In all the literature of Christendom there is arguably no equal to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Dante completed the final cantos of the Paradiso on his deathbed in 1321, and from the time of its first publication until today its appeal has never faded. It is estimated that 1,100 painters and sculptors have depicted scenes from the poem. The first of the pictures were miniatures in manuscripts, soon followed by frescoes in churches.1Jean-Pierre Barricelli, ‘Dante in the Arts: A Survey’, Dante Studies No. 114 (1996), pp. 79-93 Each passing year brings more articles and books written about the Commedia and now commentaries on blogs. There is a reason for this – Dante speaks to the human condition everywhere and at all times. This is a work of intellectual complexity and high artistry that unites theology and philosophy with poetical images of startling horror, but also beauty, and which is also the greatest apologetical work ever written in any language. The Divine Comedy is esteemed amongst the greatest works of all Western literature because it reveals the essential nature of the human soul in all its glory and degradation. The whole poem was an honest and piercing reflection upon his own sin, as well as the sins of his age. Dante, the poet, tells the story of his own salvation allegorically, through the journey of a character named Dante through the afterlife.
A hundred years ago, between the First and Second World Wars, there was a great revival of interest in the Divine Comedy in light of the political upheavals following the first and second World Wars, the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, and the concomitant secularization of society. Unsurprisingly, some Christians looked to Dante in analyzing the errors of their own day. Among those who did was Dorothy Sayers. Sayers translated and interpreted the Divine Comedy and wrote a number of essays on it as well.2Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, tr. Dorothy Sayers (Penguin, 1955); Introductory Papers on Dante, Vol. 1 (Methuen & Co, 1957, reprint Wipf and Stock), Further Papers on Dante Vol. 2 (Methuen & Co, 1957, reprint Wipf and Stock). I use her work when teaching Dante in class, along with another book, The Figure of Beatrice by Anglican writer Charles Williams.3Charles Williams, A Figure of Beatrice (Noonday, 1961; Octagon reprints, 1972). Sayers’ commentaries as well as Williams’ work (and his somewhat Dantesque novels, such as Descent into Hell) offer wonderful insight into Dante’s thought. Images and ideas from the Divine Comedy inform the apologetical fiction of C. S. Lewis and the poetry of T. S. Eliot.
The particular appeal of Dante, I argue, lies in the fact that the Divine Comedy is not only a great work of poetry but also autobiographical. Dante tells the story of his conversion to Christ as an allegory of the soul seeking God; he tells the reader of how he regained faith and hope in God in the face of his despair. To someone who thinks there is reason to despair in our day, Dante’s hope becomes his or her hope. Dante relates how he lost his faith in God and found it again, and at every moment he attributes his redemption to God’s gracious love, which is, in the words with which he closes the Paradiso, ‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars’.
One hundred cantos compose the three canticles of the Divine Comedy (canto is Italian for song). The Paradiso, the final canticle is a kind of hymn to the three theological virtues, faith, hope and love. The definition of faith found in the Divine Comedy is taken from the book of Hebrews, it is the ‘substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1). By faith we understand (have evidence) that hope is given by God’s promise of eternal life. Hope is the certainty that through faith one may rest forever in God’s love, and God’s love (charity) was made manifest by the cross of Christ. Dante is a man of hope, and the evidence lies in the poem itself. Through his own faith in God’s mercy, he found Christ’s redeeming love.
The poem opens with Dante lost in a dark wood. The dark wood is a metaphor for his spiritual condition. At one point in his life, lost to sin and error, he was in despair. It begins:
Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. Ay me! How hard to speak of it – that rude And rough and stubborn forest! The mere breath Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood; It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death; Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey The tale, I’ll write what else I found therewith.
In the dark wood of despair, the character Dante is met by the ghost of the great Roman poet and philosopher Virgil who will be his teacher and guide through Hell and Purgatory, although Virgil cannot, as a stranger to Christ, enter Heaven. Nonetheless, as a man of reason, he plays a role in Dante’s redemption; he represents ancient reason and philosophy, which prepared the ancient Romans to receive the Gospel. As it is by reason that men are able to read and understand scripture and see the persuasive nature of the doctrines of the faith, reason is rightly called the preparatio evangelii. Perhaps, had Virgil known Christ, he would have converted, but he did not, and so he cannot enter the earthly Paradise (the Eden of Adam and Eve). From that point on Dante needs a saintly guide, who will be Beatrice, sanctified in grace, a citizen of heaven.
