‘nihil omnino esse virtutem af firmauerim nisi summum amorem dei’ (De mor. Eccl., XV. xxv) [I hold virtue to be nothing else than perfect love of  God]. Such a definition immediately serves to designate virtue as an interactive principle which has an end aim beyond itself and which end aim is followed after not for motives of self advancement, but out of af fection and desire. Having God as their ultimate object, the virtues serve to direct human desire and action beyond the things of  the temporal world and thus establishing a correct valuing of material things. Augustine’s virtue is a movement towards the supreme source and end of man’s happiness, God; it is a loving interaction of creature and creator in which the creature makes itself  the best it can be according to its potential and in which the creator empowers his creation to do this by giving them being itself. Gregory the Great is not in disagreement with Augustine’s point of view, but he focuses on guiding man in his corrupted, fallen state. In Gregory’s thought, the human in temporal life can never be truly good, and

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any goodness they might attain towards is given and controlled by God. Within this context, virtue is wholly dependent on God and the human’s ease or dif ficulty in practicing virtue is regulated by God’s giving or withholding of grace. In the Moralia in Job, Gregory explains how God tests man in order to foster his progression in virtue; virtue increases depending on how man responds to the challenge: Et quia per occultam gratiam ad amorem Dei temperata desuper mensura proficimus, quanto in nobis cotidie de Dei spiritu virtus crescit, tanto noster spiritus deficit […] Tunc vero in Deo plene proficimus cum a nobis ipsis funditus defecerimus. Hae itaque crescentium mensurae virtutem, sancti viri vocibus grades dicuntur. (Mor., XXII. xx. 46) [by secret grace we advance to the love of  God by a measure regulated from above, in proportion as virtue is daily increased in us by the Spirit of  God as much as our own spirit is decreased […] we then make complete advance in God, when we have wholly and entirely fallen away from ourselves […] these measures of growing virtues by the words of  the holy man are styled ‘steps’.]7

Progressing along the ‘steps’ of virtue, man moves towards God; but it is God who provides the means for man to make his journey. Gregory’s ideas on virtue are also deeply concerned with the establishment of  the specific virtue, humility, in which the human recognizes their state of created dependency. Such a recognition ought to lead to the renunciation of  the self: as God’s spirit grows in us, the individual spirit diminishes. In temporal life, the journey of acquiring virtue is obviously undertaken ‘in the f lesh’ and the tension of  f lesh and spirit is a vital one in Gregorian thought. Superficially it may appear a negative relationship, in which virtue’s role is to protect the soul against the corrupting inf luence of  the f lesh, fortifying it against the temptations of  the world. However, on closer analysis, Gregory’s understanding of  the f lesh-soul union is much more positive. The f lesh that exists in temporal life is the medium through

7

Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, ed. by Marc Adriaen, 3 vols (Turnhoult: Brepols, 1979–85). Translation: Morals on the Book of  Job, trans. with notes and indices by members of  the English Church, 4 vols (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844–50).

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which virtues are to be acquired. The very fact that the human being exists in a state of  fragility, ripe for corruption, constantly challenges the development of virtue but thereby makes its ultimate attainment stronger and more worthwhile: as Carole Straw explains, ‘by setting of f virtue against temptation, the wondrous dispensation of  God allows inward and outward, high and low, spirit and f lesh, pride and despair to be balanced […]. Temptation checks spiritual excess and pride by making the soul humble; indeed “weakness” is the very “guardian of virtue”.’8 As the virtues, which have God as their source and aim, become stronger, the individual can correctly value and use the world in such a way as to not be trapped by it, and instead see their fulfillment in a reality beyond it. What the virtues come to represent is man’s interaction with that reality. Virtue emerges, then, as the of fer of a possibility; this is in the form of  the capacities with which man is endowed naturally by God, the experiences and challenges which they face in their life (again of fered by God), and the knowledge of  God Himself given as a directing guide to man. Thomas Aquinas, while closely following Aristotle in his theory on moral virtue, extends that theory precisely on the point of man’s interaction with God. While the moral virtues are acquirable by man alone, the infused moral virtues come to man at baptism, at the moment at which he has of ficially accepted God, and they enable man to live temporal life in conformity with its true spiritual aim of unity with God. Because man’s end now lies beyond his own capabilities and yet he is still required to act within the created world, ‘oportet quod per alias virtutes infusas perficiatur anima circa alias res, in ordine tamen ad Deum’ (ST I.IIae.63.3) [the soul needs also to be equipped by infused virtues in regard to created things, though as subordinate to God]. Essentially, God provides man with the necessary tools to both live in the world and attain to himself, in response to man’s acceptance of  God through faith: God of fers, man accepts, God gives, man receives. Man responds to the of fer of grace given him precisely through the action of virtue, in fact this response is necessary for grace and faith

8

Carole Ellen Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1988), p. 245.

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to have any value within him; but faith, grace and therefore virtue, are not possible without God’s giving of  them. Virtuous action is the way in which one activates that of fered grace of  God and is indeed a form of gratitude for that grace: ‘While unmerited grace has been extended through the righteousness of  Christ, the believer is to demonstrate gratitude by means of a virtuous life’.9 Virtue in the human being is the way in which the positive acceptance of man’s relationship with God is manifested. The interaction of virtue between God and man is focalized and channeled through the figure of  Christ; Christ who most importantly is Himself  ‘Dei virtutem’ (I Cor. 1. 24) [the virtue of  God]. God Himself is virtue, in that all forms of existence participate in God; but He also is virtue in terms of absolutely fulfilled potential to be. This fulfilled potential of  being in God, overf lows into creation of substantial beings. But it is through the figure of  Christ that mankind is sensitized to creation precisely as created by God. In Christ they see the manifested source of  their created existence. Speaking more ontologically, Christ as the Logos is the very creative principle of  God itself, the manifestation through which God expresses himself in the world. We are perhaps much more aware of  Christ as the exemplar of virtue in His incarnate state: ‘He had become a man so that human beings could imitate His human life and could not dismiss His virtues as something beyond the realm of possibility.’10 The gospels of  Matthew, Mark and Luke present Jesus as ‘teacher’ and ‘model’ of morality. He is to be imitated both in practical life and in His total awareness of  God.11 But what really must be acknowledged if we are to appreciate the richness of virtue centered on Christ, is Christ as the nexus between God’s of fered creative virtue (potential), and the way in which humanity can respond with their own virtue in order to attain God. But imitating Christ’s virtue, man is not simply being good in terms of carrying out objectively positive actions, he is attaining to a state of divine being in 9 10 11

J. Daryl Charles, Virtue amidst Vice: The Catalog of  Virtues in 2 Peter 1 (Shef field: Shef field Academic Press, 1997), p. 151. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of  Medieval Theology, 600–1300 (Chicago: University of  Chicago Press, 1980), p. 125. Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of  Mysticism (London: SCM, 1992), p. 66.

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which the human’s potential for divinity is actuated. This actuation takes place through exchange; man’s belief in God and following in the ways of  Christ, is given in return a value to his actions. Augustine, who explores the Pauline idea of  Christ as the virtue of  God, describes what man receives: ‘id est agendi ef ficacia et sobrietate contemplandi, quae dei virtus et dei sapientia id est dei filus, dilectoribus suis donat’ (De mor. Eccl., XVI. xxvii) [ef ficiency in action and sobriety in contemplation, which the virtue of  God and the wisdom of  God, that is, the Son of  God, gives to them that love Him]. The Augustinian placing of  love at the centre of  the God-man relationship (those who follow Christ are ‘dilectoribus’) will be a vital motif  that Dante carries into the rendering of  this relationship in the Commedia. Inherent to the attainment of virtue is a process of  transformation. The individual moves from a potential state to an actuated state of perfection. Precisely what is perfect depends on the standard which is applied. Within the Aristotelian context this is the full potential of  the human mind; within the Christian context it is the full potential of  the human creature as it returns to its creator and shares in the being of  that creator. Virtue, then, can exist in dif ferent states depending on the condition of  the subject. Aquinas argued for four states of virtue: exempla, purified, purifying and political (ST I.IIae.61.5). The exempla virtues are the virtues as they exist in God, ‘sicut et in eo praeexistunt omnium rerum rationes’ [just as in him pre-exist the patterns of all things]. Aquinas suggests that each of  the cardinal virtues finds its pattern in God’s action: ‘Ita scilicet quod ipsa divina mens in Deo dicatur prudentia; temperantia vero conversio divinae intentionis ad seipsum … Fortitudo autem Dei est eius immutabilitas; justitia vero Dei est observatione legis aeternae in suis operibus’ [thus the divine mind itself may be called prudence; while God’s temperance may be seen as His self containment … His courage is His changelessness; His justice the observance of  the Eternal law in His works]. This expresses even more clearly that by attaining to actions of virtue, a human is participating in the nature of  God. The dif ferent genera of virtue explain how humans may move towards this participation. At the opposite end to exemplar states of virtue are the political states of virtue, that is, the virtues of man in his natural state as a political animal. Such are the virtues of  Aristotle and other Classical thinkers who saw human,

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communal achievement as a complete end. However, Aquinas’ changing genera of virtues accompany an individual through the journey of  their life, or in the context of  Dante, their afterlife, which sees its end as being in God. Aquinas identifies virtues which accompany the period of  transition and development as purifying, when man is still moving towards a likeness of  God, and purified, when man has achieved a likeness of  God as in the case of  the blessed. Conceived in this way, developing virtue alongside a transformation of  being is a mode of assimilation towards the being of  God through imitating his actions within the sphere in which one exists and according to one’s own capacities. This is a question which we must bear in mind and return to when discussing the comparative treatments of virtue in the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, in which souls precisely subsist in the two states: purifying and purified. Thus far we have said something about the purpose and process of virtue, but what precisely is a state of virtue? This state which I have thus far claimed is a manifestation, an imitation, a participation in the being of  God. Essentially it is a state characterized by unity of self and the perfection of  being. Such a way of conceiving virtue is again the inheritance of  Augustine and Gregory the Great. Augustine understands a state of psychological and spiritual unity to be when all desires are focused onto the one true object, God. Desire for the contingent things of  the world disunites and tears the individual. Virtue, as that which identifies the correct object and orders all the human faculties towards it thereby fulfilling the capacity of  those faculties, is a uniting of  the self. In the Confessions, Augustine describes the choice between physical lust and the desire for God; even before conversion, he is aware of  his own internal disharmony and its cause: ‘et cum in virtute pacem amarem, in vitiositate autem odissem discordiam, in illa unitatem, in ista quondam divisionem notabam’ (Conf., IV. xv. 24) [and since in virtue I loved peace and in vice I hated discord, I noted that in the first there is unity and in the other division].12

12 Augustine, Confessions, ed. by William Watts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1977). Translation: Confessions, trans. by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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Incontinence or the splitting of desire between objects is a fragmentation of self, as opposed to the unity which comes from loving one true object: ‘Per continentiam quipped colligimur et redigimur in unum, a quo in multa def luximus. Minus enim te amat qui tecum aliquid amat quod non propter te amat’ (Conf., X. xxix. 40) [By continence we are collected together and brought to the unity from which we disintegrated into multiplicity. He loves you [God] less who together with you loves something which he does not love for your sake]. A state of virtue then is one in which all the desires are focused on God and the human soul is in a state both of internal unity and unity in being joined to God through love. This dual unity is represented by Augustine through the figure of  Christ who is the mediator between multiple humankind and unified God, ‘mediatore filio hominis inter te unum et nos multos, in multis per multa’ (Conf., XI. xxix. 39) [my Lord, the Son of man who is mediator between you the One and us the many, who live in a multiplicity of distractions by many things]. When the soul has been enabled through virtue to unite its desire and therefore, itself, it is then able to fulfill its potential for being. Vice, as opposed to virtue is a state of non-being, or less-being, being a direction of  the desires down towards the material world, something which essentially has less being that God. Man who is created by and attains towards eternal God is attaining to something better than himself which can improve and glorify him, whereas man who attains towards the finite world is attaining to something below himself and thus subjugating himself. By submitting its desires to the world, the soul gives up control of its own happiness, making it depend on that which must ultimately die. To acquire virtue is to understand contingent being in is proper place, that is, as subordinate to God and not a worthy object of  the desire for the eternal human soul in itself. Instead God is the eternal creator towards whom man has the capacity to attain; this capacity of  being is virtue. Sin is ‘Motusque voluntatis a te, qui es, ad id quod minus est, quia talis motus delictum atque pecatum est’ (Conf., XII. xi. 11) [The movement of  the will away from you, who are, is movement towards that which has less being. A movement of  this nature is a fault and a sin]. To move down the ‘chain of  being’ towards a thing of  the world is to move towards something which is in a lesser way than God who IS in an absolute way. Virtue, therefore, as an internal dispositional

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state and a capacity for being, is fulfilled the closer the soul approaches in likeness to God, the ground of all being. Thus the process of acquiring and developing virtue is a process of existential transformation: from division to unity, from un-being to being.

Virtue in the Purgatorio Canto I of  the Purgatorio opens up several themes central to the question of virtue. We are reminded forcibly that Dante is on a journey, progressing from place to place and from state to state. Perhaps most importantly here, we are reminded that it is an assisted journey in which Divine virtue descends to Dante in the form, first of  Beatrice, and then mediated through Virgil: ‘de l’alto scende virtù che m’aiuta’ (Purg., I. 68–69) [a power descending from above that helps me]. Divine ‘virtù’ as it comes down to Dante is mediated through a human figure with whom he engages emotionally, so the necessity of a reciprocal relationship between God and man is conceptually and symbolically grounded through human interaction. By emphasizing the pilgrim’s love for and dependence on Virgil, Dante makes conceivable and visible the necessary loving and dependent relationship which man ought to have with God. Dante’s whole journey, and indeed the journey of all the souls in Purgatory, is facilitated by God. As Robin Kirkpatrick puts it in his commentary to canto I, Purgatory is grounded upon a dif ferent ethical system than Hell; in Purgatory, ‘ethical principles derive from the Christian understanding of  God’s unexpected but liberating action in the person of  Christ […] these principles encourage a f lourishing of  human possibilities. [… the Commedia] becomes now a work where the cultivation of excellence is its primary object’.13 Essentially an ethical system based on virtue ethics shapes 13

Commentary to canto I of  the Purgatorio in Dante Alighieri, Purgatory, ed. and trans. by Robin Kirkpatrick (London: Penguin Classics, 2007), p. 324.

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the structure of  Purgatory. Much documented is the symbolism of  the four stars which Dante sees shining on the face of  Cato. Mount Purgatory is presided over by the light of  the four cardinal virtues which guide the moral improvement of  the souls upon its slopes. But these four stars ‘non viste mai fuor ch’a la prima gente’ (Purg., I. 24) [not seen before except by the first people] also hark back to the first moments of creation, when man was closest to God. Their presence here points ‘to the providential purpose of purgation, which is to recover the innocence and purity of understanding that was first possessed by Adam and Eve’.14 While the moral framework suggested by the four cardinal virtues belongs to the Pagan realm as well as the Christian, what is unique in the structuring of  Dante’s Purgatory is the Christological backdrop of  the whole virtue-acquiring process. It begins right here at the opening of  Purgatory, when Dante starts his ascent on the morning of  Easter day, ref lecting in that ascent the moment of  Christ’s resurrection and the rebirth of mankind.15 Dante himself is symbolically cleansed of sin as Virgil washes away the tears and dirt and revealing ‘quel color che l’inferno mi nascose’ (Purg., I. 129) [the colour that Hell had concealed]. The sins which Hell punishes are the stains on the pure potential being of  the human soul, which purgatory will wash away. This washing restores both Dante’s potential to be but also his ability to see his way as the dirt is cleaned from his eyes (Purg., I. 97). In terms of  the macrocosm of  humanity, the entrance into purgatory marks the point from which the soul’s capacities will be reordered until finally in the Earthly Paradise it is restored to the state of  Adam before the Fall. The motif of physical presence and physical change reappears throughout the cantos of  Purgatory, where the lingering inf luence of  the world is acutely felt, not least by Dante the pilgrim. Purgatory is the place ‘d’ire a farsi belle’ (Purg., II. 75) [go to make themselves beautiful], ‘beautiful’ being understood as the releasing of physical ties and the transformation to a spiritual aim; it is a place where souls can ‘formar l’angellica farfalla’

14 Kirkpatrick, Purgatory, p. 322. 15 Kirkpatrick points out the temporal coincidence that Dante begins his journey through purgatory at 5.30 on Easter morning (p. 322).

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(Purg., X. 125) [to form the angelic butterf ly] that they were born to be, with all the undertones of capacity, potential and fulfilment which this metaphor suggests. Dante, however, does not yet feel the ascending lightness of a butterf ly, and his continuing attachment to the corrupted and corruptible f lesh of  Adam is frequently referred to (for example, at Purg., IX. 10–12; Purg., XI. 43–45). But Dante is comforted by Virgil telling him that the ascent will become easier the higher he goes (Purg., IV. 88–90). Purgatory is not simply a place where one learns virtue, but a place where one becomes virtuous. Virtue is inextricably linked to a state of character and a state of  being; one does not do virtue, one is virtuous. Purgatory, while demonstrating how virtue is acquired by souls, is also demonstrating the souls’ transformation. Physical action is a manifestation of what is happening to their spiritual being; the proud spirits are bent in humility, the slothful are spurred into positive action, the lustful learn the wonderful purity of chaste love, and the pilgrim himself  becomes lighter. This is not a transformation which the souls undertake independently, but instead is one wholly facilitated by divine virtue. It is God as virtue who facilitates the necessary continuing interaction between body and soul, the only forum within which humans can acquire virtue, by providing the disembodied souls with new ‘airy’ bodies: ‘A sof frir tormenti, caldi e geli / simili corpi la Virtù dispone’ (Purg., III. 31–32) [The Power has disposed such bodiless bodies to suf fer torments, heat and cold]. Divine virtue facilitates the possibility of  human virtue to come to fruition by giving it the physical means for carrying it out, an interaction which is reminiscent of  that suggested by Gregory the Great, who characterized human physical life as the period in which man was of fered the change by God to perfect himself. The necessary interaction of  God and man is stressed: God of fers the means, but it is up to man to respond to that of fer. His positive response then awakens further response in God, until human spiritual progress is seen as a continuing pattern of of fer and acceptance, action and aid. The pilgrim himself is continually aided in his own progress by divine ‘virtù’, without which he cannot progress: ‘non sanza virtù che da ciel venga / cerchi di soverchiar questa parete’ (Purg., III. 98–99) [he would not attempt to cross this wall without a force that Heaven sent him as support].

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Later in canto III, the mode of man’s response to God’s of fer is manifested in the figure of  Manfredi. Even up to the last moment of  the most vicious of  human lives, God still of fers to man the possibility of salvation; all that is necessary is for man to give himself with contrition: […] io mi rendei piangendo a quei che volontier perdona.     Orribil furon li peccati miei; ma la Bontà infinito ha sì gran braccia che prende ciò che si rivolge a lei. (Purg., III. 119–23) [in tears, I then consigned myself  to Him who willingly forgives. My sins were ghastly, but the Infinite Goodness has arms so wide that It accepts all those who would return, imploring It.]

Such a turning is possible as long as ‘la speranza ha fior di verde’ (Purg., III. 135) [hope shows something green]. There is not space here to enter into the characteristics of  the individual virtues, much less to consider Dante’s great creativity in using them in his poem; but we may pause to ref lect on how Dante poetically manifests the complex theology of  the virtue of  hope.16 Hope is a ‘rivolgersi’ [turning] towards a beloved and desired object, secure in the knowledge that that object, ‘l’etterno amore’ (Purg., III. 134) [eternal love] will welcome with open arms the soul who actively chooses to return to it, expressing that choice in love. Dante makes prominent from early on in the Purgatorio the Incarnation, as the event which reopened the positive relationship of  God and man; an event which restored value to human action while at the same time demonstrating the correct forms that human action should take in order to maintain that relationship. In canto III, in which we have already considered the role of divine ‘virtù’ in providing the means for the purging souls to carry out their purgation, thus a canto in which the value of  human physicality is already established, the pilgrim is told about the necessity of  the Incarnation for humans to understand God. At the very same moment he is told of  the inability of  humans to understand that Incarnation which 16

For more details on the theology of hope, see Aquinas, ST I.IIae.40.1–5 and I.IIae.18.2.

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maintains his own intellectual humility. Dante must come to an understanding of  the Incarnation through an understanding of  the incarnated souls in Purgatory.17 By understanding that the souls are ‘incarnated’ in order to facilitate their acquisition of virtue, Dante can eventually come to understand that Christ is ‘Incarnated’ in order to make those very actions have the value of virtue by reopening the positive relationship between man and God, the relationship which gives value to human action. Love forms the basis of  the Incarnation and the subsequent positive relationship between God and man, which is first exemplified in the Virgin Mary’s acceptance at the Annunciation.     L’angel che venne in terra col decreto de la molt’anni lagrimata pace, ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo divieto     dinanzi a noi pareva […].     Giurato si saria ch’el dicesse ‘Ave!’ Perché iv’ era imaginata quella ch’ad aprir l’alto Amor volse la chiave. (Purg., X. 34–42) [The angel who reached earth with the decree of  that peace which, for many years, had been invoked with tears, the peace that opened Heaven after long interdict … One would have sworn that he was saying, ‘Ave’; for in that scene there was the ef figy of one who turned the key that had unlocked the highest love.]

The Incarnation is the point at which the tears of many years (‘molt’anni lagrimata’) can now have a value, the path to Heaven being reopened by an act of  humility. A similar process is occurring in the character of  Dante the pilgrim right at this moment as he gazes at the divine carvings before which all human creation is humbled and at the same time made ‘pregnant’ to receive the divine lessons of  God. Dante’s version of  the Lord’s Prayer at the opening of canto XI is concerned with the correctly balanced relationship between God and man, 17

Dennis P. Slattery gives a dif ferently focused though illuminating reading of  this in his essay ‘The Image of  the Body as an Aid in Teaching Dante’s Purgatory’, in Teaching the Middle Ages, ed. by Robert V. Graybill, Robert L. Kindrick and Robert E. Lovell (Warrensburg, MO: Central Missouri State University, 1982), pp. 109–18.

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which enables and gives value to human action. As mentioned earlier, virtue in humans is a form of  thanksgiving to God; by acting virtuously one is positively acknowledging the generosity of  God in his act of creation and in his of fer of redemption through Jesus. In canto XI, the souls are involved in the action of  thanksgiving which is identified in terms of creation thanking its creator:     O padre nostro […]     laudato sia ’l tuo nome e ’l tuo valore da ogne creatura, com’ è degno di render grazie la tuo dolce vapore. (Purg., XI. 1–6) [Our Father, … praised be Your name and Your omnipotence by every creature, just as it is seemly to of fer thanks to Your sweet ef f luence]

It is God’s creative power which is here praised by his creatures. In turn they ask for the aid of that divine ‘virtù’, the ‘dolce vapore’ of the Holy Spirit, to assist their own frail human ‘virtù’ in overcoming the temptations of sin:     Nostra virtù, che di legger s’adorna, non spermentar con l’antico avversaro, ma libera da lui che sì la sprona. (Purg., XI. 19–21) [Try not our strength, so easily subdued, against the ancient foe, but set it free from him who goads it to perversity.]

The insuf ficiency of  human virtue to ascend towards the divine without the assistance of  that divine has already been evidenced in relation to Dante’s own ascent; here, this is something the previously self-suf ficient souls of  the proud now acknowledge. Their once highly valued human powers are recognized as feeble and insuf ficient to draw them to God:     Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno, ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. (Purg., XI. 7–9) [Your kingdom’s peace come unto us, for if it does not come, then though we summon all our force, we cannot reach it of our selves.]

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A brief digression is worthwhile here to consider the link made between peace and virtue. Human life was understood by Augustine and Gregory the Great, as a period for the soul of  trials, suf fering, and exile from its true home in the kingdom of  God. In this state of exile, the temporal virtues exist in order to maintain and protect the soul against the conf licts of  the world, and to direct its sight towards its true home with God. In Heaven, however, there will be no conf lict, only an endless state of peace. This peace, according to Augustine, is the reward of  temporal virtue, a reward for the excellences which attempted to manifest the peace of  Heaven on Earth, but which in Heaven itself are no longer necessary. In Heaven ‘ibi virtutes, non contra alla vitia vel mala quaecumque certantes, sed habentes victoriae praemium aeternam pacem, quam nullus adversarius inquietet’ (De civ. Dei, XIX. 10) [the virtues will not be engaged in conf lict with any kind of vice or evil; they will be possessed of  the reward of victory, the everlasting peace which no adversary can disturb]. A recurrent theme in the history of  thought on virtue has been the way in which virtue has been held to correctly guide human impulses and desires towards a true form of good. For Aristotle, the balanced state of  being virtuous was happiness itself, but for the majority of other thinkers on virtue, virtue in humans is a means to an end, even though virtue may form part of  that end itself. For Dante, as necessarily for any Christian thinker, union with God is the supreme good for humanity, but the acquisition of virtue both in the moral sense of perfected human behaviour, and in the ontological sense of approaching the state of  harmony and unity which is divine virtue, is a very necessary component of attaining God himself. Human virtue’s role, as I suggested, is to both identify that supreme good and to move the human subject towards it. While virtue is not obviously at the centre of  the discourse, Virgil’s account of  the nature of  love in Purgatorio XVII resounds with the importance of identifying what is truly good and then directing one’s actions towards it:     Né creator né creatura mai […] fu sanza amore, o naturale o d’animo, e tu ’l sai.

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Love, properly directed to God, the source of its being, must always be good, and love thus properly directed will regulate a person’s attachment to the lesser goods of  the world; it will enable them to maintain a proper balance between using the physical world but not being bound by it, a balance which both Gregory the Great and Augustine sought to impress in their writings. As Dante’s Virgil states, ‘amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute’ (Purg., XVII. 104) [love is the seed in you of every virtue]; every action is founded in love. At the same time it is virtue which fosters and manifests this proper love in human life. Virtue as love for God informed into human behaviour is always directed to God. Virtue itself is never disconnected from God in whom is found virtue in its exempla form, virtue as God’s creative power, which always creates good. It is this creative virtue which informs the human soul with virtue, that is, the perfect love of God: a love which necessarily desires to return to its source of  being. This source of  being is both the ground of  human virtue and the reward for human virtue, ‘la buona / essenza, d’ogne ben frutto e radice’ (Purg., XVII. 134–35) [the true essence, fruit and root of every good]. The problems arise, of course, when the sight of  this true good is clouded by the objects of  the material world. Dante expresses the dif ference between the temporal human state and the state of souls in the final stages of  Paradise, in which the light of  God is seen entirely unblocked by objects which appear to be in front of

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it.18 At this stage in Purgatory, Dante is still learning the truth about the dif ference between human and divine objects of desire. Purgatorio XVIII turns the focus around. Whereas canto XVII had focused on love and its inf luence on virtue, canto XVIII considers the role virtue must play in controlling human impulses of  love. The meaning of  both love and virtue in this canto ought to be considered in the context of  the vice which is the topic of  this terrace: sloth. The naturalness of  the loving impulse is the theme which opens Virgil’s discourse:     L’animo ch’è creato ad amar presto, ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace, tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto. (Purg., XVIII. 19–21) [The soul, which is created quick to love, responds to everything that pleases, just as soon as beauty wakens it to act.]

The relationship of creature and creator is here asserted, so we are led to consider the role of  God’s plan in human action. God instills a readiness to love in the human soul. Canto XVII has already laid out the necessity of proper love returning to its source of  being; canto XVIII stresses that it is the source itself which provides the mode of return. The created soul is subject to the distractions of  the world, but this does not remove its responsibility for action, as being endowed with love it is also endowed with the ‘virtue’ of  free will. Love as a natural impulse towards appears the prevailing meaning here, while virtue is the natural capacity or power to control that love. But are these definitions only restricted to the human sphere, without theological content? We must return to the question of  the human soul as ‘creato’ [created]. All the faculties which it possesses are given by God; God essentially provides the means for the soul to return to him by endowing human action with value; this value comes from the freedom of  human choice which then validates the necessary interaction of giving and accepting. On the terrace which purges sloth, this interaction can be most 18

‘Né l’interporsi tra ’l disopra e ’l fiore / di tanta moltitudine volante / impediva la vista e lo splendore: / ché la luce divina è penetrante / per l’universo secondo ch’è degno, / sì che nulla le puote essere ostante’ (Par., XXXI. 19–24).

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poignantly reenacted. The souls who had been of fered an opportunity in life which they did not take (‘adesso / ricompie forse negligenza e indugio / da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo’; Purg., XVIII. 106–08 [now may compensate for the sloth and negligence you showed in doing good halfheartedly]) to respond to God’s of fer (apparent in being created with love and freewill, both conceived as virtue: ‘La nobile virtù Beatrice intende / per libero arbitrio’; Purg., XVIII. 73–74 [This noble power is what Beatrice means by free will]) now are fervent in their acceptance.     ‘Ratto, ratto, che ’l tempo non si perda per poco amor,’ gridavan li altri appresso, ‘che studio di ben far grazia rinverda!’ (Purg., XVIII. 103–05, my emphasis) [Following them, the others cried: ‘Quick, quick, lest time be lost through insuf ficient love; where urge for good is keen, grace finds new green.’]