Virgil leads Dante first on a journey downwards to the very pit of Hell where he must condemn the evil that he sees. On this journey, he rejects the wickedness within himself and his society. Hell is a funnel that runs deep into the center of the earth. It is rocky and filled with fire and boiling pitch, but the pit of hell, surprisingly, but in some ways rightly, is a lake of ice. The ice is a metaphor for the cold heart, the heart of someone who could neither love God nor neighbor. There he witnesses a vision of Satan in chains. Virgil and Dante must scramble down the back of Satan before being able to climb out of the funnel towards the other side of the earth, in order to discover the next stage of their journey, Mount Purgatory. Virgil and he will pass through the center of the earth to come out on the other side of the planet, they must travel through the bowels of the earth, and out of eternal darkness in order to look again upon the stars and sun in the sky.
Hell is depicted as a place of horror, as one might expect, and because it is the best-known part of the Divine Comedy people presume that Dante is the poet of horrors. But this is wrong. The rest of the Divine Comedy is filled with light. The journey up Mount Purgatory is bathed in the light of day. This, the second of the canticles, is the most beautiful.
Anglicans think of Purgatory as a ‘Romish doctrine’ connected to the abuse of indulgences in the late medieval church, condemned in the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the tenets of the doctrine of Purgatory were rather vague in the middle ages and quite open to interpretation. It was generally believed to exist, but how it related to heaven was a matter of opinion. Hence, Dante was quite free to describe Purgatory as he wished, and he made it a place entered only by those who already had confessed their faith in Christ, yet, desirous of erasing any blot or stain of sin and error on their conscience, chose to make satisfaction for their sin. Dante depicted Purgatory as a mountain rising up out of the southern hemisphere with the Garden of Eden at the top in order to connect the idea of purgatory to the struggles we endure in this life. It is an allegory of the Christian life in the here and now, of good Christian souls who are running the race that is set before them, working out their salvation in fear and trembling. Indeed, that is exactly what Dante finds on Mount Purgatory, souls who are desirous of becoming perfect, who take up their punishments willingly, who praise and worship God in all they say and do, willing to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Mount Purgatory is crowned at the top by the Garden of Eden because it was where men were first created perfect.
Dante’s theology is Pauline and Augustinian. Purgatory is a poem about the redeeming power of divine grace. Because of man’s fallen nature, because of the stain of sin inherited from Adam and Eve, we are too much caught up in the world, loving things, willing things, doing things which are not of God. It is always a struggle for fallen human nature to do what God commands, and to know God as the very center of our beings. In Romans 7:19, St Paul wrote, ‘For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’. The confessing Christian is confronted with his disobedience to God every day – yet at the same time, knows grace is available. This is the journey of the penitent, a continual struggle against sin until the will is turned entirely to God and sin is no more. But this is only done with the help of God’s grace because in Dante’s allegory there is no entrance to Purgatory without the virtue of faith.
Mount Purgatory depicts souls in training, redirecting their loves towards God. The seven deadly sins – pride, envy, wrath, sloth, covetousness, gluttony, and lust, are overcome. All sins are connected, they lead one to another, as another theologian central to the Christian intellectual tradition, St Gregory the Great explained in his great work on Morals (an exposition of Job). Pride is love of self, and pride in self leads to envy of others. Envy frustrated leads to wrath and anger when observing someone get something we do not have, another manifestation of pride. The sin of sloth, which is indifference to anything good, comes from turning away in frustration, choosing to satisfy false desires and loves, such as love of money (covetousness), love of food (gluttony), and Lust, which needs no explanation. Each sin, each example of disordered love, is purged in turn on a cornice of Mount Purgatory. Each soul prays – as we do in the Lord’s Prayer – ‘thy will be done’.