Good works cause the fertile grace of fered by God to grow green, to become truly alive. Following a Gregorian emphasis that faith without work is worthless, Dante here demonstrates the interaction which must take place in order to give value to faith. Perhaps it is even anticipated by the action of  the angel as described in canto XVII, who gives of  himself without being asked: ‘Questo è divino spirito, che ne la / via da ir sù ne drizza sanza prego’ (Purg., XVII. 55–56, my emphasis) [This spirit is divine; and though unasked, he would conduct us to the upward path]. Good action must be spontaneous free and loving; it must imitate the way in which God gives himself  to mankind. Similarly, the souls of  the avaricious, caught up in their desire for terrestrial possessions, were so fixed on these transient, contingent objects that they neglected to store up the true possessions which lead to God by fixing the desires towards him: the virtues as manifested in good actions: ‘avarizia spense a ciascun bene / lo nostro amore, onde operar perdési’ (Purg., XIX. 121–22) [avarice annulled in us the love of any other good, and thus we lost our chance for righteous works]. Instead, by focusing on material possessions, the souls actively distanced and separated themselves from God; this dis-unity is a state of sadness and ‘unreality’: ‘Fino a quel punto misera e partita / da dio anima fui’ (Purg., XIX. 112–13) [Until that point

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I was a squalid soul, from God divided]. Chosen dis-unity in terrestrial life is purged with enforced dis-unity in the purgatorial realm, and here the central importance of unity with God as the focal aim of  Dante’s thought is expressed in his categorization of  the punishment of  the avaricious: […] nulla pena il monte ha più amara.     Sì come l’occhio nostro non s’aderse in alto, fisso a le cose terrene, così giustizia qui a terra il morse. (Purg., XIX. 117–20) [… the mountain has no punishment more bitter. Just as we did not lift our eyes on high but set our sight on earthly things instead, so justice here impels our eyes toward earth.]

If we attempt to read this punishment according to the pattern suggested by the Purgatorio, that the punishments instill virtue by performing the counteraction of  the vice, then the meaning of  this punishment becomes more obscure. Surely the souls should be forced to look up rather than down if  they are to mimic the virtue opposite to the vice of avarice as conceived by Dante? The key to this paradox is suggested by Pope Hadrian’s words to Dante which immediately precede the above quotation:     La mia conversïone, omè! fu tarda; ma, come fatto fui roman pastore, così scopersi la vita bugiarda.     Vidi che lì non s’acquetava il core, né più salir potiesi in quella vita: per che di questa in me s’accese amore. (Purg., XIX. 106–11) [Alas! How tardy my conversion was! But when I had been named the Roman shepherd, then I discovered the deceit of  life. I saw that there the heart was not at rest, nor could I, in that life, ascend more high; so that, in me, love for this life was kindled.]

Terrestrial life, with its fruitless desires for material and contingent things is a ‘vita bugiarda’ [lying life], compared with the true reality of divine life. To recognize this is to light a burning desire to reach that true state of  being. I would suggest that the withholding of  the satisfaction of even the distant sight of  God on high, serves to increase the desire for

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God of  the avaricious souls. It does in fact redirect desire towards him, by withholding the fruition of  that desire. In this sense, the virtue of desiring God rather than the world is profoundly instilled in this punishment. But in precisely what sense is this a virtue? If a virtue is a combination of a capacity to do something and the will to do it, then the state of  being that is generated in the souls of  the avaricious is one in which the capacity to love God is ever increased by maintaining a state of desire without fruition; the natural desire which God instills in man (Purg., V. 55–57) and which had grown weak in the avaricious, by remaining unfulfilled, grows, ensuring that on being released from their fetters the souls will willingly and gratefully turn to God’s reality as opposed to the transient possessions of  the world. From canto XX, Dante’s progress is accompanied by images and events reiterating the essential link between the purging souls and Christ. Birth and rebirth become recurrent themes commencing with the example of  Mary giving birth in a humble stable as an instance of poverty. This story opens the exempla on the terrace of avarice, marking this out as an essential point of  birth and rebirth. Dante’s conversation with Hadrian has already established the necessity of  turning away from the world towards God. Only after that has happened can the soul be reborn, and it is in the figure of  Christ that that necessary ‘turning’ was first demonstrated to human kind. Christ by appearing as an object of  the world served to turn the human gaze away from that world itself and towards the divine. First Statius and then the souls of  the gluttonous are explicitly compared to Christ. Statius’ soul appears to Dante and Virgil ‘come ne scrive Luca / che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via’ (Purg., XXI. 8–9) [as Luke records for us that Christ appeared to two along his way], after his release from purgation has been celebrated with the hymn which celebrates Christ’s nativity and resurrection in the Mass, ‘Gloria in excelsis’ (Purg., XX. 136). Later the beneficial suf fering of  the souls of  the gluttonous is compared to Christ’s suf fering on the cross: io dico pena, e dovria dir sollazzo,     ché quella voglia a li alberi ci mena che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì’, quando ne libero con la sua vena. (Purg., XXIII. 72–75)

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[I speak of pain but I should speak of solace, for we are guided to those trees by that same longing that had guided Christ when He had come to free us through the blood He shed and, in His joyousness, called out: ‘Eli.’]

To appreciate further the complexity of  this statement and to understand virtue’s place within it, we must look back several lines to Forese’s description of  the tree and water:     […] De l’etterno Consiglio cade vertù ne l’acqua e ne la piante rimasa dietro, ond’io sì m’assottiglio. (Purg., XXIII. 61–63) [From the eternal counsel, the water and the tree you left behind receive the power that makes me waste away.]

Virtue from the divine mind brings about the purgation on the terrace of gluttony, as it does on every other. But why place the explicit statement here amongst the Christ-like souls of  the gluttonous? I would suggest that focus is here placed upon Christ’s crucifixion, the moment at which Christ is most ‘weak’ and human but simultaneously the moment at which he most reveals his divinity. His human incarnate form is destroyed but this is in order to reveal his divine reality. At the same time, the Crucifixion is God’s sharing in human suf fering in order to pay of f  the debt incurred by Adam’s sin, a debt only payable through the union of  God and man. There is a necessity to suf fering, a distinctly redemptive purpose. This suf fering was only made possible and valuable through the action of  God’s virtue in the form of  Christ himself, the necessary created being who was both creature and creator. Similarly, God’s virtue provides the gluttonous souls with the means by which to purge their physicality and reveal their relation to divinity and the incarnate Christ, bearing the mark of  ‘omo’ [man] on their emaciated faces (Purg., XXIII. 32). Dante’s entry into the Earthly Paradise and his meeting with Matelda in canto XXVIII represents the fruition of virtue as it appears in the Purgatorio. I use the term ‘fruition’ in a very literal sense here, as it is the canto in which a running connection of virtue with seeds, fruit, blossom and rebirth, is most fully manifested in the trees and f lowers of  Eden.

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Forms of  the word virtù appear three times in the space of  twenty lines (109–29), each time associated with the power of plants and water to form and generate life. Matelda is careful to point out that this place is separate from the disruptions of  terrestrial weather, and instead is blown by a wind which comes directly from the movement of  the Primo Mobile. In order to protect mankind from terrestrial weather in his newly created state, questo monte salìo verso ’l ciel tanto, e libero n’è d’indi ove si serra.     Or perché in circuito tutto quanto l’aere si volge con la prima volta, se non li è rotto il cerchio d’alcun canto,     in questa altezza ch’è tutta disciolta ne l’aere vivo, tal moto percuote, e fa sonar la selva perch’ è folta. (Purg., XXVIII. 101–08) [this mountain rose up this close to Heaven; from the point where its gate locks, it’s free of such disturbance. Now, since all of  the atmosphere revolves within a circle, moved by the first circling, unless its round is broken at some point, against this height, which stands completely free within the living air, that motion strikes; and since these woods are dense, they echo it.]

This is a pristine place, in which the disturbances of  terrestrial physicality are felt neither in the atmosphere nor in the souls of  those who come to it. Yet it is an overwhelmingly sensual and physical place; Dante feels the wind on his face, smells the air, and hears the birds. But none of  this physicality is distracting or dangerous because here it is entirely visible for what it really is: God’s creation and gift to man.     Lo sommo Ben, che solo esso a sé piace, fé l’uom buono e a bene, e questo loco diede per arr’ a lui d’etterna pace. (Purg., XXVIII. 91–93) [The Highest Good, whose sole joy is Himself, made man to be – and to enact – good; He gave man this place as pledge of endless peace.]

Dante here emphasizes the non-necessity of  God’s gift of creation to man; alone God is self-suf ficient and self-pleasing, but even so he created

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this place and made man to live in it. So within this ‘campagne santa’ what is virtue’s role?     […] la percossa pianta tanto puote che de la sua virtute l’aura impregna e quella poi, girando, intorno scuote;     e l’altra terra, secondo ch’è degna per sé e per suo ciel, concepe e figlia di diverse virtù diverse legna […]     E sapere dei che la campagna santa dove tu se’ d’ogne semenza è piena, e frutto ha in sé che di là non si schianta (Purg., XXVIII. 109–20) [when a plant is struck, its power is such that it impregnates air with seeding force; the air, revolving, casts this seed abroad; the other hemisphere, depending on the nature of its land and sky, conceives and bears, from diverse powers, diverse trees … And you must know: the holy plain on which you find yourself is full of every seed; and it has fruit that down there cannot be gathered.]

Virtue is first figured as the ‘formative power’ present in seeds which are scattered in the winds which originate in the Primo Mobile. It is this virtue which ‘l’aura impregna’ and which then fertilizes the terrestrial and Edenic soil. How does our reading become enriched, then, if we follow Christian Moevs’ interpretation and read the Primo Mobile as ‘the nexus or turning point between God and creation, eternity and time, self-subsistence and contingency, the One and the Many’?19 And how if we understand the Primo Mobile as that through which the infinite ‘virtù’ of  God is dif ferentiated into individual ‘creations’, indeed, as into ‘di diverse virtù diverse legna’? If it is the direct and immediate motion of  the Primo Mobile which causes the distribution of seeds ‘di diverse virtù’ in Eden, and the Primo Mobile is the point of  ‘embodying’ contact between God and his creation, then the scattered seeds-virtù in Eden which descend down to Earth are manifestations/moments of  God’s generous creation. It is God who moves the Primo Mobile, God who facilitates the dispersion of  his creation, God 19 Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 151.

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who gives his virtue to mankind. Here in the Garden of  Eden is this giving most visible and most felt; it is undisturbed and undistracted by earthly physicality figured as terrestrial weather. At the same time, it finds the ground most ready and well-disposed to receive it. Here in Eden is created matter in its most perfect and receptive form, both in terms of  ‘inanimate’ soil and in terms of  the human soul as Dante tells us in Paradiso XIII, ‘Così fu fatta già la terra degna/ di tutta l’animal perfezione’ (82–83) [In that way, earth was once made worthy of  the full perfection of a living being]. The soul which has come to Eden has been reborn, wiped clean and restored to its state of pure potential for perfection: pure potential for moral and metaphysical virtue. Only properly disposed matter will be able to fully actuate divine form/virtue. Such a correct disposal only occurred at two points in human creation: the creation of  Adam and the creation of  Christ. Only in these two figures is the creative virtue of  God fully and properly manifested. Only in the Edenic space can such a perfection of disposition be regained by the human souls who arrive in it. At this point they are ready to be washed again in divine virtue (the source of  the river Lethe) and restored to the state of  Adam: the water which the pilgrim sees, he is told,     esce di fontana salda e certa che tanto dal voler di Dio riprende quant’ella versa da due parti aperta.     Da questa parte con virtù discende che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; da l’altra d’ogne ben fatto la rende. (Purg., XXVIII. 124–29) [it issues from a pure and changeless fountain, which by the will of  God regains as much as, on two sides, it pours and it divides. On this side it descends with power to end one’s memory of sin; and on the other, it can restore recall of each good deed.]

The interaction of creative divine virtue acting on potential human and terrestrial matter is nowhere more evidenced than here, at the site of  the God’s first creative act of  human kind; the first moment at which his virtue was of fered to mankind for them to answer with their own. Here in Eden is the perfect forum for this interaction to be re-found and the perfect forum in which human virtue can be born again.

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The connections between ‘virtù’ and ‘impregna’, alongside the connection of  the Primo Mobile and Eden, cannot help recall images of  Incarnation. We have already seen how the theological tradition had established the idea of  Christ as the virtue of  God, and Christ as God manifested in creation. As the Primo Mobile is the nexus between God and creation so Christ is the visible ‘bridge or union’ between God and humankind.20 In this sense Christ and the Primo Mobile fulfill parallel roles; through the Primo Mobile God transmits his immaterial being into material creation; through Christ, that creation and specifically man, becomes aware of  God’s immaterial being. Blown by the Primo Mobile, the air of  Eden is ready and disposed to be again impregnated by divine virtù; and so Christian souls on Earth and in Purgatory are prepared to receive God through having already received Christ. The soul arrived in Eden has returned to the perfect disposition of matter shared by the figures of  Adam and Christ. They are ready to demonstrate that ‘there is no intrinsic limitation to human perfection: when matter is most suitably disposed to receive the human form, the result is divinity incarnate’.21 The purged soul has gone through the purgation process, undertaking the imitation of  Christ; it has become like the ‘campagna santa’ and ‘l’aura impregna’ of  Eden, and is now ready to manifest itself as a created being with the potential of divinity.

Virtù in Paradise The idea of  Eden as a place and as representative of a state of perfected human virtue, suggested in canto XXVIII of  the Purgatorio, is then confirmed in the first canto of  the Paradiso. Following Beatrice’s gaze, the pilgrim finds himself able to look directly at the sun, an act which would be beyond earthly human capabilities. He tells us, however, that 20 Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 34. 21 Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 83.

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Human nature in its allotted place, the place in which it was created and designed to exist, is at its most capable and virtuous in terms of ability and potential. From this point onwards with his human nature restored to its full potential, Beatrice is able to draw Dante upward both in terms of geography and in terms of ontological transformation. The transformations in Purgatory had been from states of  human imperfection, in which human virtue and powers had been impaired by sin, to a return of man to the state of prelapsarian Adam; in Paradise, the soul is transformed beyond its human virtue or potential for perfection and is able to adopt the cosmological place allotted to it within the greater scheme of creation. The soul goes from being an individual in search of moral perfection, to be a perfect part of a perfect whole. In the Paradiso, the focus of  the presentation of virtue begins to move away from the relationship between divine virtue and individual human moral virtue under acquisition which we saw in the Purgatorio; in Paradise, this process is complete in all the souls who come to it, including that of  Dante. The dialogues of  Paradise therefore are typified, not so much by an individual soul’s self-ref lection on their life and actions, but with intellectual and literal presentations to Dante of  the profound truths of  the universe. Virtue is overwhelmingly present in the Paradiso, but it is most often figured as divine, creative, informing virtue or power, or as Robin Kirkpatrick terms it, ‘the power and principle of growth’ which emphasizes virtue’s place in the transformation process.22 Virtue takes on a central role in the greater metaphysical relationship between creature and creator which is so vividly expounded in the cantos of  the Paradiso. The personal interactions of  God and man which have formed our analysis of  Purgatorio are 22

Paradiso, trans. by Robin Kirkpatrick (London: Penguin Classics, 2007), p. 337.

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now transferred from the microcosm to the macrocosm of  the interaction of  God and the created universe. Within this interaction, Christ who had figured as individual example for imitation in Purgatory is now more fully understood in his incarnated salvific role. It is not the remit of  this chapter to present Dante’s schema on creation, the Incarnation and Christ; but I would here like to make some initial suggestions of  the part virtue has to play within these greater themes. I have already suggested that the focus of  the theme of virtue in Paradise explores the cosmological interaction of divine creative virtue (power) as it is filtered down and dif ferentiated through the celestial spheres, imprinting distinct characteristics by the exercise of distinct virtues. What the exact eschatological results of  this interaction are, are explored by Dante in cantos II and III. Beatrice’s complex explanation of  the cause of moon-spots brings to light the way in which divine virtue filters through the Primo Mobile which contains and gives being to the whole material created universe. The fixed stars in the eighth sphere then dif ferentiate this virtue as it f lows down to join with matter, disposing it towards its particular action and end:     Dentro dal ciel de la divina pace si gira un corpo ne la cui virtute l’esser di tutto suo contento giace.     Lo ciel seguente, c’ha tante vedute, quell’esser parte per diverse essenze, da lui distratte e da lui contenute.     Li altri giron per varie dif ferenze le distinzion che dentro da sé hanno dispongono a lor fini e lor semenze. (Par., II. 112–20) [Within the heaven of  the godly peace revolves a body in whose power lies the being of all things that it enfolds. The sphere that follows, where so much is shown, to varied essences bestows that being, to stars distinct and yet contained in it. The other spheres, in ways diverse, direct the diverse powers they possess, so that these forces can bear fruit, attain their aims.]

The variations in the end products are the result of  the varying combinations of dif ferent virtues with dif ferent qualities of matter: ‘Virtù

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diversa fa diversa lega / col prezioso corpo ch’ella aviva’ (Par., II. 139–40) [each dif ferent power forms a dif ferent compound with the dear body that it quickens]. From this explanation we are prepared for the variety of creations and capacities which will fill heaven, while at the same time understanding that they all result from the same source. When we come to meet Piccarda therefore in canto III, the metaphysical basis for her positioning in Paradise is already suggested. We there learn that the souls exist happily in their participation in God’s order. Marc Cogan has skilfully interpreted this order by attributing it to the capacities with which the souls were endowed by God and nature: thus ‘it can be said of every soul that the blessedness it receives is not only as much as it is entitled to but as much as it is capable of ’.23 Dif ferent virtue-matter combinations produce dif ferent capacities in the resulting creatures. In Heaven, the souls exist in the constant fulfillment of  those capacities. In life, we could interpret the fulfillment of capacity through the actions of moral virtue, but in Heaven the souls’ capacity for virtue is crucial. Virtue thus becomes a central factor in the quality of a soul’s blessedness. The type and quantity of virtue they were endowed with at their creation through the actions of  God and the dif ferentiating spheres, dictates the level of  God’s direct virtue they will receive. As such, the souls do not wish to be other than they are because they are as much as they can possibly be:     Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. (Par., III. 88–90) [Then it was clear to me how every place in Heaven is in Paradise, though grace does not rain equally from the High Good.]

So the souls in heaven exist in a state of capacity now fully fulfilled i.e. in a state of perfect virtue. In such a state, they receive and ref lect God as far as their capacity allows them and do not feel any lack.

23 Cogan, Design, p. 158.

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This is the situation of all the souls in Heaven. They are placed where they are based upon the virtue with which they were originally created by God’s creative virtue itself. But Dante is also concerned in the Paradiso to express what happens when human and divine virtue are perfectly aligned. In canto XIII the dialogue on creation discussing the way in which divine virtue informs matter is continued by Thomas Aquinas as he answers Dante’s unspoken question on the relative perfection of  Adam, Christ and Solomon. He states that all of creation is nothing ‘se non splendor di quella idea / che patorisce, amando, il nostro Sire’ (Par., XIII. 53–54) [the ref lected light of  that Idea which our Sire, with Love, begets]. The Trinitarian echoes of  this canto encourage the reading of  these lines as signalling the specific act of  loving creation by God the Father at the moment of  the Incarnation/birth (patorisce) of  Christ, in which the Idea of  God is manifested in the world through the action of  the love of  God, the Holy Spirit. Dante is here referring to all of creation (‘ciò che non more e ciò che può morire’; 52 [that which never dies and that which dies]) and he seems to be filtering an understanding of all of creation through the specific Incarnation of  Christ and that loving and justifying act of  God. This moment of creation in which God appears to separate himself is precisely not what it seems and instead reveals the miraculous unity of the Godhead. At the same time, all of creation finds its source and being in the unified being of  God and continually exists in and is dependent on that being, while not disturbing that being itself:     Ché quella viva luce che sì mea dal suo lucente, che non si disuna da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea,     per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna, quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, etternalmente rimanendosi una. (Par., XIII. 55–60) [because the living Light that pours out so from Its bright Source that It does not disjoin from It or from the Love intrined with them, through Its own goodness gathers up Its rays within nine essences, as in a mirror, Itself eternally remaining One.]

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The repeatedly rhymed ‘-una’ serves to stress the unified, contained give-and-receive f low of creation which comes together in God’s continual act-being. This is God’s creative act but the results of  that act are dependent on the matter which they inform, as suggested by the variations already discussed in cantos II and III. But here the question is: if  that matter was perfect, what then would be the result?     Se fosse a punto la cera deduta e fosse il cielo in sua virtù supprema, la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta.     […] se ‘l caldo amor la chiara vista de la prima virtù dispone e segna, tutta la perfezion quivi s’acquista. (Par., XIII. 73–81) [For were the wax appropriately readied, and were the heaven’s power at its height, the brightness of  the seal would show completely … Yet where the ardent Love prepares and stamps the lucid Vision of  the primal Power, a being then acquires complete perfection.]

If  this was the case, then God would be perfectly revealed in creation. Christ and Adam represent the only moments of perfect creation in which matter was perfectly disposed and informed directly by divine virtue. They are thus points at which that virtue becomes visible in creation; they both demonstrate creation as a unified whole with God, the light unbroken from its original source. If we consider the roles of  Adam and Christ as presented thus far in this chapter (Adam representing humanity in its perfectly potential state of  human virtue, and Christ representing the greatest humanity can be, fully participatory in divine virtue), we come to see these moments of creation as moments of perfect interaction between God and humanity all centered around virtue. At the end of  Purgatory, the souls who have imitated Christ’s virtue are restored to the state of perfect potential virtue which was the state of  Adam, all of which passes through the creative and renewing virtue of  God. In addition, if  these two figures represent moments of perfect unity with God, then how can this enhance our reading of virtue and unity which was outlined earlier, in which virtue is a form of unifying the

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self ? We might look for a possible answer in the earlier dialogue on creation and the Incarnation given by Beatrice in Paradiso VII. Adam by his disobedience, his unwillingness to ‘sof frire a la virtù che vole / freno a suo prode’ (Par., VII. 25–26) [endure the helpful curb on his willpower], had dis-united himself  from God. But with the coming of  Christ man is reunited with God but also reunited within himself, the ‘virtù che vole’ or will, being now refocused on and thus reunited with its ultimate object, God: […] al verbo di Dio discende piacque     u’ la natura, che dal suo fattore s’era allungata, a unì a sé in persona con l’atto sol del suo eterno amore. (Par., VII. 30–33) [the Word of  God willed to descend to where the nature that was sundered from its Maker was united to His person by the sole act of  His eternal Love.]

Christ demonstrates to man the way to reunite his self and desires while at the same time representing the metaphysical reconnection of man with God. In the Paradiso Dante explores the interaction between God and man as it exists in the state of  blessedness. Canto XXI of  the Paradiso, in which Dante finds himself in the heaven of  Saturn, includes an intriguing way of understanding this divine-human virtue interaction. The soul of  Peter Damian who comes to speak to him, entirely motivated by ‘l’alta carità, che ci fa serve / pronte al consiglio che ‘l mondo governo’ (Par., XXI. 70–71) [the deep charity, which makes us keen to serve the Providence that rules the world], explains how and why he in particular comes to Dante: Luce divina sopra me s’appunta, penetrando per questa in ch’io m’inventro,     la cui virtù, col mio veder congiunta, mi leva sopra me tanto, ch’i’ veggio la somma essenza de la quale è munta. (Par., XXI. 83–87) [Light from the Deity descends on me; it penetrates the light that enwombs me; its power, as it joins my power of sight, lifts me so far beyond myself  that I see the High Source from which that light derives.]

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In describing the interaction of divine virtue, here figured as light, and his own capacities, figured as sight, Dante here draws on the semantic fields of sexuality, birth, and nursing to describe the union. The womblike (cf. ‘inventro’ at line 84) soul is penetrated by and then joined with (‘congiunta’, 85) divine virtù. It is then raised above itself  to see the source of  the divine light, the point from which it is milked (munta). This rich interaction of images in which the divine source of  light is both lover and mother, places virtue in the place of  the informing principle of  life (Statius’ ‘sangue perfetto’; Purg., XXV. 37 [perfect blood]); the result of  this union is a soul able to suckle at the source of  that virtue, drawing life itself  from it. If we also consider that the focal individual virtue mentioned in this sphere is charity, then the image of  the nursing mother, so often a motif of artistic representations of  this virtue, focuses our attention upon the loving self less and creative interaction between God and the souls, both of  the contemplatives and of  Dante himself. Having passed through the lower spheres of  Paradise, Dante finally has his first distant vision of  Christ rising above the heavens. Beatrice’s description of  him has a distinctly Augustinian ring. Christ appears as a light which is the source of  light for all the little lights of  heaven, and which overcomes Dante’s own power of vision. Beatrice then explains that, […] Quel che ti sobranza è virtù da cui nulla si ripara.     Quivi è la sapienza e la possanza ch’aprì le strade tra ’l cielo e la terra, onde fu già sì lunga disianza. (Par., XXIII. 35–39) [What overwhelms you is a Power against which nothing can defend itself. This is the Wisdom and the Potency that opened roads between the earth and Heaven, the paths for which desire had long since waited.]

Echoing Corinthians, Dante draws on the idea of  Christ as virtue, as overwhelming power which fills and overcomes all. Likewise, Christ as the wisdom and the power of  God are attributes which Augustine emphasizes. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of  this description is Christ as he who opened the road between earth and heaven. Augustine in the

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City of  God figured Christ in a similar way, as the direction and end of  the journey to God: Deus dei filius, homine adsumpto […] et fundavit fidem, ut ad homines Deum iter esset homini per hominem Deum. Hic est enim mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christus Iesus. Per hoc enim mediator per quod homo, per hoc et via. Quoniam si inter eum qui tendit et illud quo tendit via media est, spes est perveniendi […] sola est autem adversus omnes errores via munitissima, ut idem ipse sit Deus et homo […] quo itur Deus, qua itur homo. (XII. ii) [The son of  God became man […] and thus established and founded this faith, so that man might have a path to man’s God through the man who was God. For this is ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’ As man he is our Mediator; as man he is our way. For there is hope to attain a journey’s end when there is a path which stretches between the traveller and his goal […] and this road is provided by one who is himself  both God and man […] as God he is the goal as man he is the way.]

At this point though, the pilgrim appears unable to follow this road, to make this journey. He can only continue if  the ‘virtue’ which is overwhelming him removes itself. Paradiso XXIII is really a turning point for your understanding of  Christ; we, like the pilgrim, are brought face to face with something we cannot yet look in the eye. While in the Purgatorio Christ is always subliminally and sometimes overtly present in his incarnate nature, in the early cantos of  the Paradiso, he is most clearly present as a metaphysical principle. This is the point at which he is for the first time individualized and this time in his real presence. The reason for this delay is fully explained by the pilgrim’s previous incapacity to withstand any sight of  Christ. At this point still his capacities are weak. But the interaction which we witnessed (throughout Purgatory in a real sense, and in Paradise in a metaphysical or theoretical sense) between Christ’s Virtue (power) and Dante’s or the individual souls’ virtue (capacity) is reiterated here; Christ’s light illumines all the souls in this heaven, but his continuing presence would prevent Dante from being able to see them. And so Christ ascends upwards, leaving Dante’s vision clear:     O benigna vertù che sì li ’mprenti, sù t’essaltasti, per largirmi loco a li occhi lì che non t’eran possenti. (Par., XXIII. 85–87)

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Christ’s virtue, recognizing the insuf ficiency of  Dante’s powers facilitates and enables Dante’s increasing capacities. The pilgrim’s sojourn in the Primo Mobile in Paradiso XXVII and XXVIII brings to fruition and conclusion many of  the ideas which have been explored in this chapter. In considering Dante’s Eden of  Purgatorio XXVIII, we came to see the Primo Mobile as the intersecting point from which God’s virtue is dispersed and dif ferentiated through the created universe; as the point at which finite creation comes into being. We now see in Paradiso XXVII, that the Primo Mobile exists nowhere else but the divine mind which is the source of  the love and virtue which move and make the universe:     e questo cielo non ha altro dove che la mente divina, in che s’accende l’amor che ’l volge e la virtù ch’ei piove. (Par., XXVII. 109–11) [This heaven has no other where than this: the mind of  God, in which are kindled both the love that turns it and the force it rains.]

Virtù comes ultimately from the divine mind, but it can only rain down in a created form, transmitted and manifested through the Primo Mobile. From the Primo Mobile, virtue forms the individual spheres and is the principle by which they are ordered, a principle finally fully explicated by Beatrice in canto XXVIII. Working from Dante’s question over the apparent incongruity between the perception of  the size of  the spheres from Earth and how they really are in the Heavens, Beatrice explains that the extent to which a sphere more or less immediately receives divine virtue is what dictates its value, not merely its amplitude:     Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti secondo il più e ’l men de la virtute che si distende per tutte lor parti. (Par., XXVIII. 64–66)

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[The size of spheres of matter-large or small – depends upon the power – more and less – that spreads throughout their parts.]

The quality of a sphere is not measured by its size but by its motion – by the extent to which it fulfils its potential and the extent of potential which it has; that is, by the extent of its virtue. The same system of value applies to the human souls of  Purgatory and Paradise. They are placed and ordered according to the virtue with which they were naturally endowed and the extent to which they responded to and fulfilled that potential for virtue; that is, the extent to which they fulfilled their potential to imitate and manifest God in creation.

Conclusion With this chapter I have attempted to show that an approach that combines a more in-depth theoretical understanding with close textual analysis produces an understanding of virtue which goes beyond seeing it only as a structuring principle or a quasi deontological set of standards which Dante uses to group his souls in Purgatory and Paradise. Without being framed within the larger theological dynamics of  the Commedia, virtue appears a static and prescriptive concept. Instead, when we bring in those dynamics, virtue becomes a prism which draws together and refracts some of  the central theological questions which shape the text. Virtue acts as a meeting point between the nature of man and the nature of  God; it is the way through which these two natures communicate and interact. God’s virtue is the active force in creation; man’s virtue is the active force in his return to a state of created perfection and his own salvation. But man’s salvation is achieved through taking in and manifesting God’s own virtue. When a human being behaves in a virtuous way, they are carrying out God’s plan, they are participating in the way God intended the universe to be; essentially, they are manifesting divine truth and God himself. Such a manifestation brings to light the question of virtue and the Incarnation, the point at

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which divine virtue is most fully manifested, while at the same time being of fered for imitation, precisely through virtuous actions. This survey can only hint at future directions for the study of virtue, but two in particular are worth introducing here. The first is the question of poetic virtue, the creative power of  the poet himself. Dante’s frequent supplications to the virtue of  his poetic muses to aid his own virtue, suggests that he closely associated an idea of virtue with his own poetic creativity. A second intriguing avenue, is to consider the interrelation of  Beatrice and virtue. From her first appearance in the Vita Nuova to her ultimate appearances in the Paradiso, Beatrice is paired with usages of  the term virtue. I have already begun to suggest the richness of reading the word virtue in relation to Christ, so I would suggest that a further reading which combines Beatrice and the Christological overtones often associated with her, with a tracing of  her connection with virtue, would provide a rich and fertile path for exploration.

Zygmunt G. Barański

(Un)orthodox Dante

In memory of  Massi Chiamenti, a true unorthodox […] tolto per essemplo dal buono frate Tommaso d’Aquino, che a un suo libro, che fece a confusione di tutti quelli che disviano da nostra Fede, puose nome ‘Contra li Gentili’.1

Scuola Reunited with Beatrice at the top of  Mount Purgatory, the pilgrim is made to confront and acknowledge his intellectual and moral errors – errors which had led him to reject his beloved and to ‘give himself  to another’: ‘questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui’ (Purg., XXX. 126).2 Beatrice invokes 1

2

Conv., IV. xxx. 3. [I model myself  here on the good friar Thomas Aquinas, who entitled one of  his works, written to refute the arguments of all those who deviate from our faith, Contra gentiles.] All quotations from and references to Dante’s works are taken from the following editions: Convivio, ed. by Franca Brambilla Ageno, 2 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995); Il Fiore, ed. by Gianfranco Contini (Milan: Mondadori, 1984); La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, 4 vols, 2nd edn (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994); Monarchia, ed. by Prue Shaw (Florence: Le Lettere, 2009). The present chapter is an implicit dialogue with many Dante scholars and with various traditions of  Dante studies. Most specifically it is a sort of conversation with one of  the most important books on Dante of  the recent past: Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of  Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) – a conversation which, mutatis mutandis, mirrors the exchanges that Christian and I

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a strikingly apt image to describe the damaging and obfuscating ef fects of  the traviamento on her wayward lover’s intelligence:     […] io veggio te ne lo ’ntelletto fatto di pietra e, impetrato, tinto, sì che t’abbaglia il lume del mio detto. (Purg., XXXIII. 73–75; and compare 67–69) [I see your intellect is made of stone and, petrified, grown so opaque – the light of what I say has left you dazed.]

Dante-character’s error was of such magnitude and obduracy that it was as if  his mind had been transformed into rock; and ‘obscured’ rock at that. The assertion is deeply troubling: if  the pilgrim’s ‘intellect’ had indeed become like a dark stone then he had imperilled his very humanity, since the loss have travelling between Chicago and Notre Dame. Although our emphases are not the same, we both firmly believe in Dante’s fundamental and constant orthodoxy (see, for instance, Moevs, p. 86). This does not mean that there are not instances, as I discuss below, when his ideas stray into areas whose ideological acceptability in terms of contemporary Christian belief is at the very least doubtful. The question of  Dante’s intellectual formation has not always been addressed with due scholarly detachment. I thus consider it important to be clear from the start as to my basic premise, approach and personal perspective. Given the at times overly forceful, not to say emotive, manner in which the question of  the poet’s ideological sympathies and inf luences has been approached, I have largely avoided making direct reference to particular scholars and studies. Moreover, I have endeavoured to minimize any tones that might be taken as polemical, especially against an individual. I am grateful to the contributions of all Dantists in helping me formulate my thoughts. This does not mean that I do not strongly argue for a particular interpretation: I do, and with a degree of insistence, since I consider the matter of  the poet’s intellectual allegiances of profound importance for the study of his oeuvre. My hope is to stimulate dialogue. Polemic, on the other hand, all too often seems to close of f discussion. Finally, several of  those who, over the years, have written on the matter of  Dante’s thought have allowed unacknowledged personal sympathies and concerns to intrude a bit too much into their academic work. I am thus happy to declare that my perspective is coloured by a strong secularism and religious agnosticism, both of which, however, are indelibly tinged by the Catholicism of my parents and of  the immigrant communities in which I grew up, and by the very good pre-university Catholic education that I received at schools in Manchester, in particular at St Bede’s Grammar School.

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of  the divinely infused rational soul meant an inevitable drop to a lower order of  being.3 Yet, it is dif ficult to deny that Beatrice’s adynaton succinctly encapsulates the horror and enormity of  the viator’s intellectual transgression. Sin had so brutalized him that his anima intellectiva, and hence his whole being, was as if entombed in stone. Not dissimilarly, though now in fact and not just metaphorically, to mark not simply the nature of  their evildoing but also how sin had destroyed their humanity, divine justice had transformed Pier delle Vigne into a tree and Ulysses into a f lame. By following the wrong ‘via’ (88), the pilgrim’s intellect, puf fed up by Odyssean praesumptio, had committed intellectual and spiritual suicide. The association with the Inferno’s two finest thinkers and rhetoricians is chilling and instructive. Beatrice, however, does not restrict her condemnation to the stylistic subtleties of  her ‘parola ornata’ (Inf., II. 67) [ornamented speech]. Like any good moralist, she makes public Dante-personaggio’s erring:     ‘Perché conoschi’, disse, ‘quella scuola c’hai seguitata, e veggi sua dottrina come può seguitar la mia parola:     e veggi vostra via da la divina distar cotanto, quanto si discorda da terra il ciel che più alto festina’ (Purg., XXXIII. 85–90) [‘That you may recognize,’ she said, ‘the school that you have followed and may see if what it taught can comprehend what I have said – and see that, as the earth is distant from the highest and the swiftest of  the heavens, so distant is your way from the divine.’]

3

It was a commonplace in the Middle Ages to use stones as examples when distinguishing between dif ferent orders of  being: ‘Quodcumque vero nomen huiusmodi perfectiones exprimit cum modo proprio creaturis, de Deo dici non potest nisi per similitudinem et metaphoram, per quam quae sunt unius rei alteri solent adaptari, sicut aliquis homo dicitur lapis propter duritiam intellectus. Huiusmodi autem sunt omnia nomina imposita ad designandum speciem rei creatae, sicut homo et lapis: nam cuilibet speciei debetur proprius modus perfectionis et esse’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I. 30. 2; and compare I. 26. 9; I. 31. 2; III. 48. 10; III. 104. 9). See also Conv., IV. viii. 13–14. There are, of course, also Medusan overtones to the viator’s ‘being turned to stone’.

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There is much that is problematic in these two tercets, as well as in the earlier lines 67–75. First and foremost, in narrative terms, both Beatrice’s description and explanation of why the viator’s ‘’ngegno’ is ‘asleep’ (64) and the entire episode of which these clarifications are part do not make logical sense. The pilgrim has reached the Earthly Paradise, is spiritually cleansed, and has been bathed in Lethe; yet, nonetheless, Beatrice accuses him of  being distracted by ‘pensier vani’ (68) [vain thoughts] and describes his mind as ‘petrified’. Indeed, Dante-personaggio himself stresses his intellectual limitations, confessing that he cannot follow her ‘parola disïata’ (82–84) [desired word], which spurs Beatrice to explain that the cause of  his Edenic shortcomings can be traced back to ‘that school he had followed’ on earth. But ‘vain thoughts’ and earthly errors, however grave, can have no direct part to play in that privileged place where ‘è l’uom felice’ (Purg., XXX. 75) [mankind is happy], as Beatrice herself corroborates:     ‘E se tu ricordar non te ne [his ‘estrangement’ (92) from her] puoi’, sorridendo rispuose, ‘or ti rammenta come bevesti di Letè ancoi’. (Purg., XXXIII. 94–96) [‘And if you can’t remember that,’ she answered, smiling, ‘then call to mind how you today have drunk of  Lethe’.]

It is not surprising that the pilgrim, and we with him, should be confused. He is obviously aware that it is Eastertime 1300 and that he is in the Earthly Paradise; and yet Beatrice treats him as if  he were still in Florence, in the years after her death, when he had betrayed her: ‘colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta’ (99) [a fault in your will had turned elsewhere]. To highlight dramatically the enormity of  the viator’s past rejection of  his blessed beloved, the poet performs a literary sleight of  hand. He momentarily abandons narrative and ideological coherence by conf lating two distinct moments in the relationship between Beatrice and her inconstant lover. Yes, we are, of course, in Eden. However, in a sort of  ‘pseudo-f lashback’, what Dante has his character anachronistically enact, in order to define and evaluate it, is his past, rather than present, behaviour. That the poet should have gone to such extraordinary lengths, with their inherent danger of undermining the carefully constructed verisimilitude

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of  his otherworldly account, confirms the crucial importance of  the intellectual traviamento in the pilgrim’s biography. Indeed, if we feel inclined to merge the historical Dante with his fictional namesake – and most Dantists are so inclined – then Beatrice’s charge appears to of fer unambiguous evidence that, before composing the Commedia, there had been a period in the poet’s life when he had been tempted and enthralled by the intellectually unorthodox, which, like the pilgrim in Eden, he was now regretting and recanting. Yet, despite the sinful gravity of  the intellectual lapse, what does Dante actually tell us about it? If we are honest, not very much at all. Beatrice reveals that he had adhered to an intellectual current (‘scuola’) whose teaching (‘dottrina’) and method (‘via’) were both dramatically dif ferent from and at odds with her ‘word’ and the ‘divine.’4 In light of  the revealed qualities of  Beatrice’s speech – ‘la mia narrazion buia’ (46) [my dark narrative] – which closely imitate the revealed nature of divine forms of communication, both of which depend on an af fective and inspired reception and exegesis – ‘conosceresti […] moralmente’ (72) [you would know … in the moral sense] – which are beyond the ‘stony’ pilgrim, the ‘school’ he had ‘followed’ was decidedly earthbound in perspective and distinctly rationalist in approach.5 That, especially in the universities and the schools, significant tensions existed during the second part of  the thirteenth century and the early part of  the fourteenth century between ‘doctors’ who placed dif ferent emphases on the role that reason, ‘science’, dialectic, disputation, Scripture, faith, inspiration, Sapientia and revelation

4

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Beatrice’s choice of words is technically precise. ‘“Doctrina” denotes the teaching or doctrine of a master or school of  thought, whereas “via” refers to the method used in solving problems when commenting on texts’: Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, ‘Categories of  Medieval Doxography. Ref lections on the Use of  “Doctrina” and “Via” in 14th and 15th Century Philosophical and Theological Sources’, in ‘Vera Doctrina’: zur Begrif fsgeschichte der Lehre von Augustinus bis Descartes, ed. by Philippe Büttgen et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kommission, 2009), pp. 62–84 (p. 62). For an analysis of  Dante’s use of  the term dottrina / doctrina, see my chapter, ‘Dante and Doctrine (and Theology)’, in Volume 1. See Zygmunt G. Barański, Dante e i segni. Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri (Naples: Liguori, 2000), pp. 41–76.

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ought to have in intellectual work is well known.6 At the same time, the oppositions that emerged were anything but straightforward. To reduce these, say, to conf licts between rationalists and exegetes or between philosophers and theologians means grossly to banalize a highly complex and nuanced intellectual environment. It is enough to remember that neither the philosophers nor the theologians constituted homogenous blocks, thus serious disagreements regarding the status of  ‘sacred doctrine’ created rifts among theologians,7 and that all medieval intellectuals were essentially

6

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See, for instance, Luca Bianchi, Il vescovo e i filosofi. La condanna parigina del 1277 e l’evoluzione dell’aristotelismo scolastico (Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990); Gillian R. Evans, Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 10–16; Alessandro Ghisalberti, Medioevo teologico (Bari: Laterza, 1990), pp. 85–145; Etienne Gilson, History of  Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed and Ward, 1980), pp. 325–485; Martin Grabmann, ‘Il concetto di scienza secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino e le relazioni della fede e della teologia con la filosofia e le scienze profane’, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, 26 (1934), 127–55; J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of  Paris: 1200–1400 (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Fernand van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIe siècle (Louvain and Paris: Publications universitaires, 1966). See Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, 3rd rev. edn (Paris: Vrin, 1957), and ‘The Masters of  the ‘Theological’ Science’ and ‘Tradition and Progress’, in his Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago: University of  Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 270–309 and 310–30; Camillo Dumont, La Théologie comme science chez scolastiques du treizième siècle: Histoire de la question ‘Utrum theologia si scientia’ de 1230 à 1320 (Louvain: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1962); Gillian R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of  Theology as an Academic Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Ulrich Köpf, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie im 13. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr, 1974); Albert Lang, Die theologische Prinzipienlehre der mittelalterlichen Scholastik (Freiburg: Herder, 1964); Jean Leclercq, ‘La Théologie comme science dans la littérature quodlibétique’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 11 (1939), 351–74; Aimé Solignac, ‘Théologie’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, 17 vols (Paris: Beauchesne, 1932–95), XV (1991), 463–87 (cols 463–81); Storia della teologia nel Medioevo, ed. by Giulio D’Onofrio, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1996), in particular vol. III: La teologia delle scuole; Christian Trottmann, Théologie et noétique au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1999). See also Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Systematic Theology: Task and Method’, in Systematic Theology: Roman

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commentators. It was their respective readings of  the texts that they chose to gloss, from the Bible to Aristotle, and from Peter Lombard’s Sentences to canon law, that both distinguished and divided them. Dante’s trenchant presentation in Monarchia III. iv of  the exegetical errors committed by supporters of papal power when interpreting Scripture is impressively instructive in this regard.8 The hierocrats recognized the authority of  the Bible and the fundamental need to elucidate God’s word; however, according to Dante, when they did this, they were insensitive to the true meaning and purpose of  the text since they bent it to contingent earthly needs: ‘si vero industria, non aliter cum sic errantibus est agendum, quam cum tyrampnis, qui publica iura non ad comunem utilitatem secuntur, sed ad propriam retorquere conantur. O summum facinus, etiamsi contingat in sompniis, ecterni Spiritus intentione abuti!’ (10–11) [if such things are done deliberately, those who make this mistake should be treated no dif ferently from tyrants who do not observe public rights for the common welfare, but seek to turn them to their own advantage. O supreme wickedness, even if it should happen in dreams, to abuse the intention of  the eternal Spirit!] Such opportunistic Scriptural exegetes, as much as the most secularizing of philosophers at the University of  Paris, were deaf  to Beatrice’s ‘parola’ and found themselves at an enormous distance from the ‘via […] divina’ [the divine path]. In fact, given the gravity of  their error, they were almost certainly further away than their philosophizing counterparts. Instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to guide their exegesis, they deliberately misapplied their reason, distorting and exploiting the word of  God – aberrant behaviour which reduced them to ‘f leshly servitude’.9 It is clear, therefore, that, given the allusiveness of  Beatrice’s description of  the errant ‘scuola’ and the complexity of  the medieval intellectual

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Catholic Perspectives, ed. by Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin, 2nd edn (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), pp. 1–78. For an excellent analysis of  Dante’s treatment of  the conventions of  Scriptural exegesis in Monarchia III, see Paola Nasti, ‘Dante and Ecclesiology’, in the present volume. See, for instance, ‘Legenda est ergo Scriptura divina, et Spiritus sancti dispensatio cognoscenda, et intuenda prophetia; et reicienda carnalis servitus, et liberalis intellegentia retinenda’ (Augustine, Contra Adimantum Manichaei XV. 3).

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world at the beginning of  the Trecento, we need to move with caution when trying to establish the possible identity of  the ideological current that had led Dante-personaggio astray in the 1290s. By extension, any discussion of  the poet’s actual or presumed unorthodoxy needs also to be extremely sensitive to the historical, philological and contextual evidence. Much of what follows deals precisely with such matters. For the moment, however, I should like to continue to focus on Beatrice’s exposure of  the pilgrim’s past intellectual waywardness. Whenever Dante leaves things vague, it is because he wants us to employ our ‘intelletti sani’ (Inf., IX. 61) and engage critically with his text.10 As with so many of  the Commedia’s cruces, Dantists have eagerly taken up the challenge of attempting to pinpoint the intellectual and institutional parameters of  the ‘school.’ Allow me to cite some recent authoritative suggestions: Scuola: è certamente un’allusione (e lo conferma la parola dottrina del verso successivo) agli studi filosofici seguiti da Dante con grande entusiasmo, di cui è ricordo esplicito nel Convivio. Si tratta di una dottrina al di fuori e completamente indipendente dagli studi teologici. Che tale dottrina fosse ad un certo momento interpretata dal poeta come una specie di traviamento intellettuale, sembra da questo passo indubitabile, senza che per questo si arrivi all’assurda tesi di un Dante eretico o, per lo meno, sfiorante l’eresia.11 [Scuola: this is certainly a reference (as the word dottrina in the following line confirms) to the philosophical studies followed by Dante with great enthusiasm, which are recalled explicitly in the Convivio. This is a doctrine which is separate from, and completely independent of, the study of  theology. And it seems clear from this passage that it was, at some point, interpreted by the poet as a kind of intellectual losing of  the way, yet without this leading to the absurd conclusion that Dante was a heretic, or, at least, on the verge of  heresy.]12

*** 10 See Versi controversi. Letture dantesche, ed. by Domenico Cofano and Sebastiano Valerio (Foggia: Edizioni del Rosone, 2008). 11 Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, ed. by Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979), p. 565. 12 Editors’ translation.

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la scuola seguita da Dante a cui qui si allude è certo una scuola di pensiero, una filosofia, come dice la parola dottrina al verso seguente, e tutto il senso del contesto. Non può tuttavia intendersi della filosofia in senso assoluto, che di per sé non era da considerarsi tendenza colpevole (come appare questa ai vv. 94–99) e che non è comunque una scuola. È molto probabile che si parli qui di quella passione filosofica esclusiva che prese Dante nella sua giovinezza e lo avvicinò alle posizioni averroistiche, che portavano a ritener la ragione umana di per sé suf ficiente a intendere la verità dell’universo (cfr. vv. 87–90). Questa tendenza, propria dell’ambiente intellettuale fiorentino (averroista fu Cavalcanti, il primo amico), fa certamente parte del traviamento di Dante denunciato a questo punto del suo cammino.13 [the scuola followed by Dante which is alluded to here is certainly a school of thought, a philosophy, as the word dottrina in the next line, and the whole meaning of  the context make clear. It cannot anyway be understood as philosophy in any absolute sense, which in itself was not considered as a culpable tendency (as it appears in lines 94–99) and which is not in any case a scuola. It is highly probable that what is referred to here is that exclusive philosophical passion which seized Dante in his youth and brought him close to Avverroistic positions, which led him to hold human reason to be in itself suf ficient to understand the truth of  the universe (cf. lines 87–90). This tendency, particular to the Florentine intellectual environment (Cavalcanti, the primo amico, was an Averroist), certainly forms part of  the aberration on Dante’s part which is condemned at this point on his journey; editors’ translation.]

*** L’accenno alla dottrina fa pensare che Beatrice si riferisca ad una ‘deviazione’ intellettuale di Dante, la quale per alcuni studiosi consisterebbe nella vicinanza giovanile (anche per l’inf luenza di Guido Cavalcanti) a posizioni averroistiche. Al riguardo, però, può essere suf ficiente prendere in considerazione l’approccio del Convivio, che, pur non derogando dalla fede, presentava un’ambigua sovrapposizione o indistinzione fra dominio della filosofia e dominio della teologia […]; si tenga presente che la prima ‘accoglienza’ che Beatrice riserva al suo fedele nell’Eden allude alla aleatorietà della beatitudo raggiungibile in hac vita […], e che nel Convivio […] circola l’idea di una felicità terrena che, pur entro i suoi limiti, può dirsi perfetta.14

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, ed. by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, 7th edn (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), p. 974. 14 The words are Nicola Fosca’s, whose excellent annotations to the Commedia have still, alas, not found a publisher. I cite his commentary from the text uploaded to the Dartmouth Dante Project database. 13

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Zygmunt G. Barański [The reference to dottrina suggests that Beatrice is referring to an intellectual ‘deviation’ on Dante’s part, which in the view of a number of scholars consists in his closeness to Averroist positions in his youth (inf luenced by Guido Cavalcanti). In this respect, however, it is enough to consider the approach of  the Convivio which, while not departing from faith, presented an ambiguous superimposition or lack of distinction between the realm of philosophy and the realm of  theology […]; it is important to keep in mind that the first ‘greeting’ which Beatrice reserves for her follower in Eden refers to the uncertainty of  the blessedness achievable in this life […], and that the Convivio […] contained the idea of an earthly happiness which, albeit within limits, could be described as perfect.]

*** What ‘school’ Dante refers to here is much debated […]. Views arguing that a specific intellectual error is meant, such as that supposedly represented by Lady Philosophy in the Convivio, or Averroism […], seem too restrictive: as the pilgrim’s limitations are associated with universal history and the Fall of  Adam, Beatrice may be noting the pilgrim’s share in Adamic arrogance.15

There is much that I find troubling, because inaccurate and problematic, in the first two explanations, and to a lesser extent in the third proposal, regarding the ‘school’ and its consequences. Of greatest concern is the way in which a historical person and a literary character are treated as if  they were one and the same entity. It is at the very least perplexing that scholars of  literature should confuse life and art so blithely. Durling and Martinez are unusual in carefully sidestepping this all-too-common pitfall of  Dante studies. In any case, the nature of  the relationship between Dante Alighieri and Dante-personaggio,16 and hence the nature and extent of any possible biographism in the Commedia, is far from being satisfactorily established and resolved. In narrative terms, that the protagonist should have sinned intellectually is certainly coherent with the overriding logic of  the story of 

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, ed. by Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 579. 16 Given the crucial need to distinguish between author and character, I employ ‘Dante’, ‘Dante Alighieri’ and ‘the poet’ to refer to the historical author, and ‘pilgrim’, ‘Dante-personaggio’, ‘Dante-character’, viator, and similar designations to denote the Commedia’s protagonist. 15

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his past behaviour that emerges in the poem. Whether, during the 1290s or at some other time, Dante Alighieri, too, had behaved like his character is not something, I believe, that can be straightforwardly maintained on the basis of a poetic declaration. Nonetheless, most Dantists would af firm, as indeed do some of  the commentators in the quotations above, that, thanks to the Convivio, evidence of such intellectual erring is available; and so pilgrim and poet are naturally and necessarily one. Such a position too is not without its dangers. If one compares Bosco and Reggio’s description of  the Convivio as embodying ‘una dottrina al di fuori e completamente indipendente dagli studi teologici’ with Fosca’s cautious characterization of  the treatise as a work ‘che, pur non derogando dalla fede, presentava un’ambigua sovrapposizione o indistinzione fra dominio della filosofia e dominio della teologia’, it is immediately obvious that we are confronted with two contrasting interpretations of  the ‘esposizione’ (Conv., I. ii. 1) and its ideology, and hence with two conf licting views of its possible ‘erring’. Indeed, it is questionable whether, according to Fosca’s definition, one can even talk about ‘error’; and if  this is indeed the case, then, the Convivio is significantly less relevant when discussing Dante’s supposed unorthodoxy than is generally asserted. In any case, even accepting the biographism of  the Commedia, the Convivio is not narratively germane to the pilgrim, since, at the time of  his great otherworldly adventure, the ‘quasi comento’ (Conv., I. iii. 2) had not yet been written. It thus follows that the Convivio cannot play a role in the events that occurred in the decade after her death to which Beatrice refers.17 Furthermore, as the manuscript evidence confirms,

17

See Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘The “New Life” of  “Comedy”: The Commedia and the Vita Nuova’, Dante Studies, 113 (1995), 1–29; Peter Dronke, Dante’s Second Love: The Originality and the Contexts of  the ‘Convivio’ (Leeds: Maney, 1997), pp. 26, 72–76; Lino Pertile, ‘Dante’s Comedy beyond the stilnovo’, Lectura Dantis Virginiana, 13 (1993), 47–77 (pp. 56–61). See also the exchange in the Electronic Bulletin of  the Dante Society of  America accessed 10 April 2013: Robert Hollander, ‘Dante’s Deployment of  Convivio in the Comedy’, 7 October 1996; Lino Pertile, ‘Lettera aperta di Lino Pertile a Robert Hollander sui rapporti tra Commedia e Convivio’, 8 October 1996; and Robert Hollander, ‘Dante’s Quarrel with his own Convivio (Again)’, 23 March 2008.

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it is almost certain that Dante had no intention of making the Convivio public,18 thereby, raising extremely serious questions regarding how it might be used in relation to the Commedia. Obviously, this does not mean that we cannot have recourse to the Convivio when endeavouring to establish Dante’s intellectual formation and sympathies, including any possible unorthodoxies in his thought, especially in the years immediately after his exile; and I shall be doing as much in due course. Substantial dif ficulties af fect and delimit the presentation of  the ‘scuola’ in Purgatorio XXXIII.19 It is thus probably impossible to be precise about the complexion of  the pilgrim’s traviamento, never mind that of  the poet (that is if evidence from the canto can actually be used as the basis for laying charges of  heterodoxy against him – something which I very seriously doubt). Beatrice is deliberately allusive, while the intellectual world of  the Middle Ages was extremely complex. Consequently we should proceed with care, as Durling and Martinez commendably do, when explicating her words. Dogmatism, with its assertions of  ‘certainty’, is unwarranted and unhelpful. Where is the hard proof  to conclude that, in Purgatorio XXXIII, Beatrice is talking about ‘studi filosofici seguiti da Dante con grande entusiasmo’ [philosophical studies undertaken by Dante with great enthusiasm]; or about the Convivio; or about ‘quella passione filosofica esclusiva che prese Dante nella sua giovinezza e lo avvicinò alle posizioni averroistiche, che portavano a ritener la ragione umana di per sé suf ficiente a intendere la verità dell’universo’ [that exclusive passion for philosophy which seized Dante in his youth and drew him close to Avveroistic

18

19

See Luca Azzetta, ‘La tradizione del Convivio negli antichi commenti alla Commedia: Andrea Lancia, l’“Ottimo commento” e Pietro Alighieri’, Rivista di studi danteschi, 5 (2005), 3–34, and ‘Il Convivio e i suoi più antichi lettori’, Testo, 61–62 (2011), 225–38; Saverio Bellomo, Filologia e critica dantesca, 2nd edn (Brescia: La Scuola, 2012), pp. 110–18; Claudio Ciociola, ‘Dante’, in Storia della letteratura italiana. X. La tradizione dei testi, ed. by Enrico Malato (Rome: Salerno, 2001), pp. 137–99 (pp. 157–61); Guglielmo Gorni, ‘Appunti sulla tradizione del Convivio. A proposito dell’archetipo e dell’originale dell’opera’, Studi di filologia italiana, 55 (1997), 239–51. On the ‘scuola’, see also John A. Scott, ‘Beatrice’s Reproaches in Eden: Which “School” Had Dante Followed?’, Dante Studies, 109 (1991), 1–23.

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positions, which led to the belief  that human reason was in itself suf ficient to perceive the truth of  the universe]? As far as I have been able to ascertain, definitive evidence in support of such assertions is not available either in the Commedia in general or in the close of  Purgatorio in particular.

Contra fidem Yet, the fact that the Commedia provides limited insight into the ‘school’, and even less into Dante’s intellectual interests before he began to write the poem, does not mean that his masterpiece cannot contribute to elucidating the thorny question of  the poet’s (un)orthodoxy. It is a commonplace of a substantial part of modern Dante scholarship to depict the Convivio and the Commedia as works in ideological opposition: the former teetering on the brink of a dangerous irreligious rationalism; the latter returning triumphantly to Christian intellectual and spiritual order – to orthodoxy, in other words. Regardless of what one might think about the nature of  the relationship between the ‘almost commentary’ and the ‘sacred poem’ (Par., XXIII. 62 and XXV. 1), the idea that, in the Commedia, all is approved doctrinal harmony is, in fact, far from straightforward. The fourteenthcentury commentators of  the poem (never mind the learned Dominicans in Trecento Bologna and Florence), who were normally more sensitive than we are today to what might and might not be problematic in Christian terms, would have had little doubt how to answer if questioned about the Commedia’s ties to accepted religious belief. They would have acknowledged – almost certainly with a ready explanation to hand – that not everything in the poem, at first sight at least, was ‘secondo […] vera teologia’.20 The reason I can confidently make such a bold assumption is the evidence of 

20 L’Ottimo Commento della ‘Divina Commedia.’ Testo inedito d’un contemporaneo di Dante citato dagli Accademici della Crusca, ed. by Alessandro Torri, 3 vols (Pisa: Capurro, 1827–29), I (1827), 251.