Although the punishments on Mount Purgatory are as painful as any in Hell, the souls sing and rejoice. Each finds happiness in overcoming the shadowy and false attractions of sin, in taking up the Cross. At the end of Purgatory, the character Dante having reached the top states these words; he is now ‘Pure and prepared to leap up to the stars’.
The metaphorical picture of heavenly paradise is ordered according to the Ptolemaic system of planetary motion found in medieval astronomy – a very significant image of the heavens to the medieval mind. Dante’s vision of heaven is, of course, a vision, not a journey up through the stars. The vision is a gift from God, through the assistance of Beatrice. Each planet represents one of the theological virtues, faith, hope or charity, and in each he meets souls who represented one aspect of those virtues during their lifetime. Having ascended above those heavens, Dante is then examined on his knowledge of the three theological virtues. In the final cantos of the Paradiso, having entered the heaven of heavens, God’s heaven, the celestial rose, where all souls rest in bless, Dante is blessed by seeing a vision in contemplation of the Trinity itself, the beatific vision.
The Paradiso is a difficult and densely written work, filled with theological speculation, but my students who have followed Dante up to the celestial rose, find reading the whole of the Divine Comedy a deeply moving experience. It forces each to examine his or her own motives and actions, and undergraduate students find great happiness in Dante’s discovery that there is a place reserved for him in heaven, that he has reached his home, and that there will be a place reserved for all who love and cherish God. Dante’s true home is with God, and it is our home as well. There are no tears in heaven, there are no fears, only the blessedness of a joy beyond compare.
This is why I believe that the Divine Comedy has been so beloved throughout the ages. Current events ought to make one reflect again on its wisdom, which is the importance and truth of the faith, and then to take stock of the world in light of the fact that this world is not ultimately a home. This is particularly important when there is a sense of despair in the air, a sense that known and loved things are coming to an end. Comfort lies in the fact that we are not the first generation to feel that something is afoot which shall unsettle future generations. For that reason, it is helpful to consider, if only very briefly, what forced Dante into exile and caused his own despair.
Dante suffered a great injustice. He was exiled from Florence on trumped-up charges of political corruption and was told that to return to Florence would cost him his life. He had to leave his wife and children, and he spent over half of his adult life living off the generosity of others. Florence was a republic, and the two governing parties, or factions (in this case families) were called the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. These families did not share power willingly, if one was in, the other was out, and there were periods of violent civil war. Dante, who was a Guelf by birth and marriage and a promising young poet, was chosen for public office sometime around 1300 and got mixed up in the internecine feuds of the day. Unfortunately, outside powers, such as the King of France and the Pope, Boniface VIII, took sides in Florence’s civic affairs. Boniface, for his own purposes, created the situation which sent Dante into exile. Dante attempted to be a peacemaker and was deputed to go to Rome with others of his party to speak to the Pope. While he was gone, however, a coup was organized by the opposition party in Florence, organized with the help of the deceiving Boniface. When Dante returned, he was charged with fraud and corruption. Boniface VIII would become for Dante a symbol of everything that was wrong with the church, and without the leadership of a virtuous king in Christendom as a whole, it is not too much to say that he thought that the end times were near.
Yet, providentially, that exile, that wandering and impoverished life, led to one of the greatest poetical works ever written, a work which has led many Christians to the faith. One does not know what God has in store. In the Paradiso there is a moment when Dante, meeting the saints in glory, hears all heaven lament the current state of Christendom. But Dante still wrote, he had hope in eternal life, even though he had little hope for a peaceful and virtuous Christendom.
Men and women of the middle ages were not different from us – they knew the same fears, they knew the same wickedness. Their political and religious institutions looked different, but they were subject to the same kinds of instability due to human character. They lacked our technology, they lacked our wealth, but they, like us, chased fleeting and ephemeral things that are wicked and selfish and self-destructive. Human nature does not change; people behave much as they always have. Even those born in the 21st century will, like every generation since the fourteenth, find hope and self-knowledge in the Divine Comedy.
This article comprises what will be a regular feature in the future, namely articles that provide a survey of a particular figure or topic of importance to the evolution of Christian and Anglican thought.