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the commentators’ own words.21 Graziolo Bambaglioli was actually quite blunt about the matter, expressing an unequivocal judgement concerning Dante’s startling revelation that it is possible for souls to be cast down to Tolomea while they are still alive, their bodies remaining on earth in the thrall of a devil and functioning as if nothing awry has happened (Inf., XXXIII. 124–32). Such a claim, Graziolo asserts, is untrue in terms both of natural science and of  Christian faith.22 As we have already noted, deprived of  the anima intellectiva, a person ceases to be a living human being; and Bambaglioli too stresses this commonplace fact.23 Furthermore, as the poet would very soon establish in the opening cantos of  Purgatorio, it is a fundamental Catholic tenet that, as long as we have a single breath left in our bodies, repentance, and hence salvation, both remain a concrete possibility. To suggest otherwise was (and continues to be) ‘contra […] fidem’. There is much that at first sight is troubling, whether narratively or ideologically, about frate Alberigo’s ‘unfeasible’ existence across two worlds – and I shall return quite soon to some of  these complications.24 For the present, however, I want to focus on something that might come as a surprise to those modern scholars who anachronistically assume that, in the 21

On the ways in which the fourteenth-century commentators dealt with ideological dif ficulties posed by the Commedia, see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Chiosar con altro testo’. Leggere Dante nel Trecento (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2001), pp. 23–31; Simon Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 48–49; Robert Wilson, ‘“Quandoque bonus dormitat Dantes”? The Treatment of  Dante’s Errors in the “Trecento” Commentaries’, Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana, 29–30 (2007), 141–56, and ‘Allegory as Avoidance in Dante’s Early Commentators: “bella menzogna” to “roza corteccia”’, in Critical Discourse in the Making: The Dante Commentary Tradition, ed. by Paola Nasti and Claudia Rossignoli (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, forthcoming). 22 ‘Sed quamvis hec ita scripta sint, tamen simpliciter non sunt vera, quia falsum est, et contra naturam et fidem’: Graziolo Bambaglioli, Commento all’ ‘Inferno’ di Dante, ed. by Luca Carlo Rossi (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1998), p. 212. 23 ‘Quod anima separata a corpore corpus aliqualiter gubernetur et vivat: hec est ratio quia, cum anima regulatrix et motrix et vivificativa ac perfectio totius corporis, sequitur quod, ipsa descedente et recedente de corpore, corpus moveri et vivificari non possit; et hoc est quod dicit testus’ (p. 212). 24 See the next subsection ‘Disgiunto’.

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Middle Ages, whatever could be deemed nonconformist was automatically problematic: an inevitable and glaring challenge to authority that would have been aggressively countered, and which would have inexorably led to the proponent of  the doctrinal eccentricity (and any apologist) being condemned as a heretic.25 The reality on the ground, however, was rather more complicated, pliant and, yes, forgiving. Although he recognized the unorthodoxy of  Dante’s ‘living dead’, at the same time, Graziolo had no dif ficulty or concern about putting forward an ideologically acceptable explanation for the scripta non vera.26 Dante, the commentator explains, 25

Such a view is reductive not just on account of its sweeping nature but also because its proponents normally fail to explain what they – never mind dif ferent communities during the course of  the Middle Ages – might mean by ‘unorthodox’; who and what institutions had the power to censure and how such acts of denunciation might formally be expressed and executed; and whether all social and professional groups were deemed to have the same relationship to nonconformity. What follows touches on some of  these key issues; see in particular the subsection ‘Eresïarche and fines’. 26 ‘Hec siquidem sunt figurative ab auctore descripta; nam hoc nichil aliud significat vel figurat nisi quod tanta est gravitas prodicionis et proditoris, quod statim ex peccati pondere pena sequitur et sequi deberet auctorem suum’: Bambaglioli, p. 212. It was well established in medieval culture that creative writers enjoyed a considerable degree of artistic and imaginative licence, especially as the substantial meaning of  their writings was not found at the literal level but ‘integumentally’. Guido da Pisa is very clear on this point from the very start of  his commentary: ‘Ubi est notandum quod Virgilius in hoc loco tenet figuram et similitudinem rationis humane, qua mediante autor penas peccatis adaptat. Unde si in aliquo loco vel passu videatur contra catholicam fidem loqui, non miretur aliquis, quia secundum rationem humanam poetice pertractando dirigit vias suas. Et ego, simili modo exponens et glosans, non nisi itinera sua sequar. Quia ubi loquitur poetice, exponam poetice […]. Quia si in ista Comedia esset aliquod hereticum, quod per poesiam seu aliam viam sustineri non posset, non intendo illud tale defendere vel fovere, immo potius, viso vero, totis conatibus impugnare. Rogo te autem, o lector, ut autorem non iudices sive culpes, si tibi videatur quod ipse autor in aliquo loco vel passu contra catholicam fidem agat, quia poetice loquitur et fictive’: Guido da Pisa, Expositiones et Glose super Comediam Dantis, ed. by Vincenzo Ciof fari (Albany: State University of  New York Press, 1974), pp. 30–31. On the Trecento commentators’ allegorization of  the Commedia’s problematic passages, see Wilson, ‘Allegory’, an important study which usefully historicizes the practice of allegorical ‘avoidance’.

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is not speaking literally but allegorically (figurative and figurare): his aim is to underscore both the seriousness of  the sin of  treachery and its resulting appropriately harsh punishment. The poet’s allegorizing solution is, thus, self-evidently, an expression of religious propriety. In any case, earlier in his commentary, Bambaglioli had already dealt with another case of  heterodoxy by appealing to the dif ference between the Commedia’s literal and allegorical senses. In the wood of  the suicides, Pier delle Vigne reveals that, at the Last Judgement, ‘Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, / ma non però ch’alcuna sen rivesta’ (Inf., XIII. 103–04) [Like other souls, we shall seek out the f lesh that we have left, but none of us shall wear it], a disconcerting admission that runs counter to the key doctrine of  the resurrection of  the f lesh, according to which everyone’s body and soul will be reunited for eternity. In this instance, the commentator discussed the poet’s highly problematic claim not just in terms of allegory, but also, and more significantly, by explicitly legitimating it in terms of mainstream belief, before concluding that Dante was a ‘faithful Catholic’ who accepted the Church’s teachings (subsequently, in Inferno XXXIII, having previously established the fact of  the poet’s orthodoxy in canto XIII, Graziolo had not felt the need to repeat himself on these matters).27 At the same time, the resurrection of the body was a matter of considerable doctrinal significance. Indeed, Augustine had remarked that no article of the Christian faith had received more contradiction.28 Nonetheless, there 27 ‘Sed quamvis hec verba sic sint ab auctore descripta, nichilominus teneo quod aliud scriptum fuerit et alia fuerit auctoris intenctio: Scriptura siquidem sic rigide sic singulariter et vituperose punit et ponit de hiis qui, velud desperate cecitatis filii, perdiderunt sponte se ipsos ad terrorem et instructionem mortalium, ut sibi precaveant ab huiusmodi perdictione inposterum, per quam inremediabiliter et preter spem alicuius misericordie Deus graviori of fensione of fenditur: nam nullum est gravedinis tante delictum cuius divina misericordia misereri non possit, excepto desperationis delicto que sola mederi nequit. Hoc est quod probat et dicit; credo autem auctorem prefatum, tamquam fidelem captolicum et omni prudentia et scientia clarum, suo tenuisse iudicio quod Ecclesia santa tenet videlicet’: Bambaglioli, p. 106. 28 ‘In nulla ergo re tam vehementer, tam pertinaciter, tam obnixe et contentiose contradicitur fidei christianae, sicut de carnis resurrectione’: Enarr. In Psalmos LXXXVIII (2). 5.

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is no escaping the fact that Dante had decided that it was acceptable and appropriate for him to ‘contradict Christian faith’ on precisely this point, of fering a description of the ultimate eternal condition of the suicides that was undeniably heretical.29 In his own commentary, unlike his ‘friend’, the Ottimo had avoided any mention of heresy, glossing Inferno XIII. 103–05 as a well known universal truth.30 The logic of the Ottimo’s approach is not dif ficult to fathom: by presenting these lines as quintessentially orthodox – ‘secondo la verità, e vera teologia, e vera filosofia’ [according to truth, and true theology, and true philosophy], a case of normalizing overkill if ever there was one –, he hoped to camouf lage their deviance. His ‘friend’, however, must have been troubled by his source’s interpretive tactic. In his commentary, he openly stated that the ‘letter’ of Inferno XIII. 103–05 was heretical, but, as Graziolo had similarly noted, the literal sense should not be taken as a statement of the ‘author’s intention’. Furthermore, the anonymous commentator makes clear that others too think as he does. He thus points out 29

‘Or se l’auctore sentisse come la lettera dice non v’è dubio che farebbe heresia però che col corpo come ora siamo sia ciascuna anima al Judicio’: L’ultima forma dell’Ottimo commento. Chiose sopra la Comedia di Dante Alleghieri fiorentino tracte da diversi ghiosatori. Inferno, ed. by Claudia Di Fonzo (Ravenna: Longo, 2008), p. 151. It is most unlikely that what Di Fonzo terms the ‘last version’ of the Ottimo’s commentary was actually written by the commentator of  that soubriquet. Contrary to a view long held by scholars, it has recently been established that the philological and textual evidence points to a dif ferent exegete for this set of glosses. The anonymous commentator, however, did unquestionably base his own commentary on the Ottimo’s. Furthermore, both of  them almost certainly belonged to the same Florentine intellectual circle. Vittorio Celotto, ‘L’Ottimo commento al Paradiso. Studio della tradizione manoscritta e soluzioni editoriali’, Rivista di studi danteschi, 12 (2012), 63–134 (p. 67). 30 ‘Nelle predette parole è da notare due cose: l’una, che le parti d’alcuna cosa non hanno loro perfezioni se non sono insieme congiunte; e questo vegiamo e nelle cose artificiali, e nelle materiali. Onde le parti d’una cosa allora hanno compiuto essere, quando il fondamento con le parti, e col t[u]tto inseme sono congiunte; e se per esse[re] abbiamo alcuna parte, non l’a[bbiam]o in quanto parte, se non quando che ’l tutto si compone delle parti son congiunte. E imperò che l’uomo ha in sè due parti, secondo la verità, e vera teologia, e vera filosofia, cioè l’anima e il corpo; l’anima non ha suo propio essere se non è congiunta col propio corpo: del corpo sanza l’anima, è chiaro’: L’Ottimo Commento, I (1827), 250–51.

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that the Commedia’s readers had proposed a variety of doctrinally acceptable explanations for Dante’s eccentric treatment of the suicides, thereby dismissing any suggestion that the poet may have harboured heretical intentions.31 It is striking that the Ottimo’s ‘friend’ deemed it necessary to involve the entire community of  Dante’s contemporary readers in legitimating the poet’s unconventional treatment of  the resurrection of  the body. Indeed, he was careful to establish that even theologians concurred that Dante was not a heretic; and first among these, tellingly, was an ‘inquisitor of  heretical peverseness’, Accursio Bonfantini,32 best known for his role in the condemnation of  Cecco d’Ascoli for heresy.33 This would strongly indicate that, in the first half of  the Trecento, the passage from Inferno XIII was generally considered to be problematic, though not a mark of its author’s nonconformism. To put it simply, lines 103–05 could be orthodoxly defended and explicated, so that there could be no question that

31

32

33

‘Ma elli poetiza et argumentando come si fa in questi nostre materiale cose. Et alli dipintori et alli poeti è attribuita cotale balia. Altri dicono che ciò fece per terrore dare a’ mortali che non venissoro a tale desperatione. Udendo lo straccio ch’era facto de l’anime perse et poi del corpo per sé. Alcuno theologo dice che l’auctore essendo fornito de theologia et di phylosophia parloe con altro intendimento cioè che queste anime avranno doppia pena doppo la resurrectione universale, nella quale avranno li corpi loro cioè la pena positiva che ora sostegnono et la pena privativa di vedere li corpi suoi allato a sé col quale desiderano de riunirse. Et questo desiderio accrescerae le pene però che i lloro desiderio sia loro defraudato’: L’ultima forma dell’Ottimo commento, p. 151. Di Fonzo notes, ‘La chiosa relativa alla doppia pena dei suicidi “positiva” e “privativa” è la chiosa attribuita espressamente ad Accursio Bonfantini nel codice Magliabechiano Conventi Soppressi I V 8 a c. 130. Nella nostra redazione del commento il frate francescano inquisitore hereticae pravitatis in Toscana dal 1326 al 1329 è designato genericamente con l’epiteto di “alcuno teologo”. E se il commento Magliabechiano ad locum parla di “Expositione sopra questo caso di frate Accorso Bonfantini” la nostra redazione usa la locuzione: “come dice alcuno teologo” raf forzando l’ipotesi del Mehus circa un ciclo di letture e commenti alla Commedia af fidate al frate’ (p. 151); the reference is to Vita Ambrosii Traversarii, ed. by Lorenzo Mehus (Florence: ex typographio Caesareo, 1759; reprinted Bolgna: Forni, 1968), pp. 137, 182, 340. See Eugenio Ragni, ‘Bonfantini, Accursio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–), XII (1970), 10–11.

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Dante’s and the Commedia’s ‘opinion was plainly the same as that held by the Church’. The recourse to allegoresis and to a writer’s real rather than apparent intentio were standard devices that medieval intellectuals regularly used when attempting to normalize the ideologically challenging. In this regard, it is worth remembering that it was only the younger Dominicans, namely those who had not yet learned how to interpret properly, that were prevented from reading Dante’s poem. Religiously motivated attacks against the Commedia were in fact rare.34 Guido Vernani’s uncompromising, albeit clichéd, assault on the poem was very much an exception, and one of course whose real target was the Monarchia: ‘Inter alia vero talia sua [the devil’s] vasa quidam fuit multa fantastice poetizans et sophista verbosus, verbis exterioribus in eloquentia multis gratus, qui suis poeticis fantasmatibus et figmentis, iuxta verbum philosophie Boetium consolantis, scenicas metriculas adducendo, non solum egros animos, sed etiam studiosos dulcibus sirenarum cantibus conducit fraudulenter ad interitum salutifere veritatis’.35 In the Trecento, the poem was much more likely to be judged a repository, rather than a ‘destroyer’, of  ‘Catholic truth’: ‘Fu adunque il nostro poeta, sì come gli altri poeti sono, nasconditore, come si vede, di così cara gioia, come è la catolica verità, sotto la volgare corteccia del suo poema’ [we can clearly see, then, that our poet, like other poets, concealed the precious jewel that is Catholic truth beneath the rough bark of  his poem].36 Modern and medieval readers of  the Commedia thus ultimately concur as regards its 34

See Roberto Antonelli, ‘L’ordine domenicano e la letteratura nell’Italia pretridentina’, in Letteratura italiana. I. Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. by Alberto A. Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 681–728 (p. 714); Giorgio Padoan, ‘Il Boccaccio “fedele” di Dante’, in his Il Boccaccio, le Muse, il Parnaso e l’Arno (Florence: Olschki, 1982), pp. 229–46 (pp. 236–37); Maria Picchio Simonelli, ‘L’inquisizione e Dante: alcune osservazioni’, Dante Studies, 118 (2000), 303–21. 35 Guido Vernani, De reprobatione Monarchiae, in Nevio Matteini, Il più antico oppositore politico di Dante: Guido Vernani da Rimini: Testo critico del ‘De reprobatione Monarchiae’ (Padua: CEDAM, 1958), p. 93. See also Anthony K. Cassell, The ‘Monarchia’ Controversy (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of  America Press, 2004); Simonelli, ‘L’inquisizione’. 36 Giovanni Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia, ed. by Giorgio Padoan, 2 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1965), I (1965), 57; trans. Papio, p. 82.

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orthodoxy. Yet, the former arrive at this position largely uncritically; the latter thanks to a keen corrective and standardizing eye. Neither, it seems to me, does justice to the letter of  the text. The problem remains: is the Commedia, even if only occasionally, heterodox? And if it is, what might the implications be for both poet and poem?

Disgiunto Although the Commedia’s fourteenth-century readers were keen to recognize its religious conformity and, faced with the outwardly heretical, were skilled at deftly transforming the heterodox into the orthodox, when the poet wrote his masterpiece, he must have known that there were no guarantees that his future readers would react to his doctrinal manipulations in the wary, though largely accepting way that the majority of  them actually did in the Trecento, and as they have essentially continued to do ever since. Dante, it thus seems, was taking a serious risk – one that could have fatally damaged the ideological, cultural and religious foundations underpinning ‘’l poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra’ (Par., XXV. 1–2) [this sacred poem, touched by both heaven and earth]. In the Middle Ages, a heretic was someone who, despite being cognizant of definitive evidence to the contrary, irrationally persisted in propagating falsehoods regarding the tenets of  the faith.37 A heretic could thus neither 37

See Annelise Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte, 3 vols (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1964–77), II (1967), 59–81. On heresy in the Middle Ages, see Jennifer Kolpacof f  Deane, A History of  Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011); Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 1995); Malcolm D. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Raoul Manselli, Studi sull’eresie del secolo XIII, 2nd edn (Rome: Istituto storico per il Medio Evo, 1975); Albert Michel, ‘Hérésie. Hérétique’, in Dict. Th. Cath., VI (1935), 2208–57; Walter

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be ‘authoritative’, namely worthy of  trust, and hence of imitation, nor a source of  ‘scientific’ and ethical truths, never mind a scriba Dei, providentially ordained to guide errant humanity back to the ‘diritta via’ (Inf., I. 3) [straight path].38 Instead of serving as a counter to ‘il mondo che mal vive’ (Purg., XXXII. 103) [the world which lives badly], a heretical Commedia would have made a dire situation catastrophic, especially as it would have insinuated pernicious unorthodoxies among undoubted af firmations of obedient piety. Nearly as problematically, the ‘sickness’39 of  heresy would have fatally devastated the poem’s vital claim to of fer a historically true account of a divinely sanctioned otherworldly journey. As I said, Dante was taking a serious risk. To put it simply, why might – and I stress ‘might’, since what follows is necessarily a hypothesis – why might, I repeat, the poet have considered it profitable and acceptable to introduce matters heretical into his ‘sacrato poema’ (Par., XXIII. 62)? The question is ominously weighty; and it is surprising that Dantists have not posed it more regularly, and thus, as a consequence, have not endeavoured to deal with its unnervingly troublesome Leggett Wakefield and Austin Patterson Evans, Heresies of  the High Middle Ages (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969); The Concept of  Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–13th C.), ed. by Willem Lourdaux and Daniel Verhelst (Leuven: University Press and The Hague: Nijhof f, 1976); Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ed. by Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1980). For the specifically Italian context see Claudio Giunta, ‘Letteratura ed eresia nel Duecento italiano: il caso di Matteo Paterino’, Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, 3 (2000), 9–97; Carol Lansing, Power and Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Lorenzo Paolini, ‘Italian Catharism and Written Culture’, in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, ed. by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 83–103; Augustine Thompson, Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Italy: The Great Devotion of 1233 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 38 On Dante’s self-construction as an auctoritas and a scriba Dei, see Albert R. Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See also Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Sole nuovo, luce nuova’: Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996). 39 See Robert Ian Moore, ‘Heresy as a Disease’, in Lourdaux and Verhelst, Concept, pp. 1–12.

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implications, preferring instead to seek out and recognize unorthodoxies and doctrinal complications in the poet’s oeuvre where none may necessarily exist. This last issue I leave for later; for the present, the ‘stench’ of  heresy in the Commedia. It is noteworthy that both instances of apparent heterodoxy in the Inferno should involve the soul, and more specifically the relationship between the soul and the body. As is well known, when Dante composed the first canticle, the problem of the soul, in the wake of competing interpretations of  Aristotle’s De anima III. 5, continued to be a key area of dispute among intellectuals.40 In particular, the immortality of  the individual soul had been called into doubt by those who accepted Averroes’ controversial thesis regarding the possible intellect – an interpretation that Dante, loyal to standard Christian belief, dismissed as incorrect:     Ma come d’animal divegna fante, non vedi tu ancor: quest’è tal punto, che più savio di te fé già errante,     sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto da l’anima il possibile intelletto, perché da lui non vide organo assunto. (Purg., XXV. 61–66) [But how the animal becomes a speaking being, you’ve not yet seen; this point’s so hard, it led one wiser than you are to err in separating from the possible intellect the soul, since he could see no organ for the mind – so did he teach.]

Already in the Convivio, Dante had energetically insisted that no reputable thinker had denied the eternity of  the individual soul: ‘Dico che intra tutte le bestialitadi quella è stoltissima, vilissima e dannosissima, chi crede dopo questa vita non essere altra vita; però che, se noi rivolgiamo tutte le scritture, sì de’ filosofi come delli altri savi scrittori, tutti concordano in questo, che in noi sia parte alcuna perpetuale’ (II. viii. 8) [I declare that of all brutish opinions none is more stupid, more base or more pernicious than the belief  that there is no other life after this. For if we go through the whole 40 See Alain de Libera, ‘Introduction’, in Thomas d’Aquin, Contre Averroès, ed. by Alain de Libera (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), pp. 9–73.

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corpus of writings produced either by philosophers or by others endowed with wisdom, we find that all agree on this: there is in us something that endures for ever].41 To claim otherwise, as far as Dante was concerned, was to lapse into heresy. Indeed, although he conventionally acknowledged that there were many heresies – ‘Qui son li eresïarche / con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta’ (Inf., IX. 127–28) [Here are arch-heretics and those who followed them, from every sect] –, one group of  heretics more than any other encapsulated for him doctrinal deviance: those, of course, who ‘l’anima col corpo morta fanno’ (Inf., X. 15) [say the soul dies with the body]. Given his personal stern inf lexibility regarding the immortality of  the soul and his lucid awareness of  the intellectual and fideistic tangles in which the soul had become enmeshed, it makes Dante’s decision to embroil the soul in problematic reworkings of significant issues of dogma especially perplexing. And yet, I believe, it was precisely on account of  his customary orthodox intransigence regarding questions relating to the soul that Dante probably felt that, for reasons of didactic and dramatic ef ficacy, he could exceptionally take some carefully circumscribed doctrinal liberties. In the sixth circle of  Hell, Virgil, an unlikely yet striking model of  Catholic orthodoxy in contrast to Epicurus and ‘tutti suoi seguaci’ (Inf., X. 14) [all his followers], many of whom (it will soon become apparent) were Christians, explains that the ‘sepulchres’ (7) in which the heretics are imprisoned     […] [t]utti saran serrati quando di Iosafàt qui torneranno coi corpi che là su hanno lasciati (Inf., X. 10–12) [They’ll all be shuttered up when they return here from Jehosaphat together with the f lesh they left above.]

41 Dante then goes on to substantiate his point and begins by stating that ‘E questo massimamente pare volere Aristotile in quello dell’Anima; questo pare volere massimamente ciascuno Stoico’ (II. 8. 9). It is indicative, in light of contemporary controversies, that his first reference should be to Aristotle and the De anima, thereby af firming that he rejected the views of  those who in any way drew on the Greek philosopher to refute personal immortality.

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Dante thus strategically rebuts in advance the deplorable view that the ‘soul dies with the body’ (15); and, to emphasize the absurdity of  the error, he returns to the Last Judgment later in the same canto (103–08). Lines 10–12 are actually the second time in the canticle that the poet had mentioned the resurrection of  the body. Previously, on seeing Ciacco collapse back into the infernal mud, Virgil had declared:     […] Più non si desta di qua dal suon de l’angelica tromba, quando verrà la nimica podesta:     ciascun rivederà la trista tomba, ripiglierà sua carne e sua figura, udirà quel ch’in etterno rimbomba (Inf., VI. 94–99) [He’ll rise no more until the blast of  the angelic trumpet upon the coming of  the hostile judge: each one shall see his sorry tomb again and once again take on his f lesh and form, and hear what shall resound eternally];

and Dante restated his belief in the reunion of  body and soul in each of  the next two cantiche (Purg., I. 75; XXX. 13–15; Par., XIV. 43–66; XXV. 91–93 and 124–26; and see also Par., XXX. 129). The resurrection of  the f lesh is one of  the great themes of  the Commedia,42 which complements the poem’s emphasis on the ‘physical’ appearance of  the souls that culminates in the principle of  the airy body. There is thus not the slightest doubt about Dante’s deepfelt orthodoxy as regards the final restoration of  the body; although it is equally likely that one reason why he kept underscoring his faith in the miraculum was his keen awareness that, if read superficially and unsympathetically, the doctrinal breach he had seemingly committed in Inferno XIII could potentially have dangerous consequences both for him and for his poem. The inadequacy of my earlier frame of reference for assessing Inferno XIII. 103–05 (and XXXIII. 124–32) has been exposed.

42 See Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, ‘“Le bianche stole”: il tema della resurrezione nel Paradiso’, in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. by Giovanni Barblan (Florence: Olschki, 1986), pp. 249–71. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of  the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

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Rather than ask why Dante might have introduced the heretical into the Commedia, the question I ought to have asked is the extent to which the suicides’ uniquely divided condition after the end of  time can actually be considered an authentic challenge to orthodoxy. Let us reconsider what Dante reveals will happen to the suicides at the Second Coming. First and foremost, he conventionally states that, like everyone else, the suicides will be judged for a second time and will have their bodies restored to them (‘Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie’, 103) [Like other souls, we shall seek out the flesh that we have left]. No doctrinal problems so far. At the same time, and problematically, what the suicides will not be permitted to do is ‘reclothe’ (rivestire, 104) – the metaphor is technical43 – themselves with their resurrected bodies, ‘ché non è giusto aver ciò ch’om si toglie’ (105) [it is not right for any man to have what he himself  has cast aside]. Yet, it is anything but straightforward to regard the separation of  body and soul as a challenge to revealed truth given that their being ‘disgiunto’ is ‘just’, the avowal, in fact, of another and higher mystery, the extraordinary and largely incomprehensible, as far as we humans are concerned, operation of  God’s justice:     Però ne la giustizia sempiterna la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna (Par., XIX. 58–60) [therefore the vision that your world receives can penetrate into Eternal Justice no more than eye can penetrate the sea].

The ‘alcuno theologo’ cited by the Ottimo, like the good orthodox thinker that he was, had got it right when he referred to the appropriateness of  the suicides’ ‘double punishment’. Equally, as a dutiful scriba Dei, Dante had accurately reported what he had seen and learned – the astonishing revelation, lest we forget, is Pier’s not his –, even when his account might strain belief: ‘Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, / tutta tua visïon fa manifesta’ (Par., XVII. 127–28) [Nevertheless, all falsehood set aside,

43 See, for instance, 1 Cor. 15. 53–54.

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let all that you have seen be manifest]. Far from undermining his and the Commedia’s auctoritas and orthodoxy, the exceptionality and fitting coherence of  the suicides’ ultimate punishment are guarantors of  truth. They highlight and af firm the measured uniqueness of  God’s actions, whose unf linching fairness is momentously evident throughout Hell. Almost paradoxically, the suicides’ ‘disjointed’ state allows Dante to assert his orthodoxy by upholding the resurrection of  the f lesh and extolling the perfect execution of divine justice. The peculiar condition of  the inhabitants of  Tolomea too can be orthodoxly resolved in light both of divine justice and of accepted belief. In Paradiso XX, Dante recounts the famous story of  Trajan’s miraculous revivification (which, among many sources, is also described in Novellino 69):     Ché l’una de lo ’nferno, u’ non si riede già mai a buon voler, tornò a l’ossa; e ciò di viva spene fu mercede. (106–08, but see the whole account as far as line 117) [One, from Hell, where there is no returning to right will, returned to his own bones, as the reward bestowed upon a living hope].

The idea that the dead could be restored fully to life was deeply engrained in Christian culture, with memorable instances documented in the Old and New Testaments – it is enough to think of  Elias raising the widow of  Sarephta’s son (3 Kings 17. 17–24) and Jesus reviving Lazarus ( John 11. 1–46)44 – as well as in various subsequent exemplary accounts, normally lives of saints, in which the later miracles closely follow the norms established in the Bible.45 Academic theologians too recognized the occurrence and divine legitimacy of such extraordinary events.46

44 See also 4 Kings 4. 32–37; Mark 5. 41–42; Luke 7. 14–15; Acts 9. 40–42. 45 See, for instance, Eugippius, Vita sancti Seuerini 6; Gregory the Great, Dialogi I. 2. 5–6; 10. 18; 12. 2; II. 32. 3; III. 17. 3–4; 33. 1; Sulpicius Severus, Vita sancti Martini 7 and 8, and Dialogi II. 4. 46 ‘Ad quintum dicendum, quod idem est de Trajano qui forte post quingentos annos suscitatus est, et de aliis qui post unum diem suscitati sunt; de omnibus enim dicendum est, quod non finaliter damnati erant: praesciebat enim Deus eos sanctorum

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The miraculous raising of  the dead, as is clear from Trajan’s experience, entails the restoration of  the departed soul to the body, so that the revived person is once again fully human and able to participate for a second time in the process of salvation:     L’anima glorïosa onde si parla, tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco, credette in lui che potëa aiutarla;     e credendo s’accese in tanto foco di vero amor, ch’a la morte seconda fu degna di venire a questo gioco (Par., XX. 112–17). [Returning brief ly to the f lesh, that soul in glory – he of whom I speak – believed in Him whose power could help him and, believing, was kindled to such fire of  true love that, when he died a second death, he was worthy to join in this festivity]

However, not all the dead who, according to medieval lore,47 returned among the living were so fortunate. Most were simply bodies in the thrall precibus a poenis liberandos, et vitae restituendos; et sic ex liberalitate bonitatis suae eis veniam contulit, quamvis aeternam poenam meruissent. Non enim est simile de ipso in quem solum peccatur, et de alio judice. Unde et Deus libere remittere potest sine ullius of fensa; non alius judex qui punire habet culpam in alium, vel in rempublicam, vel in Deum commissam; unde et poenam licite remittere non potest’: Scriptum super Sententiis I. 43. 2. 2. 5; and compare ‘Ad quintum dicendum quod de facto Traiani in hoc modo potest probabiliter aestimari: quod precibus beati Gregorii ad vitam fuerit revocatus, et ita gratiam consecutus sit, per quam remissionem peccatorum habuit, et per consequens immunitatem a poena; sicut etiam apparet in omnibus illis qui fuerunt miraculose a mortuis suscitati, quorum plures constat idololatras et damnatos fuisse. De omnibus enim similiter dici oportet quod non erant in inferno finaliter deputati, sed secundum praesentem iustitiam propriorum meritorum. Secundum autem superiores causas, quibus praevidebantur ad vitam revocandi, erat aliter de eis disponendum’ (Aquinas, ST Suppl. III. 71. 5). 47 The belief in the ‘living dead’ was widespread in the Middle Ages. In addition, such beings were deemed to be anything but uncommon; see Nancy Caciola, ‘Wraiths, Revenants, and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, Past and Present: A Journal of  Historical Studies, 152 (1996), 3–45, ‘Spirits Seeking Bodies: Death, Possession, and Communal Memory in the Middle Ages’, in The Place of  the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall

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of an evil spirit, namely possessed corpses, or, more regularly, corpses that, despite being separated from their souls, had marvellously returned to life.48 The revenants were not infrequently evildoers in life. The dwellers of  Dante’s Tolomea establish suggestive links with the first two groups of resuscitated dead. They most obviously recall the demonically possessed: ‘il corpo suo l’è tolto / da un demonio, che poscia il governa’ (Inf., XXXIII. 130–31) [then a demon takes its body away and keeps that body in his power], even if  the takeover occurs at quite dif ferent points in their respective life-death cycles.49 Furthermore, in sharp contrast to the resurrected, they are sentient soulless bodies; yet, like the resurrected, they marvellously die twice: once when ‘tosto che l’anima trade / […] il corpo suo l’è tolto’ (129–30) [as soon as any soul becomes a traitor … its body is taken], and then, for a second time, when ‘’l tempo suo tutto sia vòlto’ (132) [its years have run their course completely]. Both the traitors and the resurrected

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 66–86, and Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). See also Jane Gilbert, Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 48 ‘Indeed, many tales of  the undead explicitly reject the demonic interpretation. The demonic-possession school of thought about revenants, as best represented by Thomas of  Cantimpré and the hagiographer of  Ida of  Louvain, was distinctly a minority viewpoint. Texts such as chronicles and histories, which lack the same didactic agenda as exempla collections or hagiographies, universally reject or ignore the possibility of demonic animation in regard to revenants. For these more historical authors, the transgression involved in a corpse coming back to life is one between life and death, rather than between f lesh and unclean spirit. For example, several entries in Walter Map’s twelfth-century English chronicle De nugis curialium tell of  the predations of  living, not possessed, corpses. The chronicler’s tone gives these tales in particular an air of immediacy: for Walter and his contemporaries, these were strange, but real events’ (Caciola, ‘Wraiths’, p. 19). 49 The traitors also recall another widespread tradition: that of  the living person taken over by a demon, of which there are many examples especially in the New Testament; see, for instance, Matthew 8. 28–34; 17. 18; Mark 1. 23–28; 5. 1–17; Luke 4. 35–36. As regards these unfortunates, there is no suggestion that their souls were cast down to Hell. In fact, once the evil spirit has been exorcized, their lives return to normal and salvation once more becomes an option.

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are exempla of  God’s total power over life and death.50 At the same time, frate Alberigo and his companions also grotesquely parody the divine life-restoring miracle – yet another dramatic reversal of  the holy that is a constant feature of  Dante’s representation of  Hell.51 In particular, although they are notionally alive, salvation is no longer an option for those who betrayed their guests. Their bodies may function normally, but, spiritually, sin has killed them. As Dante makes memorably clear, they have lost their souls and ‘inside them is death’. In any case, the poet had an authoritative precedent for his invention. The idea that one might be dead while still living, metaphorically at least, was well established in Christian thought: ‘et intellegamus detestabiliores mortes, omnis qui peccat moritur. Sed mortem carnis omnis homo timet, mortem animae pauci. […] Delectavit quod malum est, consensisti, peccasti; consensio illa occidit te: sed intus est mors’ [if we understand that more horrifying kind of death, every one who sins dies. But every man is afraid of  the death of  the f lesh; few, of  the death of  the soul … You have felt delight in what is evil, you have assented to its commission, you have sinned; that assent has slain you: but the death is internal].52 Although, ultimately, the precise condition of  Dante’s traitors is unprecedented, it is in fact a careful amalgam of well established Scriptural,

50 ‘Ille suscitavit hominem, qui fecit hominem; ipse enim est Unicus Patris, per quem, sicut nostis, facta sunt omnia. Si ergo per illum facta sunt omnia, quid mirum est si resurrexit unus per illum, cum tot quotidie nascantur per illum? Plus est homines creare quam resuscitare. Dignatus est tamen et creare et resuscitare; creare omnes, resuscitare quosdam’: Augustine, In Evang. Ioannis XXXXIX. 1. See also 1 Samuel 2. 6; Psalms 139. 12–16. 51 Dante’s Hell is full of perverted forms of  the divine, disturbing instances of sin’s deviant ef fects; see in particular Anthony K. Cassell, Dante’s Fearful Art of  Justice (Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 1984). 52 Augustine, In Evang. Ioannis XXXXIX. 2–3; see also paragraph 15 in the same Tractate. See too Wisdom 1. 12–13; 2. 24; Romans 5. 12; 7. 13. For Pietro Alighieri’s recourse to the idea of  the ‘two deaths’ to explain the divided condition of  frate Alberigo, see Luca Fiorentini, ‘Per il lessico esegetico di Pietro Alighieri e Benvenuto da Imola (in rapporto all’Epistola a Cangrande e ad altre fonti)’, Bollettino di italianistica, 7:2 (2010), 120–55 (pp. 141–48).

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theological, exemplary and popular traditions, which the poet subtlely tweaked – a textbook example of  his syncretism.53 The poet actualized the doctrinally metaphorical on the basis of documented instances of demonic possession and of  the dead returning to life as a result of a variety of exceptional interventions whether divine or satanic.54 To put it somewhat dif ferently, by textually and culturally contextualizing the inhabitants of Tolomea, the unorthodoxy of  Dante’s view is (largely) dispelled.55 In a text which persistently asserts and depicts the fundamental possibility of redemption, those who betrayed their guests, like the suicides, are the exception that proves the rule, while highlighting, once again, the enigma of divine judgment and the authenticity of  the Commedia’s lictera.56 In any case, as 53

In addition, Dante is careful to leave a degree of uncertainty regarding the state in which the traitors find themselves; see Inf., XXXIII. 121–23 and 133–35. He also presents the arrival of  the soul in Hell before death as not af fecting all the inhabitants of  Tolomea (124–26). 54 Virgil’s strange tale of  his first journey to the pit of  Hell ‘per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda’ (Inf., IX. 27), ‘congiurato da quella Eritón cruda | che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui’ (23–24) also belongs to the tradition of  the living dead. Boccaccio is unusual in vehemently denying the possibility that the ‘corpi […] d’alcuni morti’ can be brought back to life; see Esposizioni I (1965), 475–76. 55 Dante’s decision to synthesize the metaphor of sin as death with the tradition of  the dead being returned to life was probably conditioned by their earlier integration in the exegesis of  the raising of  Lazarus, as is apparent from the passages that I have quoted from Augustine’s commentary to John 11. Interestingly, though unsurprisingly, in discussing Lazarus, the Bishop of  Hippo also addressed the resurrection of  the f lesh (‘Audisti enim quia Dominus Iesus mortuum suscitavit: suf ficit tibi ut scias quia si vellet, omnes mortuos suscitaret. Et hoc quidem sibi ad finem saeculi reservavit’, XXXXIX. 1, but see the whole paragraph). It is significant in helping us appreciate Dante’s treatment of  the suicides and the traitors against guests that the two groups are united as a result of  the fact that both have ties to the same eschatological traditions – traditions concerned with the relationship between life and death and between body and soul. As they say in Italy, Dante’s eccentrically orthodox presentation of  their punishments fa sistema, and that system is closely involved with God’s uniqueness. 56 The best discussion that I know of  the strange condition of  the traitors in Tolomea is Simon Gilson, ‘Medieval Magical Lore and Dante’s Commedia: Divination and Demonic Agency’, Dante Studies, 119 (2001), 27–66 (pp. 45–48). Although our

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the author of  the Supplementum to the third book of  Aquinas’ Summa theologica averred when discussing Trajan’s return to life: ‘quia alia sunt quae lege communi accidunt, et alia quea singulariter ex privilegio aliquibus conceduntur: sicut alii sunt humanarum limites rerum, alia divinarum signa virtutum, ut Augustinus dicit, in libro de Cura pro mortuis agenda [16]’ [because things happen dif ferently in accordance with the general law from that which is permitted in particular cases and by privilege. Even so the bounds of  human af fairs dif fer from those of  the miracles of  the Divine power as Augustine says in De Cura pro Mortuis Agenda].57 Part of  Dante’s responsibility in the Commedia was to of fer a sense of  God’s mystery and power – a mystery and power which at times appear to transcend, although without disturbing them, the very principles of  faith. Indeed, it was precisely because he was a scriba Dei that his poem, like Scripture, is able to provide a glimpse into divine mysteries.58 Furthermore, as was common knowledge in the Middle Ages, it was a fundamental attribute of  the Bible

57 58

analyses share a number of points of contact, especially as regards the poet’s willingness ‘in certain circumstances […] to invoke miraculous forms of divine intervention’ (p. 47), we dif fer substantially as regards the ideological and artistic implications of  the poet’s presentation. For Simon, the traitors’ punishment constitutes ‘one of  Dante’s most radically unorthodox and highly personal fabrications’ (p. 45), a mark that ‘Dante is not always a theologically orthodox poet’ (p. 48), while my emphasis, in keeping with the overarching argument in the present chapter, is to attempt to explain their contrapasso in as orthodox terms as possible. See also Arturo Graf, ‘Demonologia di Dante’, in Miti, legende e superstizioni del Medioevo, 2 vols (Turin: Loescher, 1892–93), II (1893), 77–139 (pp. 98–100). While the correlation between the suicides’ sin and their final punishment is self-evident, I am not at all clear why Dante should have inf licted the strange retribution on the traitors against guests that he did. The best explanation I have read is centred on Psalm 54; however, as Gilson admits, ‘the biblical passage is in itself [not] a wholly adequate precedent for the demonic action described by Dante’ (p. 47). ST Suppl. III. 71. 5. ‘Monumentum Christi est divina Scriptura, in qua divinitatis et humanitatis ejus mysteria densissima veluti quadam muniuntur petra’: John Scottus Eriugena, Homilia in Prologum Sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem, in PL CXXII, 284. See Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 2 vols (Paris: Aubier, 1959–64), English translation from which I cite: Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of  Scripture, 3 vols (Grand Rapids,

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to be characterized by what might appear to uninitiated eyes as conf licting positions.59 Naturally, no contradiction exists: ‘In his autem omnibus quae inspicienda ponere institui, quaecumque inter se videbuntur esse contraria, postea propositis quaestionibus exponenda atque solvenda sunt’.60 Rather it was the responsibility of  the exegete, illuminated by Christ, humbly to seek out and elucidate their harmony.61 Dante’s ‘sacred poem’, in this too, dutifully and accurately ‘imitates’ its divine model, so that, tellingly, not to say paradoxically, the closer it might seem to heterodoxy the nearer in fact it is to orthodoxy. The onus falls on us, its readers, to sort out the order and coherence of  the Commedia’s ‘divine’ message.62

Eresïarche and fines ‘È qui da credere che l’autore non ha qui fatte narrar queste parole a questo spirito [Pier delle Vigne], sì come ignorante degli articoli della nostra fede, per ciò che tutti esplicitamente gli seppe, sì come nel Paradiso MI: Eerdmans, 1998–2009), I (1998), 30, 32, 34, 63, 101; Jean Leclercq, The Love of  Learning and the Desire for God (London: SPCK, 1978), pp. 251–52. 59 ‘In Scripturis enim divinis quaedam inveniuntur tam diversa, ut sibi invicem videantur adversa’: Philip of  Harvengt, Epistola I. 1, in PL CCIII, 1. 60 Augustine, De Scriptura sacra Speculum, Preface. As the formula declared, matters which appeared contradictory were in fact diversa sed non adversa; see Henri de Lubac, ‘A propos de la formule Diversi, sed non adversi ’, in Mélanges Jules Lebreton, 2 vols [= Recherches de science religieuse, 39:2–4 (1951) and 40:1–2 (1952)], II (1952), 27–40; Hubert Silvestre, ‘Diversi, sed non adversi’, Revue de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 31 (1964), 124–32. 61 See de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 60, 79–89, 225–67. See also Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic and the Poetics of  Didacticism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 15–35. 62 ‘Sententia divina numquam absurda, numquam falsa esse potest, sed cum in sensu […] multa inveniantur contraria, sententia nullam admittit repugnantiam, semper congrua est, semper vera’: Hugh of  St Victor, Didascalicon, ed. by Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1939), VI. 11.

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manifestissimamente appare’ [One must not believe that the author has the spirit speak these words because he was ignorant of  the articles of our faith, for he knew them all explicitly, as is quite abundantly clear in the Paradiso].63 Despite the somewhat anxious hyperbole of  the two adverbs, Boccaccio is correct: Dante was an orthodox Catholic and the Commedia, like the Vita nova before it, is a work of  Catholic orthodoxy. The evidence is irresistible. Thus, the overall ideological tenor of  the poem, expressed most explicitly and fervently, if  far from exclusively, as Boccaccio recognized, in the final canticle, is one of profound and sincere religious conformity. It is enough to recall the pilgrim’s answers on Faith, Hope and Charity in the Heaven of  the Fixed Stars;64 or the regular af firmations regarding the primacy of  Scripture and the authority of  the great canonical figures of  the Church; or the equally frequent avowals of  the subordination of  the human to the divine. This does not mean, as we have just seen and as the Commedia’s earliest readers immediately recognized, that everything in it is tranquilly uncomplicated. Far from it. Nonetheless, and as we have also just noted, whatever might appear to go against established and approved doctrine ought not be assessed in itself, namely in isolation, but considered and, if possible, explained and legitimated in terms both of contemporary Christian culture and of  the poem’s dominant spiritual and intellectual creed. In particular, the relative status of any seemingly problematic element needs to be carefully judged so that it is not granted overblown significance. To do otherwise – and we ought to remember this when evaluating some of  Dante’s more overtly ‘scientific’ works65 – is, I suspect, to misrepresent the poet’s views.

63 Boccaccio, Esposizioni I (1965), 619; Boccaccio’s Expositions on Dante’s Comedy, trans. by Michael Papio (Toronto, Buf falo and London: University of  Toronto Press, 2009), p. 519. 64 ‘The theological examination the pilgrim takes in Paradiso 24–26 […] is […] a welltimed occasion for the poet to pass the test of orthodoxy, colors f lying’: Peter S. Hawkins, ‘Poema Sacro’, in Literature, Religion, and the Sacred, ed. by Dino S. Cervigni [= Annali d’Italianistica, 25 (2007)], 177–201 (pp. 177–78). 65 See the subsection ‘Invidïosi veri’ below.

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Of course, as I have discussed, there were excellent artistic and didactic reasons why Dante may have wanted at times to challenge his readers’ doctrinal expectations; and it is certain that he would have been aware of  the licence which creative writers were accorded. Yet, despite his well known inventiveness and independence, when it came to matters of belief, and I extend this claim to all his works, Dante was only rarely doctrinally quirky; and, when he was, contrary to Inferno XIII and XXXIII, he normally avoided touching on matters of  faith. Thus, his treatment of  Limbo, while undoubtedly personal, was in no way heterodox, never mind heretical. In the fourteenth century, the nature of  Limbo, and with it the ultimate fate of  the unbaptized, was not fixed as a tenet of  faith. Like much else in medieval Christianity, it was an area of intellectual investigation, debate and disagreement.66 Embracing and propagating a minority view that did not challenge the dogmas of  faith was not the same as promulgating doctrinal unorthodoxies – it was simply that: a minority, and not an untenable, opinion.67 Indeed, it was a standard position that a single passage of  Scripture would generate dif ferent interpretations.68 Just as the apparently eccentric in Dante should always be properly contextualized, so substantially more research needs to be done on medieval attitudes and solutions to competing and conf licting viewpoints, error, intellectual irregularity and, naturally, unorthodoxy before blanket judgments are made regarding what was and was not ideologically acceptable in the Middle Ages, and in particular during Dante’s lifetime.69 Alas, it cannot be said that Dante studies have been especially sensitive to such issues. The poet, on the other

66 De Lubac has described this situation as ‘what would, in our day and age, be called theological pluralism within the unifying matrix of  faith. At that time, this idea derived its foundations from the multiplicity of senses of fered by a Scriptural text that could never be directly comprehended in all its depths’ (Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 31). See also de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 31–66. 67 See De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 80–82. 68 Richard of  St Victor’s assertion is typical: ‘Et saepe fit ut una eademque Scriptura, dum multipliciter exponitur, multa nobis in unum loquatur’ (Benjamin maior, in PL CXCVI, 151). See also Brown, pp. 24–35. 69 I shall return to these matters, albeit f leetingly, in the remainder of  this study.

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hand, was acutely aware of what boundaries of  belief could or could not be crossed, and how best to insulate his occasional truly challenging invention from accusations that it was contra fidem. Some intellectual attitudes, however, as far as Dante was concerned, were never acceptable: those which willfully and persistently called into question any aspect of  the faith. Heresy and heretics, as Inferno IX–XI makes abundantly clear, were always wrong, and the inevitable end of  those who upheld such abhorrent views was eternal damnation: […] Qui son li eresïarche con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta, e molto     più che non credi son le tombe carche. Simile qui con simile è sepolto, e i monimenti son più e men caldi. (Inf., IX. 128–32) [Here are arch-heretics and those who followed them, from every sect; those tombs are much more crowded than you think. Here, like has been ensepulchered with like; some monuments are heated more, some less.]

Dante was unswerving in his condemnation of  heresy, whose defeat is symbolically described in the Earthly Paradise through the traditional image of  the ‘fox’,70 which, its errors confounded by the vox Dei, is put to ‘f light’ (Purg., XXXII. 118–23). Equally, St Dominic is praised for having violently overwhelmed ‘li sterpi eretici’ (Par., XII. 100) [the thickets of  the heretics]. Dante resolutely and consistently rejected current heretical opinion, whether as regards the immortality of  the soul, or the eternity of  the world, or the independence of  free will. What is striking about the poet’s reaction to such errors of doctrine is that he refrained from attacking the individuals who held them in order to focus attention on the ideas themselves. It was the heresies rather than the heretics that needed combatting, since it was the former that inf licted damage on the faith: ‘Titubabit fides, si Divinarum Scripturarum vacillat auctoritas’ (Mon., III. iv. 9) [Faith 70 The image is Scriptural: ‘capite nobis vulpes vulpes parvulas quae demoliuntur vineas’ (Song of  Songs 2. 15). See also Jean Leclercq, ‘L’Hérésie d’après les écrits de S. Bernard de Clairvaux’, in Lourdaux and Verhelst, Concept, pp. 12–26 (p. 19).

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will waver if  the authority of  the Holy Scriptures is shaken].71 In addition, Dante probably wished to distinguish himself  from those, especially within the Church, who used accusations of  heresy as an indiscriminate weapon against their enemies. At the same time, there is no doubt that the poet took an unf linchingly hard line against heresy – one which aligned him squarely with doctrinaire Church policy. The astonishing appearance in Ante-Purgatory of  Manfred, against whom Pope Clement IV instigated a trial for heresy shortly before the king’s death at Benevento, in no way weakens Dante’s intransigence. It was established doctrine that, as long as they repented their sins, however ‘orribil’ (Purg., III. 121), heretics and excommunicates could hope for salvation. Indeed, by placing Manfred among the excommunicate penitent, Dante openly recognized the validity, in this instance at least, of  the papal condemnation against him.72 In the medieval imaginary, heretics were obstinate, intellectually arrogant, deceitful and, of course, invariably wrong. They lacked the capacity – refined by faith and humility – to discern the truth (Par., XIII. 123):     sì fé Sabellio e Arrio e quelli stolti che furon come spade a le Scritture in render torti li diritti volti. (127–29) [so did Sabellius and Arius and other fools – like concave blades that mirror – who rendered crooked the straight face of  Scriptures].

Deliberately to misinterpret Scripture, Dante concurred with orthodox Catholic opinion, was a heinous sin and a hallmark of the heretic. It had led 71

72

The phrase is a quotation from Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (I. 37. 41), the preeminent guide in the Middle Ages to the correct reading of  the Bible; see Reading and Wisdom: The ‘De doctrina christiana’ of  Augustine in the Middle Ages, ed. by Edward D. English (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 1995). Dante’s treatment of  Manfred is, of course, much more nuanced than my brief aside intimates; and part of  the poet’s purpose is to condemn Clement IV’s behaviour towards the king. However, it is precisely because his judgment of  the pope is so withering that Dante’s acknowledgment of the legality of the censure against Manfred is so striking. On excommunication, see Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1986).

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Sabellius and Arius, despite evidence to the contrary, doggedly to promote anti-trinitarian positions. The rigour, vehemence, orthodoxy and consistency of  the poet’s views against heresy meant that he had no need to repeat himself, so that actual references to heretics and heresies in the Commedia are few (I believe that I have cited the most significant instances).73 No one can doubt where he stands on heresy: foursquare with every canonical Catholic auctoritas, from Augustine to Aquinas. At the same time, Dante refined and personalized his attitude in one particular regard. He presented the calculated exploitation of  Scripture as one of  the great ills of  his day, thereby implying that those who undertook such malpractice – often on behalf of ecclesiastical authorities – even if not condemned as such, were in reality akin to heretics. His denunciation of  the ‘impii atque mendaces’ (III. i. 3) [wicked and lying], both terms commonly applied to heretics,74 is especially withering in the final book of  the Monarchia. Although, as I discussed earlier, in the treatise, Dante was specifically challenging the ways in which the hierocrats misinterpreted the Bible in order to assert the Pope’s supremacy over the Emperor, the polemic is also the poet’s major statement, in line with Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, on the supreme cognitive authority of  Scripture and on the attitude, responsibilities and methods of  the orthodox exegete. In chapters 4–9, Dante highlights how the study of  the Bible must avoid ‘error’ when interpreting the ‘mystical sense’: ‘aut querendo ipsum ubi non est, aut accipiendo aliter quam accipi debere’ (iv. 6) [either looking for it where it does not exist, or taking it in some inadmissible way]. And in her great diatribe on contemporary intellectual life in Paradiso XXIX, Beatrice too presents the ‘twisting’ of  Scripture as the rational activity which most of fends Heaven (88–95). According to Dante, human reason, a marvellous divine gift, must be directed towards apprehending truth, whose ultimate expression is of course in God: ‘omnis sapientia a Deo Domino est et cum illo fuit semper et est 73 I have decided not to discuss the case of  fra Dolcino, whom Dante presents as a schismatic, since this would require an elucidation of medieval debates on the interrelationship and dif ferences between heresy and schism, which would distract from my present purpose. 74 See, for example, Augustine, Contra mendacium VI. 17–VII. 17.

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ante aevum’ [All wisdom is from the Lord God, and hath been always with him, and is before all time].75 The aims of intellectual inquiry are ethical, cognitive and ultimately salvific. Reason should not be used to undermine truth by propagating lies whether for personal or instututional gain; nor should the exercise of reason be treated as an end in itself. Beatrice’s attacks against those who use their intellectual faculties simply as a means of selfaggrandizement without any regard for the ‘purity’ of  ‘la verità’ (73–74) dominate her celestial vituperatio in canto XXIX. She lambasts those who ‘non credendo dicer vero’ (83) on account of  their obsession with wishing to appear original (86–87). To this end, they are happy to exploit ‘la divina Scrittura’ (90) as a means of showing of f : ‘Per apparer ciascun s’ingegna e face / sue invenzioni’ (94–95) [Each one strives for display, elaborates his own inventions]. However, like denounced heretics such as Sabellius and Arius, they ‘lie’ (100). Beatrice’s charges are highly conventional, echoing the concerns, language and tropes of conservative medieval Catholic thinkers troubled by what they deemed new and questionable intellectual practices. Thus, at least since Abelard’s time, the pursuit of novitas was attacked and discouraged.76 Equally worthy of censure were those who used Scripture as a means to achieve professional advancement.77 What lay behind such criticisms was a deep anxiety about the negative ef fects of  the growing interest in dialectics which had resulted in the dangerous proliferation of dif ferent teachings. Beatrice shares in this apprehension (‘Voi non andate giù per un sentiero / filosofando’78 (Par., XXIX. 85–86; and compare 94–100, 104–05) [Below, you do not follow one sole path as you philosophize]), an unease which she ef ficiently captures at the beginning of  her invective in the verb equivocare – ‘la verità che là giù si confonde, / equivocando in 75 Ecclesiasticus 1. 1. The phrase was a standard in medieval discussions of dif ferent types of intellectual work; see De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 43. See also Conv., III. xii. 13. 76 See Brown, p. 33; De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 34, 62, 64, 69, 72; Leclercq, pp. 245–49; 255. 77 See De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 49–50, 62; Leclercq, pp. 255–56. 78 Filosofare here is technical and pointedly alludes to the behaviour of scholastics in arts faculties.

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sì fatta lettura’ (74–75) [the truth that, there below, has been confused by teaching that is so ambiguous] – which tersely highlights the power of dialectic pointlessly and uncritically to accommodate conf licting and erroneous opinion,79 what Beatrice terms ‘waking dreams’ (82), ‘invenzioni’ (95), ‘favole’ (104) and ‘ciance’ (110) [idle stories].80 Most worryingly, the explosion in competing views could only sow confusion among the ordinary faithful: ‘sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno, / tornan dal pasco pasciute di vento’ (106–07) [so that the wretched sheep, in ignorance, return from pasture, having fed on wind].81 Beatrice contrasts the modus of  the arrogant dialectician with that of  the good Christian who ‘humbly’ pursues his intellectual activities: ‘e quanto piace / chi umilmente con essa [la divina Scrittura] s’accosta’ (92–93; and compare 109–14) [how pleasing is he who humbly holds Scripture fast]. At the same time, it is important to recognize that, however much she might be focusing on the disuse into which the Bible has fallen in the present – ‘e ’l Vangelio si tace’ (96) [the Gospels do not speak] –, her attack, as the references to ‘philosophizing’, to the ‘putting aside of  79 On religious worries about dialectic, see Brown, pp. 36–64; De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 55–74; Leclercq, pp. 245–51, 256–58. 80 Compare ‘stultas autem quaestiones et genealogias et contentiones et pugnas legis devita sunt enim inutiles et vanae’ (Titus 3. 9). The passage from Paul was a commonplace and the phrase vanae quaestiones had a wide circulation. ‘Ciance’ is an extremely apt rendering of  this in the vernacular. 81 See De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I (1998), 57, 313. It is interesting to note that Dante’s presentation of  the behaviour of contemporary intellectuals recalls the conduct of  heretics: ‘Non enim disputare amant haeretici, sed quoquo modo superare impudentissima pervicacia, ut congregent, sicut hic dixit, quae non pepererunt. Christianos enim, quos maxime Christi nomine seducunt, iam per ipsius Christi Evangelium natos inveniunt, et faciunt illos divitias suas: non sane cum iudicio, sed cum temeritate inconsiderata. Non enim intellegunt ibi esse veram et salubrem, et quodam modo germanam atque radicalem christianam societatem, unde istos separaverunt, quos ad suas divitias congregarunt’ (Augustine, Contra Faustum XIII. 12). Equally, for St Bernard of  Clairvaux, heretics express eccentric opinions because of  their desire for personal success: ‘Omnibus una intentio haereticis semper fuit, captare gloriam de singularitate scientiae’ (Sermones super Cantica LXV. 2). On the heretic as as a cypher for intellectual erring in general, see below.

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Scripture’ (89–90), to ‘inventions’ (95) and to fantastical and comic preaching (103–05 and 115–17) make evident, takes in every type of intellectual pursuit that is error-strewn and inappropriate, and hence not a means, as it should be, to arriving at ‘pure truth’. Dante was not against the pursuit of  knowledge, the asking of questions. Far from it. Indeed, one way of  thinking about the pilgrim’s experience in the afterlife is as a succession of questions that only comes to an end once his intellectual ‘desires’ find ultimate satisfaction through union with God. What Dante rejects out of  hand, and this is true of  the Convivio as much as of  the Commedia, is knowledge whose ends are exclusively earthbound, deliberately selfish and, of course, quite simply wrong – knowledge, to be precise, that fails to acknowledge that ‘all wisdom is from the Lord God’: ‘l’ardore / ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto / e de li vizi umani e del valore’ (Inf., XXVI. 97–99; and compare 112–20) [the longing I had to gain experience of  the world and of  the vices and the worth of men]. Praesumptio, cupiditas sciendi, superbia: these are the sins of  the intellect that the poet found unacceptable, as did the mainstream Christian tradition as a whole.82 It is thus extremely unlikely that Dante would have been persuaded by the ideas and methods of  those masters of arts, especially at the University of  Paris, who may have championed the independence of reason and philosophical inquiry and the relative self-suf ficiency and fulfillment of philosophical principles and conclusions.83 There are certainly no assertions in his oeuvre, not even in the Convivio (or in the Monarchia), that definitively point in this direction. This does not mean, of course, that the poet was not sensitive to what, within limits, human reason might achieve on its own without the aid of

82 See, for instance, Edward Peters, ‘Libertas inquirendi and the vitium curiositatis in Medieval Thought’, in La Notion de liberté au moyen âge: Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. by George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel and Janine Sourdel-Thomine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), pp. 91–98. 83 See Gyula Klima, ‘Ancilla Theologiae vs. Domina philosophorum: St Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism and the Autonomy of Philosophy’, in What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages? Proceedings of  the Tenth International Congress of  Medieval Philosophy, ed. by Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Erfurt: Akademie Gemeinnütziger Wissenschaft zu Erfurt, 1997), pp. 393–402.

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divine illumination, as his treatment of  the pagan world makes more than apparent. Nor did he deny that reason could be a source of  ‘happiness’ in this life. Nonetheless, such appreciation, I should like to stress, is not the same as asserting the autonomy of reason and its acquisitions.84 In truth, Dante’s presentation of  the ‘two ends’ of  humanity in the Convivo and in the Monarchia is not especially radical, though it does have some interesting original inf lections. Nor does the poet claim that total satisfaction is attainable in this life. Now that the fires of  the overheated polemic on the matter stoked by Nardi and his neo-Thomist opponents have burnt out, it is possible to recognize that the notion that human beings are uniquely destined to a duplex finis was solidly part of  thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theological thought. As a result, agreement existed that a circumscribed form of earthly intellectual happiness was possible; and Dante could have found support for these positions not only in Albertus Magnus, but also, as has become increasingly apparent in recent years, pace Nardi, in Thomas Aquinas.85 In any case, the parameters within which the 84 A number of scholars have unhelpfully confused the two perspectives when examining Dante’s intellectual positions. 85 See Dante, Monarchia, trans. and ed. by Richard Kay (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Medieval Studies, 1998), 308–14; Patrick M. Gardner, ‘Thomas and Dante on the duo ultima hominis’, The Thomist, 75 (2011), 415–59 (esp. pp. 418–25); and especially Mario Trovato, ‘Dante and the Tradition of  the “Two Beatitudes”’, in Lectura Dantis Newberryana, ed. by Paolo Cherchi and Antonio Mastrobuono (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 19–36. These recent contributions have their point of origin in Maccarrone’s and Vinay’s somewhat underappreciated studies. By far the fullest assessment of  Convivio III. xv is Paolo Falzone, Desiderio della scienza e desiderio di Dio nel ‘Convivio’ (Naples: Società editrice il Mulino, 2010), pp. 101–256. See also Christian Moevs, ‘The Metaphysical Basis of  Dante’s Politics’, in Le culture di Dante: studi in onore di Robert Hollander, ed. by Michelangelo Picone, Theodore J. Cachey Jr and Margherita Mesirca (Florence: Cesati, 2004), pp. 215–41. Adriana Diomedi, Il principio di perfezione nel pensiero dantesco (Leicester: Troubador, 2005; reprinted 2012), despite its promising title, not only casts little, if any, new light on the question of  ‘perfection’, but also needs to be read with extreme caution. As regards Thomas, see in particular ‘Respondeo dicendum quod nomine beatitudinis intelligitur ultima perfectio rationalis seu intellectualis naturae, et inde est quod naturaliter desideratur, quia unumquodque naturaliter desiderat suam

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poet treated the duo fines are personal and specific, and, contrary to what Bruno Nardi maintained, his discussion is carefully worded to avoid the impression that, thanks to the exercise of  human reason in the here and now, man can ‘terminare ogni desiderio, e così è beato’ (Conv., III. xv. 4) [find every desire brought to fulfilment, and is, therefore, happy].86 Thus, it is important to recognize that, in Monarchia III. xvi. 5–10, Dante nowhere argues for the independence, self-suf ficiency or perfection of  the ‘beatitude of  this life’ (7). He simply states: Si ergo homo medium quoddam est corruptibilium et incorruptibilium, cum omne medium sapiat naturam extremorum, necesse est hominem sapere utranque naturam. Et cum omnis natura ad ultimum quendam finem ordinetur, consequitur ut hominis duplex finis existat: ut, sicut inter omnia entia solus incorruptibilitatem et corruptibilitatem participat, sic solus inter omnia entia in duo ultima ordinetur, quorum alterum sit finis eius prout corruptibilis est, alterum vero prout incorruptibilis.    Duos igitur fines providentia illa inenarrabilis homini proposuit intendendos: beatitudinem scilicet huius vite, que in operatione proprie virtutis consistit et per terrestrem paradisum figuratur; et beatitudinem vite ecterne, que consistit in fruitione divini aspectus ad quam propria virtus ascendere non potest, nisi lumine divino adiuta, que per paradisum celestem intelligi datur. (5–7) [Thus if man is a kind of  link between corruptible and incorruptible things, since every such link shares something of  the nature of  the extremes it unites, man must necessarily have something of  both natures. And since every nature is ordered towards

ultimam perfectionem. Ultima autem perfectio rationalis seu intellectualis naturae est duplex. Una quidem, quam potest assequi virtute suae naturae, et haec quodammodo beatitudo vel felicitas dicitur. Unde et Aristoteles [Ethics X] perfectissimam hominis contemplationem, qua optimum intelligibile, quod est Deus, contemplari potest in hac vita, dicit esse ultimam hominis felicitatem. Sed super hanc felicitatem est alia felicitas, quam in futuro expectamus, qua videbimus Deum sicuti est. Quod quidem est supra cuiuslibet intellectus creati naturam’ (ST I. 62. 1 resp.). See also Gerald F. Stanley, ‘Contemplation as Fulfillment of  the Human Person’, in Personalist Ethics and Human Subjectivity, ed. by George F. McLean (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1996), pp. 363–420. 86 See Bruno Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale. Nuovi saggi di filosofia dantesca, 2nd edn (Bari: Laterza, 1949), pp. 67–68. See below for a contextualized analysis of  the phrase from the Convivio.

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its own ultimate goal, it follows that man’s goal is twofold: so that, just as he alone among all created beings shares in incorruptibility and corruptibility, so he alone among all created beings is ordered to two ultimate goals, one of  them being his goal as a corruptible being, the other his goal as an incorruptible being. Inef fable providence has thus set before us two goals to aim at: i.e. happiness in this life, which consists in the exercise of our own powers and is figured in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of  the vision of  God (to which our own powers cannot raise us except with the help of  God’s light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise.]

Rather than separate, the two ‘ends’, as they are too in Albertus Magnus,87 are intimately, though hierarchically, inter-related. It is only the ‘beatitude of eternal life’ that, thanks to revelation (8–9), guarantees satisfaction (fruitio).88 Earthly beatitudo is an exclusively human ‘mechanistic’ activity (operatio), the workings of an imperfect humana ratio, that is bounded by philosophical ‘conclusiones et media’ (9), which are inescapably ‘transcended’ by the documenta spiritualia (8). Moreover, as Vasoli has expertly concluded, Dante is less interested in the duo ultima in themselves than in the dif fering ‘means’ necessary to arrive at these.89 Mutatis mutandis, the same is true as regards the earlier treatment in Convivio III. xv of  how ‘l’umano desiderio’ [human desire] achieves a state of  ‘beatitude’ (7) ‘in questa vita’ (9). The principal thrust of  Dante’s argument is not the ‘two ends’, but to clarify the limits of earthly knowledge in relation to a higher form of enlightenment and vision. Thus, even

87 ‘The Albertian double beatitude implies no dualism: it points out only the coexistence in man of a double order related, subordinated, and integrated in one operation’ (Trovato, p. 24). 88 Albertus defined fruitio as ‘Frui est amore inherens alicui rei propter se […] Frui autem dicit delectationem ultimam et perfectam et optimam’ (ST II. 7. 3). It is noteworthy that, in order to restrict as much as possible the ‘beatitude of  this life’, Dante only associated ‘fruition’ with the divine, even though, following Albert, he could have presented earthly intellectual beatitude as the relative fruitio secundum quid distinct from the absolute fruitio proprie dicta / simpliciter (see the same chapter of  his Summa). See Trovato, pp. 23–24. 89 Cesare Vasoli, ‘Filosofia e politica in Dante fra Convivio e Monarchia’, Letture classensi, 9–10 (1982), 11–37 (p. 31).

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as he declared that reason could bring about ‘human perfection’ on earth, so he immediately underscored its deficiencies with respect to the divine: E in questo sguardo [of  the donna gentile / Sapienza] solamente l’umana perfezione s’acquista, cioè la perfezione della ragione, dalla quale, sì come da principalissima parte, tutta la nostra essenzia depende; e tutte l’altre nostre operazioni – sentire, nutrire, e tutte – sono per questa sola, e questa è per sé, e non per altre, sì che, perfetta sia questa, perfetta è quella, tanto cioè che l’uomo, in quanto ello è uomo, [v]ede terminato ogni [suo] desiderio, e così è beato. […] Dunque si vede come nell’aspetto di costei delle cose di Paradiso appaiono. E però si legge nel libro allegato di Sapienza, di lei parlando: ‘Essa è candore della etterna luce e specchio sanza macula della maestà di Dio.’    Poi, quando si dice: Elle soverchian lo nostro intelletto, escuso me di ciò, che poco parlar posso di quelle per la loro soperchianza. Dove è da sapere che in alcuno modo queste cose nostro intelletto abbagliano, in quanto certe cose [si] af fermano essere, che lo ’ntelletto nostro guardare non può, cioè Dio e la etternitate e la prima materia: che certissimamente si veggiono e con tutta fede si credono essere, e pur quello che sono intender noi non potemo, se non cose negando si può apressare alla sua conoscenza, e non altrimenti. (Conv., III. xv. 4–6) [It is in this look alone, then, that human perfection is acquired, that is, the perfection of reason, on which, as on its most important part, our whole essence depends; and all our other activities (sensation, nutrition and all the rest) exist for reason’s sake alone, while it exists for its own sake, and not for others’, so that when it attains perfection so, too, does man’s essence in that man precisely as man finds every desire brought to fulfilment, and is, therefore, happy. And so the Book of  Wisdom declares: ‘Whoever casts away wisdom and learning is unhappy’, that is, he is deprived of  being happy. It follows that one attains to being happy through the habitual possession of wisdom; and to be happy is to be content, in the view of  the Philosopher. It is clear, then, how in the countenance of  that lady appear things telling something of  Paradise. So we find that same Book of  Wisdom speaking of  her in these terms: ‘She is the brightness of  the eternal light and the faultless mirror of  the majesty of  God.’    When the poem continues: They overwhelm our intellect, I excuse myself as regards the fact that I can say little about these things, because they are overwhelming. Here it should be explained that in a certain way these dazzle our intellect, in that they af firm the existence of certain things on which our intellect cannot look, namely, God, eternity and prime matter: we can perceive with absolute certainty and believe with total confidence that they exist, but we cannot understand them by grasping what they are; it is only by way of negation that one can approach to knowledge of  them, and not otherwise.]

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Indeed, Dante had prefaced the above discussion by stressing first, that, for all its wondrousness and ef ficacy, earthbound Sapienza is partial: ‘li occhi della Sapienza sono le sue dimostrazioni, colle quali si vede la veritade certissimamente; e lo suo riso sono le sue persuasioni, nelle quali si dimostra la luce interiore della Sapienza sotto alcuno velamento’ (2) [the eyes of wisdom are her demonstrations, by which the truth is seen with absolute certainty, and her smile is her persuasions, in which the light interior to wisdom shows itself under a kind of veil]; and second, that ‘in queste due cose [the eyes and smile of  Wisdom] si sente quel piacere altissimo di beatitudine lo quale è massimo bene in Paradiso’ (2) [in these two places experience is given of  that most sublime of pleasures, happiness, which is the greatest good enjoyed in Paradise]. These caveats, as with what the poet would almost immediately go on to say especially in paragraph 6, inescapably inhibit earthly intellectual ‘perfection’ as a limited terrestrial experience which, however satisfying in strictly human terms, is simply that, a narrow transient satisfaction ‘in quanto ello è uomo’ – one that cannot comprehend what is truly important and at most can of fer a ‘negative’ intimation of  the divine. In any case, as Vasoli makes clear when glossing paragraph 2, earthly knowledge for the poet is significant not in itself, but in so far as it provides a sense of  the divine.90 Furthermore, as Beatrice will demonstrate in detail in Paradiso XXIX, human intellectual striving is dangerously prone to ‘error’, especially when it transgresses its limits: ‘E però l’umano desiderio è misurato in questa vita a quella scienza che qui avere si può, e quello punto non passa se non per errore, lo quale è di fuori di naturale intenzione’ (9) [Human desire, consequently, is measured in this life in accordance with that knowledge which can be gained here, and never passes that point except in error, which is something foreign to the intention of nature]. The point is central to Dante’s argument, and he 90 ‘Dante sembra […] dire che la massima felicità raggiungibile in questa vita consiste nella cognizione dimostrativa data dalla scienza e nella persuasione o intuizione analogica e allegorica delle cose divine; e che tale felicità sarà compiutamente perenne nell’altra vita e nella beatitudine dell’eterna contemplazione di Dio di cui fruiscono i beati’: Dante Alighieri, Convivio, ed. by Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988), p. 470.

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further defines and insists on it in the following paragraph: ‘Onde, con ciò sia cosa che conoscere di Dio, e di certe altre cose, quello esso è, non sia possibile alla nostra natura, quello da noi naturalmente non è desiderato di sapere’ (10) [Since, then, it is impossible for our nature to know of  God what He is (the same holds true of certain other things), this is not something which we naturally desire to know]. Constraints encircle constraints: chapter xv is hardly that ringing endorsement of earthly philosophy and of  the autonomy of  human reason that some have claimed it to be.91 Throughout his career, Dante was always acutely aware of  the restrictions and pitfalls of  human reason, as well as its responsibilities towards and subservience to the divine. Indeed, it is noteworthy that he should have blurred, as we have seen, the boundaries between heretics and other intellectual transgressors.92 All wilful error, as far as the poet was concerned, by detracting from truth, was an of fence against God. It was a form of  heresy, as he appropriately made clear through his treatment of the heretics in Inferno IX–XI. By denying the immortality of  the soul, Epicurus and ‘his followers’ (Inf., X. 14) adamantly refused to raise their intelligence towards matters celestial. On account of  the extremism of  their views, they could thus serve as powerful symbols of intransigent materialism and rationalism;93 and Dante certainly intended his heretics to have a broad function and connotation. Thus, rather than focus on specifically Christian ‘eresïarche / con lor seguaci, d’ogne setta’ (Inf., IX. 127–28), and thereby 91

For an excellent and balanced synthesis of  the major competing interpretations of  Conv., III. xv, see Vasoli’s annotations, pp. 465–83. I shall consider more fully issues relating to the ties between faith and reason in Dante in the subsection ‘Invidïosi veri.’ Chapter xv ought also be read in light of  Conv., III. xiv; IV. xiii. 7–9; xxii. 17–18. 92 On the elasticity of  the term ‘heresy’ in the Middle Ages, see Mariano d’Alatri, ‘“Eresie” perseguite dall’Inquisizione in Italia nel corso del Duecento’, in Lourdaux and Verhelst, Concept, pp. 211–24 (pp. 222–24); Robert Ian, Moore, The Birth of  Popular Heresy (London: Edward Arnold, 1975), pp. 1–7; Thijssen, pp. 1–2. 93 ‘In Inferno 10 […] Dante systematically attacks and subverts the perspective of  those Epicureans who, like Farinata and Cavalcanti, sustain the autonomy of  human history as a field of action. Their commitment to historical temporality has led to blindness and damnation. In other words, Dante pointedly rejects secularism and its modes of representing earthly existence’ (Ascoli, p. 49).

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restrict attention to a particular doctrinal irregularity such as Arianism or Manichaeism, he instead, and provocatively, concentrated on an emblematic pagan philosopher and his adherents (although it is worth recalling that, in the Middle Ages, heretics were those who, regardless when they may have lived, doggedly rejected a tenet of  the faith).94 In medieval culture, as is confirmed, for instance, by commentaries to the Psalms and to

94 In this regard, it is important to note that Dante’s choice of  the Epicureans has nothing to do with their supposedly explicit ties to Averroism in medieval culture, as Italianists have mistakenly claimed for far too long. To put it simply, there is no documentary evidence to support the idea that, in the late Middle Ages, the designations ‘Epicurean’ and ‘Averroist’ were synonymous. The three passages from Albertus Magnus (De natura et origine animae II. 5. 30–35 and 11. 45–52; De anima I. 1. 8) and one from Jacobus de Benevento (De praeambulis ad judicium) that George Corbett puts forward as possibly linking the two traditions do not in fact openly associate the two pagan mortalist philosophers; and, in any case, Corbett himself concludes that ‘there is […] little evidence […] that the Averroistic position on the soul was conveniently identified with Epicureanism in the scholastic milieux of the thirteenth century’: George Corbett, Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of  Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Leeds: Legenda, 2013), pp. 17–18. Corbett’s is the best discussion I know of  Dante’s complex treatment of  Epicurus and Epicureanism. On the question of  the unlikelihood that, in the Middle Ages, a strict relationship existed between Epicurus and Averroes, see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Guido Cavalcanti and his First Readers’, in Guido Cavalcanti tra i suoi lettori, ed. by Maria Luisa Ardizzone (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2003), pp. 149–75 (pp. 172–75), ‘Boccaccio and Epicurus’, in ‘Caro Vitto.’ Essays in Memory of  Vittore Branca, ed. by Jill Kraye and Laura Lepschy with the collaboration of  Nicola Jones, special supplement of  The Italianist, 27 (2007), pp. 10–27, and ‘The Ethics of  Ignorance: Petrarch’s Epicurus and Averroes and the Structures of  the De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia’, in Petrarch in Britain: Interpreters, Imitators, and Translators over 700 Years, ed. by Martin McLaughlin and Letizia Panizza with Peter Hainsworth (London: The British Academy, 2007), pp. 39–59. See also: ‘Il tentativo di Maria Corti […] di far corrispondere all’accusa generica di epicureismo, rivolta a Guido [da Dante], specifiche dottrine averroiste e aristotelico-radicali è certamente interessante, ma dovrebbe essere approfondito con riscontri più puntuali, che allo stato attuale degli studi non è possibile’: Francesco Bottin, ‘Introduzione’, in Ricerca della felicità e piaceri dell’intelletto. Boezio di Dacia ‘Il sommo bene.’ Giacomo da Pistoia ‘La felicità suprema’, ed. by Francesco Bottin (Florence: Nardini Editore, 1989), pp. 7–41 (p. 35).

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Ecclesiastes, epicureus was employed as a generic term to refer not only to heretics but also to anyone who used their intellect incorrectly and especially for wholly materialist ends.95 Epicurus and the Epicureans thus represented the worst of philosophy. As occurs in Inferno, they were rational extremists who, solely concerned with earthly things, showed ‘disdegno’ (Inf., X. 63) for everything else – an attitude which for most medieval intellectuals, including Dante, had little do with the proper practice of philosophy. That Epicurus and his supporters could ef fectively embody the (ir)rational ‘anti-philosopher’ was an idea deeply embedded in the medieval world. Their reputation as mortalists and unbridled hedonists, sceptical about the gods, dismissive of divine providence and pessimistic about the human condition, was a commonplace. In the Commedia, their rejection of  the immortality of  the soul functions as a synecdoche for all their errors. Thus, the Epicureans both signify themselves and all those who abuse the gift of reason. As ought to be clear, even from my rapid resumé, in the Middle Ages, epicureus was a highly elastic term, which meant it could be applied to a broad range of sins and suspect intellectual behaviours – something which likely encouraged Dante to elect the Epicurean as a general symbol of  the heretic and the deluded thinker.96 Dante’s consistently uncompromising attitude towards heresy in particular and towards intellectual heterodoxy in general, together with the scrupulous conformity of  his overarching ideology, are the parameters 95 See Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘“Alquanto tenea della oppinione degli Epicuri”: The auctoritas of  Boccaccio’s Cavalcanti (and Dante)’, in Mittelalterliche Novellistik im europäischen Kontext, ed. by Mark Chinca, Timo Reuvekamp-Felber and Christopher Young (Berlin: Schmidt, 2006), pp. 280–325. 96 On the medieval reception of  Epicurus, in addition to Corbett, see Howard Jones, The Epicurean Tradition (London: Routledge, 1989); Valerio Lucchesi, ‘Epicurus and Democritus: The Ciceronian Foundations of  Dante’s Judgement’, Italian Studies, 42 (1987), 1–19; Alexander Murray, ‘The Epicureans’, in Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Tübingen and Cambridge: Gunter Narr and Brewer, 1986), pp. 138–63; Maria Rita Pagnoni, ‘Prime note sulla tradizione medievale ed umanistica di Epicuro’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, 3:4 (1974), 1443–77; Wolfgang P. Schmid, Epicuro e l’epicureismo cristiano (Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 1984).

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within which, as I have already begun to intimate, any discussion of  the unconventional and the seemingly unorthodox present in his oeuvre should be considered and appraised. Some of  these problematic elements were unquestionably thorny, especially when they involved a doctrinal mainstay such as the soul; others, however, were rather less challenging than we moderns might imagine.97 All, nevertheless, can be resolved, I believe, in approved terms. In addition, Dante’s ideological orthodoxy should not be treated as evidence that he reluctantly adapted himself  to an oppressive ideology and environment. Where precisely in his works can one discover the proof of such an attitude? In any case, the idea that the Middle Ages was a ‘persecuting society’98 has, in recent years, been authoritatively disputed.99 Indeed, already many earlier accounts of heresy, intolerance and persecution that antedate Moore’s present a rather dif ferent, more nuanced and less doom-laden picture of medieval society than his. Bernard Hamilton, the well-known historian of the crusades, can confidently write that, by the fourteenth century, ‘dissent had become part of  the western tradition’.100 Thus, 97 See the following subsection ‘Invidïosi veri’. 98 Robert Ian Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). I have always been struck by the ambiguity of some of  the evidence Moore adduces in support of  his thesis. However, now see also his The War on Heresy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of  Harvard University Press, 2012). 99 See in particular Mario Condorelli, I fondamenti giuridici della tolleranza religiosa nell’elaborazione canonistica dei secoli XII–XIV: contributo storico-dogmatico (Milan: Giuf fré, 1960); Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of  Dif ference: European Discourses of  Toleration, c. 1100–c. 1550 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Klaus Schreiner, ‘Toleranz’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegrif fe. Historisches Lexicon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Kosselleck, 9 vols (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972–97), VI (1988), 445–605; Beyond the Persecuting Society. Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, ed. by John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 1–91: Dif ference and Dissent: Theories of  Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 1–82. 100 Bernard Hamilton, Religion in the Medieval West (London: Edward Arnold, 1986), p. 178. He also notes that ‘the Inquisition was far less bloodthirsty and oppressive

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the extent to which ideological controls were actually imposed, and when they were, that these were implemented as a result of ideological factors, is seriously open to question (it is enough to remember the Church’s reactions to Manfred). In any case, as we have previously ascertained, creative writers were certainly one group af forded quite considerable leeway, and allegoresis was a tool of extraordinary ideological f lexibility. Equally, the acceptance of  the validity of pagan, especially classical and Islamic, culture by the end of  the thirteenth century was a given. Moreover, although there is a tendency among scholars of medieval Italian literature romantically to present the philosophizing masters of arts at the Universities of  Paris or of  Bologna, the so-called Radical Aristotelians and neo-Averroists,101 and their sympathizers as a beleaguered minority, the reality of  their situation was somewhat dif ferent. To put it simply, despite formal condemnations, such as those issued in Paris in 1270 and 1277, university teachers were granted not inconsiderable latitude and significant institutional ef fort was made to allow proponents of unorthodoxies to regularize their views.102 than it is often represented as being. The vast majority of those whom it found guilty were dismissed with canonical penances, and a substantial minority were detained in the Inquisition’s prisons, but the number of unrepentant heretics handed over to the secular authorities and burned at the stake was small’ (p. 177). On the Inquisition, see at least Grado Giovanni Merlo, Inquisitori e Inquisizione del Medioevo (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008). 101 On the problematic notion of  thirteenth-century Averroism, see Gianfranco Fioravanti, ‘Boezio di Dacia e la storiografia sull’“Averroismo”’, Studi medievali, 7 (1966), 283–332. 102 See in particular Thijssen, a key study which casts much new light on the complex relationship between what today we term academic freedom and religious authority in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See also Luca Bianchi, ‘Censure, liberté et progrès intellectuel à l’Universitè de Paris au XIIIe siècle’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 63 (1996), 45–93; William J. Courtenay, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities’, Church History, 58 (1989), 168–82; Mary M. McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom and its Limitations in the University of  Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York: Arno, 1977); Peters, Heresy, pp. 217–19. It has been suggested, though more research needs to be done on the matter, that intellectuals in Bologna and Padua enjoyed greater intellectual freedom than those in Paris; see Emanuele Coccia and Sylvain Piron,

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Such an attitude of accommodation had long been a feature of of ficial Church reaction to intellectuals and their contrasting opinions, even as regards matters of  theological doctrine.103 Debate, and hence contrasting opinion, not least because of  the centrality of disputatio in scholasticism, was far from discouraged. Instead of recognizing the complex, stratified character of  the late medieval intellectual environment, where dif fering and competing ideas, not infrequently of questionable conformity, vied for attention and legitimacy, too often Dantists have blithely reduced this hugely sophisticated and shifting world to two monolithic camps: the orthodox and the unorthodox.104 This is not to suggest that intellectually everything was open to question and revision. The centrality of  Scripture, the authority of  the Church Fathers and, of course, the tenets of  the faith as essentially established in the Nicene Creed were inviolate. Around this core, however, there was, and there had been for centuries, a remarkable intellectual ferment, beginning with how best to read Scripture whether in general or in its details. Opinion was not fixed or conveniently pigeonholed; and what,

‘Poésie, sciences et politique: une génération d’intellectuels italiens (1290–1330)’, Revue de synthèse, 129 (2008), 549–86 (p. 556). 103 See Janet Coleman, ‘The Science of  Politics and Late Medieval Academic Debate’, in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. by Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 181–214; Constant J. Mews, ‘Philosophy and Theology 1100–1150: The Search for Harmony’, in Le XIIe siècle: Mutations et renouveau en France dans la première motié du XIIe siècle (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1995), pp. 159–203. 104 It might be objected that, in light of my earlier point regarding Dante’s homologizing treatment of  heresy, the poet too divided the world of ideas into two camps. At a general and polemical level, this is undoubtedly the case. At the same time, he was also sensitive to the fact that most intellectual transgressions were not strictly speaking heretical; and, from Ulysses to the Decretalists, he presented many examples of  his attentive sense of discrimination in this regard. Furthermore, unlike the poet, we are not writing as polemicists but as historians of  literature. We thus bear the responsibility, whatever the obstacles, to reconstruct the past as accurately as possible, so that, in turn, we can hope to arrive at a degree of precision when we make claims for the poet.

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at one point, was problematic, subsequently could become acceptable, or vice versa. The very notions of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, error, irregularity were intricate and f luid;105 and medieval thinkers prided themselves on their ability to make ‘distinctions’. ‘The dif ference between ‘untrue’ (falsus), ‘erroneous’ (erroneus), and ‘heretical’ (hereticus) was clearly perceived by medieval intellectuals. The theologian Godfrey of  Fontaines, for instance, observed that errors are faults that endanger our salvation; they become heresies when they are defended with pertinacity’.106 Given the shortcomings of  human reason, error is inevitable. Even the greatest minds, as Dante confirmed, err:     Ma Gregorio da lui [Dïonisio] poi si divise; onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise (Par., XXVIII. 133–35) [Though, later, Gregory disputed him, when Gregory came here – when he could see with opened eyes – he smiled at his mistake].

It is how we react once we become aware that we have made a mistake that is crucial, as the poet succinctly captures in Gregory the Great’s smile. To put it dif ferently, what is vital is how we respond to the ‘ver’ (28. 136 and 139) when it runs counter to our own positions:

105 ‘A formal definition of orthodoxy was precisely what was lacking in many cases of academic censure. Academics were not censured for disseminating views that had already been formally condemned by ecclesiastical authorities as heretical. Rather, they were engaged in running scholastic debate during which they incurred accusations of  false teaching. […] academics charged with suspect teaching did not adhere to views that overtly contradicted faith, or that had already been formally condemned’ (Thijssen, pp. 4–5). See also Luca Bianchi, Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’Université de Paris (XIIIe–XIVe siècles) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999), pp. 14–16, 61–62, as well as his ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise? Notes on the Relationship between Dante and Siger of  Brabant’, in Dante and Heterodoxy: The Temptation of  Radical Thought in the Thirteenth Century, ed. by Maria Luisa Ardizzone (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming). 106 Thijssen, p. 2.

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    […] Quest’ è tal punto, che più savio di te fé già errante,     Sì che per sua dottrina fé disgiunto da l’anima il possibile intelletto, perché da lui non vide organo assunto.     Apri a la verità che viene il petto. (Purg., XXV. 62–67) [This point’s so hard, it led one wiser than you are to err in separating from the possible intellect the soul, since he could see no organ for the mind – so did he teach. Open your heart to truth.]

And Averroes too must have ‘opened his breast to truth’, according to Dante, or otherwise he would not be in Limbo. Genuine wisdom was in part defined by the ways in which one dealt with error and correction. Indeed, the pilgrim stumbles from one misunderstanding to another throughout his journey. However, as soon as the truth is presented to him, he accepts it unconditionally and error is left behind. Every intellectual, even the most sophisticated, could blunder, or be considered by some to have done so, as negative reaction to Thomas Aquinas, from Bishop Stephen Tempier to Durandus of  St Pourçain, incontrovertibly testifies. Yet, when we speak about Dante and unorthodoxy, we tend to forget that this should include Thomas. Our modern perceptions of  the saint as the bastion of established Catholic doctrine cloud our sense of  history. In any case, it was not the person but his ideas that were the issue. It was the validity of particular viewpoints that was evaluated. The individual only became a problem when he obstinately insisted that his errors were legitimate. To have held seriously questionable opinions, even when these were not modified in life, was not a bar to salvation – obviously as long as such opinions had not led to the intractable denial of a precept of  the faith and were part of genuine debate. Thus, in the Paradiso, Thomas is exalted in the Heaven of  the Sun, but he is also among those who, as far as Dante was concerned, were quite wrong to insist on a scientific explanation for the eclispse which had occurred at Jesus’ death:

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If on the one hand, medieval religious authorities reacted energetically to falsehood, as did Dante himself, on the other, both were also conscious of  the complexity, variety, volatility and inevitability of error and were willing, whenever possible, to handle it with a fair degree of understanding and commonsense. Until we begin properly to appreciate how of ficial medieval culture and Dante reacted to and dealt with that broad and diverse swathe of opinion that we clumsily lump together under a catch-all tag of  ‘unorthodoxy’, in particular how of ficialdom and poet discriminated between dif ferent types of irregularity, our discussions of  Dante’s relationship to problematic areas, ideas and figures of  his world, as well as of  his possible recourse to dubious opinions, will remain mired, I am sorry to say, in imprecision and, worse, unhelpful anachronism.

Invidïosi veri To examine the question of  heterodoxy in the Middle Ages requires a sharp sensitivity to context – historical, cultural, institutional and, unquestionably, textual. It thus should not be treated piecemeal. Yet, this is precisely the way in which the problem has been regularly approached in Dante studies. Individual details are both detached from the overarching framework of 

107 ‘Era questa l’opinione di Dionigi pseudo-Areopagita, seguita da molti teologi, tra cui anche Tommaso (ST III, q. 44 a. 2)’: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, ed. by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, 6th edn (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), p. 809.

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the text of which they are part, and freed from the specific constraints of  the episode, argument, etc. in which they are embedded, as well as insulated from the equally determining pressures of  the poet’s oeuvre and of  the medieval setting. This, in my view, has led not only to poor readings, but also to tenuous assumptions. Allow me to linger brief ly on a couple of well known, though usefully distinct, examples. To elucidate the creation and nature of angels, Beatrice, appropriately and orthodoxly, considers their coming into being in relation to the act of creation in its totality:     Forma e materia, congiunte e purette, usciro ad esser che non avia fallo, come d’arco tricordo tre saette.     E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo raggio resplende sì, che dal venire a l’esser tutto non è intervallo,     così ’l triforme ef fetto del suo sire ne l’esser suo raggiò insieme tutto sanza distinzïone in essordire.     Concreato fu ordine e costrutto a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto;     pura potenza tenne la parte ima; nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto tal vime, che già mai non si divima. (Par., XXIX. 22–36) [Then form and matter, either separately or in mixed state, emerged as f lawless being, as from a three-stringed bow, three arrows spring. And as a ray shines into amber, crystal, or glass, so that there is no interval between its coming and its lighting all, so did the three-form, matter, and their union f lash into being from the Lord with no distinction in beginning: all at once. Created with the substances were order and pattern; at the summit of  the world were those in whom pure act had been produced; and pure potentiality possessed the lowest part; and in the middle, act so joined potentiality that they never disjoin.]

These are lines of substantial dif ficulty and density, which have generated no little controversy among Dantists. However, they may not be quite as complicated and controversial as is normally claimed, especially if individual

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doctrinal elements are not judged in isolation. Even if, for reasons of space, I intend to focus on just one aspect of doctrine alluded to in the tercets (the most important one in terms of  the canto, the coming into being of  the angelic intelligences), my approach, I hope, is not in contradiction with my immediately preceding assertion, as I shall endeavour to understand the question contextually. My aim is thus to of fer a mode of reading and an interpretive structure that might also not be irrelevant to other disputed ideological issues in the tercets, most notably Dante’s understanding of prime matter. The poet refers to the angels both as ‘pure form’ (22) and as ‘pure act’ (33). Dante’s choice of  terms has led to accusations of inconsistency, misperception and, most worryingly, but also most pertinently for my present discussion, unorthodoxy. Indeed, it is maintained that not one but two instances of  heterodoxy trouble his treatment of  the angels. First, by defining the angels as ‘forma puretta’, Dante appears to be confusing them with God, since, according to established Christian belief, only God is pure actuality. Second, by terming them ‘pure form’ and ‘pure act’, he compounds the muddle by treating the angels, together with God, as first causes – an unorthodoxy seemingly confirmed in the Monarchia when the poet speaks of  the angels as ‘essentie […] quedam sunt intellectuales et non aliud, et earum esse nichil est aliud quam intelligere quod est quod sunt’ (I. iii. 7) [as intelligences and nothing else, and their very being is simply the act of understanding that their own nature exists], given that, as Moevs lucidly explains ‘only in God is understanding, or the “power of sight” (intelligere), identical with the act of existence itself (esse)’.108 Yet, it is almost certainly incorrect to impute heterodoxy to Dante’s formulations. As the Convivio documents – ‘l’oro, le margherite e li campi perfettamente forma e atto abbiano in loro essere’ (IV. xi. 4) [gold, pearls and lands do not lack perfection as beings, all having their proper form and act of existence] –, forma and actus were often used as synonyms in medieval philosophy,109 a usage 108 Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 150. My discussion here, especially as regards matters of medieval thought, is heavily dependent on Moevs’ balanced and reliably informed account of divine creation, being, act, etc. See also Stephen Bemrose, Dante’s Angelic Intelligences (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983), pp. 56–76, 185–201. 109 Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale, p. 117.

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which had its origins in Aristotle, where the theory of matter and form is transformable to that of potentiality and act (De anima II. 1).110 Thus, when Beatrice remarks that the angels are pure form or pure act, she is simply and correctly highlighting the fact that they are immaterial, and hence unchangeable and unaf fected by time and space. Elsewhere, Dante was less allusive, terming the angelic intelligences ‘sustanze partite da materia’ (Conv., III. iv. 9), and stressing that they are ‘sanza grossezza di materia, quasi diafani per la purità della loro forma’ (Conv., III. vii. 5) Equally, the supposedly contentious phrase in the Monarchia, as paragraphs 6 and 7 confirm when read unitarily, repeats the general and non-contentious Aristotelian generalization that intelligere intelligentibus est esse. In any case, elsewhere in the Monarchia, and in perfect conformity with Paradiso XXIX. 28–30, Dante stresses that God has the exclusive power of creation: ‘Nec etiam possent omnia sibi commicti a Deo, quoniam potestatem creandi et similiter baptizandi nullo modo Deus commictere posset, ut evidenter probatur’ (III. vii. 6) [Nor could all things be entrusted to him by God, since God certainly could not entrust to him the power to create and the power to baptize, as is quite apparent].111 110 See Frederick Charles Copleston, Medieval Philosophy: An Introduction (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), p. 88; William Thomas Jones, A History of  Western Philosophy. I. The Classical Mind, 2nd edn (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 222; Moevs, Metaphysics, pp. 43–45, 50, 82, 150. 111 In light of what I say above about reaction to error and questionable opinion in medieval theological culture, it is interesting to dwell a moment on Dante’s observation that Peter Lombard – ‘Magister contrarium dixerit in quarto’ (6) – disagrees with his claim regarding God’s creative power. The Lombard’s view, which he expressed in Sentences IV. 5. 3, was certainly eccentric and was energetically refuted by Thomas Aquinas (ST I. 45. 5 resp.). Nonetheless, this did not prevent author and text from being hugely inf luential in the Middle Ages. Indeed, the Sentences was a standard schoolroom text which inspired an enormous commentary tradition. Dante celebrates Peter in the Heaven of  the Sun: ‘quel Pietro fu che con la poverella | of ferse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro’ (Par., X. 107–08). The Lombard’s error was much more troubling than, say, Gregory’s; and yet both he and his great work of synthesis are beatified. On controversies connected to Peter, see Pietro B. Rossi, ‘Contra Lombardum: reazioni alla cristologia di Pietro Lombardo’, in Pietro Lombardo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007), pp. 123–91.

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One thing is evident. In both Paradiso XXIX and Monarchia I. iii, Dante is not saying anything especially remarkable. He is in fact repeating commonplaces about creation, angels, being, intellection, etc. – commonplaces which, furthermore, chime harmoniously with what he says more directly and expansively elsewhere about the same issues. There is no unorthodoxy here; and to claim otherwise is unnecessarily to seek out complications where none exist, and hence to do violence to Dante’s texts, oeuvre, thought and religious belief. Yet, one might reasonably wonder why, given the importance of  his subject-matter in Paradiso XXIX, the poet had not been limpidly and unambiguously clear when dealing with topics of such delicacy. The answer, in truth, is obvious: Dante was writing (vernacular) poetry and not scientific (Latin) prose. Paradiso XXIX. 22–36 builds on and extends the stupendous imagistic writing with which the canto had opened, evoking in simile ‘li figli di Latona’ (1) [Latona’s children]. Beatrice’s speech from its inception (line 10) is constellated with metaphor, before fully finding its descriptive voice in the rich concentration of similes and metaphors that constitute our lines: bows, arrows, glass, amber, crystal, light, peaks, bindings. As with other terms, Dante is using the technical vocabulary too poetice; and as we have seen, medieval poets were granted a degree of semantic leeway. Contextualizing Paradiso XXIX. 22–36 highlights levels of relevant complexity within orthodoxy – the episode’s, the canticle’s and the poem’s undoubted frame of reference. It is not enough simply to assert, even when this is accompanied with an array of  learned quotations, that Dante’s treatment of angels and creation is heterodox. What needs also to be done, and which as far as I am aware has not been attempted by any scholar who has argued for the lines’ unorthodoxy, is to explain why, in a situation where doctrinal orthodoxy is a key theme, as the latter part of  Beatrice’s speech confirms, and where our lines are immediately preceded by a rigorously conformist declaration denying the eternity of  the world (19–21),112 which functions as a kind of emblem of  the canto’s celebration of established doctrine, the poet should

112 On the controversy see Thomas d’Aquin et la controverse sur ‘L’Éternité du monde’, ed. by Cyrille Michon (Paris: Flammarion, 2004).

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have wished to undermine Beatrice, the Commedia and himself as a scriba Dei by ‘lying’ (100). The tenets of  the faith may seem absurd to the secular modern mind; for a medieval believer, such as Dante, they were a hallowed mystery, worthy of  the most profound respect. Some have claimed that Paradiso XXIX’s treatment of  the angels reveals the inf luence of  Averroes – and this conveniently leads me to my second example. That the great Arab philosopher had a considerable impact on medieval thought is indisputable; and Dante dutifully acknowledged his importance by citing him as an auctoritas, by presenting him as an individual of exceptional intelligence and erudition (Purg., XXV. 63) and by locating him in Limbo and emphasizing the ‘greatness’ of  his work as a commentator of  Aristotle (Inf., IV. 144). As far as thirteenth- and fourteenth-century intellectual culture was concerned, such appreciation of  Averroes was unexceptionable. Yes, as Dante too underscores in Purgatorio XXV. 62–66, the philosopher had made some mistakes, including some dangerously heretical ones.113 However, in general, he was deemed an excellent and authorita113 I do not have the space to examine in depth Dante’s reference to Averroes in Monarchia I. iii: ‘Et quia potentia ista per unum hominem seu per aliquam particularium comunitatum superius distinctarum tota simul in actum reduci non potest, necesse est multitudinem esse in humano genere, per quam quidem tota potentia hec actuetur; sicut necesse est multitudinem rerum generabilium ut potentia tota materie prime semper sub actu sit: aliter esset dare potentiam separatam, quod est inpossibile. Et huic sententie concordat Averrois in comento super hiis que De anima. Potentia etiam intellectiva, de qua loquor, non solum est ad formas universales aut speties, sed etiam per quandam extensionem ad particulares: unde solet dici quod intellectus speculativus extensione fit practicus, cuius finis est agere atque facere’ (8–9). Suf fice it to say that I do not believe that, in the treatise, Dante accepted Averroes’ doctrine of a single possible intellect for the whole of  humanity. As is well known, the poet always af firmed the immortality of  the individual soul. The idea that he might have casually claimed otherwise is unthinkable; not least, because as I have attempted to demonstrate, he was acutely aware of  the pitfalls of unorthodoxy. It is extremely dif ficult to imagine what might have been the purpose in the Monarchia of such a dangerously radical claim. John Marenbon, in an important essay, has attempted to provide an answer to this conundrum. He writes: ‘in a philosophical argument of  the sort found throughout Monarchia I, Dante should be expected to use in earnest the positions, which, in philosophical terms, he thought convincing’; consequently,

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tive interpreter of  Aristotle, many of whose opinions were not in any way at odds with Christianity. It is enough to remember that, despite sharply criticizing him on matters relating to the possible intellect and creation, Thomas Aquinas made ready recourse to Averroes, not least when attacking Avicenna. Yet, it has become increasingly the case among Dantists to use the name Averroes as a marker of  the poet’s supposed unorthodoxy. To put it somewhat dif ferently, whenever an echo of  the Arab philosopher is heard in Dante,114 this has also been taken as evidence that the poet had heterodox leanings, a reaction that has its origins in Bruno Nardi and which, in the early 1980s, was given a hefty boost by Maria Corti.115 I hope that I need not linger any longer on the deficiencies of  this perspective. he ‘held the Averroist position on the single possible intellect as the right position within philosophical discussion’: John Marenbon, ‘Dante’s Averroism’, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke ed. by John Marenbon (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 349–74 (p. 371; italics in the original). I remain unpersuaded by this explanation. Nowhere in his œuvre did Dante show the slightest sympathy for the claims and methods of  those contemporary philosophers who wished to insulate their thinking and conclusions from the higher insights provided by revelation, although even such philosophers were careful to present problematic claims as erroneous when considered in light of  faith (see note 116). In fact, for Dante, a philosophical truth could only be true if it did not challenge the tenets of  faith. As I document at some length in this study, he always took care to subordinate reason to revelation and not to treat philosophy as self-suf ficient. 114 It is not my intention here to evaluate the validity of such echoes. On the one hand, there is no doubt that Dante had read some Averroes (how much is a matter that is still far from established); on the other, there is little question that the extent of  his knowledge of and recourse to Averroes has been exaggerated. Rather too frequently, when an inf luence from the philosopher on the poet is posited, this is not supported by hard philological and intertextual evidence. 115 I should like to stress that I have a high regard for both Nardi and Corti. In particular, it is impossible to think about Dante’s intellectual formation and development without having recourse to Nardi’s researches. At the same time, we should not be blind to the limitations of  his scholarship, beginning with his personal biases, his love of polemic, his unacknowledged shifts in opinion, his deafness to poetry and, most notoriously, his failure to account for the contradictory nature of some of  his claims. Thus, as regards creation, Nardi presented Dante as orthodoxly Christian, as sympathetic to Avicennian emanation and as tinged by Averroism – all positions the

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Another consequence of  the fascination with Averroes is to associate Dante with the so-called radical Aristotelians or neo-Averroists, those intellectuals, usually masters of arts at the Universities of Paris and Bologna in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who, inspired by aspects of  Averroes’ reading of  Aristotle, privileged the independence of rational philosophical inquiry, while acknowledging that this could lead to interpretations that were dif ferent from what might be found in Scripture and thus from the tenets of  the faith, although, in such instances, they were also careful to acknowledge that the truth resided in revelation.116 In addition, they believed that a life dedicated to philosophy constituted a self-suf ficient earthly ideal that could lead to satisfaction (happiness) in the here and now. That, from circa the mid-1200s, the Church and orthodox theologians considered such thinkers as problematic, error-ridden and hence heterodox, especially as regards their views on the unity of  the possible intellect, the eternity of  the world, astrological determinism, the mortality of  the individual soul and free will, is well known. Thus, if it could be shown that Dante accepted even some of  their ideas and viewpoints, then, proponents of  the poet’s heterodoxy would have potent and historically pertinent evidence in support of  their case. However, it is of no little consequence that, on the contentious questions just listed, Dante

poet is supposed to have held in the Commedia. Corti, in her turn, was profoundly af fected by her discovery of  the modistae and radical Aristotelian circles in Paris and Bologna, so that it is not unfair to say – because it can be, and has been, documented – that her enthusiasm clouded her customary philological caution. 116 See, for instance, Boethius of  Dacia, De aeternitate mundi 335–36. 1–27 and 364–66. 805–60, in Opera. Topica-Opuscula. VI.ii. De aeternitate mundi; De summo bono; De somniis, ed. by Nicolaus Georgius Green-Pedersen (Copenhagen: Gad, 1976). Fernand Van Steenberghen writes about Siger of  Brabant: ‘chaque fois qu’il expose une doctrine contraire au dogme chrétien, il declare que, conformément a son rôle de professeur de philosophie, il présente les opinions d’Aristote et des autres philosophes, sans prétendre qu’elles soient vraies. Au contraire, il laisse entendre que ces opinions sont erronées dans la mesure où elles sont contredites par les enseignements de la foi, lesquels sont toujours vrais’: Maître Siger de Brabant (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires and Vander-Oyez, 1977), p. 232.

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always expressed himself orthodoxly, firmly rejecting Averroistic positions on the soul, creation and free will. At the same time, the neo-Averroists were not a homogenous movement, but individuals who reacted personally, and so dif ferently, to Averroes’ teachings.117 Thus, if we wish to argue for their inf luence on Dante, we need to demonstrate his ties to specific figures. Yet, despite the far from infrequent references in Dante scholarship to the significance of medieval Averroism for the poet, such detailed work is largely missing. This is true even as regards Siger of  Brabant,118 the only unquestionably Averroistic magister whom Dante mentions:     Questi onde a me ritorna il tuo riguardo, è ’l lume d’uno spirto che ’n pensieri gravi a morir li parve venir tardo:     essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri, che, leggendo nel Vico de li Strami, silogizzò invidïosi veri. (Par., X. 133–38) [This light from whom your gaze returns to me contains a spirit whose oppressive thoughts made him see death as coming much too slowly: it is the everlasting light of  Siger, who when he lectured in the Street of  Straw, demonstrated truths that earned him envy.]

The presentation of  Siger and his presence in Paradise are suggestive and potentially problematic, especially as the philosopher was formally

117 For an excellent survey of  the scholarship on medieval Averroism, which highlights how historians of ideas have been uncovering a highly complex and individuated reality, see Valeria Sorge, Profili dell’averroismo bolognese. Metafisica e scienza in Taddeo di Parma (Naples: Luciano, 2001), pp. 13–38. See also de Libera. 118 As I was correcting the final version of  this chapter, I was able to read, and hence take into account, thanks to Luca Bianchi’s collegial generosity, his excellent ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise? Notes on the Relationship between Dante and Siger of  Brabant’ cited at note 104. Although our emphases are dif ferent, our essential conclusions regarding Dante’s treatment of  Siger are close; as are our views regarding how problems of  ‘unorthodoxy’ in general and of  the poet’s connections to supposedly heterodox traditions in particular have been addressed by Dantists.

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summoned to appear before the inquisitor of  France, Simon du Val, in 1276 to account for his errors and thirty of  the articles censured by Bishop Tempier in 1277 apparently relate to his opinions. At first sight, the beatification of  Siger would point to Dante’s sympathy for the philosopher, and, by extension, for his unconventional views. However, in reality, matters are rather more complex and indefinite. First and foremost, the lines cannot be taken as evidence that Dante had firsthand knowledge of any of  Siger’s writings;119 or even that he was aware that some of  the philosopher’s positions were unconventional. Instead, we have a portrait of an intense, troubled and powerful intellect (134–35 and 138), a master of arts at the University of  Paris (137) who ‘commenting’ (leggere) – presumably on the works of  Aristotle – employed dialectical methods (silogizzare)120 to arrive at ‘truths’ which, as is not unusual in academic circles, created resentments among his less able colleagues (137–38).121 Naturally, the emphasis on ‘pensieri / gravi’ might imply that Dante was hinting at Siger’s interest in unorthodox ideas which brought about such a serious crisis in him that death appeared as the only way of resolving it. Yet, Siger must have overcome his despair, otherwise he would not be an ‘eternal light;’ and his ‘veri’, for the same reason, cannot relate to issues that challenged Christian dogma. Nonetheless, given the allusiveness of  Dante’s description, we need to tread carefully when maintaining that the poet was aware of  Siger’s intellectual biography and especially of  his heterodoxy. Indeed, the medieval context encourages such caution. Although it is a commonplace in Dante 119 Bianchi, ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise?’, refers to recent research which has documented the extremely limited presence of neo-Averroistic writings, including Siger’s De anima intellectiva and De causis, in Bolognese and Paduan circles with which Dante may possibly have had some contact. There is, however, no evidence that the poet had access to the libraries of  Tommaso d’Arezzo and Antonio da Parma. 120 It has been noted that ‘Siger était un bon logicien’ (de Libera, p. 45). In light of  this, to argue from Dante’s use of  the verb silogizzare that the poet must have had firsthand knowledge of  Siger’s work would be excessive. Silogizzare is what masters of arts did as a matter of course. 121 Luca Bianchi (‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise?’) suggestively relates the epithet to late thirteenth-century Parisian philosophical complaints about intellectual harassment triggered by envy.

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criticism to state that Thomas and Siger were adversaries on earth who are reconciled in eternity,122 Thomas never referred to his opponent by name.123 On the other hand, in his De anima intellectiva, Siger did respectfully mention Aquinas, together with Albertus Magnus.124 (Dante’s knowledge of  this opusculum has not been established.125) The De anima intellectiva, how122 On Dante and Siger, see at least Francesco Bausi, Dante fra scienza e sapienza. Esegesi del canto XII del ‘Paradiso’ (Florence: Olschki, 2009), pp. 215–27; M. B. Crowe, ‘Paradiso X: Siger of  Brabant’, in Dante Soundings. Eight Literary and Historical Essays, ed. by David Nolan (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981), pp. 146–63; Peter Dronke, Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 96–100; Kenelm Foster, The Two Dantes and Other Studies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of  California Press, 1977), pp. 135–36; Ruedi Imbach, Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996), pp. 141–48; Bruno Nardi, Sigieri di Brabante nella ‘Divina Commedia’ (Spianate [Pescia]: Presso l’Autore, 1912); Antonio Petagine, ‘L’elogio di Dante’, in Sigieri di Brabante, Anima dell’uomo (Milan: Bompiani, 2007), pp. 355–59; Salomon Reinach, ‘L’enigme de Siger’, Revue historique, 151 (1926), 34–47; John A. Scott, ‘Il Sigieri dantesco rivisitato’, Letteratura italiana antica, 9 (2008), 193–217; Giampiero Tulone, ‘Gli “invidïosi veri” nella Commedia e nelle fonti dantesche’, Lettere Italiane, 52 (2000), 345–78; Marco Veglia, ‘Per un’ardita umiltà. L’averroismo di Dante tra Guido Cavalcanti, Sigieri di Brabante e San Francesco d’Assisi’, Schede umanistiche, n.s. 1 (2000), 67–106, and ‘Da Sigieri al “venerabile Bernardo”. Su Par., X–XI’, Studi danteschi, 68 (2003), 113–29. 123 Bonaventure, too, in his anti-Averroistic writings, does not mention Siger. 124 ‘Per quem autem modum anima intellectiva sit unita corpori, et separata ab eodem, dicunt praecipui viri in philosophia Albertus et Thomas quod substantia animae intellectivae unita est corpori dans esse eidem, sed potentia animae intellectivae separata est a corpore, cum per organum corporeum non operetur’: De anima intellectiva III (p. 81, ll. 78–82; and see also ll. 83–95), in Siger de Brabant, Questiones in tertium de anima; De anima intellectiva; De aeternitate mundi, ed. by Bernardo Bazán (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires and Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1972). 125 Maria Corti makes much of  the fact that Siger broke of f  the De anima intellectiva with the following phrase: ‘Sed qualiter tunc debeat intelligi quod scientia est qualitas de prima specie qualitatis in praedicamentis, vigiles et studeas atque legas, ut ex hoc dubio tibi remanente exciteris ad studendum et legendum, cum vivere sine litteris mors sit et vilis hominis sepultura’: (p. 112; italics added). Corti considers the italicized phrase as evidence that Dante had read the De anima intellectiva – ‘Dante sapeva bene di cosa stava parlando’ – by deeming the phrase ‘a morir li parve venir tardo’ (Par., X. 135) a reference to Siger’s words: Maria Corti, Dante a un nuovo crocevia (Florence:

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ever, is not a polemical work but a careful response to Thomas’ De unitate intellectus contra averroistas. It represents in fact an important moment in Siger’s f luctuating accommodation to orthodoxy, in which he departs from Averroes’ interpretation of a single separate intellect, admits the failure of philosophy to deal with the question and submits to the authority of  faith.126 Furthermore, nowhere in his oeuvre does Dante of fer even a hint that he was aware of  Bishop Tempier and his condemnations; and even if  he had known about the censures, it is almost certain that he would not have necessarily associated the errors with Siger, since only one manuscript of  the 1277 condemnation, Paris BN lat. 4391, fol. 68, introduces the 219 errors as ‘contra Segerum et Boetium hereticos’.127 Indeed, explicit contemporary references to Siger as a heterodox thinker are rare. In addition to the annotation just quoted, there is one mention in a chronicle of 1320 (quoted below on p. 319, n. 133); another in a manuscript of  Ramon Llull;128 and in

Libreria Commissionaria Sansoni, 1981), p. 98. This is most unlikely. Not only are the contexts very dif ferent, but the phrase itself, rather than a heartfelt personal ‘testamentario intellettuale’ (100), is a wellworn and longstanding Scriptural and classical commonplace; see Barański, ‘“Alquanto tenea”’, pp. 304–13. Siger’s formulation is in fact close to the most inf luential classical version of  the saying. Of fering advice to Lucilius on how best to lead his life, Seneca noted: ‘deinde idem delicati timent, [morti] cui vitam suam fecere similem. […] Puto, aeque qui in odoribus iacet mortuus est quam qui rapitur unco; otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura’: Lucius Anneus Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, ed. by Leighton Durham Reynolds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), X. 82. 2–3 (my italics; and compare Conv., IV. vii. 11–12). It saddens me to conclude that most of  Corti’s short presentation of  Siger’s career and Dante’s reactions to him is exaggerated, imprecise or incorrect (pp. 98–101). In ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise?’, Luca Bianchi too is critical of  Corti’s work, including her discussion of  the De anima intellectiva. 126 See especially chapter 7 (p. 108). 127 Thijssen, p. 139. The thirty articles associated with Siger condemned in 1277 are a modern reconstruction and are not linked to him in the original document. 128 ‘Raymond Lulle prend le parti de Tempier dans un ouvrage intitulé “Declaratio per modum dialogi edita contra aliquorum philosophorum et eorum sequacium opiniones erroneas et damnatas a Venerabili Patre Domino Episcopo Parisiensi.” Dans le catalogue des oeuvres de Raymond Lulle (Paris, Bibl. Nat. fonds lat. 16.533 f. 60) de 1311 cet ouvrage est intitulé “Liber contra errores Boetii et Sigerii”’: Severinus Skovgaard

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two out of  the over fifty extant manuscripts of  Thomas’ De unitate intellectus.129 None of  the early Dante commentators, except for the author of  the so-called Chiose Vernon, dated to around 1390, who terms him ‘infedele’, makes any mention of  Siger’s unorthodoxy. The Chiose cagliaritane go so far as to describe him as a ‘grandissimo sancto maestro’.130 One very simple reason as to why Siger was not generally considered a controversial figure in the Middle Ages is that, as now seems reasonable to surmise, since no documentary evidence of a conviction for heresy exists, he was acquited of  the charges laid against him by the inquisitor.131 But what of  the reference to Siger in the Fiore? Mastro Sighier non andò guari lieto: A ghiado il fe’ morire a gran dolore Nella corte di Roma, ad Orbivieto. (XCII. 9–11) [Master Siger did not meet a happy end: with a sword I made him die with great pain in the court of  Rome, at Orvieto.]132

129

130

131 132

Jensen, ‘Introduction’, in Boethius of  Dacia, Opera. Modi significandi sive Quaestiones super Priscianum maiorem, ed. by Severinus Skovgaard Jensen (Copenhagen: Gad, 1969), pp. ix–xxxix (p. xxxi). In ms. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 8001, end of  thirteenth century, at fol. 29r the title is given as ‘Tractatus fratris Thome contra magistrum Sogerum. de vnitate intellectus’; while in ms. Oxford, Corpus Christi College 225, fourteenth century, at fol. 67v the colophon states: ‘Expliceat. Hec scripsit tl’r [Thomas] contra magistrum sig’md’ de barbantia et alios plurimos parisius in philosophia regentes anno domini mo.cc o.70’. Quotations are taken from the texts uploaded to the invaluable Dartmouth Dante Project. My conclusion regarding the commentators’ view of  Siger is also based on the same source. The following commentators and commentaries make no allusion to his holding ‘opiniones contra fidem’: Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo, Pietro Alighieri, Chiose ambrosiane, Chiose cagliaritane, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco da Buti, Anonimo fiorentino and Giovanni da Serravalle. René-Antoine Gauthier, ‘Notes sur Siger de Brabant. II. Siger en 1272–1275. Aubry de Reims et la scission des Normands’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 68 (1984), 3–49 (pp. 26–28); Thijssen, p. 48. Translations from the Fiore are taken from The Fiore, ed. and trans. by Santa Casciani and Christopher Kleinhenz (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).

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Even if  the poemetto is not by Dante, it surely reveals that, in the mid1280s, news of  Siger’s violent death, and so about his f light from Paris in late November 1276 to plead his case before Pope John XXI after Simon du Val had issued summons against him, was circulating in Florence? The first assumption is certainly not unreasonable. As regards the second, there is absolutely no trace in what Falsembiante says that Siger had abandoned Paris and was in Orvieto on account of  his questionable opinions. If  the author of  the Fiore had known this, given his well known anti-French views and his particular animus against the theologians at the university (XCII. 12–14 and XCII. 5–8), it is not unlikely that he would have mentioned it, just as he did William of  St Amour’s treatment: Mastro Guglielmo, il buon di Sant’Amore, Fec’i’ di Francia metter in divieto E sbandir del reame a gran romore. (XCII. 12–14) [As for Master William, the good man of Saint-Amour, I had the prohibition placed on him in France and had him exiled from the realm with great outcry.]

In fact, what is rarely appreciated is that, if  the first mention of  Siger being in Italy is found in the Fiore, the earliest reference that he had f led Paris because his views had been ‘confuted’ appears circa 1320.133 The reliability of  this account, given the erroneous indication of  Albertus Magnus and of  the amount of  time that elapsed between Siger’s supposed departure (late 1276) and murder (between 1281 and 1284), is suspect. Indeed, one cannot but wonder at the extent of  the reliability of  the information provided in the Fiore, since its source is the deceitful Falsembiante. Thus, it comes as

133 ‘Hujus tempore f loruit Albertus, de ordine Praedicatorum, qui multa scripsit praeclare de theologia, qui magistrum Sygerum in scriptis suis multum rearguit. Qui Sygerus, natione Brabantinus, eo quod quasdam opiniones contra fidem tenuerat, Parisius subsistere non valens, Romanam curiam adiit, ibique post parvum tempus a clerico suo quasi dementi perfossus pefiit’: Continuationes chronici Martini Oppaviensis: Continuationes Brabantina, ed. by Ludwig Weiland, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, XXIV, 259–65.

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little surprise that recent research has seriously called into question Siger’s f light to the papal court and his appeal.134 What is clear from my presentation – which is quite dif ferent in its focus from the version of  Siger’s career that holds sway in Dante studies – is that, in line with medieval communis opinio, it is most unlikely that the poet would have deemed the philosopher a heretical thinker. The question thus arises of  the implications of  Siger’s presence in the Heaven of  the Sun. I believe that, in broad terms, these are relatively straightforward. The conf licts between the masters of  theology and of philosophy, especially in Paris, were widely known. In keeping with the spirit of intellectual harmony that marks his presentation of  the inhabitants of  the fourth heaven, Dante was emblematically bringing together an exemplary teacher from each faculty – namely, Thomas and Siger –, hence the precise reference to the ‘Vico de li Strami’ (Par., X. 137) where the philosophers taught at the university of  Paris, in order to place a seal on the otherworldly reconciliation of  the once litigious academics. In order properly to assess Dante’s intellectual sympathies and to define the syncretic nature of  his attitude to the medieval world of ideas, an in-depth study of  Paradiso X–XIV, which I obviously do not have the space to undertake here, would be necessary.135 At the same time, on the basis of  the figures he introduces, it is extremely unlikely that any of  them would disturb my basic contention regarding the fundamental ideological orthodoxy of  the Commedia. And I most certainly include Joachim of  Fiore in this assertion. Given the contradictory reaction to and the wealth of conf licting information circulating about him in the Middle Ages,136 much more research needs to be done before 134 Gauthier, pp. 26–28; Thijssen, pp. 46–48. If  Siger had not f led to Orvieto, why was he there at some point during the first half of  the 1280s? Louis-Jacques Bataillon, ‘Bulletin d’histoire des doctrines médiévales: Le treizième siècle (fin)’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 65 (1981), 101–22 (p. 107), argues that he was there on business relating to his chapter. That the Fiore’s ‘Sighier’ is indeed Siger of  Brabant appears to be confirmed by his being termed a ‘gra·litterato’ (XCII. 6). 135 For the present, see Bausi; Bianchi, ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise?’. 136 For an excellent presentation of  Joachim’s medieval reception, see Marjorie Reeves, The Inf luence of  Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Notre Dame, IN: University of  Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 3–132.

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we can state with a degree of certainty what Dante’s attitude towards the Abbot and his views may have been. Like many of  his contemporaries, in the Paradiso, Dante too accepts Joachim’s prophetic powers: ‘il calavrese abate Giovacchino / di spirito profetico dotato’ (Par., XII. 140–41) [the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, who had the gift of  the prophetic spirit]. The phrase describing Joachim’s divine gift, translates verbatim a section of  the liturgy, the Antiphon to Vespers, with which his order used to commemorate him. Tellingly, since Dante appears to have known the text, the Antiphon goes on to af firm that ‘blessed Joachim’ was ‘far from heretical error’: ‘Beatus Joachim, spiritu dotatus prophetico, decoratus intelligentia; errore procul haeretico, dixit futura et praesentia’.137 Equally, although there is little doubt that Dante had some sympathy for Spiritual positions, only the most extreme of which were of ficially condemned, he was careful to distance himself  from the radicalism of  Ubertino da Casale, and to align himself with Bonaventure’s moderate Franciscanism:     Ben dico, chi cercasse a foglio a foglio nostro volume, ancor troveria carta u’ leggerebbe ‘I’ mi son quel ch’i’ soglio;’     ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta, là onde vegnon tali a la scrittura, ch’uno la fugge e altro la coarta (Par., XII. 121–26).138 [I do admit that, if one were to search our volume leaf  by leaf, he might still read one page with, ‘I am as I always was’; but those of  Acquasparta or Casale who read our Rule are either given to escaping it or making it too strict.]

In any case, as with Joachim, and as with several of  the other figures and intellectual traditions that make an appearance in the Heaven of  the Sun, considerably more philological research needs to be done before we can

137 Acta Sanctorum, VII, 90. 138 On the variety of medieval reaction, including that of  the Church, to the Franciscans and Dante’s relationship to medieval Franciscanism, see Nicholas R. Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and Papcy in the ‘Commedia’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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begin to have a sense of  Dante’s (and the medieval world’s) standpoint on them. A probable general reason why the poet associated Thomas and Siger was to underscore his belief  that theology and philosophy, and so faith and reason, were not in opposition. Indeed, in Paradiso XXIX, Beatrice reiterates this point:     ma questo vero [the creation of  the angels] è scritto in molti lati da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo, e tu te n’avvedrai se bene agguati;     e anche la ragione il vede alquanto. (40–43) [but this, the truth I speak, is written by scribes of  the Holy Ghost – as you can find if you look carefully – on many pages; and reason, too, can see in part this truth.]

In asserting as much, Dante was upholding an idea that was deeply rooted in Christian thought: reason, as long as it recognized both its boundaries, as that delimitative ‘alquanto’ declares, and its subordination to revelation, then, it could have an important supporting role to play in human life,139 especially as its origins are divine. Reason – and by extension philosophy, the exercise of  the human intellect – only became problematic when it was deemed to be self-suf ficient and its focus was restricted solely to contingent and earthly matters with little or no concern for the transcendent. In the Commedia, Dante provides several examples of those who, ‘presumptuously’ or to gain material advantage or for reasons of expediency, misdirect and 139 See, for instance, Fernand Brunner, ‘Philosophie et religion ou l’ambiguité de la philosophie’, in Historia philosophiae medii aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. by Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf  Pluta, 2 vols (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Grüner, 1991), I (1991), 129–44; Chenu, La Théologie comme science; Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Joseph W. Koterski, Medieval Philosophy: Basic Concepts (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 9–36. However, see also Gerard Verbeke, ‘Philosophy and Heresy: Some Conf licts between Reason and Faith’, in Lourdaux and Verhelst, Concept, pp. 172–97. See also Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

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overestimate their rational faculties: from the heretics to Ulysses and from the Decretalists to those who are not ‘content’ to curb their speculations to the ‘quia’ (Purg., III. 37). Human reason, and hence the knowledge and satisfaction this can provide, is extremely limited, especially when faced by the divine – as, pointedly, Virgil admits – , since true knowledge can only come through Christ:     Matto è chi spera che nostra ragione possa trascorrer la infinita via che tiene una sustanza in tre persone.     State contenti, umana gente, al quia; ché, se potuto aveste veder tutto, mestier non era parturir Maria. (Purg., III. 34–39) [Foolish is he who hopes our intellect can reach the end of  that unending road only one Substance in three Persons follows. Confine yourselves, o humans, to the quia; had you been able to see all, there would have been no need for Mary to give birth.]

As the earlier discussion of  Convivio III. xv had made evident, this had been Dante’s position in the ‘almost commentary’ too. Admittedly, there, the function of  the Incarnation and revelation are left substantially implicit. However, by the close of  Book III, Christ’s fundamental role and the inadequacy of reason had already been definitively established in the treatise, and, tellingly, in connection with a matter of  the highest import: ‘la immortalità dell’anima’ (II. viii. 7) [the immortality of  the soul] – a reality which, even if af firmed by ‘tutte le scritture, sì de’ filosofi come delli altri savi scrittori’ (8) [the whole corpus of writings produced either by philosophers or by others endowed with wisdom], ‘noi non potemo perfettamente vedere mentre che ’l nostro immortale col mortale è mischiato; ma vedemola per fede perfettamente, e per ragione la vedemo con ombra d’oscuritade’ (15) [we cannot see this perfectly while what is immortal in us is mixed with what is mortal; we do, however, see it perfectly with the eyes of  faith, while with the eyes of reason we see it shadowed in obscurity]. The close of  this passage is in perfect harmony with Beatrice’s declaration in Paradiso XXIX. 40–43; and indeed, accurately distills Dante’s steadfast view on the relationship between faith and reason. And, with dutiful precision, the poet had

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orthodoxly established what he meant by fede in the preceding paragraph: ‘la dottrina veracissima di Cristo, la quale è via, veritade e luce: via, perché per essa sanza impedimento andiamo alla felicitade di quella immortalitade; veritade, perché non sof fera alcuno errore; luce, perché allumina noi nella tenebra della ignoranza mondana’ (14) [the utterly trustworthy teaching of  Christ, which is way, truth and life: way, because by it we go without hindrance to the happiness to be found in that immortality; truth, because it does not permit of any error; light, because it illumines us who live in the darkness of earthly ignorance]. Certainly, the emphases of  the Convivio and of  the Commedia are not always the same, including as regards the ef ficacy of  human reason; while Christ and revelation play a less prominent role in the former than in the latter. However, the controlling ideological purview in both works is that of a conformist medieval Christian. Philosophy, as might be expected from the heavily Aristotelian character of  the Convivio, is granted an important status. Yet, as recent research has shown, documenti alla mano, the treatise is far from that Aristotelian monolith that some used to maintain (and others doggedly still do). As a result, the notion of philosophy in the commentary is unstable and f luid, its contours in a state of  f lux. It is not narrowly equivalent to the dialectical and demonstrative study of  the ordo naturalis, as it would have been in rigorist Aristotelian circles.140 Dante’s F/filosofia – the editorial oscillation between capitalization and non-capitalization is an immediate mark of  the term’s semantic breadth – brings together ethical, erotic, Scriptural, divine and contemplative associations.141 Until such

140 ‘Col nome di Filosofia dal secolo XIII al XVI s’intese il compatto e organico sistema di dottrine di Aristotele intorno alla natura e composizione del mondo, alle sue cause e alle sue finalità’: Bruno Nardi, ‘Filosofia e teologia ai tempi di Dante’, in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Danteschi, 2 vols (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965–66), I (1965), 79–175 (p. 79). 141 See Dronke; Moevs, Metaphysics, p. 85; Paola Nasti, Favole d’amore e ‘saver profondo’: La tradizione salomonica in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2007), pp. 93–130; Vasoli’s annotations to the Convivio. It is unlikely that anyone would now write, as Kenelm Foster did in the 1970s, that, in the Convivio, ‘the two components, the philosophical and the Christian are merely juxtaposed’ (p. 246).

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time as we have a study which thoroughly explores the term’s dif ferent and connotatively stratified applications in the Convivio,142 as well as its ties to closely related notions such as Sapienza, scienza, veritade, ragione and, of course, Dio, we should try to refrain from making easy assumptions about its, and hence the treatise’s, laicizing values, which, in any case, in the wake especially of  Vasoli’s, of  Dronke’s and of  Nasti’s work, are unquestionably religiously imprinted and orthodoxly circumscribed. At the same time, the celebration of  Filosofia, and by extension of  the working of  the human intellect, is more forceful in the Convivio than in the Commedia. Thus, if on the one hand, the intellectual ‘sciences’ are subordinated to an af fective all-encompassing theology,143 on the other, Dante pushes philosophy as close as he can to the sphere of  faith, so that it can of fer meaningful support to the former: Onde, sì come per lei molto di quello si vede per ragione, e per consequente si vede poter essere, che sanza lei pare maraviglia, così per lei si crede ogni miracolo in più alto intelletto pote[r] avere ragione, e per consequente pote[r] essere. Onde la nostra buona fede ha sua origine; dal[la] quale viene la speranza, ch’è ’l proveduto desiderare; e per quella nasce l’operazione della caritade. (Conv., III. xiv. 14; and see also III. viii. 5; xv. 2–3, 5–6, 15–16). [Thus, just as through her we see by our reason much of what without her seems marvellous, and consequently see that much has a cause giving it existence, so through her we believe that every miracle can have a cause in an intellect higher than our own, and consequently can exist. From this our precious faith takes its origin; from faith comes hope, the desire of what is seen to lie ahead; and from hope springs the activity of charity.]

Dante’s positions at the close of chapter xiv of Book III could not be further from those of philosophers following closely in Averroes’ wake. Thus, the poet’s belief  that philosophy can provide confirmation of  the miraculous runs directly counter to the view widely held among the philosophi that 142 For the present see Moevs, ‘Metaphysical Basis’, pp. 229–30, and Metaphysics, pp. 82–90; Vincenzo Placella, ‘Filosofia’, in ED, II, pp. 881–85. See also Imbach, Dante, la philosophie et les laïques. 143 Barański, ‘Dante and Doctrine’.

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this was just not possible.144 Dante never portrays philosophy as in any way creating problems for theology or the divine. Indeed, as we have just seen, Filosofia is closely and harmoniously associated with God – ‘E dico che nello suo aspetto apariscono cose le quali dimostrano de’ piaceri di Paradiso’ (Conv., III. viii. 5) [I say that in her countenance things appear which reveal some of  the pleasures of  Paradise] –, a view which challenges contemporary controversies regarding the relative standing of and the inter-relationship between theological and philosophical knowledge.145 Consequently, one way of reading the Convivio is as a work which confirms how the proper exercise of reason not only leads to intellectual and ethical improvement but also to insights about the transcendent. Indeed, the stamp of  the theological virtues is discernible in the treatise. The purpose of  the work is charitable: ‘intendo fare un generale convivio’ (Conv., I. i. 11) [I intend to provide a full-scale banquet]. Unlike the philosophi, who considered their discipline to be the preserve of an elite,146 for Dante it was potentially accessible to everyone: ‘Ed essa Filosofia non solamente 144 Siger pithily summarized this view as ‘Sed nihil ad nos nunc de Dei miraculis, cum de naturalibus naturaliter disseramus’: De anima intellectiva V (p. 84, ll. 47–48); and compare Boethius of  Dacia, De aeternitate mundi 335–36. 1–27 and 364. 805–09. See also Bruno Nardi, Dal ‘Convivio’ alla ‘Commedia’ (Rome: Alla sede dell’Istituto, 1960), pp. 64–67. 145 See Luca Bianchi, Pour une histoire de la ‘double vérité’ (Paris: Vrin, 2008). 146 See Boethius of  Dacia, De summo bono 373. 111–12. Boethius does somewhat temper his position in the opusculum’s close (377. 226–44), where, in a precautionary move, he also gives his strongly ‘humanistic’ argument a conventional final religious f lourish. See also Bianchi, Il vescovo, pp. 149–95, ‘La felicità intellettuale come professione nella Parigi del Duecento’, Rivista di filosofia, 78 (1987), 181–99, and ‘Filosofi, uomini e bruti. Note per la storia di un’antropologia “averroista”’, Rinascimento, 32 (1992), 185–201 (Bianchi usefully stresses the intricate transmission of  the idea of philosophical superiority, including Albertus Magnus’ key role in its dissemination, and the fact that, ultimately, it was not as elitist a notion as some formulations might suggest. As far as I am aware, the extent to which Dante might have been aware of  the complex history of  the idea and its ramifications has not even begun to be considered by Dante studies.); Gianfranco Fioravanti, ‘Desiderio di sapere e vita filosofica nelle Questioni sulla Metafisica del ms. 1386 Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig’, in Mojsisch and Pluta, I (1991), 271–83.

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alberga [… alberga] non pur nelli sapienti, ma eziandio, come provato è di sopra in altro trattato, essa è dovunque alberga l’amore di quella’ (Conv., IV. xxx. 5) [And Philosophy does not dwell only in the wise, but, as was shown above in another treatise, is also to be found wherever love of  her dwells]. And the Convivio is a means to enf lame that love.

Conclusion I’m far from certain that this chapter merits a conclusion. The argument it develops, probably at too great a length, is straightforward: throughout his career,147 Dante’s fundamental and controlling intellectual premises conformed to the tenets of  the faith. His acceptance of religious orthodoxy was anything but a restriction, not least because his cultural context granted an ‘independent’ artist-intellectual such as him not inconsiderable room in which to manoeuvre. His philosophical and theological interests ranged widely. Indeed, one point on which most of us who have studied Dante’s thought and intellectual development can agree is that he cannot be associated with any single ideological current. As Cacciaguida acknowledged, Dante was his own man politically. However, morally, intellectually and, of course, poetically he also made ‘parte per se stesso’ (Par., XVII. 69) [a party by himself ]. Dante was a great syncretist; and only in recent years have we begun to appreciate the rich ideological and artistic implications of  his synthesizing eclecticism.148 There is much that still needs to be done in this regard. Nonetheless, I am confident of one thing: Dante’s syncretism 147 In the past, I accepted, if not especially forcefully, that the Convivio represented a rationalizing ‘break’ in Dante’s intellectual development. I was wrong; and this study explains why I was wrong. 148 See at least Simon Gilson, ‘Medieval Science in Dante’s Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions’, Reading Medieval Studies, 27 (2001), 39–77, ‘Rimaneggiamenti danteschi di Aristotele: gravitas e levitas nella Commedia’, in Picone, Cachey Jr and Mesirca, Le culture, pp. 151–77, and ‘Dante and Christian Aristotelianism’, in

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needs to be understood, in the first instance, in terms of  his faith. More specifically, his ‘encyclopaedism’ is closely tied to his firm belief  that Truth resides solely in God, while here on earth, on account of our limitations – of  the mind, of  the body, of  temporality – we can at best glimpse a multitude of scrappy veri. Our responsibility, not unlike that shouldered by the author of  the Convivio, is to gather together these ‘truthful’ ‘crumbs’ in order to try to transcend the fragmentariness of our knowledge and achieve a somewhat fuller intimation, even though this will always amount to no more than an approximation, of  the absolute Truth that is God. Dante’s loyalty was determinedly to the divine, never to any particular human doctrine. This is one reason why all his major works, beginning with the Vita nova, and if it is in fact his, already as early as the Fiore, are works of wide-ranging synthesis. In positing two determining constants for Dante’s entire career – religious orthodoxy and artistic-cum-intellectual fusion produced by a powerful experimental energy – am I not essentially rehearsing a variation on the old f lawed idea of  the poet’s coherently evolving progress? My perspective is most decidedly not evolutionary. In any case, we should not forget that this is the image that, across his œuvre, was first carefully and consistently constructed by the poet himself. To put it bluntly, it is an idealized fiction, which fits in well with the conventions of  the vitae of great men, whether lay or religious. My point is rather dif ferent. Dante’s development is profoundly, at times contradictorily, marked by change – change brought about by external events and by personal variations in interests, understanding, learning, taste and sympathies. It is not neatly progressive. As Paolo Falzone has somewhat dryly, though not incorrectly, put it, the poet’s texts record ‘le asimmetrie del pensiero dantesco’ [the asymmetries of  Dantean thought].149 Yet, I believe, for all the ‘asymmetries’, which are unquestionably not the same as unorthodoxies or even contradictions,

Honess and Treherne, Reviewing; Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of  Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 149 Falzone, p. 256; the reference is to the Convivio, nonetheless, the notion can be usefully extended to Dante’s other works and their interconnections.

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Dante ensured that his shifts were always controlled by a deep-seated and, one can only assume, genuine adherence to and belief in the tenets of medieval Catholicism. This is, at least, what I have increasingly, in the last ten or so years, found when reading his works; and it is his texts that have to provide the basis for any account of  Dante’s intellectual and spiritual biography, and for any statement regarding his beliefs. Conversely, what we should not rely on are the compromised self-portraits that Dante paints in and between his works – compromised, first, because normally they are not supported by independent documentary evidence, and, second, because they are subordinated to the needs and structures of  the text in which they appear. The fact that Beatrice accuses the pilgrim of  having betrayed her does not necessarily mean that Dante actually underwent a spiritual and intellectual crisis in life. Her account has to be treated poetice. It certainly cannot be used as a yardstick with which to determine the Convivio’s ideological make-up. That really would be muddling up art and life! In any case, as Étienne Gilson trenchantly noted over seventy years ago, and as I have attempted to illustrate, ‘if  Dante really experienced a crisis of pure philosophism, that crisis was over when he wrote the Banquet’.150 The time is probably overdue for a major reassessment of the Convivio’s ideological parameters and its textual identity (and it is reassuring that this is precisely what is happening). Such a re-evaluation will need to begin by recognizing the dif ficulties and constraints posed by its precarious textual state. For instance, as a rapid glance at Vasoli’s notes will confirm, several of  the passages which, ever since Nardi and Busnelli locked horns, scholars have used to argue that Dante was expressing support for a particular intellectual position – not infrequently the same passage has been made to bear diametrically opposing views – are, in fact, textually corrupt, and thus should be treated with great caution. Before making significant claims on the basis of such passages, we need to establish what can be confirmed with a degree of certainty about the Convivio and what sort of overarching concerns, if any, define and unite it. Given the Convivio’s tentative state, we cannot even be certain to what degree the views Dante expressed therein 150 Étienne Gilson, Dante the Philosopher (London: Sheed & Ward, 1948), p. 159.

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can be taken as definitive or as expressing his actual opinions. He may very well have been exploring and testing dif ferent doctrinal possibilities. What the Convivio might have contained if  Dante had ever prepared a version for publication we shall never know. However, I am willing to hazard one last hypothesis. Indeed, I feel quite relaxed in stating – on the basis of  his practice in his other texts – that Dante would have ironed out potential contradictions and incongruities, and that, if  he had included elements which, at first sight, might seem questionable, he would have of fered the means for their orthodox resolution in the pages of  the Convivio itself.151

151 For two very dif ferent approaches to mine to the question of  Dante and (un)orthodoxy, see Adriano Comollo, Il dissenso religioso in Dante (Florence: Olschki, 1990); Dante & the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of  Transgression, ed. by James Miller (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005). I should like to close by thanking my friends and generous readers, Ted Cachey, Ambrogio Camozzi, George Corbett, Simon Gilson, Christian Moevs, Vittorio Montemaggi and Paola Nasti, for their precious comments on an earlier version of  this chapter.

Index

Accursio Bonfantini  270 Albert the Great  293, 316 Ambrose of  Milan  73 Aquinas, Thomas  12–14, 25, 159–61, 167, 220–23, 283, 289, 293, 312, 316–17 Aristotle  164, 259, 274, 308 Arnaud Daniel  105, 107 Augustine of  Hippo  25, 67–70, 78, 79–80, 87, 167–72, 175, 216–18, 223–25, 231–32, 248–49, 268, 289 Augustinus Triumphus  57 Averroes  274, 305, 311–14

Francis of  Assisi  131, 135

Bede 83 Beleth, John  91 Bernardino da Siena  192–93 Bernardo da Quintavalle  198 Boccaccio  91, 284–85 Bonaventure  81, 85, 88, 199 Boniface VIII, Pope  45, 82

Henry VII, Emperor  122–28, 175–82, 184 Henry of  Segusio  201 Hollander, Robert  26–29 Hugutio of  Pisa  3–10 Humbert of  Romans  129

Cavalcanti, Aldobrandino  190 Cavalcanti, Guido  97 Cecco d’Ascoli  270 Cicero 20 Cogan, Marc  212, 244

Giles of  Rome  57, 63–67, 71–72, 76–77, 82, 83 Giordano da Pisa  194, 200 Giovanni d’Alvernia  198 Giovanni da Virgilio  208 Godfrey of  Fontaines  304 Gragnolati, Manuele  212 Graziolo Bambaglioli  266, 269 Gregory the Great  218–20, 227, 231–32 Guido da Polenta  208 Guido Vernani  270

Iacopo da Varazze see Jacopo da Varagine Iacopo da Viterbo  189 Innocent III, Pope  129 Innocent IV, Pope  111

Durandus of  St Pourçain  305 Durandus, William  47, 96–97, 111, 117, 136

Jacopo da Varagine  91, 154–55, 190–91 James of  Viterbo  44, 57, 63–67 Joachim of  Fiore  320 Johannes de Caulibus  91 John XXII, Pope  111 John of  Paris  57, 79

Egidio, Fra  198 Epicurus 298–300

Llull, Ramon  193, 317 Lombard, Peter  259

332 Index Marsilius of  Padua  44, 57 McGinn, Bernard  196–98 Mussato, Albertino  11–12 Nardi, Bruno  293 Nicholas III, Pope  111 Orosius 119–20 Ottimo (commentator on Dante) 269–70, 277 Passavanti, Jacopo  200 Pelbartus of  Temesvár  190 Peter Olivi  76, 201 Petrarch  91, 129 Philip IV, King of  France  45

Pietro de Trabibus  202 Remigio de’ Girolami  161–62, 201 Riccoldo da Monte Croce  201–02 Rosa of  Viterbo  208 Siger of  Brabant  314–18 Singleton, Charles  26–28 Tempier, Stephen  305, 317 Thomas of  Celano  132 Ubertino da Casale  201, 321 Umiliana de’ Cerchi  208 Umiltà of  Faenza  208

Leeds Studies on Dante Series Editors Claire E. Honess, University of Leeds Matthew Treherne, University of Leeds

International Advisory Board Zygmunt G. Barański, University of Notre Dame Lucia Battaglia Ricci, University of Pisa Simon Gilson, University of Warwick Ronald Martinez, Brown University The book series Leeds Studies on Dante is a new collaboration between Peter Lang Oxford and the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. Based at the University of Leeds, the Centre promotes the study of Dante from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, through support for individual and collaborative research and through work with students at all levels and with a broader public. In support of this remit, the series will publish innovative new research of the highest quality on any aspect of Dante studies. It is open to a wide range of different methodologies, including comparative and interdisciplinary approaches, studies of Dante’s reception from the Middle Ages to the present, and research which engages with the poet’s broader cultural context, as well as analysis of Dante’s works. Proposals are welcomed for monographs or collections of essays in either English or Italian. Editions, commentaries and translations of exceptional scholarly value will also be considered. Potential contributors should send a detailed outline of their proposed volume, including a statement of the aims and remit of the volume and the critical methodology adopted, a chapter breakdown, and a sample chapter. In the case of edited volumes, editors are asked to send a paragraph outlining the cohesiveness of the volume and the rationale for the collection of essays. Complete manuscripts should not be sent unless invited. For further information, please contact the series editors, Claire E. Honess ([email protected]) or Matthew Treherne ([email protected]).

Published volumes Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne (eds) Reviewing Dante’s Theology: Volume 1 2013. isbn 978-3-0343-0924-0 Claire E. Honess and Matthew Treherne (eds) Reviewing Dante’s Theology: Volume 2 2013. isbn 978-3-0343-1757-3